Radio Boy
From leading breakfast radio star Christian O’Connell comes a brilliant and laugh-out-loud story of an ordinary boy with an extraordinary secret radio show. (Broadcast from his shed.)Meet Spike, aka Radio Boy: a new Adrian Mole on the radio for the internet generation.Spike’s your average awkward 11 year old, funny and cheeky and with a mum to reckon with. When he becomes the first presenter ever to be sacked from hospital radio, he decides to carry on from a makeshift studio in the garden shed, with the help of his best friends Artie and Holly, disguising his voice and going by the moniker Radio Boy.Week by week, word gets around and soon Spike is a star… if only people knew it was actually him. When Spike begins to believe his own hype, and goes too far with his mocking of the school headmaster, a hunt is launched for the mysterious Radio Boy.Can Spike remain anonymous? Will he get to marry the girl of his dreams, Katherine Hamilton? Will he become famous and popular? The answer to most of these questions is no…
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Childrenâs Books in 2017
HarperCollins Childrenâs Books is a division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd,
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London SE1 9GF
The HarperCollins website address is: www.harpercollins.co.uk
Text copyright © Christian OâConnell 2017
Illustrations copyright © Rob Biddulph 2017
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2017
Christian OâConnell 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.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
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
Chapter 3. Iâm an O-list Celebrity
Chapter 4. âPirate party in my pantsâ
Chapter 7. Chess Club Nightmares
Chapter 10. The Supermarket Detective
Chapter 13. The Best Shopping Trip I Ever Went On
Chapter 14. Shepherdâs Pie Swamp
Chapter 15. How to Start Your Own Radio Show in Your Dadâs Shed
Chapter 16. How to Do the Worldâs 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 24. No Singing Chipmunks
Chapter 25. A Brilliant Mistake Iâm About to Make
Chapter 26. Captain Invisible Nerd
Chapter 28. The Most Wanted Boy in the School
Chapter 29. Diary of a Fugitive
Chapter 30. The Worldâs Worst Apology
Chapter 34. Too Many Apologies
Chapter 35. Do the Right Thing
Chapter 36. The Dream Team Rides Again
âYouâre fired.â
I stared at the man sitting opposite me. The programme controller of St Kevinâs hospital radio. Barry Dingle, or âBazzaâ as he insisted we call him. No one ever did.
âWhat?â I said. âBut I havenât done anything wrong.â
âI ⦠I know that, Spike. But you canât work here any more. Iâm sorry.â
What kind of a man sacks an eleven-year-old boy from his dream job? A monster, thatâs who.
âWhy?â 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 Iâd said to the bald-headed man ruining my life. Such as:
1. Youâre a monster.
2. Technically, you canât actually fire me as Iâm a volunteer.
3. My mum said you live in your mumâs basement. Whoâs the bigger loser here?
4. Have you got any tissues as I think Iâm going to cry?
But I didnât 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 whoâd 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 Kidsâ Wonder Hour, Saturday mornings at 6am. Maybe the name of the show hadnât helped. For the record, it came from âBazzaâ, 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 donât 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, Iâd read in all the interviews with my favourite DJs that theyâd started off in hospital radio. I collected these interviews in a special folder under my bed, safe from my sisterâs prying eyes. Codenamed âMy Favourite Stampsâ. Iâd learned my lesson after she found a notebook Iâd been practising my autograph in.
