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The year 2000 has been good to Lee Mack. Telly appearances, among them the Des O'Connor Show. The long awaited Perrier Nomination. And now, appearing on the cover of ComedyLounge. Life does not get any sweeter.
Lee Mack has just come off stage from his show, Lee Mack's New Bits, when he meets up with us in the Performer's Bar of the Pleasance in Edinburgh. It's the night after the Perrier nominations are announced. Sitting with his comedy chum and festival flat mate, Noel Fielding, Lee is still on a bit of a high. Constantly looking over his shoulder, and playing with the cigarettes on the table, Lee changes the subject more often than blinks. With the appearance and demeanour of a hyperactive child, it proves to be a difficult task to pin him down to a straight answer. For example, we asked him how he first became involved in comedy. "I got involved when I was a milk boy. I was a milk boy, but I used to get sacked for leaving the milk bottles outside the houses, and not on the doorsteps, just leaving them outside the gate, so to stop myself getting sacked I dressed up as a chicken one day and it made him laugh so much I thought 'comedy is the new milk round'…" Is that really true? "That's not true, no. I got involved in comedy when I saw The Mighty Boosh. I looked at it and thought, fucking hell. If that worked, then even I can do this. If that drively pair of girls can make those people laugh by saying things like 'eggs' then I'm in."
That's not true either. Lee started on the comedy circuit in London in 1994, mainly, he claims, because "it seemed quite well paid. And also because I always wanted to do it really, since I was a little boy. I used to do Bobby Ball impressions. On top of the mobile in school, you know those portacabins? I used to stand on top of them and do Bobby Ball impressions in the playground. Pretty big start into show biz."
And just when it looked like he'd started making sense"I wanted to give some laughter back to the community that had given me so much." He picks up the tape recorder from the table, and speaks directly into the microphone. "I felt I had taken so much I wanted to give something back."
It is a much-repeated fact that comedians are often terribly serious off stage, and in most cases, this is true, particularly when they are discussing themselves and their art. We feel we ought to point this out to Lee, as he seems to be oblivious to this stereotype. "Oh, that's just because I'm a sparkling wit. It's an illness. It's a defence mechanism." Again, it isn't clear if Lee is being serious or not. He has just spent a long hour entertaining folk on stage, and doesn't seem to be able to drop the habit off stage.
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Lee Mack's New Bits, the Lee Mack show for the new millennium, Lee is joined by Catherine Tate and Dan Antapolski, immortalised in his Mr. Men parody as 'Little Miss Stroppy Knickers' and 'Mr. Not Really Sure What Is Going On A Lot Of The Time' respectively. The show is a fast moving sketch show, mixing video pieces with live performances. The changeover between sketches is very rapid, with punchlines flying around stage at an alarming rate. One running joke through the show is the back stage camera that broadcasts the interaction between performers as they change costume from one sketch to the next. The tension between the three performers is played up for the camera, and is also the anchor for a lot of the jokes on stage. Like most good comedy, it has a basis in truth, something that is apparent on the night that we talked to Lee. We discuss which form of comedy he prefers doing, solo stand up or sketches. "Well, at the moment it's stand up because I've just had a row with one of my co-workers, a pretty bad row, so sketches is harder, much harder, but it's more fun when it's going well. There's more of a unity when things are going wrong, apart from tonight."
With the added pressure of writing the majority of the show on his own - "Let's make this quite clear. I write it all myself. With a little bit of help. But there's only a little bit. All right?" - Lee is now on the look out for a writing partner. "I want one, because I'm tired of writing. It's very hard to write all the ideas." Having worked as part of a writing group [which included two Hollow Men] on the forthcoming BBC sketch show pilot, Walking With Diana Doors, Lee likes the idea of taking life a little bit easier. "All of a sudden you turn up and you have people dressing you. You don't want to turn into an arsehole and have people dressing you, but it's nice if you run off stage and someone's waiting for you with a costume. Sometimes you're just scrambling round on the Fringe on the floor looking for your funny hat, so that was very enjoyable." Making the programme also brought about something that Lee says is one of the highlights of his career to date, as he explains. "My show is very proppy, lots of props and made up things, and that's the bane of my life. If I do a sketch I have to make everything. But this was the one thing where… I did a moon sketch last year, I was on the moon. I had to make that costume and it took ages and it looked a bit crap. Everything looks a bit crap if I make it and it takes forever to make. But all of a sudden I did the same sketch on the BBC and they'd built a whole moon landscape and a rocket, and it cost like… it seemed to cost a lot, it probably more than my Mum's house that one set… Not necessarily the best thing I've done, but it certainly was enjoyable."
The conversation inevitably turns to the subject of fans. With the Perrier nomination, Lee's show has now attracted a whole new audience of trendy young things trying to find the next big thing before the television snaps them up. Does Lee therefore see groupies on the horizon? "No, I don't get that. They [he points to Noel Fielding, of the Boosh] get that. I would hate to have that like they do, because they get… mad. I don't really have a fan base like they do. People come and see my show for the first time, whereas they get people going back to their shows, so you have to prove yourself every time you do it." So Lee is not inundated with fan mail, then? "I've had a letter once asking me for a signed photograph. Off a mad man. It was in crayon. Capital letters. Very big capital letters. I don't really get any groupies. I get a lot of divorced northern women coming up to me and going 'you're dead funny, you. Ignore the beard and give us a kiss!' That's the kind of thing I get." He does have a theory about why The Boosh do attract the following that they do. "I think what it is that I'm a lot better looking than Noel, and I threaten ladies. I think they feel threatened. When they look a bit like a lady themselves, I think it makes them feel more comfortable."
The Boosh, of course, have never appeared on the pinnacle of show biz, The Des O'Connor Show. "Even he would draw the line at them. He wouldn't be rolling round with his golden tan, would he?" Now that he has made his Des O'Connor appearance, does Lee have any ambitions left? "I used to want to be an astronomer. I still do. I think comedy wise… to get my own… television. I'd love to have my own television. I rent one at the moment."
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