Little Britain stuff

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Doctor David Walliams?
David Walliams is the new favourite to take the title role in 'Doctor Who'.
18 December 2008
stv.tv

David Walliams is the new favourite to take the title role in 'Doctor Who'. Bookmakers have slashed the odds on the 'Little Britain' star taking over the role from David Tennant following a string of bets, with some betting shops refusing to take any more bets.

A spokesperson for bookmakers William Hill - who have cut the odds on the 37-year-old star from 33-1 to 8-1 - said: "We had a bit of money suddenly put on David Walliams 15 days ago and then we had a flood of bets. "His name has come out of the blue but these are quite significant moves in the market."

However, BBC chiefs are remaining tight-lipped on whether he is to be the 11th Timelord. An insider said: "David would be a brilliant Doctor but even if he is the new man he will not be able to confirm it until the show's producers are ready."

Show bosses insist they are considering a wide range of stars for the iconic role - and may even introduce a female or black Doctor. A source said: "The BBC really wants to shake things up. There is no reason storyline-wise why the Doctor cannot be a woman and from any ethnic background. The Doctor has morphed before and will do so again. To keep the edge they need to change and update the show otherwise there is a danger it will look tired."

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I can't see it for a minute...

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Libel victory for Little Britain
Paper apologies for 'false allegations'

David Walliams and Matt Lucas have won a libel battle over claims that Little Britain USA had angered gay Americans. They received a public apology and undisclosed libel damages at London's High Court from the Daily Star Sunday over an article headed: Little Britain USA Exposed: Gay fatty jokes put Yanks on the warpath

Two gay protest groups were mentioned in the article – the West Hollywood Gay and Lesbian Alliance and New York Gay Pride – describing the programme as ‘grossly insulting’ and calling for US broadcaster HBO to cancel the series. At the time of the claims in September, there were question marks over the existence of the groups, as there seemed to be no record of them. The supposed spokesman from the California group, Irwin Blair, was quoted as saying: ‘This is the most politically incorrect, offensive and obnoxious material ever seen in this country.’

In court, Rod Christie-Miller, solicitor for Walliams and Lucas, said that the allegations had caused ‘considerable distress’ to them both and caused significant damage to their reputations, especially given that they had a large gay fan base. Daily Star Sunday, which is published by Express Newspapers, will now pay damages and costs, and publish an apology. The newspaper’s lawyer Ian Helme offered ‘sincere apologies for the publication of these false allegations’.

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ha!

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Walliams speaks of depression battle
David Walliams, the comedian, actor and writer, has spoken of his ongoing battle against depression and his "pathological fear" of being on his own.
Chris Hastings
22 Feb 2009
telegraph.co.uk

David Walliams has spoken of his depression in a candid interview on BBC Radio. He disclosed that he is racked by self loathing and despair and must constantly fight against "dark thoughts" that have plagued him since childhood.

In a candid interview for Desert Island Discs on Radio 4, the 37-year-old star of Little Britain said his heavy workload and party lifestyle was a way of coping with moments of melancholy. He also said he would take a gun as his luxury item on the fantasy desert island, so he could shoot himself if he got too lonely.

"I can't stand being on my own," he said. "I hate it. I have a pathological fear of being on my own. When I am with my own thoughts I start to unravel myself and I start to think really dark thoughts, self-destructive thoughts." He added: "I am trying to deal with it. I have learnt I have to make plans. I have to see people and do things because I don't want to get myself in that state and I can keep it at bay by being creative."

He said his English Channel swim in 2006, which raised £1.97million for the Sport Relief charity, was an act of "redemption". "I was definitely looking for some sort of redemption," he said. "I had got to think of myself that I wasn't a good person. I don't know why I have that but I struggle with that. I think I also have a lot of self loathing and this was something that I could be proud about."

Last year, Walliams portrayed Frankie Howerd, the late comedian, who also suffered from depression, as part of BBC4's Curse of Comedy series. As well as Little Britain, which he created with Matt Lucas, Walliams has also appeared in television dramas including Stephen Poliakoff's Capturing Mary and films including The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. He has recently finished a West End run of Harold Pinter's No-man's-land, in which he starred alongside Sir Michael Gambon.

In the interview, Walliams described his childhood as normal but said he was frequently depressed. "I don't think I was diagnosed or anything I was just unhappy a lot of the time. I found it hard to kind of make friends with people and form relationships." He said he found an escape by locking himself in the bathroom listening to Rowan Atkinson albums and practising comedy routines.

Walliams also talked revealingly about his first serious relationship, with the actress Katy Carmichael, who he met when they were at Bristol University in the early-1990s, and how this "saved" him. "We were in love for about four years. That really brought me out of myself. I had never gone out all night, I had never stayed up until dawn. She brought all of that out of me. That was a great time and that really, I think, gave me confidence. She is still a very special person in my life but things change don't they? She saved me from misery, she breathed life into me. I would feel very lucky that I went out with her. She was the first woman that I slept with as well. It was a really, really magical time."

He said he had not had such a special relationship for some time. "I haven't been in love – not a love that was requited – for seven years. I got very close to someone and I got very hurt and I just never really felt that I wanted to be that intimate with anyone again."

In the interview, Walliams also refuted the suggestion that his effeminate manner means he is homosexual. He said: "I think about it because I am effeminate. Am I gay? Then I so love being with women and I so love women's bodies and all that and I think 'Well no I can't be'. Sometimes I think it would be simpler if I was [gay] because everyone thinks I am. If I was gay I would just get on with it. I love women. I love being around women I find them incredible, intoxicating. I have never had that feeling for a man." But asked if he could ever have a relationship with a man, he said: "If I fell in love with a man, then yes."

His Desert Island selections include Nick Cave's Into My Arms and Bob Dylan's You're A Big Girl Now. However, he refused to take a copy of the Bible as he said he did not like it.

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I'll try to post this tomorrow when it's broadcast.

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Mental hospital let stalker 'wed' David Walliams
By ANTHONY FRANCE
Crime Reporter
thesun.co.uk

A STALKER who threatened to kill Little Britain’s David Walliams was allowed to “marry” the star in a mock ceremony on her mental ward. Sarah Bartholomew, 29, has now changed her name by deed poll to Sarah Walliams — with the blessing of staff at the hospital where she is sectioned indefinitely. The ex-veterinary nurse marked the event with a “reception” in her room and she now introduces herself to everyone as 37-year-old Walliams’ wife.

Nurses at Kneesworth House Hospital, near Royston, Herts, helped her fill out the deed poll papers and post off a £33 fee. They are said to have feared legal action if they refused.

One astonished cop said: “Bartholomew really believes she’s married to David. Everyone is told to call her Mrs Walliams. She held a ceremony on her ward at which she was both vicar and bride. And she toasted the ‘union’ with a soft drink. The staff are terrified of saying no to her as they could be breaching her rights. It’s madness, she’s clearly still obsessed.”

A court heard last year how Bartholomew sent Walliams gifts and sexually-charged letters during four years of harassment. She turned up at his London home and spent thousands travelling to his touring show with co-star Matt Lucas. When Walliams’ solicitor asked her to stop, she said in a letter: “I have to have you at any cost. I’ll kill or abduct you to stop you seeing anyone else.” She added in a poem: “I’d rip off your pants in a sexual frenzy, you can have me how you want, I’m ever so bendy.”

Bartholomew, of Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, was sectioned by JPs last July after admitting harassment. She will stay in hospital until doctors rule she poses no threat. Her obsession began after she met Walliams at a 2004 event. The BBC banned her from its studios after she tried to break into his dressing room.

Last night Scotland Yard said: “We can confirm a woman detained under the Mental Health Act has changed her name by deed poll, but we are currently not re-opening the investigation.” A Department of Health spokesman said: “We would expect clinicians to discuss with patients if it is necessary to change their name. They may decide that if the patient’s wish to do so is caused by their disorder, it would be appropriate to discourage it.”

According to the UK Deed Poll Service, name changes can be blocked if considered vulgar, offensive or unsuitable. The Ministry of Justice said staff would NOT have faced legal action under the Human Rights Act had they refused. A spokesman said: “There’s no legal restriction on a person changing their name based on mental capacity.”

David Walliams was unavailable for comment last night.

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Bloody hell, what's the point of her being in a hospital if they are helping to fuel her fantasy? It does sound like she's going to be there a while all the same...

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Showstopper!, Leicester Square Theatre, London
Little Briton with a large talent
Julian Hall
5 May 2009
independent.co.uk

Matt Lucas is partly responsible for some of the most visceral and grotesque humour in British comedy. So it was both intriguing and refreshing to see him in an altogether more ponderous, and sometimes bashful mood, for his guest role in this improvised musical.

Sporting a dark velveteen suit with what looked like a 1960s-style red Arsenal shirt underneath, Lucas (a known Gunners fan) was vaguely in line with the black and red costumes of the cast. Though he was all dressed up and ready for action, the Little Britain star was principally employed as sidekick to writer/director Dylan Emery, whose charisma and passing resemblance to Rowan Atkinson are both noteworthy.

The show's scenario is that Emery has just one night to create a new musical. What follows vacillates between the ensemble doing his and Lucas's bidding as they up the improv ante. Suggestions from the audience are also used to create the musical "From Dust 'til Dawn", a tale of love, celibacy and betrayal through the eyes of the employees of a Mexican oyster bar, which journeys through a range of musical stylings, from Andrew Lloyd Webber and the Disney composer Alan Menken, to Sesame Street.

When the cast settle on the dust theme of the musical as relating to cocaine smuggling, Emery asks the characters to think of five euphemisms for the drug. "Venezuelan Tate & Lyle" one of them comes back. Meanwhile, wearing an impish smile, Lucas names two characters Hannah and Steve but dryly requests that the former be a man and the latter a woman, adding supportively: "it's just like Cyd Charisse and Gene Kelly."

Lucas's suggestion morphs into a so-so number about the differences between being a boy and a girl. It's a tune that would not look that out of place in Avenue Q and, while there are better songs, for example a Disney-style duet called "Two Birds", Showstopper! does approach a product that, as co-creator Adam Meggido (playing the hero Pedro tonight) has said, "could sit alongside anything in the West End." Fortunately for the cast, this achievement says more about their talents than it does about the formulaic and trite musicals going on around them.

Meanwhile, just as it was starting to look like Lucas would never be able to demonstrate his own performance dexterity, Emery casts him as Pedro's Yorkshireman brother, thus providing a late twist in the tale. Visibly reluctant, Lucas assumes his role as Balthazar Jones, here to inform Pedro that his real name is Barry and that he should come back home to his mum.

Lucas is asked to sing for his supper too, but it's a short refrain. Nonetheless, his presence during this enjoyable romp has provided both entertainment and a unique snapshot of the depth and duality of his comic persona.

Until 30th of July ( www.showstopperthemusical.com )

[pirtybirdy]

Just read the mental hospital article just now. I don't know how I missed that one. One would hope today's mental hospitals would be all about helping someone get better so they can join society somewhat mentally healthy. I hope the woman isn't just there morphing like they did in the old days where people were sort of prisoners and getting no help at all. That sounds whacked that they'd let her do that.

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Lucas and Walliams revive Rock Profiles

Matt Lucas and David Walliams have recorded six new Rock Profiles sketches, nine years after the TV series ended. In the new scenes – made specially for the internet – the pair dress up as Jordan and Peter Andre; Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty; Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow; Kerry Katona and Mark Croft; Ronnie Wood and Ekaterina Ivanova; and Cheryl Cole and Nicola Roberts.

The new material will go out on the Funny Or Die website, in which the pair have a stake, from Monday.

The original Rock Profiles series went out on now defunct digital channel UK Play in 1999 and 2000, before the duo found fame with Little Britain, and featured Jamie Theakston questioning the pair as they impersonated – badly – their targets.

This time around, the show will be hosted by Dermot O’Leary and Miquita Oliver.

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Sounds good - Rock Profiles was brilliant at points.

[eirebadboy]

Great news, Rock Profiles was great.

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I just realised some errors in that report I posted... UK Play isn't defunct, it is now what Dave is, and it was never digital either. Pesky Chortle.

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Matt Lucas is a dead ringer for 'Hairy Angel' Susan Boyle
Simon Cable
19th May 2009

We still don't know if he can do the voice, but when it comes to looks Matt Lucas is a dead ringer for Britain's Got Talent sensation Susan Boyle. The Little Britain star, best known for his chav character Vicky Pollard, has recreated the moment Miss Boyle first stepped on stage in front of the judges.

An unruly brown wig, bushy eyebrows and substantial gold frock achieve the transformation from roly-poly bald comedian to the so-called Hairy Angel. Lucas, who adopted the pose for Heat magazine, says of Miss Boyle: 'I thought she was really good. But I wouldn't say she was extraordinary. It was an extraordinary TV moment because she was such an unlikely heroine. It'll be interesting to see what happens to her - she comes across as having lots of humility.'

In an interview, 36-year-old Lucas reveals that he has lost two stone in eight weeks after his doctor warned him about his weight. He is restricted to 1,500 calories a day and has undertaken a rigorous fitness regime. 'The likelihood of me being a proper thin man is remote,' he admits. 'I think I'll end up being a stone overweight. But I'm not there yet by any stretch of the imagination.'

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Maybe if he had more humility he wouldn't be doing such an obvious pisstake and focus instead on more intellectual fodder like Jordan?

The filly sat cunt!



Here are the new Rock Profiles mini-episodes

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This is a 30 minute interview between Jimmy Carr and Matt Lucas that was part of the 'Chain Reaction' series that saw one comedian interview another. It's from just after the second tv series was broadcast.

[seshme]

Good to see the two of them finally getting some exposure...

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Matt Lucas on fame, body image and relationships
Bald at 6, a father in prison... Matt Lucas’s childhood could read as a misery memoir. Yet it wasn’t quite like that. Here he talks frankly about family, fame, body image and relationships, and how, with comedy as his weapon, he’s emerged a thoroughly grounded man who couldn’t be more unlike the gallery of grotesques he’s so famous for creating
Robert Crampton
timesonline.co.uk
6th June 2009

The comedian Bob Mortimer once described Matt Lucas as “the angriest man I have ever met”. Lucas was 18 when Mortimer said it and he’s 35 now; the quote has been hanging around his neck for a long time, so maybe it’s time to take it off. “Teenagers can take themselves very seriously; you spend too much time on your own, you start to mythologise yourself. You wear your perceived nonconformity on your sleeve.”

Lucas didn’t seem angry when I met him. Not at all. He gets upset and depressed from time to time, he says, like many people. But in our interview he was amusing, polite, most of all thoughtful. He seemed like a man who has put in a lot of work on himself, and the work has paid off. The tears of a clown may well have flowed 15 or 10 years ago; I’m not sure they do any longer.

We meet in a photography studio in North London. He is here to publicise his new BBC series, Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire, a “Blackadder meets Red Dwarf kind of thing” in which he plays an “Alan Rickman-esque Sheriff of Nottingham psychotic baddie. I got the script and it really made me laugh. I auditioned for it and got the role. It was a giggle.”

He’s been followed to the studio by paparazzi, “but it would be churlish to aspire to be on television for many years and then to be on television and moan”. The media have, in any case, “cottoned on to the fact that a picture of me as Vicky Pollard is a lot more interesting than a picture of me walking my dog [Milo, two, chocolate Labrador]. Also, for the majority of the time that I’ve been famous, I’ve been in a relationship, and to be in a monogamous gay relationship is not as interesting as being, say, straight and single.”

Like his Little Britain partner, David Walliams, for instance? “Like David or Russell Brand or all those people. And they would be considered sexier and more attractive than me. I don’t crave more attention than I get. I will always, like the vast majority of people, look at a photo of myself and wince or cringe. I’ll always have that, but I think it’s quite natural.”

When we met some months ago, Lucas was single again after his long relationship with Kevin McGee ended in summer 2008. “I was with Kevin for almost six years, from August 2002.” The two men had had a civil partnership in 2006, finally dissolved in January this year. Lucas and McGee have both a gentlemen’s and a legal agreement not to discuss their relationship. “We turned down offers to photograph our ceremony. Kevin didn’t ask to be in the public eye, I still feel very protective towards him,” says Lucas. “I’m not in another relationship,” he said at our interview, “and it’s not something that I am looking for.”

Months later, however, during a telephone update, that situation has changed. “There is someone I like at the moment,” he says, “who likes me. It’s very early days and it came as a surprise to me. That’s all I’m going to say; I don’t want to jinx anything.”

The other big change between the initial interview and the phone follow-up is that Lucas has been on a serious, and so far successful, diet. “I was 106 kilos [getting on for 17 stone] when we met. I’m 90 kilos now.” This equates, he says, to ten inches around his stomach. He wants to get to 70-75 kilos (about 11 and a half stone) which, for a man of 5ft 6½in (“I really treasure that half”), “may still be a bit tubby, but I don’t mind”.

Is he feeling more attractive? “A little, maybe. But then, almost everybody I’ve ever dated, I’ve felt they were really handsome and they’ve felt the opposite. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

For the photo shoot, Lucas is wearing a green corduroy suit and a bright red shirt. You’d think maybe he was a classic look-at-me extrovert, but he isn’t at all. Instead, this chap who dressed up in a Babygro when he was first on TV at the tender age of 18 in Shooting Stars, or strutted around in spandex as Daffyd the only gay in the village, is self-effacing to the point of shyness.

We sit in the café at the photography studio. He has a hot chocolate and a cookie (this is pre-diet). He speaks quietly, doesn’t draw attention to himself. His humour is the opposite of slapstick: so deadpan it takes a moment for the gag to register. When I ask him if he weighs himself, for instance, he says, “Yeah, I do, and then I get peckish and eat the scales.”

I say I’m someone whose weight also fluctuates dramatically. “Whereas I’m lucky I can eat and eat and eat and not put on an ounce.”

The early years

Lucas hasn’t given that many interviews, and those he has done tend to major on the stereotype of the sad funnyman. Admittedly, the stereotype has some mileage. But if there is one theme to our interview it is Lucas’s insistence that this unhappiness is not and never was the whole story.

“There were loads of happy memories from my childhood. There’s a temptation to characterise comedians as having a monopoly on suffering, and you can look at the facts and say, ‘Well, his hair fell out when he was 6, his parents divorced, his dad went to prison, questions over sexuality, struggles with weight,’ and assume every waking hour was a tyranny, but I don’t regard it as such at all. I had many happy moments watching Arsenal play, going to the theatre, wonderful friends, many of whom I still see, and a happy family. Many people have difficult lives and I don’t regard myself as one of them.”

The hair loss may have been the result of his being knocked down by a car when he was 4 and on holiday in Portugal. “Some medics thought it might be delayed shock.” Growing up, he says, he was “the bald kid. The Bald Man of Stanmore. I couldn’t get away with anything. I did feel very self-conscious about my appearance. Going through puberty was hard.”

The sudden and total hair loss is more likely to have been hereditary, as his father had also lost his hair, when he was about 13. “My dad wore a wig when we were growing up, a brown, Frankie Howerd style.” One of the traumatic things about visiting his father in prison in Aylesbury was he was not allowed to wear his wig. “I had never seen him before without it.” Going to visit his dad in prison was, he says, “really, really horrible. But I loved seeing him.”

Lucas’s parents separated when he was 10. He stayed with his mother and saw his dad every weekend. Then, when he was 12, his father, an aluminium importer, “made some bad decisions” to try to protect his failing business. “‘Cooking the books,’ I suppose they would call it. His intentions were good but his actions were a mistake.”

Lucas’s father was convicted of fraud and served six months of a nine-month sentence. He later remarried, as did Lucas’s mother. A decade later, when Lucas was in his early twenties and well-known for Shooting Stars, his father died. “There was a period, about the age of 25, when I became very depressed. I was dealing with bereavement, I was dealing with fame and I was dealing with trying to express myself and be gay and have relationships. I was out to my friends, but not my family. I saw a therapist regularly for three years; it was an overwhelmingly positive experience.”

His mother and stepmother are now friends. “It’s all very mature and amicable. They both came to my birthday recently. Good things sometimes come out of bad things.”

Lucas grew up “at the top of the Jubilee line”, on the border between Stanmore and Edgware, as part of northwest London’s Jewish community. His mother’s family had got out of Berlin in the late Thirties; his father’s, originally called Solotsky, had emigrated from eastern Europe to the East End three decades earlier.

Lucas went to Haberdashers’ Aske’s, a fee-paying school with a large (20 or 30 per cent, he thinks) Jewish minority. Sacha Baron Cohen and David Baddiel also went there. “I was number two goalie in the hockey squad until Jayesh Makan displaced me, and I shall never forgive him. I won’t be happy till I get my place back. These Baftas are meaningless.”

Lucas’s Jewishness is important to him. For one thing, he says, the crutch for many Jews is food, whereas for Gentiles, particularly in showbusiness, the crutch is more likely to be drink or drugs. “I’m lucky because many people in my industry struggle with alcohol or drugs. I struggle with my aunt’s delicious chocolate cake.”

He gave up smoking on New Year’s Eve, 2000, and “hasn’t had a drag since”. He is virtually teetotal bar the occasional sip “to be polite with friends. If I never drank alcohol again I wouldn’t be in the least bothered.” He remembers being in a pub with his dad only once. “It just wasn’t part of my culture.” He’s never had anything to do with drugs, he says. “I can’t be doing with all that. You could be spending your money on crisps, couldn’t you?”

Having made the point about his ethnic attachment to comfort food, Lucas is keen not to use it as an excuse. Having once lost a lot of weight as a teenager, he put it all back on. “Because I ate like a greedy fat bastard. It’s a way to seek solace, isn’t it? Eating is very pleasurable. Everyone who is fat is overweight for similar reasons. I mean, if I’m big-boned it’s only because I ate some big bones. I’m a greedy bastard. I like crisps and chips and chocolate. They’re nice.”

In terms of religion, he describes himself now as “a Jewish agnostic. Or probably a Jewish atheist actually. I would say I don’t believe in God but I am extremely proud of my Jewish heritage and it’s a big part of my life.” His elder brother is “very observant” and won’t watch Arsenal on a Saturday. Lucas’s mother and stepmother and cousin are involved in their local synagogue. He attends regularly but infrequently. As a child, it was synagogue on Saturdays, Hebrew classes Sunday morning, Jewish youth movement Sunday night, bar mitzvah lessons Tuesday night, Jewish cub scouts Thursday. Jewish cub scouts? “Yes, it was an exclusively Jewish pack.”

How has his ethnicity played out in his humour? “I don’t know that it has significantly. It’s not something I’m running away from, but I think you’d identify me as a gay comedian quicker than you would identify me as Jewish by looking at my work. I’ve had a few ideas about doing Jewish characters. We wrote one once but it was only half working.”

Lucas and David Walliams write together, alternating between each other’s homes. They start at 10am, break for an M&S ready meal and the news at lunch, crack on again until 4.30, 5pm. They are writing more material for Little Britain USA. Nor have they ruled out a fourth series of Little Britain here. Certainly, there will be further Christmas specials. After work they go their separate ways, often to their respective fitness regimes, Walliams to the pool, Lucas to his personal trainer for “stretching, toning and light cardio”. Lucas’s father died of a heart attack at 52, and his father died of a heart attack at 56. “I need to get out of the danger zone,” he says.

Unlike some comedy partnerships, Walliams and Lucas are also close friends, often meeting up again in the evening to socialise. “We had dinner together last night, we’re having dinner together again tonight. We’re going out with David’s mother, Dale Winton, Barbara Windsor and her husband Scott.” What’s it like going out with Barbara Windsor? “Like going out with the Queen. In fact, who needs to meet the Queen? Has the Queen’s bra ever pinged off into Kenneth Williams’s face? No. People are utterly in awe of her and so am I. She’s The Link. I love her.”

Lucas is steeped in both TV and comedy history. “I love telly. I’m very mistrustful of anybody who didn’t grow up in front of the telly. I mean, fair enough if you didn’t have a telly, but if you had a telly and a video and you didn’t watch it, I want to know why. And I didn’t stop watching when kids’ telly finished; I’d watch the test card until Laurel and Hardy came on at 6 o’clock.” Had Channel 4 started? “Yes, I remember the first day because I had a tutor after school and I rushed home to see the start. November 1982.”

Why the tutor? “I was at primary school and there was an entrance exam for Haberdashers’, so I had this tutor, Mrs Madeley, to help me cover some things that weren’t on the curriculum at our primary school. Money well spent, I guess.” He makes this last remark with a trace of bitterness. He was put on a report card after a year at secondary school, “because I was academically failing. I lacked confidence, I wasn’t applying myself and I probably wasn’t capable academically.” Surely not? “It’s possible. I still can’t do long division.” He says later it was the sort of school “where your best was still not quite good enough”.

Comedy heroes

Back in front of the telly though, Lucas was educating himself in different subjects in a different way. Not just contemporary comedy, but the classics, going back through Leonard Rossiter and Galton and Simpson and Tony Hancock all the way to Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd and his hero, Charlie Chaplin. “When I was 16 I had 2 heroes: Chaplin and Freddie Mercury.” His favourite films, he says, are Planes, Trains & Automobiles, Tootsie and Singin’ in the Rain.

“I just love comedy. I do it for a living but I’m also a fan. I sit at home and watch Gavin and Stacey and I love The Office, I think Ricky [Gervais] and Stephen [Merchant] are brilliant, and I love Peter Kay and Catherine Tate and Have I Got News for You, and I used to watch The Two Ronnies. I’ll watch Harry Hill, Vic and Bob, The Fast Show, Caroline Aherne, The League of Gentlemen.”

As a teenager, Lucas was serving a twin comedy apprenticeship. Besides absorbing so many other performers’ work, he was also producing his own, albeit as an amateur, albeit perhaps for the wrong reasons. “My self-esteem was low and I thought if I could be the roly-poly funnyman, the entertainer, I’d be allowed into the group.” He regrets this now, saying he didn’t know any better, but also admits it worked, both socially and in terms of starting to learn the trade.

He is suspicious of attempts to link the grotesque characters he and Walliams have created to his own biography. When I say an amateur psychologist might look at Daffyd, say, and suggest there was a degree of self-loathing being expressed, he responds sharply. “An amateur psychologist would, yes.” But he can identify with “those experiences of being in the closet too long and then coming out and people saying, ‘Oh, we figured that out,’ or, ‘We don’t care.’ I had used my gayness as the thing that made me special, my special secret,and suddenly I had to redefine myself.”

More generally, he admits, he and Walliams have used comedy “as a kind of weapon. Being a comedian is a great way of controlling other people’s laughter against you. If you make jokes about yourself, you’ve beaten other people to it. So coming out dressed as Bubbles or Marjorie or Andy, characters who are aesthetically undesirable, if someone points out that you are physically undesirable, you can say, ‘Yeah, I know.’ Or no one is going to snigger behind your back and say, ‘Did you know he’s gay?’ because it’s like, ‘Yeah, I told you.’ There is a sense of empowerment.”

Empowerment, and equilibrium. He seems an essentially stable character. He doesn’t complain about fame as many celebrities do. Nor has the money gone to his head. He does not have expensive tastes. Just the one house. No car. (Can’t drive.) “I sit with my dog – it makes me happy; I watch a nice film – it makes me happy. I bought a piano and taught myself to play. I keep the cupboards stocked. I’ve always got crisps in the house. I make sure there are always Cornettos in the freezer.”

So it’s all in the bank then? “I think it’s vulgar to talk about money. I bought a projector, a TV projector, that is something I always wanted as a kid. I can see the stress lines on Arsène Wenger’s face in high definition.” Football, he says, is his soap. He has a season ticket at Arsenal, having first been taken by his dad when he was 6 or 7. One of his extravagances is, “I have better seats than I used to. Better position and more comfortable. When I don’t earn money again they’ll be back where they were. Which is fine, because I’ll be watching Arsenal and I’ll be happy regardless.” It is unlikely, I think, that he will have to downgrade his seats at the Emirates any time soon.

Watch Kröd Mändoon

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This much I know
Matt Lucas, comedian, 35, London
Stuart Husband
The Observer,
Sunday 28 June 2009

I'd like to travel back to the 1990s. Going back to the Roman Empire would just be fatuous. The most useful form of time travel would be to go back a year or two and rectify the mistakes we made. David Walliams has this joke - if he could revisit any time in history, it would be a month ago, because he could get that pair of shoes he coveted but passed on at the Dorothy Perkins sale.

I've never taken cocaine. I've never taken acid or ecstasy or heroin. I smoked pot in my late teens and early 20s and it turned me into a crashing bore. Drugs are rubbish.

I've lost a couple of stone, and I need to lose some more. It all came off in two months. My doctor said if I wasn't careful I'd end up with self-inflicted diabetes. It was a counter-intuitive thing. I really like chocolate, and if I'm diabetic it'll be off-limits. I don't expect to be thin, but I'd like to feel a bit healthier. The problem is that I'm having to wear all these old clothes as my weight changes. Yesterday I was wearing a Queen "Heaven for Everyone" T-shirt from 1992.

Comedians don't have a monopoly on suffering. But creative people are sometimes fortunate enough to be able to incorporate their most traumatic experiences into their art.

If you look at the events of my life - "he was six when he lost his hair, 10 when his parents divorced, 12 when his dad went to prison" - and you keep going, it reads like a litany of woe. But what that doesn't tell you is that there were many happy times in between - West End debut at 14, getting into the National Youth Theatre at 16, etc.

My relationship ended last year, but the vast majority of that relationship was blissful. Happy memories are as instructive as bad ones. I still recall going to see Jim'll Fix It being recorded on my eighth birthday. Jimmy Savile walked up to me and patted my head. I don't know that I've ever been as excited, to this day.

I didn't really bloom until my late 20s. I put my career before my personal life for too long.

Bob Mortimer once said I was the angriest man he'd ever met. I think rage has always been a great motivator for me. I funnelled it all into the stand-up act I started doing at 18. It seems a risky thing to do, looking back on it, but it seemed like the only thing to do at the time.

What makes me laugh? I like people falling over. Never fails.

We've been accused of cruelty with Little Britain, but I also know we've benefited from the scorn of good reviewers, because it's caused us to address what we do and try to make it better.

It doesn't bother me that certain catchphrases may haunt me to the grave. It took us so long to establish ourselves that to resent a warm response would be pretty churlish. Also, I know how ephemeral celebrity can be, so if people are still shouting "yeahbutnobut" as I'm lowered into the ground in 50 years' time, then that would be amazing. I think it's very unlikely - I don't remember Arthur Askey's obituaries saying "Busy Bee Man Dies".

I tweet. I'm RealMattLucas on Twitter. I try to avoid constant tweets - an interval of a week or two may go by between them, which is a Twitter lifetime. That may explain why I currently have 30,000 followers - about a million less than Aston Kutcher.

My biggest guilty pleasure? The music of Roger Whittaker. I'm not just saying that. "Durham Town" and "The Last Farewell" are as good as anything Kurt Cobain ever wrote.

Keep yourself busy if you want to avoid depression. For me, inactivity is the enemy.

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I simply don't believe that he's never tried coke or ecstasy. Although, I notice he doesn't say that he hasn't taken speed. As for saying 'drugs are rubbish' - how old is he? 12?