Lee Evans
Comedian and Actor
Lee John Martin Evans was born on 25 February 1964 in Avonmouth, Bristol — the son of Dave Evans, a Welsh comedian, musician and impressionist from North Wales, and his Irish wife Shirley Hunt. The Welsh blood ran strong in the family, and Lee has spoken warmly of his father's influence throughout his career. Dave Evans worked the working men's club circuit, taking young Lee along with him, and it was in those smoky halls that the future comedian first understood the alchemy of making a room laugh. Lee has an older brother, Wayne. The family moved from Bristol to Billericay in Essex in 1975, when Lee was eleven.
He was not academic — he left school with a single O-level — but his body was extraordinary. A spell as a boxer followed, then two years at Thurrock Art College, then a move to Scarborough where he played drums in a punk band called the Forgotten Five. His first stand-up gig, at a Brighton pub, was memorable for all the wrong reasons: he knocked himself out on a fire hydrant. He was booed off stages regularly as he tried to follow his father into holiday camp entertainment. Then he found his niche — physical, sweating, exhausting, hysterical observational comedy — and everything changed.
He married Heather Nudds on 22 September 1984, having met her when they were both sixteen. They have one daughter, Mollie (born 1994), whom he refers to affectionately as Little Mo — the name he gave his production company, Little Mo Films. The family lives quietly in Billericay, Essex, and Evans has always been fiercely protective of their privacy.
