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Little Britain Revives 'I'm A Lady'… For About Seven Seconds

Matt Lucas and David Walliams were big names on BBC One's Big Night In. Matt Lucas performed a full scale orchestral version of his NHS fundraising Baked Potato song. David Walliams offered up the chance to appear in his next children's book which, given recent performance, will guarantee a form of literary immortality. But they also came together (if filmed separately) to revive their sketch show characters Little Britain for the first time on television in over a decade.

This was a Shutdown Little Britain, of course. Matt and David used home made costumes, cosplaying as their own characters they made nationally famous. Andy wants Lou to get him a bat to eat. Majorie Dawes is getting her isolated viewers to eat dust. Vicky Pollard is targeted by the police for sunbathing during the lock-in. Bubbles Devere had her sights set on Philip Scofield

Ruth Jones reprised her role as Myfanwy to Matt's Daffyd, the only gay in the village, while Anthony Stewart Head did similar as the Prime Minister to David Walliams' Sebastian. We even had the vomiting racist old ladies, and the computer saying no to booking flights, and all narrated by Tom Baker.

However we also saw the return of a couple of characters who the pair clearly feel differently about now.  Emily Howard played by David Walliams, later joined by Matt Lucas as Florence were transvestites or transexual characters, the joke being that no one was fooled by their attempts to be treated as women, specifically ladies of high society, with the catchphrase 'I'm a lady'. That was pretty much the entire extent of the gag. A few years ago, when reviving the original radio version of Little Britain. Lucas said that "If I could go back and do Little Britain again, I wouldn't make those jokes about transvestites… Basically, I wouldn't make that show now. It would upset people. We made a more cruel kind of comedy than I'd do now. Society has moved on a lot since then and my own views have evolved. There was no bad intent there – the only thing you could accuse us of was greed. We just wanted to show off about what a diverse bunch of people we could play."

Little Britain Revives 'I'm A Lady' For About Ten Seconds.
Little Britain Revives 'I'm A Lady' For About Ten Seconds. Screencap from YouTube.

Which led to tonight's revival of Emily and Florence for a few brief seconds, "I'm a lady." "I'm also a lady but I don't think we should do be doing this sketch anymore" before moving on very quickly. The full sketch montage can be enjoyed below. It's basically Little Britain by way of The Fast Show and the costumes of Vic Reeves Big Night Out, all for BBC's Big Night In. A kind of comfort food for comedy that turned out was just what we needed right now.

 


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Rich JohnstonAbout Rich Johnston

Founder of Bleeding Cool. The longest-serving digital news reporter in the world, since 1992. Author of The Flying Friar, Holed Up, The Avengefuls, Doctor Who: Room With A Deja Vu, The Many Murders Of Miss Cranbourne, Chase Variant. Lives in South-West London, works from Blacks on Dean Street, shops at Piranha Comics. Father of two. Political cartoonist.
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