This Week's Contemporary Hero

You may know him better as the taller half of the comedy duo behind Little Britain. Or you may know him from his numerous other TV, film, or radio roles. But we are singling out David Walliams for his heroic feats of last summer.

Mr. Walliams is a bona fide celebrity. He makes million of dollars to make people laugh and to entertain them. So why did he not only swim the English channel, but also become one of the top 50 people to ever do it and the first celebrity to ever do it as well?

While Walliams was in Africa a few years back he told someone who works for a charity organization called Sport Relief that he'd love to help them out in their charitable efforts among orphanages over in Ethiopia. This person asked Walliams if there was some sporting thing he'd like to try that could raise money for them. Walliams suggested, half jokingly, that he could swim the English channel. The Sport relief person immediately took him up on his offer.

Fast forward a year to the start of Walliams highly successful but physically demanding Little Britain Live tour of the UK. Every night Walliams and his partner in comedy Matt Lucas would take to the stage and perform sketches from their highly successful BBC show and every morning Walliams would swim and train for his English Channel attempt. Even if the tour took a night off, his training did not.

After 9 months of hard training the big day arrived and Walliams plunged into the Channel near

Dover, England. He swam through some of the roughest waters on this planet. Also in the Channel that day with Walliams were some of the biggest freighters in the world, nasty currents, raw sewage, and stinging jelly fish. Walliams plowed through, around, and over all those obstacles and in a little over 10 hours he emerged from the water and he set foot on French soil.

Now if you think swimming 21 miles in rough seas while dodging jelly fish, people's turds, huge freighters, and whatever else is in the water that day is easy, I invite you to go to your local pool and swim for an hour straight. Then when that hour is over, do it 10 more hours while people throw shit at you, toss hornets at you, and drive wave runners over your body.

In the end Walliams raised over 1 million pounds for Sport Relief. That means that those Ethiopian orphanages can stay open and provide better care to the children who live there.

Walliams didn't have to swim the Channel. He could have written a check and stayed warm and dry. But he didn't. He used his fame for good and he got a lot of people to help as well. That's why he's Monkey Muck's Contemporary Hero of the Week.

And we end this post with a gratuitous butt shot for the ladies. Here's David's butt for you ladies to enjoy: