Little Me

by Matt Lucas

  At break-time we gathered in the synagogue car park. I remember my friend’s older brother picking me up one day and putting me in a bin, but I got off lightly compared to one boy, who also happened to be in the year below me at primary school. He had a crowd of kids around him one week, and I saw that he was wearing nothing but black school shoes, socks, white underpants and a vest. When I asked why, he told me that his parents had warned him repeatedly that if he continued misbehaving they would send him to Hebrew classes like that – and he had and they did. It seemed to me an unimaginably humiliating thing to do to someone, even then. If you did it now, you’d probably have your child taken away from you.

  As if Sunday mornings weren’t enough, on a Tuesday evening for the two years prior to my bar mitzvah there were additional Hebrew lessons at the synagogue, in which I learned my parsha or portion of the Torah. This was the part of the Bible which I would be singing for my bar mitzvah from the handwritten scroll in front of the congregation. When learning this section, we also had to memorise different Hebrew vowel sounds and precise discordant musical phrases. The vowel and musical notation appeared in our study books alongside the Hebrew text to help us, but not in the actual scroll we’d be singing from on the day, making the task seem even more remote and impossible.

  I hated going to Tuesday evening classes. I would arrive home from school with mountains of homework to do and resented the extra burden of bar mitzvah classes. As I walked down the road from Stanmore station towards our house, I would start practising whatever limp, cough or sneeze I would try to deploy as an excuse that week, to convince my mother that I wasn’t well enough to go. Sadly I’m not that good an actor, so I was rarely successful.

  Despite two years of dedicated bar mitzvah lessons, in reality I ended up learning my entire piece parrot-fashion, just three weeks before the big day itself. This was thanks to even more lessons on a Sunday afternoon at the home of Mr Lawrence, who had also taught both my brother and mother before me.

  At Habs there was a large percentage of Jewish students and so we had special Jewish assemblies once a week. They were often a shambolic affair, taken in the classroom and run by the older boys. Sometimes we all gathered more formally in the music school and listened to dreary sermons from a visiting rabbi. The exception was Rabbi Wilschanski, a jolly old soul who spoke with a thick Yiddish accent, played the fiddle and told jokes about Jewish people eating too much.

  We had the option at school of studying Jewish RE, instead of the multi-faith syllabus. Our teacher was a glamorous Orthodox lady who also had a lucrative sideline giving more advanced lessons at her home to some of my classmates. She was always more engaged with them than with the rest of us, calling them by their first names and asking after their mothers. She would sit at her desk majestically, rubbing in hand cream and expressing disapproval at Reform boys like me. I was used to this kind of snobbery. It was not uncommon to be lectured by some of the more Orthodox boys, many of whom piously refused to recognise Reform Judaism as a legitimate movement.

  I found Jewish RE a drag. I’d already been taught much of the syllabus at Hebrew classes, so one term I decided to switch to the multi-faith class. I was the only Jewish boy there and found it much more interesting. We were taught in the chapel by the school chaplain, Reverend Lindsay, a warm, gentle soul whose glass eye fascinated me. His lessons were much more interesting, but my father was so alarmed when I recounted to him how I had taken communion that I felt obliged to switch back again.

  As my bar mitzvah approached, my mum took me to Jeffrey’s in Edgware, where every boy went to get their bar mitzvah suit. The choice was limited, however, as I had grown so fat. From the few available outfits I picked a black jacket with thousands of golden specks.

  We were not usually given to being flash in my family – we couldn’t afford to be, for a start – but the jacket I chose that day was the epitome of ostentatiousness. It was the sort of thing Ben Elton wore on Saturday Live. My dad (who had split from my mother a couple of years before) arranged to come over to the house to see me in it. I slipped it on and waited for his arrival.

  As I opened the door excitedly, his face dropped. He said the jacket was ridiculous and ordered my mother and me to take it back. The shop would neither refund nor change it, and so my father, grumbling, took me one Saturday morning to Regent Street. We traipsed around the department stores, until we found a much more low-key jacket and trousers. I remember the handsome young shop assistant measuring my inside leg, and even though I was only twelve I felt a rush of excitement.

  On my bar mitzvah day in April 1987 it rained and rained. The service went by without a hitch and I managed to get through my piece. My parents were still at war and, while they could just about sit proudly either side of me in the synagogue, there was no prospect of them throwing a party together for me. Therefore I waved goodbye to my dad as I left the synagogue and went back to our house, where my mum had arranged a large lunch for maybe twenty-five family members. In the evening she threw a party for me, also at home, and, in typical Jewish fashion, everyone made such a fuss of me you’d think I’d won an Oscar.

  A week later it was my father’s turn.

  I’d been to a number of lavish bar mitzvah parties. The majority of my friends at Habs had parents who could afford to hire out huge function rooms like the Glaziers Hall, or at swanky London hotels like Carlton Tower or the Intercontinental. There would be a big band, a DJ, a toastmaster, endless speeches, helium balloons – the contents of which we would inhale – and even special guests. I was never at one where this happened, but I heard many stories of Arsenal and Tottenham players turning up to surprise the bar mitzvah boy. I always thought that was the kindest gesture of all – never imagining for a moment that the players were almost certainly given an envelope full of cash for their troubles.

  Having lost his business and been to prison the year before my bar mitzvah, my dad didn’t have much left in his coffers. Three years earlier my brother had had his bar mitzvah at Melanie’s nightclub in Hendon, where the DJ – who called himself the ‘Black Prince’ – had ignored our repeated requests for Abba, Wham! and the Beatles, and had played only the latest underground soul releases, plugging in the mic to sing along. After the party was over, my parents complained about the DJ and remonstrated about the scarcity of food, leading to an almighty row in the corridor in which the manager struck my father. The four of us left the venue in shock, with my parents instructing me never ever to tell Grandma what had happened.

  When I arrived for my bar mitzvah party at the run-down community centre in Wealdstone, I thought there had surely been some mistake. I went to the cloakroom and hung up my coat on one of the few remaining pegs. In the main hall were a few tables, with paper tablecloths and some plastic chairs. My dad and stepmother’s friends brought the food. A couple of fifteen-year-olds were providing the disco.

  My school friends started to appear in their expensive suits. They were doubtless as confused as I was. There was no silver service, no Ray McVay and his Big Band, no pink chocolate almonds all in a bow.

  In the echoey hall my dad gave a speech, as did my brother. They both paid tribute to my resilience and fighting spirit. Howard said, ‘When the chips are down, Matthew eats the chips,’ which got a big laugh. I had written a speech, which I gave at my house the week before but had forgotten to bring with me, so I mumbled a few words of thanks into the microphone.

  My bar mitzvah party was thrown with great love by my father and stepmother, but it was so different to anything else I had experienced, and I was not prepared for it. To my eternal shame, I was embarrassed by its humbleness. Looking back, I’ve got a horrible feeling I showed little gratitude.

  These days I don’t really go to synagogue very much, unless there’s a specific reason. My religious belief hasn’t so much wavered as disappeared entirely. It was on a visit to Ethiopia with Comic Relief some years back, as I met a man wasting away from AIDS in a tiny hut, an image of Jesus on the wa
ll, that I figured there were three possible answers to the big question of whether or not God exists.

  1. Yes, but he’s not very nice.

  2. Yes, but he’s not very good at it. Like Aston Villa.

  3. No.

  I wish I could believe. I might be able to look at the suffering in the world differently, but I just can’t see it. And yet, despite being an atheist, I always look forward to Jewish holidays with the family and enjoy much of our rich culture. I love the feeling of being part of something. I’m not sure I’ve experienced anything else comparable to it.

  K – Kevin

  On Friday, 16 August 2002, I met a man who would change my life.

  His name was Kevin John McGee.

  It was impossible not to fall in love with him.

  He was handsome and smart and kind.

  And he was funny. Oh, so funny.

  When he was happy, I felt a warm glow inside. When he was sad, I was sad too.

  I wish he was here with me now, but some things are not meant to be, I guess.

  I think of him every day and I’m thankful for the time we had together.

  Because Kevin John McGee was beautiful.

  And here are some photos of him, so you can see for yourself.

  L – Little Rumblings

  20 August 2002. Late afternoon. BBC TV Centre, top floor.

  Jane Root’s assistant popped her head around the door to remind her boss that she needed to leave imminently for the opera. The Controller of BBC Two nodded and continued to gaze into the distance, deep in thought. David Walliams and I sat opposite her, trying desperately to read her face, looking for a sign, something, anything.

  Nothing.

  Jon Plowman, one of the Comedy bigwigs at the BBC, broke the silence. ‘Jane?’

  She blinked, as if waking from a dream. ‘I’ve just cancelled Big Train. If I say yes to this show, I have to be able to justify it to everyone who was involved in that.’

  She returned to her trance. David and I shared a look. The seconds ticked by.

  But more of that later. All in good time.

  Patience.

  Following on from our first Edinburgh show in 1995, we were asked to put together a series of sketches for the Paramount Channel – all TV parodies, directed by twenty-one-year-old prodigy Edgar Wright – which had gained us a cult following. We filmed a few more, for Channel 4, and then we made a six-part series of ten-minute films for BBC Two starring Sir Bernard and Tony Rodgers (again directed by Edgar).

  I’d had a rude awakening before Sir Bernard’s Stately Homes was even broadcast, when Reece Shearsmith came over to my house one night. We’d become firm friends with the League of Gentlemen team at the Edinburgh Festival a few years before.

  I was going to show him some of our series, but first he was going to screen a couple of episodes of The League of Gentleman. As soon as it began I realised that we were occupying different universes. We had made a mildly-amusing-if-you-like-that-sort-of-thing bunch of short films. They had made something groundbreaking, a masterpiece, perhaps the greatest comedy series of its time. I was blown away by its originality, its confidence, its command. It looked and sounded like no other comedy show. Two episodes turned into six – I didn’t want it to end.

  Then it was time to show Reece our offering. He was very polite and positive about it, but the ground had shifted. Not long afterwards both series were screened. The League of Gentlemen rightly received every plaudit – and award – going. Our first episode was greeted with a muted response – and that’s putting a gloss on it. The critics labelled the show juvenile and flat. Victor Lewis-Smith, whose radio show I had been an avid fan of as a teenager, suggested, in his London Evening Standard review, that, instead of broadcasting the second ten-minute episode, the BBC would be better off having ten minutes’ silence, in memory of our careers.

  I remember Bob Mortimer telling me how you must always launch with your strongest episode, because that was the one the critics were going to see. Because our series told a story, we were locked into an episode order. I thought that it started to get a lot better by episode four, but by then it was too late. David and I had an idea for a second series but there was no hunger from anyone for that.

  After the disappointment of Sir Bernard’s Stately Homes, TV execs’ interest in us seemed to wane. The considered opinion was that we were great onstage but weren’t really ready for TV.

  We were rescued by Myfanwy Moore, who had been at university with David and who had commissioned us a few years earlier to make the Paramount sketches. She was now running a new cable channel – UK Play – which would feature pop videos introduced by comedians.

  Myfanwy asked us and a few comedians to record some links. We decided that, rather than doing Sir Bernard and Tony again, it would make sense to spoof pop stars just as we’d spoofed TV shows. They weren’t accurate impressions – in fact, we delighted in being inaccurate. We had loved how Vic and Bob had almost gone out of their way to misrepresent celebrities. Bob’s Noel Edmonds wore a strange distorting bodysuit but somehow it seemed to capture the host perfectly. We would adopt the same approach as them, just as we had done at Paramount, by taking a kernel of truth and then magnifying it disproportionately. For instance, Brian May and Anita Dobson famously had similar hairstyles. In our parody they were a two-headed monster, sharing a specially made two-headed silk shirt and speaking in unison. Björk, to us, was like a little puppet – all squeaky and childlike – so when I played her, she was a ventriloquist puppet, with David dressed as Keith Harris, operating her.

  Myfanwy thought we’d seized our opportunity and really made something of it, so she asked us to come up with an idea for our own series. It had to be at least 50 per cent music, because that was the channel’s remit, but we could pretty much do what we wanted with the other half, as long as it didn’t cost very much. In fact, the budget for the first series was so small it was shot on Mini-DV (i.e. video camera!).

  It made sense to us to make the music a feature of our series, rather than try to fight it, so with Rock Profile we decided to spoof The O-Zone, a popular magazine interview show which ran on Sundays on BBC Two, hosted by Jamie Theakston. Luckily for us, we managed to snag Jamie himself to host our spoof. He had been in the National Youth Theatre before he’d become a presenter, but even so, it isn’t always easy to play yourself. We needn’t have worried – Jamie was spot-on at sending himself up, really easy to work with and a great laugh.

  Each episode needed about twelve or thirteen minutes of original material from us. We’d film two episodes in a day so we had plenty of lines to remember. We had to keep the shows relatively simple visually, because of the time and budget constraints. In a nod to The Chart Show we wrote five or six ‘RockFacts’ for each video, which scrolled across the screen as they played – though ours were completely made up.

  Just like Paramount, who repeated us endlessly, UK Play showed Rock Profile again and again. It became their highest-rating show and it seemed a no-brainer for all of us to do a second series. We brought back some of the impersonations and created new ones. Most merciless was Gary Barlow (me), who was reduced to living in a bedsit with Howard Donald (David), railing against the global success of his former bandmate Robbie Williams. In the first series we had filmed the characters in David’s flat and despite the best efforts of the team to repaint, I could still make out some faint Take That graffiti on his living-room wall for years afterwards.Now, bringing the characters back, we filmed on location and even shot on proper cameras!

  By the end of the second series of Rock Profile, we learned that some of the people we had played – Robbie, George Michael, Geri Halliwell, Boy George – had become fans of the show. We wondered if we’d been too cruel – in the case of Gary Barlow, we definitely had and I’ve mumbled my apologies to him many times since – but at the time we were the underdogs, still on the outskirts, tucked away late at night on cable telly, and it felt cheeky and subversive rather than mean-spirited. We
were still punching upwards, as they say.

  Whenever we met TV execs, they told us that the show deserved to transfer to BBC Two or Channel 4. In the end it was bought by BBC Two, re-edited and screened at 11.25 p.m. on a Sunday night. We hoped this might lead to an original Rock Profile commission, with the type of slot and budget given to other comedy shows, but there was no further interest, despite positive reviews. Meanwhile Channel 4 launched Avid Merrion and his Bo’ Selecta! show, which also spoofed pop stars in a surreal way. It became clear that Rock Profile had gone as far as it was going to go.

  We turned our attentions instead to radio. We recorded a couple of pilots – one starring Sir Bernard, with EastEnders star Letitia Dean as special guest. It went down a storm with the live audience but the people at Radio 4 were less convinced. They declined to commission the show, though it was – and I’m not making this up – a full fifty weeks before they got round to telling us.

  We had another go, this time producing a sketch show. I had got it into my head that we would do better without the audience there, that we could be more experimental and make something more intimate in the confines of a recording booth. I was right – it was more experimental and more intimate, but it still wasn’t what Radio 4 were looking for. At least we had a much quicker response this time from the BBC, albeit not the one we wanted. It came in the form of just two words – ‘Lacks conviction’.

  In 1998 David and I rather optimistically wrote a TV script for a sketch show. We toyed around with different approaches and came up with the idea of asking the question ‘Who is Britain?’ Within a day or two, this had morphed into Little Britain. We liked the title. It felt distinctive.

  The League of Gentlemen’s stunning TV series had raised the bar, in terms of sketch comedy. It had worked not only because it was funny and original, but also because it had such a clear identity. Most other sketch shows seemed just to be scattergun – a film parody here, a spoof advert there, a historical sketch, some stand-up, a song. We’d already produced so many TV and pop parodies, we knew we didn’t want to go straight back down that path.