Little Me. Matt Lucas

If I spill ALL the beans, then no one will trust me, no one will hire me and I’ll have no option but to go into the Celebrity Big Brother house. I’m far too crotchety in the mornings for that. It’s not going to happen.

      And finally, in this book, amongst many other things, I refer on occasion to Kevin McGee, the man I loved and lost, a kind, warm, beautiful being who didn’t have the armour for this world. I have always been reticent to talk publicly about our relationship and the events that followed it. Grief for me has been profound and unrelenting, but also private. I have a moral discomfort with using his suffering to sell a book, to elicit public sympathy and money. We also had an agreement during our separation not to discuss what happened. He kept to it and so have I. So I’ll talk about how I have tried to find a way forward after his death, but I won’t be going into rich detail about our relationship, his illness or suicide. The other truth is that there is so much about him that I don’t know and never will.

      I’ll tell you what I can about my life, but much of it, frankly, has been about learning to live without the answers.

      Right, let’s get on with it.

      Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 1987

      A – Accrington Stanley

      I didn’t often break into a run but on that spring morning in 1986 my pudgy twelve-year-old self jumped off the coach, hurtled along the path, took a left at the Art building, down the PE corridor, past the room full of state-of-the-art BBC Micro Model B computers, up the Chemistry corridor and into the house block.

      There were already a few other boys waiting eagerly for the arrival of Barry Edwards, my lanky, mop-haired form master and proud writer of Columbus!, a new musical (score by Mr Hepworth) to be performed by the Junior School at Haberdashers’ that summer.

      I’d already pondered the impending bittersweetness of appearing – no – starring in the show while my father languished in Spring Hill open prison, unable to witness in person what would surely be the beginning of my prodigious rise to fame and glory.

      Edwards appeared, pinning the cast list to the noticeboard, before swiftly exiting. We clustered around it. Being one of the shorter boys, I had to wait a moment to get a peek. At the top it said that Oliver White – from the year above – was to play the title role. I cast my eyes down the list and noted the names of a couple of friends, delighted that we would be performing together.

      I scanned quickly to the bottom and started again – thoroughly, this time – from the top. After all, there were a lot of names on there – at least thirty, I would say.

      Mine, however, was nowhere to be found.

      My initial surprise quickly gave way to disappointment, but even that gave way pretty quickly to self-flagellation, something I’d been given to a fair deal of late. What on earth had I been thinking? Little me, the tubby boy with no hair, at the bottom of every class – what right did I have to suppose that I might be any part of this?

      At morning break-time I went to my locker, reached into the brown pencil case full of coins and took out a couple. I had been appointed class charity monitor at the beginning of the year and I collected a donation from the less forgetful boys each Friday morning, during registration. Lately I had been given to pinching a coin or two to spend at the tuck shop, cramming my fat face full of jam doughnuts and Lion bars.

      I sat with my friend Andrew Bloch, who had also been waiting for the list to be posted, and who had evidently shone brighter at his audition than I had in mine. His glee at being cast was being kept in check so as not to make me feel any worse. There weren’t many boys like that at this school.

      We sucked determinedly on our rock-hard Jawbreakers (gobstoppers, three for 10p, with chewing gum in the middle, if you ever actually made it that far) as the ramifications of the morning’s key event became clear. Throughout my disastrous first year at Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ School I had consoled myself with the thought that my impending brilliance in the Junior School musical would put everything else into context. Sure, I had failed academically across the board – a wobbly cast-off on the otherwise perfect production line of future Oxbridge graduates – but once everyone finally came to appreciate where my skills really lay, I, Lord Olivier elect, would be hailed by staff and pupils alike, my academic shortfalls a mere footnote. ‘He struggles with Physics, yes,’ they would say, ‘but his Hedda Gabler was sublime. Leave him be.’

      Life returned to normality. I spent my days sat in class, utterly befuddled by an overload of information – the Treaty of Rapallo, lowest common multiples and oxbow lakes – and my nights in front of the television, watching Albion Market and Highway – anything – when I should have been doing my homework.

      And then suddenly, one day, a couple of weeks into rehearsals, a rumour went around. One of the boys had pulled out of the show and Barry Edwards was to hold further auditions for his replacement one lunch break. I checked the drama noticeboard and sure enough there was another opportunity to be in the show. This was it. This was the moment. Like Peggy Sawyer in 42nd Street (which I had seen that year at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane), I was to save the day. Four of us put our names down and took it in turns to deliver the same speech. But then came the final insult: Edwards decided not to cast any of us, not even Russell Donoff.

      On the coach home from school I sat with Andrew, prising from him updates on how rehearsals were going. My envy had given way to awe. I accepted my place under the table, happy to feast on the scraps.

      A couple of weeks before Columbus! was to be staged, it was announced at Assembly that ushers would be required. I eagerly signed up for all three nights, herding a parade of old toffs and proud parents to their seats.

      As despondent as I felt on the sidelines, it was exciting to watch my friends onstage and hear them sing. Whenever I encountered one of the stars of the show over the coming weeks, I would compliment them. I informed Benjamin Cahn that he had a lovely singing voice. I praised James Kaye for his exquisite comic timing. I even said well done to the identical Salter twins, who I had decided were only in the show because there was a magic trick in which the same person exited stage right and immediately reappeared stage left. I guess you could say I was a Columbus! groupie. I drank it all in, learning all the tunes and humming them to myself in my bedroom for weeks afterwards, imagining how I would have played each part.

      Fast forward ten months. The architect of my doom Barry Edwards had moved to Highgate School. A new teacher, the sweet, softly spoken Ian Rossotti, was to direct this year’s musical which, it was announced during one Junior Assembly, was to be (drumroll please) . . . The Roman Invasion of Ramsbottom.

      What? What on earth was that?

      The Roman Invasion of who?

      Couldn’t we do Oliver! I was really hoping we could do Oliver! and then I could play the Artful Dodger. Or Starlight Express? We could do it in the round in the dining hall. Hell, I know we’re a boys’ school, but couldn’t we even do Annie? I’ll play Sandy the dog, I don’t mind. Anything but The Roman Invasion of Ramsbottom, whatever that is.

      The Roman Invasion of Ramsbottom was, it turned out, a daft comic romp that had been written a few years earlier for the National Youth Music Theatre, about the regulars of a Lancashire pub and how they successfully thwarted an attempt by the Romans to build a motorway through it.

      This time the auditions took place on a Sunday afternoon in the school drama room. Mr Rossotti was joined by an intriguing figure, a warm, garrulous dandy with a head of wild, wavy curls and lashings of presence. I instantly adored him, for this was no mere English teacher. This was a man of the theatre.

      He took us through our paces, getting us all to sing ‘Consider Yourself’ from Oliver! pounding away at the piano, bellowing directions. He invested in us, sought to get the best out of all of us. Some of the boys visibly withdrew from this attention, but not