Now kick the sneering Walliams off our screens for good...

WHEN Britain’s Got Talent judge David Walliams was outed for making crude comments about contestants, Piers Morgan tweeted: ‘Tip of the iceberg . . . Walliams is one of the nastiest frauds in TV.’

A fit of pique from a rival TV presenter who refused to return as a judge unless Walliams was sacked? Or a hint at something deeper and darker?

The controversy reminded me of a conversation in a television green room I had some months ago with a beautiful young woman, an ‘influencer’ with almost 100,000 Twitter followers, who once dated Walliams.

She was cautious about speaking of him initially, then became tearful recalling their relationship. He pursued me, she said. In the beginning he was lovely but then he wasn’t very nice. She did not share any details, suffice to say it upset her remembering the way he’d treated her.

So I wasn’t as surprised as I might have been to learn that cheeky chappy Walliams had called an elderly contestant a ‘c***’ three times after he left the stage recording a BGT rehearsal in 2020.

Worse, he said of a female contestant: ‘ She’s like the boring girl you meet in the pub that thinks you want to f*** her, but you don’t. It’s the last thing on your mind, but she’s like: “Yep, I bet you do!” “No I don’t . . .” ’ Vulgarity aside, sneering like that about a pensioner or a woman contestant speaks volumes about his character as far as I am concerned.

He may be successful — he’s amassed a £17 million fortune, not least from his children’s books. But he’s ‘ punching down’ at the little people, those he considers his inferiors. Why else would he utter his despicable condemnation of folk on BGT? No blow is too low.

We’re expected to laugh, for example, at his Little Britain creation Mrs Emery on account of her incontinence. But anyone who’s bought quantities of absorbent pants for a mum suffering from Alzheimer’s, as I have, knows that’s not funny — it’s just cruel.

The irony is that it’s the ‘ little people’ with hope in their hearts and dreams of becoming famous who are the bread and butter of BGT.

Walliams’s contract as a judge is up for renewal. If ITV have a shred of decency they’d remove him from our TV screens for ever.