to ask, why does David Walliams act so camp?

[ssd]

is it part of his image or something?

I just dont get it.

Why are people being so self righteous and po faced?

I think Mumsnet has been infected by a fiendishly clever virus, which beams subliminal nerve-jangling wavelengths out of our screens. It's a trial for a new generation of weapons that will cause entire populations to get the massive arse with one another and wipe themselves out within days.

Erm...? Isn't DW an actor??

It's his job to be, "creepy", " leery", or anything else... He has a particular persona in the public eye & plays up to that.

Me?? I love him & find his manner strangely attractive.

He does seem to suffer from 'smug lip' syndrome in photographs. Maybe that's what gives so many folks the creeps about him? Gotta hand it to him though, his carefully cultivated, public demeanour does keep us all talking about him.

ApplePaltrow
We make character decisions based on the way people behave all the time. It's called life. I'm talking about his behavior.

In that case, what behaviour leads you to call David Walliams 'creepy and horrible', 'the kind of man I wouldn't trust to pour me a drink', 'a shifty bugger' and say 'he seems untrustworthy and really really gross'?

He leers at people. He stares at them to make them feel uncomfortable. He makes overtly sexual jokes that are just not funny. He grins like a Cheshire Cat all the time. He hits on male guests in a way that would not be acceptable if they were female. It doesn't feel lighthearted or funny, it seems desperate and creepy.

Are you his publicist?

I hope to god my DC will heed their instincts with people who make them feel uncomfortable instead of ignoring them and being part of the 1/6 (?) women who are sexually assaulted in their lifetime.

So on top of a Gaydar, there is also a Creepdar and a Sexual Assaulterdar? I am definitely lacking something.

I've never met David Walliams, no great fan of him as a comedian etc. and if the way he comes across in his public life is consistent with his private persona then I don't think I would take to him, but I wouldn't assume that that makes him any of the above. The boyfriend who sexually assaulted me on several occasions (until I used some recently acquired self defense lessons to throw him across a room) was a charming fellow, everybody loved him.

^^

I hope to god my DC will heed their instincts with people who make them feel uncomfortable instead of ignoring them and being part of the 1/6 (?) women who are sexually assaulted in their lifetime.

So on top of a Gaydar, there is also a Creepdar and a Sexual Assaulterdar? I am definitely lacking something.

This has been a very strange thread. People seem determined to defend this celebrity and I don't know why. I've explained over and over why I find his behavior questionable.

As for your boyfriend, I suggest you read this book and learn something about your instincts.

www.amazon.com/The-Gift-Fear-Gavin-Becker/dp/0440226198

It might help keep you safe in the future.

Some choice quotes:

Each hour, 75 women are raped in the United States, and every few seconds, a woman is beaten. Each day, 400 Americans suffer shooting injuries, and another 1,100 face criminals armed with guns. Author Gavin de Becker says victims of violent behavior usually feel a sense of fear before any threat or violence takes place. They may distrust the fear, or it may impel them to some action that saves their lives. A leading expert on predicting violent behavior, de Becker believes we can all learn to recognize these signals of the "universal code of violence," and use them as tools to help us survive. The book teaches how to identify the warning signals of a potential attacker and recommends strategies for dealing with the problem before it becomes life threatening. The case studies are gripping and suspenseful, and include tactics for dealing with similar situations.

Like every creature on earth, we have an extraordinary defense resource: We don’t have the sharpest claws and strongest jaws--but we do have the biggest brains, and intuition is the most impressive process of these brains. It might be hard to accept its importance because intuition is often described as emotional, unreasonable, or inexplicable. Husbands chide their wives about "feminine intuition" and don’t take it seriously. If intuition is used by a woman to explain some choice she made or a concern she can’t let go of, men roll their eyes and write it off. We much prefer logic, the grounded, explainable, unemotional thought process that ends in a supportable conclusion. In fact, Americans worship logic, even when it’s wrong, and deny intuition, even when it’s right. Men, of course, have their own version of intuition, not so light and inconsequential, they tell themselves, as that feminine stuff. Theirs is more viscerally named a "gut feeling," but whatever name we use, it isn’t just a feeling. It is a process more extraordinary and ultimately more logical in the natural order than the most fantastic computer calculation. It is our most complex cognitive process and, at the same time, the simplest.

Intuition connects us to the natural world and to our nature. It carries us to predictions we will later marvel at. "Somehow I knew," we will say about the chance meeting we predicted, or about the unexpected phone call from a distant friend, or the unlikely turnaround in someone’s behavior, or about the violence we steered clear of, or, too often, the violence we elected not to steer clear of. The Gift of Fear offers strategies that help us recognize the signals of intuition--and helps us avoid denial, which is the enemy of safety.

Excellent recommendation, Apple. Of course, people who're deeply committed to their belief in a Lovely World where Everything Is As It Should Be won't listen ... but they should read the book just in case! On top of a Gaydar, there is also a Creepdar and a Sexual Assaulterdar, a Murererdar, a Mass Hysteriadar, a Vindictivedar, and assorted other threatdars. We didn't spend two million years evolving for nothing ... though some people prefer to think we did

"We get a signal prior to violence," Gavin says. "There are preincident indicators. Things that happen before violence occurs."

Gavin says that unlike any other living creature, humans will sense danger, yet still walk right into it.

"You're in a hallway waiting for an elevator late at night. The elevator door opens, and there's a guy inside, and he makes you afraid. You don't know why, you don't know what it is. And many women will stand there and look at that guy and say, 'Oh, I don't want to think like that. I don't want to be the kind of person who lets the door close in his face. I've got to be nice. I don't want him to think I'm not nice.'

And so human beings will get into a steel soundproof chamber with someone they're afraid of, and there's not another animal in nature that would even consider it."

Gavin says that "eerie feelings" are exactly what he wants women to pay attention to. "We're trying to analyze the warning signs," he says. "And what I really want to teach today and forever is the feeling of the warning sign. All the other stuff is our explanation for the feeling. Why it was this, why it was that. The feeling itself IS the warning sign."

What happens over and over again is that women dismantle their OWN internal safety system by ignoring it. The longer she ignores it, the more 'over rides' it receives and retrains the brain to ignore the fear signal. Once rewired women are at tremendous risks of all kinds...risks of picking the wrong men, of squelching fear signals of impending violence, shutting off alarms about potential sexual assaults, shutting down red flags about financial rip offs, squeeking out hints about poor character in other people...and the list goes on. What is left after your whole entire safety system is dismantled? Not much....

Women, subconsciously sensing they need to have 'something' to fall back on, swap out true and profoundly accurate fear signals with the miserly counterfeit and highly unproductive feeling of worry/anxiety.

Thanks Gilrack!

One more and I'll stop: She will sit in the counselor's office denying true fear and begging for relief from the mounting anxiety she is experiencing. She doesn't trust herself, her intuition, her judgments--all she can feel is anxiety. And with good reason! True fear is her true intuition...not anxiety. But she's already canned what can save her and now on some level she must know she has nothing left that can help her feel and react.

Animals instinctively react to the danger signalthe adrenaline, flash of fear, and flood of cortisol. They don't have internal dialogue with themselves like "What did that mean? Why did he say that? I don't like that behavior-I wonder if he was abused as a child."

People seem determined to defend this celebrity and I don't know why. I've explained over and over why I find his behavior questionable.

And some people don't share your instincts to fear and distrust David Walliams based on his on screen persona and some anecdotes, some of the posters find him attractive. Not me as it happens.

One of the cut and pastes you've provided says "...victims of violent behavior usually feel a sense of fear before any threat or violence takes place..." So not everyone feels it? Is the author sure that the people interviewed did not project this feeling onto the event afterwards? I've had a quick look at his website and his resume is impressive, are there results of studies in his book?

As for my instincts, I'm mid 40s now and as far as interpersonal relationships go, they only failed me that one time. As I said, everyone in my circle thought he was a marvelous bloke, he dropped the facade slowly and just for me.

I've had a quick look at his website and his resume is impressive, are there results of studies in his book?

Yes :) Quite impressive ones, both on the grand scale and the individual. He provides the ground rules of his security practice, which are codified assessments of human instinct. He also gives examples of where - and, crucially, why - perceived instincts weren't reliable.

That's a whole other conversation, really, though not irrelevant here. It doesn't really matter whether each of us finds Mr Walliams creepy, scary, gifted, adorable, sexy, or any combination of the five. But it's always worth talking about 'instinct' and how to honour it! If sharing perceptions of a sleb is one way to do that - all good, I reckon.

People seem determined to defend this celebrity and I don't know why. I've explained over and over why I find his behaviour questionable.
Just because you don't like him, it doesn't mean his behaviour is wrong.
I like him. I don't find his behaviour questionable. I have no problem with his overt campness.

And as long as we are honest with ourselves and don't mistake prejudice for instinct. Thanks to arse hole mentioned above there is a certain physical type that gives me a niggling discomfort, there are circumstances where I 've had to recognise that feeling for what is and put it aside.

Does it matter if he is gay, straight, bi, camp, not camp, not camp and gay or camp and straight or any combintation of the above? Since when is behaving 'camp' and not being gay a problem, or vice versa?

he's putting it on so much on BGT but I'm wondering why

Because he wants to / is actually just like that / doesn't care what people think / realises it doesn't matter if he is camp without being gay ...

HTH

Well, this thread's generated 269 posts to date on a very high-search-ranking website It won't be doing his profile any harm!

Have not read full thread to self...but if he is 'putting it on so much for BGT' it will be for one reason and one reason only...ratings. His shtick of flirting with His Simon when he first appeared was a hit with the viewers. Ratings went up, he was lauded for being refreshing and funny, all the is he-isn't he gossip surrounding SC in any case = more publicity, no such thing as bad etc, so...if it ain't broke, don't fix it. High camp is what he has been paid to do. He was always a bit camp, hence his life story being called Camp David, and he talks of this on desert island discs, if he goes up a gear it will be because SC wants him to perform like a no key boy

monkey boy.
Figs how do I get rid of autospell?

I rather liked him in Attachments - anyone else remember that drama all about a trendy internet company from 2000? I remember being quite thrown by his comedic persona as I saw him first as a serious actor. I don't like it when anyone uses their sexuality to make people feel uncomfortable on purpose. I find him quite a perplexing character - I see him as someone who is not entirely comfortable in his own skin- and I don't think that's solely to do with sexuality either. I think he deliberately invites speculation as to his sexuality - it's all part of his schtick. I don't think we need to start assuming that people debating his sexuality are being intolerant. He does play being creepy VERY well - remember his character in Little Britain that had a thing for the 'gran'? That was played hideously well - he is an actor after all.

FiveExclamations

But I have no issue with the way he looks, only the way he acts. Fine, you like him. But I keep stating that I find him creepy. I've explained why. I don't dislike other camp actors, straight or gay. I don't dislike his physical type. I have no reason to dislike him except his behavior.

His defenders keep trying to insist that I and others are wrong. We are somehow anti-gay or anti-camp or somehow otherwise prejudiced. Our instincts are wrong. We have the wrong feelings.

Why is it so important to you that everyone like him? What do you have to gain by shouting me down and insisting that my feelings are invalid? I think your feelings are valid - you like him. Why are mine unacceptable?

The thing is, ApplePaltrow, your opinions about Walliams go beyond any behaviour you have observed. Of course you're entitled not to like someone and to say so. But when you start to ascribe negative behaviours and characteristics to a person that are not supported by evidence, then you are wondering into the realms of prejudice.

burnthesprouts I really liked Attachments. (From what I can remember, there was a lot of speculation about Walliams's character's sexuality in that.)

wandering, even.

" Fine, you like him."

From my previous posts:

...no great fan of him as a comedian etc. and if the way he comes across in his public life is consistent with his private persona then I don't think I would take to him.*"

"...some of the posters find him attractive. Not me as it happens."

I don't like him, not my cup of tea, but I accept that my mild dislike of him is based on the way he presents himself when he's on the job, that he may be different off the job and that his "leery", "camp" over the top-ness when he is working could be a facade. I don't regard it as evidence that he is gay, that he's a "creep" in real life, or that I should be especially careful to keep my drink away from him should I ever be in his company At least, anymore than I keep my drink away from anyone that I don't know.

To me this is just like those people who chase actors that play "baddies" down the street and harangue them for their characters crimes and misdemeanors. They're acting, their act may or may not have any relation to their true selves.

If I ever met him personally I might change my mind.