“I thought children’s books may become irrelevant...”
Best-selling children’s author David Walliams speaks about the anxieties and joys of writing, staying funny and trying not to offend.
David Walliams, best-selling author of children’s books like Gangsta Granny, The World’s Worst Children and Ratburger, is in India on his first book tour. The 53-year-old wrote his first children’s book in 2008 (The Boy in the Dress), which earned him praise from critics and brought him to the attention of young readers, and their parents, who couldn’t seem to get enough. Since then, Walliams has been prolific. His latest book, Super Sleuth is his 43rd. He has also written a comic book (Astro Chimp, 2024), short story collections (The World’s Worst series, started in 2016 is a hugely popular set), and turned his children’s books into television films. In all, he’s been translated to 55 languages, and has sold over 50 million copies worldwide according to a 2022 announcement by his publisher, Harper Collins. He’s also sold over half a million copies in India --- where the children’s literature market is the fastest-growing compared to other genres.

“I want to take over the world, I’m going to be the Elon Musk of children’s novels,” Walliams laughs. “That’ll make an arresting headline,” he said.
Yet Walliams’s fame isn’t restricted to young readers. In the early 2000s, together with writer-actor Matt Lucas, Walliams wrote and starred in sketch comedy gold, Little Britain, which ran first as a radio series and then on the British Broadcasting Corporation channel between 2003 and 2006. Over eighteen 28-minute episodes, the writer-actor duo created several characters and spared no one, high or low, in their cultural and social satire of British society. In 2008, they made a version for the American audience and later came out with a memoir called Inside Little Britain. More than a decade later, Walliams and Lucas came under criticism for their use of racial and sexist stereotypes in their sketches, which led to a public apology.
“[I do have] a little bit more anxiety as a white middle-aged man from a middle class upbringing. If someone doesn’t like something, I really listen. I don’t want to get defensive. It’s really my job to listen and try and make things better,” he said, reflecting on how he treats criticism now.
Walliams, who was in Bengaluru on Wednesday, met school children and signed books at the Sapna Book House in Koramangala. He will make his way to Chennai, Pune, Mumbai and New Delhi, and will end his tour with an appearance in the Jaipur Literature Festival slated to be held between January 30 and February 3. Edited excerpts from an interview:
You attended your first few events in India today, and on Tuesday. What has the reception been like?
It has been really good. I’ve only been here three days, but so far, I have had a great response. So, I’m really pleased. They keep saying come. But you wonder if there’s any audience. I mean, does anyone care?
I’m surprised to hear you say that though. You’ve sold over 50 million books worldwide, so people do care.
I mean, obviously there’s some countries which I understand, like Australia, New Zealand, some European countries, and Canada, that they know me. I’m not often given the breakdown. So when they said, ‘Oh, you’ve sold half a million copies in India,’ I was like, ‘Really? No one told me that’.
I thought 15 years ago when I started writing that children’s books might become more and more irrelevant. But, actually, they’re still going strong. [J.K] Rowling [author of Harry Potter series] changed it all. I’ve never heard of kids queuing up outside a bookshop at midnight. She created quite a revolution making [the book release] a kind of a major cultural event. No one else has been able to do that. But she helped all of us.
Do you feel a sense of responsibility given that yours is quite likely the first proper book a lot of children all around the world might read?
Sure, yes of course I do. I do feel a sense of responsibility that children might pick up my book before they read another book. I just basically try and make my books as entertaining as possible so that they’ll read another.
You also occupy such a unique place because you have managed to create a space for yourself as a writer of something like Little Britain, which was like a cultural phenomenon, and then as one of the world’s bestselling children’s novelists. How do you think about humour and comedy for adults and children, and in terms of changing social mores?
Humour is different for children and adults but at the same time, I think it’s worth remembering that children are quite aspirational. So when you’re 10 years old, you want to watch a comedy show that’s on late at night, or a film that isn’t quite meant for you, you know, or certainly as a kid, I was desperate to see things that I thought were rude, or that I wasn’t allowed to see because I was too young.
(...)
Things generally reflect the time that they’re made in. My son [11-year-old Alfred] is very into comedy movies, and we were watching some comedy movies from the 1990s and 2000s, like [Mike Myers and Elizabeth Hurley starrer] Austin Powers. And it was hilarious but I also wondered if we could [make] this now. It’s a shame really, because you know, there weren’t any bad intentions. It was just funny. I think we’re just much more aware now. When people didn’t like something on Little Britain, they’d have to find the number of the BBC Complaints Department, call them up to make a complaint or write a letter. So it was a bit of a task and perhaps it was just easier just to turn the TV off. But now? You can go on to X and you start making your comments or go to Instagram.
What do you think about this?
You make comedy to make people happy. And so the thought you’re making someone unhappy is uncomfortable. You have got to listen [to what people are saying]. But at the same time, it’s complicated. You know, offence is sometimes part of what a comedian is trying to do. Being offended is not liking something because it makes you feel uncomfortable. It’s very hard to think you can get through life without that without that happening to you. I think it’s more about marginalized groups who feel quite rightly that they haven’t been treated right and they worry that humour reinforces negative stereotypes. And so as a writer and a comedian, you don’t want to be the person who’s adding to someone’s pain. But, I think, ultimately you have to be able to make jokes about anything otherwise you might as well get rid of comedy.
[I do have] a little bit more anxiety as a white middle-aged man from a middle class upbringing. If someone doesn’t like something, I really listen. I don’t want to get defensive. I don’t want to get, you know, bullish about it. I just feel that it’s my job to listen and try to make things better. Sometimes, I’ll find something in a book I wrote 15 years ago that I think I would do differently now.
