How cockroach Ken inspired Ratburger
DAVID Walliams has revealed that the inspiration for his kids’ book Ratburger came from a cockroach-eating contestant on Britain’s Got Talent in 2012.
Ken Edwards demonstrated his talent for eating cockroaches out of a paper bag on the ITV show.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, he failed to make it past the first stage.
But his bizarre performance did give judge Walliams the germ of an idea for Ratburger, which has now been turned into a feature-length special for Sky 1 this Christmas.
David, 46, says: “The character of Burt is partly based on a guy we met on Britain’s Got Talent.
“This man came on, and he had dark glasses, greasy black hair and false teeth rattling in his mouth.
“His first line was, ‘I know what you’re thinking – they’ve dug up Roy Orbison’. You knew the line was meant to get people on side, but it was such an odd opener. We asked, ‘What’s your act?’
“He replied, ‘I’m going to eat live cockroaches’. Then, he got out a brown paper bag and proceeded to start eating the cockroaches.
“As you can imagine, he immediately got buzzed off.”
But Walliams’ interest had been piqued and he couldn’t stop thinking about Ken.
He says: “In a way, I was slightly disappointed that he didn’t go through to the next round because he was such an amazing character.
“But he got me thinking. I created this whole imaginary life for him. I imagined that he had a burger van, used his cockroaches to make special sauce and turned rats into burgers.
“I had so much fun with the idea. It was a seed of truth that grew into the tree of this story.”
It turns out that Ken, from Glossop in Derbyshire, once actually worked as a rat-catcher, so we’re sure that helped him come up with the story too.
In fact, had Walliams been watching The Big Breakfast back in March 2001, he could have embarked on his career as a children’s author somewhat earlier. Ken was featured on the Channel 4 show eating 36 Madagascan cockroaches in one minute for a record attempt.
He said that swallowing them was “like having an anaesthetic at the back of the throat”. Yuk.