To tell you all that David Walliams has been dropped by his publisher Harper Collins?

And yet here you are on the thread!

Just Googled as I had no idea what this was all about...allegations. Until he has committed a crime, it is best not to comment...

I came along to say this. A Christmas banger but of course no longer played publicly

I'm currently reading Code Name Bananas to one of the DC each night and it's a really enjoyable read.

Used to watch Little Britain years ago, might actually still have it on DVD box set.

You'd hope a ghostwriter would turn out something of better quality.

Oh, indeed, he behaved appallingly in front of the camera too; but I suppose he knew when he could try to gaslight people that it was just his 'wild madcap comedy' and when it was purely nothing other than sleazy nastiness.

I'd be very, very interested to hear Lara Stone's personal accounts. Why on earth did she marry him? Aside from the widespread beliefs that he may not have been all that into women in the first place, if she was after more fame or fortune, there must be countless wealthy single celebrities out there who aren't mega creeps.

It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if his legal representatives had 'strongly encouraged' her not to talk about any of her experiences of the marriage.

If the only consideration were financial, they would keep him. Print fewer copies, not delist him entirely.

Less money is still some money; which is better for a business than no money. If you were getting, say, £4,000 for doing virtually nothing, you wouldn't turn it down on the grounds that you used to get £10,000.

I understand (I may be mistaken) that he fought back, going legal against the many suggestions that his books were ghost-written. What the truth is, though, who knows?!

Either way, aside from the many other issues here, there's inevitably going to be an artistic quality issue in many cases when people who are already famous decide to turn their hand to writing (whether all their own work or just using their name on the cover).

Roald Dahl came to public prominence because he was a brilliant writer; if his writing had been mediocre and he'd struggled to find a publisher, none of us would even know who he was today.

But I still found his on camera behaviour objectionable at the time. I didn't even like the programme but my DM did and stopped watching because of his unfunny antics.

Interestingly, he seemed to know just how far to push it and what he could get away with. He tried very hard indeed to suppress the revelations of his odious comments on BGT that he believed wouldn't be audible to viewers at home - threatening legal action, as he is repeatedly reported to do.

The whisper network in the writing world has been going strong on Williams for years. General consensus is there’s something big still to come out. The timing of them dropping him just before Christmas last year suggested their hand had been forced. I’m wondering whether things have been snarled up with lawyers since then.

And the backlist sales are free and clear profit to Harper Collins. I’m just saying I agree with others who think there must be a reason for them to cut off this money stream

Apologies if the tone was snotty, I genuinely didn’t mean it to be.

yes of course the sales have taken a big hit. The context is that they were massive sales so 40% of a huge figure is still a lot of money to Harper Collins

Was there a need to be snotty and patronising?

Do you agree that HC are not making anywhere near as much money from his books as they used to?

Do you have Google?

The backlist are properties that have already been written and marketed. There are no overheads associated with them, the sales are profit. For Harper Collins to give Walliams his rights back to the backlist and cut off a revenue stream, if you know the business at all it looks like they have good reason to do that. We’ll see over the coming days

A 60% drop is huge. I knew this was about money.

If there is worse to be reported, please spare a thought for any victims, if there are any.

Getting rid of the backlist is an extra step they didn’t need to take. There was no clamour for it. The David Walliams story had faded away. His sales are down 60%, but that means they are still getting 40% of those massive sales. Harper Collins are cutting off a revenue stream and I share the opinion of other posters who says that it points to something about it come out

Is it still very lucrative though? What’s the data on that? I suspect its popularity has declined when he’s not on TV and there’s no active marketing of the books plus there’s a whiff of something that people don’t know the details of but would be put off buying the books by.

Yeah, apparently he’s a ‘Lay Dee’ who likes to do ‘Lay Dee’ things.

I thought they dropped him a while ago.

They’ll disappear from bookshops soon enough: if they’re not sold they’ll be returned to the publisher to be pulped.

The only really funny scenes from Little Britain was the one with the dodgy politician giving statements to the press, and that was only funny because of Lucas’ expressions! The ‘weight watchers’ skit was mildly amusing, but blatantly copied from League of Gentlemen, which was much funnier.

This. I couldn't watch it, so many parts were just offensive rather than funny. I didn't understand why it was so popular.