Читать книгу Little Me - Matt Lucas - Страница 7

Preface

Hello. How are you? You been up to much?

And that’s the first line of my book. Now I know a lot of people write books and the opening line is something all clever like ‘I walked along the moors, leaves crunching beneath my feet, the dying sun retreating from view’, but the publishers said I have to write the truth, and I don’t think ‘I was sat on the sofa, polishing off a Chambourcy Hippopotamousse in front of Lovejoy’ is particularly suspenseful so I’ve decided to open with ‘Hello’, and then, even if you don’t care for anything that comes after that, at least you’ll say I was well mannered.

Secondly, this is, I guess, a sort-of autobiography, but, as you will have gathered, it isn’t quite chronological. I have no attention span left. I give up halfway through reading a text message. This is my attempt to keep things zipping along. Life may begin at babyhood (I just checked and I’m slightly disappointed to learn that word already exists) but my thoughts and memories are dotted about. The alphabetical approach is actually an attempt to corral them somehow.

Tonally it’s probably a bit all over the place, because that’s me. Half my life has been spent with people complaining that I’m too serious, that – in the words of my late father – I ‘think too much’. The rest of the time people tell me to stop mucking about.

Also, everything in this book is – as far as I know – true. But not everything is in this book. I know things that would ruin people’s careers. I certainly know things that would finish mine. I’m not looking to burn bridges. You might have to read between the lines here and there. In Ethel Merman’s autobiography there is a chapter entitled ‘My Marriage To Ernest Borgnine’ which just has one empty page. I’m not going to go that far, but there’s no scorched-earth policy in this book. I’d like to keep working if I can. I’m only forty-three. If I spill ALL the beans, then no one will trust me, no one will hire me and I’ll have no option but to go into the Celebrity Big Brother house. I’m far too crotchety in the mornings for that. It’s not going to happen.

And finally, in this book, amongst many other things, I refer on occasion to Kevin McGee, the man I loved and lost, a kind, warm, beautiful being who didn’t have the armour for this world. I have always been reticent to talk publicly about our relationship and the events that followed it. Grief for me has been profound and unrelenting, but also private. I have a moral discomfort with using his suffering to sell a book, to elicit public sympathy and money. We also had an agreement during our separation not to discuss what happened. He kept to it and so have I. So I’ll talk about how I have tried to find a way forward after his death, but I won’t be going into rich detail about our relationship, his illness or suicide. The other truth is that there is so much about him that I don’t know and never will.

I’ll tell you what I can about my life, but much of it, frankly, has been about learning to live without the answers.

Right, let’s get on with it.