lee mack family© Photo: Getty Images

Lee Mack's bittersweet comment about 'late' fatherhood with wife Tara

The 8 Out of 10 Cats star shares children Millie, Louie and Arlo with wife Tara McKillop

Lifestyle Managing Editor
1 day ago

Lee Mack has been on our screen for the best part of three decades. But away from his primetime comedy shows including 8 Out of 10 Cats and the long-running sitcom Not Going Out, the comedian is a devoted dad to his three children.

Lee, 59, shares kids Millie, Louie and Arlo with his wife Tara McKillop, and describes fatherhood as a wonderful experience. His only regret? Not having taken the plunge sooner.

Lee Mack and his wife Tara attend the British Comedy Awards at Fountain Studios in Wembley, north London.© Alamy
Lee Mack shares three children with his wife Tara McKillop

"I waited fairly late to have kids. I am 46 and my eldest is 10. Nowadays, 36 isn’t massively late but I would probably have kids earlier because it has been so great," he told The Big Issue in a past interview. "I now have a three-year-old – and I have more time but less energy."

Lee and Tara tied the knot in 2005, a decade after they met while studying at Brunel University.

Lee also confessed that his attitude towards politics and life in general has evolved as his children have grown up.

© Getty
The comedian's children Millie, Louie and Arlo tend to stay out of the spotlight, but made a rare red carpet appearance with his dad in 2023

He told the publication: "As you get older with kids you get more political without realising it. The oldest cliché in the world is that as you get older you get more right-wing. I find that odd because as you get older, you worry about your kids and you want them to be in a fairer, nicer, safer world.

"If you can make the world fairer, your children will be more safe. And you associate more caring politics with a left-of-centre stance."

Lee Mack's children Arlo, Louie and Millie

© Getty
Lee and Tara tied the knot in 2005, a decade after meeting at university

Arlo, the couple's first child, was born a year before Lee and Tara's wedding. The teen leads a private life but has appeared on a Christmas special of his dad's long-running show, starring as a 'Victorian Boy' in the 2013 episode titled The House.

His brother Louie was welcomed into the world about a year after the couple’s wedding, but little is known about the youngster. 

The couple's youngest child, daughter Millie, guest starred alongside her dad as a character named Elsie in a 2022 episode of Not Going Out.

© Piers Allardyce/Shutterstock
Two of the kids (pictured in 2015) have had guest appearances in Not Going Out

Would I Lie To You star Lee and his family lead a private life in East Molesey, Surrey. While Lee doesn't offer glimpses into his home on social media, he has revealed he is a homebird at heart and finds a sense of normalcy in his "grounded" home life.

Speaking to The Guardian, he previously said: "Family is everything to me. I'm quite a homey person. I live near Hampton Court - being a northerner I think of everything within the M25 as London, but then I went to vote in the London mayoral election and found I wasn't allowed.

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"The job is an escape from reality: you get treated phenomenally well and get paid well, and I can see why people who haven't got a grounded home life go a bit mental."

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