Her hands were shaking and her expression was haunted as a young David Walliams fan showed me a letter on her phone from a celebrity law firm.
It was 2020, and the woman was 22 when we met near her home in the West Midlands.
The letter that had frightened her had been sent nearly four years earlier, when she was 18, and concerned her friendship with the comedian and author.
Despite the years that had passed, the intense fear triggered by the strongly worded legal warning was still clear.
Solicitors from London firm Schillings told her she was ‘at significant risk of committing a serious civil offence’ if she disclosed ‘private or purported private’ information about Walliams, who was almost 30 years older, to the Press.
At that point, Walliams was a household name at the height of his career.
As a judge on the must-watch Saturday night programme Britain’s Got Talent, he appeared in homes across the country every week. At the same time, he was enjoying enormous success as a children’s author, with books including Mr Stink and The Boy in the Dress.
The lawyers warned the young woman that she could ‘face serious consequences’ if she made public her account of the friendship, which had included a visit to the star’s £3.5million north London home. Such disclosure, they said, would breach his privacy.
To be clear, her account contained no accusations of sexual misconduct. Instead, it described what many people might regard as an ill-judged friendship between an older man at the peak of his professional influence and a starstruck teenager who was 17 when they first met.
Even so, Walliams, through his lawyers, had sent a teenager the kind of formal warning that could unsettle the most self-assured adult.
That is why I am not remotely surprised by the revelation that Walliams, 55, is the celebrity who has taken extraordinary steps to keep his identity secret in recent weeks.
We can now finally report that Walliams brought a case to the High Court seeking to permanently prevent two news organisations, ITN and The Guardian, from publishing allegations made against him.
I am not surprised that Walliams, 55, is the celebrity who has gone to extraordinary lengths to protect his anonymity in recent weeks, writes Katie Hind
The allegations, all of which Walliams denies, are extremely serious. They claim he ‘abused his status’ to engage in ‘inappropriate and exploitative sexual activities’ with girls and young women, conduct that could ‘include potential criminal conduct’.
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 misconduct were interviewed, including over 30 sources who provided first-hand accounts.
In an extraordinary argument, Walliams’ legal team claimed that publication would be ‘highly likely to lead him to commit suicide’.
During a two-day hearing last month, his lawyers said Walliams had made two suicide attempts in recent weeks.
Gavin Millar KC, representing the media organisations, argued in written submissions that blocking public-interest journalism about the allegations would create an ‘ongoing risk that other young women will be subject to similar kinds of inappropriate conduct’. He also said it would draw judges ‘into assessing the causes of suicidal ideation, which are for professionals and not for a judge’.
On November 3, Mr Justice Nicklin rejected the former Little Britain star’s application. The judge said Walliams’ claim that he might take his own life ‘must be taken seriously’, but ruled that his statements ‘do not, however establish that suicide is inevitable. The risk is capable of being reduced through treatment.’
Addressing Walliams’ argument that publication would affect his 13-year-old son, Mr Justice Nicklin said there was ‘no direct evidence from the son, or from anyone speaking directly on his behalf, which enabled the Court to assess the nature and weight of the son’s own rights and interests.’
Although reporting restrictions remained in place for another week while Walliams and his legal team considered an appeal, his identity can now be revealed. The decision represents a significant victory for Press freedom and vindication for the young woman who spoke to me so bravely in 2020.
A decade after receiving that intimidating legal letter, we can now publish the full account of a woman in her mid-20s. At best, the details make for uncomfortable reading; at worst, they raise questions about a possible abuse of power.
The woman says she first met Walliams at the Britain’s Got Talent auditions in 2015
In February 2015, the 17-year-old was studying media at college and, like many enthusiastic fans, applied successfully for tickets to a BGT audition in Birmingham through an online forum. We are not naming her.
When she arrived at the city’s Hippodrome theatre with friends for the recording, she was selected to sit at 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 star had found her on Twitter and followed her. The gesture left the awestruck teenager, whose mother was undergoing cancer treatment, feeling ‘giddy’ and ‘almost fainting’.
At the time, she believed the best 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. In my reply I asked if he was being serious and he told me it was for real and to email his PA.’
Walliams said he would arrange the details. A few weeks later, she and a 17-year-old friend travelled roughly 100 miles from their home town to London and booked a budget hotel for the night.
After the programme, Walliams’ PA took the two teenagers backstage to his dressing room, where they were offered snacks and soft drinks.
The woman recalled: ‘He kissed me on the cheek when he arrived to meet us. I was nervous. His PA gave us cupcakes – it was so nice. I didn’t think anything about it, I was just so excited to be in a room with David Walliams.
‘He said he had watched my YouTube videos, which was a bit cringe. My videos are just a girl in her bedroom doing her make-up. It’s not groundbreaking.’
She told Walliams that she hoped to become a television producer, prompting him to suggest that she write to his production company, King Bert, to ask about work experience.
When she had not contacted the company a week later, Walliams messaged her on social media to request her mobile number so he could remind her to send the letter.
‘I was sat at my make-up desk in my bedroom and he rang me,’ she said. ‘I was just sat there and he was like “do this, do that” telling me what to say for the producer.’
She said they remained in regular contact after that.
The following month, he invited her to the New Alexandra Theatre in Birmingham, where his bestselling children’s book Gangsta Granny was being staged.
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She recalls that, on her 18th birthday in autumn 2015, Walliams called her and sang Happy Birthday down the phone.
She later wrote online that their friendship had become close enough for her to meet Walliams’ mother, Kathleen, and sister, Julie. In December, Walliams asked for her address so he could send a Christmas card. Days later, she received one 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, captioned ‘Alfred Bear and Papa Bear’.
She subsequently posted a photograph of it on social media, writing: ‘This is the first Christmas card he sent me.’
Inside was a picture of Walliams kissing his son.
Walliams with fellow BGT judges Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden and Alesha Dixon in 2020
Soon after Christmas, Walliams invited her again to watch BGT auditions in Birmingham and asked her to visit him before filming at the city’s 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 Walliams joked with them and that, after they had chocolate ice cream, they travelled together to the Hippodrome. During the taxi ride, she took selfies of them in the back seat.
‘Throughout the show, runners were bringing us Haribo sweets and drinks. I remember the girls behind us asking why we were treated like that. He texted after the show, telling how he was struggling with his divorce.’
‘I was comforting him. I was telling him that he has his son, he had support around him and everyone loves him. I was able to give him something back after he had been inviting me to all of these shows.’
In February 2016, she spotted a missed call from Walliams. When she returned it, he suggested that she and a friend stay overnight at his London property, Supernova Heights, which he bought from Oasis frontman 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 after eating they went sightseeing at Buckingham Palace.
She was also taken for an afternoon 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 much money for him to spend.
She recalled that she had ‘never had a boyfriend before’.
In December last year, Walliams was dropped by publisher HarperCollins over alleged inappropriate behaviour with young women
She later uploaded a photograph of herself on a relaxation bed, alongside the caption: ‘And guess who paid for the spa day?’
Back at Walliams’ house, he ordered pizza and the three of them watched Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror film The Shining on the sofa. That evening, she said, Walliams again told her that ‘divorce is so s***’.
‘I told him to perhaps go and find a girlfriend but he said he couldn’t as everyone recognises him,’ she said.
She also remembered him being ‘touchy-feely’ and said he suggested that he had ‘kissed her friend’.
The two women had been drinking wine and were tipsy when they went to bed, staying overnight at the mansion.
The friendship gradually faded during 2016. However, after the woman posted about it on social media, she said Walliams’ former wife, Stone, contacted her to ask whether she was ‘okay’.
At the height of his fame, Walliams was a major figure in British showbusiness. His former girlfriends included model Lisa Snowdon, Patsy Kensit and former Page 3 model and actress Keeley Hazell.
He became famous in the mid-2000s alongside comedy partner Matt Lucas in Little Britain, later joining BGT and appearing in film adaptations of his bestselling books, including Gangsta Granny Strikes Again. His fortune was estimated at about £120million.
His public image began to unravel in 2022, when a leaked transcript of comments made during breaks in BGT filming two years earlier showed him making disrespectful, derogatory and sexually inappropriate remarks about contestants.
He left the programme and later won a case against production company Fremantle for misuse
of his private information, breaches of data protection law, psychiatric harm and loss of earnings.
Following his departure, I spoke several times with senior executives at Fremantle and Simon Cowell’s now-defunct company Syco. They said they had tried to investigate claims that Walliams had invited young women into his dressing room.
They said they found 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, the woman had begun to view the friendship in a very different light and published a series of posts online. ‘Why did I ever think it was normal for a 44-year-old male to invite four girls aged 16/17 into this dressing room without any adults – just his PA, who would bring refreshments once in a while,’ she wrote.
‘And the fact that everyone at that TV production company would see it and say NOTHING,’ she added.
In another post, she shared an image of Walliams standing in a corridor backstage at the ITV studios and said he had texted her ‘quite a bit’.
‘So many people knew about girls getting invited into this particular judge’s dressing room,’ she wrote in a further post published that year.
In December last year, HarperCollins dropped Walliams over alleged inappropriate behaviour involving young women. Last week, Alton Towers also announced the permanent closure of its £18million David Walliams World attraction, only five years after it opened amid considerable publicity.
Schillings’ letter is cited in The Guardian and ITN investigation. When contacted, the firm said it had been instructed to write to the woman because it understood she intended to ‘sell her story’, which Walliams believed contained ‘an untruthful account’. His lawyers also said he was concerned about the effect publication could have on his family.
The young woman told me that she had undergone therapy because of what she came to regard as an inappropriate friendship. Her personal ordeal, she said, would take ‘many more to years get over’.
