You Wouldn’t Want To Be Cancelled

Notes from the Waiting Room of the Disappeared

David Walliams The Telegraph

Spent

This is not what a trial looks like.

There is no charge. No finding. No conclusion.

What follows instead is a process - institutional, procedural, and increasingly familiar.

Whether an allegation is true, false, contested, misunderstood, or unknowable is not the point at which this mechanism engages.

It engages earlier - and it concludes faster.

You were ignited, You burned brightly.

You are now considered spent.

On December 20th, 2025, David Walliams was removed from professional life with remarkable speed.

Cancelled

Within the space of a single weekend, his publisher, HarperCollins, announced it had ended its relationship with him following reports of alleged inappropriate behaviour towards young women, allegations he strongly denies and for which, his representatives say, he was neither informed at the time nor invited to respond before the decision was taken.

Almost immediately, Waterstones confirmed that Walliams would no longer appear at its upcoming children’s book festival. His scheduled event vanished from the programme, ticket links ceased to function, and promotional material was quietly adjusted. Several independent bookshops followed suit, removing recommendation cards or reducing the visibility of his books.

No Future Projects

Meanwhile, the BBC confirmed it had “no future projects directly involving him”, while continuing to broadcast previously completed adaptations of his work. An animation based on one of his books is reportedly still in development , but without his participation.

There has been no trial. No public finding. No formal conclusion.

What occurred instead was a familiar modern sequence: institutional withdrawal, reputational distance, and professional disappearance, not of the work, but of the person.

This is what it now means to be “dropped”.

And it is why this blog exists.

Because while the facts of any individual case may be debated, the mechanism is increasingly clear - and increasingly common. Once allegations enter the public domain, organisations act not as judges but as risk managers. Decisions are made quickly, language becomes cautious, and silence is repackaged as prudence.

Past

One moment you are in circulation.The next, you are spoken of in the past tense - preferably without verbs.

Welcome to the outer lounge of modern life:

No fixed title. No forwarding address.

You join a curious fellowship - from those who walk, from those who talk too much, those who have odd friends, those who stand up to the mob, royals of no fixed title, disgraced broadcasters; from the quietly erased creatives to authors whose names remain as revenue pipelines on spines while disappearing from magazines, panels, festivals, and polite conversation.

When Publishers Still Held Their Authors

This is not a new problem. Writers have always embarrassed, appalled, frightened, and exhausted their publishers. The difference is what publishers once believed their role to be. When Lord Byron scandalised Georgian Britain with sexual transgression, political radicalism, and personal chaos, his publisher John Murray did not disown him. Murray absorbed the discomfort, continued to publish the work, and assumed - correctly - that time, not institutions, would decide Byron’s standing. The scandal surged and receded.

The Books Remained.

A century later, Oscar Wilde was destroyed by prosecution and imprisonment. Publishers withdrew. His name became professionally toxic. Yet even here, the system still allowed for return. Wilde was not erased forever; after his death, his work slowly re-entered circulation. Reputation could collapse - but it was not treated as permanently terminal. In October 2025 Oscar Wilde's reader's pass to the British Library, which had been removed due to his criminal conviction was symbolically reinstated the pass has gone to his only grandson: Merlin Holland.

The Books Remained.

By the mid-20th century, D. H. Lawrence marked the last stand of publisher courage. When Lady Chatterley’s Lover was prosecuted for obscenity, Penguin Books did not distance itself. It defended the book in court - and won. Not because Lawrence was morally exemplary, but because the work mattered.

The Books Remained

What unites these cases is not leniency, but duration. Publishers once understood themselves as custodians operating on long horizons. They endured scandal, absorbed pressure, and allowed complexity to stand unresolved. Modern publishing does not. It no longer holds authors through difficulty; it manages exposure. The shift is not ethical. It is structural.

On the Curious Comfort Taken in Being Vindicated While Dead

There is a peculiar modern comfort offered to the disgraced writer:

History will be kinder to you.

This is presented as magnanimity. It is, in fact, a shrug.

Posthumous rehabilitation is the easiest virtue of all. It requires no courage, no legal fees, no awkward meetings, no risk to one’s brand deck or HR strategy. The author is no longer alive to complicate matters by speaking, suing, or - worst of all - being inconveniently human.

To be celebrated after death while being reviled in life is not justice. It is deferred embarrassment.

The living writer is denied income, platform, defence, and dignity - offered instead the promise of a better reputation they will never enjoy. You cannot pay rent with future footnotes.

Earlier publishers understood something we have forgotten:that reputation is not a fire alarm to be silenced, but a weather system to be endured.

Today’s publishers do not hold authors through storms; they evacuate, issue statements, and later commission a plaque.

If values only apply once the author is safely dead, they are not values at all. They are stage props - rolled out long after the audience has gone home, when no one is left to boo.

History does not thank those who avoided risk.It merely notes, with a raised eyebrow, who was absent when it mattered

You don’t generally wake up thinking:

“Today, I should like to be cancelled.”

And yet here we are.

So what happens inside your head when you are cancelled, disappeared, or politely unacknowledged into oblivion?

Let us consult the symptoms.

How individuals experience this internally, whether with rage, denial, shame, disbelief, or numbness, varies enormously. These responses are not evidence of anything beyond the fact that sudden erasure is psychologically destabilising.

The Psychology of Being Disappeared

Being “disappeared” or “cancelled” in this way. whether through sudden withdrawal, erasure, or minimisation, can lead to a number of psychological challenges, many deeply tied to identity, self-worth, and legacy. The core damage stems from a perceived loss of recognition, validation, and control over one’s narrative.

Here are the most common effects, and how people tend to survive them.

1. Loss of Identity and Purpose

When your work and contributions are erased or diminished, it can trigger an existential crisis. If your career has been built on making things that circulate publicly, the sudden absence of credit can leave you disconnected from your own sense of worth.

How to respond

• Reclaim your narrative. Writing, speaking, or creating on your own terms restores agency.

• Redefine success. External validation matters — but it is not the only measure of meaning.

• Diversify identity. New forms of work can create fresh purpose beyond the original frame.

2. Feelings of Rejection and Worthlessness

Erasure feels personal, even when it is procedural. Intellectually you may know your work has value; emotionally, it can feel as if it never mattered.

How to respond

• Cognitive reframing. The erasure reflects institutional fear, not your intrinsic worth.

• Seek grounded affirmation. Trusted peers and collaborators matter more than platforms.

3. Anger and Resentment

Anger is natural. Left unattended, it corrodes. It can stall future work and contaminate relationships.

How to respond

• Channel it creatively. Anger can be fuel — but only if transformed.

• Accept limits of control. Letting go is not approval; it is self-preservation.

4. Isolation and Loneliness

Watching peers continue while you are sidelined can deepen a sense of exclusion.

How to respond

• Find parallel communities. Others have been here before.

• Remain visible. Quiet persistence counters disappearance.

5. Impostor Syndrome

Even the accomplished can begin to doubt themselves when their past is erased.

How to respond

• Document achievements. Memory is a defence.

• Build forward. New work restores confidence through action.

6. Fear of Future Irrelevance

Erasure often breeds paralysis.

How to respond

• Reinvention. Not as branding — but as curiosity.

• Perspective. This experience gives insight few possess.

7. Existential Doubt

When work can be erased so easily, effort can begin to feel futile.

How to respond

• Legacy through continuity. Mentoring, writing, building — not visibility.

• Acceptance of impermanence. What you do now still matters.

Reclaiming the Narrative

The task is not to demand reinstatement but to continue with dignity. Control returns not through statements, but through sustained, meaningful work.

Rebuild yourself as someone worth respecting - quietly, deliberately.

But perhaps not immediately.

John Profumo

In 1963, John Profumo, then UK Secretary of State for War, resigned after it emerged that he had conducted an affair with Christine Keeler, a young model also involved with a Soviet naval attaché during the Cold War. Profumo initially denied the relationship in Parliament, later admitting he had misled the House — a breach regarded as fatal to ministerial credibility.

The scandal exposed the intersections of sex, power, class, media intrusion, and national security, and badly damaged public trust in Harold Macmillan’s government. Profumo resigned immediately and withdrew from public life.

The Profumo Route: Redemption Without a Comeback

There is a largely forgotten manual in British public life for what happens after disgrace.

It does not involve statements.It does not involve podcasts.It does not involve reinvention strategies.

It involves work.

After his resignation, Profumo disappeared deliberately. Invited to volunteer at Toynbee Hall in London’s East End, he worked there quietly for the rest of his life. Not as a figurehead. Not as a redemption performance.

Simply as someone being useful.

He did not seek forgiveness.He did not explain himself.He did not attempt a comeback.

Instead, he used what he still had — organisation, persuasion, contacts — to raise substantial funds for charity. All unpaid. All unpublicised. His wife, the actress Valerie Hobson, worked alongside him.

Over time — and only over time — perception shifted. The scandal receded. What replaced it was not absolution, but respect. In 1975, Profumo was appointed a CBE. When he died in 2006, he was remembered not only for his fall, but for the decades of service that followed.

Why This Still Matters

The Profumo route is not redemption through performance.It is repair through usefulness.

Its lessons are unfashionable:

• Do not rush back.

• Do not explain.

• Do not demand absolution.

• Do not confuse visibility with rehabilitation.

• 
  

Instead:

• Do work that does not require applause.

• Accept that respect returns slowly, if at all.

• Live in a way that complicates history’s footnotes.

Rehabilitation is not a statement.It is a lifetime.

And it does not begin online.

• Keep working

• Don’t brood

• Don’t embalm the past

• Enjoy the process

• Let go of control

• Stay playful

• Be kind to yourself

Rehabilitation is not a statement - it is a lifetime.

And it does not begin online.

When the Shift Became Structural

The decisive change in UK publishing did not occur because writers became more badly behaved. It occurred when publishing ceased to be a trade of individuals and became an asset class.

The turning point is corporatisation from the late 1980s through the 1990s, accelerating sharply after 2000. Independent, editor-led houses were absorbed into multinational groups whose primary obligations were no longer literary judgement or posterity, but brand protection, legal exposure, and shareholder confidence. Publishing decisions moved away from editors and towards legal, HR, and corporate communications. Time - once the publisher’s greatest ally - became an unaffordable risk.

Three moments matter:

• Pearson’s transformation in the 1990s, divesting trade identity in favour of education and scale, signalling that publishing was now primarily a corporate function, not a cultural one.

• Bertelsmann’s consolidation of Random House and its later merger with Penguin in 2013, creating Penguin Random House - a publisher whose scale makes reputational exposure systemic rather than containable.

• The post-2008 financial climate, which entrenched quarterly accountability and risk-aversion across all cultural industries, publishing included.

From this point on, publishers ceased to act as buffers between authors and public outrage. They became firewalls. Once a publishing house begins to speak in the language of “values alignment”, it must act before facts are known. Waiting itself becomes reputational risk. Ambiguity becomes intolerable. The author, no matter how successful, becomes the most easily removable component in the system.

This is why modern erasure feels so clean. It is not judgement.

It is procedure.

Words That End Careers Without Ever Becoming Verbs

Footnotes from the Waiting Room of the Disappeared

The language of cancellation

These words do not accuse. They do not judge. They do not conclude.

They simply arrive, and everything else quietly leaves.

Alleged

A word of exquisite balance.Technically neutral. Practically terminal.

Used to signal that nothing has been proven, while ensuring that everything has been decided.

Functions as:

• a legal cushion

• a reputational accelerant

• and a moral fig leaf

Often paired with decisive action (“dropped”, “removed”, “paused”, "refreshed") to demonstrate that although nothing is established, continuation would be inappropriate.

Its true meaning is best translated as:

We are not saying it’s true. We are behaving as if it is.

No longer aligned with our values

A marvellous sentence, because it implies the values were always stable, coherent, and widely agreed.Also useful for avoiding the vulgarity of specifics.

Dropped A verb borrowed from crockery.Carries the faint implication that gravity, not choice, was responsible.

After careful consideration

Usually refers to a meeting lasting between 12 and 17 minutes, including the phrase “optics” and a discussion about whether the logo will be affected.

Historic comments A comforting euphemism suggesting Roman coins or sepia photographs.May in fact refer to last Tuesday.

We take these matters extremely seriously A ritual incantation meaning: our

lawyers have been consulted and you should stop speaking immediately.

We wish them well An ancient dismissal formula.Comparable to being patted on the head before the drawbridge is raised.

Learning moment Rarely followed by any evidence of learning.Often followed by compulsory training modules involving stock photography and laminated sincerity.

Deplatforming A technical term that makes the removal of someone’s livelihood sound like routine maintenance.

Accountability A word that once meant responsibility.Now frequently means distance.

Moving forward Always said by those who are not being left behind.

Context matters Invoked just long enough to explain why context will not, in fact, be provided.

Reputational risk A measurable quantity.Unlike human cost, which remains inconveniently unquantified.

Internal process A black box into which people disappear and from which statements emerge.

The conversation has moved on A polite way of saying: we would rather forget you existed.

Closing Filing Note

None of these words are, on their own are lethal.Their power lies in accumulation - a soft linguistic snowfall under which entire careers quietly disappear.

No charge .No verdict. No memory.

Which is why footnotes matter. They are where language goes when it hopes not to be examined.

A Note from the Library of the Disappeared

The Library of the Disappeared has no grand entrance.

There is no catalogue desk. No digital index. No helpful assistant to tell you where you’ve been shelved.

Its inhabitants arrive by different routes - terrible behaviour, real scandal, alleged scandal, silence, merger, misjudgement, cowardice, convenience - but they share a common fate: they are removed while still alive, their names left behind like outdated signage.

Some rage at the door. Some attempt a noisy re-entry through side windows labelled comeback. Some deny any wrongdoing, Some fade, bitterly, into footnotes written by others.

A very small number do something else.

John Profumo did not escape the Library. He entered it fully, deliberately, and without protest. Then - having accepted the shelf - he began, quietly, to rewrite the entry.

Not by argument.Not by explanation. Not by insisting on context.

But by usefulness.

The Library of the Disappeared is not interested in redemption arcs. It has seen too many.It is, however, attentive to durational acts - to people who continue, unobserved, without asking to be reinstated.

This is the part modern culture struggles with.

We want endings. We want statements. We want lessons extracted and laminated.

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The Author

David Salariya has spent a working life making books and watching how they circulate, who is credited, and who quietly vanishes. He is interested in the gap between institutional memory and lived experience, and in the long work that remains when public attention moves elsewhere.

Burn Bright