COMIC’S RANT AT TV ‘BULLY’
31st August 2009
By Nigel Pauley

POSH comic Stewart Lee stunned fans by confessing: “I wish Richard Hammond was dead.”

Lee, who went to the same school as “The Hamster”, claimed the Top Gear star should have been “decapitated” in his crash three years ago.

And the 41-year-old comedian, star of BBC2 show Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, said Hammond, 39, deserved to die as he and his Top Gear pals were “bullies”.

He made his “sick joke” during a 20-minute on-stage verbal attack on the pint-sized TV star.
Lee, who was two years ahead of Hammond at the £9,400-a-year Solihull School, shocked his live audience with his bizarre comments.
Hammond suffered brain injuries in the smash. His jet-propelled Vampire dragster flipped and crashed at about 280mph during a land speed record attempt at a Yorkshire airfield.
He defied the odds to make a speedy recovery and attracted record ratings of almost 10million fans for his return to the BBC show.

But Lee had no sympathy for Hammond as he took to the stage during his show If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One, at the Edinburgh Festival.
During his rant, he said: “I wish he had died in that crash and that he had been decapitated and that his head had rolled off in front of his wife and that a jagged piece of metal debris from the car had got stuck in his eye and blinded him. And then his head had rolled on a few more yards into a pool of boiling oil and retained just enough neural capacity for him to be able to think ‘ooh, this is bit hot’ before the whole thing exploded into tiny pieces.”
Later, he told the packed crowd: “Of course it’s a joke, but coincidentally, it’s what I believe.”

Oxford graduate Lee has often blasted Top Gear during his BBC2 show.
He says Hammond and his colleagues Jeremy Clarkson, 49, and James May, 46, are “bullies”.
One member of the Festival audience said: “He certainly didn’t pull any punches.” Another added: “They must have some form of history.”

Hammond did not wish to comment last night but privately he believed the comments were unnecessary and in “bad taste”.
Lee, who co-wrote the controversial musical Jerry Springer: The Opera, said last night: “I don’t want to talk about it.

“They do jokes on Top Gear don’t they? Treat it as a joke.”

Clarkson has Top Gear chiefs pack the front of the studio crowd with pretty babes and hide all the ugly blokes, he told a session at the Edinburgh TV Festival.
nigel.pauley@dailystar.co.uk
Daily Star