A sell-out tour with extra dates being added all year and two TV shows, Lee Mack seems to be doing anything but not going out of his way to find success. Viv Hardwick reports on Mack’s big year.

HE’S most famous for TV’s Not Going Out, but 40-year-old comedian Lee Mack is out and about so much at the moment that he’s had to extend a 107-date UK tour until November… and all but a handful are sold out. It would have been a lot easier, and more profitable, for the comic born Lee Gordon McKillop to have joined the current cult of arena tours, but he confesses that appearing in front of 12,000 people at a time gets in the way of his live connection with his audience.

Instead, Mack’s opted for Newcastle City Hall on November 6-7 to add to sold out dates at York Opera House on February 21 and Newcastle Theatre Royal – which hasn’t even bothered to mention its February 16 and 28 bookings in the current brochure because the seats sold out so quickly.

Mack says: “Arenas are the latest vogue. I could have done a night at the O2 in London, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’m not being big-headed, but for my act I can’t be talking to an audience of 12,000 people. There’s no intimacy.

“I don’t think it’s good to have people watching you on a giant TV screen when they’ve paid to see you live.

They’ve come to a live and they want to experience that. I was on the bill at the Christmas show at the NEC in Birmingham, which holds 12,000 people. It was great for 15 minutes, but I couldn’t chat to the audience. You can’t ask someone in the front row ‘what do you do for a living?’ and then shout out to everyone ‘he’s a butcher’.

For me, it’s just the wrong vibe for comedy.

“The bigger the venue gets, the more you get away from what’s intrinsically best about comedy. If you can do one night at a 12,000-seater, why not do four nights at a 3,000- seater? It’s still pretty well paid.”

Not bad for a Blackburn-born entertainer who was allegedly fired from his first full-time job as a Pontin’s Bluecoat after having too much to drink one night.

Asked about the growing power of the comedy circuit during a recession, Mack looks at the surge in ticket sales and says: “People say that in a time of recession, people want to laugh more – hence the recent explosion of comedy. There’s a lot of truth in that. If everyone is depressed, they just want to forget about their problems and lose themselves in escapist comedy. Perhaps that’s one reason why tickets for my live show are selling really well at the moment.” His starting point was Bobby Ball impersonations and even now Mack’s aware of the grassroots nature of his appeal.

“The best comedy you can ever have is when you’re in the pub with your mates. You can never beat that. That’s what I try to recreate in stand-up.

“I never have fixed subjects that I discuss on stage. I never go on with any particular subjects in mind. If I spend ten minutes talking about my wife, it’s because I have ten loosely connected, wife-related jokes. It’s very flexible. If I’ve got a joke about size ten shoes, I’ll make sure that for the sake of the act my wife wears them. My show is not about anything. It’s not meant to be thoughtprovoking.

It’s just meant to be a laugh.”

Marriage to Tara and life with two youngsters clearly hasn’t persuaded Mack to follow fashion trends. He believes in timeless humour.

“I’ve never been able to keep my finger on the pulse of fashion. Unfortunately, comedy is increasingly becoming more like pop. It’s all about brands and competition, regardless of whether or not it’s good for comedy. It’s about who can sell the most arena dates. Being at Number One is more important than whether the song is any good.

“But if you enter the world of pop culture, then your life-span as a comedian will be determined by the media and fashion-makers. Most of the comedians of yesteryear were uncool and fat and ugly and didn’t appeal to kids.

They were the opposite of rock‘n’roll, but they were really funny and they were around forever. If kids like you because their mum and dad don’t, common sense dictates that the next generation won’t like you.”

Fan pressure on the BBC means that Mack is also continuing to co-write what will be the fourth series of award-winning Not Going Out. The show developed from an Edinburgh Festival piece in 1998 featuring a then unknown Catherine Tate and Dan Antopolski Mack’s downbeat humour works perfectly in this sitcom about a pair of mismatched mates with Mack playing himself alongside Tim (Tim Vine).

He says: “I was delighted that those people had enough sway to bring it back. It’s a traditional, studio-based sitcom, and once again we’re battling against fashion. It’s really difficult to write. The point is to get a laugh every 15 seconds, and that’s very hard to do.

“But it seems to work and strike a chord with people. Viewers really warm to the characters. It’s a show about people. We haven’t invented characters and then auditioned actors for them. I take funny people and write stuff around them. That’s why Tim and I have our own names in the show.

We play funny characters, and hopefully people like them.”

Despite audience ratings dropping below 3m, Mack’s other BBC1 comedy vehicle, the panel game Would I Lie to You? is also coming back for a fourth series.

Mack comments: “In the old days, TV showed a lot of panel games that people could play at home, like Give Us a Clue and What’s My Line? This is similar. People really enjoy playing along at home.”

■ Lee Mack is appearing at Newcastle City Hall, November 6-7. Box Office: 0191-261-2606.

For the full tour list go to: leemacklive.com