Radio Boy and the Revenge of Grandad

by Christian O'Connell

  But wait.

  Scratch that. The next morning brought major breaking news.

  Today was the day.

  We were handing in our entry for Radio Star.

  Holly had texted me that morning. She’d finished editing our entry. As soon as she emailed over a link I downloaded it and listened. Wow. I didn’t want to be too boastful, but this entry rocked. The judges would have no option but to give me – I mean, us – the win.

  I didn’t want to risk losing the CD in the post, so I was going to personally deliver it by hand. I set my alarm extra early so I could cycle to Kool FM’s studio on the way to school. It wasn’t much of a detour for this very important package.

  Dad was already in the kitchen making his breakfast and looked shocked to see me up so early.

  ‘Wow! What happened – you wet the bed?’ This was what I would call a classic ‘Dad joke’. No one laughs at these – only him. This ‘you wet the bed?’ one is made every time I get up early. Every. Single. Time.

  Other classic Dad jokes are:

  If I ever leave a door open, we get ‘You born in a barn?’ I don’t understand this. If indeed I was born in a barn, why would I prefer to leave doors open? Surely the barn animals of various kinds would escape? I don’t see many barns where I live, but whenever I do they seem very shut to me.

  Any time I accidentally trip over, I hear ‘Enjoy your trip! Send us a postcard.’ Again, makes no sense. Why would I send anyone a postcard from the place I tripped over? What would I say?

  Hi Nan,

  Wish you were here! On this pavement outside Mr Kleen the dry-cleaner’s where I’ve just tripped over. Weather is pretty horrid.

  Lots of love, Spike xxx

  I just hope none of this ‘funny’ comes out during Dad’s TV audition this weekend on Search For a Star.

  ‘No, Dad, I haven’t wet the bed, thanks. I’m dropping off my Radio Star entry,’ I said, pouring the milk on my cereal.

  ‘Great. Good luck. In that case, you can do me a favour and drop this one off as well,’ he said, and passed me an envelope.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘Your grandad’s entry,’ he replied.

  ‘One show! He’s done one show and it was awful,’ I said, stunned at Grandad Ray’s arrogance, thinking he had nailed the art of radio in one drunken shambolic show.

  ‘Then you have nothing to worry about, do you?’ said Dad.

  We said our goodbyes and I headed to Kool FM and my destiny. I got there quickly – an Olympic cyclist would’ve been proud of my time. I took my bike helmet off and locked my bike up against some railings. I looked up at the radio station. I could see a large aerial on the roof. The building seemed massive. It towered over me. I lost count of the floors it had. At least five.

  Plastered all over the window of the reception were posters saying ‘KOOL FM – Playing all the Hits’. I pressed the buzzer by the front door, shaking with nerves.

  ‘Hello?’ said a lady through the speaker.

  ‘Er … Hi. Hello. I’m here with my entry for Radio Star,’ I stuttered.

  ‘Come in,’ said the speaker. I heard the door unlock and I pushed it open and walked straight into reception. I could hear the news from the speakers that were on the wall. Speakers on the wall! Radio stations have speakers on the wall! My eyes widened as I tried to take it all in. I was in an actual radio station. Not a shed, a proper radio station. This was an Aladdin’s cave to me. I was like Charlie when he first sees Wonka’s factory. I glanced towards a large photo of Howard ‘The Howie’ Wright, pretending to yawn and pointing at an alarm clock. How funny. That Howard was a trickster.

  ‘So you are entering Radio Star,’ asked a very smiley receptionist who had bright red lipstick and huge hair.

  ‘Yes. I’m Spike Hughes, Radio Boy. I already do a show,’ I said. Wanting to reassure the smiling lady I wasn’t just some sad fame-seeking kid giving it a go. I was already a DJ.

  ‘Really? My son listens to him,’ said the smiley lady.

  ‘That’s me. I’m him,’ I said.

  ‘You’re Radio Boy! Really? Well, wait there, Howie will want to come and say hi, I’m sure,’ said Mrs Smiley (as I will now call her). She picked up a bright red phone, held her hand over the mouthpiece, and whispered to me, ‘This goes direct to the studio.’

  Radio stations have SPECIAL PHONES THAT GO STRAIGHT TO THE STUDIO. Incredible. One day I will have a special phone. Maybe to go straight to the kitchen so I can get Mum to make a cheese toastie.

  I couldn’t believe Mrs Smiley was going to ask my hero to come to the place where I was standing. Stay cool, Spike, stay cool.

  ‘Oh, hi, studio. Howard, that kid Radio Boy – you know … the kid that does a show in a broom cupboard—’

  ‘Shed,’ I corrected.

  ‘Sorry, shed – he is here in reception. He’s got his entry for Radio Star. I thought, as the news and sports was on, you might wanna pop down and say hi quickly … What? Does he look …’

  She spun round in her chair so her back was towards me and started whispering the next bit into the phone. I was just under a metre away, so could still hear. Adults are lousy at whispering. FACT.

  ‘No, Howie … he doesn’t look mad.’

  Did he just ask her if I looked mad?

  She hung up and turned round.

  ‘He’s coming down. He can’t wait to meet you,’ she said.

  The glass door that went into reception from the radio station flung open and smashed against the wall. Howard ‘The Howie’ Wright clearly liked to make a grand entrance like my mum.

  ‘The secret DJ! Radio Boy himself!’ yelled my hero. He had very white teeth and looked extremely tanned, despite the fact it wasn’t summertime. His hair looked perfectly positioned.

  He thrust his hand towards me. ‘Howard “The Howie” Wright – call me Howie, or “Legend” if you like.’ He laughed hard at his own joke. That Howie was such a trickster. What a guy!

  ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr Howie,’ I said. I thought I was going to faint.

  ‘I bet,’ he said and I wasn’t sure if he was joking. ‘You’re entering Radio Star?’ he asked. He seemed surprised.

  ‘Yes, here is my entry. I hope you like it.’

  I handed him the best bits of the show on CD and the completed entry form (I’ve attached a copy at the end of this chapter).

  ‘Why the heck not? A kid on a real radio show … it could work …’ He paused and smiled. ‘Big step up from a shed.’

  ‘I’m steady,’ I said.

  ‘Steady?’ asked Howie, frowning at me.

  ‘Ready, I meant ready,’ I said, hating myself.

  ‘Oh, bless him, look at him! He’s all nervous to meet you, Howie,’ said Mrs Smiley the receptionist. I went bright red. Thanks, Mrs Smiley. Not.

  ‘Wow! You could toast marshmallows on that red face right now, kid,’ said Howie, and he laughed hard again at his own joke and patted me on the back. It felt like we were mates now.

  ‘Quick, let’s get a photo before I have to head back,’ he suggested. I fumbled in my school bag for my phone. I hadn’t been expecting to get a picture. I found the phone, but in doing so my lunch box fell out on the reception floor. Howie kindly bent over to help me, but the lunch box fell open and revealed a note from my mum:

  Oh no. I immediately wrote another note in my head. It read:

  Dear Ground, please swallow me up.

  Howard ‘The Howie’ Wright saw the note (the one from Mum, not the one in my head). Our eyes met; mine then looked down at the ground in shame. I’d made it weird.

  My phone then took ages to turn on, of course. Howie kept looking at his watch.

  ‘I’m gonna have to bolt in a sec, kid, as we’re out of news and sport and into a song now,’ he said.

  COME ON, PHONE, TURN ON, YOU STUPID PIECE OF—

  ‘It’s on now,’ I said, almost in tears at the full horror of the last three minutes of my life. I was sweating. Mrs Smiley to
ok my phone.

  We posed for a photo, Howie placed his arm over my shoulder and gave this fake grin, then looked at his watch.

  ‘Sorry, kid – I have to go NOW.’ He let go of me and walked off, just as Mrs Smiley took the photo. Great.

  As I closed the door of Kool FM, a devil and an angel were in my head having a major argument.

  Angel: ‘Hey, Spike, you forgot to hand in your Grandad Ray’s entry to Radio Star. You should do the right thing and put it in the station letterbox.’

  Devil: ‘Or maybe not do that, Spike, and just hang on to it.’

  Angel: ‘But that’s not nice. He’s your grandad.’

  Devil: ‘Who is also trying to stop you winning Radio Star.’

  Angel: ‘Don’t do it, Spike.’

  Devil: ‘Do it, Spike. PUT IT BACK IN YOUR BAG and forget you’ve got it.’

  Angel: ‘You’ll feel bad.’

  Devil: ‘You’ll feel just great. Just great.’

  I cycled away from Kool FM to school, as if I was fleeing the scene of a crime. In my school bag was Grandad Ray’s entry. I was going to hand it in for him. Once I’d done something. The devil in me hadn’t won completely … just a bit.

  The thought of it made me smile for the first time that day. Sometimes bad ideas make you smile.

  ‘What are you up to?’ Dad asked me, making me jump out of my skin.

  Sometimes your parents just know when you’re doing something you really shouldn’t be. And I was.

  I took my headphones off and slammed my laptop shut.

  ‘Oh, just some boring homework.’

  ‘Uh-huh, sure,’ said Dad. Unconvinced.

  He had materialised out of nowhere in my bedroom. Parents can do this. It’s one of their mysterious superpowers. It’s quite an irritating ability, in my view. The power of appearing when you least want them to.

  If my dad was a superhero, I would call him Ninja Dad and he would be the dullest superhero ever.

  My dad’s superpowers would be:

  the ability to open jam jars easily. Once Mum has already loosened them.

  repelling anyone with the powerful death stink from his backside. Maybe I should call him Fart Man.

  mending the Wi-Fi. By turning it off, then on again.

  the power to always get my friends’ names wrong; this also extends to TV shows, actors, singers. Sometimes I need a Google Translate for my dad, to work out who or what he is referring to:

  Dad was right, of course; I was up to no good. I was about to sabotage Grandad Ray’s Radio Star entry using the audio software on my laptop – just a little bit, the devil had said. I could edit it to make it sound terrible. Even more terrible than it already was.

  ‘I really hope that is your homework, son,’ said Dad. ‘Because if I was to open that laptop up and check, I wonder what I would find.’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Nothing. Honest.’

  ‘Choices, Spike, our life is all about choices. Today’s choice is tomorrow’s destiny. Sometimes we forget we have choices. I hope you are making the right one now, whatever it is you’re doing. I can tell by the look on your face you’re up to something. Plus anyone who slams a laptop shut that quickly is guilty of something.’

  How did he know? Get out of my mind, Ninja Dad! (NOTE TO SELF: make a tinfoil hat to wear when I’m up to something in the future so Ninja Dad can’t read my mind and I can be evil.)

  Dad disappeared from my bedroom as quietly as he’d arrived. I opened the laptop back up and carried on with my work, tampering with Grandad Ray’s entry. Was I really doing anything wrong when it was so bad anyway? Choices, Dad, sure, but what choice did I have? My crazed grandad had made his choice to try to beat his own grandchild in Radio Star.

  Right at that moment, Grandad Ray began singing in the shower at the top of his voice … some song about a tiger’s eye. I’ve heard it before in a boxing movie called Rocky, that my dad always falls alseep in front of at Christmas. We go to change the channel over and Dad wakes up and says ‘I was watching that.’

  Bouncing back from his black eye, not a care in the world. No sense of guilt at trying to ruin his grandson’s future. Unbelievable. Choices, Dad, choices.

  I carried on ‘editing’ his entry. Basically, in just a few minutes I’d made a copy and very quickly altered his voice, to slow it down so he sounded like he was a crazy drunk person.

  A text appeared on my phone. From Dad.

  I looked all around me, above me – was he watching me?

  The angel in my head appeared.

  Angel: ‘You could undo this. It’s only a copy. It’s not too late.’

  Oh! Go away, angel, go away, Dad. Why does it hurt so much to do the right thing?

  I hit ‘undo’. Then I went back to the original file. In fact, I even tidied Grandad’s poxy entry up a bit for him to make it sound better. I balanced the audio a little, taking down the far-too-loud music and bringing the voices up. I cleaned up some room noise and boosted the bass tones to make it less tinny. This is the sort of thing a millionaire record producer does. Polishes poop so it doesn’t smell as bad any more.

  Now, Grandad’s entry sounded almost … good.

  Why can’t I be evil?

  I put his entry in an envelope along with his completed entry form. Not before I’d had a sneaky read of it, though.

  What did he mean, ‘desperate kid’? Did he mean me? Because he always writes in capitals, it was quite easy to copy his handwriting so I added something:

  I cycled over to Kool FM and dropped off his entry at reception before I had time to change my mind. After leaving the building I looked up at the sky to see if Dad was watching me.

  ‘Happy now?’ I shouted up into the sky.

  ‘You OK, Spike?’ came a voice behind me.

  ‘Oh, yes, sorry,’ I said. It was Howard ‘The Howie’ Wright. Oh no.

  ‘I was … erm, just … practising my lines from the school play,’ I said, rattling off my now go-to excuse when behaving like a loon.

  ‘Right. Dropping off another entry, I see,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, my grandad’s,’ I said through gritted teeth.

  Howie’s eyes widened and lit up.

  ‘Your grandad is entering? Against you?’

  ‘Yes, he is,’ I replied. Obviously Howie felt sorry for me and was no doubt wondering what kind of grandfather would do such an evil thing.

  ‘FANTASTIC! Oh, the drama,’ Howie said, rubbing his hands with glee.

  ‘Gotta shoot, Spike, off to open a new butcher’s shop. I’m doing it gratis in exchange for free mince for the rest of the year,’ he added, and departed.

  That was it, then. Grandad was entered into Radio Star.

  D Day. Dad Day. Disaster Day.

  Dad On the TV Day. The day what little coolness I had as the school’s resident renegade DJ was about to be DESTROYED.

  As the morning light crept into my bedroom, I yawned and opened my eyes. Immediately, I shut them again and willed sleep to come back to me so that this day would never start. A giant eraser was poised over my life, about to rub away into oblivion any cool points I’d collected from me being Radio Boy. All this because my dad and the band he used to be in a hundred years ago had thought it would be fun to play a gig in a pub.

  Your parents are embarrassing enough, without them dancing and singing on TV in front of millions of people! They should be banned from ever being on TV. My dad once came to pick me up from school in denim shorts, white vest and a baseball cap. He looked like something from an MTV documentary about people who marry their cousins. Weeks after that, the older kids at school, led by Martin Harris, of course, were still talking about my ‘Hillbilly Dad’. Thanks, Dad.

  When I reluctantly came downstairs, Dad was getting his stuff ready before meeting the rest of his band and heading to the TV studios.

  ‘I’m so nervous, Spike,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, I bet. You don’t have to do it, you know …’ I said hopefully.

  Nin
ja Dad saw through me.

  ‘Oh, I see. Thinking about yourself, Spike, and how it’s going to look – your dad on TV? Well, I really want to do this – it’s just a bit of fun. I’ll try not to embarrass you and ruin your street cred,’ he said.

  ‘Good luck, Mr Rock Star,’ said Mum as she and Dad hugged.

  ‘Thinking about doing the old stick flick, Carol,’ said Dad.

  ‘Be careful! You could have someone’s eye out! You’re not twenty-one any more,’ said Mum.

  ‘Yes, I do know that. Thanks, Carol,’ said Dad.

  ‘What song are you doing?’ I asked.

  ‘One of our big numbers from back in the day. “Pirate Parade”,’ said Dad.

  I couldn’t hold back. ‘Pirate Parade?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, big full-on rock song, huge drum solo from me; it’s about being proud of who you are as a pirate and as a person,’ said Dad.

  Just then Grandad Ray walked in.

  ‘Parade of fools, more like – if you ask me,’ he said.

  ‘Well, no one did ask you, but thanks for the support, Dad,’ said Dad.

  Seemed odd, seeing my own dad arguing with his dad. Incredible: even at my dad’s old age, you still argue with your parents.

  Maybe it starts with arguing with your parents about tidying your room and ends with arguments about which care home you will put them in?

  As always, my mum tried to be the peacekeeper. ‘I think Grandad was just having a little jokey-wokey,’ she suggested.

  ‘Yeah, some people just can’t take a joke,’ said Grandad Ray, stirring it up.

  My dad just did a super-sized sigh and raised his eyebrows as if to make his face into an emoji of ‘whatever’. ‘Well, I’ve got to go. Wish me luck, and remember to tune in tonight, 8pm, and vote!’ said Dad. He looked really nervous, so we hugged and I even managed to wish him luck.

  Dad and Grandad Ray shook hands awkwardly. My mum handed my dad a bag that was bulging at the sides.

  ‘What’s in here?’ asked Dad as he struggled to hold the bag up to examine its contents.