The Life of Lee

by Lee Evans

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.

• ISBN10: 0718156188
• ISBN13: 9780718156183
• Publish Date: 29 September 2011
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 25 October 2012
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• Imprint: Michael Joseph Ltd
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 400
• Language: English

Reviews

[Leah]

Lee Evans is one of my favourite comedians. Actually, he's my ONLY favourite comedian; he's the only stand-up comedian I actually watch. I can't remember when I started watching him, but I've watched all of his DVDs, with XL being a particular favourite. I watched Road Runner recently, and that was just as good. I like his jokes, his brand of humour, the way he sweats A LOT. So when I saw he was releasing his autobiography, I was thrilled!

Although his autobiography is titled The Life of Lee, it should come with a subtitle that it only covers Lee's childhood and teenage years. Because that's all it covers. I did find that disappointing; I wanted to learn more about Lee's career, and I rather suspect that next Christmas we will probably see a second Lee Evans autobiography (not that I'm complaining).

It may not have been what I was expecting, but it's still a good read. Not perfect, and it was sometimes a bit repetitive, but I learnt a lot about Lee, things I didn't know. I know he's been with his wife for ages and made a faux pax the first time they met (well, it was the second time, really) and I know he's an awesome comedian (obviously) but I didn't know that Lee didn't know he was going to be a comedian, that Lee always felt like the odd one out, growing up on the Lawrence Weston estate, that he and his family moved around a lot making Lee feel even more ostracised. Lee spends a lot of the novel putting himself down, calling himself stupid and an idiot, and all of that, and it is kind of sad. You see him on stage, entertaining thousands and it is hard to see the Lee we read about in the book as the same one on stage. That they're the same two people.

Lee talks a lot about life on the Lawrence Weston estate, how he met his wife, how they moved to Scarborough and, eventually, how Lee got to life on stage. But his struggles were so sad to read about. You see how successful he is now, but the way he struggled when he left college and as he struggled to find a job, any job, to support himself and Heather was just so touching and sad. You will learn a lot about Lee from reading the book, even if it only scratches the surface of Lee's life. I look forward to the next edition, because I really now want to know more about Lee's rise to fame, because it seems as if it was epic!