HAVING battled his way through jellyfish, seaweed and sewage to conquer the English Channel in 2006, comedian David Walliams is preparing for a fresh challenge: swimming the Strait of Gibraltar alongside Olympic rower James Cracknell later this week.

Cracknell is currently midway through an attempt to reach north Africa in seven days by rowing, cycling and swimming.

He is pedalling furiously down through France and Spain to raise money for Sport Relief, having set off from Dover last Wednesday.

Walliams is awaiting a call to join him as he nears the end of his 1,400-mile bike-ride. They will both then swim the final leg to Africa, with Walliams acting as friend and coach.

“I’m quite concerned about how exhausted James is going to be,” he says.

“People assume that because you’re an Olympian you can do anything but this is way out of what he’d normally do.”

At 12 miles, the swim from Spain to Morocco is nine miles less than the Channel but offers dangers in the form of cold and sharks.

Walliams, 36, swam the Channel in summer, with the water at a bearable 15C: this time it will be 10C at best.

“In other words, you’d be dead in an hour if you fell in and hung around,” he says.

The swim promises to be as much an emotional as a physical challenge for Walliams, whose father Peter died of liver cancer before Christmas. “I was having nightmares about it last night, it has been on my mind a lot,” he says. “It will be very sad that my dad won’t be here to see us off.”

Walliams admits that the responsibility for getting 35-year-old Cracknell to the finishing post is weighing heavy, but he is trying to laugh it off. “It’s really James’s challenge,” he says. “I’m just jumping in at the end to get some of the glory.”

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