Matt Lucas and David Walliams have dissected the British psyche and tapped into a rich vein of irony to create the comedy monster that is Little Britain. the catchphrase kings talk to Brian Boyd
MATT LUCAS is walking down a street in London's Soho. A large bloke driving a van, with stubble and a union jack T-shirt, clocks Lucas. He stops his van, winds down the window and shouts: "Oi Matt, I'm a fackin' laydee".
Just as the Queen Elizabeth experiences the world as always smelling of fresh paint, Matt Lucas and David Walliams experience the world through having their Little Britain catchphrases thrown back at them. Almost on an hourly basis, the two will have any permutation of "Yeah but no but yeah", "I'm the only gay in the village", "I want that one" and the above "I'm a laydee" shouted at them.
"Put it this way, it's five o'clock now and I've had a few catchphrases and also 'Are you that Walliams creature?' and 'Is it you or am I dreaming?' from members of the public already today," says Walliams (his real name is Williams, but there was another David Williams already registered with Equity, hence the vowel change). "I'm absolutely fine with it - it's a massive tribute to the show when people call out the catchphrases. Sometimes, though, it can get a bit weird. We've just begun this huge, year-long theatre tour of the show and on the first night a lot of the audience came dressed as their favourite characters.
"When we first came out [ on stage], they all started to shout out their character's catchphrase. It was really bizarre. The two of us were just standing there a bit terrified by it all. I mean, there were 11-year-old boys there dressed as Emily the transvestite screaming out 'Look, David, I'm a Laydee. I'm wearing Laydees' things'. We were just thinking: What is this monster we've created?"
The supreme art of the comedy monster that is Little Britain is that Lucas and Walliams have made the mainstream come to them. That might have been easy enough if the show had just stuck to its anchor reference-points: Dick Emery-style campness and saucy/racy end-of-the-pier picture-postcard comedy. But added on is a layer of grand guignol grotesques, confused transvestites and a fiercely independent republic of gay characters.
The links between the traditional sketch format of recurring characters is a logorrhoea of surrealism voiced in a theatrical baritone by former Dr Who, Tom Baker.
"It's shocking to us how it has crossed over so much," says Walliams. "We were going for that edgy feel from the beginning and never thought we would end up on primetime BBC1 being watched by six-year-olds. It was, and is, important to us that we don't compromise on characters like Daffyd and Emily Howard and what they say."
Although the show goes out at a post-watershed time on BBC, it attracts 86,000 viewers between four and nine years of age. "It's certainly not aimed at people that young, but, you know, they probably see it as a naughty comedy that they're not supposed to be watching," says Walliams. "Then again, when I was 12, I used to watch and love The Young Ones. Now, that wasn't made for 12-year-olds, but that didn't stop me. Apparently it's now got so bad with the very young viewers that teachers' groups in the UK are complaining that kids never stop using the catchphrases back to them, particularly Vicki Pollard's 'I never done nuffing' and stuff like that."
Walliams says he's too close to the show to explain its massive demographic reach, but does recount other people's explanations. "I'm not name-dropping here or anything, but Caroline Aherne told me we get away with the outrageousness because we do it in a 'nice, cheeky' way," he says. "We never set out to be Chris Morris; there is no real satirical edge to the show. And I don't really think we're the first show to do naughty in the mainstream - Absolutely Fabulous had plenty of references to alcoholism, sex and drugs. And, just on the naughty thing, go back and listen to Mrs Sugden talking about her pussy on Are You Being Served in the 1970s, never mind what the characters Julian and Sandy got away with it on the radio show Around The Horne in the 1960s. You have to remember, though, that Little Britain started out on the radio, so we never had those over-the-top costumes back then for the characters to flounce around in. In fact, could I just mention that the person responsible for getting us on to television was Graham Linehan [ Dublin writer/director of Father Ted fame].
"When we went to BBC TV, they only agreed to put it on if Graham would direct the pilot. And he was brilliant in helping us transfer the characters from radio to television. We first went out on BBC3, then we got moved to BBC2 and now it's BBC1. We're as surprised as anybody at how far Daffyd and Emily and Bubbles and Vicki have travelled."
Although loath to sound in any way pompous about it, Walliams is proud of the fact that the show has had a weird sociological knock-on effect. "I think putting ideas of transvestism and gay rights, albeit in a comic way, into the mainstream can only be a good thing. You know, if this sort of humour stops the word 'gay' being used as an ignorant insult by schoolchildren, then great. I do think there is a gentle subversion in the show in that we do try and take on big themes in an over-the-top way. We have Judy and Maggie, the two Women's Institute types at the village fête who are violently sick at any mention of a person who isn't white."
Incidentally, the Women's Institute complained to the BBC about Judy and Maggie with the result that all references to the WI had to be edited out and replaced by the imaginary 'Woman's Association'.
For Matt Lucas, Little Britain can be read in three different ways. "I do find it odd how different people can get different things from it. The three biggest groupings tend to be first, those who see it as being a bastion of political incorrectness. Second, you get a certain type of reactionary liking it and third, you have those who see it as a liberalising influence. And it's no secret that David and I mean it to be read in the third sense" he says.
"We're not trying to make any political point with the show, but comedy can act as a prism. If you look at Marjorie Dawes and how she treats the Asian member of her Weight Watchers group, Myra, it's just casual racism. We did have this idea, doing the live theatre show, that if any Asian member of the audience shouted out anything, I'd go over to them and say 'Sorry, what was that. I didn't understand you', but we dropped the idea because it could become a stock routine. It's fine for Marjorie to treat Myra like that, because Marjorie is a vile pig, but doing it live was a different thing . . . also there didn't seem to be any Asian people in on the first night of the tour [ laughs].
"I think Daffyd has a small political thing going on as well. It's a move along from how gay people are represented on television from Mr Humphries in Are You Being Served to The Thin Blue Line to Gimme Gimme Gimme. Daffyd is the only one making an issue out of being gay - no one else cares. Sometimes, though, you can read too much into the characters. Somebody once wanted to know if we were making some sort of point about disability with our Lou and Andy characters, which is clearly ridiculous."(Lou and Andy are, incidentally, named after Lou Reed and Andy Warhol).
Even though their live stage tour of the show has another year to run in venues all over Britain, there's barely a ticket left (most shows sold out a year and half in advance), there's a good chance you can get in to see Littler Britain - a real-life tribute act who bill themselves as "perfect recreations of the Little Britain characters - just the thing for your corporate do, party, nightclub or whatever your venue, event or occasion".
"Oh we've met those two guys who do it," says Lucas. "I've actually got a picture of one of them up on my notice board - don't ask me why. David says they used to do Ali G as well. Would I go and see them? Yeah, why not? I might try to get some material out of them. It's just like a tribute band isn't it? Very flattering."
Lucas mentions how careful he is not to give in to all the requests he gets from various celebrities salivating to appear in the show. "The only time we have ever used celebrities - and we have used Elton John and George Michael [ and Robbie Williams] - is in the specials we do for Comic Relief. It just wouldn't seem right if, for example, Lou and Andy were to go into a shop and Madonna was working behind the counter. Oh, we did have Vanessa Feltz on once, but that was only because Marjorie Dawes got to spit in her face."
It has been reported that Tony Blair was beseeching Matt and David to be written into the show. "All I want to say about that," says Walliams, "is that it was right before the last general election and we didn't want to be seen to be endorsing anyone. And remember that time Noel Gallagher went to 10 Downing Street for less than an hour and had a tepid glass of wine with Blair - people are still criticising him for that. So it's just not worth it."
For all the ubiquity of the catchphrases and the mass crossover appeal, Matt Lucas still feels that the show's most groundbreaking work is in their use of prosthetics. "I know it's a weird one," he says. "But I don't think any television programme before has used prosthetics and fat suits to the same degree we have. It kills me doing Bubbles DeVere - that sweat really stays on you. But at least you can really see the result. And in this new series we have Desiree with Bubbles - poor David, who plays Desiree, has to get up at three in the morning to get made into her. Yeah, I'm really proud of the prosthetics and the fat suits in the show - that and the fact that we've made 11-year-old boys dress up as transvestites. "
Series one and two of Little Britain are now available on DVD. Lucas and Walliams say they are hoping to bring the Little Britain live show to Ireland next year.
