The TV presenter Jonathan Ross has said he is “as horrified by the revelations about David Walliams and the crimes of Russell Brand as the rest of the nation”, adding that he was “genuinely unaware of their conduct” despite making a joke about a 15-year-old “going home” with Walliams at the British Comedy Awards in 2004.
Walliams, one of Britain’s best-known television personalities and top-selling children’s authors, has been accused by several women of using his power and celebrity status to prey on young women and teenagers for sex.
The Guardian and ITV News published the allegations, which were the subject of a three-year joint investigation, after a court rejected a legal attempt by Walliams aimed at preventing publication. Walliams, 55, denies any wrongdoing.
Ross said at the awards in 2004: “The comedy awards is 15 years old – 15 years old! And like most 15-year-olds, it’s drunk, it’s unpredictable and it’s probably going home with David Walliams.”
In a statement, Ross said: “I recognise how deeply shocking it is to revisit footage of a joke delivered by me at the Comedy Awards in 2004, in which I make light of the notion of Walliams going home with a 15-year-old.
“This joke was submitted to me by the Comedy Awards script-writing team, and I believed that the punchline was a reference to the fact he had publicly dated younger women, exaggerated for comic effect. It is also a tasteless joke that I would not dream of making today about anyone, but that is beside the point.
“Had I had any reason to suspect that it might be referring to actual events, I would not only have refused to use it, but I would not have felt comfortable continuing a personal or professional relationship with him. I also like to think that I would have acted upon that knowledge.”
The culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, said the claims were the “latest in a long line of reported abuses of power”.
She promised to meet senior media and entertainment industry members to “draw a line in the sand”.
“A decade and a half on from the revelations about Jimmy Savile, and 10 years on from the #MeToo movement, we must finally take meaningful steps to end abuse and harassment in sectors where the power imbalances are huge and careers are built on contacts and reputation,” she said.
Walliams has been dropped by his literary agency, Independent Talent Group, which said it was “deeply disturbed the allegations”, while Fremantle UK, the production company behind Britain’s Got Talent, said it is “disturbed and concerned” at the allegations. Walliams was a judge on the show from 2012 to 2022.
Sky has announced it will no longer hold the licence for Fing!, a film written by and starring Walliams, which was expected to be released next year.
The BBC is removing some programmes, including Little Britain, while it reviews “all material featuring and written by David Walliams on our platforms”, a spokesperson has said.
The Labour MP and former safeguarding minister Jess Phillips said she thought it was important that the law intervened to stop the allegations being silenced. She told Times Radio: “It would have been a terrible precedent, and every powerful man in the public eye and outside of the public eye would have used this injunction tactic in the future.”
Downing Street has described the allegations as “deeply troubling”, and Walliams’s Labour party membership has been suspended.
Walliams remains in a psychiatric hospital. In a personal letter written to Guardian and ITV News journalists denying the allegations and detailing their impact on his mental health, he wrote: “Looking back, 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. I have not broken the law, but I am devastated that some of the women I met 10-20 years ago have now expressed hurt or anger towards me.”
Walliams’s lawyers said he also denied the allegations of sexual harassment and inappropriate behaviour in the workplace.
