Little Me. Matt Lucas

to feel eternally self-conscious, constantly stared at, teased, mocked and bullied. But also it’s important to get things into perspective.

      When I was seven it was announced that a new ‘handicapped’ boy called Michael would be joining our class. Miss Robbins told me that I was to look after him.

      Michael had – has – cerebral palsy. Tottering in with a winning smile on his first day, none of us found it easy to understand what he was saying. But in time, we learned his patterns and rhythms, knew to wait patiently because it took him longer to speak.

      Michael was smart, funny, sweet and never complained about anything. He found writing a challenge so he did his work on a special computer. Michael was a marvel.

      Maybe a generation or two earlier he would have gone to a special school, or not even gone to school at all, but I’m so glad he came to ours.

      The truth is, it put things into perspective. Having no hair was unfortunate, but spending time with someone who had to face significantly greater challenges showed me that if nothing stopped him living his life to the full, why should my situation set me back?

      I should point out that, when we were seventeen, Michael took me out for a spin in his specially adapted shiny red car. I’ve failed my test twice and still can’t drive.

      Meanwhile my ever-growing cap collection was coming in useful. My oldest friend Jeremy can scarcely recount the number of times he got into trouble at school for something we both did, while I bowed my head, smirk hidden beneath the huge brim of my cap. Before long, tears of laughter would be rolling down my face. If you were taller than me, you’d never know.

      My favourite piece of headwear was different from the others, a small-peaked sailor’s hat that my grandmother had bought for me. I fell in love with it after watching Ghostbusters in the cinema (twice in one week) as it resembled the one worn by the giant Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. I wore it for months and months, until it became filthy. Then one day, spurred on by my brother, I wrote ‘STAY PUFT’ on the front in thick black marker pen, which was great until it rained and the hat was ruined.

      Though we would fight like cat and dog at home, my brother Howard was the first to stand up for me if anyone gave me any aggravation. Sure, he’d badger me mercilessly about my steadily increasing weight, but he never ever teased me about having no hair.

      Quite the opposite. He loved my bald head so much that one day, as he sat in the back of the car, with me in front of him, and our mum outside chatting to a friend, Howard offered to draw a Pac-Man on my head. I thought it a terrific idea. First, I would have a Pac-Man on my head and who didn’t like Pac-Man? And second, I knew he would get into trouble.

      Howard whipped out one of the marker pens he habitually stole from school (for graffiti purposes) and started to draw. On Mum’s return I gave a beautiful performance.

      ‘Waaaah! Look what he’s done now!’

      Mum was furious with him. I was delighted. What I hadn’t bargained for was that the Pac-Man wouldn’t come off. Howard was instructed to scrub until my head was clean, but the traces were still visible three weeks later.

      Joking around with my brother was one thing, but my baldness could also attract a more mean-spirited attention. Around the age of twelve or thirteen, I was deemed old enough to go out with a friend, rather than with a parent, so Jeremy and I would often get the bus to Copthall swimming pool or Harrow Leisure Centre.

      I remember one time we were upstairs on a double-decker when we were joined by a couple of rough boys who seemed younger than us and were keen to stamp their authority. Without provocation, they pushed us around and took great pleasure in repeatedly slapping my head. I was petrified. This wasn’t the usual teasing – there was something ungovernable about them. I doubt they even went to school.

      I encountered them a few times in my youth. Once, one of them spotted me in Edgware when I was out with my mum and walked behind us in the street, kicking me in the rear at regular intervals. I didn’t say a word.

      On another occasion I was sat in the front passenger seat of the car, with my mum driving, when we stopped at some traffic lights. I was minding my own business when a biker in black leather pulled up next to us and repeatedly shouted ‘Baldy’ in a mocking voice. My mum and I sat in silence. When the lights changed to amber, I watched him zoom off laughing in the distance. I hoped he might crash.

      The truth is, there was always some kind of incident whenever I went out – a confrontation, name-calling, sniggering. The dark side of young people, the lack of empathy, might feel like a new phenomenon, thanks to the camera-phone videos you see online of kids humiliating each other. It isn’t new. Kids are inherently cruel. Kindness doesn’t come for a while – not naturally, at least.

      While children could be cruel, the younger ones were just confused. It didn’t make sense to them. I understand why a three- or four-year-old would simply point at a bald kid. When I was that age my brother and I used to tease our father and tell him he wore a wig. It seemed such a fantastical notion to me, because of course he didn’t. We were just having fun.

      But then, one Sunday morning when I was maybe ten, as I was getting ready to go to Hebrew classes, Dad beckoned me into the bathroom. He shut the door and told me that he had actually lost his hair at thirteen years old and that he wore a toupee.

      He then proceeded to slowly and carefully peel it back, until it came all the way off. He had hair round the back and sides, but otherwise, like me, he was bald, I was gobsmacked. He made me promise not to tell a soul and I swore blindly that I definitely wouldn’t and then went straight to Hebrew classes and told EVERYONE.

      ‘You’ll never guess what! My dad . . . wears . . . a WIG!’

      ‘Yeah, I know,’ said Darren Swabel, rolling his eyes. ‘It’s pretty obvious.’

      And then I remembered one evening a few months earlier, when he had come home and Mum had looked at him, unimpressed.

      ‘I’m not sure about that at all,’ she said.

      Dad had been defensive. ‘I think it looks nice.’

      I have to admit his hair did look pretty different that day, kind of flatter, darker and shinier. A bit like a Brillo Pad or a small, flat hat.

      It was a different time, I guess. In those days, not having hair was seen as socially unacceptable. People actually thought that it was preferable to wear a squirrel on their head than be bald.

      So I guess I shouldn’t have been entirely surprised when my parents suggested to me that I might want to wear a wig at secondary school. Certainly I didn’t question it.

      At this moment, as I type away, I do question it. I really question it.

      What the hell was everyone thinking?

      It was 1985, a full five years after my hair had fallen out. Five years. I had already done my best to somehow assimilate my baldness into my personality, if that makes sense. I had figured out jokey responses to the same old questions if I was in a good mood and withering retorts if I wasn’t. I had mastered the art of staring back fearlessly at people when I caught them sneaking a look at me. I had figured out, in my own way, how to live with being bald.

      This was survival, turning a disadvantage into something I could own – but in my heart I still wanted to be just like everyone else. Maybe the wig could do that for me.

      I was assessed again by a doctor and then told that, yes, I could have a wig on the National Health Service, so off I went with my mum and grandma to a wig store in central London, where the offending item was waiting for me.

      I don’t know if they make wigs for children nowadays, but they certainly didn’t in 1985. A large brown human-hair wig – intended for a woman – was placed on my little head and cut down to size. Unsurprisingly, it was still far too big for me, but Mum and Grandma and the lady in the wig shop all said it looked marvellous and so we left the shop with the wig in a bag.

      Back at home I put it on and looked at myself in the