Martin Clunes says David Walliams was ‘very rude’ about him on Graham Norton: ‘I was not flattered’
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Martin Clunes has complained that comedian David Walliams was “very rude” about him during an appearance on The Graham Norton Show, after featuring a sketch about the actor in the controversial series Come Fly With Me.
The 2010 BBC mockumentary comedy series, which was removed from streaming services in 2020 for racial stereotyping, was set in an airport and featured Walliams and his longtime collaborator Matt Lucas playing a number of different roles.
In one sketch, the duo dressed up as excitable Japanese schoolgirls who were huge fans of the Doc Martin star.
Speaking to The Sunday Times, Clunes revealed that he was in fact supposed to be in the sketch, in a scene in bed with Walliams and Lucas’s characters as he says: “Actually, I’m pretty big in Japan.’”
“But my schedule closed up and I couldn’t,” he said. “So now I’ve got this pain-in-the-arse song without any get-out.”
The song in question, which is still available on YouTube, shows Walliams and Lucas doing a racist caricature of the Japanese language.
Asked if he heard it often, Clunes said it had been “enveloped in the mist of casual racism”.
“I remember being very flattered they’d chosen me,” he continued, “then I saw David Walliams talking about it on [The Graham Norton Show] and I was not flattered: he was very rude about me.”
In the episode, Walliams told Norton: “Normally [some Japanese fans are obsessed] with someone like Robbie Williams. We thought, ‘Who’s the most unlikely person? We thought of Martin Clunes.’”
“Well, there you have it,” Clunes said.
The Independent has contacted Walliams’ representative for comment.
Walliams and Lucas apologised for their use of Blackface in their sketch show Little Britain in 2020, while also expressing regret about their portrayals of “characters of other races”.
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Their apology came after the programme was dropped from streaming services including BBC iPlayer and Netflix, amid global anti-racism protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.
A spokesperson for the BBC said at the time: “There’s a lot of historical programming available on BBC iPlayer, which we regularly review. Times have changed since Little Britain first aired so it is not currently available on BBC iPlayer.”
Lucas had previously expressed regret for his and Walliams’ racial stereotyping in their shows, telling the Big Issue in 2017: “If I could go back and do Little Britain again, I wouldn’t make those jokes about transvestites. I wouldn’t play Black characters.
“Basically, I wouldn’t make that show now. It would upset people. We made a more cruel kind of comedy than I’d do now.”
In December last year, Lucas confirmed that he and Walliams had started recording a new project he believed would be released in January 2025.
He said the duo would be appearing as themselves, rather than as characters.
Clunes’s new show, Out There, is on ITV later this month.
