Little Me. Matt Lucas
bill before I came on. I went onstage already angry on behalf of my colleagues and it wasn’t long before I too was the recipient of abuse. In my case someone threw a bottle and – in a rare and uncharacteristic moment of skill – I returned it on the volley, punting it over the heads of the front few rows. ‘Come on then!’ I screamed. Not wise. More bottles followed and I scarpered to the dressing room, where I had to be locked in for an hour for my own safety.
Some months later, I was performing at the intimate Aztec Club in Crystal Palace. I was more confident by then, but again alarmed as every act was falling prey to a huge, very drunk Irish guy, who was bellowing insults across the small room and ruining the evening. Even the compère was helpless.
I knew I was doomed to the same treatment, but I decided to meet the challenge head-on. I went onstage, dispensed with my material and instead focused my act solely on the man, hurling insults at him, belittling him, even impersonating him. The atmosphere changed. The tyrant was humiliated! The relief in the room was palpable. Now surely this bully had been silenced once and for all. Maybe he would even leave.
I came offstage to wild applause and the next act went on. I packed my wig and jacket into my bag, paused for a moment and leaned against the wall near the bar, smugly basking in a jubilant glow.
The floored giant came over and calmly spoke to me . . . ‘Very funny, that. Good stuff. I like what you did.’
‘Um, thank you,’ I said, a little surprised.
‘And now I’m gonna take you outside and beat the bollocks off of ya.’
I looked up to him and gulped. His eyes burned into mine. The moment seemed to last forever.
‘Nah, I’m only playin’ wit’ ya.’
I exhaled loudly. The relief probably would have been visible from the moon.
He paused, studied me and then spoke again. ‘Nah, you’re gonna get a bruising. Pick up your bag. I’ll meet you outside.’
A low whine from yours truly, then . . .
‘I’m just mucking about. You’re fine.’ He patted me on the head.
Pause.
‘Nah, screw it. Do you think you can talk to me like that in front of these people? In front of my lady? Fetch your coat.’
Imagine a nineteen-year-old arse quivering and then times it by ten.
‘I’m messing. I’d never do that.’
‘Ha. G-g-good.’
‘Nah, this is my local. No one comes here and talks to me like that. Funny man, yeah? I’m gonna teach you a lesson. Come with me. Now!’
This went on and on, back and forth. He was going to beat me to a pulp. Of course he wasn’t. He was going to smash my head into a lamp-post – no, he was just joking. He was going to punch my lights out. Only kidding.
One of the bar staff witnessed this exchange from a few feet away. He came and stood between us, and then whispered in my ear that it might be a good time to leave, and that he and a couple of others would walk me to the station. I didn’t hesitate to accept his offer. I assume Goliath watched as I picked up my bag and coat and we slunk out of the bar, but I didn’t look back so I’ll never know.
Remember in the first chapter when I was name-dropping? Well, here is one of my proudest ever clangs. In 2008 David Walliams and I had the honour and pleasure of spending a little time with Robin Williams in LA. I told him this tale one night when a group of us were at dinner, swapping war stories, and he fell in love with it. Later I heard that he’d started doing an impression of my impression of the Irish guy in his act.
Does it get any clangier than that? Unlikely.
Except it just did, because Billy Crystal was at that dinner too.
Clang!
Clang!
Clang!
Clang!
Clang!
Sometimes when I played outside London, accommodation was provided as part of the deal. This sounded good on the face of it, but it usually meant a dodgy B&B, a flea-ridden bed in a cupboard in a university hall of residence, or a room in someone’s mate’s house, rather than a hotel.
I had a tough gig at a student union in Newton Abbot, where I was supporting the magnificent Jenny Eclair. Afterwards we were dispatched to the austere home of Mrs Dalton, a thin-lipped old lady who had been widowed just a couple of months before.
I couldn’t get to sleep because it was freezing cold in my room – and also she had cats which set off my allergies and gave me a pretty severe asthma attack. Stupidly I had forgotten to bring my medicine with me and in the early hours, sleepless, wheezing and shivering as the window frames rattled in the wind, I quietly took myself downstairs to the kitchen.
An irritated Mrs Dalton, woken by the noise, followed, and kindly made me a cup of tea. We chatted for a little while and then I went back up to bed. A couple of hours later, still sleepless and now genuinely struggling to breathe, I returned downstairs. Mrs Dalton reappeared too. Close to tears, I told her that I might need to call an ambulance. Mrs Dalton had had enough of this strange man wandering around her house. She calmly told me that if I called an ambulance, she would call the police. I went back to my room, sat on the bed gasping for air, and waited for the sun to rise. Eventually Jenny surfaced, fresh from a lovely night’s sleep, and we shared a taxi to the station. I told her about my night.
‘Oh, you should have woken me,’ she said. ‘I get asthma sometimes. You could have used my inhaler.’
There were happier experiences. My favourite batch of out-of-town gigs was a mini-tour of the south-west – Exeter, Yeovil, Falmouth, Bridport and Torquay – booked and compèred by a lovely guy called Bentley, who worked away on the oil rigs for several months of the year and then returned to spend time with his family and run comedy shows. Everyone on the circuit was happy to do Bentley’s gigs, even though they didn’t pay a king’s ransom, because he was such a generous host, cooking for us and driving us around.
When one of the other comics offered me a joint before the show one night, I declined because I didn’t know how it would affect my act. Some comics could knock it back but I never had more than half a pint before I went on, and certainly didn’t smoke pot ahead of a gig, though I often indulged afterwards. Bentley told me I should have a toke – it might inspire me. I warned him that I had no idea what would happen and he said he didn’t mind and I should just enjoy the experience.
I had a few puffs, but to my surprise it was really strong stuff. I went onstage, started my set and the audience was laughing. I then got completely paranoid that they were doing so for the wrong reasons. I became convinced that I hadn’t done my flies up properly, and kept stopping to adjust them, which the crowd thought was part of the act. I went down so well they gave me an encore. I promptly went back onstage and was so disorientated I repeated my entire set word-for-word, prompting more hysteria from the audience and more confusion from me as to what they were finding funny.
In the early nineties London had a burgeoning Jewish comedy circuit, where some established acts – Ivor Dembina, Mark Maier, Peter Moss, Dave Schneider, Ian Stone – would perform modified sets or even create new ones.
It was at one of these that I met the late Leelo Ross. A large, friendly Northerner, Leelo’s quickfire set was jammed full of great gags. It was a pleasure to watch her and a pain to follow her.
Some years later I found myself by chance sitting opposite Leelo on a bus to Muswell Hill. She told me she had given up comedy and become a clairvoyant. We got off at the next stop and popped into a nearby café, where she read my tea leaves. She told me that I had Italian ancestry, came from a family of sailors and that she could see my late grandmother standing in front of us, hairs coming out of her chin, holding a tray of cheap cakes. I thought it was high time she returned to making people laugh and shortly afterwards David and I cast her as Tanya in the ‘Fat Fighters’