“Ghastly, puritanical, po-faced, sanctimonious, finger-wagging, Woke-Witchfinder-in-Chief” Toby Young, Twitter

“Sphincter-poppingly angry, totally unamusing and uninsightful, and painfully, excruciatingly right-on. A bitter, politically correct member of the Remain-voting liberal elite. The type of comedy which is not designed to provoke laughter so much as solemn head-nodding and applause at the politically correct sentiment.” James Delingpole, Steve Bannon’s Breitbart News

““I seem to have been radicalised into a one man crusade against Stewart Lee and his fans. This will probably occupy the rest of my life but mark my words the man will die and I will try to be the one that ends his life.” Corbyngrad Mayor @SyedforLondon, Twitter

Dear Covidians

I hope you are all well and have not suffered any loss.

One day we will be laughing again in some rooms. I cannot embrace you all.

Your pal

Stew Art Lee

1) LIVE SHOWS UPDATE

All outstanding SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO dates have or are being rescheduled. Any updates will be added to the LIVE DATES page of the website as soon as they’re confirmed.

Here is an updated list of those that are confirmed and on-sale, although most are sold out anyway.
There are some new dates too, and there are sure to be some returns due to fear.
The Bristol date this time is The Hippodrome, as the lovely Colston Hall is closed for refurb and rename.

The Hippodrome is an ATG theatre. ATG tickets often end up on dodgy resale websites so please don’t pay over the odds.
We must thwart the criminal touts that the Tory Sajid Javid calls “legitimate entrepreneurs” who only annoy “the chattering middle classes”. I hope the theatres can hang in there.

2) KING ROCKER SHEFFIELD

Our documentary KING ROCKER has been selected for the Sheffield Documentary Festival in Oct/Nov this year.
There is also loads of other great news about it that I can’t share yet.

Everybody worked so hard on this, and mainly for nothing, so I am so glad it appears to be being so well received by those who have seen it.

https://sheffdocfest.com/films/7007

Comedian Stewart Lee and director Michael Cumming (Brass Eye) investigate a missing piece of punk history. Robert Lloyd, best known for fronting cult bands The Prefects and The Nightingales, has survived under the radar for over four decades. Anti-rockumentary King Rocker weaves the story of Birmingham’s undervalued underdog autodidact into that of the city’s forgotten public sculpture of King Kong, eschewing the celebrity interview and archive-raid approach for a free-associating bricolage of Indian food, bewildered chefs, vegetable gardening, prescription medicines, pop stardom and pop art.
Available to watch in the cinema or Sheffield Doc/Fest Selects in the Autumn.

Here’s everything we know at this point;

https://www.firerecords.com/films/king-rocker/
https://www.firerecords.com/films/

3) LEICESTER COMEDY FESTIVAL PODCAST W ME STEWART LEE

A q&a with me and Geoff Rowe, who has been all over the British comedy scene for 3 decades as head of the Leicester Comedy Festival, goes live at 8pm Thursday 24th September and tickets, from just £5, are now on sale

https://comedy-festival.co.uk/event/an-interview-with-stewart-lee/

The money goes to help float the festival through the virus.

4) SIMON CLAYTON/GINA RYAN

In these strange times, tragic events keep reminding me of those first few carefree and blissful years on the circuit, back in the days when nobody played stadiums and everyone voted Labour.

The comedian and poet Gina Ryan died in August. I remember Gina holding court, back in the early ‘90s, when the room above the Comedy Café was the unofficial clubhouse of the afterhours circuit at weekends, then a few dozen faces as opposed to the 1000s of hopefuls of today. Like Jim Macabre, who died last year, Gina was a fabulous technician of the taut and compact black comedy couplet, and helped me tweak the joke about Robert Powell in my open spot set that I still do at benefits to this day.

Today, the world would know better what to make of her. As part of the then revolutionary black and white double act The Crisis Twins, Simon Clayton was on the bill of the first London show I ever did an open spot at, at the Acton Banana in September 1989, and the duo kindly shared their precious list of promoter phone numbers with me after the gig, an unimaginable act of kindness and confidence in those pre-digital days. Simon’s been a stalwart of the circuit as a solo act for a quarter of a century but had a stroke in August, and obviously won’t be able to work for ages.

There is a funding page here https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/simon-clayton-fundraiser.

There are so many deserving causes in the comedy world at the moment, it is difficult to know where to begin, and if you are an F-list champagne socialist like me both your engagement with them, or your apparent lack of engagement with them, will be weaponised to discredit both you and the causes you espouse.

Nonetheless, I am working out a way of putting something back in this Winter and recipients of this mailing list will be the first to know when and where it happens.

In the meantime…
GO OUT! FUCK THE NHS! SAVE THE TORY PARTY!

5) I arrogantly recommend… The following recent home-consumables

ELECTRIC MUSIC by WOLFHOUNDS with sleeve notes by me –

https://thewolfhounds.bandcamp.com/album/electric-music

FOR SAKE OF JOY by THE SEEN. Stew is the guest reader of prose by the percussionist John Stevens

THE SEEN – FOR SAKE OF JOY | confront-recordings

Isolation, an experimental music album assembled by Mark Jenkins during lockdown to raise money for Age UK, which includes actual people from Tangerine Dream and Neuronium and me, in STOKE NEWINGTON ISOLATION UNIT. https://www.cd-services.com/product_info.aspx?id=17272&qry=&key=&genre=148&pi=0

The Trees. I have done sleeve-notes for the reissue of the complete back catalogue of superb 70s folk rock band THE TREES. https://www.firerecords.com/shop/

BOOKS.

The Comedian Phil Kay has written some new books.
Phil Kay is great. Here is a link. https://philkay.online

100 STORIES TO SAY THANK-YOU, NHS benefit book edited by Adam Kay, featuring a story by me Dear NHS by Various | Waterstones

BEN MOOR’S NEW BOOK. Performance Artist and writer Ben Moor says,

“In lieu of the theatrical performances of Who Here’s Lost? I have printed the text of the piece for to be read at leisure.
This would have been on sale after the show to people who missed half the jokes (I tend to go fast) and so they can try and work out just what it was they’d been watching. The book version also includes a selection of pieces I wrote in each of the last four decades:

From the 2010s – The Predicates – a weird parallel universe story, first presented at NN Contemporary Art in 2014.

From the 2000s – Glove Story – a tale of lost gloves and lost love, first published by The Idler in 2002.
From the 1990s – The Flower Whose Petals Were Mirrors – a fable from a strange place.

And from the 1980s – Shipwreck – a short monologue about a man in a boat.

Plus there’s a Bit at the Back of the Book to explain the whole thing; and then there’s trailers for Pronoun Trouble and BookTalkBookTalkBook.
And here’s another tiny excerpt:

Our car needs replacing in City A, and we travel around in a wasp taxi, which I’m OK with, but Dilys doesn’t enjoy, not because she objects to wasps travelling by taxi, but it’s the noise. We don’t talk, I don’t update my social media: the recent ban on relating events to personal anecdotes reminds me of nothing.

It’s on sale at the very tremendous online comedy merchant Go Faster Stripe (where you can also download the live show of Pronoun Trouble and over a million other units of comedy excellence). In foggy London Town it can be purchased from the exceptional BookBarge Word on the Water which is located on Regent’s Canal just above (mapwise rather than vertically) King’s Cross and St Pancras stations. It’s a beautiful shopping experience, and if you’re lucky they’ll also be selling homemade lemonade during these hot days. And, south of the canal and then the major River Thames, it’s available at the toppest of top bookshops, Bookseller Crow on the Hill in Crystal Palace. They were so kind to host a reading of the piece back in January, and they should be frequented at a frequent frequency by all bookfans. All these places have free badges to go with the book too. But if you’d like to purchase a copy from me right now this moment without changing your standing/sitting/reclining position in which you are reading this overlong and rambling electronic mail… CLICK THIS LINK.
And you’ll be taken to a temporary online shop where literally the only thing you can buy is the new book. (If you’d like to purchase more and different things, my main WEBSHOP is always open.) Choose to buy Who Here’s Lost? (and other things) from me during this month of August and I’ll sell it to you for just £7.00 (that’s a 12.5% discount on the RRP of £8.00. Yeah, maths.) And then I’ll send it youwards, charging Postage and Packaging of £1.50 for UK Customers (First Class Large Letter) and £5.00 for International Customers (International Standard Airmail) So a total of £8.50 for UK Customers and £12.00 for International Customers. And you get a free badge that asks “who here’s lost?” in trendy lower case lettering. These are made of a metal. Under the Paypal button you can tell me if you’d like a dedication and, if so, what it should be.”

NEW FILMS

Honeyland (Tamara Kotevska, Ljubo Stefanov)

Days of The Bagnold Summer (Simon Bird)

NEW MUSIC

The Nightingales – Four Against Fate

Rich Hopkins & Luminarios – Live At El Lokal

The Dream Syndicate – Universe Inside

Wild Billy Childish – Kings Of The Medway Delta

Garcia Peoples – Nublu NYC 2019

Windy & Carl – Allegiance & Conviction

The Frees – Live From The End Of The Earth

Alan Wilkinson & Douglas Benford – Appointed Views

The Heartwood Institute – Tomorrow’s People

John Edwards – Just Another Day At Home

Adam Bohman & Douglas Benford – Ad Hoc & Words

Laura Cannell – The Earth With Her Crowns

Jack Sharp – Good Times Older

The Frees – Live To Air

The Frees – Lips That Bite

Fixed Horizon – Jungle

Jon Free – Spiralling

Richard Skelton – Border Ballads

Howe Gelb – Cocoon

The Primevals – Second Nature

Richard Youngs – Vistas

Darren Hayman – Home Time

Richard Youngs – Four Verses

V/A – Seito In The Beginning Woman Was The Sun

Lucinda Williams – Good Souls & Better Angels

Bob Dylan – Rough & Rowdy Ways

Billy Sedlmayr – Mean What You Say

Shirley Collins – Heart’s Ease

Alasdair Roberts – The Songs of My Boyhood

Boris – No

Slum of Legs – Slum Of Legs

Tobin Sprout – Empty Horses

Thurston Moore – By The Fire

Rhodri Davies – Telyn Rawn

Idles – Ultra Mono

Guided by Voices – Mirrored Aztec

REISSUED OLD MUSIC

Tim Buckley – Live At The Electric (1968)

John Lee Hooker – Black Night Is Falling (1977)

The Heads – Reverberations Vol 1 (2005)

Barnabus – Beginning To Unwind (1971)

Miracle Legion – 4.20 Live At The Boot (2017)

V/A – Brown Acid The Tenth Trip (1969-74)

Creedence Clearwater Revival – Live At Woodstock (1969)

John Lee Hooker – Documenting The Sensation (1948-52)

Albert Ayler – New Grass (1969)

Guided by Voices – Doses of Nonchalance (1995)

PODCASTS DADDI-0!

(Podcasts are like radio shows but are on the internet and you can hear them at any time.
I have just found out about them.)

These Weird Isles – LISTEN HERE

Pope Longergan Plimpin’ & Lompin’ – LISTEN HERE

Ian McPherson’s Hardly A Fit Subject For Levity – LISTEN HERE

6) Davro’s Sock

https://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/18679846.comedian-stewart-lee-gives-gift-mother-shiptons-cave/

Comedian Stewart Lee gives gift to Mother Shipton’s Cave

By Haydn Lewis

A WELL-KNOWN writer and comedian dropped in at a North Yorkshire visitor attraction and left a little gift.

Stewart Lee visited Knaresborough on Wednesday (August 26) for a post-lockdown family trip to Mother Shipton’s Cave.

The strange attraction boasts an impressive petrifying well, which turns items to stone as if by magic, due to the unusually high mineral content in the water.

The museum at Mother Shipton’s already contains a selection of petrified items from celebrities, including Dame Agatha Christie’s Handbag, John Wayne’s hat and Bobby Davro’s sock and Mr Lee decided to leave something of his very own for posterity.

A spokesman for the attraction said: “A team member recognised the stand-up comedian and asked if he had anything to petrify.

“Of course, what better item to commemorate his socially-distanced adventure than a bottle of hand sanitiser gel?”

The gel will be strung under the petrifying well to slowly turn to stone.

Unlike the porous teddy bears that petrify very quickly, this small plastic bottle may be hanging for quite some time – even up to two years – before it forms a crust.

The petrifying well is the oldest entrance-charging tourist attraction in England, open since 1630.

Stewart Lee first came to prominence in the mid-1990s as one half of the comedy duo Lee and Herring, alongside Richard Herring and is a regular fixture on the stand-up scene, having played York venues many times over the years.

Mother Shipton’s Cave tells the tale of a legendary prophetess and is operating a pre-booked car ticket system.