Return of the Mack

3:21pm Tuesday 13th November 2007

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THE comedian Lee Mack has been locked away in the TV studios for many months. But now the star and co-writer of Not Going Out, BBC1's immensely popular Friday night sitcom, has been let out - and he simply can't wait to get back to the professional activity he loves most: live stand-up.

As he prepares to embark on the final leg of his tour, which enjoyed a sell-out run last year, Lee smiles that he can think of nothing better than life on the road. "Stand-up is still my favourite activity," beams the hugely successful comedian, "and I'm looking forward to once again existing on a diet of Pot Noodle and Ginsters as I travel round the country telling loads of made-up true stories."

What Lee adores above all else is the immediacy of stand-up. A man with "funny bones", the comic is delighted to be back interacting off the cuff with theatre audiences after several months cooped up in a TV studio.

The passion for live comedy clear in his voice, Lee asserts that, "I always really look forward to getting back to stand-up. Telly's brilliant, but what I'm most looking forward to about this tour is the pure freedom it gives me. It's just me in my car travelling round the country. It's fantastic not to have to sit through loads of meetings deciding what should be in the show."

Hitting his rhetorical stride now, Lee continues that, "if I think of a joke for a TV show, I have to write and re-write it, rehearse it, get my make-up done, perform it three times in a studio - and then they decide to take it out in the edit! The whole process takes months.

"The great thing about stand-up is that I can think of a joke in the car on the way to a gig and tell it to hundreds of people the very same night," says Lee, whose first live DVD is released on 26 November. "It takes half an hour rather than several months. That gives you a wonderful sense of liberation."

By contrast, Lee sighs, "there are always committees in TV. What's lovely about stand-up is that I'm the ultimate arbiter. I'm a control freak," he adds with an infectious giggle. "I've spent years trying not to be, but now I just accept that I am one. It's easier that way!"

This is a typical example of the sharp, self-deprecating humour of the comedian whom Kelsey Grammer, no less, once described as "a very funny gentleman He's got that manner about him."

The live show - which garnered ecstatic reviews on its last outing - is a highly entertaining blend of mischievous one-liners, audience banter and raw physical energy. During the course of his spellbinding act, Lee conjures up a parallel world where the All Blacks perform a camp hand-jazz Haka, pasties are sold in the style of uber-pretentious perfume ads and grannies snort Angel Delight. It's delightfully daft stuff.

Such dazzling material has helped establish Lee as one of the country's top live draws - and he has the rave reviews to prove it! Metro enthused that "Lee Mack cuts to the funny bone like a knife," and The Daily Express exclaimed, "I was knocked out by Lee Mack's talent." The Independent, meanwhile, simply called Lee "inspired." To substantiate those judgments, he has also won Time Out's Best Live Comedy Act and Loaded's Best Stand-Up Award.

Lee, who has also chaired BBC1's much-loved sports panel game, They Think It's All Over, as well as headlining in the Sony Award-nominated BBC Radio 2 programme, The Lee Mack Show, and ITV1's Bafta-winning Sketch Show, is always quick to make a joke at his own expense.

In that vein, he stresses, "I can't emphasise enough that this is a continuation of my tour from last year. Extended tour means the same jokes! I don't want people coming expecting new material. Can you put that in capitals, please? People can welcome these jokes like old friends, but this is the final time I'm doing them! I'm starting again with a whole new show next year."

Lee goes on to quip that he tried to rope in a high-level support act from his old pals on They Think It's All Over. "I asked Boris Becker to do the first twenty minutes on the tour, but he's got too many cheeky one-liners, so it would be hard to follow!" But in all honesty, such back-up is not necessary, because Lee is now such a major-league live act in his own right.

What makes Lee's live act stand out is his warm relationship with his audience. It is this constantly-evolving, improvised interaction with the punters which forms the beating heart of his show.

"I love just chatting," beams the comic, who will also be covering such topics as swearing and predictive texting on the tour. "On Day One, you go out on stage with an entirely new show, but if you're still saying the same words by Day Three, you're already slightly bored with them. I want to keep it loose because the loose bits are often the best. They keep you on your toes.

"I love going to the pub for a laugh with my mates. That's the atmosphere I aim for on stage. I never prepare a script when I go to the pub with my mates, so why should I prepare a script when I'm doing stand-up?"

Lee manages to retain his rapport with his audience, despite the fact that he is playing pretty large venues these days. "More people know who I am every time I do a tour. When I first performed live, I'd walk on to polite middle-class clapping and whispers of 'who's he?' "Every time I've played live since, people seem to know a little bit more about me. The last time I went on stage, someone shouted out the name of my missus. No, he wasn't stalking me - he'd just read it in the papers! Of course, in an ideal world I'd play to a million people a night and never get recognised. But you can't have it both ways."

Lee's laid-back attitude extends to his deliberately apolitical material. "I don't fly a banner," he declares. "I'm not a very political person. I don't like hypocrites, and if I pretended to know something I don't, then I'd be hypocritical. I've never been interested in political comedy. I've always preferred silly comedians like Tommy Cooper and Eric Morecambe."

The frantically busy comic has also found the time to write and star in Not Going Out, the second series of which has just aired to acclaim on BBC1.Lee reckons that this run has been more engaging because it has had more riding on it. "We have ensured that there is more at stake this time round. Last year, each episode was self-contained, but this one has a serial element to it. That way, viewers invest more in it.

"Throughout this series, my character, Lee, was trying to make his new flatmate, Lucy played by Sally Bretton from The Office, see that her boyfriend was not right for her and that Lee was right for her instead!"

Not Going Out is a return to the tried and trusted studio sitcom. "I can't lie - it's a very traditional format," Lee carries on. "Everyone always complains about old-style sitcoms and tries to do something new involving shaky cameras and no studio audience, but I'm bored with that now. I've always been amazed by the idea that the studio sitcom is dying. All the best ones in America - like Frasier, Seinfeld and Larry Sanders - are studio-based.

"Sitcoms don't all have to be revolutionary - they can be old-school and not crap. People confuse 'traditional' with 'rubbish'. They say, 'it's very mainstream. Loads of people watch it, but do you really want those sort of people watching?' How patronizing! People can be so snobbish. The world is not made up of five per cent artists and 95 per cent drunken lunatics."

Lee sighs that, "on the back of shows like The Office, commissioning editors said, let's make comedy gritty and real and concentrate on embarrassment rather than jokes'. So people gave up on telling jokes. But I've brought them back!"

Eternally modest, Lee continues that, "clearly, telling a gag every fifteen seconds is not exactly real, but I had no choice! I don't see myself as an actor who can star in the kind of naturalistic comedy that is prevalent.But I think I can do well in studio sitcoms, where you need comics rather than actors."

It may go against the current naturalistic trend in comedy, but Not Going Out has still been a resounding success. "We knew we were always going to be up against it," Lee reflects. "Writing gags is an incredibly difficult job - as they say, drama is easy, comedy is hard."

"We also knew we would be seen as going against the grain and old-school. After all, we were doing a mainstream sitcom at a time when Extras was taking the mick out of mainstream sitcoms. But in the event, Not Going Out was really well received by both audiences and critics. I couldn't have asked for a better reception." As proof, the first series picked up both a Royal Television Society Award and a Golden Rose of Montreux.

Lee has also somehow found time to star as a team captain in the well-regarded new BBC1 panel game, Would I Lie to You? "What I love about it is that it is totally improvised," the comic avers. "It is no secret that the contestants prepare before some panel games, but there is nothing you can prepare for on Would I Lie to You? The nature of the game is lying - and that's much easier to do if you haven't prepared! It's like when you're walking home after doing something awful. If you rehearse a lie to your wife, it always comes out wrong - not that I'd know about that, of course!"

Lee's profile has rocketed in recent times thanks to his critically lauded role as host for several series of They Think It's All Over. He didn't actively seek the job, but was chuffed to be offered it. "I haven't got a great plan," he admits.

"I used to work for twenty-five quid a week mucking out stables. So when a producer asked me 'do you want to host this show where you just chat to sportsmen every week?' It was no decision whatsoever. I mean, if Pele was standing there with a wad of fivers saying 'do you want to have a natter about football?', you wouldn't say, 'is this a good career move?', would you?"

For this card-carrying sports fan, it was the dream job. "As a child, I always wanted to be a professional footballer, but unfortunately I was rubbish! I wasn't even in the school team.

"Even today, if I was offered the choice of playing football for England and retiring at 30 or being a stand-up till the age of 80, in my heart of hearts I think football might win. One day I was taking the mick out of Ian Wright, and the next day I saw footage of him scoring a goal in the FA Cup Final. When I saw Ian the next week, I said to him, 'I can't take the mick out of you anymore. You scored a goal in the FA Cup Final, and it doesn't get any better than that!'"

Lee was such a success as the chairman of They Think It's All Over because he manifestly didn't take the job that seriously. He sent up the purported gravitas of the role. "I was supposed to be in charge, but I didn't care about the rules," he smiles. "I had to pretend to be bothered, but I had no real interest in getting the answers. I had no authority as the host - and hopefully that made it more entertaining."

The great thing about Lee is that even though his profile is now sky-high, his head has not been turned. He has never lost sight of the primary requirement of any stand-up comic: to be killingly funny.

"I used to think that famous people were somehow special," Lee muses. "But the more celebs I meet, the more I realise it's not down to being special but to luck. In the same way, I used to think that everyone in showbiz knew what they were doing and I was the only one who didn't. I still don't know what I'm doing, but I now know that no one else does, either. I'm sure a lot of famous people probably sit there thinking, 'I don't know what I'm doing'. Once you realise everyone is in the same boat, it makes everything easier."

So given all that, how does Lee view his forthcoming national tour? "Every night I'll go on stage thinking, 'I don't know what I'm doing.' I hope an hour and a half of me standing there not knowing what I'm doing will be entertaining!"

He can rest assured that it will be.

Lee Mack. November 21. Fairfield Halls, Croydon. Box office 020 8688 9291.