FROM THE STAGE, August 2005

There is no doubting the writing or performance skills of Stewart Lee. He is a top class stand-up as well as the brains behind Jerry Springer - The Opera.

This show, however, left you feeling disturbed and nauseous, with a sense that something was awry in Lee’s life. In nine years at the Fringe, I have never seen a show as gratuitously offensive and profane.

Lee, who rightly had a blasphemy charge thrown out in court early this year for the Jerry Springer production, was like a delinquent teenager who had got off for shoplifting and decided to try his hand at armed robbery.

The result - three people walked out of this show, which contained a passage about being sick into an intimate part of Christ’s anatomy. Many others listened in stunned silence. Lee’s intellectual mind revelled in their discomfort, dissecting the bond of trust between audience and performer he had just severed.

If Lee had delivered an anti-Jewish or anti-Islamic show, rather than an anti-Christian one, he would have had a hell of a ride. Even so, he emerged, in my view, looking like a bigot - surely not his intention.