David Walliams Fought in Court to Keep These Allegations Secret — Then Two Women Revealed How Old They Were When He First Got in Touch

In January 2004, a 15-year-old girl picked up the pink phone in her bedroom and heard a voice she knew from television.

“Hi Alex, it’s David Walliams off the telly!”

Days earlier, she had queued with her mum at the Virgin Megastore in London’s Piccadilly, where Walliams and Matt Lucas were signing autographs dressed as Lou and Andy from Little Britain. She had handed him comedy sketches she had written, with her contact details tucked inside. When the call ended — at least an hour later, she says — she grabbed lined paper and wrote across the top: “David Walliams phoned me!!”

She still has those pages. On Tuesday, after weeks of legal battles fought behind a court-ordered code name, the world finally learned whose voice was on the other end of the line — and why the man it belonged to had fought so hard to keep her story from being told.

The Star Known Only as “PPT”

For weeks, British newspapers could refer to him only by three letters. A celebrity identified in court papers as “PPT” had gone to the High Court to stop ITV News and the Guardian from publishing the results of a joint investigation that had run for more than three years.

His lawyers’ case rested on one stark argument: that publication could cost him his life. The court heard that Walliams, 55, had made two attempts to take his own life after the allegations were put to him in May, and that the week before the hearing he had been sectioned under the Mental Health Act. His barrister, Sara Mansoori KC, told the court he would try again if the stories were published, and asked for a lifelong injunction.

Mr Justice Nicklin accepted the risk was “genuine and grave.” But he ruled the investigation “concerns matters of substantial public interest,” and that gagging it would be “an exceptionally serious interference” with press freedom — one that would also stop the women “communicating their experiences to the public.” Walliams’ lawyers confirmed on Monday they would not appeal. By Tuesday morning, his name was everywhere.

He denies all of it. “I am not a sexual predator,” he wrote in a personal letter to the journalists. “I have not broken the law, but I am devastated that some of the women I met 10 to 20 years ago have now expressed hurt or anger towards me.”

“I Was Only a 15-Year-Old”

The Guardian says it heard from 30 sources with first-hand accounts. Two of the women say they were 15 when the Little Britain star first got in touch.

Alex says the calls kept coming after that first night, along with a postcard of Lou and Andy with a heart drawn on it: “Good luck with your exams and keep writing. David x.” By the time she was 17, she told ITV News, his emails had turned to compliments about her photos, then, she says, requests for more revealing ones — which Walliams says he does not recall and does not believe he made. She says they had sex at his home in Belsize Park when she was 17 and he was 34. “I think I was groomed. 100%,” she said. Walliams denies grooming her, says he believed she was 18, and says he is “mortified to learn” their “brief, consensual relationship has caused her sadness.”

The second woman, Jade, says Walliams messaged her on MySpace in 2007, when her profile showed she was 15. She describes a meeting in Soho, a kiss in an alleyway and a drive in his Aston Martin to his house, where she says he touched her before she pulled away. “I was only a 15-year-old,” she said. She told ITV News he replied that they should wait until she was 16. Walliams “strongly denies” any sexual contact with her.

Other women describe being contacted out of the blue as teenage models, invited to his home or his Britain’s Got Talent dressing room. One, Lilly Creightmore, who was 18 when he first wrote to her, said he would “plead with me to share a bed with him.” Walliams denies acting inappropriately and says he did not target anyone for being young or vulnerable.

“You Couldn’t Go by Yourself”

The second turn in the investigation came from inside the businesses that made him rich.

Former HarperCollins staff told ITV News that young women at the publisher — which sold more than 26 million of his books in the UK alone — developed their own rules around their star author. “There was an agreement — if you went to his house you had to go in a pair. You couldn’t go by yourself,” said one, identified as Helen. Walliams admits he had a sexual relationship with a 2017 intern but denies harassing anyone at the company. HarperCollins ended its 18-year relationship with him in December 2025 and stopped publishing his back catalogue this September.

At Britain’s Got Talent, a former junior staffer said Walliams handed him an envelope with £300 and a signed card at the end of a series — and that a senior colleague joked, “there’s your hush money.” Walliams calls that a “smear” and says he tipped staff every year. The show’s producer, Fremantle, and broadcaster ITV said they had received no complaints about him.

And there was a punchline hiding in plain sight. At the 2004 British Comedy Awards, host Jonathan Ross told a national audience the awards were “15 years old” — “and like all 15-year-olds, it’s drunk, it’s unpredictable and it’s probably going home with David Walliams.” ITV News and the Guardian say Ross did not write the joke; he only delivered it.

Gone by Teatime

The fallout came fast. Within hours, the BBC said it was removing Little Britain, Come Fly With Me and other programmes from its platforms while it reviews everything featuring or written by Walliams. Independent Talent Group, his literary agency for nearly two decades, told Deadline, “We are no longer representing him in any capacity.” The Labour Party suspended his membership, the BBC reported.

Walliams remains in a psychiatric hospital, according to the Guardian.

Jade, now a mother of three, says the hardest part is that he never quite goes away. She hears his voice in the children’s shows her kids watch and has told her son’s teacher he cannot read Walliams’ books.

“I feel like I can’t escape him,” she said. On Tuesday, nearly two decades after a pink phone rang in a teenager’s bedroom, she and the other women were finally allowed to say why.

If you are affected by this story: in the UK, Samaritans can be reached free on 116 123. In the US, call or text 988.