“Glorious… This book is terrific. More, please.” Adele Geras, TES
“It’s like Adrian Mole but dafter… You’ll luv it!” The Times
“Genuinely funny… sparklingly well-written.” The Independent
“Hilariously Funny” The Times
JAMIE RIX - BIOGRAPHY
Jamie Rix started out as a comedy producer for BBC Radio Light Entertainment, producing amongst other shows; The Michael Bentine Show, In One Ear, The Wow Show and Radio Active. For the last 25 years he has produced comedy on TV. Shows such as Not Going Out, Smith & Jones, Colin’s Sandwich, Faith In The Future, KYTV, and My Hero.
He is also a prolific writer of children's books, including The Incredible Luck of Alfie Pluck (shortlisted for the Roald Dahl Funny Prize in 2010), 120 cautionary tales for the Grizzly Tales series (the original book, Grizzly Tales For Gruesome Kids, was a Smarties Prize winner), The Revenge Files of Alistair Fury, Johnny Casanova The Unstoppable Sex Machine, Giddy Goat and many others.
Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids is an award-winning television series (two British Animation Awards and five times BAFTA nominated) that started on CiTV and is now shown daily on Nicktoons, and in 2008 his adaptation of The Revenge Files of Alistair Fury won the Best Children’s Drama at the BAFTA Awards. In 2012 Grizzly Tales won the Best Children’s Series award at the Broadcast Awards.
OTHER BOOKS BY JAMIE RIX
GRIZZLY TALES (Orion Children’s Books)
Vol 1 - Nasty Little Beasts
Vol 2 – Gruesome Grown Ups
Vol 3 – The ME! Monsters
Vol 4 – Freaks of Nature
Vol 5 – Terror Time Toys
Vol 6 – Blubbers and Sicksters
Vol 7 – The Gnaughty Gnomes of ‘No!’
Vol 8 - Superzeroes
THE REVENGE FILES of ALISTAIR FURY (Random House Children’s Books)
Vol 1 - Bugs on the Brain
Vol 2 - Dead Dad Dog
Vol 3 - Kiss of Death
Vol 4 - Tough Turkey
Vol 5 - Happy Helliday
Vol 6 - Exam Fever
OTHER TITLES
The Incredible Luck of Alfie Pluck (Orion) Shortlisted for Roald Dahl Funny Prize 2010
Grizzly tales For Gruesome Kids (Scholastic) Winner of Children’s Choice at Smarties’ Prize
Ghostly Tales For Ghastly Kids (Scholastic)
Fearsome Tales For Fiendish Kids (Hodder)
More Grizzly Tales For Gruesome Kids (Scholastic)
Giddy The Great! (Orchard Books)
Giddy Goat (Orchard Books)
The Last Chocolate Biscuit (Walker Books)
Looking After Murphy (Hodder)
Free The Whales (Walker Books)
One Hot Penguin (Random House Children’s Books)
Mr Mumble’s Fabulous Flybrows (Random House Children’s Books)
www.fatherchristmas.con (Walker Books)
The Fire In Henry Hooter (Walker Books)
The Cool Guide (Walker Books)
The Dreaded Lurgie (Scholastic)
A.Stitch In Time (Hodder)
The Wizlets – Wet! Wet! Wet! (Scholastic)
The Wizlets – The Magic Waste-Goat! (Scholastic)
The Vile Smile (Macdonald)
The Unstoppable Sex Machine
To the girl in the purple uniform
(Whoever you are)
1 The Unstoppable Sex Machine
2 The Apple of My Eye
3 How Sexy Are You?
4 Purple Passion
5 The War Zone
6 The Language of Love
7 Young Love’s Dream
8 Happy Birthday to Mum
9 Courting Disaster
10 Preparations for the Altar of Love
11 My First Date
12 Kiss and Make-up
13 Mia’s Tears
14 Standing at the Purley Gates
15 The Brooch Fairy
16 Red Hot Sex Pot
17 Ginger’s Revenge
1
THE UNSTOPPABLE SEX MACHINE
“The name’s Worms. Johnny Worms. They call me the unstoppable sex machine, ‘cause I’m hot to trot. I’m a red hot chilli pepper with cayenne sauce. I’m a townie tiger with a rrrrrrapacious appetite. And when the ladies set their eyes on me I’m the London Fire Brigade’s worst nightmare! I’m talking lickin’ chickens, you understand, flaming feminines, ‘cause when I set their hearts on fire there ain’t no river wet enough to put ‘em out!” I flicked the fringe out of my eyebrows and pouted into the bathroom mirror. I loved the thought that nobody else could see me standing on top of the loo seat using a toothpaste tube as a microphone. I wiggled my powerful hips inside my Mickey Mouse boxer shorts, thrust up my arms in a dashing, ride-’em-cowboy sort of a pose and blew myself a well deserved kiss. “My God, but you’re handsome!” I said to my own reflection. “How could Alison possibly resist? She’ll faint when you ask her to marry you.” There was a loud knock at the door, which made me jump.
“I with you’d huwwy up in there,” lisped my baby sister in that weary tone of voice she’d copied off Mum. “If Teddy doethn’t go to the toilet thoon, he’th going to have a vewy nathty accident all over Mummy’th carpet.”
“Go and get the carpet shampoo,” I said. “I haven’t done my hair yet.”
“But you’ve been in there for wover a nour!” she moaned. It was time to give Sherene a lesson in Major Life Priorities. I took my tub of gel off the sink and bent down by the keyhole.
“Listen, little sister, I’ll let you into a secret…” I wanted her to think that I was going to reveal something really, really important, something she was far too young to know, because then she was guaranteed to do exactly what I said in order to hear it. “Put your ear as close to the door as you can.” Sherene pressed herself up against the plywood panel. I could see the pinkness of her ear through the keyhole.
“Well, go on then,” she urged, impatiently, “impreth me.” Well, she did ask. I took a scoop of blue hair gel out of the pot and impressed it right through the keyhole until it squirted out the other end and filled up her lughole to overflowing, like one of those cakeshop doughnuts with plastic cream in the middle. It was totally scam-cessful, but Sherene failed to see the funny side. She just bawled.
“MUMMY! Johnny’th gone and put the jelly in my earholeth!” and she ran off to exaggerate the story to Mum, so that she could have the pleasure of watching me getting duffed up.
“Huh, kids!” I snarled, curling my top lip like Bruce Willis in I’m-harder-than-a-hard-hat, no-tears, muscle-man mode.
The gel pot was now half empty, but there was still enough for me to perform the solemn ceremony of the Preparation of the Sacred Hair. I filled the basin with lukewarm water and plunged my head in up to the neck. The water worked miracles on the ridges, valleys, lumps, bumps and sticking-up cows’ licks that last night’s pillow had creased into my hair, flattening them on to my scalp like a swimming cap. I half-dried it with a towel and brushed the tangles out with my dad’s comb, scraping the dark wet strands behind my ears until I looked like one of those gigolo blokes from that ballroom-dancing programme, the ones with the tight trousers. Dead Spanish Matador, I thought, imagining a rose between my teeth and a bull at my heels. The crowd roared. The bull’s horns were inches away from my perfectly rounded bottom. The women were standing all around the bull ring, handkerchiefs stuffed into their mouths, tears rolling down their cheeks, begging the bull not to gore me! A million and one people held their breath. Cars stopped on motorways to listen on their radios. Boats sank, aeroplanes crashed, even God stopped creating for a bit… and then, with one lightning swivel of my elastic hips, I turned and faced the ton of charging topside, dispatching it swiftly between its shoulder blades with a single lunge from dad’s electric toothbrush.
“Hurry up in there, Johnny, will you? Some of us have got gnomes to feed before going to work, you know.” Talk of the devil, there he was, regular as clockwork. My Dad. Every morning at 7.15 he’d say exactly the same thing, and every morning I never finished doing my hair before 7.25, so I don’t know why he bothered. I still had my topknot to titivate. It was time for the gelling. The artistic engine room of hair styling. With water you can iron out any overnight horrors (like Hair Horns or Falling Fringes), but with gel you can create a thing of genuine beauty, a classic work of art that would sell for millions if you peeled your scalp off the top of your head and mounted it in a display case. Gel, in my opinion, is what girls most like about boys. That and money. So I rubbed a clear blue fistful of the stuff into my locks until they were stiff and sticky like papier mache. Then I spread the gunge evenly across my scalp with a cake mix scraper that I’d nicked out of the kitchen, and shaped, fussed and patted till my head looked like a speed cyclist’s helmet. Solid Darth Vader. Black, shiny and hard as a coal scuttle. Not a hair moved, not even when I turned my head upside down to study my immaculate styling through my legs. It was 7.25. I was ready to face the world.
When I opened the door, my dad was outside tapping his foot on the carpet. He had his shaving towel draped over his arm like a waiter and his breath smelt sour. He always wore the same thing. A red, shiny dressing gown (with a gold T for Terry on both lapels), red leather slippers (with the heel trodden down) and light blue pyjamas, buttoned right up to the top, to stop Mum getting her hands on him. He’s a reedy man, a bit thin and scraggy round the edges, the sort you can see through if you shine a torch on his chest, at least that’s what my mate Ginger said, but I’ve never tried it. My biggest worry is that one day I’ll grow up to be like him. Bulging veins, spindly wrists, all teeth and glasses. Little, black, round-framed glasses which sit neatly on the bridge of his nose, come rain, shine, bath or swim. He says he can’t see without them, but it doesn’t hurt to try occasionally, does it, especially when you’re out in public and you don’t want your mates to think your dad’s a weedy gink? He’s a creature of habit: same newspaper, same breakfast, same house, same bus, same job, same lunch, same gin and tonic, same bedtime and same chapter in the same book for twenty years. The man’s a walking museum, and he sings Elvis Presley hits in the bath which is even more embarrassing, because he doesn’t look one bit like Elvis, and maybe everyone thinks that he thinks that he does, or maybe everyone thinks that I keep telling him that he does, which is even worse, because I wouldn’t be that stupid! But there again, maybe they think I am that stupid, that’s my point. Anyway, on this particular day, as every day, my mega-boring dad was standing outside the bathroom as I came out.
“Morning, son,” he said, ruffling my hair, like he was patting a dog for fetching a stick. “Having fun?”
Was I having fun? Let’s examine the situation. I had just spent the best part of an hour getting my crowning glory done up perfect for school (and Alison), then he comes along and collapses it! Was I having fun? Was I hell. My exquisitely crafted hair sculpture had just tumbled over my eyes, like a poorly pasted sheet of wallpaper!
* * *
“Ooooooo-hoooooo!” The Worms’ mating call rang through the house like a burst of Tarzan’s jungle-yodelling. My Mum was calling her family to table.
She whacked the back of my knees with a fish slice as I walked into the kitchen.
“Mornin’, ducks,” she said. “That’s for teasing Sherene. Now, scrambled, fried, poached, boiled or just raw with a dash of brown sauce?” She was cooking eggs for breakfast.
“Nothing,” I said, lowering myself gingerly into my seat so as not to ruin the crease in my school trousers. “I’m on a diet.”
“Well, excuse me,” snorted Mum. “You’re on a what?”
“Mummy,” interrupted Sherene, “I think the doggie’th jutht done a thmelly woopth.” The dog was a bloodhound called Pongo, with Very Leaky Bowel Syndrome, which meant that he smelled disgusting, especially when his lower intestine vaporized over the breakfast table.
“Can’t we put a cork up there or something?” I suggested, but Mum threw her arms protectively around Pongo’s neck.
“No, we can’t!” she quivered. “I wouldn’t do that to you, would I? And Pongo’s just as much a part of our little family. Now don’t get me wrong, I find his little smells at table just as nasty as you do, but he’s so sweet, isn’t he? Look at those lovely, big, saggy eyes trying to say he’s sorry.” Actually those lovely, big, saggy eyes were trying to say that a second smell would shortly be joining us for breakfast, and perhaps we’d all like to leave the kitchen, but a bloodhound’s eyes always look like they’re apologizing for something or other and Mum hasn’t twigged that yet. The table cloth fluttered gently as Pongo fulfilled his promise, while Mum turned the conversation back to diets. “What’s a boy your age need to slim for? You’re all skin and bone.”
“My physique is the talking point of the shower room,” I replied, indignantly. “I bet Arnold Schwarzenegger’s mum doesn’t force him to eat eggs in the morning.” At the mention of Arnie, Mum’s eyes glazed over and a thin tendril of dribble drooled over her bottom lip. I knew the look. She was dreaming of firm flesh and hairy biceps. “Your Uncle Stan looked like that once, you know, before all his muscles slipped down to his stomach. He’s nice, isn’t he, Stan? Cuddly.”
“No. He’th fat and ugly,” said Sherene, “and breatheth beer.” Then she trilled, mischievously, “I’ll tell you why Johnny won’t eat… he’s in love!”
“Shut up, Sherene,” I said, realizing she’d overheard what I’d said in the bathroom.
“He’s in love with Alithon Mallinthon.”
“I’m not,” I shouted, storming from the table in a hair-tossing huff, but my sneaky, snitchy sister had got it in one. I adored Alison Mallinson. I swooned at the mere mention of her name. She was drop-dead gorgeous, the most desirable creature that ever wore a grey pleated skirt and knee-length socks, and although she didn’t know it she was going to be my pinny-pink princess, my pash, my paramour, my powder-puff partner till the end of time! All of this I don’t mind admitting to the bathroom mirror, but it’s not something you want your mum telling the neighbours, is it?
ON PONGO AND LUV
Luv unlike a doggy smell,
Which follows you and makes life hell,
Is really quite a luvly thing,
It makes you want to talk and sing.
The other thing on which to touch
Is why girls luv me so very much.
I think it’s ‘cause I make them laugh
And do ten press-ups in the bath.
(Every day, I’ll have you know)
(Johnny worms, Aged 13 - From his unpublished collection of poems, “LUV TICKLES A BIT”)
2
THE APPLE OF MY EYE
What my best mate Ginger and I like to do best when we hide out in the school loos is to make the first years pee on the seat. We wait until they’re past the point of no return, when even a plumber with a monkey wrench can’t turn you off, and then leap up, put our faces over the top of the cubicle door and shout, “Smile, you’re on Candid Camera!” If we get lucky they turn round and splash their shoes as well as the seat, which is worth two extra points. Ginger’s just flukey, I think, because there’s no difference in our techniques, but he’s got masses more points than me. He says it’s because he can shout louder, on account of him having bigger lungs and I’ve got little lover’s lungs, which are only good for whispering sweet nothings.
So, that morning, Ginger and I had sneaked into the loos before assembly, and Ginger wanted to play the “seat-wetting” game, but I told him I had more important things to do with my time.
“Like what?” he said, disbelievingly.
“Promise not to tell?” I asked, locking the cubicle door. He crossed himself all over.
“On pain of death and you can have my twelve-inch pencil case if I do.” That was good enough for me. Everyone wanted Ginger’s pencil case, because he could get a full size ruler in it.
“OK, you’re on,” I said to him. “Well, last night I went to bed a boy and this morning I woke up a man!”
“What man?” said Ginger. “Your dad?”
“No! I … ME … JOHNNY WORMS … I woke up with manly feelings!”
“You’ve grown a hair in your armpit, haven’t you?” grunted Ginger, full of repressed jealousy.
“I’m not talking about hairy armpits,” I said. “I’m talking about emotions, Ginger. I’m in love.” Ginger laughed.
“With yourself,” he snorted.
“With Alison Mallinson,” I replied, sharply. I paused to let the wonderful news sink in, but Ginger already knew what he thought. He didn’t like it. Actually, it was Alison he didn’t like, or, to be more accurate, girls in general. They weren’t good enough at football for Ginger. Not to mention the fact that they cried non-stop, stole his best friend (that’s me) and, when he did spend time with them, either stopped him from doing what he liked best (which was football) or tidied him up. He couldn’t see the point in making friends with someone who didn’t like him the way he was. He was a scruff-bucket. “A lump of sheep’s offal tied round the middle with string” was what his mum called him. It was fair enough really, because his shirt was always flapping, his socks never matched, his blazer was more patch than blazer, his shoes were scuffed white and he had this horrible habit of picking his nose and wiping the bits on the back of his tie.
“Boring,” he said. “I thought you were going to tell me you’d met Ryan Giggs or something.” I told my ex-best friend Ginger I’d be grateful if he could stop thinking about himself for a moment and start thinking about me instead.
“Do you think it’s easy being in love?” I said. Ginger shrugged and picked a scab on the back of his hand.
“Dunno,” he replied.
“It makes you do really stupid things that you wouldn’t normally do.”
“Like dump on your friends,” he muttered, bitterly.
“No. Like cycle in the rain and buy each other chips, that sort of thing. But, and here’s the difficult bit, girls want you to keep saying “I love you, darling,” and things like that, all the time. And you try making “I love you, darling,” sound different every time. It’s hard. Actually, it’s harder making it sound like you mean it, but that’s why I need your help, Ginger. I’ve got to win Alison’s heart and I don’t know what to say.”
“Your prayers?” smiled Ginger, helpfully. “If Timothy Winchester ever gets to hear about this, he’ll kill you.”
“Timothy Winchester!” I sneered. “Huh! That puffed-up windbag doesn’t scare me. I could duff him up with one foot tied behind my back.”
“No, you couldn’t.”
“I could.”
“Couldn’t.”
“Could.”
“Couldn’t.”
“Could.”
“Couldn’t.” We’re good conversationalists, Ginger and I.
“How do you know?”
“Because Timothy Winchester can break a ruler between his knees and Cecil said he saw him nut a desk and leave a huge dent in it.”
“Yeah, in his head,” I said.
“In the desk,” said Ginger. “Plus, he’s told everyone he’s going to marry Alison when he’s got a mortgage. I wouldn’t mess with him.”
“Bet he hasn’t told Alison,” I said, pretending not to care, “and I know for a fact that she wouldn’t have him, because his arms are too long, like a monkey’s.”
“He’s got money,” said Ginger.
“Will you shut up!” I shouted. “You’re supposed to be supporting me.” Ginger stood up.
“You’re mad,” he said. “I’m going outside for a game of football. If you’ve got any sense you’ll forget about Alison and come with me.”
“Love knows not what is sense,” I said profoundly.
“Then love’s a plonker,” said Ginger. “Have a nice beating-up.” And he left.
A FLEETING GLANCE AT LOVE AND HATE
Luv
Hurts
(Or so they say),
But
Hate
Hurts More
When it hits you.
(Johnny Worms – In pain on the pan)
I took out a set of coloured pencils and a piece of card and laid them out on top of the cistern. I had decided to melt Alison’s heart with a personalized love postcard. This was like a letter only shorter and more direct, like taking a girl to the cinema and getting straight into the snogging by the sweet counter in the foyer. I started off by drawing a huge red heart in the top left hand corner. It wasn’t quite as symmetrical as I had hoped, in fact it leaned over alarmingly to one side, like it was made of ice cream and left too close to the fire. Actually, it didn’t look like a heart at all, more like a rotten apple. So I added in a couple of green leaves and a stalk and wrote underneath:
You is the apple of my eye.
Cor! I bet you taste good with custard!
That was good. She’d probably laugh at that. Now for the important bit. I sat back on the toilet seat, sucked on my pencil and let the muse take me.
Alison, Alison,
When can I see you some?
My heart is all cooked and done,
For a blinder called Alison
(Mallinson).
Luv
JW
I added in the Mallinson just in case she thought I was talking about a different Alison, and then I put it in brackets just in case using her surname was too formal and offended her (after all, it was a bit of a bank-managerish thing to do). Anyway, I was pretty confident that the note would move her to tears. I turned the card over and drew a huge pair of lips on the front. Underneath, I wrote the letters S. W. A. L. K., and then added some seagulls, because I’m good at drawing them. I can draw hills and car wheels too (if the rest of the car is out of the picture), but I thought, on balance, that seagulls were more romantic and symbolic of my soaring passion. As a final gesture of serious desire, I kissed the love postcard and imagined it was Alison.