![\"Lee](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/0_Magnum-Media.jpg\")
Lee Mack hosts The 1% Club Rollover which is on ITV for five nights nextv week, starting on Monday at 9pm.(Image: ITV)<\/p>\n19:00, 06 Dec 2025Updated 21:34, 06 Dec 2025<\/p>\n
Lee Mack hosts The 1% Club Rollover which is on ITV for five nights nextv week, starting on Monday at 9pm.(Image: ITV)<\/p>\n
Forget smiling people in Christmas jumpers, Lee Mack\u2019s<\/a> family album is filled with photos of his mum taking her false teeth out and his dad with a cigarette stuck up his nose – playing for laughs.<\/p>\n So it\u2019s hardly surprising that, at 15 he wanted to be a comic. He says: \u201cAt 15, I said in my head, \u2018I want to be a comedian,\u2019 but I didn’t know what that meant. It was always the thing I did with my mates. I would make my mates laugh.\u201d<\/p>\n Now 57, for five nights, starting on Monday, Lee will be hosting The 1% Club<\/a> Rollover. Described as \u2018event TV,\u201d this spin-off from the usual ITV<\/a> quiz show sees the prize pot growing to a life-changing \u00a3500K. Although Lee would never win it – he says his memory is so bad that he can never remember the answers. A great fan of the show, he says: \u201cAt the pilot I didn\u2019t get any laughs, as everyone was intrigued by the questions.<\/p>\n READ MORE: Coronation Street: From Joanna Lumley to Suranne Jones and Michael Ball – all the celebrities who have stepped onto the cobbles<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI thought \u2018this is a good format as my jokes are brilliant!\u2019 The questions are researched to within an inch of their lives.\u201d Endlessly funny, Lee\u2019s life has been a balancing act between comedy and tragedy. He started out as an aspiring jockey, working with Ginger McCain, who trained Grand National winner Red Rum – the first horse Lee ever rode. But, in his inimitable style, he developed a lucrative sideline selling Red Rum\u2019s manure for 50p a bag – declaring it was \u201cgood for rhubarb!\u201d<\/p>\n Away from the comedy, he speaks movingly of his brother Darren McKillop\u2019s death in 2014, after taking an overdose of anti-depressants, aged just 47. Speaking on Gyles Brandreth’s Rosebud podcast, he says: \u201cI don’t really like to talk about this. He did take his own life, but it was alcohol connected.\u201d<\/p>\n Of the \u2018misadventure\u2019 inquest verdict, he says: \u201cI think that’s a fair assessment of the situation.\u201d According to Lee, his brother and his parents – who were publicans – all died through alcohol abuse. No longer drinking himself, he adds: \u201cWhen you’re in a pub, you see everything. I saw the parties, I saw the fights in pubs, I saw my dad in very violent situations having to throw people out of pubs. \u201cI’ve seen him dancing on a pool table, the happiest looking man in the world<\/a>. \u201cSo I’ve seen all the gamuts of emotion that come with alcohol.\u201d<\/p>\n Lee stopped drinking after reading Allen Carr\u2019s Easy Way book. He says: \u201cNot the comedian, a different Alan Carr. \u201cI love Alan to bits, the comedian, but I don’t really look at him for my lifestyle choices!\u201d Lee\u2019s wife used the Alan Carr book on quitting smoking, so he read the alcohol one, saying: \u201cI just suddenly for the first time saw alcohol for what it was, and decided I just wasn’t interested.\u201d<\/p>\n The flipside of Lee\u2019s early life was the comedy that came with a family life based around a local boozer on a tough Blackburn estate. He says: \u201cMy dad was as close as you can get to being a comedian without being paid for it. It’s like a little stage being behind a bar.\u201d<\/p>\n He also recalls his dad being the spitting image of comedian Bobby Ball. Lee says: \u201cHe did have a permanent moustache like Bobby. Because in the 1980s, it was a criminal offence to live in the North and not have a permanent moustache.\u201d<\/p>\n Lee\u2019s uncle remembers Bobby Ball – who played his dad in his sitcom – performing in his parents\u2019 pub, before finding fame. He says: \u201cMy uncle said, \u2018I remember Cannon and Ball coming because they were just breaking through.\u2019 I like the fact that my fictional dad and my real dad probably did meet.\u201d<\/p>\n Lee\u2019s dad also encouraged his comedic personality. \u201cI can’t remember any serious conversations as a child,\u201d he says. \u201cEverything was brushed under the carpet. Even when they [his parents] split up, I don’t remember a big chat about it. \u201cAfter my mom died, I went through the photos. There’s far too many where she’s taken her false teeth out to get the laugh for the photograph. There’s a lot of the ones with my dad with a cigarette up his nose, because it’s a funny image, isn’t it?\u201d<\/p>\n Marrying when his dad was 21, Lee is fairly sure his mum was pregnant, but he says: \u201cThey seemed very happy. They were party animals.\u201c But they split up when Lee was 11. His dad was a heavy drinker and he recalls his parents having ferocious rows when they were on holiday in Spain. \u201cThey were feisty. It was chaotic. He’d slam the door and walk off,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cMy mum went to bed, woke up the next morning, and very calmly and casually said, \u2018go by the pool and see if your dad’s asleep on one of the deck chairs. We’ve got to leave for the plane in a few hours.\u2019 We couldn’t find my dad anywhere near the pool. Turned out he just couldn’t face going back. And he just went. He left and started hitchhiking. He was drunk.<\/p>\n \u201cHe told me years later that in the middle of the night, the guys that picked him up stopped in a layby, pulled him over. And he genuinely thought he was going to get killed.\u201d Lee says his dad was more like an older brother. \u201cHe wasn’t dad material,\u201d he says. \u201cHe was a really nice guy. He was funny. He was a good person. He just didn’t know how to be a dad.\u201c<\/p>\n![\"Lee](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/0_National-Television-Awards-2023-Winners-Room.jpg\")
Lee Mack poses with the award for Quiz Game Show for “The 1% Club” in the National Television Awards 2023.(Image: Getty Images)<\/p>\n![\"Lee](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/0_SDC_MDG_-CHPc_49282JPG.jpg\")
Not Going Out is Britain\u2019s second longest-running sitcom and pulls in millions of viewers. (Image: BBC)<\/p>\n
![\"Lee](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/0_Cazoo-Derby-Festival-2022-Derby-Day-Epsom-Racecourse.jpg\")
Lee Mack in the stands on Derby Day during the Cazoo Derby Festival 2022 at Epsom Racecourse, Surrey. (Image: PA)<\/p>\n