When Aussie ex-cricketer and ex-showerer Ashley "Curly" Gibson gets the call from Cricket Australia, it's not to parachute him into the Test team, it's to babysit them while they take on England on the Ashes tour of 2013. They need him to keep the big names out of the papers, clear of strip joints and free of more fisticuffs with opposition players.

His PI career being what it is, a bit of all-expenses-paid chaperone work sounds like easy money until an Indian betting syndicate also makes him an offer he can't refuse: help fix some matches or get the mother of all smallpox booster shots.

Throw in a sex-crazed physiotherapist, Mickey Arthur's pending lawsuit, a drugs investigation headed by Curly's best friend and an American ex-cop with a penchant for the macabre and you've got the kind of tour you can't get on a London bus.