First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2017

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd,

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London SE1 9GF

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Text copyright © Christian O’Connell 2017

Illustrations copyright © Rob Biddulph 2017

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

Christian O’Connell and Rob Biddulph assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

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Source ISBN: 9780008183325

Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780008200572

Version: 2017-01-17

To my mum and dad, Liam and Jenni. Thanks for always encouraging my dreams and never laughing at them, even when they included becoming:

  Boxing middleweight champion of the world

  World BMX champion

  A DJ

If your parents laugh at your dreams, sack them.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1. Fired!

Chapter 2. Gateaux Chateau

Chapter 3. I’m an O-list Celebrity

Chapter 4. ‘Pirate party in my pants’

Chapter 5. Loser FM

Chapter 6. Mae Geri!

Chapter 7. Chess Club Nightmares

Chapter 8. The Next Chapter

Chapter 9. Merit Radio

Chapter 10. The Supermarket Detective

Chapter 11. Like Magic Really

Chapter 12. Shop-o-rama

Chapter 13. The Best Shopping Trip I Ever Went On

Chapter 14. Shepherd’s Pie Swamp

Chapter 15. How to Start Your Own Radio Show in Your Dad’s Shed

Chapter 16. How to Do the World’s Worst Radio Show

Chapter 17. Elvis is In the Shed

Chapter 18. The Secret Shed Show Launches and Sets the World on Fire

Chapter 19. The Rise of Radio Boy

Chapter 20. Homework Hell

Chapter 21. Fish and Face

Chapter 22. An Angry Monkey

Chapter 23. In

Chapter 24. No Singing Chipmunks

Chapter 25. A Brilliant Mistake I’m About to Make

Chapter 26. Captain Invisible Nerd

Chapter 27. Oh Very No

Chapter 28. The Most Wanted Boy in the School

Chapter 29. Diary of a Fugitive

Chapter 30. The World’s Worst Apology

Chapter 31. The NET Closes

Chapter 32. The UNMASKING

Chapter 33. The Fallout

Chapter 34. Too Many Apologies

Chapter 35. Do the Right Thing

Chapter 36. The Dream Team Rides Again

Note from Me, the Writer of this, Spike Hughes

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

‘You’re fired.’

I stared at the man sitting opposite me. The programme controller of St Kevin’s hospital radio. Barry Dingle, or ‘Bazza’ as he insisted we call him. No one ever did.

‘What?’ I said. ‘But I haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘I … I know that, Spike. But you can’t work here any more. I’m sorry.’

What kind of a man sacks an eleven-year-old boy from his dream job? A monster, that’s who.

‘Why?’ I spluttered. Later, on the bus home, when I replayed this moment in my mind (as I will do for the rest of my days), there were many things I wished I’d said to the bald-headed man ruining my life. Such as:

1. You’re a monster.

2. Technically, you can’t actually fire me as I’m a volunteer.

3. My mum said you live in your mum’s basement. Who’s the bigger loser here?

4. Have you got any tissues as I think I’m going to cry?

But I didn’t say any of that. Annoyingly, my face was letting me down. My bottom lip had started to wobble, and my eyes flooded with tears. The tears of a dreamer who’d just had his heart RIPPED out, put into a blender and then force-fed back to him. My fantasy of being a famous DJ with a detached house and gravel driveway (and personalised gold-plated headphones) was no more.

Barry Dingle was firing me from the only hour of joy I had in my life, my radio show.

The Wacky Kids’ Wonder Hour, Saturday mornings at 6am. Maybe the name of the show hadn’t helped. For the record, it came from ‘Bazza’, not me. But I loved doing that show. It was sixty minutes when for once I felt I was funny and good at something. It was the highlight of my week.

Well, it had been.

Sure, it was only hospital radio, and most people don’t even know hospitals have their own radio stations. But they do: run, for the most part, by overly enthusiastic volunteers with bad breath and sandals. The thing was, I’d read in all the interviews with my favourite DJs that they’d started off in hospital radio. I collected these interviews in a special folder under my bed, safe from my sister’s prying eyes. Codenamed ‘My Favourite Stamps’. I’d learned my lesson after she found a notebook I’d been practising my autograph in.

I thought I was following in these DJs’ footsteps. Not any more. Me getting fired was also going to be bad news for the fellow members of our AV Club at school. The AV (Audio Visual) Club is an after-school club run by Mr Taggart. There are only three members: me and my best mates, Artie and Holly, and each week Mr Taggart does his best to school us in the magical worlds of broadcasting, video and print.

There had been a fourth member, Dave Simpson, but he quit for Jazz Club. We could hear them practising, and I’m no expert, but it sounded like they were all playing from different pages in different books.

I liked to think I was held in some regard by Mr Taggart and the AV Club, as I was actually doing radio. Spike Hughes – the country’s youngest radio DJ.

Now I was the youngest sacked radio DJ. A scandal like this could ruin the AV Club. I just hoped we were strong enough to survive.

The bald-headed monster man started to speak again, his coffee-flavoured breath hitting me in the face. Ugh.

‘It’s awkward, Spike, and I feel dreadful having to do this face to face. I was going to tell your mum, but …’

He drifted off, a thousand-yard stare appearing in his eyes. This was a look I’d seen a million times when people said the ‘M’ word.

Mum.

It was the look of fear, and my mum was the source of it. A force to be reckoned with. Confident, protective – very protective – and always on the lookout for possible danger in everything around me and my sister. She’s a ward manager at the hospital and that’s how I got the show. My mum ‘persuaded’ Barry Dingle to give me an hour on the radio. Her ability to get people to do what she wants is, according to my dad, ‘nothing short of a superpower’. Running a hospital ward is the ideal job for my mum. It puts her in charge, looking after people, and it provides her with an endless supply of grisly stories to justify her need to protect us from the modern world.

‘See, just today we had a boy come in who got a skateboard for his birthday. Yes, it seemed like fun to him, Spike, for the two minutes before he fell off … Now he only has one eye, one leg and no arms. They have to pull him around everywhere on the skateboard.’

No, Barry Dingle wouldn’t have dared give my mum this news or she would have done something to him that would’ve made him a patient at St Kevin’s. I’m not saying she would’ve physically hurt him. No. She would’ve made him hurt himself, using her special powers.

Bazza started to clear his throat to bring his attention back to the job in hand: sacking me.

‘You know I like you, Spike, and you’re a talented kid; you’re a bit odd but I don’t mind that. It’s just that we’ve got the results back from our yearly audience review. It tells me which shows are the most popular and which aren’t … and that leads me to your show … I’ll just come out and say it …’

‘What?’ I snapped, defensively.

‘It has no listeners. Actually, that’s not true – there was one.’

‘Well, that’s good; you always said the key to radio is to imagine you’re talking to just one person,’ I reasoned.

‘Yes, but it turns out that one person was an elderly lady called Beryl who had sadly passed away and no one turned her radio off. Tragic really.’

Oh.

‘Look,’ Barry went on, ‘I can’t justify your kids’ show any more. The show after you, Graham’s Gardening Gang, is our biggest by far so I’m extending his slot by an hour.’

This was even worse news. The shame of it. Graham Bingham is a really patronising old man with a huge beard that has bits of food in it, and on one occasion I think I saw a small mouse in there. Graham actually resembles a garden gnome. All that’s missing is a red hat and a fishing rod.

I was being sacked and replaced by a show about allotments and hedges, presented by a gnome.

‘When’s my last show?’ I asked, thinking at least I could have a big send-off.

‘You’ve just done it.’

And that’s how my career in radio ended. The dream was over. Part of me wished it had never begun. How cruel to be given hope and then have it taken away. By a gardening show. My dad always said supporting England at football was like this.

‘It’s the hope that kills you, son.’

As I was packing away my headphones, I saw something in the bottom of my bag. A gift Artie had got me from his recent holiday to France. Stink bombs. Banned from our school after some boys threw them into the staffroom. Poor Miss Mills fainted into the eager arms of the PE teacher, Mr Lewis. (Quick update on this: they’ve just returned from their honeymoon.)

No, I couldn’t, I thought.

Yes, I could. I really could.

‘Sorry, Bazza, I’ve left my keys in the studio. Can I just pop in and get them?’ I asked, innocently.

‘Yes, of course, Spike. It’s a tulip special this week. Graham’s just setting up.’

Indeed he was. Graham and his garden show, now extended by an hour. As I walked past all the hospital supplies, I saw Graham and his beard were in the studio, sorting through some tulip bulbs.

‘Ah, Spike, so sorry to hear about your show. No hard feelings, lad. You’re young, you’ll be fine. Probably too young really to have a show, much to learn still. Hey, stick around and help out on my show if you like – see how it’s done!’

With that, Graham let out a loud cackle and stroked his beard. As I said goodbye and walked past the flowerpots and compost he’d brought in, I placed not one, not two, but three stink bombs around the studio. One for each hour of his newly extended show. My gift. The barely audible crunch they made as I left the studio, treading on them, will always be the greatest sound I’ll ever hear. No, second. The best was a few minutes later when Graham’s theme tune started playing. As he began discussing the merits of Dutch tulips, all that could be heard was the sound of a human gnome coughing violently and swearing at the top of his booming voice as he threw up into his beard.

I later found out that as a result of some complaints (from my mum) about his language, they had to move Graham’s show to the graveyard slot.

1–4am.

I sprinted up the steps out of the hospital basement, fleeing the scene of the dreadful crime. The crime of Barry Dingle killing my radio career. I walked past the dozing security guard. Quite why there was a security guard at the hospital always puzzled me. Was someone trying to steal the patients? What would they do with them? Sell them on eBay? I was about to hand in my security pass when I thought better of it. You never know when that might come in handy one day.

I then began my very own solemn walk of shame to the bus stop. Like a funeral march. Same as when our dog Sherlock is told off for trying to steal food from the dinner table. His ears go back, his tail drops between his legs and he skulks away, hugging the ground. My walk of shame quickly turned into the bus ride of shame, as I got on the Number Nine as usual to head back to the estate I live on.

At least now I could relate to all those famous people I read about in my sister’s celebrity magazines. The ones with headlines like ‘WASHED-UP STAR NOW CLEANS CARS’.

I asked myself, Did I crash and burn too young?

I didn’t want to go back home right away as I wasn’t ready for my mum’s interrogation. (I was already imagining it: ‘So you said what to him? Then what did he say? Why didn’t you call me immediately? What exactly did he say?’)

Dad would try to fix the situation, but this time he wouldn’t be able to, as it was broken forever. No, at a time like this I needed the kind of people who wouldn’t ask five thousand questions or try to make it better. I texted my best friends, Artie and Holly.

This was a devastatingly serious situation so I used no emojis.

There isn’t an emoji for ‘I’ve been sacked by a bald-headed monster and set three stink bombs off, causing a studio evacuation’. If there was, maybe it would look like this:

I suggested meeting at Artie’s as I knew he’d be in. He’s in every Saturday morning after returning from his weekly pilgrimage to Lionel Vinyl with a fresh batch of records. Artie loves music, but only if it’s on vinyl. These are round discs of black plastic that songs used to be played on in olden times. To me they look like something you’d see in a history museum next to an Egyptian mummy or a dinosaur tooth. It makes no sense that when the rest of the world is simply beaming songs from outer space on to their phones in nanoseconds, Artie is spinning black plastic discs. It’s like preferring to drive an old horse and cart rather than a Ferrari sports car. Or using a carrier pigeon to send a message to your parents asking them to pick you up from the swimming pool, instead of just texting them.

Artie discovered his dad’s old record collection last year when he found him stuffing the discs into bin bags for the guide dogs’ charity shop. Those dogs are amazing. I love my dog Sherlock too. My sister wanted a cat and I was desperate for a dog. Cats are scary to me. They will attack you at any moment with no warning. What an awful pet. If you had a mate who suddenly just tried to scratch you, you would not say he or she was ‘cute’. Dogs are way cooler and help blind people. There are no guide cats.

Anyway, I won the dogs vs cats debate and Sherlock became the fifth member of our family. However, it was a short-lived victory as my sister used all this to get what she really wanted: a pony. It cost way, way more and means we won’t have a foreign holiday this year.

Anyway, as Artie’s dad was cramming these antique relics into his work van, Artie asked what they were. While his dad told him, an instant obsession was formed. Artie took them back into his house and – fast-forward a year – he loves nothing better than sitting in his bedroom, listening to his records on his headphones.

If Artie robbed a bank, maybe to fund more record-buying, and I had to describe him to the authorities, I’d say he looked like an owl. Big eyes, thoughtful and a large rotational head. I made that last bit up, but he does sometimes cough up pellets. This might be from all the out-of-date cakes that are freely available in his house. That’s the big bonus if your parents own a bakery empire. Every time I go round, I’m offered a wide variety of cakes, and it’s guaranteed all of them will be out of date. Artie’s parents own about five cake shops all over town, under the name Mr Cake. Much to Artie’s horror, sometimes his dad makes him dress up in a giant cupcake costume as the shop’s mascot – ‘Mr Cake’ – handing out freebies in the High Street at the weekend.

Artie is accidentally funny. He just says stuff. There isn’t any filter, or any kind of pause, to think about what he is saying. As a result, other kids at school reckon he’s a bit odd. Like the time he was sent to the headmaster, Mr Harris, after our English teacher, Miss Tusk, asked the class to describe her. Artie shot his hand up, she nodded at him to speak and he said, ‘Skin like a ham slice.’ I don’t think it was what she was after.

Artie’s detached house is just on the outside of the estate Holly and I live on. His parents are way richer than mine. We live in a semi-detached house, but Artie’s house doesn’t have any other house attached to it. Also, he has a gravel driveway. I think my dad might be jealous because whenever I mention Artie’s house my dad immediately snaps back with, ‘Paid for by kids’ rotten teeth from all those cakes; might as well have kids’ teeth in his driveway instead of gravel!’

Artie goes on two foreign holidays a year to exotic-sounding places I’ve never heard of. He also goes skiing every year. The closest I ever came to an Alpine trip was when it snowed last year and Dad made me a toboggan. When I say ‘made me’, it was an old door cut in half. I had the half with the door handle.

Holly’s house and my house have numbers, but Artie’s house has its own name. Artie’s house is called ‘Gateaux Chateau’.

The estate Holly and I live on was built in olden times (1970-something) when the people whose job it was to come up with street names finally ran out of ideas.

I imagine the meeting went like this:

‘OK, what can we name all the streets after?’

‘Queens, you know, like—’

‘Done that.’

‘Kings?’

‘Done.’

‘What about birds? Sparrow? Kestrel—’

‘GENIUS! Let’s take the rest of the day off to celebrate how good we are!’

Holly is on Chaffinch Close and I drew the short straw with Crow Crescent.

I got off at my stop. I was going to get my bike and cycle over to Artie’s. No one was at home, but as I was leaving with my bike I saw Terry. Sensei Terry. He made me LEAP right out of my skin as he was crouched behind our garden wall at the front of the house.

‘Sorry, Spike,’ said Sensei Terry as he stood up. ‘I heard a noise and, seeing your dad’s car wasn’t here and fearing a burglary, I came to investigate. Happy to see it’s you.’

‘Yes, just off to my mate’s.’

‘Safe on the roads, Spike. Safe on the roads.’

Sensei Terry muttered to himself as he turned away, going back to scanning the road like a robot.

Sensei Terry, on top of being our postman and a karate instructor (which is why he insists on being known as Sensei Terry), also runs the local Neighbourhood Watch. He lives four doors down from us. When he isn’t working or teaching karate, he seems to be permanently patrolling our streets and area for any, and I mean any, suspicious activity.

Like the time he called the police to our neighbours’ house as their curtains were still closed at lunchtime one Sunday. The police gave the Meachers the shock of their life as they kicked down their front door, splintering it into a thousand pieces, screaming, ‘POLICE! PUT YOURS HANDS UP NOW!’

Only to find a terrified Mr and Mrs Meacher, who had been enjoying a nice lie-in after a late night celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Sensei Terry was made to pay for a new front door and was cautioned by the police. For the second time that year.

The first time was a classic. Sensei Terry called the police to report ‘terrorist activity’ at Number 56 Crow Crescent. The home of a family Sensei Terry hated, as the dad was a rival martial arts instructor.

‘He teaches kung fu; it’s not a patch on karate, just Mickey Mouse stuff you see in movies,’ Sensei Terry would confide to anyone at every opportunity.

The police obviously take these calls very, very seriously. A SWAT team was dispatched and officers with guns stormed the Woodses’ house. They were led out in handcuffs. An emotional Mr and Mrs Woods and their two teenage daughters protested their innocence tearfully.

‘They’re trained to behave like that – they’re lying,’ said Sensei Terry, who was watching it all round at ours. Next to my mum, by her go-to observation post. Just behind the net curtains.

Four ski masks were removed from their house, which Sensei Terry had seen them all in and presumed them to be planning a terrorist attack, rather than what they were actually doing, which was trying on some new ski gear ahead of their trip.

Now Sensei Terry turned to look at me again, frowning. ‘You OK, Spike?’ he asked. ‘You look down.’

I swallowed. ‘Fine, fine, Sensei Terry,’ I said. You see, there are only two members of the Neighbourhood Watch and my mum is the other one. She and Sensei Terry give each other ‘intel’ on a daily basis. Anything I said to him would get back to her, and I did not want my mum knowing about me getting fired. Who knew what she would do.

‘All right then,’ said Sensei Terry. ‘But if you’re ever in any kind of trouble, you let me know, OK? There’s a spare place in my karate class, you know.’

‘OK,’ I said.

‘You would learn the ancient art of KARATE, thousands of years of wisdom for just four pounds a week. Think about it, Spike.’

No, I won’t, Sensei Terry.

‘Sure,’ I lied.

I cycled to Artie’s house and when I got there Artie’s dad, Ray, aka ‘Mr Cake’, answered the huge oak door (with bronze cake-shaped door knocker) halfway through eating a bun.

‘Spike! You look sad – everything OK? Come in.’ I think that’s what he said anyway. It was hard to fully understand with all the cake in his mouth.

‘I’ve been sacked from my radio show,’ I said glumly. Just saying those words out loud caused a pain in my heart like I’d never felt before.

‘WHAT! Why? Did you play some of Artie’s records and put them all to sleep?’ Mr Cake said, still chewing that bun.

‘I don’t have any further comment at the moment,’ I answered. I’d heard troubled celebrities say this when hassled by the paparazzi. Mr Cake laughed out loud at this and a load of crumbs came flying out.

Sure enough, Artie was upstairs in his headphone heaven. His parents had converted the loft into a hangout for their only child. Up there was a massive TV about the size of our dining-room table and a pinball machine. The walls were lined with hundreds of records. Artie’s collection was more like a record library. Radio stations would have less. Most stations only seem to have one CD actually, as they just play the same songs over and over.

I walked over, yanked one of his headphones dramatically away from his ear and yelled, ‘THEY SACKED ME!’

Then I collapsed on to his bed. Artie stopped the record he was listening to. This he had to do with care and precision. You’d think he was a nuclear scientist handling plutonium and any sudden movement might blow the whole world up. Really, though, all it involves is lifting a needle from the record on the turntable. All in the time it takes to get your shoes on. When he could have just pressed PAUSE on his phone.

‘Spike, what are you talking about?’ Artie said as he stood over me.

‘Apparently, no one listens to my show.’ I put my head in my hands. I told him exactly what had happened, sparing no details. The owl took it all in. Then spoke.

‘So … you just give up now? Where’s the fight in you? Gone, just like that? Can’t mean that much to you then.’

‘I’ve been fired. From a volunteer job on hospital radio. How will I ever be a radio star now?’

‘By not giving up,’ said Artie.

‘Who’s giving up?’ said a voice from behind us.

My other best friend had arrived. She has a habit of appearing out of thin air. It’s as if she lives in another dimension and is beamed into our world from time to time. Her earth name is Holly. Elf-like in appearance, with piercing blue eyes that see right through you. My mum once said – a bit cruelly – that her ears stick out so much she ‘looks like a monkey’.

However, no one would ever say anything like this to Holly’s face as that would be a HUGE mistake. Holly may not be one of the super-popular girls at school, but she is seriously tough. A brown belt in karate, she even takes part in big competitions and is unbeaten in eight fights. I once asked her why she didn’t use her skills on the kids at school when they made monkey noises behind her back.

She looked at me intently and said, ‘The first and most important lesson Sensei Terry teaches you is when not to use martial arts; it’s about self-control, Spike.’

No idea what that meant. If it was me, I’d have karate-kicked Martin Harris, the school bully, all the way down our high street. Of course, it wouldn’t be me because you couldn’t pay me to go to Sensei Terry’s karate class. Despite all my mum’s attempts to get me to ‘join in’, I don’t like any kind of activity that involves sport or being in a group. Apart from AV Club. But that’s different.

I’d also say Holly is probably the smartest out of all of us. Top of the class in science. I think she even knows more than the teacher. I don’t know any other kid who can use a soldering iron. She used it to repair the AV Club printer. Her dad, Timothy Tate (‘Please, Spike, call me Tim’), is an inventor. Just not a very successful one. All around their house are empty bits of circuit boards and the wiry guts of computers. In the shed, it’s like a graveyard of his failed inventions.

Personally, I liked his singing kettle that stopped singing when it was boiled. Sadly, it only ‘sang’ one song so people got fed up with it and it was voted Most Irritating Product of the Year. This was made worse by the fact that the number-two place on the list was taken by another of his ideas, a pillow that cut your hair as you slept. This ended up on the teatime news, with buyers of the Pillow Barber complaining that not only were random bits of their hair missing, but also bits of their ears too. Two hundred Pillow Barbers now rest in pieces in the shed under a blanket, as if hiding their shame from the world.

As I’ve already said, me, Holly and Artie are the only members of the AV Club. None of us will ever be one of the cool kids at school. Life has just decided it. I’m not saying we aren’t all great kids (as my mum is always telling me), but being ‘cool’ is like being an A-list star in those celebrity magazines. These A-listers may not be the smartest or even the prettiest, but they are the chosen ones and they get to walk on the red carpet.

Holly always says, ‘Who cares? We’re not one of the pinheads. Good.’

I’m not so sure. Sometimes I quite fancy a walk on the red carpet. I’d secretly hoped the radio show might bump me up a few letters in the celebrity alphabet to at least the O-list or the M-list. This would mean the girl of my dreams who I was going to marry, Katherine Hamilton, would not only talk to me, but not mind being seen talking to me. She’s red carpet. I’m the kind of carpet your nan and grandad have that looks like someone’s been sick on it every day for the last fifty years.

Artie, Holly and me go way back. Our mums have been friends since they met in birthing class. They bonded instantly over a love of gossip, fixing other people’s lives and elasticated maternity pants. The three of them are a powerful union. The league of mums.

Anyway, back to the story unfolding in Artie’s room.

‘I’ve been sacked from my show,’ I said to Holly.

‘Well, proves what an idiot that programme controller is,’ she said. ‘That’s why he isn’t working in a proper radio job. Running his fake station. Loser.’

‘Um. Yeah,’ I said.

‘Doesn’t mean you’re not a great radio presenter,’ continued Holly. Her head jutted forward to really drive the point home.

The three of us chatted it over before I had to ask one final question.

‘Please be honest: do you want me to resign?’ I said.

‘From what?’ said Artie.

‘The AV Club. I’ve been fired from an unpaid radio job. I’ve brought shame on you both.’

Holly rolled her eyes. ‘Spike. If you quit, then you’re not my friend any more. Only losers quit. I’ll kick your backside if you do and put you on your mum’s ward.’

‘But radio’s my thing,’ I said. ‘The only thing I want to do. The only thing I’m good at. What am I meant to do now?’

‘Well …’ said Artie. ‘We’ve been promised a school radio station for ages. Why don’t we ask again about it?’

‘Yeah,’ said Holly. ‘No more being fobbed off. We’ll show them the petition again. And you can present. You’ll be back on the radio in no time. I mean, no one else in the school has your experience, do they? I’ll make a list of action points.’

Holly is super-organised and loves making lists.

That’s what friends do. Lift you up when you’re down. And offer you out-of-date cakes.

The wafting aroma of pony poo told me I was nearly back home at 27 Crow Crescent.

Dad’s car would be caked in the stuff after taking my sister to some awful pony gymkhana. For those of you lucky enough not to know what a gymkhana is, it’s like a strange kind of sports day for ponies. All watched and cheered on by people with names like Tamara and Fenella.

One day last summer I was made to go to one of these events and help out. Worst day of my life. I was forced to wear a high-visibility jacket that would have been too big for a giant, and run the car park. It got even worse when Katherine Hamilton, the girl of my dreams, turned up with her mum. No girl is impressed by anyone in an oversized high-vis jacket. I couldn’t hear them laughing in their car, but I could guess they were, just from the small clues. Like the finger pointing at me, and them being doubled over in hysterical laughter.

My sister’s pony is called Mr Toffee. Mr Waste of Money would be more accurate. This super-sized pet gets better shoes than me. If you look up the word ‘pony’ in the dictionary, it should say ‘angry, pooing motorbike’. Why would any sane human want to sit on an animal that can go crazy and run off at any moment? They are huge beasts, yet will head for the hills at top speed at the mere sight of a packet of crisps. Sometimes they just decide to throw you up in the air and break your bones for the pure fun of it.

I could see Dad out the front of our house de-pooing his car. My sister was nowhere to be seen of course. Probably counting her new rosettes and making space for them on her bedroom wall. Dad’s car is not a BMW like Artie’s dad’s. We had to sell our decent family car for a second-hand one to fund Mr Toffee’s stable fees. So now we travel around in an estate car from the olden days all so Mr Toffee can sleep in luxurious five-star accommodation – with en suite hay. I’m talking wind-down car windows. It’s the colour of sick. Dad says it’s ‘golden sunrise’, but, trust me, the only way you’d ever see a sunrise this colour is if the world was ending and the sun was throwing up into the sea.

Whenever Dad picks me up from school, I ask him to park a few streets away so no one can see him. Often he will think it’s ‘hilarious’ to wait for me right outside the school gates, playing nursery rhymes at full volume and yelling at me, ‘Got your favourites on, Spike!’ Dad’s very funny. To himself.

I think he does all of this because his job is sooooo boring. He’s the manager of the local supermarket, but he used to be cool once, a very long time ago. He was a drummer in a band and that’s how Mum met him. Mum makes us all feel a little bit sick when she starts telling ‘our story’.

‘Your dad was in the coolest band in town; everyone was talking about them being the next big thing. One night after a show I invited myself backstage and we kissed.’

I’ve seen photos (no videos as they hadn’t been invented back then; I think people drew on cave walls) and maybe it was a different time, but you don’t see many famous bands these days with all the members wearing eyepatches.

‘We were called the Pirates you see, son. That was our gimmick. If you liked a girl in the crowd, you lifted up your eyepatch, like I did when I spotted your mum,’ Dad would confide, creepily.

It turns out they weren’t the next big thing or even the one after that. Sadly, the Pirates broke up on the cusp of being signed to a major record label at the age of just eighteen. Mum says we aren’t to ask Dad about what split the band up (‘it could upset him’). But I heard them talking about it late one night. They’d been at a party and Dad had bumped into the Pirates’ former lead singer, Tom Dibble, who now runs a tanning salon in town. It was the first time I’d ever heard my dad swear. After playing Count the Swear Words (seventeen, including one I didn’t understand; Holly did when I told her – she said her mum called her dad it once when he shrank her favourite jumper), I finally found out what broke up the band.

It would appear that Tom, the Pirate singer, took the rock-and-roll behaviour too far. Despite having a girlfriend, he thought it would be no problem to have a spare one. The only problem was that the spare one turned out to be my Aunt Charlotte. Dad’s sister. When she discovered she was the bonus girlfriend, she came home in tears and Dad had a fight with his Pirate bandmate in the middle of a show. Oh, wouldn’t you have wanted to see that? Two pirates fighting live on stage – walk the plank, Tom! As the other pirates tried to break up the fight, the microphone got smashed into Pirate Tom’s teeth. A tooth was knocked out and into the drink of an audience member.

Tom really did look like a pirate after that, it would seem.

Despite much dental work, the Pirates had ended up with a lead singer with a slight but very audible whistle when he sang. The record deal never happened and they split up a few weeks later. Sometimes Dad is all fun and laughter until certain songs come on the radio and it will take him to his dark Pirate times. Then he starts staring madly into the distance, mumbling to himself the words of the band’s biggest hit, ‘Pirate Party in My Pants’.

‘Pirate … party … pirate p-p-p-p-PARTY.’

Now Dad looked up from cleaning pony poo off the wing mirror of the old-mobile.

‘You’re back early. Everything all right, Spike?’ he asked, unaware that the information I was about to give him was going to change our lives forever.

‘Not great,’ I said. ‘I got fired from hospital radio.’

Dad put his serious face on. Frowning and everything.

‘Sorry, son,’ he said. He stretched his back. ‘That must have been awful for you.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘life sometimes isn’t very fair. But I’m telling you now, if you really want anything, there will always be setbacks along the way. What’s important is how you handle them. No one gets anywhere without struggling.’ Dad looked at me, seriously. ‘Every day I wonder what could have been with the band. If we’d worked things out better, or if I’d taken up the offer to join the Dead Giraffes …’

After The Pirates broke up, Dad was offered a drumming spot in another band, the Dead Giraffes. However, disillusioned with fame and fortune, he joined the trainee management scheme at the supermarket he now runs. He’s done well.

Not as well as the Dead Giraffes though, who went on to have five number-one hits in thirty different countries.

‘But … how do I keep going?’ I asked, bringing him back from one of the thousand-yard stares that goes with him reminiscing about his drumming glory days.

‘Simple. Get back on the horse.’

‘The horse?’

‘I mean, find another show,’ said Dad. ‘Get back on the radio somehow.’

‘Easier said than done,’ I pointed out. ‘Although Holly wants to make the school finally start its own radio station …’

‘That’s the spirit!’ said Dad. ‘Or just do it yourself. You watch all those kids with online shows, but it’s not just videos. There are online radio stations too, Spike, playing much better music than all that pop rubbish you hear now. I love this one called New Music Is All Rubbish. It’s a brave new world out there on the interweb. Why don’t you launch your own one? Do the Spike Show.’ Dad’s serious face changed into his excited one. Which is maybe scarier.

‘Where from? I don’t have a studio,’ I replied. He obviously hadn’t thought it through. What my dad said next will go down in history as the dumbest idea ever.

‘Do your show from the shed.’

An innocent suggestion from a dad trying to help out his desperate loser son.

But those fateful words started this whole mess.

‘WHAT? The shed! The buried jungle temple? Where a whole community of spiders with fangs and rats live? Are you kidding me, Dad?’ I yelled.

‘Spike! You’re missing the bigger picture,’ said Dad, warming to his idea now. ‘You’d be your own boss: no one to fire you or tell you what to do. We’d have to keep it a secret from your mum or she’d never allow it. Your mate Holly can get it up and running, I’m sure. Ask Mr Taggart, the AV Club teacher, for some help. I’ll help you too. Don’t do what I did and walk away from your dream. Chase it.’

‘Dad, have you ever heard of anyone doing a radio show from a shed? It’s pathetic. Look, it’s OK, Dad. Keep your shed. It’s got all your paint pots and the lawnmower in and it’s covered in thorns and weeds. I’m going to chill out in my bedroom.’ I left him to his car-cleaning, my head low and dejected. I dragged myself upstairs.

As I climbed the stairs, I bumped into my sister, who’d been listening to everything.

Her eyes narrowed as she said, ‘Oh dear. Little brother’s been sacked and is now launching Loser FM live from the shed?’

Amber was loving this. Remember: her weekend highlight would’ve been sitting on Mr Toffee’s back, being carried around a field, praying the beast didn’t launch her into the air just for a laugh.

‘Not now,’ I sighed, and tried to get past.

But Amber blocked the way. She was dressed in her riding gear and stank of manure and attitude. A fresh red rosette the size of her face was pinned to her.

‘Maybe you could do the show from the toilet? Perfect for your material,’ she kindly suggested.

‘Ha ha,’ I said. I was too tired to think of a comeback.

Her smile widened. ‘Oh, and I couldn’t help but notice you’ve doodled Katherine Hamilton’s name all over your desk.’

‘YOU’VE BEEN SNOOPING IN MY ROOM!’ I yelled.

‘It’s so sweet,’ she replied. ‘The first flush of romance …’

‘I hate you,’ I said. I could feel – with horrified embarrassment – that I was about to cry. I took a deep breath.

Suddenly, Amber’s face softened. ‘I don’t know why you like her so much anyway,’ she said. ‘She’s horrible. She is not the girl you were friends with in primary school.’

I was confused. Was Amber being nice now, caring about me?

I wasn’t confused for long.

‘Anyway, so long, loser,’ she said. And with that she walked off.

As I flopped on to my bed, I heard a key in the front door. My dog Sherlock ran under my bed as if he knew a storm was coming.

Mum was back.

I heard her and Dad talking briefly, and the word ‘sacked’ sounded loud and clear. Then it went quiet. Too quiet. Eerily quiet. My mum swore. Very loudly.

‘The loser! I’ll stick his headphones …’

Technically it’s impossible to do what she suggested to Barry Dingle – the Beyerdynamic headphones are very big – but I’d have liked to have seen her try. Sherlock pushed himself even further under the bed.

Then footsteps. Mum was coming up the stairs. No, running up the stairs. Two or three at a time. The whole house was shaking. Carol Hughes had been given bad news and things were about to go NUCLEAR.

‘WHERE is my poor angel?’ Mum asked before she was even in the room.

Now she was here, almost ripping my bedroom door off its hinges. The first thing I noticed was the red, angry face. You could’ve seen it on Google Earth. My mum isn’t tall and not really short either, but she has the power of ten men, according to my dad.

‘Tell me what that SLAP-HEADED coward did! Tell me everything!’ Mum yelled as she stood in my bedroom, hands on her hips, her tracksuit soaked in sweat from her Zumba class.

‘Well … um … he fired me.’

‘Why?’ asked Mum.

‘Apparently no one was listening.’

Mum stared out of the window and started chewing her bottom lip. This wasn’t good. This meant she was hatching a plan.

‘RIGHT! It’s clear to me that what you need now is a new hobby. It’s not going to do any good moping around here, Spike. You have to make some new friends,’ Mum declared.

‘I already have friends and don’t want to join any more clubs, Mum,’ I pleaded.

In the vain hope of moving me up the school popularity rankings, my mum had made me join various clubs. Gymnastics, scuba-diving and Air Cadets. I hated them all.

My gymnastics career ended with me crashing into some parents who had the misfortune to be sitting near my high beam. Scuba-diving ended when I dropped an air tank on to the instructor’s foot, breaking not one but several bones. He swore and said a good selection of the words my dad said that night when I learned the story about Tom, the Pirates’ lead singer.

Air Cadets ended after the first meeting at the community centre when Squadron Leader Gary told Mum that many of his cadets went on to join the air force and fly fighter jets.

‘No son of mine is sitting in a rocket with wings, firing bombs at dangerous people, plus his ears play up just flying on holiday to Spain,’ were my mum’s final words.

Now, though, her mind was made up and resistance was futile.

‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘Sensei Terry has a spare place in his karate class. I’m calling him now to sign you up.’

‘Oh, please don’t—’

‘My mind is made up, Spike. I’m only doing what’s best for you,’ she said. This was one of my mum’s classic catchphrases. Along with:

 ‘It could kill you stone-cold dead in seconds’: applied to almost anything and everything, from food that is seven minutes past its sell-by date to swimming within an hour of eating a ‘heavy meal’.

 ‘What would people say?’: again, Mum is constantly worried about what neighbours and friends might say, like when my sister Amber said she wanted to get her ears pierced. This got a record high score of three Mum catchphrases within less than three seconds. ‘You want YOUR EARS PIERCED, AMBER? No way, madam. A dirty, infected needle could kill you stone-cold dead in seconds; what would people say? I’m only doing what’s best for you.’

I could only think of one way of getting out of this. Use my mum’s worry that danger lies round every corner. I think she gets it from working at the hospital.

‘Isn’t karate a bit … dangerous?’ I said, mock-innocently.

But she was wise to me. ‘Sensei Terry is all about avoiding violence,’ she said. ‘He’ll teach you to protect yourself. From murderers and that. Just what you need.’

‘I don’t need protecting from murderers.’

‘You never know,’ she said. ‘Anyway, Holly goes, doesn’t she? So you’ll have a friend there. It’ll be fun.’

‘Fun’. Now there’s a word I’d love to ban. ‘Fun’ is a word parents use to describe something that’s rubbish or boring to try to kid you it isn’t.

No, karate wouldn’t be fun. It would be yet another painful reminder that sport and me hate each other.

These are my two favourite things to do at school:

1. Closing my eyes and imagining what it would be like to throw Martin Harris into a pit of snakes.

The snakes won’t have eaten for a year and will have been told that Martin killed their Snake Dad. Martin Harris is officially my School Enemy Number One. Most of us have a nemesis. Someone who was put on this planet to make your life a misery. You’ve done nothing to them, and leave them alone, but they somehow find you and it’s as if you’ve stolen everything they’ve ever owned. Dad tells me you also get them when you’re a grown-up. The supermarket area manager is his. Though I doubt his nemesis once tried to shove his head down the toilet.

Martin Harris is Mr Perfect. Captain of the school football, rugby, cricket and swim teams. He’s also the son of the headmaster, Mr Harris, who I think created Martin in the science lab.Worse than him constantly trying to ruin my life at school is the fact that Katherine Hamilton (the girl I want to marry) thinks he’s great. This is only because she hasn’t really spent much time with me since primary school, when we used to be friends and play at each other’s houses.

2. Going home.

‘Your school years are the best years of your life, son.’

My dad told me this once, just before I stepped out of his car and into a steaming pile of dog poo, right outside the school gates.

My school is St Brenda’s. Named after one of the lesser-known saints, ‘Brenda’, who, judging from this place, must be the patron saint of boring kids to death. I walk around like I’m invisible. Sure, I’ve got my gang of Artie and Holly, but at St Brenda’s, if you aren’t great at sport, you’re about as cool as a boy caught dancing with his mum at the school disco.

All week, I’d been getting used to living in a world of being sacked. On the TV news I’d seen a football manager being fired, and now I felt an instant bond with him. Luckily for me, my sacking hadn’t involved fans waving big banners saying ‘SACK THE CLOWN’ and ‘YOU SUCK’.

Normally, I looked forward to the weekend and to that one hour on a Saturday when I was king of the hospital radio airwaves. Now all that was waiting for me at the end of the week was the dreaded karate lesson. I had been thinking about Dad’s idea of doing my own show, but two things kept coming up:

1 The sadness of doing it from my dad’s garden shed.

2 Mum never letting it happen due to various worries, like me being mauled by a wandering bear or struck by lightning.

But the reality was that it was possibly the only way I had of doing radio again. Unless the school did launch its own station, in which case I’d be the only one for the job. But I didn’t share Holly’s optimism about that. Headmaster Harris had been promising us a radio station for ages.

Right now, though, I didn’t have the energy to worry about getting back on the radio, because I was heading to my first ever karate lesson. After much initial moaning at Mum’s decision to make me go, I had to admit I was now a bit excited. This was down to two things.

Firstly, Holly had told me that Katherine Hamilton (the girl I was going to marry) would be there. This was the perfect opportunity to finally impress her.

Secondly, I LOVE fight scenes and action movies. I’ve often thought I could easily be a stuntman if prime-time radio doesn’t happen for me. Everyone should have a back-up plan: it’s just smart thinking. I have an Iron Man poster on my bedroom wall. I like to look at it and imagine being the stand-in who does all Robert Downey Jr’s amazing stunts.

One evening, I made the mistake of telling Mum about my dreams of Hollywood stardom. She looked at the poster and all she said was, ‘Well, you need to get your maths grades up.’ As a lifelong member of the bottom set in maths, I knew that would be hard work. And, anyway, why would a stuntman need pie charts and fractions?

Brave though Iron Man is, he never has to face my personal hell of the boys’ changing room. Sure, it’s a fun place if you are one of the boys who look like Olympic athletes, with the early signs of hairs on your chest. But for the rest of us it’s a nightmare, nervously trying to take our clothes off without the other, bigger apes seeing you.

While getting ready for the karate lesson, there was an early sign this was not going to go to plan when Martin Harris strutted in, chewing gum.

Soon as he saw me, he shouted over, ‘Girls’ changing room is over there, Spike!’ and his mutant ape mates all laughed.

After some warm-up star jumps, the karate class was ordered to line up. Sensei Terry walked out with his hands proudly resting on his black belt. Cooool! Like a cowboy with his belt and holsters, except this was a gym hall in a community centre, not the Wild West.

He bowed.

‘Welcome, Spike,’ he said. ‘To our class.’

‘Um, thanks, Terry.’

‘Call me Sensei!’ he said sternly. Almost barking at me.

You might remember that Sensei Terry was also our local Neighbourhood Watch leader and postman. (Dad had asked me to check with Sensei Terry after the class about a parcel he was waiting for.)

Sensei Terry proceeded to demonstrate a front kick. Or, as he described it, in his unique Japanese accent, ‘Mae Geri … MAE GERI.’

Hearing the Japanese word for this technique, I felt suddenly excited again, at the prospect of this ancient art being passed on from Master (Terry the postman) to promising young protégé (me). All in a sports hall that stank of cheesy feet, and that we had to vacate by 5pm, as that was when my mum’s Zumba class started.

I could do this. Sensei Terry called out for a volunteer. I shot my hand up. This was my moment to impress Katherine Hamilton (the girl I wanted to marry).

He picked me. Sensei Terry knew there was something about me. This promising newcomer who showed raw potential. Maybe just something in the way I had swaggered into the community hall. As if I belonged there. The Master had finally found his apprentice. Sadly, just walking out to the front of the class wasn’t easy due to my karate outfit.

About that. I’d asked my mum for a new karate uniform to wear to my first lesson. Dad agreed and looked online at one made in Japan, the home of karate.

‘This is the one, Spike,’ he said, ‘as worn by three-time World Champion Chuck Chuckerson.’ My dream of owning such a sacred garment was only one Dad click away. Sadly, this moment was to last less than 0.09 seconds as Mum stopped Dad mid-sentence to remind him that there was already a ‘perfectly good’ karate uniform in the house. My big sister’s.

‘YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME, MUM!’ I pleaded.

‘If you actually stick to this class, then your dad will get you a new one,’ she said.

Dad may be many things, but in this house the real Sensei is Mum – with a black belt in cheapness. If Dad died, I think – rather than pay for a proper wooden coffin – she’d just put him in a shoebox and bury him in the garden, like we did my sister’s hamster, Mr Whiskers.

This karate outfit, or ‘gi’ as I later learned it was called from Terry the samurai postman, hardly fitted as it had shrunk after Dad put it in the tumble dryer for too long. It would have been uncomfortable on a small dog, let alone an eleven-year-old like me, who was about to become a highly trained fighting machine.

‘Spike here will show us how easy it is, won’t you?’ said Sensei Terry.

‘Yeah, Terry,’ I replied.

‘It’s Sensei!’ the samurai postman screamed back, his words almost punching the air.

‘Yes – sorry, Sensei,’ I replied meekly.

‘OK, so, Mae Geri front kick NOW!’

We were in a ‘front stance’. Which meant left foot forward and right leg behind. I was coiled like a cobra, ready to strike. As my rear leg came up like the mighty Sensei Terry had just demonstrated, I fired my foot into an imaginary attacker’s stomach (not really imaginary – Martin’s), and … there was a tremendous tearing noise.

Suddenly, I could feel fresh air around my backside. This wasn’t going to be my moment to impress Katherine Hamilton or become a Hollywood stuntman.

My karate trousers had split.

To be precise – my sister’s karate trousers had split.

In front of the whole class. But, worse, in front of Katherine Hamilton (the girl I wanted to marry).

Leading the laughing and pointing at what my split karate trousers had revealed was, of course, School Enemy Number One, Martin Harris. The tear had revealed my underpants. They were Iron Man underpants.

Yeah, I know, Iron Man underpants. Please don’t judge me. My mum got them when I was younger and they were the only clean ones to wear that day.

It was obvious I could never, ever go back. I had brought shame on this ancient art form and I’m pretty sure the samurai code didn’t allow its warriors to wear their big sisters’ clothes. The laughing, the pointing, the Iron Man underpants: this would now become yet another nightmare I would relive forever.

For days afterwards, as I walked the school corridors, I could see people looking at me, sniggering, trying to hide their laughter, and hear the yells of, ‘Hey, look, IT’S IRON MAN!’

Or worse, ‘He wears his SISTER’S CLOTHES!’

Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up! Then GET INTO THE PIT OF SNAKES, MARTY!

My stuntman career was over before it had even begun.

That evening, I was hit with another MMB (Mum Mind Bomb). As she turned out my bedroom light, she chillingly said, ‘Don’t worry, there’s always the Chess Club.’

As I slept, I had terrible nightmares of Katherine Hamilton in a wedding dress, walking down the aisle with a man in my clothes – except it was Martin Harris. I wasn’t going to be marrying Katherine. Instead, I was playing chess with the vicar at the back of the church.

No! I thought when I woke up, sweating coldly from the nightmare. Not Chess Club. This had to stop, and only one thing could halt Mum on a mission.

I’ve got to get back on the radio.

There was nothing else for it: I was going to have to try out Dad’s idea, and start broadcasting from the garden shed.

There was one big Mum-sized problem with that plan, though, as I will explain in the next chapter, if you’re still reading this horror story.

Another thing I like to think about at school, other than going home and snake pits and School Enemy Number One, Martin Harris, is sacking my parents.

OK, maybe that’s a bit harsh, but wouldn’t it be amazing if at least we actually ran our own parents’ evenings? Instead of them sitting down for a cosy chat with our teachers about our efforts, we would sit down with our parents and ‘review’ how they have performed over the year.

Of course, there wouldn’t be in-depth analysis about their progress in maths, English or science. The subjects up for discussion at this parents’ evening would be a little bit more interesting.

This would be my dad’s report.

Dad’s Report

Subject: Meltdowns

In science one day, Mr Boron told us about something called DNA. He said it was ‘the code of life’. Every human has genes that make up who we are. I think in my dad’s DNA there must be a MELTDOWN gene. He can be all calm for weeks on end, then all of a sudden, with no warning, something very small will make him explode – like a volcano in slippers.

Take last week, when he couldn’t find the TV remote control. A weird vein came up on his neck and started throbbing. It looked like an angry worm. Mum told him helpfully to ‘calm down’, which made the worm double in size. He went off like a dad firework.

‘REMOTE … MISSING … WHY CAN’T ANYONE JUST PUT IT WHERE IT SHOULD BE? ON THE COFFEE TABLE … I AM CALM, CAROL!

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