Jim Smith - I am sort of a Loser

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.