David Walliams praised ‘easy to talk to’ Prince William and Princess Kate
(Picture: ITV)David Walliams has revealed the surprising topic of conversation his mother and Prince William were enjoying during a chance encounter at Wimbledon.
The comedian and children’s book author, 51, took his mum Kathleen, 78, to watch the annual tennis tournament in the summer and found themselves sat behind William and his wife Kate in the Royal Box.
Speaking to the Standard, he said: “We didn’t know when we got invited that they were going to be there. And also, you don’t choose where you’re going to sit, you’re placed somewhere so it was obviously quite good luck that we were there on the day they were there and that we were sat behind them which meant it was natural to chat to them.
“I’d met them before – there were really nice! I mean as they entered they said hello to me and my mum – they remembered her name, William had met her before and remembered her name.
“It was nice because it wasn’t like, obviously it’s quite wooden and formal but we were just chatting so it wasn’t like, you know, when you’re lined up and you have your thirty seconds of talking to someone which is normally what happens when you’re an entertainer and there are royals, it’s normally quite brief, so this was lovely.
“I don’t know them at all well, but they are certainly very easy to talk to, they put you at ease. At the time the Queen was still alive and my mum was chatting to William about comfortable shoes for older ladies!
“It was quite surreal, the thing is they are people, aren’t they, you know, I know they occupy this role, but they are people, they have similar concerns to people and all people are not exactly the same, but you know. Their lives are different to other people, but they are still people. So yeah, it was lovely.
“My mum was on cloud nine and then not only did we meet them and chat to them, obviously the whole world knows because we were photographed everywhere! If ever there was really a day when you wanted to bump into someone that bullied you at school, that’s it. You know ‘Oh, hi! Are you enjoying it?’ Yeah, I was just chatting to Wills and Kate!’ That’s what you really want.”
Walliams stars with Sherridan Smith and Kevin Bishop in a six-part TV adaptation of his book Gangsta Granny Strikes Again, which premiered on CBBC on December 16 and on BBC One on December 19.
He is also part of the judging panel for one-off ITV special Britain’s Got Talent: The Ultimate Magician, which airs on Saturday.
If that wasn’t enough, another of his books, Demon Dentist, is also currently enjoying a limited run at London’s Bloomsbury Theatre.
This is the first time that the 2013 released book has been turned into a stage show. Speaking about what those going to see it can expect, he teased: “It’s something quite different. There are lots of surprises and it’s one where you’re hopefully as an audience really involved and you kind of get into it and boo the baddies and cheer the goodies, all that kind of stuff.
“I was really chuffed because it is written on quite a big scale so you worry how it’s going to work in the theatre because you have to be very inventive if you’re trying to do a very ambitious story and scale because you don’t have the same things when you’re making a movie or something. If you’ve got a couple of hundred million dollars you can sort of do anything, it’s different in a theatre. [In the book] there’s a train crashing into a coal mine and even that’s done in this show which is fantastic.”
