Note: This piece was published in September 2023, three years before the allegations against David Walliams in the Guardian came to light.
It is David Walliams’s world, we just live in it. At least that is how it seems to many British parents, trapped in what he might call the Burptastic Snot-sphere of Mr Wallybottom. Walliams’s children’s books, which frame him as the hilarious, heart-warming heir to Roald Dahl, are inescapable: since 2013 he has produced between two and four a year. In 2019 the TV comedian joined a small group of authors – including JK Rowling and Dan Brown – whose writing has earned more than £100m in the UK. In 2022 his publisher, HarperCollins, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp, announced that Walliams has sold more than 50 million books worldwide. This July The World’s Worst Monsters, his 38th title, was published.
