The end came abruptly for David Walliams’ tenure on Britain’s Got Talent. The comedian and children’s author served as a judge on the ITV reality series for a decade, until vulgar remarks he had allegedly made about certain contestants came to light via The Guardian in November 2022. In one instance, Walliams referred to an elderly contestant as a “c**t” multiple times; in another, he described a female contestant as “the slightly boring girl you meet in the pub that thinks you want to f*** them, but you don’t”. Walliams apologised at the time, stating that the insults were lifted from “private conversations with friends” and “were never intended to be shared”.
Plenty of other celebrities have committed more grievous sins than Walliams and held onto their jobs; it’s perhaps just the rebarbative optics of Walliams’s comments that made his role untenable. (What has seemingly been glossed over amid the outrage is exactly to whom Walliams made these remarks, and why they were not called out at the time.) After the BGT insult furore, Walliams was removed from the judging panel; series bigwig Simon Cowell this week said that Walliams had “decided to take a step back”, with “the final decision” having gone to the show’s two producers. So, on Saturday, BGT returned for its 16th series with Walliams replaced by ex-Strictly Come Dancing judge Bruno Tonioli. The Little Britain star’s departure can be seen as an attempt to detoxify the programme. The truth is, however, BGT’s problems run deeper than a few nasty remarks.
