The Parent Agency

David Baddiel's The Parent Agency is a what-if comedy for 8 year olds, and the what-if is one nearly every child has had at some point.

What happens

Barry Bennett is nine. Nearly ten. In five days.

Under his pillow is a list headed THINGS I BLAME MY PARENTS FOR. Being boring. Calling him Barry. Being tired all the time. Never, ever making his birthday really good. Number nine is "being poor", and he feels a bit bad about that one, because he knows it is not really their fault. His dad works at IKEA. His mum is a primary school assistant who seems to live behind the dishwasher.

The whole thing goes off on a Sunday, over a Casino Royale DVD. Barry wanted the Daniel Craig one. His dad bought the cheaper one on Amazon, which turns out to be the 1960s spoof. Barry shouts his list out loud, hurls the DVD across the kitchen, and hits his mum in the eye with it.

Sent upstairs. Still furious. He says it three times. I wish I had better parents.

Then the room starts shaking.

He wakes up in Youngdon, which is basically London if London had a Playhouses of Parliament and a station called Ha Ha Ha This Station Is Called Watery Loo. Here, grown-ups do not have children. Children choose their parents. And the grown-ups queue outside the Agency in sleeping bags, handing out CVs.

Everybody Barry knows turns up here doing a different job, which is the gag that kept me grinning. His mates are Parent Controllers with a loudhailer. Jake, who can raise one eyebrow, runs the place and has started talking like Downton Abbey. The twin sisters are the secretaries, and this time they are writing it all down for real.

The offer is five sets of parents, one a day, five parties, and five gigantic hourglasses ticking down to his birthday. Nobody will tell Barry what happens if he has not chosen by then. They just glance at each other and say "circumstances" in a whispery voice.

He asks for rich first. Obviously.

It is funny in the way that trusts a child to keep up, and it is quietly clever, because Barry's list is not wrong. His parents really are tired and strict and skint.

Do be ready for the kitchen row. Barry loses his temper completely, yells that he hates his mum and dad, and the thrown DVD does hit his mother. She falls over and something smashes. You feel exactly how awful he feels two minutes later, but a child who has had a row like that lately may go quiet.

What to read next

For another boy who goes out looking for better parents, The Perfect Parent Project is in the library too. Sam has been in and out of foster care his whole life, he keeps a den in a skip he calls Eric, and his friend Leah tells him to stop waiting for a family and go and find one.