Second From Last In The Sack Race — David Nobbs

Born into poverty, saddled with a born loser and parrot-strangler for a dad, short sighted and ungainly, young Henry Pratt doesn't exactly have a head start in life.
But in David Nobbs's brilliantly funny evocation of a Yorkshire boyhood, unathletic and over-imaginative little Pratt proves he can stick up for himself with the stoic good nature of the great British underdog