He had me on side early with that preface. Because what it also establishes is the very human, clearly self-authored collection of stories that follows. As a rule, I’m not a fan of the A-Z format that Lucas adopts to give his book structure – he himself comes a cropper when it gets to X! – but it soon becomes clear that he’s pretty much just cheating to keep things in order. This is still an autobiography, just with enough wiggle room for Lucas to go off and do something else if he needs to. The fear of an A-Z where someone loses interest around the later vowels is unwarranted here. Lucas hasn’t had an easy life, and he doesn’t shy away from some of the challenges it’s presented. Chapter G stands for Gay, and his stories of his sexuality, and how cautiously he could tell people of it, are really quite haunting. I don’t think it’s spoiling anything to say that Lucas ends the chapter observing that “in maybe twenty-five years’ time, the notion of dedicating an entire chapter of an autobiography to being gay might actually seem – in Britain, at least – rather quaint”, but the stories he tells still feel unfortunately relevant. A further chapter is devoted to his hairline, and here I got a sense of what Sarah Silverman put across in her memoir Bedwetter. That Lucas effectively weaponised his difference, using humour to take the sting out of the bullies who targeted him for what was, or wasn’t, on his head. I tore through this book, and I think many of you will too. I admire Lucas enormously for the thread of sheer decency through it, but also for bothering to put words on a page that actually do tell you things, and are interesting. This is no ghost-written cash-in job. Instead, it’s a lively, warmly recommended book. And I found myself at the end wishing Matt Lucas the happiness he’s battled through life to discover. Little Me: My Life From A-Z is out now from Canongate Books.
