Comedy hero Matt Lucas is about to bring his very funny radio show to our telly screens. If you’re not familiar with the concept, The Matt Lucas Awards sees Matt and his celeb guests chat about some very silly awards categories.
Before the new series starts on Tuesday, Matt has told us who and what he thinks deserves an award and why…
The Matt Lucas Awards, Tuesday 10 April at 10.35pm on BBC2
The Lucas Award for Weirdest Celebrity Crush goes to.... Tulisa
Now wait a minute. Before you cry 'That's not weird, she's gorgeous!', please remember that I am gay so if you think about it, I should be more into the likes of Simon Cowell but I'd definitely give my vote to Tulisa. She has a lovely soothing rough Cockney accent and there’s a great bit every week when she gets riled up by one of the auditionees questioning her pedigree and she says 'How dare ya! I built meself up from nuffink so don't you dare tell me I ain't done nuffink 'cause you're the one wot ain't done nuffink!'. On the subject of weird crushes, when we did the show on Radio Two, we were debating who should win the Lucas Award for Sexiest Prime Minister and someone nominated Winston Churchill. I said 'Yeah, why not? If you were a 'chubby chaser' he'd be right up your street' and everyone laughed but the people at Radio Two emailed us and asked if we wouldn't mind taking that bit out of the show in case it offended someone. I said 'Offend who? Churchill's ghost?' but they didn't reply.
The Lucas Award for Most Moreish Food goes to…. Popcorn
Popcorn is nice. In fact sometimes it’s really nice. It is NOT the nicest food on earth. It doesn’t even come close. The Lucas Award for Most Nicest Food On Earth would probably be a tie between chicken noodle soup and Maltesers but the Most Moreish Food is definitely popcorn? What other food is – let’s be honest – as bland and unremarkable yet so bafflingly addictive that you can down a giant carton of it before that Sandra Bullock movie you’ve been dragged to see has even started. You don’t think popcorn is moreish? Then how come you just ate enough to fill a Vauxhall Astra? Popcorn wins the Lucas Award for Most Moreish Food because it demands to be eaten in vast quantities. On its own, one piece of popcorn is pointless. It is merely a placebo to fill the time and space before the next piece enters your mouth, and the next, and the next, but once you accept your fate and dive into a whole tub of it, you are liberated. The best flavour? The Americans like salted, we Brits take it sweet. I heartily recommend a heady mix of the two. Popcorn also deserves a special mention, because you can stuff yourself silly and somehow you’re still allowed to go to dinner after the film.
The Lucas Award for the Best Day Ever goes to…. The First Day Of The School Year.
No, this is not a mistake. If you think I should have gone for The Last Day Of The School Year then you’re sorely mistaken. The Last Day Of The School Year is good but it’s not the Best Day Ever, because school rules still apply. Sure, you get to go home early and yes, you’re not going to have to come into school for at least six weeks. However, you’re going to have to a) do a ton of reading during the school holidays, b) ‘go away and think carefully about your conduct and return next term with a bit of a better attitude’, c) get horrendously bored as the summer rain and your empty piggy bank consign you to hanging round the arcade watching the older boys play on the machines and, worst of all, d) you’re going to miss stealing that furtive gaze at the girl/boy/teacher who has stolen your heart but who you’ve not yet summoned up the guts to actually speak to. Whereas The First Day Of The School Year is pure joy. You can laugh at the short boy whose voice still hasn’t broken, you can show off your swanky new propelling pencil and, most exquisitely, you can fool the gullible new French teacher into believing that they’re not allowed to give you homework until the Sixth Form. Perfection.
The Lucas Award for The Best Present I Have Ever Been Given goes to…. My friend Alex And His Amazing Book.
When David Walliams and I made ‘Little Britain USA’ for HBO a few years back, we filmed a really silly sketch in which I played a guy who worked for Starbucks and who was so obsessed with the notion of Starbucks continuing to expand, that he explained to the rest of the boardroom how he had acquired every single shop on the same street and would be converting all of them, one by one into a Starbucks. As the sketch went on, the man went more and more insane, repeating the word Starbucks again and again, until eventually his head just fell off and it was revealed that he was a robot! To make the gag work, the special effects people had to take a mould of my head and create an exact replica. When the series finished and we came back to England, I brought the head with me and it sat on a shelf. But, unbeknownst to me, my flatmate Alex spent two weeks taking the head round London and photographing it with several of my friends, probably forty in all, in weird and wonderful poses. One of my friends lay in the bath with it, another kicked it like a football, one pretended to find his wife in bed with it, another put it in a frying pan and Mr Walliams was even photographed discovering it in his toilet!