Jack Whitehall to be guest star

Sketch show David Walliams and Friends has been given a full series on BBC One.

The commission follows a successful pilot episode starring Joanna Lumley at Christmas, with Walliams confirming the news on Twitter.

Walliams has revealed that Jack Whitehall will be one of the guest stars on the new show. Appearing on Chris Evans's Radio 2 show this morning, he said: 'Me and Jack are going to do a sketch show together. I'm doing this series called Walliams & Friend, and Jack is one of the star guests. I'm very, very excited because he's my favourite comedian.'

Whitehall was also on the show, plugging his forthcoming tour, and tweeted a picture of the pair together in the Radio 2 studio:

PET SHOP BOYS! pic.twitter.com/UwnVd5lKeC

— Jack Whitehall (@jackwhitehall) May 20, 2016

Walliams, who writes the TV series with The Dawson Brothers, joked that when creating scripts for Whitehall he tried to consider ’what can a posh, camp bearded man do and be funny… We’ve got a sketch where a plumber comes round and he tries to pretend he’s down with working class people.’

No details have yet been released about any other guest stars, and the show is set to air in the autumn.

The pilot, which co-starred Morgana Robinson, Mike Wozniak, Colin Hoult and Barunka O’Shaughnessy, attracted 3.83 million viewers or 20.4 per cent of the audience when it aired at 10.05pm on Christmas Eve.

The series comes almost a decade after Little Britain ended.

Reviews of the pilot were broadly positive, with many comparing it to the Two Ronnies. The Daily Telegraph stated that ‘most of the sketches were sharp and funny’ but ‘some felt like Little Britain rejects’, while the Independent thought it was ‘better than you might expect’.

The Evening Standard thought it was ‘daft fun’, noting that ‘by its very nature sketch comedy is hit-or-miss, but Walliams & Friend is thankfully more of the former’.

-by Jay Richardson

Published: 20 May 2016