Gillian Martin, 34
Newly qualified teacher, Rawtenstall, Lancashire

We have been talking for 10 minutes when Gillian Martin stops. She wants to explain something. "This is really unique: for me to sit here and think and talk about my physicality. It's not on my mind 24/7." She says it pleasantly, but it's easy to see what she means: she would rather the media had a broader interest in people of restricted growth. "I'd love to see a small person in a soap opera, having trouble meeting the bills," Martin says with a chuckle. "Or having an emotional crisis that has nothing to do with their physicality. Because that is my life on a day-to-day basis: I have the same quarrels with my husband, I have the same issues with raising my daughter – the same crap that everyone else has."

Her dream may be realised – or not – when BBC2 airs the pilot episode of Life's Too Short, the new sitcom from Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, and Britain's best-known actor of restricted growth, Warwick Davis. "We don't know what it's going to be like," Martin says calmly, but she feels small people are unfailingly represented as either comic sidekicks or magical freaks. "That's all society is exposed to," she says. "All you see is the stereotype, or the buttend of jokes." Indeed, Gervais and Merchant first collaborated with Davis on an episode of Extras in which Merchant's character calls Davis a "midget" – a term Martin says "is in line with the word nigger for me". The sketch ended with Gervais, provoked, kicking Davis in the face, primetime on the BBC.

So Martin knew what to expect when she went to see Jimmy Carr a few years ago. "When he asked the audience if there were any dwarfs in [the audience], I announced myself. These guys nearby were going to do it for me if I hadn't. He asked me what my name was, what my age was, how tall I was. He commented that I'm a giant in the dwarf world, which was very funny, and true, because I am quite tall for a person of restricted growth. Then he asked me about [my average-sized husband] Steve, and quipped that we were 'the acceptable face of paedophilia'." Martin says "the whole crowd erupted into laughter, and we laughed along too".

When she met Carr afterwards, he was very polite, apologetic even, but Martin walked away "worrying about the other 2,000 people in that room. The joke reaffirms that being small is weird, and that having a relationship with somebody who's small is weird."

She and Steve had met through a mutual friend at Bolton University, where Martin studied art. "We just used to hang out, so he kind of got to grips with how I went about my daily life, and it was never an issue," she says. "I was extremely lucky; I think there are lots of cases where people struggle to find a lifelong partner, because of the prejudices, perception and because people care far too much what other people think." Had Steve known others with restricted growth? "I don't think he had. I ask him even now, years down the line, what is it about me, and he just says, 'Your personality, and you're gorgeous to me.' And that was it."

Within 18 months they married, and then Martin became pregnant with their daughter Sophie. It was a tense time. If the baby did not inherit Martin's condition, she knew she would soon be caring for a toddler who was nearly as big as she was. And if the child did inherit it . . . well, that would not be easy either. "There was no sense of rejection in me at all," she says, as she remembers finding out, quite late, that her daughter did indeed have achondroplasia, the genetic disorder that causes around 70% of the world's cases of dwarfism. "I just thought, gosh, she is going to have to go through everything that I've gone through."

Now Sophie is 10 and coping well. And Martin, who has just qualified to be a primary school teacher, is now looking for her first job. As for married life, "13 years down the line we're as strong as ever. And the looks we get when Steve bends down to give me a kiss are hilarious."

Luke Barrett, 21
Business student, Birmingham

"Some people would not explore the world," Luke Barrett says. "But I didn't want to stay in Birmingham for university, and come home at the end of the day. I wanted to go and do what a normal student does." So Barrett, who is one of many small people happy to refer to himself as a "dwarf", plumped for Liverpool, where he has just resat the first year of his business degree, and is thinking about what comes next.

"In a few years, if I can build up some money, I would like to go into renting out houses, maybe for students," he says. "This year, I was junior manager at the Dwarf Games [he is a powerlifter], and I'd like to interact with teenagers, or small people like me. Perhaps coaching football, for example . . . I'd just like to be a helper in any way." Not that people of restricted growth always need help. "I just don't see it as a disadvantage."

Indeed, nosing around the family home, the lowered sinks and kitchen worktop are the only clue to the adjustments that have been made to accommodate his, his mother's and his sister's achondroplasia (Barrett's father is average-sized). As a black man, Barrett might be expected to get a double helping of prejudice. Yet he says he has never received any abuse about his race, only his height. "I don't mind children looking, because children are always inquisitive. But I went shopping in the city centre once, and these lads just pulled over, had 10 seconds full of laughter, and drove off. For them that will be a good little joke, but it will put me on a downer all day. And if there's more than one dwarf – say I went out with one of my mates – then it's more of a problem."

This weekend he plans to go bowling with a group of friends and his girlfriend Naomi, who studies childcare in Amsterdam, and whom he met by chance at last summer's Dwarf Games in Belfast (she wasn't competing, she was visiting friends). "When we are all together, it's a nightmare. It's not a nightmare, but it's something I can't deal with, because you'll have at least one person try to take a photo."

His friends of average height, on the other hand, don't even notice: "Once I was walking with my mate from secondary school and this kid must have walked past me, pointing. And my mate was all confused. He said, 'Luke, why is he staring at you?' And I went [he points his hands down at his body] like that to him. And he went, 'Oh yeah.' Then I was laughing at him. And that made me feel good, because he doesn't see me in that way."

"I don't know what [the fascination] is." He grins and shrugs again, dragging a hand through his tied-back hair. "But my mum always says, 'Put on your good clothes, because people are going to look at you every day.'"

Jo Osmond, 23
Presenter and performer, Cardiff

"I get ID-ed everywhere," says Jo Osmond, "even for 15-rated films. And I get talked down to like I'm 10 years old." She speaks with a bubbly kind of exasperation. "It is annoying," she agrees, "but my mum just says to me, 'When you're 50, you won't be annoyed about it.'"

To this day, no one knows why Osmond's mother Lisa has never grown taller than 4ft 4in. No gene for any recognised form of dwarfism has been found in the family, but it does seem to be a genetic condition, as both Jo and her brother Ed inherited it too. "When we go to the little people convention the first thing people will say is, 'What condition have you got?'" Osmond laughs.

Her stature put an end to her first showbiz dream when she was 16, and "it got to the point where I knew I couldn't be a dancer. The entertainment business is what you look like," she says simply. The early disappointment did not put Osmond off entirely, but displaced her ambitions to other forms of performance. "If you don't look like a part, you won't get the part." And if you look like a child, you get parts as a children's stunt double. And as a goblin in two Harry Potter films. And as a "child mannequin" in Doctor Who. And as Baby Bop in the Barney the Dinosaur roadshow. Indeed, it was during this last job that Osmond had her big idea for a new show.

"It's for under-fives and it's called Fruit Pot," she begins. "The four fruits are all little people, and I'm a raspberry called Flo." Osmond has already financed, filmed and sold a pilot show, and is looking for international distribution. The genius of using small people, she explains, is that "children are often scared of costume characters because they're so big. You've got the seven dwarfs in Disneyland," she splutters, scandalised, "and they're all 5ft 8in."

Osmond's first break came when she won a competition, aged 11, to present awards on the Disney Channel. (Her submission was a poster on world peace, and the judges had no knowledge of her restricted growth when they chose it.) Since then, besides her film and television work, she has been a Bluecoat at Pontin's, and spent the last two years presenting entertainment on cruise ships. She doesn't offer jokes about restricted growth in her own work, and draws a clear line on what kind of jobs she is prepared to do.

"There are people who will dress up as Oompa-Loompas and work in nightclubs," she says. "The money is so good. I know from being offered work in the past, and I can see why people would do it: you can get £700-£800 for two hours." She won't do it herself. "But I have a lot of friends in the business who do those jobs," she says. "It doesn't mean I'm not their friend."

In the US, she says, there is more interesting work to be found. "There are a lot more serious parts [for actors of restricted growth], and a lot more awareness of small people. Whereas it seems over here, and in Europe, that people are so rude. It's human nature to look, I'd do it myself, but I wouldn't be rude about it . . ." Her passion is beginning to overtake her eloquence, so she stops and collects herself. "Being small is a bit like being famous," she says finally, distilling the point, "only famous in a way which isn't good."

James Coyle-King, 19
Automotive design student, Lincoln

Born with diastrophic dysplasia, which causes widespread malfunctions in the body's growth of cartilage and bone, James Coyle-King underwent a dozen operations during the first 12 years of his life. "It didn't really bother me. Most of my bad ones were done when I was younger, and when I was older I saw it was necessary," he says. His tone is matter of fact, though he admits not everything was easy. "I was away from school and my friends. But I'm quite competitive, to be honest, so I always try to recover as quickly as possible."

Diastrophic dysplasia is the third most common cause of dwarfism, and those who have it are generally the smallest of all. At 3ft 6in, Coyle-King is quite tall for someone with the disorder. He also suffers from several other joint problems, such as permanently dislocated thumbs and fingers that are fused solid at the knuckles. Which makes it seem incredible – perhaps almost wilful – that the passion he has developed is for drawing cars.

"It all started when I was 10, recovering from an operation, and my brother John came in and he'd brought a pack of Top Trumps of cars. And that's when I saw a McLaren F1. It was so different, so well designed. I got home and decided to draw a car, and it stemmed from that, really. Now I still draw two or three [cars] a week, mostly from my imagination. There are bits of paper everywhere." At first using a pencil "was a pain, because I can't bend my fingers [except] where they meet my hand. Ever since I can remember I've always held the pencil the same way, which is threaded between my fingers."

There are other physical challenges for Coyle-King, such as standing still, which can hurt his ankles. And walking can quickly become tiring as well, so he often uses a wheelchair to get about. Though even this limitation became a focus for ambition when, quite by chance, he observed a game of wheelchair basketball while he waited for his archery class to start.

"I always thought of people in wheelchairs as disabled, and I didn't consider myself disabled back then. When I accidentally turned up to basketball, I saw all the other people in wheelchairs playing very well, and thought, ooh, I'll have a go at that. So I got my mum to go home and get my wheelchair, and started playing."

Now he competes nationally, training three times a week. "Before that I didn't like using my wheelchair," he says. Would it be fair to say that he is actually proud of having diastrophic dysplasia? "Kind of, yes," he says. Glad even? "Yes." This time the word is spoken as though it were obvious. "Because if I didn't have this condition it wouldn't be me, would it? I wouldn't be like I am." No, but if he could just press a button and grow, would he do it? Coyle-King thinks. "I'd like to try it," he says eventually, "but I wouldn't want it to be permanent."