Billionaire Boy

Mr Spud reached into the pocket of his shiny grey designer suit and pulled out his chequebook. His suit was horrible, and horribly expensive. “I’m so sorry son,” he said. “Let’s make it two million.”

Now, it’s important you realise that Mr Spud had not always been this rich.

Not so long ago the Spud family had lived a very humble life. From the age of sixteen, Mr Spud worked in a vast loo-roll factory on the outskirts of town. Mr Spud’s job at the factory was sooooo boring. He had to roll the paper around the cardboard inner tube.

Roll after roll.

Day after day.

Year after year.

Decade after decade.

This he did, over and over again, until nearly all his hope had gone. He would stand all day by the conveyor belt with hundreds of other bored workers, repeating the same mind-numbing task. Every time the paper was rolled onto one cardboard tube, the whole thing started again. And every loo roll was the same. Because the family was so poor, Mr Spud used to make birthday and Christmas presents for his son from the loo-roll inner tubes. Mr Spud never had enough money to buy Joe all the latest toys, but would make him something like a loo-roll racing car, or a loo-roll fort complete with dozens of loo-roll soldiers. Most of them got broken and ended up in the bin. Joe did manage to save a sad looking little loo-roll space rocket, though he wasn’t sure why.

The only good thing about working in a factory was that Mr Spud had lots of time to daydream. One day he had a daydream that was to revolutionise bottom wiping forever.

Why not invent a loo roll that is moist on one side and dry on the other? he thought, as he rolled paper around his thousandth roll of the day. Mr Spud kept his idea top-secret and toiled for hours locked in the bathroom of their little council flat getting his new double-sided loo roll exactly right.

When Mr Spud finally launched ‘Freshbum’, it was an instant phenomenon. Mr Spud sold a billion rolls around the world every day. And every time a roll was sold, he made 10p. It all added up to an awful lot of money, as this simple maths equation shows.

Joe Spud was only eight at the time ‘Freshbum’ was launched, and his life was turned upside down in a heartbeat. First, Joe’s mum and dad split up. It turned out that for many years Joe’s mum Carol had been having a torrid affair with Joe’s Cub Scout leader, Alan. She took a ten-billion-pound divorce settlement; Alan swapped his canoe for a gigantic yacht. Last anyone had heard, Carol and Alan were sailing off the coast of Dubai, pouring vintage champagne on their Crunchy Nut Cornflakes every morning. Joe’s dad seemed to get over the split quickly and began going on dates with an endless parade of Page 3 girls.

Soon father and son moved out of their poky council flat and into an enormous stately home. Mr Spud named it ‘Freshbum Towers’.

The house was so large it was visible from outer space. It took five minutes just to motor up the drive. Hundreds of newly-planted, hopeful little trees lined the mile-long gravel track. The house had seven kitchens, twelve sitting rooms, forty-seven bedrooms and eighty-nine bathrooms.

Even the bathrooms had en-suite bathrooms. And some of those en-suite bathrooms had en-en-suite bathrooms.

Despite living there for a few years, Joe had probably only ever explored around a quarter of the main house. In the endless grounds were tennis courts, a boating lake, a helipad and even a 100m ski-slope complete with mountains of fake snow. All the taps, door handles and even toilet seats were solid gold. The carpets were made from mink fur, he and his dad drank orange squash from priceless antique medieval goblets, and for a while they had a butler called Otis who was also an orangutan. But he had to be given the sack.

“Can I have a proper present as well, Dad?” said Joe, as he put the cheque in his trouser pocket. “I mean, I’ve got loads of money already.”

“Tell me what you want, son, and I’ll get one of my assistants to buy it,” said Mr Spud. “Some solid gold sunglasses? I’ve got a pair. You can’t see out of ’em but they are very expensive.”

Joe yawned.

“Your own speedboat?” ventured Mr Spud.

Joe rolled his eyes. “I’ve got two of those. Remember?”

“Sorry, son. How about a quarter of a million pounds worth of WH Smith vouchers?”

“Boring! Boring! Boring!” Joe stamped his feet in frustration. Here was a boy with high-class problems.

Mr Spud looked forlorn. He wasn’t sure there was anything left in the world that he could buy his only child. “Then what, son?”

Joe suddenly had a thought. He pictured himself going round the racetrack all on his own, racing against himself. “Well, there is something I really want…” he said, tentatively.

“Name it, son,” said Mr Spud.

“A friend.”

Chapter 2 Bum Boy (#ulink_9e39dafc-bf98-53e9-882a-8a95befe4c90)

“Bum boy,” said Joe.

“Bum Boy?” spluttered Mr Spud. “What else do they call you at school, son?”

“The Bog Roll Kid...”

Mr Spud shook his head in disbelief. He had sent his son to the most expensive school in England: St Cuthbert’s School for Boys. The fees were £200,000 a term and all the boys had to wear Elizabethan ruffs and tights. Here is a picture of Joe in his school uniform. He looks a bit silly, doesn’t he?

So the last thing that Mr Spud expected was that his son would get bullied. Bullying was something that happened to poor people. But the truth was that Joe had been picked on ever since he started at the school. The posh kids hated him, because his dad had made his money out of loo rolls. They said that was ‘awfully vulgar’.

“Bottom Billionaire, The Bum-Wipe Heir, Master Plop-Paper,” continued Joe. “And that’s just the teachers.”

Most of the boys at Joe’s school were Princes, or at least Dukes or Earls. Their families had made their fortunes from owning lots of land. That made them ‘old money’. Joe had quickly come to learn that money was only worth having if it was old. New money from selling loo rolls didn’t count.

The posh boys at St Cuthbert’s had names like Nathaniel Septimus Ernest Bertram Lysander Tybalt Zacharias Edmund Alexander Humphrey Percy Quentin Tristan Augustus Bartholomew Tarquin Imogen Sebastian Theodore Clarence Smythe.

That was just one boy.

The subjects were all ridiculously posh too. This was Joe’s school timetable:

Monday

Latin

Straw-Hat wearing

Royal studies

The study of etiquette

Show-jumping

Ballroom dancing

Debating Society (‘This house believes that it is vulgar to do up the bottom button on your waistcoat’)

Scone eating

Bow-tie tying

Punting

Polo (the sport with horses and sticks, not the mint)