Stay focused Brexiters – Russia is not the enemy - March 2018 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - March 18th, 2018

Last Sunday, diners from the Salisbury Zizzi were belatedly advised to burn all their clothes as a precautionary measure; as was anyone who had ever visited a Jamie’s Italian, but for different reasons. Enemies of Putin expire and nuclear threats are proliferating across the Earth. Perhaps the trademark robust diplomacy of the foreign secretary Boris…

American Cornish pasties? Did King Arthur die for this? - March 2018 The Observer - March 11th, 2018

Say “Cornwall” to an uncontacted pygmy brave deep in a New Zealand forest and his bamboo flute will swiftly carve the shape of the Cornish pasty into the Shotover riverbank sands. “Oggy, oggy, oggy,” he will cry, as he mimes pushing a too-hot Cornish pasty into his unambiguously delighted face. “Oggy, oggy, oggy!” But last…

I was a pawn in one of the great comedy crimes - February 2018 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - February 18th, 2018

The weekend before last, my curator friend worried there had been a burglary at his Bloomsbury Museum of Comedy, but nothing was taken. Perhaps some obsessed comedy fan had wanted to caress the stuffed bear from Steptoe and Son with Matthew Corbett’s Sooty puppet while dressed in Freddie Starr’s yellow teddy boy jacket? Aware of…

Can Harry and Meghan make Britain whole again? - December 2017 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - December 3rd, 2017

In 2005, the then 20-year-old Prince Harry appeared as a Nazi at a fancy dress party. Perhaps the uniform had been inherited from his great-great-uncle, Edward VIII, who was not averse to a spot of recreational sieg heiling. But next year Prince Harry is to marry the mixed-race descendant of a black American slave, his wedding garments scrupulously stripped of…

Kim Jong-un’s happiness is just a great mini-break away - September 2017 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - September 10th, 2017

At the beginning of the current decade I was often mistaken for the then North Korean dictator-in-waiting Kim Jong-un, which led to an embarrassing incident in a pet shop on Dalston High Road in February 2009. Needless to say, I was unable to convince the Polish lady behind the counter that I was merely looking…

Political turmoil has left humorists with nothing to aim at - July 2017 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - July 16th, 2017

Last summer I wrote a comedy drama script, currently “in development with a major broadcaster”, concerning a charming, confident, clever and machiavellian politician. Named Horace Thompson, he manipulates popular culture to consolidate support for a controversial referendum he narrowly won, intending to further his own self-interest. And he was in the Bullingdon Club. And he…