Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Comedian who writes and stars in BBC One's 'Not Going Out', known for stand-up tours and panel shows.
On the island
Eight records
when I bought a guitar many years ago, this was one of the first songs I learnt to play on it.
My dad... would always do Adam Faith. He'd always sing this song. And it sort of got so ingrained in my head when I wrote Not Going Out, this was the theme music for The Pilot
this is my f the first single I ever bought... I'm gonna play the the much cooler Punky B-side, Beat My Guest.
Roger Taylor, Freddie Mercury, David Bowie, John Deacon, Brian May
I had about 12 or 13 Queen albums, but nothing else. So it would feel right that I have to choose one of my 13 Queen albums from all those years ago.
Ian Curtis, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris, Bernard Sumner
I've always been a bit obsessed with Ian Curtis. But the reason I've chosen this particular song, Atmosphere, is because I've trained for the Marathon a couple of years ago, and I used to listen to this song a lot when I was training
Getting Away with It (All Messed Up)
Tim Booth, Jim Glennie, Adrian Oxaal
after every gig I listened to this song... when I come off stage, I'd always listen to the same song as the sort of I'm winding down after the gig music.
this is the song that gets my children asleep when they're young and they're babies. So this song has been played in my car or in my house sometimes up to 30 times a day for all three kids and I'm now sick to death of this song.
Astral WeeksFavourite
this is the song that because my wife has definitely given me a better taste in music since I met... I made our wedding video, I edited it and I put this on because it's my wife's... one of my wife's favourite songs.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:26Is writing sitcoms and doing stand-up tours genuinely a struggle for you?
I think it's a struggle for all comics to write. It's just the writing. I always think the writing is God's way of punishing you for having the best job in the world.
Presenter asks
2:45Why do you choose to be two different people by name [Lee McKillop and Lee Mack]?
I was actually a mobile DJ many years ago and I wanted to get a job on the cruise liners and I thought Lee McKillop doesn't sound like a name as a DJ on a cruise liner and by coincidence my great granddad was a Variety Hall comedian called Billy Mac and so it just seemed logical that I'll just take his name.
Presenter asks
9:00Were there times when you wished your father was a bit more like a dad?
Yeah. I suppose so. I mean, my mum and dad split when I was quite young, so th I was only sort of eleven or twelve when he sort of left home, so I went to visit him regularly over the years from that age.
The keepsakes
The book
Stephen Hawking
I'm going to take A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking, because I haven't read it, so I figure the number one rule is take a book you haven't read.
Presenter asks
Do you think moving around so much made an impression on you?
Oh, without a doubt. I worked out, I think, by the age of eighteen, I'd lived in sixteen different houses... I went to another school and I had a very strong Lancastrian accent... trying to ingratiate myself with my new friends I thought well I'll play on that and do impressions of Bobby Ball so that's what I did.
Presenter asks
22:01When did you tell Tara that you wanted to be a stand-up comedian?
I'd never told anybody really. I'd kept this, it was like a dirty little secret I never told anyone about... I said, Look, the thing is, I want to be a stand-up comedian. She went, Oh, yeah, good idea, you should do that. So very casually, didn't think anything of it.
Presenter asks
24:56Why are there not more women on panel shows?
The problem is there's not enough women in comedy in general. If 20% of comedians out there are female, then it makes sense that 20% of people on panel games are female... when men sit around together and talk, they're very competitive... When you get six women in a room together, they share a lot more... So the conversation is broken up a lot more and it's more interactive and less about individually showing off.
“I always think the writing is God's way of punishing you for having the best job in the world.”
“I'd been on like Blackpool Beach on a donkey, and I think I'd been on pony trekking rides in Spain, but I'd not had any horse history whatsoever. But by coincidence, in my hometown, they trained Red Rum, and he was still alive.”
“I have two versions of of my life. I have the version where I'm at home and I'm the normal person, then I have the version that works in telly and does stand up tours and... I don't like the crossover of those two things. I like to keep them separate.”