Nigel Farage shouldn’t be in the jungle – get him out of there! - November 2023 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - November 26th, 2023

In 2011, Nigel Farage co-chaired the Europe of Freedom and Democracy grouping with Italy’s Francesco Speroni, who described the Norwegian white supremacist mass murderer and unlikely celebrity Top Gear fan Anders Behring Breivik as someone whose “ideas are in defence of western civilisation”. Farage has received £1.5m to appear on ITV’s I’m a Celebrity ……

I’m not sure I feel comfortable pinning a poppy to my cagoule this year - November 2023 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - November 12th, 2023

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…

Will the planet outlive my dying laptop? - November 2023 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - November 5th, 2023

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…

The Tory MP protecting Ipswich, Twix by Twix - October 2023 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - October 29th, 2023

Stop me if I’ve told you this one before, but 20 years ago, a BNP-supporting aunt of mine forwarded me a document, purporting to be a scholarly explanation of why Muslims were inhuman, by a particular academic from a particular university. Even back in the pre-Cambridge Analytica days, I still did a quick fact check,…

In search of strange and sacred sites – the UK’s weirdest walks - October 2023 The Guardian - By Stewart Lee - October 28th, 2023

Two books bestrode my childhood, and made me the man I am: The Magic Bridle, a collection of British and Irish myths retold by the folklorist Forbes Stuart, which ignited my six-year-old imagination in 1974, and Mysterious Britain by Janet and Colin Bord, published two years earlier, and part of a then burgeoning bookseller phenomenon…

Labour’s meat tax is just another Tory lie that we’ve all been forced to swallow - October 2023 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - October 8th, 2023

When I was a younger man, if someone had come up to me in the old Wheatsheaf pub in Camden on a Friday night and said they wanted to tax my meat, I would have embraced the experience with humble gratitude. But how things have changed! Now the last thing anyone wants is to see…