Lee Evans is one of the best-loved comedians in the country; a Hollywood star able to sell out arenas in the blink of eye. But he was not always such a roaring success. "The Life of Lee" is an utterly hilarious and very moving autobiography charting his ups and downs on the way to the top. Lee takes us on a darkly humorous journey through his childhood spent running wild on a Bristol housing estate and his unconventional school days, when he was publicly derided as 'a failure' by a sadistic teacher. In this brilliantly entertaining and engaging tale, he also guides us through a grim teenage period of numerous dead-end jobs. When he was cleaning toilets and plucking turkeys, he could never have imagined that one day he would be playing to thousands of adoring fans at the O2 Arena. The book also reveals how as a boy Lee got his first taste of showbiz, living out of a suitcase and accompanying his entertainer father around the smoky, rowdy, unforgiving working-men's club and theatre circuit. Desperately struggling to be accepted, this quiet young loner always saw himself as an outsider.
But he finally met the love of his life and accidentally discovered the one place where he felt at home: the stage. "The Life of Lee" is a story that is like its subject: compelling, touching, charming and, above all, fantastically funny.
Author Biography
In November 2005, the comedian Lee Evans smashed the world record by playing to the largest ever comedy audience, 10,108 people at the Manchester Evening News Arena. The record merely underlined his status as the most popular comedian in the UK. A former boxer, Lee went on to break more records. On his 'Big' tour of 2008, he sold more than 500,000 tickets on fifty-nine arena dates. He has now sold in excess of four million DVDs. The Perrier Award-winning comedian, who was born in Bristol in 1964, has also enjoyed great success as a movie star, headlining in such films as There's Something About Mary, MouseHunt, The Fifth Element, The Martins and the critically acclaimed Funny Bones. In addition, he has made a big splash in West End shows such as the musical, The Producers (with Nathan Lane), Endgame (with Sir Michael Gambon) and The Dumb Waiter (with Jason Isaacs), receiving numerous theatre awards along the way. Lee has been happily married to Heather for twenty-seven years. They live in Essex and have a daughter called Mollie.
