David Walliams doesn’t like Simon Cowell and makes no effort to hide it. Since being forced out as a judge of Britain’s Got Talent in 2022 – when offensive comments Walliams made about contestants were leaked – the comic has made plain his disdain for the talent show supremo.
Taking the stage at a marketing jamboree this week, Walliams was asked about winning four National Television Awards for best TV judge. “Simon Cowell never won once. That’s all he does is judging,” he said on Tuesday. “It was a tiny part of my career. For him, it was the focus and he still couldn’t win it.”
Walliams has certainly had a more varied career – Little Britain and Come Fly With Me on TV, then becoming one of the UK’s most popular children’s authors with the Gangsta Granny series, the odd film cameo – but he has become, according to one industry source, a pariah for TV and film bosses since the Britain’s Got Talent scandal. His TV career, says the insider, has “imploded”.
Hence his bitterness. Walliams, 53, has pushed the idea that Cowell, 65, is a talentless and overcritical person of late. On the podcast he co-hosts with comedy partner Matt Lucas, Walliams and his mother Kathleen complained that she had once baked a cake for Cowell but he dismissed it for being dry. “I think he can’t do anything without judging,” Walliams said on Making A Scene. “Bit of a downer, isn’t it?”
Sometimes Walliams is even more blunt. When asked about how he came up with characters for his children’s books on This Morning last year, he replied: “Whenever I’m trying to think of an evil villain I always think: ‘What would Simon Cowell do?’” Walliams has also named his dog Eric the same name as Cowell’s 11-year-old son, although he has claimed that it is a tribute to Eric Morecambe. The pair are said to no longer be on speaking terms – having previously been friends and regular dining companions – with Cowell even committing the most awful celebrity snub: unfollowing Walliams on Instagram.
Those who know and like Walliams do not understand why he continues to take potshots at Cowell. “I can totally get why David would have beef with Simon, if he never called to say ‘Thank you’ or whatever, but that’s showbusiness,” says an industry source who knows both men well. “I don’t know why David feels the need to speak out. He’s very successful.”
The rupture in their relationship – which began on-screen after Cowell appointed the Little Britain star as a Britain’s Got Talent judge in 2012 – came when recorded but unbroadcast comments by Walliams about contestants from a recording in January 2020 came to light. One contestant, a pensioner who made a mild jibe about Walliams before his unsuccessful audition, was described by Walliams as a “c___” three times after he walked off stage.
In another incident, Walliams made lewd comments about a woman who auditioned on the same show. “She’s like the slightly boring girl you meet in the pub that thinks you want to f___ them, but you don’t,” he remarked. “It’s the last thing on your mind, but she’s like: ‘Yep, I bet you do!’ ‘No I don’t!’ I had a bit of a b____, but now it’s going, it’s now shrivelled up inside my body.”
When the comments were published Piers Morgan, a friend of Cowell’s and a former Britain’s Got Talent judge himself, said that they were the “tip of the iceberg” and that “Walliams is one of the nastiest frauds on TV”. Morgan has since described Walliams as a “duplicitous little berk”.
Walliams immediately apologised after The Guardian published the transcripts, thought to have been leaked by an unhappy production worker, in November 2022 and said that the “disrespectful comments” were “never intended to be shared”. The self-flagellation was not enough to save his £1 million-a-year primetime role, however, and he stood down within days. He was replaced by the erstwhile Strictly Come Dancing judge Bruno Tonioli.
Rather than lick his wounds and feel sorry for himself, Walliams went on the attack and, in October 2023, sued Fremantle, the production company behind the long-running talent show, for breaching his privacy and sought as much as £10 million in damages. A 21-page writ laid bare how bad the damage had been for Walliams, with his lawyers saying that he had had only one new work booking since the scandal erupted and that he had an invitation to read at the Commonwealth Writing Competition with the Queen rescinded. There had been “catastrophic results for his reputation and career”, they claimed, with Walliams fighting “a return of severe depression, including active suicidal thoughts”.
Walliams’s earnings after his effective sacking plummeted from £3.7 million in 2022 to a little over £100,000 in the first five months of 2023, according to the claim, and the comic’s “ability to perform” was affected.
He feels vulnerable on entering a studio because he fears that what he says and does in that setting may be recorded and leaked without his consent,” the claim said. “Because of the constant concern that any unguarded comments could be used against him, he has lost the ability to be spontaneous or edgy – in short, to be funny. His inability to perform in this, his signature manner, has caused him further acute distress, because he has lost an important part of his personal and professional identity.” The case was eventually settled for a seven-figure sum, but way below the original £10 million he sought.
Is it fair to say that the episode has damaged Walliams’s future TV prospects? “I think damaged is probably the wrong word. It’s imploded,” says the source. “He’s not on TV now, is he?” It is notable that Walliams has not had a big gig on the small screen since his fall from grace.
Though the leaked comments were the straw that broke the camel’s back, there has long been talk that Cowell – the driving force behind so many talent shows – had long since tired of Walliams.
For the best part of a decade on Britain’s Got Talent, Walliams had adopted a high-camp persona in which he affected being in love with the brooding Cowell, whom he dubbed “My Simon”. After the misfires of David Hasselhoff and Michael McIntyre as judges, it originally proved popular and played on public rumours of both Walliams and Cowell’s sexuality. Some in the entertainment world say this act started to grate – especially after Cowell had a son with his partner, Lauren Silverman, in 2021 — and that Walliams got too big for his boots.
“Simon Cowell’s the big boss, without him there wouldn’t be the show. Everyone comes along and they can get ideas above their station. By that I don’t mean David is not a great guy, because he is, and he’s been around for a long time, but I think he began to think he was bigger than Britain’s Got Talent,” says the friend of both men.
“There’s a boundary you don’t cross. You know when you can take the p— out of your boss and you know when you can’t. You know when you can criticise your boss’s bossing, or have to laugh at his joke. David misjudged it. His big mistake was misreading the situation with Britain’s Got Talent and Simon. He should have played the game better.”
Although he is a much-diminished force from his X Factor heyday – when he bestrode Saturday primetime like a colossus – Cowell is still an almost uniquely powerful executive and is able to get commissions based on his reputation alone. Britain’s Got Talent – sans Walliams – is in the middle of its 18th series, while Cowell will soon make his first foray onto Netflix with Midas Touch, in which he seeks to put together a new boy band.
At present, the only game Walliams seems to want to play is Cowell-bashing. If he is serious about making a TV comeback he may have to do more than that. He may even need to make friends again.
