First published in Great Britain 2013 by Jelly Pie an imprint of Egmont UK Ltd The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN

Text and illustration copyright © Jim Smith 2013 The moral rights of the author-illustrator have been asserted.

ISBN 978 1 4052 6033 6

eISBN 978 1 7803 1381 8

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

barryloser.com www.egmont.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

Printed and bound in Great Britain by the CPI Group

49955/1

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E G M O N T L U C K Y C O I N

Our story began over a century ago, when seventeen-year-old Egmont Harald Petersen found a coin in the street.

He was on his way to buy a flyswatter, a small hand-operated printing machine that he then set up in his tiny apartment.

The coin brought him such good luck that today Egmont has offices in over 30 countries around the world. And that lucky coin is still kept at the company’s head offices in Denmark.

My mum’s embarrassing enough just being my mum, but now she’s won this stupid Feeko’s Supermarkets competition it’s even worse.

Like the other day, when I was skateboarding home with my best friend Bunky and we went past a Feeko’s and there was a poster of my mum, winking and holding up a packet of sausages.

‘Coowee, Barry!’ said Bunky, holding a packet of invisible sausages and scrunching his face up, trying to do a wink.

I rolled my eyes and they landed on another poster of my mum, wiggling her bum in a pair of Feeko’s jeans.

‘Tshhhhhh!’ farted a bus as it drove past with a poster of my mum on the side. She was sticking her tongue out and putting a Feeko’s chocolate digestive on to it.

I didn’t used to mind her winking, or the way she dances, or how she sticks her tongue out when she’s eating, but now that she’s on posters everywhere it’s completely ruining my keelness.

I picked up a snail that was having a little drink of a puddle and went to throw it at the poster of my mum winking, then changed my mind because I’m not a snail murderer.

‘There you go, Snailypoos!’ I said, sticking him on to my mum’s bum and patting him on the shell so his whole head disappeared inside it.

‘See you tomozzoid,’ I said when we got to Bunky’s road.

I was just about to do my goodbye face that makes Bunky wee himself with laughter, when I spotted Nancy Verkenwerken standing outside Bunky’s house.

Nancy Verkenwerken is Bunky’s loserish new next-door neighbour.

She’s got glasses like Mrs Trumpet Face down my street, plus she collects stamps, which everyone knows is the unkeelest thing you can do apart from winking.

‘Get your OWN tomozzoid!’ shouted Bunky, and I snortled with laughter because ever since I borrowed his ruler in Maths and he said,‘Get your OWN ruler!’ we’ve been saying ‘Get your OWN . . .’ and then the thing we’re talking about after it.

I was still snortling as I rolled up to my front door and saw my mum through the kitchen window, holding a tin of chopped tomatoes like she was in one of her adverts.

‘Coowee, Barry!’ she mouthed, doing a wink, and I stopped laughing and wished I wasn’t the boy whose mum was The Voice of Feeko’s.

‘Do your helmet straps up!’ shouted my mum as I rolled off to meet Bunky at the top of my road.

This was the next morning by the way, not that you could tell, because I was wearing all the same clothes, including my trousers that haven’t been cleaned since my mum got her Feeko’s job and my dad took over the washing.

‘Do your OWN helmet straps up!’ I shouted, all excited because it was less than a week until the school trip to The Ski Dome, which is the keelest place in the whole wide world amen.

The Ski Dome has its own hotel and indoor ski slopes with real-life snow, which was why Bunky was cycling towards me in a pair of ski goggles.

Nancy Verkenwerken was walking next to him with her Mrs Trumpet Face glasses on and a massive red stamp album under her arm.

‘Ah, Mrs Trumpet Face, what do you have in your cupboard-eyes today?’ I said to Nancy, and Bunky did a snortle.

‘Cupboard-eyes’ is what me and Bunky have started calling Mrs Trumpet Face’s glasses, because the frames look like cupboard doors.

‘You, unfortunately,’ said Nancy, pointing her cupboard-eyes right at me so I could see my reflection.

Usually when I call Mrs Trumpet Face Cupboard-eyes she just stands there looking confused, so I didn’t know what to do this time. I stood there looking confused until I felt something on my knee.

‘OW!’ I said, even though it didn’t hurt. I looked down and saw a fly sitting on my trousers, eating a tomato ketchup stain. ‘Arrrgghh, a fly!’ I screamed, waggling my leg around like a sausage.

‘It’s more of a “sit” at the moment,’ said Nancy, wafting her stamp album at it, and the sit turned into a fly and flew off.

‘Thank,’ I said, because it was only worth one thank, but Nancy was too busy looking at the old falling-apart house at the end of my road to take any notice. I glanced up at its windows and imagined a ghost staring down at me.

‘Come on Bunky, let’s get the keelness out of here,’ I said, pretending I wasn’t scared, and we zoomed off, me with my helmet straps undone.

One of the bad things about skateboarding to school is that you get there really fast, which isn’t good when you’re famous for having a famous mum.

‘Here he comes, ladies and gentlemen!’ shouted Darren Darrenofski as me and Bunky glided through the school gates, and he ran up and poured Cherry Fronkle on the floor in front of me. ‘A red carpet for our unspecial guest!’ he said, doing a wink and wiggling his bum like my mum in her adverts.

I flipped my board up and tiptoed through the Fronkle, wondering if Snailypoos would like a cherry flavour puddle.

‘What do you think of the new craze sweeping the school?’ said Anton Mildew, holding a banana microphone up to my face.

Anton has been holding bananas up to people’s faces and asking annoying questions ever since he started his newspaper, The Daily Poo.

‘What craze?’ said Bunky, sticking his nose in and waggling it about.

‘The Mrs Loser Wiggle!’ said Anton, and he danced around with his bum wiggling, sticking his tongue out and winking all at the same time.

‘Yeah, give us a wink, Loser!’ said Gaspar Pink, who was standing behind Anton with his camera.

I watched them with my mouth shut and my eyes open and my bum completely still.

‘Nice helmet, Barold!’ said Gordon Smugly, walking past and bonking me on the head so hard my legs did a wobble and one of my helmet straps flicked me in the eye and made me blink.

‘Perfectamondo!’ smiled Gaspar, and his camera flashed in my face.

Anton and Gaspar were fiddling around on the computer in the corner of the classroom when I walked in with Bunky, playing it keel times a million.

‘Arrr! Good morning me hearties!’ shouted Miss Spivak, who’s been our teacher since Mr Hodgepodge went on a six-month cruise around the North Pole with my granny.

There was a parrot on her shoulder and she was carrying a sword and had an eyepatch on and one of her legs was a wooden stump.

‘What’s good about it?’ said the parrot, which was the only bit of Miss Spivak’s outfit that wasn’t weird, because he’s our class parrot that we adopted from Mogden Zoo when it closed down last year.

‘Well for starters it’s Show and Tell,’ said Miss Spivak, putting the sword down and pulling her leg out of the wooden stump. ‘I’ll go first. Can anyone tell me what this is? Yes, that’s right, it’s an eyepatch. Who knows why pirates used to wear them?’ she said, all in one go.

‘Me!’ shouted Darren.

‘Yes, Darren?’ said Miss Spivak.

‘I dunno,’ said Darren, and we all did a little snortle.

‘Was it for when they got a sword poked in their eyeball?’ said Tracy

Pilchard, jangling with jewellery like she was a pirate herself.

‘That’s right, Tracy. Mind-boggling, isn’t it!’ said Miss Spivak, poking the plastic sword into her eyepatch. It was one of those swords where the blade pushes into the handle, and everyone gasped.

‘Mind-boggling!’ screeched the parrot, whose name is Honk, and I thanked keelness the zoo closed down, otherwise we’d just have a hamster.

I’d forgotten it was Show and Tell, so I was rummaging around in my rucksack for something keel to talk about when I saw Anton’s and Gaspar’s stupid feet walking to the front of the classroom.

‘Hot off the press!’ said Anton, holding up a sheet of paper with ‘The Daily Poo’ typed out at the top.

Underneath was a photo of me. My bum was wiggling from where my legs had gone wobbly, and I was winking from the helmet strap that’d hit me in the eye.

‘Just like his mumsy!’ said Gordon from the back of the classroom, and everyone laughed, and I rolled my eyes to myself because I know for a fact he calls his mum ‘Mama’.

I was still rummaging around in my rucksack, which meant my nose was near my knee, and a waft of tomato ketchup went up my nostrils and gave me an amazekeel idea for how to stop them laughing.

There’s a bit in every Future Ratboy episode where he treads in a dog poo and waggles his foot in the air.

‘By the power of smelly shoe . . .’ he shouts, and his enemies run off screaming.

‘Get your OWN mumsy!’ I shouted, hopping up to the front of the classroom with my leg bobbing around in front of me.

‘By the power of smelly knee . . .’ I said, waving it in front of Anton’s and Gaspar’s noses.

‘Get a photo, Gaspar, he’s gone completely stark raving bonkers!’ said Anton, holding his Daily Poo up to protect himself from my knee.

I grabbed the newspaper and scrunched it into a snowball and aimed it at Gordon Smugly’s nose. The only problem is, I’m rubbish at throwing.

‘Mind-boggling!’ screeched Honk as the snowball whizzed past his beak and hit Miss Spivak in the eye, which luckily for me was still underneath her pirate eyepatch.

I glanced over at Bunky and high fived him with my eyes, which is what we do when something like this happens.

‘That’s it Loser, outside NOW!’ screeched Miss Spivak, although it could have been Honk, because I wasn’t really looking.

On my way to the door I walked past Nancy Verkenwerken, who was going up to the front to show off her massive red stamp album.

I looked at my reflection in her cupboard-eyes and she smiled one of those smiles where you’re not sure if the person is being nice or thinking what a loser you are.

‘Looking forward to The Ski Dome, Loser?’ said Mr Koops, jogging past me as I stepped into the hallway, smelly knee first. His trainers squeaked on the floor like he was treading on parrots.

‘Ye-ah!’ I said, splitting my yeah into two bits because of how excited I was.

‘If you’re anything like your mum you’ll be a natural!’ he shouted over his shoulder, and he tucked his arms in as if he was skiing and wiggled his bum like my mum.

I got on my tiptoes and peered through the little window at the top of the classroom door. Nancy was pointing to a stamp with a picture of a butterfly on it.

‘Bor-ring,’ I whispered, and the glass misted up from my breath.

Last year’s Ski Dome photos were stapled up on the wall behind me, so I walked over to look at them, still tiptoeing because there was nothing else to do, plus I wish I was a bit taller, like Bunky.

Everyone in the photos was having the keelest time ever, and I imagined myself zooming down a ski slope in my new jacket and goggles, having snowball fights with real-life snow instead of scrunched-up Daily Poos.

I was snortling to myself about a photo of a snowman that looked exactly like Mr Hodgepodge, when the classroom door swung open and everyone ran out, all fizzy like Fronkle pouring out of a can.

‘I’m gonna collect sweets!’ said Stuart Shmendrix, wobbling past opening a packet of Cola Flavour Not Birds.

‘I’m gonna collect jewellery!’ said Tracy Pilchard, jangling from all her jewellery.

‘I’m gonna collect Fronkle ringpulls!’ said Darren Darrenofski, who drinks about five million cans of Fronkle a day, so that wouldn’t be very hard for him.

I was just about to do a reverse- twizzle-upside-down-salute from how loserishly excited everyone was about their stupid collections, when Miss Spivak came out with Nancy Verkenwerken.

‘Well that went down well didn’t it! Mind-boggling how many stamps you’ve collected. I think you might’ve started a new craze!’ she said all in one go, patting Nancy on the head.

‘Yeah, a craze for being a loser,’ I said, doing a mini-salute in my pocket for how funny I was.

I looked at Nancy’s eyes through the glass in her glasses and waited for her to say something clever or do one of her sort-of smiles.

‘Mind-boggling,’ she whispered to herself, and she walked off towards the playground.

‘Can I go now please?’ I said, looking at Miss Spivak.

‘I don’t think so, Loser,’ said Miss Spivak, then Honk the parrot said it too.

It was rubbish having to stay in the classroom with Miss Spivak for the whole of break, looking through the window at everyone in the playground coming up with their stupid collections.

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