Lee Mack

Lee Mack

Real name: Lee Gordon McKillop
Born in Blackburn and raised in Southport, Lee Mack started in comedy after a series of casual jobs, including stableboy and working in a bingo hall. His first taste of stand-up came as a Pontin's bluecoat.

His frist experience of the wider circuit came in 1994, when he did his first open mike slot while a student at Brunel University, West London. Within 18 months, he had won the So You Think You're Funny new act competition at the 1995 Edinburgh Fringe and become a full-time comedian.

In 1996, he returned to the festival as part of an ensemble show, Gagging For It, and the following year he performed the solo show Return Of The Mack. He had some level of fame by then, having hosted the Channel 4 stand-up show Gas, but found the experience of performing alone disheartening.

So in 1999, he teamed up with Catherine Tate and Dan Antopolski for the Fringe sketch show Lee Mack's Bits, and the 2000 follow-up was nominated for the Perrier. On the strength of that, Mack became one of the key players in ITV's The Sketch Show, which ran from 2001 to 2003. He was the only member of the UK cast to feature in the short-lived American remake, introduced by Kelsey Grammer, in 2004.

The following year he landed the job of host on BBC One sports quiz They Think It's All Over, taking over from Nick Hancock. But the programme was cancelled after one series with Mack in the chair.

He then moved to sitcom, premiering the traditional studio-based Not Going Out on BBC One in October 2006, at a time when that style was thought to be dead. The show returned for a second series in September 2007 and a third in January 2009. It has won Rose d'Or and Royal Television Society awards.

Mack is also a team captain on the BBC One panel show Would I Lie To You?

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Lee Mack: I'd love to be on Coronation Street

...but not for long

comedyLee Mack has one showbiz ambition left to fulfil – appearing in Coronation Street.

The stand-up – who also hosts ITV1’s The 1% Club  – says that when he started in the business, there were two things he wanted to do - ‘be in Doctor Who, and a little part in Corrie’.

He got to appear alongside Jodie Whittaker’s Time Lord when he played Dan Cooper in the 2018 episode Kerblam!

But speaking of his soap ambition on Emily Dean’s Walking The Dog podcast, he said: ‘I'm not joking, I would like a small part in Coronation Street.

‘I'll just pop in, go up to the bar at The Rovers, they go "Are you new round here?" and I go "Yeah, I just sacked the secretary and I'll tell you something, she's not coming back if she's spreading rumours like that about me," and then I just go again.

‘But I'm not willing to spend more than two or three days on set because I've got things to do. When I say "things to do", I just like being at home.’

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Published: 5 Jan 2024

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Agent

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