Little Britain has become a comedy icon. Matt Lucas and David Walliams talk about its modest beginnings
By Bruce Dessau
Little Britain isn’t just a comedy programme – it’s a phenomenon. From its humble start on radio in the UK in 2001, the sketch show has spawned three hit TV series, three million DVD sales, three Bafta awards, countless catchphrases and a range of merchandise that includes talking character dolls, greetings cards and nightwear.
It has transformed its creators, David Walliams, 35, and Matt Lucas, 32, into wealthy household names. Walliams now features in UK tabloid stories about his love life almost as often as he does the TV listings, and when Lucas, who is gay, married his partner Kevin McGee in December 2006, guests at the lavish reception included Sir Elton John and Courtney Love.
The road to fame has been long and winding, however. Lucas and Walliams first met in 1990 at the UK’s National Youth Theatre. Lucas is a business consultant’s son, Walliams is the son of a transport engineer. A shared love of cult comedy show Vic Reeves Big Night Out forged their friendship and soon they started writing and performing comedy together.
Their first show, Sir Bernard Chumley and Friends, went to the Edinburgh Festival in 1995 and toured Britain in 1997. Lucas’s talents were spotted by his heroes Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer; in the late 1990s he gained cult recognition on their BBC game show Shooting Stars. Walliams, meanwhile, had a number of small TV appearances.
They teamed up again for Rock Profiles, a series of spoof documentaries about rock stars (including Elton John). Then characters such as Dafydd, “the only gay in the village”, delinquent Vicky Pollard, and carer Lou and his not-really-disabled charge Andy began to take shape.
Reader’s Digest caught up with the duo for an interview before their record 35-night stint at London’s 3700-seat Hammersmith Apollo last year, part of a UK Little Britain tour that sold more than 800,000 tickets. While their characters may go around vomiting, insulting fat people and committing petty crime, Walliams and Lucas in person are charming and happy to chat about the tour and their future plans.
RD: You’ve played more than 140 shows in the past year and face another 70 more. Is touring fun or exhausting?
Lucas: It has been gruelling, but it helps that we get on very well. We’re very close because we’ve shared a lot of strange experiences in the past few years – mad things like the fact that we now need security guards.
Walliams: Matt and me maybe have one drink [after a show]. We have to protect our voices. But being onstage isn’t boring. We have fun every night – we have to or the show wouldn’t work.
RD: How does the live performance differ from the TV programme?
Walliams: Each sketch is different every time. There’s a lot of improvisation, particularly when things go wrong or we forget our lines.
Lucas: Some of our smaller characters become bigger onstage. Des Kay, the former children’s TV entertainer who now works in a hardware superstore, had only a tiny part in the TV series but he comes into his own on tour because he gets audience members onstage to help him perform magic tricks.
RD: Matt, you make a grand entrance as Andy, who has escaped from his wheelchair and is swinging above the stage on a wire. Was that scary?
Lucas: Crossing the road is frightening to me, but up there I never felt scared. People bought their tickets a year in advance and we wanted to give them something spectacular. The real feats are the costume changes – me trying to get from mail-order bride Ting Tong’s miniskirt into Vicky Pollard’s skin-tight tracksuit in 25 seconds.
RD: Do you have favourite characters?
Walliams: I like anyone in dresses. I love playing Carol, the “computer says no” woman, because she is so inactive. After running around for the rest of the show, it gives me a chance of a sit-down. I also like Lou because there’s pathos there. Emily Howard, the rubbish transvestite, is fun but there’s no depth. I’d like to let her go at some point, but Lou I’d be happy playing in 20 years.
Lucas: As Fat Fighter Marjorie Dawes, I can interact with the audience, tease people in the front row. For me, that’s when the show really comes alive.
RD: You’ve been performing since your teens. Did you always want to become comedians?
Walliams: I got a laugh when I was in a play aged ten and it made me feel important. From then on, I’d do things like getting teachers onstage during assemblies and putting custard pies in their faces. Making people laugh gave me pleasure, so I always thought, Let’s see where this one leads me.
Lucas: I’d record A Bit of Fry and Laurie on a cassette player and learn the routines, but I didn’t dare dream of doing anything like stand-up because of the way I looked. (Lucas went bald with shock, aged six, after being hit by a car.) Then I met David and he started doing spots at comedy clubs. It gave me confidence that there was someone I knew working on the stand-up circuit.
