Walliams pays tribute to Dahl in TV documentary

Funnyman David Walliams will narrate Roald Dahl's much loved books for a new TV special about the famed children's author.

The Little Britain star will be seen in striped pyjamas and in bed reading extracts of the author's work in the ITV1 documentary Dahl in Perspective, which airs on 22 April.

Walliams is a huge fan of Dahl, and his own bestselling children's novels have been compared to the late writer.

Speaking on the show, he says, "When I was a child I devoured every book I could get my hands on. I loved losing myself in colourful and dramatic stories - and my absolute favourite was Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. Everything about it electrified me, and when I re-read Roald Dahl's books as an adult it surprised me. There's nothing prescriptive or predictable about them, with little sense of narrative rules. And they are nearly all perfect.

"Children's books are often seen as the poor relation of literature. But children are just as demanding as adult readers, if not more so. I should know. I'm a children's writer myself. Yet I will never be as good as Dahl. In this film I want to try to understand where Dahl's magic touch came from. I feel sad that I will never meet Dahl, who died in 1990. People think writing a children's book is something you could do in an afternoon but it's actually really hard."