Lee: Ker-ching!

A couple of years ago Ray Parlour got divorced and the courts found that his wife had a claim on his future earnings, I find that immoral. She was given money based on the ‘lifestyle that she was accustomed to’. That’s not how it should be. And it goes both ways. An ex-girlfriend of mine had a few bob and was married to a guy and he turned her over. He had debt when they got married. The debt went in the pot, so she had to pay his debt as part of the deal.

I think this is one of the biggest reasons for people not getting married. Because they know when they get married the burden is on the person with the money - be that the man or the woman. As much as people say they will never take your money, when push comes to shove, down the track they always do.

If a woman decides a guy has a few bob, she can’t just live off what he’s got and then ask for half. In my books, she’s had a good run and should walk away with what she came with. If you gave up a career for children, again, it’s your choice. I think the father is totally responsible for the kids and he should always pay for the kids, whether he is there or not.

There are plenty of women out there who have a career, have had kids and have carried on with their career. So I don’t buy women getting half when they stay at home.  I’ve had a situation with a girl who was getting divorced and she’d been knocked about by the guy and she thought that was justification for her getting money out of him. Really someone should have taken a hammer to him for knocking her around. But she shouldn’t treat him like a cash register, so every time he hits her it’s ‘Kerching’. She should have left the bastard and not just stayed thinking she was going to get more money every time he hit her. Become a boxer if you want that. I found the whole thing bizarre.

Because of the way the law works I could never see myself getting married. I got turned over by an ex-girlfriend who managed to screw me for shitloads of money. It wasn’t even a marriage and I found out about the law the hard way. The law doesn’t care about morals, it just has a set of black and white rules. The way it plays out isn’t healthy for marriage at all. I think it kills the potential. Now I look sideways at every woman I meet – now I know the law.

If a man buys a flat entirely himself and puts their girlfriend on the deeds, then she gets half, even if she didn’t pay a penny. The end. That’s it plain and simple. In that situation I would deal honourably with someone. If I was with a really rich woman and she bought the flat, I would walk away. After all I’ve been living there rent free.  It’s unfair that someone goes into a marriage with nothing, and then comes out with half. Knowing the law, I just think, Marriage, fuck that!

you can see Lee this Saturday at the Fymfyg Bar

Lee: Is it wrong if it's dead?

Many years ago, me and another comedian were both bemoaning the fact that we had both been having a lean spell. He had been having a particularly lean spell – he had three women who had knocked him back in three days, all using the B word. We were doing a gig in Leister Square and crying on each others shoulders. One of our rules was that we would never go out with someone that is in a relationship. That is just not happening.

A couple of weeks later that went out the window. For a single guy, that was an entirely new seam that you didn’t realise was out there. There were loads of women in relationships that are dead, and they are just looking for something else, more so with women. I feel that when women are in relationships, they are looking for something to jump ship to. They need a confidence boost to move on. This happened to me a lot of times, and you think, well this is the role I’m playing, I’m having fun anyway. Occasionally you would find they were looking to jump ship to another relationship, or they just use you as a bridge to jump to another relationship. There was one girl, who was in a really bad long term relationship, it was dead. Rock hard dead. We were having some fun, and then she met another guy and I started to keep my distance, I knew she was looking for a lot more than I was prepared to give. I held her at arms length eventually we drifted apart, she met a guy, she had a child and they are all happy happy. I’m not saying I was responsible for that, but I was involved. Because otherwise she would have been stuck in this other dead, abusive relationship for god knows how long. Because people do that, because people are frightened of being alone. So they won’t leave that relationship until something else is on the table. It gives them the confidence to believe that there is someone else out there.

Is it right or wrong? Well I remember when I was having conversation in a pub when and we were talking about what you would do if you came home and your bird was shagging some other bloke. My mates were saying they would beat him up, do this, do that and it got around to me and I just said ‘I’d just walk away’. All my mates piped up saying ‘but there’s some bloke shagging your girl’. I just said, well it’s over. What’s it going to do? And for him, he didn’t wake up some day and think, ‘I’m going to shag Lee’s Girlfriend’. He’s just met her. Chatted her up, she’s responded. It’s nothing to do with him. It’s all to do with her. What I am going to gain from picking a fight? I should just walk away. I’ve stayed the same since that. When I’ve been the outsider, I haven’t set out to ruin a guys life, it’s already over. If anything its ended it quicker for him than he would have ended it himself. The quicker it’s over, the quicker you move on and maybe find something better.

I don’t feel bad about any of that, because I’ve never set out to hurt anybody. And if someone has shown attraction to me, whether they are in a relationship or not, is irrelevant. We are now attracted to each other and that’s it. Likewise, I wouldn’t cry if it happened to me. If they stray, then the relationship is dead.

You can see Lee Saturday night at the Fym Fyg Bar.

Lee: We Need to Talk

When I’ve been dumped it’s always been pretty clinical, it’s just over. Ultimately at the time, when you are involved it sounds a bit blunt, but it’s the best way. Doesn’t leave any room for error. It’s black and white, bang it’s done. I think myself I’ve probably done it myself that way. I think it depends on the circumstances. I met one girl I met a few years ago and I got a text about meeting up. I wrote back saying, I’m out with my friends, down to my parents tonight, then down the hospital tomorrow to see my Dad. Should be back tomorrow night, failing that definitely around on Tuesday. In other words, we can definitely meet Tuesday, possibly Monday. I just get text straight back from her saying ‘I think we need to talk’.

I never saw her again. ‘We need to talk’, that is never going to be a good thing, that either means you are going to have to back down, or they are going to bin you. ‘We need to talk’ is effectively giving your four weeks notice. Anything else is just sugaring the pill. If anyone thinks it is anything other than that they should stop doing the lottery as well – they’re living in a dream world. 99.9999% certain you are going to get axed. 'We need to talk' and you just think right, I’ll leave it at that then.

There was one occasion where a woman just went off the radar. That is a crap one. It was literally everything was alright, then everything was off. Nothing. Silence.  Just on a purely, shit, what’s going on terms, it’s like, was she alive? Some inkling that you are still present on earth would still suffice. I am the sort of person who thinks, is she OK?

Talking about going off the radar, I met another girl, just got her a drink and was going to the loo. I came out and she was gone. My mate told me she’d gone down to the petrol station to get some fags. Well she never came back. And there was her drink. I thought shit. In the end I took a drive by to the Petrol Station  just to be on the safe side. She wasn’t there. She’d told me where she worked, so on the Monday I phoned her work and they told me ‘No, she’s not in’. This was not making me feel any more secure. I called them the next day again, and they said, no, still not in. So at this point I was really shitting myself, thinking, this is a crimewatch job. Something was said, and the woman said ‘oh, we’ve heard from her’. I went oh, that’s all I needed to know.

As it transpired, she went for a pack of fags and as she was crossing the road she broke her toe on the pavement. She ended up down at Whitechapel Hospital in the A&E and her parents came up to get her. Only me. 

You can see Lee this Saturday at the Fym Fyg Bar in Bethnal Green.