CAMP DAVID

HE’S KNOWN FOR CAMPING IT UP TO THE CAMERAS BUT HAS ALWAYS BEEN COY ABOUT HIS SEXUALITY. AFTER YEARS OF SPECULATION, MATT CAIN PUTS DAVID WALLIAMS ON THE SPOT AND ASKS, JUST HOW GAY IS HE?

MATT CAIN

PHOTOGRAPHS: LEE BAXTER // FASHION: NICK BYAM

David Walliams flashes me a wry grin. I’ve just reminded him that the first time we met was several years ago, when mutual friends introduced us on a night out because they thought he might be bisexual.

“I wasn’t aware I was being fixed up at the time,” he laughs.

“But there should be a plaque on the wall outside now.”

We joke about how awkward the evening was and try to work out when it happened; we manage to pin it down to 2002, before Walliams filmed the first series of comedy sketch show Little Britain and became a major star. “And it’s all been leading up to this moment,” he jokes.

We’re chatting over lunch in Manchester, where Walliams, 45, is staying while he films a lead role in the TV adaptation of his children’s book, Ratburger. It follows hot on the heels of TV versions of several of his best-sellers and comes just before he returns to his role as a judge in the studio finals of the latest series of Britain’s Got Talent.

It’s a show on which he’s often flirted with male contestants — not to mention Simon Cowell — and built on the camp persona established through several of his Little Britain characters, despite the fact that all his relationships so far, publicly at least, have been with women. But is he genuinely attracted to men? And would he describe himself as bisexual, queer or just plain old straight?

You’re about to do another series of Britain’s Got Talent. Are you looking forward to it?

Yeah. It’s a fun show to do, where you can’t prepare anything. If you wanted to write down lots of funny lines to say to bad people and then reeled them off, it would die a death because it’s about completely being in the moment and just reacting; that’s all you have to do as a judge.