Multiple women have accused David Walliams of sexually inappropriate behaviour and grooming, including when they were teenagers, according to a joint investigation by ITN and The Guardian.
The 55-year-old children's author and comedian is alleged to have abused his power and status to contact young women and try to engage in “inappropriate and exploitative sexual activities”.
Walliams denies all the allegations but admits he “at times behaved thoughtlessly” towards people with whom he was involved in casual sexual relationships.
Legal action and publication
Walliams had brought legal action against Independent Television News (ITN) and Guardian News and Media (GNM), publisher of The Guardian, to stop them publishing details of the investigation. After that bid failed, the two news organisations published the allegations.
The claims include a woman who described her alleged encounter with Walliams at 15 years old as a “sexual assault”, while multiple women have accused him of “grooming” them when they were teenagers. One woman said he began contacting her when she was 15, after meeting her at a Little Britain fan event, before starting a sexual relationship with her at 17.
The investigation also reveals he had a sexual relationship with at least one junior employee at HarperCollins, and pursued another. The women at the centre of the investigation, who do not know one another, all allege they were targets of unwanted sexual advances.
Alleged victim's account
One alleged victim, a schoolgirl named Jade, says that Walliams contacted her after she commented on a photo of him on MySpace in 2007. Although Jade was aged just 15 at the time, she claims that Walliams asked for her number and called her within minutes from a withheld line, before they continued to speak via email, often via her school account.
They soon met in person in Soho, where Jade confided in Walliams that she'd been sexually abused when she was younger. They then went to Walliams' house, where Walliams kissed her and attempted to initiate sexual contact. When she pulled away, she claims Walliams said that they should wait until she was 16 and to keep in contact.
She told the investigation: “I struggle with it sometimes – if I think about it a bit too much, about the reality of what happened. It's a sexual assault. It's a grooming. It's completely wrong in every way.”
Background and career
In response to the investigation, The Guardian said Walliams sent a letter to reporters saying: “Looking back, I realise that at times I behaved thoughtlessly towards other people I had casual sexual relationships with... I realise I did not always take people's feelings properly into account. That is something I regret.”
Walliams rose to fame for his comedic partnership with Matt Lucas, with whom he co-created the BBC sketch show Little Britain. He was a judge on Britain's Got Talent between 2012 and 2022, and has sold more than 50 million copies of his children's books.
He left BGT amid reports that he had made sexually explicit and derogatory remarks about contestants, which led to a legal dispute settled in 2023. HarperCollins ended their publishing contract with Walliams in 2025 following an internal investigation into his alleged inappropriate behaviour and harassment towards junior female staff. He denied the claims, saying he had "never been informed of any allegations raised against him” or been asked to cooperate with the HarperCollins investigation.
