British comedian and bestselling children’s author David Walliams has been named as the high-profile figure who tried to stop allegations of sexual misconduct against him from being published, after the High Court in London rejected his bid for an injunction.
The Guardian and ITV News identified Walliams on Tuesday, after a deadline for him to appeal against the ruling passed on Monday. The two media groups said multiple women had accused him of abusing his “power and position as a celebrity to prey on them for sexual purposes when they were teenagers or young women”.
Walliams denies the allegations. In a letter to the investigating journalists, he wrote: “I realise that at times I behaved thoughtlessly towards other people I had casual sexual relationships with … And whilst a power imbalance is inevitable when one party is famous, abusing that power is something else entirely and it is something I never did.” He added: “I am not a sexual predator.”
The High Court rejected his injunction application on 3 November. His lawyers had argued that publication should be blocked because he would be highly likely to take his own life if the allegations were revealed, relying on his right to life and his right to freedom from inhuman or degrading treatment. The court did not name him at the time.
Judge Matthew Nicklin found that publishing the allegations would pose a risk to Walliams’ life, but that suicide was not inevitable. He said the duty to protect him had been assumed by the mental health services looking after him, rather than by the court. The court also noted that Walliams had a “serious and longstanding psychiatric vulnerability and an elevated underlying risk of suicide, independently of the proposed publications”.
His lawyers told the court that after he was approached for a response in May, ahead of publication, he expressed a desire to kill himself, and that he attempted to do so in July. They said shame arising from deep-rooted childhood trauma and the fear of “trial by media” lay behind the risk.
Editors and media lawyers had warned that granting an injunction on those grounds would have set a worrying precedent for free speech. Similar requests in the past have generally been based on privacy rights rather than a risk to life.
Walliams first found fame on British television alongside Matt Lucas in the early 2000s with the sketch series “Little Britain”, before becoming one of Britain’s most successful children’s authors, with books including “The Boy in the Dress” and “Gangsta Granny”. He has sold more than 60 million books. He later became a judge on “Britain’s Got Talent”, but left in 2022 after remarks he made about contestants were leaked, and he apologised for “disrespectful comments”.
His publisher, HarperCollins UK, dropped him in December 2025 after the Daily Telegraph reported that the firm had investigated allegations of harassment of some of its junior female employees. “After careful consideration, and under the leadership of its new CEO, HarperCollins UK has decided not to publish any new titles by David Walliams,” the publisher said at the time. A spokesperson for Walliams said then that he strongly denied behaving inappropriately and that HarperCollins had never informed him of the allegations.
The allegations reported by the Guardian and ITV News have not been independently verified by Reuters, and no charges have been brought against Walliams.
Sources: Reuters, “UK children’s author Walliams named as subject of sexual allegations by media”, 10 November 2026 — https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/uk-childrens-author-walliams-named-subject-sexual-allegations-by-media-2026-11-10/ ; The Guardian; ITV News.
