Matt Lucas

Video - Five minutes with: Matt Lucas

Comedian Matt Lucas talks to Matthew Stadlen about how Little Britain changed his life, working with David Walliams, growing up with alopecia and trying to be funny in public.

The bald truth: Matt Lucas lacks shine

If you think that title shows a lack of imagination you'll no doubt be staggered to discover it is yet another panel show. It is also yet another attempt by the BBC to transfer a radio show to TV. And it just doesn't work.

Matt Lucas Awards took a pop at fawning awards culture

The Matt Lucas Awards show leaned too close to the well trodden comedy panel show format at times, but on the whole was more hit than miss.

Last night's viewing: The Matt Lucas Awards, BBC1

Are the guests' suggestions their own, or are they supplied for them? It doesn't look as if they care much either way, to be honest.

The Matt Lucas Awards, BBC One, review

The trouble with the comedy-chat-show-game-show hybrids that have burgeoned in recent years is that guests are asked to go on and be funny but can end up looking very pleased with themselves in the process. Unfortunately, this new series really seemed to magnify that effect last night.

What is it with celebrities and their parents? First Sarah Millican uses her TV show to introduce the world to her dad and his words of wisdom, now Matt Lucas has roped in his mum Diana to provide the comic links for The Matt Lucas Awards.

Truth be told, Mrs Lucas proves good fun, and fits in rather well with the surroundings. Indeed, the show itself is as snug, cosy and comforting as a mother's embrace. If anything a little more edge would have been welcome.

The premise mimics traditional showbusiness award ceremonies, only with bizarre and previously neglected categories such as 'smuggest nation' and 'worst football song ever'. A panel of three celebrity guests are charged with providing the nominations and arguing their case, while host Lucas fires off non-stop quips before deciding on the winner.

It's a pleasant enough distraction, and inaugural guests Henning Wehn, Jason Manford and Graeme Garden proved good value, but The Matt Lucas Awards is clearly a show in the grips of an identity crisis.

The set - a studio-bound facsimile of Lucas' living room - is reminiscent of The Kumars At Number 42, while the format invariably invites comparisons to Room 101. The only truly original aspect of the programme - the designated performance corner where the celebrities indulge in costumed karaoke - is by far the least successful. I'm afraid it looked suspiciously like padding.

Which is the smuggest nation on Earth?

It's not me asking that question - well, it is, but not originally - but the host of a new show called The Matt Lucas Awards (BBC1, 10.35pm).

That host, though you may find this hard to believe, is Little Britain's Matt Lucas, who originally did a similar programme on Radio 2.

Each week he's joined by three guests - tonight it's Jason Manford, Graham Garden and German stand-up comic Henning Wehn - to debate the sort of award nominations which for obvious reasons don't get a look-in elsewhere.

Others under consideration include the most dreadful football song ever sung.

Matt Lucas's solo project, minus his comedy partner David Walliams, is the flip side to Room 101. Instead of nominating the worst things in various categories, his guests each week will be nominating the best - although sometimes, as tonight, they're giving awards to the worst too.

This show started life on radio in 2009 called And the Winner Is. They recorded an unbroadcast pilot last year which was staged to look like a glitzy award ceremony, but that felt too formal, and so they've taken the show in completely the other direction and it's now shot in a studio masquerading as Matt's front room. His mother's in it too, and it really is his mum - not just Matt in a wig.

It's a fun concept that ought to work - and it also deserves a Matt Lucas Award of its own for the Best Title Song For A Comedy Panel Show as well as Most Overqualified House Band. David Arnold, who's seated at the piano, didn't just write the theme tune for Little Britain and Come Fly With Me, he's most famous as the composer of the last five James Bonds.

The trouble in this first episode is the lack of chemistry between the guests. Jason Manford is a safe pair of hands on any panel show and Graeme Garden tries hard, but Henning Wehn - the self-styled German Ambassador for Comedy - is a bit of an acquired taste, and from the stony expression on Jason Manford's face, he doesn't get the joke either.

Creating The Matt Lucas Awards with my childhood friend

The corner of a school quad in Elstree, Hertfordshire is where this story begins in in the winter of 1986.

The Matt Lucas Awards - radio's latest TV hit?

BBC1's new comedy awards show is just the latest radio success to try moving to television.