Billionaire Boy

Billionaire Boy by David Walliams is a friendship story for 7 year olds in which the richest boy in the country asks his dad to buy him a friend.

What happens

Joe Spud is twelve. His dad invented a loo roll that's moist on one side and dry on the other, and the money has never stopped since.

There's a rollercoaster in the back garden. There's a 10-lane bowling alley underground. There are two crocodiles (yes, two).

Then it's Joe's birthday and Dad hands him a cheque for a million pounds. Joe is disappointed. Dad makes it two million and asks what else he'd like, and Joe says he'd like a friend.

He hasn't got one. At St Cuthbert's the other boys are mostly Princes and Dukes, and they look down on him for where his money came from. They call him the Bog Roll Kid. So do some of the teachers.

So Joe asks to leave and go to the local comp instead. He'll say nothing about the money. He'll just be Joe. The question is how long he can keep that up.

The story is told to you like someone leaning over and telling it. You get asked questions. You get shown Joe's actual school timetable, which has Nose in the air hour on a Tuesday.

The jokes are very silly and quite a lot of them are about bottoms. Joe's dad puts on a ten-grand toupee that looks like a hamster flattened with a mallet. Joe's first proper conversation at his new school is an argument about which of the two boys weighs more.

That last bit is worth knowing before you hand it over. A big chunk of the early humour is about Joe and Bob being fat, and both boys get laughed at for it. The PE teacher makes Bob run cross-country in his vest and pants in front of everybody. Joe's dad reads Page 3 of the Sun and takes the models out, and Joe's mum ran off with his Cub Scout leader. All of that is set up in the first three chapters, so it isn't a surprise waiting further in.

If your child would feel got at by the weight jokes, this probably isn't the one for them. If they already love Walliams being rude and daft on every page, they'll be away.

Underneath all the silliness the wish is a very small one. Joe would swap the whole lot for somebody to race against.

What to read next

If that's the bit that lands, Mr Stink is in the library too. Chloe is lonely at her posh school as well, and the person she wants to be friends with is the tramp on the bench her mother has told her never to speak to.