Katie Hind: Why I’m Relieved David Walliams Has Been Exposed

Her hands were shaking and her expression was haunted as the young David Walliams fan showed me a letter on her phone from a prominent celebrity law firm.

It was 2020, and she was 22 when we met close to her home in the West Midlands.

The letter had been sent nearly four years earlier, when she was 18, and concerned her friendship with the comedian and children’s author.

Despite the passage of time, the distress caused by the intimidating legal warning was still unmistakable.

Lawyers from London firm Schillings warned that she could be ‘at significant risk of committing a serious civil offence’ if she disclosed ‘private or purported private’ details about Walliams, who was almost 30 years older, to the Press.

At that point, Walliams was one of Britain’s biggest television and entertainment stars.

As a judge on the hugely popular Saturday-night programme Britain’s Got Talent, he appeared on television screens across the country each week. At the same time, his children’s books, including Mr Stink and The Boy in the Dress, were selling in enormous numbers.

The lawyers told the young woman she could face ‘serious consequences’ if she made public her account of the friendship, which included a visit to the star’s £3.5million north London home. They claimed publication would breach his privacy.

To be clear, her account contained no allegations of sexual misconduct. Instead, it described what many people might regard as an unwise relationship between a powerful, much older celebrity and a starstruck teenager who was only 17 when they first met.

Even so, Walliams used his lawyers to send a teenager a formal warning that would have unsettled many adults.

That is why I was not surprised when Walliams, now 55, was identified as the celebrity who had taken extraordinary steps in recent weeks to keep his name out of the headlines.

We can now report that Walliams went to the High Court in an effort to permanently prevent ITN and The Guardian from publishing allegations made against him.

Walliams, 55, was the celebrity who took extraordinary legal steps to protect his identity, writes Katie Hind

The allegations, all of which Walliams denies, are extremely serious. They claim he abused his position to engage in ‘inappropriate and exploitative sexual activities’ with girls and young women, conduct that could potentially amount to criminal behaviour.

The material gathered by the news organisations came from a ‘wide-ranging and rigorous’ investigation that began in early 2022. More than 100 people with knowledge of the alleged behaviour were interviewed, including over 30 individuals who said they had first-hand accounts.

In an extraordinary submission, Walliams’ legal team argued that publication was ‘highly likely’ to cause him to take his own life.

At a two-day High Court hearing last month, his lawyers said he had made two suicide attempts in recent weeks.

Gavin Millar KC, representing the media organisations, argued in written submissions that blocking reporting in the public interest would leave ‘an ongoing risk that other young women will be subject to similar kinds of inappropriate conduct’. He also said it would force judges to assess the causes of suicidal thoughts, matters that should be handled by medical professionals rather than the courts.

On November 3, Mr Justice Nicklin rejected the former Little Britain star’s application. The judge said Walliams’ claim that he might die by suicide ‘must be taken seriously’, but added that his evidence did not show suicide was inevitable and that the risk could be reduced through treatment.

Addressing concerns about Walliams’ 13-year-old son, Mr Justice Nicklin said the court had received ‘no direct evidence from the son, or from anyone speaking directly on his behalf’ that would allow it to judge the nature or significance of his rights and interests.

Walliams can now be named after reporting restrictions remained in place for a further week while he and his legal team considered an appeal. The decision represents an important victory for press freedom and vindicates the young woman who spoke to me so bravely in 2020.

A decade after receiving that threatening letter, we can finally tell the full story of a woman now in her mid-20s. Her experience makes uncomfortable reading and, at its most troubling, raises questions about the potential misuse of power.

The woman says she first met Walliams at the Britain’s Got Talent auditions in 2015

In February 2015, the teenager was studying media at college and had just turned 17. We are not naming her. Like many enthusiastic fans, she applied through an online forum for tickets to a BGT audition in Birmingham.

When she arrived at the city’s Hippodrome with friends, she was selected to sit near the front of the audience, only a few feet behind Walliams and fellow judges Simon Cowell, Alesha Dixon and Amanda Holden.

She and Walliams began talking, and within hours the former Little Britain performer had found her on Twitter and followed her. For the teenager, whose mother was undergoing cancer treatment, the attention was overwhelming. She said she felt ‘giddy’ and ‘almost fainting’.

At the time, she believed the most exciting part was still to come.

Walliams later contacted her on Twitter and invited her to attend the show’s semi-final, recorded at ITV’s Fountain Studios in Wembley on May 26, 2015. ‘I was freaking out that he had messaged me,’ she recalled. ‘I asked whether he was serious, and he said it was real and told me to email his PA.’

Walliams said he would arrange the necessary travel details. Several weeks later, she and a 17-year-old friend travelled around 100 miles from their hometown to London, where they booked a budget hotel for the night.

After the programme, Walliams’ PA escorted the pair backstage to his dressing room, where they were offered snacks and soft drinks.

‘He kissed me on the cheek when he came in to see us,’ she said. ‘I was nervous. His PA brought cupcakes and it all felt so lovely. I didn’t question anything; I was simply thrilled to be sitting in a room with David Walliams.’

She added: ‘He said he had watched my YouTube videos, which was a little embarrassing. They were just videos of a girl doing her make-up in her bedroom. Nothing groundbreaking.’

During the meeting, she told Walliams that she hoped to become a television producer. He suggested she write to his production company, King Bert, to ask about work experience.

Mr Justice Nicklin refused Walliams’ attempt to keep his identity concealed on November 3

When she had not contacted the company a week later, Walliams messaged her online and asked for her mobile number so he could prompt her to send the letter.

‘I was sitting at my make-up desk when he called,’ she said. ‘He told me what to do and what to say to the producer.’

She said they remained in frequent contact after that.

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The following month, Walliams invited her to the New Alexandra Theatre in Birmingham, where his bestselling children’s book Gangsta Granny was being staged.

When she turned 18 in the autumn of 2015, she recalls receiving a surprise birthday call from Walliams, who sang Happy Birthday to her.

She later wrote online that their friendship became close enough for her to meet Walliams’ mother, Kathleen, and his sister, Julie. In December, he asked for her address so he could send a Christmas card. A few days later, she received a card showing Walliams and his son, Alf, from his marriage to Dutch model Lara Stone, which had ended in a quick divorce that September.

The card showed a large polar bear and a smaller bear, with the words ‘Alfred Bear and Papa Bear’.

She later posted a photograph of the card on social media, captioning it: ‘This is the first Christmas card he sent me.’

Inside was a photograph of Walliams kissing his son.

Walliams pictured with fellow BGT judges Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden and Alesha Dixon in 2020

Soon after Christmas, Walliams invited her back to watch BGT auditions in Birmingham and asked her to visit him before filming at the five-star Hotel du Vin, where he was staying.

She brought a male friend, and Walliams bought them burgers and chips while he had his make-up applied.

She said he joked with them and, after they had eaten chocolate ice cream, they travelled to the Hippodrome. During the taxi journey, she took selfies with him.

‘During the show, runners brought us Haribo sweets and drinks. I remember the girls sitting behind us asking why we were being treated that way. After the show, he messaged me and said he was struggling with his divorce.

‘I comforted him. I told him he had his son, people around him and plenty of people who loved him. After he had invited me to all those shows, I felt I could finally give him something in return.’

In February 2016, she saw that Walliams had called her. When she returned the call, he suggested that she and a friend stay overnight at his London property, Supernova Heights, which he bought from Oasis singer Noel Gallagher in 2005.

On February 21, the 18-year-old and a friend travelled by train to London before taking a taxi from Euston station to Walliams’ home. He had prepared pasta for them, and afterwards they went to see Buckingham Palace.

He also arranged a spa visit at the luxury Bulgari hotel in Knightsbridge, where she had her eyebrows and nails done. Walliams offered to pay for an £800 massage, but she declined because she felt it was too expensive.

She recalled that, at the time, she had ‘never had a boyfriend before’.

Walliams was dropped by publisher HarperCollins in December last year over alleged inappropriate behaviour with young women

Later, she uploaded a photograph of herself lying on a relaxation bed, writing: ‘And guess who paid for the spa day?’

Back at the house, Walliams ordered pizza and the three of them watched Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror film The Shining on his sofa. She said he again spoke about how difficult his divorce was.

‘I suggested he should find a girlfriend, but he said he couldn’t because everyone recognised him,’ she said.

She also described Walliams as ‘touchy-feely’ and said he suggested that he had kissed her friend.

The two young women had been drinking wine and were tipsy when they went to bed at the mansion.

The friendship gradually faded during 2016. However, after the woman posted about it online, she received a message from Walliams’ former wife, Lara Stone, who wanted to check that she was ‘okay’.

At the height of his fame, Walliams was a major figure in British showbusiness. His former partners included model Lisa Snowdon, actress Patsy Kensit and former Page 3 model Keeley Hazell.

He became famous in the mid-2000s through Little Britain, the sketch show he made with Matt Lucas, before joining Britain’s Got Talent and appearing in film adaptations of his bestselling books, including Gangsta Granny Strikes Again. His wealth was estimated at about £120million.

His public image began to unravel in 2022, when a leaked transcript revealed that he had made disrespectful, derogatory and sexually inappropriate comments about contestants during breaks in BGT filming two years earlier.

He subsequently left the programme and later won a legal case against production company Fremantle over the misuse of private information, data protection breaches, psychiatric injury and lost earnings.

After his departure, I spoke several times with senior figures at Fremantle and Simon Cowell’s now-closed company, Syco. They said they had tried to investigate claims that Walliams invited young women into his dressing room.

They said their inquiries uncovered no wrongdoing by Walliams, despite the woman having posted a photograph of herself and other young women backstage at BGT during their 2016 visit to his dressing room.

By 2020, however, the woman viewed the relationship in a very different light and published several posts online. ‘Why did I ever think it was normal for a 44-year-old man to invite four girls aged 16 or 17 into his dressing room without any adults present?’ she wrote. ‘There was only his PA, who occasionally brought refreshments.’

She continued: ‘And the fact that everyone working on that television production saw it and said nothing.’

In another post, she shared an image of Walliams standing in a corridor at ITV’s studios and said he used to message her ‘quite a bit’.

‘So many people knew about girls being invited into this particular judge’s dressing room,’ she wrote in a further social media post that year.

In December last year, HarperCollins dropped Walliams over alleged inappropriate behaviour involving young women. Last week, Alton Towers also confirmed the permanent closure of its £18million David Walliams World attraction, only five years after its high-profile launch.

The Schillings letter is cited in The Guardian and ITN investigation. When contacted, the firm said it had been instructed to send the warning because Walliams believed the woman intended to ‘sell her story’ and that her account was untrue. His lawyers also said he was concerned about the possible effect publication could have on his family.

For the young woman I interviewed, the consequences have been lasting. She told me she underwent therapy after coming to view the relationship as inappropriate, and believes her personal ordeal will take ‘many more years to get over’.