Ball Boy and his comic strip debuted in issue 1,735, dated 18 October 1975 featuring a five-a-side football team who usually lost all their matches.

For issue 3,260, dated 8 January 2005, the Ball Boy strip was meant to feature a French footballer called Henry Thierry who wore a red shirt.

The Beano editor Euan Kerr decided to destroy the entire print run of that comic so as not to risk the striker's wrath, the issue eventually going on sale with a different Ball Boy strip in its place.

[2] Ball Boy also features in The BeanoMAX comic, drawn in the black and blue vertical striped kit, by Nigel Parkinson.

In July 2013, Ball Boy was taken over by Alexander Matthews who revamped the strip with a new look and a new emphasis on parodying specific incidents in modern football, such as the ownership of Premier League clubs by foreign investors.