At the age of nine Simon Hattenstone was one of the brightest boys in his class. Then he woke up one day with a headache. By the age of ten he d lost half his body weight, started to talk in baby language, and looked retarded. Despite the symptoms of a very serious illness, the medical profession labelled him a malingerer. Wracked by pain and bewildered by the callousness of the adult world, health workers and doctors, he retreated into the darkness of his own head - a darkness illuminated only by his obsession with Glam rock, the deluded conviction that he was a great poet and the unconditional love of three middle-aged women. When he finally resurfaced three years later, it was into an alien environment every bit as terrifying as the one he just managed to escape from.

In Out Of It Simon Hattenstone tells the extraordinary story of those years.