By Matt Lucas, David Walliams & Boyd Hilton
Ebury Press/RH, NZ$40 | Reviewed by Simon Sweetman

WRITTEN with the help of journalist (and friend) Boyd Hilton, Inside Little Britain documents a year in the life of the show – and its co-creators/performers, Matt Lucas and David Walliams. With three television series’ behind them, having grown from a radio show, the pair decided to set out and take Little Britain all around Great Britain – a live stage-show. This book is part travelogue and part official biography. Ostensibly, Hilton’s fly-on-the-wall observations form a travel diary – documenting the surreal and the mundane, the literal day-to-day problems (both technical and personal) and offering an amazing glimpse in to just how popular Walliams and Lucas have become in their home country.

Little Britain has been raved about as the new Monty Python, the new Blackadder, the new Young Ones, the new Black Books... and it is basically all of this and more. But the reaction of the media – and fans – to the show and its creators is actually akin to Beatlemania. Every day a new tabloid speculation sets in motion a whirl of cat-calls and public concern. Is David gay? (It didn’t help when he went on a chat show and confessed to being “70% heterosexual” in attempts to make a joke about the public’s ongoing fascination with his sexuality). Is Matt Lucas really gay? The one member who is publicly out – and happy about it (having just joined his long time partner in a civil union since the book’s release) – tends to draw surprise from the same press at his sexual orientation.

But Hilton deftly manages to balance the gossip against the real back-story, providing confessional and candid moments from Walliams and Lucas’ shared past – and their individual upbringings. It is not so much a case of digging in the dirt, rather providing details of the fertile soil from which the two comedy masters sprouted. And with photos and comments from their mums along the way it makes for a constantly illuminating read. Like an extended magazine feature article, without all the muck-racking and surmising.

If you’re a fan of the show at all – or interested in British comedy – then this book is a must. Accessible and just wide enough in scope, it’s well worth checking out.