David Walliams has been named as the public figure at the centre of numerous allegations of sexual misconduct.
Last month, it was reported that a “well-known individual” – referred to in court simply as PPT – had been seeking a legal injunction to prevent The Guardian and the news production company ITN from publishing allegations about him.
These accusations included what The Guardian described as “inappropriate and exploitative sexual activities with girls and young women”. PPT’s legal team had previously denied that he ever used “his power and position as a celebrity to contact and forge relationships with young women and teenagers to try to have sex with them”.
They also argued that the publication of these claims could place him at a high risk of suicide, stating that he was still “seriously ill” after two previous attempts on his life in recent months.
Last week, this request for an injunction was denied, and on Tuesday afternoon, ITV published allegations from multiple women alleging that Walliams “groomed” them as teenagers.
One woman has also accused him of “sexual assaulting” her when she was a teenager, after they first made contact on the social media site MySpace in 2007, when she was 15 and he was in his mid-30s.
Another, as outlined in The Guardian, claims she met him at a Little Britain fan event in 2004, when she was also aged 15, with the pair striking up a relationship that she said had turned sexual by the time she was .
The reporting includes accounts of alleged “inappropriate conduct” and “sexual harassment” behind the scenes of Britain’s Got Talent, where he served as a judge for 10 years, and at his former publisher, HarperCollins.
David Walliams arriving at Britain’s Got Talent auditions in 2013
ITV’s reporting also confirmed that Walliams had attempted to block the allegations detailed in the three-year investigation with an injunction, but was unsuccessful.
Walliams has denied all of the allegations against him, including any criminal behaviour.
“Looking back, I realise that at times I behaved thoughtlessly towards other people I had casual sexual relationships with,” he said in a statement. “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 10 to 20 years ago have now expressed hurt or anger towards me.”
On the same day the injunction was confirmed to have been turned down, it was reported that a zone at the theme park Alton Towers inspired by Walliams’ children’s books was being “permanently closed”.
In December, it was reported that the publisher HarperCollins UK – with whom the former Britain’s Got Talent judge had previously collaborated on more than 20 children’s books – had “decided not to publish any new titles by David Walliams”.
“HarperCollins takes employee well-being extremely seriously and has processes in place for reporting and investigating concerns,” a spokesperson said at the time, while declining to comment any more specifically on “internal matters”.
At the time, Walliams’ 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.”
Since then, as recently as September 2026, HarperCollins confirmed it had dropped Walliams’ backlist, meaning it would be phasing out his past titles.