Derren Litten

David Walliams swam across the English Channel today. This was supposedly to selflessly raise money for charity although it's quite clear this was merely a desperate (yet to my mind unsuccessful) attempt to overshadow my own efforts for 'Sports Relief' this year. A couple of months ago I was asked by Geoffrey Perkins (producer of The Catherine Tate Show) to write a final (albeit short) spoof episode of Footballers Wives with Jonathan Harvey. Between us Jonathan and I cobbled together some rather silly scenes and emailed them to Mr Perkins. Now I guess between us we must have spent 4 or 5 hours writing the mini episode (over long sketch would be more precise) and during my portion of that time I'd like to say, for the record, that I went the entire time without food or water. I hear Mr Walliams, while crossing the world's busiest shipping lane, was given food via a long pole; as I said, I ate nothing. I also know for a FACT that Mr Walliams had a complete support team travelling only meters away from him during the entire swim. I had NOBODY in my office with me whatsoever; I was COMPLETELY alone. On watching the news this afternoon I saw that Mr Walliams was completely covered in EXPENSIVE goose fat; I would like it to go on record that during the morning of my writing I wore nothing but my regular 'John Rocha at Debenhams' beige towelling robe which I have owned for some two years and WAS NOT bought especially for the event. Finally I would like to quote Mr Walliams himself, "I thought it was going to take me about 14 hours"; the swim through 21 miles of human waste and stinging jellyfish actually took him TEN HOURS AND A HALF HOURS - so what happened to the other 3 and half hours you had promised to work for Sports Relief Mr Walliams? Did you spend that excess time working for charity? NO, I THINK NOT. In fact French sources have revealed to me that you casually spent this time recovering from your "gruelling" swim. I had assumed my efforts for Sports Relief would take me about 2 hours and I was absolutely bang on (in fact during that 2 hours I even managed to listen to last weeks 'Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive' via radio 4's 'Listen Again' feature) but then I guess some of us are just naturally better time keepers than others. I don't know Mr Walliams very well but I have met him on several occasions and I would like to think we are on easy enough terms for him to apologise to me the next time we meet for trying to usurp my charitable efforts in this shameless, publicity seeking manner. If you would like to congratulate David Walliams you can do so by texting DAVID to 82125 (texts cost £1 with at least 70p going directly to Sport Relief.