I liked the first half of the book more than I liked the second half- that is, the part were he recounts of his time before he found fame. This book is laugh out loud funny in places and is also truthful about the comedian’s early failures. Finally, each chapter ends with a transcription of meetings he had with a psychologist who read an earlier draft of the book.

I think it’s important to read stories like Lee’s because not everyone has the divine providence to know what they want to do for a living all along or to assume it’s attainable, or even to know it’s a long shot and do it anyway. Lee's work is often concerned with the materiality of printing technique, and for twenty years she has utilised a liquid photo-sensitive emulsion brushed on handmade rice paper, a method akin to painting. Lee Mack is honest and open and even if you don't want to be a comedian, it is certainly an enjoyable and worth while read! There are things in "Mack the life" that I didn't know about comedy in general albeit the book is a biographical account of how he got into comedy rather than the usual dissection of early years and family. He thought and continues to mention throughout the book that he wrongly thought comedy was for special people.

Autumn 2006 saw the successful launch of Lee's own sitcom Not Going Out on BBC 1 with the first series winning both the Break-Through Award at the RTS Awards and the Gold Rose D'or award for Best Sitcom. Being so used to seeing the man on TV it was impossible to read the book without hearing Lee's voice in my head - the whole way through. Lee Gordon McKillop (born 4 August 1968) is an English stand-up comedian and actor, known by the stage name Lee Mack.

He went to Birkdale Primary Junior School (Bury Road), Stanley High School in Southport, and Everton High School in Blackburn.While on the show, Mack found that his great-grandfather was a jobbing comic named William Alexander McKillop, who used the stage name Billy Mac. He travelled by train to Barcelona, and went around the world for Children in Need in 2009 with other celebrities; however, he and Frank Skinner did not fly to Turkey.

From 2014 to 2017, Mack presented Duck Quacks Don't Echo, a comedy-based panel show for Sky1, with various celebrity guests.Recently, Lee Mack helped raise even more money for Soccer Aid for Unicef, thanks to a dare from Chris Moyles. which I love, and in Not Going Out, which is his sitcom, but I didn’t really know what to expect going into this book. Obviously these aren’t serious passages but I think that they broke the bulk of the text up nicely and gave a break from the first person narration.

But it was at the camp in Hemsby, Great Yarmouth, where he got to perform a stand-up routine for the first time… and a star was born. Even Lee Mack says he only does one half of a standup show (meaning no intermission) because that’s more than enough to ask of people to sit through listening to one person. Growing up in his parents’ pub, small and wiry in a world of bigger and chunkier specimens, Lee quickly learned that cracking jokes was a way to get attention.

It’s a cleverly written and very funny autobiography anyway, but a real joy having Lee’s lovely voice tell the story. If you are a fan of Lee Mack you will enjoy this book - telling the story of his life with honesty and humour up to the point when he became a regular face on our TV screens. At first, he described the podcast as a "side-splittingly funny and really relatable take on a fascinating subject matter" that he thought would make for a great book. But, a bit like the warning not to meet your idols, this book revealed (as we, of course know but perhaps don't want to admit to ourselves) that people in the public eye are not one dimensional and that comedy isn't a natural characteristic--though Lee Mack is extraordinarily funny even in unscripted occasions like WILTY; it takes a lot of hard work, as he keeps reminding us. He goes on to talk about casting and how he preferred working with comedians who could act rather than actors who could deliver a joke.