Today, if I worked as a cartoonist for a tabloid newspaper, I could simply hand in a hurried scrawl of heaven, where Victoria Wood now plays the piano alongside Prince on guitar and John Whittingdale’s political credibility on slap bass. But instead, I must write.

Does it matter that the torture-porn fan, free-market fundamentalist and wilful BBC wrecker John Whittingdale dated a woman who turned out to be a dominatrix and then threw her under the bus when the story threatened to go public? Not unless you entertain some outdated idea of chivalry, I suppose. Whittingdale should remember that dominatrixes are ladies too. There is nothing of the knight about him.

And does it matter that the knowing withholding of the knowledge that Whittingdale, hog-tied by events, unknowingly dated a known dominatrix may have been knowingly left unknown in order to influence Whittingdale’s attitude to press regulations? Yes.

And in the week that Whittingdale, the cheeks of his reputation blistering, has said he is “not minded” to implement the Leveson recommendations on press regulation in full, it matters doubly so. And anyone who chooses not to see that has been wilfully latex blindfolded and tied to a bedstead of betrayal by the Anne Summers Beginners’ Bondage Kit of political expediency.

But can any of us honestly say we never unknowingly dated someone we didn’t know was knowingly working as a known dominatrix, without our knowing? I know I can’t.

In a related development, on Saturday, I was supposed to host a discussion with Roger Drew, a writer on the political satire The Thick of It, about the 2012 Leveson-inspired Goolding inquiry episode. The session was one of many at a music festival in a Pontins in north Wales for which, this year, I was the e-list celebrity curator who got to chose the acts, though not the catering.

Pontins insists on providing all the dining options for in-house events themselves, even though the staff remain visibly overwhelmed by the unexpected arrival of 3,000 people not content to eat only chips for three days.

There were more kitchen utensils in operation on stage in the drone-percussion performance by Japan’s Boredoms than there were in either of the venue’s hot food outlets. It was Jesus Christ in reverse, as if a blue-coated anti-miracle worker had taken one tiny nourishing new potato and turned it into mountains of fried food that thousands of people didn’t want to eat.

That said, I think today’s entitled young festivalgoers should be grateful for what they are given. At Glastonbury, throughout the pre-designer wellies decades of the 80s and 90s, I slept in puddles, not chalets, and ate only mung gruel given away free by Hare Krishnas.

And gruel is all I will offer next time my name is attached to a residential arts festival, in order to differentiate it from those tasteful home counties boutique events, patronised by Tories and Top Gear presenters, where the cheeses are advertised in the same-sized font as the bands and the postmodern wanking. “Cypriot halloumi + Shed Seven + burlesque.”

In the days approaching The Thick of It screening I smugly congratulated myself on my precognitive programming genius. Leveson was suddenly back in the news thanks to the speculation that sex revelations about John Whittingdale had been suppressed in order to influence his decision to implement its recommendations.

The press denied this while, simultaneously and without an iota of shame, making a fuss about not being able to name a threesome celebrity who, coincidentally, held no sway over legislation concerning newspapers’ futures. The session with Roger Drew was to be charged with sudden meaning.

But, at 6pm on Saturday afternoon, 300 political satire fans in the cinema room began a slow handclap, when it became clear that, like the evening’s supposed main stage star John Cale, the episode of The Thick of It would not be appearing.

Doubtless fans of experimental music, hysteria and exaggeration have read of the weekend event’s other problems, the final turd blockage in the U-bend of its cash flow being the caught-on-CCTV vandalism of an arcade machine by a person who had gained access to the site by pretending to be a member of the Fall’s entourage.

Orange juice (the drink not the band, though they would have beatified my 80s Peel show-heavy line-up) had been wilfully and cruelly siphoned into the toy dispensing orifice of a Minions claw grabber machine, short-circuiting an entire electrical system. Pontins’ initial estimate of the damage, for which we were financially accountable, was £24,000, a figure equal to the appearance fees of over half the acts on the bill combined.

In the micro-economics of obscure music promotion the vandalism of a cloth cyclops dispenser could be the point at which your break-even point disappears over the event horizon. I had just learned of this when I was suddenly called away to fill in during the delay caused by the missing Thick of It film.

The patient writer Roger Drew, less familiar than I with hostile, bored audiences, looked at me for answers. I decided to begin the event while technicians struggled to download a workable version of the episode, making comic play of the fact that we might be about to discuss, at length, something that would not actually be seen by its intended audience. Ionesco would applaud.

Since being press-ganged five years ago into an on/off trio, to interpret John Cage’s chance composition Indeterminacy, I have cultivated an ambivalent attitude to the very notion of what constitutes a “performance”. I realised that Roger and I looking at an impotently rotating Samsung logo on a 20ft-high screen in front of 300 people was now “the show”. We improvised around it and Roger charitably transmogrified his potential and justified indignation into comedy gold. Some people said it was their event of the weekend.

Later, I asked the lady in charge what had happened. She said that an unknown whip-wielding woman in tiny black hot pants had been seen to place the Leveson-satirising disc on a desk in the production office, and wriggle around on it until it was arse-sweated into unusability.

The nipple clamp of Murdoch bites hard on the nipple of John Whittingdale’s ministerial responsibilities. Could it be that Whittingdale, like some sick torture-porn Blofeld, maintains an army of taxpayer-funded lap-dancing dominatrix sleeper agents in basements all around Berwick Street, to ball-gag dissent and dog muzzle debate about any issues that affect him, by simply bum-juicing the evidence into oblivion? Has he no shame? What must be done with him? Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart!

1) KING ROCKER NOW TV

Our labour of love really landed. I arrogantly think it knocks most rockumentaries into a cocked hat and will cheer you up no end in the awful times.

“I loved every minute” - Ben Dowell, The Times
★★★★ Financial Times
★★★★ Chortle
“One of the best music documentaries of all time” - The Quietus
“The new gold standard for rockumentaries” - The Scotsman

All Press is collecting here.
You can also watch it, ad-free, on NOW TV if you have that;

NOW TV LINK

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2) UNRELIABLE NARRATOR DOC BBCR4

I just did this piece of KRS1-style edu-tainment for BBCR4 with Resonance 104.4FM alumney Michael Umney, called Stewart Lee - Unreliable Narrator. Lots of comedians in it.

You can listen here.

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3) ASIAN DUB FOUNDATION

The record store day dbl vinyl of Asian Dub Foundation’s Access Denied album includes a ‘neolithic’ remix of the no 1 single Comin’ Over Here (feat. Stewart Lee) Facebook Link

The original 12” remains available...
Bandcamp
X Ray Production

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4) TEN BOB / USE YOUR LOAF 7”

‘Ten Bob Each Way’ / ‘Use Your Loaf’ is a limited 7” single, featuring a brand-new Nightingales recording, their first since recording their ‘Four Against Fate’ album.
B-sided with Stewart Lee and Nick Pynn covering the band’s second single, ‘Use Your Loaf’, a track that was for a mooted Nightingales tribute album, which didn’t happen after something got spilt on the laptop that had all the tracks on it.
Fire Records/King Rocker Records.

Order 7” here: https://fire-records.lnk.to/TenBobUseYourLoaf

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5) LIVE DATES NEWS

It looks like all the SNOWFLAKE TORNADO tour dates outstanding from 2020 will be shifted into 2022, starting in Jan, and below are the ones we know about so far.
Local venues will contact you if they haven’t already.
All the warm-up club dates you may have bought tickets for have been slotted in to Nov and Dec, covid willing, and venues will contact ticket holders.
Please do not hassle venues about all this. They will contact you. We will get there!

I am planning on re-writing the SNOWFLAKE half of SNOWFLAKE TORNADO to reflect our drastically altered world and will make as good a recording as possible of the abandoned original SNOWFLAKE available at some point.
It’s all bacon!

After the abrupt end of the covid-cancelled sell-out tour of Snowflake/Tornado in March 2020, Stewart Lee, “the world’s greatest living stand-up” (Times), returns to Leicester Square Theatre in January 2022 and then to more than 60 towns and cities in the UK.
The tour, a double bill of two 60-minute sets, back-to-back nightly, will include new material for 2022.



The first half, Snowflake, will be heavily rewritten in the light of the two years the show has been laid off, looking at how the Covid-Brexit era has impacted on the culture war declared on lovely woke snowflakes by horrible people.

The second half, Tornado, questions Stew’s position in the comedy marketplace after Netflix mistakenly listed his show as “reports of sharks falling from the skies are on the rise again. Nobody on the Eastern Seaboard is safe.”

January 2022

Tuesday 4th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS

Wednesday 5th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS

Thursday 6th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS

Friday 7th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS

Saturday 8th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS

Monday 10th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS

Tuesday 11th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS

Wednesday 12th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS

Thursday 13th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS

Saturday 15th January 2022 - Theatre Royal, Norwich - TICKETS

Monday 17th January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford

Tuesday 18th January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford

Wednesday 19th January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford

Thursday 20th January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford

Friday 21st January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford

Saturday 22nd January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford

Tuesday 25th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS

Wednesday 26th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS

Thursday 27th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS

Friday 28th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS

Saturday 29th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS

Sunday 30th January 2022 - Theatre Royal, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS

February 2022

Wednesday 2nd February 2022 - St. David's Hall, Cardiff - TICKETS

Thursday 3rd February 2022 - Rose Theatre, Kingston - TICKETS

Friday 4th February 2022 - Westlands Entertainment Venue, Yeovil - TICKETS

Saturday 5th February 2022 - Westlands Entertainment Venue, Yeovil - TICKETS

Tuesday 8th February 2022 - Town Hall, Cheltenham - TICKETS

Wednesday 9th February 2022 - Town Hall, Cheltenham - TICKETS

Thursday 10th February 2022 - De Montfort Hall, Leicester - TICKETS

Friday 11th February 2022 - Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry - TICKETS

Saturday 12th February 2022 - Festival Theatre, Malvern - TICKETS

Sunday 13th February 2022 - Hippodrome, Birmingham - TICKETS

Friday 25th February 2022 - The Dome, Brighton - TICKETS

Saturday 26th February 2022 - The Dome, Brighton - TICKETS

Sunday 27th February 2022 - The Dome, Brighton - TICKETS

Monday 28th February 2022 - The Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury - TICKETS

March 2022

Wednesday 2nd March 2022 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS

Thursday 3rd March 2022 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS

Friday 4th March 2022 - Lighthouse, Poole - TICKETS

Saturday 5th March 2022 - Playhouse, Salisbury

Sunday 6th March 2022 - De La Warr Pavillion, Bexhill On Sea - TICKETS

Wednesday 9th March 2022 - Theatre Royal, Wakefield - TICKETS

Thursday 10th March 2022 - Opera House, Buxton - TICKETS

Friday 11th March 2022 - The Courtyard, Hereford - TICKETS

Saturday 12th March 2022 - Grand Theatre, Swansea

Monday 14th March 2022 - King's Theatre, Glasgow - TICKETS

Tuesday 15th March 2022 - King's Theatre, Glasgow - TICKETS

Wednesday 16th March 2022 - The Sands Centre, Carlisle - TICKETS

Thursday 17th March 2022 - Royal Hall, Harrogate

Tuesday 22nd March 2022 - Churchill Theatre, Bromley - TICKETS

Wednesday 23rd March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS

Thursday 24th March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS

Friday 25th March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS

Saturday 26th March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS

Sunday 27th March 2022 - Royal & Derngate, Northampton - TICKETS

Tuesday 29th March 2022 - City Hall, Sheffield - TICKETS

Wednesday 30th March 2022 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS

Thursday 31st March 2022 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS

April 2022

Friday 1st April 2022 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS

Saturday 2nd April 2022 - Storyhouse, Chester - TICKETS

Tuesday 19th April 2022 - Wyvern Theatre, Swindon - TICKETS

Thursday 21st April 2022 - The Hawth, Crawley - TICKETS

Friday 22nd April 2022 - The Hexagon, Reading - TICKETS

Sunday 24th April 2022 - Mayflower Theatre, Southampton - TICKETS

Tuesday 26th April 2022 - Cliffs Pavilion, Southend On Sea - TICKETS

Wednesday 27th April 2022 - The Central Theatre, Chatham - TICKETS

Thursday 28th April 2022 - Derby Theatre, Derby - TICKETS

Friday 29th April 2022 - Lyceum Theatre, Crewe - TICKETS

Saturday 30th April 2022 - Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield - TICKETS

May 2022

Tuesday 3rd May 2022 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS

Wednesday 4th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS

Thursday 5th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS

Friday 6th May 2022 - St. George's Hall, Bradford - TICKETS

Saturday 7th May 2022 - Gala Theatre, Durham - TICKETS

Sunday 8th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS

Tuesday 10th May 2022 - Palace Theatre, Watford

Wednesday 11th May 2022 - Palace Theatre, Watford

Thursday 12th May 2022 - Assembly Hall Theatre, Tunbridge Wells

Friday 13th May 2022 - The Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS

Saturday 14th May 2022 - The Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS

Sunday 15th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, Plymouth

Tuesday 17th May 2022 - Corn Exchange, Cambridge - TICKETS

Wednesday 18th May 2022 - Corn Exchange, Cambridge - TICKETS

Thursday 19th May 2022 - The Baths Hall, Scunthorpe - TICKETS

Saturday 21st May 2022 - New Theatre, Peterborough - TICKETS

Sunday 22nd May 2022 - The Grand, Wolverhampton - TICKETS

Monday 23rd May 2022 - Hippodrome, Bristol - TICKETS

Tuesday 24th May 2022 - Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury - TICKETS

Wednesday 25th May 2022 - The Forum, Bath - TICKETS

Friday 27th May 2022 - Wycombe Swan, High Wycombe - TICKETS

Saturday 28th May 2022 - Winding Wheel, Chesterfield - TICKETS

June 2022

Tuesday 7th June 2022 - Mercury Theatre, Colchester

Wednesday 8th June 2022 - Mercury Theatre, Colchester

Friday 10th June 2022 - Hall For Cornwall, Truro

Saturday 11th June 2022 - Hall For Cornwall, Truro

Friday 17th June 2022 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS

Saturday 18th June 2022 - Hippodrome, Darlington - TICKETS

Sunday 19th June 2022 - Festival Theatre, Edinburgh - TICKETS

Sunday 26th June 2022 - Theatre Royal, Plymouth

Wednesday 29th June 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS

Thursday 30th June 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS

July 2022

Friday 1st July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS

Saturday 2nd July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS

Sunday 3rd July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS

Sunday 3rd July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS

 

All Covid rescheduled dates will be added to the Live Dates page of the website, here, as they are confirmed.

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6) TO VAC OR NOT TO VAC

I would be delighted if, if you are coming to see me, you could do your best to get vaccinated, irrespective of what the gvt or the venue insist upon.
I doubt that my snowflake audience will contain many people who deny the existence of Covid or believe the vaccine is George Soros or Bill Gates trying to put tiny Transformer robots into your blood.
But I and my team will be interacting with over 150 000 people on the next leg of the tour, and I would like to minimise our risk, and the risk to my audience, so meet me half way.

I will be selling and signing stuff as usual, I hope, but I won’t be shaking hands to thank you all this time around, and will probably be positioned behind some kind of screen like William Shatner in Airplane 2. Sad.

 

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7) MEDIA GARAGE SALE

My trusted sales partner Media Garage has compacted all my available stand-up dvds into one convenient on-line marketplace, with most available to d/load too.

Remember, if you buy here we will pay tax on these purchases, and help with British schools and hospitals, whereas many major physical media suppliers and streaming services have found ways to avoid declaring their profits, as have NETFLIX, the utter bastards.

AMERICANS - stop moaning about not being able to see me and visit MEDIA GARAGE!

MEDIA GARAGE | MORE INFO ON THE MERCH PAGE

 

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8) Podcasts

To try and promote King Rocker I have been pimping myself about like Priss Fotheringham on every Podcast going, alone or with dir M Cumming (Brass Eye, Toast), saying the same things in the same room in the same clothes to all different people, all of whom were very kind.

I don’t know what a podcast is really but I think you go on the internet and click on something.
As my grandfather once said, in 1983, “Do you know, in America, there are shops that only sell Kentucky Fried Chicken?” I enjoyed being on the internet with all these people enormously, but will put some blue water between me and the next wedge.
David Baddiel told me it was good to be on the internet, though. These are available..





 





 





 





 





 





 





 





 





 





 





 





 





 









 





 





 





 





 





 





 





 

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9) I Arrogantly Recommend

 

LIVE EVENTS

 

Paul Currie - Edinburgh Fringe.

The first comedian my kids ever saw live was Paul Currie, so they think everything else is boring unless it ends with a massive breadfight.
He is ace, a deceptively clever surrealist clown who generates a genuine sense of comedy panic, and is best seen on his own terms in a fringe vibe.

Paul Currie says - “I AM PLAYING EDINBURGH this August on the Fringes of the fringe.  I’ll be performing my new show TEET from 9th-29th August in the HIVE on Niddry Street @thehivenightclub.
Strict Covid rules must be followed by all punters before, during and after the show. Social distancing will be in place.  NOTE: I’m doing this independently of the fringe festival on my own, a “fringe of the fringe” if you will.
As myself and many artists have been hit so badly with zero furlough over the past 17 months I truly can’t afford the admin fees to be part of the corporate fringe so I’m doing this completely DIY. There will be no physical tickets & No box office.
It will be £5 cash on the door entry fee. Pay What you Want donation on exit of the show. Minimum of 50 socially distanced seats so get there early. 6pm doors open.  7pm SHOW STARTS .late comers not permitted.  8pm SHOW ENDS.

TEET merchandise available to all who attend.
As I’m not using the fringe website or their online program this can only work as word of mouth and people sharing the show through social media and telling friends about it. So please if you could share the details and this advert as much as you can I’d really appreciate it, so we can try fill the venue each night. Thank you for taking time to read this and I hope to see you at the Hive in August.”

Henry Lowther’s Birthday show

British jazz veteran celebrates at London Vortex JULY 31st

Shirley Collins

Folk legend in sonic installation JULY 31ST/AUGUST 1ST Charleston, Lewes.

The Nightingales

Birmingham post punk veterans and KING ROCKER stars.
AUGUST 6th Preston New Continental.
SEPTEMBER 3rd Birmingham Moseley Folk Festival.
OCTOBER 28TH M’cr Gullivers, 29th Newport Le Pub, 30th Exeter Cavern, 31st Lewes Con.
NOVEMBER 1st Sheffield Greystones, 3rd London Lexington, 4th B’ham Hare & Hounds, 5th Bristol Rough Trade, 6th Southsea Wedgewood, 7th Bedford Esquires, 8th London Lexington W BLUE ORCHIDS & TED CHIPPINGTON, 9th Barrow-in-Furness Underground, 10th Glasgow Hugh & Pint, 11th Edinburgh Caves, 12th Middlesbrough Westgarth, 13th Hebden Bridge Trades, 14th Leicester Cookie

Blue Orchids

6th Aug Bristol Thunderbolt, 7th Aug Dublin Castle London, 8th Aug Brighton Prince Albert.
Post-punk dishwater psychedelia.

Ruts

DC Dub punks AUGUST 7th London Jazz café.
SEPTEMBER 10TH Liverpool Positive Vibrations, 25th Newcastle Northumbria Uni

Sleaford Mods

Angry loud man and quiet man. AUGUST 7TH Bromley South Facing.
SEPTEMBER 2ND End of The Road fest.
NOVEMBER 26TH Oxford Academy.
DECEMBER 2ND London Printworks, 3rd Brighton Dome

The Shadracks

Youthful garage punk AUGUST 13TH London Moth
MDC 14th Aug Edinburgh Sneaky Pete’s.
Veteran angry American hardcore innovators. Can this be true?

The Rebel

The Jerry Sadowitz of garage country.
AUGUST 14TH London Lexington

Lucinda Williams

19th Aug Cambridge Junction.
Is this on? Odd one-off date by the Queen of Alt Country?

Hawkwind

Psychedelic survivors. AUGUST 20TH Devon Beautiful Days Fest.
SEPTEMBER 11th Cambridge Corn Exchange, 12th Leamington Spa Assembly, 17th Swindon Mecca, 27th M’cr Ritz.
OCTOBER 28TH London Palladium.

The Wolfhounds

Cheesewire realists
AUGUST 20TH Preston Popfest.
NOVEMBER 5TH London 229, 19th Middlesbrough Westgarth, 20th Preston Ferret

Bo Ningen

Lots of dates from Japanese noise-niks.
AUGUST 27TH Preston Ferret,
SEPTEMBER 4th M’cr Pscyh Fest,
OCTOBER 1st Bristol Fleece, 2nd Ramsgate Music Hall, 3rd S’hampton Loft, 6th B’ham Hare & Hounds, 7th Sheffield Record Junkee, 8th L’pool District, 9th Glasgow Stereo, 10th Bristol Fleece, 12th Oxford Bullingdon, 13th London Village U’ground, 14th Brighton Chalk

The Primevals

Glasgow garage rockers.
SEPTEMBER 3rd Middlesbrough Westgarth.
NOVEMBER 27TH London Hope & Anchor.

The Catenary Wires

Overqualified popticians
SEPTEMBER 4TH London Amersham Arms, 10th Rainham Oast, 12th Brighton Prince Albert, 24th Oxford Fusion, 25th Coventry Coal Vaults.

The Chameleons

M’cr post punk visionaries on another victory lap.
SEPTEMBER 8th Bedford Esquires, 25th Holmfrith Picture Dome.
NOVEMBER 12TH Minehead Shine On.
DECEMBER 14TH Huddersfield Parish, 16th Blackpool Waterloo, 17th/18th M’cr Ritz.
JANUARY 14TH Leicester Academy, 15th Birmingham Institute.
FEBRUARY 1ST Nottingham Rescue Rooms.

The Fallen Leaves

Gentlemen mod punks.
SEPTEMBER 11TH London Camden Fiddler’s Elbow.
OCTOBER 30TH London 100 Club.
NOVEMBER 20TH Brighton Prince Albert.

The Scientists

16th SEPTEMBER Spicejazz Soho London. Can this one off by Australian garage gurus be for real?

The Meat Puppets

We are lead to believe that the amazing Meat Puppets, who you must see before you or they die, are doing four UK dates. Grateful Dead crossed w Husker Du. Desert punk psyche.
SEPTEMBER 23rd London Islington Academy, 24th M’cr Bread Shed, 25th Newcastle Cluny, 26th Dover Booking Hall

Fossil Fools

24th Sept Swindon Victoria. Tentative return by top XTC tribute band.

Alison Cotton

Psychedelic folk OCTOBER 27TH London Café Oto

The Fallen Women

Female Fall tribute band w guest vocalists incl me.
DECEMBER 5th London Lexington.

Nina Hamnett

Exhibition of the art of the underrated bohemian Fitzrovian, Charleston, East Sussex.

NEW FILMS

Ronnie’s, Ronnie Scott & His World Famous Jazz Club (Oliver Murray)
The Dig (Simon Stone) ★★★★★
Little Joe (Jessica Hausner) ★★★★
The News Of The World (Paul Greengrass) ★★★★
Nomadland (Chloe Zhao) ★★★★
County Lines (Henry Blake) ★★★★★
Animal Antics (Patrick Goddard) ★★★★★

OLD FILMS

Box Of Moonlight (Tom DeCillo, 1996) ★★★★★
Local Hero (Bill Forsyth, 1983) ★★★★★
Where Eagles Dare (Brian G Hutton, 1968) ★★★★★
The Big Gundown (Sergio Sollima, 1967) ★★★★★
The Sting (George Roy Hill, 1973) ★★★★★
Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977) ★★★★★
The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)★★★★★
Good Vibrations (Lisa Barros D’sa/Glen Leyburn, 2013)★★★★★
Caliber 9 (Fernado di Leon, 1972) ★★★★★
‘71 (Yann Demange, 2014) ★★★★★
Big Night (Campbell Scott/Stanley Tucci, 1996) ★★★★★
Jason & The Argonauts (Don Chaffey, 1963) ★★★★★
Goldstone (Ivan Sen, 2016) ★★★★★
Witness (Peter Weir, 1985) ★★★★★
Avengers Infinity War (Russo Brothers, 2018) ★★★★
Avengers Endgame (Russo Brothers, 2019) ★★★★
In Order of Disappearance (Hans Peter Molland, 2014)★★★★★
Iron Man III (Shane Black, 2013)★★★★★
Pauline A La Plage (Eric Rohmer, 1983) ★★★★★
Gone To Earth (Powell/Pressburger, 1950) ★★★★
The Odd Couple (Neil Simon, 1968) ★★★★★
Excalibur (John Boorman, 1981) ★★★★
Samurai 1 : Mushashi Miyamoto (Hiroshi Inagaki, 1954) ★★★★
Cache / Hidden (Michaek Haneke, 2005) ★★★★★
Babylon (Franco Rosso, 1980) ★★★★★
Summer In February (Christopher Menaul, 2013) ★★★★
Guardians of The Galaxy (James Gunn, 2014) ★★★★★
All Tomorrow’s Parties (Jonathan Caouette, 2009) ★★★★
Medea (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1969) ★★★★★
Force Majeure (Ruben Ostlund, 2015) ★★★★
Lift To The Scaffold (Louise Malle, 1958)★★★★★
Macbeth (Roman Polanski, 1971)★★★★★

OLD BOOKS

Rosemary Tonks - Emir (1963)★★★★★
Rosemary Tonks - The Bloater (1968) ★★★★★
John Berger/Jean Mohr - A Fortunate Man (1967) ★★★★★
Ann Quin - Berg (1964) ★★★★
Sir John Mandeville - The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (1357)★★★★
Sean Bythell - Diary of a Bookseller (2018)
Robert Aickman - The Inner Room (1988)
Virginia Nicholson - Amongst The Bohemians (2003)
Joanna Moorhead - The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington (2017)
Betty May - Tiger Woman (1929)
Val Doonican - My Story, My Life (2009)
Dave Graney - Workshy (2017)
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde - R L Stevenson (1985)
Hide & Seek - Dennis Potter (1973)

NEW BOOKS

Tessa Norton/Bob Stanley - Excavate!
Alan Stafford - Wilson, Keppel & Betty, Too Naked For The Nazis
Peter Oborne - The Assault On Truth
Nesrine Malik - We Need New Stories ★★★★★
Sean Bythell - Diary of a Bookseller (2018) ★★★★★
Robert Aickman - The Inner Room (1988) ★★★★★
Alicia Foster - Nina Hamnett
Charlie Hill - I Don’t Want To Go To The Taj Mahjal
Hill’s economic autobiography is a simplistic list of addresses, dead end jobs, cultural ephemera, and brief assignations, garnished with two or three short paragraphs of barely formed reflection. And yet, in reducing his life to these most basic elements, it manages to be a more profound comment on existence then many more self-consciously analytical efforts. As if to confound Wittgenstein, it appears the unexamined life was worth living after all.

NEW COMICS

Joe Sacco - Paying The Land (2020)

NEW TV

Ghosts S2 (BBC, 2020)
Ghosts - Xmas Special 2020 (BBC, 2020)
The Mandalorian S2 (Disney, 2020) ★★★★★
Call My Agent S3 (France 2, 2018)★★★★★
Call My Agent S4 (France 2, 2021) ★★★★★
The Trump Show (BBC, 2020-1)★★★★★
Lupin S1 (Netflix, 2021)★★★★★
Wandavision (Marvel, 2021)★★★★★
Stonehenge The Lost Circle Revealed (BBC, 2021) ★★★★★
Adam Curtis’ Can’t Get You Out Of My Head (BBC, 2021)★★★★★
Raiders Of The Lost Past With Janina Ramirez (BBC2, 2021) ★★★★
Mortimer & Whitehouse Gone Fishing S3 (BBC, 2020) ★★★★★
The Falcon & The Winter Soldier (Marvel, 2021) ★★★★★
Homeland s8 (Netflix, 2020)★★★★★
Into The Night S1 (Between a Dog & A Wolf, 2020) ★★★★
Unforgotten S4 (ITV, 2021) ★★★★
Inside No 9 S6 (BBC, 2021) ★★★★★
Great British Bake Off S11 (C4, 2020) ★★★★★
An Evening With Tim Heidecker (Youtube, 2020)
Time (BBC, 2021) ★★★★★
Loki (Kate Herron, Marvel, 2021)

INTERNETS, RADIOS, YOUTUBES AND PODCASTS

Rob Auton’s Daily Podcast
Alastair Beckett-King on Youtube
Shawn Woods’ Mouse Trap Monday on Youtube
An Evening With Tim Heidecker (Youtube, 2020) ★★★★
Bridget Christie - Mortal (BBCR4)
Rosie Holt’s Youtube characters

THEATRE

Under Milk Wood - Dylan Thomas (National) ★★★★★
The Pin’s The Comeback (Noel Coward Theatre) ★★★★
This felt like it was from the 1870s, the 1950s and now all at the same time.
It was of a tradition at the same time as exploding it. It reminded me of THE RIGHT Size and it would be great if The Pin could hold the partnership together in the way they didn't as there's probably lots to find out about how elastic it can be, and what you can subsume into it.
A Victorian audience would have recognised it as Music Hall and a ‘50s audience would have recognised it as Absurdism, which Beckett knew was music hall anyway. Were they even in a theatre, really, them blokes? I hope it tours.

NEW RECORDS

Lady Leshurr - Quaranqueen
The Primevals - New Trip
Cult Figures - Deritend
Vapour Trails - Celestial Scuzz ★★★★★
Robert Pollard - Before Computers (demos)
Kevin March - Last Night
Doug Gillard - Douglas Scott Gillard II
Guided by Voices - Earth Man Blues
Gwenifer Raymond - Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain
Ustad Saami - Pakistan Is For The Peaceful ★★★★★
The Blue Orchids - Speed The Day
Dave Graney & The Mistly - Live At Byrds ★★★★★
Mainliner - Dual Myths ★★★★★
Hawkwind - 50th Anniversary Live
The Amorphous Androgynous w Peter Hammill - We Persuade Ourselves We Are Immortal
Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orcestrea - s/t
Major Murphy - Access
Eleventh Dream Day - Since Grazed
Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg
Guided By Voices - Earth Man Blues
Fixed Horizon - Grenouille
Lucinda Williams - Runnin’ Down A Dream
Krallice - Demonic Wealth
Catenary Wires - Birling Gap
Cub Scout Bowling Pins - Heaven Beats Iowa ★★★★
Pat Todd & The Rank Outsiders - There’s Pretty Things in Palookaville ★★★★
Robyn Hitchcock - The Man Upstairs ★★★★
Chris Forsyth - First Flight
Chris Eckerman - Where The Spirit Rests ★★★★
The Scientists - Negativity
David Grubbs & Ryley Walker - Husky Pants ★★★★
Shirley Collins - Heart’s Ease ★★★★★
Gary Louris - Jump For Joy ★★★★★
Fixed Horizon - Full Circle ★★★★
Trees Speak - Post Human ★★★★
William Loveday Intention - People Think They Know Me ★★★★★
Hawkwind - Somnia
The Bevis Frond - Little Eden ★★★★★
Pat Todd & The Rank Outsiders - There’s Pretty Things In Palookaville ★★★★★
Goat - Headsoup
Adele & The Chandeliers - First Date
Trees Speak - Post Human
Sun Ra Arkestra - Swirling ★★★★★
Phil Minton - Woke Up At 8 ★★★★★
Rudimentary Peni - The Great War
Lucinda Williams - Southern Soul

NEW OLD RECORDS

V/A - Rough Guide To Avant-Garde Japan
Guided by Voices - Live At Irving Plaza (1996)
Damo Suzuki & Echo Ensemble - Live @ Green Door (2013)
Heavenly - A Bout De Heavenly (1989-1996)
Martin Stone - Down But Not Out In Paris and London (1992-2013)
John Russell & Terry Day - Russell & Day (1979?)
Derek Bailey, Trevor Watts & Terry Day - At LTC (1972?)
Sonny Rollins - Rollins In Holland (1967) ★★★★★
Robert Pollard - I Sell The Circus (demos) (2015)
The Fall - St Helen’s Technical College (1981) ★★★★★
Charles Gayle, John Edwards, Mark Sanders - Seasons Changing (2017) ★★★★★
The Misunderstood - Children of The Sun(1965-66) ★★★★★
Dexter Gordon - Live In Chateauvallon (1978) ★★★★★
The Loft - Ghost Trains & Country Lanes (1984-2015)
And Also The Trees - s/t (1984)
Neil Young - Young Shakespeare (1971)
T2 - It’ll All Work Out In Boomland (1970)
The Outsiders - Count For Something (1976-78)
The Selecter - Too Much Pressure box (1980)
Brown Acid 11 - v/a (1969-73)
Fleur de Lys - Circles (1964-1969)
J Jazz Deep Jazz From Modern Japan vol 3 - V/A (1962-1985)
The Black Keys Present Hill Country Blues - v/a
Brown Acid 12 - v/a (1968-80)
Raw Material - s/t (1970)
Open Road - Windy Day (1971)
Dave Graney, Clare Moore, Georgie Valentino & Malcolm Ross - s/t (2017) ★★★★
Hangman’s Beautiful Daughters - Smashed Full Of Wonder (1987)
The Lipstick Killers - Strange Flash (1976-81)
The Hawks - Obviously 5 Believers (1979-81) ★★★★
v/a - Goitse A Thaisce (1960-2020) ★★★★★
v/a - Fire Draw Near (1940-2020) ★★★★★

OLD RECORDS

Cocteau Twins - Treasure (1984) ★★★★
Billy Bragg - Life’s A Riot (1983) ★★★★★
Billy Bragg - Brewing Up with (1984) ★★★★★
The Triffids - Born Sandy Devotional (1986) ★★★★
Siouxsie & The Banshees - A Kiss In The Dreamhouse (1982) ★★★★
Bunny Striker Lee - The Bunny Striker Lee Story (1967-80) ★★★★
V/A - Dub, A Journey Into Bass Culture (1970s) ★★★★
V/A - Dub, Original Bass Culture (1970s) ★★★★
V/A - Dub, More Bass Culture (1970s) ★★★★
Tomorrow’s Gift - Goodbye Future (1973) ★★★★
Jackson C Frank - s/t (1965) ★★★★
V/A - Down Home Blues, Chicago Fine Boogie (1947-1958)★★★★
Maggie Bjorklund - Shaken (2014)★★★★
June Tabor - Airs & Graces (1976) ★★★★★
John Martyn - The Very Best Of (1967-1996) ★★★★★
The Owl Service - The Garland Sessions (2007) ★★★★★
John Lee Hooker - Tantalising With The Blues (1965-70)★★★★★
Furry Lewis, Memphis Willie B, Memphis Slim - Bluesville 3 (1963?) ★★★★
Lightnin’ Hopkins - Prestige Profiles (1960-4) ★★★★★
Magic Slim - Live @ Ma Bea’s (1976) ★★★★
Jimmy Dawkins - Come Back Baby (1977) ★★★★
Allman Brothers - At Filmore East (1971) ★★★★
John Fahey - The Yellow Princess (1968) ★★★★★
Freedy Johnston - Can You Fly? (1992)★★★★
Julie Doiron - I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day (2009) ★★★★
Tragically Hip - Man Machine Poem (2016) ★★★★
Tragically Hip - We Are The Same (2009) ★★★★
Tortoise - Millions Now Living Will Never Die (1996) ★★★★★
Grant Lee Buffalo - Storm Hymnal (1993-98) ★★★★
Shiva Burlesque - Mercury Blues (1990) ★★★★
Yo La Tengo - President (1989) ★★★★★
Yo La Tengo - Fakebook (1990) ★★★★★
Yo La Tengo - That Is You La Tengo (1991) ★★★★
Yo La Tengo - May I Sing With Me? (1992) ★★★★
Yo La Tengo - Painful (3 cds) (1993) ★★★★
Tim Buckley - Dream Letter (1968) ★★★★★
Those Bastard Souls - Debt & Departure (1999) ★★★★★
Wanderlust - Prize (1995) ★★★★
Chain - Towards The Blues (1971) ★★★★
The Schramms - Omnidirectional (2019) ★★★★
Cannonball Adderley - Soul Zodiac (1972)
Fred Anderson - Quintessential Birthday Trio Vol II (2015)
Greg Bendian’s Interzone - Requiem For Jack Kirby (2001)
Nels Cline & Greg Bendian - Interstellar Space Revisited (1999)
The Beat - Bounce (2016)
Nina Simone - To Be Free (1959-1993)
Swervedriver - 99th Dream (1998)
Road - s/t (1972)
Mudhoney - Morning In America (2019)
Necromandus - Orexis of Death (1973)
Julian Cope - Peggy Suicide (1991)
Ultravox - Rage In Eden (1981)
Siouxsie & The Banshees - Tinderbox (1986)
Blues Pills - Live In Paris (2017)
Gram Parsons - Alternate Takes (1973-4)
Mike Westbrook - Mama Chicago (1976)
The Fall - Grotesque (1980)
Truly - Fast Stories From Kid Coma (1995)
Echo & the Bunnymen - Evergreen (1997)
Echo & The Bunnymen - What Are You Going To Do With Your Life? (1999)
Blues Pills - Lady In Gold (2016)
Leo Bud Welch - The Angels In Heaven Done Signed My Name (2019)
The Black Keys - Chulahoma (2006)
Nanci Griffith - One Fair Summer Evening (1988)
The Soft Boys - Invisible Hits (1983)
Robyn Hitchcock - Robyn Sings (2003)
Raw Material - s/t (1970)
Don Carlos & Gold - Them Never Know Natty Dread Have Him Credentials (1982)
Henry Junjo Lawes - Volcano Erruption (70s-80s)
Don Carlos - Day To Day Living (1982)
Bunny ‘Striker’ Lee - Full Up (1968-72)
Bunny Lee & Friends - Tape Rolling (1971-4) ★★★★
v/a - Trojan Roots Dancehall Box (‘70s, ‘80s)
Charlie Chaplin & Papa San - Respect Due (1986?)
Robert Forster - The Evangelist (2008) ★★★★★
John Stewart - California Bloodlines (1969) ★★★★
v/a - Trojan Dancehall Box (‘70s, ‘80s)
Don Carlos - In Dub (1980)
Yabby You - Deeper Roots (‘70s, ‘80s)
Yabby You - Deeper Roots Part 2 (‘70s, ‘80s)
Norma Winstone - Edge Of Time (1972) ★★★★
Atlas - Just Playin’ Rhythm & Blues (1967-71)
V/A - Alan Lomax Songbook (1939-76) ★★★★
Shirley Collins - Lodestar (2016) ★★★★★
The Go-betweens - Loving Shocks (1989) ★★★★
Red House Painters - Songs For A Blue Guitar (1996) ★★★★
Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats - Mind Control (2013)
The Damned - Music For Pleasure (1977) ★★★★
Skids - Days In Europa (1977)
Big Country - The Crossing (1983) ★★★★
Big Country - Steel Town (1984)
Jon Dee Graham - Escape From Monster Island (1997) ★★★★
The Fall - Live At The Witch Trials (1979) ★★★★★

10) WOKE CAUSES - THIS MONTH, GOOD LAW PROJECT, GET OFF MY MED RECORDS, GBNEWS ADVERTISERS

GOOD LAW PROJECT

LINK
It’s evident that the corrupt kleptocracy of Boris Johnson isn’t going to dislodged by Kier Starmer’s PMQ’s however forensic, or by the biased media, or by legal investigations in which the gvt essentially investigate themselves.

However, despite the threats to judiciary in the Queen’s speech, at present the gvt are required to obey the law.
Champagne socialist fox-whacking lawyer Jolyon Maugham’s donation funded Good Law Project seems to be better than the opposition currently at holding the gvt to account, and proving where they have broken the law, so if you can spare a pound crowd fund them, as they do seem to be making an impact.

MEDICAL RECORDS OPT OUT

LINK
Did you know that the gvt are about to sell all your medical records off to the highest bidder? Thought not. We weren’t consulted.
I don’t care about the privacy aspect, but I do object to my life being monetised to give leverage to some horrible massive info-tech company.
You can withdraw the gvt’s right to farm your medical history as if you were some kind of data-pig at the link above. THIS IS NOW DELAYED TO SEPTEMBER DUE TO OPPOSITION BUT STILL WORTH DOING

GBNEWS ADVERTISERS

Stop Funding Hate say - Advertising sales for GB News are reportedly handled by Sky Media.
We’re aware of at least one company who say they were unaware that they were going to appear on GB News and suspended those ads when they found out. If you work for a company that buys programmatic advertising from Sky, it may be worth checking with them to ensure that your ads aren’t placed on GB News.

A huge thanks to the Stop Funding Hate volunteers who have come together to help identify GB News advertisers.
Brands that we’ve seen so far include: Vodafone, Octopus Energy, Ovo Energy, Co-op, Ikea, LV, Virgin Media, Kelloggs, Deliveroo, Nivea, Kenco coffee, AA, Premier Inn, American Express, Benadryl (Johnson and Johnson), Wickes, Starbucks, Weetabix, Listerine (Pfizer), National Lottery, Boomin, Cadbury, Taylors coffee, Amazon, Cazoo, Microsoft, Google, Alpen (Weetabix), Beko Harvestfresh, Pinterest, Ladbrokes, Rana pasta, Burger King, Warburtons, The UK Government (EU resettlement scheme), Bosch, Specsavers, TalkTalk, trivagoWeekend, itchpet.com, MSC Cruises, Grolsch, Indeed recruitment, Motability, Feel Multivitamins, Green Flag, Clean G non alcoholic gin, Facebook,Volvo, Bazuka, fiverr, Motability, Ibuleve Gel, Toyota, Appeal home shading / blinds, People’s Postcode Lottery, Just Eat, Petit Filous, Direct Bullion, Compare the Market, Kardia Mobile, Bupa, Verisure, The Open University.

There’s more information here about Stop Funding Hate, and the impact of our campaign so far. If you’re able to help build our movement tackling toxic media in the UK and internationally, please consider becoming a committed supporter and making a regular donation.

11) IN OUR COVID ERA LAMENTATIONS

Adam Schlesinger (Fountain of Wayne) (1967)
John Prine (outlaw country singer) (1946)
Henry Grimes (jazz bassist) (1935)
Dave Mountfield (Ornate Johnson) (1970)
Hal Wilner (arranger) (1957)
Tim Brooke-Taylor (Goodie) (1940)
Lee Konitz (jazz saxophonist) (1927)
Matthew Seligman (Soft Boy) (1955)
Millie Small (ska singer) (1946)
Florian Schneider (Kraftwerk robot) (1947)
Bill Rieflin (drummer for hire) (1960)
Hugh McKenna (Tear Gas pianist) (1949)
Steve Weber (Holy Modal Rounder) (1942)
Astrid Kirchherr (photographer) (1938)
Danny Ray Thompson (Sun Ra saxophonist) (1947)
Aubrey Burl (archaeologist) (1926)
Phil May (Pretty Thing) (1944)
The Clacton Fin Whale (circa 2000)
Christo Vladimirov Javacheff (artist) (1930)
Doll Tor stone circle (3300 BC)
Kay Carroll (The Fall) (1948)
Bob the Cat (73 bus) (2006)
Alex Taylor (Shop Assistant, in 2005, and no-one knew)
Simon H Fell (jazz bassist) (1959)
Carl Reiner (director) (1922)
Ennio Morricone (architect of sonic dreams) (1928)
Keith Tippett (jazz pianist) (1947)
Jimmy Cobb (jazz drummer) (1929)
Barbara Smoker (Humanist) (1923)
The Nuffield Theatre, Southampton
Tony Elliot (Time Out) (1942)
Judy Dyble (folk singer) (1949)
Peter Green (blues guitarist) (1946)
Emitt Rhodes (power pop auteur) (1950)
Annie Ross (jazz bohemian) (1930)
Joe Ruby (Scooby-Doo) (1933)
Craig Weatherhill (folklorist) (1950)
Don Weller (jazz saxophonist) (1940)
Simeon Coxe (Silver Apple) (1938)
Diana Rigg (Avenger) (1938)
Toots Hibbert (reggae got soul) (1942)
Dele Fadele (carry bag man) (1962)
George Jeffrie (man’s-laughter maker) (1964)
Dave Kusworth (Brum punk Stone) (1960)
Gary Peacock (jazz bassist) (1935)
Doorkins (Southwark Cathedral Cat) (2005?)
Spencer Davis (Brumbeat pioneer) (1939)
Bunny Lee (dubmaster) (1940)
The Cubbington Pear Tree (1770)
Fungie The Dingle Dolphin (1979)
Jill Paton Walsh (humanist novelist) (1937)
Val Warner (poet) (1946)
Guy N Smith (Lord of The Crabs) (1939)
Richard Corben (decadent cartoonist) (1940)
David Johnson (Duke of Soho) (1960)
Leslie West (Mountain man) (1945)

- 2021 -
Katharine Whitehorn (bedsitter cook) (1928)
Katharine Whitehorn (bedsitter cook) (1928)
Celia Drummond Ford (voice of Trees) (1950)
The Happy Man Tree (Stoke Newington Tree) (1870)
John Russell (guitar guru) (1954)
Marcel Uderzo (Asterisk artist) (1933)
Tom Stevens (Long Ryder and Magus) (1956)
Dougie Anderson (Coda’s Edinburgh record dealer (1952)
Captain Tom (Covid Walkman) (1920)
Rynagh O’Grady (Ted’s Mary) (1954)
Mary Wilson (Supreme) (1944)
Chick Corea (Miles’ tinkler) (1941)
Iain Pattinson (You wanted to see me Prime Minister?) (1951)
U-Roy (Toastmaster) (1942)
Lawrence Ferlinghetti (bookstore beat) (1921)
Wink O’Bannon (Eleventh Dream Day) (1956)
Bunny Wailer (Wailer) (1947)
Doug Parkinson (Oz vocal celeb) (1946)
Milford Graves (temporal explorer) (1941)
Johnny Rogan (Byrds’ Boswell) (1953)
Jessica Walter (Play Misty For Me) (1941)
Bertrand Tavernier (Round Midnight) (1941)
Anita Lane (Oz punk chanteuse) (1958)
Barbara Ess (Theoretical Girl) (1944)
Michael Collins (Apollo 11) (1930)
Mohammed Ag Itale (Tinariwen) (1960)
Monte Hellman (Two Lane Blacktop) (1929)
Sonny Simmons (jazz hobo) (1933)
Charles Grodin (The American Tim Key) (1935)
Franco Battiato (Italian Fetus) (1945)
Yoshi Wada (bagpipe minimalist) (1943)
Ned Beatty (squealing piggy) (1937)
Davey Datblygu (Davey Datblygu) (1964)
S Clay Wilson (Captain Pissgums) (1941)
Peter Zinovieff (sonic pioneer) (1933)
Richard Donner (kebab pioneer) (1930)
Alix Dobkin (feminist folksinger) (1940)
Patrick Sky (native American folksinger) (1940)
Tom O’Connor (raconteur) (1939)

All 37 episodes of the pub-based sitcom starring award-winning comedian, Al Murray.

Written by Al & Richard Herring, with some contributions from Stew.

Stewart Lee had promised to write an article for Chortle about the imminent airing of his stand-up special on BBC Two. But his publicist told us he was far too busy doing the washing and the ironing to submit anything. So instead we have secured the services of comedy archivist Ewal Street, of www.goodbyemotherinlaw.com, to assess the show…

---

In his new television stand-up special, Content Provider, Stewart Lee hurls himself around a rubbish-strewn stage in Southend-On-Sea for two patience-draining hours, visibly struggling for breath as he rages against digital media, Brexit, Trump, his own audience, all other comedians, and ultimately himself.

Employing his trademark neuro-linguistic crowd manipulation, and all the camera-savvy tricks he developed for his TV series Comedy Vehicle, Lee achieves a four-dimensional rendering of the stand-up experience never before seen on the flat plane of television.

So why do I find myself, a dispassionate observer of his erratically variable output in the medium for three decades now, worrying about him?

As a child in the Seventies, I was taken on holiday each year to a secluded cottage on the West Coast of Scotland. There was no television reception there, which was torture to me. You can perhaps imagine how excited I am about the forthcoming box set of the complete Goodies, which will allow me to finally make notes on classic episodes I was prevented from documenting in my notebook the first time around by my heartless holidaying parents!

One summer night, as I lay awake reciting Monty Python sketches to myself and doing all the voices, a great whale, (I do not remember the exact species as I have always struggled with the natural world and its infinite and unknowable variety), beached itself in the small hours and its mournful, and all too human, cries drew my mother, my father and I, dressed in John Pertwee pyjamas, down to the moonlit shingle.

The leviathan’s breathing was heavy and laboured, its distress obvious, and we were too weak to roll it back into the churning black sea. My father set off to drive the thirty miles to the nearest phone and my mother and I watched, hand in hand, as the mighty beast slowly expired in front of us in the dim light of the gathering dawn, moved by its majesty, edified by its obvious suffering. By the time the RSPCA arrived the whale was dead and I knew that one day I too would die. I can only attribute my inappropriate response to this revelation to panicked hysteria. Reader, I laughed until I cried.

I had forgotten the exact emotions this experience stirred in the six-year-old me, until I downloaded a press preview file of Stewart Lee’s Content Provider, due to be screened on BBC Two this Saturday, July 28. For here was another majestic creature in slow, obvious and painful decline, yet nonetheless capable of communicating, perhaps accidentally, some profound truths, not least the certainty of our mortality, the frailty of our flesh, whilst simultaneously finding new ways of exploring the limits of the TV comedy format.

After a strong start as a rule-breaking solo stand-up in the late 1980s, even popping up on the forgotten cable channel BSkyB’s The Happening in 1990, Lee eventually went on to spend the best part of the opening decade of this century in the wilderness, by which I mean he didn’t appear on television. During this period Lee built his stand-up reputation with acclaimed live shows, and eventually, in 2008, he secured a BBC Two series which saw him stuffed, at his executive producer’s insistence, into an unsuitable suit, (think Jack Dee circa 1989), his filleted leftover material interrupted by often underwhelming film items, which aped The Day Today, The Fist of Fun, and Asylum without remotely equalling them.

The first series of Comedy Vehicle’s relationship with the three series that followed recalls Blackadder’s tentative debut, which nonetheless saw a confident subsequent flowering, a process I have written about in my book on the ‘alternative comedy’ TV movement of the 1980s, Goodbye Mother-In-Law, and subsequently in my online blog of the same name. It can only be the unprecedented acclaim heaped on Lee’s contemporary live shows that saw the somewhat uneven series re-commissioned by an openly reluctant BBC.

And we are lucky it was, for Lee’s undoubted Indian summer was the four-year period from 2009 to 2013, encompassing a sustained and substantial period of work, totalling ten hours of stand-up in four years; namely series two and three of his BBC Two show Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, for which he developed and road-tested twelve bespoke half hour routines, and the 2009 and 2011 stand-up shows If You Prefer A Milder Comedian Please Ask For One and Carpet Remnant World.

Post Bafta and two British Comedy Awards, the more extreme approach of his fourth Comedy Vehicle series, however, tested both his suddenly suspicious, BBC staff stuffed, studio audience, the viewers at home, and presumably the patience of Shane Allen and his BBC comedy department to boot, who soon asked Lee to vacate his spoiled slot, with some sympathetic fans appearing to view the series as an elaborate and deliberate career suicide note.

But Lee’s ghost continued to haunt the cathode ray tube, a spectral presence speaking through the bodies of others. In the last year the avant-comedy stylistic tropes Lee popularised, though admirably never claimed to have pioneered (seek YouTube for Kevin McAleer on Friday Night Live in 1988 or any Ted Chippington footage for proof), are also evident in the television work of newer acts, praised for the very processes the younger Lee was once condemned for.

These youngsters, in turn, have gained worldwide acclaim on the stack-‘em-high global content platform of Netflix, which understandably deems Lee himself, with his bloody-minded half hour routines about obscure right-wing British tabloid journalists, Hackney Weight Watchers, and varieties of English crisps, ‘too parochial’.

Meanwhile, the same ongoing worldwide Culture War that gave us Brexit and Trump has seen the liberal comedy cabal Lee once called home under siege from the bedroom demagogues of the Alt-Right. Indeed, the Judge Dredd and Mad Max writer Brendan McCarthy observed on Twitter, ‘Stewart Lee is an archaic left wing relic. Milo Yiannopoulos is more on the zeitgeist. I don't agree with all of his views, but at least people like Paul Joseph Watson can be funny about subjects that Lefties like Stewart Lee are shit-scared to go anywhere near.’

Even his fellow comedians seemed to tire of the now acclaimed Lee during his golden years, much as I refused to see Mamma Mia on principle, solely because I was sick of my Mother telling me it was the best film of all time (It isn’t by the way, mother! I think you will find that that particular honour belongs to our old friend Mr Spinal Tap!).

For the outrageous Frankie Boyle, Lee was ‘irrelevant and flabby’; for last year’s Edinburgh Comedy Award winner, the XFM DJ John Robins, Lee was ‘a part of the same hypocrisy he’d have you believe he exposes’; for the controversial rasping comedian Andrew Lawrence he was a ‘rancid fucking imposter and Oxbridge cunt’; while the TV comedian and music theatre star Jason Manfield blames his own perfectly creditable three star Guardian reviews on the fact that he ‘isn’t Stewart Lee’.

To cap it all, the ongoing campaign the once presentable Lee fought against physical decay for the last decade has suddenly, and convincingly, been lost, and he has become, in the words of the acclaimed writer-producer Armando Iannucci, ‘a human bin bag’. Where does this leave the man described by the character comedian Al Murray as ‘the Grand Poobah of stand-up’, seemingly both too young to be a has-been, and not quite old enough to be a legend?

Well, it left the suddenly unemployed Lee doggedly monetising his new Content Provider live set, a show he hoped would hold together in the face of the most volatile political climate of our lifetimes, for 18 months and 214 dates, until finally filming it in Leave-voting Southend On Sea last April, at the unexpected request of the new controller of BBC Two, Patrick Holland.

While he’s unlikely, in the changing climates of both television and politics, to ever benefit again from the baronial largesse that allowed him four BBC Two series, it would nonetheless be a sadistic pleasure to be allowed to watch Lee’s physical and mental decline at biannual intervals in TV special sized chunks culled from his tours, as he clings to an outmoded value system in the face of a world that considers him a relic, Lee positively revelling in his own perceived irrelevance. In a landscape of instant content Lee has, by accident or design, achieved that rarest of states – a special kind of scarcity.

You could consume Lee’s new live show at your convenience on the BBC iPlayer from Sunday. Or you could stay up, as I will, late into the night on Saturday, uncork a nice chardonnay and some naughty nibbles, and watch with a resolutely unconvinced Mrs Goodbyemotherinlaw as the mighty beast slowly expires in front of you in the dim light of the gathering dawn, moved by its majesty, edified by its obvious suffering. Reader, I laughed until I cried.

• Ewal Street, television critic and archivist, www.goodbyemotherinlaw.com

I fear the Apple Store. It’s a disorienting cross between a Los Angeles hotel lobby, the place where everyone over 30 gets killed in Logan’s Run and the headquarters of Hydra ™ ®. The protocols for attracting a staff member seem inexplicably opaque, like the rules for bidding in an auction, or initiating a new friendship. They induce mild panic attacks and my heart flutters as groomed twentysomethings, who could be customers or staff, waft by me, geishas for Steve Jobs’s ghost. Why aren’t there any queues? Can I just sit in here quietly and eat the things from my bag? Is there a duty free section?

In the Apple Store, I never know if a commercial transaction is taking place, or if I am just involved in a continuing discussion about my “needs”, a situation I admittedly find replicated in my dealings with my therapist and people generally. And there is now a raised area at the rear of the Regent Street branch in London that suggests a ziggurat. Here, ancient Aztecs tore out people’s hearts to appease Quetzalcoatl, a sacrifice still less demanding than the financial one required buy a new Apple laptop. When I mentioned, to the charming young man attending me, that the shop design made me think of the death rituals of the winged serpent worshippers, he just smiled, as if I were complimenting Apple’s bold aesthetics. But I will have to go to the Apple Store again. Soon.

My laptop has been on the blink, for more than quite a while, and I am in a textbook state of denial. It shuts down at random, like my memory. The battery percentage surges, like my blood pressure. It suddenly switched off just then, in fact, when I was Googling “Quetzalcoatl”, but not before it reminded me of Larry Cohen’s 1982 David Carradine vehicle Q – The Winged Serpent, a demented horror movie in which both the female nudity and the kung fu fighting are entirely gratuitous, as indeed they are in life as a whole. Look. I know it’s true and I just can’t face it. This laptop’s on the way out. Like life as we know it.

It’s Wednesday 1 November. October ended last night. As a kid, I loved the writer Ray Bradbury, and Ray Bradbury in turn loved the word “October”, an all-purpose adjective redolent of twilight, encroaching cold, dry crackling leaves and woodsmoke. The October Country of his imagination accommodated The Autumn People and The Halloween Tree, and his best novels, Something Wicked This Way Comes and Dandelion Wine, are both set in very Octobery Octobers. Nobody ever got poetic about September. New pencil cases, the Ludlow food festival and International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

But last night our October Halloween came and went, hot and muggy again now as usual, and to my children the word “October” has no meaning. It’s just another month, without its distinctive Octoberness, in a calendar of largely uniform weather, spiked by sudden climatic shocks. The year is now like a bland edition of Antiques Roadshow, an endless parade of willow-pattern plates, enlivened by unexpected moments where unpredictable members of the public suddenly present a sickened Arthur Negus with a demonic phallus made of quartz, some old worms, or a fossilised patriarch of the early Coptic church.

October as we knew it is gone. Today, where once I remember the first flavours of winter tailgating the closing month into November, like Tories pushing a wine fridge into Downing Street, instead I’m preparing for monsoon weather and tropical deluges, like an old geordie man who’s run off to live on a beach with a Thai sex worker. The world, like my laptop, is demonstrably deteriorating, but the effort required to fix it seems too much to contemplate. I give us 10 years, tops. Put it this way. If I get a new laptop, it certainly isn’t worth taking out an extended warranty. And, with things as they are, I won’t bother starting that box set of The Wire that’s been sitting on my shelf for a decade.

And as everything burns and buckles, the unelected evil idiot Rishi Sunak grants new North Sea oil and gas licences, even as his party makes political capital out of demonising exactly the sort of people who’ll be displaced as their homelands drown and smoulder. We’ll flood your country and beat you back into the sea with sticks. The wealthy regard the planet’s future as collateral damage in the battle to bolster their bank balances, oblivious to the fact that there’s not much point being top dog in a dead world. “Waiter! There’s a fly in my soup!” “That’s because all the other food sources have vanished, sir. Nothing grows any more, but flies still hatch from maggots laid in the decomposing corpses of the dead. You’re lucky to have a fly, to be honest. Will there be anything else?”

Paul Marshall, the co-owner of GB News, who is currently contemplating the Telegraph, runs a hedge fund with $2.2bn of fossil fuel investments. Is it any wonder that climate scepticism runs through GB News’s coverage like an oil slick, with a third of its presenters reportedly spreading climate science denial on air in 2022 and more than half criticising climate policies? Could that be why Marshall’s quasi-respectable libertarian UnHerd website routinely criticises climate action? Or maybe Marshall just hates all life on Earth and wants it to die, irrespective of the financial benefits he gains from mass extinction. But why? Well, it can’t have been easy being the father of the ex-banjo player from Mumford & Sons. “That was really good, Winston. Really good. But I’ve just got to go and discredit Thunberg.” Must we all suffer for Marshall’s shame?

We’re doomed. And our overlords are evil. Next Halloween, I’m going as the ex-banjo player from Mumford & Sons.

On last Sunday’s BBC politics show, presenter Laura Kuenssberg spoke to the energy secretary, Grant Shapps. On this occasion Shapps manifested as himself, rather than as one of the many false identities he used to inhabit when promoting his internet business. I always find Shapps’s appearances as himself uncomfortable, a bit like when Mike Yarwood used to say “and this is me!” at the end of his impressionist shows and then sing an old jazz standard in a weird American accent while squinting and waving his hands. Like Yarwood, Shapps himself seems more improbable than the people he pretended to be.

Because to me Shapps will always be Michael Green. Or Sebastian Fox. Or, proving Shapps a pioneer of now-commonplace gender fluidity, Corinne Stockheath, a name so blandly insane that, I will never tire of pointing out, no one else ever had it. Ever. Come on everyone! Sing it!! “One Corinne Stockheath! There’s only one Corinne Stockheath! One Corinne Stockheath! There’s only one Corinne Stockheath!”

Bland Insanity. It sounds like the name of a cruise ship covers band staffed entirely by any Conservative MPs that survive the Mexican standoff of this currently collapsing Conservative government. And One Corinne Stockheath is the song they would play for the slow dance at the end of the evening. The environment secretary, Thérèse Coffey, steps up to the mic to perform the spoken word section over Shapps’s gently undulating flamenco guitar and declares: “With the poor people of the Earth will I share my fate. The streams of the mountains are more pleasing to me than the sea.” Are they, Thérèse? Is it because they haven’t got all those huge chods of human faeces you’re responsible for floating in them, Thérèse? Bland insanity!

While Kuenssberg nodded like a toy bulldog bobblehead on the back shelf of an economic family car, Shapps cranked in mentions of all the usual decontextualised bullet points: “Stop the boats”, “Jeremy Corbyn”, “Just Stop Oil”. And then he lied, of course, this time justifying the naked cronyism of the liar Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list, a document so bent and slippery it is to be used as a bobsleigh track at the next Winter Olympics. Gordon Brown also had a resignation honours list, apparently, according to the man of a thousand faces and one ride-on lawnmower. It was yet another example of Tories using the standard Billy Bunter defence. “Boris Johnson didn’t steal your cake Jenkins, and anyway, Gordon Brown stole your cake as well.”

Kuenssberg sat quietly through Shapps’s lie, either through ignorance or compliance. But Gordon Brown didn’t have a resignation honours list. He had a dissolution honours list, which honoured people from all parties, rather than just honouring Tories who had eaten jelly and ice-cream in No 10 during lockdown, and then vomited it up the walls in front of the cleaners’ badly paid faces and tried to lie about it.

Luckily the great British public were on hand to help the BBC they cherish maintain its reputation for accuracy and unbiased political coverage, and many politics mavens rang in to correct the record. The surprise is that anyone interested in politics would still be watching any BBC news coverage anyway. If it’s shameless, right-leaning political bias you’re looking for, GB News does it much better, and if you’re interested in facts and analysis, there are dozens of liberal commentators on social media far better equipped for the job than anyone at the BBC. And some of them do cool swearing too. And if you’re interested in the exact point where political passion ferments into a kind of furious, blackly comic despair, there’s always James O’Brien on LBC. It can only be a form of cruelty, or masochism, that draws us back to Kuenssberg, like sick voyeurs, wondering what kind of contortions she will concertina herself into this week to avoid outright criticism of the Conservatives, a limbo dancer wriggling under a wooden clothes horse, each rung bedecked with transcripts of Johnson’s well-documented lies.

Kuenssberg reacted with patronising condescension to those who called in to help her out of the hole her unfamiliarity with the subject she was discussing had allowed her to fall into, stating live on air: “For all you political pub quiz champions out there, Grant Shapps said that Gordon Brown had a ‘resignation honours list’. In fact he had a ‘dissolution honours list’, which actually gave awards to members of all political parties. We like to make nerds happy on a Sunday morning, so that clarification is something you can entertain your friends and relatives with throughout the day.” Oooh! Someone needs to change their duvet to a lighter tog!

Frankly, the public deserve better than to be sneered at by Kuenssberg, whose inane Sunday morning show title sequence makes her look like an estate agent trying to sell a wealthy buyer a luxury home made out of scribbles. The BBC’s failure to hold the leave campaign to account for its lies in the run-up to Brexit was surely one of the factors that has now led the country into economic and environmental disaster, and a public broadcaster doing its job of questioning potential PMs properly would never have seen the self-serving liar Boris Johnson anywhere near the door of No 10, let alone attending an Abba party in a flat upstairs while hundreds of thousands died. Allegedly. If expecting the BBC to be fair and accurate makes me a nerd, then knit me a tank top, shine up my NHS specs, array my Dungeons & Dragons characters in order of hit points, pour me a foaming real ale, and number me nobly among those nerds!

I have provided the spoken word section for new recordings by Brighton’s PHYSICS HOUSE BAND

Stewart Lee's twenty-first century television output continues with a second series that perhaps wasn't expected to see the light of day.

Maybe 'light of day' isn't the right turn of phrase, considering Comedy Vehicle now goes out past 11pm on a Wednesday night, though I doubt either Lee or his fanbase have serious problems with that scheduling. If Lee's work were competing with more mainstream comedic programming, up against the likes of Mock The Week or Have I Got News For You, then it'd be more open to public scrutiny, and there's a large chunk of the potential audience out there who won't get on too well with this stuff.

That's not to say people are too stupid for Lee's technique, though some undoubtedly are. Aside from those, there are people who get it but simply don't get on with it. His patterns of repetition annoy a lot of folk, whilst his tendency to deconstruct his own act, while it's actually in progress, will bug those who find the process a little too fussy. Comedy's a very subjective thing, clearly, so it might be best that Comedy Vehicle's not entirely buried, but slightly submerged in the listings.

Having said that, it's a real shame that panel show mediocrity fills the mainstream hours whilst content like that in this first episode is somewhat less available. In the opener, there was a slightly different construction to the show from last series, with a central, pre-show interview with Armando Ianucci forming a contextual reference point (wherein Lee explained he only had four, maybe three jokes) and a brilliantly extravagant sketch finishing things off, all around a stand up routine that was, as usual, oblique, painfully clumsy and brilliantly messy. The repetition of the word 'crisps' shouldn't be funny, and wouldn't be in the hands of a lesser talent, but here it provided gold in a routine about Stewart Lee's fictional grandfather, his attitude towards the Japanese people and his home/nest, made out of unlikely materials.

It was no surprise Arnold Brown was involved somewhere in the writing, and it was pleasing to see this distinguished old timer make a very small cameo. Also not a shocker was the listing of Chris Morris and Armando Iannucci in the scripting and writing credits.

With all this major talent and with the best opening episode of a comedy series this year, it would be mystifying as to why a show of this calibre has to be shown close to midnight in the middle of the week, if we didn't all already understand the BBC's problem when transmitting work like this. They've already created a prime-time that's stuffed with rubbish. If Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle showed up in the middle of all that ropey content, it'd stick out like a sore thumb. People would become frightened and incontinent - so it's probably best to shove it where only those in the know will find it.

Speaking With Sean Hughes on his Under The Radar Podcast - July 2014

Desperate for American co-operation with post-Brexit trade, Britain is hamstrung in her reaction to Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. A man in Southend-on-Sea, who just wanted bendy bananas, eats takeaway butterfly wings, and a nuclear missile hits Tel Aviv.

In July, Guardian and Observer readers, their furious tofu-smeared faces red with righteous rage, will doubtless wish to greet visiting American president Donald Trump with well-punctuated placards, laced with Pythonesque whimsy.

Meanwhile, a crazed Islamist lone wolf will already be preparing a bucket of unstable fertiliser to use as a home-made bomb. And prankster Simon Brodkin will already be preparing a bucket of Russian prostitutes’ urine to use as a photobomb.

Realpolitik appeasers like Boris “Piccaninnies” Johnson assure us, with one eye on transatlantic trade deals in the dystopian post-EU wasteland he has engineered, that we must respect the office of the president of the United States. But Boris “Watermelon Smiles” himself described the current president, in 2015, as “unfit to lead the United States”, “clearly out of his mind”, and “stupefyingly ignorant”. Less impressive U-turns have given Richard Hammond whiplash.

But life goes on, and the really important cultural questions blare from the Sunday supplement headlines. “Wham! Bam!! Pow!!! Have Superhero Movies Finally Grown Up?”; “Gnngh! Squish!! Yuk!!! Is Our Love Affair With The Smoothie Maker Finally Over?” “Squelch! Squish!! Ker-ching!!! Has Porn Finally Entered The Mainstream?”

At least one of these great debates is at last resolved. Porn has finally and undeniably entered the mainstream, like a massively mammaried Milk Tray man, slopping his pendulous udders one at a time through the unlocked hotel bedroom window of one Donald J Trump, the 45th president of the United States of America.

Franklin D Roosevelt bequeathed the New Deal, Theodore Roosevelt the Teddy Bear. Donald J Trump means even Sister Wendy Beckett may now have read about the president’s paid-off lover’s 2004 video vehicle, Toxxxic Cumloads 6.

Obama was the first black president. And Donald J Trump is the first porn president. He has pornified not the high street, not the world of fashion, but the whole world itself. What unregulated internet access began, Donald Trump has finished, his porn star affair inadvertently dissolving the last vestiges of modesty displayed by the world of monetised desire. And the phrase “porn star” now sits comfortably in the mouths of Today programme presenters, TV newsreaders, and year 4 schoolkids.

This presents a dilemma for Theresa May, who looks increasingly like something that lurches up at you on a ghost train. And so, in the interests of gender equality, does her husband, Mr Theresa May. How does the vicar’s daughter from Eastbourne court and entertain the president of porn, upon whom our post-Brexit future depends? My Whitehall mole has leaked Theresa May’s plans to welcome Trump in an appropriately pornographic way.

On Friday 13 July at 11.08 am, President Trump and Melania Trump will be met on the tarmac at Heathrow airport by the prince and princess of British pornography, Ben Dover and his ex-wife Linzi Drew, who have been persuaded to partner up again in the interest of post-customs union trade opportunities.

Having explained to the Trumps how the joke in Ben Dover’s name works, and that Ben Dover is not his real name (it is Simon Dover), the Drew-Dovers will then whisk the Trumps away in a Routemaster bus with a bouncy suspension, driven by the late Reg Varney.

On the way, the Drew-Dovers will explain to the Trumps the fascinating differences between saucy homegrown British pornography and the more airbrushed fantasies of the American version, and what this tells us about our two historically close nations and their unbreakable special relationship.

While the president will doubtless have a lot to contribute to this discussion, his wife is expected to sit in silent, smouldering resentment, like a big pile of disappointed hate, brushing away any attempts at physical contact, as Ben Dover tries to smooth over the situation with seaside postcard humour and amusing anecdotes about mishaps on the set of Ben Dover’s English Muffins.

At 1.17 pm, the Trumps will arrive in newly gentrified Soho, where they will be met by the billionaire pornographer and former Birmingham City chairman David Gold, and his daughter, the sex-toy retailer Jacqueline Gold (CBE). The Golds will show the Trumps around the historic pornographic district, temporarily restored to its 70s glory, with swathes of hairy suede-denim filth flung over the contemporary ciabatta outlets, bringing innocent joy to Donald Trump’s orange face.

Now hopefully suitably buttered up, and in a brief respite from pornography, the first family will proceed to the otter enclosure at London Zoo, where the foreign secretary Boris Johnson, dressed as a glistening wet otter, will cavort and frolic to the Trumps’ delight with real otters in their pond, and toss a stone from hand to hand, hopefully disorienting Donald Trump to the point where he will accidentally agree some kind of trade deal. Melania will be invited to choose which otter she would like made into a hat, and the doomed mammal will then be slaughtered and skinned in front of her by a vengeful Terry Nutkins, to the obvious distress of schoolchildren, before the bloodied pelt is presented to Mrs Trump on a silver tray.

That evening, at Buckingham Palace, alongside the Royal Family and armed forces veterans, the Trumps will enjoy a late-night charity gala screening of the Stormy Daniels 2007 Gulf-war themed sex comedy Operation: Desert Stormy, with Kentucky Fried Chicken finger buffet.

Oh for God’s sake, it’s going to be awful for everyone, much worse than all the rubbish I’ve written above. And someone’s bound to get killed.

Exciting Nottingham Burger News!

Nottingham Playhouse has instigated a burger special offer at my personal request, and is the only venue on the tour to agree to my demand for "a belly full of laughs the right way" to be available on all dates.

Please make sure you take advantage of this offer as I will have the cost of any unsold burgers deducted from my fee.

"Seeing Stewart Lee at Nottingham Playhouse ? Why not take advantage of our new stand-up comedy Burger and Beer deal? Cheeseburger + Drink = £15.50. Falafel & Hummus Burger + Drink £13.50. Get great for a belly full of laughs the right way with Nottingham Playhouse Bar & Kitchen!"

— Playhouse Bar & Kitchen (@NottinghamPBK) January 25, 2020

https://twitter.com/NottinghamPBK/status/1221044276479582208

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Extra Salford Date - 28th April 2020

Due to demand, the Salford Lowry are adding an extra date to the week of Snowflake / Tornado at their Lyric Theatre.
The date is not on sale yet, but I expect it will show up on their main booking page for the show once they release the tickets. It'll be added to the website when on sale, too. The extra date will be Tuesday 28th April.

Last weekend, I stood on a remote Derbyshire moor with my flask and surveyed the romantic remnants of a once-flourishing society that faded out, forgotten, 5,000 years ago. Civilisations hang by threads and can collapse, as Hemingway said, “gradually and then suddenly”. Watching the Conservatives and their media allies dissolve objective notions of truth before my eyes daily these last two weeks I wonder if the Great Britain we loved is entering the “suddenly” phase.

Paul Marshall, the £680m financier and father of Mumford & Sons’ banjo-playing Jordan Peterson fan Winston Marshall, funds the libertarian-lite wankstains’ website Unherd, where Nick Cave is finally able to speak without fear of censure by the wokerati. And Marshall Sr also backs the inexplicably unregulated conspiracy-theory-and-saloon-bar-opinion funnel GB News. But Marshall, it transpires, has been sharing unambiguously, and now mysteriously disappeared, Islamophobic material online, like your shit Christmas-dinner uncle but with his own multimillion-pound media propaganda platform. Yes, Uncle Paul. Allah wants British people to be replaced. Yes, Uncle Paul. Winston is doing very well on the banjo at school. More sprouts?

It’s hard to imagine the Daily Telegraph, Britain’s worst newspaper, becoming even more rightwing, and even less trustworthy, but Marshall plans to buy it and then it will become a mere tissue of Tufton Street talking points. On Marshall’s GB News, rightwing politicians present rightwing talkshows where they interview rightwing politicians to promote rightwing policies, while Ofcom looks the other way like bent cops in The Sopranos. If you work for Ofcom, what is the point of your life exactly? Why don’t you go and work for the Environment Agency, where your experience of failing to deal with Paul Marshall will surely be valuable in ensuring the ongoing flow of raw sewage into our rivers? We need broadcasters and newspapers that will hold lies to account, not propagate them, or democracy dies.

Last month, Conservative party social media accounts selectively clipped news footage to make the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, appear antisemitic, using a mid-sentence stumble he immediately corrected. On Times Radio, the Tory party chair, Richard Holden, defended the Conservatives’ circulation of the fake footage, largely unchallenged in my opinion by the accommodating presenter, Calum Macdonald. The important thing, apparently, was not whether the video of Khan was real or not. What mattered was what it told us about Khan. I used to tell a long, false, but plausible story on stage about David Cameron making me eat his vomit when I was a student. The punchline was that it didn’t matter if the story was true, because what it told us about David Cameron was true. An absurd, self-parodic joke of 15 years ago is now an actual Tory attack strategy.

Eight days later, the GB News presenter, former Tory Party deputy chair, and Ashfield MP Lee Anderson appeared on Paul Marshall’s GB News. He was being interviewed in his capacity as a Tory MP by a GB News presenter, rather than interviewing another Tory MP in his own capacity as a Tory MP GB News presenter. Speaking of the London mayor, Anderson said Islamists had got control of “a very cowardly Khan” who was, among other things, letting down the Jewish population. Anderson soon had the whip taken away from him, technically for failing to apologise, but essentially for speaking ill of someone his own party had tried to smear in a similar fashion by using edited footage just over a week earlier.

Throughout the week it became clear that Tory MPs had been briefed that Anderson’s comments were serious enough to be condemned, but that they were not to alienate potential voters from the valuable racist and Islamophobic communities by condemning the comments as racist or Islamophobic. In Wednesday’s PMQs, Keir Starmer, by criticising the Conservatives’ relationship with Nigel Farage, made it clear he was finally happy to let those same voters swing to Reform plc, where the red wall referendum cannon-fodder whose votes holed Britain below the waterline for a generation can be farmed like pigs for political power by Richard Tice.

Someday, the communique advising all Tory MPs to just use the word “wrong” over and over again all week in respect of Anderson’s comments, without ever defining what “wrong” means, will come to light. Michael Tomlinson, who is the Tory MP for both Mid Dorset and North Poole simultaneously, used the word “wrong” seven times, without defining it, before being cut off by the normally compliant Nick Ferrari on LBC. On Monday, the Tory Forest of Dean MP Mark Harper told Sky’s Kay Burley that Anderson’s comments were “wrong” 10 times, but refused her repeated invitations to clarify. On Wednesday, Croydon South’s disposable Tory MP Chris Philp told her Anderson’s undefinable comments were abstractly wrong three times. When discourse is this degraded, democracy is, suddenly, entering the palliative stage.

Last weekend, a helpful farmer pointed me in the direction of the Brand End Stones, said I was welcome to walk across his land on what appeared to be a Roman road, and confessed that the smaller of the two monoliths was now considerably shorter, having been kicked by a horse. The pair were still impressive, in their imperious isolation, a white mist billowing up from the Dove Valley beyond. The farmer pointed out another stone on the horizon, undocumented by archaeologists, with which he said they aligned, but when I looked for it later I was unable to find it. He asked me what the stones were for exactly. I said no one really knew. No records remain. Down in the valley, he said, there were ancient earthworks, but they had been rendered unrecognisable by quad-bike damage. I expect these Neolithic stargazers thought their way of life would last for ever. Then maybe someone started lying about stuff. And things deteriorated rapidly.

A newly discovered birth relative of mine, a Catholic priest, is an exorcist, from County Cork. The Exorcist came to stay on Wednesday. The next evening he was doing what he called “a fairly straightforward overnight identify, isolate, subdue and expel job” in Angel. He wasn’t allowed to talk about it, and knows I’m an atheist, so avoids putting us in situations where we’d argue. The Exorcist displays a natural diplomacy my Brexit-voting relatives could learn from.

But with his boisterous sense of humour, four pints nightly Guinness habit, and lifelong addiction to Viz comic, my Exorcist cousin isn’t anyone’s idea of a spiritual warrior. I introduced him to Sandi Toksvig, who he loves, at a radio comedy recording, when he’d come straight from an especially distressing Solemn Exorcism. Toksvig took one look at the portly Irishman, assumed I was joking about his line of work, and let loose that hysterical laugh she does on Bake Off when a poor old man ruins his pie.

Because he was still wound up from fighting what he believed had been a servant of Hell, the Exorcist and Toksvig nearly came to blows and had to be separated by Nicholas Parsons. I think that, after 30 years in the game, this is still probably my best showbiz anecdote by some distance, and is the only reason I still get invited anywhere for Christmas dinner.

I was glad of the Exorcist’s company on Wednesday as I myself had felt possessed, if only by a sense of confusion, all week. Last Sunday, I had written a deliberately silly article, comparing burning Yorkshire brushfires to the apparently combustible Shredded Wheat hair of Andrew Neil, which somehow went viral, Neil’s own indignant tweet about the column driving a further 24,000 people through to it.

Googling “This Week”, “Andrew Neil” and “Stewart Lee”, to try and find out what was going on, only brought me further stress. I had enjoyed appearing on Neil’s show in February 2014 with the Scottish Nationalist, and former Kane Gang frontman, Pat Kane. And yet now I saw that afterwards Kane had tweeted his followers to say, “Jolly end-of-term feel backstage. Got to meet the somewhat odiferous Stewart Lee.”

To be fair, I had just come straight from doing three hours on stage at the Leicester Square theatre, but it is a disturbing comment to read about yourself. One of the great things about Google, I think, is that years after a social interaction which you felt had been a success, you find that all the while the other people involved were fighting back their urge to vomit because you stank.

By the end of last Sunday even the Cameron-pig-sex fantasist, tax toilet fugitive, and former Conservative party deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft had accused me of having a “meltdown”, while Neil was tweeting some guy called “Tom”, apologising for “Venezuela”, and pleading, “Could you now get Guardian to delete some of the garbage it’s recently published about me?”

Something I didn’t understand was kicking off and I was out of my depth. So, you’ll forgive me if today, instead of inadvertently bringing down the wrath of the online “alt-right”, I share with you a true story that has been bothering me that I can’t quite make sense of. There’ll be nothing so divisive as Andrew Neil’s smouldering Shredded Wheat hair this week.

Ridiculously, the Exorcist is another person with an impossible job who, when the subject of standup comes up, says to me, “I don’t know how you do what you do. I’d go to pieces. You must have some balls.” He still won’t accept that what he does for a living, even though I think it’s all a delusion, is harder than talking about farts to strangers.

We watched a news report together saying that, since the Brexit vote, British people’s mental health has deteriorated rapidly compared to their European counterparts’. This came as no surprise to the Exorcist. “People who think they are possessed are canaries in the mine,” he told me.

“I know there’s a national mental crisis brewing when I have to order extra bottles of Holy,” the Exorcist continued, pouring himself another Guinness. “I’m getting through gallons of the stuff! Brexit has brought people down and weakened their spiritual defences. There’s folk thrashing about, foaming at the mouth, and some of them spouting Tourette’s level 1970s racist bollocks on top of it all. The lads in my department are run off their feckin’ feet.”

“Are you saying Brexit has let the Devil in?,” I asked the Exorcist, smirking. “You realise people will say that is the most extreme manifestation of Project Fear to date.”

“I’m not saying any more to you, Stewart Lee,” the Exorcist said, and suggested we agree on our usual compromise. And with that the Exorcist leant forward and did a fairly convincing impression of my own supercilious English tones. “People who think they are possessed are just displaying symptoms of mental health problems, and that if Brexit is exacerbating them, then there’s going to be more of these supposed ‘possessions’.”

I agreed, laughing, that yes, that was exactly the sort of thing I would say. “Well you’re wrong,” the Exorcist said, shaking now, “and let me tell you, once Brexit kicks in, not being able to get fresh mozzarella is going to be the least of your feckin’ worries. Don’t you see? This is what He wants. The Lord of the Flies. The Lie Father. Division. Social breakdown. Brother against Brother. That Mrs May. Your man Neil with his hair. People like them. They could have stopped this. They’re His servants and they don’t even know! And you just think it’s funny, you smug bastard!”

Glasgow’s garage punk veterans The Primevals announce a new single as featured in the new Stewart Lee vs The Man-Wulf upcoming U.K. tour.

There are 3 versions
Side a I’m The Man-Wulf
Side b I’m The Man-Wulf (long nail edit)
Plus a 9 minute I’m The Man-Wulf (long nail version) (I LOOOOOVE THIS!!)

Vinyl sides a&b released on a 7” 45 in January.

It’s a blustery and rainy February evening and I’m attending Stewart Lee’s stand-up show ‘Content Provider’. Tonight is sold out. Actually, all four nights at the Brighton Dome are sold out. This is a testament to Lee’s popularity and perhaps to Brighton’s good sense of humour. We’ll see what Stewart has to say about that…

Stewart Lee has an air of the Godfather of comedy; and it is a hard-won role, I imagine. Lee emerges to raucous applause. Casually dressed with slick-back hair, with a slight paunch and chin in the air, he looks at the audience as if to say: ‘So you’re here then?’ And immediately there is a sense of dialogue and rapport to his address.

What the audience is well aware of is that in 2016, his BBC series was cancelled after four series. Despite performing well and holding onto a stable viewership, it was culled as part of funding cuts. What a shame. Still, tonight promises to be an opportunity for an uncensored experience with the comedian who manages the delicate balance of mainstream appeal and uncompromising critical content.

Lee is also quick to bait the crowd. I’m sure there were a few people shifting in their seats as he weighed in on those who have come along as a plus one. Rather than the excited die-hard fans who Lee supposed were confined to the main stall seats. Between this and the clear warning of no mobile phones, the audience was reminded to pay attention and to read between lines. While in some way ‘Content Provider’ was a call to decode both Lee’s wit and script, it also questioned the rhetoric of politicians and authority in general. It follows then, that we hear about Brexit and Trump.

Throughout the show, Lee tramples on his stage props. DVDs of other comedians and from time to time refers to the show he was planning to write prior to Brexit happening. The show was to be inspired by the 19th Century painting Wanderer above the sea of fog by Friedrich Casper David. It depicts a romantic silhouette of a man in nature as an example of Rückenfigur. Since the key to these paintings is the idea of experiencing nature, the figure always has his back to the viewer. Concealing his face and perhaps emotions of isolation too.

Well, that was worth the research. Lee was obviously thinking long and hard about the message and criticisms he wanted to voice. Both personally and publicly, and of whether it was a politician, a comedian or the under 40’s (in general). He delivered his critique to a crowd who laughed uncontrollably. And one person who disobeyed his call for using mobiles.

I don’t think they’ll ever do that again. It was an excellent show. I almost took to the aisle to lie down to laugh.

Stewart Lee returns to TV with this new show, and when he left - all of ten years ago - I mourned his passing. Together with Richard Herring he crafted two shows (Fist of Fun & TMWRNJ) which were full of life, joy, and intelligence.

A favourite memory from the show involves a repeated joke where a guest would make a lazy ‘political’ gag at a soft target, only for Stewart and Richard to deconstruct it to the point of absurdity and humiliation.

It was a surprise to me, then, that the ostensible targets of Stewart Lee’s new show were so soft. Celebrity books, Harry Potter, slapstick British sitcoms. He is no longer the arrogant young star, but a paunchy middle aged man, who has experienced some of life’s indignities, and his sarcasm veers close to bitterness. The intelligence still burns brightly, and the forensic analysis is combined with a new, daring, tendency to torture his audience by the repetition of a line until it becomes almost performance art. And I think that it is here that we find the real target of Mr Lee’s ridicule. Us - his audience.

Both shows so far have started by attacking some aspect of modern popular culture. We laugh along with him while he points out how ghastly they are. And then he slips in something like; ‘Have I read Harry Potter? No! But I have read the entire works of William Blake!’ which sounds a lot like literary snobbery. And we laugh along - only a bit more nervously. We are suddenly not so sure of our ground. Is he saying, not in so many words, ‘You laugh at how crap celebrity books are, but you still buy them, don’t you? You are the people who make this stuff popular.’

So perhaps his targets are not so soft at all. Its easy to mock a celebrity biography, certainly. Not so safe to mock us for buying them. At one point - when discussing the credit crunch - he demands that all those watching on a flat screen TV they have not paid for turn off the set and read a book instead. You haven’t earned the right to watch, he says, you are the cause of all the problems.

Still, he makes me laugh but he makes me pay for the laughter with thought. The world needs more from Stewart Lee.

It was Andrew Rawnsley’s column in last week’s Observer that first made me aware of the danger a no-deal Brexit would pose to British sperm supplies. Up to 50% of our sperm is imported into the United Kingdom from Denmark alone, its cross-border movement currently micro-managed by EU organ and tissue directives, but now red tape may leave fresh sperm rotting at customs.

The sperm shortage sounds, initially, like a rather silly story, an example of “project fear” at its most desperate, and it has been covered in a typically smutty way by the tabloids, who say we must stiffen our resolve, and harden our intentions, to produce more sperm, exactly as one would expect them to.

But the breakdown in supplies of European, and specifically Danish, sperm will have genuine detrimental consequences for British couples trying to conceive artificially, and for scientific research, an area already set to be severely damaged by the withdrawal of EU funding and data sharing. With a national fertility crisis mushrooming, and our status as a global leader in scientific breakthroughs threatened, there has never been a worse time for Britain to be shut out of the sperm loop.

As a diehard Remoaner, the troubling statistics piqued my interest. Perhaps I could exploit them to criticise Brexit? After a little late-night Googling at my laptop, I realised that, typically of overworked journalists who can no longer afford to cover anything in real depth, the Observer’s Andrew Rawnsley had only scratched the surface of the Danish semen story. The sperm crisis ran far deeper than even Rawnsley imagined and over the last week I have become the Carole Cadwalladr of sperm.

It’s not a coincidence that, in 1969, liberal Denmark became the first country to legalise pornography, including with animals (nb it’s banned now). The vast proliferation of sexually stimulating material available, from everyday vanilla through to the strongest chocolate and/or strawberry flavoured imagery, soon made the cake- and Lego-loving land the international capital of onanism.

Indeed, throughout Scandinavia, the act of solo sexual gratification is still euphemistically known as “going for a Danish” (in Swedish, “går till en Danska”, in Norwegian “går til en Dansk” and in Finnish “menee tanskaksi”).

To give you some idea how deeply the notion of the Danes as lonely self-pleasers is embedded in Scandinavian culture, the popular 1970s Swedish satire show Pappa Olaf’s Karneval Av Idioter included a famous sketch, voted the funniest joke of all time in a recent Swedish poll, where a foolish Norwegian visitor to London becomes angry when he is offered a Danish pastry by an effeminate cockney baker.

At first, commercial Danish sperm production was a small-scale affair. In the 70s and 80s, Danish sperm, packed in heavy, thick glass test tubes, was most commonly used as a mildly profitable ballast in the hold of their cargo ships. These Danish “semen-både”, as they were known in the shipping industry, mainly carried more profitable Danish products such as bacon and fish bits to Europe, the semen subsequently sold on to collectors and enthusiasts for minimal return once the more commercial products had been disposed of.

But it was inevitable, as even the socialist Scandinavian states fell under the spell of the capitalist doctrines of Reaganomics and Thatcherism, that sooner or later the great national Danish pastime would be monetised. By the end of the 80s, Denmark was the unchallenged world leader in the business of commercial human sperm production. The Danish “sperm-salg” industry became a major concern, swiftly nationalised under the Dansk Sperm-Salg I Hele Verden banner and employing tens of thousands of men in the manufacturing process.

But joining the dots of the supply chain of Danish sperm to modern Britain throws up a remarkable discovery. Not only is nearly 50% of our sperm sourced from Denmark, but nearly 85% of that sperm is actually sourced from one Dane.

Hans Thrigger Andersen is a wiry 50-year-old who enjoys the life of a comfortable flâneur and he FaceTimed me from the jazzy countercultural enclave of Aarhus on the Jutland peninsula. It was easy to understand why Hans’s sperm donor directory profile pictures have, over the years, seen millions of British couples clamour for his sperm above that of most other Danish donors.

As a younger man, Hans, who is one of a small handful of full-time sperm-donating Danes, had the hard-rock angel good looks of Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, and he’s aged to sport the same rugged Viking charisma evidenced by the Canadian standup comedian and woodcutter Tony Law. It’s a ludicrous coincidence that Hans’s parents met in 1968 at an early Aarhus performance by Pekka Airaksinen’s experimental Finnish band Sperm, and conceived him that very night, but he dismisses any idea of environmental determinism as deftly as he evades my attempts to inculcate him into the second referendum narrative.

Despite the damage it will do to his livelihood and lifestyle, Hans is an unlikely champion of Brexit. “Listen, I have spent my life lying on my back like a lazy hog. Brexit will force me to make something of myself. Same as maybe it will for Britain. The kitten is out of its sack, man. You make nothing and you can’t feed yourselves and all your fruit is picked by Latvians. Sure, in the short term, we are both taking a heavy cash hit, but maybe Brexit will make us get our shit together.”

I tried to press Hans further on exactly what he meant but he had a daily quota to meet. In the short time we spoke, the tired Dane had already given me food for thought. If a man whose precarious lifestyle, predicated as it is on an endless cycle of continual self-abuse, can rationalise the destruction Brexit will wreak on his career as an opportunity for self-improvement, maybe it’s time for all of us here in Britain too to move on and embrace the no-deal uncertainty as a chance for a new beginning.

BRIDGET CHRISTIE LEICESTER

My wife Bridget Christie is performing her hit 2011 Edinburgh Fringe show Surrealist Housewife at Curve in the Leicester Comedy Fest at 8pm on Friday Feb 10th. http://www.curveonline.co.uk/curve.php?view=showinfo.php&showid=327
Press about the show is here, and join Bridget's mailing list here for more news.

CARPET REMNANT WORLD

Carpet Remnant World is the title of the new full length show from the acclaimed star of the BAFTA nominated BBC2 series: Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle (“The funniest thing on television" The Guardian). The London run sold out three 02’s worth of people. Now it tours. More dates tba.

February 2012

Thursday 23rd - The Playhouse, Nottingham - 8.00pm. Box Office: 0115 9419419 Book Online.
Friday 24th - The Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury - 7.30pm. Box Office: 01227 787787 Book Online.
Saturday 25th - Town Hall, Cheltenham - 8.00pm Box Office: 0844 576 2210 Book Online.
Wednesday 29th - Harrogate Theatre, Harrogate - 8.00pm Box Office: 01423 502116 Book Online.

March 2012

Thursday 1st - St. George's Hall, Bradford - 8.00pm. Box Office: 01274 432000 Book Online.
Friday 2nd - Waterfront Hall, Belfast - Box Office: 028 9033 4455 Book Online.
Saturday 3rd - Philarmonic Hall, Liverpool - 8.00pm. Box Office: 0151 709 3789 Book Online.
Tuesday 6th - Opera House, Buxton - 7.30pm. Box Office: 0845 1272190 Book Online.
Wednesday 7th - Corn Exchange, Cambridge - 8.00pm. Box Office: 01223 357851 Book Online.
Friday 9th - The Anvil, Basingstoke - Box Office: 01256 844244 Book Online.
Saturday 10th - Royal & Derngate, Northampton - Box Office: 01604 624811 Book Online.
Sunday 11th - Theatre Royal, Norwich - 7.30pm. Box Office: 01603 630000 Book Online.
Thursday 15th - DeMontfort Hall, Leicester - 7.30pm. Box Office: 0116 233 3111 Book Online.
Friday 16th - Derby Theatre, Derby - Box Office: 01332 255800 Book Online.
Saturday 17th - Performing Arts Centre, Lincoln - Box Office: 0844 888 4414 Book Online.
Wednesday 21st - The Dukes Theatre, Lancaster - 8.00pm. Box Office: 01524 598500 Book Online
Thursday 22nd - Journal Tyne Theatre, Newcastle - 8.00pm. Box Office:0844 493 9999 Book Online.
Friday 23rd - King's Theatre, Glasgow (Glasgow Comedy Festival) - 8.00pm. Box Office: 0844 3954005 Book Online.
Saturday 24th - Theatre Royal, York - 7.30pm. Box Office: 01904 623568 Book Online.
Monday 26th - Playhouse, Oxford - 8.00pm Box Office: 01865 305305 Book Online.
Wednesday 28th - St David’s Hall, Cardiff - 8.00pm Box Office: 029 2087 8444 Book Online.
Thursday 29th - The Hexagon, Reading - 8.00pm Box Office: 0118 960 6060 Book Online.
Friday 30th - Symphony Hall, Birmingham - 8.00pm Box Office: 0121 7803333 Book Online.

April 2012

Tuesday 17th - Theatre Royal, Winchester - 8.00pm Box Office: 01962 840440 Book Online.
Wednesday 18th - Hall For Cornwall, Truro - 8.00pm Box Office: 01872 262466 Book Online.
Friday 20th - Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield - 7.45pm Box Office: 0114 249 6000 Book Online.
Saturday 21st - Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield - 7.45pm Box Office: 0114 249 6000 Book Online.
Thursday 26th - Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury - 8.00pm Box Office: 01743 281281 Book Online.
Sunday 29th - The Lowry, Salford - MATINEE - 3.00pm Box Office: 0843 208 6010 Book Online.
Sunday 29th - The Lowry, Salford - EVENING - 7.30pm Box Office: 0843 208 6010 Book Online.

May 2012

Wednesday 2nd - The Dome, Brighton - Box Office: 01273 709709 Book Online
Saturday 5th - Machynlleth Comedy Festival, Wales - Book Online.
Sunday 6th - Hippodrome, Bristol - 7.30pm Box Office: 0844 871 3012 Book Online.
Monday 7th - Theatre Royal, Plymouth - Box Office: 01752 230440 Book Online.
Tuesday 8th - Octagon Theatre, Yeovil - Box Office: 01935 422884 VENUE WEBSITE.
Saturday 12th - Music Hall, Aberdeen - Box Office: 01224 641122 Book Online.
Sunday 13th - Eden Court, Inverness - Box Office: 01463 234234 Book Online.
Thursday 17th - Vicar Street, Dublin - Box Office: 00353 (0)1 77 55 800 Book Online.
Friday 18th - Vicar Street, Dublin - Box Office: 00353 (0)1 77 55 800 Book Online.
Saturday 19th - Seapoint Ballroom, Salthill, Galway - 8.00pm - 0818 719300 Book Online.
Sunday 20th - Savoy Theatre, Cork - 8.00pm - 0818 719300 Book Online.
Thursday 24th - Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry - 8.00pm Box Office: 024 7652 4524 Book Online.
Saturday 26th - Festival Theatre, Malvern - Box Office: 01684 892277 Book Online.

June 2012

Friday 8th - West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds - Box Office: 0113 213 7700 Book Online.
Saturday 9th - The Alban Arena, St Albans - 01727 844488 - ON SALE SOON.
Thursday 14th - Grand Theatre, Swansea - Box Office: 01792 475715 VENUE WEBSITE.
Friday 15th - Lighthouse, Poole - Box Office: 0844 406 8666 Book Online
Friday 22nd - Civic Theatre, Chelmsford - Box Office: 01245 606 505 VENUE WEBSITE.
Saturday 23rd - City Hall, Salisbury - 8.00pm - Box Office: 01722 434434 Book Online.
Sunday 24th - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - Box Office: 01392 493493 Book Online.
Tuesday 26th - City Hall, Hull - 8.00pm - Box Office: 01482 300 300 Book Online.
Wednesday 27th - Huntingdon Hall, Worcester - Box Office: 01905 611427 Book Online.
Thursday 28th - Huntingdon Hall, Worcester - Box Office: 01905 611427 Book Online.

A DISCUSSION ABOUT THE ARTS

With me, Josie Long & Alan Moore, March 26th in Oxford, 2pm
http://oxfordliteraryfestival.org/events/detail/whats-the-point-of-the-arts-and-humanities

NEW BOOK - IF YOU PREFER A MILDER COMEDIAN ETC

Out from Jan 5th through Faber. - click here to buy... link

FIST OF FUN SERIES 1 DVD

You probably know the saga of this. The 1995 series by Richard Herring and me was in the room where the BBC throw things away. An insider asked them why they hadn’t released it.

They said “neither Sales nor Marketing believed that Lee & Herring had much sales potential in the current market”, which probably explains why all my own BBC series are conspicuously absent amongst all the TV comedy tat piled high for Xmas in HMV. Rich and Chris Evans of the Welsh comedy indie label GoFasterStripe brokered a deal to buy Fist of Fun series 1, and now it’s available with three discs of extras, following a superb half page review in The Guardian, Dec 3rd.
If you could buy this rather than steal it it would be good, as all the profits of GFS so far have gone into making it.
Cheers. Buy it here.

Since it was founded in 1982, The Wire magazine has covered a vast range of alternative, experimental, underground and non-mainstream music. Now some of that knowledge has been distilled into The Wire Primers: a comprehensive guide to the core recordings of some of the most visionary and inspiring, subversive and radical musicians on the planet, past and present.

Each chapter surveys the musical universe of a particular artist, group or genre by way of a contextualizing introduction and a thumbnail guide to the most essential recordings.

A massive and eclectic range of music is celebrated and demystified, from rock mavericks such as Captain Beefheart and The Fall; the funk of James Brown and Fela Kuti; the future jazz of Sun Ra and Ornette Coleman; and the experimental compositions of John Cage and Morton Feldman. Genres surveyed and explained include P-funk, musique concrète, turntablism, Brazilian Tropicália, avant metal and dubstep.
The Wire Primers is a vital guide to contemporary sounds, providing an accessible entry point for any reader wanting to dig below the surface of mainstream music.

Stewart has written a chapter on The Fall for this book.

Have you ever looked into the eyes of a hedgehog and known that it wanted to die? I have. But wait, I am getting ahead of myself.

On Halloween, as we headed west in our Volkswagen Passat, I realised the most horrifying thing in the vicinity was our own family estate. With our car belching toxic death, courtesy of a secret cabal of heartless engineers hellbent on the end of humanity and the ecosystem as a whole, I joked to my wife, “Next Halloween I’m going dressed as a Volkswagen!” “You should,” she replied, stony-faced and expressionless, like a cement yak, “and you certainly wouldn’t have any trouble providing the noxious emissions.”

(This may seem like amusing marital banter to you, but my wife knows full well that I have had a long history of painful bowel problems, beginning with an unexpected bout of ulcerative colitis as a teenager, and culminating in hospitalisation as a result of diverticulitis in my late 30s, a condition which still requires careful daily management and, admittedly, can lead to occasional and unpleasant flatulence. I include her supposedly amusing comment here only to bolster the legal dossier I am preparing in advance of our divorce.)

I think it was the TV fisherman Robson Green who said, 'You cannot step twice into the same river'

When I was a child in the 1970s, my mother would take me out into deepest rural Worcestershire, on the Saturday before 5 November every year, to see the ageless traditional celebrations in the tiny village of Monk’s Norton. We stayed each year with the elderly Dr Hemming, for whom she had worked as a medical receptionist in Birmingham, before he retired in the mid-60s after a scandal involving a missing carton of Drinamyl, some ancient manuscripts, a replacement aortic valve, and a dead weasel.

“How nice to see you again, Dr Hemming,” I would say politely, as my mother had rehearsed me in the Hillman Imp, “I hope you have had a pleasant year.” “Years are meaningless, boy,” he would reply, vaguely, “Time is an illusion. Flesh is a gossamer shroud. One day I will take on any body I choose. Would you like some hot eels?” I always enjoyed our visits.

As the flames flickered outside his window, Dr Hemming would stare at them in a thaumaturgic trance through a haze of self-prescribed temazepam and hand-pulled Watney’s Party Seven, and my mother and I would head out into the famished night to seek out the ancient pagan England of our collective northern European subconscious, and some sausage. You have not known sausage until you have known it while watching an effigy of Joe Gormley burning on a bonfire in 1975 in a solidly Conservative-voting Worcestershire village.

While I applaud how the American tradition of trick or treat has taken off in my London neighbourhood, I worry it has made Halloween too commercial. This year our neighbours were ritually intimidated by resentful children dressed respectively as Siri, the Playboy Bunny logo, and an Amazon Fire TV Stick. Another satirically minded youngster appeared inside the severed head of a pig with a Conservative party rosette pinned to its face, which I thought inappropriate, as we live in an orthodox Jewish area.

But I wanted my own children to enjoy the same festivities that I experienced as a child, and so it was we loaded up the Deathwagon last Saturday morning and headed to Monk’s Norton. The hamlet was hemmed in now by the heavy traffic of the M5 and the M50, and smells more of fuel than it did 40 years ago, but is still identifiably itself. Dr Hemming was long dead, I expect, but as we drove at dusk down the leafy lane past the vicarage where the obtuse physician had lived, I saw a small white-faced boy staring all-knowingly from the window, as if heavy with the apprehension of eternity, and then withdraw.

I think it was the TV fisherman Robson Green who said, “You cannot step twice into the same river.” I had perhaps been foolish to expect the Monk’s Norton festivities to have remained unchanged. In the 70s, each year an effigy of a trade unionist burned on the pyre – Jack Jones, Derek Robinson, Len McCluskey, Mick McGahey – but now even in relatively homogenous rural Worcestershire, Britain was clearly divided in who it chose to demonise.

Upon the village green, by torchlight, in the flickering shadows of the tall Tudor houses, rival factions squabbled, dragging different effigies towards the unlit bonfire. Here was Jeremy Clarkson, innocently piling his fist into a selfish minion’s face; and here was a selfish minion, stupidly allowing his face to connect with Jeremy Clarkson’s fist, denying us future Top Gear; and here was David Cameron, in farm girl’s frock and bonnet, borne aloft in plywood pigsty, fair Chloris, innocent and pleased; and here, a papier mache Martin Winterkorn, head of Volkswagen, strangling the green earth with his clean hands. And so on, and so on, a multitude of villains and no clear candidate for the conflagration.

And then a shrill voice cut through the commotion: “Burn them all.” It was the little boy from the window, in pantaloons and waistcoat, with a cold authority beyond his years. As the people of Monk’s Norton surrounded the bonfire, hurling their hated effigies onto it, I was sure I saw him crawl between their legs and into the pyre. Before the head of the Round Table, dressed amusingly as a sponging Pacific Islander displaced by rising sea levels, could light it, I persuaded him to let me crawl inside. The boy was not there. But a hedgehog was. I recognised the look in its eyes. It knew its time was up.

When I was a child, there were 30 million hedgehogs in the UK. We were cavalier about their abundance, and their tyre-squashed early morning bodies were so commonplace it seemed they must be in almost endless supply. Now – because of climate change and the collapse of their food chain – there are less than a million. We can’t even save the hedgehog. How do we expect to save the world?

Last month, we imagined there was a hedgehog in our garden, by virtue of a telltale track, and we invested in hedgehog food from an online outlet. But it has proved to be a phantom hedgehog, and our nightly replenishment of the illusory hedgehog’s saucer was an act of delusional wish-fulfillment. I think the cat ate the hedgehog food. That would explain why he has developed bristles and a taste for worms. There should have been a warning on the box. I think so anyway.

A Room With a Stew is at Leicester Square theatre, London WC2 until 8 Jan. Stewart Lee is the curator of next year’s All Tomorrow’s Parties festival, at Prestatyn Pontins, 15-17 April 2016

The first week of the fringe has passed and my goal of seeing 100 shows/exhibitions/happenings this month seems distant, as I have so far managed a mere 10.
My goal of not being a drunk argumentative twat at 1 am in the morning is going well though.

Here are my top 6 shows so far...

Alasdair Beckett-King - Nevermore - Pleasance Dome 7PM Great writerly material which has enough room to breathe to make it feel like it’s alive, and a well-judged and non-interventionist use of tech. Precise and very funny.

Paul Currie - The Chorus of Ghosts Living in My Skull Keep Telling Me to Take a Shit in the Fruit Salad - Just The Tonic @ Caves 9PM Best show I’ve seen so far. A surrealist revivalist church meeting in which anything can happen. Brilliant clowning and unexpected hints of the personal.

An Evening Without Kate Bush - Assembly George Sq Gardens 5.55PM A Bush-consumed lady channels Bush fandom with persuasive charm, genuine warmth, and accurate choreography

Fascinating Aida - Assembly George Square 6PM Sophisticated satirical songs, performed by jazz-age cabaret muso-dames, with unexpected angry edges and fantastic internal rhyme schemes

Jonny & The Baptists - Dance Like It Never Happened - Assembly George Square 4PM High energy satirical folk-pop sure to make you dance in your seat, hate the Tories, and question God.

Mavelus - All The Marvel Movies … Kind Of! - Just The Tonic Caves 6.10 PM Two deeply humane nerds impro-comedy their way through the MCU, making massive and imaginative use of limited props. Great if you know your Marvel movies, and probably weirdly enjoyable if you don’t.

MY SPIES TELL ME

The Tragedy of Macbeth - Roxy - 12 midday The full on classic fringe treatment w live music, puppets, physical theatre etc, apprently. It blew my kids’ minds!

Circus Abyssinia Tulu - Underbelly meadows 1.30 PM The kids said this was utterly brilliant and unaffectedly honest. They want to join the circus now.

Ten down, 90 to go.
That’s 30 shows a week, or just over 4 a day, for the next 3 weeks. Will I make it?

Theatregoers will be aware that it is a rare night when the queue for the men’s outstrips the queue for the women’s toilet. The toilet queue as a feminist issue has been discussed by Caroline Criado Perez in her book, Invisible Women. Where could I have been where the length of the comfort break queue was so out of kilter with reality?

I was not at the darts, snooker or a Chuck Norris convention, instead I was at a colosseum in Watford watching the scourge of Tony Parsons and Brexiteers, lifebelt to the liberal elite, Stewart Lee. His new double bill Snowflake/Tornado is brilliantly and painfully funny. His extended routine on what Ricky Gervais saying the unsayable would really be like, which is ten minutes in the company of a free jazz yodeller who has recently had intrusive and numbing dental surgery and has a Werther’s original stuck in their throat, worried me for fear that the combination of failing to go to the loo in the interval and now losing all control via tearful giggling may ultimately upset the equilibrium of my bladder.

It is the show that I should have avoided as there is an inescapable sense that that there really is no point in continuing with my own career when something this good is out there. I take heart in knowing that my shows are cheaper at least.

Stewart Lee continues to increase the amount of absurdity and clowning in this show, though his trousers remain on for the entirety in this show. He notes that there are likely to be sons brought by fathers in the audience, fathers who believe that bringing their children to see this “culturally significant” comedian will be a bonding exercise and an attainment of kudos, but the young will then sit there, nonchalant and unimpressed. I was fortunate to have a family in front of me where exactly that was happening. At times when I thought I could laugh no more, I would catch a side glance of a bemused face with hints of disdain and the laughter would be reignited.

It is good to know that despite the number of tickets he can sell, Stewart Lee still has the artistic credentials which mean some people leave the auditorium and saying, “Well I’m sorry, Bob, but I did not get that at all.” It reminds me of a night in Newcastle when two annoyed men were heard discussing my show in the urinals, “He’s no Kevin Bridges is he?”.

The best encore I have ever had was at a comedy club in Manchester where one table were still booing. During a particularly critically successful  run at the Edinburgh Fringe, Nick Helm had a couple walk out of his show halfway through. He ran after them, out of the venue, across the cobbles, bellowing, “Next time, don’t just look at the stars, read what the review says.” (This is a precis of the anecdote)

I was surprised by how male Stewart Lee’s audience were.  They were not dissimilar to an audience that you might see at a Wedding Present gig where you bemoan the number of podgy, grey and bald men in the audience and then catch your reflection in the mirror behind the bar.

Being podgy, grey and bald is not a requirement for enjoyment of Stewart Lee, though occasionally a knowledge of Steel Pole Bath Tub or bands that have only ever been mentioned in The Wire magazine might add an extra moment of bonding.

This week I also took a trip to the cinema.

Greta Gerwig’s Little Women is beautifully shot, performed and structured. Gerwig fractures the narrative like a Donald Cammell movie, jumping back, forth and around the lives of the four sisters. Some fans of the novel dislike this approach, but for me it gave certain scenes tremendous emotional punch and entangled the audience in the frequently confused relationships between siblings and the speed from love to hate and back again.

Introducing the film, the cinema manager mentioned how pleased she was to see some men in the audience as until now, the screenings had been almost entirely female (imagine the loo queues). It surprises me how sex specific entertainment still is, or indeed, life as a whole.

On Saturday night trains I see the boys laughing with boys, the girls laughing with girls and the quartet of middle aged straight couples uneasily doing that “We’re all swingers in Pinner” fake flirting which might hide forbidden hopes. I forget who wrote that men’s stories are considered tales for everyone and women’s stories are still seen as stories for women. When The Piano was released some decades ago, I remember being told it was “a woman’s picture”, perhaps because it was directed by a woman, starred a woman and had some costumes in it and pretty music. It also had the lead woman being punished for her truculence by having her finger chopped off by an angry Sam Neill. This did not please all the women who saw it.

I have no grand conclusion save to say, whether man or woman, go and see Stewart Lee’s new show and Greta Gerwig’s new film for the simple reason they are creatively brilliant and excellent ways to spend approximately 130 minutes. Who knows, perhaps Netflix will describe Snowflake/Tornado as “Four sisters learn who they are during a civil war fought between humans and sharks in nineteenth century America.”

Let’s get ready to rhumble! As heroic locals and beleaguered police battle to stop cocaine-fuelled hard-right rioters burning people to death, the laughing faces of ITV’s Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly hang suspended in the smoke shrouding buildings in Rotherham and Tamworth. Watch us wreck the mike!! Psyche!!!

The greatest trick Nigel Farage ever pulled, appearing in December’s I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, was looking normal to the ITV millions by eating a pizza covered with some penises. How Ant and Dec laughed as Nigel’s EU views were left un-factchecked by current affairs titans such as Britney Spears’s sister and a man from JLS. Psyche!

And now Britain burns in Farage-flavoured flames, minorities prepare escape packs, policemen are battered by cokehead patriots with swastika tattoos, and sausage rolls are looted from Greggs because blah blah blah Muslims. Are Ant and Dec proud? Straight up proovin’ we can getcha groovin’. This track’s boomin’! It ain’t no hype!

A 17-year-old boy, born and raised in Wales to parents from the safe country of Rwanda (which is largely Christian), has now been charged for last week’s horrendous murders. However, hysterical social media accounts had already claimed the perpetrator was a cross-channel Muslim from Syria, called Ali Al-Shakati, which translates as “I Have to Go to My Apartment”. I don’t know Arabic but I assume “Apartment” was his surname and “I Have to Go to My” was a string of unnecessary first names, like what those foreigners have.

Señor Apartment’s guilt was amplified online by Farage, bypassing the tedious opportunity of asking questions in the parliament he is paid to attend, who wondered, “Was this guy being monitored by the security services? … I just wonder whether the truth is being withheld from us,” having got his information from Andrew Tate, a misogynist influencer currently facing charges of human trafficking, and valid news source.

Farage works to the same schematic as lucratively rewarded libertarian Netflix standups. He’s not making a definitive statement that could get him in trouble. No. He’s just sayin’, just puttin’ it out there. And then he drops the mic and leaves his fans to get arrested. Ka-booom!

Stoking tension with speculation is stupid. But Farage isn’t stupid. Once broadcasters redubbed the barking of Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams because he was considered too charismatic. But today Ant and Dec invite Farage to eat penises in a clearing, and he has his own show on GB News, which is the same thing. Let’s get ready to rhumble!

The Tory party blamed the incoming Labour administration for the fire they set. Their own adviser Dame Sara Khan said Tories’ “inflammatory language” had “undermined social cohesion”. The right spent 15 years training a fat dog to shit in our house and now that it’s finally done loads of massive shits everywhere, they tell us it’s Labour’s fault for not killing the shitting dog five weeks ago. Or something.

Gaza ceasefire demonstrations, none of which ended in attempted mass murder, were “hate marches”, but the commentariat initially called the current would-be pogroms “protests”. The Tory Hampshire police and crime commissioner Donna Jones said the riots were “upholding British values”. Do these include making toddlers chant the word “paki”, and stealing sausage rolls? A BBC reporter even went as far as to describe one riot as a “pro-British march”, which is a bit like saying the Viking raid on Lindisfarne was a pro-Norse cruise.

On Monday’s Good Morning Britain, a load of old white men, including the home secretary’s embarrassing husband Ed Balls and the Daily Mail hate-gonk Andrew Pierce, source of endless fudged front pages, repeatedly shouted down Zarah Sultana’s attempts to explain the Legitimate Grievance Riots as a British Asian. And then Jeremy Vine, the monstrous Belial from Basket Case to his benign brother Tim, invited Farage’s Reform sidekick Richard Tice, of all people, on to his show to explain the violence, as a bin full of entrails and flies was unavailable.

Farage’s falsehoods threaten lives. We have to do better. Liberal legacy media flagellates itself when inaccurate. The reason my last column didn’t mention the Legitimate Grievance Riots was because I’m now filing six days early so the legal department can protect me, and the paper, from my incoherent “jokes”, having recently received a request for correction from a former Tufton Street commentator, and wrangled over the wording of a complaint from Mumsnet. It’s only Monday. By the time you read this you might be on fire.

My main job is comedy on stage, and I can’t afford to be banned for my carelessness in print from every venue in the world, a fate that recently befell two comedians I admire enormously, neither of whom are Ricky Gervais, Dave Chappelle or Jerry Seinfeld. Two months back I wanted to quit this column, done in by dramas, but a chance encounter with the 70s actor Judy Matheson of The Flesh and Blood Show fame, declaring herself an avid reader in a King’s Cross cafe, appealed to my vanity.

But the rightwing instigators of the Legitimate Grievance Riots aren’t restricted by factchecking. Farage choses online agitation over parliamentary presence. The evil Elon Musk declared “civil war is inevitable”, and recently allowed the worst offenders back on his now lawless X. This is handy if you are black because Tommy Robinson announces the towns chosen for next week’s riots on Musk’s platform so you can avoid them.

In 2020, Farage broadcast himself entering identifiable hotels used to house unprocessed migrants on social media. Earlier this year, the newsreader Geeta Guru-Murthy, someone Farage fans would want deported, casually called the hard-right figurehead’s language “inflammatory”. The enfeebled BBC demanded her apology. Now those hotels are on fire. Is that inflammatory enough for you? Let’s get ready to rhumble!

Well done, rightwing culture warriors! I’ve worn a poppy with pride every year since I was a choirboy, singing around Solihull war memorial on Remembrance Sunday in the suede denim 1970s, where the solemnity of the situation and the stark beauty of the Last Post momentarily softened even the talented young choirmaster’s yearnings. But I won’t wear a poppy this year.

Don’t get me wrong. I still put a few quid in the poppy collection box at my local Sainsbury’s, just now when I was buying some cat excrement bags. But on Monday on LBC, the increasingly befuddled wasps’ nest whacker Nick Ferrari spent an hour extrapolating an imaginary scenario where Keir Starmer didn’t wear a poppy in order to avoid offending imaginary Muslims. (Ironically, the same cynical Starmer deliberately ate Indian food in public during lockdown to try to ingratiate himself with our ethnic minorities, only to lose all the support this gained him by shillyshallying about a ceasefire, his naans nibbled for nothing.)

People like the GB News character and doorstep swing-voter-faking liar MP Lee Anderson have changed the poppy’s meaning somehow, making it a badge of allegiance to a whole raft of values I don’t necessarily subscribe to, damning as beneath contempt anyone who, even inadvertently, neglects to wear the red flower. So this year I don’t know if I feel comfortable with the once straightforward symbol of sacrifice pinned to my cagoule. A mystically inclined musical acquaintance once sent me prospective album cover art with which he hoped to reclaim the ancient good luck symbol of the swastika from the Nazis. I suggested it wasn’t a hill worth dying on. Symbols change their meaning with usage. There’s not much you can do about it.

I’m a man of a certain age and size. An XL Fred Perry shirt fits me, physically and culturally. It’s as stylish as I can get without feeling stifled, it locates me temporally in the 2 Tone/post-punk era that shaped me as an impressionable teenager and it’s smart enough to sport on stage but casual enough for me to wear around the house in just my pants. My clothes rail has a dozen identical Fred Perrys and I especially used to favour the black ones with yellow trim. But apparently, according to a pink-haired hipster girl in the merch queue at one of my Leicester Square theatre shows five years back, this has now been adopted as a covert uniform by the far right in Europe and the US. So I quickly took six neo-Nazi black and yellow Fred Perry shirts to the local People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals charity shop, where hopefully they were snapped up by a delighted cat-loving north London racist.

Similarly, last week the usual culture war suspects were trying to imprint the phrase “hate march” on to something that most reasonable people agree probably isn’t such a thing, even though pockets of it will undoubtedly be motivated by hate and be marching. I have to file this on Wednesday night, so there’s time to legally query all my unsubstantiated statements, or jokes as they were once known before wokery went woke. But by the time you read this, you’ll know if Saturday’s peace march turned bad. I don’t know. I didn’t go.

As it happens, even though in my woke mind I would have viewed the march as neither pro-Palestine nor anti-Israel, but simply as pro-ceasefire, I couldn’t have attended even if I had decided to, because I had already been booked to introduce a documentary film about experimental American jazz of the 60s and 70s at the London jazz festival. Peace march or jazz film? Hobson’s choice for the woke north London pseudointellectual. Nonetheless, Shitty Sunak promised to hold Metropolitan police commissioner Mark Rowley to account for any trouble, but was happy to sit alongside home secretary Suella Braverman at during the debate on the king’s speech on Wednesday, as she refused to withdraw her “hate march” assertions.

A bonfire is smoldering. Braverman and columnists and commentators such as Sarah Vine at the Daily Mail and the fascism-downplayer Douglas Murray at the Spectator (“I don’t see why no one should be allowed to love their country because the Germans mucked up twice in a century”) have thrown petrol on to it, deliberately striving to make the desire to honour the war dead of the past incompatible with the desire to prevent further war death in the present. The British Transport Police, meanwhile, have dismissed the Daily Mail’s claims that a poppy seller, seen sporting at least two different regimental berets, was set upon by pro-Palestine demonstrators at Waverley Station, but the inflammatory story did its job. And yet the person Sunak is going to hold to account if the bonfire combusts is the Met’s Mark Rowley, the fireman charged with keeping it under control. It’s insane, and Sunak is weak, afraid of the unappeasable maw of the Tory far right that has gobbled up every PM since the impossible Brexit empowered it, the heated-swimming-pool, credit-card twat.

But I still want to remember the war dead somewhere on Sunday. The grandfather who raised me was an airfield engineer on Lancasters in the RAF, his Cadbury factory skills repurposed from Bournville to bombers. A working-class white man of a particular generation, he hated the Germans of the past and the migrants of the present in equal measure. But I never saw him so distressed as when describing flying over Dresden after the 1945 firebombing and saying that what we had done to those people was utterly wrong. I know he would have supported a ceasefire.

So, frozen by Remembrance Sunday’s calcification into yet another theatre of the culture war, where do I go to grieve? Last year, I attended a sensitive ceremony in my local cemetery where, alongside the Last Post, folk choirs performed a varied selection of musical responses to conflict, including a song by anarcho-punk chart-toppers Chumbawamba. It was a beautiful thing. Hopefully, I’m there again as you read this, and when I wear the poppy there, I know it won’t be repurposed. And, should a gust of wind momentarily displace it, I won’t be swallowed whole by Nick Ferrari.

This article was amended on 15 November 2023. An earlier version said that Rishi Sunak sat next to Suella Braverman at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday; in fact this was during the king’s speech debate.

Last week it was confirmed that Gary Barlow, Mark Owen and Howard "the duck" Donald, the key talents of legendary rock'n'rollers Take That, hid £63m in the Icebreaker tax avoidance scheme. Barlow's crime may cause short-lived shame, but it could guarantee the Take That frontispiece an eternal place in the rock'n'roll annals that his music (a regular presence on David Cameron's Spotify account) might not. Sid Vicious, Pete Doherty and Screaming Lord Sutch can step down. Gary Barlow is now the most offensive rock'n'roller of all!

Rock'n'roll has always given young people the means to offend the petty sensibilities of society, from Elvis Presley's lascivious legs and Freddie Garrity's cruel dances, via the furious bile of punk rock'n'rollers the Jags, Bad Manners and the Pork Dukes, to the sexual explosives of Bucks Fizz's Eurovision thighs, Miley Cyrus's plucked chicken wrecking-ball lick, and Dennis Roussos's diaphanous sack.

But for me, and many other part-time pop cultural critics, rock'n'roll as an art form of offence appeared to have reached its apogee in the work of the late GG Allin. Allin delighted the American hardcore rock'n'roll scene of the late 80s and early 90s by performing naked, having swallowed vast amounts of laxatives, before bellowing violently misanthropic lyrics, maiming himself, defecating on stage, throwing his excrement into the crowd, and inflicting often actionable degrees of physical damage on audience members. But at heart, Allin was still an entertainer, pledged to put on a good show for the paying public, no different to TV's Dara O'Briain or world war two's Dame Vera Lynn.

Though he had always promised to commit suicide during a show, a defeated Allin finally walked off stage in Manhattan in June 1993, sporting just soiled briefs, his body smeared with blood and droppings, and into a fatal heroin overdose. Gary Barlow, in contrast, performed before the Queen at her Diamond Jubilee concert wearing a scrupulously clean thong, received an OBE for his services to charity in 2012, and once climbed Kilimanjaro with Fearne Cotton for Comic Relief, the latter an image more disturbing than anything a Google of Allin will throw up.

But, to paraphrase an old vaudeville act, who is the real sick man? Is it GG Allin, singing Bite It You Scum in dirty knickers, beating himself over the head with the microphone until his skull bleeds, masturbating furiously, and kicking audience members in the teeth? Or is it Gary Barlow of Take That, in his suit and tie, conscientiously following his accountant's advice to invest in a tax avoidance scheme, while soliciting other people's money for charity and denying the most vulnerable members of society the benefit of his personal financial contribution? It is Gary Barlow. Obviously.

In Hated, a documentary about his former employer, GG Allin's drummer, Donald "Dino Sex" Sachs, suggests Allin's scatological, sadomasochistic performances had some satirical purpose, or were a form of social commentary; that Allin intended to compare his own zany plop antics with "a society that's going crazy with violence". I wish that were true, though I'm not sure Allin's posthumous body of work has the rigorous theoretical scaffolding required to sustain a consistent ideological or aesthetic position. That said, there doesn't seem to have been much difference between Allin's private faces and his public faeces.

Gary Barlow is a far more complex character than GG Allin, despite also choosing to place his artworks within the broad field of light entertainment. Though convicted of an appallingly violent assault in 1989, Allin was nonetheless a kind of punk bouffon, and one that the clown guru Philippe Gaulier would have recognised, inviting us to hate him, self-consciously taking on the mantle of the folk devil. In contrast to Allin, Gary Barlow accepted an OBE publicly for his good works, despite privately playing his part in closing hospitals, schools, shelters, and women's refuges across the land. Allin's life was a performance. Barlow's life is an act.

The paper trail linking Gary Barlow to a homeless man expiring in an empty building is convoluted. Allin's culpability follows a more obvious sequence of cause and effect. He ate laxatives. This caused him to soil himself. He then threw his filth around, and if it hit you in the face you might get an illness. But compared with Barlow's tax avoidance, Allin's actions seem simple, uncontrived, honest – noble, even. His onstage offences were transient, as ephemeral as the sudden impact of a ball of dung in the eye. But who knows at what age Barlow began planning to present the public face of a charitable do-gooder, while secretly scheming to deprive the weak and vulnerable of succour, if indeed he ever did so? To quote Karlheinz Stockhausen's oft-misunderstood comments on the 9/11 atrocity, Barlow's career might be the devil's "greatest work of art that is possible in the whole cosmos". Allin aimed to be the ultimate rock'n'roll degenerate, but as an icon of filth, Barlow has surpassed him.

To be charitable to Barlow, we might perhaps see the same sort of satirical purpose in songs like "Back For Good", "Shine" and the other ones, all of which now taste of ashes and earwax, that defenders of GG Allin attribute to songs like "Kiss Me In The Gutter" and "Suck My Ass It Smells". In creating this "Gary Barlow" character, who raises money for charity while simultaneously trampling our shared values into the urinal trough, was Barlow in fact (like the comedy of Jimmy Carr or Ricky Gervais at its best) holding up a mirror to society, magnifying our hypocrisy through the lens of his own actions? Who can say? But the fact remains, today's young people, anxious to offend as ever, need to embrace the opportunity Barlow has offered them to discover an avatar of offence that is entirely appropriate to our corrupt era.

Grubby T-shirts of Vicious and Cobain and Doherty all seem so 20th century. In the current climate of cuts and austerity, drugs and violence are silly schoolyard crimes compared with massive corporate and individual tax avoidance. In 1976, Vivienne Westwood made T-shirts of a violent masked criminal. Couldn't some enterprising young fashion designer today employ Barlow's Cameron-endorsed visage as a similar cipher for off-the-peg prêt-a-porter moral transgression? How brilliantly and thrillingly offensive would it be for today's teens to parade around in T-shirts bearing the smiling face of Gary Barlow, OBE?

Stewart Lee is appearing free for charity at standup comedy benefits almost weekly for the rest of the year, as usual. See stewartlee.co.uk for details

Not many shows start with the audience sitting on a minibus inching its way through a traffic jam. But then the very point of Interiors, part of the impressive new Manchester International Festival, is that it’s not like other shows. Instead, it takes theatre out of the theatre and into a modest, suburban semi in a secret location.
We, the 20-strong audience, are potential housebuyers, being bussed to a viewing courtesy of estate agents Pennington Lee – named after the comedians behind this inventive project, Stewart Lee and Michael Pennington, or as you may better know him, Johnny Vegas.

Vegas plays Jeffrey Parkin, who’s selling this spacious brick-built two-bed des res so he can embark on a new life in Macedonia, where he’s bought a plot of land on which he’s planning his dream home. Doing places up is something of a passion of his, you see. He’s done – or at least started - plenty of design work on this Victorian semi, which he is more than proud to show off, from the illuminated pan rack in the kitchen to the bespoke rootwood Coffee table that takes pride of place in an otherwise spartan lounge. Given Vegas’s fearsome, full-on comic persona, it’s with some trepidation that you cross his threshold.
Being in confined quarters with a drunken, supercharged, 18 stone of idiot is an intimidating prospect.
T hankfully, he’s not like that at all. Playing against type, his character here is a respectable corporate troubleshooter, somewhat nervous about having all these guests round, but generally a genial host. When it comes to matters of taste, he does everything an aspirational middle-class chap should. In furniture, it’s custom-made over Ikea mass production, rare wood over MDF. In food, likewise, he prefers exotic and organic, and in films, it’s acclaimed art-house fare such as his favourite Farinelli: Il Castrato.

So, why, when it comes to imparting bite-sized philosophies, does he resort to quoting Crocodile Dundee and Top Gun? For all his admirable ambitions, is he trying to be something he’s not, living up to the unattainable ideals of glossy style magazines rather than being true to himself? He may be houseproud, but is he happy?
These are the questions that Interiors skilfully raises. Vegas – whose ex-wife, coincidentally, is an interior decorator - plays Parkin with warmth and wit, his experience on the stand-up circuit preparing him well for the uncertainties of working so intimately with an audience. In fact, audience seems almost the wrong word, so completely broken down are the boundaries between punter and performer.

He offers us tea and biscuits, wine if we’d like, and people seem perfectly happy to engage him in small talk, just as if this was a real viewing. It is all enjoyable good-natured banter, really, nothing much more substantial than that, until Parkin takes a phone call that shatters his fragile veneer of happiness, and the experience takes a turn for the dramatic. Even in his stand-up guise Vegas is the prince of pathos, and he uses that to great effect here.

For ticket-holders, it genuinely is a unique experience, being such an integral part of the action. And the fact that this is so obviously an art-for-art’s sake project, with no hope of making much money from such small ‘audiences’ and with no obvious way to be done on any bigger scale, only adds to the special sense of occasion. Viewing recommended.

William Blake wrote that we can see heaven in a wild flower and hold infinity in the palms of our hands. He also thought a massive flea with a bald man’s face and no pants on came into his bedroom at night, and I speak as a fan. But, like Blake would, I think we can see the world – and everything that is wrong with it – in a National Trust scone. Bear with me.

Until November last year, the Conservative-appointed Victoria and Albert Museum trustee Zewditu Gebreyohanes, formerly of the Tufton Street-linked thinktank Policy Exchange, was the director of Restore Trust. This is an organisation dedicated to parachuting its own preferred right-leaning candidates, including the evangelical Stephen Green, who has denied the existence of marital rape and once supported Uganda’s death penalty for some homosexuals, on to the seemingly impregnable board of the supposedly “woke” National Trust. What even is woke, anyway? It’s the kind of word Jonathan Gullis MP uses to describe anything he doesn’t like, like a Welsh-language edition of the Highway Code, olives on a pizza, or women in lace-up shoes.

Restore Trust is backed by Neil Record of the Tufton Street climate crisis denial bodies Global Warming Policy Foundation and Net Zero Watch. In November last year, Restore Trust director Gebreyohanes left to join the pro-Brexit free-market cheerleader the Legatum Institute, which shares senior fellows with various Tufton Street thinktanks and is funded by businessman Christopher Chandler’s Dubai-based Legatum Group. Legatum is also the chief backer of the loss-making GB News, along with the former banjo-playing twat from Mumford & Sons’ dad, Sir Paul Marshall, the would-be Telegraph buyer, who has shared Islamophobic material online. There are ponds full of frenziedly spawning toads with more dignity than this financier clusterfuck.

Having failed to discredit the National Trust at Restore Trust, Gebreyohanes made it her first job at the Legatum Institute to publish a report on 21 March called National Distrust, calling for the secretary of state for culture, media and sport and the Charity Commission to intervene in National Trust governance.

A 2019 report penned by Gebreyohanes’s former Tufton Street-linked Policy Exchange shaped Sunak’s criminalisation of climate protesters, so these documents are dangerous in the hands of a failing government desperately looking to create enemies it can appear to defeat. I’m going to write a report blaming the Princess of Wales for all potholes, bedbugs and haemorrhoids and see if it can get any traction in Sarah Vine’s Daily Mail column. But I suppose I’ll have to wait until Kate is well enough to be a legitimate tabloid target again.

Gebreyohanes’s National Trust report was immediately amplified in the Daily Telegraph, Britain’s worst newspaper, by the former National Trust chairman Sir William Proby, who repeated a false claim about National Trust procedures – namely, that National Trust trustees in effect select the National Trust council themselves – that the Telegraph, which appears to run whatever messages Restore Trust wants it to, has already had to apologise for when it printed it for the first time in November last year, so that apology obviously worked.

Currently, the Restore Trust website, reeking of desperation, criticises the National Trust not for wokeness, but for its inability to make “decent scones”, in response to a story that conveniently ran last weekend in the Mail. “Critics have condemned the use of a vegetable-based spread instead of butter in the baking as a ‘virtue-signalling betrayal’, in what looks like yet another woke row involving the charity,” reported both Chris Pollard and Daisy Graham-Brown, working as a Woodward and Bernstein-type team. The offending vegan scone was then pictured alongside a pot of decidedly non-vegan clotted cream.

In the same Mail story, Restore Trust’s chair, Cornelia van der Poll, a retired lecturer from the now closed private Oxford college St Benet’s Hall, “slammed the move”, seeing the scone as symptomatic of a wider malaise and saying: “It is unfortunate that the National Trust can’t even get scones right, let alone bigger issues such as properly looking after the properties in its care.” The report also quoted a sickened 64-year-old National Trust member from Bury St Edmonds (sic), who said: “I can’t stand the taste of the new scones,” adding: “They are flatter, drier and have an unappealing texture.” And the Eurosceptic MP Bill Cash, who, Pollard and Brown reported, “often has tea and scones in the House of Commons”, rose from his coffin of moist earth and rats to wonder, utterly nonsensically, if the National Trust will “stop selling Madeira cake because of historical events in Madeira”. But what are the Madeiran historical events Cash worries about? The island appears most notable for its six different species of identifiably different indigenous mice, each separated by high hills, ensuring they do not mix, a situation Cash, in his opposition to freedom of movement, would surely approve of.

But then the bombshell! Within days, the National Trust’s tirelessly diligent and heroic director of communications, Celia Richardson, had wasted her precious time to reveal that National Trust scones have been vegan for “many years”, and indeed in 2018 the Daily Mail itself invited readers to celebrate “truly scrumptious recipes from a new book by the National Trust”, including scones featuring no butter and “115g (4oz) of soft margarine”. Stick your Madeira cake in your Notting Hill bolthole, Bill Cash! Cornelia van der Poll!! You know nothing of scones, so why should we trust your opinions on the maintenance of historic properties? And guess what, National Trust member, 64, of Bury St Edmonds!!! The scones are the same! There’s something wrong with your mouth!!! And Bury St Edmonds isn’t even a real place!!!!

But why does Restore Trust want control of the National Trust so badly? Is it about the properties? The land? Or can it really be that Legatum’s Dubai-based backers just really love scones made with butter? I think we should be told.

If someone invited you to a two- hour stand-up routine by an ultra post-modern comedian, so sophisticated that he satirises himself, his audience and all the big names on the circuit, you might pass and ask to see a panto instead.

But Stewart Lee's humour is the opposite of pretentious. Sure, his new show, Carpet Remnant World (I'll come to the title later), is clever, and riddled with oblique references - you're expected to know about Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls, and see the absurdity in the Vatican changing its doctrine on Purgatory. But he isn't showing off - he just assumes you're on his intellectual level. And if you're not, he doesn't want you there anyway. As he keeps saying to any Jimmy Carr fans in the audience: "It's not for you," adding, for his loyal fans, "It'll soon be back to just us."

At the same time he is mock-baffled that the BBC hasn't commissioned him for a third series - it hasn't had time to make a decision. "They're too busy commissioning 200 episodes of Russell Howard and writing Rob Brydon a blank cheque."

In his deadpan, "passive aggressive", middle-aged and bitter way, Lee brilliantly deconstructs and savages other comedians' techniques, so when a joke's not going very well, he says, you slip in a reference to rectal bleeding. Or just add a bit, and then a bit more, and eventually you get a laugh. "In the trade we call it Boyle's law."

If his Michael McIntyre prancing is funny, then his riff on what he calls "observational comedy" is funnier still, as in those comedians who endlessly say, "have you noticed the way ...?". As he puts it: "You can't just go on stage and ask a load of questions without a punchline. Can you?" Of course, the twist is that he is indulging in "observational comedy" about comedy itself.

This sort of meta-comedy, if it can be called that, is the seam running through the show. Take his self-deprecation. He says he's got no material because his life consists of watching Scooby-Doo with his son, and driving round the North Circular. In the hands of another comedian, being told they've got no jokes would be annoying. It's been done before. But Lee pushes it further. Towards the end of the first half, he starts looking at the prompts scrawled on his hand. He does it so subtly, just as you would if you actually had forgotten your script, that for a moment I thought, yeah, actually, you are rubbish. But as the first half fizzles and you realise the fizzling is the joke, the laugh is on you for falling for it.

It's not all so convoluted - there are one-liners too. Such as: "My wife wants me to have a vasectomy." Sigh. "Hardly any point." And there are meta-one-liners, such as: "That was a joke ... They do stick out." Then there are moments of sheer silliness, like the Scooby-Doo riff. Having watched the same cartoon 180 times, it's his only frame of reference. So when he goes into observational comedy mode, the question he keeps asking is: "You know those jungle canyon rope bridges, right, you know, the ones that are always broken ...?"

And what of the show's title? It refers to the carpet remnant store he finds himself going into, on one of his lonely motorway drives. But its true significance comes clear only at the end. Suddenly, a show that you thought was just a meandering two hours of deadpan half-baked material-free nonsense - as he keeps telling you it is - comes together, tight as a ball of string. At the beginning, he tells you what will happen one minute from the end, to "create an illusion of structure". Except it's not an illusion at all - it's just brilliantly post-modern.

Gilles invites his absolute favourite stand-up comedian, Stewart Lee - who is also a keen record collector - to join him on the show, play some tunes, and tell us about his sources of inspiration. Expect an eclectic range of sounds, from two-tone to freewheeling jazz and punk, plus lots of stories from Lee, ahead of his new show debuting at London’s Alexandra Palace Theatre on the 3rd of February.

Elsewhere in the show, a special bunch of new releases from around the world and unknown gems from Gilles’ archives.

Produced by Reduced Listening for BBC Radio 6 Music

The Pogues with Kirsty MacColl. Photograph: Brian Rasic/Rex Features

When Colombian drugs lords invented Father Christmas as a marketing tool for cocaine, back in the 1980s, they could never have imagined that this red-faced, overweight man, whipping his staff while shooting through flurries of "snow", would one day become beloved by infants worldwide. And when, 4,000 winter solstices ago, the Beaker Folk cast toy clay pots to symbolise the passing year's disappointments, and tossed them into the past from a tiny spring-loaded mammoth, they could not have dreamed that, many millenniums later, we would enact their yearly rite as the Christmas game Buckaroo.

Today, even religious folk accept that the date of Christ's birth was fudged to appropriate pagan celebrations, but all of us were shocked when the BBC slowed the Earth's passage around the sun this year so that New Year's Day coincided with the already scheduled debut of the new sexed-up Sherlock. (One of the few female characters in the original Holmes stories, Irene Adler, was changed from an opera singer to a prostitute. Out Mrs Hudson as an angel and the whole gamut of TV roles for women will be covered.)

Not all traditions survive. For a whole generation of British people, nothing says Christmas like the newsreader Angela Rippon emerging on ludicrously long legs from a news desk on another Morecambe and Wise Christmas special. (Who even imagined Angela Rippon had legs? It was commonly assumed that she was some kind of news Davros, wheeled into position to warn of power cuts, three-day weeks and punk rock.) But today Morecambe and Wise's 1970s comedy double act show is almost as forgotten as Horne and Corden's, which was broadcast way back in 2009.

There are other traditional casualties. In Scotland, on New Year's Eve, a tall young man would enter the house at midnight, carrying a piece of coal. Today, rising fuel prices mean coal is delivered piece by piece in Securicor vans, so instead a little old man enters the house in the afternoon, holding a winter fuel allowance voucher and turns on the gas fire, so that it will be nice and warm at midnight, when heroin addicts break in to steal copper piping. (Similarly, the Easter tradition of the Maundy money, when the Queen gives silver coins to the poor, continues, but alongside the Maundy melting, when the poor then post the coins off to dodgy "cash for jewellery" websites in exchange for credit at Voucherland.)

But how quickly do apparently isolated events coalesce into traditions? In the first week of last year, the papers ran photographs of Helena Bonham Carter, then not a CBE, and her husband, the goth film man Timothy Buttons, carousing on the Chiltern Hills with the Camerons on New Year's Day. (Nick Clegg had been left behind to fulfil his traditional role of posing alone on the lawn of Chequers, naked except for a mask of the two-faced god Janus, looking backwards into the past and forwards into the future and imagining fondly that he has any significance in either.)

This strange Bonhameron tableau was only 12 months back. And yet this year revellers had already gathered in Wapping early on 2 January to await the pictures of our prime minister's 2012 new year guests, so as to predict which borderline liberal arts figure Cameron will award with the poisoned chalice of the CBE next year, their reward for dining with him an eternal loss of credibility. (Look out for the now thoroughly co-opted Timothy Buttons's forthcoming film of George Osborne's 2012 budget announcement, George Pencilhands. The batcave-haired director's love of S&M-styled fantasy is sure to prove the perfect vehicle for the previously low-profiled chancellor.)

My generation has lived through the emergence of a tradition. Nearly three decades ago the Pogues' banjo player Jem Finer came up with a lyric about a sailor returning home. His partner, the performance artist Marcia Farquhar, hated it and suggested a story based on the couple over the road, whose Christmases always followed the same cycle of angry recrimination and drunken redemption. Vocalist Shane MacGowan eventually relocated the story to New York, city of emigrants' dreams, giving the lyrics' mix of black despair and romantic resilience a global resonance.

A quarter-century since its completion, the now seasonal standard "Fairytale of New York" recently endured a curious mixture of homage and parody on another seasonal standard, Michael McIntyre's Christmas Comedy Roadshow. The host and his writers entertained the notion that the song's lyrics were unintelligible. The crowd was encouraged to karaoke them as best they could over the top of MacGowan's vocal, in which he is in character as an incoherent, incarcerated drunk.

The tragic opening image of an old dying man singing an Irish folk song was guffawed through and an inappropriate celebrity cutaway showed Carol Vorderman singing the supposedly incomprehensible lyrics word perfect, suggesting the editor had some secret wish to undermine the piece. Already I was slack-jawed, thinking: "What are they going to do with Kirsty MacColl's vocal?" MacColl, part of the genetic fabric of folk, and an essential element of the song's appeal, died in a boating accident 11 years ago and it might seem rather tasteless to encourage a mass slur through her contribution. Instead, the backing track snapped into an instrumental, a young singer in hot pants came on, a troupe of stunned Irish dancers hoofed along and a cutaway to a happy Irish Eamonn Holmes reassured everyone this wasn't offensive.

On some level, the sequence was sincerely meant and 34 years since the last edition of The Black and White Minstrel Christmas Show, it's good to see racially stereotyped dancing back where it belongs, at the centre of the seasonal schedules. But the song survives.

As well as playing in the Pogues, Jem Finer is a conceptual artist. Much of his work seems concerned with music and notions of endurance. Water began dripping sonorously into the woodland pit of his Score for a Hole in the Ground six years ago and Longplayer is currently 12 years into its 1,000-year cycle of musical drones in an east London lighthouse. But Finer's pieces' attempts at immortality remain necessarily speculative. In pop terms, "Fairytale of New York" is already eternal, a secular carol with a spiritual resonance, an impregnable slice of dirty realist redemption that's now beyond both parody and its creators' control. Strangely, it's something to believe in. Take my baubles, take my pies, take my Christmas carols, and my Christmas Doctor Who, but I'll only give you my 7in of "Fairytale of New York" when you prise it from my cold dead hands.

Punk Rock Ist Nicht Tot is a career-spanning compilation album by hugely prolific Godfather of the Kent punk and garage rock scene, Billy Childish. Contains songs from his work with The Pop Rivets, The Milkshakes, Thee Mighty Caesars, The Delmonas, Thee Headcoates and more. Sleeve notes by Stewart Lee.
More Info on the release here.

Here’s a field guide to the many faces of Billy Childish. by Stewart Lee

From 1977 to 1980 The Pop Rivets played contemporary sounding primitive punk, Childish alongside Bruce Brand on guitar, and then on drums, who was to stay at his side until the end of the century; from 1980 to 1984 The Milkshakes mined the sound of exactly Hamburg 1961. The later, stomping garage anthem ‘I’m Out Of Control’ (included here), could have been written by the Sonics, The Wailers or the The Kinks and their British beat buddies, just as the first solar flares of psychedelia started to singe their fringes; from 1985 to 1989.

Thee Mighty Caesars evidenced an even simpler, earlier, and much messier take on the garage sound than The Milkshakes, with Childish starting to find a way of incorporating the sort of stanzas, which while reflective of the raw confessionals of his writing, still swung like song lyrics should. Whilst still sonically rooted somewhere around the mid-sixties, Thee Headcoats’ twelve year reign, from 1989 to 2000, seemed to allow a playful Childish freedom to indulge a variety of whims. While previous projects had seen him channeling existing garage punk forms, Thee Headcoats used these structures to service his own distinctive vision, his musical apprenticeship now complete, Childish having learned guitar on the job.

If the Bo Diddley licks of Thee Headcoats phase sounded like they emanated from the delta of the Mississippi, then the idiom and sensibility of Thee Headcoats’ songs was leaking demonstrably from the delta of the Medway. Clad in Deerstalkers in honor of the Twickenham ‘60s beat group The Downliners Sect, with whom they were to collaborate, and unduly fixated on Sherlock Holmes ephemera, Thee Headcoats found Childish finally fusing a distinctly English take on an American music, and lionised by American grunge era Sub Pop groups, luminaries for whom he represented a disappearing authenticity, occasionally sighted through the Seattle tree line, a sonic sasquatch.

Meanwhile, Childish has always had an interest in Native American culture, and to me Thee Headcoatees, the female-fronted version of Thee Headcoats that allowed Childish to foreground songs more suited to a feminine perspective, casts him as a kind of Chatham berdache. This Zuni man-woman shaman was charged with maintaining a fluid gender identity in an act of cosmic balancing, and Childish uses Thee Headcoatees as a way of undergoing a kind of musical gender-reassignment. Subsequent distaff Childish combos, The Buffets and The Shall-I-Say-Quois maintained this idea, Headcoatee Holly Golightly would go on to record abrasive duets with childish, and a snatch of Kyra Rubella’s solo work, backed by Childish’s band, is included here too.

As he entered the new century, and nudged into his forties, Childish’s best musical work was still ahead of him, an astounding state of affairs given rock musicians’ usual descent into irrelevance and nostalgia. The Buff Medways, active from 2000 to 2005, saw Childish hook up with a new rhythm section and don cavalry twill to form a tight trio in thrall to the sound of the Soho beat scene speakeasies of late 1966
and early 1967, no earlier, and no later. The decadence of psychedelia was eschewed, but live covers of Hendrix’s ‘Fire’ and The Who’s ‘A Quick One, While He’s Away’ sat comfortably on-top of a whirlwind of windmilling drums and bass.

With wife and latter Buff Medways bassist Nurse Julie on board Childish essayed an authentic sounding Medway Delta Americana with The Chatham Singers, field recordings drawn from a parallel world where Alan Lomax and Shirley Collins traced the roots of the blues to 19th century Kent, and discovered its last living exponent breaking rocks in Chatham docks. Anticipating the anxieties of national identity that now divide England, Childish moved a decade forward from the chosen musical milieu of The Buff Medways to spend 2007 and 2008 fronting The Musicians Of The British Empire. The group snagged Victorian military regalia to sneer satirical state of the nation songs, and allow Childish to recall the mood of the mid-Seventies that shaped him, over textbook 1976/77 punk riffs.

The short-lived Vermin Poets side-project morphed into The Spartan Dreggs, active from 2011 to 2014, which saw Childish switch to bass and surrender guitar and vocals to The Fire Dept’s Neil Palmer. The group’s recordings see the set texts of the poetry course at a 1950s liberal arts university, or an experimental private school, set to the sound of a trebly ‘60s folk rock band fed into the garage punk grinder, and they are a highpoint in Childish’s catalogue.

Where much of his music fills me with a virulent, if invigorating, anxiety, The Spartan Dreggs somehow touched the sublime and make me turn my face toward heaven. Childish’s current project reflects a man at peace with his past, and could almost be described as an act of time travel. CTMF, or The Chatham Forts, was the name Childish chose for his first band, back in 1976, but the proposed members never got around to rehearsing or sourcing a drum kit. In 2013

Childish and his current collaborators revived the spirit, if not the original intended line-up, of CTMF, unused lyrics he had jotted down thirty-seven years previously, many of them relating to Chatham’s local history, forming the basis of the new group’s first album. An ongoing concern, this flexible trio touch bass with all the different stylistic phases of Childish’s career, and their most recent album, Brand New Cage, features a forty year old photo of a vacantly furious young Billy, his face scarred with acne and razorblades, while inside this elder statesman of outsider art, flanked by long term drummer Wolf and his wife and co-worker Julie, stares up at the camera, now unassailable. In ‘A Song For Kylie Minogue’ Childish even appears to make peace with his own reputation, accommodating, rather than resenting, the praise and adulation of the art and music superstars who cite him as an influence, hatchets and bitten hands well and truly buried.

Few artists of such wildly independent spirit live long enough to achieve this kind of equilibrium.

Stewart Lee, writer/clown, Stoke Newington, October 2018

Images of physical retribution against hated political figures have, rightly or wrongly, been part of the holy fool’s comedic arsenal since the dawn of human civilisation. Effigies of the sparkler-toting anarchist Guy Fawkes have been burnt every November 5th since 1606, while a 17,000-year-old daub on the wall of the Grotte de Niaux in south-west France shows a primitive cave chief having milk squirted over him directly from the lactating teat of a female megatherium. But, in a political climate that has seen a pro-Remain politician murdered in the street by a Brexiter, and even actual milkshakes thrown at both Nigel Farage and that other one who wouldn’t even rape a Labour MP, stock images of satirical revenge violence no longer seem so funny.

As Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Haircut Bullshit Inconclusive-Cocaine-Event Wall-Spaffer Johnson prepares to take power, unelected and unopposed, modern day alternative so-called “comedians” need to start working out which forms of fantasy violence it is comically acceptable to imagine being meted out to him. Or face the strongest condemnation. Presumably there is no problem with images that Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Haircut Bullshit Inconclusive-Cocaine-Event Wall-Spaffer Johnson has already introduced into public discourse himself?

In January 2017, Piccaninny Johnson, as part of his delicate EU negotiation strategy, warned the then president of France not to “administer punishment beatings to anybody who chooses to escape, rather in the manner of some world war two movie”. Is it then funny to imagine Letterbox Johnson himself, pegged out face-down on the prison camp parade ground, naked but for a massive pair of white Y-fronts, being repeatedly clubbed by the butts of the Nazi camp guards’ Karabiner 98K rifles? Yes, it is funny, but only until such time as a modern-day politician is actually beaten senseless by Nazi camp guards, at which point it would become distasteful.

In 2002, in a column in the Telegraph, Britain’s worst newspaper, Cake Johnson described African people as “piccaninnies” with “watermelon smiles”. Would it be funny then, to extend the comical image of him pegged out at Stalag Luft III in just his pants, by imagining the piccaninnies arriving, jungle spears at hand, poking them into his bottom, and stuffing watermelons into his smiling mouth, while doing a capering jungle dance? Would it be funny to imagine Bumboys Johnson’s supporter James Cleverly looking on and wondering, like the loyal house slave in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, where his loyalties lay?

The answer is yes, it would be funny to imagine these things, but only until such a time as a leading politician has been spiked in the gluteus maximus and force-fed on watermelon by piccaninnies, then it would become tasteless and not funny at all. And would it be appropriate to notice that James Cleverly’s left eyebrow is always raised inexplicably higher than its fellow, as if even Cleverly’s actual face has begun a sudden downward drift towards the far right?

In a 1998 Telegraph column about Peter Mandelson, Haircut Johnson wrote about “tank-topped bumboys”. If a so-called “comedian” were to imagine the Nazi-beaten, piccaninny-speared, watermelon-gagged Bullshit Johnson then being touched on his bottom by bumboys, would that be funny? The answer is yes, it would be funny, but only so long as a leading political figure had not been Nazi-beaten, piccaninny-speared, watermelon-gagged and bumboy-touched, at which point the so-called “comedian” conjuring the image should become the subject of a police investigation.

In his 2001 book, Friends, Voters, Countrymen, Wall-Spaffer Johnson wrote: “If gay marriage was OK – and I was uncertain on the issue – then I saw no reason in principle why a union should not be consecrated between three men, as well as two men, or indeed three men and a dog.” Would it then be funny to imagine the dazed and beaten Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Haircut Bullshit Inconclusive-Cocaine-Event Wall-Spaffer Johnson, pegged out on the Nazi camp parade ground, in just his pants, and being forced, in quick succession, to marry three men, two men, and then three men and a dog, while being spiked by piccaninny spears, gagged with watermelons, and having his bottom touched by tank-topped bumboys, with each parody of a wedding ceremony enthusiastically officiated by the celebrant James Cleverly?

The answer is yes, it would be funny, but only until such time as a leading politician was forced against his will, having been beaten semi-senseless by Nazis, speared by piccaninnies, gagged by watermelons, and goosed by bumboys, to marry three men, two men, and then three men and a dog. Then it would not be funny. It would be sick.

Last week Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Haircut Bullshit Inconclusive-Cocaine-Event Wall-Spaffer Johnson claimed to have taken cocaine only once, in a “single inconclusive event” as a teenager. Would it be funny then to imagine the next leader of the Conservative party pegged out on the Nazi camp parade ground, in just his pants, forced at great speed to marry three men, two men, and then three men and a dog, spiked by piccaninny spears, gagged with watermelons, and having his bottom touched by tank-topped bumboys, while privileged teenagers hurl millions of pounds of cocaine repeatedly and inconclusively into his sneezing nose?

Yes. It would be funny. But only until such time as the next prime minister of Britain has been beaten trouserless by Nazis, forcibly wed to various human-animal combinations, spiked by piccaninnies, choked on fruit, fondled by bumboys, and forcibly fed cocaine. Then it would not be funny. It would be an outrage. And would it be funny to imagine that the opponent to Prime Minister Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Haircut Bullshit Inconclusive-Cocaine-Event Wall-Spaffer Johnson is a man who agrees “150%” with a nakedly racist Donald Trump-Katie Hopkins co-tweet? No. It wouldn’t be funny. But it is true.

As the lies that drove Brexit unravel under the spotlight of actual fact, so the reasons bewildered Leave voters gave for supporting it seem increasingly tragic. My relative who wanted to get rid of Pakistanis and Indians, and other people from the far south-eastern region of the EU, finds they are still here, curing him, presenting the news and cooking delicious baltis.

The Welsh railway worker who Paul Mason overheard in July 2016 saying that he was voting out because “you can’t buy girls pink toys any more, they have to be grey” (while his colleague thought she should be allowed to say “gollywog”), has discovered there is no EU toy colour diktat. Toybox gender miscegenation will continue unabated, cloth rabbits and robot cars changing colour and sex at will, like gender-fluid frogs spawning in a filthy pond.

Those wooed, understandably, by the bus-borne “£350m a week for the NHS” bullshit now know it was just one of Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Disaster Johnson’s many self-serving falsehoods. But even now it is being regurgitated by Theresa May, a horrible vomiting cormorant sicking up lies into the squawking beaks of the terminally and furiously disappointed, hoping that if their gullets are at least full of something, anything, however baseless, they will at last shut up.

Those who voted Leave as a protest, hoping to give the elite a scare, reluctantly admit they overplayed their hands somewhat. Even Michael Gove who, in the words of his Daily Mail wife, was “only supposed to blow the bloody doors off”, now chooses to attach himself, the limpet of regret, to the hulls of various blameless environmental causes, in an attempt to disassociate himself from the national catastrophe his pitiful vanity has initiated. Michael Gove hopes to be remembered, instead, as the Dian Fossey of Surrey’s hedgehogs. But Brexit is Michael Gove’s only legacy. And the shame of it will outlive all of his hedgehogs.

Only Jacob Rees-Mogg, one of our few conviction politicians, can still hold his head up high and say that he had a reason to leave the EU that remains not demonstrably untrue. For, in the early days of the Leave campaign, Rees-Mogg nailed his colours to the same mast of hope that he was again saluting last Monday morning, when he made the case for Hard Brexit once more to his familiar, Nick Ferrari, on LBC: the benefits of free trade focused through the lens of Cheaper Footwear.

It is true that in 2006, the shoe-producing EU nations slapped blocks on Asian shoe imports that drove up high street prices. But only a genius like Rees-Mogg could realise how emotive this footwear issue was for the Ukip/Brexit axis. Brexit supporters, it appears, get through a lot of shoes, after hurling them at the television whenever Gina Miller comes on Question Time.

And now, long since all other supposed good reasons for exiting the EU have been invalidated by facts, Rees-Mogg’s “cheaper footwear” gambit remains undiscredited. But this is largely, it must be said, because no one from the corrupt pro-EU elite thought it important enough to try and discredit, which just shows how out of touch they are with what ordinary people care about.

For many Brexit voters, the financial benefits of EU membership – investment in rural infrastructure, sharing of scientific research, work and education opportunities – remain tantalisingly abstract, and seem geared to the needs of the metropolitan liberal elite. But the cost of footwear is a tangible concrete concept, and it is this notion that Rees-Mogg harnessed to arouse the Europhobia of the British people.

After all, everyone has feet, or knows someone who has, whereas not everyone knows someone who has benefited from the work of the European Space Agency. And if it is trying to contact queue-jumping aliens, that is hardly likely to endear it to the Brexit voter.

But even Brexit supporters with no feet might want to buy a shoe, if only to hurl at the television in case Gina Miller comes on Question Time. And they would probably want that shoe to cost as little as possible. And they wouldn’t care if it was an Asian shoe, as long as it wasn’t jumping the shoe queue.

Rees-Mogg’s own two feet continue to fascinate all of us, and one can see why footwear would be of such importance to him. Rees-Mogg has always looked younger than 49, especially when he was a child, though he is finally beginning to decay. However, a swift internet image search will show that Rees-Mogg’s shoes have remained unchanged throughout Rees-Mogg’s life.

Either Rees-Mogg is wearing a new pair of shoes every day, in which case one could understand his obsession with footwear prices and their relationship with EU membership, or some more sinister factor is at play. Rees-Mogg’s shoes, always shiny, always bright, never scuff or age. I looked at 570 consecutive photographs of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s unchanged shoes online and then gave up, the horror seeming to tear at my throat.

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde, a man sells his soul to the devil or something, I expect, and there’s a drawing of him and it gets old and he stays the same. Brexit rots in front of our eyes, wilting on the vine. But Rees-Mogg’s shoes remain unchanged. And who is this “nanny” who has accompanied him since birth, guiding his political progress, steering us toward our doom? Whatever diabolical deal the footwear-obsessed free trade evangelist struck, I just hope it was worth it.

In The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973), the key to the sacrifice’s efficacy is that Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodwoodward, 1930), embraces victimhood willingly. And so Liz Truss climbs into her photo-op tank and trundles gladly toward the burning wicker effigy of the role of Chief Negotiator for Exiting the European Union Brexit (formerly Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union), and the poisoned post claims another scalp. Greater love hath no man.

Lord Frost understood. Did he really exit his Exit Secretary job because he no longer agreed with Boris Johnson’s general direction of travel, namely lurching from one leaking honeypot to another like a priapic bear? Or did the lordly Exiteer realise he could not exit the European Union in a fashion that would garnish his square head with coveted laurels? And so, unzipping the tent flap into the howling Arctic gale of public opinion, Lord Frost declared: “I’m just going to the pub with Brexit hardman Steve Baker’s European Research Group. I may be some time. Masks optional, of course.”

The artfully cantilevered Good Friday pivot, which discreetly emolliated the island of Ireland in 1998, fractures and ferments; furious fishermen and farmers fulminate fruitlessly into foam and fertiliser, respectively; our brightest creative talents lower their life expectations accordingly as earnings, market access, postal rates, touring options and cross-border collaborations collapse; despite Michael Gove’s claims to better EU environmental rules post-Brexit, once more we are swimming in human sewage; once more we are known as the “dirty man of Europe” (at least until Allegra Stratton’s revelations about Boris Johnson’s love life surface); and a scheme to lure Nobel laureates to work in buccaneering Brexit Britain attracted precisely no takers worldwide, making us the intellectual destination equivalent of Eddie Murphy’s 2002 box office bomb, The Adventures of Pluto Nash.

Was Boris Johnson’s finally all-too obvious incompetence, dishonesty and lack of any coherent plan, beyond what might get him either elected or noshed off, merely a useful fig leaf to cover the chief Exiteer’s exit from the unwinnable forever war against the phantoms of Europe? The lie-fuelled promises of the Brexit campaign can never be delivered. It is a package, like that gatefold vinyl copy of Hawkwind’s Space Ritual I ordered from a previously reliable French dealer via discogs.com, that appears undeliverable in the post-Brexit world. Brexit did, however, deliver the most right-leaning government in living memory. Was that the idea all along? Slaps head. Falls over. Cries.

Faithful leave-voting red wall constituents, pining for levelling up and Brexit dividends, will be delighted that Lord Frost’s Exiteer replacement, Liz Truss, voted remain in 2016, and was the co-author of the 2012 Tory manifesto-in-waiting, Britannia Unchained. Britannia Unchained opined that “the British are among the worst idlers in the world… Whereas Indian children aspire to be doctors or businessmen, the British are more interested in football and pop music.” What is a “Beatle”, eh Liz? And why have all the footballers got long hair now, like girls? For your information, Truss, both British football and British pop music have been massive engines for your vaunted social mobility, and key elements of the soft diplomacy that briefly made Britain less universally hated all around the world.

A Kurdish nomad on the Syrian border in 1988 bonded with me over his tape of Sheffield’s Def Leppard. With all due respect, the goat-herding tent-dweller had nothing to say about the quality of British businessmen. And there’s a generation of British schoolchildren that take their moral inspiration from Marcus Rashford, not from vegetable magnate Andrew Bridgen, the Igor homunculus of Brexit hardman Steve Baker, who so delighted in his master’s performative online defenestration of snowflake Nadine Dorries this week. (“Go on Steve! Bloody Nadine with her confusing shiny hair!! Get her!!! Oh!!!!! I’ve made a mess in my pants, Steve!!!!!”) Believe it or not, the kids aren’t doing collages of Bridgen’s stinking Leicestershire vegetable distribution hub, or Boris Johnson’s lockdown cheese-and-wine work non-party. They’re making murals of Marcus Rashford.

To be fair, Truss didn’t write Britannia Unchained alone. Her co-authors were: the thinking woman’s thug Kwasi Kwarteng, Boris Johnson’s brutish Golem-enforcer, who spent a November press round trying to bully parliamentary standards commissioner Kathryn Stone into resigning, unaware that focus-polling at CCHQ had already decided to ditch Owen Paterson, leaving Kwarteng looking like a gormlessly obedient snap-on tool, both fanatically loyal and fatally un-looped; Dominic Raab, who lasted four months as Truss’s Exiteer predecessor, having revealed he didn’t know where Calais was, defended the Tories’ falsified online independent fact checking service during the 2019 election, and floated about on a paddle board during the rout of Kabul, like the devil made flesh by Silvia Pinal in a Luis Buñuel film; Priti Patel, who was bailed out personally by Boris Johnson when she breached the ministerial code for bullying, and threatens regulations against dying drowning children, Darth Vader pointing the Death Star at Alderaan; and Chris Skidmore, the MP for Kingswood, only known at all because a covert 2019 investigation into the Westminster laundry service by Vice magazine found Skidmore to have more skids in his pants than any other politician, a nominatively determined quirk which Andrew Bridgen secretly envied. Everything that is awful about the modern Conservative party is embodied by Truss’s collaborators in Britannia Unchained, which should make her a perfect fit for the Wicker Woman’s flaming frame.

Britannia ashamed requires a sacrifice. So far, the role of Chief Negotiator for Exiting the European Union has claimed five victims, six if you remember that David Davis did it twice, having forgotten that he’d already done it all wrong once already. Nothing is achieved. Another body goes up in flames, the carcass shunted into another cabinet position. The peasants dance and sing, and wait out the winter.

Stewart Lee performs his latest tour show Basic Lee filmed in April at The Lowry in Salford.

Superficially an uncharacteristically simple Stewart Lee show, in which the gnomic fifty-six-year-old veteran attempts to define by example what stand-up comedy is, Basic Lee slowly reveals a subtext about staying sane by re-structuring reality. But Lee’s most personal show is also his funniest, as he rewards the post-pandemic audience with a barrel load of big laughs as well as a bucketful of post-modern comedy deconstruction.

Probably the finest live recording to date of “the world’s greatest living stand-up comedian” (The Times, 2018) or “the world’s second best living stand-up comedian after Bo Burnham” (Daily Telegraph, 2023).

Stewart Lee, Basic Lee: Live at the Lowry is produced by Drum Studios in association with Awkward Films. The Producer Director is Colin Dench. The Executive Producers are Danny Carvalho and Andy Holland. The Commissioning Editor for Sky is Dwayne Eaton.

Stewart Lee, Basic Lee: Live at the Lowry airs 20^th July at 9pm on Sky Comedy and streaming service NOW

This week Stewart Lee is on the pod.

Twice voted 'Funniest Comedian' on Sigma XI Stewart is torn on whether he wants Donald Trump to win the US Election (for a very selfish reason!), and has some excellent advice for anyone (say, a bin-headed count from off-world) who might be heading on their debut comedy tour.

This really is a great episode - it's so good that if you haven't yet, this is probably the one that would make you hit 'follow' so you get a new episode every week.

Enjoy!

It’s a privilege to write funny columns about the news for the Observer, and every Sunday I wake excitedly to see what flows from the slushy pen of our illustrator, David Foldvari. But writing these means I have to read the news every day, a weather eye on the endemic corruption of untouchable ministers, and trawl the filth of social media and the sewer press to see if they vomit forth anything I could spin into satire. Sometimes I feel done in by it, a 6 Music dad Malcolm McDowell with my Clockwork Orange eyes pinned open, flickering images of Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman burning my retina until my heart is broken. Again. It’s the lying I can’t stand.

Can two different things be true at the same time? Or is nothing actually true? What is truth? What are lies? A sandalled seeker searching a lifetime in a desert could encounter more vital incarnations of these questions by observing the current antics of the Tory party’s most malevolent manifestation to date. Schrödinger merely had one lone reality-defying cat. We have an entire reality-defying government. And unlike Schrödinger’s cat, Rishi Sunak doesn’t know how to use a litter tray, preferring to stink out the front benches every time his mouth miaows.

I was in the car with a 12-year-old on Wednesday morning, listening to the Covid inquiry coverage on news radio, the child provoked into laughter by Boris Johnson’s quarter-arsed explanation of how he had lost his WhatsApp messages, and then again by Rishi Sunak’s repeated use of the phrase “I don’t recall”. To paraphrase the comedian George Carlin, “I don’t recall” is just an uptown way of lying. When he is finally flushed, Sunak should reboot Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall. In Total Non-Recall, Sunak plays Dick, a man who has all his memories removed, but instead of being replaced with other memories, they are replaced by an endless loop of the phrase “I don’t recall” and a photo of a man touching a woman’s bum from the front of a Jilly Cooper novel. And it ain’t over ’til the fat lady’s head explodes!

Kids, used to trying to weasel their way out of trouble without a shred of conscience, recognise the smell coming out of the mouths of Johnson and Sunak, and find it joyously hilarious to hear actual adults – let alone two British prime ministers – wheeling out the same fake shit as I did in 1972 when I kicked a ball through next door’s greenhouse window. The difference being, that ball didn’t result in the deaths of tens of thousands of people and the misappropriation of billions in public funds. When I ruined Mr Archer’s tomato plants I didn’t kill everyone’s grannies, or get an ocean-going yacht and an interview under caution about a missing two hundred million quid. And kids are better at lying than this lot.

Funny how I can just write the word “lying” and know there will be no legal comeback. We all know they are lying. And they know we know they are lying. And the apparently powerless interlocutors of the Covid inquiry must know they’re lying too. Sunak, especially, seems to have given up caring. Why should he worry about consequences when he can dismiss an international convention affecting billions, and the findings of his own supreme court, with a waft of parliament? Facts begone!

Right now Sunak, like Johnson, says he can’t find his WhatsApp messages because they were all lost. But in June he sought a judicial review to say he didn’t need to hand the WhatsApp messages over, declaring them “unambiguously irrelevant”. The judicial review, then, was presumably a big waste of everyone’s time and money if the WhatsApps were actually all lost anyway. Which they obviously weren’t. Perhaps Schrödinger’s cat ate them. I am sure all those teenagers who hack free rides every day on Santander short-term hire cycles all over London could find those WhatsApps in seconds. Rishi – they can remember it for you wholesale! Is anyone going to actually do anything about this?

Because Sunak’s lies matter. Pursuing the transporting of 200 people a year to Rwanda, at a cost of £290m so far, is supposed to deter migrants from seeking our shores. Rwanda was presumably a good deterrent because of its poor human rights record, and because its police force kill refugees if they protest about having no food. But we can only deport 200 people a year, and if you’re already someone who thinks crossing the Channel in a Tupperware box is an acceptable risk, the remote possibility of Rwandan resettlement has such low odds it’s irrelevant.

Seven Bins Sunak has supersized his lies, using a self-invented lie-law to undermine the judgment of our own non-foreign supreme court that deemed Rwanda unsafe, which it is, and insisted in a law that it is safe, which it isn’t, so he can send migrants there. But if Rwanda was safe it wouldn’t be a deterrent, would it? Critics have called it Schrödinger’s Rwanda, after the famous paradoxical cat mentioned earlier, which is simultaneously both alive and dead. But I call it Pursglove’s Rwanda, after the new minister for legal migration and delivery Tom Pursglove, who is both a purse and a glove at the same time. Meanwhile, a man took his own life on the Bibby Stockholm.

The government’s convoluted, costly and impractical immigration policy is built on lies and serves no purpose other than to try to preserve the unity of a collapsing Conservative party, and consolidate the loyalty of its most aggrieved, and easily misled, supporters. Life would be simpler, and I would be happier, if I didn’t have to follow the falsehoods of the Tory turds beached by the backwash of Brexit. But I do this for you. And for the money. Both at the same time. Schrödinger’s columnist.

Last week, there was really only one story. And it wasn’t that a children’s television science-fiction character, who never reproduces or has sexual relations with anyone, is now played by a human of a different gender than at any point previously. Despite this, like all the other crying centrists, I wept hot snowflakes to witness it happen in my lifetime.

And I couldn’t be happier that the Time Lady’s new companions include a black teenager with mild learning difficulties and a female Asian police officer. Predictably, The Chase’s Bradley Walsh let the side down by being a straight white man. Though I understand that in tonight’s episode Bradley Walsh reveals that, as a result of unpredictable side-effects from his character’s chemotherapy treatment, he now has both male and female genitalia, while a cloaca on his left thigh also enables him to reproduce parthenogenetically, although not without some discomfort.

Like the Zuni berdache, Bradley Walsh will become an intergender priest-princess, an ambassador between different dimensional realities, his engagements unencumbered by a traditional sexual identity. Typical BBC! It’s political correctness gone mad!! Nonetheless, the genitalia of fictional time travellers wasn’t the week’s big story.

On Monday, scientists revealed that we have only 12 years to put in place real strategies to combat climate change before the future of all life on Earth is doomed. It has taken our government more than two years to fail to agree that Brexit is more difficult than David Davis’s proposed easiest thing in the world. In the light of the progress of these negotiations, I don’t hold out much hope for the survival of the Melton Mowbray pork pie, let alone the continued existence of all the life on Earth.

But while climate change experts were once derided as cranks, a kind of environmental Flat Earth Society, finally their message is believed. And now the cranks are oil industry cheerleaders such as Nigel Lawson, ranting outside the window like a Hogarth etching of some bawling fictional aristocrat; Lord Entitlement Demands His Buttermilk Ramekin.

The definitive mass extinction bombshell held its position in the news chart for a few days and on Wednesday all four of the Guardian’s page four stories covered the end of all life as we know it and related fossil fuel consumption and rainforest obliteration news, shunting Adrian Searle’s review of the artist Anni Albers’s new abstract textiles exhibition all the way back to a humiliating page nine.

A further story, that the Dutch are developing robot bees to pollinate the crops we need to survive after the now inevitable insect apocalypse, ran on page 14, being five pages less important that the textile display. I immediately began to worry that intelligent robot bees would realise the best way to ensure the survival of the crops they were programmed to nurture was to destroy the human race who were poisoning the Earth. I wondered how me and my family would best survive attack by millions of Dutch nano-bees. I began learning the phrase “Robot bee, I am your friend” in as many Dutch dialects as I could master: West Frisian, Papiamento, Low Saxon and Limburgish.



In other newspapers, we were back to business as usual. On the front page of Wednesday’s Sun, the end of all life on Earth forgotten, it was revealed that a comedy man had kissed a dancing lady behind an acting lady’s back. Really? As a species, we don’t deserve to live. It’s just a shame we’re going to take all the insects, animals and plants down with us. Unless we are exterminated by robot bees.

The imminent extinction of all life on Earth exposes a logical hole in the Doctor Who mythos. The Doctor loves to help humanity but as a time traveller she must know that within a decade or so our whole race will be doomed. If she really cared, wouldn’t she go back in time and save us all from ourselves? But by doing what exactly? Preventing Trump from weakening the Paris accord last June? Exposing the 1970s oil companies that sat on climate change data they knew would make their brands toxic in the short term? Or going back to the dawn of time and preventing the clever troglodyte, Keith Flintsparker, the first fire-starter, from dipping a dry twig into a puddle of tar and flint-sparking it into fuel.

The 1975 Tom Baker Doctor Who story Genesis of the Hateweed explores this conundrum. In it, the Doctor finds himself in the laboratory where his future nemesis, the Hateweed, is being genetically engineered into existence. He holds the spores over a nearby toilet and eventually decides that flushing them down the bowl and destroying them would constitute too great an intervention in the timeline. Nicholas Parsons, in a rare serious role as the Hateweed’s creator, Anglias the Weedseeder, watches him while eating a blue space pie, in an act of defiant indifference.

In 1992, I worked with Baker on the BBC radio comedy series The Inexplicable Worlds of Patrick Nimmo and I loved pumping Baker for behind-the-scenes Who stash. Baker told me he had been professionally jealous of the popularity of the Hateweed with female Doctor Who fans and had intended to change the scene while filming by “throwing the fucking seeds into the toilet and doing a massive, fast wee on them and shouting, ‘That’s pissed in their chips!’ But Nicholas Parsons said, ‘You, Thomas Stewart Baker, are drunk,’ and he said he would throw the space pie at me if I did a wee. I said, ‘I may be drunk, but you are Nicholas Parsons and in the morning I will be sober.’ We had a jolly good laugh and it was all forgotten over a few jars.”

I share a personal trainer with Bradley Walsh and so I went to meet him in Doctor Who’s Cardiff studios on Thursday and asked him if he thought the new Doctor should intervene in the climate change catastrophe. Bradley Walsh, who was patiently being fitted for multiple prosthetic genitals, both male and female, and those of a bird, said he didn’t know.

“This is the end…
…of our elaborate plans, the end
of everything that stands, the end
no safety or surprise, the end”

Jim Morrison of The Doors wrote these words about a failed relationship 50 years ago but he could just as easily have been speaking about the demise of All Tomorrow’s Parties (ATP). The organisation that had made its name by staging a series of often quite incredible festivals in holiday camps has now surely run out of road. Paying punters were in the process of handing in their chalet keys following what was ultimately the successful completion of ATP 2.0 April 2016 curated by Stewart Lee when news broke that next weekend’s event – curated by Drive Like Jehu – had been cancelled.

The news came as no surprise. For years ATP has been plagued with organisational difficulties, mounting financial problems and reports of extensive unpaid debts. In 2012 the company went into voluntary liquidation apparently owing £2.6m to creditors. That same year a dispute with the Butlin’s holiday camp chain ended with their six-year relationship being terminated.

Two years later, and after re-emerging in the interim in a different guise, ATP cancelled the Jabberwocky festival three days before it was due to take place; it had previously jettisoned a show at Alexandra Palace at which Grizzly Bear were to headline. And then only last month the Stewart Lee curated event was thrown into confusion after ticket-holders were advised by the Pontin’s venue that it had been cancelled amidst suggestions of non-payment by the promoters.



ATP said that a “miscommunication” had occurred between them and Pontin’s and the event finally went ahead as planned on Friday. The gates to the North Wales holiday park had barely been opened, though, before it was revealed that the weekend’s headliner John Cale had pulled out. In a deeply embarrassing development for ATP, the founding member of The Velvet Underground – whose song ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’ provided ATP with their brand name – blamed the event organisers for “letting us all down”. As the afternoon progressed further rumours circulated the site. There were very strong indications that Friday night’s bill topper Roky Erickson had followed Cale’s example and withdrawn from proceedings too – he was, however, to eventually play – and then there was a swell of opinion that the plug might even be pulled on the entire festival before the weekend was out. Suddenly the small matter of there being no hot water in our chalet did not seem quite so important.

Early Friday evening, in his first scheduled appearance of the weekend, the English stand-up comic Stewart Lee tried to draw the sting from what was fast becoming a very palpable concern amongst the crowd. In a hastily prepared skit – he had even written prompts on the back of his hand – he explicitly acknowledged the rumours with jokes about the organisation’s sister event ATP Iceland being relocated to Greenland; ATP’s head honcho Barry Hogan having been seen counting out money back stage; and anyone who grew a beard over the weekend being asked to hand it in to ATP’s London office afterwards to assist the company with further fund-raising. In conversation with Lee a day later he said that he “had been trying to calm everyone down”.

And things did calm down and despite repeated stories to the contrary nobody else did pull out. And for those of us that remained – and compared with the poorly attended Nightmare Before Christmas in December, there were plenty of us – we could only marvel that despite ATP’s rapidly deteriorating reputation as a promoter (and this was even before the Drive Like Jehu announcement) it still had the capacity, against all odds, to pull something rather special out of the hat.



To be greeted on entry by a Police sniffer dog and car searches was rather over-zealous at best. The dilapidated infrastructure of this sadly jaded Pontin’s site – characterised by the vagaries of its push-button showers and those electricity guzzling payment cards – did leave much to be desired.  Much of the organisation was consistent with the traditional ATP behind-the-scenes chaos and the loss of the much-loved ATP TV channels must surely be attributed to the organisation’s dire financial straits. And whilst John Cale’s absence did see The Fall promoted to Saturday night’s headline slot – an honour that they just about managed to fulfil despite Mark E. Smith’s best efforts to derail the process through his customary unpredictability – it left a huge gaping hole in the afternoon schedule.

But for all of that, and once the immediate anxieties had ceded, the ATP ethos of producing a quality, varied programme of predominantly alternative music to be enjoyed in a warm, friendly communal atmosphere was maintained.

From the Australian experimental jazz trio The Necks, who commenced proceedings proper early Friday evening with their breath-taking display of dextrous musical virtuosity, to the multi-dimensional sonic grooves of the Sun Ra Arkestra late on Sunday night, there was pretty much something for everyone. Sleaford Mods – one of many artists who in contrast to the more popularised view of ATP spoke warmly about their host’s hospitality – go from strength to strength. Age may have withered Roky Erickson – a man who is no stranger to having faced difficulties of his own – but here he rolled back the years as he trawled through The 13^th Floor Elevators back catalogue. With his by now cracked country croon, ‘I Had To Tell You’ reaffirmed the fact that this man is a genuine piece of psychedelic history.

Not everything turned to gold; Giant Sand, in what is their farewell tour, sounded laboured and disinterested for the most part and whilst this will be a view at stark odds with most everyone else in Stage 3 on Friday night, the three-piece nucleus of Liverpool’s Ex-Easter Island Head failed to properly engage this listener. But the Geordie songwriter Richard Dawson later that night was a revelation. Performing what he himself describes as “ritual community music”, his music was accessible, engaging and underpinned with more than a hint of Daniel Johnston-like vulnerability.

The Blue Aeroplanes produced what was probably the highlight of the entire weekend with “a carefully contrived mix of the old and the new”. With singer Gerard Langley looking like Tom Jones’ more louche younger brother and dancer Wojtek Dmochowski defying age, gravity and reason, their set was all bristling energy and pizzaz. Running them a very close second was Dave Graney. A regular presence over the festival’s three days and nights, the Australian maverick illustrated another fine ATP principle that of the ordinary punter being able to literally rub shoulders with the performing artists.  His two sets – the second of which where he was joined by the legendary former Orange Juice guitarist Malcom Ross – merely begged the question why this man is not a huge international star.

Somewhat unfathomably given the apparent leeway with the schedule John Cale’s departure afforded, The Bellrays were listed to play at the exact same time as The Fall. They won that particular battle, punching a huge, visceral hole in the heart of Saturday night. And the following night and despite some early sound problems Flamin’ Groovies achieved much the same end and in so doing showed why they are fully deserving of the epithet seminal.

If this was to be the last such ATP event then in many ways it was a fitting finale, demonstrating that if you are able to put all of their financial chicanery to one side the organisers were still able to put on an event that merges the experimental, the legendary and the downright weird (ergo Sing-Along-A-Wickerman, hosted by Dr. Bramwell and fellow musician, Eliza Skelton). But maybe the strangest moment of all was suddenly realising that the very last performance in ATP’s incredibly chequered holiday camp promotion history should be a showing of the 1973 British comedy film Holiday On The Buses. In it the principal character – played by Reg Varney – is sacked from his job for reckless, negligent behaviour in which he placed others at considerable risk. He ultimately finds redemption of sorts at Pontin’s in Prestatyn. The ATP story is not destined to have a similar ending.

ATP 2.0 curated by Stewart Lee was held at Pontin’s Holiday Park in Prestatyn between 15th and 17th April 2016

Photo credit: Simon Godley

More photos from this event can be found HERE

Earlier this month, Rishi Sunak went to the economically depressed, wealthy second-home owners’ paradise of Cornwall, which is now £230m down as the Conservative government’s promises to replace funding lost from the EU because of Brexit remain predictably unmet. Take back control! Enjoy your fish!! What did the EU ever do for us? The Eden Project. The Hall for Cornwall. The South West Coast Path. Newlyn fish market. Penzance’s Jubilee Pool. The Camborne to Pool link road. Superfast broadband. The Penzance heliport. Oh.

While in Cornwall, Sunak went for a photo op at a dentist that, it transpired, wasn’t accepting new adult NHS patients, a real problem for the Cornish populace, who having gnashed their teeth down to the gums in a nonspecific fury with the EU, now have no teeth left to gnash at the London newspaper columnists buying up their family cottages for half-term holidays twice a year with insolent middle-class teenage sons who steal locals’ lobsters out of pots in the harbour and eat them round campfires on the beach while smoking weed and having sex with their friends’ sisters.

Then, as the sweet scent of deregulation wafted through a country now liberated from Brussels’ ability to punish polluters, Sunak deftly avoided the stench of the sewage-lapped beaches of Wastewater Sands, Stinkin Bay, Mawgan Filth, Filth, Faecal North, Faecal South, Craptock, Trevaunfilth Cove, Pisstreath, Gwithian Turdans, Godrevy Turdans, Perranuthpoo, Porthoushit, Colstridia Haven, Pentestank, Readecoli Cove, East Poo, Millenpiss, Shaton, Downsmelly, Portwinkle, Kingshatton and Porthkidney Discharge.

Instead, Sunak went to the Philps pasty shop in Hayle, where he rat-nibbled a Cornish pasty in such an obtuse way to suggest that every other meal the prime minister had eaten up until that point in his life had been cut up into tiny pieces with a silver cake fork and fed to him by Jacob Rees-Mogg’s nanny on loan, parcelling it into his stupid lying face while pinching his nose and praising him. “Who’s a clever boy? Who’s going to be prime minister? Rishi is.”

A clearly confused Sunak held the unfamiliar pasty at both ends and munched a big half-moon-shaped bite into the middle of it, like Scooby-Doo attacking an especially large cartoon sandwich. Had Sunak continued in this fashion, he would have been left holding a pasty end in each hand while making a confused face, as if baffled by the disappearance of the main body of the pasty proper.

Sunak’s pasty technique inspired local debate. Was Sunak in fact eating the pasty in the authentic way a 19th-century Cornish tin miner with dirty fingers would, as opposed to the modern way, crust first, like a Greggs steak bake shielded in a paper bag? Or should Sunak have probed the pasty in the way that DH Lawrence, who sought sanctuary in Zennor during the first world war, would have done, namely in the “Greek” fashion, till suddenly, in the spasm of coition, tupping like a jerking leap, and oh!

Was it possible that Sunak’s policy wonks had advised him to eat the pasty in the Scooby-tinner style to court the support of Cornish traditionalists, even more alienated now that the Brexit they voted for had left them even more ruined? All that was certain is that the pasty shop Sunak visited received such a massive backlash that within hours it had thoroughly cleansed its social media feeds of any mention of Sunak’s visit, in a process now known as pasty-washing.

When will politicians learn to avoid food? It normally works out about as well as when they encounter actual members of the public. Gordon Brown’s 2010 campaign suffered when he was famously caught on a still-live microphone describing his confrontation with a Rochdale Labour voter Gillian Duffy thus: “That was a disaster – they should never have put me with that woman. Whose idea was that? Ridiculous… she was just a bigoted woman.” Luckily, Sunak’s aides swiftly stepped in to suppress a rogue recording of his own post-Pastygate tantrum: “That was a disaster – they should never have put me with that pasty. Whose idea was that? Ridiculous. It was too big for my face.”

But the papers soon had their fun and just days later even I, a massive fan of pasties, who also hates Tories, can barely remember the chance meeting at a pasty shop of Sunak and a pasty. But to this day we all remember the alfresco dining disaster of Ed Miliband, the butterfly broken on a bacon sandwich.

On 21 May 2014, the Labour leader was photographed, a thorough 13 times by the Evening Standard’s Jeremy Selwyn, eating a bacon sandwich in an ungainly fashion in a cafe in London’s New Covent Garden market, which he visited on the campaign trail. The newspaper, which by that time was mainly owned by the future Tory prime minister Boris Johnson’s friends the former KGB spy Alexander Lebedev and his son, the future Lord of Siberia Baron Evgeny Lebedev, then ran a sequence of Eadweard Muybridge-style photos showing Miliband’s face, caught between mouthfuls, looking as ridiculous as possible. Rightwing media ran with it. A year later, David Cameron’s campaign released a picture of him eating a hotdog with a knife and fork. Although he looked hopelessly posh, he at least wasn’t making a funny face.

Within days, the Conservative pre-campaign media machine had moved on, leaving Cornwall to its sewage and its suddenly unsubsidised unviability, Philps’s pasty business fighting to recover its reputation. In Plymouth, the Right Honourable Johnny Mercer MP “took the PM for a quick jog around a blustery City, and showed him the names of some of my mates on the Commando memorial we built to them. Rishi Sunak is resilient, tough, determined, like we were back in the day. Tough times make tough folks.”

Pasting together doctored drawings of the Daily Mail’s long-running cartoon dog, Fred Basset, I’m creating the mother of all monetisable Christmas cash-in books.

In the first of a typical three-frame strip, Fred defecates insolently on a pavement. Then Fred’s owner scoops up the excrement before – and this is the twist – popping it through the letterbox of an immigrant family, and saying “Merry Winterval, my coloured friends! You’re in England now!!” It’s hilarious, no?

Was it possible to work the lucrative adult Ladybird book market, using a similar level of ironic self-awareness of the Daily Mail brand, across a range of self-parodying Daily Mail products, without necessarily undermining the integrity of the loathing-ridden opinion sluice itself?

After all, Lego’s funny children’s Batman, Adam West’s liberal gay Batman, and Christian Bale’s fascist asthma Batman all coexist commercially. And Paperchase were already interested in an exclusive stockist deal.

But now the whole thing is ruined! And all thanks to that political-correctness-gone-mad brigade that they have now!!

As a proud member of the “metropolitan liberal elite”™, I would normally have been delighted that a tiny minority of “leftwing bullies”© had forced the high-street card shop Paperchase to dump an advertising deal with the Daily Mail, fearing the negative association of Paperchase’s wholesome family card retail values with the Mail’s conduit of poisonous hate, sudoku and Sarah Vine.

Usually, I am the sort of person who thinks that anyone who has ever worked for the Daily Mail is worse than Adolf Hitler, even the temps and the tea lady. And I’m not alone. So disgusted are youth voters by the repellent newspaper, it’s now clear that the Daily Mail’s increasingly hysterical attacks on Jeremy Corbyn, the coddled egg of British politics, may even have helped secure his triumphant loss in the last general election.

I find that a damning Daily Mail review can attract hundreds of thousands of paying punters, precisely because they assume that anything hated by the hated Daily Mail must be worth seeing, while anything it likes must be awful.

My current tour poster proudly boasts the following Daily Mail quote from the 2001 Bad Sex award-winning novelist and Daily Mail columnist Christopher Hart; “Clever-clever, oh-so-fashionable and deeply unfunny ‘anti-populist’ comedian Stewart Lee is an exceptionally well-trained lapdog of the Brexit-hating establishment.”

Ker-ching!!!! Thanks, Christopher! The ticket-buying public’s hands are, as you might once have written, “moving away from my knee and heading north. Heading unnervingly and with a steely will towards the pole. And, like Sir Ranulph Fiennes… will not easily be discouraged.” (Rescue Me, Christopher Hart, 2001)

I understand, from a purely business point of view, Paperchase’s need to disassociate itself from the elderly and expiring racists that read the Daily Mail, to court instead the affections of the growing market of tomorrow’s mixed-race polyamorous avocado-coveters. But on this occasion, I was on the verge of sealing a three-way creative partnership with both Paperchase and the Daily Mail that would have made me millions.

Sitting across the desk from the editor, Paul Dacre, last week, I gave him my pitch: “The Daily Mail is already adept at working contradictory markets simultaneously,” I flattered the hate magnate, as he sucked hard on his fourth Calippo of the morning. “The print edition pretends to despise the very ephebophiliac swimwear sleaze that the Daily Mail website thrives on, for example.

“But imagine if, Paul baby, as well as profiteering from the hateful scaremongering that is your vile newspaper’s raison d’etre, you could also empty the pockets of those who claim to despise your organ, by selling them irresistible satires of your own sickening values.” I emptied my sample sack. Dacre’s two eyes exploded in hot greed. Greetings cards. Christmas cash-in books. Sex novelties. And all with an ironically arch Daily Mail flavour.

“These greetings cards are sure to be top-sellers.”, I told Dacre. A photo of columnist Quentin Letts disgorges the opinion, “Middle-class parents are middle-class because they have learned what it takes to succeed. Happy Birthday.” Sarah Vine opines: “Jacob Rees-Mogg is worth far more than the flaccid consensus of the commissars of political correctness. Merry Christmas.”

And a sepia-toned card of the first Viscount Rothermere, the paper’s 1930s proprietor, declares, in Daily Mail font, “I urge all British young men and women to study the Nazi regime in Germany. There is a clamorous campaign of denunciation against ‘Nazi atrocities’ which consist merely of a few isolated acts of violence, but which have been generalised, multiplied and exaggerated to give the impression that Nazi rule is a bloodthirsty tyranny. Congratulations on passing your driving test.”

In order to annoy politically correct prudes and killjoys, I had arranged for the darkest recesses of Paperchase to showcase a range of naughty, but saucy and harmless, adult Daily Mail-themed items. The paper’s star columnist and author of 50 People Who Buggered Up Britain, Quentin Letts, had agreed to lend his image to a fun range of used female sanitary products, Quentin Lil-Letts.

Meanwhile, the vibrating head of the Daily Mail royal columnist Robert Hardman crowns the novelty “Hardman” Sphincter Stimulator; and a special brass hammer, designed for nailing your own penis to a table, was to be called The Paul Dacre Nail Your Own Penis to a Table Hammer.

Dacre actually laughed himself silly at the final few strips in my Fred Basset book. In the end, the beagle just looks on bemused while his squatting owner simply scrapes his own human foulness directly from his own bottom himself, to deposit through the offending immigrants’ door; until the climactic strip where, perching atop a brass bust of Jan Moir, Fred Basset’s owner defecates directly into the immigrants’ letterbox, with a triumphant cry of “Brexit Means Brexit! Now get back to Bongo Bongo-land!”

“We’re looking at a massive hit,” said Dacre, his Calippo melting in his excited hand. And then the phone rang. The Paperchase partnership was off. “Sorry son. You get yourself a coffee and I’ll tidy your samples away,” said Dacre kindly. When I came back, my novelties were bagged up, but I could hear Dacre in his private bathroom, squealing and using an electric toothbrush, so I left.

When I got home I unpacked my futile creations. All present and correct, except the Robert Hardman probe. Never mind. It’s not like this deal is going anywhere fast.

Stewart Lee’s Content Provider is in London until 3 February and continues to tour in 2018

Last night I remembered how much I love sound in all its guises.

A friend was down in London and had tickets for a performance of John Cage's Indeterminacy, a series of short stories Cage wrote that were to be accompanied by improvisations from other musicians. Neither party is meant to pay attention to the other and the results shouldn't be in anyway an attempt to soundtrack the stories that are read out: all taking a minute each. Prior to the performance of Indeterminacy a few musicians demonstrated some Cage improvisations.


The trombone freestyle of Alan Tomlinson was trance like, as he spun, spat, salivated and scorched notes from his trombone, an instrument I had previously only associated with coal mining bands from northern England. Basically put, they sound to me like the musical equivalent of a drizzly Sunday afternoon. That said, Tomlinson's performance of Solo for Sliding Trombone was anything but grey, the sounds better described as invisible hallucinations. Wild-style. Just before the interval there was a performance of Cage's Water Walk, a piece he himself performed on TV back in 1960. A vase of roses being watered in a bathtub while a steamer fires a geyser into the air. A blender full of ice-cubes whirring noisely while a rubber duck squeaks over a tape-loop.


Fun, surprising, abstract but precise. Water Walk was surreal enough without the edition of it being performed on this occasion by Harry Hill. It was a sight I'd never imagined witnessing and one I doubt I'll ever see again. Interval over, the evening drew to a close with a 40 minute rendition of Indeterminacy, narrated by long-standing comedian and writer Stewart Lee, a figurehead of the alternative comedy movement of the '80s. As Lee began his narrations a range of sounds began emanating from the assorted toys, objects and instruments situated around musicians Tania Chen and Steve Beresford.


Seeing two people randomly smash out sounds from everything from an iPhone to a packet of pasta was like watching some ancient Pagan ritual. A little stupid, a little fascinating and a little magnetic. Judging from the stories in Indeterminacy, Cage was a big fan of mushrooms. We couldn't decide which type he was most a fan of, but I'm going to make assumptions and go with the magic variety, I guess the abundance of abstraction has got to come from somewhere. Deep down though, I think I have to come to terms with the fact that someone could potentially be so avant-garde without the need for psychotropic substances.


The beauty of watching/listening/playing Cage's work lies in the inherent physicality of performing it. Unlike classical compositions, Cage's work makes the audience feel like a participant instead of just a spectator. Even after the performance was over I was drawn to touch and play with the table of tricks that Chen had been working from, briefly discussing the objects and their origins, and then the elitism of mustached attendees from the night when I bumped into her the following day.


Chen's enthusiasm for sound is infectious, and her variety of music and sound producing iPhone apps, expansive. It was interesting to learn more about her work on her website, where you can also see her recent projects and watch performances on her blog. Night over, Indeterminacy was an entertaining marriage between words and sound, two things I've always enjoyed exploring, and two things I hope to pair as successfully as Cage in future projects.

He is well known enough not to need a 6ft tall phallus and a velvet white whale to draw in the punters, but Stewart Lee seems to like strange props.

The audience is advised to familiarise itself with the story of Moby Dick from a copy it has been handed before the show, and some soothsaying 'fortune sandwiches' are passed around at the end. It is a good set. Lee explains how he hit on the idea of showing a fight between porn king King Dong and Moby Dick.

He says that he wanted to get two references to the male member in his show title. There is also a great scene of Lee trying out his idea in front of an unreceptive student audience. It is a mixture of a stand-up show and a bizarre lecture on two dicks and it is funny.

Lee's timing is smooth and his material irreverent and imaginative.

It is a busy, convoluted story which rolls a lot of different types of humour into an hour and keeps you wanting more. Incidentally, my fortune sandwich said: "As flies to shit, so are you to disappointments."

This show proved an exception to the rule.

Even though I am an atheist, I am nonetheless a creative artist. And so the gods regularly manifest themselves to me in my hours of need. Perhaps you envy me my ability to hear the voice of the divine? I in turn envy you non-artists the peaceful silences of your own empty minds.

On Wednesday lunchtime, the goddess Athena, an owl upon her shoulder, appeared to me in the toilet cubicle of a Chinese restaurant near Leicester Square. I was frustrated by both my inability to write this column against the backdrop of political chaos, and a problematic absence of lavatory tissue.

The goddess handed me a piece of paper. “Thank you, my lady,” I said, bending over gratefully. “No, mortal. Read,” Athena boomed from behind her glistering helm. The paper was a set of bullet points towards this week’s column, a satire of the news essentially dictated to me by the goddess herself.

I believe it was I who wrote, on 9 September in the Observer, on the subject of attempts to force Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Vampires Haircut Wall-Spaffer Spunk-Burster Fuck-Business Fuck-The-Families Get-Off-My-Fucking-Laptop Girly-Swot Big-Girl’s-Blouse Chicken-frit Hulk-Smash Turds Johnson to take No Deal off the table: “If No Deal is successfully legislated against, and Dominic Cumming is unable to force an election by some backdoor method, then Turds may be trapped in ineffectual office, a Netto Prometheus, chained to the dispatch box, his liver pecked out anew every day by the Eagle of Truth.”

And this week, Turds went to the UN to compare Brexit itself to long-suffering Prometheus. But Turds’s attempts to invoke myth have been blowing up in his face of late, after the wily Irish taoiseach, a bumboy by the rules of Turds’s own lexicon, threw his allusion to Hercules back at him on live TV, like a nailbomb made of legends.

Varadkar’s suggestion that Turds was, like Hercules, an out-of-control psychopath who needed the Athena of Ireland to restrain him was an ultra-high-level hip-hop burn, but only dope classics professors could feel its full heat.

As a rule, the artistic subjects of Turds’s comparisons don’t want his patronage. The Godfather is Turds’s favourite film and includes the lines: “Lawyers can steal more money with a briefcase than a thousand men with guns and masks”; “I have no intention of placing my fate in the hands of men whose only qualification is that they managed to con a block of people to vote for them”; and “We are all honourable men here. We do not have to give each other assurances as if we were lawyers.”

Having heard, on 9 September, that Turds was a Godfather fan, the usually reclusive director Francis Ford Coppola broke his monastic silence to tell the Financial News’s Tom Teodorczuk he hoped his work would not provide “encouragement to someone I see is about to bring the beloved United Kingdom to ruin”. Ooh! Ooooh!! Ouch!!!

The Godfather, it should be noted, also includes the line: “A man who is not a father to his children can never be a real man”, particularly if his own Wikipedia page is unable to say exactly how many children he has, or what their names are.

And I believe it was also I who, two years ahead of the cultural curve as usual, first exposed Turds’s suddenly celebrated Hulk fixation in this very paper, on 21 May 2017. Turds had compared himself, as he had many times before, to the Hulk while talking to a comic shop owner in Newport market, where he was booed by ex-miners and mocked with a hash cake. Hulk creatives were quick to deny Turds’s appropriation of the character.

“I can’t help feeling that Boris Johnson slightly missed the point of it all,” Hulk artist Gary Frank told this paper at the time, “in that Hulk’s alter ego, Bruce Banner, doesn’t actually want to get angry, become stupid and then smash everything to fuck. Do you think Boris Johnson misread the Hulk comics as a sort of Tony Robbins self-help guide to fulfilling your potential?”

During his Tory party leadership campaign, Boris boasted of his love of buses, and his favoured bus company Wrightbus went into voluntary administration last week, despite turning a huge profit, because bosses suddenly felt the very idea of a bus was now tainted beyond redemption.

To date, the American model and businesswoman Jennifer Arcuri, star of the Bollywood sex comedy Naughty @ Forty, of whom Turds is a huge fan, is the only artist the prime minister likes yet to make a public statement disassociating themselves from his enthusiasm for their work.

Given that most of the artists Turds reveals affection for immediately try to sever their links to the lying PM, I wondered how the fire-stealing Prometheus himself felt about being cited by Turds at the United Nations as a metaphor for Brexit. So I held tight to the feet of the owl of Athena, as it swept me on the space-winds to the rock upon which the mythic titan himself lies eternally chained, his liver perpetually pecked by an eagle.

Raising his head from the blood-soaked slab, Prometheus said he was pleased I had mentioned him in the Observer earlier this month. His role, as he understands it, is to provide a mythical archetype to help humanity understand its own predicament, and he sometimes feels he is having his liver pecked out every day for no real reason.

But Prometheus disagrees with the comparison of his predicament to Brexit. “No. Boris Johnson himself is Prometheus,” he explained, “trapped in office and pecked to pieces every day by parliament. I thought he studied classics at Eton. Ow ow, my liver!”

I phoned ahead to check the show was still on - it was only sensible given the Prime Minister's ambiguous update earlier in the day.

The woman who answered assured me it was, but in honesty didn't seem entirely convinced herself.

So, it was against this backdrop of impending doom that we travelled to Canterbury's Marlowe Theatre to take in what could prove to be one of the last performances in a while... anywhere.

I'm pleased to report it was worth the risk, even if Stewart Lee announced to the audience it wasn't one he would have taken.

Snowflake/Tornado is split in to two parts, finely tuned over a six-month run at London's tiny Leicester Square Theatre.

It was at one of these experimental shows, albeit for a previous tour, where I last took in the spectacle of 'The Times' greatest living stand up'.

That was in Sevenoaks and he was very good.

Maybe it was the trip deeper in to Kent, maybe it was the way the world has changed in the two years since or maybe, as he concluded early on, it was coronavirus whittling down his audience so that just the hard core fans were left but he was better this time.

Not many people know this about me but my personal comedy litmus test revolves around the history of baked potatoes - if a comedian can make me cry with laughter at the fact the carb-packed snack didn't arrive in the UK until a few hundred years after legend first mentioned Robin Hood, then he or she gets the thumbs up.

Stew passed with flying colours and for good measure embarked on routines about cult horror Sharknado, Alan Bennett and rotisserie chickens.

They're all threads in a far larger tapestry which he masterfully weaves together at the end of each half - first in the form of a story and then a song (panic not, it worked).

But as always the show is the sum-of-its-parts and this equated to a heavy-hitting take down of the anti-PC generation and the state of the modern world.

It's a world Stewart Lee may well be getting tired of but that certainly doesn't mean he's slowing down - even if he does now qualify for free sessions of chair-based activity at Hackney Council-funded leisure centres.

So, when you do finally emerge from your toilet roll fortresses and baked bean induced slumbers one of the first things you should do is snap up a ticket to watch the self-proclaimed master of the multiple call back - you won't be disappointed.

* Stewart Lee's Snowflake/Tornado was due to tour until July 17 with two more dates at the Marlowe which have now been postponed. Who knows when the tour will resume but when it does tickets can be bought at stewartlee.co.uk/live-dates/

Interviewed by John Wilson for BBC Radio's "Front Row" programme about the (then) forthcoming 3rd series of Comedy Vehicle.

The inspirational Leicester comedy festival awards ceremony, which I attended on Monday in the ballroom of the refurbished Grade II-listed Mercure Leicester Grand, could only have been improved by a multimillionaire performatively punching another multimillionaire in the face. Nonetheless, my once-in-a-lifetime Legend of Comedy statuette win was overshadowed by the violent brawling of the Oscar attendeees, meaning my achievement remained unmentioned in all the major American entertainment trade papers. Bah!

It was almost a very different story. While I and the other Leicester winners were posing for our photos, I nearly stepped backwards off the 18-inch podium, briefly losing one of my hearing aids as it fell from my ear. This should have been one of the Leicester Mercury’s biggest stories of the year, doubtless going viral and helping me to sell as many tour tickets as being punched in the face has shifted for Chris Rock. But in the wake of mouthgate, no one was interested.

I can honestly say that, of the many I have been professionally obliged to attend, the Leicester comedy festival awards ceremony was the only one I have ever enjoyed. It was certainly better than the 2011 Baftas, where Michael McIntyre’s famously excited late manager got me in a headlock in a dark corner and said he would personally see to it that my career was destroyed, while his own minder struggled to free me from his employer’s chokehold. To this day, I have a psychosomatic reaction to the very mention of McIntyre’s name that leaves me gasping for air. Or is that a nut allergy?

I think the awards night felt exceptional to me because the Leicester comedy festival itself is uncharacteristically and inherently worthwhile and isn’t just built around selling booze and bribing executives. The accolades handed out reflected its commitment to encouraging new talent and to building a cultural profile for unfairly overlooked Leicester, previously only famous for being the home of the world’s fattest man, Daniel Lambert. The enormous cock-fighter managed to achieve the weight of 53st in 1805. Seeing his portrait in Leicester as a child, and realising the sacrifices he had made to become a legend, inspired me to follow my dreams. I wore my Daniel Lambert pin badge as I received my Legend award and considered my debt to him paid. The middle “has-been” phase of my career is now officially over and I am into the third and final “legend” act, a clear downhill bobsleigh run to an early grave and subsequent critical reappraisal.

Today, it has become necessary for most mainstream awards ceremonies, from the Oscars down to whatever the British comedy awards are called this year, to be archly hosted with the sassy contempt of a cocaine-addled Friars Club roast by a dutifully disrespectful, high-profile comedian for hire. Is this because even the people putting the events together suspect, deep down, that both the artists and the works they are supposed to be recognising probably aren’t really all that outstanding after all? An Oscar tradition that, in recent years, has not found space for Paddy Considine, Mark Jenkin’s Bait or my own King Rocker, yet rewards violent hooliganism and The Nutty Professor, is demonstrably worthless.

Rock is one of the world’s greatest standups, and his 1996 routine about the black community’s perception of itself is in the all-time top 10. Hosting the Oscars is quite frankly beneath him and they should have just let Ricky Gervais do it again, as he has no dignity to lose. Rock wouldn’t host a corporate Christmas gig for a logistics company and agree to mention the CEO’s wig and the time Sally from accounts was sick in a plant pot, so why is he whoring himself out in the same way to the Academy? Rock brings shame on the nobility of the standup’s profession.

Most of the put-downs Rock trotted out would have been prepared anyway, generated by hired hands in a packed Hollywood writers’ room, and which the Academy, desperate for publicity, had already approved and signed off on. Employing the controversial comedian is a risk cynically calculated to drive traffic. Don’t shoot the messenger. If Will Smith had run off and punched the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences president, David Rubin, hard in his stupid Hollywood face, I’d have had more respect for him. Rock was just the patsy. Smith’s punches, justified or not, fell wide of the target.

Jada Pinkett Smith’s position on her husband’s chivalrous battering of Rock’s tiny face went unreported. In 1987, an observant builder extravagantly complimented my feminist girlfriend’s figure in no uncertain terms and my 11st, 19-year-old frame immediately plunged into battle, as fellow builders theatrically held their colleague back. My girlfriend immediately reprimanded me for a sexism, as it wasn’t for me to fight another man over her. Today, my feminist wife tells me that, although my girlfriend’s criticisms were correct, I would also have looked like a loser if I hadn’t reacted. It was a lose-lose situation. The builder, unlike Rock, was at least doing his own material and perhaps comes out as the winner here.

Smith’s awards night ended with violence, disciplinary proceedings and the threat of expulsion. Mine ended with Guinness, Highland Park and the kind of curious, regionally specific crisp selection I can’t resist, in a stained-glass-windowed backstreet bar full of vibrant local artists and standups, duty bound to indulge my reminiscences of the pre-podcasting cultural landscape. For once in my life, in this filthy business, I felt as if I came out ahead. Back in my hotel room, I realised I had spilled mango chutney dip from some poppadom snacks down my awards ceremony shirt, but my hosts had been respectful enough to ignore it. I was now officially a legend, even with all chutney all on me. And I wouldn’t have traded places with Will Smith for the world.

Steve Beresford & I talk to Mark Radcliffe about the John Cage project; "Usurp Chance" Tour.

For the corrupt Tories and their opportunistic friends, the double whammy of Brexit and the pandemic has been a cash handout bonanza, the clatter of fruit machine payouts drowning the lamentations of millions of mourners. Handsy Matt Handcock even got a £400,000 cow’s anus-noshing, sin-eating television appearance out of his role in the racket.

At least it isn’t as offensive as Handcock’s last reality TV special, where he touched that woman’s bum in an office with his two hands when the rest of us weren’t even allowed to wave to Grandma through a window or go to her subsequent funeral. But it is disrespectful to a dead cow, an animal that is sacred to the Hindu, for example, to have its anus eaten by Handcock.

However, Handcock has done his fellow Conservatives a favour by raising the bar significantly in the disgusting behaviour stakes. David Cameron may have been falsely rumoured to have had sexual relations with a dead pig’s head, but at least he didn’t eat it afterwards, like some kind of Bullingdon Club mantis.

Iain Duncan Smith must be relieved. Next time someone draws attention to the time he sat in the House of Commons, happily eating mucus out of his own nose, he can simply point them in the direction of Handcock gobbling a camel’s penis. It’s reasonable to assume Duncan Smith’s culinary indiscretion is now eclipsed, until such time as he chooses to style out prime minster’s questions while tucking into a paper bag of shrews’ foreskins.

Should Handcock ever return to the Commons, will his newfound taste for the severed genitalia of ungulates mean they have to be added to the menu of the Houses of Parliament restaurants? And, alongside the brut reserve champagne and the seared salmon with a chia crust and pomegranate and fennel slaw, will the beleaguered taxpayer now find themselves subsidising the cost of Handcock’s tenderised okapi prostates?

And is Handcock’s genital-munching a useful distraction anyway? As systems fail and the full extent of their greed is revealed, the corrupt Tories and their opportunistic friends seem like dark-age bushwhackers fleeing a botched raid, as the burning citadel of Brexit Britain collapses behind them, their hands stuffed with whatever treasures they can seize.

The Conservative donor David Meller rides through a smouldering courtyard with £164m of PPE contracts and an elephant’s-foot drinking vessel stashed in his saddlebag; the Conservative donor Lord Bamford leaps a buckling balustrade, a priceless ivory carving of Min the Penis Deity clenched between his teeth, while his Wrightbus-owning son waves £26m of government-backed funding. Handcock ostentatiously vaults an athletics hurdle in tiny tight shorts, for no reason at all, one testicle a-fly, while eyeing the ruins of the temple of Artemis and a lifesize effigy of the thousand-breasted goddess herself. But Handcock only has two hands, 998 hands too few on this occasion, and the crumbling building offers no opportunities for the intimacies he craves.

Finally, the Conservative peer Michelle Mone dodges falling beams, her adult children running alongside her in golden chainmail bras and bikini bottoms, which, like the Medipro PPE contract, are worth more than £200m. An inspiration to self-employed strivers like myself, it is Mone’s mendacity that cuts the deepest. She seemed so nice, her rags-to-£29m-in-an-offshore-trust story giving hope to ordinary, hardworking people everywhere. What happened?

In October 1996, newly redundant from her marketing job with Labatt’s mighty Scottish arm, Mone found herself at a Glaswegian dinner dance wearing an uncomfortable, yet cleavage-enhancing, bra. Racked with pain, Mone’s mind wandered. Leftover neeps were scraped into the pigs’ bin, the pipes struck up a doleful dirge, a listless jig began and Mone wondered if there was something that could be done about uncomfortable bras, while staring gormlessly at a lightbulb in the toilet window.

In what the peer has subsequently described as being “a lightbulb moment”, Mone realised that the answer to the uncomfortable bra problem was to make bras more comfortable. It seemed so obvious, but no one had thought of it before, probably because of the fact that the bra industry was run by men, who were only interested in how easy it was to undo the fastenings in the dark. By November 1996, Mone had launched the Comforto-Bra 2000 ™ ® brand and changed the world bra industry, and bras, for ever.

It’s easy to be facetious about bras, but Mone’s Comforto-Bra 2000 ™ ® changed the lives of millions of uncomfortable women at dinner dances, both in her native Scotland and indeed anywhere that dining and dancing occurred. And Mone’s cleavage-enhancers soon caught the eye of the then Prince Charles. As far as we know, King Charles III does not have any breasts himself, although it is impossible to be certain without checking the inventories of the many properties he has acquired since the death of his mother.

Nonetheless, the future king realised that Mone’s work was important and invested £5,000 of Prince’s Trust money so that he could see millions of women sporting Mone’s cleavage-enhancing bras in every high street in the land as quickly as possible. While the new king’s proclivities are more wholesome than those wrongfully attributed to his perma-dry brother Andrew, they surely raise questions. Did the benefactors of the Prince’s Trust imagine their donations would go towards the enhancement of cleavage? And was it King Charles III’s cleavage-financing donation that made Mone think that money was just there for the taking?

A convoluted chain of VIP-contract corridors and offshore trusts, companies and accounts, appears to be the route via which £29m of profits from pandemic PPE supply made its way into the hands of Mone and her children. The Tories contaminate everything they touch. And now they have made me hate even bras.

Called the "world's greatest living standup" by The Times, listen to Stewart chat with Clare about the mechanics of comedy, his favorite music and whether or not he's ever seen a ghost, also features Orkney oatcakes.

Interviewed by R Herring on his Leicester Square Theatre Podcast.

1. BASIC LEE

The tour of the current stand-up show, BASIC LEE, resumes active service at the Leicester Square Theatre in December and nationwide from January 2024. Then it will be finished in April. December London dates are mainly sold out, but seats remain in January.
Dates here

December 2023

Saturday 9th December 2023 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Sunday 10th December 2023 - Leicester Square Theatre, London MATINEE - TICKETS
Sunday 10th December 2023 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Monday 11th December 2023 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Tuesday 12th December 2023 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Wednesday 13th December 2023 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Thursday 14th December 2023 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Friday 15th December 2023 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Saturday 16th December 2023 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Sunday 17th December 2023 - Leicester Square Theatre, London MATINEE - TICKETS
Sunday 17th December 2023 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Monday 18th December 2023 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Tuesday 19th December 2023 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Wednesday 20th December 2023 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Thursday 21st December 2023 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Friday 22nd December 2023 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS

January 2024

Thursday 4th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Friday 5th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Sunday 7th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London MATINEE - TICKETS
Sunday 7th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Monday 8th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Wednesday 10th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Thursday 11th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Sunday 14th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Monday 15th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Tuesday 16th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Wednesday 17th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Thursday 18th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Friday 19th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Saturday 20th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London MATINEE - TICKETS
Saturday 20th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Monday 22nd January 2024 - Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham - TICKETS
Tuesday 23rd January 2024 - Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham - TICKETS
Wednesday 24th January 2024 - Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham - TICKETS
Thursday 25th January 2024 - Westlands, Yeovil - TICKETS
Friday 26th January 2024 - Westlands, Yeovil - TICKETS
Saturday 27th January 2024 - The Forum, Bath - TICKETS
Sunday 28th January 2024 - Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton - TICKETS
Monday 29th January 2024 - The Marlowe, Canterbury - TICKETS

February 2024

Friday 2nd February 2024 - The Hawth, Crawley - TICKETS
Saturday 3rd February 2024 - Symphony Hall, Birmingham - TICKETS
Sunday 4th February 2024 - William Aston Hall, Wrexham - TICKETS
Tuesday 6th February 2024 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Wednesday 7th February 2024 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Thursday 8th February 2024 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Friday 9th February 2024 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Saturday 10th February 2024 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Sunday 11th February 2024 - Theatre Royal, Newcastle - TICKETS
Sunday 18th February 2024 - DeMontfort Hall, Leicester - TICKETS
Tuesday 20th February 2024 - Harrogate Theatre, Harrogate - TICKETS
Wednesday 21st February 2024 - Harrogate Theatre, Harrogate - TICKETS
Thursday 22nd February 2024 - The Baths Hall, Scunthorpe - TICKETS
Friday 23rd February 2024 - Opera House, Buxton - TICKETS
Saturday 24th February 2024 - Belgrade Theatre, Coventry - TICKETS
Sunday 25th February 2024 - Belgrade Theatre, Coventry - TICKETS
Monday 26th February 2024 - Wycombe Swan, High Wycombe - TICKETS
Thursday 29th February 2024 - The Hexagon, Reading - TICKETS

March 2024

Friday 1st March 2024 - Royal & Derngate, Northampton - TICKETS
Saturday 2nd March 2024 - The Beacon, Bristol - TICKETS
Sunday 3rd March 2024 - Theatre Royal, Plymouth - TICKETS
Monday 4th March 2024 - Hall For Cornwall, Truro - TICKETS
Wednesday 6th March 2024 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Thursday 7th March 2024 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Friday 8th March 2024 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Saturday 9th March 2024 - Storyhouse, Chester - TICKETS
Tuesday 12th March 2024 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Wednesday 13th March 2024 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Thursday 14th March 2024 - Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield - TICKETS
Friday 15th March 2024 - Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield - TICKETS
Saturday 16th March 2024 - Hippodrome, Darlington - TICKETS
Sunday 17th March 2024 - King's Theatre, Glasgow - TICKETS
Thursday 21st March 2024 - King's Theatre, Portsmouth - TICKETS
Friday 22nd March 2024 - Chelmsford Theatre, Chelmsford - TICKETS
Saturday 23rd March 2024 - Chelmsford Theatre, Chelmsford - TICKETS
Sunday 24th March 2024 - Theatre Royal, Norwich - TICKETS
Wednesday 27th March 2024 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS
Thursday 28th March 2024 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS

April 2024

Thursday 18th April 2024 - St. George's Hall, Bradford - TICKETS
Monday 22nd April 2024 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Tuesday 23rd April 2024 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Thursday 25th April 2024 - The Alban Arena, St. Albans - TICKETS

2) SHORT SETS AND BENEFITS

15-30 min sets at the following

NOV 27TH Just Stop Oil Benefit, Walthamstow Trades Club w Kate Cheka, Rosie Holt, Alasdair Beckett-King, Alex De Koning & Andrew O’Neill
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-burning-parrot-comedy-fundraiser-for-just-stop-oil-tickets-717104337377

DEC 8TH Hackney Comedy Experience w Jessica Fostekew, Desiree Burch, Rob Auton & Fathia El-Ghorri.
https://earthackney.co.uk/events/hackney-comedy-experience-with-stewart-lee-8th-dec-earth-london-tickets-yb3kp/

3) MOORE EVENTS

THURSTON MOORE & STEWART LEE – SONIC LIFE. WEDS 29TH NOV SOUTHBANK CENTRE, 7.45 - I interview Thurston Moore about his new autobiography. TM has been unwell and all his other book events are cancelled. https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/literature-poetry/thurston-moore-and-stewart-lee-sonic-life

ALAN MOORE AT 70 – STEWART LEE & IAIN SINCLAIR IN CONVERSTAION. THURS 30th NOV. Burley Books, Dalston, London, 6.30pm. https://burleyfisherbooks.com/products/alan-moore-at-70-stewart-lee-and-iain-sinclair-in-conversation

4 - I ARROGANTLY RECOMMEND SOME HAPPENINGS

SLEAFORD MODS Shouting men NOV 22^nd B’ham Academy, 23^rd Glasgow Academy, 25^th Dublin Academy, 28^th Leeds Academy, 29^th M’cr Victoria Warehouse, 30^th Bristol Academy, DEC 2^nd London Alexandra Palace (with me as support at the final one)

LARGE PLANTS Cheesecloth hairy funk-folk Vertigo-flavoured revivalists return to London Grace Nov 25^th

CRIME & THE CITY SOLUTION Australian cinematic blues punks of Wenders cameo fame return NOV 24^th London Moth, 25^th Bristol Cube, 26^th Colchester Arts

BLUE ORCHIDS Dishwater visionaries NOV 21^st Glasgow Hug & Pint, 24^th Newcastle Cumberland Arms, DEC 1^st London 229, 2^nd St Leonard’s Piper, 3^rd Leicester Musician

LEAN LEFT – CAFÉ OTO, LONDON Nov 27^th/28^th. Punk-improv 4-tet of unsurpassed brilliance. Ex-ex. 27^th w the fabulous Maggie Nicols, 28^th w Steve Beresford. https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/lean-left-2023/

MARTIN CARTHY Venerable and invaluable folk veteran DEC 8^th London Mycenae House

CYANIDE PILLS Power-poppy punks DEC 15^th Londin Hope & Anchor, 16^th Leeds Brudenell

FALLEN LEAVES Punk-mod showmen. Jan 27^th Brighton Hope & Ruin

MICHAEL ROTHER Neu! noise man still motoring FEB 3^rd 2024 London Barbican

ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN The psychedelic scallies play the greatest hits of their first incarnation March 2^nd – 26th

March 2^nd Norwich Nick Rayns LCR UEA, 3^rd Brighton Dome, 5^th Bournemouth Academy, 6^th Bristol Beacon, 8^th London Roundhouse, 10^th Cardiff University, 13^th Nottingham Rock City, 16^th/17^th M’cr Albert Hall, 19^th Sheffield City Hall, 20^th Glasgow Barrowlands, 22^nd Leeds Academy, 23^rd Newcastle City Hall, 25^th/26^th Liverpool Empire

STIFF LITTLE FINGERS Raucous NI punk survivors.  March 11^th – 23rd

Stiff Little Fingers
Rock City, Nottingham Performing: Stiff Little Fingers

Tue 12 Mar 2024
19:00 Stiff Little Fingers
O2 Academy Birmingham, Birmingham Performing: Stiff Little Fingers and Glen Matlock

Wed 13 Mar 2024
19:00 Stiff Little Fingers
O2 Academy Bristol, Bristol Performing: Stiff Little Fingers and Glen Matlock

Fri 15 Mar 2024
19:00 Stiff Little Fingers
O2 City Hall, Newcastle Performing: Stiff Little Fingers and Glen Matlock

Sat 16 Mar 2024
19:00 Stiff Little Fingers - Saturday
Barrowland, Glasgow Performing: Stiff Little Fingers

Sun 17 Mar 2024
19:00 Stiff Little Fingers - Sunday
Barrowland, Glasgow Performing: Stiff Little Fingers

Saturday 16th - Sunday 17th March 2024Stiff Little Fingers - Weekend Ticket
Barrowland, Glasgow Performing: Stiff Little Fingers

Thu 21 Mar 2024
19:00 Stiff Little Fingers
O2 Academy Leeds, Leeds Performing: Stiff Little Fingers and Glen Matlock

Fri 22 Mar 2024
19:00 Stiff Little Fingers
Manchester Academy, Manchester Performing: Stiff Little Fingers

Sat 23 Mar 2024
19:00 Stiff Little Fingers
Roundhouse, London

HAWKWIND This current Hawkwind iteration channels their classic ‘70s space rock sound unashamedly, with keyboardist Thighpaulsandra of Coil, Cope and Spiritualised clearly living out a childhood dream.

April 4^th M’cr Academy, 5^th N ewcastle City Hall, 6^th Edinburgh Academy, 7^th Glasgow Academy

HOUSE OF ALL M’cr Fall-related supergroup tour APRIL 2^nd Sheffield Leadmill, 3^rd Glasgow Stereo, 8^th London Dome, 9^th Brighton Hope & Ruin, 20^th M’cr Gorilla, 25^th Portsmouth Wedgewood, 16^th Bedford Esquires

THE BEVIS FROND Psych legends Lexington, London May 18^th

5) IN OUR LAMENTATIONS 2023

Ruggero Deodato (Junk genius, 1939)
Kelly Monteith (Lucky pants stand-up, 1942)
Alan Rankine (Associate musician, 1958)
Darryl Hunt (Pogue bass, 1950)
Jeff Beck (He happened ten years time ago, 1944)
Jane Suck (punk chronicler, 195?)
Yukihiro Takahashi (Sadistic Mika Man, 1952)
Ronald Blythe (Akenfieldsman, 1922)
Piers Haggard (hack genius of Claw and Quatermass, 1932)
Van Connor (sturdy psychedelic tree, 1967)
David Sutherland (Bash Street basher, 1933)
David Crosby (Byrdmaniac, 1941)
Tom Verlaine (Sui generis genius Televisionary, 1949)
Burt Bacarach (Musical cheesnius, 1928)
Eugene Cheese (chucklin’ cheesenius moocher, 1944)
Betty Boothroyd (croaky speaker, 1939)
Wayne Shorter (Shorter no longer, 1933)
David Lindley (Kaleidoscopic guitarist, 1944)
Keith Johnstone (Improvisational Canadian, 1933)
Rolly Crump (West Coast Pop Artist, 1930)
Paul O’Grady (Proudly woke drag act, 1955)
Peter Usborne (Generation-spooking publisher, 1937)
Tony Coe (Jazz panther, 1934)
Barry Humphries (Machenalian Australian, 1934)
Mark Stewart (Bristol pre-post-punk pioneer, 1960)
Gareth Richards (Comedian, 1979)
Johnny Fean (Horslips guitar bandit, 1951)
Frank Kozik (the Giotto of grunge, 1962)
Andy Smart (Bull-running comedian, 1959)
Alan Frank (Gateway ‘70s film scribe, 1942)
Algy Ward (Damned bass Saint, 1959)
Andy Rourke (Sainted bass Smith, 1964)
Pete Brown (Battered ornament, 1940)
George Logan (The Black Cap’s breakout Hinge, 1944)
Jah Shaka (Sound system shaker, 1948)
Spot (SST soundman, 1951)
Ahmad Jamal (cool jazz piano 1931)
Harry Belafonte (anti-apartheid boat singer, 1927)
Gordon Lightfoot (Fitzgerald wrecker, 1938)
Stu James (Mojo not working, 1945)
Jon Povey (Pretty bass Thing, 1942)
Broderick Smith (Singing Dingoe, 1948)
Wee Willie Harris (2 I’s wild man, 1933)
Cliff Fish (Paper Bass, 1949)
Simon Emerson (Afro-Celt Weekender and a very nice man, 1956)
Bruce Barthol (Fish bass, 1947)
Top Topham (Yardbird & man with ‘top’ twice in name, 1947)
Renee Geyer (Voice of Sun, 1947)
Tony McPhee (Hoglord, 1944)
Martin Duffy (He Felt the keys, 1967)
Jack Lee (He nervously hung on the telephone, 1952)
Cormac McCarthy (The real writing deal, 1933)
Peter Brotzmann (Machine-gunner, 1941)
Henrietta Soames (Novelist, theatregoer, gardener, guerrilla rose grower, 1958)
Bill Allerton (Outstanding Stand Out Gentleman disc dealer)
Lord Creator (Rocksteady artistocrat, 1935)
Blackie Onassis (Urge Overkiller, 1966)
Tony Butler (Alan Partridge of Birmingham, 1935)
Jane Birkin (Je t’aime, 1946)
Adrian Street (glam wrestler, 1940)
Ron S Peno (He died pretty, 1955)
Sixto Rodriuguez (rediscovered man, 1941)
Robbie Robertson (bandleader, 1943)
Erkin Koray (Turkish delight, 1941)
David LaFlamme (It’s a beautiful violin, 1941)
George Tickner (Fruminous snatchman, 1946)
Louis Tillet (Dark poet of the keys, 1959)
Brian McBride (Star of The Lid, 1970)
Charles Gayle (Jazz sax titan, a real blow,1939)
Richard Davis (Jazz bass sidesman, 1930)
Malcolm Hay (Comedy listings magnate without whom….1941)
Jon Privett (Book barge bibliophile, 1965?)
John George (TJ Electrician of The Art Of Repair)
David McCallum (He platformed the WCPAEB, 1933)
The Sycamore Gap Tree
Michael Gambon (He was kind to Paul Putner, 1940)
Carla Bley (Jazznik, 1936)
Tony Husband (Political cartoonist & a very nice man, 1950)
Angelo Bruschini (Original Blue Aeroplane, 1960)
Dwight Twilley (Power popster, 1951)
Roger Whittaker (He has left old Durham Town, 1936)
Gary Wright (His teeth were haunted, 1943)
Gary Young (He drummed on the Pavement, 1953)

1) KING ROCKER CINEMA TOUR

Our labour of love Nightingales rockumentary King Rocker really landed. I arrogantly think it knocks most rockumentaries into a cocked hat and will cheer you up no end in the awful times.
“I loved every minute” - Ben Dowell, The Times
**** Financial Times
**** Chortle
“One of the best music documentaries of all time” - The Quietus
“The new gold standard for rockumentaries” - The Scotsman

You can now watch it, ad-free, on NOW TV if you have that here.

The film receives its hometown premier in Birmingham, as the King Rocker Christmas Special at the Midland Arts center on Sat 18th December, preceeded by a Q&A with me and dir Michael Cumming, and followed by a performance by the Nightingales.
https://macbirmingham.co.uk/event/king-rocker-q-a


There are also these further screenings, where Michael and I will do a Q&A afterwards.

NOV 9th London Broadgate Everyman https://www.everymancinema.com/film-info/king-rocker-live-qa
NOV 10TH Bristol Everyman https://www.everymancinema.com/film-info/king-rocker-live-qa
NOV 11th Liverpool Everyman https://www.everymancinema.com/film-info/king-rocker-live-qa
NOV 18TH Leeds Everyman https://www.everymancinema.com/film-info/king-rocker-live-qa
DEC 16TH London Dalston Rio https://riocinema.org.uk/RioCinema.dll/WhatsOn?Film=13951901

Here’s one link that takes you to all the events;
https://linktr.ee/kingrocker

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2) RED LEICESTER T-SHIRT

Stewart Lee says - "Following hot on the heels of our sell-out CONTENT PROVIDER t-shirt comes this tasteful ALL THE CHEESES design. The front celebrates Stewart's famous CHEESE joke while the rear print is a delightful tapestry of negative reviews from politicians and their media clients"

Available in two colourways - black t-shirt with liquid silver ink and navy t-shirt with golden yellow (cheese) ink. There is a front print and a back print on each shirt. Available HERE from Noon on Monday 25th Oct.


Stewart Lee said earlier: ‘There are at least 13 t-shirt designs out there based on lines from my stand-up that are nothing to do with me, and a scarf as well, so my hand has been forced into the land of quality endorsed garments. Here is another icily obtuse t-shirt which announces your fandom only to other adepts, and confuses the weak. It's available here from Wax Face, who also do t-shirts for Warren Ellis and the Osees, and make models of Iggy Pop's body and Daniel Clowes' comic book characters. Buy it for the prematurely aged pseudo-intellectual in your life today! As TV's James Acaster recently said, "Stewart Lee fans are like Radiohead fans. They have one big thing they like, and because it’s such a connoisseury thing to enjoy they’re like, “I don’t need anything else outside that. And I’m going to tell everyone that if they don’t get it they’re thick.” And they’re the worst kind of fans.” Come to think of it, that might be the next t-shirt!''

Tees are all unisex and are made by Bella-Canvas. High quality and 100% eco friendly production and no Sweatshops. Shirts come in all sizes and ship worldwide. Get yours before they sell out.


 

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3) LAURA CANNELL

The avant-folk dronemädchen Laura Cannell has been releasing an ep a month throughout the pandemic.
I wrote and mumbled some words for the latest, August Sounds, also featuring Welsh harpist Rhodri Davies, whose book {below} I done some words for too and that. Available here as cd or dl.
http://www.lauracannell.co.uk


Laura Cannell and Kate Ellis also bring the much delayed live incarnation of their These Feral Lands recording project to London’s King’s Place on Feb 18th 2022.
I wrote words for four of the tracks and will attempt to do something with them on the night.
I thought about where I was conceived, and where I was born, plugged the details I know into the folklore of both regions, and tried not to get in the way of Laura and Kate’s mediaeval trance music steamroller.
https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/contemporary/laura-cannell-with-stewart-lee-kate-ellis-these-feral-lands/

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4) LIVE DATES/LEICESTER SQUARE THEATRE NEWS

All the SNOWFLAKE TORNADO tour dates outstanding from 2020 will be shifted into 2022, starting in Jan, and below are the ones we know about so far. Local venues will contact you if they haven’t already.
All the warm-up club dates you may have bought tickets for have been slotted in to Nov and Dec, covid willing, and venues will contact ticket holders. Please do not hassle venues about all this. They will contact you. We will get there!
I am planning on re-writing the SNOWFLAKE half of SNOWFLAKE TORNADO to reflect our drastically altered world and will make as good a recording as possible of the abandoned original SNOWFLAKE available at some point. It’s all bacon!

January 2022

Tuesday 4th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS

Wednesday 5th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS

Thursday 6th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS

Friday 7th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS

Saturday 8th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS

Monday 10th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS

Tuesday 11th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS

Wednesday 12th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS

Thursday 13th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS

Saturday 15th January 2022 - Theatre Royal, Norwich - TICKETS

Monday 17th January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS

Tuesday 18th January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS

Wednesday 19th January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS

Thursday 20th January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS

Friday 21st January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS

Saturday 22nd January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS

Tuesday 25th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS

Wednesday 26th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS

Thursday 27th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS

Friday 28th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS

Saturday 29th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS

Sunday 30th January 2022 - Theatre Royal, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS

 

February 2022

Wednesday 2nd February 2022 - St. David's Hall, Cardiff - TICKETS

Thursday 3rd February 2022 - Rose Theatre, Kingston - TICKETS

Friday 4th February 2022 - Westlands Entertainment Venue, Yeovil - TICKETS

Saturday 5th February 2022 - Westlands Entertainment Venue, Yeovil - TICKETS

Tuesday 8th February 2022 - Town Hall, Cheltenham - TICKETS

Wednesday 9th February 2022 - Town Hall, Cheltenham - TICKETS

Thursday 10th February 2022 - De Montfort Hall, Leicester - TICKETS

Friday 11th February 2022 - Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry - TICKETS

Saturday 12th February 2022 - Festival Theatre, Malvern - TICKETS

Sunday 13th February 2022 - Hippodrome, Birmingham - TICKETS

Friday 25th February 2022 - The Dome, Brighton - TICKETS

Saturday 26th February 2022 - The Dome, Brighton - TICKETS

Sunday 27th February 2022 - The Dome, Brighton - TICKETS

Monday 28th February 2022 - The Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury - TICKETS

 

March 2022

Wednesday 2nd March 2022 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS

Thursday 3rd March 2022 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS

Friday 4th March 2022 - Lighthouse, Poole - TICKETS

Saturday 5th March 2022 - Playhouse, Salisbury - TICKETS

Sunday 6th March 2022 - De La Warr Pavillion, Bexhill On Sea - TICKETS

Wednesday 9th March 2022 - Theatre Royal, Wakefield - TICKETS

Thursday 10th March 2022 - Opera House, Buxton - TICKETS

Friday 11th March 2022 - The Courtyard, Hereford - TICKETS

Saturday 12th March 2022 - Grand Theatre, Swansea - TICKETS

Monday 14th March 2022 - King's Theatre, Glasgow - TICKETS

Tuesday 15th March 2022 - King's Theatre, Glasgow - TICKETS

Wednesday 16th March 2022 - The Sands Centre, Carlisle - TICKETS

Thursday 17th March 2022 - Royal Hall, Harrogate - TICKETS

Tuesday 22nd March 2022 - Churchill Theatre, Bromley - TICKETS

Wednesday 23rd March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS

Thursday 24th March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS

Friday 25th March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS

Saturday 26th March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS

Sunday 27th March 2022 - Royal & Derngate, Northampton - TICKETS

Tuesday 29th March 2022 - City Hall, Sheffield - TICKETS

Wednesday 30th March 2022 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS

Thursday 31st March 2022 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS

 

April 2022

Friday 1st April 2022 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS

Saturday 2nd April 2022 - Storyhouse, Chester - TICKETS

Tuesday 19th April 2022 - Wyvern Theatre, Swindon - TICKETS

Thursday 21st April 2022 - The Hawth, Crawley - TICKETS

Friday 22nd April 2022 - The Hexagon, Reading - TICKETS

Sunday 24th April 2022 - Mayflower Theatre, Southampton - TICKETS

Tuesday 26th April 2022 - Cliffs Pavilion, Southend On Sea - TICKETS

Wednesday 27th April 2022 - The Central Theatre, Chatham - TICKETS

Thursday 28th April 2022 - Derby Theatre, Derby - TICKETS

Friday 29th April 2022 - Lyceum Theatre, Crewe - TICKETS

Saturday 30th April 2022 - Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield - TICKETS

 

May 2022

Tuesday 3rd May 2022 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS

Wednesday 4th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS

Thursday 5th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS

Friday 6th May 2022 - St. George's Hall, Bradford - TICKETS

Saturday 7th May 2022 - Gala Theatre, Durham - TICKETS

Sunday 8th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS

Tuesday 10th May 2022 - Palace Theatre, Watford - TICKETS

Wednesday 11th May 2022 - Palace Theatre, Watford - TICKETS

Thursday 12th May 2022 - Assembly Hall Theatre, Tunbridge Wells

Friday 13th May 2022 - The Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS

Saturday 14th May 2022 - The Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS

Sunday 15th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, Plymouth - TICKETS

Tuesday 17th May 2022 - Corn Exchange, Cambridge - TICKETS

Wednesday 18th May 2022 - Corn Exchange, Cambridge - TICKETS

Thursday 19th May 2022 - The Baths Hall, Scunthorpe - TICKETS

Saturday 21st May 2022 - New Theatre, Peterborough - TICKETS

Sunday 22nd May 2022 - The Grand, Wolverhampton - TICKETS

Monday 23rd May 2022 - Hippodrome, Bristol - TICKETS

Tuesday 24th May 2022 - Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury - TICKETS

Wednesday 25th May 2022 - The Forum, Bath - TICKETS

Friday 27th May 2022 - Wycombe Swan, High Wycombe - TICKETS

Saturday 28th May 2022 - Winding Wheel, Chesterfield - TICKETS

 

June 2022

Tuesday 7th June 2022 - Mercury Theatre, Colchester

Wednesday 8th June 2022 - Mercury Theatre, Colchester

Sunday 12th June 2022 - Queen's Theatre, Barnstaple

Friday 17th June 2022 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS

Saturday 18th June 2022 - Hippodrome, Darlington - TICKETS

Sunday 19th June 2022 - Festival Theatre, Edinburgh - TICKETS

Monday 20th June 2022 - Perth Theatre, Perth - TICKETS

Tuesday 21st June 2022 - Perth Theatre, Perth - TICKETS

Wednesday 22nd June 2022 - Tivoli Theatre, Aberdeen - TICKETS

Thursday 23rd June 2022 - Tivoli Theatre, Aberdeen - TICKETS

Sunday 26th June 2022 - Theatre Royal, Plymouth - TICKETS

Wednesday 29th June 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS

Thursday 30th June 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS

 

July 2022

Friday 1st July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS

Saturday 2nd July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS

Sunday 3rd July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS

Sunday 3rd July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS

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5) TO VAC OR NOT TO VAC

I would be delighted if, if you are coming to see me, you could do your best to get vaccinated, irrespective of what the gvt or the venue insist upon.
I doubt that my snowflake audience will contain many people who deny the existence of Covid or believe the vaccine is George Soros or Bill Gates trying to put tiny Transformer robots into your blood. But I and my team will be interacting with over 150 000 people on the next leg of the tour, and I would like to minimise our risk, and the risk to my audience, so meet me half way.
I will be selling and signing stuff as usual, I hope, but I won’t be shaking hands to thank you all this time around, and will probably be positioned behind some kind of screen like William Shatner in Airplane 2. Sad.

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6) MEDIA GARAGE SALE

My trusted sales partner Media Garage has compacted all my available stand-up dvds into one convenient on-line marketplace, with most available to d/load too.
Remember, if you buy here we will pay tax on these purchases, and help with British schools and hospitals, whereas many major physical media suppliers and streaming services have found ways to avoid declaring their profits, as have NETFLIX, the transphobic bastards. AMERICANS - stop moaning about not being able to see me and visit MEDIA GARAGE! https://www.mediagarageproductions.com/store/

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7) PODCASTS AND THAT

To try and promote King Rocker I have been pimping myself about like Priss Fotheringham on every Podcast going, alone or with dir M Cumming (Brass Eye, Toast), saying the same things in the same room in the same clothes to all different people, all of whom were very kind. I don’t know what a podcast is really but I think you go on the internet and click on something.
As my grandfather once said, in 1983, “Do you know, in America, there are shops that only sell Kentucky Fried Chicken?” I enjoyed being on the internet with all these people enormously, but will put some blue water between me and the next wedge.
David Baddiel told me it was good to be on the internet, though. These are available...

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8) I Arrogantly Recommend

LIVE EVENTS

Ithell Colquhoun

- Song of Songs The surrealist ascendent’s unseen privately owned works displayed alongside sympathetic contemporary artworks at Union London, Hannover Sq, until Nov 6th

Bridget Christie - Who Am I?

My multi-award winning wife has some dates.
You can book here https://www.bridgetchristie.co.uk/gigs/

Sunday 14th November 2021 Warwick Arts Centre Coventry
Thursday 2nd December 2021 Quarterhouse Folkestone
14th - 18th December Leicester Square Theatre London https://leicestersquaretheatre.ticketsolve.com/shows/873620281

Big Joanie

Raucous smart post-punk trio NOVEMBER 4th Brighton Mutations Fest

Emily Young - Carving In Time

The mighty Emily Young - who carves monumental god like figures in the tradition of Blake and Epstein - has an exhibition at a commercial gallery, Tomasso at Marquis House in London, until 12th Nov

Alasdair Roberts

Scottish wyrd folk singer NOVEMBER 13th London Jazz Festival Nick Drake event, 19th Canterbury Gulbenkin

The Nightingales

Birmingham post punk veterans and KING ROCKER stars.
NOVEMBER 1st Sheffield Greystones,
3rd London Lexington,
4th B’ham Hare & Hounds,
5th Bristol Rough Trade,
6th Southsea Wedgewood,
7th Bedford Esquires,
8th London Lexington W BLUE ORCHIDS & TED CHIPPINGTON,
9th Barrow-in-Furness Underground,
10th Glasgow Hugh & Pint,
11th Edinburgh Caves,
12th Middlesbrough Westgarth,
13th Hebden Bridge Trades,
14th Leicester Cookie,
DECEMBER 18th Birmingham MAC w King Rocker film

The Fallen Leaves

Gentlemen mod punks.
NOVEMBER 20TH Brighton Prince Albert.
JANUARY 15TH Acton George & Dragon, 20th 100 Club, London + Downliners’ Sect & Masonics.
FEBRUARY 12th 229 London.
JUNE 11TH 100 Club, London.

Thurston Moore Group

Guitar Guru NOV 2ND London Omeara

Paul Currie

The fantastic Belfast surrealist clown-comedian Paul Currie is doing his new show TEET at Soho Theatre, London, from NOV 3RD - 6TH. I cannot recommend him enough. He is the teets!
https://sohotheatre.com/shows/paul-currie-teet/

The Wolfhounds

Cheesewire indie kitchen sink realists
NOVEMBER 5TH London 229, 19th Middlesbrough Westgarth, 20th Preston Ferret

Martin Carthy

Ageless folk veteran NOV 11th Lewes Con Club, 27th Brighton Toy Museum, DECEMBER 1st Café Oto London

The Chameleons

M’cr post punk visionaries on another victory lap. NOVEMBER 12TH Minehead Shine On.
DECEMBER 14TH Huddersfield Parish, 16th Blackpool Waterloo, 17th/18th M’cr Ritz.
JANUARY 14TH Leicester Academy, 15th Birmingham Institute.
FEBRUARY 1ST Nottingham Rescue Rooms, 5th London Islington Assembly Hall

Archie Shepp

Jazz genius NOV 15th London Barbican

Faust

Krautrock noise veterans NOV 15th London Union Chapel

Yo La Tengo

Melodic/experimental New York survivors
NOV 16th Bristol SWX, 17th Cantebrury Colyer-Fergusson Bldg, 19th London Royal Festival Hall

Sleaford Mods

Angry loud man and quiet electronic man.
NOVEMBER 17th M’cr Academy, 18th Glasgow Barrowlands, 19th Aberdeen Lemon Tree, 21st Dublin Olympia, 24th Newcastle Academy, 25th Liverpool Academy, 26th Oxford Academy, 27th Nottingham Motorpoint, 30th Cardiff Tramshed,
DECEMBER 1st Bristol Academy, 2nd London Printworks, 3rd Brighton Dome

Trash Kit

High-life inflected post-punk NOVEMBER 19th + 20th Newcastle Brave Exhibitions Festival.
Their mums and dads probably owned Paul Simon’s Gracelands.

Len Price 3

Reliably thrilling Breton-bejumpered Mod-Punks NOV 19TH London Water Rats. Good to see them back.

Jackie Oates

Compelling contemporary folk singer NOVEMBER 24th Exeter Phoenix

The Primevals

Glasgow garage rockers, our own Flamin’ Groovies.
NOVEMBER 27TH London Hope & Anchor.

Dry Cleaning

Sing-speak post-punk poets
NOVEMBER 27th Nottingham Motorpoint, 30th Cardiff Tramshed.
DECEMBER 1st Hebden Bridge Trades, 2nd Norwich Arts Centre, 3rd Brighton Dome.
FEBRUARY 14th Liverpool Arts, 15th Dublin Button, 16th Belfast Empire,. 18th Edinburgh Summerhall, 19th Glasgow QMU, 20th Leeds Brudenell, 22nd Birmingham Mill, 23rd Bristol Marble, 25th Manchester Academy 2, 26th Sheffield Leadmill 2, 27th Nottingham Rescue.
MARCH 1st Southsea Wedgewood, 2nd Brighton Concorde 2, 3rd London Forum.
APRIL 1st Manchester 02 Ritz.

Swell Maps

Surviving members and associated acts DECEMBER 3rd + 4th, Café Oto, London

The Fallen Women

Female Fall tribute band w guest vocalists incl me. DECEMBER 5th London Lexington.

The Bohman Brothers

Dada-ish improvisors. DECEMBER 8th Brighton Rose Hill

John Butcher, Mark Sanders, John Edwards

Top free-improvisation trio DEC 8th London Iklecktik

Eliza Carthy

Folk superstar fiddler currently on top form, seen at Laugharne last month DEC 21st London Union Chapel

NEW FILMS

Little Joe (Jessica Hausner) ****
County Lines (Henry Blake) *****
Animal Antics (Patrick Goddard) *****

 

OLD FILMS

Box Of Moonlight (Tom DeCillo, 1996) *****
Local Hero (Bill Forsyth, 1983) *****
Where Eagles Dare (Brian G Hutton, 1968) *****
The Big Gundown (Sergio Sollima, 1967) *****
The Sting (George Roy Hill, 1973) *****
Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977) *****
The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)*****
Good Vibrations (Lisa Barros D'sa/Glen Leyburn, 2013)*****
Caliber 9 (Fernado di Leon, 1972) *****
'71 (Yann Demange, 2014) *****
Big Night (Campbell Scott/Stanley Tucci, 1996) *****
Jason & The Argonauts (Don Chaffey, 1963) *****
Goldstone (Ivan Sen, 2016) *****
Witness (Peter Weir, 1985) *****
Avengers Infinity War (Russo Brothers, 2018) ****
Avengers Endgame (Russo Brothers, 2019) ****
In Order of Disappearance (Hans Peter Molland, 2014)*****
Iron Man III (Shane Black, 2013)*****
Pauline A La Plage (Eric Rohmer, 1983) *****
Gone To Earth (Powell/Pressburger, 1950) ****
The Odd Couple (Neil Simon, 1968) *****
Excalibur (John Boorman, 1981) ****
Samurai 1 : Mushashi Miyamoto (Hiroshi Inagaki, 1954) ****
Cache / Hidden (Michaek Haneke, 2005) *****
Babylon (Franco Rosso, 1980) *****
Summer In February (Christopher Menaul, 2013) ****
Guardians of The Galaxy (James Gunn, 2014) *****
All Tomorrow's Parties (Jonathan Caouette, 2009) ****
Medea (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1969) *****
Force Majeure (Ruben Ostlund, 2015) ****
Lift To The Scaffold (Louise Malle, 1958)*****
Macbeth (Roman Polanski, 1971)*****
Tomb of Ligeia (Roger Corman, 1964) ****
Massacre Time (Lucio Fulci, 1966) ****
Bandidos (Massimo Dallamano, 1967) ****
And God Said To Cain (Antonio Margheriti, 1970) *****
Dead Man's Shoes (Shane Meadows, 2004) *****
Romeo + Juliet (Baz Luhrmann, 1996) *****
Gallivant (Andrew Kotting, 1996) *****

OLD BOOKS

Rosemary Tonks - Emir (1963)*****
Rosemary Tonks - The Bloater (1968) *****
John Berger/Jean Mohr - A Fortunate Man (1967) *****
Ann Quin - Berg (1964) ****
Sir John Mandeville - The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (1357)****
Sean Bythell - Diary of a Bookseller (2018)
Robert Aickman - The Inner Room (1988)
Virginia Nicholson - Amongst The Bohemians (2003)
Joanna Moorhead - The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington (2017)
Betty May - Tiger Woman (1929)
Val Doonican - My Story, My Life (2009)
Dave Graney - Workshy (2017)
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde - R L Stevenson (1985)
Hide & Seek - Dennis Potter (1973)
M R James - Complete Ghost Stories (1904 - 35) *****
Gavin Lambert - The Slide Area (1959)****

NEW BOOKS

Tessa Norton/Bob Stanley - Excavate!
Alan Stafford - Wilson, Keppel & Betty, Too Naked For The Nazis
Peter Oborne - The Assault On Truth
Nesrine Malik - We Need New Stories *****
Sean Bythell - Diary of a Bookseller (2018) *****
Robert Aickman - The Inner Room (1988) *****
Alicia Foster - Nina Hamnett
Charlie Hill - I Don't Want To Go To The Taj Mahjal
Hill's economic autobiography is a simplistic list of addresses, dead end jobs, cultural ephemera, and brief assignations, garnished with two or three short paragraphs of barely formed reflection. And yet, in reducing his life to these most basic elements, it manages to be a more profound comment on existence then many more self-consciously analytical efforts. As if to confound Wittgenstein, it appears the unexamined life was worth living after all.
Tracey Thorn - My Rock 'n' Roll Friend *****
Will Sergeant - Bunnyman ****
Hotel Art Head - Rhodri Davies & Nikos Veliotos I have written the intro for this new project exploring the interior design aesthetics travelling musicians' hotel acommodation
https://rhodridavies.bandcamp.com/merch/hotel-art-head-rhodri-davies-nikos-veliotis-art-book

NEW COMICS

Joe Sacco - Paying The Land (2020)

NEW TV

Ghosts S2 (BBC, 2020)
Ghosts - Xmas Special 2020 (BBC, 2020)
The Mandalorian S2 (Disney, 2020) *****
Call My Agent S3 (France 2, 2018)*****
Call My Agent S4 (France 2, 2021) *****
The Trump Show (BBC, 2020-1)*****
Lupin S1 (Netflix, 2021)*****
Wandavision (Marvel, 2021)*****
Stonehenge The Lost Circle Revealed (BBC, 2021) *****
Adam Curtis' Can't Get You Out Of My Head (BBC, 2021)*****
Raiders Of The Lost Past With Janina Ramirez (BBC2, 2021) ****
Mortimer & Whitehouse Gone Fishing S3 (BBC, 2020) *****
The Falcon & The Winter Soldier (Marvel, 2021) *****
Homeland s8 (Netflix, 2020)*****
Into The Night S1 (Between a Dog & A Wolf, 2020) ****
Unforgotten S4 (ITV, 2021) ****
Inside No 9 S6 (BBC, 2021) *****
Great British Bake Off S11 (C4, 2020) *****
An Evening With Tim Heidecker (Youtube, 2020)
Time (BBC, 2021) *****
Loki (Kate Herron, Marvel, 2021)
Ghosts S3 (BBC, 2021) *****
Alma’s Not Normal (BBC2, 2021)
King Gary S2 (BBC1, 2021)
Great British Bake Off S5 (C4, 2021) *****
Four Hours At The Capitol (BBC, 2021) *****
Blair and Brown, The New Labour Revolution (BBC, 2021) *****

INTERNETS, RADIOS, YOUTUBES AND PODCASTS

Rob Auton's Daily Podcast
Alasdair Beckett-King on Youtube
Shawn Woods' Mouse Trap Monday on Youtube
An Evening With Tim Heidecker (Youtube, 2020) ****
Rosie Holt's Youtube characters
James O’Brien (LBC)
Alexei Sayle’s Imaginary Sandwich Bar S1 (BBC R4, 2016)
Bridget Christie - Mortal (BBCR4)
Gideon Coe (BBC 6Music)
Marc Riley (BBC 6Music)
Eddie Mair (LBC)
Down The Line S1, S2 ( )
Tom Robinson (BBC 6Music)

THEATRE

Under Milk Wood - Dylan Thomas (National) *****
The Pin's The Comeback (Noel Coward Theatre) ****
This felt like it was from the 1870s, the 1950s and now all at the same time.
It was of a tradition at the same time as exploding it. It reminded me of THE RIGHT Size and it would be great if The Pin could hold the partnership together in the way they didn't as there's probably lots to find out about how elastic it can be, and what you can subsume into it.
A Victorian audience would have recognised it as Music Hall and a '50s audience would have recognised it as Absurdism, which Beckett knew was music hall anyway. Were they even in a theatre, really, them blokes? I hope it tours.
Ben Moor - Who Here's Lost? (Hen & Chickens) ****

COMEDY

Jo Neary - Wife On Earth (Hen & Chickens) ****
Rob Auton - Time (Soho Theatre) ****
Johnny & The Baptists (Soho Theatre) *****

NEW RECORDS

Lady Leshurr - Quaranqueen
The Primevals - New Trip
Cult Figures - Deritend
Vapour Trails - Celestial Scuzz *****
Robert Pollard - Before Computers (demos)
Kevin March - Last Night
Doug Gillard - Douglas Scott Gillard II
Guided by Voices - Earth Man Blues
Gwenifer Raymond - Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain
Ustad Saami - Pakistan Is For The Peaceful *****
The Blue Orchids - Speed The Day
Dave Graney & The Mistly - Live At Byrds *****
Mainliner - Dual Myths *****
Hawkwind - 50th Anniversary Live
The Amorphous Androgynous w Peter Hammill - We Persuade Ourselves We Are Immortal
Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orcestrea - s/t
Major Murphy - Access
Eleventh Dream Day - Since Grazed
Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg
Guided By Voices - Earth Man Blues
Fixed Horizon - Grenouille
Lucinda Williams - Runnin' Down A Dream
Krallice - Demonic Wealth
Catenary Wires - Birling Gap
Cub Scout Bowling Pins - Heaven Beats Iowa ****
Pat Todd & The Rank Outsiders - There's Pretty Things in Palookaville ****
Robyn Hitchcock - The Man Upstairs ****
Chris Forsyth - First Flight
Chris Eckerman - Where The Spirit Rests ****
The Scientists - Negativity
David Grubbs & Ryley Walker - Husky Pants ****
Shirley Collins - Heart's Ease *****
Gary Louris - Jump For Joy *****
Fixed Horizon - Full Circle ****
Trees Speak - Post Human ****
William Loveday Intention - People Think They Know Me *****
Hawkwind - Somnia
The Bevis Frond - Little Eden *****
Pat Todd & The Rank Outsiders - There's Pretty Things In Palookaville *****
Goat - Headsoup
Adele & The Chandeliers - First Date
Trees Speak - Post Human
Sun Ra Arkestra - Swirling *****
Phil Minton - Woke Up At 8 *****
Rudimentary Peni - The Great War
Lucinda Williams - Southern Soul
Son Volt - Electro Melodies ****
Guided By Voices - It's Not Them! It Couldn't Be Them! It Is Them! ****
Billy Childish & CTMF - Where The Purple Iris Grows ****
David Lance Callahan - English Primitive 1 *****
Paul Rooney - Service Industries 1 *****
The Shadracks - From Human Like Forms ****

NEW OLD RECORDS

V/A - Rough Guide To Avant-Garde Japan
Guided by Voices - Live At Irving Plaza (1996)
Damo Suzuki & Echo Ensemble - Live @ Green Door (2013)
Heavenly - A Bout De Heavenly (1989-1996)
Martin Stone - Down But Not Out In Paris and London (1992-2013)
John Russell & Terry Day - Russell & Day (1979?)
Derek Bailey, Trevor Watts & Terry Day - At LTC (1972?)
Sonny Rollins - Rollins In Holland (1967) *****
Robert Pollard - I Sell The Circus (demos) (2015)
The Fall - St Helen's Technical College (1981) *****
Charles Gayle, John Edwards, Mark Sanders - Seasons Changing (2017) *****
The Misunderstood - Children of The Sun(1965-66) *****
Dexter Gordon - Live In Chateauvallon (1978) *****
The Loft - Ghost Trains & Country Lanes (1984-2015)
And Also The Trees - s/t (1984)
Neil Young - Young Shakespeare (1971)
T2 - It'll All Work Out In Boomland (1970)
The Outsiders - Count For Something (1976-78)
The Selecter - Too Much Pressure box (1980)
Brown Acid 11 - v/a (1969-73)
Fleur de Lys - Circles (1964-1969)
J Jazz Deep Jazz From Modern Japan vol 3 - V/A (1962-1985)
The Black Keys Present Hill Country Blues - v/a
Brown Acid 12 - v/a (1968-80)
Raw Material - s/t (1970)
Open Road - Windy Day (1971)
Dave Graney, Clare Moore, Georgie Valentino & Malcolm Ross - s/t (2017) ****
Hangman's Beautiful Daughters - Smashed Full Of Wonder (1987)
The Lipstick Killers - Strange Flash (1976-81)
The Hawks - Obviously 5 Believers (1979-81) ****
v/a - Goitse A Thaisce (1960-2020) *****
v/a - Fire Draw Near (1940-2020) *****

OLD RECORDS

Cocteau Twins - Treasure (1984) ****
Billy Bragg - Life's A Riot (1983) *****
Billy Bragg - Brewing Up with (1984) *****
The Triffids - Born Sandy Devotional (1986) ****
Siouxsie & The Banshees - A Kiss In The Dreamhouse (1982) ****
Bunny Striker Lee - The Bunny Striker Lee Story (1967-80) ****
V/A - Dub, A Journey Into Bass Culture (1970s) ****
V/A - Dub, Original Bass Culture (1970s) ****
V/A - Dub, More Bass Culture (1970s) ****
Tomorrow's Gift - Goodbye Future (1973) ****
Jackson C Frank - s/t (1965) ****
V/A - Down Home Blues, Chicago Fine Boogie (1947-1958)****
Maggie Bjorklund - Shaken (2014)****
June Tabor - Airs & Graces (1976) *****
John Martyn - The Very Best Of (1967-1996) *****
The Owl Service - The Garland Sessions (2007) *****
John Lee Hooker - Tantalising With The Blues (1965-70)*****
Furry Lewis, Memphis Willie B, Memphis Slim - Bluesville 3 (1963?) ****
Lightnin' Hopkins - Prestige Profiles (1960-4) *****
Magic Slim - Live @ Ma Bea's (1976) ****
Jimmy Dawkins - Come Back Baby (1977) ****
Allman Brothers - At Filmore East (1971) ****
John Fahey - The Yellow Princess (1968) *****
Freedy Johnston - Can You Fly? (1992)****
Julie Doiron - I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day (2009) ****
Tragically Hip - Man Machine Poem (2016) ****
Tragically Hip - We Are The Same (2009) ****
Tortoise - Millions Now Living Will Never Die (1996) *****
Grant Lee Buffalo - Storm Hymnal (1993-98) ****
Shiva Burlesque - Mercury Blues (1990) ****
Yo La Tengo - President (1989) *****
Yo La Tengo - Fakebook (1990) *****
Yo La Tengo - That Is You La Tengo (1991) ****
Yo La Tengo - May I Sing With Me? (1992) ****
Yo La Tengo - Painful (3 cds) (1993) ****
Tim Buckley - Dream Letter (1968) *****
Those Bastard Souls - Debt & Departure (1999) *****
Wanderlust - Prize (1995) ****
Chain - Towards The Blues (1971) ****
The Schramms - Omnidirectional (2019) ****
Cannonball Adderley - Soul Zodiac (1972)
Fred Anderson - Quintessential Birthday Trio Vol II (2015)
Greg Bendian's Interzone - Requiem For Jack Kirby (2001)
Nels Cline & Greg Bendian - Interstellar Space Revisited (1999)
The Beat - Bounce (2016)
Nina Simone - To Be Free (1959-1993)
Swervedriver - 99th Dream (1998)
Road - s/t (1972)
Mudhoney - Morning In America (2019)
Necromandus - Orexis of Death (1973)
Julian Cope - Peggy Suicide (1991)
Ultravox - Rage In Eden (1981)
Siouxsie & The Banshees - Tinderbox (1986)
Blues Pills - Live In Paris (2017)
Gram Parsons - Alternate Takes (1973-4)
Mike Westbrook - Mama Chicago (1976)
The Fall - Grotesque (1980)
Truly - Fast Stories From Kid Coma (1995)
Echo & the Bunnymen - Evergreen (1997)
Echo & The Bunnymen - What Are You Going To Do With Your Life? (1999)
Blues Pills - Lady In Gold (2016)
Leo Bud Welch - The Angels In Heaven Done Signed My Name (2019)
The Black Keys - Chulahoma (2006)
Nanci Griffith - One Fair Summer Evening (1988)
The Soft Boys - Invisible Hits (1983)
Robyn Hitchcock - Robyn Sings (2003)
Raw Material - s/t (1970)
Don Carlos & Gold - Them Never Know Natty Dread Have Him Credentials (1982)
Henry Junjo Lawes - Volcano Erruption (70s-80s)
Don Carlos - Day To Day Living (1982)
Bunny 'Striker' Lee - Full Up (1968-72)
Bunny Lee & Friends - Tape Rolling (1971-4) ****
v/a - Trojan Roots Dancehall Box ('70s, '80s)
Charlie Chaplin & Papa San - Respect Due (1986?)
Robert Forster - The Evangelist (2008) *****
John Stewart - California Bloodlines (1969) ****
v/a - Trojan Dancehall Box ('70s, '80s)
Don Carlos - In Dub (1980)
Yabby You - Deeper Roots ('70s, '80s)
Yabby You - Deeper Roots Part 2 ('70s, '80s)
Norma Winstone - Edge Of Time (1972) ****
Atlas - Just Playin' Rhythm & Blues (1967-71)
V/A - Alan Lomax Songbook (1939-76) ****
Shirley Collins - Lodestar (2016) *****
The Go-betweens - Loving Shocks (1989) ****
Red House Painters - Songs For A Blue Guitar (1996) ****
Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats - Mind Control (2013)
The Damned - Music For Pleasure (1977) ****
Skids - Days In Europa (1977)
Big Country - The Crossing (1983) ****
Big Country - Steel Town (1984)
Jon Dee Graham - Escape From Monster Island (1997) ****
The Fall - Live At The Witch Trials (1979) *****
Echo & The Bunnymen - The Stars, The Oceans & The Moon (2018)
Echo & The Buynnymen - Ballyhoo (1980-87) *****
Orange Juice - Rip It Up (1982)
Orange Juice - Texas Fever (1984)
The Stone Roses - s/t (1989) ****
The Screaming Trees - Buzz Factory (1989) ****
Mark Lanegan - The Winding Street (1990) *****
Killdozer - For Ladies Only (1989) ****
Magazine - Real Life (1978) ****
The Stranglers - Peaches (1977-82) *****
Screaming Trees - Uncle Anaesthesia (1991)
Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan - Sunday At Devil Dirt (2008)
The Osiris Club - Blazing World (2014)
UB40 - Signing Off (1980)*****
UB40 - Present Arms (1981) *****
UB40 - Present Arms In Dub (1981) ****
Radiohead - In Rainbows (2007) *****
The Brave Little Abacus - Last Show @ Vic Geary Center (2012) *****
Sarofeen and Smoke - s/t (1970) ****
Blue Cheer - Outsideinside (1968) ****
Conqueroo - From The Vulcan Gas Company (1968) ****
Frank Morgan - City Nights (2004) ****
Peter Brotzmann - Machine Gun (1968) *****
Phil Minton - A Doughnut In One Hand (1998) *****
Chris Von Sneidern - The Wild Horse (2003)
Alexei Sayle - Cak! (1982) ****
Steve Wynn - Here Come The Miracles (2001) ****
Steve Wynn - Static Transmission (2003) ****
Andy Irvine - Old Dog Long Road Vol 1 (1961-2012) ****
Patti Smith - Land (1975-2002) *****

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9) WOKE CAUSES - THIS MONTH, GOOD LAW PROJECT, GET OFF MY MED RECORDS, GBNEWS ADVERTISERS

GOOD LAW PROJECT

LINK
It's evident that the corrupt kleptocracy of Boris Johnson isn't going to dislodged by Kier Starmer's PMQ's however forensic, or by the biased media, or by legal investigations in which the gvt essentially investigate themselves.

However, despite the threats to judiciary in the Queen's speech, at present the gvt are required to obey the law.
Champagne socialist fox-whacking lawyer Jolyon Maugham's donation funded Good Law Project seems to be better than the opposition currently at holding the gvt to account, and proving where they have broken the law, so if you can spare a pound crowd fund them, as they do seem to be making an impact.

GBNEWS ADVERTISERS

Stop Funding Hate say - Advertising sales for GB News are reportedly handled by Sky Media.
We're aware of at least one company who say they were unaware that they were going to appear on GB News and suspended those ads when they found out. If you work for a company that buys programmatic advertising from Sky, it may be worth checking with them to ensure that your ads aren't placed on GB News.

A huge thanks to the Stop Funding Hate volunteers who have come together to help identify GB News advertisers.
Brands that we've seen so far include: Vodafone, Octopus Energy, Ovo Energy, Co-op, Ikea, LV, Virgin Media, Kelloggs, Deliveroo, Nivea, Kenco coffee, AA, Premier Inn, American Express, Benadryl (Johnson and Johnson), Wickes, Starbucks, Weetabix, Listerine (Pfizer), National Lottery, Boomin, Cadbury, Taylors coffee, Amazon, Cazoo, Microsoft, Google, Alpen (Weetabix), Beko Harvestfresh, Pinterest, Ladbrokes, Rana pasta, Burger King, Warburtons, The UK Government (EU resettlement scheme), Bosch, Specsavers, TalkTalk, trivagoWeekend, itchpet.com, MSC Cruises, Grolsch, Indeed recruitment, Motability, Feel Multivitamins, Green Flag, Clean G non alcoholic gin, Facebook, Volvo, Bazuka, fiverr, Motability, Ibuleve Gel, Toyota, Appeal home shading / blinds, People's Postcode Lottery, Just Eat, Petit Filous, Direct Bullion, Compare the Market, Kardia Mobile, Bupa, Verisure, The Open University.

There's more information here about Stop Funding Hate, and the impact of our campaign so far. If you're able to help build our movement tackling toxic media in the UK and internationally, please consider becoming a committed supporter and making a regular donation.

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10) IN OUR COVID ERA LAMENTATIONS

 

Adam Schlesinger (Fountain of Wayne) (1967)
John Prine (outlaw country singer) (1946)
Henry Grimes (jazz bassist) (1935)
Dave Mountfield (Ornate Johnson) (1970)
Hal Wilner (arranger) (1957)
Tim Brooke-Taylor (Goodie) (1940)
Lee Konitz (jazz saxophonist) (1927)
Matthew Seligman (Soft Boy) (1955)
Millie Small (ska singer) (1946)
Florian Schneider (Kraftwerk robot) (1947)
Bill Rieflin (drummer for hire) (1960)
Hugh McKenna (Tear Gas pianist) (1949)
Steve Weber (Holy Modal Rounder) (1942)
Astrid Kirchherr (photographer) (1938)
Danny Ray Thompson (Sun Ra saxophonist) (1947)
Aubrey Burl (archaeologist) (1926)
Phil May (Pretty Thing) (1944)
The Clacton Fin Whale (circa 2000)
Christo Vladimirov Javacheff (artist) (1930)
Doll Tor stone circle (3300 BC)
Kay Carroll (The Fall) (1948)
Bob the Cat (73 bus) (2006)
Alex Taylor (Shop Assistant, in 2005, and no-one knew)
Simon H Fell (jazz bassist) (1959)
Carl Reiner (director) (1922)
Ennio Morricone (architect of sonic dreams) (1928)
Keith Tippett (jazz pianist) (1947)
Jimmy Cobb (jazz drummer) (1929)
Barbara Smoker (Humanist) (1923)
The Nuffield Theatre, Southampton
Tony Elliot (Time Out) (1942)
Judy Dyble (folk singer) (1949)
Peter Green (blues guitarist) (1946)
Emitt Rhodes (power pop auteur) (1950)
Annie Ross (jazz bohemian) (1930)
Joe Ruby (Scooby-Doo) (1933)
Craig Weatherhill (folklorist) (1950)
Don Weller (jazz saxophonist) (1940)
Simeon Coxe (Silver Apple) (1938)
Diana Rigg (Avenger) (1938)
Toots Hibbert (reggae got soul) (1942)
Dele Fadele (carry bag man) (1962)
George Jeffrie (man's-laughter maker) (1964)
Dave Kusworth (Brum punk Stone) (1960)
Gary Peacock (jazz bassist) (1935)
Doorkins (Southwark Cathedral Cat) (2005?)
Spencer Davis (Brumbeat pioneer) (1939)
Bunny Lee (dubmaster) (1940)
The Cubbington Pear Tree (1770)
Fungie The Dingle Dolphin (1979)
Jill Paton Walsh (humanist novelist) (1937)
Val Warner (poet) (1946)
Guy N Smith (Lord of The Crabs) (1939)
Richard Corben (decadent cartoonist) (1940)
David Johnson (Duke of Soho) (1960)
Leslie West (Mountain man) (1945)

- 2021 -

Katharine Whitehorn (bedsitter cook) (1928)
Katharine Whitehorn (bedsitter cook) (1928)
Celia Drummond Ford (voice of Trees) (1950)
The Happy Man Tree (Stoke Newington Tree) (1870)
John Russell (guitar guru) (1954)
Marcel Uderzo (Asterisk artist) (1933)
Tom Stevens (Long Ryder and Magus) (1956)
Dougie Anderson (Coda's Edinburgh record dealer (1952)
Captain Tom (Covid Walkman) (1920)
Rynagh O'Grady (Ted's Mary) (1954)
Mary Wilson (Supreme) (1944)
Chick Corea (Miles' tinkler) (1941)
Iain Pattinson (You wanted to see me Prime Minister?) (1951)
U-Roy (Toastmaster) (1942)
Lawrence Ferlinghetti (bookstore beat) (1921)
Wink O'Bannon (Eleventh Dream Day) (1956)
Bunny Wailer (Wailer) (1947)
Doug Parkinson (Oz vocal celeb) (1946)
Milford Graves (temporal explorer) (1941)
Johnny Rogan (Byrds' Boswell) (1953)
Jessica Walter (Play Misty For Me) (1941)
Bertrand Tavernier (Round Midnight) (1941)
Anita Lane (Oz punk chanteuse) (1958)
Barbara Ess (Theoretical Girl) (1944)
Michael Collins (Apollo 11) (1930)
Mohammed Ag Itale (Tinariwen) (1960)
Monte Hellman (Two Lane Blacktop) (1929)
Sonny Simmons (jazz hobo) (1933)
Charles Grodin (The American Tim Key) (1935)
Franco Battiato (Italian Fetus) (1945)
Yoshi Wada (bagpipe minimalist) (1943)
Ned Beatty (squealing piggy) (1937)
Davey Datblygu (Davey Datblygu) (1964)
S Clay Wilson (Captain Pissgums) (1941)
Peter Zinovieff (sonic pioneer) (1933)
Richard Donner (kebab pioneer) (1930)
Alix Dobkin (feminist folksinger) (1940)
Patrick Sky (native American folksinger) (1940)
Tom O'Connor (raconteur) (1939)
Dusty Hill (ZZ Top) (1949)
Bob Sergeant (digital Beat producer) (194?)
Byron Berline (Byrds fiddler) (1944)
John Lawton (friend of Lucifer) (1947)
Una Stubbs (wooden woman) (1937)
Nanci Griffith (C&W poet) (1953)
Sean Lock (excrement genitals) (1963)
Brian Travers (UB40 blowhard) (1959)
Lee Scratch Perry (The Super Ape) (1936)
Michael Chapman (English primitive) (1941)
Norm Macdonald (acceptable face of US stand-up) (1959)
Tony Selby (Get Some In!) (1938)
Tom T Hall (Harper Valley songsmith) (1936)
Powell St John (Psychedelic Texan) (1940)
The White Stag of Bootle (2010?)
John Rossall (The Last Glam In Town) ()
Pat Fish (A Southern Mark Smith) (1957)
Jim Pembroke (psychedelic Anglo-Fin) (1946)
Rick Jones (Fingerbob Meal Ticket) (1937)
Alan Hawkshaw (Sausage on fork composer) (1937)
Takashi Mizutani (Les Rallizes dude) (1948)

I’m going to end on a note about Tony Selby, as these days not posting anything on Social Media, due to not actually being on social media, can be taken as callous indifference, and there tends to be a rush to comment in the light of any loss.
Condolences to his family and friends. I once had to stay at my friend Nigel Short’s house one night when my Mum was working.
His brother made me eat a maggot. We watched Tony Selby on TV in ‘Get Some In!’ and it seemed really funny.