The Week Trending

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

The Last Word with Life Pharmacy. Over 100 local pharmacies nationwide that are always here to help Life Pharmacy live better together.

Matt Cooper (0:11)

Joining us for the week trending, we have writer and journalist, Edel Coffey and Joe O'Shea, editor of Corkbeo.ie. Let's start, Joe, with David Walliams, because we've had reports this afternoon now of an investigation by the Metropolitan Police in the UK into allegations that apparently are not linked to the reports in the Guardian on an ITV earlier this week. Tell us about this.

Joe O'Shea (0:35)

Yeah, this is interesting because it only just happened when in the BBC reporting out in the last half hour or so, 40 minutes, the Met in London have said that they are now opening an investigation into alleged serious sexual offences. And you're right, the interesting thing here is the the Met are saying that this is these what they're investigating are separate from what the ITV and the Guardian reported, which is actually very significant and sort of again, an echo of what we saw with Russell Brand. Because earlier today, there were six more women came forward to make complaints against Russell Brand separate again to the court case that he was involved in. So the legal heat is very much being turned up now on David Walliams.

The Met are obviously taking it very seriously. He's maintained all along that he's issued a statement saying that he's not a sexual predator, that it was consensual sex. But with the Met involved now, with more women coming forward, this is the very, very serious investigation at this stage.

Matt Cooper (1:37)

Yeah. So Edel, what essentially are the allegations here in relation to David Walliams?

Edel Coffey (1:42)

Oh, the new ones or the ones that have?

SPEAKER_1 (1:44)

The ones that have been out this week.

Matt Cooper (1:46)

I mean, what is it that he's accused of? Because we're not talking about Russell Brand's style actions.

Edel Coffey (1:52)

As he said himself, he said, I've never done anything illegal. He's denied all allegations. But the allegations are that he used his celebrity and his fame and his position of power within the industry to groom young women for sex essentially. So that's the allegations. A lot of women have come out and said that, they met him when they were young. There were two women, I think, who said they were 15 when they first met him and they feel like they were groomed by him to have sex with him. And then there were women who felt that he was using his position of power, women who worked in his publisher, for example, or women who worked on the show. There were references. I don't even know if I can say it on air, but he was referring to one woman. He said, oh, she's the one with the, and he's referring to her bum, essentially, and just dehumanizing stuff.

So yeah, a lot of negative stuff. And he was the celebrity that there was a lot of talk about over the last few weeks who was trying to stop this report being published with a high court injunction.

And he was the person who was said to be at risk of taking his life. Currently, he's made previous suicide attempts as well in The Guardian and the ITV reports. They made reference to the fact that he actually has longstanding and previous psychological issues. So they seem to be making a point of mentioning that too. So but the fact is that like what's come out in the last week seems to be that the thing that people are focusing on is the fact that there are so many jokes. There's so much footage from 20 years ago, references like, I know it was a different time, but at the same time, the jokes seem to be quite pointed. There's one particular one that Jonathan Ross made this week. I'm sure your listeners and you have all seen it by now, where he was at this TV Awards, which was in its 15th year. He said something along the lines of, like all 15-year-olds, it's drunk, it's unpredictable, and it's probably going home with David Walliams. That was kind of the punchline and everybody laughed. And while David Walliams and his legal team have said that was just a joke, obviously, Jonathan Ross said this was written by a scripted by a team of joke writers, and it was exaggerated for comic effect. The fact is that, you know, why was that joke funny? Why was it even considered a joke?

Matt Cooper (4:27)

Yeah, it was pointed, shall we say, which makes you wonder Joe, and Jonathan Edel mentioned that there's an awful lot of people saying, oh, this is what used to go on at the time. Are there many other people, do you reckon, who might be worried that they might be called to account belatedly for their behaviour?