David Walliams dropped by publisher

[azuleja]

Over inappropriate behaviour towards women. Anyone surprised?

a link would be great thanks !

Memoirs normally, yes.

Carrie Fisher was unusual among celebrity authors in that she could and did write : Postcards From The Edge was especially good.

I don't know him or the facts leading to the consequences he's currently facing

Fools. Frost. Granville.

Just a point about Walliams’ sales dropping - if a publisher doesn’t want to promote an author their sales drop. His popularity might have stayed at the same level if Harper Collins had kept pushing him, but not if they knew he was about to be unmasked. I don’t think it’s ‘he’s losing popularity and we can now scrap him’ because 40% of his previous sales is still a big chunk of cash.

I think a lot of celebs acted differently 10 years or so ago. This is now seen as creepy, sleezy or bullying. It's not just him, look at celebritiy chefs, presenters or pop stars back in the 90s/00s. I was watching the video about girl bands and boy bands on the BBC and it's horrible the way they acted. The questions they were asked and the answers they gave. Plus, the way they constantly feel themselves while singing. Peter Audre still does it. He played at a local gig a few years ago that I took my children to. 🤮

Over the last 20 years the way we look at things have changed. If we were to look at all our favourite celebrities there will be something they said or did that we dont like. God, it wasn't too long ago we had 16 year old page 3 modules.

Anyway I always found him sleezy. The way he used to jump on Simon cowel on Britain's got talent. 🤮

🤦 oh of course, sorry that was obvious. I knew the rumours about that person but for some reason though it was rumours about someone else.

Yes, I read an article recently about the weird macho culture for chefs. I know little about cooking so had no idea it was like this on shows with chefs like Ramsay etc.

While the shouting etc might be fun for TV viewers,,chef culture in at least some top kitchens seems very harmful, creating an environment where better working conditions , bullying & sexual harassment or worse of women were much harder to address. Luckily this is improving,(which among other things, leads to more female chefs)

I agree.
I think if it’s because of any change in publishing it’s that young women staff are less likely to tolerate and keep quiet about pervy behaviour from authors no matter how big the author; if they are told making a fuss will affect their career they will push back or decide to go public and then the employer will look very bad indeed. There is less tolerance of inappropriate behaviour in general but also it’s a consequence of young people being more about work life balance and believing less in sacrificing everything to their career because they know realistically the career won’t return the favour.

A few other celebrity memoirs which (afaik) aren't ghostwritten: Katharine Hepburn, Lauren Bacall, Helen Mirren, Patti Smith, Isabella Rossellini, Anthony Sher... If they can do it, I think non ghostwritten show more personality. Otoh I like memoirs if they're good even if ghostwriter

Incidentally, if anyone likes Ealing type old films, Irene Handl was a good author herself a dark comic novels. There are some surprising actor-novelists!

Fools was a clue!

TBH, its always going to be a male.

@TorroFerney Yeah I realised. Sorry, I'm normally sharper than that but it went over my head.

I know that people post NAMALT ... but when its a person abusing a position of power for personal sexual gratification it is always, but always men.

huh ?..ive just bought his complete audio collection for my son for xmas...whats going on ????

Fiction as well! Very much so. Writing is much harder than people think.

I used to be a chef in an award winning restaurant (lauded by Jay Raynor) I always thought that it was disgusting how the employment laws of this land didn't seem to apply to restaurants. Think owner calling the front of house staff cunts daily, making them cry, drug taking, and general male dominance. I was the only female chef at the time and took no shit, but still put up with a lot. Its a bloody hard job, physically and you constantly have to prove yourself 'as good as the men'. I was always told that I should know 'how it works in a kitchen' Staff left on a weekly basis, and still the male owner and male head chef acted like arseholes. Some stayed out of misplaced loyalty. We used to joke that it was like Stockholm syndrome. I imagine that the only other industry is the TV industry.

Can you imagine working for, say, Tesco and have your male manager make you work a 17 hour shift, spit in your face, call you a cunt then get pissed out of his mind, snort coke, pass out in the toilet, then expect the female staff to clean up his puke and carry on as normal / cover for him? It just wouldn't happen (or I'd like to think not)

It's horrendous when you think about it how Gordon Ramsay made a career out of basically being a nasty bastard. I was on Masterchef in the early 2000's and he was the celebrity chef on the programme after mine. I remember saying to the producer that I was pleased I swerved him. She assured me he was actually really lovely in real life. Well, he's either really nice with a nasty TV persona, or he's an arsehole. Either way, he shouldn't be applauded, really.

I hated Wallace and Torode from day one of both of them appearing on TV. So pleased they have been cancelled. I have met a lot of celebrity chefs. Most are genuinely awful. It's also quite telling that Ramsay despises Jamie Oliver for some reason, who I've met a number of times and seems decent. James Martin is another who is nice on the surface, but is actually an insufferable prick with a huge ego.

Ultimately, it comes down to that. A (usually male) ego that is fed by the limelight and enabled by those around them. TV is always going to draw them in to feed their ego. It's time they were stopped from being enabled in their quest.

I was at a lit festival where other authors casting lots of shade at a very well known famous children’s author & his ghostwritten books in public talk/s.

Don’t doubt books are often ghost written but odd such universal disapproval?

I shamefully enjoyed Little Britain. Looking back now it gives me the ick. Horribly misogynistic, classist and cruel.

Walliams and Matt Lucas have a podcast now called Making A Scene.

And racist. If Little Britain was the one where they did Blackface.

Never watched it but I probably saw clips of it in ads.

I used to work in hospitality, long time ago, and one of the places I worked the head chef stabbed the commis chef in the arse with a paring knife. Poor bloke had to have stitches but daren't make a fuss otherwise.

It is, but a lot of celebs have written stand up routines, sketches, scripts, and have studied literature as well as drama, so often it’s not impossible they might have put their mind to learning and already have something to build on.
I wonder whether often there’s a ghostwriter who takes drafts and works with the celebrity author to make it work for the genre, rather than just the professional writes it and the celebrity tags on their name. Lots of writing for tv and comedy is collaborative after all, it’s how they would be used to working.

Horrible talentless sleazy misogynist creep on the make.
Fancied himself beyond belief
Some of his background and one particular relative sanitised in Who Do You Think You Are.

Hope. he gets his just desserts.

Writing is much harder than people think.

Understatement of the millennium.

It’s been a long time coming