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Matt Lucas is an award-winning comedian, actor and writer.
He started his comedy career in the early nineties, working with Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer on The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer and Shooting Stars, where he played giant baby George Dawes, but discovered major success with co-star David Walliams in Little Britain and Come Fly With Me, for which they won three BAFTAs, three NTAs and two International Emmy Awards. Matt received much praise for his work on stage in Les Miserables and has since gone on to feature in many successful films and TV shows, including Alice in Wonderland, Bridesmaids, Paddington, A Midsummer Night's Dream and now Doctor Who.
Published in Great Britain in 2017 by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
This digital edition first published in 2017 by Canongate Books
Copyright © Matt Lucas, 2017
The moral right of the author has been asserted
ISBN 978 1 78689 086 3
Export ISBN 978 1 78689 106 8
eISBN 978 1 78689 107 5
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
While every effort has been made to contact copyright-holders of illustrations, the author and publishers would be grateful for information about any illustrations where they have been unable to trace them, and would be glad to make amendments to further editions.
Typeset by Biblichor Ltd, Edinburgh.
Contents
H – Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ School
Q – Queen (and other Teenage Pursuits)
S – Southend, Sydney and Sunset Boulevard
V – Various Other Things I’ve Been In
W – What are the Scores, George Dawes?
This book is dedicated to Emily,
the kindest, most patient person in the world.
Preface
Hello. How are you? You been up to much?
And that’s the first line of my book. Now I know a lot of people write books and the opening line is something all clever like ‘I walked along the moors, leaves crunching beneath my feet, the dying sun retreating from view’, but the publishers said I have to write the truth, and I don’t think ‘I was sat on the sofa, polishing off a Chambourcy Hippopotamousse in front of Lovejoy’ is particularly suspenseful so I’ve decided to open with ‘Hello’, and then, even if you don’t care for anything that comes after that, at least you’ll say I was well mannered.
Secondly, this is, I guess, a sort-of autobiography, but, as you will have gathered, it isn’t quite chronological. I have no attention span left. I give up halfway through reading a text message. This is my attempt to keep things zipping along. Life may begin at babyhood (I just checked and I’m slightly disappointed to learn that word already exists) but my thoughts and memories are dotted about. The alphabetical approach is actually an attempt to corral them somehow.
Tonally it’s probably a bit all over the place, because that’s me. Half my life has been spent with people complaining that I’m too serious, that – in the words of my late father – I ‘think too much’. The rest of the time people tell me to stop mucking about.
Also, everything in this book is – as far as I know – true. But not everything is in this book. I know things that would ruin people’s careers. I certainly know things that would finish mine. I’m not looking to burn bridges. You might have to read between the lines here and there. In Ethel Merman’s autobiography there is a chapter entitled ‘My Marriage To Ernest Borgnine’ which just has one empty page. I’m not going to go that far, but there’s