Little Me

by Matt Lucas

  Mark Lamarr was the first to pooh-pooh the idea. ‘I think we’ve all earned enough out of this show,’ he said. The others seemed to agree. And that was that. It was never mentioned again. I had earned a fraction of what the others were on and it was an eye-opener to learn that anyone could turn down money like that.

  My youthful ideological approach to earning money – ‘I will never sell out, I am an artist’ – had already been tested when I was offered a small fortune for George Dawes to be the new face of Walkers Crisps. I approved the scripts, was measured up for a new romper suit – and then received a call. Someone high up at Pepsi (who owned Walkers) had remembered that actually he hated my bits in Shooting Stars. The campaign was scrapped. A few weeks later a new advert for Walkers appeared, starring Paul Gascoigne and Gary Lineker. I can only assume it was a big success, because twenty years later Gary is still eating crisps and getting paid for it.

  I soon got offered another advert, though, and I became the Cadbury’s Creme Egg man for the next three years. The money allowed me to put a hefty deposit down on a flat in West Hampstead. My mum, who had worried so much about my career choice, was delighted.

  We recorded a third series of Shooting Stars in 1997 and after that it felt like the right time to put it to bed. Vic and Bob were so creative, so full of ideas, it made sense that they wanted to explore other avenues. Before we all went our separate ways, the original team got together for one last time. Our live tour at the end of 1996 had been a big success, but had never reached London. Now our promoter Phil McIntyre – who David and I would work with years later on Little Britain Live – had booked us into the Hammersmith Apollo, on a double bill with a stage version of The Fast Show.

  Shooting Stars was the highest-rating show on BBC Two, often getting as many as seven million viewers a week, but Vic and Bob decided that we should do the first half and The Fast Show should do the second. If pressed, I would suggest that this was so they could get to the bar earlier.

  Our opening night at Hammersmith was a disaster. It had been over a year since we had done the tour and we were very under-rehearsed. The audience shuffled around restlessly and I was upset because I didn’t think any of us were focused or committed enough. Shooting Stars might have looked like a muck-about, but the reality was that it required lots of planning. At Hammersmith nobody seemed to be steering the ship. We didn’t even have a director. The reviews were damning and I didn’t disagree with any of them.

  The Fast Show, on the other hand, did one of the best live comedy shows I’ve ever seen. It was magnificently staged, full of invention and originality, and really broke new ground in terms of transferring a TV show to stage. They’d also spent a ton of money on it. It looked expensive. The audience loved it.

  In the course of the run, we – literally – got our act together. Finally we delivered a funny hour and played to big laughs, but we were always the starter and The Fast Show was the main course. One week John Thomson had filming commitments and Bob and I stepped in to cover for him. I was chuffed to be performing with Paul Whitehouse, Charlie Higson and co. I had to take a custard pie in the face from Paul each night and couldn’t have been happier.

  On the last night of the record-breaking Hammersmith run (only to be broken years later by Little Britain) there was a big party, with ice sculptures and lots of celebs. And that was the end of Shooting Stars.

  Or so I thought.

  Four years later I was booked to appear in an episode of Vic and Bob’s reboot of Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased). It had been a while since we’d worked together and I mentioned that I was missing doing Shooting Stars and that there was still nothing like it on television. If they ever wanted to do it again, I was in.

  And it happened. Mark didn’t return, but Ulrika did, and Will Self and Johnny Vegas made up the teams. It was lovely being back behind the kit. I improvised as I had before, but this time I started adding songs to my repertoire.

  Sometimes they were covers, but always with a twist. Using Google Translate, I sang The Flintstones theme tune in dodgy German and the Happy Days theme in a kind of French.

  But it was the original songs that really resonated with viewers. One of my favourites involved a baked potato puppet. The audience wasn’t expecting it to move – it looked very much like a real baked potato – so when it started singing back to me, they were in fits.

  I remember Bob telling me the secret to writing a good comic song is to cut it in half, and then cut it in half again. Mine rarely exceeded a minute, and sometimes they were only forty seconds long. The time constraints forced me to focus on what I really wanted to say in the song.

  Another time I had written a fun piece of big band music and set myself the task of shouting ‘Peanuts!’ as loudly as possible, at various intervals. It was inspired by the peanut sellers at Highbury in the eighties, who’d walk the terraces during the game. I’d always buy a bag for 30p. Once you’d cracked the shells and spat out the bitter skins, there were only about a dozen nuts there. I don’t even like peanuts that much, but I’d always buy a bag.

  I digress.

  On the night of the ‘Peanuts’ song, I found that I couldn’t stop laughing. I was a terrible giggler at the best of times, but on this occasion I was just helpless. It was mainly because I looked so perfectly odd, with my long-haired, receding wig and big glasses. Vic and Bob, too, were in hysterics, as was the audience. Usually, if I erupted into laughter, we’d do the sequence again, but on that night I knew – no matter how many times I tried – I’d never get through it with a straight face. We did one take and that’s what you saw.

  Another time I couldn’t get it together was when we filmed a spoof ‘Geordie Jumpers’ commercial. There are countless outtakes. However, the ultimate scene of me out of control, was when Bob and I did a sketch on location.

  The sketch – if you can call it that – involved me buying a caravan from Bob. In another sketch that we’d shot a few days earlier, I had been called upon to shake my head so fast that my cheeks wobbled. I’d never been asked to do this before and was delighted to discover that I was a natural. When it came to the caravan sketch, there wasn’t really a script – just the idea that I would wobble my cheeks after each line.

  There’s a rehearsal that unfortunately wasn’t filmed, in which Bob and I ended up on the floor, laughing so much we were unable to get up. The footage that viewers did eventually see was the only vaguely usable take, but even that involved a copious helping of hysteria.

  We did two series of Shooting Stars with Will and Johnny and they had a warmer feel to them than the original shows. We were now a little older, and less concerned with the Britpop scene and being hip.

  Will Self, despite his po-faced onscreen persona, is one of the warmest, most self-effacing people you will ever meet. Johnny Vegas, another big cuddly ball of loveliness, brought an amazing new dimension to the show. Audiences adored him, and I would sit in awe, watching him improvise, painting a picture of a man teetering on the brink. He would go off on his own journey, often adding about an hour to each recording, but I didn’t mind too much. Again, I had the best seat in the house.

  As ever we had some weird and wonderful guests. Vic told me we were on the verge of getting Art Garfunkel, but it fell through at the last minute. Mo Mowlam appeared, and – as the recording came to an end – so did Michael Aspel, presenting her with a This Is Your Life book. We also had Larry Hagman, who said it was the strangest show he’d ever been in, which is saying something when you consider that his brother died in Dallas and then turned up in the shower as if nothing had happened a year later.

  I only ever struggled with one booking and that was ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser. I was really upset when I arrived at the BBC, looked at the call sheet and saw he was coming on the show that day. I don’t know how much of what was written about him was true, but ostensibly his celebrity arose from his life as a gangland torturer who had spent forty-two years in prison.

  A few hours later the guests ar
rived and in walked Frankie, now a frail little old man, who couldn’t have been friendlier to me. I got on with the show and we even had a couple of funny moments on it together, but I still think it was an error of judgement inviting a violent criminal on the programme. I’m sure many viewers were equally bemused.

  For those two series, we would record in the studio next to Top of the Pops, which had recently moved to Television Centre after years at Elstree. I would get changed in my dressing room and then head down the corridors in my big pink romper suit – but now I had to run the gauntlet of hundreds of pubescent girls, all queuing to see their favourite bands perform. They would howl at the sight of me and I would have to pretend that I wasn’t in any way embarrassed.

  The most exquisitely cringe-inducing memory of being spotted in the romper suit came one night after a tough recording, when I hadn’t received many laughs. Walking back past the Top of the Pops studio, a lone girl – made up to the nines – caught sight of me.

  ‘Looks attractive,’ she said, rolling her eyes.

  ‘Well, actually,’ I replied indignantly, ‘I work here. This is … what I wear to work.’

  The girl snorted with laughter.

  I then caught sight of a familiar face – a tall male model who I had chatted up a few months earlier in Heaven nightclub. We had spent much of the evening in a corner of the club kissing. I had been quite smitten and we had swapped numbers, but when it came to meeting up for a proper date, he ‘ghosted’ me, as I believe the young people of today refer to it. I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him since.

  He now had a job on Top of the Pops and was escorting a cool-looking indie band to the green room. He stopped, looked at me, and then at the girl, who was in hysterics, and stifled a laugh. As he walked off, I heard him say, ‘Yeah, you get some weird types round here’. The band sniggered, while I slunk back to my dressing room in silence.

  After series four and five of Shooting Stars, the BBC decided that it had run its course … but then they brought it back yet again a few years later.

  Shooting Stars ran for eight series in total. I did the first six. I was going to do the seventh series, but it was shooting just a few months after Kev had died. I just couldn’t do it, I couldn’t get myself together. I was replaced as scorekeeper by the brilliant Angelos Epithemiou. There were no hard feelings on my part. I even snuck in one time during rehearsals to say hello.

  In the spring of 2017, eight years after we had last worked together, an email appeared in my inbox from Lisa Clark, Vic and Bob’s producer. They were bringing back Big Night Out and were wondering if I might be free to join them in some sketches. On a scorching day in May we hugged and reminisced, then got dressed up and just mucked about. First I was Rag’n’Bone Man, then I was an assortment of different oddballs. As ever, a huge collection of wigs and moustaches had been laid out. We chose what we wanted to wear and what we wanted to say, in the moment. Despite boasting to the crew that I don’t corpse anymore, I laughed my head off throughout and we had to do several takes. It was like no time had passed at all. I loved every minute.

  It has been a pleasure and a privilege to work with and for Vic and Bob. I don’t know if the words ‘important’ and ‘comedy’ should ever go together, but if they do, then Vic and Bob really are the most important comedians of their generation. They’re certainly my favourites. I owe them everything.

  Well, I was going to finish there but my stepfather has insisted I end this chapter by informing you that in 2017, over twenty years after leaving empty-handed, I returned to Bristol University to receive an honorary degree.

  It was a joyous day. I loved getting dressed up and beneath the giant cap there was already a big grin on my silly face. In my address I admonished the great institution for what had clearly been a grave administrative error …

  ‘Today you bring the entire university honours system into question, by celebrating a charlatan, who left university a year early, in 1995 – when most of this year’s graduates were still in nappies – so he could wear a romper suit of his own, appear in some Cadbury Creme Egg adverts and then do a sketch show with his friend.

  ‘And this afternoon I stand here before you in receipt of this great tribute.

  ‘You fools. You’ve honoured the wrong one. Walliams’ll be fuming. He hasn’t got one of these and he’s swum more channels than there are on a Sky Plus box.’

  And so it was that I left the university that day a Doctor of Letters.

  Of sorts. As it happens, the university does request that I do not actually put any letters after my name. Well, I’m afraid there’s no chance of me honouring that. I’m putting everything after my name. In fact while I’m at it, I might even make myself a Sir, like David Beckham. And I shall insist on being called Doctor Lucas from now on. I’m even going to open up my own general practice in Fishponds, so if you do have anything troubling you, just book an appointment with Carol in reception.

  Doctor Matt (probably the most ridiculous photo in the whole book)

  X – Xenophobia

  I’m not particularly xenophobic. If anything, I probably prefer foreign people to British ones. I just couldn’t think of anything else for the letter X. Sorry.

  Y – Yankee Doodle

  I fell in love with America long before I ever went there. The images I saw in the movies and on TV made me sure that that’s where I wanted to be one day.

  America was confident, loud, brash and busy. Americans were colourful and quick-witted. They had authority. And America was always open – unlike suburban Stanmore, where the shops closed at 5 p.m.

  America got everything before we did – TV shows, films, music, gadgets. It set the trends. If any of my friends were lucky enough to go on a family holiday to the States, I would press them for details on their return. Where did they visit? How did the people talk? What adverts did they have on TV?

  Disneyland was the ultimate destination. I loved Mickey Mouse. Not as a fan, you understand, but as a friend.

  ‘Next year in Jerusalem,’ we said at Passover, but I always added ‘or Disneyland’.

  I finally made it to the US in 1998, shortly before I turned twenty-five, spending a week in San Francisco. I returned there the following year and went to Miami, Vegas and LA.

  While I was in LA my British agent managed to set up a few meetings for me with some American TV executives. Young and inexperienced, I really wasn’t sure how to pitch myself, so I tried to be funny. I met my match at NBC with a fast-talking, high-ranking producer who asked me what my ambition was.

  ‘To have a doll of myself in shops that people can buy,’ I joked, but he seemed to take me at face value.

  Over the next decade I went to the States at every opportunity, often to New York with Kevin to see the shows on Broadway. We talked about getting an apartment in Manhattan one day. We went to Disneyworld too. All gays love Disney. It’s part of the deal.

  But it was California that would become my home, after his death. A new start. My aim was not to hit it big over there, just to rebuild. The fact that I could work there was a bonus. The weather, the tranquillity and the relative anonymity were the deciding factors.

  And so here I am, in the sun. Well, in the shade, mainly. I’m so pale I have to make sure I don’t get burnt. Billy Connolly once said, ‘I’m blue. It takes me a week to get white.’ I can identify with that.

  I’ve made some lovely friends here. Many of them are from the UK too. We have sing-songs around the piano. I can play chords. Sometimes, when no one is around, I sing ‘The Baked Potato Song’ for my own amusement.

  Every couple of weeks I walk up the street and see a comedy show at Largo at the Coronet. It’s a terrific venue where the greatest comedians – Larry David, Sarah Silverman, Bill Burr, Patton Oswalt – try out their new material. Twenty years after I quit the circuit, I toy with the idea of dipping my toe back in, just popping up at small clubs around the city. I think I might be ready to perform as myself at last.

  I do my be
st to be a bit healthier. I eat sensibly and go for long walks with my dogs, swim, hike a couple of times a week. When I’m back in Britain, all that collapses, of course.

  And every few months I come back to London, to see family and friends, to work, and to catch a couple of Arsenal matches.

  I’ve no idea what the future holds. I love America and I love Britain. I don’t love Trump or Brexit.

  Maybe I’ll work with Walliams again one day; maybe I won’t. I’m aware that people would like us to reunite. I respect that. I know we made magic together and that such a relationship is a rare thing indeed. I also wonder if it might be best left where it was.

  Since I can remember I have worked and worked and worked. It might be time to slow down a little. I still haven’t seen Game of Thrones. I’m thinking of taking a month off just to catch up on that.

  But then again I really really want to write a musical. I’ve got four different ideas bouncing around in my head, vying for attention, and some tunes which are driving me mad.

  Z – Zzzzzzzz

  Are you still awake? Probably not.

  When I was a kid and I had a friend to stay over, I was always the last to fall asleep. I would be chatting away, barely noticing that the other person’s responses were becoming shorter and less frequent. I’d be prattling on about something or other for quite a while before I realised that the friend had already drifted off and I was on my own.

  I’ve often found sleep elusive. There is too much on my mind, usually. But I have bad habits too. Eating late and reading nonsense online until the small hours. Sometimes my filming schedule allows for a later start the next day, but I then become so excited at the prospect of a lie-in that I can’t sleep. I’m an idiot, remember? And on the rare occasion I do nod off for a full eight hours – or even more – I wake up in a panic. Have I slept too much? Will I now not be able to sleep tonight?