Lee Evans - The Life of Lee

LEE EVANS

The Life of Lee

MICHAEL JOSEPH
an imprint of
PENGUIN BOOKS

Contents

1. In the Beginning

It wasnt the greatest of starts. In fact, things were pretty rocky for me at the beginning. As if arriving on earth with a hole in the heart wasnt enough already, when I was born on 25 February 1964 at the Bristol Royal Infirmary, I was also named Cassius Clay Evans.

Now, thats fine if youre a strapping lad from the Deep South whos destined to grow up to be undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. However, its not so brilliant if youre a scrawny kid from Avonmouth whos fighting for something else altogether his life.

Being an obsessive boxing fan, Dad was keen to mark in his own special way 25 February 1964, the day Clay knocked out the seemingly invincible Sonny Liston to claim the world heavyweight title. So passionate was Dad about boxing, the moment I was born he hot-footed it up the corridor from the waiting room where he had been glued to the TV, demanding that I be named after the new champ.

Luckily, Mum flatly refused, thank goodness. Im not suggesting that Cassius isnt a decent enough name, but even the great man himself changed it to Muhammad Ali a little later.

Fortunately, Dads other passion was rocknroll music, and so I was named Lee after Jerry Lee Lewis, the manic, piano-playing rocker. Looking on the bright side, Im very glad he never listened to Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five, or Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich.

This is the story of how that small, shy, sensitive boy from a run-down council estate near the Avonmouth dockyards of Bristol and a travelling family of performers stumbled quite by accident into the heady world of show business.

Dressed in my best clothes my first proper photo.

Regarded by anyone I came into contact with as hailing from a different planet, I had a simple longing to be accepted. Life for me always felt like an unexpected turn of events that merely conspired to exacerbate my bewildered state of mind. A naturally quiet, enigmatic, gangly, fuzzy-haired, goggle-eyed scruffbag, I just wanted to blend into the background as best I could. Ironically, trying to do so only made me stand out from the crowd.

My dad was a performer who worked the South Wales and West Country club circuit, eventually sharing the bill with some of the most famous and talented performers of his generation. As a child, I led a kind of secret, dual existence, flitting between show business and the real world. In the realm of loud, excessive, sometimes over-dramatic, insecure show people of all shapes, sizes and persuasions, I was always under strict instructions from my parents to be seen but never heard. I became The Invisible Boy.

All the while, stage folk would talk openly in front of me about all sorts of things that children shouldnt normally hear. But, through it all, I was unwittingly soaking up everything I witnessed. A loner, I fostered a clandestine yearning to be noticed, to be a part of all the excitement that was going on around me.

At nineteen, I rushed into marriage and was immediately expected to provide. But faced with never really fitting into the conventional workplace, I was forced under pressure to fall back on what came naturally: show business.

Eventually, when my back was to the wall and all else had failed, I got an act together based on what I had seen as a kid and entered a talent show. To my astonishment, I found very quickly that it felt better out on stage than it did dealing with the harsh realities of bills and rent payments. I stepped on to a magical platform where, miraculously, all my troubles melted away and everything suddenly seemed possible.

Looking back at my adventures now, I have come to feel that, to an extent, I have triumphed over my background. I have hurdled quite a few barriers and undergone an amazing journey. Ive got a beautiful wife and a wonderful daughter. And Ive still got all my own teeth. But the truth is, all I have ever been looking for is peace and acceptance.

Im getting ahead of myself, though. Lets go back to the very start, just after my parents wisely dropped the idea of calling me Cassius Clay.

Even though I now had a more commonplace British name, I was still blighted. Afflicted with that hole in the heart, I was for several years seen as the weakling of the family. I suppose that underlined to me the sense that life was going to be a bit of a struggle and that I would always feel a bit detached from everyone else. My illness only heightened the feeling that, from the very beginning, I was somehow different.

When I was tiny, of course, I didnt know about the illness, having only just taken my first gasps of air. I was too young, only one step up from a sperm really, at the time. I could have died right there on the table and not known much about it, if it hadnt been for the hefty ward nurse at the Bristol Royal Infirmary who promptly scooped me up and, with a face that could crack nuts, sternly informed my mum in a thick, unforgiving West Country accent that she was taking me away to let the doctors have a look because there was something wrong. With that, she swiftly left the room, leaving my mum in stunned silence, exhausted and confused as to what the problem could possibly be and feeling that her baby might not actually return. Eventually, I was returned to Mum, who was allowed to take me home. I still needed lots of monitoring, though.

My dad was the son of a very hard and tough Welsh ex-miner who later became a drill sergeant in the army.

And my granddad Evan John Evans.

Dad complained that Granddad never really gave him any credit for anything. His attitude was, If you get knocked down, you just have to get back up again. Even though Dad joined the army to please his father and signed up for the boxing team, that still didnt cut it with Granddad. I think this informed Dads whole outlook on life. My mum shared his sense of not fitting in. She was the daughter of an Irishman who left her to be adopted in Bristol. Subsequently, she suffered constantly from feelings of abandonment.

So from a very early age, I realized things werent exactly going to be a bed of roses around here and somehow I always knew I was different. That feeling was only heightened by my parents, a couple who always seemed to be at war with the world.

Anyway, after the first few years, my condition slowly improved. But there were still the regular bus journeys every week to Bristol Royal Infirmary, a much-cherished day off school and away from the grey, dull housing estate, as the bus took Mum and me through leafy Fishponds and the excitement of the busy Bristol city centre. As a scrawny five-year-old, I relished the attention from what seemed like angels, the beautiful nurses with their crisp, clean, blue uniforms and tender looks of concern. Then there was the routine examination by the doctor, the cold stethoscope that made me jump every time he placed it on a new part of my chest. Mmmm, mmmm? Mmmmm, Mmmm. I thought, Surely I deserve more than mmmm? Thats a perfectly decent chest, that is.

My height was taken, and my weight. Then, after the examination, the doctor would hand me a lollipop from a jar on his desk, smiling as if giving a chimp a treat. You could tell from his face that he thought we were an unfortunate family. As he told me Id done very well, hed ruffle my hair with his hand. Then youd see him secretly check to see if it was now dirty while he gave some quick words of advice to Mum, never to me after all, I was the one who was ill.