The Great British Bake Off host Matt Lucas has opened up about losing his hair aged just six years old.
The comedian appears on The Jonathan Ross Show tomorrow night, and discusses his new Christmas jingle as well as the Channel 4 cooking competition, following its finale.
But he also takes a more serious turn, and opens up about his self esteem growing up, and how this was impacted by his alopecia.
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The Little Britain creator said: "I started out actually always in character because I think growing up, I lost my hair when I was six, I was ashamed of being gay, struggled with weight.
"Other challenging things happened in the family."
The comedian has spoken about his hair loss before, revealing that doctors think it was a consequence of being knocked down by a car aged four, while on holiday in Portugal.
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"In 1980, aged six, I woke up one morning to find several hairs on my pillow. The next day the same thing happened, only this time there were a lot more. By the end of that summer all my hair had fallen out," he recalls in The Guardian.
"The doctors - and we saw an endless stream of them - concluded that it must have been a delayed response to the shock of being knocked down by the car in Portugal two years earlier.
"And so I was the first six-year-old in my class to learn the word 'alopecia'".
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Discussing the impact his hair loss had, among other incidents in his life, the comedian said on the Jonathan Ross Show that it played a big part in why he wanted to be a stand up comedian.
"I felt I could be more honest in character than I could be as myself," he reasoned.
"Actually, even just doing Bake Off as myself for me there's a vulnerability there, I guess, to some extent."
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The Jonathan Ross Show drops Saturday 28th November at 9.35pm on ITV.
Topics: Celebrity News