Comedian Lucy Beaumont has revealed that she was among the whistleblowers who alerted The Guardian to concerns about David Walliams.
The Celebrity Traitors star said she decided to highlight concerns about Mr Walliams’s behaviour after a junior television worker shared troubling information with her about the star’s alleged conduct around teenage girls.
The former Britain’s Got Talent judge, 55, was identified on Tuesday as the celebrity behind a failed injunction attempt to suppress reporting of sexual misconduct allegations against him, following a joint three-year investigation by The Guardian and ITV News.
The allegations, which Mr Walliams denies, date back to 2003 and involve multiple women, some of whom were teenagers at the time.
Ms Beaumont, 43, told Sky News that about three years ago, a young crew member on their second television job approached her with concerns about what they had witnessed while working on a programme featuring Mr Walliams.
Ms Beaumont said: “I don’t know Walliams, I haven’t worked with him but, bizarrely, it’s been a really strange day for me because, about three years ago, a young person – and it was their first job on TV – worked on a show he was on and the next show that they worked on was with me.
“They took me aside and said, ‘I need to tell somebody something,’ and confided in me.”
The young worker alleged they had to escort girls that were “definitely” older than 16 to Mr Walliams’ dressing room, with Ms Beaumont adding: “He felt they were vulnerable.”
The comedian went on: “I did as much as I could do privately. Whenever I’ve heard a rumour about anyone, I’ve done everything I can. There’s only so much you can do. I’m not the police. Nothing seems to be illegal.
“But I was really worried, and I was one of the whistleblowers. I was one of the people to let The Guardian know.”
Ms Beaumont claimed she had also reached out directly to one of Mr Walliams’s alleged victims, offering financial assistance with legal costs after becoming “really worried about her.”
The stand-up added that she feared the alleged victim was “going to take her own life” because of the alleged ordeal.
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“I offered to pay legal fees to try and get her some protection, and I’m not saying necessarily that what she said was true, but I wanted to help her because it was a world that she was really out of her depth with, and she, I believe, had signed an NDA,” Ms Beaumont continued.
The woman ultimately turned down Ms Beaumont’s offer of support, the comedian said, explaining that the alleged victim felt she had been silenced and was concerned that confiding in others would place a legal burden on them too.
“People are saying, ‘Why tell journalists?’ There’s no HR department in TV. There’s no proper duty of care. There’s no social services that you deal with, and it’s partly because the industry is very well-managed,” Ms Beaumont said.
“These things slip through the net because, I think, there will be now, but there hasn’t been a process that you can deal with.”
The Taskmaster star went on to suggest that she doesn’t think she’ll work on telly again after publicly declaring herself as a whistleblower against Mr Walliams.
“The reason high-profile people are not saying anything is because they lose work, because you’re seen that you might be a trouble causer,” she said.
Mr Walliams has denied all the allegations against him. In a statement issued to The Guardian and ITV News, he said: “Looking back, I realise that at times I behaved thoughtlessly towards other people I had casual sexual relationships with.
“I realise I did not always take people’s feelings properly into account. That is something I regret.”
He continued: “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.”
He added: “I am not a sexual predator. 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.”
His legal team had sought a permanent injunction to prevent the allegations being published, arguing that reporting them could cause irreparable harm to his mental health.
The court rejected that bid, and it is believed an appeal was not lodged by the court’s deadline.
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