**** Emporium of Mirth, August 2005

So, Stewart Lee is back for the second year in a row. This pleases me, especially as even though he is sometimes seen as the nineties comedian the title of his show suggests, he's lost nothing of his skill, talent, or even hilarity.
Although, watching this years show you do start to wonder if he may have started to lose the plot. he has had a hard year, what with the hate campaign and death threats over his alleged plasphemous ways and everything, and instead of calming his act down, he's gone the other way so that he now goes so far, you really start to worry that you shouldnt' be watching at all, that you've accidentally stumbled in on his mid-life crisis or a nevous breakdown, albeit an expertly written and performed one.
His show this year is in the White Belly, one of the Underbelly's larger, and therfore darker caves and this all adds to the feeling that maybe you shouldn't be there, and at one point, Lee retreats into the darkness which only adds to the feeling of tresspass.
Yes, it's funny, but the material and the dankness of the room makes you feel like you need to have a bath and watch something really, really silly afterwards.