Gill Oliver speaks to the reluctant reader turned best-selling author Steven Butler

Steven Butler hated reading as a child. These days, he’s a best-selling author on a mission to show youngsters storytelling can be fun.

The first of his The Wrong Pong series of children’s books was shortlisted for the Roald Dahl Funny Prize two years ago.

And his latest work, The Diary of Dennis the Menace, has just been published to mark 75 years of Dennis and Gnasher mischief.

The 31-year-old explained: “I was terrible at reading and writing when I was young. “As a child you tend to hate what you can’t do very well and I was an incredibly slow at reading.

Everything changed when children’s author Jeremy Strong happened to become headteacher of his primary school in Kent.

Steven said: “It was amazing and rather like having Willie Wonka as your headmaster. I was so lucky that he transformed all my feelings about reading by showing us books could be hilarious.”

At the Oxford Literary Festival, he’ll be giving the inside story on every cheeky trick and prank played by Dennis the Menace and owning up to the dodgy things he got up to as a child.

“The best thing about Dennis is that he doesn’t fear adults and children just love that,” he laughed.

“Comics can feel safer than books for those who are not confident readers, because there are more pictures than words.

“I am a really big campaigner for them and it’s amazing how often they are pooh-poohed in the literary world but they are incredibly important.”

A professionally trained actor, dancer and circus performer, Steven starred in the Horrid Henry Live stage show. Steven has also appeared in West End productions such as The Wizard of Oz and most recently as Arial in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. In the Trevor Nunn production at the Theatre Royal in Haymarket, his fellow cast included Ralph Fiennes and Only Fools and Horses and Goodnight Sweetheart star Nicholas Lyndhurst. He recalled: “I started the play in a flying harness in the fly tower, perched 50 feet above stage. “It was the most incredible thing to be alone up there in the rafters watching Ralph Fiennes as Prospero walk onto stage below.

“It was one of those magical moments that very few people will ever experience.”

He grew up in a tiny village in Kent which he describes as being “exactly like the one in the Vicar of Dibley”.

Steven added: “Looking back, I was pretty weird because I used to spend hours at the end of my garden looking for fairies and was quite solitary but naughty too and broke a lot of windows.”

His acting career came after winning a place at the prestigious Italia Conti stage school in London, which boasts Patsy Kensit, Martine McCutcheon, Pixie Lott and Russell Brand as former students. The idea for The Wrong Pong book, which is about a boy being snatched down a toilet by trolls, ignited while while he appeared in the Horrid Henry stage show.

The family of trolls have thick Forest of Dean accents and Steven explained: “Because I am an actor, I voiced the trolls in my head when I was writing them. That accent was never really a choice, it just sort of happened. “Acting makes it easier to write dialogue, because we deal with scripts all the time and having a cinematic view of your book in your head as you go along helps too.

“I love acting but am most attached to writing because although I play a role for a certain time, my characters and books last forever.”

Steven Butler gives the inside story of The Diary of Dennis the Menace on Sunday March 30 at 2pm. The event is aimed at six-to-nine-year-olds. Tickets £6.