Walliams: ‘I would be so miserable on desert island, I’d have to shoot myself’

COMEDIAN David Walliams says he hates his own company so much he has to socialise a lot to “escape from himself”.

David Walliams at the party for the Elle Style Awards this month with girlfriend Lauren Budd wenn David Walliams at the party for the Elle Style Awards this month with girlfriend Lauren Budd / wenn

The much-loved Little Britain star, who raised £1million for Comic Relief when he swam the English Channel three years ago, said: “When I am with my own thoughts I start to unravel myself. I start to think really dark, self-destructive thoughts.”

Speaking to Kirsty Young on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, he went on: “If someone said to me I had to spend a weekend on my own in my house I would not be able to hack it.

“I can’t stand being on my own, I hate it. I have a pathological fear of being on my own.”

It was the 37-year-old’s fear of his own company which led him to choose a shotgun as the  luxury item he would take if he were stranded on the fictional desert island.

He said: “I would like to take a gun because I don’t like being on my own, so if I really start hating it I can shoot myself.”

His claimed his persistent party-going was a coping strategy for his self-loathing.

“I am trying to deal with it but I have also just learned to make plans,” he said.

“I have to see people and do things because I don’t want to get myself in that state and I know I can keep it at bay by being creative. If I am alone and writing something then I can kind of feel calm.”

Despite the adulation heaped on him and Little Britian co-star Matt Lucas, Walliams says he often feels bereft after a show.

“When we were on tour with Little Britain we could play 10,000 people in an arena,” he said.

“Some nights it would be amazing and we would get an ovation. And an hour later I would be in my hotel room drinking tea feeling pretty lost.

“That’s the terrible thing, it sort of points up how miserable you are. It is not all the time that I feel like that. I thrive off the company of others; I love being sociable and I love being creative so I have got lots of things to be thankful for.

“I think there is something strange about needing a load of strangers to laugh at you. needing that love and attention from people who you have never met, craving that.”

And in spite of Walliams’ success – he has won three BAFTAs and two Emmys – he claimed he felt “redeemed” by his cross-channel swim in 2006.

While some of his parents’ friends may not have liked Little Britain, a charity swim, he said, could not be criticised.

“You can’t really have a negative slant on swimming the Channel and raising money for charity,” he said.

“I was really pleased to do something that would make my parents proud.

“I definitely felt I was looking for some sort of redemption. It was about putting myself through something that was incredibly painful and difficult.

“I got to think that I wasn’t a good person. I don’t know why I have that but I struggle with it and this was something I

thought: I have done a good thing.”

Walliams singled out comic Tony Hancock, who committed suicide in 1968, as an influence on him when he was growing up.

He said: “There are certain comedians like Tony Hancock who, because he killed himself, you can’t really look at their work without taking that on board.

“I think Hancock spoke to me on a deeper level. I was just depressed as a child. I wasn’t diagnosed, I was just unhappy a lot. I found it hard to make friends and form relationships.

“I liked just escaping and my favourite thing was locking myself in the bathroom and practising comedy routines or being in my room listening to Rowan Atkinson and being with myself and my thoughts.

“I learned a lot about comedy and timing and structures of jokes and I used to sometimes perform them at school in

assemblies.

“This was the time when I felt powerful, so any opportunity in school, be it an assembly, a school play or at Scouts I would seize it, this was my thing. I lived for those opportunities.”

Walliams also paid tribute to  his former girlfriend, actress Katy Carmichael, who he met when he was at Bristol University.

“Falling in love with her brought me to life,” he said.

The theme of longing ran through all eight tracks Walliams picked for the programme.

Among his choices were The Smiths’s Please, Please Please Let Me Get What I Want, Johnny Cash’s I Still Miss Someone and Into My Arms, by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

The comedian declined the offer of the Bible to take to the island and chose instead the collected poems of Phillip Larkin.

At the end of the show he said: “Thank you so much for having me. Sorry it was depressing.”

Desert Island Discs is on BBC Radio 4 today at 11.15am.

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