'I grew up around alcohol abuse... I lost my parents and brother to it...I am glad I don't drink'

LONG before Would I Lie to You?, Not Going Out and The 1% Club, Lee Mack knew he was born for a life making people laugh.

- Marc Baker

“At 15, I said in my head, ‘I want to be a comedian,’ but I didn’t know what that meant,” he says.

“It was always the thing I did with my mates. I would make my mates laugh.”

His family album is also full of laughs — his mum taking her teeth out, his dad with a cigarette up his nose. But there is tragedy behind the laughter.

According to Lee, his brother and his parents, who were publicans, all died through alcohol abuse.

He says: “I’ve grown up with alcohol and I’ve seen all the so-called benefits and all the so-called negatives.

“My brother, like my parents, they died of alcohol abuse. That’s what they really died of.”

Sober since 2016, Lee adds: “It took a while actually. My brother was the last to die of the three and I still drank quite a few years after that.”

Lee stopped drinking after reading hypnotherapist Allen Carr’s Easy Way book... “Not the comedian,” he clarifies.

“I love Alan to bits, the comedian, but I don’t really look at him for my lifestyle choices!

“I just suddenly for the first time saw alcohol for what it was, and decided I just wasn’t interested.”

It was a big move, given the part pub life had played in his childhood on a tough estate in Blackburn, Lancs.