“When my oldest child was about nine or ten, he started to doubt whether Father Christmas was real,” he explained.
“And I thought, ‘Well I have to write a story that will convince him that Father Christmas is real’.
“I wanted to write the origin story of Christmas and I wrote a story called The Night I Met Father Christmas about a boy called Jackson (my son’s name is Jackson) who meets him and learns all about how he became Father Christmas.”
After securing a publishing deal, Ben went on to write four more Christmas books, and his latest story, which follows the adventures of Tog the Christmas elf, came out just last week.
Diary of a Christmas Elf by Ben Miller is out now (Hardback, Simon & Schuster Children’s Books) to buy for £9.99.
The festive book has been described as “a funny and heartwarming story about the true meaning of gift giving” and also features beautiful illustrations by Daniela Jaglenka Terrazzini.