Unbeknownst to adults, the Little Britain star has reinvented himself as one of the UK's most successful - and richest - children's authors. So what's his secret?
On the money … David Walliams with his book Gangsta Granny. Photograph: Murdo Macleod
Between creating award-winning comedy and conquering every grimy body of water within reach, David Walliams has become a phenomenally successful children's author, almost by stealth.
His lifetime sales are creeping towards the £15million mark, and over the past 12 months, his children's books have sold 1.1 million copies, putting him behind only Julia Donaldson (2.7m) and Jeff Kinney (1.6m), both of whom have far more books on the market.
It means he has outstripped both the perennially successful Jacqueline Wilson and Suzanne Collins, whose Hunger Games trilogy has been a chart-topper for the last few years. Without doubt, he's up there in the Rowling league. How has he achieved such a commanding position, and built on it, year on year, in such a fickle and tempestuous market?
Walliams naturally had an enormous advantage as a debut children's author - he started out from a position of unusual power as a well-known and highly bankable comedy star. But comedic fame doesn't automatically translate to the household name status he's since achieved with his kids' writing. Compare Ricky Gervais's Flanimals - though it was initially a strong seller, a proposed ITV Claymation series of the animal miscellany has now been cancelled, and the big-screen version is mired in development hell . What has Walliams done so differently?
Many reviewers and readers have compared his work to Roald Dahl's - more readily because his first two books, The Boy in the Dress and Mr Stink, are illustrated by Dahl's long-time collaborator Quentin Blake. Walliams acknowledges having saturated himself in Dahl's "perfect" work, and the debt is definitely discernible. Mr Stink's egg-and-sausage-festooned beard, for instance, is straight out of The Twits, and casts of obnoxious siblings, tiresome grandmothers and child-hating head-teachers will ring a whole tower of bells for any Dahl aficionado.
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His lifetime sales are creeping towards the £15million mark, and over the past 12 months, his children's books have sold 1.1 million copies, putting him behind only Julia Donaldson (2.7m) and Jeff Kinney (1.6m), both of whom have far more books on the market.
It means he has outstripped both the perennially successful Jacqueline Wilson and Suzanne Collins, whose Hunger Games trilogy has been a chart-topper for the last few years. Without doubt, he's up there in the Rowling league. How has he achieved such a commanding position, and built on it, year on year, in such a fickle and tempestuous market?
Walliams naturally had an enormous advantage as a debut children's author - he started out from a position of unusual power as a well-known and highly bankable comedy star. But comedic fame doesn't automatically translate to the household name status he's since achieved with his kids' writing. Compare Ricky Gervais's Flanimals - though it was initially a strong seller, a proposed ITV Claymation series of the animal miscellany has now been cancelled, and the big-screen version is mired in development hell . What has Walliams done so differently?
Many reviewers and readers have compared his work to Roald Dahl's - more readily because his first two books, The Boy in the Dress and Mr Stink, are illustrated by Dahl's long-time collaborator Quentin Blake. Walliams acknowledges having saturated himself in Dahl's "perfect" work, and the debt is definitely discernible. Mr Stink's egg-and-sausage-festooned beard, for instance, is straight out of The Twits, and casts of obnoxious siblings, tiresome grandmothers and child-hating head-teachers will ring a whole tower of bells for any Dahl aficionado.
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