The broadcaster and comedian has been delighting and outraging audiences for almost 30 years. Off-air, his life has lurched from crisis to crisis. Has he finally found peace?
It’s nearly three decades since Iain Lee roamed the streets for Channel 4’s 11 O’Clock Show, armed with clipboard and microphone, a string of filthy questions tucked up his oversized suit sleeve. He’s 52 now, and presumably he’s matured since he memorably interviewed the singer Cleo Laine about her husband’s masturbatory habits. But maybe not, because this summer Lee hit the streets again, where among other things, he mimed giving a blowjob to a 76-year-old who said he’d never been attracted to a man. A lot of the content on the original show was homophobic, Lee says, but he came out as bisexual in 2019, and maybe he now goes where his younger self didn’t dare.
Next month Lee returns with Impostor Syndrome – his first solo live gig in 10 years. The show is billed as a commemoration of three decades in showbusiness, but it’s also a self-experiment. Actually, he clarifies, he’s “recovering from impostor syndrome”. It’s an important theme for Lee, who is a recovering drug, sex and alcohol addict, nearly five years sober. It’s fair to say he has had a chequered career – for years, it seemed as if Jimmy Carr got everything Lee went for – and an eventful personal life, much of which has played out on air.
