Professor Protein's Fitness, Health, Hygiene and Relaxation Tonic ¦ Shocking Science 5,000 years of mishaps and misunderstandings

Ever since 1066 and all that and Latin with Laughter, humour has been a respected shoehorn for easing knowledge into our size 7s even though some terrible liberties have been committed in its name. Sometimes the formula works, though, and here it has. Three cheers and a loud raspberry for hitherto straight man Steve Parker as he dons soft shoes and comic mask.

Professor Protein comes on like a minor Tintin character. His F, H, H, and R Tonic, he explains, are the only medicine we need, as he exhorts us to get FHHARTing at once. His subtext is a very well programmed guide to bodily structure and function with maintenance in mind, spiced up by genuinely comic and comically genuine observations and examples as we go through the lot, from allergies and blackheads to warts and washing.

Shocking Science chronicles the goofs and glitches, blips and blunders that make the experimental way of science the productive business it is. It is an irresistible gallop of anecdotes and, incidentally, a whole history of science. Here we can find out about Edison's sound-powered sewing machine (probably successful only in the Edison household, as T A Edison himself was profoundly deaf) and Isaac Newton's cat flap.

Highly user-friendly, these two titles will entertain not only the quick dipper but also the end-to-end reader, for they contain far more solid information than their presentation initially suggests. So much more the pity, then, that the pages in Shocking Science are not all clearly numbered which makes the information less accessible than either reader deserves or author no doubt intended.