David Walliams is on his way to Canberra? Computer says yes

"Hello boys!" he says.

"It's a very unusual interview this one, isn't it? Dogs, cars, everything."

Unusual, yes. Engaging, definitely. Walliams is a great conversationalist.

We've veered, like his zippy car, from one topic to the next.

Comedy role models? Australians are right up there - Barry Humphries inspired him to get into comedy; Chris Lilley is one of his favourites: "Summer Heights High is one of the funniest things ever made, I think," he says.

Publishers "cleaning up" the language in Roald Dahl's original books? "He might have been the greatest writer for children of all time. It felt like vandalism, to me, to change it," Walliams reckons.

Fatherhood? "It's the best thing in the world". His 11-year-old son Alfred is his everything. "There's no person I'd rather spend time with."

Edgy comedy? "I just love things when your jaw is on the floor."

It's hard not to want the conversation to keep going for ever. Walliams is down to earth, charming and a little bit devilish, that wicked gleam in his eye never quite dimming, whether he's being serious or not.

It all bodes well for when the 52-year-old steps onto the stage at the Royal Theatre in Canberra in September for An Audience with David Walliams.

The one-man show is all him - his stories, his anecdotes, his experiences.

There's the outrageously grotesque characters he and comedy offsider Matt Lucas created for Little Britain and Come Fly with Me. And the classic dialogue that fans still quote more than 20 years after Little Britain first appeared on TV, in 2003.

("I'm the only gay in the village!", "No but yeah but no", "I don't like it", "I'm a lady". "Bitty". Just last week the British tabloid The Daily Star had on its front page a picture of Walliams as the barely-breathing bank teller Carol Beer with the headline "Computer Says No" for its story about the global IT crash.)

Walliams can also talk about becoming the true successor to Roald Dahl - an author on the side of kids who ignited a new generation of readers. (He's written 41 books, from his first, The Boy in the Dress, to his latest, the graphic novel Astro Chimp, and sold more than 56 million copies. His first kids' murder mystery, Super Sleuth, will be released in October. )

And then there's his (in the end) controversial time as a judge on Britain's Got Talent (he was still mic-ed and got a bit too honest about one of the contestants). He was also a judge on Australia's Got Talent. And don't forget his mammoth swims. (He's swum both the English Channel and the River Thames for charity.)

"I still go swimming all the time but I won't be swimming to another country - I'm not swimming from Australia to New Zealand," he says, droll as ever.

For his show, Walliams does promise to touch on anything and everything - including whatever the audience ask him.

"I thought it was a good opportunity to get out there and entertain. That's the first thing I want the show to be - really entertaining, really fun and for everyone to leave on a high," he said.

"And I think a generation has passed and a new generation of teenagers and stuff are watching Little Britain and Come Fly with Me and loving it. So I thought maybe there's a show where you've got the people who were watching it first time 'round and now they've had kids and now they're going to share it together.

"I've never done a show like this. It could be quite fun. I've got a lot of great stories I've never told before. I've had a lot of adventures over the years. People are interested in how characters came about. Or what's it like meeting the Queen. Whatever it may be.

"Ultimately, I don't want to be like soul-searching or anything like that. I'll be open and honest but the main thing I want this to be is a great piece of entertainment.

"I want people to have had a great time like we've sat around the dinner table and I've told them lots of funny stories and done some impressions, gone into the dressing-up box and dressed up and done some sketches and things and I just want them go, 'That was a really brilliant evening'."

Canberra is getting the grown-up version of his show.

Other cities including Sydney and Melbourne are also getting the kid-friendly The David Walliams Book Show which will be held in the daytime and in which he'll talk about his amazing writing career. (Tickets for that are here.)

"When I was a kid, I got into reading because my mum and dad were very good and they took me and my sister to the local library every couple of weeks so we could take out three books," he said.

"So I'd go and get a book about volcanoes or space travel. One about werewolves, whatever. And I wasn't drawn that much to fiction. And I think boys often like things that have pictures and great descriptions about planes or trains or dinosaurs, that sort of thing.

"And then I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and that was it. I was away. So that book will always be very special to me."

While he wanted to act, Walliams said he got into writing, even at school, to achieve his ultimate goal of becoming a comedian: "There weren't many comedians who weren't writing their own material."

"I wanted to get up at school and do little sketches ... so that was my first go at writing," he said.

As his comedy career progressed, he started to concentrate more on the creative side of writing and the thrill of "creating something that had never existed before".

"Then I just had this idea for a children's book about a boy going to school dressed as a girl and once I had that I idea, I thought, 'Maybe I'll write a children's book', you know?" he says, of his first book, The Boy in the Dress.

"I thought, 'This could be an interesting story and maybe I'll have a go'. It wasn't a big seller but it was well-received and I think the most important thing for me was I got a real kick out of doing it. And I realised I could have an emotional dimension to the characters that I couldn't have in a comedy sketch."

I tell Walliams he needs to do something about getting Canberra in on his book show. Kids here, too, love his books.

"I will petition them," he promises, archly.

The son of an engineer and a lab technician, Walliams was just a teenager when he first saw Barry Humphries live as Dame Edna at a theatre in London.

"I saved up and sat 10 rows back and it was the moment I thought, 'Oh, this is what I want to do'," he says.

"Because I knew I wanted to do comedy but I knew I wasn't going to be a stand-up comic. I just couldn't get my head around how I would do that...

"What I loved was - I mean obviously [Dame Edna] is one of the greatest comedy characters ever created - but also I loved how anarchic is was, the games he would play in sort of being nice to people but also rude to them at the same time. The back story of the character was always good... It was just ... hilarious. And I can remember the whole thing in great detail, probably more than I can remember something I saw last week."

Years later, Walliams met Humphries and, with Matt Lucas, the trio became great friends.

"Our very first night of The Little Britain tour in Australia, he came. We were in Melbourne and he took us out for lunch at The Flower Drum Chinese restaurant. The whole thing is etched in my memory because we were sitting there with our hero," Walliams said.

And that may feel the same for many Walliams fans come September in Canberra.