By Tim Saunders on
British comedian David Walliams has completed his second epic charity swim… and swallowed some water at the same time.
“Swimming and throwing up… it shouldn’t really go together,” said the star of Little Britain. “It was really tough.”
The 36-year-old swam across the Strait of Gibraltar, from Spain to Morocco, with Olympic rower James Cracknell. The event was part of Cracknell’s 10 day “Swim To Africa” adventure, which raised money for Sport Relief.
Cracknell’s trip started from Dover on February 27, when he rowed across the English Channel in atrocious weather conditions. This was followed by cycling 1,400 miles through France and Spain.
The final leg of the trip was the 12-mile swim, and having Walliams along was a boost for Cracknell’s morale. Walliams is certainly no stranger to swimming long distances – in 2006 he swam the English Channel and raised $2 million for Sport Relief in the process.
“I can’t believe David volunteered to do that after having done the Channel,” said Cracknell. “[The swim] was horrible.”
But Walliams had his own way of dealing with the cramp-inducing swim, and hummed Elton John songs to himself to keep his mind off the sharks that seemed to circle around the pair.
“I was singing to try and get me through it,” he said. “I was singing Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word and Your Song. When you’re in the water, if you start thinking about where you are, you think ‘I want this to be over.’ But if you think about nice things like Elton John songs, it kind of passes the time. I found it really tough. About two hours in I started to get seasick. The sea was really rough and I swallowed a lot of seawater. I started feeling really nauseous and throwing up. I got really demoralized so I had to talk to myself and say ’you’ve got to do it, you’ve got to do it.”
The pair completed the swim in four and a half hours.
Copyright © 2008 Look to the Stars
