I can’t quite remember when a David Walliams book first entered our house, but I do remember my reaction. On the surface, it looked fine. Entertaining title; jolly-sounding plot; lively illustrations by Tony Ross. But reading a few pages was disappointing. Walliams didn’t have the verve and wicked humour of Roald Dahl – clearly his inspiration. Above all, where Dahl was cunning, Walliams was simply crass.

Walliams was dropped by his publisher, HarperCollins, on Friday for alleged inappropriate behaviour towards young women. As exclusively uncovered by the London Telegraph, the author faces multiple accusations of harassing junior female staff. To dump him is a huge commercial decision: he has brought HarperCollins $200 million in sales via more than 40 books that have sold more than 60 million copies, are widely used in schools and have been translated into 55 languages.

Children’s author and Little Britain star David Walliams has been accused of harassment and inappropriate behaviour.Credit: Getty Images

But as many parents could tell you, those books’ own attitude to women has always been suspect, even unpleasant. Despite writing for an impressionable audience of pre-teens – especially boys who are learning to interact with their real-world female peers – Walliams has seemed viciously dismissive of many of his female characters, simply because they’re overweight, unattractive or have some degree of power. Here are a few examples.

Walliams focuses an awful lot on underwear, specifically women’s underwear, which tends to make an unscheduled appearance in a sudden and humiliating manner. Take Demon Dentist, in which the “prim and proper” Miss Hare, a science teacher, falls one day in class. Poor Miss Hare, we’re told, tumbled through the air. The science teacher’s legs were now where her arms had been. Worse than that, her knickers were where her........

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