Six middle-class World Book Day costumes for your precocious child

WORLD Book Day isn’t an unnecessary ordeal for parents, it’s a unique opportunity to show off just how advanced and superior your posh sprog is. Here’s what to dress them as.

Odysseus

Your son wanted to be Percy Jackson, but you insisted that he would be much cooler if he looked back a few millennia. Unlike sword-wielding warrior Odysseus, your offspring will get his head kicked in at lunchtime for wearing a toga.

Snow White

No Disney nonsense for you, despite the name. Your daughter should be drilled to recite that she is Grimm’s Snow White, or as she is called in the original High German, Schneeweißchen. Forget Dopey and Doc, this one’s focus is on the original story’s exciting plot points like the poisoned comb.

The Little Prince

Show those suckers that your little darling can read French, too. Well, he did technically read it in translation, but there is a significant etymological crossover between French and English via Latin, actually. That should shut up any nit-pickers.

One of the Little Women

Finally, a proper children’s book not about magic. Impress parents and teachers with a costume obsessively dedicated to 1860s historical accuracy. That’s what makes reading so magical – a pedantic level of detail.

Winston Smith from Nineteen Eighty-Four

Admit it, your six-year-old has never read Orwell, which is probably just as well with the face-eating rats bit. You just wanted a picture you could post on Twitter to make some sort of bland political point for a few likes. It’s what World Book Day is all about.

Matilda

Roald Dahl’s child genius is very much how you see your offspring, with your superb parenting responsible. It’s just a shame their actual academic abilities are less ‘child prodigy’ and more Stig of the Dump.

Jubilation as young couple's home given to disgraced sex case uncle

THE UK is cheering after a young family’s house was snatched from them and given to an unrepentant associate of serious sex offenders.

Frogmore Cottage, which is for decent and dutiful Royals to live in, not media-hating monsters like the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, has been rightly taken away to become the new home of good old Prince Andrew.

A Palace aide said: “It made Britain sick, a nice little cottage like that being reserved for the likes of them. After all they’ve got up to over in America. It’s indefensible.

“They’ve got no right to a grace-and-favour home after the lies they’ve told. So it’s being given to Prince Andrew instead, a nice honest fellow who’s never done anything to upset anyone.

“They spent £2.4m of their own money just three years ago to make it a perfect family home and now it’ll be the residence of a 62-year-old single man with a history of questionable friendships. Serves them bloody right.

“I, and the whole country, hope he rubs his aged genitals all along their precious copper bath and sends them the video. Actually it should be in the King’s speech next Christmas. Give the country a real lift.”

The Duke of York said: “It seems like a lovely little place. Secluded. Well away from prying eyes.”