SLEEVE NOTES FOR LEAN LEFT’S 2012 ALBUM, LIVE AT CAFÉ OTO - January 2012 Lean Left Sleevenotes - By Stewart Lee - January 1st, 2012

I first saw The Ex in November 1986, in a pub in Oxford, before Andy Moor joined Terrie Ex on guitar. I liked noise. But The Ex’s noise was about something, a crafted and constructed sequence of intense moments and sustained power; and there were spaces for the band to surprise themselves. On the way…

SLEEVE NOTES FOR JOHN DOWIE’S 2012 CD AN ARC OF HIVES - January 2012 John Dowie Sleeve Notes - By Stewart Lee - January 1st, 2012

I am a stand-up comedian. I am Eighteen years younger than John Dowie. I never saw him perform stand-up. As a teenager, I bought a copy of his book, Hard To Swallow, a collection of his “abandoned comedy routines” illustrated by the underground cartoonist Hunt Emmerson; I had seen him on TV occasionally, doing slots…

A PRESS RELEASE FOR BOOTHBY GRAFFOE’S 4TH ALBUM - January 2012 Boothby Graffoe Sleevenotes - By Stewart Lee - January 1st, 2012

Most stand-ups secretly want to be rock stars, their ambitions thwarted only by their total lack of musical ability. This man is unique amongst comedians, in that he’s a real musician, who has been moonlighting as a funnyman since re-naming himself after a Lincolnshire village sometime during the Thatcher era. Cut from the same English…

It’s Got Bells On - December 2011 BBC Radio 2's Dance Season - December 6th, 2011

I don’t remember when I saw my first Morris dance. I think it was sometime in the early Seventies. My Mum was working, I wasn’t yet at school, and I spent a lot of time with my grand-dad. He’d been, or maybe was still, a rep for Colman’s, the Norfolk based mustard company, who had…

SLEEVE NOTES FOR A FLYING NUN RECORDS SAMPLER, NOV 2011 - November 2011 Flying Nun Sampler - By Stewart Lee - November 1st, 2011

The Eighties is still regarded as something of a wasteland for rock, the first period in which the relentless forward motion that had propelled white boy guitar music from rock and roll, through acid rock and into punk, had run out of steam in a mess of hair metal and anthemic stadium-sized post-punk derivatives. The…

Heard the one about the right-on comics who HATE the funniest man in Britain? - July 2011 The Daily Mail - By Jan Moir - July 19th, 2011

This article has since been removed from the Daily Mail’s own website. Download a PDF of the article here. View Stewart’s riposte to the article, here.