Joe Lycett reflects on immense power of ‘attention-seeking’ stunts: ‘The Beckham stuff wasn’t expected’

Affable, charming and self-deprecating are all descriptions you can apply to Joe Lycett, whether you’re watching him perform or getting to spend time with him in person. When we meet in a coffee shop in London’s Covent Garden, he regales me with snippets from his personal life that range from his current gym obsession “I want to get so much muscle that people start to worry” to “I literally shit myself yesterday. Thank God I was at home!” It’s this genuine persona that’s not only won him this and numerous other awards, but also a broad spectrum of fans across the country. 

While most sections of the mainstream press still somewhat clumsily label Joe a ‘gay comic’, it’s not something he worries about too much. “I feel ‘bisexual’ is the convenient way of explaining it to people on the street, as they get that,” says Lycett – winner of the Comedy Award at this year’s Virgin Atlantic Awards, powered by Jaguar. “I’m very fluid and attracted to all different types of people. Gender is such a small part of it, and a lot of it is how the person makes you feel and how you look. I tend to use the term ‘pansexual’ or ‘queer’. Mostly, I’m a big fan of nice arms in general,” he laughs.

Lycett grew up in Birmingham, a place where he still lives, loves and works, and describes a “gentle suburban upbringing and lovely parents”. “Things got slightly trickier in secondary school in the shadow of Section 28,” he recalls. “I basically didn’t see anyone like me. There was a lot of homophobia and people hiding who they were, there was no complexity in the debate or conversations about queerness. There was no one talking about how gender looks or how sexuality works. Now, with hindsight and knowing what laws were in place at the time, I understand how damaging that was.” 

Like many of us, Lycett utilised comedy as a tool in his teenage armour. “I was definitely a bit of a dickhead!” he says. “I remember watching Pete Burns on Celebrity Big Brother and finding him fascinating — the look, that caustic wit and how effective that wit was in creating a barrier,” he says. “It didn’t feel people like me were allowed to thrive. Comedy is a very effective therapy, and ‘camp’ is a way of batting [away] a lot of negative stuff. A lot of queer people, trans people, are very funny because they have to be.”

“I basically didn’t see anyone like me. There was a lot of homophobia and people hiding who they were” – Joe Lycett

At first, he did not pursue comedy. Instead, a dalliance in acting was the start of his self-professed “attention-seeking”. 

“I knew I wanted to show off in some way,” says Lycett. “I recognised at an early age that people are messy, they change and are inconsistent, and I found the humour in that,” says Lycett. He was 19 when he first tried his hand at stand-up. “My first gig was horrible,” he recalls. “I had no idea I wanted to do stand-up, but I went to this absolute bear pit of a comedy night, and they asked if anyone wanted to give it a go. I thought I could be better than anyone else, and I couldn’t because I had no material, so I came off humiliated, my friends hugely embarrassed, and I spent the last 15 years proving everyone in that room wrong, really. Rejection and failure are great motivators.” 

It was around this age that Lycett began reading Attitude — this is one of the reasons the award means so much to him. “It’s really lovely. I read Attitude at university, and I liked it because, while it has your gorgeous guy on the cover, there was a bit more thought and substance that went into the copy than some similar magazines. I learnt a lot from it. It was great to know there’s enough people that a magazine like this can exist for them. It was a great safe space in those years coming out of school, at a time when there weren’t many.” 

After learning that he’s the recipient of The Comedy Award this year, Lycett recounts the time he gave the same award to Matt Lucas at a previous Attitude Awards ceremony. “I was drunk, and I can’t remember much about the night other than that something I said on stage made Amanda Holden, and only Amanda Holden, laugh. I mostly use my comedy powers for the noble purpose of giving various PRs, lawyers and executives a slightly difficult 20 minutes while they work out how to respond to an email,” he jokes. 

With his appearances on numerous panel shows, radio hosting and also his consumer comedy show Joe Lycett’s Got Your Back, which he describes as a “sexy Watchdog”, Lycett is now firmly in the mainstream, and he’s not afraid to use his platform for good. 

“When I see injustice, I want to do something about it”

“Don’t get me wrong, I use my platform to make loads of money for me,” he says with a wry smile. “I definitely am selfish, an attention-seeker and want people to like me, but I don’t think that’s unusual in what I do. When I see injustice, I want to do something about it. I have to find a way to say, ‘Fuck off!’ to all the bastards out there, but I always want it to be funny.”

Last year, he attracted plenty of attention, acclaim and criticism by calling out David Beckham for his multi-million-pound sponsorship deal promoting the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, a country with a terrible record on LGBTQ+ rights. 

In a meticulously planned stunt that was incredibly original and creative, Lycett famously said he would give £10,000 to charities that support queer people if Beckham pulled out of the deal — but if he didn’t, he would shred the money. When Beckham’s deal remained in place, Lycett live-streamed himself appearing to destroy the money on the website benderslikebeckham.com and, with Attitude’s full support, shredded the cover of a 2002 issue that featured Beckham. Lycett later revealed that the ‘shredded’ money was fake and that he had, in fact, already donated the cash. This admission seemed to anger the Sun in particular, which responded by running a story about Lycett performing in Doha, Qatar, in 2015. 

“You’re in the kitchen, you’ve got to take the heat,” Lycett states matter-of-factly, when discussing the press response to his protest. “The Beckham stuff wasn’t unexpected. I courted the press, and I lied to them with the intention of using them for a cause I believe in — and they didn’t like that. The way they painted me as ‘fuck the gays, I’m taking money from Qatar’ was classic cynical reporting. They were trying to find something to discredit me, and I’d got too big for my boots in their view — which possibly I had. It wasn’t surprising, but I didn’t feel like I should have done things differently. I stand by the decisions I made, and I’m not going to take lessons in morality from the Sun newspaper.”

“There are millions of bad things in the world. I’ve only got so much resource and profile”

As ever in the world of online ‘keyboard warriors’, some statements are never good enough. “Some people said, ‘I notice you didn’t shout up when the World Cup was held somewhere else,’ or ‘You haven’t done anything about this issue.’ I think it’s such a bad take,” says Lycett. “There are millions of bad things in the world. I’ve only got so much resource and profile, and you have to funnel your time into something you care about. I’ve always cared about LGBT rights and improving the lives of LGBT people around the world.” 

Even before the headlines about his Beckham protest, Lycett was stirring things up. When he appeared on Laura Kuenssberg’s BBC political show last year (during Liz Truss’s ridiculously short tenure as prime minister), Lycett jokingly claimed to be “extremely right wing”, a comment which suitably aroused the ire of the right-wing press. “I think the way the Mail reported it was useful for them as they had an axe to grind with the BBC. But I framed the front page that they did of me — one of my proudest moments,” he cackles. 

The Beckham stunt has caused the glare of the press spotlight on Lycett to intensify. “I am more fair game than I used to be,” he says, “but I firmly believe in the principle of the free press for a healthy society. If you’re profiting from the media and made yourself a public figure, you are fair game — I get it. But no one really cares. I preferred [it] when it was slightly less, but you can’t control these things.” Then, in classic Lycett style, he switches tone and adds with a smile: “But it’s great to be famous, you get so much stuff! I think everyone should try it,” he laughs. 

Thankfully, the press does afford him some privacy when it comes to his personal life. When looking for love, Lycett has used regular dating apps. “I have done the apps, but I find them lacking substance,” he says. “It was hard work, especially being known. I got my profile reported a lot for pretending to be myself,” he recalls, chuckling. “[There were] people who just wanted to know who I was. They generally get over it quite quickly when they realise you’re just a person. I had a good time on them, but I’m pretty glad not to be on them now. For certain people it’s brilliant — it gives highly sexualised people a place to have consensual relationships, and I know people who’ve had long-term relationships [from] them, but I feel the returns are diminishing.”

So, what’s next for Lycett? While he has no set schedule for his next epic stunt, he teases that he is working on “something big and horrific and is a really big problem that needs to be highlighted”. There is also a new series of his live TV venture, Late Night Lycett, which not only marries his love of live TV and audiences, but also his love of Birmingham and the people in it. The first series of his show gave nearly 30 local young people itching to get started in TV the chance to work in production at a time when it’s becoming increasingly difficult to do so. 

Lycett is also returning to the passions that help drive his creativity. One of his outlets is making art, and he recently held an exhibition with his mother at queer-run gallery space They Made This. But where does he find the time? “I’m fortunate that I don’t have to do many things I don’t want to,” he says. “It doesn’t feel like work, even though it is. But, basically, I want to do it all!” 

Issue 355, the Attitude Awards issue, is available to pre-order now.