Buch lesen: «The Barry Loser Series»

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.