Nearly 20 years after Danny Wallace's bestselling book Yes Man was adapted into a film starring Jim Carrey, the author still remembers working with the Hollywood star. “It was surreal,” says Danny, 49. “I never thought it was going to happen until I was on my way to the Warner Brothers studio and I realised I’d get to see him messing about in the flesh.”
Carrey did not disappoint, as Danny discovered when the pair spotted a tourist train passing slowly by. “I was like, ‘Shame for these people. All they’re seeing is empty brown buildings with nothing happening.’ And Jim just said, ‘Wait here,’ and then he ran and jumped on the train and started rocking it from side to side. It must have made their year.”
Career and Family Life
Over a career spanning more than 30 years, Danny has written bestselling books and novels, and in 2005 he started his own country for a TV series, Kingdom of Lovely. He currently hosts The Important Broadcast on Radio X, which he says is “probably the only radio show that regularly tells its listeners to shut up because I’m talking.”
But the moments Danny values most are those closer to home. He met his wife Lizzie when she asked him to buy her an Edinburgh Festival ticket – a request he met under his Yes Man rule of agreeing to everything. The pair married and now have three children. “It's been brilliant,” Danny says of family life. “I can't imagine it any other way, really. What’s most gratifying is that we’ve become like a little gang of friends, all with distinct personalities.”
Danny compares his children to the young prodigies in The Royal Tenenbaums. “You've got one who's quite serious, then you've got my little girl who's very stylish, and then my little guy is basically just dressed in Adidas tracksuits all the time and obsessed with football. We all bring something different to the table, but what unites us is humour.”
Concerns About Social Media and Hope for the Future
Raising children in an age of social media brings concerns, particularly around toxic messages aimed at young males by figures like Andrew Tate. “They don’t even seem to understand what they’re lacking or how they’re ruining their own lives by being appalling human beings,” Danny says. “The people that they hate, the so-called 'woke', aren’t woke at all. They’re decent, just good people.”
What he sees in his own children gives him hope. “When I hear my son and his friends talking to each other, and when I watch them interacting with strangers, it’s respect and it’s empathy and it’s decency,” he says. “That’s the way we should all be, male or female.”
Danny’s own philosophy revolves around basic human decency. “I’ve always tried to live by three things, which is: be nice, work hard and get involved – which just means nothing’s going to happen unless you do something. You’re not going to meet the love of your life if you don’t go to the party they’re at.”
Optimism for Britain and New Book
With new prime minister Andy Burnham now running the country, Danny feels more optimistic for Britain. “It’s been a really difficult time, but I think there’s hope, and a feeling that things are getting done, and improvements are being made,” he says. “I hope this is the start of something, and it makes us recapture what it used to mean to be British. All we need is that confidence, which means being confident enough not to think the club’s ripping us off. So let’s get back in the EU, and let’s all pretend it was a bad dream.”
His latest project is a children’s book, Henry Tudor: The Incredible Diaries of Me!, which imagines Henry VIII as an eight-year-old boy. “I’ve always been interested in that phrase, ‘Show me the kid at seven and I’ll show you the person.’ I sort of wondered how Henry VIII ended up being like Henry VIII.”
He found the young Henry was hardly a shrinking violet. “He was like a little tiny Trump and dictator. He’s pompous and unpleasant and self-mythologising. He thinks he is the greatest gift to everything in the world, and he was great fun to write because he was an arrogant, rude little snob.”
Writing for children comes naturally after years of discovering what his own three enjoy reading. “I've always been fascinated by what makes them laugh, so I just imagine that I'm telling them this story, really. There's loads there that kids love – gross stuff and bloodshed and gore. I mean, it was a horrible, disgusting time. It was great.”
His adult writing has drilled into excruciating personal situations, such as his former bestseller Awkward Situations for Men. He recalls chatting to a woman about her newborn baby: “The way the baby’s hair was at the time, I couldn’t help but point out that this lady had a baby who looked a lot like Hitler.” The experience left him with a valuable lesson: “Never compare someone’s new baby to Adolf Hitler. Just don’t do that.”
Henry Tudor: The Incredible Diaries of Me! (Simon & Schuster, £7.99, Ages 8+) is out on 27 August.
