Lee Evans: I’m retiring from comedy

Lee Evans has announced that he is quitting comedy after his tour ends later this month.

Speaking to Jonathan Ross on his ITV chatshow, to be broadcast on Saturday, Evans said that he is retiring from comedy when his current Monsters tour ends so that he can spend more time with his wife Heather and daughter Molly.

Ross asked him: “You are a remarkable force of comedy. Are you feeling it in your body? How long will you carry on?”

Evans replied: “I am 50. I am frigging knackered. This is it. Finished. This is the end. I am not doing anything.”

Evans, who is one of the UK’s biggest selling stand-ups, said the sudden death of his manager, Off The Kerb founder Addison Creswell, last year was one of the reasons behind him quitting.

He said: “My manager died last year. All I have ever done is work and Addison always used to put his arm around me and say, ‘Don’t worry, I will look after you. It is OK’.

“My dad always said to me, ‘You have got to work’ so I constantly worked and did comedy tours. And I think I have ignored for far too long my missus. And I want to spend a lot more time with her. I am going to go and see my wife, be home and say “I’m yours”.

“I know what will happen. In a week it will be ‘Get out. You are getting on my nerves’. But I am deadly serious. I have said to her “I am really sorry. I am always away”.

“Every single week I have been doing plays. I have had to say to my little Mo (daughter Mollie) “I can’t go to the school play as I have got to do this work.”

“But now I can be with little Mo and do the things that we never did when we were kids.”

Lee Evans has been a stand-up for over two decades. He rose to fame during the 1990s with his trademark, high-octane comedy before going on to play some of the biggest arenas in the UK.

In November 2005, Evans broke the world record for a solo act performing to the biggest comedy audience, performing to 10,108 people at the Manchester Arena.

In 2008, his Big show became the highest selling Christmas DVD in the UK, selling over 1m copies.

The comedian’s 2011 Roadrunner tour grossed a record-breaking £12.9million. In the same year he was honoured by the British Comedy Awards with the Channel 4 award for special contribution to comedy.

Evans has also had a hugely successful acting career, appearing in the likes of Doctor Who, Mouse Hunt, There’s Something About Mary and The Fifth Element.

His Monsters tour comes to an end on 30 November.