Iain Lee - Presenter & Comedian

Let’s get the facts right, OK? Wikipedia don’t know everything, so ignore that bullshine and read this and absorb.

So, Iain Lee was born on June 9th 1973. Sort of in Slough. Not Scotchland. He’s not Scotch, although one of his grandparents was Scotch. But that’s as far as that goes.

Then a load of growing up stuff happened and that was fine. Nothing too exciting really, you probably had to be there to enjoy it. And some people were there. So they know. Was almost a teacher for about 20 minutes but was lucky enough to muff up his A Levels so spectacularly that he had to go to Windsor College to do some more. Luckily, he didn’t do much better there and by a twist of fate and star alignment ended up where he needed to be, which was at Middlesex University (formerly a Polytechnic – remember those kids?)

Leaving there he had naught except his signing on so he trundled around the country trying to do the stand up comedy. At the start he wore a safari suit and a red polo neck jumper and did some nonsense about Rod Hull. It involved him stealing

an audience members shoe and dragging them across the floor. Fact. It wasn’t always funny and would often end in Iain being chased out of the club and having to hot foot it to the train. He is not a member of a Kiss tribute band but he does recommend the excellent Dressed To Kill for all your Kiss tributary needs.

Stand up continued with a break for 3 months working as a prop boy and Christopher Lee’s double in Pakistan working on the film Jinnah. He also did 6 months working as Iain McCartney (no one remembers why) aka Iain in Black Thunder at a radio station in Milton Keynes (Horizon if you need to know). This job was quit as his car was shit and didn’t always make it from Kensal Green where he lived, to Milton Keynes where he died. It was however on his last week at this job that he heard about auditions for a new Channel 4 series called The 11 O’Clock Show. Skint and depressed, he decided to go for this last audition before getting a proper job and earning enough money to buy food.

Luckily, he got The 11OCS gig. Originally hired to film some video inserts, 5 days before the first series, he was called into try out for the role of ‘third host’ after Brendan Burns and Fred Macauly ( I can’t be bothered to look on the net to see how to spell it). This run lasted 2 weeks and was followed by a further 3 series with Iain, Daisy Donovan and various others including Ricky Gervais, Ali G, Mackenzie Crook, Paul Garner, Alex Lowe, Dom Joly and a load of others.
	Other shows came and went. Vent. Mental! Critical Mass. Thumb Candy (excellent video games documentary). Thumb Bandits (disappointing computer game series that wasn’t anywhere near as good as it should have been). It wasn’t until RI:SE, Channel 4’s ill fated replacement for The Big Breakfast, that Iain found a job he enjoyed. Getting up every morning at 2.45 for a year was no problem and highlights included fighting with the fat one from Liberty X and also having a row with Daniel Beddingfield’s PA after asking him if he was a Gaylord. Other things have happened, including Posh & Becks in LA as well as Wills & Harry in Vegas, both for Sky One. He spent several years hosting various shows on LBC 97.3, a radio station based in London, and increased the listening figures in every slot he went to.
As of typing this guff, Iain Lee now presents a Sunday Night Show on Virgin radio, although that’s about to change its name to who knows what. Probably Zavvi. So I won’t say too much more about this. This is a fact based world, so here are some facts. Read them, learn them and then destroy this page. He loves Lost and speaks a little Japanese. Or he loves the Japanese and speaks a little Lost. Something like that. He thinks Clive Bull is excellent and Steve Allen is not. He loves the computer games and at the moment prefers the X-Box 360 over all others. He has a room full of retro games consoles. His favourite all time game ever is Elite on disk on the BBC Micro. It’s just great. He has a cat called Velvet. He may, or may not, be Christopher Lee’s grandson. His least favourite bit of the flight is the 25 minutes or so when it’s descending, that really hurts his ears. He is still only half way through the first series of Heroes, blame that on Fandango. Oh yeah, he is going out with a girl called Fandango, she could do better than him but don’t tell her that. He loves his mum, despite the fact she is completely bonkers. He is a vegetarian and has been since he was 15. He did it to impress a girl. Not Fandango. He may start eating meat to impress her. He has won The Weakest Link, beating Jim Bowen in the final. But Jim Bowen sort of helped him on one of the answers. And he cheated to get to the final because he was going to vote Bowen off but he saw Eddie Large was going to vote HIM off so, in an attempt to avoid a 3-way split, he changed his vote to Large and hoped that Bowen had done the same. He had. He won The Mastermind. His specialist subject was fictional sixties pop group The Monkees. He beat a Nolan, a Scott Mills and Jimmy McGovern. He has won The Ready, The Steady and The Cook. So what? He beat Christian O’Connell. So what? The tight bastards only gave £100 to charity and Iain got no fee. So what? He is a hypnotist and got his first break writing for Paul McKenna who is a delightful man. He really is. No irony there. He would bum Duncan Bannatyne at a moments notice. He pops up for about 30 seconds in the spectacularly shit film ‘Beyond Borders’. It stars Angelina Jolie, Clive Owen and Teri Polo. Angelina was delightful, told Iain he was very funny and kissed him on the cheek. Polo did the same thing (she’s Stiller’s wife in ‘Focking The Parents’). Danny Baker and Tommy Boyd are the only 2 remaining geniuses working on radio at the moment. Right, that’s yer lot. I’m off. Judge Judy is on. Good day to you.