Lee Evans: Performing helps my depression
LEE EVANS is alone on stage, staring thoughtfully into the inky black abyss of an empty arena.
Just one man and his microphone, doing a soundcheck.
In two hours’ time, 13,000 people will file into the Glasgow Hydro with the sole expectation that he must make them laugh.
And he will. The months of hard slog in writing material and testing it out in small clubs will make sure of that.
But, as the suicide of Robin Williams testifies, there can be a flipside to the legal high of audience appreciation — an emptiness that
descends in private moments. Does Lee ever get depressed?
“Every single day,” he replies with disarming honesty.
“Not on the outside, but at home I do. I get very gloomy and dark, very deep and depressed. Everyone does sometimes, don’t they?
“I can sit there for ages, with my head in my hands. It’s mostly out of being criticised, because then I don’t feel worthy and slope off on my own.
“But then I’ll do a show and the audience reaction is humbling and I say to myself, ‘Come on, sort yourself out.’”
Lee worked with Williams a couple of times — the first in the “old days” of the Comedy Store club in London.
“He turned up out of the blue and asked if I minded him going on just before me, just to try out some stuff.
“He did about four hours of brilliant material then it was, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, now it’s Lee Evans...’ ” Lee pulls a despairing face. “I worked with him in LA too.
“It’s such a shame he’s gone. He was really lovely, with an enormous amount of pathos.
“I guess he was a case in point, where somebody is trapped in their own little bubble and just wants to be liked, to be accepted. Comedy is all about that, it comes from fear.
“I fear everything. Darkness, light, fear of insecurity, fear of women, fear of conversation... I suppose there’s a mad side to me. You can tell that
from my act, can’t you?”
You certainly can. But you can also tell that, despite the insecurities and yearning for approval, on stage is where Lee belongs.
Which is why his next comment is so surprising.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do after this,” he adds, referring to his 65-night, countrywide Monsters tour that finishes on November 30.
“I feel that something is definitely coming to an end.”
His manager and best friend, Addison Cresswell, died of a heart attack at the age of 53.
The shock of it seems to have provoked a major shift in how Lee, who turned 56 in February, views his own life.
“He was my friend. I miss him,” he says quietly. “As I’m insecure, I suppose I always look for powerful people to take care of me and Addison was one of those people.
“I was very young and unknown when we met and he was the person who said,
‘I’ll look after you.’ He protected me, he allowed me to go off and develop my work.
“I feel stronger that I met him. He taught me everything — to turn up on time, to be prepared... when I met him, things changed.”
And now he is gone, it seems that things might change for Lee again. He says:
“For the first time in my life, I have said no to absolutely everything. I’m going to have a rest and see what happens next.
“Me and my wife Heather will go on holiday, to spend some time with Mollie and her boyfriend,” he adds, referring to his 20-year-old daughter who left their home in Billericay, Essex, two years ago to study art and animation in the US.
“When I’m on tour, I feel terrible about not being around and I think I should really devote more time to my family, though it probably won’t be long
before they’re saying, ‘Get out!’ ”
The joker is back, his infectious grin the mask that Lee has deployed to great effect through many difficult times in his life, particularly his schooldays.
Lee’s dad Dave was an entertainer and the family, which also included mum Shirley and the comic’s older brother Wayne, moved around the country to wherever the work was.
By the time they settled in Essex, Lee was behind with his schooling and compensated by playing the classroom for laughs.
He can throw his voice, making it seem as if someone else is speaking across the room, and often used it to wind up his teachers.
He was caned several times and one teacher forced him to stand on a chair, then told the class: “You are all looking at an idiot.” But he bears no bitterness.
“If I saw them now, I would say sorry,” Lee says with all sincerity. “I was an idiot and it must have wound them up. Now I’m grown up, I just think it was absolutely stupid.
“I wasn’t sporty or academic, so to avoid getting picked on I’d play the fool.” Now he’s making a handsome living out of it and could give Ed Miliband a masterclass in how to effortlessly remember material, all while gyrating around the stage like the Duracell bunny on full power.
Off stage, he’s quite reserved, someone who likes to observe life from the sidelines.
“I’m very quiet at parties,” he says. “If Heather forces me to go out, I will stand in the corner and laugh away to myself at people who don’t realise
they’re doing something funny.
“I don’t mean any harm by it but a guy threatened to beat me up at an airport once because I was watching him picking his teeth and trying to hold a
newspaper at the same time.
“I was laughing to myself and he picked me up by my lapels and said, ‘What are you staring at?’ I didn’t realise I was doing it and had to say sorry.”
Lee Evans — apologetic, funny, quirky, humble and just plain brilliant.
Let’s hope that, after some much-needed rest and recuperation, he decides we haven’t seen the last of him.
The DVD of Lee’s Monsters tour is out on Monday.
Jester bloke from Bristol
1964 Lee is born in Avonmouth, Bristol, to Shirley and Dave
1984 Marries Heather Nudds – this year marked their 30th anniversary
1988 Wows critics at the Edinburgh Festival as a breakout star
1993 Wins Perrier Comedy award, the top comedy prize in the UK
1994 Birth of his daughter Mollie – who now lives in the US
1995 Stars in his own Channel 4 series, The World of Lee Evans
1997 Two big film roles, in The Fifth Element and Mousehunt
1998 Stars with Cameron Diaz in There’s Something about Mary
2004 Has a stint on London’s West End stage in The Producers
2008 Lee’s “Big” stand-up tour runs to 59 dates and is seen by 500,000 people. It results in the best-selling comedy DVD for Christmas 2008, shifting more than one million copies.
2011 Lee breaks his own record with a 67-date tour in 14 cities, selling £7million of tickets on the day they go on sale
2011 Wins the British Comedy Award for special contribution to comedy