Introducing a major new talent in children’s books… award-winning broadcaster and comedian Christian O’Connell!
From award-winning breakfast radio star Christian O’Connell comes a brilliant, fresh and laugh-out-loud story of an ordinary boy with an extraordinary secret radio show…broadcast from his shed.
Meet Spike, aka Radio Boy: a new Adrian Mole on the radio for the internet generation. Spike’s your average awkward 11 year-old, funny, cheeky and with a mum to reckon with. When he becomes the first presenter ever to be sacked from hospital radio, he decides to carry on from a makeshift studio in the garden shed, with the help of his best friends Artie and Holly, disguising his voice and going by the moniker Radio Boy!
Week by week, word gets around and soon Spike is a star… if only people knew it was actually him. When Spike begins to believe his own hype, and goes too far with his mocking of the school headmaster, a hunt is launched for the mysterious Radio Boy.
Can Spike remain anonymous? Will he get to marry the girl of his dreams, Katherine Hamilton? Will he become famous and popular? The answer to most of these questions is no…
““Sometimes a book’s voice is so compelling, fresh and funny that you know within a page that it’s the Real Thing. Radio Boy’s Spike is just such a voice – think a young Adrian Mole for the Youtube generation! Struggling with fame and an embarrassing family, Spike is a character who will find a place in the nation’s heart; and Christian O’Connell is a major new talent in children’s books. Watch this space…” ”
Aimed at middle-grade readers and launching in January 2017 with simultaneous ebook and audiobook publications, this hilarious first-person novel is set to launch a major new talent in children’s books and comes with a big-hearted message – every child has a secret super power and with so much information and technology at their finger-tips these days, they can do absolutely anything! As Christian says, “get on with it, get after it. Do it. Fail, learn, persevere…”
““I’ve had this idea for a kids’ book for years since being inspired when reading to my own kids years ago. It has been the hardest but most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. My daughters were my editors as I would give them chapters that they would just destroy and hand them back to me with post-it notes of where I’d gone wrong! I can’t wait for kids to read about Radio Boy and maybe it inspires one of them to do their own radio show or start something. Most of all I hope they laugh very hard. I’ve even done some of the jokes in stand up to pressure test them.””
Christian O’Connell is a multi-award-winning broadcaster (including 11 gold Sony awards) who hosts commercial radio’s biggest breakfast show on Absolute Radio, with over 3 million listeners. He is also a touring stand-up comedian with several sold out tours and three critically acclaimed Edinburgh Festival shows.
PR contacts:
For all media enquiries contact Annabel Robinson at FMcM on 020 7405 7422 or email annabelr@fmcm.co.uk
For all schools and event enquiries contact Jo Hardacre at Harper Collins Children’s Division on +44 (0)20 8307 4736 or email jo.hardacre@harpercollins.co.uk
