David Walliams Accused of Grooming Minors: BBC Pulls Content, Publisher Already Dropped Him

A joint Guardian-ITV investigation alleges the children's author groomed teenage fans and sexually assaulted a 15-year-old. The BBC is pulling his programmes; HarperCollins dropped him last year.

David Walliams, the 55-year-old British comedian and children's author, faces allegations of grooming teenage fans and sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl, according to a joint investigation by The Guardian and ITV News published Tuesday. Multiple women gave firsthand accounts of alleged misconduct spanning a period roughly 10 to 20 years ago. Walliams denied targeting teenagers and using his fame to manipulate them into sex, calling his behaviour "thoughtless" while insisting he is "not a sexual predator" and has "not broken the law."

The allegations are specific. A woman identified as "Jade" said Walliams, then 36, contacted her through a social media page showing her age as 15 and invited her to his house in 2007, accusing him of sexual assault and grooming. His lawyers denied sexual contact with her. A woman identified as "Alex" said she first met Walliams when she was 15 and he was 32, alleging their first sexual contact occurred when she was 17 and he was 34. "I think I was groomed, 100 percent," she told The Guardian. Under UK law, it is illegal for someone over 18 to intentionally communicate with a child under 16 for a sexual purpose. Walliams's lawyers said he believed Alex was 18. The institutional response has been swift and decisive. The BBC announced it would remove some programmes and conduct a review of "all material featuring and written by David Walliams on our platforms." HarperCollins had already dropped him last year after separate accusations of harassing young female colleagues, which he also denied. His books have been translated into more than 50 languages and reportedly sold 50 million copies — a commercial empire now in rapid disassembly. Walliams attempted to prevent the investigation from going public. He sought a High Court injunction to block ITV News and The Guardian from identifying him, but a judge rejected the application last week. A summary of the court judgement stated that some of the alleged conduct could amount to criminal offences if proven. His lawyer, Sara Mansoori, told the court he had made two attempts on his life after receiving the journalists' letters and was admitted to hospital for psychiatric care last month. The structural pattern here is familiar and worth naming plainly. A celebrity with enormous access to minors — through children's books, television appearances, and the parasocial trust those create — allegedly used that access and fame asymmetry to target teenage fans. The institutions that profited from that fame for decades — the BBC, HarperCollins, ITV's "Britain's Got Talent" — are now severing ties only after investigative journalism forced their hand. Walliams left "Britain's Got Talent" in 2022 after apologising for "disrespectful comments" about contestants, a departure that now looks like an early tremor. The legal question remains open. No criminal charges have been filed, and the court summary's careful phrasing — "could amount to criminal offences if proven" — signals the gap between allegation and prosecution. The women are identified only by first names, and the defence rests partly on disputed knowledge of ages. Whether police investigate will depend on whether complainants come forward through formal channels. What is not in dispute is the scale of institutional failure. Walliams authored more than 40 children's books. He was a fixture on primetime family television. The machinery that made him a trusted figure in children's culture operated for two decades without apparent safeguards against the very risks his position created.