David Walliams

David Walliams (born David Williams, August 20, 1971) is a British comedy actor, best known for his partnership with Matt Lucas in the sketch show Little Britain.

Biography

Born to Peter (a London Transport engineer) and Kathleen Williams (a lab technician) Walliams was raised at Banstead in the county of Surrey. He has a sister named Julie, and two nephews, named Ben and Joe.

Walliams was educated at Reigate Grammar School where he was a contemporary of Robert Shearman. Walliams was a member of the National Youth Theatre where he met comedy partner Lucas, and later studied Drama at Bristol University, where he was in the year below Simon Pegg.

Walliams is a professional name, for Equity purposes. This was sent up in Rock Profile, in which Robbie Williams is always referred to as 'Robbie Walliams'.

On the 4th of July 2006 David successfully swam the English Channel to raise money for Sport Relief.

Career

One of Walliams' earliest TV appearances was as "The Lift" on the first series of the CBBC gameshow Incredible Games in 1994.

David appeared in the video of the Fat Les song Vindaloo, the unofficial anthem for the England national football team at the 1998 FIFA World Cup.

Together with The League of Gentlemen's Mark Gatiss, he wrote and appeared in Doctor Who parodies The Pitch of Fear, The Web of Caves and The Kidnappers for BBC2's "Doctor Who Night" in 1999. He later performed in the Big Finish Productions Doctor Who audio play Phantasmagoria, written by Gatiss.

In 2000 he played Jake Plaskow in the BBC's Attachments, set in an internet start-up company.

He appeared in an episode of Black Books in which he complained about getting second-hand smoke from the main character, who waved him off saying, "Forget about it, you can buy me a drink sometime."

In 2003 he appeared in an episode of EastEnders. He also appeared in the first episode of Agatha Christie's Marple.

In 2006 he will make appearances in the movies A Cock and Bull Story and Angels & Virgins

Walliams and Lucas

He and Lucas have also appeared as grotesque caricatures of various rock musicians in the series Rock Profile, and in the spoof documentary series Sir Bernard's Stately Homes.

Walliams and Lucas recently starred together in the film clip for the Pet Shop Boys new single "I'm with Stupid", in which the two are apparently auditioning their version of the song's film clip for Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, who are tied up and appear to be hostages.

Among the characters played by Walliams in Little Britain are Emily Howard, the "rubbish transvestite", the mad Scottish hotel owner, Ray McCooney, and Sebastian Love, a camp aide (or aide de camp) to the Prime Minister, on whom he has a huge crush.

As of 2006 he will be appearing in a tour of a stage show of Little Britain, Little Britain Live.

Personal life

There are many rumours that Walliams is bisexual. However in an interview with Queerday,^*, Walliams stated that life would be easier if he were attracted to men - implying that he is not.

He lives in Belsize Park, North West London in a house called "Supernova Heights" - Noel Gallagher's former home, which he bought for £3.25M from Davinia Taylor and her ex-husband. ^*

Swimming the English Channel

On 4 July 2006 he swam the English Channel for the charity Sport Relief (part of Comic Relief). BBC report Times Online report

He completed the swim in 10 hours and 34 minutes, one of the top 50 recorded times, and in the process raised over £1,000,000 in donations.

It took one year of training to prepare for the swim. The traning had to coincide with Walliams' and Lucas's Little Britain tour so every morning before performing he had to complete several hours of training before performing on stage in the evening. Walliams first swam from Portsmouth to the Isle Of Wight in around 2 hours and he also completed an eight hour swim off the coast of Croatia before embarking on the cross-channel attempt. Walliams has insisted that prior to his challenge he had never taken part in any sport.^*

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