Little Britain stuff

[faceless]

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.

[faceless]

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.'

-----------------

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!

[seshme]

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

[faceless]

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.

[faceless]

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.

--------------------

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?

[pirtybirdy]

Why don't you believe he's never tried coke or ecstasy? Also, why is he 12 for stating his opinion? Drugs are great? lol! Thanks for the article by the way. :-)

[faceless]

He's been around the tv and live comedy industries for 15 years or more and to say he's never tried these drugs is like saying he's never breathed. A lot of the time you won't even get on in your career unless you do because people have their little secret and don't risk others being around who don't partake...

'Drugs are rubbish' sounds like the words of a 12 year old who's just seen that daft video from the 80s - 'Just Say No'. And if he hadn't tried them at least, then how does he know they're rubbish?

[pirtybirdy]

I'd say for sure he's been around people that have partaken. I know I have, but I've always said no to harsher stuff than marijuana, mainly because of my heart murmur. Maybe he was afraid of having a heart attack taking coke. I think you have a point though on the drugs are rubbish. I suppose he could have said he doesn't like drugs for himself because "insert reason here", but I think I know what he meant. I don't think hard drugs are good on a habitual basis. In that case, it's of my opinion that they are rubbish.....lol!

On a different note, can't wait to see that Alice in Wonderland film by Tim Burton with him in it. Love those weird films....lol!

[faceless]

I was speaking to a pal today about this and he pretty much said the same as you. He was a bassist in a band for years and while drugs were all around he didn't take any. I suppose it's just adventurous, exciting, cool-as-hell types that try them! haha

I was surprised to see he's in that new Alice film, but it looks funny...

[faceless]

Matt Lucas: 'I feel very vulnerable'
On the end of Little Britain – and why the critics of his chav creation Vicky Pollard are missing the point
Decca Aitkenhead
The Guardian,
4th September 2009

When I replay the tape after the interview, I come to a point where I excused myself from the table. After a minute or two, Matt Lucas's voice breaks the silence. "Look into my eyes, the eyes, the eyes," he intones into the Dictaphone, "don't look around the eyes, look into my eyes . . . You're under. Now, when you finish interviewing me, you will write the most extraordinary article about the genius that is Matt Lucas, the renaissance man that is Sir Matt Lucas. Three . . . two . . . one . . . You're back in the room." Moments later I return from the toilet, and the interview resumes.

If you're one of Little Britain's many million loyal fans, you will recognise this as a riff on Lucas's character Kenny Craig, a lazy and fraudulent hypnotist – and presumably you'll find it funny. Not being one of them myself, I'd hoped that by meeting Lucas, I'd begin to understand his extraordinary appeal. For six years now, he and his comic partner David Walliams have enjoyed a popularity with Little Britain so widespread and intensely felt that those of us who still don't quite get the joke have to wonder what we're missing. But in truth, I'd guess that even those fans who find Lucas hilarious would struggle to recognise him, still less his humour – unless you count the Kenny Craig intervention – in the lunch we spent together.

He does look, of course, exactly as you would expect – if somewhat smaller, having lost more than three stone. He is very polite, in a rather earnest fashion, carrying my bag for me and checking which restaurant I'd prefer. But if I hadn't known it was his job to make people laugh, I'm not sure how I would ever have guessed. He is so tense, so defensive, so prone to cliche – "I have a passion for my job, and a passion for life" – that if hard-pressed I'd probably have said he was a contestant on The Apprentice, rehearsing his job interview technique.

He doesn't laugh much, or even smile very often, but speaks in a rather humourless monotone bleached of any personality, not unlike an accountant's. He also has the frustrating habit of beginning a sentence with "To be honest with you" or "To be totally honest" – which sounds as if he's about to say something interesting – then completing it with the most commonplace banality. For example, "To be honest with you, Sacha Baron Cohen is in a class of his own" – which is hardly an original opinion – or "To be totally honest, we don't have a lot of luxury when we film Little Britain – but we don't need luxury or want it, it would be a waste of money."

When I ask about last year's American series of Little Britain on HBO, he says of the ratings, "I don't know what they were but I know that they grew every week; I know that every single week it either held up or went up. It never went down. I know that for a fact." I hadn't expected him to seem so brittle – after all, HBO want to work with him and Walliams again – so I wonder if it had felt particularly exposing, trying to break into the American market. "No," he says quickly, "all we can do is go out and make the best show we can."

Apart from one-off specials, there are no plans for any more series of Little Britain, either here or in the US, but when I ask if he'd grown bored of it, he answers before I've even got the question out. "I wasn't bored of it. I just felt it's important to stop before we get bored of it." Then, quite unprompted, he launches into a tribute to Walliams which, though I'm quite certain it's sincere, is delivered so tensely as to have the perverse effect of sounding like a lie.

"It's very important to challenge yourself. I find David Walliams very inspiring, he's someone who challenges himself, and I find that very inspiring. I love working with David; we're good friends and next year it will be 20 years since we met and 15 years since we began performing together. And you know, it's a wonderful relationship."

Even a question as harmless as "How has the relationship changed over the years?" elicits an amazingly long sort of verbal PowerPoint presentation on their closeness – when, as far as I know, there's never been any question of the pair not getting along. They have, he concedes, the "odd bust up", but he can't remember the last one – "it's not that I don't want to, I just can't" – and they "never close the door on an argument". They are at the "height of our powers, creatively" and "have a very brotherly relationship, we look out for each other, and I always say the relationship both professionally and personally is as healthy as it's ever been."

And this, according to Lucas, is the new relaxed version of himself talking. "I think success has relieved a lot of tension for us, which is nice. When we started working together in the early 90s I think we were quickly tipped for success – and then it didn't really happen for six or seven years and we stood by and saw a lot of our peers have success, and you always think maybe the ship's going to sail without you. So you worry, and you become angst-ridden and anxious. And then we reached a point where actually, we did have success that exceeded any hopes or expectations, and we were rabbits in the headlights for a while."

Were they? I only ask out of politeness, but he shoots back: "Well I think anybody would be," as if he were under attack.

The funny thing is that in all the interviews I'd read with Lucas, he is invariably described as modest, mild-mannered and, above all, self-effacing. I'm not quite sure how to put this, I say to him, but you don't seem to be any of these things. It feels as if I'm conducting a job interview with an unusually driven salesman.

"Fair enough," he says, looking terribly offended. Have I hurt your feelings, I ask? "No, you haven't. I'm fine." He clearly isn't, though, so I ask how he thinks the discrepancy might be explained. I'm glad I did, because his answer makes a lot more sense of all the tension radiating from him.

"Well, I've just spent the morning rehearsing a scene where I end up taking my own life, so that raises up aggression I wouldn't ordinarily have – and that's where you catch me. This play is me stumbling around in underpants having a psychiatric meltdown, and that's a big emotional arc to feel and to tell. I think I'm normally quite relaxed, but I'm excited about this job, so perhaps unsurprisingly I'm not that relaxed."

The play is an original work about the doomed relationship between the playwright Joe Orton and his lover Kenneth Halliwell, which shares the title of the 1987 film Prick Up Your Ears. It's an ambitious project, and Lucas, who plays Halliwell, is disarmingly frank about his nerves. "I feel very vulnerable, and I feel very exposed that I won't be able to carry it off." Is it the most exposing work he's ever attempted?

"Oh, without a shadow of a doubt. Oh yeah, nothing comes close to it. As an actor, yeah, definitely. It would have been much easier for me to take a job in a big, light Broadway-style musical, a frothy comedy or something. Or the easy option would be to go and be in a sitcom – that's an option that would be available to me. But I know I can do that. The point about this is that I don't know if I can do it or not."

When the comic Bob Mortimer first met Lucas 17 years ago, he described him as "the angriest man I've ever met". The comment was, Lucas admits, "very apt; I was 18, with a lot to say, not knowing how to say it." Although from a comfortably-off north London middle-class family, Lucas's life until then had been far from easy.

At the age of six, all his hair fell out – a condition he probably inherited from his father, who had lost all his hair at 13. When he was 10, his parents separated, and two years later his father, a businessman, was sent to prison for six months for white-collar fraud. A bald, overweight, gay Jewish teenager, Lucas struggled in secrecy with his sexuality throughout adolescence, comfort eating and watching TV while working on a comic persona to present as a defence to the world.

Lucas and Walliams became friends while studying drama at Bristol University, but it was Lucas who first found fame as a gigantic baby playing drums in a babygrow on Vic and Bob's surreal panel game, Shooting Stars. But early success coincided with the death of his father, and Lucas spent three years of his 20s in therapy.

In 2006 he became one of the first gay celebrities to marry, but the civil partnership with TV producer Kevin McGee ended two years later, making Lucas Britain's first celebrity gay divorcee. He and McGee have agreed not to discuss the split, and he will say nothing on the matter, though he does confirm that he is in a new relationship. "It's very, very early days though," he adds quickly. "He's not a public figure, it's very early days, and that's all I'm saying."

By all accounts Lucas leads a rather quiet, unostentatious life; when I ask what he spends his money on, he comes up with trips to Broadway and Arsenal season tickets, which can't make much of a dent in his estimated £15m fortune. I wonder if the weight loss was inspired by finding himself single again, but he says no, it was simply that his doctor had warned him he was at risk of becoming diabetic.

"I thought, that's no good: I like chocolate, and if I'm diabetic I can't eat chocolate. People often look for deep psychological and emotional reasons why people eat, and I'm sure for many people those exist. But other people, and I would include myself, are just fucking greedy bastards who like eating. It's nice – it's a nice feeling. Eating chocolate is nice, right? Chocolate's fucking great. So I don't think it was a horrible self-comforting thing, I think it was just lack of self-discipline. Most people want a load of chocolate, but they stop. They think, if I do that I'll get fat. Whereas I just thought, I don't care."

It's a surprisingly unreflective comment from someone who has benefited immensely from therapy, which he credits with the contentment he feels today. He is also, I think, oddly incurious about the psychology of the comic creation for whom he is most famous – Vicky Pollard, Little Britain's iconic chav. To some, the spectacle of two middle-class men inviting the country to laugh at a bleached blonde joke about the underclass is in questionable taste, but when I raise the objection Lucas says, straight away, "She's a winner – she is triumphant in her sketches. She doesn't feel like a loser.

"I remember being in a chemist a few years ago, and a very loud girl who looked like Vicky Pollard came in with a bag of hot, vinegary chips that were stinking out the shop. The pharmacist said, 'Excuse me but there's a sign saying No Eating In The Shop.' And she said, 'Well I aint eating them.' And she wasn't – she was holding them in her hand. And I thought, well there you go, you've had a victory, haven't you? So I kind of, I admire Vicky – she has ingenuity."

The character is certainly well-observed, I agree, and her defiance is instantly recognisable. But isn't her hostile triumphalism the brittle self-defence of someone who has been beaten and belittled for most of her life?

"She's not real," he retorts. "She is a caricature." Does it annoy him when critics accuse Little Britain of class tourism? "No, because I'm not completely convinced that opinion exists outside the minds of a few journalists. The show is a celebration of the different types we have in Britain. It's a comedy show, it's not a documentary."

He has recently reprised the role of George Dawes, the drumming baby, on a new series of Shooting Stars – a rather undignified role you might have thought he'd be happy to leave behind. But in fact, he flew back from the Hollywood set of a forthcoming Tim Burton film, Alice in Wonderland (in which he plays Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee), just to get back into his babygrow for two days.

"I always say I've got the best seat in the house; I get to sit and watch Vic and Bob clown about, I get to be part of their story. I feel privileged to be part of their work because they are pioneers. The one thing I had put in my contract with Disney was that they'd release me for two days so I could fly back and do the Shooting Stars filming."

Is it a different experience this time around? "Yeah, because I'm more relaxed about it. I'm not sitting at the drum kit thinking, 'Oh my God, will I get my moment? Do people like what I'm doing?'"

That sounds truly awful, I say. Is that really what he used to think, sitting there behind the drums?

"Oh I was way angst-ridden," he agrees. "Now it's more like pleasure."

I hope I did meet Lucas on an atypical day – hyped up from rehearsals, and uncharacteristically tense. Otherwise it can't be much fun being him. When I ask if part of his motivation for returning to Shooting Stars was a concern not to look like he'd got too big for his boots, his answer seems rather sad. "No, it wasn't that. I didn't want to turn on Shooting Stars and see someone else at that drum kit."

Who, I ask, would he have cast for the part if he couldn't do it himself?

"Ann Widdecombe," he flashes back.

It's the first and only funny thing he says throughout lunch, and I laugh.

"Put that I said it without a beat," he adds quickly.

[faceless]

Lucas 'destroyed' by ex's suicide
Kevin McGee found hanged

Matt Lucas has pulled out of his West End play following the suicide of his former civil partner yesterday Kevin McGee, 32, was found hanged in his Edinburgh flat after leaving a suicidal message on Facebook. The 32-year-old posted a status update in the early hours of saying: ‘Kevin McGee thinks that death is much better than life.’ Three hours later, police broke into his flat and found him dead. A spokesman for Lothian and Borders Police said that there were no suspicious circumstances.

Grieving Lucas, 35, has left his role in the West End play Prick Up Your Ears indefinitely, producers said. In the show, the Little Britain star plays Kenneth Halliwell, who killed himself after murdering his lover Joe Orton, the playwright. Lucas's part will now be played by understudy Michael Chadwick

The comic has been ‘utterly destroyed’ by McGee's death, according to The Sun. The pair met in 2002 and married in 2006 in a high-profile civil partnership, but split up in September last year. McGee’s cocaine use – for which he underwent several spells in rehab – was said to be a factor. A neighbour of McGee’s told reporters his death came as a shock, saying: ‘He seemed a nice guy with no signs of obvious problems. He never mentioned Matt Lucas.’

------------------

That's sad to hear - maybe drugs are rubbish after all...

[faceless]

Matt Lucas finds the two roles of a lifetime
By Ian Spelling
New York Times

An actor's life is hard. Landing a good part is hard, landing a good part in a major movie virtually impossible. Except, of course, when it's easy.

"My agent just called me and said, 'Tim Burton would like a meeting with you,'" recalled Matt Lucas, the 35-year-old British comedian best known for the series "Little Britain" (2003-2006), "Little Britain USA" (2007-2008) and "Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire" (2009). "So I went to Tim's house, and he asked me if I'd play this role."

The role - or is it roles? - was as Tweedledum and Tweedledee in Burton's revisionist "Alice in Wonderland," in theaters. "It was bizarre," Lucas said, "because this is the biggest thing I've ever done, and yet I didn't have to read for it. I guess Tim had seen some of my work in the U.K. But it's funny when Tim Burton says, 'Is this something you would consider doing?' As if you're going to say, 'Well, give me a few months to think about it.' Really, as if you'd say that to Tim Burton."

Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" employs Lewis Carroll's classic children's novels "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" as launching pads to spin a fresh story. In his take a teenage Alice (Mia Wasikowska) returns to Wonderland - aka Underland - which is ruled by the despotic Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) and populated by such exotic characters as the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), the Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry), the Knave of Hearts (Crispin Glover) and Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

He may play two characters, Lucas says during a telephone interview from a Los Angeles hotel, but he considered Tweedledum and Tweedledee to be two copies of the same character or two heads on one body. "I saw them as chubby, argumentative, petulant children, always trying to undermine each other," the actor said. "But they also have a bit of warmth about them at times. They're pleased to see Alice. Everyone is a victim of the Red Queen's rule, her tyrannical rule, so they want liberation as much as anyone else."

Portraying two characters who constantly interact with each other, Lucas acknowledges, created all sorts of challenges. The key one was to deliver a believable performance - or two - while shooting in a green room against green screens and little else.

"At that moment, when you know you're acting beside yourself, you realize that the process is going to become very technical," Lucas said. "But I was fortunate because I was working with another actor called Ethan Cohn, who was very good, a very talented actor in his own right. Whichever Tweedle I was, he was the other one. So he was always there whenever I was there. I always had someone to bounce off of, and that was very helpful. I think, if I'd been completely without someone else there, it would have been impossible."

It didn't hurt, of course, that the man behind the camera was both wildly inventive and a master technician. Lucas sounds supremely impressed with Burton. "Tim is very open," Lucas said. "He's very open as a person, but he's very open creatively too. Always the first take was pretty much whatever the actor wanted to do, and then he'll take what you do and help you craft and tailor it into something that will fit into the movie alongside what everybody else is doing.

"He's also just capable of retaining huge amounts of information in his head. He says, 'Oh, that was good, but I know that won't fit it,' or 'I know this will work.' You may not always understand why you're doing something, but, when you see the movie, sure enough, there are scenes where there are four or five different people on the screen, all of whom are different sizes and in different scales, some of whom weren't even there when you were filming your part of it, and it all fits together seamlessly.

"It's extraordinary to not only have the vision, but to then be able to make that vision available to everybody else," he said. "There's not one person who has worked with Tim Burton who doesn't sit at home hoping to get the call to work with him again."

Lucas might receive that call if "Alice in Wonderland" turns out to be something wondrous at the box office. If the phone rings again, Lucas says, he will most definitely grab the line. "The enjoyment was working with Tim and Johnny and Mia and all the other actors and the crew," Lucas said. "To be honest, it was also an honor to be in something made by Disney, because everybody has grown up with Disney in their lives. So the chance to reunite with any of those elements is what would inspire me - in whatever fashion, whether it was a sequel or whether it was something else, really."

[faceless]

[faceless]

Matt Lucas accepts Daily Star damages
25 May 2010
bbc.co.uk

Matt Lucas has accepted undisclosed damages over articles published by the Daily Star after the death of his former civil partner, Kevin McGee. The High Court heard the paper had "without foundation" published articles alleging the Little Britain star had been placed on suicide watch. It also suggested they split up because of Mr McGee's cocaine use, it heard.

Express Newspapers apologised for invading Mr Lucas's privacy and for any distress caused by the articles. The newspaper group's solicitor, Zoe Norden, said it had also agreed to pay the entertainer's legal costs.

Lucas's solicitor, John Kelly, told Mr Justice Tugendhat that after Mr McGee had been found dead at his flat in Edinburgh, the comedian had asked the media to respect his privacy. Despite this, Mr Kelly said, the Daily Star published an article suggesting Mr Lucas was on suicide watch. The same piece also said Mr Lucas had found a new boyfriend and had chosen to move on, he added.

"Such claims are wholly without foundation, and publishing these false claims at this time considerably aggravated the hurt and distress caused by the article," Mr Kelly said.

A further article speculated about reasons for the end of their civil partnership, the solicitor added. Mr Kelly said the allegations were not put to Lucas before publication of the articles which, he said, "caused the claimant considerable upset and distress and constitutes a gross invasion of the claimant's privacy. This is especially the case as the articles were published at a time when the claimant ought to have been given time to grieve." Express Newspapers had since retracted the allegations, he added.

Mr Lucas, who was not in court, said in a statement he had taken "no pleasure or sense of triumph in this settlement". "My deep pain and sorrow have been made even greater by the intrusive and defamatory stories made about my private life in the Daily Star just hours after Kevin's death," he said. "I had no choice but to bring these proceedings to protect my private life and my right to grieve in peace." He added: "I am just relieved that this case has been resolved and I sincerely hope this sort of intrusive reporting will now end."

The couple celebrated their 2006 civil partnership with a lavish, pantomime-themed reception. Mr Lucas was granted a dissolution in October 2008 on the grounds of his partner's unreasonable behaviour.

[faceless]

Little Britain duo's new show revealed
Come Fly With Me to be set in an airport
chortle.co.uk
28th May 2010

BBC One has confirmed details of the new show from Little Britain stars Matt Lucas and David Walliams. The six-part series has the working title Come Fly With Me and is set in a busy airport. It promises all new characters from the duo, plus ‘special guest appearances’ throughout the series.

BBC One controller Jay Hunt said: ‘It's thrilling that Matt and David's next big show will be on BBC One. They are uniquely talented comic writers and performers and Come Fly With Me is a wonderfully exciting idea.’

And the BBC’s head of comedy Mark Freeland added: ‘I'm proud and excited that the BBC are back working with David and Matt, two of the country's most brilliant comedy talents. Also it's great that it'll be boom time once again for dress, wig and mak- up suppliers in the UK.’

The series is now in pre-production and will be filmed in HD, for broadcast later this year. The producer is Adam Tandy, whose credits include The Thick Of It and In The Loop and the director is Paul King, who alsoo directed Mighty Boosh. Veteran comedy producer Geoff Posner is executive producing the show for Little Britain Productions, alongside the BBC’s Freeland.

-------------------

Good stuff - I'm guessing that being in an airport that gives them scope to have loads of new and old characters coming through.