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Carpet Remnant WorldIt’s funny, but Lee won’t tell jokes

Carpet Remnant World Leicester Square Theatre, London

By Mark Wareham in The Mail On Sunday Posted on Sunday, January 22nd, 2012

Stewart Lee, it has to be said, will never be a household name. Sure, his recent two series of Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle on BBC2 met with much critical acclaim and the show was nominated for a Bafta. But Lee obstinately refuses to play the fame game. When he won a brace of Comedy Awards last month, he was notably absent from the boozy proceedings. Despite being ‘current’, he won’t be seen serving up chummy repartee on any of the myriad TV shows in which comics chop up their routines to recycle them in the guise of ‘spontaneous wit’. Wilfully perverse, he ensures his act is hard enough to break down into tenminute chunks for benefit gigs, let alone 30-second panel-show soundbites.

The inverse of a crowd-pleasing standup, he elects to stand out from the pack by a) telling precious few jokes; b) advising his audience he indeed has precious few jokes – ‘That was a joke,’ he explains. ‘They do stick out’ – and c) ensuring the few he does tell are not especially funny. His new show, Carpet Remnant World, is a splendid case in point. The theme of the show is that there is no show. In his characteristic monotone, Lee tell us all he does is drive up and down motorways from gig to gig or sit at home with his four-year-old son watching Scooby Doo And The Pirate Zombie Jungle. ‘I’ve got nothing,’ he admits apologetically. He’s taken to driving around the North Circular in the vain hope something might happen to him. The idea of a comic in desperate search of a routine, then turning that search into his routine, is classic Lee.

This Marmite of comedians is not to everyone’s taste. You only have to look online to witness the love-hate divide on the message boards. It’s typical of Lee that he should share some of the bilious outpourings posted on the internet about him, while backed by a jazz soundtrack.
In the past he has made much of a quote by commentator de nos jours Toby Young, even including it in his publicity material. Young said: ‘I have always thought that Stewart Lee’s comedy is the opposite of what comedy should be.’ It is surely the opposite of what comedy is thought to be in the age of Michael McIntyre; Lee’s bitter persona is relentless in satirising his peers. ‘When only half the room go for something,’ he declares with relish, ‘the comedians you like would do something else . . . I do it more!’ Cue hearty applause.

But when the current comedy boom fizzles out, as it one day must, Lee will still challenge audiences with his uncompromising material, as he walks his fine line between multi-layered, self-referential deconstructionism and disappearing up his fundament. This is a comedy masterclass, and not for the easily pleased. ‘I’m aware that this is a peak,’ he says of this show. If so, then it’s a triumphant one. Let’s just hope nothing of any interest happens to him on the North Circular to mar his future shows.

Written by Mark Wareham in The Mail On Sunday on 22nd January 2012. Filed Under: Carpet Remnant World, Reviews
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