'A sad but not bad' case

David Walliams’s stalker has been sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

Sarah Bartholomew, 29, of Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, bombarded the Little Britain star with gifts and more than 1,000 pages of letters and e-mails over a four-year period.

In one letter she told Walliams: ‘I have to have you at any cost’; in another she said she wanted to touch the comedian’s ‘perfect bare flesh.’

Sentencing Bartholomew at Highbury Magistrates Court, District Judge Adrian Turner said her actions had been ‘delusional’ but said she was a ‘sad but not bad case’.

She will now remain at a psychiatric hospital until doctors decided she posed no threat to herself or anyone else.

Bartholomew was also issued with a restraining order banning her from contacting the 36-year-old star.

Walliams made a complaint to police in April and she was arrested but continued to harass him.

The former veterinary nurse spent thousands of pounds following the comedian on the Little Britain tour and sent him gifts including a toy donkey, a Doctor Who book about Daleks and a set of Are You being Served? DVDs.

Published: 28 Jul 2008