David Walliams backs shock value as saving grace in a time of cancel culture

Comedian David Walliams is willing to bet people haven’t completely lost their senses of humour just yet.

Cancel culture isn’t going to scare David Walliams.

The boundary-pushing British comedian believes shock value is an inherent part of the art of making people laugh and it is here to stay.

“The whole thing is exhausting, isn’t it?” Walliams said.

“If you do everything from a place of being inhibited, you’re not going to create anything interesting. Things that are explosively funny are often on the edge, aren’t they?

“It is complicated, but you just look at each joke as it comes really. Obviously if you were worried about every single thing you said or did might offend someone, that you wouldn’t be able to say or do anything on stage. I kind of think people haven’t lost a sense of humour in the way that it’s often portrayed.”

Walliams speaks from the heart, and from experience.

David Walliams will be in Sydney for An Audience With David Walliams World Premiere Tour next month. Picture: Supplied

He is a professional joker with decades of skin in the game and one of the biggest names in comedy globally over recent decades.

Alongside Matt Lucas, he is behind iconic cult favourites Little Britain and Come Fly With Me.

Little Britain has been pulled from streaming services because Matt Lucas and David Walliams used blackface for some of their characters. Supplied

Both pushed boundaries and were criticised for going too far with characters wearing full blackface like Desiree Devere, reverend preacher Jesse King and airline worker Taaj.

Other controversial characters include Thai bride Ting Tong Macadangdang and trans woman Emily Heward.

“The thing about comedy is ultimately what you’re trying to do is make people happy. That’s where it comes from – deep inside yourself you want to make people happy,” Walliams explained.

“You don’t do it to make people unhappy and if you have made people unhappy, then it is your job to listen and think, ‘I got that wrong and we need to move in a different direction.’ It is interesting that culture evolves, and things change, and change is exciting. But for some reason it’s comedians that get a lot of pushback.”

The former Britain’s Got Talent and Australia’s Got Talent judge continued: “John Cleese said an interesting thing, he said if you were very literal minded, therefore you don’t understand that sort of playful (banter), then you’re not going to like it. I think there is some truth in that. If you take every joke as if it’s real, then you’re not going to like it.”

Comedian and author David Walliams will also perform a number of daytime children’s shows under the banner, The David Walliams Book Show. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

The performer spoke to Insider ahead of his An Audience With David Walliams World Premiere Tour next month, which starts at Sydney’s Darling Harbour Theatre on September 6, with a show at the venue again the following night before dates in Canberra, Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Adelaide, Newcastle, Melbourne and Hobart.
The comedian will also perform a number of daytime children’s shows under the banner, The David Walliams Book Show.

He has sold more than 50 million copies of his kids’ books, which have been translated into 54 languages.

Although still friends, Walliams and Lucas went their separate ways back in 2011. However, fans will be thrilled to know though that they have something new in the works.

“All new characters,” Walliams said, not giving too much away.

“In the way that Come Fly With Me was a departure from Little Britain, we still have our comic sensibility and our things that we love, which is our kind of over-the-top-characters kind of gags and stuff. So, as much as it was a continuation, there were no characters that recurred and so this is again another step forward with a whole new set of characters and a new situation.”

Matt Lucas and David Walliams, who went their separate ways back in 2011, have something new in the works.

Walliams said it had been refreshing “starting with a blank piece of paper”.

“It is quite freeing,” he said.

“You just sort of feel quite free to create and you know that you’re not trying to replicate the success of something. You’re just trying to do something new so you feel free to follow your instincts still but let them take you in a slightly different path. If you are lucky enough to have a really big success, you sort of don’t want to be competing with yourself. It is easier sometimes to turn the page so that you can move on and not think about, ‘Can we think of another sketch that is funnier than the one we did’.”

Walliams is more serious than expected on the chat. He is funny, friendly and warm but not cracking jokes and one-liners constantly.

The line between stage persona and who you are in your private life is an interesting one for Walliams.

“You think, ‘If I met them in the pub, what would they be exactly the same?’

“When you see a great actor playing a role, you don’t really think they’ll be like that character.”

Harry Enfield and David Walliams in Who Does One Think One Is? “Fear is not a great place or starting point for creativity, it is probably the worst starting point.”

Again, the conversation turns to cancel culture. Walliams references the likes of Chris Rock, Jimmy Carr, Dave Chapelle and Ricky Gervais as “edgy” but “not necessarily following a path where it is going to please everybody”.

“I always think (Monty Python’s) Life of Brian, the funniest film ever made, the Pope wouldn’t like it,” he mused.

“I think we’ve almost got to a point where we feel like everyone should like something all at the same time but it’s not ever going to be like that, certainly not with comedy. It is very personal, sort of like what scares us or what turns us on, they are all different things aren’t they? Everyone is worried someone somewhere doesn’t like something but very few of us know people like that and so it is kind of odd. It would be a shame if it was lost, but I don’t think it is. Fear is not a great place or starting point for creativity, it is probably the worst starting point.”

Art, he said, was subjective.

“To be pretentious, lets say Marcel Duchamp put a urinal in an art gallery and signed it, that is a definite attempt to shock people, offend people, upset people,” he explained.

“There is something exciting about shock value,” says David Walliams. Picture: Dave Benett/Getty Images

“Things have got to probably settle down a bit, haven’t they, because people are going to be inhibited now to put anything out there and that is not a good thing. There is something exciting about shock value.

“I mean, in Monty Python, Mr Creosote is so fat because he eats so much he explodes. Now, it is sick, guts fly over everyone, (but) it is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in my life. A big part of the humour of that is that it is shocking and disgusting and revolting. Not everyone is going to like it, but I love it.”

An Audience with David Walliams World Premiere Tour plays Sydney’s Darling Harbour Theatre on Friday, September 6, and Saturday, September 7. The David Walliams Book Show is at 11am and 3pm at the Darling Harbour Theatre on September 7.