How David Walliams’ mask slipped as allegations of inappropriate sexual behaviour and grooming emerge

How David Walliams’ mask slipped as allegations of inappropriate sexual behaviour and grooming emerge

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For as long as Walliams has been famous, rumours and stories have swirled around him, particularly surrounding his behaviour towards women. There was always an exaggerated sexual element to his persona, whether it was in character on one of his hit sketch shows, or playing himself as a judge on Britain’s Got Talent. Now, what insiders had once called an “open secret” about Walliams’ behaviour is out in the open.

“There was always so much darkness to him,” says one celebrity insider who has known Walliams for more than 20 years. “He had bad vibes. He was so shady with the way he pursued women. He sent presents, and properly badgered them. And he had success with the pretending to be gay thing, which was always very strange.”

The damaging stories about Walliams have gathered steam over the past six years, while the work that made his name has also been re-evaluated.

In 2020, Little Britain was pulled from streaming services for its depiction of minorities, in particular Walliams’ appearance in blackface. “We want to make it clear that it was wrong and we are very sorry,” he and co-star Matt Lucas said in a statement.

Since then, Walliams has suffered a series of ever-more damaging reports around his work and personal life. In 2021, his publisher HarperCollins agreed to remove Mr Wong, a character in Walliams’ books, over accusations the depiction of Wong was insensitive to Asians.

The following year, in a leaked transcript from Walliams’ time as a judge on Britain’s Got Talent, he could be heard calling a male contestant a “c***”, and saying of a female participant that “she thinks you want to f*** her, but you don’t” during a 2020 audition at the London Palladium.

Walliams apologised for the remarks, although he insisted the conversations were meant to be private, and left the programme in late 2022. He later sued the production company, Fremantle, over the leak and the case was settled out of court, but the damage to Walliams’ on-screen career was lasting. In November 2022, Piers Morgan, who had previously described Walliams as “creepy”, said the revelations were only the “tip of the iceberg” and that “Walliams is one of the nastiest frauds on TV”.

Walliams did not help his case last year, when he made two Nazi salutes during a recording of Would I Lie To You?, a panel show. Comedian Richard Herring, while noting that context is important in comedy, described it as an “idiotic and inappropriate thing” and said he had “reservations” about Walliams.

Until this week, however, Walliams’ nadir was December 2025, when the Telegraph reported he had been dropped by HarperCollins over allegations he had harassed junior female employees, with one receiving a five-figure settlement. The HarperCollins chief executive Charlie Redmayne had stepped down suddenly two months previously. A statement on behalf of Walliams said: “David strongly denies that he has behaved inappropriately and is taking legal advice.”

It came after HarperCollins had announced in September that, as well as not publishing new Walliams books, it would no longer be printing his back catalogue. Last week, Alton Towers said it would be closing The World of David Walliams, an area of the theme park dedicated to his children’s books.

Whatever comes of these allegations, they surely mark an ignominious end to a once-stellar career.

Few British entertainers in memory have experienced higher highs or, indeed, lower lows than Walliams. He was born in 1971, the son of Peter Williams, a bus engineer, and Kathleen Ellis, a school lab technician. (David changed Williams to Walliams when he became an actor.)

Walliams’ older sister would dress him up in girls’ clothes when he was a boy (his first children’s book, published in 2008, was titled The Boy in the Dress). At Reigate Grammar School, he was badly bullied for his effeminacy and has spoken about playing up his campness as a response to that time.

He has struggled with his mental health since childhood, too. His father died in late 2007. Earlier that year, Walliams said that “I had a very happy childhood, but I wasn’t that happy a child”. In 2024, in a joint interview with his mother, he revealed that he had attempted suicide in 1989, in his first Christmas home from studying drama at Bristol University. He has spoken about suffering from depression throughout his career. “It’s true that I go through periods of intense self-loathing,” he said once. “I think that’s only human, isn’t it?”

As an undergraduate, he met Lucas when they attended the National Youth Theatre together. They forged one of the most successful comic partnerships of the era, working their way up through live shows and TV – often with impersonations – before Little Britain shot them to stardom as a duo.

Starting on Radio 4 in 2001 before transferring to BBC Three two years later, its catchphrases – “computer says no” or “yeah but no but no but yeah”, or “I’m the only gay in the village” – became seared on to the national psyche. The third series’ debut on BBC One attracted nearly 10 million viewers; there were sell-out live tours, DVDs, awards (including three Baftas).

He and Lucas made a memorable pair. Lucas was short, bald and gay, Walliams was tall, darkly handsome and – despite the persistent chat about his campness – heterosexual. In 2012, he joined Britain’s Got Talent, Simon Cowell’s blockbuster talent show competition, as a judge. At that time the series still drew more than 10 million viewers per episode. Any remaining British viewers who were somehow unaware of Walliams beforehand would not have been afterwards. Meanwhile, the children’s books were gathering steam.

He was famous enough that his charity fundraisers were news stories in their own right. He had been a promising swimmer when he was younger. In 2006, he swam the English Channel for Sport Relief, raising more than £1 million; in 2011, he swam the length of the Thames, raising a further £1m. In 2017, he was awarded an OBE for his services to charity and the arts.

With fame, and money, came women. His campness became a seduction tool. In 2006, during a conversation with Brand, Walliams spoke about pretending to be gay as a “smokescreen” to seduce women.

“No one knew if he was gay or straight,” says one director who worked with Walliams. “He was very elusive and he was very powerful, which made it hard for people to get close to him. You did not know if his act was serious or make-believe, which is why he probably got away with it for so long.”

As his star rose, Walliams was linked with a string of celebrity girlfriends: Patsy Kensit, Lisa Snowdon, Geri Halliwell. In 2009, when he was 37, he dated Lauren Budd, a model, who was 18. He was even reported to have dated Peaches Geldof, daughter of Bob. In his autobiography, Camp David, he wrote: “I became so well known that when I walked down the street every second person recognised me. Women threw themselves at me. And sometimes I caught them.”

In a 2009 interview for his programme Chatty Man, the comedian Alan Carr said to Walliams “you always seem to be in the paper with different women”, adding that he was “a bit like an illegal taxi driver, you lure them into a false sense of security and then you pounce”.

In light of this week’s allegations, such clips from Walliams’ peak take on a more sinister aspect. Introducing the 2004 Comedy Awards, host Jonathan Ross said: “The comedy awards is 15 years old… and like most 15-year-olds, it’s drunk, it’s unpredictable, and it’s probably going home with David Walliams.”

Three years later, during an episode of 8 out of 10 Cats, a panel show, Walliams cracked a joke about British teenagers doing “very well in pregnancy tests”. Peaches Geldof, a fellow contestant, and who by that time had not been linked to Walliams romantically, replied: “You’d know a lot about that David, wouldn’t you?” (“Oh, you b****!” Walliams snapped back.)

One photographer who first photographed Walliams 15 years ago says she was always troubled by his behaviour.

“I remember finding him really creepy, and being surprised because his star was rising,” the photographer says. “He was really smiley for the cameras and as soon as they were off, very curt and somewhat threatening in manner.”

Still, by 2010, Walliams seemed to be a reformed man, having married the Dutch model Lara Stone. The couple lived at Noel Gallagher’s old house in Belsize Park, London, and were part of a glitzy social circle including Gallagher himself, Tom Ford and Sir Elton John.

“Many people in my position, comedians or musicians, might have taken advantage of the situation, going out after each show and getting drunk and high, trying to shag anything that moved,” Walliams told the Evening Standard in 2012.

The implication was that, at 40, he had settled down. He and Stone had a son, Alfred, born in 2013. But by 2015 they had separated, with Walliams citing “unreasonable behaviour”. A divorce was granted later that year.

Some of the new allegations made against Walliams date from the period after the divorce, when he was still a judge on Britain’s Got Talent. The reports allege patterns of behaviour in which Walliams would spend time with young female fans or contestants, often alone.

Despite his marital fallout, however, Walliams has said that fatherhood has helped him with his mental health. “Being a parent is a great thing because it makes you a lot less self-obsessed,” he told the Radio Times in 2018.

Last December, Walliams gave an interview to a New Zealand-based podcast about Santa & Son, a children’s book. He was less upbeat about fatherhood, speaking of his sadness at not spending Christmas with his son who was instead with Stone as part of a shared custody arrangement.

As the controversy around him has mounted, Walliams has cut an increasingly isolated figure.

And although he has continued to work in film and TV in recent years, he has never hit the heights he achieved beforehand. Britain’s Got Talent’s viewing figures had fallen steeply even before he left in 2022. Since he left the show, his screen appearances have been few and far between, although his publishing empire endured.

Instead, he has seemed content to try to focus on books and fatherhood.

Any dreams Walliams might have harboured of a quieter life, however, were destroyed this week, as the extraordinary allegations against him have brought him back into the glare of the media. The World of David Walliams at Alton Towers has closed down; but the world of David Walliams is in tatters, too.

Speaking before his Thames swim at the height of his fame, Walliams reflected on the fleeting nature of success. “It worries me, what the future holds,” he said. “I realise that people who were once on TV, people who I used to love, people who were unthinkably famous, are just not on TV any more.

“I didn’t realise how passing it would all be.”

Walliams enjoyed greater success than he could ever have imagined. Its passing, confirmed by the gruesome allegations reported this week, has been just as dramatic.

Additional reporting by Blaise Cloran and Kimberley Bond

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