does anyone know anything about spread betting on the forex or any good book recommendations?

I spent a while on a dummy account a few years, my advice would be to avoid it, unless you have money to lose and understand and follow economics to a high level you will most likely lose a lot of money. Even top economists get it wrong regularly and the markets are in a very unpredictable state, so whatever you do will be a pretty big gamble. That said I would be going short on most markets, due to the current U.S deficit and debt ceiling being reached, the stopping of QE, China's apparent slowdown, U.K's cuts about to kick and our property bubble having not popped completley yet, along with other factors but thats just my personal opinion and could be completley wrong.
This video gives an overview of how it works,
Spread Betting Explained | Spread Betting Online | IG Index

If you have money to spend on this sort of thing I would reccomend following and investing in individual small cap shares, or defensive shares that give a dividend, the sites that I follow for this sort of thing are,

Free Portfolio, Share dealing, ISAs, PEPs, SIPPs, CFDs, Spread betting - Interactive Investor - This is really good for setting up a shares account and finding out info on different shares.
This is Money: Be your own financial adviser - predictions, advice & tips
Investing, investment advice, financial news & more - MoneyWeek
Britishbulls, Home Page

Might be worth getting a book on how to read fundemantals, like chart patterns and financial statements, but its a bit tricky and not always that relevant.

I do it on different sports but I dont know Zilch on the Forex but I guess it is the same.
Example:
Quote for the number of corners in a football match (10-11), so if you think there will be more than 11 you buy, if you think there will be very few in the match then you sell at 10 and hope it is lower. Just like if you thought shares were going to go up and down -you would buy or sell to back up your judgement on the share prices.

with forex it's very different you bet in pairs e.g eur/gbp then you bet per pip eg 50p a pip goes from 8000 to 8020 you make 10 quid

I used to do it for a while back when I had disposable income.
Unless you want to immerse yourself in it for at least a year, you are going to lose money. You can easily make £100 in an hour. But then it's just as easy to lose £200 the next hour. And that will turn your stomach and make you feel sick.

Yes, you can use stoplosses and stuff to limit losses. But the gambler inside you will come out and you will start throwing good money after bad etc. Leave it alone.

I've tried to block it out of my memory but the worst part unlike a race/footy game you know you've lost x, if I remember rightly its not just x you lose and all you can do is sit at a pc monitor and watch the loses get bigger and bigger. Having said this my work colleague at the time made enough in a year to buy six houses out right, but the year was 2003 when we were riding the crest of an economic nirvanna.

I started doing arbitrage back in 2002. Then I moved to sports trading since 2005. The money I make pay for my holidays It is harder these days to find the edge as bookmakers are becoming more efficient with their odds.

Last week, I withdrew £600 from my betfair account towards my Vegas holidays and left £200 in there and start all over again. It is a goldmine if you know what you doing!

Forex market is a dangerous game in my poker botting days i also dabbled a bit with a bot that played the forex market
dont bother

Ive known people to spend 2.5k on a Forex market course with the top traders in the world and they have walked away with the same conclusion that its a gamble and not worth the risk

I learned that for free

Did you ever code your own poker bot? I'm learning c# now with the aim of building one in 2012. A gargantuan task but potentially big returns.