Christian O’Connell - Radio Boy

‘Where from? I don’t have a studio,’ I replied. He obviously hadn’t thought it through. What my dad said next will go down in history as the dumbest idea ever.

‘Do your show from the shed.’

An innocent suggestion from a dad trying to help out his desperate loser son.

But those fateful words started this whole mess.

‘WHAT? The shed! The buried jungle temple? Where a whole community of spiders with fangs and rats live? Are you kidding me, Dad?’ I yelled.

‘Spike! You’re missing the bigger picture,’ said Dad, warming to his idea now. ‘You’d be your own boss: no one to fire you or tell you what to do. We’d have to keep it a secret from your mum or she’d never allow it. Your mate Holly can get it up and running, I’m sure. Ask Mr Taggart, the AV Club teacher, for some help. I’ll help you too. Don’t do what I did and walk away from your dream. Chase it.’

‘Dad, have you ever heard of anyone doing a radio show from a shed? It’s pathetic. Look, it’s OK, Dad. Keep your shed. It’s got all your paint pots and the lawnmower in and it’s covered in thorns and weeds. I’m going to chill out in my bedroom.’ I left him to his car-cleaning, my head low and dejected. I dragged myself upstairs.

As I climbed the stairs, I bumped into my sister, who’d been listening to everything.

Her eyes narrowed as she said, ‘Oh dear. Little brother’s been sacked and is now launching Loser FM live from the shed?’

Amber was loving this. Remember: her weekend highlight would’ve been sitting on Mr Toffee’s back, being carried around a field, praying the beast didn’t launch her into the air just for a laugh.

‘Not now,’ I sighed, and tried to get past.

But Amber blocked the way. She was dressed in her riding gear and stank of manure and attitude. A fresh red rosette the size of her face was pinned to her.

‘Maybe you could do the show from the toilet? Perfect for your material,’ she kindly suggested.

‘Ha ha,’ I said. I was too tired to think of a comeback.

Her smile widened. ‘Oh, and I couldn’t help but notice you’ve doodled Katherine Hamilton’s name all over your desk.’

‘YOU’VE BEEN SNOOPING IN MY ROOM!’ I yelled.

‘It’s so sweet,’ she replied. ‘The first flush of romance …’

‘I hate you,’ I said. I could feel – with horrified embarrassment – that I was about to cry. I took a deep breath.

Suddenly, Amber’s face softened. ‘I don’t know why you like her so much anyway,’ she said. ‘She’s horrible. She is not the girl you were friends with in primary school.’

I was confused. Was Amber being nice now, caring about me?

I wasn’t confused for long.

‘Anyway, so long, loser,’ she said. And with that she walked off.

As I flopped on to my bed, I heard a key in the front door. My dog Sherlock ran under my bed as if he knew a storm was coming.

Mum was back.

I heard her and Dad talking briefly, and the word ‘sacked’ sounded loud and clear. Then it went quiet. Too quiet. Eerily quiet. My mum swore. Very loudly.

‘The loser! I’ll stick his headphones …’

Technically it’s impossible to do what she suggested to Barry Dingle – the Beyerdynamic headphones are very big – but I’d have liked to have seen her try. Sherlock pushed himself even further under the bed.

Then footsteps. Mum was coming up the stairs. No, running up the stairs. Two or three at a time. The whole house was shaking. Carol Hughes had been given bad news and things were about to go NUCLEAR.

‘WHERE is my poor angel?’ Mum asked before she was even in the room.

Now she was here, almost ripping my bedroom door off its hinges. The first thing I noticed was the red, angry face. You could’ve seen it on Google Earth. My mum isn’t tall and not really short either, but she has the power of ten men, according to my dad.

‘Tell me what that SLAP-HEADED coward did! Tell me everything!’ Mum yelled as she stood in my bedroom, hands on her hips, her tracksuit soaked in sweat from her Zumba class.

‘Well … um … he fired me.’

‘Why?’ asked Mum.

‘Apparently no one was listening.’

Mum stared out of the window and started chewing her bottom lip. This wasn’t good. This meant she was hatching a plan.

‘RIGHT! It’s clear to me that what you need now is a new hobby. It’s not going to do any good moping around here, Spike. You have to make some new friends,’ Mum declared.

‘I already have friends and don’t want to join any more clubs, Mum,’ I pleaded.

In the vain hope of moving me up the school popularity rankings, my mum had made me join various clubs. Gymnastics, scuba-diving and Air Cadets. I hated them all.

My gymnastics career ended with me crashing into some parents who had the misfortune to be sitting near my high beam. Scuba-diving ended when I dropped an air tank on to the instructor’s foot, breaking not one but several bones. He swore and said a good selection of the words my dad said that night when I learned the story about Tom, the Pirates’ lead singer.

Air Cadets ended after the first meeting at the community centre when Squadron Leader Gary told Mum that many of his cadets went on to join the air force and fly fighter jets.

‘ No son of mine is sitting in a rocket with wings, firing bombs at dangerous people, plus his ears play up just flying on holiday to Spain ,’ were my mum’s final words.

Now, though, her mind was made up and resistance was futile.

‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘Sensei Terry has a spare place in his karate class. I’m calling him now to sign you up.’

‘Oh, please don’t—’

‘My mind is made up, Spike. I’m only doing what’s best for you,’ she said. This was one of my mum’s classic catchphrases. Along with:

‘It could kill you stone-cold dead in seconds’: applied to almost anything and everything, from food that is seven minutes past its sell-by date to swimming within an hour of eating a ‘heavy meal’.

‘What would people say?’: again, Mum is constantly worried about what neighbours and friends might say, like when my sister Amber said she wanted to get her ears pierced. This got a record high score of three Mum catchphrases within less than three seconds. ‘You want YOUR EARS PIERCED, AMBER? No way, madam. A dirty, infected needle could kill you stone-cold dead in seconds; what would people say? I’m only doing what’s best for you.’

I could only think of one way of getting out of this. Use my mum’s worry that danger lies round every corner. I think she gets it from working at the hospital.

‘Isn’t karate a bit … dangerous?’ I said, mock-innocently.

But she was wise to me. ‘Sensei Terry is all about avoiding violence,’ she said. ‘He’ll teach you to protect yourself. From murderers and that. Just what you need.’

‘I don’t need protecting from murderers.’

‘You never know,’ she said. ‘Anyway, Holly goes, doesn’t she? So you’ll have a friend there. It’ll be fun.’

‘Fun’. Now there’s a word I’d love to ban. ‘Fun’ is a word parents use to describe something that’s rubbish or boring to try to kid you it isn’t.

No , karate wouldn’t be fun. It would be yet another painful reminder that sport and me hate each other.