To feel a bit ill about David Walliams?

[HelloYouTwo]

Apparently he’s made over £100m from his books.

There are so many better books out there than that pile of repetitive mildly racist, stereotype-laden junk that he peddles off the back of being a bit famous. I feel sorry for all the decent non-celeb authors out there.

News article if anyone interested:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/david-walliams-sitting-comfortably-in-100-million-book-club-gmp6bwm6b?shareToken=170904334320775f0850152088ce45a1

I am not a fan of his at all but my reluctant reader asked for his books after watching bgt. This was a child who had never read anything for pleasure before. He also asked for the frank lampard ones. That same child has asked for the latest Walliams for Christmas, but has now also started reading a huge range of books by a variety of authors including Roald Dahl and Michael Morpurgo. He may not be the best author in the world but his books got my child reading, and if my child hadn’t heard of him he wouldn’t have wanted to read the book no matter how great a story or how much he may have enjoyed it once he started (Dd on the other hand has always loved reading and thinks David Walliams’ books are utter rubbish)

My DS loves Simon May's Itch books so celeb of a sort. From the little I've read of them, they are well written.

@HelloYouTwo

Actually he has made £10 million from his books personally, not £100 million.

Agree with everything else you say though.

My issue is that his books are shit and they only got published because he was already a celebrity. And it turns into a band wagon where he can keep writing more books exactly the same as the last one and still get published, use his contacts for spin off TV and theatre etc. It’s a race to the bottom in terms of quality.

Yep I agree with this. It gets on my nerves that people who are already famous get book deals. People who are not famous have an incredibly low chance of a book deal these days, and it's massively unfair and wrong. SO many great authors will never get a book deal because of the publishing houses throwing all the cash advances at people who are already famous. It's incredibly sad. They just very very rarely give a total unknown a chance these days.........

Katie Price, Kerry Katona, David Walliams, and many more like them, should never have had book deals. And who the fuck gives a shit about Coleen Nolan's life story?

Grates on me so much too!

His books are apparently poorly written. By he's become famous and profitable from them.

So this happens all the time!

Why 50 shades of grey? Why J K Rowling? What about all the other authors who are better, but never make it? Why some, but not others?

@Bluerussian Dahl, Blyton & Seuss were writing long ago. For the vast majority of children's authors writing nowadays, stereotyping would be considered unacceptable and anything considered sexist or racist would be removed by the editor/publisher before the book went to print. I would suggest the stereotyping in Walliams' novels is an exception nowadays, not the norm.

On a side note, isn’t it strange how he makes so many of us feel uncountable although he’s never done anything wrong? It’s like that book ‘The Gift of Fear’.

I've thought the same Truth

There is definitely something about him that sense my spider-senses tingling, and not in a nice way.

Just because someone seems charming it doesn't mean he's a good person, but I think that if someone disturbs you at a visceral level - not just a "he's a bit weird", or "I don't like him", then I think you need to listen to your instincts.

The first few were good

Same. With the uncomfortable feeling.

*sends my spider-senses tingling - not what the autocorrect said.

*SPIDEY!!!!!

SPIDEY, FFS!

I can't imagine Walliams groping waitresses or approving of it

Not sure about that.

Spidey senses yes.

And no, he isn't really camp. He acts it, almost takes the piss out of being camp. Or at least that's how it seems to me. Camp has an element of genuine up-for-a-laugh fun about it that seems entirely absent from him. His smile never reaches his eyes. I find him really quite disturbing.

Ummm my kids loved his books made us all laugh and encouraged them to read. I read them myself and think they are great entertaining heartwarming and funny there are no bad books there is 100% no racism and think you sound a bit odd tbh

Lessstressy I've had exactly the same thoughts.

They are terrible books. Creepy and inappropriate to put it mildly.

I'll not a fan but calling him a serial killer or the next saville is ridiculous.

I'm a writer and read a lot and I think if it gets kids reading, why not? We've been through so many kids books and his are the only ones my 2 non readers (the others are happy with most) will seek out. I also think you see an extremely different side to David Walliams when he speaks about books and as for saying he only got his break through being a celebrity, so what? So he's using his celebrity for good! And I'd argue that it's Quentin Blake's cover designs that gained him notoriety, people thought Roald Dahl and gravitated towards him.

Oh Lessstressy I do hope not.

Does he even write them

No-one suspected Rolf Harris, either.

That’s hardly the point.

Making extremely serious allegations against people with zero evidence is appalling behaviour.

I think some posters on here need to put their pitchforks down and walk away.

Unbelievable.

Agree with @FizzyGreenWater . He isn't camp, he plays at it. And his smile never reaches his eyes.
Maybe he's fiiiiiiiine , but my alarm goes off when I see him.

A lot of kids books aimed at that age range are crap. Dd used to read bloody Rainbow Faries. All pretty much the same story, but we had about 50 different books!

Never read david walliams books so can’t really comment if his are better or worse.

I’ll tell you what I don’t like about him though is his stupid fake “Simon chasing” routine on BGT. I know it’s fake and he doesn’t really fancy Simon and probably thinks he’s been hilarious winding Simon up.

But Simon genuinely seems to not like it (yes I know he’s the boss and could sack him if he wanted to)....and when he’s doing pelvic thrusts at him, etc and Simon is telling him to stop and he carries on I think it gives a poor message about consent, etc.