‘And now here is the news …’ He added a day and a date from fifteen years ago. The record was changed, the children’s song being replaced by a scratchy old military march. TV Boy nodded in time to it for a few seconds before putting on a pair of glasses and carrying on. His voice had changed again, so that he sounded like a newsreader. It was unreal. Blue couldn’t help smiling. He’d got hung up on the idea that these kids were comic book superheroes, and he reckoned TV Boy’s superpower was being able to impersonate people.

‘Good evening. The headlines at six o’clock. Flooding in south-west England, earthquakes in the Middle East, tornadoes in the American Midwest, starvation in Africa and twenty million people watch a cat playing the piano on YouTube.’

A couple of the warehouse kids laughed. Blue’s lot just sat there open-mouthed. The needle was lifted off the record and TV Boy carried on.

‘But first, loggers in the Amazonian rainforest have discovered a “lost” tribe who speak their own unique language and have a culture that appears unchanged for thousands of years.’

Some of the kids came through the curtain, the fish-faced girl, the one called Flubberguts and the boy with the elongated foot – the Pink Surfer. They crouched low, looking around, scared and amazed, acting out the South American tribe emerging from the forest.

TV Boy carried on.

‘We talked to one of the international medical team who have flown out to study the Stone Age tribe. So called because they have had no previous contact with the outside world and live a life very similar to how we believe our distant ancestors lived at the time of the last ice age.’

TV Boy whipped off his glasses and quickly put on a battered old sun hat. His voice changed, to something accented and European. His whole face seemed to change too, so that Blue could imagine he really was watching a scientist on a news broadcast.

‘We are still working to decipher their language, which bears no relation to any other language we know of in the area. This is not unusual. At least a thousand different indigenous languages are spoken in the Americas …’

The three actors started making a peculiar insect-like clicking, whirring noise.

‘… So far all we have been able to discover for certain is that they call themselves the Inmathger. They are small people, and many display genetic birth defects, indicative of centuries of inbreeding. It is quite clear from their reactions, however, that they consider us to be the ones who are deformed.’

The actors now pointed at Blue and his friends and started miming laughing and jeering. Meanwhile, with the skilful speed of a magician, TV Boy replaced the hat with a blonde wig, and his voice morphed into that of an Englishwoman.