Review: Little Me by Matt Lucas

Speaking of Doctor Who, my most recent reviews are up at USF: Hour of the Cybermen, featuring the return of David Banks, the greatest Cyber Leader! Road Trip, featuring Bernice Summerfield, on a quest to find her son! Red Planets, featuring Mel, enthusiastic booster for communism! And The Quantum Possibility Engine, featuring the long-awaited return of Toby Longworth as Josiah W. Dogbolter, once a blustering business mogul, now president of the solar system!

Trade paperback, 321 pages
Published 2018 (originally 2017)
Acquired and read November 2018

little me: My autobiography
by Matt Lucas

This is the autobiography of Matt Lucas, who I primarily know as Nardole, the Doctor's companion in series 10 of Doctor Who. This book covers most of his life as a comedian and actor. It's told in a series of lettered chapters (e.g., B for "Baldy!", H for "Haberdashers' Aske's Boy's School," T for "The TARDIS") and you can read them in any order (I read "The TARDIS" first, naturally), but they work best as written, because Lucas references earlier chapters in later ones, even when he doesn't go in strict chronological order.

It's pretty interesting and pretty charming. I found the chapters about the evolution of Lucas's comedy career the most interesting, as he went from having a weird character as a stand-up act to being the brains behind Little Britain, an absolute national sensation. I like this kind of show business story, the kind that give me insight into a world I know nothing of (British stand-up), and Lucas peppers it with great anecdotes. I suppose I really must watch Little Britain now. The story of Lucas's youth is good, as is his discussion of his homosexuality. Also some of the stuff about how he went bald as a child is hilarious.

I didn't think the chapter "Idiot" did quite what he wanted to it; Lucas is really rather awful to an innocent hotel manager in it, and doesn't seem to have self-awareness about it. And maybe the chapter about food goes into a bit more detail than one really cares to hear.

The Doctor Who chapter is among the best, not because he gives any particular insight into the show (though I did learn a little), but because it's the most he discusses his partner Kevin, to whom he was married only eighteen month before Kevin left him for someone he met in rehab... and then eighteen months after that, Kevin committed suicide. Kevin was a massive Doctor Who fan, and the show meant so much to him-- and thus to Matt. Despite the misstep of "Idiot," the overall impression Lucas gives of himself is of a hard-working charming man whose successes are deserved, even if occasionally his ego gets the better of him. It was a quick read, and a highly enjoyable one.