The Life of Lee

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 reading 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.