Matthew Richard Lucas (born 5 March 1974) is an English actor, comedian, writer and television presenter. He is best known for his work with David Walliams on the BBCsketch comedy series Little Britain (2003–2006) and Come Fly with Me (2010–2011).
Matthew Richard Lucas was born on 5 March 1974 in the Paddington area of west London, the son of Diana (née Williams; born 1945) and chauffeuring business owner John Stanley Lucas (1944–1996).[citation needed] His family is Jewish; some of his mother's family fled Nazi Germany just before the Second World War. He was raised in a Reform Jewish household although his parents came from Orthodox Jewish families.[2] He has had alopecia since childhood,[3] having lost all his hair after being struck by a car at the age of 6.[4] When Lucas was 22, his father died of a heart attack.[5]
Lucas's association with Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer began in 1992. He appeared in The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer in 1995, and went on to star with them in Shooting Stars. He quickly rose to fame as George Dawes, a giant baby (often dressed in an adult-sized romper suit) who would deliver a string of meaningless gags and insults before delivering the teams' scores, while sitting at and playing a drum kit. He also appeared on occasion as Marjorie Dawes, George's mother, who also appears in Little Britain.[9]
Lucas ventured into stage musicals in 2002, when he took a role in Boy George's musical Taboo at The Venue in London. He played the performance artist Leigh Bowery.[9]
Little Britain
Little Britain is Lucas' most commercially successful work. The show came about when trainee BBC radio producer Ashley Blaker, tasked with coming up with ideas for a television or radio series, bumped into Lucas in London.[12] The two were old friends from Haberdashers' and Lucas took Blaker to the Groucho Club, where he told Blaker of his ideas for a sketch show. Little Britain was launched as a radio show on BBC Radio 4 and it later became a TV series.
Among the many characters he plays in the series, which he writes and acts in along with David Walliams, are apparently "disabled" Andy Pipkin, teenage Bristol chavVicky Pollard, homophobic homosexual Daffyd Thomas, and insensitive slimming club organiser Marjorie Dawes.
In 2005, he took his first role in a television drama, a supporting part as a Venetian duke in the BBC historical serial Casanova, written by Russell T Davies. Also in 2005, he did voice work in the ITV children's program King Arthur's Disasters alongside Rik Mayall. Since 2006, Lucas has been the voice of the radio and television character Digit Al, devised as part of a public information campaign on digital switchover. On 26 November 2006 he appeared on the BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs. He made a cameo appearance in Shaun of the Dead as Tom, the cousin of Shaun's friend Yvonne.
Starting in February 2010, Lucas began hosting his own radio show, And The Winner Is, in which he handed out a fictional series of awards based on nominations by his guests.[16]
On 3 October 2010,[17] Lucas played Thénardier in the 25th Anniversary Concerts of Les Misérables, at the O2 Arena in London. A year later, from 23 June to 10 September 2011,[18] he reprised the role at the Queen's Theatre, in the West End. He has since collaborated with Alfie Boe, who played Jean Valjean, to record a duet of "The Impossible Dream" on Boe's debut album.
On Christmas Day 2010, the BBC began showing Lucas and David Walliams' new series, Come Fly with Me. The show saw Walliams and Lucas each playing multiple characters but, unlike Little Britain, it focused entirely on the working environment of the airline industry. In an interview shown on BBC 3 on 9 February 2011, it was stated that the creators considered bringing travel agent character Carol Beer from Little Britain to the new series, but decided against it, as they did not want viewers to see the new show as merely a spinoff. Instead, all new characters were introduced.
On 28 March 2012, Lucas appeared as the "Generation X" guest on the Australian game show Talkin' 'Bout Your Generation. On 10 April 2012, Lucas's own BBC One show The Matt Lucas Awards began. It was a send-up of an awards program, with a panel of comedians giving their nominations for awards for a series of prizes concerning trivial topics.
Lucas also starred in the dark comedy Small Apartments released in February 2013 alongside James Caan, Billy Crystal, Johnny Knoxville, and Juno Temple with other cameo performances by notable actors. On 21 February 2013, Lucas appeared on the NBC series Community as Toby, an English friend of Abed Nadir. In 2014, Lucas played Ray Thomas in The Life of Rock with Brian Pern.
Lucas launched a new comedy series called Pompidou for BBC Two. The show began airing on 1 March 2015.
On 16 February 2017, Lucas was awarded an Honorary Degree "Doctor of Letters" by the University of Bristol, where he had studied for two years in the 1990s but had left before completing his degree course.[20] On 3 October 2017, Lucas released his autobiography titled Little Me, published by Canongate Books in hardback. The paperback edition was released on 7 June 2018.[21]
From 10 August to 30 November 2019, Lucas appeared in Les Misérables at the Gielgud Theatre in London's West End, playing the role of Monsieur Thénardier in a fully staged concert adaptation of the musical. On 20 December 2019, Lucas returned to the role at the Sondheim Theatre, after actor Gerard Carey contracted vocal damage through pneumonia and was forced to pull out. On 10 January 2020, Lucas himself was forced to withdraw from the show following a back injury.[25]
On 3 April 2020, Lucas released a reworked version of his "Baked Potato Song" from Shooting Stars titled "Thank You Baked Potato", with all proceeds from the track going towards the Feed NHS campaign, which aims to provide meals for NHS workers in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK.[27][28] The song reached No. 34 in the charts. Lucas also wrote a children's picture book based on "Thank You, Baked Potato", published by Egmont and all proceeds again go to Feed NHS.
In 2020, Lucas, along with his Little Britain co-star David Walliams, apologised for their portrayal of characters using racial caricatures, "including an obese Caribbean woman called Desiree DeVere, portrayed in blackface, and a 'portly Thai bride' called Ting Tong." This was prompted after Netflix and BBC iPlayer removed the show from their catalogues.[29]
Personal life
Lucas is a patron of the Karen Morris Memorial Trust, a UK charity for leukaemia patients and their families. In April 2003, he appeared on Celebrity Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and won £62,500 for the charity.[30]