A number of comedians and former friends of David Walliams have spoken out about the comedian amid the recent allegations of sexual misconduct made against him.
The Little Britain star was accused of sexual assault and grooming girls as young as 15 in a joint investigation by The Guardian and ITV on Tuesday (10 November). Walliams denies all allegations and any wrongdoing.
One of the first to address the allegations was Jonathan Ross, who appeared on several TV shows with the comedian and made a controversial joke about Walliams and 15-year-olds at the British Comedy Awards in 2004, which featured in the investigation.
Ross said he was “as horrified” by the allegations about Walliams “and the crimes of Russell Brand as the rest of the nation”. He added in his statement on Wednesday (11 November): “There was a time in my life when I was on friendly terms with both men, and during that period I was genuinely unaware of their conduct.
“My thoughts are with the many, many women who have bravely come forward.” Brand was sentenced to 10 years and six months in prison for rape and sexual assault earlier this week.
Meanwhile, comedian Lucy Beaumont said that while she never worked with Walliams, she became a whistleblowers after hearing from a male television worker who claimed his job involved taking “young girls” who were “definitely” over 16 to Walliams’ dressing room.
“I was worried that these girls were young. What I did was I then tried to contact some of them to check and to ask if they were all right,” she said, adding that she didn’t think she will work in television again because people “lose work” for challenging that kind of behaviour.
Beaumont also revealed that she offered to pay the legal fees of a woman who allegedly signed a non-disclosure agreement relating to Walliams in order to “get her some protection” but she declined her offer.
Richard Osman – who worked on his first-ever job in TV with Walliams – said in the latest episode of his podcast, The Rest is Entertainment, on Wednesday that it’s hard “not to feel some sense of shame about what has happened” as a man in the comedy industry.
“We fell out, not for any exciting reasons, shortly afterwards and I didn’t work with him again,” Osman said of Walliams. “I think it’s hard for any man who worked in television in the 1990s and 2000s to not feel like they failed, to not feel blind, to not feel some sense of shame about what has happened. It’s not a sin of commission, it’s a sin of omission and not understanding you need to create an environment in which everybody felt safe.
“You look back and you think, if you’d started understanding what was going on then and understand that 90s laddy culture was not a natural culture. It was a slightly weird aberration. It’s tough looking back and it’s horrific. I’m delighted to still be around at a time when people are being found out.”
Nish Kumar also gave his thoughts on Walliams on his podcast, Pod Save the UK, with the comic claiming that people in the comedy industry knew Walliams had been booked on shows with a policy that forbade young women from going into his dressing room.
“The thing that we had all heard... [that] the comedy industry knew about David Williams is in the last few years, there were instances of him being booked on shows where the instruction was: no young women to go into his dressing room,” he said.
He went on to call out the “enablers” around Walliams who continued to give him jobs. “If you can't have 50 per cent of the population of the country in a room with a guy, don't f***ing put him on your show,” he said.
“The protection rings that surround them have not been dealt with,” he continued. “And the producers that continue to work with these people continue to work in our industries. Things will start changing when there is accountability for the enablers of these men.”
Fellow comedian and writer Katy Brand shared a lengthy statement to Instagram after the Walliams allegations came to light and Russell Brand was convicted of rape and sexual assault. “I am so glad to see women being listened to, and the men being exposed, rather than simply exposing themselves where it’s not wanted or welcome,” she wrote.
She said that the topic “brings a lot of stuff back for me”, adding: “I was trying to make a career in TV comedy when this lot were at their most powerful. Sometimes I wonder how any of us managed it. My fellow lady comics of the time know what I mean.”
Brand later posted that “producers, execs, former execs” who say they weren’t aware of the allegations against Brand and Walliams’ conduct “isn’t going to cut it”.
In a statement to The Guardian and ITV News, Walliams denied that he was a “sexual predator”, adding: “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.
“And whilst a power imbalance is inevitable when one party is famous, abusing that power is something else entirely and it is something that I never did. I am not a sexual predator… I have not broken the law… I am devastated that some of the women I met ten to twenty years ago have now expressed hurt or anger towards me
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