The former judge quit Britain’s Got Talent in 2022

man standing in white suit with black bowtie

David Walliams hasn’t been on Britain’s Got Talent for a couple of years now, and hasn’t appeared on TV very much at all either, with the exception of a 2023 Comic Relief special that left fans divided.

david walliams 7© ITV
David Walliams was a judge on Britain’s Got Talent between 2012 and 2022

However, he remains incredibly active on social media through an Instagram account run by his team and he continues to make public appearances. So, what happened, and what has he been up to?

Why did David Walliams leave BGT?

Though the Little Britain star has not publicly discussed the reason why he resigned from his role as a judge on the hit ITV talent show, it is widely believed that it is related to the incident surrounding “disrespectful” comments David made about a contestant in 2020.

In November 2022, a leaked transcript was published in The Guardian that showed David making explicit and expletive comments about two contestants who had been auditioning on the show. Shortly afterwards, it was announced that Strictly star Bruno Tonioli was replacing him.

amanda david walliams bgt judges© Getty Images
David Walliams resigned from the show following the leak of the transcript

David released a statement apologising for the remarks, saying: “I would like to apologise to the people I made disrespectful comments about during breaks in filming for Britain’s Got Talent in 2020…”

He continued: “These were private conversations and – like most conversations with friends – were never intended to be shared. Nevertheless, I am sorry.”

He later sued production company Fremantle for the misuse of private information and for breaching data laws, but the lawsuit came to an “amicable resolution”, reported the PA news agency.

David Walliams’ feud with Simon Cowell

Though he judged on the show alongside Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden – who spoke out in David’s defence when the transcript was leaked – and Alesha Dixon for ten years, not all of those partnerships have endured.

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David has been incredibly vocal about his disdain for Simon. On the podcast he co-hosts with Matt Lucas, the pair, alongside David’s mother Kathleen, were recalling a time when she had baked a cake for Cowell but he complained that it was dry. “I think he can’t do anything without judging,” David said. “Bit of a downer, isn’t it?”

On an entirely separate occasion, when asked about how he conceived the ideas for characters in his children’s books on This Morning, he joked: “Whenever I’m trying to think of an evil villain, I always think: ‘What would Simon Cowell do?'”