I’m not answering my phone, in case it’s No 10 offering me a job - July 2022 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - July 10th, 2022

I will always remember where I was when I heard Boris Johnson had resigned. It was 9.05am on Thursday 7 July, I was driving through Stamford Hill. This column had a final deadline of 10am and now I had 55 minutes to rewrite it. The bendy BBC Tory-trumpet Chris Mason broke the news via the…

Tory contempt for the arts means we face a second dark age - July 2022 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - July 3rd, 2022

On Wednesday, Dominic Raab, the Minister for Paddleboarding While Kabul Burns, mocked the Labour deputy leader for attending Glyndebourne while railway workers picketed. Who did Angela Rayner think she was? Pick up your stepladder, get back in your slum and eat your fried offal, peasant. “No opera for you!” Raab even winked at Rayner before…

Look at the Tories – scotch egg all over their faces - December 2020 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - December 6th, 2020

On Wednesday morning, on Times Radio, the terminally bewildered health secretary, Matt Handcock, claimed unchallenged that our imminent departure from the EU meant the Covid vaccine had been approved more quickly. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency quickly clarified we had completed the process using existing provisions of EU law. If the Brexit-Covid government…

Since we’re talking fantasy Brexit deals… - October 2020 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - October 25th, 2020

In 1981, tarnished by a legacy of nuclear embarrassments, the leaky Cumbrian atomic power plant Windscale was rebranded as Sellafield and the problems of public perception simply melted away, like hot uranium seeping into a water table. Likewise, we are no longer about to embrace a similarly contaminated no-deal Brexit. We are instead welcoming a…

What’s the story with Britpop and Covid denial? - September 2020 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - September 20th, 2020

On Monday, the Oasis pop star Noel Gallagher announced his suspicion of masks: “If I get the virus it’s on me, it’s not on anyone else… it’s a piss-take,” declared the People’s Virologist. “There’s no need for it… They’re pointless.” The previous week, in a punctuation-resistant statement Auto-Tuned into near coherence, former Stone Roses singer…

I’m not saying Michael Gove is a bit of an animal… - June 2016 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - June 19th, 2016

The so-called EU Referendum debate on so-called ITV (let us not dignify either by naming them) filled me and all my ABC1 liberal friends with despair. Oh! The humanity!! Drunk on Belgian wine, I watched the Barrier Reef of the Britain I know bleach to nothing in the twin glare of Brexit’s burning certainties and…