FEATURE: Sit-Down-Stand-Up with Steve Lee

It is 6.30am, Steve Lee is in Northern Thailand, dressed in a sarong about to try to peel 150 hard-boiled eggs.

Even by his somewhat esoteric theatrical lifestyle this has to be regarded as bizarre. The easy eggs take under thirty seconds, the difficult ones can take two minutes, after an hour he has done twenty-five.

‘Why?’ would be a perfectly reasonable question to apply to the above.

Steve says: “Let’s start with the sarong. It is moderately but not excessively hot. I do not like shorts, yes perhaps on ball boys at Wimbledon but not on me. I think, well I think they are common on men of a certain age. Don’t get me wrong, I have excellent legs, hairless, smooth, no flab or sag and anyone who saw me below the waist, and they are few and far between these days, would say they were the legs of a thirty year old, and I am twice that and change.

“So yesterday on an excursion to a neighbouring town for lunch alongside the Mekong river with a view of another country Laos three hundred yards away, swimmable, if one could swim, I was offered a sarong for two pounds fifty. Why not? I love it. Perhaps I’ve always been a closet cross dresser and it’s the skirt I’ve always needed?

“So the eggs? I am staying with the family of an ex with whom I am still great friends. I have just lost my soul mate and ‘brother’ of 46 years who died suddenly and unexpectedly and I am out of the country to avoid looking at an empty chair. The family sell street food in a market and the hard-boiled eggs are then reboiled with some foul brine to make them completely inedible, however it seems that when I peel them they sell out but when anyone else peels them they can’t give them away.

“I believe this to be a sop to me to ensure that I am up at 6.30 a.m. peeling the bloody things! I do insist on a large brandy per hour – I am meant to be on vacation for Chrissake, and with England seven hours behind us the sun is most definitely over the yardarm.

“I am still not sure how one copes with the death of someone you have lived and worked with for 46 years. Peter and I were a double act and what is Wise without Morecambe? It’s going to take a great deal of adjustment and as one of my correspondents said: “the grief never goes, you just make an accommodation with it”.

“For myself, after nearly half a century in show business, and you’ve never heard of me, I am going to launch myself on the Brighton Fringe as a sit-down stand-up – at my age I can’t be too energetic!”