Comedian named as new judge to replace David Walliams

Alan Carr is to replace David Walliams as a Britain’s Got Talent judge, it has been reported.

The Daily Mail says the comedian will join Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden and Alesha Dixon when the show returns later this year.

Walliams left the ITV show last year after recordings emerged of him making crude sexual remarks about two contestants during auditions in January 2020.

Carr is a close friend of Holden’s and they currently star together in a BBC One show charting how they renovated two dilapidated Italian flats that they bought for just €1.

An unnamed source told the Mail: ‘Alan is hilarious but also kind. He tells a mean joke but he is also soft in the middle. The bosses are already excited about how wonderful he will be with the contestants.’

At the weekend, it was reported that Graham Norton had been approached to take Walliams’ place, but that the BBC One talk show king had decided it was  ‘not a project he wanted to take on right now’.

No annoucement on the new panellist has officially been made, but auditions for the next series of BGT start in two weeks’ time.

Walliams left the show in November after recordings of his off-air comments were leaked to the press.

He is said to have called one pensioned ‘a cunt’ after making a joke at Walliams’s expense, and described a female contestant as ‘like the slightly boring girl you meet in the pub that thinks you want to fuck them, but you don’t’.

When he announced he was standing down, the former Little Britain star said: ‘I would like to apologise to the people I made disrespectful comments about during breaks in filming for Britain’s Got Talent in 2020.

‘These were private conversations and - like most conversations with friends - were never intended to be shared. Nevertheless, I am sorry.’

Published: 10 Jan 2023