Walliams is the favourite to win sporting honour.

At least one person is celebrating a lacklustre summer for British sport: David Walliams.

The nation's failure to achieve any major sporting success means the Little Britain star has become the bookies' favourite to be named the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year.

His cross-Channel swim earlier this month earned £1million for Sports Relief ¼ and his time of 10 hours, 34 minutes is one of the 50 fastest ever.

Now bookies are offering 7-2 on the 34-year-old comic scooping the prestigious prize in December, ahead of Liverpool FC captain Steven Gerrard, who is second favourite at 5-1.

'His sporting achievement compares very favourably with anything that any UK sportsperson can boast so far in 2006,' said Tony Calvin from Betfair.

'When we introduced David Walliams into the market he was an initial 119-1 chance, but that was obviously highly dismissive of a phenomenal sporting achievement.

'With a few notable exceptions, he is largely up against gallant British failures and remember, the BBC have no shortage of footage of his swim and that means he will getting plenty of airtime come the December trailers for the award.'