THE BIG SHORT

Mocking smaller men for their height says an awful lot about the person delivering the joke’ 5ft 2in

-  Mike Bedigan

A few years ago, I wrote about how it felt being a “grown” man who is 5ft 2in. The piece bemoaned the various height-related hurdles I had to jump over (with difficulty) in my teenage years and early twenties; unsolicited jokes, difficulty meeting women, and a hilarious saga of having growth hormones injected into my bum. These days, I’m at peace with my height, but society is still obsessed with it – and the discourse often swings wildly between the celebration of the “short king” and being branded an angry little goblin with “short man syndrome”.

In Mr Bigstuff, a new Sky comedy out on Wednesday, creator Ryan Sampson seeks to examine societal notions of masculinity. Sampson, standing at 5ft 4in, is the series star, opposite a 6ft Danny Dyer – famously one of the world’s most manly men. The two face off as carpet shop worker Glen (Sampson) and his bombastic, estranged brother Lee (Dyer), who loves chucking the c-word about, you know, like a real man.

“As a particularly short gay dude, I’m fascinated by masculinity; by all the ways that we’re trying and failing to do it right,” Sampson said in an interview earlier this year. “Maybe it’s because of some unresolved short-man issues.”