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Interview: Matt Lucas

The most surreal Jew in the village

February 18, 2009 17:00
Matt LucasFRONT
5 min read

Persistence finally paid off for Matt Lucas. The rotund funny man ­had some near misses and minor hits before Little Britain made him one of the nation’s biggest stars. Indeed, it now transcends the UK: “It plays in over 40 countries. there’s nowhere to hide now!” laughs Lucas. The idea for the show, which also stars his longstanding friend and comedy partner David Walliams, was “to get as many characters out as possible, keep the show moving, make each sketch last not much more than two minutes so that if you don’t like something then there’s something else coming up very shortly”.

The pair had been writing projects which “were too adult for TV — we were getting audiences to our live shows and making them laugh but we couldn’t get to the next step”.

In 2001 they wrote their innovative sketch show for Radio 4 and the rest is history. Lucas explains that they didn’t want to be The Two Ronnies, who played the shows as themselves. “We were too shy and self-conscious — which might sound weird when you think we run around dressed as women!”

Hence the idea of using Tom Baker as narrator, a device that would suit radio while introducing characters and linking sketches. “Radio needs devices like this to distinguish one show from another. We hit gold with Tom. We were very lucky. He was our first choice. If he said no we were going to ask Harold Pinter!”