Lee Evans Photographed by Steffan Hill

This was one of my first ever jobs for the Daily Telegraph, way back in 1996. I had been to see Lee Evans along side Jack Dee when I was a student for the princely sum of £1.00 in our S.U. bar. It was one of the funniest nights I have ever experienced, and was really excited to photograph him 4 years later.

The shoot was at his agents offices in Soho, it took an age to find as it was hidden away on a really quiet back street. I had a quick scout around and decided to set up in the stairway as everywhere else was really grim. I was given a whole 20 mins with him, which is great as even just a few minutes longer allows you to get much more variety. He was brilliant, what a nice guy, he's much more famous now of course, and I really hope he's remained as nice as he was back then.

It was a whirlwind photographing him as he just came up with all these great poses, running around just like he does on stage. It was almost difficult to get him to stop and calm down, before he would say 'hey lets do this'...

In those days before digital everything for the Telegraph was shot on colour neg film, to give them a choice whether to use it in black and white or colour. My favourite shot I think is the one of him looking to towards the light, which is actually positioned at the top of the stairs, he's at the bottom. Using a honeycomb I managed to get a lovely pool of light on him and the wall.

I had one almost disastrous occurrence, as my time was nearly up with him, and I was rushing around almost as much as him, I didn't notice getting the sync lead wrapped around my legs and I pulled over the flash head which sailed pass both of us, narrowly missing his head and crashed to the bottom of the stairs. Fair play to Lee, he tried to stop the falling light with his leg and rushed down to pick it up for me. I nearly had a heart attack, thinking Christ, I've nearly knocked him out and now he's going to get electrocuted by my alarmingly fizzling flash head! Considering he was about to go on the West End for his first major season, I dread to think what would of happened if I had injured him. Anyway, glad to say I've never had as near a miss as that since, and Lee carried onward and upwards on his amazing career. I've managed to route out some old contacts and scan them so you can have a look at the progress of the shoot.