Award-winning comedian, actor and writer Matt Lucas spawned one of the most successful television shows in British comedy, Little Britain. Matt joined The Ryan Tubridy Show to talk about his new autobiography, Little Me: My Life From A-Z.
Matt begins his conversation with Ryan by admitting that writing the autobiography was quite therapeutic for him. He found it compelled him to think about topics and certain areas of his life that he had been avoiding and helped him find clarity for future projects.
When Matt was four years of age, he was knocked down by a car while holidaying with his family. It wasn’t until two years later when he found clumps of his hair on his pillow every morning, that the doctors blamed the car accident for his hair loss. Evidently, this made Matt very self-conscious and made him very distinctive in school amongst his peers. Although his parents had gone to great efforts to repair his hair loss, nothing had worked and Matt ended up wearing a flamboyant, ladies wig.
"So I had this sort of bouffant wig, which was a woman’s wig and I had it fitted on my head. It was huge; the wig was almost larger than my head."
Matt says that becoming an actor in the school plays and youth theatres was a medium where he could escape to from being himself. Growing up, Matt had a difficult time being gay and overweight as well as having a tricky home life. Acting provided him with some relief by being someone else for a while.
"The acting thing seemed like the chance to be someone else for a little while."
He says he found it very hard to come out when he was younger because of society’s sharp and critical views towards homosexuals. He reckons the media played a big part in linking gay people with HIV and AIDS. Matt told Ryan that people refused to see the love in a relationship between two women or two men.
"People didn’t talk about the love between two men or two women. They just talked about the idea of disgusting gay sex. It was painted as a very unsavoury thing."
Matt came out that he was gay to his friends, when he reached his adolescent years but it wasn’t until he was twenty-five that he declared his sexuality with his family. He told Ryan that his mother was confused and disappointed. Matt emphasises again, that even in the 1990’s when he came out, society was still not ready to hear about homosexuals. Our concept of the topic today is relatively a new one.
Listen back to the full frank discussion between Ryan and Matt, click here.
