First published in Great Britain 2014 by Jelly Pie an imprint of Egmont UK Ltd The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN

Text and illustration copyright © Jim Smith 2014 The moral rights of the author-illustrator have been asserted.

eISBN 978 1 7803 1371 9

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

barryloser.com www.jellypiecentral.co.uk 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

55382/1

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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.

I’ve always wanted to be a superhero like my favourite TV star, Future Ratboy. That’s why I’ve started calling myself . . . Superloser!

Superloser’s catchphrase is ‘keel!’, which is what Future Ratboy says instead of ‘cool’.

My superpower is loserkeelness, which is where I’m always coming up with brilliant and amazing ideas.

Like the time my mum said she never had any surprises, so I hid in the airing cupboard dressed as a burglar and jumped out when she walked past.

Loserkeelness is also where you accidentally tread in a dog poo, or turn the wart on your thumb into a remote control for yourself or something like that, and all your friends laugh and think you’re really loserkeel.

Everyone at school knows I’m the loserkeelest person ever.

So imagine how annoying it was when Fay Snoggles came in one day acting even more loserkeel than me . . .

‘What’s that white plastic board thingy hanging round your neck?’ said Sharonella, as Fay walked through the classroom door with a white plastic board hanging round her neck.

Fay pulled a big red marker pen out of her pocket and plopped the lid off.

‘GOT SORE THROAT,’ she wrote on the board. ‘HURT TO SPEAK.’

She wiped the board clean with a tissue and blew her nose like an elephant, leaving a red pen-smudge on the end of her nose, and everyone laughed, apart from me.

‘Oh my days, Fay, you are making me LARF!’ snorted Sharonella, who’s been fake best friends with Fay ever since her real best friends Donnatella and Tracy fell out with her for copying the way they draw dogs.

‘Isn’t this the sort of loserish thing YOU’D do, Barry?’ burped Darren Darrenofski, swinging Fay’s board round and almost slicing the red bit off her nose.

He flumped over his desk and poked me in the earhole with his fat little finger.

‘Yeah, except I’d do it a million times more loserkeely,’ I said, pretending I wasn’t bothered.

I looked out the window at all the wind that was blowing, not that you can actually SEE wind, even if you’re a superloser like me.

A poster saying ‘YOU COULD BE CLASS CAPTAIN!’ blew across the playground, and I remembered our teacher Miss Spivak saying the elections for Class Captain were coming up.

‘What you gonna do, Barry? Fay’s COM-PER-LEET-ER-LY copying your loserkeelness!’ said Bunky, who’s sort of like my sidekick.

He poked his finger into my OTHER earhole, and I bonked him on the nose for being such a naughty best friendypoos.

Because of all the fingers in my ears I couldn’t really hear anything, apart from what I was thinking.

‘Bunky’s right, Superloser. Fay’s completely copying your loserkeelness!’ said the voice inside my head, and I imagined it coming out of a tiny little mini Barry, sitting on my brain like it was a sofa.

‘Yeah, Superloser, you’ve got to come up with one of your brilliant and amazekeel ideas!’ said another mini Barry, and I nodded my head, imagining the mini Barrys falling off their brain sofa because of all the nodding I was doing.

‘Listening to your mini Barrys, are you?’ said Nancy Verkenwerken’s voice all of a sudden.

I was just about to tell her to get out of my head, when I realised she’d pulled Darren and Bunky’s fingers out of my earholes and was speaking into my actual ear with her real-life mouth.

‘Looks like you’ve got some competition, doesn’t it?’ she smiled, pointing over at Fay, who was blowing her nose again, this time like a warthog.

That’s the annoying thing about Nancy, she can always tell what I’m thinking.

‘Oh yeah, like I’m really bothered!’ I said, leaning back in my chair just enough to fall over. ‘ARRRGGGHHH!’ I screamed, waggling my arms around like the loserkeelest superloser ever.

But nobody noticed, because they were all too busy laughing at Fay.

Verbunkenloser Ltd is me, Bunky and Nancy’s new company. It only sells one thing at the moment, but in the future it’s gonna be bigger than Feeko’s Supermarkets.

‘Roll up, roll up, get your Verbunkenloser Whatever Boxes here! Only a few left!’ shouted Nancy from behind the table-tennis table in the playground, which is where we set up our pyramid of Whatever Boxes every lunchtime.

When I first came up with the idea of selling old cereal boxes filled with whatever rubbish we had lying around, I wasn’t sure anyone would buy them. But it’s turned out to be a big hit, mainly thank* to Nancy.

* only one thank, though

‘Ooh, me! Me!’ squeaked Jocelyn Twiggs, handing Nancy the dirtiest, bent-in- halfest coin ever and taking a box off the top of the pyramid.

It was a Feeko’s cereal packet painted light blue, with the word ‘Whatever’ scribbled on it in black felt-tip pen.

He ripped the lid off, stuck his hand inside and pulled out a worm. ‘A real- life worm! Just what I’ve always wanted!’ he grinned.

‘And it doubles up nicely as a bracelet,’ said Nancy, curling it round Jocelyn’s wrist.

Jocelyn did a face like he didn’t know what was more funny, having a worm curled round your wrist or wearing a bracelet. Then he shrugged and bounced off, and I wondered if the worm was thinking it was all a bit funny too.

Gordon Smugly glided over and picked up a box, and the pyramid swayed.

‘Hmmm . . . good weight, interesting rattle . . . I’ll take it,’ he said, putting a coin into my hand, and I popped it into the plastic Feeko’s ice cream tub, which is where we keep all our money.

‘Is that the one?’ whispered Bunky, and I snortle-nodded, even though I wasn’t really in a snortle-nodding sort of mood what with Fay COM-PER-LEET-ER-LY copying my loserkeelness and everything.

Gordon slid his finger along the top of the box and opened the flap. ‘Raisins!’ he smiled, grabbing a handful of tiny, brownish, dried-up, bobbly balls and opening his disgusting mouth.

‘Yeah, my NOSTRIL raisins!’ Bunky laughed.

‘EUUURRGGGHHHYYUCK!’ screamed Gordon, throwing the bogies into the air, and they swirled off in the wind like tiny planets. ‘Ha ha, nice one Bunky,’ he said, not wanting to look stupid, and he walked away with his box of bogie raisins still rattling.

Nancy turned round and gave us one of her looks. ‘If we’re going to make a success of Verbunkenloser Ltd, we cannot afford to annoy our customers,’ she said, tidying up the pyramid.

Another poster saying ‘YOU COULD BE CLASS CAPTAIN!’ blew in front of my eyes like a magician’s cape. Sharonella and Fay appeared from behind it and I did a little blowoff out of shock and annoyedness.

‘WHA-EH-VA,’ said Sharonella, reading the box she’d picked up. ‘What’s inside? Not that I’m bothered . . .’

‘You never know with a Verbunkenloser Whatever Box!’ smiled Nancy like she was on TV. ‘But every one’s a winner!’

‘Ooh, random! Go on Fay, you can’t lose!’ said Sharonella, nudging Fay forwards, and I looked at the pyramid of Whatever Boxes swaying in the wind and came up with one of my brilliant and amazekeel ideas right there and then on the spot.

Fay pulled her pen out and plopped the lid off. ‘ONE PLEASE,’ she wrote, sliding a coin towards Bunky and picking up a box. She opened the lid and peered inside.

‘Ru-ub-bish!’ moaned Sharonella, as Fay’s hand pulled out a smelly old hair clip with a faded plastic goldfish perched on it that I’d found down a drain.

I stepped forwards and got ready to play it loserkeel.

‘Woohoo! Fay is a winner, everyone!’ I shouted, pretending to trip on a piece of gravel and fall towards the pyramid of Whatever Boxes. ‘ARRRGGGHHHH! I’M SOOOOOOOO LOSERKEEEELLLL!!!’ I screamed, crashing into them.

Light-blue boxes flew into the air like rectangle chunks of sky and my nose thudded on to the floor, me following behind it.

‘That is SO you, Barry!’ laughed Sharonella as I lay on the ground covered in Whatever Boxes, and I breathed a sigh of relief, because I was back to being the loserkeelest person in my class.

(Not really.)

It felt good being the most loserkeel person in my class again, and to celebrate I’d come up with ANOTHER one of my brilliant and amazekeel ideas.

It was the next day and we were in the school coach on the way to Mogden Poo.

Mogden Poo is our town’s swimming pool, except the ‘L’ from the sign disappeared one night eight million years ago and no one ever found it.

‘Don’t forget, aim them right for my nose!’ I whispered into Bunky’s ear as we jumped out of the coach and ran into the changing rooms, Darren Darrenofski blowing off with excitement behind us.

One of the keel things about the changing rooms at Mogden Poo is that the girls’ and boys’ are right next to each other with a wall in-between that doesn’t go all the way up to the ceiling, so you can spy on the girls getting changed.

‘I can see Donnatella’s pants!’ screamed Stuart Shmendrix, wobbling on top of Darren and peering over the wall.

‘ARRGGGHHH!’ shrieked the girls from their changing room, and I looked over at Bunky and gave him the signal.

I was on the spying-wall side of the room, doing my Future Ratboy super- high-speed pants-into-swimming-trunks change, and Bunky was by the door.

I counted down from five in my head and got ready to look like the most loserkeel superloser ever.

The elastic strap on Bunky’s swimming goggles twanged as they shot out of his hands towards my face.

As they flew across the room, I went through the plan in my head:

1. Get hit in the nose by Bunky’s goggles

2. Start spinning around, screaming

like a loser

3. Tangle myself up in the towel

hanging on the hook next to me

4. Stumble into the showers like

a blind ghost

5. Accidentally turn on the water and

end up lying in a puddle, groaning

I smiled to myself, imagining everyone laughing at how loserkeel I was.

Then I realised I’d managed to do the whole list inside my head AND a smile to myself, all with the goggles still not hitting my nose.

I looked up and saw them shooting over the wall into the girls’ changing rooms.

‘FAY BABES!!! WATCH OUT!’ screamed Sharonella, then everything went quiet.

I climbed up Darren Darrenofski, then Stuart Shmendrix, and peered over the wall.

Fay was lying in a puddle in the showers, tangled up in a towel like a blind ghost, groaning, with all the girls laughing at how loserkeel she looked.

‘It’s exactly like you planned it, except it all happened to Fay instead!’ whispered a mini Barry in my brain, and I tried to swivel my eyeballs all the way round and give him one of my looks.

‘Get your OWN loserkeelness!’ I shouted, falling off Darren and Stuart and accidentally landing in the towel bin, which normally would’ve been really funny and loserkeel, except everyone was too busy laughing at Fay.

‘Work it, ladies!’ boomed an old wrinkled-up man in shiny shorts as I walked out to the swimming pool. His voice echoed off the water and bounced around the ginormous glass windows.

He was dancing along the side of the pool, kicking his legs out and clapping his hands. The whole of his head was completely bald apart from a little grey beard that went all the way round his mouth, like a hairy donut.

I looked into the water and saw Granny Harumpadunk and her friends Ethel, Doreen and Three Thumb Rita from the sweet shop splashing about like they were being attacked by granny-eating sharks.

‘What in the keelness are THEY doing here?’ whispered a mini Barry inside my brain, then I saw a sign that said ‘AQUA AEROBICS FOR THE ELDERLY’ and I nodded my head, imagining the mini Barrys falling off their brain sofa again.

‘Cooweee, Barrr-rrrry!’ warbled my granny, waggling her arms at me, and I was just about to pretend I didn’t know who she was when I had one of my brilliant and amazekeel ideas.

I glanced along the pool at everyone about to start their lesson and took a deep breath.

‘Gwannnnnny!’ I shouted, running up to the edge of the water and doing the most loserkeel jump ever. ‘Yaaaaayyyyy!’ I screamed, landing with a massive splosh.

I opened my eyes underwater and saw Doreen’s bum waggling in my face.

‘GRANNY BUMS!’ I shouted as my head bobbed out of the water and floated there like a duck. I was in-between Doreen and Ethel, who were panting and marching on the spot in super-slow underwater-granny motion.

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