Matt Lucas - The Face of Countless Characters

Sketch, or ‘broken’ comedy generally takes one of two forms: the Mainstream (mostly funny, often associated with one or two well-known names, broadcast on BBC1, ITV, Sky One) and the Alternative (hit and miss, often bizarre, featuring an ensemble cast, broadcast on BBC2 or Channel 4). In the former camp you might find Catherine Tate, Lenny Henry or Harry Enfield while the latter would be populated by the likes of Monty Python, Big Train or The Fast Show. Little Britain and Come Fly With Me would be uneasy bedfellows, which demonstrates the versatility of Matt Lucas. 

I know both shows are essentially two-handers, performing and writing duties shared with David Walliams, but for me it’s all about Lucas. David is the more outrageous but most of his characters are basically the same - grotesque women – while Matt is the superior, more subtle actor.

Then there’s his unique appearance. I suspect losing his hair to alopecia at the age of six must have been unimaginably traumatic but for an adult comedian the resulting baldness must be a boon. Like those games we had as children, where you had an outline head on which to design hair and beards with magnet and iron filings, Matt’s bonce is a brilliant blank canvas on which to create superb comedy characters, albeit with the contents of make-up boxes and costume wardrobes. 

Having said that, the first time I ever saw him was almost certainly in BBC2’s Shooting Stars, with no wig at all. Back in the Nineties, much of Matt Lucas’ TV work was surreal art-house stuff, from Blur and Fat Les videos and cameos with Reeves and Mortimer. I’ve written before that I always found Vic and Bob’s comedy too oddball for my taste and Shooting Stars, though resembling a panel game show, totally defied categorisation. It was basically another vehicle for the duo’s somewhat eccentric humour, into which Matt’s George Dawes, adorned inexplicably in a pink romper suit, fitted like a baby’s mitten. When the show was revived in 2009, he was a household name and could indulge in seemingly improvised wacky chat with celebrity guests like Dizzee Rascal as capably as the main stars. 

The Reeves and Mortimer connection continued in 2001 with a role as a mischievous ghost in Reeves and Hopkirk (Deceased) but there were also parts in sketch series Punt & Dennis and French & Saunders, which I also enjoyed watching. Around the turn of the millennium, Lucas turned up again with a new comedy partner called David Walliams in tow. I’m pretty sure I never watched it on UK Play but I did sneak a peek at Rock Profile when screened on BBC2. It was very akin to Reeves and Mortimer: the two stars appearing as disturbingly dark versions of musicians being interviewed by Jamie Theakston. Matt could portray anyone from Prince and Boy George to George Michael and Shirley Bassey! Too weird for me to watch every week but it could be very funny. 

The same applied in 2003 when Little Britain first broke out from Radio 4 to BBC3, and I was compelled by peer pressure to give it a try. The Tom Baker narration treats it as a documentary about typical British people but of course most of the Lucas/Walliams characters are either freaky, creepy or downright deeply unpleasant, the sort you’d move house to avoid. For example, I had a particular aversion to the slack-jawed wheelchair-user Andy who, unbeknown to his long-suffering carer Lou, was only pretending to be disabled. How could he be so cruel and selfish? And yet, thanks partly to Matt’s acting, I eventually cast aside such antipathy to enjoy the pair’s sketches. They were like mini-pantomimes; you wanted to shut “Behind you!” at poor Lou for as soon as his back was turned, his charge would leave his seat and ride a horse dive into a swimming pool or beat up a gang of bullies. Then there were his catchphrases, “Yeah I know…” and “Want that one…” I still use to this day. 

The outrageously camp Dafydd, determinedly “The Only Gay in the Village” even when faced with clear evidence to the contrary, was another Lucas triumph. The local landlady was played by Ruth Jones, at that time unfamiliar to me. By 2009, Dafydd managed to leave his Welsh village to interview a certain Elton John on Comic Relief. It still worked as the basic joke was that we all knew that Dafydd wasn’t the only gay in the palace… 

Other characters included the racist Marjorie Dawes who runs a slimming club while constantly mocking fat people and the flamboyantly obese Bubbles de Vere but my all-time favourite has to be West Country teenage ‘chav’ Vicky Pollard. How Matt Lucas managed to reel off her rapid-fire unintelligible explanations amazes me. The accent and attitude seemed cartoonish – until I found myself in Barnstaple for  work one afternoon in 2005. Walking towards the town centre I passed a gaggle of girls sitting on a wall, and the voices were pure Vicky. All that was missing was someone blurting, “Yeah but no but yeah but no but…..”! 

Little Britain ran for three domestic series, plus a USA follow-up and various one-offs or Comic Relief specials then, instead of churning out the old characters Lucas and Walliams returned in Christmas 2010 with a new venture Come Fly With Me. It was essentially Little Britain but in mockumentary format, set entirely in an airport populated by all-new characters. Personally I thought it much funnier than its celebrated predecessor. From the lazy West Indian coffee stall manager Precious (“Praise the lorrdd!”) and ground crew Taaj (“Innit”) to shady paparazzi, bitchy check-in girls and Japanese girls stalking Martin Clunes, there was so much to enjoy. As so often, it was the Matt Lucas characters who were more memorable. While Walliams would parade in wild lipstick or fake tan, Matt was the chameleon, equally credible as the daftly deluded Scottish boy Tommy and the middle-aged hen-pecked husband Peter, forever experiencing what his serial complainer wife called their “holiday from hell”. They were my faves. Such a shame only six episodes were made. 

More recently both series have attracted criticism for supposedly racist and sexist stereotyping. Now, I’ve never been comfortable with ‘blacking up’ but neither do I find cross-dressing for comedic effect remotely amusing, and where would British comedy be without that?!. However, the whole point of LB and CFWM was that we can laugh at ourselves the blatant caricatures and their instant catchphrases, almost all of which were uttered by Matt Lucas. 

In the past decade or so, he has become a hugely versatile and influential writer, performer and LGBT+ campaigner. He has reciprocated roles in friends’ own series, such as Gavin and Stacey and another Ruth Jones comedy Stella and also appeared in Russell T Davies’ Casanova and Doctor Who, playing the comical alien, duffle coat-wearing Nardole in several adventures. 

I also saw him on screen as a splendidly energetic Thenardier belting out ‘Master of the House’ in the 25^th anniversary concert production of Les Miserables. He’s not the best singer in the world but comic timing and a cheeky face can get you far! Only last year he found a new audience on Channel 4’s Great British Bake Off. Obviously I would never dream of wasting my time watching a cookery programme but Matt’s introductory Boris Johnson Covid briefing spoof deserved wider exposure on YouTube and Facebook. 

OK, so I can’t rave about everything he’s done, but Matt Lucas is a modern master of character sketch comedy with the potential to do a whole load more in the future.

Rob Brydon - Small man ON the box!

Everybody seems to love Rob Brydon. Tom Jones has his supporters and Gareth Bale a dwindling number of superfans but Rob has a legitimate claim to be the most popular living Welshman. Over the past two decades he has appeared in some of the funniest shows on television. However for all his undoubted successes, in my opinion his isn’t even the best character in any of them. Then again, would any of his prime programmes be the same without him? I think not. 

At the start of the millennium, I probably heard him in assorted adverts – he’s voiced anything from Tango to Tesco, Pot Noodle to Fairy Liquid – but, being an Essex boy, I missed his teeth-cutting Nineties work on Radio Wales. I also failed to watch his BBC2 comedy series Human Remains and only tuned into Marion and Geoff after word of mouth recommendation. Better late than never. 

At first these took the form of ten-minute fillers on BBC2, in which Brydon delivered in-car monologues by naïve taxi driver Keith who took a while to realise his wife Marion was having a long-standing affair with the aforementioned Geoff despite the obvious clues he was drip-feeding the viewers. It took a few instalments for me to appreciate the dark humour but the show revealed the qualities that Rob has been demonstrating ever since. It was a Baby Cow production, continuing a Steve Coogan thread which hasn’t really stopped. 

In series 3 of Little Britain, Rob had a small but regular role as the hen-pecked ‘ex’ of the grotesque Matt Lucas character Bubbles de Vere but it was three years earlier, sharing the same bill with Little Britain’s David Walliams on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, that I first became aware of his extraordinary gift for impressions including the unique 'small man in a box'. From Brucie to Tom Jones I couldn’t stop laughing, and his singing voice wasn’t bad either. 

Like Sir Tom, the boy from Baglan is a proud Welshman and when on QI in 2008 launched a well-deserved attack on casual Welsh racism which has somehow been allowed to pervade comedy for donkey’s years. When Brydon ‘does’ icons of his homeland such as Jones, Hopkins and Burton he does so with wit and respect and in his early days of national fame he was an ideal chat or panel show guest, although you were left wondering what the real Rob Brydon was like. When he took over as host of Would I Lie to You in 2008, his days as mere bit player were quickly consigned to history. 

In the early days I considered it a so-so show, not quite in the same league as Have I Got News For You? However, I now consider the celebrity fib-telling half-hour to be one of the most consistently hilarious on the box. Much of this relies on the brilliant quips and exchanges between David Mitchell and Lee Mack but I love the moments when the chairman has the chance to show what he can do in the final edit. Naturally Would I Lie To You? offers opportunities to show off those impersonations but at times he can rival the team captains for anecdotes and personality quirks which also emerge from his ‘stand-up’ gigs. 

However, his talents don’t stop there. My only encounter with Rob Brydon in the flesh, as it were, was at a special BBC Radio staff day. I forget whether it was an anniversary of the Beeb or Broadcasting House but one session I signed up to was an interview by him. I forget the interviewee but it’s Rob’s questioning I do recall. It obviously proved a useful audition because some years later he was given his own BBC TV chat show. Amiable enough but not ‘appointment to view’. 

Another of his greatest hits – possibly THE greatest – is, of course, Gavin and Stacey. Launched quietly in 2007 on BBC3 this latest Baby Cow production has grown from inauspicious beginnings to become the most popular sitcom of the 21^st century. I didn’t cotton on until the second series but re-runs have ensured I’m au fait with every episode, especially since moving to Wales where all children probably have to take exams in it. Writers James Corden and Ruth Jones take the best lines as Smithy and Nessa but amongst the splendid supporting cast, Rob Brydon’s Uncle Bryn is one of the most likeable characters. With his rigid side-parting and natty line in sweaters or cardigans, Bryn isn’t the most exciting member of the Barry-based West clan but is arguably the most eccentric. His non seqiturs and rambling stories are legion and yet he has the ability to conjure a surprise or two. 

The show has yielded a few musical set-pieces over the years but none have surpassed the rendition of ‘Islands in the Stream’. I can’t stand line dancing but the notion of Nessa and Bryn as Dolly and Kenny just had to be a winner. Roping in a real-life Bee Gee (Robin) and yer actual Tom Jones, it even rocketed to number one, assisted by this all-time classic 2009 Comic Relief film. Even after umpteen viewings it still makes me titter. Last year Angie and I paid homage in a couple of lockdown front garden performances. Angie’s costume and make-up made for a splendid Ruth Jones but donning plastic cowboy hat and neck-scarf doesn’t make me Rob Brydon. Not even with my chin! 

Performing ‘Islands’ in character gave no sign of Brydon’s own vocal capabilities. They did, on the other hand, surface occasionally during one of the surprise comedy gems of recent years, The Trip, alongside old mucker Steve Coogan. I first saw them starring together in a TV screening of Michael Winterbottom’s film-within-a-film, A Cock and Bull Story. It was a clever idea but the humour derived from the part-improvised dialogue between Brydon and Coogan playing exaggerated versions of their media persona: Steve as a vain, egotistical womaniser and Rob a starry-eyed family man with a crush on Gillian Anderson. 

It wasn’t the greatest movie in the world but when Winterbottom and the two actors took the best ingredients and cooked them in a different setting, they were on to a winner. The first series wasn’t all laugh-out-loud stuff. Much of it was bittersweet, touching on love, loss and relationships, played out in a series of posh restaurants and grey Lake District landscapes as the duo became food critics for a broadsheet newspaper. That wasn’t the funny bit. What made me cackle were the incessant competitive impressions involving the pair as they munched and sipped their way through expensive menus. My fave from the original The Trip has to be their enlightening duel of the Michael Caines! Their inventive scene with Ray Winstone was also hilarious, albeit a bit rude. 

As their culinary travels expanded to reach the gorgeous coastal scenery of Italy and Greece (I missed The Trip to Spain, when it was poached by Sky), their relentless rivalry took in prestige of awards won, knowledge of Ancient Greek legends and more mimicry, from Godfathers (Trip to Italy) to Demis Roussos and even each other. The first episodes of The Trip to Greece were particularly satisfying, and I could empathise with Rob and Steve as they contemplated the ageing process. 

Coogan’s frequent assertions were correct: he is a better actor than Rob Brydon. However, when it comes to an actor who is equally at ease doing sitcoms, panel shows, voiceovers, stand-up and slightly darker material, the Welshman has the edge. Not sure, though, if I’d want to spend a day with him driving around Europe…

Dennis Waterman - actor, singer and feem tune writer

Since Little Britain captured what we were all thinking in the Noughties and caricatured him as a boy demanding of his agent that he always “write the feem tune, sing the feem tune”, dear old Dennis Waterman’s previous reputation as loveable London tough guy has been almost forgotten. On one hand this is a shame, but on t’other it reminds us that there was always much more to him than roles beating up ‘lags’ and hounding ‘slags’.

I’m not sure whether Waterman could dominate a series on his own; even when ostensibly the star he was often upstaged. But that’s not to denigrate him. He’s been a brilliant supporting character actor, be it in drama, comedy or as himself, an authentic Sarf Londoner. 

In the 1960s he was a child actor on TV, stage and film and before he hit the big time as Sergeant Carter in 1975 I must have seen him in small parts on big series. In 1972 I was allowed to stay up late to watch the BBC’s Colditz. It was quite stagey but as a WW2 prison drama that just ratcheted up the tension, it was absorbing. In one episode a 24 year-old Dennis appeared complete with dodgy German accent and oily hair-do as an SS officer in a scene with Robert Wagner. A few years later he was in more familiar garb and voice as a Cockney geezer truck driver nicking a top-secret weapon in ITV’s Special Branch, but this was all preparation for his stint on the other side of the fence in London’s Flying Squad. 

To teenage schoolboys like me The Sweeney was essential viewing and my friends soon had me watching. It wasn’t all punch-ups and “Get yer trousers on, you’re nicked”; it was real drama with proper acting and everything. Even Dad enjoyed it! However, the wasteground shootouts and boozer battles were always welcome. There were lighter moments, too. Even Morecambe and Wise made an appearance. 

For all Waterman’s youth it was usually John Thaw’s rugged Regan who had the birds after him and I never found Dennis convincing as a muscular macho type. What did I know? In real life he’d been in the ring himself and boxing was in the blood. This was used in the back story (and opening titles) of his next TV character Terry McCann in Minder. If The Sweeney and its immediate replacement The Professionals had been a hot topic for school conversation, Minder was a popular subject amongst undergraduates at Exeter. It wasn’t the same, though. 

Minder may have featured Dennis Waterman in numerous chases, bouts of fisticuffs and uneasy relationships with ‘the local plod’ but it was much lighter fare. Thames TV teamed him with George Cole, then best known for playing spiv Flash ‘Arry in the ‘50s St Trinians films, and it was the older statesman’s Arthur Daley who began to steal the scenes and hog the funniest lines. ‘Terence’ was dodgy dealer Arfur’s bodyguard and general gopher and, while he obviously wanted more from life, was ultimately content with his meagre pay despite knowing his boss took advantage of his good nature and loyalty. 

At least in this series, there was no John Thaw to distract the ladies. In an early episode of Minder he was smitten by the sultry Rula Lenska, for whom Waterman would eventually leave his second wife, and Terry always had an eye for a pretty face, the posher the totty the better. However, the highlights of the programme tended to be the amusing exchanges between Terry and Arthur. 

The series also started the whole business of writing and singing the signature tune. Although he had recorded an album in the Seventies, Dennis soared to three in the charts in 1980 with the jaunty “I Could Be So Good For You”. He seemed to promote it on every TV show going but – credit where credit’s due – he actually sang live on one Top of the Pops. A million times better than the official vomit-inducing video which was cornier than the plains of Nebraska. 

By now the dye was cast. He was on vocal duties again for ITV’s series with Jan Francis, Stay Lucky and around the same time over the credits of Bob Larbey’s amiable sitcom with Sam Kelly and Joan Sims, On The Up. The latter featured Dennis as a Clapham boy (so far, so true to life) who became a self-made millionaire. Again, while he was the undoubted lead, it was Joan’s “Just the one” which was the programme’s enduring catchphrase. 

For the Beeb’s New Tricks, in which he appeared as Gerry for twelve years, Waterman ceded theme writing duties to the more experienced Mike Moran but it was the same old Dennis chirping away, albeit in his sixties. He seemed to be playing a geriatric version of Carter alongside James Bolam, Alun Armstrong and real-life old flame Amanda Redman, and the mix of careworn banter and occasionally serious crime-solving storylines proved a winning format. I lost interest after several series but Mum was a huge fan to the end. 

Waterman’s natural accent and personal background have often been to the fore, and his love of football has also influenced his choice of TV work. In the Nineties, he fronted the Beeb’s nostalgia series Match of the Seventies, while a decade earlier he largely funded and starred in a Tyne Tees film A Captain’s Tale, timed to coincide with the 1982 World Cup, about a Northumberland town club skippered by Dennis with a gallant attempt at a generic North-East accent. And, amidst my degree finals, a very enjoyable two hours it was, too. 

Not a dodgy deal in sight, and in ’86 his was an unexpected casting in the BBC1 adaptation of Fay Weldon’s Life and Loves of a She-Devil. His role of a posh wealthy bloke who leaves his wife for Patricia Hodge, motivating said ex to wreak an elaborate revenge, was hardly a crowd-pleaser; the women had the meatiest parts and Waterman’s was completely against type. It all made for gripping if, for me at least, uneasy viewing.

But he has forged a long and fruitful career as a crafty, resourceful Londoner handy with his fists and a sharp one-liner. He knows how to handle comedy. With The Sweeney at its peak in 1976 he and John Thaw guested in the prestigious Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show, a few weeks after another light-hearted skit with Basil Brush! 

He doesn’t always take himself seriously either, which is just as well given David Walliams’ regular portrayal of Dennis as a high-voiced junior schoolboy in Little Britain back in the Noughties. He would enter his agent’s office to learn of his role offers, forever asking whether he’ll be “writing the feem tune, singing the feem tune”. I can’t find it on YouTube but I recall the sketch broadcast from the 2006 live tour in which the real Waterman interrupts Walliams and Matt Lucas in mid-caricature. It was hilarious. Nobody, not least even the comedians themselves, really understands why the ex-Minder is played as a falsetto-voiced boy but I have to confess the persistent theme song topic is thoroughly deserving of parody. 

John Thaw may have garnered more awards in starring roles but in my opinion it’s his loyal sergeant Dennis Waterman who has been the more engaging and enduring TV personality.

Derek Martin - The London Cabbie for all ages

For many years, Derek Martin was an easily forgotten name, but the same could not be said of his face or voice. He wasn’t quite in the Ray Winstone/Alan Ford league as a Cockney ‘heavy’ but as a genuine East Londoner with a stint at Smithfield market on his CV his Cockney credentials earned him lots of TV work. So often, In Seventies cop shows I watched, like Softly Softly and Dixon of Dock Green, he’d be a common-or-garden Len, Ted or Dick. As a van, lorry or taxi driver. he possessed  the authenticity of a Londoner behind the wheel.

For me, Derek’s relative anonymity was blown apart when in his late sixties he established himself in the cast of Eastenders, but his overnight celebrity took more than four decades to happen. In the early Seventies I must have seen him in the family business drama The Brothers (as ‘van driver’, surprise surprise) and the quirky children’s sci-fi serial Man Dog. Sadly I couldn’t find a clip of the latter but it made a substantial impression on me, helped by its familiar Southampton locations.

Later in the decade he became a familiar figure in ITV crime capers, invariably on the wrong side of the law. In an episode of The Sweeney, he even managed to out-run Dennis Waterman’s Carter, but I daresay he was nicked by the closing credits. That same year, he played another villain in The Professionals, and then a ‘heavy’ up against Waterman again in Minder.

Derek Martin wasn’t always one of the bad guys. He upheld the forces of law and order, albeit under the radar, in programmes like Z Cars and even Terry and June, but it was in The Chinese Detective that he really made his mark. At that time (1981-2), this was quite a ground-breaking series, providing a rare starring role for an ‘ethnic minority’ actor. I loved David Yip in that show, portraying the mild-mannered but slightly unorthodox (is there any other kind of cop on TV?) John Ho, clashing not only with criminals but also his boss DCI Berwick, played by Derek Martin. He was old-school Londoner, and displayed the sort of casual racism that pervaded much of the police in those days. In my mind’s eye I can still see him shouting “’O, ‘O” at his sergeant! I think there grew a grudging mutual respect between the two by the end, but it ran for only two series.

In the Nineties, I watched some of ITV’s Lynda la Plante prison drama The Governor, in which Derek played Janet McTeer’s deputy but I missed out on one of his largest roles, in King and Castle. However, it is as a regular cast member of a couple of soaps that he has become part of my TV furniture.

Back in ’93, he joined the Beeb’s ill-fated foray into international drama, Eldorado. Located in an expat community on the Costa del Sol, it carried a great deal of investment, financial and professional. As a BBC employee, I fervently wished for success but it was doomed from the first creaking instalment which, somewhat improbably, I watched from a Channel ferry. In hindsight, box-ticking took priority over plotlines, and the European eye-candy failed to attract the younger audiences. A few of them could barely act. The hostile anti-Beeb press finished the job. Removing the dead wood and bringing in some sterling British character actors did help but the plug was pulled after a single year. As Alex Morris Derek Martin appeared in forty episodes, including the very last but, to be honest, all I can remember was ‘Mucky Marcus’ escaping from an exploding car. 

In comparison I have a clear memory of his arrival in Albert Square as Charlie Slater and his dysfunctional family of females. That was 2000, and in all he went on to make nearly 800 episodes of Eastenders. Apparently Derek had been considered for both Dirty Den and Frank Butcher (there’s a thought!) but as East End cabbie Charlie, he must have been a shoo-in for the casting team. At first he had some meaty storylines, even becoming involved in some fisticuffs, but it was for his verbal clashes with mother-in-law Big Mo (Laila Morse) that he is best remembered by me.

The character also brought him a few related TV roles, be they in Eastenders spin-offs or as cameos in comedies such as Little Britain. In my opinion he made a splendid straight man to Matt Lucas’ grotesque Fatfighters leader Marjory. But then that has always been Derek Martin’s strength. For fifty years he’s been one of our most dependable supporting actors on the box. I’ll never know how he might have fared battling with Angie Watts or wooing Pat Butcher wearing nowt but a rotating bow tie but, now well into his eighties, I reckon Derek Martin has done enough to enter my role call of Treasures.