Billionaire Boy is a 2010 children's book written by David Walliams. It tells the story of a young boy named Joe Spud whose father is a multimillionaire from making double-sided toilet paper rolls he calls "Bumfresh." Because Joe desperately wants friends and hates his current school, his father switches him over to the local comprehensive where he meets a young boy named Bob, who is being tormented by the local bullies the Grubbs. Joe tries to help his friend but it doesn't go according to plan, and Bob soon abandons him. He later meets another girl named Lauren, but is this new girl everything she seems to be?
The third installment in the "World of Walliams" series.
Tropes Include:
- Age-Gap Romance: Mr. Spud is 46 and his fiancee, Sapphire Stone, is only nineteen.
- Alas, Poor Villain: Everyone rejoices when Miss Spite (the history teacher) loses her job. Joe, on the other hand, finds it sad because she had never done anything that would warrant her being fired.
- All Animals Are Domesticated: It's said that Joe keeps two crocodiles and a real-life shark as pets.
- Alliterative Title: Billionaire Boy.
- Always Identical Twins: The Grubbs look exactly alike (both with matching mustaches and crew cuts) even though one of them is a girl. They also sound alike (both their voices wavering high and low in each sentence). All this makes their exact genders indistinguishable.
- Ambiguous Gender: No one can figure out which one of the girls is a male and which one is a female.
- An Aesop: Sometimes money can't buy happiness.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
- Lauren, who turns out to be an actress hired by Joe's father and coldly turns him down once the jig is up.
- Mrs. Trafe seemed like a kind ear to Joe after his secret was exposed, but she spends all the money Joe lent her for a hip replacement on plastic surgery instead, meaning she was after his money all along.
- Brick Joke: During chapter 6, after the Grubbs swear at Bob the author lists some of the words he considers to be rude (all of them being made-up words) and one of them is "Ploomfizz." Later on, when Joe and Bob stop being friends, the author states "He thought he'd found a friend, but all he'd really found was a selfish, bad-tempered, ungrateful... Ploomfizz."
- Catchphrase: Miss Spite loves saying "The bell is a signal for me, not you!" to the children whenever the bell rings.
- Cool Bike: The shiny new Harley Davidson motorcycle that Mr. Spud buys the headmaster to bribe him into firing Miss Spite.
- The Ditz: Sapphire.
- Embarrassing Nickname:
- Because Bob is so overweight most kids call him "Blob."
- Most of the kids at Joe's old school make fun of him because his father makes toilet rolls for a living, calling him "Bum Boy," "Bottom Billionaire," "The Bog Roll Kid" and worse.
- Many of the teachers at the school have been given cruel nicknames by the students. Mr. Dust is "The Tortoise" because he is so old and wrinkled. Another teacher is called "Tomato" as he has a round face like a tomato. The biology teacher probably has the worst one as she is so hairy everyone calls her "Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy."
- Impractically Fancy Outfit: The school uniforms at St. Cuthbert's consists of tights and Elizabethan collars, which obviously doesn't look very stylish at all.
- Lonely Rich Kid: Joe has an amazing amount of money but it doesn't really make him happy. It turns out he wants friends more than anything.
- Oh, Crap!: Joe's reaction when his dad flies into the schoolyard with his helicopter to give him his essay, outing him as a billionare in the process.
- Overly Long Name: A boy at Joe's old school is named "Nathaniel Septimus Ernest Bertram Lysander Tybalt Zacharias Edmund Alexander Humphrey Percy Quentin Tristan Augustus Bartholomew Tarquin Imogen Sebastian Theodore Clarence Smythe."
- Punny Name: Peter Bread (a pun on pita bread). The author actually gives us an entire list of these shortly after (Justin Case, Barbara Blacksheep, Walter Melon, etc).
- Running Gag: Whenever a doorbell sounds, the author reassures the reader that it isn't their own doorbell. Lampshaded near the end when the author says "I think I've done that joke too many times now."
- Shout-Out:
- Miss Spite is nicknamed "The Witch" by the children. When she is fired someone can be heard singing "Ding-dong the wicked witch is dead!"
- The list of Punny Names after the class's reaction to 'Peter Bread' (Pita Bread) include names famously used by Bart Simpson when prank-calling Moe's Tavern such as 'Bea 'O' Problem' and 'Hugh Idiot' (Bowdlerised from 'Hugh Jass').
- Spoiled Brat: Sapphire is thrilled to be engaged to such a rich man as Mr. Spud. She gives him a very long list of things she wants for her birthday which includes a solid gold Rolls Royce, a bucket of diamonds, a tank of tropical fish and a talking dog.
- Subverted with Joe. His father buys him insane amounts of toys and other luxuries with his money but Joe isn't necessarily a brat. In fact he's the exact opposite.
- Title Drop: When the other kids find out that Joe is rich one of them tells "Hey! Billionaire Boy!"
- Toilet Humor:
- The entire idea of Bumfresh, which is basically a toilet roll that is wet on one side and dry on the other. It might sound like a bad idea but it makes Mr. Spud millions of pounds every day.
- At one point Mr. Spud begins advertising different Bumfresh products including HOTBUMFRESH (it warms your bottom), LADYBUMFRESH (very soft wipes for ladies) and MINTYBUMFRESH (it leaves your bottom with a minty aroma).
- Bumfresh's downfall comes when everyone realizes it makes their bottoms go purple. Even the Queen gets it!
- The Topic of Cancer: Bob tells Joe that his own father passed away the previous year due to cancer. He explains his dad's last few hours in graphic detail: "You could hear his breath rattling and then the sound just stopped. I went to get the nurse and she said he was gone."
- Trademark Favorite Food: Mr. Spud loves Shepherd's Pie. He never eats it though because he thinks he has to eat fancy food to live the high life.
- Unfortunate Name: Peter Bread. Played straight when all the students laugh at him.
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The story ends with this.
- Mr. Spud marries Bob's mother because he enjoys her Shepherd's Pie so much, and Joe and Bob become stepbrothers.
- Mr. Spud also begins working with Raj to create new confectionery items that will make them rich (e.g. five-fingered KitKat and Vindaloo-flavored mints). Unsurprisingly, none of these ideas make them any money.
- Sapphire gets married to an entire Premier League football team.
- The Grubbs are sent to a boot camp in the United States.
- Mr. Dust retires from the school after turning 100 and goes into motorbike racing.
- Miss Spite gets her job back and gives Joe litter duty for the rest of his life.
- Peter Bread changes his name to Susan Jenkins. Needless to say it doesn't help at all.
- Lauren continues acting and appears in the show Casualty... as a dead body.
- The Queen's bottom remains purple and she shows it to everyone during her yearly Christmas Day speech.
- Mrs. Trafe publishes a cookbook called 101 Recipes with Bat Sick.
