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.
Why does David Walliams retain such a grip on our children’s imaginations when his own is so impoverished? His 2008 debut, The Boy in the Dress, a story of a cross-dressing lad gaining acceptance from his divorcee father, was elevated by illustrations by Dahl’s former collaborator Quentin Blake. But Walliams’s subsequent output has offered diminishing returns, and the “World’s Worst” series is, well, the worst. Let’s put to one side the dubious stereotyping of Mr Raj the Asian news agent, the Chinese boy Brian Wong “who was never wrong” (but was later deemed to be “wrong” enough to be removed from publication) and the women who are constantly brandishing mops and “bog brushes”. After all, Dahl was a reliable source of unpleasant prejudices, as the row over “updated” editions earlier this year reminded us.
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