December 1, 2025 • 10 mins
Although he’s best known for his comedy, David Walliams has a growing portfolio of children’s literature.
He’s sold more than 60 million copies worldwide and has just released his 44th book ‘Santa & Son’, just in time for Christmas.
He released his first children’s book in 2008, and even after 17 years and nearly 50 books, Walliams still finds writing to be a challenging task.
“You’re constantly scared, you think, oh my god, I’m gonna run out of ideas, or you think, oh god, this is too similar to something I’ve already done,” he told Mike Hosking.
“The thing I try and do is move as far away as I can from something I’ve just done, because the thing is you just don’t want to repeat yourself.”
A lot of his earlier works were set contemporary Britain and revolved around schools, and after a while he found he’d run out of ways to make a teacher character work.
“I can’t think of any more traits that would make teachers funny,” he told Hosking.
“So I thought I just have to move away from that and find different stories.”
“I sort of have to make it difficult for myself just so I don’t end up going down the same path.”
When it comes to success, Walliams explains that he’s not competitive in any major way.
“I don’t see other people who do what I do as sort of foes or anything,” he said.
“But of course I want my book to be well-received, I want kids to enjoy it, I want it to make people happy.”
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Time for catch up with an old mate. David Williams
is meck Withather's lightest children's book just in time for Christmas,
called Center and Sun Eds to his growing portfolio, he
sold more than sixty million copies. For goodness sake, David
Williams as well, there's good morning.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Lovely to see you. I've missed you. Miss I've missed
you too A year since.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
I've seen I was last year and it was the
highlight of my trip surprising you at the studio and
your sort of wife arranged this as if I were
some kind of kiss agram or something like that. I've
come to delight you. But it's lovely to see you.
You're looking very well.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Well, you're looking well as well. I note I'm a
details person. Last time we interviewed each other via the zoom,
you were in exactly the same position, and I believe
the glasses behind you were exactly the same.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
I well, I have my position, I have my lighting
set up, I have my makeup and costume team right here,
and this this is the spot in my house that
I reserve for fa zooms. So yes, you can see
my glass where, some of which is incredibly nice and
incredibly camp including these glasses.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
They have a little flamingo. I mean, what kind of
man owns that?
Speaker 1 (01:17):
What are your serving lives?
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Me?
Speaker 3 (01:20):
When you have kids over like my son and these
having a little you know, tea party or something, you
you put a little bit of water in those just
to jazz things up.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
A little bit.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Like say's a man who spends his life in skin
tight leather trousers criticizing my flamingo.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
I'm not criticizing him. I just want what drinks you
would serve in there? And you've got a lovely cup
as well. By the way, I saw a foight who.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
My willy beautiful rolled down?
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Where are you at with your writing?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
In terms?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Are you still challenged by it?
Speaker 3 (01:57):
I love doing it. I mean it is challenging. I
think the more you do, you know you're constantly scared.
You think, oh my god, I'm going to run out
of ideas, or you think, oh God, this is too
similar to something I've already done.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
The thing I try and do.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Is move away as far as I can from something
I've just done, because the thing is, you just.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Don't want to repeat yourself.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
And a lot of the first books I wrote, they
were set in contemporary Britain, and they revolved around schools
and things, and I created all these teacher characters, you know,
all these head masters had mistresses and maths teachers and Frenchlyiesever,
I've got no more teachers. I can't think of any
(02:38):
more traits that would make teachers funny. So whether I
just have to move away from that and find different stories.
And so they've gone in all different directions to Victorian times,
into the future, the nineteen twenties, the nineteen forties, and
that's really helped me, you know, just kind of each
(02:58):
time feel like I'm doing something new, because forty four
books is a lot. I mean, it's quantity of equality mic,
but it's still a lot of different ideas. You know,
It's not a series I've written each time. It's a
different story, and so I sort of have to make
it difficult for myself just so I don't end up
going down the same path.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
I love.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
I love doing it. It's just sometimes you get stuck
and you get really demoralized. But then you do something
else and then you just you sit in a bath
or something and for some reason it just pops up
the idea. Mike the idea just pops up and your head.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Do you is the success still important?
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Very much so more than.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Well, yeah, I mean, you know, it's the same effort
writing a book that one people, you know, one person
buys to the same effort as a million people buy,
So it's exactly the same effort. And of course, I
I'm not I'm not. I'm not really competitive in any
big I don't see other people who do what I
do as sort of foes or anything. I'm perfectly pleased
(04:06):
with other people's success. But of course I want my
book to be well received. I want kids to enjoy it.
I want it to make people happy. I mean, the
thing about doing a book is that you write the
book on your own, and generally the books are read,
you know, children read them on their own with parents
and stuff. But obviously it's not a thing. I'm not
on a stage read I'm not getting immediate feedback. And
(04:28):
so the lovely thing is is when I meet kids
at events and they tell me how much they enjoyed
the books, or a parent says comes up to me
and says, I couldn't get my child to read until
they've read one of your books. And I sent some
books to a friend's kids and they said, well, they've
already devoured three hundred pages tonight, and I was like, wow, okay,
(04:48):
the book must be okay, because kids, you know, to
read that much in one go and to want to
keep reading, you know, to have that sense of urgency
that you need to whip through it is you know,
it's it's exciting to me, so you know. But ultimately,
I think with anything, and you could ask a lot
of greater people, this is like, ultimately what matters a
(05:09):
lot is how you feel about it. So I would
hate to turn out something that I thought was underpar
and I'd feel embarrassed. And I was talking to a
friend of mine, Ragna, who's a crime writer who lives
in Iceland, and I said, you know, I woke up
in the middle of the night with just wanting to
change a line and he went, that's because you care,
and I thought, yeah, that's good wad. Yeah, I thought
(05:32):
it was a good way of putting it. Obviously he
cares too, all writers do, I'm sure, but yeah, that's
the weird thing. You're lying a bed at night and
you just think, oh, that would be a better joke.
I've changed that in the morning and it's really really
like you it's two words or something.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
You're going to change now listen without without probing too much. No, no, no,
But your son Elfie does he Where is he in
terms of does he think you're cool?
Speaker 2 (05:57):
You?
Speaker 1 (05:57):
And what you do? And you know Dad's Dad's a writer.
He's you know, is he get that age yit? Where
he's got them?
Speaker 2 (06:03):
And now he's rolling his eyes every time I speak.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Oh, I like that when I ask him to do something.
But it's very strange. You do have to tell children
to do things like the other day, well yesterday actually
was getting out of the car, is about to play rugby,
and it's like, you know, these got out of the
car with rugby, hasn't done up the laces. Are doing
it later, Dad, The sensible thing would be to do
it now. But yeah, I mean I think he I
(06:29):
think what's happened is he's twelve years old and so
he's now even though I never said to him, I
never really talked him about Little Britain or comply with me,
he's now in a situation with his friends at school
who are just finding these things themselves on YouTube or
online or.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Whatever, and.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
So He sort of got into it to my comedy
work through through his friends, not because his friends particularly,
I don't care about me or no me, but just
that when you're a twelve year old boy, you want
to start watching some rude comedy shows.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
So he's got into that now. But I find it odd.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Because says daddy, you know, can we watch an episode
of Little Britain? And I just find it odd sitting
there watching it with him, because I'm thinking, is he
finding this funny?
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Does he understand this joke? Whatever?
Speaker 3 (07:16):
But no, I think he you know, we have a
lot of fun together. We have a very close relationship.
And the book is about the bond between a father
and son, and it's also well this dad is a
sort of deadbeat dad. But there's definitely a theme running
through about parents, separated parents, and the boy, you know,
(07:37):
basically he hasn't seen his dad for many years, and
he doesn't he going to you know. It's like he
sort of gets to spend Christmas with his dad but not.
And so I was thinking a bit about sometimes the
pain you feel as a parent when you don't have
your child at Christmas. I was thinking about that because
I think Christmas everyone there's a sort of thing we've
(07:59):
all got to be happy, but there's often sort of
melancholy creeps in.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
And I remember my dad died.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
It was like seventeen years ago now, but sort of
in November, and I remember sort of dreading the first
Christmas without her, and it was just horrendous, you know,
sitting around crying. And so it's one of these things,
isn't it. It's a time where sort of it's almost
like you're forced to be happy, but it's not always
the happiest time, especially if something has gone on, like
(08:28):
your breathement or something.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
So I wanted a little bit of that.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
And it's a comedy, action adventure, but I like to
have a theme.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I like to make a point.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
It makes it interesting for me, and it means there
is something for the reader to take away and to
discuss their parents, you know.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
I think that's important.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
If I'm going to go to the effort of writing book,
I want there to be some point to it. Sometimes
they're just funny, sometimes they're silly. Sometimes they're just adventures.
But I feel like if I'm going to write a
Christmas story, it's got to have some resonance, you know.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
It's got there's got to be more than fun going on.
Are you escaping Britain for Christmas? Are you off to
your villa and New Yorker? Portugal?
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Spain? I call it more of a castle, But I'm
not going there.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
I'm I'm taking my son away before Christmas to the Maldives.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
There you go.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
But he's really into his scuba diving, so we're going
to go diving together, and I'm very excited. I don't
have him for Christmas, which is probably what I was
just talking about just now, but I have my mom,
my sister, my nephews, so that's all good. But yeah,
I don't mind. London's quite exciting at Christmas, the run
up to Christmas. This suddenly is the first. This is
(09:45):
the first of December. Today, obviously the Christmas lights are up,
the tree in Trafalgar Square goes up today, the pantomimes
are on, you know, the Christmas menus and the restaurants everything,
and so it does become quite excited. I rather like
I rather like being in London, and they run out
to Christmas. But as soon as I've had my Christmas lunch,
(10:07):
I'm ready for the whole thing to be over. I've
had enough bit immediately, Well we've done it, we had
the lunch, right, can we get on with something else?
And you know, I find the time between Christmas and
New Year an amazing time to get on with some work.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Oh really, because well.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Because people aren't contacting you offices, CLO, you're not getting
emails com fore, and it's an amazing time to get
a lot of writing done.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
So I will finishing off my new book.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Then all right, well listen, you go, well, you have
a fabulous Christmas, fabulous holidays, and we'll look forward to
having you back on the program super soon. David Williams
with us this Morning, Center and Sun.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, Listen live to
news talks.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
It'd be from six am weekdays, or follow the podcast
on I Hard Radio
Time for catch up with an old mate. David Williams
is meck Withather's lightest children's book just in time for Christmas,
called Center and Sun Eds to his growing portfolio, he
sold more than sixty million copies. For goodness sake, David
Williams as well, there's good morning.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Lovely to see you. I've missed you. Miss I've missed
you too A year since.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
I've seen I was last year and it was the
highlight of my trip surprising you at the studio and
your sort of wife arranged this as if I were
some kind of kiss agram or something like that. I've
come to delight you. But it's lovely to see you.
You're looking very well.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Well, you're looking well as well. I note I'm a
details person. Last time we interviewed each other via the zoom,
you were in exactly the same position, and I believe
the glasses behind you were exactly the same.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
I well, I have my position, I have my lighting
set up, I have my makeup and costume team right here,
and this this is the spot in my house that
I reserve for fa zooms. So yes, you can see
my glass where, some of which is incredibly nice and
incredibly camp including these glasses.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
They have a little flamingo. I mean, what kind of
man owns that?
Speaker 1 (01:17):
What are your serving lives?
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Me?
Speaker 3 (01:20):
When you have kids over like my son and these
having a little you know, tea party or something, you
you put a little bit of water in those just
to jazz things up.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
A little bit.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Like say's a man who spends his life in skin
tight leather trousers criticizing my flamingo.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
I'm not criticizing him. I just want what drinks you
would serve in there? And you've got a lovely cup
as well. By the way, I saw a foight who.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
My willy beautiful rolled down?
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Where are you at with your writing?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
In terms?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Are you still challenged by it?
Speaker 3 (01:57):
I love doing it. I mean it is challenging. I
think the more you do, you know you're constantly scared.
You think, oh my god, I'm going to run out
of ideas, or you think, oh God, this is too
similar to something I've already done.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
The thing I try and do.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Is move away as far as I can from something
I've just done, because the thing is, you just.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Don't want to repeat yourself.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
And a lot of the first books I wrote, they
were set in contemporary Britain, and they revolved around schools
and things, and I created all these teacher characters, you know,
all these head masters had mistresses and maths teachers and Frenchlyiesever,
I've got no more teachers. I can't think of any
(02:38):
more traits that would make teachers funny. So whether I
just have to move away from that and find different stories.
And so they've gone in all different directions to Victorian times,
into the future, the nineteen twenties, the nineteen forties, and
that's really helped me, you know, just kind of each
(02:58):
time feel like I'm doing something new, because forty four
books is a lot. I mean, it's quantity of equality mic,
but it's still a lot of different ideas. You know,
It's not a series I've written each time. It's a
different story, and so I sort of have to make
it difficult for myself just so I don't end up
going down the same path.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
I love.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
I love doing it. It's just sometimes you get stuck
and you get really demoralized. But then you do something
else and then you just you sit in a bath
or something and for some reason it just pops up
the idea. Mike the idea just pops up and your head.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Do you is the success still important?
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Very much so more than.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Well, yeah, I mean, you know, it's the same effort
writing a book that one people, you know, one person
buys to the same effort as a million people buy,
So it's exactly the same effort. And of course, I
I'm not I'm not. I'm not really competitive in any
big I don't see other people who do what I
do as sort of foes or anything. I'm perfectly pleased
(04:06):
with other people's success. But of course I want my
book to be well received. I want kids to enjoy it.
I want it to make people happy. I mean, the
thing about doing a book is that you write the
book on your own, and generally the books are read,
you know, children read them on their own with parents
and stuff. But obviously it's not a thing. I'm not
on a stage read I'm not getting immediate feedback. And
(04:28):
so the lovely thing is is when I meet kids
at events and they tell me how much they enjoyed
the books, or a parent says comes up to me
and says, I couldn't get my child to read until
they've read one of your books. And I sent some
books to a friend's kids and they said, well, they've
already devoured three hundred pages tonight, and I was like, wow, okay,
(04:48):
the book must be okay, because kids, you know, to
read that much in one go and to want to
keep reading, you know, to have that sense of urgency
that you need to whip through it is you know,
it's it's exciting to me, so you know. But ultimately,
I think with anything, and you could ask a lot
of greater people, this is like, ultimately what matters a
(05:09):
lot is how you feel about it. So I would
hate to turn out something that I thought was underpar
and I'd feel embarrassed. And I was talking to a
friend of mine, Ragna, who's a crime writer who lives
in Iceland, and I said, you know, I woke up
in the middle of the night with just wanting to
change a line and he went, that's because you care,
and I thought, yeah, that's good wad. Yeah, I thought
(05:32):
it was a good way of putting it. Obviously he
cares too, all writers do, I'm sure, but yeah, that's
the weird thing. You're lying a bed at night and
you just think, oh, that would be a better joke.
I've changed that in the morning and it's really really
like you it's two words or something.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
You're going to change now listen without without probing too much. No, no, no,
But your son Elfie does he Where is he in
terms of does he think you're cool?
Speaker 2 (05:57):
You?
Speaker 1 (05:57):
And what you do? And you know Dad's Dad's a writer.
He's you know, is he get that age yit? Where
he's got them?
Speaker 2 (06:03):
And now he's rolling his eyes every time I speak.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Oh, I like that when I ask him to do something.
But it's very strange. You do have to tell children
to do things like the other day, well yesterday actually
was getting out of the car, is about to play rugby,
and it's like, you know, these got out of the
car with rugby, hasn't done up the laces. Are doing
it later, Dad, The sensible thing would be to do
it now. But yeah, I mean I think he I
(06:29):
think what's happened is he's twelve years old and so
he's now even though I never said to him, I
never really talked him about Little Britain or comply with me,
he's now in a situation with his friends at school
who are just finding these things themselves on YouTube or
online or.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Whatever, and.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
So He sort of got into it to my comedy
work through through his friends, not because his friends particularly,
I don't care about me or no me, but just
that when you're a twelve year old boy, you want
to start watching some rude comedy shows.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
So he's got into that now. But I find it odd.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Because says daddy, you know, can we watch an episode
of Little Britain? And I just find it odd sitting
there watching it with him, because I'm thinking, is he
finding this funny?
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Does he understand this joke? Whatever?
Speaker 3 (07:16):
But no, I think he you know, we have a
lot of fun together. We have a very close relationship.
And the book is about the bond between a father
and son, and it's also well this dad is a
sort of deadbeat dad. But there's definitely a theme running
through about parents, separated parents, and the boy, you know,
(07:37):
basically he hasn't seen his dad for many years, and
he doesn't he going to you know. It's like he
sort of gets to spend Christmas with his dad but not.
And so I was thinking a bit about sometimes the
pain you feel as a parent when you don't have
your child at Christmas. I was thinking about that because
I think Christmas everyone there's a sort of thing we've
(07:59):
all got to be happy, but there's often sort of
melancholy creeps in.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
And I remember my dad died.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
It was like seventeen years ago now, but sort of
in November, and I remember sort of dreading the first
Christmas without her, and it was just horrendous, you know,
sitting around crying. And so it's one of these things,
isn't it. It's a time where sort of it's almost
like you're forced to be happy, but it's not always
the happiest time, especially if something has gone on, like
(08:28):
your breathement or something.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
So I wanted a little bit of that.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
And it's a comedy, action adventure, but I like to
have a theme.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I like to make a point.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
It makes it interesting for me, and it means there
is something for the reader to take away and to
discuss their parents, you know.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
I think that's important.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
If I'm going to go to the effort of writing book,
I want there to be some point to it. Sometimes
they're just funny, sometimes they're silly. Sometimes they're just adventures.
But I feel like if I'm going to write a
Christmas story, it's got to have some resonance, you know.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
It's got there's got to be more than fun going on.
Are you escaping Britain for Christmas? Are you off to
your villa and New Yorker? Portugal?
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Spain? I call it more of a castle, But I'm
not going there.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
I'm I'm taking my son away before Christmas to the Maldives.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
There you go.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
But he's really into his scuba diving, so we're going
to go diving together, and I'm very excited. I don't
have him for Christmas, which is probably what I was
just talking about just now, but I have my mom,
my sister, my nephews, so that's all good. But yeah,
I don't mind. London's quite exciting at Christmas, the run
up to Christmas. This suddenly is the first. This is
(09:45):
the first of December. Today, obviously the Christmas lights are up,
the tree in Trafalgar Square goes up today, the pantomimes
are on, you know, the Christmas menus and the restaurants everything,
and so it does become quite excited. I rather like
I rather like being in London, and they run out
to Christmas. But as soon as I've had my Christmas lunch,
(10:07):
I'm ready for the whole thing to be over. I've
had enough bit immediately, Well we've done it, we had
the lunch, right, can we get on with something else?
And you know, I find the time between Christmas and
New Year an amazing time to get on with some work.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Oh really, because well.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Because people aren't contacting you offices, CLO, you're not getting
emails com fore, and it's an amazing time to get
a lot of writing done.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
So I will finishing off my new book.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Then all right, well listen, you go, well, you have
a fabulous Christmas, fabulous holidays, and we'll look forward to
having you back on the program super soon. David Williams
with us this Morning, Center and Sun.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, Listen live to
news talks.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
It'd be from six am weekdays, or follow the podcast
on I Hard Radio
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