That’s what friends are for:
David Walliams enlists some help for his new TV sketch show.
In one memorable sketch from the first episode of the new British comedy show Walliams & Friend (a Christmas special screened last week), a bickering couple use their dinner guest as a conduit to conduct a bitter marital feud. The husband is played by David Walliams and his wife by, er, Jack Whitehall.
Jack is hilarious in this role but was David – already famous for his cross-dressing in his sketch-show hits
Little Britain and Come Fly With Me – tempted to don the frock again for Walliams & Friend?
“I’m obviously very well known for cross-dressing,” David smiles, “and I thought it was time to change. I’ve got to watch it or it’s all I’ll be remembered for. ‘Did David Walliams do comedy?’ ‘No, I just remember him dressing as a woman’.”
In the first episode, comic actor Jack shines in everything from a spoof of Sherlock to a parody of Jeremy Kyle. “Jack Whitehall is so, so funny. In fact, he is too funny. He needs to be stopped,” jokes David, 45. “He made me feel really old when he told me, ‘I used to love watching Little Britain when I was at school’. ‘I’m sorry, how old are you?’ He’s still in his 20s. It’s absurd.” But Jack is merely the first guest star to share the screen with David. The others include Meera Syal (Goodness Gracious Me),
Miranda Richardson (Blackadder), Sheridan Smith (Cilla), comedian Harry Enfield, and Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey). David, who fits in other jobs as a judge on Britain’s Got Talent and a best-selling children’s author, reveals the benefits of working with a new guest star in each episode.
“It means the show can reinvent itself week to week. It feels very fresh and never gets boring.
“In other sketch shows, there are a lot of reasons why you end up doing the same characters every week. You need at least 100 sketches for a series and that’s hard. But if you’re writing for specific people, you can constantly reinvent the show.”
The comic outlines why he was keen to return to sketches after working in other genres such as TV drama (Partners In Crime), sitcom (Big School) and theatre (A Midsummer Night’s Dream).
“I wanted to reconnect with something purely comic. This show has no agenda – it’s just there to make you laugh. It’s rather old-fashioned in that way, like The Two Ronnies.”
David believes the sketch show is still a perennially popular format.
“A sketch show is a great way of doing comedy because it is constantly refreshing itself.
“If you don’t like one sketch, another one will be along in a minute.
“People often try to write off sketch shows and say that they’re finished. But they are a perfectly good way of doing comedy.
“You can also cover a lot of ground doing sketches. You can do everything from spoofs to relationship comedy.”
“I wanted to reconnect with something purely comic. This show has no agenda – it’s just there to make you laugh.” – David Walliams
For all that, David did not want to make a sketch show that looked like a retread of Little Britain. “The big thing for me was to be different from Little Britain.
“On that show, we didn’t do historical sketches or spoofs. Little Britain had a very strong idea of its own identity. I didn’t want Walliams & Friend to be like a spin-off of that. I wanted it to be very much its own thing. “Hopefully, it’ll stand out because there are so few sketch shows these days. We’re trying to be funny in a very uncomplicated way. “You don’t have to think too much – it’s just meant to be a fun watch. The moving moments in The Office are magic. But comedy is valid in all its different forms.” David relished working opposite so many classy performers. “Look at Meera Syal. She is fantastic. She is very nice, very intelligent and brilliantly funny. Having been in Goodness Gracious Me, she’s a wonderful sketch performer. “But she’s also a really good serious actor. She’s been in dramas such as Broadchurch before. So she’s got a lot of gravitas – unlike me. She is excellent with scripts and committed to everything.” David pauses before revealing: “Meera and I also had the delight of doing a sketch with Janette Krankie (of the Scottish comedy duo). “I’m sure I’m not the only one who can’t wait to see that.”