Daily Record article
The following appeared in the Scottish Daily Record, 23rd December 2009:
Lee Mack: Legendary funnyman Bobby Ball is my comedy father
Lee’s dad ate his goldfish, walked out on his son when he was just four and refused to pay any maintenance.
So when he turns up at Lee’s door unexpectedly, he doesn’t exactly get a warm welcome.
Fortunately, this is not real life, this is Lee Mack’s Christmas special for his BBC1 sitcom Not Going Out – and veteran comic Bobby Ball plays Lee’s dad.
In some ways, though, Bobby is Lee’s real-life comedy father.
Lee says: “The first thing I can remember as a sort of performance was doing Bobby Ball impressions in the playground at school.
“He was as big as you could get at the time. The Cannon and Ball Show was getting 20million viewers. Then cut to almost 30 years later and he’s playing my dad in a sitcom.
“He’s not a million miles away from what my dad was like. He’s from that part of the world and my dad, at one point, had a perm and a moustache. My dad was a lot taller but he had a similar way of being. It’s quite surreal for me.”