Little Me

by Matt Lucas

  I also got to meet a bunch of celebrities. I was beginning to discover the music of Pulp, who had just released the extraordinary ‘Common People’ that very week and I was excited to meet Jarvis Cocker. With his natty suits, thick black specs and dry Northern wit, he fitted perfectly into Vic and Bob’s world.

  John Peel, who I was also a fan of, seemed to be regretting appearing on the show. He was selected to take part in the final challenge, which saw him dressed as a baby in a pram, and he grumbled throughout. I couldn’t tell if it was an act or not.

  Little and Large and Hale and Pace – two double acts I had watched avidly on TV while I was growing up and whose routines I quoted back to them – were warm and friendly and knew how to play along.

  Chris Rea was brilliant on the show, I thought, and was the first guest who made the decision to come on with a persona – in his case, totally deadpan and apparently mystified by goings on. He was the perfect foil that week to Vic and Bob’s madness. After the episode went out, people kept asking me ‘Was he really like that?’ No – he was a delight. He loved every minute. He was just playing.

  I had a bit in my stand-up act, in which I changed the words of a popular Madonna song from ‘Erotic, erotic, put your hands all over my body’ to ‘Bill Oddie, Bill Oddie, put your hands all over my body’. When the man himself appeared on the show, I sang it at the end of a round.

  Oddie groaned loudly. ‘Oh, I’ve heard that a million times!’ – and there was a moment of unease. I apologised profusely in the next recording break and then asked the producer if we could cut the gag out. At the time I thought it was a shame that he hadn’t enjoyed it, but I can see his point – for me it was just a gag, for him it probably would have meant viewers of the show yelling it at him wherever he went.

  As the series recording drew to an end, I rather grandly told the producers I would be killing off George Dawes and trying a different character out next series. In truth I really wanted to do Sir Bernard on the show. I was so much more assured as him, so much funnier. I had big TV ambitions for the character and wanted the audience to get to know him too. In retrospect it was very presumptuous of me to do that. It was naive, certainly, as there was no guarantee – if there was a second series – that Vic and Bob would even want me back. I’d had a few good moments, but it wasn’t clear cut that I’d be staying. At twenty-one, I hadn’t learned humility yet!

  I was still at university when we made that first series of Shooting Stars. As in my previous double life a couple of years earlier, when I’d played the stand-up circuit while working at Chelsea Sportsland, I would hang up my romper suit and head back to Bristol after recordings. The following morning I’d be at a seminar furiously taking down notes, or sat at my desk in my bedroom trying in vain to stay on top of my coursework.

  I’d assumed the comedy thing was something I would do as a hobby, and then I could turn professional once I had completed my degree. Things had clearly taken off much earlier than I’d anticipated. In my second year at university I appeared in both The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer and Shooting Stars and was at the stage where I could have gigged every night of the week if I’d wanted to.

  I spoke of little else but my comedy career and my new life. I’m quite sure I alienated the others on my Theatre, Film and Television course – many of whom had similar ambitions of their own – and I rarely socialised with my housemates anymore. Most weekends I was away performing somewhere, but on the rare occasion I wasn’t, I could be found in my bedroom, desperately trying to catch up on my studies. In truth I was running on empty – trying to squeeze too much in. I became (unreasonably) resentful of the increasing demands of the degree – which would have been substantial but manageable if I didn’t also effectively have a full-time job writing and performing comedy.

  And then one day my tutor told me that he was giving me the lead role in a play. I thanked him, but in truth I was mortified. I was already weeks behind on my coursework and I had a diary full of bookings. How on earth was I going to fit this in too? Oh, the irony! Ten years earlier at Habs I would have done anything for a part in … well … anything. Now I had somehow been cast in something against my will – and there was nothing I could do about it.

  My course wasn’t actually a vocational one – it was a university degree that was built around theories and analysis of film, TV and theatre. Many of those who graduated became writers, teachers, directors and producers. For the most part I found lectures impenetrable and even when we studied something fun and light, everyone did their best to find the most sinister hidden agenda. On our course, my favourite film Singin’ in the Rain became an insidious piece of misogynist propaganda, designed to keep women in their place and reinforce the wealth and power of the ruling patriarchy – that sort of thing.

  We acted only occasionally, and usually in devised pieces. A typically bewildering lunchtime performance saw my friends Claire and Lucy hurling raw meat across the room. Another abstract show, apparently inspired by the recent death of River Phoenix, featured a group of topless male students from the year above groping each other frenetically in silence.

  However, we were now to put on a production as part of our course, so I couldn’t get out of it. My role was that of Mercy in an English medieval morality play called Mankind – notable because it dates back to c. 1470 and is thought by some to be the earliest surviving play in the English language.

  Our tutor, who specialised in Medieval Studies, was incredibly excited that we were putting on the show. It was, he said, hardly ever performed, so our production was of global cultural significance. He had invited academics from all over the UK and would be filming the show too.

  My already overflowing diary – packed with lectures, gigs, coursework, Shooting Stars and the writing of my first Edinburgh show with David – was now also jam-packed with rehearsals for the play, but the biggest challenge of all was learning the lines. They were written in verse and there were so many of them that I had to cancel several gigs while I stayed in my room for weeks and crammed them in.

  Here’s how it starts …

  The very founder and beginner of our first creation

  Among us sinful wretches he oweth to be magnified,

  That for our disobedience he hath none indignation

  To send his own son to be torn and crucified.

  Our obsequious service to him should be applied,

  Where he was lord of all and made all thing of nought,

  For the sinful sinner to have him revived,

  And for his redemption, set his own son at nought.

  It may be said and verified, mankind was dear bought.

  By the piteous death of Jhesu he had his remedy.

  He was purged of his default that wretchedly had wrought

  By his glorious passion, that blessed lavatory.

  O sovereigns, I beseech you your conditions to rectify

  And with humility and reverence to have a remotion

  To this blessed prince that our nature doth glorify.

  And that’s just the beginning. There’s loads more. It goes on and on and on.

  To my annoyance I had to stop smoking weed. It played havoc with my memory. I spent the entirety of the rehearsal period in a state of panic, wondering how on earth I was going to remember all these lines. In the end I just had to get on with it. The play was a success and we were all word-perfect. I was relieved and surprised to have got through it, and hoped there might be a moment’s pause to catch my breath, but the demands of the course continued to increase.

  While battling away at my Amstrad word processor one night, trying and failing to make headway on my thesis on DV8 Physical Theatre Company’s Dead Dreams of Monochrome Men, I realised something had to give.

  I arranged for an appointment with the head of the Drama Department and requested a year out from the degree – and, to my surprise, my wish was granted. The idea was that I would be able to accept the TV and radio work I was being offered and then come back t
o take my final year.

  Who was I trying to kid?

  David and I went to the Edinburgh Festival a few months later, in the summer of 1995. It was abundantly clear there was something special happening when the two of us were onstage together. Off the back of the show we were offered our own series on the newly formed Paramount TV channel. We were on our way.

  My ‘year off’ had barely begun before I wrote to the university and explained that, while I wanted to return and finish my course as agreed, I didn’t feel I could guarantee it. I received a genial and gracious response. They understood that I had to follow my dream.

  My mother and grandmother were devastated. My parents had not been to university, but they had worked incredibly hard to get me and my brother through private school and beyond. My father worked all hours and I rarely saw him. My mum had two, sometimes three jobs. They had made sacrifices and provided unerring love and support, and here was I, stepping away from university just one year from graduation. My parents had always supported my dreams of being an actor, but we all knew how precarious a profession it could be. A degree would allow me to teach between jobs. Now I would have nothing.

  Mum and Grandma made it their mission to stop me leaving the course. There was no other topic of conversation. They couldn’t understand how I could be so reckless.

  Amidst all the drama my father quietly took me aside and told me that he thought I was making the right choice. He said that I wouldn’t be able to guarantee that I’d have the same work opportunities a year down the line. ‘The course is a means to an end. Maybe you’re already at the end. You have to do this and you have to do it now.’

  Mum and Grandma were furious with him for supporting my plan of action. I was grateful for his understanding. I can say, though, that even without it, I had already made up my mind.

  Shooting Stars went out on BBCTwo in the autumn of 1995. Vic and Bob had a devoted fan base but they hadn’t yet breached the mainstream. This show would change that.

  The previews in the press were mixed, so my hopes were not high. I was largely ignored, apart from a line in The Observer, which dismissed me as a ‘baby fetishist’. I didn’t even know such a thing existed, though I would soon receive plenty of weird and wonderful letters from people who did, and who assumed I was one too, going into detail about their ‘adult baby’ lives.

  Once the series began, however, the media fell in love with it. The broadsheets celebrated its surrealism, originality and subversiveness, while the tabloids loved Ulrika and her evolution from homely weather girl to the ultimate ‘ladette’ – funny, sexy and able to down a pint in seconds.

  The public just took it for what it was. They liked the slapstick, the silliness, the celebs and the catchphrases.

  The night after the first show aired I went to have a drink with friends at the Good Mixer pub. As I was on the upward escalator at Camden Town Tube station, a man on the downward escalator pointed at me – ‘TV! Saw you on TV!’

  And so it began.

  It was quiet at first, occasional. And then after a while I was stopped pretty much wherever I went by people telling me they loved the show and wanting to know what Ulrika was like in real life.

  My mum, on the other hand, was bewildered by the whole thing and was still disappointed that I wasn’t doing something a bit weightier. Now back from Bristol, I was living full-time at home again. I tried to avoid watching the show with her because I’d constantly be looking over and seeing a confused expression on her face.

  ‘Do people actually like this?’ she would enquire, genuinely bamboozled.

  Mum has always been upfront in telling me what she thinks of my work – good or bad. After all, I’m still her little boy.

  In fact, I remember in the run-up to the broadcast of the first episode of Shooting Stars, I would talk about little else. It was all still very new to me. One day I was re-enacting a gag I’d done at one of the recordings, and she cut me off halfway through.

  ‘Yeah, never mind Shooting Stars. You go and tidy your room.’

  I was quite a messy kid, in fairness.

  Shooting Stars came back for a second series. It had been a moderate success, rather than a big hit, but in those days – believe it or not – you didn’t have to be an instant smash to get a second series. Shows were allowed to find their feet.

  This time the BBC decided to commission a much longer run. With so many episodes – and a weekly repeat on the Sunday – we were able to build an audience properly. Also we no longer had to record more than one episode a night, which meant that Vic and Bob could be more ambitious. Props, special effects, songs – all of those things took time to get right, and now we had even more.

  I had watched the first series go out and been underwhelmed by my own contributions. Setting aside the novelty of ‘There’s a man on national TV dressed as a baby’, I didn’t think I was very funny. Yet Vic and Bob had faith in me and were keen for me to revive the character. I decided I needed to push myself a little more. I started to ask for different outfits and props. I still didn’t often write gags in advance, but I did start to keep a little piece of paper on the drum kit, that would say something like …

  Posh

  Scouse

  Bristol

  Stutter

  Pakistani

  Geordie

  Nasal

  Scottish

  New Jersey

  … basically just reminding myself of dialects and voices that I could do.

  Sometimes I just played around with language, coming up with rhymes like ‘One of the main issues is the misuse of disused tissues’ or mispronouncing words: ‘marmalade’ became ‘mar-malla-dee’. It was more funny-peculiar than funny-haha but the audience didn’t seem to mind. If something went especially well, I’d try and think of a sequel to the joke to slip into a later episode.

  I found that the audience particularly enjoyed it when I adopted an aggressive Cockney persona, and I used it to interact with some of the guests. A recent ex-member of Take That, who had turned up to the recording rather merry, got a scolding from George for his troubles …

  ‘Robbie Williams, you filthy cow! Sort your life out and start making changes!’

  I was also cheeky to Griff Rhys Jones, asking him if he had seen Pretty Woman, and when he answered yes I replied, ‘So what? So have I. It’s been on telly four times. It was in cinemas. It’s been on video for years. You think you’re some kind of big shot?’

  One week Bob suggested that I might like to shake things up a bit. He said maybe I should play George’s mum or dad. ‘You could call yourself Marjorie Dawes,’ he added, in a reference to the children’s rhyme ‘See Saw Margery Daw’.

  The make-up department found a nice wig and from then on, Marjorie would make occasional appearances in the show. Like George, she was prone to sudden crazed outbursts, but on the whole she was mild-mannered in comparison.

  The voice was inspired by my own mother’s, and I thought that it might be fun if Marjorie was always on a diet, as women of a certain age always seemed to be. I came up with the idea that she could even be dispensing advice. She mentioned the new ‘Half the Calories’ diet …

  ‘Take a bit of cake and cut it in half and it’s only half the calories. And because it’s only half the calories, you can have twice as much.’

  In that second series, Shooting Stars got weirder and wilder, bigger and barmier. And now, each time I was introduced, I would get a huge cheer from the audience. I didn’t expect that at all. Vic, Bob, Ulrika and Mark were the stars. I had presumed my bits were merely tolerated.

  No longer was the audience filing out while I was doing my retakes. They stayed and lapped up every moment. If I had to do a bit again I would often change the line, keeping the audience fresh.

  After the second series aired, Vic, Bob, Mark, Ulrika and I went on a nationwide tour, playing to 90,000 people over forty dates.

  The first half of the show featured three musical impersonators – the type you
see on Stars in Their Eyes. It was usually Elton John, Freddie Mercury and either Rod Stewart or Neil Diamond. The audience, expecting something subversive, waited patiently for Vic and Bob to wander on halfway through with the punchline, but it never happened. By the time the actual Shooting Stars part of the show began, the audience was often quite grumpy.

  On the opening night in Manchester there were some technical problems, which meant that the audience watched the sound-alikes and then waited nearly an hour for the main event. The lights dimmed and then came up again, and then dimmed again. There was an unexpected pause, while we waited for the go-ahead to start the show. The audience, who had been cheering, fell silent, and one really loud lone Cockney voice screamed, ‘Twenty-five quid for this? You thieving CUNTS!’

  Everyone heard it. There was silence for two seconds. The curtain went up, out came Vic and Bob, and all was forgiven.

  The show was a bit of a shambles, to be honest, but a lovable shambles. Local celebrities were hired. Sometimes we lucked out and the audience got added value, like when Paul Heaton appeared in his hometown of Hull or Ben Elton joined us in Cambridge. Other times the audience was stumped by the booking of a local radio weatherman or a lower division reserve-team footballer.

  We went around the country in a large tour bus, driven by a friendly Scouser called Dave. No matter where we stopped for lunch, he always ordered soup. ‘It’s very hard to get soup wrong,’ he reasoned.

  Vic and Ulrika seemed to be in the papers every day and we had press following us around, though they didn’t bother much with me. After the show each night I was usually the first to leave the bar, heading to my room for a joint in front of the TV.

  One day an offer came in – a big multinational company wanted to fly us all out first class to Singapore, to do a private Shooting Stars show. The only snag was that the audience would be made up of employees, and the CEO and his cronies would be the guests. There was £200k on the table, and Vic and Bob said we could split it five ways. My jaw dropped. I was in, most definitely. The idea of being paid £40,000 for anything was unheard of, let alone one night’s work, and this was twenty years ago!