Billy Bunter at Butlins

Summer again and Greyfriars School begins to think of holidays – and where to spend them. Into one ever-hopeful fat mind comes the same ever-recurring problem.

For given a sum of one lazy Owl with two months' holiday, plus one parent with a home called Bunter Villa, the answer is obvious enough even for the laziest brain in the school to work out to be equal to two months of discomfort. Mr. Bunter, senior, is just such an unnatural parent as to expect a son at home to help in making himself useful.

He is not the man to understand that a break from Greyfriars – weeks away from the eagle eye of Mr. Quelch – should be spent in complete rest with the solace of soft beds and ample supplies of food.

The renown of Butlin's Holiday Camp has penetrated even the thick ears of the fattest boy of the Remove. But holidays such as they provide, be they ever so inexpensive, cannot compete, in the eyes of Bunter's august parent, with a completely free eight weeks at Uncle Carter's boarding house, where having to do the washing-up would provide work for unwilling hands.

But luck, in the friendly shape of Mr. Billy Butlin himself, tumbles into Billy Bunter's life.

And luck is working overtime, for not only is the way to a free holiday provided, but also a wallet stuffed with enough money to provide tuck to satisfy a gargantuan appetite, is planted in a capacious, but hitherto empty pocket. For a pickpocket about to be caught in the act must get rid of incriminating evidence somehow and, just for once, Billy Bunter's fat person happens to be in the right place at the right time. And even with a criminal desperate to retrieve his ill-gotten gains behind him, the fat Owl is able to spend at least a few glorious food-filled holidays at Butlin's.