'Jesus didn't wear a nappy'
Comedian Stewart Lee

Stewart Lee is officially the 41st Best Stand Up Ever. So amused was the comic genius behind Lee and Herring and Jerry Springer the Opera, that he renamed his current tour to mark the accolade. He tells Judith Dornan why 41 is the magic number...
I confess I didn't expect the first thing I heard when I called the wryly-anarchic comedian Stewart Lee was to be a crying baby.

But the brains behind Jerry Springer the Opera, Good Morning With Richard, Not Judy, and Fist of Fun, has a new role in life these days “ adjusting to fatherhood of a nine-month-old baby boy who, today, is unwell.

Through the fractious screams, he says: "We'll give it a go and see what happens. Sorry, it's just the baby's got a cold."

Lee is about to arrive in Preston with his latest stand up tour, originally named March of the Mallards, but renamed Stewart Lee “ 41st Best Stand Up Ever, after he featured in said position in a Channel 4 poll show last year.

Typically of Lee, it's a sardonic comment on the state of an industry which randomly doles out such honorariums. He says: "It's completely meaningless and the result of an obviously corrupt vote.

"All these things are stupid, all these Channel 4 lists, any kind of lists. But I also thought it was a really funny way to start looking at the way you might be perceived – and then say what your family think of you and so on. I thought that was something anyone could relate to."

It seems his family aren't keen on his comedy “ they prefer old style comedians, such as cheeky Liverpudlian, Tom O'Connor.

Through continuing baby screams, he grins: "My parents won't even come and see me, they hate me, and they still think it's some kind of fantasy that I'm a comedian.

"Whenever the subject of stand up comes up, they always go on about this Tom O'Connor gig they saw 11 years ago “ it was very good apparently."

His success as half of comic duo, Lee and Herring, didn't convince them and nor did his appearances in TV classics such as Time Trumpet, Fist of Fun or the Good Morning shows.

Nor did writing with Johnny Vegas, or producing the first live Mighty Boosh show, Arctic Boosh, or work with stars from Steve Coogan to Chris Morris or appearances on TV comedy quizzes like Never Mind the Buzzcocks or Have I Got News For You.

Not even winning four Olivier awards as co-writer of the marvellously controversial Springer the Opera convinced them – although its initial appearance at the National Theatre came close.

But then reactionary Christian groups “ many of whom had never even seen the show “ ruined everything. Lee says: "For once, they were able to go, 'Oh, he's on at the National Theatre.'

"They took a photo of my name in lights outside. But then it became this thing that the Daily Mail wanted banned which is the paper everyone they know reads.

"When all their friends are really embarrassed at the mention of it, the fact you've got an Olivier Award doesn't really count for anything."

The protests turned Springer into a nightmare for Lee and his co-writer Richard Thomas. As the barracking convinced venues to cancel the show and stores to pull the DVD, they ended up working for nothing for 18 months.

And it came out of the blue. He says: "It happened really quickly. It ran in the National Theatre and the West End fine until the January of 2005.

"And then the Christian Right picked up on it and decided to make it a way of piggybacking into the news. Before then, there had been no opposition to it whatsoever.

"It wasn't a gradual thing. It was blanket universal approval and then suddenly, 'Ban this filth!' One minute we were being showered with praise and the next, we were being advised by the police to be careful because there were people putting people's home addresses on the Internet."

The controversy centred around the supposed portrayal of Jesus in a nappy. But, unbelievably, this never actually happened.

An actor who plays a nappy fetishist Springer guest reappears, sans nappy, in the second half playing the Messiah. Yet the idea persists.

Lee says: "When they finally decided at the end of last year that we couldn't be done for blasphemy, the Daily Mail theatre critic, Quentin Something, was on TV saying, 'The thing is, you have to remember they DID show Jesus in a nappy'.

"This has been in the news over and over again – and he was never in a sodding nappy, ever! It's like, 'Oh, the Nappy Jesus!'

"Even the people that defend it, like the Independent, write: 'It's their right to put him in a nappy!' Well... thanks, but it never happened!

"It was awful, the whole experience, but it does give you lots of ideas about how things work. Most comics have to write about the news.

"But if you ARE also the news at the same time as commenting on it, it's quite funny in a way – but I wouldn't want to go through it again."

He dealt with the experience in his stand up show 90s Comedian. He muses: "It wasn't much fun to do because it meant having to think through all this awful stuff we'd experienced again and again.

"But something good came out of it. And the weird thing was by the end of it, I was kind of over it."

He harbours serious doubts about television's approach to comedy as a whole, citing the success of his previous collaborators The Mighty Boosh as an exception that proves the rule.

He says: "No TV commissioner would be in a meeting where he'd say, 'What we need is a show where there's a head that has five legs on it and wriggles around speaking'.

"They'd say, what we need is something about 20-somethings in a pub. They would never ever imagine that they would want the Boosh.

"That's got through by accident. How many brilliant things are blocked because they have to get through the hurdles imposed on them by people that are not artists?"

Although Lee's acerbic monotone style, along with his bitter observational humour, has earned him recognition rather than cash, his stand up career is currently in resurgence.

Fiercely prolific, he has always maintained his solo stand up alongside his numerous collaborations. He's even halfway through his second novel – although that's now on hold due to Baby.

With a harsh cackle, he says: "People go, 'Oh, you haven't sold out.' But, to be fair, I was never offered the opportunity!

"It was always very easy when you had no responsibilities. But having just had the baby, I'm very relieved the stand up's picked up because nothing else in the last 10 years has really worked out financially.

"Who knows, if that hadn't happened, I might have had to do something else because when you've got a family, you cant really sacrifice them to your principles.

"To be honest though, even if I did things I didnt want to do, they'd still be better than the average person's job. If I ended up directing a Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial, it would still be better than working as a temp.

"All the things I've done are heroically acclaimed failures. We caught the tailend of this journalistic notion that comedy was the new rock and roll which meant it was ephemeral and there'd be another one along in a minute like there was with bands.

"I think I've had to get 15 stone and grey and old to be allowed to prove that I was here for the long haul."

Baby Lee is by now giggling happily as he plays with toy bricks. His arrival has clearly had an enormous impact on his proud father. He says: "It's amazing what you can put up with because you love a little baby.

"It's difficult to maintain the posture of defeated cynicism when you do tend to wake up in a good mood because you've got a funny little baby.

"It's a bit like being forced to join the human race. I've always been an outsider and I enjoy that, being a non-participant.

"But yesterday I had to go to this nine month progress thing where they put you with loads of other kids and their parents and it was very interesting and good fun.

"I probably could have gone on until my death mainly just reading books quite happily but the baby has forced me to participate in society and I actually find that people, the average random bunch of people, are much nicer than I imagined.

"So it can't be their fault that everything's crap! Who's to blame?"

Stewart Lee plays Preston's Guild Hall Foyer Bar on Friday, February 15. Tickets are £14 available from the box office on 0845 344 2012.