Iain Lee: Almost famous

After 'The 11 O'Clock Show', Iain Lee thought he'd be TV royalty. A decade later, as he finally makes it back to primetime, he tells Nick Duerden how it all went wrong

Iain Lee, the nearly man of British comedy, has spent the vast majority of his 10 years on television progressing backwards. This is not something he is particularly proud of, he says, it's just the way things have turned out. As he charts his downward trajectory, the 31-year-old avoids all eye contact, instead drawing concentric circles on the table in front of him with an outstretched finger. He may well be spelling out the word ANXIETY.

Iain Lee, the nearly man of British comedy, has spent the vast majority of his 10 years on television progressing backwards. This is not something he is particularly proud of, he says, it's just the way things have turned out. As he charts his downward trajectory, the 31-year-old avoids all eye contact, instead drawing concentric circles on the table in front of him with an outstretched finger. He may well be spelling out the word ANXIETY.

"I start off presenting what turns out to be the most talked-about show of my career when I'm - what? - 22, 23, convinced it's the beginning of great things, but then it's all steadily downhill from there. I lose jobs, I get fired, I do terrible satellite TV, and then I can't even get arrested." He coughs up another low laugh. "I seem to have fallen out of favour with Channel 4 of late, and Jimmy Carr is getting all the offers I would have got a couple of years ago. It's almost funny, isn't it?"

His pronounced ability to irritate aside, it is difficult not to pity the poor man. There is a school of thought that suggests that Iain Lee is actually one of our brighter TV stars. Tall, gaunt and, shall we say, "distinctive-looking", he is a little bit Chris Evans, a little bit Jonathan Ross: witty, razor sharp and possessed of a Tourette-like compulsion to be cheeky, rude and downright obnoxious at any given opportunity. Perhaps consequently, then, the people who hate him - and these include critics, celebrities, occasionally even co-hosts - hate him with a passion.

"I seem to prompt extreme reactions, it's true," he agrees, "but I do have to say I'm rather misunderstood. I've created a persona, a TV character, much like Ricky Gervais has, but with me people don't seem to think it's acting. They think I'm an arrogant tit in real life when the thing is, I'm not. Away from the camera, I'm completely different."

He tells me, with a little V of intensity between his eyebrows, that he is rather shy, and finds talking to me incredibly daunting. "It's not that you're intimidating or anything but, well, I do feel intimidated nevertheless."

The trouble with Lee, and his perennial smirk, is that you never know whether to take him seriously. Despite protestations that a one-on-one conversation makes him squirm, he talks with extreme ease and a voluble confidence, and is hugely engaging. Presumably, then, this is all part of his schtick, to make people like him, to make people relate.

"No, not at all. Honestly," he insists. "I think the root of my problem is that I don't actually like people." What, all of them? "Pretty much, yes. They're hard work, don't you think? But then, perhaps I'm biased. TV hasn't done me very many favours in that respect. I've lost count of the number of times people have come up to me in the street to punch me or simply call me obscene names. It does nothing for the self-confidence, let me tell you."

Nine years ago, a youthful Iain Lee - all cheekbones and too many teeth - was the annoying face of Channel 4's The 11 O'Clock Show, an irreverent programme with chat, topical events and stand-up comedy. It was sometimes funny, always offensive and often quite dreadful. But it did prove to be a very fertile ground for fresh new talent.

"Someone once said that I am the most successful person to come from The 11 O'Clock show after Ricky Gervais, Daisy Donovan, Ali G, Mackenzie Crook and the tea lady," he says grimly. "And I guess that's true."

He refuses, however, to be bitter. "I'm not bitter, no, but I am confused. Why did they go on to get all the glory and I didn't? I reckon that I've been saddled with the blame for everything that was bad about it simply because I was the host. If you think back, everyone hated Ricky [Gervais] on the show. But nobody seems to remember that."

But that's because Gervais went on to do something spectacular, I tell him. And he ... well, he didn't.

"OK, true, but still, I deserve better, don't I?" He barks with sudden laughter, eyes tight shut, head thrown back. "Tell me, do you think I'm protesting too much?"

Lee, it transpires, was the architect of his own downfall, because in 1999 he walked out of the fifth series just five days before transmission. "It was a terrible thing to do, and very unfair," he concedes, "but Channel 4 had drastically cut the budget, and I felt that the show's humour had gone completely. I simply couldn't do it. Walking away closed a lot of doors for me, and was a very expensive decision - I would have made £90,000 - but it was, I feel, the right thing to do."

And so while his peers went on to further success, Lee became a real-life Alan Partridge, landing an execrable late-night game show called Thumb Bandits. And when Thumb Bandits was axed, the only other TV offer came from satellite channel UK Play, on another game show, this one with its own exclamation mark: Mental! He groans at its very name. "I only did it because I was convinced I'd never get to do TV again. It was a terrible, terrible show. Just wretched. That was the end of my career, as far as I was concerned."

It wasn't until 2003 that a rescue package was finally thrown his way when, having grudgingly forgiven his past misdemeanours, Channel 4 brought him in to save their beleaguered breakfast show, RI:SE. For 12 months, Lee lived out his dream as a non-ginger Chris Evans, wreaking zany havoc on live TV for two hours each day, his comedy routine interrupted only by the pop stars he had to interview (and summarily offend), and the Pop Idol contestants he felt compelled to flirt with. Later that same year, he was offered a DJ slot on radio station XFM, but was sacked within a week when, while discussing the recently released film The Passion of the Christ, he called into question the existence of God, and mocked believers. But Lee didn't care. His self-confidence was being fuelled each day on live television, his employers telling him that he was brilliant, a broadcasting genius. The side effects were ugly. "I was becoming an arsehole, basically," he says, "turning into my worst nightmare: my TV persona."

But that didn't last, not because Lee valiantly pulled himself back from the edge of self-obsession, but because Channel 4 pulled the plug on RI:SE due to flagging viewer figures. He was back to square one.

"After such a busy and fruitful 2003, I had an absolutely terrible 2004. No offers, nothing. I just sat on the couch at home, annoying my girlfriend [Lee has been in a relationship for seven years, a subject he'd rather keep private], and stressing very much indeed. I didn't become an alcoholic, but I was drinking a lot, mostly because I had a lot to stress about. In my mind, I was supposed to be a fixture of TV, and yet here I was, virtually unemployable. This wasn't the way it was supposed to be."

Iain Lee is of vaguely Scottish descent, hence the extra "i" of his Christian name. That said, he is very much Slough born and bred. His father worked in the props department at the BBC, while his mother was a secretary until she developed MS, which forced her, somewhat abruptly, into retirement. The couple divorced early in their son's life, prompting in him a craving for attention. At school, he studied performing arts, but when any natural acting talent was becoming increasingly conspicuous by its absence, he turned instead to comedy. But his comedy routines were also lacking, and so he considered quitting his very nominal showbiz life when the offer came to host The 11 O'Clock Show. Here, at last, Lee was able to indulge, as he so succinctly puts it, "my twatness". A year into the job, he received his first death threat.

"Oh God, the whole stalker thing," he says, with a visible shudder. "That was terrible, just horrible. What happened was, I referred to [former EastEnders actress] Daniella Westbrook as a coked-up slut on TV. Yes, it was pretty harsh, I suppose, but that was kind of the point of the whole show. Anyway, I then started getting threats from somebody connected to her, I think."

Under police advice, he was instructed to move out of the flat he shared with his friend Mackenzie Crook, and into a hotel while the situation was investigated.

"It went on for quite a while, actually, and it made me and everybody around me quite ill, but it ended quite amusingly, almost by accident. My stalker called me up one night, very pissed, and forgot to block his phone number. I called him back asking if he was the bloke that had been threatening to kill me, and that was it, basically. I passed his number on to the police, he was fined, and it all went away, thank God."

If the episode had taught him anything, he says, it was to watch his mouth. Were he a better man, he would have heeded such advice.

"I don't know what it is, but as soon as you turn a camera on me, a mist descends and I feel a compulsion to see how far I can push things." He laughs like a mischievous six-year-old. "Granted, it probably hasn't done me many favours, but what can I do? This is who I am."

After the worst year of his life, Iain Lee says he is coming into 2005 with renewed vigour. He recently turned down invitations to appear on both I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! and Celebrity Big Brother because, "while I'm desperate, I'm not that desperate - yet". Instead, he is about to be rescued by Bob Mortimer ("a huge fan of mine, believe it or not," he beams) on an ITV comedy show called Monkey Trousers, and is writing the pilot of a sitcom for Channel 5 with Mackenzie Crook about the life of rock'n'roll roadies. He has plans to take a stand-up show to the Edinburgh Festival later in the year, and has just been employed by London radio station LBC, hosting a late-night phone-in show which he says he loves as he gets to speak to "right-wing religious fascists and horny housewives".

But still, his childhood ambition has yet to be fully realised. Iain Lee is keen - no, he is "desperate" - to front his own late-night Channel 4 talk show. He likes to think he could be quite brilliant at it.

"There are lots of talented people out there," he says dismissively, "and Jimmy Carr is, I suppose, one of them, and Jonathan Ross is another. They are great people, and they are brilliant at what they do. But the thing is," and here, he slips back into the TV persona that is always close at hand, flashing a reptilian smile, "I'm better than they are. I really am. Trust me on this one."

'Monkey Trousers' is scheduled for broadcast on ITV1 next month