Met Police Open Sexual Offence Investigation Into David Walliams as Institutional Scaffolding Collapses Around Him

London police are investigating allegations of serious sexual offences against the 55-year-old comedian and children's author. His publisher, literary agency, and the BBC have already cut ties.

London's Metropolitan Police have opened a formal investigation into allegations of serious sexual offences involving David Walliams, 55, one of Britain's most commercially successful children's authors and a former judge on ITV's Britain's Got Talent. The investigation follows but is separate from allegations published this week by ITV News and The Guardian, meaning the police probe involves additional accusers beyond those already in the public record.

The two news organisations published their findings on Tuesday after a three-year joint investigation involving interviews with more than 100 people. The allegations span back to 2003 and include claims that Walliams sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl at his London home, groomed teenagers, and harassed young female colleagues. Detective Superintendent Mike Cagney urged anyone affected to come forward. Walliams has denied the allegations. In a letter to ITV and The Guardian prior to publication, he acknowledged an inevitable power imbalance when one party is famous but insisted he never abused it. "I am not a sexual predator … I have not broken the law," he wrote. He lost a High Court bid to block the outlets from naming him, with Justice Matthew Nicklin ruling that an injunction would represent "an exceptionally serious interference" with press freedom. The institutional response has been swift and unambiguous. The BBC pulled all episodes of Little Britain and other shows featuring Walliams. His literary agency, Independent Talent Group, dropped him entirely. His publisher, HarperCollins, had already severed ties last year over separate allegations of harassing female staff, which he also denied. The speed of institutional distancing reflects a post-Brand, post-Savile recalibration in British media — organisations now move to cut exposure before legal outcomes. The timing is notable. The reports landed one day after Russell Brand was sentenced to more than 10 years for rape and sexual assault, a case that has shifted the calculus for British institutions regarding the reputational cost of association with accused figures. The Brand conviction functions as a forcing event: it demonstrated that investigative journalism into celebrity sexual misconduct can survive legal challenge and produce criminal outcomes. The core structural question is about the machinery of access and protection. Walliams occupied a specific nexus — children's entertainment, prime-time television, literary celebrity — that generated enormous commercial value for publishers, broadcasters, and talent agencies. His books reportedly sold more than 50 million copies. That commercial gravity creates institutional incentives to manage rather than investigate complaints. Whether those incentives operated here is now a matter for police and, potentially, courts. What matters going forward is whether the investigation produces charges and whether additional accusers emerge in response to the Met's public call. The pattern across similar cases — Savile, Brand, and now potentially Walliams — suggests that public investigation acts as a signal that enables previously silenced complainants to come forward, which in turn determines whether isolated allegations aggregate into a prosecutable pattern.