‘She’s not just wicked but very funny too’, says Neal Foster as he plays Aunt Alberta in Birmingham Stage Company’s Awful Auntie

Annie Cordoni’s Stella and Neal Foster’s Aunt Alberta in Birmingham Stage Company’s Awful Auntie. Picture: Mark Douet 

AFTER directing Gangsta Granny, Billionaire Boy and Demon Dentist, Neal Foster is at the helm of his fourth David Walliams stage adaptation and playing the lead too for the first time in Awful Auntie.

As with the previous three children’s plays, and indeed myriad Horrible Histories shows too,
Birmingham Stage Company is heading for York, playing the Grand Opera House from today (26/9/2024) to Sunday.

“It’s been ten years since we started working with David, and we’ve done four of his books now,” says Neal, long-standing actor-manager, director and writer/adaptor for the Birmingham company.

“He’s been a brilliant person to work with, so generous, so interested; he’ll do anything to help; he’s there at rehearsals, he’s there on opening night. He looks at my scripts with a really helpful professional colleague’s eye, and it’s been a wonderful ten years.”

Neal continues: “I think he has always appreciated how we capture the tone of his work and how we understand how comedy works on stage. I’ll send him drafts and he’ll send notes. I think it works because I get his humour and I knew it would work on stage from the moment I read the books.”

“We’re both fans of Roald Dahl and heavily influenced by him, and Birmingham Stage Company has done more Dahl shows than any other companies in the world.”

Awful Auntie novelist David Walliams. Picture: Charlie Clift

One David Walliams story had been adapted by another company before the Birmingham bond was forged. “He had not been entirely happy with that show and thought maybe it was not the right road to go down again. When we approached him, he liked our track record with the Horrible Histories shows, and that gave him the confidence to run with us.

“Gangsta Granny was then so successful that David was happy to put his books in our hands and has been delighted with the work we’ve done. The stories are very funny, he has a fantastic, wicked sense of humour, but there’s always something important going on in the stories too. It’s no surprise that you will see adults with tears in their eyes at the end because he writes in that way. 

“That’s one of the reasons I wanted to do them, and why they work so well on stage is that David is a performer too and so the stories are naturally theatrical.”

Awful Auntie sends Stella to London with her parents, but she has no idea her life is in danger. When she wakes up three months later, only her Aunt Alberta (Foster’s role) can tell her what has happened, but not everything Alberta says turns out to be true, whereupon Stella discovers she is infor the fight of her life against her very own awful Auntie.

Neal is savouring playing Aunt Alberta. “I’ve been doing it since March,” he says. “One of the first shows I did with Birmingham Stage Company was Roald Dahl’s George’s Marvellous Medicine, where I played Grandma, one of my favourite parts, and there’s a resonance with that role in Alberta because she too loves being wicked and naughty. 

“In the end, Grandma was just rather nasty, but in this one, Alberta turns out to be a serial killer, probably psychopathic, but what makes it so wonderful is that she’s not just wicked but very funny too.

Neal Foster: Birmingham Stage Company actor-manager, director and adaptor, now playing Aunt Alberta in Awful Auntie, on tour at Grand Opera House, York 

“It’s a great privilege to play one of David’s leads, having adapted and directed the previous shows. It’s been a great joy to play a part this time, knowing I could do it, and though it would be hard to pull it off, I knew it would lend itself to being played by a man, applying the strength of a man, because Alberta is quite brutal.”

Neal “loves the science of comedy in making it work”. “David’s tone is like Chekhov’s comedies: it makes audiences laugh and cry, where you feel sad at some parts, laughing at the characters but at the same time sympathising with them,” he says.

“Here Aunt Alberta is very funny but menacing. She’s entertaining; she’s dangerous, but she’s NOT terrifying. Menacing, yes, but at the same time David is providing children with an adventure.”

That is the key to Birmingham Stage Company welcoming children as young as five to Awful Auntie. “With all those wicked characters in Roald Dahl’s work, for example, we wouldn’t give them thatlabel, but they probably are psychopathic,” he says.

“When you’re playing Alberta, you realise she doesn’t seem to care and is lethal in what she does, having her psychopathic responses, but it’s not something young audiences need to know, whereas as an actor you’re aware that she’s basically an absolute nutter!”

Birmingham Stage Company in David Walliams’s Awful Auntie, Grand Opera House, York, today, 6.30pm; Friday, 10.30am and 6.30pm; Saturday, 2.30pm and 6.30pm; Sunday, 11am. Age guidance: Five upwards. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

Copyright of The Press, York

REVIEW: Birmingham Stage Company in David Walliams’s Demon Dentist, Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday ***

Sam Varley’s Alfie, with Miss Root’s cat Zang, Emily Harrigan’s Miss Root, Georgia Grant-Anderson’s Gabz and Misha Malcolm’s Winnie in David Walliams’s Demon Dentist. Picture: Mark Douet

AS part of Birmingham Stage Company’s 30th anniversary, director Neal Foster is drilling down into the tooth, the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth in a third collaboration with prolific children’s author David Walliams.

As with Gangsta Granny and Billionaire Boy, already presented at the Grand Opera House by these regular York visitors, Foster has written the adaptation and lyrics for this fast-moving fangtasy.

In familiar Walliams style, Roald Dahl meets Little Britain for little’uns in his toothy tale of dental detectives Alfie Griffin (Sam Varley) and school classmate Gabz (Georgia Grant-Anderson) – his friend who’s a girl but not his girlfriend, just to be clear – investigating the strange events suddenly besetting children’s bedrooms in their hometown.

As per the norm, children leave their teeth for the tooth fairy, but in Walliams’s warped world, they awake to find strange, unpleasant things under their pillows. Dead mice. A bat’s wing. The rest of the bat is apparently still alive, reduced to flying around in circles. A typical Walliams gag in a show that adds a pinch of Tim Burton and Addams Family gothic humour and pathos too.

Alfie is 12, a lone child, with a dead mother and an ailing dad (James Mitchell), who is reduced to walking on sticks as he struggles with his breathing after years of working down the mine. Pneumoconiosis. Not long to go.

Dark materials for a children’s show, you might think, but it was ever thus in literature. Besides, there is the bond of love, a routine of tea and biscuits after school. Comfort amid the difficulties of what life has thrown at them.

Emily Harrigan’s “tooth witch”, Miss Root. Picture: Mark Douet

Varley’s Alfie has something of the downbeat yet upwardly aspirant diarist Adrian Mole about him, aged 12, not 13¾, not least in his Me Against The World demeanour, especially in his relationship with social care worker Winnie (Misha Malcolm), with her expectations of chocolate biscuits or any variation of chocolate whenever she visits.

Those demands peak in one of the show’s best scenes, full of comic timing by Varley and Malcolm, as his exasperation meets her insistent enquiries in pursuit of a choc boost.

Where does the demon dentist of the title fit in, you ask? All routes lead to Emily Harrigan’s Miss Root – “Call me Mummy,” she says, arms outstretched – who is one of those white-coated practitioners that puts the mental into dental, like Orin Scrivello in Little Shop Of Horrors.

Alfie has not sat in a dental chair since his traumatic encounter with his last dentist – Mr Erstwhile, a literary gag of a name for a late dentist – six years ago and his mouth is more like a graveyard. Off to the corner of Drill Drive and Plaque Place he is taken, and evil this way lies.

Before you know it, kindly, if eccentric newsagent Raj (Zain Abrahams) has given him his late wife’s false teeth and drunk the stale water himself. Raj makes a case to be the favourite character here, with his bargain offers on everything, his warm heart and eternal optimism. A cornershop caricature, yes, but within the exaggeration rests the ring of truth too.

Sometimes, especially in the first half, Foster’s production feels overstretched, the comedy striving too hard. Alas, Miss Root falls short of a premier league villain, no match for a Miss Trunchbull or Miss Hannigan: a dental disappointment.

Dental detectives at work! Sam Varley’s Alfie Griffin and Georgia Grant-Anderson’s Gabz. Picture: Mark Douet

Gems are to be found, however: observations of no-one liking the coffee-flavoured Revels; how boys and girls behave towards each other at 12; above all, the scene-stealing cameo by the over-excitable drama teacher (Aaron Patel), flouncing around as he revels in an improvisation session. Why is every school impro play always about the end of the world, ponders Walliams. How true!

Jacqueline Trousdale’s set, comprising brick walls and interiors beneath a brooding urban skyline, moves with ease from house to school to dental surgery and later, in the equivalent of a pantomime transformation scene, to a mine shaft and Miss Root’s bewitching HQ. Jak Poore’s songs are functional rather than memorable.

This driller-thriller adventure ends with self-sacrifice, a thwarted, flattened baddie, an adoption and a wedding, so much melodrama to cram in, like a misfitting set of dentures, but with a big smile as the reward.

David Walliams’s Demon Dentist, Grand Opera House, York, today, 10.30am, 6.30pm; Saturday, 11am, 3pm. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

What’s next from Birmingham Stage Company on tour?

David Walliams’s Awful Auntie, Live On Stage!, coming to a theatre near you in 2024. Watch this space.

Matthew Mellalieu rolls out role as inventor dad in Billionaire Boy at Grand Opera House

Matthew Mellalieu, back, centre, as dad Len Spud, with Matthew Gordon, front, centre, as Joe Spud, the billionaire boy in David Walliams’ Billionaire Boy, on tour at Grand Opera House, York. Picture: Mark Douet

MATTHEW Mellalieu will be playing the theatre closest to his home on the 2022 tour of David Walliams’ Billionaire Boy from July 14 to 17.

North Yorkshire-born Matt, who moved from London to Nether Poppleton after the first pandemic lockdown, takes the role of dad Len Spud in Birmingham Stage Company’s stage adaptation when visiting the Grand Opera House, York, next week.

Billionaire Boy’s four-day run follows the Birmingham company’s February tour with Walliams’ Gangsta Granny. “I was aware of David Walliams popularity with children, but I hadn’t realised just how big his stories were with families in general,” he says.

“After I’d accepted the job, I told my housemate, who’s a teacher, and when he mentioned it at school, all the children were so excited, asking who I’d be playing!

“What I love is that there’s all that comedy but there’s quite a lot of needled political comment going on too,” says actor Matthew Mellalieu of Billionaire Boy

“Until playing Len, I hadn’t been aware just how prolific David Walliams had been, writing stories with all that gross-out comedy that children adore, making him the successor to Roald Dahl. What I love is that there’s all that comedy but there’s quite a lot of needled political comment going on too.”

In Walliams’ story, 12-year-old Joe Spud is the richest boy in the country, with his own sports car, two pet crocodiles and £100,000 a week pocket money, but what he lacks is a friend. Whereupon he decides to leave his posh school for the local comp, but things do not go as planned, his life becoming a roller coaster as he tries to find what money cannot buy.

“His dad, Len, like many of us, had found himself in a day-to-day job that had never really changed,” says Matt. “His job was to wrap the paper around the toilet roll day after day, but one day he was struck by an idea: inventing toilet roll that is moist one side and dry on the other, making billions of pounds for himself as he opened the Bum Fresh factory.

“In fact, he makes so much money, he has no idea what to do with it all, so he buys the biggest house and a Formula One race track, has a robot butler, the biggest TV set in the world and a swimming pool, but the crux of the matter is that now they’ve moved to a new place, they have no friends.

“This is a proper West End show, like a big musical, not just something for school halls,” says Matthew Mellalieu, third from left, in praise of Birmingham Stage Company’s Billionaire Boy production. Picture: Mark Douet

“He feels that to be a good dad, he needs to buy Joe all the things he never had as a child, but Joe only wants friends and the love of his dad, yet Len doesn’t realise that. It’s very much a story about friendship and love being important and money not being the be all and end all.”

Billionaire Boy first went on the road in 2019 and touring has resumed since lockdown restrictions were eased. “I joined the cast in January with only two weeks of rehearsals in London – where  I first moved to go to drama school – and those rehearsals were really fast-tracked with half the company having been in the show since 2019,” says Matt.

“When Covid happened, they first re-started the show by performing off the back of a lorry, and now they’re resuming the original tour.

“What I’ve found with this show is you may have an idea of how a show will be; you may have a rough idea of what a kids’ show is, when I haven’t really done them, but have lots of Shakespeare on my CV, but then you discover this is a proper West End show, like a big musical, not just something for school halls.”

“The art of storytelling never changes,” says North Yorkshire-born Billionaire Boy cast member Matthew Mellalieu

As for the play itself, suitable for five-year-olds upwards, Matt says: “The reason that Shakespeare still works so well is that you’re dealing with archetypes, and then you realise that Billionaire Boy isn’t a million miles away from Shakespeare. It’s looking at  relationships, though there’s none of the blood and murders! But there are grotesque bullies, just like in Shakespeare, and I play the bullies in this show as well as Len.

“The art of storytelling never changes; Walliams tells stories, with spectacle and yukky comedy, just as Shakespeare re-told Greek tales. Stories are ingrained in us and we all think about who we are, what we mean to our friends and family and where our place in the world is, but with a few good f**t gags or a song or a spectacle every five minutes in Walliams’ case to keep the kids engaged!”

Looking back on his own childhood, growing up in the fishing village of Robin Hood’s Bay, Matt says: “From a very early age, with friends and family at home, we told stories and made up our own sketches and interviews that my mum and dad filmed on a full-scale VHS camera and then we’d watch them back.”

And so began the performing career of Matthew Mellalieu that now brings him to the Grand Opera House, York, in Billionaire Boy. Performances are at 1.30pm and 7pm, July 14; 10.30am and 7pm, July 15; 2.30pm and 7pm, July 16, and 11am and 3pm, July 17. Box office: atgtickets.com/York.

More Things To Do in York and beyond, as York welcomes York to York for the weekend. List No. 67, from The Press

Enjoy free admission to York Art Gallery’s Young Gainsborough: Rediscovered Landscape Drawings exhibition as part of York Residents’ Festival. Booking required. Picture: Charlotte Graham

YORK attracts 8.4 million visitors, but this weekend you are invited to be a tourist in your own city, as Charles Hutchinson highlights.

Festival of the week: York Residents’ Festival, today and tomorrow

MORE than 70 events, attractions and offers make up this weekend’s York Residents’ Festival, with the offers continuing all week.

Organised by Make It York, this annual festival invites all York residents with a valid YorkCard to “explore the city and be a tourist for the weekend”, one card per person. 

Pre-booking is required for some highlights of a festival that takes in museums, theatres, galleries, churches, hidden gems, historic buildings, food and drink and shops.  For more details, visit: visityork.org/residents-festival.

Tall storey in Tall Stories’ The Smeds And The Smoos at York Theatre Royal this weekend

Children’s show of the week: The Smeds And The Smoos, York Theatre Royal, today, 2.30pm and 4.30pm; tomorrow, 10.30am and 1.30pm

SOAR into space with Tall Stories’ exciting new stage adaptation of writer Julia Donaldson and illustrator Axel Scheffler’s joyful tale of star-crossed aliens.

On a far-off planet, Smeds and Smoos cannot be friends. Nevertheless, when a young Smed and Smoo fall in love, they promptly zoom off into space together.

How will their families get them back? Find out in an interplanetary adventure for everyone aged three upwards, full of music and laughter, from the company that delivered The Gruffalo and Room On The Broom on stage. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Bedtime story: Ian Ashpitel and Jonty Stephens as Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise in Eric & Ern

Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be; it’s better in: Eric & Ern, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday and Wednesday, 7.30pm

IAN Ashpitel and Jonty Stephens bring you sunshine in their uncanny portrayal of comedy duo Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise in a show that has been touring for more than five years.

Combining renditions of famous comedy sketches with contemporary references, Eric & Ern contains some of the first new writing in the Morecambe & Wise  style in more than in 30 years. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Abstract collage, by Peter Schoenecker, at Pocklington Arts Centre

Exhibition of the week outside York: Peter Schoenecker, A New Way Of Looking, Pocklington Arts Centre, until February 19

PETER Schoenecker’s mixed-media artworks open Pocklington Arts Centre’s 2022 season of exhibitions in the studio.

On show are watercolours, acrylics and lino prints by the Pocklington artist, a former graphic designer, who is inspired by the landscape and seascape textures and lighting in and around his Yorkshire home.

“My aim is usually to create a mood or atmosphere using colour or black and white,” he says. “Switching between media keeps me interested and innovative, hopefully bringing a freshness to the work.”

Echo & The Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant: From Liverpool to Leeds on Wednesday

Gig of the week outside York: Echo & The Bunnymen, Leeds O2 Academy, Wednesday, doors, 7pm

AHEAD of the February 18 vinyl reissue of their 1985 compilation Songs To Learn & Sing, Liverpool legends Echo & The Bunnymen play plenty of those songs and more besides in Leeds (and at Sheffield City Hall the night before).

Available for the first time since that initial release, the “Best Of” cherry picks from their first four albums with the single Bring On The Dancing Horses as the icing on top. On tour, vocalist Ian McCulloch and guitarist Will Sergeant will be leading a band now in their 44th year, still too cool to be called a heritage act. Box office: gigsandtours.com/tour/echo-and-the-bunnymen.

Granny (Isabel Ford) and Ben (Justin Davies) in the Crown Jewels-stealing scene in Birmingham Stage Company’s Gangsta Granny

Family show of the week: Birmingham Stage Company in Gangsta Granny, Grand Opera House, York, February 3 to 5, 2.30pm and 7pm; February 6, 11am and 3pm

IN David Walliams’s tale, Friday night means only one thing for 11-year-old Ben: staying with Granny, where he must put up with cabbage soup, cabbage pie and cabbage cake.

Ben knows one thing for sure – it will be so, so boring – but what Ben doesn’t know is that Granny has a secret. Soon Friday nights will be more exciting than he could ever imagine, as he embarks on the adventure of a lifetime with his very own Gangsta Granny, in Neal Foster’s touring production, back in York next week for the first time since 2016. Suitable for age five upwards. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/York.

Two out of Seven: Shed Seven’s Rick Witter and Paul Banks to perform as a duo in Scarborough

Compact Sheds: Rick Witter and Paul Banks, Scarborough Spa Theatre, April 17, 7.30pm

SHED Seven shed three when frontman Rick Witter and lead guitarist Paul Banks “go where no Shed has gone before” to play Scarborough over the Easter weekend.

Mr H Presents promoter Tim Hornsby says: “Expect a special night of classic Shed Seven material and a few surprises”.

“You already know this whites-of-their-eyes show is going to sell out, so don’t get bothered with the regular unholy last-minute scramble for tickets and purchase early for a holler-along to some of the best anthems ever,” he advises. Box office: scarboroughspa.co.uk.

James Swanton as Lucifer with cast members of The Last Judgement when plays from the 2018 York Mystery Plays were staged in the Shambles Market. Picture: Lewis Outing

Looking ahead to the summer: 2022 York Mystery Plays, York city centre, June 19 and 26

HERE come the wagons, rolling through York streets on two June weekends, as the Guilds of York maintain their four-yearly cycle of York Mystery Plays set in motion in 1998.

As in 2018, Tom Straszewski is the artistic director for a community production involving nearly 600 people creating hours of drama, performed for free, on eight wagons at four locations, including St Sampson’s Square, St Helen’s Square and King’s Manor.

“The plays will cover the creation of the world, floods, last meals together and resurrections,” says Strasz. “We’re still seeking directors, performance groups and actors, who should email director@yorkmysteryplays.co.uk to apply.”

How cabbage soup, David Walliams and a Crown Jewels-thieving Gangsta Granny became a recipe for stage show success

Oh, no, cabbage soup again: Granny (Isabel Ford) serves up another spoonful to 11-year-old grandson Ben (Justin Davies) in Birmingham Stage Company’s Gangsta Grammy. Picture: Mark Douet
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WHEN actor, humorist, author, talent-show judge, Channel swimmer and activist David Walliams was a child he spent time aplenty with his grandmas.

So began his odyssey to writing Gangsta Granny, his book for children that has since transferred to the stage in Birmingham Stage Company’s touring production, whose latest itinerary takes in the Grand Opera House from February 3 to 6, having first played the York theatre in September 2016.

“Sometimes I would selfishly think spending time with my grannies could be boring,” he says. “But when I got them on a subject like living in London during World War II, when bombs were raining down, they would become very animated and I would be enthralled. I realised everyone has a story to tell.”

In Walliams’s tale, Friday night means only one thing for Ben: staying with Granny, where he must put up with cabbage soup, cabbage pie and cabbage cake. Ben knows one thing for sure – it will be so, so boring – but what Ben doesn’t know is that Granny has a secret.

Soon Friday nights will be more exciting than he could ever imagine, as he embarks on the adventure of a lifetime with his very own Gangsta Granny.

“I realised everyone has a story to tell,” says David Walliams, who drew on childhood memories of his grandmothers for Gangsta Granny

“There was definitely a smell of cabbages in one of my grandmas’ houses,” recalls Walliams, giving an insight into his inspiration for Gangsta Granny. “The other did break wind like a duck quacking when she walked across the room.”

Walliams acknowledges the special bond between children and their grandparents. “I think grandparents love being grandparents because they get to give the children back to the parents!” says the 50-year-old Little Britain and Partners In Crime television star.

“Children love spending time with their grandparents because they love hearing their stories and being allowed to stay up past their bedtime.”

He is delighted that Gangsta Granny has become a stage show. “It’s a huge thrill seeing Gangsta Granny have this whole new life on the stage. It’s already been a TV film. People seem to really like the story,” says Walliams. “In fact Gangsta Granny is my best-selling book by far, and the stage show is brilliant – better than the book.”

Assessing the potential challenges or difficulties in staging Gangsta Granny, he says: “There is lots of action, especially when they try to steal the Crown Jewels. It’s quite a challenge for Birmingham Stage Company to bring those scenes to life but they do it so well,” he says. “Shows for children need to be fun and fast paced, which Gangsta Granny certainly is.”

Birmingham Stage Company cast members in Gangsta Granny. Picture: Mark Douet

“The great thing about seeing Gangsta Granny on stage is you will get to share it with an audience. So hopefully you will laugh and cry along with everyone else. That’s what makes theatre so special.”

What does Walliams hope children will take away from watching Gangsta Granny in York next month? “The moral of the story is, ‘don’t assume old people are boring just because they are old’,” he advises. “In fact, they are likely to have had a much more interesting life than yours. Talk to old folk, listen to their stories. They are bound to be full of magic and wonder.”

Wise words indeed from Walliams, who took up writing children’s fiction 15 years ago. “I had an idea for a story: what if a boy went to school dressed as a girl? I thought it would be a thought-provoking children’s book. That became The Boy In The Dress, my first of many children’s novels,” he says.

“The only limitation in a children’s book is your imagination. You can take children on magical journeys in books that many adults would be reluctant to go on.”

Walliams highlights the challenges presented by writing for children? “Children love to be scared but it can’t be too horrifying. Children love to laugh but it can’t be too rude. You always have to be the right side of the line,” he says.

He admires the work of Roald Dahl, arguably the 20th century doyen of children’s authors. “I think Dahl’s books always feel a little bit forbidden. He manages to balance the humour and scary elements in his stories perfectly,” says Walliams, who picks The Twits as his favourite Dahl story. “It’s utterly hilarious and I love that it’s a children’s book with no child characters.”

Birmingham Stage Company actor-manager Neal Foster, who has adapted and directed Gangsta Granny

He recalls enjoying other writers, such as Dr Seuss, in his childhood days. “I loved Dr Seuss books as a child, especially Green Eggs And Ham. His books are like nightmares come to life. They are rich and strange and utterly unlike anybody else’s work,” says Walliams.

David Walliams has become popular in his own right as a children’s author and ticket sales for Gangsta Granny testify to that popularity. “I imagine children like the humour and that I don’t patronise them,” he says, summing up his appeal as a storyteller. “I deal with quite big topics, cross-dressing, homelessness, grief. I know children are a lot smarter than most grown-ups think.”

Premiered in 2015, Gangsta Granny has become a West End hit twice over, prompting stage adaptations of Walliams’s books Awful Auntie and Billionaire Boy too. Now Birmingham Stage Company actor-manager Neal Foster’s adaptation returns to York for a second Grand Opera House run, full of Walliams’s humorous home truths wrapped inside family relationships. 

Birmingham Stage Company in Gangsta Granny, Grand Opera House, York, February 3 to 6; Thursday to Saturday, 2.30pm and 7pm, Sunday, 11am and 3pm. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/york. Suitable for age 5+.

Did you know?

SINCE the 2008 publication of his first novel, The Boy In The Dress, David Walliams’s  books have sold  44 million copies worldwide and been translated into 55 languages.

Isabel Ford’s Granny and Justin Davies’s Ben in the Crown Jewels scene in Gangsta Granny. Picture: Mark Douet