That Book ...of Perfectly Useless Information, commonly abbreviated as "That Book" (the title it was published under in Britain) is a book written by writer and journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

 Mitchell Symons

Mitchell Symons

Mitchell Symons is a Journalist/Writer from London, England. Born in 1957, he was educated at Mill Hill School and the LSE where he studied Law. Since leaving the BBC, where he was a researcher and director, he worked as a writer, broadcaster and journalist...

, and published in 2004.

Material

The book covers all sorts of material, but frequent topics are celebrities and other people, and their personal qualities, animals, calendar dates, years, toilets, songs, bands, and information normally in the form of lists.

Collection

In the acknowledgements for the book, Symons says: "For the past twenty years, I've been collecting weird and wonderful facts, which I've been storing on bits of paper and, more recently, on my computer. Every few years I'll use some of it in a book or a newspaper series, but it's always been my ambition to be able to put together the most fascinating, extraordinary facts I had-or could find-in one volume.". Interestingly, Symons has previously published somewhat similar books.