The last time David Walliams did a sponsored swim he was a tubby schoolboy, a sideline kid who preferred talking to any kind of physical activity. His efforts consisted of hustling a few uncles into giving him 5p for every lap of the local pool. This time around it was a bit different.

After visiting Ethiopia in January last year with his friend and Little Britain co-creator Matt Lucas, 34-year-old Walliams pledged to swim the Channel for Sport Relief. He was assigned a trainer, who worked with him for nine months. Once in the water, at 5.30am on Tuesday, he battled jellyfish, effluent, and the dark, doubtful corners of his own mind, to emerge, triumphant, 10 and a half hours later. At last count, he had raised £460,768 for his cause. “A lot of people said to me, ‘Don’t put yourself through it,'” he says. “My mum was very worried. Some people were very sceptical about whether I was going to make it.”

Walliams was sceptical himself. For a man more than willing to endure indignity for his comedy, be it as a clownish transvestite or an incontinent woman, he was terribly worried about public humiliation. Less than 10% of people who attempt the swim are successful and he had never been sporty. The added pressure of media coverage and a documentary crew didn’t help – if he failed, he would do so very publicly.

“I weighed more when I was 14 than I do now,” he says. “I’ve never been very coordinated and I never played with the other kids. I was more interested in sitting around talking about plays and books and things. We’d seal ourselves off and that’s what I wanted to do.”

From the fat kid chrysalis emerged a driven butterfly. Walliams’ swimming trainer, Greg Whyte, himself a pentathlete, says he has never encountered a similar level of dedication in anyone, including the Olympians he has trained. “He’s an incredibly tenacious and single-minded individual. He didn’t miss a single training session in nine months.”

Jon Plowman, head of comedy at the BBC and executive producer of Little Britain, has seen this tenacity in a professional context. “Matt is more garrulous but David is a fantastically hard worker … and that accounts for some of the success of Little Britain.”

Walliams’ apparent earnestness is at odds with his party-hopping image, which has loomed large since he found fame with Little Britain in 2003. When the show began, the tabloids and gossip magazines swiftly added him to their list of prey. Tall, good-looking and charming, he was linked to a stream of actors and glamour models, from Abi Titmuss to Courtney Love.

The interest in his love life sits somewhat peculiarly beside open speculation about his sexuality. He is always photographed looking immaculate in designer suits, or perhaps a pink polo short if he is going casual. He lives in a fashionable area of north London, in the former home of Noel Gallagher, and drives a Mercedes convertible. He owns a poodle. The Sun, which gained exclusive coverage rights to his Channel swim, even created a “Gay-O-Meter”, which measured how heterosexual or homosexual he appeared to be that week. Snapped at Nobu with a beautiful starlet? The Gay-O-Meter flips to solidly straight. Seen shopping at Prada in Bond Street? He is back in the pink.

Walliams appears to enjoy fame, but gossip clearly bothers him. Despite his willingness to crossdress for his comedy, he was unamused when Jonathan Ross teased him on television about his sexuality.

“I think he quite enjoys being a star and is happy with his success,” says his friend David Baddiel. He says Walliams did the Channel swim because he “genuinely wanted to give something back”.

Raised in a middle class household in Surrey and educated at Reigate grammar school, Walliams is certainly well mannered. Like Emily Howard, the rubbish transvestite, he likes to take tea, and will provide exquisite cakes to go with it, according to Baddiel.

His taste in gifts is immaculate – he once gave Baddiel a designer leather passport holder, a gift he says he could not imagine receiving from anyone else. Whyte says after the swim on Tuesday, when Walliams would have been entitled to sit back with a beer and a burger, he visited and telephoned people who helped his swim, and sent off presents to thank them.

As well as gratitude, perhaps Walliams felt some guilt. He admitted feeling incredibly “nauseous and panicky” before the swim, and wished it could be called off. “I have this thing before a show when I really hope the fire alarm goes off, and it was the same with the swim,” he says. “I kept thinking, I hope something happens and I get let off the hook.” But it didn’t and he wasn’t.

The CV

Born David Williams (later changed for Equity purposes), August 20 1971

Family Never married, no children. Mother is Kathleen, former lab technician, father Peter, former transport engineer. Raised at Banstead, Surrey. Has sister, Julie, and two nephews

Education After Reigate grammar school, attended National Youth Theatre, later studied drama at Bristol

Career Began in bit television parts. Wrote and acted in three Doctor Who parodies in 1999. As well as Little Britain, he and Matt Lucas collaborated on the series Rock Profile, and in the spoof documentary series Sir Bernard’s Stately Homes

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