How to be a Beta Male

From rom coms to wrestling and fatherhood to fist fights, Robert Crampton's How to Be a Beta Male is a brilliantly funny and sometimes moving insight into being a modern-day bloke.

Robert Crampton has been writing his Beta Male column for The Times since 2001. A much-loved weekly insight into modern masculinity – whatever that might mean – Beta Male strives to unlock the secrets of contemporary relationships in all their frequent glory, occasional frustration and on-going complexity. While by his own admission totally failing in this task, Crampton is at any rate amusing as he goes about his business, as his legions of loyal fans would attest.

How to be a Beta Male is a carefully curated selection, bursting with observational nuggets on the minutiae of daily domestics and disasters in the Crampton household, and offering the very best of a sixteen-year-long account of what it is to be a beta male married to an alpha female. From his attempts at DIY to disciplining their children to trying once in a while to put his foot down to getting involved in a punch-up in the street in her defence, Robert continues to fail to impress his wife but always delights his readers.

It's a very smart, extremely funny and yet surprisingly sensitive exploration of the trials, tribulations – and, ultimately, triumphs – of not being young, free and single.