The abrupt closure of Alton Towers\u2019 The World of David Walliams, which only opened in 2021, is\u00a0a considerable\u00a0blow to its inspiration\u2019s decidedly diminished reputation. It is also a reminder as to how fickle the world of publishing, and children\u2019s publishing\u00a0in particular, can be.<\/p>\n
The World of David Walliams has\u00a0ended with an\u00a0abrupt and\u00a0terminal\u00a0crash<\/p>\n
Five years ago, Walliams was not just the golden goose of HarperCollins, but someone who had\u00a0single-handedly\u00a0changed the face of the industry. Thanks to Walliams, and his 60 million worldwide sales, it became not only acceptable but practically\u00a0de rigueur\u00a0for celebrities to write, or have ghostwritten for them, books for young readers, and to enjoy the benefits that such success brought them. And now, Walliams\u2019 downfall has come with an even more decisive plunge than the rides that once had his name attached to them.<\/p>\n
Visitors to\u00a0the theme park in Staffordshire will probably get over the loss of Raj\u2019s Bouncy Bottom Burp, Flavio\u2019s Fabulous Fandango and\u00a0Gangsta\u00a0Granny: The Ride. And as Alton Towers is closed between November and March every year, there will be plenty of time for the attraction to scrub all mention of Walliams\u2019 name from\u00a0its doors. He has already been deleted from its website with Stalinist efficiency; you would not know that, until recently, the area, which once rejoiced in the unfortunate name of Cloud Cuckoo Land, had been dedicated to all things Walliams.<\/p>\n
It caps off an extraordinarily bad year for the once-beloved writer and comedian, who has entirely disappeared from public view even as the bad news keeps on coming.<\/p>\n
HarperCollins announced that not only were they going to stop publishing his books, but, in virtually unprecedented circumstances, would delete his backlist altogether, meaning that once the stock of such books as\u00a0The Boy In A Dress\u00a0and\u00a0Mr\u00a0Stink\u00a0is exhausted, Walliams\u2019 diminishing\u00a0band\u00a0of admirers will have to haunt charity shops and jumble sales to get their hands on his oeuvre.<\/p>\n
Alton Towers have ended what was undoubtedly a lucrative and high-profile association with the star. And while Walliams indignantly denied\u00a0rumours\u00a0of inappropriate\u00a0behaviour, including\u00a0towards younger women,\u00a0that emerged last year, his denials have been insufficient to quell\u00a0the\u00a0growing sense that\u00a0organisations\u00a0that were once only too keen to ally themselves with him are now just as\u00a0hoping to be shot of the star.<\/p>\n
One can make all the usual noises about innocence before guilt being proven and how, for the time being at least, all that Walliams has been accused of is\u00a0unsavoury, rather than strictly illegal,\u00a0behaviour. Yet there is something\u00a0about the way in which institutions such as HarperCollins and Alton Towers have abandoned him (The BBC continue to have\u00a0Little Britain\u00a0on their\u00a0iPlayer\u00a0service, at the time of writing.) While the theme park might suggest that they regularly assess\u00a0\u201celements of our attraction offering\u201d,\u00a0in somewhat strained language that might have found its way into their former star attraction\u2019s books, it is unusual for something so drastic to occur.<\/p>\n
Still,\u00a0librarians and children\u2019s teachers everywhere might be breathing a sigh of relief at Walliams\u2019s downfall from a purely literary perspective. His books were \u2013 let us be frank \u2013 dreadful, a miserable hodgepodge of clich\u00e9s, stereotypes and\u00a0tasteless\u00a0humour that read like Roald Dahl post-lobotomy. Their popularity stemmed in large part from name recognition and Walliams\u2019 televisual ubiquity, not least when he was combining his work as a comic actor with his time as a judge on\u00a0Britain\u2019s Got Talent.\u00a0Many more talented but far less successful authors justifiably felt aggrieved at the attention and emphasis given to his writing. Now, perhaps, they will get their day in the sun,\u00a0if\u00a0their publishers want to invest in proper children\u2019s writers, rather than former A-list celebrities.<\/p>\n
What will become of Walliams? He has the financial freedom, thanks to his now-extinguished career, to do what he likes for the rest of his life, and it would be unsurprising to hear that he has left Britain for Dubai or some similarly sunny climes, where he may one day once again delight easily amused expatriates with some of his comic schtick.<\/p>\n
Yet as he draws the curtains in whatever mansion he is currently residing in, all too aware that\u00a0dark\u00a0rumours about him buzz endlessly on social media, there must be an uncomfortable awareness that The World of David Walliams has\u00a0ended with an\u00a0abrupt and\u00a0terminal\u00a0crash. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The abrupt closure of Alton Towers\u2019 The World of David Walliams, which only opened in 2021, is\u00a0a considerable\u00a0blow…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":823953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,192745,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-823952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-coffee-house","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=823952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/823953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=823952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=823952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=823952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}