Britain's Got Talent 'operatives' deliberately 'leaked' the sexually explicit comments made by David Walliams that led to his departure from the show, it has been claimed. 

In November 2022, Walliams stepped down from his role as a judge on BGT after recordings of derogatory and sexually explicit comments he made about contestants were obtained and published by The Guardian. 

Walliams made the comments during filming breaks in 2020 at the London Palladium auditions. The recordings saw the star call one elderly contestant a 'c***' three times when the man left the stage.

He also described a woman as 'like the slightly boring girl you meet in the pub that thinks you want to f*** them, but you don't'.

'Did we know that people were trying to get rid of him?' Hyde asked during the conversation with co-host Richard Osman on their The Rest Is Entertainment podcast.

'Operatives, I don't know who and I don't know at what level... who leaked those comments? They were trying to get rid, someone at some level in Britain's Got Talent was trying to get rid of him,' she continued.

Hyde argued that 'two interesting things happened' after Walliams' leaked comments came to light. 

After his comments became public, Walliams sued BGT's producers Fremantle for misuse of his private information and breaching data protection laws. 

The former Little Britain star is said to have claimed in court documents that producers 'recorded, transcribed and retained' his conversations during his decade-long stint, and that he had no idea his microphone was 'kept on and recording' throughout the entire day of filming.

Walliams alleged 1,700 hours of audio recordings were collected. He added that he had battled severe depression since the sacking and had experienced 'active suicidal thoughts'.

An 'amicable resolution' was reached, with the production company apologising for the recordings being made public.

Hyde asked why the comedian took legal action, saying: 'You might have thought, "You are a hugely bestselling author, perhaps why would you wish to excavate it?"

'He sued them in the High Court in 2023 and he said, "Oh, you constantly transcribed." He clearly thought that they had leaked it deliberately.'

She continued that because of Walliams' legal action 'we knew how he operated legally. He has sent a message with that to everybody that he is incredibly litigious and he'll sue over anything even when it's best left alone'. 

It has now been revealed that around the same time Walliams left BGT in November 2022, The Guardian made its first approach to the star about allegations of inappropriate conduct. The allegations were denied and a story was not published.

In 2023, The Guardian and ITV News agreed to collaborate on an investigation into Walliams, the results of which were published on Tuesday.

Representatives for Fremantle and ITV have been contacted by the Daily Mail for comment. 

Hyde's podcast co-host Richard Osman, meanwhile, has recalled working with Walliams early in his career, admitting that looking back he wishes he had done more to 'create an environment in which everybody felt safe'.

Before writing his hit Thursday Murder Club novels, Osman was an executive producer in television, creating the BBC show Pointless and working on other shows for Hat Trick Productions and Endemol UK.

At Hat Trick he worked with Walliams and his comedy partner Matt Lucas to write the 1999 Channel 4 satire Boyz Unlimited.

Osman recalled on The Rest Is Entertainment that he first met Walliams when the comedian was 21 and they worked on a computer game show together. He says that after Boyz Unlimited 'we fell out – not for any exciting reasons – shortly afterwards, and I didn't work with him again'.

Noting that he has 'of course' followed Walliams' career, Osman admitted that 'I think it's hard for any man who worked in television in the 1990s and the 2000s to not feel like they failed, to not feel blind, to not feel some sense of shame about what has happened'. 

'It's not a sin of commission. It's a sin of omission and not understanding you need to create an environment in which everybody felt safe.

'If you'd really started understanding what was going on then and understood that the 1990s laddy culture was not some kind of natural culture, it was a slightly weird aberration... It's tough looking back and it's horrific.'

'It's unremittingly grim. I'm delighted to still be around at a time when people are, you know, being found out and people are either going to prison in Russell Brand's case or at least being exposed in the case of Walliams. And there will be more to come, I suspect, from that generation as well,' Osman continued.

Earlier this week, comedian Russell Brand was sentenced to ten-and-a-half years in prison for rape and sexual assault. 

Osman says that all of this has felt like 'a'It would be lovely going forward to not make those same mistakes and to be able to put those things right, I think.

'And there are a generation of TV men who I suspect would agree with me and and I suspect would do anything they can to try and find a route through it.

'And also to feel just an awful depression and to think about, I don't know, stuff that you miss and stuff you take for granted and stuff you don't realise and stuff you could have done and stuff you could have said.'

On Tuesday, the three-year joint investigation by ITV News and The Guardian revealed a series of allegations dating back to 2003, with some accusers being as young as 15. Walliams denies all the allegations. 

A High Court judge previously dismissed Walliams' bid to prevent the publication of the allegations made against him, but granted him permission to appeal and temporarily kept his identity secret.

The allegations were subsequently published by ITV News and The Guardian the day after the deadline.

Lawyers for Walliams were today accused of sending a 'threatening' letter to a woman who was trying to warn others about his behaviour ten years ago.

The woman, named as Zara, met the BGT judge at a show recording in 2016 when she was aged 18 – and tried to tell other young women about him online.

But she received a warning letter from Walliams' lawyers which suggested she could be committing a 'serious civil offence' and could face a legal claim from him.

The letter said: 'We act for David Walliams. Let us be absolutely clear: you are at a significant risk of committing a serious civil offence should you disclose, to the press or any other third party, private information concerning our client...

'Should you disclose our client's private information... he will be entitled to issue a legal claim against you.'

Zara recalled how she was 'shaking' when she read the email, saying: 'It was just really threatening... I was like "Bloody hell, what have I done?"

'They just kept going on about signing something. They started ringing me then... messaging me... they wanted it like immediately... they wanted reassurance that I wasn't gonna retell anyone.'

ITV did not report the specifics of the behaviour that Zara wanted to warn others about.

But Walliams denies any wrongdoing and claims he believed Zara was planning to sell a false story to the press.

In the investigation published on Tuesday, one woman described her alleged encounter with Walliams, when she was 15, as a 'sexual assault', while multiple women accused him of 'grooming' them when they were teenagers.

In another letter, understood to have been sent several months ago by Walliams to journalists, the television personality denied being a 'sexual predator'.

He said he recognised he 'behaved thoughtlessly' at times, and regretted not taking people's feelings 'properly into account', but insisted he had not broken the law.

The letter added: 'Whilst a power imbalance is inevitable when one party is famous, abusing that power is something else entirely and it is something that I never did.'

Walliams has not yet responded to Tuesday's reports that have named him as the subject of the allegations.

Several sources alleged inappropriate behaviour towards women at BGT, where Walliams served as a judge from 2012 to 2022, and his publisher HarperCollins, which dropped him last year. 

Allegations made in the reports by ITV News and The Guardian include one from a woman known as Jade, who alleges what she describes as 'sexual assault' and 'grooming' after meeting him in 2007 when she was 15 and he was 36.

Another woman, named by the news organisations as Alex, also accused Walliams of grooming her, and alleged she was having sex with him by the time she was 17.

A young woman named Lilly Creightmore, who said she met Walliams at a live filming of Little Britain when she was 18, alleges he was 'trying to coerce me into sleeping with him' after claiming he asked her to stay in his bed every night.

A model, named as Ella, alleges Walliams tried to kiss her when they were alone after she met him at a party in 2007, when she was 19 and he was 36.

Walliams has vehemently denied all allegations made against him, rejects any allegations of criminal activity and said he has never engaged in the grooming of young women.

He also denies 'buying' a junior BGT employee's silence following allegations from a man, named as Mark, who claimed he received £300 from Walliams after he walked into his dressing room and found two 'very young people' in there while the TV star was only wearing a towel.

A spokesman for Fremantle UK, which makes BGT, said the company is 'disturbed and concerned' at the 'serious allegations', but added that no complaint was ever made to them about his behaviour.

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy is hauling broadcasters in for a showdown next week after it was claimed that Walliams' alleged preying on young women was – as with Brand – an 'open secret' in the industry.

Both are said to have become so powerful, and were so lucrative for broadcasters, their behaviour went unchallenged.

Ms Nandy vowed to 'draw a line in the sand' when she meets entertainment leaders – threatening laws to clean up the industry if they do not act.

She said: 'A decade and a half on from the revelations about Jimmy Savile, and ten years on from the MeToo movement, we must finally take meaningful steps to end abuse and harassment.' 

No10 called the Walliams allegations 'deeply troubling', and said there was 'a pattern of behaviour that needs to change'.