From http://designermagazine.tripod.com/LeeAndHerringINT1.html

After what can only be described as "a farce" on the BBC's part in terms of scheduling Stewart Lee has moved into other areas. His debut novel "The Perfect Fool" hit the shops this week and tells the story of 7 mad individuals in search of the Holy Grail and he also writes for the Sunday Times music column. We caught up to relive the best moments of "Fist Of Fun" and Attention Scum" and find out about this new book of his.

Q: "The Perfect Fool" hits the shops this week. For the readers out there could you explain the basic plot?
A: Its about 2 blokes that are in a Dire Straits cover band that then want to go and find their 60s rock hero in America and form a band with them. And there's a woman who's had a bit of a dodgy past who's on the run being accused of being a serial killer. A man who's lost his memory but thought that he might have once been an Astronought involved in hiding the Holy Grail in space - And these guys meet up and have an adventure.

Q: Its must have been a pretty big change from doing the stand-up or sketch based shows though?
A: Well yeah and no. The weird thing is, it sort of came at a good time really. The stand up I do has been getting longer and longer and more and more complicated - to the point where I find it really hard to do 20 minute sets now - because it takes me about 15 minutes to get to establish the premise of what I'm talking about. And actually a lot of ideas that I've wanted to do live were loads better for the novel anyway.
I think I got to the point where instead of doing stand-up and complaining about how we have to do it in noisy clubs it was probably better to not worry about it and try and do the things I might have done in stand-up somewhere else.

Q: How long have you had the idea of a novel?
A: Well I started it in 1992. And then I had lots and lots of bits of it but I didn't have a clue how to fit them together until about 1996. Then about 1998/9 i'd got 30,000 words and did the rest between then and last Christmas.

Q: I asked Richard this question as well. How do you come up with the character ideas?
A: In "Fist of Fun" and "This Morning....with Richard not Judy" they came from all different things. The Curious Orange came from looking at my girlfriends hair which was orange and she said something that was curious - and it reminded me of title of a 1960s Swedish film and ballet done by the Fall called "I Am The Curious Orange - so I thought what if there was an orange that was curious about stuff.
The Weak Lemon drink idea came from this bloke at my school called Alan Pritchard who just used to find the idea of weak lemon drink really funny. He just used to say "Would you like a weak lemon drink?" and the character of that just came from people who were obsessed by things.
The way that we performed in that was just an exaggeration of how me and Rich used to act together. We used to write each others bits really so when people say one character was funny and the other wasn't they really should be blaming the other person.

"The Perfect Fool" is out now in all good book shops www.stewartlee.co.uk