Pupils in a coastal primary school were surprised to get a video message this week from their favourite author and Britain’s Got Talent judge, David Walliams.

With lockdown preventing birthday gathering, the family and friends of a pupil from Portknockie Primary School recently rallied round to get some video messages from his favourite people.

One of these was top children’s author David Walliams.

And when the young pupil wrote and thanked the TV celebrity, he asked if he would send a message to his school chums who are all home-schooling and missing each other.

And he did. He praised the pupils for working hard and even suggesting he will be using the school name in his next book. He said: “You certainly win the prize for the best-named school… Portknockie.”

Head teacher, Karen Murray, said: “While schools have been closed this term, our pupils have been learning through Microsoft Teams and we shared Mr Walliams’ message with them through class teams yesterday,” she said.

“The video message has caused great excitement with one parent describing how her daughter was jumping up and down as she watched it. The Facebook page has also attracted a great deal of interest with many positive comments from our local community and further afield.

“We have been very impressed with the home learning our pupils and their families have undertaken this term and are very grateful to Mr Walliams for the positive message he sent out to pupils about their hard work.

“Mr Walliams’ books are always very popular in school, both for personal reading and when used for teaching purposes. I’m sure our pupils will be even keener to read them now – some new copies might be required for our return to school in August!”

The video is on the school’s Facebook page and can be seen here at this link: https://www.facebook.com/portknockieps/videos/3441159315894788/