A Norman Wisdom lookalike and genius of slapstick comedy, performer and screenwriter Lee Evans has an estimated a net worth of £5 million.
Lee M.J. Evans was born in Avonmouth, Bristol on February 25, 1964 to an Irish mother, Shirley Hunt, and a Welsh father, Dave Evans. His father performed in nightclubs and his job forced the family to travel extensively.
Named after rock ‘n’ roll singer Jerry Lee Lewis, the introverted Evans studied in dozens of schools and was subjected to a bellyful of bullying.
How did shy Evans become a millionaire comedian? Read more.
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By the age of 9, Evans was analysing jokes and, as a teen, pounding the percussion for The Forgotten Five, a punk rock band. He quit Thurrock Art College, Essex, to enter the entertainment business.
His humour balanced twenty first century stand-up comedy with old school slapstick, with many likening the wisecracker to Sir Norman Wisdom.
His reputation soared during the 1990s with sweat-drenched, rip-roaring stage stand-ups. At the Edinburgh Festival in 1993, Evans had his first major breakthrough when he won the Perrier Comedy Award.
Granada Productions brought BAFTA nominated The World of Lee Evans to TV via Channel 4 in 1995. This show had the distinction of being among the first to adopt the endboard cap under the Granada banner.
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Evans booked an eight-week sell-out show in 1996 at Lyric Theatre, London, with his solo stand-up also breaking box office records at Stoll Moss Theatre. He toured the UK with Same World, Different Planet before resurfacing in London with another successful show, Lee Evans Live – Different Planet Tour, which ran at the Apollo Theatre for two weeks. He revisited Apollo Theatre for a ten-week sell-out run in 1998. October 2002 saw Evans become the first solo comic to perform for a 20,000 crowd for two nights at a sold-out Wembley Stadium.
The comedy icon co-wrote and acted in the BBC sitcom So What Now? in 2001 and was the first to introduce the idea of stand-up arena performances in 2002. His arena tour of 2005 was the harbinger for equating comedians with rock musicians in terms of pay cheques. In November 2005, he broke the world record for ‘performing in front of the largest audience’, tickling 10,108 people at the Manchester Evening News Arena.
The DVD of his 59 date Big tour of Britain in 2008 became a Christmas comedy bestseller, with fans buying over 1,000,000 copies.
For just one day of his tour, in October 2010, 200,000 tickets worth £7 million were sold. He amassed a reported £10.9 million in 2011 alone.
Evans took on another record-breaking 67 date UK tour in 2011 with Roadrunner, selling 911,000 DVDs and 733,000 tickets and earning £12.9 million, according to The Sunday Times. Channel 4 honoured him with the Special Contribution to Comedy Award at the British Comedy Awards in the same year.
He met Heather Nudds when he was 17, and they married in 1984. The couple have one daughter, Mollie Joan Evans. They still live in their decades-old two-bedroom house in Billericay, Essex. Evans own production company, Little Mo Films, named after his daughter, produces his comedy DVDs. Evans also holds the distinction of being the first comedian to bring out a comedy DVD in 3D.
Evan’s headway in Hollywood has also been with significant, with starring roles in films such as There’s Something About Mary, MouseHunt, Funny Bones, The Medallion, The Fifth Element and Freeze Frame. Evans also lent his voice to the animated movies Dinotopia and The Magic Roundabout.
Also a TV and theatre actor, the physical comedian has performed in acclaimed plays such as Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, The Producers and The Dumb Waiter, and appeared in the Easter special of Doctor Who, Planet of the Dead, in 2009.
His autobiography, The Life of Lee, recounts his rollercoaster life surviving a childhood of poverty, a hole in the heart (that later healed by itself), bullying at school, and eventually finding love, home in the form of the stage and ultimately having ‘the last laugh’.
Evans also composes the music for his shows. He can play the drums, guitar, ukulele, piano, keyboards and mandolin. A dedicated philanthropist, he also supports a host of children’s charities.
