It seems Russell Brand has more in common with Jesus than you’d think - October 2014 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - October 19th, 2014

Last week, at the age of 46, I moved with my family into a home, with a garden and a garage, in the Shropshire countryside. I feel guilty about my privilege, but not as guilty as Russell Brand does about his, which makes me a worse person, I think. In one of the extracts from…

The search for the nation’s identity: my part in Cameron’s odyssey - June 2014 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - June 15th, 2014

On Wednesday evening a high-level spook I had known vaguely at Oxford, a former Etonian and a Bullingdon Club chum of David Cameron’s, rang me up with interesting findings and a resistible offer. “You’ve been following this Birmingham schools thing, Lee?” “Yes,” I replied. “It’s outrageous. No child should have to go to school in…

Sex and drugs? Real rock rebels are into tax-efficient accountancy abuse - May 2014 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - May 18th, 2014

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…

Public art can’t be used for adverts. But my subconscious is up for sale - May 2014 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - May 11th, 2014

Last weekend, the world woke to find Morrisons had projected an image of a cut-price baguette on to the outstretched wings of Antony Gormley’s iconic public artwork The Angel of the North. The stick of bread was the perfect shape to occupy the Angel‘s wingspan, and one wonders what other products Morrisons might have filled…

Why I’m a leading contender for the Great British fruitcake bake off - May 2014 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - May 4th, 2014

As homemade fruitcakes continue to rise in the nation’s ovens, the political and culinary establishments are sinking to even greater depths to smear them. In some Birmingham schools, traditional Christmas cake, the famous fruitcake of English festive celebration since Dickens’s day, has even been banned. But moist fruitcakes composed of dried fruit, flour, margarine, eggs…

The maggots that changed my life (and the future of the Tory party) - March 2014 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - March 23rd, 2014

From 1989 to 1991 I lived in Finsbury Park, decades before it began to show signs of gentrification. I’d get home late from unpaid standup try-out spots, and it was hard to hold down a day job. At the end of my street, outside a hardware shop on Tollington Park, was a contraption so unusual…