MATT LUCAS has quit his starring role in Prick Up Your Ears following the suicide of Kevin McGhee, his ex-husband.


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The play – about the fatal relationship between Kenneth Halliwell and Joe Orton – only opened last week. It will carry on with an understudy taking Lucas’s role.

“Our thoughts are with Matt whom we are in constant touch,” said a spokesperson for the Comedy Theatre.

“Until further notice his role of Kenneth Halliwell in the West End production of Prick Up Your Ears will be played by his understudy Michael Chadwick.”

No word has been given as to when the Little Britain star will return.

Police found McGhee’s hanged body at his Edinburgh home yesterday and issued a statement, reading:

“[Officers] were called to an address in Bruntsfield Gardens, Edinburgh, at around 8am yesterday morning where a 32-year-old man was found dead. There are no suspicious circumstances.”

Not long before police made their gruesome discovery, McGhee’s Facebook site had been updated to read: “Kevin McGee thinks death is much better than life.”

Lucas and McGhee were married in a civil ceremony in 2006, but their partnership was legally dissolved last year, the comedian citing “unreasonable behaviour”.