It was one of the nation’s most-watched Saturday night shows – and he one of its star judges. So when David Walliams invited a teenage fan back to his dressing room, behind the scenes on the set of Britain’s Got Talent, to be a VIP guest, it was an offer she could hardly refuse.
It was May 2015, at the semi-finals of that year’s competition, and the 17-year-old happily posed for selfies with Walliams, then 44, as she and her teenage friend enjoyed backstage cupcakes and fizzy drinks with the comedian and best-selling author.
For the youngster, the attention she received that day was flattering. After all, what young teen wouldn’t want to be noticed by Walliams among the hordes of other BGT fans in the audience?
But even more surprisingly, given the near 30-year age gap, that day marked the start of a bizarre and enduring friendship between the young woman and the BGT judge that lasted a full year.
He offered to help her with her career ambitions, phoned her on her 18th birthday, and introduced her to his mother and sister.
She even spent a night at his £3.5million London home.
But today – and, indeed, long before the revelations emerged last week about Walliams being dropped by his publisher HarperCollins over alleged inappropriate behaviour with young women – she sees their whole friendship very differently.
Five years on, in 2020, the woman – who we are choosing not to name – made a series of social media posts about the time she spent hanging out with Walliams.
David Walliams was a judge on hit Saturday night show Britain’s Got Talent for around ten years
The comedian and children’s book writer held an odd, year-long relationship with a teenage fan
She posted a photograph of herself and three other young women, taken backstage at BGT during their semi-final visit to Walliams’s dressing room. But the caption was far from a breathless appreciation of the star by a devoted fan.
‘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.’
In another public post, the woman shared a picture of Walliams standing in a backstage corridor of the ITV studios, and told how he would text her ‘quite a bit’.
‘So many people knew about girls getting invited into this particular judge’s dressing room,’ the woman wrote in another post, which appeared on social media the same year.
At the time, her posts went unreported. Walliams was still a judge on Simon Cowell’s prime-time talent show, and was winning plaudits for his best-selling children’s books, including Gangsta Granny and Billionaire Boy.
But last week, allegations emerged – which are strongly denied by Walliams – that he behaved inappropriately towards young women working for HarperCollins, the firm which publishes those books.
It will no longer release any more new titles by Walliams.
Reportedly, that decision was made after he was accused of ‘harassing’ junior female employees there, with one reportedly receiving a five-figure payout and later leaving the company.
It is worth making clear that the young woman we are describing here, who posted online about her friendship with Walliams, has not made similar allegations of wrongdoing against him.
But with the benefit of hindsight, The Mail on Sunday understands that she increasingly began to feel that the fact he wanted to hang out with a significantly younger fan was inappropriate.
The woman’s friendship with Walliams began some three months before the BGT semi-final in 2015 when she applied for tickets to one of the show’s auditions in Birmingham via an online forum.
Once she arrived for the recording at the city’s Hippodrome theatre, she was moved to the front of the audience – just a few feet behind Walliams and his fellow judges, Simon Cowell, Alesha Dixon and Amanda Holden.
The woman and Walliams began chatting and, within hours, the former Little Britain star had sought her out on Twitter and started following her, in a move that left the star-struck teen feeling ‘giddy’ and ‘almost fainting’.
But the best, as she then saw it, was yet to come.
Walliams later contacted her on Twitter to ask her to be a guest at the semi-final of the show, which would be recorded at ITV’s Fountain Studios in Wembley on May 26, 2015. He told her to email his personal assistant, whom he said would make the necessary arrangements for the trip.
The woman is understood to have initially thought he was joking, but when she realised the offer was genuine she travelled with a friend to London from their home, 100 miles away, booking into a budget hotel so they could stay overnight. A source said: ‘She told her friends straight away and word soon got round and her invitation became the talk among the friendship group.
‘She couldn’t believe she had stood out like that. They were too young to drink so David offered them any soft drinks they wanted.
‘For the girls it was the most perfect evening. The odd producer would go in and have a chat with everyone.’
That night, the woman confided to David that she wanted to become a television producer, so he suggested she write a letter to his production company, King Bert, to get work experience.
A week later, when she had not sent off an application, Walliams messaged her on social media to ask for her mobile phone number so he could chase her up to send it. They were in regular contact from then on, the friend said.
Walliams invited her back to Birmingham’s BGT auditions in October 2015, and to visit him before the recording at the city’s five-star Hotel du Vin where he was staying.
She took a male friend, and Walliams treated them to burgers and chips while he was getting his make-up done.
Sources close to the woman say Walliams told jokes, and after a chocolate ice-cream dessert, they all made their way to the Hippodrome where the woman took selfies of them in the back of the taxi.
The following month, he invited her to the New Alexandra Theatre in Birmingham, which was staging his best-selling children’s book Gangsta Granny.
Then, in December, Walliams asked for the woman’s address so he could send her a Christmas card that featured a picture of him and his son, Alf, now 12, from his marriage to model Lara Stone, which had ended earlier that year.
The card was a cartoon, depicting a big polar bear and a smaller one, captioned ‘Alfred Bear and Papa Bear’.
The woman later shared an image of the card on social media, writing alongside it: ‘This is the first Christmas card he sent me.’ Inside the card was a picture of David kissing his son.
On her 18th birthday, the friend recalls that Walliams surprised her with a phone call where he sang his own rendition of Happy Birthday. Indeed, their friendship was so strong that the woman was introduced to Walliams’s mum Kathleen and sister Julie, she later wrote online.
In February 2016, she and a friend spent the night at his London home, Supernova Heights, which he bought from Oasis frontman Noel Gallagher in 2005. They ate ravioli and took a sightseeing trip to Buckingham Palace.
She was even treated to a spa afternoon at the luxurious Bulgari hotel in Knightsbridge, where she opted to have her eyebrows and nails done.
She later posted a picture of herself on a relaxation bed, writing alongside it: ‘And guess who paid for the spa day?’ The day was capped off with a pizza and movie night at home, where Walliams chose Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror classic The Shining.
The friendship fizzled out naturally during 2016. But by 2020, the woman had begun to look back on it differently and made the series of posts on social media.
The woman’s friends have suggested the relationship may have been born of loneliness on Walliams’s part. In 2015, he and Stone separated and were granted a quickie divorce that September, citing ‘unreasonable behaviour’ on Stone’s part – the same year as the friendship began.
But whatever the reason, it has left the woman still feeling uncomfortable all these years later.
Last week, in response to the HarperCollins claims, Walliams’s agent said: ‘David has never been informed of any allegations raised against him by HarperCollins. He was not party to any investigation or given any opportunity to answer questions.
‘David strongly denies that he has behaved inappropriately and is taking legal advice.’
A spokesman for Talkback Thames, the production company for Britain’s Got Talent, said: ‘There is no suggestion of any impropriety on behalf of any of the Talkback Thames team. To insinuate otherwise would be both false and defamatory.’
Representatives for Mr Walliams were contacted for comment.
