Harper Collins announced last week that it would no longer be publishing any children’s books by their one-time cash cow David Walliams. The Little Britain star has been accused of ‘harassing’ junior female employees at the publishing house – he has strongly denied allegations of wrongdoing against him. According to a new investigation, one member of Harper Collins staff was reportedly given a five-figure payoff after raising concerns about his behaviour, while other junior staff were advised never to visit his home alone. The Daily Telegraph’s well-sourced investigation into this behaviour represents the first time that these allegations have been made public.
It seems unlikely that Walliams will be publishing any more children’s books with any other house in the future. Despite being by some distance Britain’s bestselling children’s author of the past couple of decades, Walliams personally conveyed a sense of edginess and potential danger that, say, Katherine Rundell or Philip Pullman have not. Watching him on chat shows or hosting Britain’s Got Talent, it was clear that he was attempting a mixture of charm, charisma and subversion in his public appearances: this may have been lost on many, who merely saw him as sinister. Whether or not more stories will emerge over the coming days and weeks, it represents a seismic reckoning for the publishing industry.
If you serve up slop, and it’s popular, you will continue serving slop
When its various worthies return to their desks after the Christmas breaks, questions will inevitably be asked, and the main one that probably will – and undoubtedly should – be asked is ‘Do we really need celebrity children’s authors?’ Walliams was hardly the first well-known figure who used his fame to publish undistinguished books (one thinks of the similarly beleaguered Fergie and her wretched, inexplicably popular Budgie the Little Helicopter titles) but he established a precedent that has seen the industry rush to sign up well-known faces purely because they are household names, rather than because they have any particular writing ability.
Not everyone who puts out these books is doing so cynically or with the aid of a ghostwriter. The likes of David Baddiel, Ben Miller and Charlie Higson are writers first and foremost, and so it’s no surprise that the children’s books they publish are every bit as good as anything else available in the shops. Instead, it’s publishers’ depressingly basic attitude towards celebrity that has resulted in tat cluttering up the same shops for years. It begins to sound like a joke of sorts: what do Madonna, Geri Halliwell, Dermot O’Leary, Frank Lampard, Keira Knightley and (oh God help us) Meghan Markle all have in common? The answer is that they have all published titles aimed at a youthful audience and received large advances for so doing, on the grounds that the name recognition they enjoy is likely to result in large sales. The quality of the books, then, becomes largely irrelevant.
None of this would matter if it was a lucrative sideshow to the serious business of publishing great books for children. But what Walliams’ awful offerings did was devalue the entire industry. If you serve up slop, and it’s popular, you will continue serving slop. There are far, far better writers working today – published and unpublished alike – but the children’s book industry has been dominated by this hee-hawing Colossus for far too many years.
Now, like a cross-dressing Ozymandias, Walliams’ career lies shattered. As we look on his not-so-mighty works and despair, let us hope that the lesson that the industry takes from this is that just because someone has enjoyed a fleeting measure of fame in a sitcom, they do not necessarily have the ability to write a book of the calibre that our children deserve. It is little wonder that reading for pleasure has declined precipitously amongst the young, because they are being expected to read rubbish. It is time for others – not yet household names, but with every opportunity of becoming so – to be given a chance instead, and reverse this grim decline.
Comments