Her hands were shaking and her eyes looked haunted as a young David Walliams fan showed me a letter from a celebrity law firm on her phone.
It was 2020, and the woman, then 22, had agreed to meet me near her home in the West Midlands.
The letter that had frightened her had arrived almost four years earlier, when she was 18. It concerned the friendship she had formed with the comedian and author.
Even after all that time, the intense fear caused by such a strongly worded legal warning had plainly not gone away.
Solicitors from London firm Schillings told her she faced ‘a 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 and at the height of his career.
As a judge on Britain’s Got Talent, the must-watch Saturday-night television programme, he appeared in homes across the country every week. At the same time, he was enjoying huge 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 her account of the friendship public. That friendship had included a visit to the star’s £3.5million north London mansion. Publishing the story, they said, would breach his privacy.
To be clear, the woman was not making allegations of sexual misconduct. She was describing what many people might regard as an ill-advised friendship between an older man at the peak of his professional influence and a starstruck teenager who was 17 when they first met.
Nevertheless, Walliams, through his lawyers, sent a teenager the kind of formal letter that would unsettle even 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 in the High Court seeking to permanently prevent two news organisations, ITN and The Guardian, from publishing allegations made against him.
Walliams, 55, is the celebrity who took extraordinary measures 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’ behaviour.
The information 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 said publication was ‘highly likely to lead him to commit suicide’.
During a two-day hearing last month, his lawyers told the court that he had twice attempted to take his own life in the preceding weeks.
Gavin Millar KC, representing the media organisations, warned in written submissions that blocking journalism in the public interest 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 would take his own life ‘must be taken seriously’, but added 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 harm 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’, allowing the court to assess the nature and weight of the boy’s rights and interests.
Walliams can only be named now because the reporting restrictions remained in place for a week while he and his legal team considered an appeal. The decision represents an important victory for Press freedom and a vindication of 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 uncomfortable reading; at worst, they point to a possible abuse of power.
The woman says she first met Walliams at the Britain’s Got Talent auditions in 2015
The woman, whom we have chosen not to name, was 17 and studying media at college in February 2015. Like many excited fans, she applied successfully for tickets to a BGT audition in Birmingham through an online forum.
After arriving at the city’s Hippodrome theatre with friends, she was selected to move to the front of the audience, just a few feet behind Walliams and fellow judges Simon Cowell, Alesha Dixon and Amanda Holden.
She and Walliams began chatting. Within hours, the former Little Britain star had found her on Twitter and followed her. The gesture left the awestruck teenager, whose mother was battling cancer, 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. I asked in my reply whether he was serious, and he told me it was real and that I should email his PA.’
Walliams said he would arrange the visit. Several weeks later, the teenager and a 17-year-old friend travelled roughly 100 miles from their home town to London, booking a budget hotel so they could stay overnight.
Following the recording, Walliams’ PA took the pair backstage to his dressing room, where they were offered snacks and soft drinks.
The woman told me: ‘When he arrived, he kissed me on the cheek. I was nervous. His PA brought us cupcakes, and it was all so nice. I didn’t think anything of it; I was simply thrilled to be in a room with David Walliams.
‘He said he had watched my YouTube videos, which was a bit cringe. They were just videos of a girl in her bedroom doing her make-up. Nothing groundbreaking.’
That evening, she told Walliams that she hoped to become a television producer. He suggested that she write to his production company, King Bert, to ask about work experience.
When she had still not contacted the company a week later, Walliams messaged her on social media asking for her mobile number so he could remind her to send the letter.
‘I was sitting at my make-up desk in my bedroom when he called,’ she said. ‘He was telling me, “Do this, do that,” and explaining what I should say to 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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On her 18th birthday in autumn 2015, she recalled that Walliams surprised her with a phone call and sang Happy Birthday.
She later wrote online that their friendship had become 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. 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 cartoon card showed a large polar bear and a smaller bear, with the caption ‘Alfred Bear and Papa Bear’.
She later posted a photograph of it on social media, writing: ‘This is the first Christmas card he sent me.’
Inside was a photograph of Walliams kissing his son.
Walliams with fellow BGT judges Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden and Alesha Dixon in 2020
Soon after Christmas, Walliams again invited her to watch BGT auditions in Birmingham. He also asked her to visit him before the recording 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, after they ate chocolate ice cream, the group travelled to the Hippodrome. During the taxi journey, she took selfies of them together.
‘Throughout 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 texted to say he was struggling with his divorce.
‘I comforted him. I told him he had his son, people supporting him and everyone who loved him. After he had invited me to all those shows, I felt I could give something back.’
In February 2016, the woman saw that she had missed a call from Walliams. When she returned it, he suggested that she and a friend spend the night at his London home, Supernova Heights, which he bought from Oasis frontman Noel Gallagher in 2005.
On February 21, the 18-year-old and her friend travelled by train to London before taking a taxi from Euston station to Walliams’ house. He had prepared pasta for them, and afterwards they went sightseeing at Buckingham Palace.
She was also taken for an afternoon at the luxurious 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 last December over alleged inappropriate behaviour with young women
She later shared a photograph of herself lying on a relaxation bed, adding the caption: ‘And guess who paid for the spa day?’
Back at Walliams’ home, he ordered pizza and the three watched Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror film The Shining on his sofa. That night, she said, Walliams again complained that ‘divorce is so s***’.
‘I told him perhaps he should find a girlfriend, but he said he couldn’t because everyone recognised him,’ she added.
She also remembered him being ‘touchy-feely’ with her. According to her account, he suggested that he had ‘kissed her friend’.
The two young 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, the woman said that after she posted about it on social media, Walliams’ former wife, Stone, contacted her to check that she was ‘okay’.
At the height of his fame, Walliams was British showbusiness royalty. His girlfriends had included model Lisa Snowdon, Patsy Kensit and former Page 3 model turned actress Keeley Hazell.
He became famous in the mid-2000s alongside comedy partner Matt Lucas in the sketch show 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 reputation began to suffer in 2022, when a leaked transcript of comments made during recording breaks on BGT two years earlier showed him making disrespectful, derogatory and sexually inappropriate remarks about contestants.
He left the programme and later successfully sued production company Fremantle for misuse
of private information, breaches of data protection law, psychiatric harm and loss of earnings.
After 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 taken young women into his dressing room.
They said their investigation 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 on social media. ‘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 there – apart from his PA, who would occasionally bring refreshments?’ she wrote.
‘And the fact that everyone at that television production company saw it and said NOTHING,’ she added.
In another post, she shared an image of Walliams standing in a backstage corridor at the ITV studios and said he used to text her ‘quite a bit’.
‘So many people knew about girls being invited into this particular judge’s dressing room,’ she wrote in a further post that appeared online the same year.
Last December, Walliams was dropped by publisher HarperCollins over alleged inappropriate behaviour with young women. Last week, Alton Towers also announced the permanent closure of its £18million David Walliams World, just five years after the attraction opened amid considerable fanfare.
The Schillings letter is mentioned in The Guardian and ITN investigation. When contacted by the newspaper, 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 might have on his family.
The young woman told me she had undergone therapy because of what she came to regard as an inappropriate friendship. Her personal nightmare, she said, would take ‘many more years to get over’.
