Inside David Walliams’ very lonely life: Dropped by publishers, accused of sexual harassment, housebound… and now determined for love. Friends reveal his remoted existence and new relationship transfer

There was a time when David Walliams was rarely seen without an attractive woman on his arm.

Past companions were certainly of a type – stunning, successful and famous – and included figures as varied as actress Patsy Kensit, Spice Girl Geri Horner, model Lisa Snowdon, reality TV star Ashley James, model Lauren Budd and Miss Norway contender Sylvia Flote.

Most prominent among his past lovers, of course, was his former wife, the Dutch supermodel Lara Stone, to whom he was married for five years.

Yet the Daily Mail can reveal that – since he was accused of sexual harassment and ‘inappropriate behaviour’, all of which Walliams strongly denies, and was dropped by his publishers last year – Walliams has struggled to find romance and is currently looking for love on the celebrity dating app Raya.

In images seen by the Daily Mail, Walliams has used photographs of himself looking sharp in a cream tuxedo – which he also wore at the Mediterrane Film Festival last year – to illustrate his dating profile.

He has even included a picture of him and his Little Britain co-creator Matt Lucas as two of their most famous characters, Lou and Andy – presumably just in case anyone was in doubt as to whether the David Walliams they’re looking at is the real deal.

While users on Raya – an exclusive dating site that can only be joined by invitation, and is largely made up of high-profile individuals or celebrities – have the option of adding a biography to further draw attention, Walliams has chosen to leave his profile almost entirely blank, merely revealing his location as London, and linking it to his official Instagram account.

While Raya is seen as more exclusive than dating sites such as Tinder or Hinge, make no mistake: for Walliams, it is something of a humiliation.

Once the darling of every red carpet and after-party, I’m told these days the 54-year-old is extremely lonely and exists in a state of social exclusion. His Belsize Park mansion where he lived with Stone and their son, Alfred, now 12, was sold in 2019.

He currently splits his time between a home in north London – with only his pet dogs, Bert and Ernie, for company – and a seafront home in Hove, believed to be under threat of coastal erosion.

One former associate of Walliams commented that his Raya profile proved ‘just how the mighty fall’.

‘David used to be a woman magnet. Women found him hilarious,’ says a former friend of his. ‘He loved having a pretty lady on his arm. Women fawned over him, they enjoyed his company, he made them laugh.

‘He knew his fame and connections made him more attractive. He used to have women queuing up but now, clearly, he’s struggling.’

Indeed, his social life these days is seemingly non-existent. I’m told since he was dropped by his publishers Harper Collins in December, Walliams has been largely housebound. He has also stayed away from social media, posting just a single photo on Mother’s Day of his mother, Kathleen, and his co-star Matt.

It’s a solitary existence and in stark contrast with the happiness ex-wife Lara Stone has found since their divorce in 2015.

In perhaps a cruel irony Stone also turned to dating apps and met handsome property developer David Grievson on Tinder in 2018. She married him three years later, and now lives in an exquisitely designed Victorian house in Hampstead with her blended family – Alfred, her son with Walliams, and toddler Bob, born in 2023.

In an interview in Vogue Australia, Grievson gave a guided tour of their eclectic home – all splashes of colour and individually sourced treasures – proudly showing how he had designed his wife a bespoke dressing room, with an impressive space to store her shoe collection. He spoke of them swimming together in the Heath’s famous ponds, and the picture was very much of a family existing in cosy contentment.

There appeared to be none of the emotional complexity that seems to go hand-in-hand with Walliams, a man known for his insecurity and sexual ambiguity, and whose romantic style appears to vary between obsession and awkward overtures.

Indeed, many of his early relationships were later revealed to be, if not platonic, then not exactly full-throated in their passion.

In 2007, he was said to have had a dalliance with Geri Horner, but years later, she admitted she ‘loved him’ though he was ‘never more’ than a friend.

He was open about falling hard for singer Natalie Imbruglia – who, he said, ‘friend-zoned’ him, much to his distress – and also spoke of being ‘heartbroken’ by Lisa Snowdon, who insisted they had never been intimate.

‘We did have a couple of dates, but it’s not how everyone thinks. We’ve never slept together,’ she said.

‘It was a bit weird when he said his proudest moment was seeing me naked.’

Similarly, lingerie model Lauren Budd, who dated Walliams for three months in 2009, said their relationship didn’t progress beyond holding hands. They split up on a trip to New York, where they were due to sleep in separate bedrooms.

A year later he married Lara Stone, but by 2015 that relationship was also over.

In 2016 he was linked to Playboy bunny Emily Agnes. She told friends how he wooed her with a sketch from his transvestite Little Britain character Emily Howard.

The same year David was pictured escorting Norwegian actress Sylvia Flote to his chauffeur-driven car after a romantic evening in Soho.

He is also said to have had a brief relationship with Lou Teasdale, a make-up artist who worked on Britain’s Got Talent. And when the Covid pandemic began in 2020 he voiced a desire to date Pussycat Dolls singer Ashley Roberts.

He’s known to be easy company. Those who like him say he has a brutal sharpness to him – even Stone, at the height of their love, called him ‘mean, but in a good way’.

That sharpness proved to be his downfall. He was ousted from Britain’s Got Talent in 2022 after footage emerged of him making disparaging comments about a contestant two years previously. A leaked transcript revealed him using vile misogynistic language, calling one contestant a ‘c***’ and describing another female as ‘like the slightly boring girl you meet in the pub that thinks you want to f*** them, but you don’t’.

He went on to sue Fremantle, the makers of the programme, for misuse of private information and for breaching privacy laws.

As part of his case, High Court papers reportedly said Walliams was fighting ‘active suicidal thoughts’.

Consultant psychiatrist Dr Mark Collins reportedly said the leak of the transcripts has ‘had a profound, severe and, at times, very worrying effect on his mental health’, with Walliams suffering with sleep problems and negative thoughts.

Walliams received an apology from Fremantle, and is believed to have pocketed £5 million from the legal proceedings – but his career, and public image, have never recovered.

Indeed, his once frenetic workload has slowed to a mere trickle – his calendar appears to be dotted with only occasional corporate speaking events.

His last public appearance was in January of this year, where he looked downcast arriving for a children’s reading event in London, flanked by a member of his team. My sources tell me, while he looked ‘happy to be performing’, he was simultaneously deflated that the crowd was nowhere near the number he was previously used to.

After the allegations of inappropriate behaviour at Harper Collins – with female staff said to have been advised to work in pairs around the author and not to visit his home – there was no upswell of support from celebrity pals.

Rather, there was relief in showbiz circles, with this newspaper told by some at the time how the television star is ‘utterly despised’.

A spokesman for Walliams previously said of the claims: ‘David has never been informed of any allegations raised against him by Harper Collins.’

Still, the final dates for his one-man show, An Audience with David Walliams, which were due to take place at the University of Exeter and Cadogan Hall in London in March this year, were pulled due to low ticket sales and he has been removed from his roles at multiple charities where he was an ambassador and patron, including The Children’s Trust.

Walliams, then, must be desperately hoping that his profile on Raya will work its magic – even if he is no longer the catch he once was.