I interview Graeme Garden, Bill Oddie & Tim Brooke Taylor at Leicester Square Theatre as part of a DVD extra on a DVD box set of their BBC Catalogue In 1970, the Goodies unleashed their legendary blend of surreal storylines, strikingly topical satire, slapstick and general lunacy on an unsuspecting viewing public. Capturing the irreverent…
I know you do not sign up to this list for my opinions but this has been an important week for comedy.
The time line goes like this;
MONDAY - New BBC DG Tim Davie announces that on Thursday he will make a speech about how the BBC must include diverse viewpoints.
TUESDAY - The Conservatives' newspaper The Daily Telegraph says "BBC insiders" have said Davie wants to crack down on "left wing" comedy, citing Mock The Week, HIGNFY and Nish as examples. This story is picked up, as if it were fact not speculation, by all other right wing papers, and others that should know better, framing a debate in news, on-line and social media about how there is too much 'left wing' comedy entirely on terms already dictated by right wing media and the Conservatives. People who should know better participate in these debates despite the fact there is no hard evidence that Tim Davie intends his crack down on comedy.
THURSDAY - Tim Davie does his actual speech. He praises FLEABAG and THIS COUNTRY and says nothing of a crackdown on comedy. His speech did not contain the points and threats the Telegraph specifically, and right wing media (i.e the media) generally said 'BBC insiders' had told them it did. Who were these 'BBC insiders'?
After the speech Davie does an in-house BBC webcast where he is asked about his crackdown on left-wing comedy. He says, "Reading some of the commentary is ridiculous. Comedy has always been poking at authority. If a particular government is in charge you probably do get a bit more edge against those in power, that’s how it works. And, by the way, I want good satire on the BBC. I like being adventurous." He says he has no idea where the story came from. Let us help him. It came from The Telegraph and The Conservatives, dishonestly fanning the flames of a culture war to distract from the Covid-Brexit government's many failings.
By the time this clarification leaks out to the only media source interested in covering it (Chortle, below) the damage has been done. The deliberate suggestion has been planted, by a client media, that comedy is too left wing and will be clamped down on.
In short. DO NOT BELIEVE WHAT THE RIGHT WING PRESS TELL YOU ABOUT ANYTHING. If they can lie like this about something like comedy, what else are they lying about? Everything, presumably.
There's no war on left-wing comedy, says new BBC boss
But Tim Davie DOES want a wider range of viewpoints on air
New BBC director-general Tim Davie has dismissed ‘nonsense’ and ‘ridiculous’ speculation that he wants to shut down left-wing comedy.
A debate on the Corporation’s comedy output has been raging all week since the Daily Telegraph suggested some satirical shows could be axed if they failed to redress a perceived political bias.
In his first public speech in the job yesterday, Mr Davie – who was once deputy chairman of a local Conservative party in London – did not address the issue.
But in an interview broadcast internally to BBC staff, and obtained by Chortle, he offered reassurances that comics would still be allowed to bash the Conservative government.
However, he did say he wanted to ‘to nurture brilliant writers from all kind of perspectives’ and hear a wider variety of viewpoints - which might suggest allowing more pro-Tory, pro-Brexit gags if he felt they weren’t sufficiently represented on air.
When asked directly about him addressing bias in comedy, Davie said: ‘I’ve no idea where that came from.
‘Reading some of the commentary is ridiculous. Comedy has always been poking at authority. If a particular government is in charge you probably do get a bit more edge against those in power, that’s how it works. And, by the way, I want good satire on the BBC. I like being adventurous.
‘What I do think though, is the same as my framework for overall impartiality. The BBC should not come from a platform from when there’s an assumed point of view. It’s not just about left and right, it’s different people.’
He likened his aims to the publicly stated policy of ensuring there was always at least one woman on panel shows.
‘We didn’t have enough diversity on our panels. We did it [addressed it], it’s brilliant and it adds more flavour,’ he said.
‘I would like a multitude of flavours in our comedy. It’s not about stopping one [side]… that’s just nonsense.’
DEAR ALL I know you do not sign up to this list for my opinions but this has been an important week for comedy. The time line goes like this; MONDAY - New BBC DG Tim Davie announces that on Thursday he will make a speech about how the BBC must include diverse viewpoints. TUESDAY - The Conservatives' newspaper The Daily Telegraph says "BBC insiders" have said Davie wants to crack down on "left wing" comedy, citing Mock The Week, HIGNFY and Nish as examples. This story is picked up, as if it were fact not speculation, by all other right wing papers, and others that should know better, framing a debate in news, on-line and social media about how there is too much 'left wing' comedy entirely on terms already dictated by right wing media and the Conservatives. People who should know better participate in these debates despite the fact there is no hard evidence that Tim Davie intends his crack down on comedy. THURSDAY - Tim Davie does his actual speech. He praises FLEABAG and THIS COUNTRY and says nothing of a crackdown on comedy. His speech did not contain the points and threats the Telegraph specifically, and right wing media (i.e the media) generally said 'BBC insiders' had told them it did. Who were these 'BBC insiders'? After the speech Davie does an in-house BBC webcast where he is asked about his crackdown on left-wing comedy. He says, "Reading some of the commentary is ridiculous. Comedy has always been poking at authority. If a particular government is in charge you probably do get a bit more edge against those in power, that’s how it works. And, by the way, I want good satire on the BBC. I like being adventurous." He says he has no idea where...
With a comedian as political as Stewart Lee, fans could have guessed Brexit and Trump would feature in his latest show, a rolling tour he admitted would evolve between now and next April. In fact, he complained, today's fast changing world makes comedy somewhat difficult to pin down.
So, although both these topics were covered neatly at the beginning of each half in Lee's usual deconstructive s tyle, it was the more offhand material that got the biggest laughs.
A segment that destroyed Russell Howard had many weeping, while continued references to 80s forgotten rockers Deacon Blue were repeatedly hilarious (if archly signposted).
Lee continually joked that four nights at the Dome - especially following the same feat in 2016 - might be too much for some but the love in the room always bubbled under the surface. The show also focused on the disconnected, narcissistic society we live in as a result of technology. At the close, Lee provided an amazing visual 'reveal' that elicited gasps, tying what was at times a ragbag evening together beautifully.
Stewart Lee
2017-02-27T23:31:17+00:00
With a comedian as political as Stewart Lee, fans could have guessed Brexit and Trump would feature in his latest show, a rolling tour he admitted would evolve between now and next April. In fact, he complained, today's fast changing world makes comedy somewhat difficult to pin down. So, although both these topics were covered neatly at the beginning of each half in Lee's usual deconstructive s tyle, it was the more offhand material that got the biggest laughs. A segment that destroyed Russell Howard had many weeping, while continued references to 80s forgotten rockers Deacon Blue were repeatedly hilarious (if archly signposted). Lee continually joked that four nights at the Dome - especially following the same feat in 2016 - might be too much for some but the love in the room always bubbled under the surface. The show also focused on the disconnected, narcissistic society we live in as a result of technology. At the close, Lee provided an amazing visual 'reveal' that elicited gasps, tying what was at times a ragbag evening together beautifully.
Sourcing fresh meat, a cabal of powerful Pygmalions, including Tompkins Square records and Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, declare Michael Chapman not an overlooked English Seventies singer-songwriter, but an innovator in the vein of John Fahey and the American primitive school of tranced-out folk blues instrumentals.
Now he's the subject of a tribute record, Happy Birthday, staffed by famous fans and friends, and has a vinyl noise album due on Moore's label. Most significantly, the double CD Trainsong sees the seventy year old survivor re-record twenty-six principally acoustic, finger-picked numbers from his catalogue, stretching initially simple structures into unknown space, transforming them into intense, modal meditations.
Stewart Lee
2011-01-05T01:57:33+00:00
Sourcing fresh meat, a cabal of powerful Pygmalions, including Tompkins Square records and Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, declare Michael Chapman not an overlooked English Seventies singer-songwriter, but an innovator in the vein of John Fahey and the American primitive school of tranced-out folk blues instrumentals. Now he's the subject of a tribute record, Happy Birthday, staffed by famous fans and friends, and has a vinyl noise album due on Moore's label. Most significantly, the double CD Trainsong sees the seventy year old survivor re-record twenty-six principally acoustic, finger-picked numbers from his catalogue, stretching initially simple structures into unknown space, transforming them into intense, modal meditations.
Martin Simpson’s a generation younger than the Sixties folk revivalists, like Martin Carthy and Bert Jansch, who beat the path he followed.
But, now sixty, he has a unique ability to make traditional tunes from both sides of the Atlantic sound like relatives only recently separated.
Here’s Simpson alone at a dramatically close mic’d acoustic guitar, in Sheffield and Maryland, his burnished Lincolnshire burr bringing back home itinerant cross-cultural hybrids, such as Bob Dylan’s Blind Wille McTell, the unacknowledged descendent of a distant English folk song.
Stewart Lee
2013-07-28T21:39:08+01:00
Martin Simpson’s a generation younger than the Sixties folk revivalists, like Martin Carthy and Bert Jansch, who beat the path he followed. But, now sixty, he has a unique ability to make traditional tunes from both sides of the Atlantic sound like relatives only recently separated. Here’s Simpson alone at a dramatically close mic’d acoustic guitar, in Sheffield and Maryland, his burnished Lincolnshire burr bringing back home itinerant cross-cultural hybrids, such as Bob Dylan’s Blind Wille McTell, the unacknowledged descendent of a distant English folk song.
‘You know those amazing occasions where a significant band’s finally unearthed first demo tape is revealed as better than anything else they ever recorded?’ go the sleeve notes to Stewart Lee’s newly-released Jazz Cellar Tape from 1989. ‘Well, this CD is not like that.’
True, but this small bit of comedy history is a fascinating curio and, despite Lee’s assertion that the set is ‘undeniably poor’, it is occasionally funny, and - more significantly – very revealing about the origins of his penchant for subverting comedy conventions.
This 27-minute set was recorded when Lee was a student of 20 in the Oxford Union’s jazz cellar. As a contemporary, I remember those Sunday-night gigs fondly if patchily. With the naitivity of youth, seeing the Oxford Revue Workshops in this intimate, smoky, low-ceiling venue seemed like belonging to an exciting, secret clique, riding the spirit of alternative comedy which, to us, still seemed fresh.
This recording – made on an old reel-to-reel tape and of the quality you might therefore expect – shows what an easily pleased audience we were. But although the jokes may be patchy there is still an unmistakably impudent, precocious attitude to Lee’s writing.
Twisting the expected formula, he gets some cheap anti-Tory cheers from what looks like a series of ‘knock, knock’ jokes, which he undermines immediately, while the riddle of why a chicken would cross the road is warped into a routine about the persecution of Iraq’s Kurds and a philosophical treatise on the meaning of life. It’s possibly more ambitious than funny, although this is clearly a young man with ideas for comedy. ‘Where have all the proper comedians gone?’ he asks, putting clear water between him and the Jimmy Tarbucks of the world; a disconnect from the mainstream he exploits to this day.
Largely his approach is similar to his contemporary persona so loved by comedy aficionados, if less sophisticated, and without the grumpy weariness of middle age that fits him so well. Talk of pulling women and being a great shag is strange, the supposed irony barely disguising the self-aggrandisement, but his comments on Christianity remain sharp.
Familiar sayings and old wives’ tales are a staple of this act, with Lee applying a superiority and logic to subjects that don’t require much in the way of life experience. Sometimes he tries to have his cake and eat it, for example by doing a deliberately poor piece of observational stand-up about the weather, but with a cheesy wink.
The content has largely weathered the intervening 22-and-a-half years well, although there is the occasional dated references to the likes of acid house (which Lee admits is already not ‘trendy’) and the Queen Mum looking well at 80. And a jibe at the undergraduates of Wadham College also shows that Lee couldn’t entirely raise his comedy scope above parochial student in-jokes.
The CD also includes a reproduction of the original poster advertising the gig (which cost 50p to Union members) and a student newspaper review of ‘Stuart’ Lee, which concludes he ‘might be bound for the host’s job in a comedy club’. And yet he’s still not a regular at Jongleurs...
Stewart Lee
2011-09-05T18:45:08+01:00
‘You know those amazing occasions where a significant band’s finally unearthed first demo tape is revealed as better than anything else they ever recorded?’ go the sleeve notes to Stewart Lee’s newly-released Jazz Cellar Tape from 1989. ‘Well, this CD is not like that.’ True, but this small bit of comedy history is a fascinating curio and, despite Lee’s assertion that the set is ‘undeniably poor’, it is occasionally funny, and - more significantly – very revealing about the origins of his penchant for subverting comedy conventions. This 27-minute set was recorded when Lee was a student of 20 in the Oxford Union’s jazz cellar. As a contemporary, I remember those Sunday-night gigs fondly if patchily. With the naitivity of youth, seeing the Oxford Revue Workshops in this intimate, smoky, low-ceiling venue seemed like belonging to an exciting, secret clique, riding the spirit of alternative comedy which, to us, still seemed fresh. This recording – made on an old reel-to-reel tape and of the quality you might therefore expect – shows what an easily pleased audience we were. But although the jokes may be patchy there is still an unmistakably impudent, precocious attitude to Lee’s writing. Twisting the expected formula, he gets some cheap anti-Tory cheers from what looks like a series of ‘knock, knock’ jokes, which he undermines immediately, while the riddle of why a chicken would cross the road is warped into a routine about the persecution of Iraq’s Kurds and a philosophical treatise on the meaning of life. It’s possibly more ambitious than funny, although this is clearly a young man with ideas for comedy. ‘Where have all the proper comedians gone?’ he asks, putting clear water between him and the Jimmy Tarbucks of the world; a disconnect from the mainstream he exploits to this day. Largely...
Cardiff Comedy mavericks Go Faster Stripe shot the 90s Comedian show in 2006, and it's now available on DVD.
I'm delighted to have the show available and the team worked wonders with limited equipment.
I'll flog these at gigs, or check their website to get them, and please don't bootleg them all over the place.
I NEED THIS.
Stewart Lee
2017-01-21T19:50:53+00:00
Cardiff Comedy mavericks Go Faster Stripe shot the 90s Comedian show in 2006, and it's now available on DVD. I'm delighted to have the show available and the team worked wonders with limited equipment. I'll flog these at gigs, or check their website to get them, and please don't bootleg them all over the place. I NEED THIS.
Farina's early nineties post-rock scene contemporaries Codeine and Bitch Magnet are hauling gloriously their brontosaurus bodies over the comeback coals, but Farina's band Karate always stood out from the tranquilised hardcore crowd, with their diminished sevenths and jazzy licks. Today he's a born again acoustic troubadour, laying rewarding mid-west poetry professor verbiage over finger-picked traditional sounding tunes, not unlike that other bookish math rock graduate, David Grubbs.
Prick Up Your Ears describes small town soldiers departing for Iraq with commendable sobriety, in a folksy idiom that emphasises the their timeless circumstance.
Stewart Lee
2012-03-04T19:30:43+00:00
Farina's early nineties post-rock scene contemporaries Codeine and Bitch Magnet are hauling gloriously their brontosaurus bodies over the comeback coals, but Farina's band Karate always stood out from the tranquilised hardcore crowd, with their diminished sevenths and jazzy licks. Today he's a born again acoustic troubadour, laying rewarding mid-west poetry professor verbiage over finger-picked traditional sounding tunes, not unlike that other bookish math rock graduate, David Grubbs. Prick Up Your Ears describes small town soldiers departing for Iraq with commendable sobriety, in a folksy idiom that emphasises the their timeless circumstance.
With Stewart Lee's show (Four stars, Underbelly, 8.40pm), the satirical edge cuts in a variety of directions.
Although he starts with 9/11, a date he insists on calling November 9 — "Reclaim the date from American imperialism" — Lee slides effortlessly between attacks on America, Scotland, himself and even the idea of stand-up itself. His greatest bile is reserved for Ben Elton, and he manages to get the audience to offer more praise for Osama bin Laden than for Elton. Top joke, however, was his riff on William Wallace's invention of Pez sweets with collectable heads, including one set of pretenders to the throne of Edward II. The room giggled uncontrollably like schoolchildren hearing their teacher fart.
Superb.
Stewart Lee
2004-08-01T18:28:00+01:00
With Stewart Lee's show (Four stars, Underbelly, 8.40pm), the satirical edge cuts in a variety of directions. Although he starts with 9/11, a date he insists on calling November 9 — "Reclaim the date from American imperialism" — Lee slides effortlessly between attacks on America, Scotland, himself and even the idea of stand-up itself. His greatest bile is reserved for Ben Elton, and he manages to get the audience to offer more praise for Osama bin Laden than for Elton. Top joke, however, was his riff on William Wallace's invention of Pez sweets with collectable heads, including one set of pretenders to the throne of Edward II. The room giggled uncontrollably like schoolchildren hearing their teacher fart. Superb.
Stewart Lee has been called the comedian's comedian - pushing the boundaries of comedy with clever word play, rather than cheap shock tactics. He's also been described as 'a slime pit of bitterness', and coming from the Daily Mail, exceeding its bile takes some beating.
Of course his politics are widely opposed to the Mail, and in this show there is plenty of political swiping. There are some obvious jokes about Thatcher, which go off on a tangent leading to a crude joke about anal sex.
It makes you want to turn into the 45-year-old, dad-of-two, which Lee is, and say, 'It's not clever and it's not funny,' but really I just thought, 'Aren't you better than this?'
Thankfully, the rest of the show does get better than this. There are the obvious laughs, having a pop at our Scouse neighbours, 'If only there was a way for Liverpudlians to make profit out of talking about the past in a whiney voice', ridiculing the distinction between Manchester and Salford when everyone outside sees them as one and the same, and pulling apart the routines of more mainstream comedians like Peter Kay and Jimmy Carr - although that said, his Jimmy Carr face is unexpectedly hilarious.
But next to this are a series of more inventive ideas drawn out to surreal lengths with painstaking repetition. Lee takes UKIPs policy on immigration to its extreme by leading us back to the first amphibians stepping out of the water, then back further to the Big Bang, all followed by UKIPs deputy leader, Paul Nuttal's repetitive remarks on immigration, which sound increasingly absurd as the joke progresses.
Lee's obscure take on intolerance then takes a different twist as he mocks both a small-minded cabbie and his own liberal need for political correctness, by pretending he has both a black wife and a gay wife, striking up a scenario where these purposefully stereotyped characters meet with his equally stereotyped Irish wife.
In all it's a mixed bag, but there are enough gems in there to keep him on top, and, much as he might fight it, filling the 1,000-plus seater Lowry for two nights must surely mean that Lee's humour, thanks to TV success, has won over the mainstream.
Stewart Lee
2013-10-05T18:20:35+01:00
Stewart Lee has been called the comedian's comedian - pushing the boundaries of comedy with clever word play, rather than cheap shock tactics. He's also been described as 'a slime pit of bitterness', and coming from the Daily Mail, exceeding its bile takes some beating. Of course his politics are widely opposed to the Mail, and in this show there is plenty of political swiping. There are some obvious jokes about Thatcher, which go off on a tangent leading to a crude joke about anal sex. It makes you want to turn into the 45-year-old, dad-of-two, which Lee is, and say, 'It's not clever and it's not funny,' but really I just thought, 'Aren't you better than this?' Thankfully, the rest of the show does get better than this. There are the obvious laughs, having a pop at our Scouse neighbours, 'If only there was a way for Liverpudlians to make profit out of talking about the past in a whiney voice', ridiculing the distinction between Manchester and Salford when everyone outside sees them as one and the same, and pulling apart the routines of more mainstream comedians like Peter Kay and Jimmy Carr - although that said, his Jimmy Carr face is unexpectedly hilarious. But next to this are a series of more inventive ideas drawn out to surreal lengths with painstaking repetition. Lee takes UKIPs policy on immigration to its extreme by leading us back to the first amphibians stepping out of the water, then back further to the Big Bang, all followed by UKIPs deputy leader, Paul Nuttal's repetitive remarks on immigration, which sound increasingly absurd as the joke progresses. Lee's obscure take on intolerance then takes a different twist as he mocks both a small-minded cabbie and his own liberal need for political correctness, by pretending...
IF YOU’VE not heard anything from Stewart Lee since his 90’s television work, you might be surprised to learn his recent comedy is blasphemous.
That’s according to fundamentalist Christians at least, who did not enjoy his ‘Jerry Springer: The Opera’.
The show depicted American chatshow host Springer descending into hell and Jesus, Satan, the Virgin Mary and God appearing as his guests.
The group Christian Voice, which advocates “national repentance” through prayer, tried to get him, the BBC and the show’s producers prosecuted for blasphemy.
“The court threw out the charge on the grounds it’s not 1508,” is one of Lee’s jokes about it.
When the show toured the UK, Christian Voice members followed it to sing hymns in protest outside venues and distributed leaflets saying it was blasphemous.
The show is no longer being performed and Lee joked: “No one will touch it. It (the protests) is the reason I’m not a millionaire.”
He does not regret making the show or the anger caused but says he has started to take what he says more seriously, twenty years after first doing stand-up.
He started doing comedy while he was an undergraduate at Oxford University.
He is married with a son and now wants what he says to be more serious about what he jokes about.
His new show, which is coming to the Camberley Theatre on October 21, is called If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One.
The show’s title comes from coffee chains promise written on its cups: “If you would like a milder coffee, please ask for one”.
Lee told the News & Mail he started writing the show after Costa Coffee refused him a free drink because the ticks on his loyalty card were in the wrong place.
He said: “I was watching an interview with Frankie Boyle (a comedian best known for his Mock the Week appearances), who said people shouldn’t be comedians when they’re over 40 because they’re not angry about anything anymore.
“I just found it funny, here I was writing about how angry I was at Costa Coffee for not giving me a free coffee.”
But his new outlook will not mean a change to his deadpan style.
Every comedian sticks quotes from favourable reviews and Lee has no shortage of them from, among others, Ricky Gervais. But one he preferred to use is from the Birmingham Sunday Mercury, the paper of his hometown.
The quote is: “His whole tone is one of complete, smug condescension.”
Lee said this was help “curate the audience” and warn people that his humour may not be for everyone.
For all the controversy of the Jerry Springer show, Lee’s career is on the rise again.
He returned to television earlier this year with his own six-part series Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, where he told jokes on themes from political correctness to celebrities’ books.
He wrote a novel in 2001, the Perfect Fool, and is now writing a book about his last three shows and how the ideas came to him.
“It should be out by spring. I’m hoping it’ll be quite academic,” he said. “But still funny.”
‘If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One’ is at the Camberley Theatre on October 21 at 8pm.
IF YOU’VE not heard anything from Stewart Lee since his 90’s television work, you might be surprised to learn his recent comedy is blasphemous. That’s according to fundamentalist Christians at least, who did not enjoy his ‘Jerry Springer: The Opera’. The show depicted American chatshow host Springer descending into hell and Jesus, Satan, the Virgin Mary and God appearing as his guests. The group Christian Voice, which advocates “national repentance” through prayer, tried to get him, the BBC and the show’s producers prosecuted for blasphemy. “The court threw out the charge on the grounds it’s not 1508,” is one of Lee’s jokes about it. When the show toured the UK, Christian Voice members followed it to sing hymns in protest outside venues and distributed leaflets saying it was blasphemous. The show is no longer being performed and Lee joked: “No one will touch it. It (the protests) is the reason I’m not a millionaire.” He does not regret making the show or the anger caused but says he has started to take what he says more seriously, twenty years after first doing stand-up. He started doing comedy while he was an undergraduate at Oxford University. He is married with a son and now wants what he says to be more serious about what he jokes about. His new show, which is coming to the Camberley Theatre on October 21, is called If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One. The show’s title comes from coffee chains promise written on its cups: “If you would like a milder coffee, please ask for one”. Lee told the News & Mail he started writing the show after Costa Coffee refused him a free drink because the ticks on his loyalty card were in the wrong place. He said: “I was watching...
The faithful gun dog guitarist Kid Congo Powers spent his early years loping alongside various legends of the blues punk aristocracy, retrieving wounded rock and roll riffs for The Cramps, Gun Club, and Nick Cave.
But his third album with The Pink Monkeybirds buffs the black leather with bright shards of Fifties sci-fi sonics.
Echoed vocals and analogue keyboards blend with brothel creeper licks and cocktail lounge twangs to conjure a Tiki bar vision of a Tupperware future.
Stewart Lee
2013-08-11T20:38:07+01:00
The faithful gun dog guitarist Kid Congo Powers spent his early years loping alongside various legends of the blues punk aristocracy, retrieving wounded rock and roll riffs for The Cramps, Gun Club, and Nick Cave. But his third album with The Pink Monkeybirds buffs the black leather with bright shards of Fifties sci-fi sonics. Echoed vocals and analogue keyboards blend with brothel creeper licks and cocktail lounge twangs to conjure a Tiki bar vision of a Tupperware future.
Based loosely on Caspar David Friedrich’s painting Wanderer Above a Sea Fog, Telford’s Stewart Lee took the sold out audience on a two hour seemingly off topic tirade including Brexit, Trump and the fact that punters bringing their friends along to the show spoilt it’s reception. There’s also some real material in amongst it relating to our place in a digital world, Lee’s approach to DVD re-sales and his hatred of the under 40’s.
His deadpan and defensive approach allows Lee to seamlessly flick between scripted material and off the cuff topics, joined on stage by piles of DVD’s that become part of the show at various points. The fact that Lee is no longer on our screens as part of his BBC Comedy Vehicle series has seemingly given him the time to craft and perfect a show for the live environment, that works on a variety of levels both in terms of intellect and comedy.
On the hottest day of the year so far, Lee included various local references whilst analysing his audience in terms of social status and their decisions during the Brexit vote. He also took the time to air his feelings on various television comics both in terms of their fly away success and unimaginative material.
And it’s with this that you appreciate the talent and thought that has gone into this latest tour, through Lee’s ability to stand out from the crowd and remain individual whilst filling rooms the size of the Wolverhampton Grand.
Stewart Lee will certainly be welcomed back into the city with open arms once the next tour comes around.
Stewart Lee
2017-06-22T23:26:33+01:00
Based loosely on Caspar David Friedrich’s painting Wanderer Above a Sea Fog, Telford’s Stewart Lee took the sold out audience on a two hour seemingly off topic tirade including Brexit, Trump and the fact that punters bringing their friends along to the show spoilt it’s reception. There’s also some real material in amongst it relating to our place in a digital world, Lee’s approach to DVD re-sales and his hatred of the under 40’s. His deadpan and defensive approach allows Lee to seamlessly flick between scripted material and off the cuff topics, joined on stage by piles of DVD’s that become part of the show at various points. The fact that Lee is no longer on our screens as part of his BBC Comedy Vehicle series has seemingly given him the time to craft and perfect a show for the live environment, that works on a variety of levels both in terms of intellect and comedy. On the hottest day of the year so far, Lee included various local references whilst analysing his audience in terms of social status and their decisions during the Brexit vote. He also took the time to air his feelings on various television comics both in terms of their fly away success and unimaginative material. And it’s with this that you appreciate the talent and thought that has gone into this latest tour, through Lee’s ability to stand out from the crowd and remain individual whilst filling rooms the size of the Wolverhampton Grand. Stewart Lee will certainly be welcomed back into the city with open arms once the next tour comes around.
During the Edinburgh Fringe Festival a few years ago a cab driver asked me who my favourite stand-ups were. I mentioned Billy Connolly amongst the usual international top ten. The cab driver explained that he hated Billy Connolly because he was ‘too English.’ I didn’t know what this meant exactly. Was it perhaps that Connolly had given money away to charity, rarely ate shortbread, and was no longer an alcoholic? Whatever, I understood being ‘too English’ was not a good thing. Nevertheless, ‘too English’ or not, Connolly remains one of my favourite comics, though as stand up comedian myself, and also as the son of a Scottish man I have never met, perhaps I see in Connolly some kind of idealised father figure, and would forgive him anything. Either way, even in the light of recent events, we Scotts should be proud of Connolly and rally around him in his hour of need.
If the tabloids are to be believed, in the last week Connolly has committed an even worse crime than being ‘too English’. Two inopportune comments about the Iraq hostage Ken Bigley have incurred the wrath of both his audience and a far more important group, namely journalists and opinion formers who weren’t actually at the Hammersmith Apollo gig where the outrage occurred. The assumed funniness or non-funniness of Connolly’s comments is of course, further complicated by the subsequent unconfirmed reports of the death of Ken Bigley himself, adding an especially bleak coda to a previously not especially significant story that would perhaps otherwise have blown over. Remember, it is not Billy Connolly’s fault that Ken Bigley may be dead. Don’t make The Big Yin the receptacle for your misplaced anger. Given that we went into Iraq in defiance of UN regulations, international opinion and common sense, to transfer blame to a stand-up comedian whilst Blair and Bush remain in power , even when the WMD excuse has been entirely discredited and the subsequent liberation of Iraq so terribly mismanaged, is patently absurd. When writing comedy about real events, whether serious or trivial, there is an inherent risk of those same events overtaking you.
In 1999 my one time double-act partner Richard Herring and I filmed a dozen sketches for BBC2 in which Rod Hull kept suffering fatal accidents due to having a false arm permanently wrapped around his Emu puppet. Three days before the first one was due to be broadcast Rod Hull fell off a roof whilst adjusting a TV aerial and died. Luckily we had time to re-edit the show to avoid sullying the memory of a comedian we both greatly admired and looking like we were chasing an adolescent notion of deliberate bad taste, but it was a close thing. Admittedly, the likelihood of Ken Bigley being killed is more significant than Rod Hull’s sudden and unexpected expiry, but it is important not to judge Connolly’s comments of last week in the light of this week’s news. Before pontificating on the rights and wrongs of what Connolly may or may not have said, let’s remember what a special comedy case Scotland’s best stand-up comedian actually is.
Many comedians feign spontaneity. The actor, comedian and transvestite Eddie Izzard is a master of it, and one cannot help but be impressed by the way he makes tried and tested material sound as if it had literally just occurred to him. Personally, I like prepared material and have a huge admiration for the beautifully constructed routines of Victoria Wood, Reginald D Hunter or Glasgow’s own Arnold Brown. But I also love seeing comics caught in the actual act of creation, and Connolly is one a very small sub-section of stand-ups, including Ross Noble and Johnny Vegas, who will actually go on stage with no specific idea of what they are about to do. I doubt any of the above even own a pencil, let alone a word processor. But this often ill-prepared spontaneity is both Connolly’s major strength, in that you genuinely feel caught in a once in a lifetime experience when watching him, and his major weakness, in that his stand-up shows are all far too long, lack any shape or structure and, as with the Ken Bigley lines, sometimes charge headlong into complex areas that might have required more preparation.
Apparently, the Bigley material was a bit Connolly had been toying with on previous nights during his London run. Whenever I am working up a new routine, especially if it involves controversial subjects, I try it out in small venues, within the context of new material nights. I have a piece at the moment wherein I hold the crisp advertiser and footballer Gary Linneaker accountable for the deaths of hundreds of obese children, and chased the idea around from many directions before it settled into an acceptable shape that drew disgust and laughs in equal measure, rather than just appalling everyone. But as a relative unknown with a sustainable and small cult following I have the luxury of anonymity denied to Billy Connolly. Nothing I say will make the news. Nevertheless, I don’t believe that the literally thousands of fabulous hours of stand-up Connolly has generated out of thin air are compromised or undermined by this one apparent error. And arguably, the Bigley lines were not an error at all, but actually an essential part of what comedy is for.
There are jokes to be made about the Ken Bigley situation. The sickest, stupidest and most inexcusable ones are already being made by you, the public, privately, to each other, drunk, in bars, or via emails at work, whilst you simultaneously maintain a high moral tone in judging a professional comic’s attempt to cover the same ground in a more intelligent and responsible fashion. And you know it. Cast the first stone, I dare you. The best Ken Bigley jokes, like Chris Morris’ Brass Eye paedophilia special, tell us something about our own hypocrisy and that of the newsgathering services we put our trust in. I believe that Connolly’s lines, as reported in the press, allude to both these areas. In opining, “Perhaps I shouldn't be saying this ... aren't you the same as me, don't you wish they would just get on with it?", Connolly is referencing our inability to stick with a story, and the media’s self-sustaining interest in spinning one out. Afghanistan is still a wreck but we rarely see it reported anymore. It’s old, boring news. And global tragedies that unfold over years, rather than days, suffer a lack of public interest that aid-workers and fund-raisers identify with the phrase, ‘compassion fatigue’. The line, “What is it with him and that young Asian wife?", I believe, deliberately addresses the fact that whenever we see an elderly British businessman on TV with a young Asian woman it’s usually in the context of a story about mail order brides. This isn’t to suggest that the Bigleys’ marriage itself was anything but loving and genuine, but at least let us admit that an image our inherent racist suppositions have made us suspicious of is currently being represented to us as the emotive, human interest angle in a bigger story.
Of course, Bigley’s family, Connolly’s audience and the press have every right to be upset by these lines, but Connolly has every right to say them. I directed Richard Thomas’ Olivier-award winning, blasphemy-musical Jerry Springer The Opera, which was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2002. At the moment, Las Vegas hotels want to stage it but are caught in an unprecedented legal loop. After Linda Rondstadt criticised the Bush administration onstage in Vegas earlier this year to some audience disapproval, casino owners are seeking to indemnify themselves against the responsibility for showcasing acts their customers may be offended by. Is this reactionary American cowardice a mood you want the UK to be engulfed by? Inevitably, it ultimately appears challenging work won’t get shown. There at least appears perhaps to be some righteous moral anger behind Connolly’s comments, and an intelligence in identifying a danger area.
You don’t have to be a student of comedy to realise that if the same lines had been said by the nation’s favourite Ricky Gervais, in the character of David Brent, with a small posse of office workers looking disapproving in the rear of the shot, they would have been consumed and analysed in an entirely different way. In The Office, Gervais’ David Brent character is a pantomime burlesque of the unacceptable in all of us, but we appreciate that it is a character. To his credit, Connolly didn’t gloss the lines, put them in inverted commas, wear a costume in order to deliver them, or diffuse them with the dramatic conceit of having some authority figure on stage to condemn him. He merely offers them up for our consideration, and in so doing credits us, wrongly it might now appear, with intelligence, judgement and some sense of irony.
But to get to bogged down in justifying Connolly’s lines morally and intellectually is to miss a bigger point. Namely, should comedy need to be morally and intellectually justified anyway? What Connolly did at Hammersmith, and did brilliantly, was to say exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time. He has a genius for inappropriate behaviour. It’s not such a long journey from what journalists are already calling Bigley-gate, back to Connolly’s 1975 Parkinson appearance when he joked about a Glaswegian man burying his wife with her bum sticking out of the earth so that he would have somewhere to park his bike. Parkinson wept. My mum wet her pants. And, the stirling work of The Beatles and Monty Python notwithstanding, it was finally clear that the 1950’s were at last over. It is moments like this that bring the stand-up comedian close to the status of the Holy Fool.
In the year 2000 I finally brought a mild obsession with Native American clowns to a close, having stayed on the Hopi reservation in Arizona and seen the pueblos and plazas where they would have performed. I’d been researching a novel set in the region but became sidelined for two years by a fascination with the pueblo clowns, part holy-men, part fools. Soon after, I gave up stand-up for three years due in part, though not exclusively, to anxieties about my own role raised by my reading. The Hopi clown’s function was to manufacture inappropriate behaviour. The clowns would spend months studying the social tensions of their pueblo before, on special feast days, exploding them with carefully considered transgressive acts - simulated sexual assaults, absurd interruptions to sacred ceremonials, parodies of their oppressors’ Christian services, incoherent reinterpretations of the life of Christ, and obscene scatological acts. The American army officer John G Bourke’s 1881 pamphlet The Urine Dance Of The Zuni Indians Of New Mexico was one of many texts that led to the invading powers’ active suppression of the pagan comedians of the pueblos, driving the clowns literally underground. Likewise, in 1975 Connolly, who had previously urinated on stage whilst dressed as The Pope, was escorted to a Belfast theatre by armed policemen. And now he’s under siege once more. But look at the Native American model. In those close-knit communities, perched on the high mesas, the pueblo clowns pushed at the limits of socially acceptable behaviour and showed the people, for better or worse, what lay beyond. Great comedy can act as both a social barometer, and a social pressure valve. Connolly, more than any other performer in recent months, has shown that.
Our sympathies must go out to Ken Bigley’s family. But we must also back Billy. Increasingly, opinions are manufactured and distributed by the same giant media machine, broadcasters like Fox are in bed with the Bush administration and the BBC ran scared from the might of the Blair government. On some small level, people like Billy Connolly stick a spanner in the spokes and, just for a moment, make us aware of the mechanism. Nowadays we need him more than ever. Support your local wiseman.
Stewart Lee
2004-10-01T18:14:05+01:00
During the Edinburgh Fringe Festival a few years ago a cab driver asked me who my favourite stand-ups were. I mentioned Billy Connolly amongst the usual international top ten. The cab driver explained that he hated Billy Connolly because he was ‘too English.’ I didn’t know what this meant exactly. Was it perhaps that Connolly had given money away to charity, rarely ate shortbread, and was no longer an alcoholic? Whatever, I understood being ‘too English’ was not a good thing. Nevertheless, ‘too English’ or not, Connolly remains one of my favourite comics, though as stand up comedian myself, and also as the son of a Scottish man I have never met, perhaps I see in Connolly some kind of idealised father figure, and would forgive him anything. Either way, even in the light of recent events, we Scotts should be proud of Connolly and rally around him in his hour of need. If the tabloids are to be believed, in the last week Connolly has committed an even worse crime than being ‘too English’. Two inopportune comments about the Iraq hostage Ken Bigley have incurred the wrath of both his audience and a far more important group, namely journalists and opinion formers who weren’t actually at the Hammersmith Apollo gig where the outrage occurred. The assumed funniness or non-funniness of Connolly’s comments is of course, further complicated by the subsequent unconfirmed reports of the death of Ken Bigley himself, adding an especially bleak coda to a previously not especially significant story that would perhaps otherwise have blown over. Remember, it is not Billy Connolly’s fault that Ken Bigley may be dead. Don’t make The Big Yin the receptacle for your misplaced anger. Given that we went into Iraq in defiance of UN regulations, international opinion and common sense, to...
I hope you are all well. I had a great summer of weird music and Welsh mountains, but I have been a bit ill with covid or something and had to cancel some warm-ups, so sorry of that affected your plans. I went into a bad acid world of wet cement and sat still for days staring at Italian ‘70s cinema. I ate only sausages, I think because Keir Starmer mentioned them in a speech which reminded me how much I love them, and that I don’t eat them enough, so well done Sir Keir.
One of my cats is really pissing me off as he will never let me catch him for flea and worm treatment, but to be fair he was a rescue kitten and his siblings were pretty much all killed by foxes so he is jumpy. My other cat was found abandoned in a box on a busy road, but you wouldn’t know it as he is cool. It makes you think about nature and nurture, as does the book Who’s The Boy With The Lovely Hair? by Jakko M Jakszyk, who I am interviewing in London in November. We are all dust in the wind.
In September I had a great night with the American gentleman musician Steve Wynn, of Dream Syndicate, and his partner the drummer Linda Pitmon, when I hosted an event for Steve’s new book I Wouldn’t Say It If It Wasn’t True. The book reminded me how I was shaped by the things I was sold on as a teenager, how lucky I was that one of them was Steve’s work, and what a quiet inspiration his art and attitude has been for four decades.
In August, I realised I was much blinder than I thought and got some new glasses for reading which has changed my life and pushed me back into books again with glee. The newfound funnelling of information will hopefully bleed out on the stage, as I am struggling more than usual with the new show, as you will see. Now I am blind, deaf, and with a heart condition. I don’t ever need to see a Samuel Beckett play again.
“The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of farts.”
1) VOTE IN THE NATIONAL TRUST A G M
This may seem a strange start to a comedian’s newsletter, but just because the government has changed ongoing attempts by sinister organisations and individuals to infiltrate and influence our cultural and educational institutions have not ended. Every year a mysteriously funded, Tufton St associated astroturfed, fake grass roots pressure group called, plausibly, Restore Trust tries to get its candidates onto the board of the National Trust. Their previous candidates have included the ‘Reverend’ Stephen Green, the homophobic far right evangelical who attempted to close down Jerry Springer The Opera. The group enjoys the support of Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg and benefits from sympathetic, if often inaccurate and legally actionable, pieces in The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail etc.
If Restore get control of board of the National Trust they could free up – for God knows what use – land and property and artwork that has been held in trust on our behalf since the 19th c. We don’t know exactly what they want because, typically of Tufton St afiliated groups, they won’t say who funds them.
So if you are a National Trust member you MUST VOTE for the National Trust’s recommended candidates by Nov 2nd (online below), and of you are not maybe join and vote to protect our environment, our inheritance and our history from those who would repurpose such things for their own financial and political ends. You’ve seen what they did to the BBC.
Do you agree with the high keening complaints of Feargal ‘Teenage Kicks’ Sharkey that British seas and rivers should be shit-free, so we can swim and so living things can live, and that the private companies that have profiteered from them should pay up and clean up, or pack up and clear off? Then go on the march for clean water – it’s a basic right! Make Keir Sausages Starmer hear the song of the sea!
3) AN EVENING W JAKKO JAKSZYK, WEST HAMPSTEAD ARTS, OCT 11TH
West Hampstead Arts Club - 32 Mill Lane, London, NW6 1NR Doors 7.30pm | 8.30pm start Limited tickets available to purchase from here
Stewart Lee is to host An evening with Jakko Jakszyk, that celebrates the release of Jakko’s new memoir - ‘Who’s The Boy With The Lovely Hair? The Unlikely Memoir of Jakko M Jakszyk’. Jakko is best known as lead singer and guitarist for the founding fathers of progressive rock, King Crimson, since 2013. Jakko...“I’m a huge admirer of Stewart, so I’m thrilled he’s agreed to be part of this evening. Indeed he once wrote of my one man show in Edinburgh, that I should ‘stop wanking on about being an orphan like a loser’ So he’s clearly the right man for the job!” In his new memoir - ‘Who’s The Boy With The Lovely Hair? The Unlikely Memoir of Jakko M Jakszyk’ Jakko tells the story of his life, from finding and meeting his birth mother and self-proclaimed ‘white supremacist’ step-siblings, to encounters with Michael Jackson, Kate Bush, Cliff Richard, Jack Charlton, Audrey Hepburn, the Dalai Lama and Millwall Football Club’s dodgy director Reg Burr. It is about how his journey to discover his family allowed him to reflect on who he could have been had he not been given away at birth. Pre-order ‘Who’s The Boy With The Lovely Hair? The Unlikely Memoir of Jakko M Jakszyk’ here
4) SAMHAIN RITUAL, EARTH, HACKNEY, LONDON OCT 29TH
Weird Walk magazine presents Stewart Lee introducing wyrd musicians headlined by Daisy Rickman, 6pm Earth, Hackney, London. Tickets: https://thesamhainritual.eventbrite.com There may be Were-action, costume pending.
5) TALES OF THE WEIRD BRITISH LIBRARY NOV 2ND
I’m hosting an event with the novelists Daisy Johnson and Andrew Michael Hurley as part of this folk-horror lit fest at the British Library on Nov 2nd
Rob Curry and Tim Pleister (Way Of The Morris, The Ballad of Shirley Collins) are in the process of making a charming film about a day in the life of the enduring septuagenarian British legend of psychedelia Nick Saloman, of the group Bevis Frond, Little Eden, which may or may not be finished.
I will be hosting a screening, and the group will play a rare acoustic set, on Sunday Nov 3rd at 5pm at the Rio Dalston in London. There is also another screening and acoustic set, but without me kakking on, the next day in Brighton at the Duke of York’s cinema at 6.15pm
7) SO WATT! LONDON JAZZ FESTIVAL FILM SHOW NOV 16TH
So Watt: Jazz and Improvisation on British TV Jazz on Screen Sat 16 Nov 2024, 14:30, BARBICAN, LONDON Cinema 2. Diving into the British TV archives of the 70s!
Stewart Lee (Host): Lee’s passion for the genre ensures a thoughtful exploration of the themes and historical context behind these films.
Maggie Nicols (Special Guest): Celebrated jazz vocalist and improviser Nicols has been a prominent figure in the British jazz scene for decades.
Ian Greaves (Co-Curator) is a writer and researcher whose books include edited collections of the work of Dennis Potter, Jonathan Miller and Ivor Cutler.
Open Door: Musicians' Action Group (1974) is introduced by the inimitable Spike Milligan and features rare footage of The Tony Oxley Unit, Stan Tracey, Norma Winstone and Maggie Nicols. Aquarius: Sounds Amazing (1975) features saxophonist Evan Parker, percussionist Paul Lytton, Max Eastley, David Toop, and Hugh Davies. There will also be the earliest known footage of Derek Bailey performing for Omnibus (1973). And Richard Williams speaking to Ornette Coleman on an early edition of The Old Grey Whistle Test (1972).
Michael Cumming’s Oxide Ghosts, a blurred documentary about Chris Morris’ Brass Eye, is on the road again. Michael and I are both appearing at the 21st Nov event in Finsbury Park, London. Other dates, and other guests, are available
"Reviewing a new Stewart Lee show is the easiest work in the world if your audience already knows who Lee is and what he does. Then you just stand by the side of the road, maybe dressed in the uniform of the typical Stewart Lee fan (all London media-hipster-type denim waistcoat and caramel twill rollups, topped with a herringbone baker boy) and you point the traveller in the right direction (Basic Leenow streaming on Sky Comedy until 24th August).You can also reassure them and say it’s "more of the usual" and, in that smug way that all true fans of Lee are said to display, give them a knowing wink and say it’s fearsome stuff and blisteringly good.
But if your audience doesn’t know Lee, then the work becomes more difficult...
You begin by mumbling "Lee is kind of like... but nothing like..."
Daniel Kitson and Simon Munnery are widely cited as his main similarities but it’s also Tony Hancock’s pathos with a dash of Steve Martin’s eclectic brilliance; the misanthropy of George Carlin with a hint of Don Rickles willingness to jump off the stage and pick a fight. Then again, it’s nothing like that. Lee is uniquely Lee; the beats are familiar but the paths taken on his long rambles are entirely his own.
Basic Lee is Lee’s attempt to return to pure standup after some higher concept (and more expensive) shows, including his last (Snowflake/Tornado) which involved a large shark’s head. He presents an argument about the evolving nature of standup comedy, starting with the oldest material he’d written, and working his way to the present day. But that’s not really "the show".
Skim the surface and you might describe the show as a series of encounters between Lee and his audience. What you don’t get are jokes or punchlines, or, certainly, not in the traditional sense. Jokes are there but delivered as if through a meat grinder. It’s up to you to pick the bones from the gristle.
The fun is in the asides, the digressions, and the continual baiting of the audience. "It’s like jazz," says Lee at one point, adopting the voice of those insufferable types who constantly whine on about how watching Stewart Lee is like listening to jazz.
But it is like listening to jazz. He plays with motifs and form, and then, just in case you missed the influence, riffs on the history of jazz. We should only be thankful that he doesn’t break out a trombone and give us a 20-minute exploration of the Phrygian Minor scale (maybe on his next tour when he promises to adopt a Wolfman mask).
Gary Winogrand, the great(est) American street photographer, once said, "I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed". With Lee, you sense he’s performing material to see what it looks like when performed as standup. He constantly talks about himself doing standup; reminding us thatThe Timesonce described him as "the world’s greatest living stand-up comedian". He talks about the role he’s played in popularising long-form stand-up and delivers a particularly biting (but fair) verdict on Phoebe Waller Bridge’s breaking of the fourth wall inFleabag. Yet Lee draws back how insufferably egotistical this would be by leaning into the insufferable character he’s playing.
This gives rise to the tension underlying the drama on stage; that of an artist trying to create art inside a genre unaccustomed to art and against an audience hostile to the entire venture. It’s tightly crafted, even as it often feels like it’s falling apart. At one point, he liberally takes the old Pagliacci joke, made most famous by its appearance in Alan Moore’sWatchman, and offers it as his own. It’s theft but I’m constantly reminded of Lewis Hyde’s seminal book on the nature of disruptive imagination,Trickster Makes This World. "Trickster isn’t a run-of-the mill liar and thief. When he lies and steals, it isn’t so much to get away with something or get rich as to disturb the established categories of truth and property and, by so doing, open the road to possible new worlds."
At which point, I can hear Lee’s voice pointing out that only "another monotonous, passive-aggressive man" would reference a little-known book on anthropology to recommend a standup special.
But that’s just it. To love Lee’s work is to loathe yourself for enjoying comedy pulled apart so you can see how it’s done. I am that monotonous passive-aggressive man. Why the hell can’t I just enjoy jokes? Why can’t I just go see Tim Vine, like everybody else?
I saw "Basic Lee" four times on tour, proving (as if this needs proof) that I am that insufferable bore. I can explain why each one was so very different. I first saw it at the start of the run, in the Leicester Square Theatre in Soho. Lee had just broken his foot and hobbled around the stage with a large protective boot on his foot. He kept wincing in pain, which lent the show pathos. That night he thanked the audience for helping make it the best show of the run (to that point). I saw it again once again in Salford, and twice in Liverpool, including the show that Lee would claim to have been his worst.
From my place in the audience, ranging from the front row to almost the back row, the standard never dipped. Some nights, Lee extemporised more than he would on other nights, but it was never easy to spot which bits were new. "That bit normally doesn’t get a laugh," he’ll say, though, of course, that bit always got a laugh.
The version ofBasic Leenow showing on Sky Comedy is perhaps the purest distillation of the run’s material. It also adopts a few of his familiar tricks you might know from his TV series and other specials, especially the commentary he addresses straight to camera. It’s another of the things he does so well, creating a paratext to the main text; asides functioning like footnotes and adding another layer of abstraction to the entire proceeding.
And, still, none of that really explains Lee, which is why his comedy is worth return visits. Compared to many stand-ups who play familiar games ("blah, blah, rhythm of a joke" as Lee puts it), Lee deliberately places himself on the edge between success and failure. But even writing that is to borrow from Lee, who mocks those of us who point out that it’s best when it’s failing. But that’s why Stewart Lee remains a paradox. The closer you get to enjoying his work, the more he pushes you away; the more you loathe his work, the more he wants to draw you closer.
See if you’re on the inside or the outside of his comedy on Sky Comedy."
10) STEWART LEE VS THE MAN-WULF
John Mackay & Sally Homer, in association with Debi Allen/Curtis Brown present
STEWART LEE vs THE MAN-WULF BRAND NEW SHOW
LEICESTER SQUARE THEATRE, LONDON
3rd December 2024 – 17th January 2025 AND UK TOURING THROUGHOUT 2025
NB: TICKETS FOR THESE SHOWS WILL REMAIN AT THE ADVERTISED PRICE. SURGE PRICING IS IMMORAL AND TICKETMASTER AND OASIS ARE WANKERS, ENCOURAGED BY SUCCESSIVE TORY CULTURE SECRETARIES IN THEIR CRIMINAL ENDEAVOURS.
In this brand-new show, Lee shares his stage with a tough-talking werewolf comedian from the dark forests of North America who hates humanity. The Man-Wulf lays down a ferocious comedy challenge to the culturally irrelevant and physically enfeebled Lee. Can the beast inside us all be silenced with the silver bullet of Lee's unprecedentedly critically acclaimed style of stand-up?
Stewart Lee, ("the world's greatest living stand-up comedian" The Times), is in danger of being left behind. He's approaching sixty with debilitating health conditions, his TV profile has diminished, and his once BAFTA award winning style of stand-up seems obsolete in the face of a wave of callous Netflix-endorsed comedy of anger, monetising the denigration of minorities for millions of dollars. But can Lee unleash his inner Man-Wulf to position himself alongside comedy legends like Dave Chapelle, Ricky Gervais and Jordan Peterson at the forefront of side-splitting stadium-stuffing shit-posting?
Opening at Leicester Square Theatre in December 2024 the new show will tour to UK cities throughout 2025.
Leicester Sq Theatre, London 3rd Dec 2024 – 17th Jan 2025 7pm, except for 6pm and 8.30 pm Sat 4th Jan.
0207 734 2222 www.leicestersquaretheatre.com
STEWART LEE vs THE MAN-WULF 2025 TOUR SCHEDULE
January 2025
Sunday 19th January 2025 - Mayflower Theatre, Southampton - TICKETS
Monday 20th January 2025 - Dorking Halls, Dorking - TICKETS
Tuesday 21st January 2025 - Dorking Halls, Dorking - TICKETS
Wednesday 22nd January 2025 - The Alban Arena, St. Albans - TICKETS
Thursday 23rd January 2025 - The Alban Arena, St. Albans - TICKETS
Friday 24th January 2025 - Symphony Hall, Birmingham - TICKETS
Saturday 25th January 2025 - Symphony Hall, Birmingham - TICKETS
Sunday 26th January 2025 - Symphony Hall, Birmingham - TICKETS
Tuesday 28th January 2025 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
Wednesday 29th January 2025 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
Thursday 30th January 2025 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
Friday 31st January 2025 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
February 2025
Saturday 1st February 2025 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
Monday 3rd February 2025 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Tuesday 4th February 2025 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Wednesday 5th February 2025 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Thursday 6th February 2025 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Friday 7th February 2025 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Saturday 8th February 2025 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Monday 10th February 2025 - The Marlowe, Canterbury - TICKETS
Wednesday 12th February 2025 - Chelmsford Theatre, Chelmsford - TICKETS
Thursday 13th February 2025 - De Montfort Hall, Leicester - TICKETS
Friday 14th February 2025 - De Montfort Hall, Leicester - TICKETS
Saturday 15th February 2025 - Wycombe Swan, High Wycombe - TICKETS
Sunday 16th February 2025 - Wycombe Swan, High Wycombe - TICKETS
Tuesday 18th February 2025 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Wednesday 19th February 2025 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Thursday 20th February 2025 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Friday 21st February 2025 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Saturday 22nd February 2025 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
April 2025
Tuesday 1st April 2025 - Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield - ON SALE SOON
Wednesday 2nd April 2025 - Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield - ON SALE SOON
Thursday 3rd April 2025 - New Theatre, Peterborough - TICKETS
Friday 4th April 2025 - Palace Theatre, Southend - TICKETS
Saturday 5th April 2025 - Palace Theatre, Southend - TICKETS
Sunday 6th April 2025 - Palace Theatre, Southend - TICKETS
Tuesday 22nd April 2025 - Royal & Derngate, Northampton - TICKETS
Wednesday 23rd April 2025 - Royal & Derngate, Northampton - TICKETS
Monday 28th April 2025 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Tuesday 29th April 2025 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Wednesday 30th April 2025 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
May 2025
Thursday 1st May 2025 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Tuesday 6th May 2025 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Wednesday 7th May 2025 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Thursday 8th May 2025 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Friday 9th May 2025 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Saturday 10th May 2025 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Monday 12th May 2025 - Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton - TICKETS
Thursday 15th May 2025 - King's Theatre, Portsmouth - TICKETS
Friday 16th May 2025 - The Forum, Bath - TICKETS
September 2025
Monday 8th September 2025 - Lighthouse, Poole - ON SALE SOON
Tuesday 9th September 2025 - Lighthouse, Poole - ON SALE SOON
Wednesday 10th September 2025 - Hall For Cornwall, Truro - ON SALE SOON
Thursday 11th September 2025 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - ON SALE SOON
Friday 12th September 2025 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - ON SALE SOON
Saturday 13th September 2025 - Westlands Entertainment Venue, Yeovil - ON SALE SOON
Sunday 14th September 2025 - Westlands Entertainment Venue, Yeovil - ON SALE SOON
Tuesday 16th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
Wednesday 17th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
Thursday 18th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
Friday 19th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
Saturday 20th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
Wednesday 24th September 2025 - Hippodrome, Darlington - ON SALE SOON
Sunday 28th September 2025 - His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen - ON SALE SOON
October 2025
Wednesday 15th October 2025 - Grand Theatre, Swansea - ON SALE SOON
Thursday 16th October 2025 - Grand Theatre, Swansea - ON SALE SOON
Friday 17th October 2025 - Bristol Beacon, Bristol - TICKETS
Saturday 18th October 2025 - Bristol Beacon, Bristol - TICKETS
Tuesday 21st October 2025 - Storyhouse, Chester - ON SALE SOON
Wednesday 22nd October 2025 - Storyhouse, Chester - ON SALE SOON
Thursday 23rd October 2025 - Opera House, Buxton - ON SALE SOON
Friday 24th October 2025 - Opera House, Buxton - ON SALE SOON
Wednesday 29th October 2025 - Cast, Doncaster - ON SALE SOON
Thursday 30th October 2025 - Cast, Doncaster - ON SALE SOON
Friday 31st October 2025 - Harrogate Theatre, Harrogate - ON SALE SOON
November 2025
Saturday 1st November 2025 - Harrogate Theatre, Harrogate - ON SALE SOON
Sunday 2nd November 2025 - Harrogate Theatre, Harrogate - ON SALE SOON
Monday 3rd November 2025 - Tyne Theatre & Opera House, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Tuesday 4th November 2025 - Tyne Theatre & Opera House, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Tuesday 11th November 2025 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - ON SALE SOON
Wednesday 12th November 2025 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - ON SALE SOON
Thursday 13th November 2025 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - ON SALE SOON
Friday 14th November 2025 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - ON SALE SOON
Saturday 15th November 2025 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - ON SALE SOON
Monday 17th November 2025 - Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham - ON SALE SOON
Tuesday 18th November 2025 - Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham - ON SALE SOON
Wednesday 19th November 2025 - Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham - ON SALE SOON
11) SNOWFLAKE/TORNADO
Stewart’s 2019 touring show Snowflake/Tornado, which was originally broadcast as a BBC Special in Autumn 2023 is now available to buy or rent “on demand” from www.mediagarageproductions.com
Both shows also appear to be free as part of the current Amazon Prime rosta. Hopefully I can give them a physical release at some point so you are slaves to the whims of licensing but you know what it’s like. These days.
MUDHONEY Grunge godheads still growling OCT 1st Bristol Academy, 2nd London Electric Ballroom
LONG RYDERS Another final chance to see the resurrected and now seemingly immortal Alt Country Punk pioneers – like the Clash gone Nashville – The Long Ryders.
OCTOBER
10th Glasgow Oran Mor,
11th Birkenhead Future Yard,
13th M’cr Band On The Wall,
14th Nottingham Metronom2,
16th London 229,
18th St Leonards Piper
MARK RADCLIFFE AND MARC RILEY LIVE Slack muthafuckas shoot the breeze. NOV 3rd Shrewsbury Severn, 5th Crewe Lyceum, 10th Warrington Parr Hall.
TIRZAH GARWOOD: Beyond Ravilious, Dulwich Picture Gallery London, 19 November 2024–26 May 2025. The first major exhibition devoted to the artist and designer Tirzah Garwood (1908–1951) since 1952. Best known until now as the wife of Eric Ravilious and as the author of the autobiography Long Live Great Bardfield, Garwood excelled as a fine artist and printmaker. Her diverse and enchanting works are gems of the mid-20th century.
THE DAMNED Black Album/Strawberries line-up, with hard-wristed Holy Grail headhunter Rat Scabies back on drums.
CHUCK PROPHET Chuck’s last live tour was on of the greatest rock and roll shows I ever saw – real huckster guitar slinger stuff that they don’t make anymore. The Mount Rushmore of sandblasted country noir is on the road here again in 2025. Don’t miss. Honestly.
February 19 - Oxford - The Bullingdon
February 20 - Leeds - Brudenell Social Club
February 21 - Manchester - Yes Pink Room
February 22 - Newcastle - The Cluny
February 23 - Glasgow - St Lukes
February 24 - Sheffield - Greystones
February 25 - Leicester - The International
February 26 - Nottingham - Metronome
February 27 - Cambridge - Portland Arms
February - 28 Norwich - Arts Centre
March 1 - Hassocks - Mid Sussex Music Hall
March 2 - Bristol - Lantern
March 3 - Birmingham - Hare & Hounds
March 4 - Southampton - 1865
March 5 - London - The Garage
14) IN OUR LAMENTATIONS 2024
Tony Oxley (Sheffield’s Sunny Murray, 1938)
John M Burns (His modesty blazed, 1939)
John Pilger (News terrier, 1939)
David Soul (The covered man, an inspiration 1943)
Annie Nightingale (Gateway drug, 1940)
Pitchfork (Signal to noise, 1996) Mary Weiss (She led the pack, 1948)
Chris Karrer (Archangel’s Thunderbirdman, 1947)
Iasos (Greek space muso, 1947)
Phil Niblock (NY art noise, 1933)
Pluto Shervington (Ram Goat Liver Eater, 1950) Tisa Farrow (Zombies ripped her flesh, 1951)
Norman Jewison (Rollerball Superstar, 1926)
Neil Kulkarni (Era-enhancing music critic, 1972)
Wayne Kramer (He kicked out the jams motherfucker, 1945)
Steve Brown (He left Avalon and taught the world to sing, 1954)
Christopher Priest (Dorset future-ist, 1943)
Aston “Family Man” Barrett (dub bass headcase, 1946)
Ian Lavender (Don’t tell him, Pike, 1946)
Damon Suzuki (Krautrock witness cuddled me & Noel Fielding, 1950)
John Rotheroe (Shire Book Seer, 1935)
Steve Wright (massive old-skool pro made it look easy, 1954)
Alan Tomlinson (Jazz trombonist, dry northern wit, beatnik, 1947)
Ewen Mackintosh (Office secondary superstar, 1973) Jenni Nuttall (Chaucerian)
Richard Lewis (Worthwhile American comedian, 1947)
Nick Dimbleby (Sculptor of note, scholar, gentleman, comedy fan, 1946)
Edward Bond (Whitehouse-infuriator, 1934)
Karl Wallinger (Waterboys’ prime period pianist, 1957)
Eric Carmen (Raspberry sensation, 1949)
Wally Shoup (Hard-blowin’ hero, 1944)
The Wye Salmon (pollution-fucked fish)
Paul Brett (Crazy World guitarist, 1947)
Shane Baldwin (Vice Squad drummer and punk scribe, 1963)
John Sinclair (Beatnik, 1941)
Carl Andre (None more brick, 1935)
Graeme Naysmith (Pale Saint) Marian Zazeela (Eternal Musician, 1940)
Shelley Ganz (Unclaimed but claimed, at last, 1959)
Steve Albini (Big blackhead, 1962)
Dennis Thompson (He also kicked out the jams motherfucker, 1948)
Gary Floyd (Double happy dick punk, 1953)
Roger Corman (King of the Bees, 1926)
Doug Ingle (The Iron Butterfly, 1945)
Gerry Conway (Folk drummer for hire and tool of anti-CND propaganda, 1947)
Nicholas Ball (His house bled to death, 1946)
Larry Page (Wild thingy, 1936) Francois Hardy (Chanteuse genieuse, 1944)
Arthur Gaps Hendrickson (Selectaman under pressure, 1951)
James Chance (He contorted himself, 1953)
Donald Sutherland (Kilroy was here, 1935)
Dexter Romwebber (Guitar jet, 1966)
Clarence Frogman Henry (Anthropomorphic blues amphibian, 1937)
Randy Fuller (He fought the law also, 1944) Lucy Rimmer (She fell briefly on a birthday)
Callum The Highland Red Deer (Killed by twat tourists)
Mark Found (Sound recordist and model railway specialist) Shelly Duvall (She shone, 1949) Wendy Ritson (Centipede violinist, 1934) Jean Williams (Complex Feminine bassist, 1951)
Bob Newhart (I ripped him off, 1929)
Toumani Diabate (Mali kora master, 1965)
Jerry Miller (He was purple and lived under the sea, 1943)
John Mayall (Bluesbreaker broken at last, 1933) Irene Schweizer (German jazznius, 1941)
Jack Karlson (Succulent Chinese meal, 1942) Catherine Ribeiro (Oh! My heart is broken! An angel! A true star!1941)
Anthony O’Neill (Brú na Bóinne architect)
Pete Bailey (Josefus/Stone Axe vox)
Brian Trueman (Dangermouseman, 1932) Rebecca Horn (Concerto anarchist, 1944)
James Earl Jones (He made shit sparkle, 1931)
Dean Roberts (Thela-maturgist, 1975)
Brother Marquis (He had 99 problems and a bitch weren’t one, 1966)
Zoot Money (Ran madly towards Tim Kirkby’s dad’s beach hut, 1942)
Herbie Flowers (He walked on the wild side, 1938)
Pat Collier (He vibrated,1952)
Steve Kille (Dead Dead Meadow Man)
Gavin Webb (Master’s Apprentice,1947)
Alan Delon (Man In A Girl On A Motorcycle, 1935)
Stewart Lee
2024-09-27T13:35:51+01:00
Dear fans! I hope you are all well. I had a great summer of weird music and Welsh mountains, but I have been a bit ill with covid or something and had to cancel some warm-ups, so sorry of that affected your plans. I went into a bad acid world of wet cement and sat still for days staring at Italian ‘70s cinema. I ate only sausages, I think because Keir Starmer mentioned them in a speech which reminded me how much I love them, and that I don’t eat them enough, so well done Sir Keir. One of my cats is really pissing me off as he will never let me catch him for flea and worm treatment, but to be fair he was a rescue kitten and his siblings were pretty much all killed by foxes so he is jumpy. My other cat was found abandoned in a box on a busy road, but you wouldn’t know it as he is cool. It makes you think about nature and nurture, as does the book Who’s The Boy With The Lovely Hair? by Jakko M Jakszyk, who I am interviewing in London in November. We are all dust in the wind. In September I had a great night with the American gentleman musician Steve Wynn, of Dream Syndicate, and his partner the drummer Linda Pitmon, when I hosted an event for Steve’s new book I Wouldn’t Say It If It Wasn’t True. The book reminded me how I was shaped by the things I was sold on as a teenager, how lucky I was that one of them was Steve’s work, and what a quiet inspiration his art and attitude has been for four decades. In August, I realised I was much blinder than I thought and got some...
I am not going to the Ed Frin for the 2nd time in 30 years.
If I were going I would go and see the following 5 shows, and I would also point out that it is important to support non-Pleaseance/Underbelly/Assembly/Avalon shows as all those sets ups run people in to debt, co-operate with the death serpents, and decrease the chances of talent busting in from left-field.
But that wouldn't stop me recommending shows at those venues if I thought they were good, as I did last year, and you would have to be being deliberately obtuse to misread this paragraph as in any way trying to destroy someone's career.
1) Kevin McAleer: Saying Yes to Yes - New Town Theatre (Venue 7) 13:30 1 hour. Join Ireland's biggest lama Kevin McAleer for an hour of divine light entertainment, with mindfulness, bananarama yoga, fire walking with dolphins, psychic flower arranging, neurolinguistic colonic hydrotherapy reprogramming, tree visualization.
I have never laughed so much at any comedian as I have at Kevin, who writes one show a decade, and so should be as treasured as an eclipse. GO TO THIS!!!!!
2) Blueswater Presents: Smitten - The Jazz Bar (Venue 57) 17:30 10th and 17th August ONLY. Smitten are a minimalist smoky pop trio. Performing original songs written by vocalist Nicole Smit and arranged by guitarist and percussionist Charlie Wild.
I saw this last year. Superb.
3) Derevo - Last Clown on Earth - Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) 17:40. 1 hour 20 minutes. Celebrating 20 years since their Fringe debut, multi award-winning Russian physical theatre company Derevo return with their latest masterpiece. Through mime, butoh and spectacular visuals and sound, a deeply fallen and pushed around Anton Adasinky immortalises the cosmic figure of the clown, full of inner joy yet trapped in a never ending cycle of self-sacrifice and rebirth. Forever - with a smile.
Derevo remain the masters of what they do. I wish I could see this.
4) Paul Sinha: Shout Out to My Ex - The Stand Comedy Club (Venue 5) 16:55. In his 2015 Edinburgh Fringe show, comedian and doyen of daytime, Paul Sinha, weaved an intricate tale of happiness based on a combination of doing two jobs he loved, enjoying parental approval, and, actually being in a proper, grown-up, long-term relationship. The day after he returned home, the illusion of happiness was shattered. Was this the end? The beginning of the end? Or the end of a beginning?
I wish I could see quizmaster Sinha's return to stand-up.
'A comedian like no other. There's so much humour in the hour it's hard to breathe. This original comedy genius is like a Choose Your Adventure. The free-forming journey that is utterly unforgettable!' (Australian Times, 2017).
Free from self-sabotaging legend. And I suspect Bob Slayer's Heroes venues on the Free Fringe may be where it's at this year for a largely twat-free 80s style fringe experience.
NEW LONDON CONTENT PROVIDER DATES
Because all the London Leicester Sq Content Provider dates sold out here is another three month block of the SAME SHOW at the SAME VENUE, Leicester Sq Theatre, with the SAME JOKES at the SAME TIME, 7pm, from November this year until Jan 2018.
Leave voters planning to walk out in disgust will need to book early.
Weds 1st Nov - Sat 9th Dec 2017
Tuesday to Saturday - except there is a performance on Monday 4th December
Tues 2nd Jan to Wed 31st Jan 2018 - Monday to Saturday
Not Fri 24, Sat 25, Thur 30 Nov 2017 (DAYS OFF)
Not Tue 9, Sat 13 Jan 2018 (DAYS OFF)
ED FRIN TIPS I am not going to the Ed Frin for the 2nd time in 30 years. If I were going I would go and see the following 5 shows, and I would also point out that it is important to support non-Pleaseance/Underbelly/Assembly/Avalon shows as all those sets ups run people in to debt, co-operate with the death serpents, and decrease the chances of talent busting in from left-field. But that wouldn't stop me recommending shows at those venues if I thought they were good, as I did last year, and you would have to be being deliberately obtuse to misread this paragraph as in any way trying to destroy someone's career. 1) Kevin McAleer: Saying Yes to Yes - New Town Theatre (Venue 7) 13:30 1 hour. Join Ireland's biggest lama Kevin McAleer for an hour of divine light entertainment, with mindfulness, bananarama yoga, fire walking with dolphins, psychic flower arranging, neurolinguistic colonic hydrotherapy reprogramming, tree visualization. I have never laughed so much at any comedian as I have at Kevin, who writes one show a decade, and so should be as treasured as an eclipse. GO TO THIS!!!!! 2) Blueswater Presents: Smitten - The Jazz Bar (Venue 57) 17:30 10th and 17th August ONLY. Smitten are a minimalist smoky pop trio. Performing original songs written by vocalist Nicole Smit and arranged by guitarist and percussionist Charlie Wild. I saw this last year. Superb. 3) Derevo - Last Clown on Earth - Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) 17:40. 1 hour 20 minutes. Celebrating 20 years since their Fringe debut, multi award-winning Russian physical theatre company Derevo return with their latest masterpiece. Through mime, butoh and spectacular visuals and sound, a deeply fallen and pushed around Anton Adasinky immortalises the cosmic figure of the clown, full of inner joy yet...
I’VE always thought that people from Solihull (or Silhillians, as they pretentiously call themselves) were snobs.
Now Stewart Lee proves it. The comic, who grew up in the town, decided to lay into fellow Midlander Adrian Chiles in his BBC2 Comedy Vehicle this week.
He said of The One Show (watched by considerably more people than his show, by the way): “It’s like being trapped in the buffet car of an express train with a Toby jug which has somehow learned to speak. The inexorable rise of Adrian Chiles makes me long for the days when a regional accent was a professional disadvantage.”
Ooh, how mean!
Stewart went on to have a go at almost everything on television, a medium which doesn’t meet his high standards.
Admittedly, he does have a certain way with words and some of it was quite amusing. It’s true, Andrew Lloyd Webber does look like “a monk in a wind tunnel” and it’s odd Ant and Dec don’t grow old.
But then Stewart took it too far by saying the Geordie duo are “caked in sin”. Hang on!
His whole tone is one of complete, smug condescension, all but saying “I’m so intelligent and you’re all just stupid for watching popular TV.”
Fine, we’ll just switch you off, then.
He tried to recreate Del Boy’s fall through the open bar on Only Fools And Horses, saying “how can this be the funniest thing ever on TV?”. Maybe it isn’t, Stewart, but it’s a lot funnier than you. You’re not nearly as clever as you think you are.
I realise I’m rising to the bait by complaining about him, because he wants to be controversial. This is the man who wrote Jerry Springer: The Opera, after all. But this is one vehicle that’s way off track.
Stewart Lee
2009-03-29T10:35:10+01:00
I’VE always thought that people from Solihull (or Silhillians, as they pretentiously call themselves) were snobs. Now Stewart Lee proves it. The comic, who grew up in the town, decided to lay into fellow Midlander Adrian Chiles in his BBC2 Comedy Vehicle this week. He said of The One Show (watched by considerably more people than his show, by the way): “It’s like being trapped in the buffet car of an express train with a Toby jug which has somehow learned to speak. The inexorable rise of Adrian Chiles makes me long for the days when a regional accent was a professional disadvantage.” Ooh, how mean! Stewart went on to have a go at almost everything on television, a medium which doesn’t meet his high standards. Admittedly, he does have a certain way with words and some of it was quite amusing. It’s true, Andrew Lloyd Webber does look like “a monk in a wind tunnel” and it’s odd Ant and Dec don’t grow old. But then Stewart took it too far by saying the Geordie duo are “caked in sin”. Hang on! His whole tone is one of complete, smug condescension, all but saying “I’m so intelligent and you’re all just stupid for watching popular TV.” Fine, we’ll just switch you off, then. He tried to recreate Del Boy’s fall through the open bar on Only Fools And Horses, saying “how can this be the funniest thing ever on TV?”. Maybe it isn’t, Stewart, but it’s a lot funnier than you. You’re not nearly as clever as you think you are. I realise I’m rising to the bait by complaining about him, because he wants to be controversial. This is the man who wrote Jerry Springer: The Opera, after all. But this is one vehicle that’s way off track.
‘capri-batterie is an Exeter-based experimental artcore trio, specialising in industrial jazz and avant-garde sonorities. Stewart Lee spent an hour in a Bristol studio last October improvising words to their spontaneous sounds. These are the unfiltered results’. Is Avante-Garde Jazz combined with Comedy and Psychogeography the ‘new rock’n’roll’ asks Ged Babey. Don’t be such a tool says his inner monologue… it’s good fun though.
When Stewart Lee keeps mentioning this release in his newspaper columns a lot of people probably assume it was ‘a joke’. He hasn’t really made an avant garde jazz album has he?
Well he has. And it’s great. “This is the worst thing I have ever heard …what a waste of money” the Man in the Street would probably say – but Sid was right about him. It is a difficult but captivating album and pretty-much unique. Improv which is genuinely engaging because it carries all the hallmarks of Lees stand-up and a bunch of his post-punk influences appear momentarily in his vocal gymnastics, inflections and wordplay.
I’m only an occasional delver into the world of experimental, avant-garde jazz so possibly not qualified to review this album from the musical perspective… (That said, I do own the John Zorn ‘Naked City’ album, some Terry Edwards and the Scapegoats and the first James Chance album, loads of PIL, ATV.. so I’m not a total beginner, but) my entry-point is via ‘post-punk’ and as a fan of Stewart Lee and his comedy.
He has Godlike Genuis status in my book. He is one of the three Greatest Living Englishmen -as far as humour and intelligent entertainment is concerned; Charlie Brooker and Will Self complete the trio.(But not this trio!) Lee’s love of the Fall, Nightingales and the like is well documented, and there is a coincidental weirdness about the timing of this albums release with Mark E’s passing.
My friend Bear, long time Fall aficionado, unsentimentally mourned the fact that ‘there will never be a new Fall album to brighten every year from now on’. Well, I hope, that there might be a Capri-Batterie and Stewart Lee album appearing at irregular intervals in the future…. because although completely unlike a Fall album musically – it somehow occupies the same territory – using repetition, absurdity, vicious humour, uncompromising art and anti-commercialism to communicate hard to relate ‘stuff’ mixed up with absolute nonsense.
Bristol Fashion should be the cult album of the year. Discussed in hushed tones and when two or more lovers of the work gather together there will be much quoting of the words…. in the same way that Monty Python and Derek and Clive were in the schoolyards and common rooms of the 1970’s. Only this isn’t just comedy… it’s the weird and wonderful way that the chopped-up and reassembled spoken/sung narratives are framed by the eerie, percussive, honking , rhythmic soundtrack. It is compulsive listening – without the music it would be ‘the rantings of a madman’ but the way it gells is fascinating. Lee’s delivery is central though – but I am intrigued to hear what capri-batterie do without him, or with other collaborators.
Apart from a couple of songs in one of his TV series (who can forget Russell Brands Wedding? ) I don’t think Stewart Lee has ever made a record or been part of a band, as far as I am aware. So this must be a first for him… something to tick off his list of Ten Things You Have To Do Before You Die. (Edit – he did a John Cage performance with Steve Beresford and Tania Chen of Interdeterminacy but its not quite the same as this original work.)
In episode five of the fourth series of Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle there is a point – during a long piece concerning Rod Liddle and a variety of foodstuffs… that once he gets fifteen minutes in, is really on a roll, after ad-libbing his was out of a smashed glass interruption, using the three R’s the three R’s, he reaches a peak and says as an aside to himself ‘Miles Davis has arrived’ as he relishes the feeling of being as cool as the coolest jazz. (Smug and Unfunny – the Daily Mail)
Stew is Jazz… he’s the master of seemingly improvised, stream of consciousness comedy – so it’s only natural that he does this – works with some great jazz dudes. Pale, malnourished looking ones from the West Country.
How old are you?
I’m 22 mate.
This exchange took place between Stewart Lee and a DJ wearing a crash-helmet, indoors, at 4 in the morning. Lee was wearing a dressing gown, walking boots and no underwear. It became the raw material for Track 1 on this album Six and a half minutes of drum and bass and sax honking, farting and schronking and Lee doing what he does – talking in exaggerated voices, relating the tale in an absurd way. It’s hilarious. It’s fucking mental. The nearest thing I can compare it to by way of music that you, my dear reader punk readers, might know is Fodderstompf from the first PIL album. You can hear it for free, as a taster for the whole album …
I remember reading a review of the first PIL album as a school-kid and the word(s) ‘self-indulgent’ being used to describe it. I thought Fodderstompf was a work of hilarious, genius so took ‘self-indulgent’ to have very positive connotations rather than the intended negativity.
The 27-minute-plus epic which makes up three-fifths of the album is called ‘Telly Savalas Looks at Birmingham’ and is the track which convinced me that this is so much more than a ‘novelty’ or an indulgence. It explores Lee’s personal psychogeography of Birmingham (or so the spirit of Paul Morley tells me…). Although improvised, Lee must’ve had some notes to work from; the script of the short promotional film that the West Midlands Tourist Board commissioned in the late 1970’s – which gives the piece its title. (Stew’s Savalas voice is uncanny by the way – he could be the new Mike Yarwood if he wanted to.) Some quotes from Sir Herbert Manzoni – the civil engineer who changed the landscape of Birmingham. Some info on the Pop Artist Nicholas Munro and some about Little Nanetta Stocker. All this, combined with childhood memories, a variety of voices, repetition and the atmosphere created by the music creates a long, rambling, funny and skilled exploration of the city he grew up in, and escaped. His mixed feelings about the people and the place. Regret, sadness and ripping the piss out of it. There is a lot of absurdism and a cut-up and paste vocal sampling technique he uses, switching from one voice to another, but occasionally his own voice appears, and one which would seem to be a grandparent reciting a section of an old Music hall song ‘Out Went the Gas’ by Harry Champion (Google is a wonderful thing – I just typed in ‘I had a little donkey, I kept it in the yard...’ to discover that.)
Telly Savalas Looks At Birmingham is Stewart Lee’s Sister Ray. His masterpiece which future generations will look back on…
I played it to my son who concluded after the first five minutes, ‘It’s OK, I’ll leave it for you and the other four people in the country who bought it to enjoy” as he walked away. He liked the Crash Helmet one though. But then, he is 22 (mate) next year.
It is a bizarre, wonderful, funny and uncompromising work – which won’t reach as wide an audience as it should – and it’s uniqueness is the fact that it’s experimental jazz/noise which you can laugh at -or with, or to… and it will definitely get rid of that unwanted dinner-party guest who won’t leave.
Stewart Lee
2018-02-06T02:32:56+00:00
‘capri-batterie is an Exeter-based experimental artcore trio, specialising in industrial jazz and avant-garde sonorities. Stewart Lee spent an hour in a Bristol studio last October improvising words to their spontaneous sounds. These are the unfiltered results’. Is Avante-Garde Jazz combined with Comedy and Psychogeography the ‘new rock’n’roll’ asks Ged Babey. Don’t be such a tool says his inner monologue… it’s good fun though. When Stewart Lee keeps mentioning this release in his newspaper columns a lot of people probably assume it was ‘a joke’. He hasn’t really made an avant garde jazz album has he? Well he has. And it’s great. “This is the worst thing I have ever heard …what a waste of money” the Man in the Street would probably say – but Sid was right about him. It is a difficult but captivating album and pretty-much unique. Improv which is genuinely engaging because it carries all the hallmarks of Lees stand-up and a bunch of his post-punk influences appear momentarily in his vocal gymnastics, inflections and wordplay. I’m only an occasional delver into the world of experimental, avant-garde jazz so possibly not qualified to review this album from the musical perspective… (That said, I do own the John Zorn ‘Naked City’ album, some Terry Edwards and the Scapegoats and the first James Chance album, loads of PIL, ATV.. so I’m not a total beginner, but) my entry-point is via ‘post-punk’ and as a fan of Stewart Lee and his comedy. He has Godlike Genuis status in my book. He is one of the three Greatest Living Englishmen -as far as humour and intelligent entertainment is concerned; Charlie Brooker and Will Self complete the trio.(But not this trio!) Lee’s love of the Fall, Nightingales and the like is well documented, and there is a coincidental weirdness about the...
Stew compiled and annotated this compilation by The Fall.
...this is a fine collection; brave, broad and admirably biased...
It is, of course, an appalling concept. Allowing writer/ comedian Stewart Lee to compile a selection of his favourite, latter-day Fall tracks smacks of misguided marketing;an ill-informed attempt to glean the collegiate vote for what surely remains the most virulently anti-student band in Britain. Duh!
Anyway. The onset of the ’90s saw Mark E Smith-uh and his ever-changing chums embrace new technology with gusto – a gambit that would provide a fresh framework for Smith’s misanthropic, beanbag-faced rants. While tracks such as last year’s brilliantly disorderly ‘Touch Sensitive’ could’ve been plucked from the riotous preserve of their late-’70s heyday, ‘A Past…’ shows the ramshackle approach of yore superseded by a battalion of samples and grinding, zeitgeist-courting techno beats. It’s an approach that has yielded some of The Fall‘s finest songs – with the synth-heavy, anti-EU wrath of 1991’s ‘Free Range’ and the deceptively sweet ‘Rose’ proving Smith‘s invective wears many, equally effective, disguises. With ‘The Chisellers’ being the only glaring omission, this is a fine collection; brave, broad and admirably biased.
Stew compiled and annotated this compilation by The Fall. ...this is a fine collection; brave, broad and admirably biased... It is, of course, an appalling concept. Allowing writer/ comedian Stewart Lee to compile a selection of his favourite, latter-day Fall tracks smacks of misguided marketing;an ill-informed attempt to glean the collegiate vote for what surely remains the most virulently anti-student band in Britain. Duh! Anyway. The onset of the ’90s saw Mark E Smith-uh and his ever-changing chums embrace new technology with gusto – a gambit that would provide a fresh framework for Smith’s misanthropic, beanbag-faced rants. While tracks such as last year’s brilliantly disorderly ‘Touch Sensitive’ could’ve been plucked from the riotous preserve of their late-’70s heyday, ‘A Past…’ shows the ramshackle approach of yore superseded by a battalion of samples and grinding, zeitgeist-courting techno beats. It’s an approach that has yielded some of The Fall‘s finest songs – with the synth-heavy, anti-EU wrath of 1991’s ‘Free Range’ and the deceptively sweet ‘Rose’ proving Smith‘s invective wears many, equally effective, disguises. With ‘The Chisellers’ being the only glaring omission, this is a fine collection; brave, broad and admirably biased. - NME
The C86 Show is weekly show inspired by an NME cassette of the same name. We feature new, exciting, in-depth interviews with bands and artists of the time. Check out our other arts and culture content too!
The Nightingales - with Stewart Lee & Michael Cumming in conversation - discussing King Rocker A film about Robert Lloyd & The Nightingales
PREMIERES: SATURDAY FEBRUARY 6TH ON SKY ARTS (9pm)
Stewart Lee
2021-01-25T16:00:58+00:00
The C86 Show is weekly show inspired by an NME cassette of the same name. We feature new, exciting, in-depth interviews with bands and artists of the time. Check out our other arts and culture content too! The Nightingales - with Stewart Lee & Michael Cumming in conversation - discussing King Rocker A film about Robert Lloyd & The Nightingales PREMIERES: SATURDAY FEBRUARY 6TH ON SKY ARTS (9pm)
https://www.stewartlee.co.uk/mp3/the-c86-show/
In the middle of a week of record temperatures, as if unaware of the irony, the business community celebrated the consolidation of its attempts to force the government’s hand to agree to a third filth-generating runway at Heathrow, tipping all species on Earth towards extinction. Everything will die soon, except for cockroaches, and Glastonbury favourite the Fall, who will survive even a nuclear holocaust, though they will still refuse to play their 80s chart hits.
In Norfolk on Thursday, the tarmac melted, and ducklings became trapped in sticky blackness. When a lioness whelped in an ancient Roman street, Caesar thought something was up. Here, solid matter transmuted to hot liquid and swallowed baby birds whole. How surreal do the signs and warnings have to become before we stop in our tracks? Are whales required to fall from the sky? Does Tim Henman have to give birth to a two-headed cat on Centre Court?
CBI director John Cridland says: “The government must commit to the decision now, and get diggers in the ground at Heathrow swiftly by 2020.” Head of the Institute of Directors Simon Walker says: “There can now be no further delay from politicians.” And Segro chief executive David Sleath merely bellows: “Get on with it!”, like some selfish Top Gear presenter demanding his steak dinner after dawdling, the planet itself the powerless BBC employee he punches in the face.
Illustration by David Foldvari.
The business community has thrown its executive toys out of the pram, and now there are chrome ball bearings on strings everywhere, tripping up unpaid interns and making life difficult for immigrant cleaners scrabbling under desks on less than minimum wage. David Cameron, an electoral promise to oppose the third runway sticking in his throat like an undigested salmon bone, can only duck his cowardly head and hope some terrible atrocity or a Wimbledon win wafts our attention away.
When I was a child, my grandmother always referred to our pet dog’s excrement as “business”, so to this day, when I envisage “the business community”, I imagine a vast pile of sentient faeces issuing its demands while smoking a Cuban cigar, an image that seems increasing accurate as the decades pass.
The destruction of all life on Earth is inevitable if fossil fuel use continues unabated. (Legal. Please advise. Are we allowed to say this now without being shouted down by Nigel Lawson?) The business community’s genius move in the third runway debate has been to change the dialogue from an argument which should have been between building a runway and not building a runway at all, and trying to restructure our society to avoid the need for a third runway, into an argument about where exactly it was best to position this massive portent of our world’s forthcoming doom. It’s like offering an innocent man who doesn’t want to be hanged the chance to be poisoned instead.
As with fracking and the academification of all schools, decisions have already been made behind closed doors by forces beyond our control. Heathrow’s third runway will happen. Assurances about air quality are meaningless. The UK has already been threatened with £300m a year fines by those meddling Brussels bureaucrats for our terrible British air, and Boris’s solution in London was to spray adhesive around the city by night to try and stick the pesky pollution particles to the pavement, like a lazy duplicitous boy pushing his mess under his bed rather than tidying up his room.
And in 50 years, will there be anyone left to remember what it was like before a sterile and toxic environment gradually became the norm? Can it only be four decades ago that every summer holiday trek along A-roads to South Devon caravan sites left our Morris Marina windscreen smeared thick with now-disappeared invertebrates, that sparrows swarmed around morning milk bottles, that sticklebacks and minnows spawned in every park pond, that hedgehogs gathered at night in suburban gardens and lay flattened in their thousands on roads every morning, and that an actual hare ran out of the encroached common land of Palmers Rough, on the fringes of Birmingham, to be chased by my grandfather along Arnold Road in that same Morris Marina, a sight that would seem as surreal today as escaped hippos wandering the streets of some collapsed eastern European capital?
The absence of abundance is already accepted. The metaphors of the nature poets, mapping human hearts through once commonly understood imagery, are irrelevant and impenetrable. “The sun of Winter, / The moon of Summer, and all the singing birds / Except the missel-thrush that loves juniper, / Are quite shut out.” I’m sorry. The missel-what? Can the juniper be monetised? Is this missel-thing for sale? Our children already have no stable baseline from which to calibrate the loss of all that lives. It’s game over.
Bearing this in mind, I finally find myself reluctantly agreeing with the business community. There is no time for delay. Let’s build the runway. Let’s choke the Earth. Let’s get this damn thing over with, for what can be avoided, whose end is purposed by the mighty gods of business? Hasten our demise, let our children be the last of their sorry line, and spare their unborn descendants any further suffering. We will not save the rhino. We will not even save the hedgehog. How can we save the world?
But, if you can purge cheap sentiment from your mind, how exciting and fascinating it will be to watch as the world becomes uninhabitable. It’s almost worth going on a health kick to survive another 60 years and see everything immolated. How many humans have had the awe-inspiring opportunity to witness such spectacle: the end of all that is?
But something of us should be preserved, I think, for posterity. Perhaps the village of Harmondsworth and its residents, instead of being demolished and paid off at 125% of their homes’ market values, should be sealed within a vast dome and shot spacewards, to drift on the solar winds as a museum of mankind, saving something of our society at the point where it finally became unsustainable.
Under a vast skein of convex glass Harmondsworth floats beyond Orion’s Belt, its ancient tithe barn, Betjeman’s “cathedral of Middlesex”, still and safe under the stars; local resident Graham Wibrew, his once imperilled kitchen extension complete, watches the comets and thinks of home; and the bells of 11th century St Mary’s toll the eternal hours silently in endless empty space. “But far more ancient and dark / The Combe looks since they killed the badger there, / Dug him out and gave him to the hounds, / That most ancient Briton of English beasts.” Edward Thomas, The Combe.
Stewart Lee
2015-07-05T21:26:23+01:00
In the middle of a week of record temperatures, as if unaware of the irony, the business community celebrated the consolidation of its attempts to force the government’s hand to agree to a third filth-generating runway at Heathrow, tipping all species on Earth towards extinction. Everything will die soon, except for cockroaches, and Glastonbury favourite the Fall, who will survive even a nuclear holocaust, though they will still refuse to play their 80s chart hits. In Norfolk on Thursday, the tarmac melted, and ducklings became trapped in sticky blackness. When a lioness whelped in an ancient Roman street, Caesar thought something was up. Here, solid matter transmuted to hot liquid and swallowed baby birds whole. How surreal do the signs and warnings have to become before we stop in our tracks? Are whales required to fall from the sky? Does Tim Henman have to give birth to a two-headed cat on Centre Court? CBI director John Cridland says: “The government must commit to the decision now, and get diggers in the ground at Heathrow swiftly by 2020.” Head of the Institute of Directors Simon Walker says: “There can now be no further delay from politicians.” And Segro chief executive David Sleath merely bellows: “Get on with it!”, like some selfish Top Gear presenter demanding his steak dinner after dawdling, the planet itself the powerless BBC employee he punches in the face. [caption id="attachment_3615" align="alignright" width="212"] Illustration by David Foldvari.[/caption] The business community has thrown its executive toys out of the pram, and now there are chrome ball bearings on strings everywhere, tripping up unpaid interns and making life difficult for immigrant cleaners scrabbling under desks on less than minimum wage. David Cameron, an electoral promise to oppose the third runway sticking in his throat like an undigested salmon bone, can...
In April this year, I rammed my forty-six year old self into the 150 capacity 12 Bar club in Denmark Street, Soho. On stage, a tall haunted man bobbed to the beats of his laptop like an aging rave survivor lurking in a municipal park, and another twitched and ranted like the cash-cadging last orders cokehead he might once have been. A conflagration of showbiz tastemakers and dedicated fans agreed that something superb was happening. Despite thirty-three years of weekly gig going, I've rarely been in the right place at the right time. I may have missed The Sex Pistols at The Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1976, but I was there for Sleaford Mods at the 12 Bar in 2014. And now Sleaford Mods have descended upon me, like an enormous yes.
Jason Williamson, a brick-built office worker long marinated in quietly suppressed fury, started recording as Sleaford Mods in 2007, dropping dirty realist observations in a distinct East Midlands argot over home-grown sample-heavy slabs. Things stepped up a gear in 2011 when Andrew Fearn, a lanky laptop jockey with laughing eyes who lives in a perpetual state of secret amusement, arrived with his hydroponically nurtured musical hybrids, floppy dance rhythms cross-pollinated with Peely post-punk noise.
"When we first got together," recalls Williamson, "I just told him to make it faster and sound like the Wu Tang Clan." "Jason was a bit suspicious of me," Fearns remembers, "I'd make a mix-tape with The Butthole Surfers and Abba on it. He didn't know what would work. I'd put a synth pad or something in and he'd say, 'No. Change that for a car alarm.'"
When I first heard Sleaford Mods' genre-collapsing speed-poetry I imagined I'd finally stumbled across young people making obviously contemporary records that nonetheless matched the incendiary energy of similarly smouldering sounds that had scorched me decades ago– The Specials, The Fall, Husker Du, Conflict and Public Enemy. But the duo, it turns out, were in their early forties, having served long apprenticeships in the Nottinghamshire music scene; Fearns nurturing a larder of supposedly incompatible sources to draw upon; Williamson accruing a lifetime's supply of archly observed turns of phrase and awkward situations to concertina, cut-up style, into car-crash images of quiet desperation.
"I suck on a roll-up. Pull your jeans up. Fuck off! I'm going home."(Jobseeker, Chubbed Up, 2014)
Jaded middle class opinion formers like me trip over themselves to declare Sleaford Mods the authentic voice of the English provincial working class, a bona-fide Prole Art Threat, to quote The Fall. In the 1930s, the American folk song collector John Lomax employed the jailbird bluesman Lead Belly as a driver come butler, whilst also recording his music, and there's something crass and telling about the way metropolitan media treats Sleaford Mods' distinctive voice, the sort rarely heard today outside of poverty porn TV, as somehow exotic. But standing in the smokers' courtyard of a sensitively refitted olde London pub in newly gentrified Finsbury Park, the sort of disputed cultural territory Sleaford Mods regularly mock, it becomes clear these marginalised outsiders are within snatching difference of the keys to pop music's executive toilets. But will they smash up the cistern or just redecorate?
"Who gives a fuck about yesterday's heroes, who seem to think that they are still today's heroes? It's not a pyramid, you're not a fucking pharaoh." (Pubic Hair Ltd, Austerity Dogs 2013)
"Johnny Borrell fucks off to an island for four months at the height of his fame. Was the country bothered? Was it fuck. He made a massively bad calculation, the thick cunt."(6 Horsemen (The Brixtons), Tiswas 2014)
I put it to Sleaford Mods that, given the naked hostility they appear to display to identifiable individuals, they're lucky there is some separation between them and the characters that narrate the songs. The ungrateful houseguest in You're Brave, (on the last album Divide And Exit), who ridicules Chumbawumba, secretly masturbates in his "fucking tit-rifle" host's toilet, and then nicks his biscuits, as some obscure act of social justice, is not the same person as the suddenly conscience stricken drug consumer in 2011's Double Diamond, who takes issue with a dealer supplying to crack-addicted prostitutes.
So who is firing off these zeitgeist-derailing zingers and insulting all these pop stars? Is it Sleaford Mods themselves or a succession of different semi-fictionalised characters? Fearn gives an answer that I suspect is slightly off-message; "They're being insulted by us really I think. But it's just a wind up as well, pub humour, where you take the piss out of your mates." But how will their Holy Fool outsider act play if Sleaford Mods become massive? "It remains to be seen. But I've been thinking about that a lot lately," says Williamson, typically more pensive. "It's inevitable that you are sucked in."
Fearn is acutely aware of how success might change the duo, but is enjoying the ride. "Manchester last week was amazing. There was this whirlwind of young people, all crowd surfing. Whatever is happening, it's here now. We just carry on doing what we do on stage but you can't control how it's going to be perceived. We've been trying to do things the traditional way, and you get a reputation for being real and hanging out in the bar but then there's kids everywhere wanting to talk to you and doing selfies…" He tails off. Williamson continues for him.. "And you can't carry on. Sleaford Mods has been wrapped in an energy dictated by being in full time work and having to dedicate 80% of your life to something you don't like. But when that changes you have to see how it goes from there."
Williamson's quitting his job this month to be a full time Sleaford Mod, but his stories are acutely informed by his workplace experiences, a strange mix of cynicism and empathy, contempt and pity. What will Sleaford Mods write about now? Will they get angry with journalists and air travel like Kelly Jones on the third Stereophonics album? Fearn isn't worried, and has touching faith in Williamson's abilities to find friction in things "as simple as the coining of British phrases, like 'You couldn't make it up'. It's such a British thing to say. Everything people say could be musical."
"I always found it hard to write love songs," confides Williamson, "with a bridge and a chorus, then I stopped trying and it came easily. What's interesting to me is the horribleness of everyday things, that ashtray on that table, the concrete on the floor, and I've been trying to hone in on that, thinking about what naturally comes out." Williamson sees magical strangeness in the banal, and his apprehension of the ashtray echoes Jean Paul Sartre's horrified encounter with a doorknob in the existentialist classic Nausea.
Jean Paul Sartre? Really? In the '80s the music press creaked with such heavyweight cultural names, dropped into Bananarama 7" reviews through ducts of newly minted critical theory. Today Sleaford Mods are making pop music sturdy and significant enough to take the pounding of music writers' art-crit ambitions. The car alarms and flushing toilets that Fearn chops into the tracks echo the unadorned urinal Marcel Ducamp dumped in an art gallery; and writing in The Wire, the academic Mark Fisher offered analysis of Sleaford Mods informed by concerns about global capitalism. There are things here to wrap your brain around, to take to your heart. But Williamson is worried about how reading such criticisms might influence the duo's work.
"I started to read Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism after he reviewed our album because I thought the way he explained it was really interesting. He'd seen stuff we hadn't. But that kind of criticism makes you self-conscious. I don't want to do what we do to order. Now I could probably reel off something that sounded like A Level Government Politics or whatever if I wanted to but you are wary of doing that because a) it's really fucking patronising and b) it sounds shit as well. It's better to talk about the sociological things you've experienced in a 'feet on the ground' sense rather than an academic sense."
While Sleaford Mods' feet are definitely on the ground, Williamson's words and Fearn's occasional psychedelic touches conjure a visionary mood. Liveable Shit, from Divide And Exit, is a key track. It begins with the scatological satirical bent of a Viz comic strip, describing Williamson's daily workplace encounter with the same shitty smell and the co-worker responsible for it, then expands into a critique of the shitness of life, with David Cameron's face "hanging in the clouds like Gary Oldman's Dracula", lyrical allusions to acid-godfathers The Doors, and sudden watery sunspots of tonal backwash. William Blake saw heaven in a wild flower and eternity in a grain of sand. Williamson sees the world in an office toilet.
"Liveable Shit was based on seeing the same bloke in the same shirt going in the same toilet, where you spend most of the day, going backwards and forwards, drinking your coffee, in the same workplace at the same time every morning," Williamson remembers, "And we didn't get on anyway. I forget what his name was. He went for a job I was going for it and he fucking got it. And he turned up the next day in these fucking trousers, rocker's trousers – he was a rocker – and I went "You got the fucking job!"
Sleaford Mods' age and cultural and geographical positioning fingerprint their work, making it quintessentially English, and magically timeless, regurgitating decades' worth of reference points whilst remaining utterly contemporary. The new single Tiswas cites Chris Tarrant's forgotten early '80s comedy project OTT. And who talks about 'rockers' anymore anyway? Mark Fisher pointed out that even the duo's name seems like 'vintage graffiti', and I imagine it scrawled on an M6 motorway bridge sometime in the late '70s. Why 'Sleaford Mods'?
"It was just random one night," Williamson recalls. "The old engineer said, 'You've got five or six tunes here that are all really good. You're going to need a name sharpish.' I was sat in the pub and it just popped out. I like the Mod thing. It's not trying to be subtle. It's just like someone shouting 'MODS!'" Why 'Sleaford' though, a small Lincolnshire market town? And then someone from the NME uses the Gents behind the window in the pub courtyard and triggers the flush cycle. When I transcribe the tape the rest of The Sleaford Mods' conversation is masked by the sound of the gushing urinal. Beneath the flow I can just make out Williamson's still small voice, reaching back across the years. "I used to go to Sleaford, from Grantham, as a kid, with my parents, to go to the cinema and that. I saw Superman there, with Christopher Reeve. Sleaford was a real treat."
Sleaford Mods' Tiswas ep is available on Invada from Nov 24th. The Chubbed Up album is reissued on October 26th. They tour Britain this month and support The Specials in November. Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle Series 2 is available on DVD and download from Nov 10th.
SWEARING SIDE-BAR
Sleaford Mods' are our current kings of swearing. But here's five of their forebears.
Philip Larkin – Sunny Prestatyn (1964), This Be The Verse (1971) and High Windows (1974). The Hull poet punched through poetic convention with well chosen expletives. "They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do."
George Carlin – Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television (1972). The brilliant American stand-up explores the cultural context of swearing. The seven words are shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits.
Crass – Reality Asylum 7" (1979) Anarcho-punk pioneer Eve Libertine's cut-glass voice intones, with impossible precision, a studiously blasphemous collage of holy imagery, feminist protest and fantastic swearing. "Fucklove prophet of death. You sigh alone in your cockfear. You lie alone in your cuntfear."
John Cooper Clarke – Evidently Chickentown (1980) The punk poet's howl against urban living is the ultimate versified fuckathon. "The fucking clocks are fucking wrong, The fucking days are fucking long, It fucking gets you fucking down, evidently chicken town."
The Opera Device – Stockhausen soprano soloist Lore Lixenberg circled the fringe of the '90s comedy circuit in a titanium bra crushing hecklers with operatically arranged put-downs like "Fuck off you cunt", composed by future Jerry Springer The Opera creator Richard Thomas.
Stewart Lee
2014-10-01T21:16:19+01:00
In April this year, I rammed my forty-six year old self into the 150 capacity 12 Bar club in Denmark Street, Soho. On stage, a tall haunted man bobbed to the beats of his laptop like an aging rave survivor lurking in a municipal park, and another twitched and ranted like the cash-cadging last orders cokehead he might once have been. A conflagration of showbiz tastemakers and dedicated fans agreed that something superb was happening. Despite thirty-three years of weekly gig going, I've rarely been in the right place at the right time. I may have missed The Sex Pistols at The Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1976, but I was there for Sleaford Mods at the 12 Bar in 2014. And now Sleaford Mods have descended upon me, like an enormous yes. Jason Williamson, a brick-built office worker long marinated in quietly suppressed fury, started recording as Sleaford Mods in 2007, dropping dirty realist observations in a distinct East Midlands argot over home-grown sample-heavy slabs. Things stepped up a gear in 2011 when Andrew Fearn, a lanky laptop jockey with laughing eyes who lives in a perpetual state of secret amusement, arrived with his hydroponically nurtured musical hybrids, floppy dance rhythms cross-pollinated with Peely post-punk noise. "When we first got together," recalls Williamson, "I just told him to make it faster and sound like the Wu Tang Clan." "Jason was a bit suspicious of me," Fearns remembers, "I'd make a mix-tape with The Butthole Surfers and Abba on it. He didn't know what would work. I'd put a synth pad or something in and he'd say, 'No. Change that for a car alarm.'" When I first heard Sleaford Mods' genre-collapsing speed-poetry I imagined I'd finally stumbled across young people making obviously contemporary records that nonetheless matched the incendiary energy...
Stewart Lee's Carpet Remnant World has been on the road for months and I am sure it is far from as free-form as it appears.
Lee also makes much use of information that can be gleaned online, from the horrifically explicit and sick reactions of some Americans to the death of Osama Bin Laden to some equally robust criticism of his own comedy.
He gives as good as he gets, it should be admitted, with a bloke called Boyle and the many Russells from his line of work among those in the firing line.
More edgily, a huge amount of his act is devoted to critiquing the reaction of certain sections of the audience with building sarcasm. This is bolder than it sounds in print and becomes increasingly squirmingly hilarious as the set goes on and he deconstructs both his jokes and the reaction to them.
There is a lot of old-school vaudeville about Lee's schtick: the gentle, in front of the cloth comedy of Morecambe and Wise pushed into brave new dimensions. It is the intelligence that he brings to the mechanics of making people laugh that make it a really fascinating experience.
Stewart Lee
2012-08-09T14:48:19+01:00
Stewart Lee's Carpet Remnant World has been on the road for months and I am sure it is far from as free-form as it appears. Lee also makes much use of information that can be gleaned online, from the horrifically explicit and sick reactions of some Americans to the death of Osama Bin Laden to some equally robust criticism of his own comedy. He gives as good as he gets, it should be admitted, with a bloke called Boyle and the many Russells from his line of work among those in the firing line. More edgily, a huge amount of his act is devoted to critiquing the reaction of certain sections of the audience with building sarcasm. This is bolder than it sounds in print and becomes increasingly squirmingly hilarious as the set goes on and he deconstructs both his jokes and the reaction to them. There is a lot of old-school vaudeville about Lee's schtick: the gentle, in front of the cloth comedy of Morecambe and Wise pushed into brave new dimensions. It is the intelligence that he brings to the mechanics of making people laugh that make it a really fascinating experience.
The smelly thoughts of Donald Trump bubble up like brown burps in the sort of bombsite pond Chopper bike-riding children were advised to avoid in 1970s public information films. Do they indicate concrete plans, are they designed to provoke, or do they have no meaning, like the gurgles and gasps that can inadvertently escape from a decomposing corpse? My job here is to try to anticipate if anything Trump says or does is likely to be of any lasting significance and to satirise it accordingly, in the small window of time allowed, for money. And it isn’t getting any easier. Yes, Ukraine is suffering, but I am the real victim here.
For example, last Saturday Trump opined: “We were the richest… think of this, from 1870 to 1913… because we collected tariffs… We had so much wealth. Wouldn’t it be nice today? Of course, now, we give it away to transgender this, to transgender that. Everybody gets a transgender operation. It’s wonderful. We give it away to crazy things. But in those days, it was different. It was a different world. It was a different country.”
Would Trump’s notion of the damage caused to long-term American prosperity by transgender this surgery, and also to a lesser extent by transgender that surgery, gain any traction, and thus be deserving of the barbs of my quill, or would it be politely ignored as another crazy corpse bleat?
I’m not a historian, though I do follow Prof Janina Ramirez on social media, but surely part of US prosperity in the period Trump describes was built on the proceeding two and a half centuries’ use of free labour in the form of enslaved people stolen in their millions from Africa, their descendants finally getting the vote in 1965, when the Beatles’ Help! was top of the UK charts; and also on the natural wealth appropriated from the country’s Indigenous people, who were systematically ethnically cleansed and robbed of land and resources for which, conveniently, they hadn’t really developed a notion of ownership as Europeans understood it. Have these beads, this whiskey and these smallpox-infected blankets. Thanks for all the pelts. Enjoy your dancing.
To be fair to Trump, studies of Irish history, for instance, show that though three significant famines between 1740 and 1879 did affect the country economically, the main dent in the nation’s finances was caused by the Roman Catholic church’s liberal attitude to notions of gender, and by its demand that the Irish state fund transgender this surgery, and moreover transgender that surgery, for any Irish citizen requiring it, or for anyone who had even been just a little bit curious. I’m joking of course. Trump’s idiotic Trump Theory of Transgender Economics ™ ® didn’t stick and I wisely elected to ignore it in last week’s column. But Trump continues to be a tough call.
For 13 years, I filed these columns on Thursday mornings, hoping that I’d have anticipated any news developments that might destabilise my so-called “jokes” between the deadline and Sunday’s publication. But last year I asked if I could start filing on Tuesdays, as various special-interest, right-leaning groups kept nibbling at the grey area between actionable exaggeration and exaggeration for comic effect, and I wanted to give the Observer’s legal team time to protect me from imprisonment, having already experienced the spleen-dissolving stress of being co-targeted by Britain’s final, and failed, attempt at a blasphemy prosecution in 2005.
But now I’m back to filing at the last possible moment, 10am on Thursday. It’s 9.15 now and I’m cross-checking the paragraphs that follow this sentence with live news updates to see if, perhaps, last week’s Trump Theory of Transgender Economics ™ ® has suddenly resurfaced in a more vociferous form. Trump has turbocharged the news cycle and I’m a tortoise trying to spray-paint the side of speeding trains with clever satirical caricatures, James Gillray on a folding scooter. Those long wavy lines all along the carriages were supposed to be a drawing of Trump hanging a tea towel marked Ukraine out to dry. Or something.
It’s impossible. On Wednesday afternoon, the world briefly combusted when it appeared Trump’s Truth Social feed had shared an impossibly offensive AI-generated film of his vision for Gaza’s future. An image of a soldier pointing a gun at a Palestinian kid’s head dissolves into liberated children running towards a Dubai-style resort, where Elon Musk eats hummus on a beach, bellydancers bellydance, a toddler tugs at a giant golden balloon of Trump’s head, Trump apparently dances with a semi-naked woman, Musk and some infants dance in falling money, a gaudy Trump casino full of small golden effigies of Trump emerges from the ruins, Musk eats some more hummus but indoors this time, a giant golden statue of Trump bestrides a street scene and, finally, Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu drink cocktails by a pool in just their pants as a rapper raps: “Trump Gaza number one!”
Theories erupted. Was Trump trying to bait the world? Or had Israel made the film to goad Hamas into breaking the ceasefire? Had Hamas made it to goad the outraged into attacking the US? But looking closely, it seems Trump is uncomfortably overfamiliar with the woman he is dancing with and the beach bellydancers are in fact men with beards in translucent dresses, in a country where transgender this and transgender that is yet to do the economic damage it has in the US.
Had someone made an all too plausible satire of Trump’s ethics and aesthetics that Trump himself had taken as an endorsement and shared online? Or did Trump know it was a parody and have so little regard for the human suffering in the region, he shared it anyway? It’s impossible to know. All that is certain is that, as Steve Bannon advised, the zone is flooded with shit. And every week, it gets harder to wade through.
Stewart Lee
2025-03-02T19:26:17+00:00
The smelly thoughts of Donald Trump bubble up like brown burps in the sort of bombsite pond Chopper bike-riding children were advised to avoid in 1970s public information films. Do they indicate concrete plans, are they designed to provoke, or do they have no meaning, like the gurgles and gasps that can inadvertently escape from a decomposing corpse? My job here is to try to anticipate if anything Trump says or does is likely to be of any lasting significance and to satirise it accordingly, in the small window of time allowed, for money. And it isn’t getting any easier. Yes, Ukraine is suffering, but I am the real victim here. For example, last Saturday Trump opined: “We were the richest… think of this, from 1870 to 1913… because we collected tariffs… We had so much wealth. Wouldn’t it be nice today? Of course, now, we give it away to transgender this, to transgender that. Everybody gets a transgender operation. It’s wonderful. We give it away to crazy things. But in those days, it was different. It was a different world. It was a different country.” Would Trump’s notion of the damage caused to long-term American prosperity by transgender this surgery, and also to a lesser extent by transgender that surgery, gain any traction, and thus be deserving of the barbs of my quill, or would it be politely ignored as another crazy corpse bleat? I’m not a historian, though I do follow Prof Janina Ramirez on social media, but surely part of US prosperity in the period Trump describes was built on the proceeding two and a half centuries’ use of free labour in the form of enslaved people stolen in their millions from Africa, their descendants finally getting the vote in 1965, when the Beatles’ Help! was top...
This week's post is brought to you by Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle. Series 3 is on Netflix and I've been watching it again. If you can, and like that sort of thing or want to try it, I'd recommend episode 4 - "context".
"The conflict of interest I would have would be if Nando's were to invent some kind of jazz chicken, by which I mean a chicken that whilst still recognisably a chicken, used improvisation and chance procedure to operate at the very limits of what a chicken could be."
I've been a fan of Stewart Lee for a long time. From Lionel Nimrod's Inexplicable World through (perhaps especially) Fist of Fun, This Morning with Richard Not Judy and his stand-up over the years, there's just something about what he does that I always really liked. The combination of intelligence and silliness, of well-developed and considered craft and improvisation, use of language and physical performance. It's not always the easiest of comedy, it involves thought and participation.
I think it's a form of magic in its purpose and layers and approach to the use the audience puts it too, and I'd draw a comparison here to the shaman, the musician, the facilitator. If you are any of these, there are things you can learn from watching about the craft and nature of owning physical and intellectual space to take an audience with you even through some uncomfortable concepts and places.
Stewart Lee
2015-09-12T00:57:52+01:00
This week's post is brought to you by Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle. Series 3 is on Netflix and I've been watching it again. If you can, and like that sort of thing or want to try it, I'd recommend episode 4 - "context". "The conflict of interest I would have would be if Nando's were to invent some kind of jazz chicken, by which I mean a chicken that whilst still recognisably a chicken, used improvisation and chance procedure to operate at the very limits of what a chicken could be." I've been a fan of Stewart Lee for a long time. From Lionel Nimrod's Inexplicable World through (perhaps especially) Fist of Fun, This Morning with Richard Not Judy and his stand-up over the years, there's just something about what he does that I always really liked. The combination of intelligence and silliness, of well-developed and considered craft and improvisation, use of language and physical performance. It's not always the easiest of comedy, it involves thought and participation. I think it's a form of magic in its purpose and layers and approach to the use the audience puts it too, and I'd draw a comparison here to the shaman, the musician, the facilitator. If you are any of these, there are things you can learn from watching about the craft and nature of owning physical and intellectual space to take an audience with you even through some uncomfortable concepts and places.
I’d say writing comedy about the ever-shifting opinions of Donald Trump, the Speedy Gonzales of on-the-hoof policymaking, is like playing pin the tail on the donkey, but it’s unfair on donkeys. No donkey ever sexually assaulted someone in a department store changing cubicle.
It’s 4.30pm on Wednesday and I’m done. Last week I filed this column on Thursday, and then on Friday DJ Trump and JD Vance beat up Volodymyr Zelenskyy live on TV in the Oval Office to try to grab his minerals, as brazenly as Trump might grab a pussy, like a performatively cruel Tweedledum and Tweedledee in Sopranos suits.
Teenage thugs caught on a security camera roughing up a petrol station attendant and tipping the contents of the till into an Adidas bag have more dignity and honour than Trump and Vance in that now immortal moment. At least they spend the money on drugs and put cash back into the local economy. The postwar order as we understand it melted before our eyes, and the funny “jokes” I had already submitted were suddenly so 24 hours ago, as DJ and JD microwaved the Cornetto™® of hope.
Since I sat down to write this at six this morning, Greenland, which seemed to have disappeared from Trump’s gadfly mind for a week or two, has wandered back into his line of fire, the adjudicated abuser having told congress nine hours ago now that he will seize the rapidly thawing mineral-rich territory “one way or another”. Who is writing Trump’s lines? 1940s Batman comics have better dialogue. And less two-dimensional sidekicks.
“I have a message tonight for the incredible people of Greenland,” the convicted fraudster declared. “We strongly support your right to determine your own future. And if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America. We will keep you safe. We will make you rich.” In Inuit folklore, the evil spirit Idlirvirissong looks like a clown with a funny nose, but if you laugh at its dance it will slice you open, put your intestines on a plate, and feed them to its dogs. Qimitiaka nexessaqtaqpaka! Ring any bells, Inuits? I don’t think Donald Trump would bother with the plate.
The Inuit probably need to check out Trump’s treatment of Indigenous Americans before they spill their guts for the orange Idlirvirissong’s beads and baubles. Back on the mainland, Navajo people have reportedly been swept up in immigration raids, due to being kinda foreign lookin’, and Trump’s attempt to overturn birthright citizenship muddies the waters of First Nation nationality. Greenland is called Kalaallit Nunaat in the native language, meaning Island of the People. I predict that within seconds of the purchase, Google maps will have renamed it, after Trump’s favourite snack, as Island of the McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish-People™®.
The ghostwritten self-help manual author’s support for self-determination for the Greenland Inuit runs counter to his belief in the self-determination of the people of Ukraine, who he thinks should live as Tolkienesque mineral-mining dwarf-slaves at the behest of whichever evil warlock has the most powerful magical eye. But, as we are rapidly realising, pointing out the bathroom document archivist’s inconsistencies, or placing any value on anything he promises from one day to the next, is pointless. The Budapest Memorandum of 1994, signed by Russia and the US, forbids the use of both military force or economic coercion against Ukraine. Ah well. Money talks! Budapest walks!
Face it. America is now our enemy. JD Vance is desperate to destabilise Europe, supposedly because of our fear of “freedom of speech”, but perhaps because steps towards internet safety might prevent profiteering American techlords pumping falsehoods and filth into our waters, and saying it’s illegal to pray in Scotland. And Trump’s vision of the future sees a global turkey carved up between Russia, China and the US, while the rest of us fight over the giblets. Our Trident missiles require American tech to service them. Our “deterrent” is dependent on the ongoing cooperation of a man who thinks the Chinese invented global warming and that Keir Starmer rules Ireland. But that isn’t the worst part of it.
Sometime in the spring of 2020, as the breathless euphoria of lockdown’s early days slowly mutated into existential despair, I lay on my back long into the night, in the garden we were lucky enough to be able to go into, and stared at the stars in the now much clearer sky. Suddenly I saw a long caravan of lights moving at regular speed in a twinkling but sinister convoy across the static stars.
Was it a coordinated Russian air force attack? Or the second wave of an extraterrestrial invasion, our planet already weakened by their alien virus? No, the internet told me, it was a chain of 60 “Starlink” communication satellites of 7,000 that ostentatiously orbit the Earth, all owned by someone called Elon Musk. Until that moment I had been blissfully unaware of the ketamine-gobbling cap goblin’s existence.
Two weeks ago, when Ukraine continued to resist Trump’s attempts to commandeer its minerals, Musk reportedly threatened to shut off the country’s access to Starlink, which would have crippled its military defences. We are beholden to American tech companies in every aspect of our lives, via Google, Amazon, PayPal, Facebook, and multiple social media platforms. Musk has shown their Trump loyalist owners will use them as weapons of war against those who disagree with him. It’s sick to sacrifice the soft diplomacy of foreign aid to spend on flash tanks while continuing to expose our tech flanks.
Starmer thinks he can keep both an antagonistic Trump and our natural EU allies in play, and perhaps he can. To be fair, at the Edinburgh fringe in the 1980s, I saw a man swing a massive claw hammer from a hole in his penis while swallowing a fluorescent light tube at the same time.
Stewart Lee
2025-03-09T19:28:58+00:00
I’d say writing comedy about the ever-shifting opinions of Donald Trump, the Speedy Gonzales of on-the-hoof policymaking, is like playing pin the tail on the donkey, but it’s unfair on donkeys. No donkey ever sexually assaulted someone in a department store changing cubicle. It’s 4.30pm on Wednesday and I’m done. Last week I filed this column on Thursday, and then on Friday DJ Trump and JD Vance beat up Volodymyr Zelenskyy live on TV in the Oval Office to try to grab his minerals, as brazenly as Trump might grab a pussy, like a performatively cruel Tweedledum and Tweedledee in Sopranos suits. Teenage thugs caught on a security camera roughing up a petrol station attendant and tipping the contents of the till into an Adidas bag have more dignity and honour than Trump and Vance in that now immortal moment. At least they spend the money on drugs and put cash back into the local economy. The postwar order as we understand it melted before our eyes, and the funny “jokes” I had already submitted were suddenly so 24 hours ago, as DJ and JD microwaved the Cornetto™® of hope. Since I sat down to write this at six this morning, Greenland, which seemed to have disappeared from Trump’s gadfly mind for a week or two, has wandered back into his line of fire, the adjudicated abuser having told congress nine hours ago now that he will seize the rapidly thawing mineral-rich territory “one way or another”. Who is writing Trump’s lines? 1940s Batman comics have better dialogue. And less two-dimensional sidekicks. “I have a message tonight for the incredible people of Greenland,” the convicted fraudster declared. “We strongly support your right to determine your own future. And if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America....
Last time I filed one of these Observer columns it was the March weekend of our first failed attempt to leave the European Union. I felt I was living in a farce. Brexit is the No Sex Please, We’re British of European political integration. It will run and run. Chris Grayling spends 14 million pounds on non-existent ferries to ship insulin into a country Dominic Raab “hadn’t quite understood” was an island. And both of them are wearing their wives’ nighties! And Michel Barnier and his EU negotiating team are coming to dinner!!
But, as I attempt this week’s toxic screed, I feel I am living not in a farce, but in a horror story; a lurid yarn that, if I hadn’t experienced the terrible reality of it myself, I would have dismissed as too bleak to be believable, too obscene to countenance.
But forgive me, my old friend. I am getting ahead of myself. Sit down here by the fire a while and I will tell you a tale of… No, not there. That’s my chair. You sit over there, by the bin. No, by the bin. The bin for Christ’s sakes. Does that look like a bin? That is an umbrella stand, obviously!! Well, it’s got all umbrellas and sticks and that in it, that’s why!!! That, there, that is a bin!!! They are completely different!!!! Are you blind as well as stupid?
Forgive me, old friend. I forgot to take my lisinopril. Aaah, that’s better. Yes, one of the side-effects is flatulence. I do apologise. Now, I believe it was last Tuesday night… excuse me, again… that I settled down to watch John Carpenter’s 1994 film In the Mouth of Madness. Horror and pulp suddenly seem more pertinent to the world of today than worthy TV dramas such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CSI: Miami and CSI: Mugging Inquiries Binned After 24-hour Window Due to Staffing Issues.
Drawing heavily on the works of the horror writer and fruit sauce magnate HP “HP” Lovecraft, In the Mouth of Madness envisions a society whose citizens believe they have free will, but are following the script of an all-powerful author, intent on turning them against each other, to make their world a playground for unspeakably evil beings hellbent on their ruin.
Did Sir Lynton Crosby spend a million pounds targeting Facebook users through a series of implausible “grassroots” hard-Brexit campaign groups? Britain’s Future and We Are the 52% have both been discussed by the disinformation subcommittee, which is a genuine parliamentary body not an alt-metal band. But were Crosby’s cronies actual organisations or just opinion-morphing constructs made of lies, stock photographs of plausibly normal people pulling serious faces, and exciting fonts?
On Wednesday, it was my younger daughter’s sixth birthday and so, still under that shadow of In the Mouth of Madness, I took her to Kelvedon Hatch secret nuclear bunker in Essex, a perfectly preserved abandoned government shelter that survives as a monument to the impossibility of winning a nuclear war, picnic area and snack bar.
In the bunker’s dressing-up room, the whole family wore the uniforms of gas-masked troopers, tasked with fighting off vengeful irradiated civilians, and posed for selfies. It will make a great politically correct Christmas card this year. “The North London Metropolitan Liberal Elite wish you a Happy Nuclear Winterval.”
In one dimly lit room, a dummy of John Majors reposed on a bed where the PM would have waited to broadcast the nation’s funeral rites. But John Majors is known for his wicked sense of humour and I wondered if he had ever lain in place of his effigy, hiding in plain sight and chuckling, as the traumatised tourists passed by.
Leaflets warning of imminent nuclear war, familiar from my own anxious teenage years, made me oddly nostalgic. Back then, we thought we’d go out with a bang, but climate change science shows us our doom will be a protracted whimper as, over the next few decades, environmental alterations render the world as we know it incrementally unsustainable.
Needless to say, I dragged my children down to Oxford Circus over Easter, travelling by bicycle to avoid the BBC’s Justin Webb accusing me of hypocrisy. I had hoped to get in some good virtue signalling, but I am so out of shape no one recognised me as “Stewart Lee, the world’s greatest living stand-up comedian” (Dominic Maxwell, the Times) and Nanny McPhee was able to snaffle the limelight as usual.
You would have to be dead inside to ridicule the teenage environmentalist Greta Thunberg and yet the usual grindingly algorithimic alt-right controversialists have done just that. And Ken Marsh, the actual genuine chairman of the real Metropolitan Police Federation that exists, described Greta’s followers on LBC as people “eating their lentil souffles that they are all doing”, like an incoherent baby writing a satirical song about hippies for Nationwide circa 1983.
Theresa May wouldn’t even meet the child warrior, knowing she would melt before Greta’s Scandinavian certainties, just as in In the Mouth of Madness, the insurance fraud investigator John Trent (Sam Neill) remains incarcerated in an asylum rather than confront the horrible truths beyond its walls.
I’ll level with ya, True Believers! Inspired by In the Mouth of Madness, I had hoped to write an entire column in the style of a 19th-century horror writer. But I gave up. My youngest flushed a whole apple down the toilet last night and I lost an evening’s writing time in the fallout.
But Greta Thunberg has made everything buzz with hot fuzzy meaning. And there was one line in In the Mouth of Madness, that Sam Neill’s character says while drawing crucifixes on the wall of his padded cell, that just jumped out – “Every species can smell its own extinction.” You go, girl!
Stewart Lee
2019-04-28T15:07:26+01:00
Last time I filed one of these Observer columns it was the March weekend of our first failed attempt to leave the European Union. I felt I was living in a farce. Brexit is the No Sex Please, We’re British of European political integration. It will run and run. Chris Grayling spends 14 million pounds on non-existent ferries to ship insulin into a country Dominic Raab “hadn’t quite understood” was an island. And both of them are wearing their wives’ nighties! And Michel Barnier and his EU negotiating team are coming to dinner!! But, as I attempt this week’s toxic screed, I feel I am living not in a farce, but in a horror story; a lurid yarn that, if I hadn’t experienced the terrible reality of it myself, I would have dismissed as too bleak to be believable, too obscene to countenance. But forgive me, my old friend. I am getting ahead of myself. Sit down here by the fire a while and I will tell you a tale of… No, not there. That’s my chair. You sit over there, by the bin. No, by the bin. The bin for Christ’s sakes. Does that look like a bin? That is an umbrella stand, obviously!! Well, it’s got all umbrellas and sticks and that in it, that’s why!!! That, there, that is a bin!!! They are completely different!!!! Are you blind as well as stupid? Forgive me, old friend. I forgot to take my lisinopril. Aaah, that’s better. Yes, one of the side-effects is flatulence. I do apologise. Now, I believe it was last Tuesday night… excuse me, again… that I settled down to watch John Carpenter’s 1994 film In the Mouth of Madness. Horror and pulp suddenly seem more pertinent to the world of today than worthy TV dramas...
Is Content Provider likely to gain Stewart Lee a new fanbase? Probably not. Does it offer proof to his followers as well as the comedy world at large that he remains one of the country's foremost agent provocateurs when it comes to getting up on stage and talking into a microphone? Almost certainly.
On the weekend before the broadcast of this two-hour recording of his most recent live show, The Times announced Lee as the number one English-speaking comedian on the planet. Though to his detractors, he continues to spew the same metropolitan liberal elitist gobbledygook that winds them up into a frothing, Hard Brexit fury. Here, as you'd expect, Lee puts those types to his withering sword but is not afraid, as he has done for several live shows in a row as well as during his now-axed BBC Comedy Vehicle, to mock-antagonise those who purport to be on his side.
Filming this show in the Leave-opting Southend-on-Sea is already an act of theatrical aggression, and the 'character' of 'Stewart Lee' absolutely lords it over their ignorance and bigotry, amusingly coming to the conclusion that the majority in the crowd have been dragged there against their will.
Upon a stage covered in other comedians' live DVDs, he stomps on them both literally and metaphorically, insisting that the very mechanics of his stand-up (how he doesn't always end a line on a hard consonant like Jimmy Carr and Frankie Boyle), makes him a clearly far superior comedian, while he hilariously mimics Michael McIntyre and Russell Howard in his most physically comedic sections.
As with the Comedy Vehicle shows, he breaks up the stand-up bits with the appearance of a merciless interrogator who does the job that his more vocal critics would love to take on, destroying his very existence as a comedian with anything meaningful to say. Previously, the devil's advocate role was performed with relish by Chris Morris and Armando Iannucci, and here it's comics legend Alan Moore (Watchmen / V for Vendetta) who picks away at Lee's scabs of self-doubt. The joke is always on us: they know that we know that they know that Stewart Lee is a uniquely talented comedy warrior.
Stewart Lee
2018-07-25T22:35:34+01:00
Is Content Provider likely to gain Stewart Lee a new fanbase? Probably not. Does it offer proof to his followers as well as the comedy world at large that he remains one of the country's foremost agent provocateurs when it comes to getting up on stage and talking into a microphone? Almost certainly. On the weekend before the broadcast of this two-hour recording of his most recent live show, The Times announced Lee as the number one English-speaking comedian on the planet. Though to his detractors, he continues to spew the same metropolitan liberal elitist gobbledygook that winds them up into a frothing, Hard Brexit fury. Here, as you'd expect, Lee puts those types to his withering sword but is not afraid, as he has done for several live shows in a row as well as during his now-axed BBC Comedy Vehicle, to mock-antagonise those who purport to be on his side. Filming this show in the Leave-opting Southend-on-Sea is already an act of theatrical aggression, and the 'character' of 'Stewart Lee' absolutely lords it over their ignorance and bigotry, amusingly coming to the conclusion that the majority in the crowd have been dragged there against their will. Upon a stage covered in other comedians' live DVDs, he stomps on them both literally and metaphorically, insisting that the very mechanics of his stand-up (how he doesn't always end a line on a hard consonant like Jimmy Carr and Frankie Boyle), makes him a clearly far superior comedian, while he hilariously mimics Michael McIntyre and Russell Howard in his most physically comedic sections. As with the Comedy Vehicle shows, he breaks up the stand-up bits with the appearance of a merciless interrogator who does the job that his more vocal critics would love to take on, destroying his very existence as...
Long after their relationship ended, one of David Cameron’s ex-girlfriends joined a nunnery, so wounded was she by their parting. It is hard to know what religious comforts the supposed pig at the centre of the Daily Mail’s current allegations might later have pursued following Cameron’s brief and perfunctory dalliance with it, primarily because it was already dead. And so on. And so on.
As a professional humorist, there is very little point, this week, in trying to write zingy one-liners about David Cameron, the Bodil Joensen of international politics. (Don’t Google this. Not safe for work.) Within two hours of the rumour breaking, the infinite number of monkeys of Twitter had written all the best jokes, winning the battle of wits by sheer weight of numbers. Well done. I concede defeat.
But the gravitational pull of unseen interests directing the movement of our perceptions of the pig rumour is all too obvious. It appears we must now view British politics, and the coverage thereof, as its own reality; a vast interrelated fiction comprising many parallel narratives, with our understanding of it shaped by some guiding editorial intelligence; like the Marvel Comics Universe, the Eternia realm common to both He-Man and She-Ra Princess of Power, or the overlapping fantasy worlds of Dallas and Knots Landing.
The dubious pig story first appeared in a book by a wronged political ally of Cameron’s, written in a spirit of spite and self-justification – though, we have to concede, is there really any other kind of book?
Nonetheless, it has been childishly amusing to watch the same trolls usually contracted to crow over the corpses of their defeated enemies struggling to defend their traduced leader. Was I dreaming or did the thinker Toby Young opine on television that the prime minister had “emerged well from the situation”? Perhaps. But he will never be able to eat breakfast in a hotel restaurant again. Or cuddle a pig in public.
Meanwhile, on social media, the expat plant-loather Louise Mensch cited an obscure 1981 street punk B-side, tweeting “the story is rubbish, and if it isn’t, to quote the Anti-Nowhere League, ‘So f****** what?’”
But the League’s So What (“I’ve fucked a sheep, I’ve fucked a goat, I’ve had my cock right down its throat”) is perhaps not the ideal platform upon which to mount a defence of David Cameron, going on, as it does, to justify sexual relations with a schoolgirl in the same nihilistic spirit of mock moral relativism.
Derived from an overheard pub conversation between some jaded reprobates, So What is not intended to be embraced as a coherent philosophy for life, though the cover version metalhead Mensch presumably knows, that of her rock manager’s husband Peter Mensch’s protegees Metallica, is predictably stadium-shorn of whatever wafer-thin smattering of ironic nuance the original had.
Never mind. All Conservatives’ interactions with culture of any form, from the very idea of public broadcasting itself down to a punk rock B-side, end in confusion. They are like dogs listening to human conversations, the puzzled twitching of their heads sometimes mistaken for understanding.
One might be tempted to assume the pig tale is true because it is difficult to imagine most of the six Conservative MPs suspected of supplying it having enough imagination to imagine it. Jeremy Hunt, for example, couldn’t imagine his way out of an imaginary paper bag even if the bag had a hole cut in it in the exact shape of his own body, with arrows all round it and a flashing exit sign.
Michael Gove, on the other hand, does have a creative streak, and he and I both appear in the same 1983 anthology of verse by adopted middle-class teenagers, Pathetic Bleats From The Cradle Of Privilege.
Gove is also a fan of the down-market horror scribe Dennis Wheatley, and though this looks classy next to the culture secretary John Whittingdale’s voracious appetite for watching women die slowly in “torture porn” horror films, Wheatley’s sacrificial Satanic rites are rarely as lurid as Cameron’s supposed sow abuse.
The way is clear for whoever is really writing the story – Lord Ashcroft, Paul Dacre, or John Major, playing a long game
As an Oxford-educated classicist, Boris Johnson would, however, be familiar with the source material and critical studies required to conjure the bacchanalian vision engulfing the prime minister – Robert Graves’s The White Goddess, James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough, and any number of visceral Greek and Roman tragedies. But what would be his motive?
I was never one for conspiracy theories, but today the sort of mushroom gibberish I loftily dismissed when it was spewed at me by an articulate crusty nicknamed “The Professor”, hanging out the back of a converted peace convoy ambulance at the Elephant Fayre festival in 1983, suddenly seems plausible.
Unnamed forces have moved against Cameron, as they inevitably would, eventually. The secret chiefs no longer have any need for him. He was always just a useful plasticine man with no real opinions, and no vision, remorphed periodically to fit the shape of prevailing trends.
Cameron is like Bob Kane’s Batman, a two-dimensional cipher originally invented to amuse simpletons, subsequently invested with character and motivation as required.
To say Cameron is meaningless is to dignify him with the suggestion of anti-meaning. He is beyond meaning. And now the way is clear for whoever is really writing this story – Lord Ashcroft, Paul Dacre, or maybe even John Major, playing a long game – to have him replaced.
In case George Osborne gets any ideas, Boris Johnson is keen to pull rank. The mayor’s spiky pun about “hookers”, at last week’s Influential Londoner awards, reminded Osborne that there is a shit-filled slop-bucket of Damocles ready to rain down on him at a moment’s notice, only deflected last time around by the quiet cooperation of the then News Of The World editor, and future Cameron aide, Andy Coulson. Clearly, Boris the inveterate playground bully didn’t get the post-Corbyn memo about everyone being nice to each other in public from now on.
Given what has been made to stick to Cameron, it is impossible to predict what the machine might use to destroy its next spent servant. If we were told George Osborne used to employ chained naked gimps as human pencil sharpeners we’d probably go with it.
In a way then, Louise Mensch was right, but for the wrong reasons. Does it matter if David Cameron did Netflix and chill with a dead hog? So what? What matters is who is telling us this, and why, and what power do they wield? But, we’ve been so busy laughing at an amusing jpeg of Peppa Pig running away from the prime minister, it’s a question we haven’t found time to ask.
Stewart Lee’s A Room With a Stew is at Leicester Square theatre, London WC2 until 8 Jan.
Stewart Lee
2015-09-27T14:36:08+01:00
Long after their relationship ended, one of David Cameron’s ex-girlfriends joined a nunnery, so wounded was she by their parting. It is hard to know what religious comforts the supposed pig at the centre of the Daily Mail’s current allegations might later have pursued following Cameron’s brief and perfunctory dalliance with it, primarily because it was already dead. And so on. And so on. As a professional humorist, there is very little point, this week, in trying to write zingy one-liners about David Cameron, the Bodil Joensen of international politics. (Don’t Google this. Not safe for work.) Within two hours of the rumour breaking, the infinite number of monkeys of Twitter had written all the best jokes, winning the battle of wits by sheer weight of numbers. Well done. I concede defeat. But the gravitational pull of unseen interests directing the movement of our perceptions of the pig rumour is all too obvious. It appears we must now view British politics, and the coverage thereof, as its own reality; a vast interrelated fiction comprising many parallel narratives, with our understanding of it shaped by some guiding editorial intelligence; like the Marvel Comics Universe, the Eternia realm common to both He-Man and She-Ra Princess of Power, or the overlapping fantasy worlds of Dallas and Knots Landing. The dubious pig story first appeared in a book by a wronged political ally of Cameron’s, written in a spirit of spite and self-justification – though, we have to concede, is there really any other kind of book? Nonetheless, it has been childishly amusing to watch the same trolls usually contracted to crow over the corpses of their defeated enemies struggling to defend their traduced leader. Was I dreaming or did the thinker Toby Young opine on television that the prime minister had “emerged well...
If The Byrds or REM had joined the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood maybe they'd have played the baroque folk-pop Seattle's Green Pajamas have pushed since 1984.
Still stalked by dark ladies and ghost lovers, The Pajamas' 30th album in an apparently infinitely sustainable career satisfies regular customers' expectations of effortlessly hummable guitar pop - Supervirgin's McCartney bass runs and the controlled rush of Carrie - but offers enough new moves to justify the band's persistence.
The Queen's Last Tango, for example, is a Balkan-sounding polka that becomes an incendiary twin guitar burn-out.
Stewart Lee
2013-02-17T19:53:28+00:00
If The Byrds or REM had joined the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood maybe they'd have played the baroque folk-pop Seattle's Green Pajamas have pushed since 1984. Still stalked by dark ladies and ghost lovers, The Pajamas' 30th album in an apparently infinitely sustainable career satisfies regular customers' expectations of effortlessly hummable guitar pop - Supervirgin's McCartney bass runs and the controlled rush of Carrie - but offers enough new moves to justify the band's persistence. The Queen's Last Tango, for example, is a Balkan-sounding polka that becomes an incendiary twin guitar burn-out.
I am a standup comedian, and simply putting the words “standup comedian” in inverted commas in your below-the-line comments on this column will do nothing to change that, you Brexit-crazed cyberbots of billionaire Trump-backer Robert Mercer’s referendum-shaping Cambridge Analytica company. Sad!
Last week, in Truro, as part of the endless tour I use these columns to promote, I performed my “comedy” act at the “Hall” for Cornwall. Last “year”, at the same “venue”, a charitable “local” man, mistaking my trademark fabricated frustration for actual despair, came on “stage” for 20 “minutes” to help me get the “evening” back on track by telling amusing stories about his “cat”.
It was the kindest, and most prolonged, heckle any “comedian” has ever experienced. But, as usual, my consummate skill in weaving it seamlessly into the show made the Cornish people present assume the invader was a paid stooge, carted around the country for Equity minimum and free crisps.
It could be worse. Tommy Cooper’s faux-incompetence was so convincing that his audience rapturously applauded his own on-stage ITV death in 1984. Warren Beatty needs to realise that worse things have happened on live television, though admittedly without the racially awkward subtext. Tommy Cooper’s death did not compound the marginalisation of African Americans.
Truro’s Hall for Cornwall, where I performed, is about to undergo a £17m refurbishment, partially funded by the European Regional Development Fund, fortuitously finalised before Cornwall voted Leave. It seems that showering someone with gifts and money can make them resent you. Who knew?
I could have told the EU their gauche attempts to woo Cornwall would fail. My packed bottom drawer, full of haughtily returned boxes of Ferrero Rocher, Ann Summers gift vouchers and Katie Price™ Kissable Eau De Parfum, bears mute witness to my own inability to understand that affection cannot simply be bought. What do women want? Ah, solving that question brings the priest and the doctor running over the fields in their Hai Karate aftershave.
And anyway, the county of Cornwall elected to leave Europe in part due to a misunderstanding about the political loyalties of fish. Fish will soon swim away, or choke to death on microbeads, whether Nigel Farage gets knighted or not, as he has no power over the reproductive cycles of cod. Or women, other than his own pan-European concubines. Yet.
Last spring, Cornish Leavers were reassured that their annual £60m European funding would be met after Brexit. Last week they learned it wouldn’t be, obviously, another unravelling assurance. “Whatever your views on the referendum, we are about to go off a cliff,” said Cornwall-dwelling Labour councillor Tim Dwelly, whose experience of rhyming schoolyard taunts propelled him into the Labour party as a form of revenge.
Looking on the bright side, there are worse cliffs to “go off” than Tim Dwelly’s Cornish ones, which are among the most beautiful in Britain. I might buy one, and own a second cliff alongside my main London cliff, as a seasonal holiday cliff.
And the metaphorical cliff that European nationals, who have settled here decades ago and raised culturally British children, are to be hurled off by Theresa May makes Cornwall’s self-inflicted imminent lack of rural broadband and transport infrastructure look less deserving of sympathy.
Perhaps the unelected Lords will stop the unelected prime minister making political sacrifices of the delightful east Europeans who prop up our health and hospitality industries. But, hating both the lower and the upper houses, I feel like Fay Wray, hysterical atop Skull Island in King Kong, hoping the chest-beating monster-ape Heseltine will save us from the carnivorous pteranodon May, the lesser of two evils.
As a fully paid-up member of the Metropolitan Liberal Elite™, I am torn between anger at my beloved Cornwall’s Leave vote and a deep and enduring affection for the mythologically and archaeologically rich county that will endure irrespective of its Boris-bewitched people’s Brexit crime.
Indeed, I have just written an introduction to a new edition of the surrealist Ithell Colquhoun’s 1957 psychogeographical study of the region, The Living Stones, priced at £9.99 from Peter Owen Publishers. Cornwall needs to understand its principal function is as a profitable dreamscape for incoming artists and writers, and not as an economically viable region serving the needs of its indigenous folk.
I thought it would be educational to be on tour in pre-Brexit Britain, testing the waters of different towns by opening with a quarter of an hour of EU referendum-themed zingers. I realised that, as 52% of the country have voted broadly against the sort of liberal position I predictably espouse, this time around I would have to write jokes that were funny in of themselves, rather than being just mildly amusing statements carried because the sycophantic audience unquestioningly agreed with them. This was a whole new area for me, and I relished the challenge.
How could I write a one size fits all touring, two-hour, standup show that would play to all of divided pre-Brexit Britain? A line that, on Tuesday night, might receive a round of applause in Remain-voting Brighton, Harrogate or Glasgow might the next night, in Lincoln, see me glassed in the face by a man with a full transcript of Amber Rudd’s last Tory party conference speech tattooed along the full length of his erect racist penis.
I initially played the show for four months to the metropolitan liberal elite of Remain-voting London, who lapped up my Brexit bit greedily, as if it were a newly spiralised courgette.
Then I went out into the wilderness of Brexit Britain, where the Remain-voting towns loom out of the darkness like fantasy citadels in a Tolkienesque landscape, wondrous walled cities full of wizards and poets, and people who could understand data, in the middle of a vast bubbling swamp with “Here there be trolls” written over it in curly pirate script.
I am writing this now, at 2am, having come offstage earlier tonight in Poole, the most Brexit-y town I have played so far. People laughed along. They bought books afterwards. Some audience members told me the friends they had brought with them had left annoyed, like it was a badge of honour.
I felt torn between not wanting to entertain any stray Leave voters and understanding that, like me on one of our rare nights out, they might be just parents who had booked a babysitter and hoped for the best, and deserved it. I made my colours clear. Nobody died. I don’t know. Ask me in two years.
Stewart Lee’s Content Provider is now touring; see stewartlee.co.uk for details
Stewart Lee
2017-03-05T15:16:28+00:00
I am a standup comedian, and simply putting the words “standup comedian” in inverted commas in your below-the-line comments on this column will do nothing to change that, you Brexit-crazed cyberbots of billionaire Trump-backer Robert Mercer’s referendum-shaping Cambridge Analytica company. Sad! Last week, in Truro, as part of the endless tour I use these columns to promote, I performed my “comedy” act at the “Hall” for Cornwall. Last “year”, at the same “venue”, a charitable “local” man, mistaking my trademark fabricated frustration for actual despair, came on “stage” for 20 “minutes” to help me get the “evening” back on track by telling amusing stories about his “cat”. It was the kindest, and most prolonged, heckle any “comedian” has ever experienced. But, as usual, my consummate skill in weaving it seamlessly into the show made the Cornish people present assume the invader was a paid stooge, carted around the country for Equity minimum and free crisps. It could be worse. Tommy Cooper’s faux-incompetence was so convincing that his audience rapturously applauded his own on-stage ITV death in 1984. Warren Beatty needs to realise that worse things have happened on live television, though admittedly without the racially awkward subtext. Tommy Cooper’s death did not compound the marginalisation of African Americans. Truro’s Hall for Cornwall, where I performed, is about to undergo a £17m refurbishment, partially funded by the European Regional Development Fund, fortuitously finalised before Cornwall voted Leave. It seems that showering someone with gifts and money can make them resent you. Who knew? I could have told the EU their gauche attempts to woo Cornwall would fail. My packed bottom drawer, full of haughtily returned boxes of Ferrero Rocher, Ann Summers gift vouchers and Katie Price™ Kissable Eau De Parfum, bears mute witness to my own inability to understand that affection...
Defying digitization and the dispensability of music, here's a 14 CD boxed behemoth of everything ever recorded by Family, 1967 - 1973, with a price tag pitched at now comfortable fans who formerly grooved in greatcoats, available only online at familyonceuponatime.com.
As complicated as any of their Progressive Era peers, Family were distinguished by a soulful blues heart, and the confrontational proto-punk presence of vocalist Roger Chapman, and by the fact that being from Leicester rendered pretention impossible.
By Seventies standards Family seemed strange. Shorn of their moorings they suddenly make sense.
Stewart Lee
2013-02-24T19:29:49+00:00
Defying digitization and the dispensability of music, here's a 14 CD boxed behemoth of everything ever recorded by Family, 1967 - 1973, with a price tag pitched at now comfortable fans who formerly grooved in greatcoats, available only online at familyonceuponatime.com. As complicated as any of their Progressive Era peers, Family were distinguished by a soulful blues heart, and the confrontational proto-punk presence of vocalist Roger Chapman, and by the fact that being from Leicester rendered pretention impossible. By Seventies standards Family seemed strange. Shorn of their moorings they suddenly make sense.
Jill O’Sullivan, Belfast born but Chicago raised, fills her lungs and sucks the trademark Alternative Country and Post Rock sounds of the windy city through the filter of a dramatically dour Welsh-Scottish rhythm section.
Valley Of Death, Water Wont Fall and Avalanche of Lust suggest some lost widescreen western cowgirl, like Neko Case or Paula Frazer of Tarnation, forced to sleep on PJ Harvey’s uncomfortably spiky couch.
The Glasgow-based group’s third album unmasks a parade of previously unmixed influences to create a new identity.
Stewart Lee
2013-02-06T21:51:00+00:00
Jill O’Sullivan, Belfast born but Chicago raised, fills her lungs and sucks the trademark Alternative Country and Post Rock sounds of the windy city through the filter of a dramatically dour Welsh-Scottish rhythm section. Valley Of Death, Water Wont Fall and Avalanche of Lust suggest some lost widescreen western cowgirl, like Neko Case or Paula Frazer of Tarnation, forced to sleep on PJ Harvey’s uncomfortably spiky couch. The Glasgow-based group’s third album unmasks a parade of previously unmixed influences to create a new identity.
Cutting edge comedian Stewart Lee performed at a packed Truro Hall for Cornwall last night.
Seats were in short supply as the Lee brought his unique comedy act to the stage as part of his live tour taking him up and down the country.
As well as stand-up comedy, Lee has broadcast on television and radio and written in national newspapers.
Stewart Lee
2010-02-20T17:19:08+00:00
Cutting edge comedian Stewart Lee performed at a packed Truro Hall for Cornwall last night. Seats were in short supply as the Lee brought his unique comedy act to the stage as part of his live tour taking him up and down the country. As well as stand-up comedy, Lee has broadcast on television and radio and written in national newspapers.
The Fall's five releases from 1980-1983, - Grotesque (After The Gramme), Slates, Hex Enduction Hour, Room To Live and Perverted By Language - fused garage punk and droning Krautrock stasis with primitive improvisation, Mark E Smith in expansive lyrical flow. The Fall were the rock refusenik's rock band. But in 1984 a pre-album single, the heretically shiny c.r.e.e.p, boded ill to purists, with clanging casio keyboards, clipped female backing vocals, Tupperware percussion and childlike melody. And then, suddenly, there was The Wonderful And Frightening World Of… , a pop album of sorts, resubmitted here for your reconsideration, a quarter of a century later, the first of Beggars' Banquet's Fall 'omnibus editions'.
The first CD offers the album proper, crackling with previously obscured details.
Lay Of The Land's Quatermass chant cuts into a stop start polka built on twin tautened telegraph basses; 2 by 4 revels in the rockabilly rhythms with which the Seventies Fall endured an oedipal relationship; Copped It is closest to the one chord drones of Hex and Perverted; Elves closes the album's first side, one of many Fall rewrites of I Wanna Be Your Dog.
So far there's little to scare the horses, but on side two Mark E Smith struggles to expand the definition of what The Fall could be. Slang King's propulsive funk riff and fairy light keyboards frame the oft-quoted lyric 'Put the Curly Wurly back'; Stephen Song's modal clatter sees Brix E Smith's backing vocals finding a pop hook that no-one else could hear; Disney's Dream Debased pressgangs hazy California sunshine pop into The Fall's post-punk drizzle.
The meandering Bug Day is the only hint of filler. Just as their punk peers began to ossify The Fall struck out for strange new territories.
A fifty page booklet of key players' reminiscences accompanies a further three discs. The cd of singles and rough mixes includes the indispensably insolent Pat - Trip Dispenser and a newly discovered recording of the oddly euphoric anthem to domestic lighting difficulties, No Bulbs; a live disc from September sees the band replicate the album with an accuracy which perhaps sells them short; a disc of BBC sessions includes the soon abandoned work-in-progress Words Of Expectation, a magnificent nine minute torrent of words over a luxuriously lugubrious groove, but nevertheless a now redundant last gasp of the former Fall sound.
The following year The Fall were on The Tube in eyeliner and leather, where Bo Diddley praised the snake-hipped, Southern fried rock and roll of Cruisers' Creek, and my teenage Goth cousin had their picture next to the inverted cross on her wall.
The Fall had made it as big as Peel-patronised bands ever did in those days. This Nation's Grace, perhaps The Fall's most accessible album, is dirty urban psychedelia. Its sleeve, reproduced here in a miniature gatefold, depicts Blakean charioteers surging over decrepit tower blocks. The songs are big and beaty and alterno-disco primed, subversively in synch with prevailing trends.
Bombast and Gut Of The Quntifier offer the usual fractious barked poetics; the stomping chants of What You Need, My New House and Paintwork reveal the caveman within every consumer; I Am Damo Suzuki and Mansion plagiarise Can and The Deviants respectively, placing The Fall in the cult band continuum; Spoilt Victorian Child is a career high-point of spiky psychobilly and LA is a throbbing fug of Batcave blues.
A second disc compiles previously unheard album demos, including Ma Riley, a petty dig at Smith's former Lieutenant Mark Riley. A third collects all the album's attendant singles and Peel session tracks. Rewarded for their patience, The Fall's constituency coalesced, and cling loyally to this day.
Stewart Lee
2011-01-02T19:27:57+00:00
The Fall's five releases from 1980-1983, - Grotesque (After The Gramme), Slates, Hex Enduction Hour, Room To Live and Perverted By Language - fused garage punk and droning Krautrock stasis with primitive improvisation, Mark E Smith in expansive lyrical flow. The Fall were the rock refusenik's rock band. But in 1984 a pre-album single, the heretically shiny c.r.e.e.p, boded ill to purists, with clanging casio keyboards, clipped female backing vocals, Tupperware percussion and childlike melody. And then, suddenly, there was The Wonderful And Frightening World Of… , a pop album of sorts, resubmitted here for your reconsideration, a quarter of a century later, the first of Beggars' Banquet's Fall 'omnibus editions'. The first CD offers the album proper, crackling with previously obscured details. Lay Of The Land's Quatermass chant cuts into a stop start polka built on twin tautened telegraph basses; 2 by 4 revels in the rockabilly rhythms with which the Seventies Fall endured an oedipal relationship; Copped It is closest to the one chord drones of Hex and Perverted; Elves closes the album's first side, one of many Fall rewrites of I Wanna Be Your Dog. So far there's little to scare the horses, but on side two Mark E Smith struggles to expand the definition of what The Fall could be. Slang King's propulsive funk riff and fairy light keyboards frame the oft-quoted lyric 'Put the Curly Wurly back'; Stephen Song's modal clatter sees Brix E Smith's backing vocals finding a pop hook that no-one else could hear; Disney's Dream Debased pressgangs hazy California sunshine pop into The Fall's post-punk drizzle. The meandering Bug Day is the only hint of filler. Just as their punk peers began to ossify The Fall struck out for strange new territories. A fifty page booklet of key players' reminiscences accompanies a...
All across the land the emergency alarm went off. Oliver Dowden had been appointed deputy prime minister. The harsh metallic tone of the mobile phone sounded suspiciously like the rattle of a barrel being scraped bare. Metal on metal. There’s not an ounce of talent left in the Tory party. If it was a circus elephant you’d put a bullet in its head and have done with it. A kindness.
Dominic Skeletor Raab is gone, currently preparing to spend more time with the sentient throbbing vein in his head that tells him who can live and who must die. The Conservative response to Raab’s transgressions is not to make sure ministers stop bullying civil service staff, but instead to recruit only party loyalists who will be grateful for the honour of being shouted at by a top Tory, rather than kicking up a fuss. Those wet wipes! Those silly bitches!
Similarly, in 2021, rather than ending dodgy party donations, the Conservatives instead proposed to limit the Electoral Commission’s ability to scrutinise them. The November 2021 elections bill planned to give Michael Gove the power to decide what got investigated and when. Snort if you like, but Gove famously has a nose for sniffing things out, and snuffling up any lines of inquiry that might be laid out before him on the glass-topped coffee table of British political corruption.
As far back as 2012, instead of dealing with London’s air pollution problem, the then mayor Boris Let the Bodies Pile High Johnson simply used suppressants to glue pollution particles to roads near official air quality monitors, bringing down readings, to suggest better air quality. If only there had been some warning, when Turds was allowed to become prime minister on the back of his busload of Brexit lies in 2019, that he was not to be trusted. Tories gonna Tory!
But the problem is, guys, that Rishi Sunak needs to pick another Conservative politician to be deputy prime minister. The problem is, guys, if you are a Conservative politician at the moment, you have clung on by making unjustifiable intellectual and moral accommodations for Brexit, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss’s Tufton St apocalypse, the flooding of the nation’s rivers and water table with human excrement, proposed state-sanctioned breaches of international human rights understandings, and a prime minister who calls everyone “guys”, like a sixth-form prefect trying to convince some cool kids to sell him weed that is actually dried out strands of goldfish excrement in a Tic Tac mints box.
In short, guys, if you are currently in government, you are either evil or a moron. In short, guys, if you are currently in government you are, by definition, not fit to be in government. And yet, guys, it is into this shallow smallpox well of Tory talent, as clogged with filth as our waterways, that a bare-forearmed can-do Sunak must lower his leaky slop bucket. Guys.
I sit, sickened, next to the conveyor belt in the sushi restaurant of broken Brexit Britain, and watch Conservative politicians going round and round the track. They are tiny piles of human excrement splatted on to clean white plates, each topped with a flag of their face to remind me who these blandly evil beings are during their brief moment in the spotlight, before greed, cruelty and incompetence send them hence. Again. They disappear round the corner of the serving unit, trailing unholy halos of flies, only to re-emerge, with clockwork Camberwick Green inevitability. But I thought we had seen the last of Oliver Dowden, the Harold Bishop of the anti-woke Avengers ™ ®.
In February last year the then minister without portfolio and party co-chairman Dowden flew to America to address the Heritage Foundation. Sixty-six of the thinktank’s employees and alumni got roles in the Trump administration; it published lies about election fraud on its website; has an affiliate that spent $75,000 on adverts, including falsely suggesting that Democrats wanted to register illegal aliens to vote; pushed to ban critical race theory teaching; supports legislation against transgender rights; opposed military aid for Ukraine; has received ExxonMobil funding; and criticises the Kyoto agreement. Dowden spoke to them about how cancel culture is a “painful woke psychodrama”, and woke ideology is a “dangerous form of decadence”.
Ironically, Dowden, the anti-woke wokefinder general ™ ® , stepped down as minister without portfolio and party co-chairman last year, after the Tory defeat at the Wakefield byelection, a wakey-wakey Wakefield wake-up call for the weakened anti-wokeys. When a minister quits as minister without portfolio it is not clear if the minister is then handed a portfolio to prove they no longer have the job. Either way, it seemed we had seen the last of Dowden, with or without portfolio.
But the sushi belt trundles on, and the pile of shat with Dowden’s face on the flag rounded the corner again last October, this time as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, replacing the financially inconsistent horse-warmer Nadhim Zahawi. And now the hand of fate reaches down and places a new flag on Dowden’s poo pile, declaring him deputy prime minister. In lieu of any answers to the country’s real problems, expect Dowden to bodyboard a brown tide of bullshit, about woke teachers and rewritten history, into the sunset.
Meanwhile, Southwest Water is fined a paltry £2.1m for fish-fatal river pollution; Lee Anderson rampages through a select committee, a dangerous golem given life by a Conservative establishment that know not what they do; Robert Jenrick raises the false flag of incompatible values to court far-right votes, clinging to power like a perma-smiled dingleberry on the filthy anus of Suella Braverman’s home office; Brexit means food and drink prices are rising at the fastest rate since the 70s, making builders’ Bovril a luxury drink; and Rishi Sunak smiles like a spanked schoolboy as CBI leaders tell him everything is fucked. But the real problem is wokeness. Guys.
Stewart Lee
2023-04-30T21:32:25+01:00
All across the land the emergency alarm went off. Oliver Dowden had been appointed deputy prime minister. The harsh metallic tone of the mobile phone sounded suspiciously like the rattle of a barrel being scraped bare. Metal on metal. There’s not an ounce of talent left in the Tory party. If it was a circus elephant you’d put a bullet in its head and have done with it. A kindness. Dominic Skeletor Raab is gone, currently preparing to spend more time with the sentient throbbing vein in his head that tells him who can live and who must die. The Conservative response to Raab’s transgressions is not to make sure ministers stop bullying civil service staff, but instead to recruit only party loyalists who will be grateful for the honour of being shouted at by a top Tory, rather than kicking up a fuss. Those wet wipes! Those silly bitches! Similarly, in 2021, rather than ending dodgy party donations, the Conservatives instead proposed to limit the Electoral Commission’s ability to scrutinise them. The November 2021 elections bill planned to give Michael Gove the power to decide what got investigated and when. Snort if you like, but Gove famously has a nose for sniffing things out, and snuffling up any lines of inquiry that might be laid out before him on the glass-topped coffee table of British political corruption. As far back as 2012, instead of dealing with London’s air pollution problem, the then mayor Boris Let the Bodies Pile High Johnson simply used suppressants to glue pollution particles to roads near official air quality monitors, bringing down readings, to suggest better air quality. If only there had been some warning, when Turds was allowed to become prime minister on the back of his busload of Brexit lies in 2019, that...
Superyachts seek safe havens. Property portfolios dissolve. Lawyers are engaged, accountants contracted. Politicians confect plausible denials over ostentatious donations. Tory party co-chairman Ben Elliot deletes online boasts of his company’s “15 years’ experience providing luxury lifestyle management services to Russia’s elite and corporate members”. It seems there were oligarchs everywhere, all along. We’ve been living in an oligarchy, and no one knew, except all the silenced journalists and stifled inquiries that tried to tell us.
Six years ago, after meeting him at a urinal, I briefly befriended the now penitent oligarch Roman Abramovich. Ten songs into a brilliant set by Americana legends the Long Ryders at Under the Bridge, the venue attached to the football ground Abramovich owned, I dashed to the gents, just after Ivory Tower and during The Light Gets in the Way, my prostate gland and my enthusiasm for plangent country rock in mortal combat.
“That Ivory Tower song is so good. We do live in an Ivory Tower,” the urinating oligarch next to me moaned drunkenly in an anglicised Russian accent, “And an Ivory Tower can fall down, any time, my friend! Fantasticheskiy!” And with that, the edified oligarch began to weep hot tears that splashed down into the urinal bowl, diluting the champagne-flavoured micturate his tiny penis had squirted weakly there. I am not a fan of football, kleptocracies or smelting. I did not know I was being addressed by the oligarch, and newly converted Long Ryders fan, Roman Abramovich.
“I agree,” I said, innocently. “The Long Ryders work within the country rock genre, I suppose, but they invest it with levels of real tenderness, insight and originality, magically greater than the sum of its parts.” “You are an intellectual, my fat companion. A shoe-shine boy of the elite. You overanalyse,” said my new oligarch friend, suddenly stabilising. “I never knew this group before, but the sound is Clash, but on a farm! Makes Robbie Williams seem shit.”
“Have you seen Robbie Williams live?” I asked politely, zipping up my flies, and wondering how a Russian Robbie Williams fan had found his way into a reunion show by some not well-known 80s alternative country pioneers. “Williams played the New Year’s Eve party I threw for Vladimir Putin two years ago. Then he writes an offensive song obviously about me and the loans-for-shares privatisation programme: ‘It takes a certain kind of man with a certain reputation to alleviate the cash from a whole entire nation.’ Happy to take my money though, eh? Asshole! I should sue him. Like Catherine Belton and HarperCollins in the future. At least I was never in Take That!”
Now I was confused. “You threw a party for Putin? Who are you?” Without washing his hands, my oligarch companion clasped my face in his palms. “You do not know who I am? Ha! Fantasticheskiy!” And then he kissed each of my cheeks in turn. “Come Shoe-shine! We’ll drink champagne. You explain this ‘alternative country’ to me and watch the cowboy farm band, yes?”
As we were served, very quickly, at the bar, the Long Ryders kicked into the countrified powerpop of their signature NRBQ cover, I Want You Bad. “Fantasticheskiy,” enthused Abramovich, as a woman poured us champagne, “But I have never heard them before. Their failure to penetrate the wider marketplace is surely due to poor business decisions by record labels in the 80s. All is business. I bought a painting of a big woman for £17m. George Lucas, yes? I invited him to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers play at my 2011 New Year’s party. Ideal party band. Those Ewoks in Return of Jedi, yes? They are no fucking good. I asked Lucas, ‘The Ewoks are Wookiees, yes, from the other two films, the good films? Compare the meerkat. You changed Wookiees for the new small creatures to sell more toys to morons?’ Lucas said nothing. All is business. What song is the group playing now?”
“State of My Union,” I reply, fizzing, “I suppose, both musically and lyrically, it has an ironic relationship with rock’n’roll songs that eulogise a particular place, like the Beach Boys’ California Girls, the humour here deriving from the fact that it concerns the unglamorous state of Kentucky.” “Enough, Shoe-shine!” honked Abramovich, “they’re leaving the stage. Clap for an encore.”
“Ivory Tower! Ivory Tower!” commanded Abramovich, a man not used to having his wishes disobeyed, but the spritely roots veterans sprang instead into a spirited reading of their near hit, the British invasion hued American history lesson Looking for Lewis and Clark. “This song is good. The harmonica break excites me,” concluded Abramovich as the Long Ryders left that stage, and we headed to the exits. “But it’s no Ivory Tower. Hey! Shoe-shine,” and Abramovich threw his arm around me as we walked through the Chelsea grounds in the cool summer night, “Ivory Tower. Sing that song for me, now.” “Really,” I asked, “just here now, unaccompanied? I don’t know if … ” “Sing the fucking song, Shoe-shine, and earn your champagne!” growled Abramovich, so I summoned some inner strength, stood up straight and sang: “My friend lives in an ivory tower. She don’t listen when you try to tell her: ‘it’s too late, your ivory tower’s falling down.’”
The notes faded and Abramovich sat down near a seagull on top of a dirty bin, gazing at the stars. He seemed momentarily moved, as if about to admit something, but then snapped back into certainty. “Hmm,” concluded Abramovich, “This Ivory Tower needs a checkpoint entry, crash barriers, iron gates, like Kensington Palace Gardens. Or expensive litigation lawyers. Some donations to a charitable fund. Etc. Then the Ivory Tower will not fall. Go home Shoe-shine. Home to your stinking book-lined cave.”
Stewart Lee
2022-03-06T19:09:10+00:00
Superyachts seek safe havens. Property portfolios dissolve. Lawyers are engaged, accountants contracted. Politicians confect plausible denials over ostentatious donations. Tory party co-chairman Ben Elliot deletes online boasts of his company’s “15 years’ experience providing luxury lifestyle management services to Russia’s elite and corporate members”. It seems there were oligarchs everywhere, all along. We’ve been living in an oligarchy, and no one knew, except all the silenced journalists and stifled inquiries that tried to tell us. Six years ago, after meeting him at a urinal, I briefly befriended the now penitent oligarch Roman Abramovich. Ten songs into a brilliant set by Americana legends the Long Ryders at Under the Bridge, the venue attached to the football ground Abramovich owned, I dashed to the gents, just after Ivory Tower and during The Light Gets in the Way, my prostate gland and my enthusiasm for plangent country rock in mortal combat. “That Ivory Tower song is so good. We do live in an Ivory Tower,” the urinating oligarch next to me moaned drunkenly in an anglicised Russian accent, “And an Ivory Tower can fall down, any time, my friend! Fantasticheskiy!” And with that, the edified oligarch began to weep hot tears that splashed down into the urinal bowl, diluting the champagne-flavoured micturate his tiny penis had squirted weakly there. I am not a fan of football, kleptocracies or smelting. I did not know I was being addressed by the oligarch, and newly converted Long Ryders fan, Roman Abramovich. “I agree,” I said, innocently. “The Long Ryders work within the country rock genre, I suppose, but they invest it with levels of real tenderness, insight and originality, magically greater than the sum of its parts.” “You are an intellectual, my fat companion. A shoe-shine boy of the elite. You overanalyse,” said my new oligarch...
Where the Blackadder feared to tread – that is the territory occupied with resolution and wit by Simon Munnery and Miles Jupp in Stewart Lee’s take on the first Elizabethan age.
The plot of Elizabeth And Raleigh – passingly relevant as an excuse to move things along – has Raleigh wooing the Virgin Queen only to find her truculent, indeed downright vengeful, in the face of his romantic entreaties.
The Queen is played with the sort of comic force of persuasion that Munnery brought to his TV persona in Attention Scum! She/he repairs to her trampette to bounce off her anger while Miles Jupp – comically versatile in a Hugh Laurie vein – energetically counts the ways he loves her.
This is advanced panto fare – with knowing quips to the audience, sharp ad libs, mashed potato as a form of torture and soiled underpants as a makeshift crown. But amid the setpiece ribaldry, there’s nifty wordplay, dextrous acting, and, despite the odd codpiece gag, the script happily steers clear of the lowest common denominator.
The audience at Greenwich Theatre was not large and the wind outside was whipping and cold. The pair – old hands at this kind of thing – did a handsome job of warming an initially bewildered audience (what is this, we wondered as Raleigh gave us a slide show featuring Jimmy Carr), finally bringing us to our feet for a closing rendition of the national anthem.
God save this gracious queen.
Stewart Lee
2008-10-02T20:31:26+01:00
Where the Blackadder feared to tread – that is the territory occupied with resolution and wit by Simon Munnery and Miles Jupp in Stewart Lee’s take on the first Elizabethan age. The plot of Elizabeth And Raleigh – passingly relevant as an excuse to move things along – has Raleigh wooing the Virgin Queen only to find her truculent, indeed downright vengeful, in the face of his romantic entreaties. The Queen is played with the sort of comic force of persuasion that Munnery brought to his TV persona in Attention Scum! She/he repairs to her trampette to bounce off her anger while Miles Jupp – comically versatile in a Hugh Laurie vein – energetically counts the ways he loves her. This is advanced panto fare – with knowing quips to the audience, sharp ad libs, mashed potato as a form of torture and soiled underpants as a makeshift crown. But amid the setpiece ribaldry, there’s nifty wordplay, dextrous acting, and, despite the odd codpiece gag, the script happily steers clear of the lowest common denominator. The audience at Greenwich Theatre was not large and the wind outside was whipping and cold. The pair – old hands at this kind of thing – did a handsome job of warming an initially bewildered audience (what is this, we wondered as Raleigh gave us a slide show featuring Jimmy Carr), finally bringing us to our feet for a closing rendition of the national anthem. God save this gracious queen.
I am now writing 1000 funny words a week for Carol Cadwalladr’s new on-line newspaper The Nerve, run by people who were sacked or quit when Tories took over The Observer. It is immediately ace.
Sign up here and it would also really be great if you could pay them £6.95 a month as the 5 women at the helm sunk all their redundancy money into it. Carol understands that the only story in town is how the tech-bros choose what news we see and how we understand the world, and The Nerve will address this head on. The only news that matters.
Please send the link below and this begging request to anyone you can.
2. ALEXANDRA PALACE LONDON MAN-WULF RUN FEB 3RD-15TH 2026
STEWART LEE VS THE MAN-WULF.
The unstoppable Man-Wulf show has another London run, having already done 12000 seats at Royal Festival Hall and 12000 seats at Leicester Sq Theatre.
It’s sure to look great in the gothic confines of the Alexandra Palace theatre.
My favourite show to perform and as the world gets worse the basic premise of the show – that the bully boys are taking over in music, comedy and TV cooking shows – only gets funnier. ALEXANDRA PALACE, 3rd – 15th Feb 2026, Tuesday to Saturday at 7.30pm plus Sunday matinees at 3.30pm
Along with WAXFACE’s usual line of Stewart Lee merch there are new for 2025 t-shirts and hoodies on the Man-Wulf theme, all of the highest quality. I’d wear them myself but I’d look arrogant. Waste the money your Nan gave you for Xmas here - https://wax-face.com/stewart-lee
4. MAN-WULF BY THE PRIMEVALS
Glasgow’s garage punk veterans The Primevals announce a new single as featured in the new Stewart Lee vs The Man-Wulf U.K. tour.
There are 3 versions
Side a I’m The Man-Wulf
Side b I’m The Man-Wulf (long nail edit)
Plus a 9 minute I’m The Man-Wulf (long nail version) (I LOOOOOVE THIS!!)
Vinyl sides a&b were released on a 7” 45 in January.
See The Primevals live JUNE 27th London Hope & Anchor, 28th Preston Ferret.
John Mackay & Sally Homer, in association with Debi Allen/Curtis Brown present
STEWART LEE vs THE MAN-WULF BRAND NEW SHOW
UK TOURING THROUGHOUT 2025/26
NB: TICKETS FOR THESE SHOWS WILL REMAIN AT THE ADVERTISED PRICE. SURGE PRICING IS IMMORAL AND TICKETMASTER AND OASIS ARE WANKERS, ENCOURAGED BY SUCCESSIVE TORY CULTURE SECRETARIES IN THEIR CRIMINAL ENDEAVOURS.
In this brand-new show, Lee shares his stage with a tough-talking werewolf comedian who hates humanity. The Man-Wulf lays down a ferocious comedy challenge to the culturally irrelevant and physically enfeebled Lee. Can the beast inside us all be silenced with the silver bullet of Lee's unprecedentedly critically acclaimed style of stand-up.
The show will tour the UK throughout 2025 and 2026.
Wednesday 8th July 2026 - Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury - TICKETS
Thursday 9th July 2026 - Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury - TICKETS
Friday 10th July 2026 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Saturday 11th July 2026 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Monday 13th July 2026 - King's Theatre, Glasgow - TICKETS
Tuesday 14th July 2026 - King's Theatre, Glasgow - TICKETS
Wednesday 15th July 2026 - Playhouse, Edinburgh - TICKETS
Thursday 16th July 2026 - Perth Theatre, Perth - TICKETS
Friday 17th July 2026 - Eden Court, Inverness - TICKETS
September 2026
Thursday 3rd September 2026 - King's Theatre, Portsmouth - TICKETS
Friday 4th September 2026 - Pavillion, Weymouth - TICKETS
Saturday 5th September 2026 - Hall For Cornwall, Truro - TICKETS
Monday 7th September 2026 - Rose Theatre, Kingston - TICKETS
Tuesday 8th September 2026 - Rose Theatre, Kingston - TICKETS
Thursday 10th September 2026 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Friday 11th September 2026 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Saturday 12th September 2026 - William Aston Hall, Wrexham - TICKETS
Wednesday 16th September 2026 - Marina Theatre, Lowestoft - TICKETS
Thursday 17th September 2026 - Marina Theatre, Lowestoft - TICKETS
Friday 18th September 2026 - Castle Theatre, Wellingborough - TICKETS
Saturday 19th September 2026 - The Central Theatre, Chatham - TICKETS
Sunday 20th September 2026 - The Central Theatre, Chatham - TICKETS
Thursday 24th September 2026 - Bristol Beacon, Bristol - TICKETS
Friday 25th September 2026 - Bristol Beacon, Bristol - TICKETS
Saturday 26th September 2026 - Bristol Beacon, Bristol - TICKETS
Tuesday 29th September 2026 - Truck Theatre, Hull - TICKETS
Wednesday 30th September 2026 - Truck Theatre, Hull - TICKETS
October 2026
Thursday 1st October 2026 - The Spa Centre, Scarborough - TICKETS
Friday 2nd October 2026 - Alhambra Theatre, Bradford - TICKETS
Saturday 3rd October 2026 - Alhambra Theatre, Bradford - TICKETS
Tuesday 6th October 2026 - Festival Theatre, Malvern - TICKETS
Wednesday 7th October 2026 - Festival Theatre, Malvern - TICKETS
Monday 12th October 2026 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Tuesday 13th October 2026 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Saturday 17th October 2026 - Waterside Theatre, Aylesbury - TICKETS
Friday 23rd October 2026 - New Theatre, Peterborough - TICKETS
Saturday 24th October 2026 - Tyne Theatre & Opera House, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Sunday 25th October 2026 - Tyne Theatre & Opera House, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
November 2026
Thursday 12th November 2026 - Chelmsford Theatre, Chelmsford - TICKETS
Friday 13th November 2026 - Chelmsford Theatre, Chelmsford - TICKETS
7. SNOWFLAKE/TORNADO
Stewart’s 2019-2022 touring show Snowflake/Tornado, which was originally broadcast as a BBC Special in Autumn 2022 is now available to buy or rent “on demand” from www.mediagarageproductions.com
Both shows also appear to be free as part of the current Amazon Prime rosta, but buy them from us to defeat American fascism.
We are currently preparing a physical release of these shows but it’s got delayed as I got pneumonia and have been bogged down in picking through a wealth of possible, and very exciting, audio extras, where the material worked much better than in the broadcast show itself.
8. COMPANY 2025 FOR DEREK BAILEY
I am compering 2 nights of this celebration of the late Derek Bailey at Café Oto, London, Dec 15th-16TH
Derek Bailey formed COMPANY in 1976. The premise was an effectively simple one; invite a group of musicians to improvise together, in various ad-hoc formations, with as little pre-planning as possible. COMPANY 2025 (for Derek Bailey) celebrates this endeavour, and also marks the twentieth anniversary of Derek’s passing.
Khabat Abas (cello)
Julia Brüssel (violin)
John Butcher (saxophones)
Teresa Hackel (recorders)
Charles Hayward (drums)
Petra Heller (tap dance)
Pat Thomas (piano, electronics)
Matt Wand (electronics)
Alex Ward (electric guitar, clarinet)
Mark Wastell (percussion)
Compered by Stewart Lee
COMPANY 2025 (for Derek Bailey) includes musicians that participated in original COMPANY events organised by Derek; John Butcher (1990/91/92/95), Pat Thomas (1990/91), Alex Ward (1988/90/94, 2002), Mark Wastell (1999, 2000/01) and Matt Wand (1992/93), alongside performers new to the form; Khabat Abas, Charle Hayward, Teresa Heckel, Petra Heller and Julia Brüssel. Over two evenings, these ten musicians will combine in various group formations, chosen by a particular individual just moments before going on stage. The whole event will be compered by Derek Bailey devotee, Stewart Lee. COMPANY 2025 (for Derek Bailey) curated by John Butcher, Tim Fletcher, Ian Greaves and Mark Wastell.
9. DR JOHN COOPER CLARKE AND SPECIAL GUESTS – REMEMBERING JOHNNY GREEN. CADOGAN HALL, LONDON, WEDS DEC 3RD.
Join the legendary Dr John Cooper Clarke, alongside special guests Richard Hawley and Stewart Lee, for an evening celebrating the life and legacy of Road Manager extraordinaire, Johnny Green.
Best known as The Clash’s Road Manager during their meteoric rise, Johnny chronicled this unforgettable chapter in his acclaimed memoir, A Riot of Our Own (available for purchase in the foyer). In the 1980s, his journey took him across the Atlantic, working with icons like Willie Nelson and Joe Ely.
For the past 15 years, Johnny was the ever-reliable Gentleman Companion to John Cooper Clarke, ensuring he was on time and on song for every one of his many gigs.
The evening also features performances from special guests and friends: Mike Garry, Freya Beer, Luke Wright, Toria Garbutt, Clare Ferguson-Walker, Tim Wells, and Johnny’s son, Earl Broad.
A passionate cycling enthusiast, Johnny was a devoted follower of the Tour de France. His behind-the-scenes book, Push Yourself A Little Bit More, is a must-read for fans of the sport. He also penned a regular column for Rouleur magazine, offering hilarious and alternative insights into the cycling world.
The entertainment world has lost a true original, and this evening is its way of remembering Johnny Green. All profits from the event will go to Johnny’s chosen charity, Médecins Sans Frontières. TICKETS HERE
10. STAND UP FOR ORANGUTANS
24TH November, Leicester Sq Theatre, London, with Stewart Lee, Harry Hill, Alison Spittle, Robin Ince, Sikisa and Huge Davies. Did you know a group of orangutans is called a buffoonery? It’s the perfect name for this stellar line-up of comedians, coming together to help protect these incredible apes and the rainforests they call home.
Every ticket sold supports the Sumatran Orangutan Society’s work protecting critically endangered Sumatran orangutans and preserving their precious rainforest habitat, which they share with tigers, elephants, rhinos, sunbears and so much other incredible wildlife. So gather your mates, book your tickets, and stand up for orangutans. It’s proper good fun for a proper good cause.
Already in the diary for next year, a performance at one of my favourite places in the world - I've done lots of shows here over the years and they have always been an absolute delight.
BEN EDGE – CHILDREN OF ALBION. The punk-ruralist painter has a new exhibition at the Fitzrovia Chapel, London, 6th – 26th November.
BOB MOULD Hardcore punk pioneer of Husker Du/Sugar lineage. NOV 18th Glasgow Oran Mor, 19th Leeds Brudenell, 20th London Dome
SAINTS 73-79 Superb! The original line-up of the Australian Punk progenitors, but with Mudhoney's Howlin’ Mark Arm deputising for the departed Chris Bailey (a gentleman and a scholar who once came to one of my shows and told me his tales afterwards!). His original co-writer and co-guitarist Ed Kuepper remains undimmed and the authentic ‘70s rhythm section will rattle your bones. NOVEMBER 21ST Bristol Trinity, 22nd Leeds Project, 23rd Glasgow Garage, 24th M’cr Academy 2, 26th London Camden Electric Ballroom
THE OWL SERVICE Unless I am mistaken it looks like Essex’s innovative acid-folkies The Owl Service are making a tentative return to active service. We all now live in a post Owl Service world. NOV 29th Leigh On Sea Fishermen’s Chapel, DEC 7th M’cr Red Deer, Jan 31st London Good Shepherd Studio.
SWANSEA SOUND Anglo-Welsh indiepop supergroup, combine photo-strip romance and quietly radical politics, the C86 Crass. DEC 20th London Stoke Newington Waiting Room.
DREAM SYNDICATE You must see this enduring American rock institution who impossibly combine free-jazz styled freakouts with classic solid literary songwriting. JAN 30TH London Garage, FEB 1st M’cr Band On The Wall.
SLEAFORD MODS It’s easy to take Sleaford Mods for granted, but go and see them live and be reminded what an amazing act this is, as much Beckettian theatre as it is whatever else it is. £1 on every ticket goes to Warchild. FEB 6th Glasgow Barrowland Ballroom, 7th Manchester Academy, 12th Leeds O2 Academy, 13th Liverpool O2 Academy, 14th Cardiff Great Hall, 19th Dublin 3Olympia, 20th Belfast Limelight, 21st Cork Cyprus Avenue, 26th Oxford O2 Academy, 27th Nottingham Rock City, MARCH 5th Bristol Bristol Beacon, 6th Brighton Dome, 7th London 02 Academy Brixton.
THE NIGHTINGALES King Rocker cats’ annual club circuit FEB 19th Swansea Bunkhouse, 20th Southampton Joiners, 22nd Cambridge Portland Arms, 24th London Moth, 25th B’ham Castle & Falcon, 26th Sheffield Greystones, MARCH 1st Sunderland Pop Recs
PSYCHEDELIC PORN CRUMPETS Australian prog-psyche FEB 24th Newcastle Uni, 25th Glasgow Galvanizers, 28th Leeds Uni, MARCH 1st B’ham Digbeth Crossing, 3rd Southampton 1865, 4th London Forum
HEAVENLY Suddenly boosted by fleeting Tic Toc fame with Punk Rock Girl, here’s another victory lap for the mould-making indie veterans in 2026. FEB 25th Coventry Just Dropped In, 26th London Lexington, 28th Athens Temple, MARCH 5th Ramsgate Music Hall, 6th Paris Petit Bain, 8th London Lexington all ages matinee, 14th Oxford Nest, 18th M’cr Yes, 19th Glasgow Mono, 20th Sunderland Pop Recs, 21st Sheffield Sidney & Mathilda, 26th Brighton TBC, APRIL 4th Cardiff Wales Goes Pop
SUGAR Apparently they’ve reformed MAY 23rd, 24th London Forum
13. IN OUR LAMENTATIONS 2025
Barre Phillips (Jazz bassman, 1934)
Bob Grover (Brighton Piranha, 1956)
Riro (Japanese sea otter, 2007)
Nora Orlandi (Spaghetti symphonist, 1933)
Ed Askew (Acid folkie, 1940)
Tony Slattery (The vile blows of the world made him reckless, 1959)
Peter Watkins (Genius of British film, prophet of Privilege, 1935)
Jack DeJohnette (Miles’ funky fusionist, 1942)
Stewart Lee
2025-11-08T12:33:09+00:00
1. THE NERVE I am now writing 1000 funny words a week for Carol Cadwalladr’s new on-line newspaper The Nerve, run by people who were sacked or quit when Tories took over The Observer. It is immediately ace. Sign up here and it would also really be great if you could pay them £6.95 a month as the 5 women at the helm sunk all their redundancy money into it. Carol understands that the only story in town is how the tech-bros choose what news we see and how we understand the world, and The Nerve will address this head on. The only news that matters. Please send the link below and this begging request to anyone you can. https://www.thenerve.news 2. ALEXANDRA PALACE LONDON MAN-WULF RUN FEB 3RD-15TH 2026 STEWART LEE VS THE MAN-WULF. The unstoppable Man-Wulf show has another London run, having already done 12000 seats at Royal Festival Hall and 12000 seats at Leicester Sq Theatre. It’s sure to look great in the gothic confines of the Alexandra Palace theatre. My favourite show to perform and as the world gets worse the basic premise of the show – that the bully boys are taking over in music, comedy and TV cooking shows – only gets funnier. ALEXANDRA PALACE, 3rd – 15th Feb 2026, Tuesday to Saturday at 7.30pm plus Sunday matinees at 3.30pm Tickets on sale 30th July. BOOK HERE: https://www.alexandrapalace.com/whats-on/stewart-lee-vs-the-man-wulf/ 3.NEW MERCH Along with WAXFACE’s usual line of Stewart Lee merch there are new for 2025 t-shirts and hoodies on the Man-Wulf theme, all of the highest quality. I’d wear them myself but I’d look arrogant. Waste the money your Nan gave you for Xmas here - https://wax-face.com/stewart-lee 4. MAN-WULF BY THE PRIMEVALS Glasgow’s garage punk veterans The Primevals announce a new single as featured in the...
Comedy Central's critically acclaimed cult stand-up series The Alternative Comedy Experience is back with 13 brand new episodes.
Curated once again by Stewart Lee the show takes another entirely original look at the grass roots stand-up scene with performances from the best cult comedy acts around and is unlike any other live comedy show on Television.
The range of comedy talent featuring in this second series reflects an ever changing and innovative scene and includes a significant number of female comedians.
Returning to series two are favourites Tony Law, Isy Suttie David Kay, Simon Munnery, Maeve Higgins, Josie Long, David O Doherty, Paul Foot, Bridget Christie, Henning Wehn and many others from season one alongside newcomers to the show such as Kevin Eldon, Michael Legge, Ginger and Black, Nish Kumar, Liam Mullone, Grainne MaGuire and John Hegley.
Lee once again provides exclusive behind-the-scenes interviews with the performers to uncover the inspiration behind their unique stand-up acts and these interviews are interspersed with their specially filmed live performances.
With 13 episodes there is not much room for extras on this 2 disc set but we have still managed to cram on an exclusive interview and live performance clip of Trevor Lock.
Stewart Lee
2017-01-21T20:03:46+00:00
Comedy Central's critically acclaimed cult stand-up series The Alternative Comedy Experience is back with 13 brand new episodes. Curated once again by Stewart Lee the show takes another entirely original look at the grass roots stand-up scene with performances from the best cult comedy acts around and is unlike any other live comedy show on Television. The range of comedy talent featuring in this second series reflects an ever changing and innovative scene and includes a significant number of female comedians. Returning to series two are favourites Tony Law, Isy Suttie David Kay, Simon Munnery, Maeve Higgins, Josie Long, David O Doherty, Paul Foot, Bridget Christie, Henning Wehn and many others from season one alongside newcomers to the show such as Kevin Eldon, Michael Legge, Ginger and Black, Nish Kumar, Liam Mullone, Grainne MaGuire and John Hegley. Lee once again provides exclusive behind-the-scenes interviews with the performers to uncover the inspiration behind their unique stand-up acts and these interviews are interspersed with their specially filmed live performances. With 13 episodes there is not much room for extras on this 2 disc set but we have still managed to cram on an exclusive interview and live performance clip of Trevor Lock.
Stumbled upon unwares upstairs in an Oxford pub, in the Winter of 1986, Razorcuts were the coolest looking band I'd seen to date. Magnificently stylish beatniks, but clad in threads you could snag from charity shops, beamed in from bohemia. For the next three years it seemed impossible to avoid them.
And the sound was like nothing around. Summer of '66 psychedelia slashed with a summer of '76 sneer. Today there's fifty years of rock and roll source material instantly downloadable to young hipsters the world over, but in 1986, the flavours of 1976 and 1966 were distanced from us by un-navigable dimensions, apparently lost for ever. Achieveing this apparently effortless fusion would have taken Razorcuts real dedication.
Razorcuts were The Byrds playing The Buzzcocks, lyrically emboldened by Morrissey's winsome wordplay and the bookish Postcard records crowd, not embarssed to write a song with the word 'embarass' in its title. But they were here and now, four feet away, at The Jericho Tavern and The Ice rink, and slinking through the streets in pointy shoes carrying skinny guitar cases.
I was eighteen. I never saw The Byrds, or spat at The Sex Pistols, but stepping out into the frosty north Oxford night, the 12-string guitar parts of that song about the snowbirds still ringing in my ears, I couldn't imagine that the after-buzz of either could have been much better.
A quarter of a century later, revisiting the things that spun you out as an impressionable teenager, it's clear we often mistake objective excellence with the hormonal rush that made everything we experienced seem special. How graitifying to realise that Razorcuts, however briefly, really were that good.
Stewart Lee
2010-09-01T18:11:52+01:00
Stumbled upon unwares upstairs in an Oxford pub, in the Winter of 1986, Razorcuts were the coolest looking band I'd seen to date. Magnificently stylish beatniks, but clad in threads you could snag from charity shops, beamed in from bohemia. For the next three years it seemed impossible to avoid them. And the sound was like nothing around. Summer of '66 psychedelia slashed with a summer of '76 sneer. Today there's fifty years of rock and roll source material instantly downloadable to young hipsters the world over, but in 1986, the flavours of 1976 and 1966 were distanced from us by un-navigable dimensions, apparently lost for ever. Achieveing this apparently effortless fusion would have taken Razorcuts real dedication. Razorcuts were The Byrds playing The Buzzcocks, lyrically emboldened by Morrissey's winsome wordplay and the bookish Postcard records crowd, not embarssed to write a song with the word 'embarass' in its title. But they were here and now, four feet away, at The Jericho Tavern and The Ice rink, and slinking through the streets in pointy shoes carrying skinny guitar cases. I was eighteen. I never saw The Byrds, or spat at The Sex Pistols, but stepping out into the frosty north Oxford night, the 12-string guitar parts of that song about the snowbirds still ringing in my ears, I couldn't imagine that the after-buzz of either could have been much better. A quarter of a century later, revisiting the things that spun you out as an impressionable teenager, it's clear we often mistake objective excellence with the hormonal rush that made everything we experienced seem special. How graitifying to realise that Razorcuts, however briefly, really were that good.
When you see a lot of comedy gigs like I do something that is a bit different usually has a head start. And Soiree in a Cemetery was very different.
Ticket-holders only discovered the location of this one-off in the afternoon, which meant that excitement was building up even before arriving. There was a bit of anxiety about the weather as autumn had decided to chip in, but the rain stopped, the sky cleared and, as long as you were well-insulated by overcoats and alcohol a good time was had by all.
Tower Hamlets Cemetery was a pretty spectacular setting. We were told that there were around 40 bodies under each gravestone due to popular demand.
There were more people buried here than are currently alive in the borough. Having arrived, sat down and enjoyed a welcoming song from the British Humanist Choir (pictured below) and a peanut butter and banana muffin from the non-ironic Women's Institute stall we were all taken on a tour, along paths lit by candles in paper bags.
This was a little like Arthur Smith's old tours of Edinburgh crossed with a ghost train ride. Little pocket performances popped up along the way. Jessica Pearce dancing with fire here, an undertaker there. Henry Maynard with a grisly skull puppet sitting on a tomb, screaming brides running past. It was all very evocative and atmospheric if a little crowded - the event sold out and around 400 people were squeezed in.
After this it was back to our al fresco benches where spooky folksome duo Gentle Folk delivered eeerily catchy songs about prostitutes and lost graveyards in Southwark. Poetess/host/laughter therapist Vivienne Soan, of Nunhead variety club Pull The Other One (who put the night together with Adam Taffler of special event organisers @adamotionsuk) compered, getting everyone to release endorphins by giggling hysterically.
Elsewhere her husband Martin Soan went around shaking everyone's hands - he's usually in naked balloon dance troupe The Greatest Show On Legs but this wasn't the climate for stripping off or a location for gratuitous nudity.
And then it was time for the headline act who didn't want to be called the headline act. Stewart Lee is currently doing gigs testing
out his material for the next series of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle. This time round he did his challenging routine subverting the stand-up trope of churning out gags about childhood memories with a recollection of being bullied in the school urinals.
It's a very funny routine pulling together Lee's own tropes of repetition, exaggeration and mock irritation.
It was a potentially tricky gig for Lee. This was probably the most comedy-literate easy-to-amuse audience he was ever going to get (he opened with an ironic remark of "tough gig") and there is a section in the set which depends on not getting a lot of laughs.
But with a bit of improvisation around his scripted material be pulled it off. He also got a fair number of chuckles out of a random insect flying across the makeshift stage just as he was building to his finale.
The eminence gris of stand-up said to me a few years ago that he tends to have phases where he goes in and out of fashion every seven years so he should be due for a fall any time now, but there was no sign of it last night. Yes, alright, I'll say it he was dead funny.
Lee had not wanted to be called the headline act and in fact he wasn't. He was followed by shadow puppeteer Matthew Robins who sang warped Tiger Lillies-style song-stories while images of flies and other animals danced around on the screen. A lovely end to a very special night.
I think the organisers will probably do more. Now, if they can only install radiators in the cemetery for their next event...
Stewart Lee
2014-10-05T21:25:37+01:00
When you see a lot of comedy gigs like I do something that is a bit different usually has a head start. And Soiree in a Cemetery was very different. Ticket-holders only discovered the location of this one-off in the afternoon, which meant that excitement was building up even before arriving. There was a bit of anxiety about the weather as autumn had decided to chip in, but the rain stopped, the sky cleared and, as long as you were well-insulated by overcoats and alcohol a good time was had by all. Tower Hamlets Cemetery was a pretty spectacular setting. We were told that there were around 40 bodies under each gravestone due to popular demand. There were more people buried here than are currently alive in the borough. Having arrived, sat down and enjoyed a welcoming song from the British Humanist Choir (pictured below) and a peanut butter and banana muffin from the non-ironic Women's Institute stall we were all taken on a tour, along paths lit by candles in paper bags. This was a little like Arthur Smith's old tours of Edinburgh crossed with a ghost train ride. Little pocket performances popped up along the way. Jessica Pearce dancing with fire here, an undertaker there. Henry Maynard with a grisly skull puppet sitting on a tomb, screaming brides running past. It was all very evocative and atmospheric if a little crowded - the event sold out and around 400 people were squeezed in. After this it was back to our al fresco benches where spooky folksome duo Gentle Folk delivered eeerily catchy songs about prostitutes and lost graveyards in Southwark. Poetess/host/laughter therapist Vivienne Soan, of Nunhead variety club Pull The Other One (who put the night together with Adam Taffler of special event organisers @adamotionsuk) compered, getting everyone...
He was set to play two nights here as part of his Snowflake/Tornado tour in March 2020, but things were cut short after the first.
In fact, things were cut short across the world as lockdown turned everything on its head.
At the time I'd phoned ahead to check the show was still on but even the woman who assured me it was didn't seem convinced.
We arrived to a sell-out auditorium spattered with deserted seats. Looking back it was all very budget disaster movie.
It also felt like we were taking a risk – a band of rebel snowflakes thrown together by a shared interest in the comic works of The Times' "world's greatest living stand-up”, sneaking out to enjoy a pre-apocalyptic gig.
If the end of the world had happened in March 2020 and we were trapped in the Marlowe how would we have beaten back the baying mobs who would have inevitably taken to the streets? With rolled up copies of The Observer and snobbery, of course.
If Putin does go full tonto over the course of the next 140 minutes this imagined scenario will no doubt play out.
I've been in the lobby for five minutes and standing in the queue at the bar the woman in front is ordering breakfast tea with oat milk, the woman behind is scrolling through the Guardian's Instagram feed and everyone is wearing Doc Martens. The proportion of mask wearers is exceptionally high. It's the kind of place to make a GB News presenter explode with resentment. Bliss.
Lee arrives on stage to rapturous applause and launches into a set that immediately gives me déjà vu. Of course it does, I've already seen it.
This is the same material with some tweaks along the way but I'll give you two reasons why that's a good thing and a third if you need it.
Firstly, it showcases his higher-level skill. At points it feels like a seminar on comic writing and at points he makes it exactly that by explaining in intricate detail to members of the audience who have made the short hop from the University of Kent's comedy course exactly what he is doing.
These little lectures may not sound like good material but they very much are.
Watching it for a second time I'm appreciating the level of craftsmanship that goes in to a set like this.
Of course, much of this didn't happen before, he's improvising masterfully. And that's the second thing.
Within minutes the microphone cable has broken, a large group has arrived late and someone near me gets their phone out.
All these things are worthy of their own bits and as with everything with Lee nothing is brushed over quickly; as he points out later he doesn't do "quips", regardless of what anyway says.
He weaves all these interruptions into his set, runs to time and doesn't appear to leave anything out. It's impressive stuff.
Thirdly, and on perhaps the most basic level, I'm still laughing.
I'm laughing at everything. Some of it I've heard multiple times and while I'm not howling like some people and don't sound like I'm about to collapse like the guy behind (hope he's OK) it doesn't really matter that I remember a few punch lines.
I'm not sure this would happen if you watched the same Jimmy Carr joke twice.
Carr, by the way, gets a pasting, with material written in 2019 that is, if anything, more relevant now.
As does US comedy giant Dave Chappelle, whose penchant for rotisserie chicken and near-impossible work rates makes him the "Vladimir Putin of poultry".
Ricky Gervais gets a lengthy section in which he (acted by Lee) repeatedly attempts to say the unsayable.
All this forms part of a first half (Tornado) inspired by a Netflix mishap.
The second half (Snowflake) is a searing take down of the 'anti-woke brigade' centred around a GQ article penned by punk era polemicist Tony Parsons.
It's got a long bit about the structure of cesspits and concludes with fake snow and an acoustic song but as with everything during Lee's barnstorming return to the city it works because and not in spite of those things.
As Lee thanks the audience for taking advantage of the small window of opportunity between a pandemic and a war to come out and see him he remarks that not much has changed in two years.
One thing that has are Canterbury's parking charges (£6.90!!!), something that only dawns on me as my partner reveals she's spent two years developing a crush on Stewart Lee. We drive off silently into the night.
Stewart Lee
2022-03-01T19:40:15+00:00
What a difference two years makes. When I was last sat in Canterbury's Marlowe Theatre awaiting the arrival of Stewart Lee it was against a backdrop of impending doom. He was set to play two nights here as part of his Snowflake/Tornado tour in March 2020, but things were cut short after the first. In fact, things were cut short across the world as lockdown turned everything on its head. At the time I'd phoned ahead to check the show was still on but even the woman who assured me it was didn't seem convinced. We arrived to a sell-out auditorium spattered with deserted seats. Looking back it was all very budget disaster movie. It also felt like we were taking a risk – a band of rebel snowflakes thrown together by a shared interest in the comic works of The Times' "world's greatest living stand-up”, sneaking out to enjoy a pre-apocalyptic gig. If the end of the world had happened in March 2020 and we were trapped in the Marlowe how would we have beaten back the baying mobs who would have inevitably taken to the streets? With rolled up copies of The Observer and snobbery, of course. If Putin does go full tonto over the course of the next 140 minutes this imagined scenario will no doubt play out. I've been in the lobby for five minutes and standing in the queue at the bar the woman in front is ordering breakfast tea with oat milk, the woman behind is scrolling through the Guardian's Instagram feed and everyone is wearing Doc Martens. The proportion of mask wearers is exceptionally high. It's the kind of place to make a GB News presenter explode with resentment. Bliss. Lee arrives on stage to rapturous applause and launches into a set that...
Carolyn Mark writes fifties-flavoured indie-country pop songs, with an unexpectedly bittersweet edge.
Our touring hustler heroine is professionally removed from straight society, and spooked by encroaching middle age, failed romances, and the inevitability of compromise. Baby Goats sounds upbeat, but the kids at the petting zoo aren't hers, everyone seems so young, and she's alone.
Nonetheless, she dusts herself down to own Elvis' Flaming Star, Wanda Jackson style. Mark's last album, Let's Just Stay Here, pitched her perfectly against the heavier Alt Country of the NQ Arbuckle band, but the Queen Of Vancouver Island still conceals a dark heart.
Stewart Lee
2012-09-16T20:53:17+01:00
Carolyn Mark writes fifties-flavoured indie-country pop songs, with an unexpectedly bittersweet edge. Our touring hustler heroine is professionally removed from straight society, and spooked by encroaching middle age, failed romances, and the inevitability of compromise. Baby Goats sounds upbeat, but the kids at the petting zoo aren't hers, everyone seems so young, and she's alone. Nonetheless, she dusts herself down to own Elvis' Flaming Star, Wanda Jackson style. Mark's last album, Let's Just Stay Here, pitched her perfectly against the heavier Alt Country of the NQ Arbuckle band, but the Queen Of Vancouver Island still conceals a dark heart.
Memphis garage punks the Oblivians split at the end of the century, various key player permutations finally recapitalizing four years ago.
The stringy solos, snotty vocals, and stomping sixties riffs remain, but the invigorating profanity and surly nihilism of old is toned down in favor of a more mature assimilation of classic blues and soul forms, though still spat at breakneck speed.
Little War Child is an unexpected pop-soul gem, and a cover of the Louisiana R&B-zydeco singer Stephanie McDee’s rousing rebel party song Call The Police is a surefire shack-shaker.
Stewart Lee
2013-07-21T21:10:30+01:00
Memphis garage punks the Oblivians split at the end of the century, various key player permutations finally recapitalizing four years ago. The stringy solos, snotty vocals, and stomping sixties riffs remain, but the invigorating profanity and surly nihilism of old is toned down in favor of a more mature assimilation of classic blues and soul forms, though still spat at breakneck speed. Little War Child is an unexpected pop-soul gem, and a cover of the Louisiana R&B-zydeco singer Stephanie McDee’s rousing rebel party song Call The Police is a surefire shack-shaker.
In the early Eighties, The Long Ryders played country-influenced garage rock to LA crowds culturally programmed to despise it. Such is the subliminal influence of their 1984 debut, here with thirteen indispensible extras, that without it the whole world would sound very slightly different. Punked country stomps like (Sweet) Mental Revenge and Run Dusty Run collide with the soaring psychedelic mini-suites, The Trip and And She Rides. Ivory Tower and Too Close To The Light hum with then forgotten folk rock harmonies. Though the band were to write better individual songs on the follow up, State Of Our Union, Native Sons remains definitive.
Stewart Lee
2011-06-11T20:46:39+01:00
In the early Eighties, The Long Ryders played country-influenced garage rock to LA crowds culturally programmed to despise it. Such is the subliminal influence of their 1984 debut, here with thirteen indispensible extras, that without it the whole world would sound very slightly different. Punked country stomps like (Sweet) Mental Revenge and Run Dusty Run collide with the soaring psychedelic mini-suites, The Trip and And She Rides. Ivory Tower and Too Close To The Light hum with then forgotten folk rock harmonies. Though the band were to write better individual songs on the follow up, State Of Our Union, Native Sons remains definitive.
The sleeve of Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell's debut reveals the trio in 1972 flares and trainers.
A bulbous bird head apes countless album covers by the Seventies Welsh blues rock wranglers Budgie. But the period product within is dispatched with a New York 1976 punk energy and flanged with iridescent late Sixties psychedelic effects.
Don't Hear It... Fear It! is further evidence of the internet-expediated end of linear cultural progression, but its sick thrills more than justify the threat it poses to the space-time continuum.
Stewart Lee
2012-10-14T00:42:21+01:00
The sleeve of Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell's debut reveals the trio in 1972 flares and trainers. A bulbous bird head apes countless album covers by the Seventies Welsh blues rock wranglers Budgie. But the period product within is dispatched with a New York 1976 punk energy and flanged with iridescent late Sixties psychedelic effects. Don't Hear It... Fear It! is further evidence of the internet-expediated end of linear cultural progression, but its sick thrills more than justify the threat it poses to the space-time continuum.
Former farm boy Corb Lund's cowpoke honky-tonk evidences a Canada dry wit. Bible On The Dash sees him evading border confrontations by faking belief, and Mein Deutsches Motorarad is a rockabilly German bike tribute. But Lund and his tight-chapped bar band, The Hurtin' Albertans, respect the roots rock rules and, on the bleakly dispassionate Priceless Antique Pistol Shoots Startled Owner and the nostalgically reflective One Left In The Chamber, can make genuine emotional connections despite, or perhaps because of, Lund's apparent nonchalance. A second disc strips the same songs back acoustic basics, often with more affecting results.
Stewart Lee
2012-10-07T20:48:33+01:00
Former farm boy Corb Lund's cowpoke honky-tonk evidences a Canada dry wit. Bible On The Dash sees him evading border confrontations by faking belief, and Mein Deutsches Motorarad is a rockabilly German bike tribute. But Lund and his tight-chapped bar band, The Hurtin' Albertans, respect the roots rock rules and, on the bleakly dispassionate Priceless Antique Pistol Shoots Startled Owner and the nostalgically reflective One Left In The Chamber, can make genuine emotional connections despite, or perhaps because of, Lund's apparent nonchalance. A second disc strips the same songs back acoustic basics, often with more affecting results.
I am a travelling entertainer. I spent decades in secondhand bookshops in shabby sidestreets, filling the sick-stomach void between station and show with palliative possibility, panning for gold. Somewhere at the end of the last millennium, a few measly pounds bought me a signed first edition of the Irish travelogue The Crying of the Wind (1954), simply because I liked the accompanying archaeological etchings of its author, one Ithell Colquhoun. More than 20 years later, it’s £300 unendorsed on eBay, I got to write the introductions to the 2016 reprint, and a lifelong fascination with this most mysterious of pan-disciplinary artist-writer-mystic saw me asked to be an unworthy speaker at the launch of an exhibition pairing her paintings with work for sale by comparable contemporary artists at Unit London, Song of Songs. Colquhoun and I, it seems, are trapped in the same cramped Ford Fiesta on Google’s algorithmic roundabout, and I very much doubt she is at all happy about it. But who was Ithell Colquhoun, what inspired the fecund fleshy forms and prehistoric undulations of her work, and how is she creeping back into the collective consciousness?
Amy Hale, author of the most recent Colquhoun study, Genius of the Fern Loved Gully, explains: “Historically, surrealism has been utterly dominated by big male personalities. Women were thought of as either muses or monsters who may have been artists on the side, but they can no longer be relegated to those roles. Self-promotion takes swagger and bravado. Colquhoun was quite terrible at it.”
She’s right. Your heart goes out to her. The Crying of the Wind depicts a woman in retreat from life – at one point it alludes elliptically to Colquhoun’s split from the Italian surrealist Toni del Renzio via a lone remark that her wedding ring has outlasted her marriage – and yet her story is told as if automatically, landscapes and apparently random observations doing all the heavy lifting. And Colquhoun’s artwork is rarely figuratively explicit, illustrating instead the complexities of our inner mental turbulence. For Song of Songs’ curator, Rachael Thomas, it is telling that Colquhoun’s will copyrighted her works to the Samaritans, and mental health charities are the partial beneficiaries of any Unit London sales.
Born in India to a British military family in 1906, Colquhoun splices aspects of an adopted Celtic identity with surrealist techniques. The Indo-Caribbean multidisciplinary artist Suchitra Mattai, who shows five collages in Song of Songs, agrees that such cross-cultural pollination provokes an almost accidental surrealism. “I use imagery from Indian folktales, memory and oral tales passed down to me from my Guyanese Indian family. I study the patterns and palettes of Indian miniatures and textiles but am steeped in contemporary themes of gender and postcolonialism. For me the ‘accidental surrealism’ emerges through a juxtaposition of disparate materials. I reconcile my layered past through seemingly harmonic compositions. My Indian, Guyanese, Canadian and American identities create a mashup of oddities emerging from memory, myth and history and parallel Ithell’s transnational experiences.”
Clare Ormerod’s textiles shadow the occult abstractions of Colquhoun’s paintings. Years after she had become aware of Colquhoun she discovered the artist had visited her husband’s ancestral home, Huntington Castle in Ireland’s County Carlow, the cellar of which houses an ancient sacred well dedicated to St Brigid, the Catholic church’s cannibalisation of the Celtic goddess of the same name. “In the 70s my husband’s great-aunt, Oliva Robertson, initiated Ithell Colquhoun as a priestess of the Fellowship of Isis, the divine feminine religion that is based in the castle dungeons.”
This kind of information can cloud Colquhoun for me. I am not a spiritual person – I’m not even convinced that I exist, let alone any gods or goddesses – but sometimes it feels as if the once forgotten trickster surrealist is organising my existence from the great beyond. It appears the schoolboy me, for example, delivered newspapers to the Birmingham surrealist Emmy Bridgwater, the third party in Colquhoun’s failed marriage; I’ve walked the west London suburbs and west Cornwall moors where Colquhoun lived, arriving at guarded conversations with suspicious personalities connected to her; and only last Sunday, as I sat in a crowd of less than 50 in a chapel in west Wales watching the last ever live performance by the folk veteran Meic Stephens, a woman leaned forward to introduce herself as Katell Keineg, the singer due to perform with me at Song of Songs’ opening, 218 miles and five days away.
The polymath Linder Sterling’s sacred not-safe-for-work collages profanely recast Colquhoun’s collisionary assemblages, and channel a punk aesthetic Mojo readers will recognise from her work on seminal 70s sleeves like the Buzzcocks’ Orgasm Addict. Sterling playfully calls the familiar Colquhoun coincidences I’ve experienced “the Hand of Ithell”.
She notes: “I found a large stash of Health and Efficiency magazines in a bookshop in Penzance. The naturist magazines all dated from the last years of Colquhoun’s life. Coincidence? Or the Hand of Ithell at work?” To me these odd intersections show that, despite having been with us all these years, we are suddenly noticing Ithell Colquhoun everywhere. Her time is now.
Stewart Lee
2021-10-11T15:32:54+01:00
I am a travelling entertainer. I spent decades in secondhand bookshops in shabby sidestreets, filling the sick-stomach void between station and show with palliative possibility, panning for gold. Somewhere at the end of the last millennium, a few measly pounds bought me a signed first edition of the Irish travelogue The Crying of the Wind (1954), simply because I liked the accompanying archaeological etchings of its author, one Ithell Colquhoun. More than 20 years later, it’s £300 unendorsed on eBay, I got to write the introductions to the 2016 reprint, and a lifelong fascination with this most mysterious of pan-disciplinary artist-writer-mystic saw me asked to be an unworthy speaker at the launch of an exhibition pairing her paintings with work for sale by comparable contemporary artists at Unit London, Song of Songs. Colquhoun and I, it seems, are trapped in the same cramped Ford Fiesta on Google’s algorithmic roundabout, and I very much doubt she is at all happy about it. But who was Ithell Colquhoun, what inspired the fecund fleshy forms and prehistoric undulations of her work, and how is she creeping back into the collective consciousness? Amy Hale, author of the most recent Colquhoun study, Genius of the Fern Loved Gully, explains: “Historically, surrealism has been utterly dominated by big male personalities. Women were thought of as either muses or monsters who may have been artists on the side, but they can no longer be relegated to those roles. Self-promotion takes swagger and bravado. Colquhoun was quite terrible at it.” She’s right. Your heart goes out to her. The Crying of the Wind depicts a woman in retreat from life – at one point it alludes elliptically to Colquhoun’s split from the Italian surrealist Toni del Renzio via a lone remark that her wedding ring has outlasted her...
It's a set list you could hardly predict. First, there'll be a section of Islamophobic comedy. Then, says Stewart Lee, "I'm going to talk exhaustively about urine for half an hour". Of course.
A Room with a Stew is labelled as work in progress, each block of material building towards an episode for the next series of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle. What Lee has got is already very progressed, however. There's hardly a spare word as he does his usual knowing dance.
He's part craftsman and part torturer as he reels his audience in, and out, and in again, like alternative comedy's grumpy burlesque act, a precision tease before the punchline is delivered.
The core components of Lee's act are well known: the knowing sneer, the wilful repetition, the stretching of the boundaries both of ideas and the conventions of comedy. What is exhilarating is how many surprises he still throws in and how deft his jumps are from one tone to another.
His first section is essentially a riff on a Daily Mail article in which Jan Moir called for comedians to joke more often about Muslims. As Lee delivers his 30-minute riposte, the impact is fiercely biting, yet he's unafraid to also be gloriously childish, using one of his extended rants to belittle the journalist Rod Liddle as a man "with all gravy down him", among other things.
The section about urine takes several U-turns: from a story of Lee being bullied at school to a playful deconstruction of the phrase "water off a duck's back". Then, just when you think Lee's lost control, he reaches a climax in which he tackles the suicide of comedians including Robin Williams and directs his anger against the audience themselves.
Mocking observational comics, Lee concludes: "It's not enough is it? You've got to have something to say." Lee still has plenty to say and it's invigorating to watch him say it.
Stewart Lee
2014-11-17T21:44:46+00:00
It's a set list you could hardly predict. First, there'll be a section of Islamophobic comedy. Then, says Stewart Lee, "I'm going to talk exhaustively about urine for half an hour". Of course. A Room with a Stew is labelled as work in progress, each block of material building towards an episode for the next series of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle. What Lee has got is already very progressed, however. There's hardly a spare word as he does his usual knowing dance. He's part craftsman and part torturer as he reels his audience in, and out, and in again, like alternative comedy's grumpy burlesque act, a precision tease before the punchline is delivered. The core components of Lee's act are well known: the knowing sneer, the wilful repetition, the stretching of the boundaries both of ideas and the conventions of comedy. What is exhilarating is how many surprises he still throws in and how deft his jumps are from one tone to another. His first section is essentially a riff on a Daily Mail article in which Jan Moir called for comedians to joke more often about Muslims. As Lee delivers his 30-minute riposte, the impact is fiercely biting, yet he's unafraid to also be gloriously childish, using one of his extended rants to belittle the journalist Rod Liddle as a man "with all gravy down him", among other things. The section about urine takes several U-turns: from a story of Lee being bullied at school to a playful deconstruction of the phrase "water off a duck's back". Then, just when you think Lee's lost control, he reaches a climax in which he tackles the suicide of comedians including Robin Williams and directs his anger against the audience themselves. Mocking observational comics, Lee concludes: "It's not enough is it? You've...
Stewart Lee's final, and most punishing, BAFTA and multiple-British Comedy Award winning BBC2 stand-up series;
recorded live at The Mildmay Club in Stoke Newington, it features six half hour sets on Wealth, Islamophobia, Patriotism, Death, The Migrant Crisis, and Childhood Memories.
Chris Morris returns as the hostile interrogator, picking apart Britain's most consistently critically acclaimed stand-up. A family-sized bucket of extras includes deleted routines, film items, unreleased audio, and gut-spilling interviews.
"Comedian seems an inadequate term for this intelligent, thoughtful, almost philosophical figure. Every frame of the Comedy Vehicle is freeze-dried to ironic perfection, containing more layers than a mille-feuille pastry, a textural delight." The Independent
"Somehow, he managed to turn a full three minutes of the sounds of a cat s diarrhoea into the most plosive and gorgeous argument against deference. It was wonderful, and I still stand and applaud its sculpted perfection." The Guardian
"Lee caters for the smug, right-on, middle class Guardian-reading crowd who share his elitist prejudices." Gary Bushell, The Daily Star
2) Art Machen Art in Cardiff
RICHARD JAMES (Gorky's Zygotic Mynci) AND ANGHARAD VAN RJISWIJK FEATURING STEWART LEE AND ANDY FUNG: THE HILL OF DREAMS
An audio-visual, immersive installation based on the psychogeography of childhood and the wider themes explored in Arthur Machen's book, The Hill of Dreams, Richard and Angharad will travel to locations of their childhood in Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire and the southern Netherlands to record the landscapes that defined their childhoods.
The pair's collaborative suite of footage, field recordings and archive material will be embellished by comedian and writer, Stewart Lee, recording an original, narrative piece for the audio installation and artist, Andy Fung who will paint an accompanying canvas that reflects on his Trinidadian upbringing. Opens Oct 21st at the Angel Hotel pop-up gallery.
Vinyl re-release of 15 year old comedy-art-drone piece on Green Vinyl.
An owl wakes up at sea in a pea green boat. It is accompanied by a cat, its natural predator. There is some honey. What chain of events led to this dangerous situation?
This is a long awaited luxury vinyl repress of the legendary Pea Green Boat record. On Pea Green Vinyl! (note - it's slightly darker than it looks in the photo)
It's more or less identical to the 2007 release, except this time we have pressed the record on pea green vinyl, and in deference to the times, each disc comes with an mp3 download.
Also we've removed the references to myspace from the back of the sleeve.
I unreservedly recommend the following shows at London's Leicester Square Theatre, some of which can be seen after me some nights, so why not double-dip it!
In recommending them, I do not seek to use my vast influence to damage the careers of other comedians who I am not recommending, or to seek to take business away from other venues, which are not the Leicester Square Theatre.
In the interests of full disclosure I am married to this woman, who is now sold out until the December dates.
I recommend also...
Suns Of The Tundra - The Bedford, Balham, S London, Oct 20th. TICKETS
Featuring comic-monologuist-writer Ben Moor as the narrator the ATP-shaking psych-prog band perform their concept album on the arctic explorer Ernest Shackleton.
Other rock groups and comedians are available.
CONTENT PROVIDER BOOK
I had a new book out on August 4th, Content Provider, through Faber.
This clunky title, as well as being the same name as my next book, will be another full-on, finished, Carpet Remnant/41st Best/Milder Comedian type epic show, with an actual set, although the exact material is currently in freefall post-Brexit.
Until Nov the shows are work-in-progs and then I will tour it for about 18 months (everywhere in UK and EIRE, except Carlisle) into mid-2018, unless there is no demand for it or I get sick or bored. Here's some dates.
OCT
11th - 15th, 18th - 20th Digital Content Provider w free DVD, Leicester Sq Theatre London
NOV (Digital Content Provider w free DVD)
November 1st - Watford Colosseum - 7.30pm - 01923 571102 - TICKETS November 2nd - Liverpool Philharmonic Hall - 8pm - 0151 709 3789 - TICKETS November 3rd - Cambridge Corn Exchange - 8pm - 01223 357851 - TICKETS November 4th - Cardiff St. David's Hall - 8pm - 029 2087 8444 - TICKETS November 6th - Newcastle Upon Tyne Theatre Royal - 7.30pm - 08448 11 21 21 - TICKETS
NOV (Content Provider)
8th - 12th, 15th - 19th, 22nd 24th, 29th Leicester Sq Theatre, London
JAN 2017
2-7, 9-10, 12-14, 16-21, 23-28 Leics Sq Theatre
The 2017 Content Provider tour will cover much of the UK, Scotland & Ireland and will run - at least - from February to June 2017.
Dates are currently being booked.
As such, the dates below are the ones confirmed so far.
More dates - and the full tour schedule - will be added shortly. For now, though...
As usual, I continue to work tirelessly for charity.
Oct 7th - Stop The War, Shaw Theatre, w Michael Rosen, Jen Brister and more.
I have had to drop out of this due to a funeral. I continue to think war should be stopped.
March 21st - South & North London Care. Leics Sq Th, London. Details TBC
9) ARNOLD BROWN'S BRITHDAY BASH
The legendary and inspiring comedian Arnold Brown celebrates his birthday with this generation-spanning bill at the Comedy Store, London, on Nov 21st at 7.30.
Joining him for this very special show will be MC Clive Anderson, Paul Merton, Stewart Lee, Sara Pascoe, John Hegley, Bridget Christie, Norman Lovett, Adam Bloom, Nick Revell & more acts to be announced. Also, a rare chance for fans of weird shit to see inside the temple of comedy. http://thecomedystore.co.uk/london/show/arnold-browns-birthday-bash/
10) Other live s-up Dates
(mainly 30 mins sets w some previews)
OCT
7th Bush Hall, London
10th Happy Mondays, London
11) Global Globules with Baconface
On Wednesdays at 11pm on Resonance 104.4 fm and on the station website, the barely present cult Canadian stand-up comedian Baconface continues to play lengthy and mainly uninterrupted selections from his late brother's extensive record collection of '60s and '70s psychedelia, progressive rock, free jazz, folk, acid folk, folk rock, acid rock, electronic music, and ethnoforgeries.
Resonance is a groundbreaking 24/7 radio station which broadcasts on 104.4 FM to central London, DAB to Greater London, nationally on Radioplayer and live streamed to the rest of the world.
12) Dead Funny Encore book
A new comedians' horror fiction anthology, in which I have a piece.
1) Series 4 STEWART LEE'S COMEDY VEHICLE OCT 10TH DVD https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01KM7MJBI/ Stewart Lee's final, and most punishing, BAFTA and multiple-British Comedy Award winning BBC2 stand-up series; recorded live at The Mildmay Club in Stoke Newington, it features six half hour sets on Wealth, Islamophobia, Patriotism, Death, The Migrant Crisis, and Childhood Memories. Chris Morris returns as the hostile interrogator, picking apart Britain's most consistently critically acclaimed stand-up. A family-sized bucket of extras includes deleted routines, film items, unreleased audio, and gut-spilling interviews. "Comedian seems an inadequate term for this intelligent, thoughtful, almost philosophical figure. Every frame of the Comedy Vehicle is freeze-dried to ironic perfection, containing more layers than a mille-feuille pastry, a textural delight." The Independent "Somehow, he managed to turn a full three minutes of the sounds of a cat s diarrhoea into the most plosive and gorgeous argument against deference. It was wonderful, and I still stand and applaud its sculpted perfection." The Guardian "Lee caters for the smug, right-on, middle class Guardian-reading crowd who share his elitist prejudices." Gary Bushell, The Daily Star 2) Art Machen Art in Cardiff RICHARD JAMES (Gorky's Zygotic Mynci) AND ANGHARAD VAN RJISWIJK FEATURING STEWART LEE AND ANDY FUNG: THE HILL OF DREAMS An audio-visual, immersive installation based on the psychogeography of childhood and the wider themes explored in Arthur Machen's book, The Hill of Dreams, Richard and Angharad will travel to locations of their childhood in Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire and the southern Netherlands to record the landscapes that defined their childhoods. The pair's collaborative suite of footage, field recordings and archive material will be embellished by comedian and writer, Stewart Lee, recording an original, narrative piece for the audio installation and artist, Andy Fung who will paint an accompanying canvas that reflects on his Trinidadian upbringing. Opens Oct 21st at the...
Our labour of love really landed. I arrogantly think it knocks most rockumentaries into a cocked hat and will cheer you up no end in the awful times.
“I loved every minute” - Ben Dowell, The Times
★★★★ Financial Times
★★★★ Chortle
“One of the best music documentaries of all time” - The Quietus
“The new gold standard for rockumentaries” - The Scotsman
I just did this piece of KRS1-style edu-tainment for BBCR4 with Resonance 104.4FM alumney Michael Umney, called Stewart Lee - Unreliable Narrator. Lots of comedians in it.
The record store day dbl vinyl of Asian Dub Foundation’s Access Denied album includes a ‘neolithic’ remix of the no 1 single Comin’ Over Here (feat. Stewart Lee) Facebook Link
‘Ten Bob Each Way’ / ‘Use Your Loaf’ is a limited 7” single, featuring a brand-new Nightingales recording, their first since recording their ‘Four Against Fate’ album.
B-sided with Stewart Lee and Nick Pynn covering the band’s second single, ‘Use Your Loaf’, a track that was for a mooted Nightingales tribute album, which didn’t happen after something got spilt on the laptop that had all the tracks on it.
Fire Records/King Rocker Records.
It looks like all the SNOWFLAKE TORNADO tour dates outstanding from 2020 will be shifted into 2022, starting in Jan, and below are the ones we know about so far.
Local venues will contact you if they haven’t already.
All the warm-up club dates you may have bought tickets for have been slotted in to Nov and Dec, covid willing, and venues will contact ticket holders.
Please do not hassle venues about all this. They will contact you. We will get there!
I am planning on re-writing the SNOWFLAKE half of SNOWFLAKE TORNADO to reflect our drastically altered world and will make as good a recording as possible of the abandoned original SNOWFLAKE available at some point.
It’s all bacon!
After the abrupt end of the covid-cancelled sell-out tour of Snowflake/Tornado in March 2020, Stewart Lee, “the world’s greatest living stand-up” (Times), returns to Leicester Square Theatre in January 2022 and then to more than 60 towns and cities in the UK.
The tour, a double bill of two 60-minute sets, back-to-back nightly, will include new material for 2022.
The first half, Snowflake, will be heavily rewritten in the light of the two years the show has been laid off, looking at how the Covid-Brexit era has impacted on the culture war declared on lovely woke snowflakes by horrible people.
The second half, Tornado, questions Stew’s position in the comedy marketplace after Netflix mistakenly listed his show as “reports of sharks falling from the skies are on the rise again. Nobody on the Eastern Seaboard is safe.”
January 2022
Tuesday 4th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Wednesday 5th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Thursday 6th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Friday 7th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Saturday 8th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Monday 10th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Tuesday 11th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Wednesday 12th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Thursday 13th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Saturday 15th January 2022 - Theatre Royal, Norwich - TICKETS
Monday 17th January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford
Tuesday 18th January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford
Wednesday 19th January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford
Thursday 20th January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford
Friday 21st January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford
Saturday 22nd January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford
Tuesday 25th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Wednesday 26th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Thursday 27th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Friday 28th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Saturday 29th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Sunday 30th January 2022 - Theatre Royal, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
February 2022
Wednesday 2nd February 2022 - St. David's Hall, Cardiff - TICKETS
Thursday 3rd February 2022 - Rose Theatre, Kingston - TICKETS
Friday 4th February 2022 - Westlands Entertainment Venue, Yeovil - TICKETS
Saturday 5th February 2022 - Westlands Entertainment Venue, Yeovil - TICKETS
Tuesday 8th February 2022 - Town Hall, Cheltenham - TICKETS
Wednesday 9th February 2022 - Town Hall, Cheltenham - TICKETS
Thursday 10th February 2022 - De Montfort Hall, Leicester - TICKETS
Friday 11th February 2022 - Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry - TICKETS
Saturday 12th February 2022 - Festival Theatre, Malvern - TICKETS
Sunday 13th February 2022 - Hippodrome, Birmingham - TICKETS
Friday 25th February 2022 - The Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Saturday 26th February 2022 - The Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Sunday 27th February 2022 - The Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Monday 28th February 2022 - The Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury - TICKETS
March 2022
Wednesday 2nd March 2022 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS
Thursday 3rd March 2022 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS
Friday 4th March 2022 - Lighthouse, Poole - TICKETS
Saturday 5th March 2022 - Playhouse, Salisbury
Sunday 6th March 2022 - De La Warr Pavillion, Bexhill On Sea - TICKETS
Wednesday 9th March 2022 - Theatre Royal, Wakefield - TICKETS
Thursday 10th March 2022 - Opera House, Buxton - TICKETS
Friday 11th March 2022 - The Courtyard, Hereford - TICKETS
Saturday 12th March 2022 - Grand Theatre, Swansea
Monday 14th March 2022 - King's Theatre, Glasgow - TICKETS
Tuesday 15th March 2022 - King's Theatre, Glasgow - TICKETS
Wednesday 16th March 2022 - The Sands Centre, Carlisle - TICKETS
Thursday 17th March 2022 - Royal Hall, Harrogate
Tuesday 22nd March 2022 - Churchill Theatre, Bromley - TICKETS
Wednesday 23rd March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Thursday 24th March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Friday 25th March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Saturday 26th March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Sunday 27th March 2022 - Royal & Derngate, Northampton - TICKETS
Tuesday 29th March 2022 - City Hall, Sheffield - TICKETS
Wednesday 30th March 2022 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Thursday 31st March 2022 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
April 2022
Friday 1st April 2022 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Saturday 2nd April 2022 - Storyhouse, Chester - TICKETS
Tuesday 19th April 2022 - Wyvern Theatre, Swindon - TICKETS
Thursday 21st April 2022 - The Hawth, Crawley - TICKETS
Friday 22nd April 2022 - The Hexagon, Reading - TICKETS
Sunday 24th April 2022 - Mayflower Theatre, Southampton - TICKETS
Tuesday 26th April 2022 - Cliffs Pavilion, Southend On Sea - TICKETS
Wednesday 27th April 2022 - The Central Theatre, Chatham - TICKETS
Thursday 28th April 2022 - Derby Theatre, Derby - TICKETS
Friday 29th April 2022 - Lyceum Theatre, Crewe - TICKETS
Saturday 30th April 2022 - Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield - TICKETS
May 2022
Tuesday 3rd May 2022 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
Wednesday 4th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
Thursday 5th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
Friday 6th May 2022 - St. George's Hall, Bradford - TICKETS
Saturday 7th May 2022 - Gala Theatre, Durham - TICKETS
Sunday 8th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Tuesday 10th May 2022 - Palace Theatre, Watford
Wednesday 11th May 2022 - Palace Theatre, Watford
Thursday 12th May 2022 - Assembly Hall Theatre, Tunbridge Wells
Friday 13th May 2022 - The Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS
Saturday 14th May 2022 - The Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS
Sunday 15th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, Plymouth
Tuesday 17th May 2022 - Corn Exchange, Cambridge - TICKETS
Wednesday 18th May 2022 - Corn Exchange, Cambridge - TICKETS
Thursday 19th May 2022 - The Baths Hall, Scunthorpe - TICKETS
Saturday 21st May 2022 - New Theatre, Peterborough - TICKETS
Sunday 22nd May 2022 - The Grand, Wolverhampton - TICKETS
Monday 23rd May 2022 - Hippodrome, Bristol - TICKETS
Tuesday 24th May 2022 - Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury - TICKETS
Wednesday 25th May 2022 - The Forum, Bath - TICKETS
Friday 27th May 2022 - Wycombe Swan, High Wycombe - TICKETS
Saturday 28th May 2022 - Winding Wheel, Chesterfield - TICKETS
June 2022
Tuesday 7th June 2022 - Mercury Theatre, Colchester
Wednesday 8th June 2022 - Mercury Theatre, Colchester
Friday 10th June 2022 - Hall For Cornwall, Truro
Saturday 11th June 2022 - Hall For Cornwall, Truro
Friday 17th June 2022 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Saturday 18th June 2022 - Hippodrome, Darlington - TICKETS
Sunday 19th June 2022 - Festival Theatre, Edinburgh - TICKETS
Sunday 26th June 2022 - Theatre Royal, Plymouth
Wednesday 29th June 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Thursday 30th June 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
July 2022
Friday 1st July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Saturday 2nd July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 3rd July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 3rd July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
I would be delighted if, if you are coming to see me, you could do your best to get vaccinated, irrespective of what the gvt or the venue insist upon.
I doubt that my snowflake audience will contain many people who deny the existence of Covid or believe the vaccine is George Soros or Bill Gates trying to put tiny Transformer robots into your blood.
But I and my team will be interacting with over 150 000 people on the next leg of the tour, and I would like to minimise our risk, and the risk to my audience, so meet me half way.
I will be selling and signing stuff as usual, I hope, but I won’t be shaking hands to thank you all this time around, and will probably be positioned behind some kind of screen like William Shatner in Airplane 2. Sad.
7) MEDIA GARAGE SALE
My trusted sales partner Media Garage has compacted all my available stand-up dvds into one convenient on-line marketplace, with most available to d/load too.
Remember, if you buy here we will pay tax on these purchases, and help with British schools and hospitals, whereas many major physical media suppliers and streaming services have found ways to avoid declaring their profits, as have NETFLIX, the utter bastards.
AMERICANS - stop moaning about not being able to see me and visit MEDIA GARAGE!
To try and promote King Rocker I have been pimping myself about like Priss Fotheringham on every Podcast going, alone or with dir M Cumming (Brass Eye, Toast), saying the same things in the same room in the same clothes to all different people, all of whom were very kind.
I don’t know what a podcast is really but I think you go on the internet and click on something.
As my grandfather once said, in 1983, “Do you know, in America, there are shops that only sell Kentucky Fried Chicken?” I enjoyed being on the internet with all these people enormously, but will put some blue water between me and the next wedge.
David Baddiel told me it was good to be on the internet, though. These are available..
A rambling chat in which I fail to promote King Rocker at the expense of a Marxist analysis of culture and history from the inventor of Alternative Comedy ™ ®
Dir Michael Cumming and I discuss King Rocker with Britain’s top film guru and skiffle enthusiast, who has been very supportive of the no-budget project.
Andy Miller and John Michinson’s long running and much loved books podcast. I discuss the waspish poet and novelist Rosemary Tonks with them, Nicky Birch and Jennifer Hodgson.
This is a marvellous ongoing Podcast which is unashamedly civilised in an unenlightened era, and this episode is full of great writing, batshit radiophonic music and clever women.
North London echo chamber fun sure to irk people of all political persuasions with the forensically-minded folk devil for the far right and snowflake do-gooder Owen Jones, and me, talking about King Rocker and more general stuff. His current run of ‘casts has some great guests.
Informed Wolverhampton-based comedy and music enthusiast of uncommon warmth and knowledge talks to me about KING ROCKER and what the Gray Pays ‘n’ Bacon are like at the Great Western pub.
I asked Adam if I could go on this massively popular podcast and he said yes which was very kind of him. It was fun hearing his Mark E Smith story from the horse’s mouth and he asked me hard questions of the type I usually avoid.
I answer questions from various utterly delightful members of the Idler’s thoughtful middle class readership from their wine and book filled homes.
They are the real stars here! You will emerge from watching this in love with at least one of them.
In this episode of The Last Line, James talks to comedian Stewart Lee about his new film King Rocker, a documentary about Robert Lloyd, lead singer of 70’s post-punk band The Nightingales.
During their conversation they discuss the new film, its central protagonist Robert Lloyd, stand up comedy, Stewart’s propensity to defend stand up comedians against the views of the general public and his reluctance to participate in podcast interviews.
There’s an interview with Michael Cumming on this podcast too, link below.
Sometime in March you will be able to hear me eat a really lovely Sri Lankan mutton curry from the Kolama restaurant, Soho, with bon viveur jazz pianist Jay Rayner. (I see how this works now!)
This is the most showbiz thing I have ever done, and I am glad it was with jazzy Jay Rayner.
This is a new series of docu-chats on different esoteric subjects.
You have to pay for them because they are finished pieces of work not just some fuckers talking or wandering about.
I have appeared on three of them - on Hawkwind, Penda’s Fen and John Carpenter’s Apocalypse Trilogy.
The first comedian my kids ever saw live was Paul Currie, so they think everything else is boring unless it ends with a massive breadfight.
He is ace, a deceptively clever surrealist clown who generates a genuine sense of comedy panic, and is best seen on his own terms in a fringe vibe.
Paul Currie says - “I AM PLAYING EDINBURGH this August on the Fringes of the fringe. I’ll be performing my new show TEET from 9th-29th August in the HIVE on Niddry Street @thehivenightclub.
Strict Covid rules must be followed by all punters before, during and after the show. Social distancing will be in place. NOTE: I’m doing this independently of the fringe festival on my own, a “fringe of the fringe” if you will.
As myself and many artists have been hit so badly with zero furlough over the past 17 months I truly can’t afford the admin fees to be part of the corporate fringe so I’m doing this completely DIY. There will be no physical tickets & No box office.
It will be £5 cash on the door entry fee. Pay What you Want donation on exit of the show. Minimum of 50 socially distanced seats so get there early. 6pm doors open. 7pm SHOW STARTS .late comers not permitted. 8pm SHOW ENDS.
TEET merchandise available to all who attend.
As I’m not using the fringe website or their online program this can only work as word of mouth and people sharing the show through social media and telling friends about it. So please if you could share the details and this advert as much as you can I’d really appreciate it, so we can try fill the venue each night. Thank you for taking time to read this and I hope to see you at the Hive in August.”
Henry Lowther’s Birthday show
British jazz veteran celebrates at London Vortex JULY 31st
Shirley Collins
Folk legend in sonic installation JULY 31ST/AUGUST 1ST Charleston, Lewes.
The Nightingales
Birmingham post punk veterans and KING ROCKER stars.
AUGUST 6th Preston New Continental.
SEPTEMBER 3rd Birmingham Moseley Folk Festival.
OCTOBER 28TH M’cr Gullivers, 29th Newport Le Pub, 30th Exeter Cavern, 31st Lewes Con.
NOVEMBER 1st Sheffield Greystones, 3rd London Lexington, 4th B’ham Hare & Hounds, 5th Bristol Rough Trade, 6th Southsea Wedgewood, 7th Bedford Esquires, 8th London Lexington W BLUE ORCHIDS & TED CHIPPINGTON, 9th Barrow-in-Furness Underground, 10th Glasgow Hugh & Pint, 11th Edinburgh Caves, 12th Middlesbrough Westgarth, 13th Hebden Bridge Trades, 14th Leicester Cookie
Blue Orchids
6th Aug Bristol Thunderbolt, 7th Aug Dublin Castle London, 8th Aug Brighton Prince Albert.
Post-punk dishwater psychedelia.
Ruts
DC Dub punks AUGUST 7th London Jazz café.
SEPTEMBER 10TH Liverpool Positive Vibrations, 25th Newcastle Northumbria Uni
Sleaford Mods
Angry loud man and quiet man. AUGUST 7TH Bromley South Facing.
SEPTEMBER 2ND End of The Road fest.
NOVEMBER 26TH Oxford Academy.
DECEMBER 2ND London Printworks, 3rd Brighton Dome
The Shadracks
Youthful garage punk AUGUST 13TH London Moth
MDC 14th Aug Edinburgh Sneaky Pete’s.
Veteran angry American hardcore innovators. Can this be true?
The Rebel
The Jerry Sadowitz of garage country.
AUGUST 14TH London Lexington
Lucinda Williams
19th Aug Cambridge Junction.
Is this on? Odd one-off date by the Queen of Alt Country?
Hawkwind
Psychedelic survivors. AUGUST 20TH Devon Beautiful Days Fest.
SEPTEMBER 11th Cambridge Corn Exchange, 12th Leamington Spa Assembly, 17th Swindon Mecca, 27th M’cr Ritz.
OCTOBER 28TH London Palladium.
The Wolfhounds
Cheesewire realists
AUGUST 20TH Preston Popfest.
NOVEMBER 5TH London 229, 19th Middlesbrough Westgarth, 20th Preston Ferret
Bo Ningen
Lots of dates from Japanese noise-niks.
AUGUST 27TH Preston Ferret,
SEPTEMBER 4th M’cr Pscyh Fest,
OCTOBER 1st Bristol Fleece, 2nd Ramsgate Music Hall, 3rd S’hampton Loft, 6th B’ham Hare & Hounds, 7th Sheffield Record Junkee, 8th L’pool District, 9th Glasgow Stereo, 10th Bristol Fleece, 12th Oxford Bullingdon, 13th London Village U’ground, 14th Brighton Chalk
The Primevals
Glasgow garage rockers.
SEPTEMBER 3rd Middlesbrough Westgarth.
NOVEMBER 27TH London Hope & Anchor.
The Catenary Wires
Overqualified popticians
SEPTEMBER 4TH London Amersham Arms, 10th Rainham Oast, 12th Brighton Prince Albert, 24th Oxford Fusion, 25th Coventry Coal Vaults.
The Chameleons
M’cr post punk visionaries on another victory lap.
SEPTEMBER 8th Bedford Esquires, 25th Holmfrith Picture Dome.
NOVEMBER 12TH Minehead Shine On.
DECEMBER 14TH Huddersfield Parish, 16th Blackpool Waterloo, 17th/18th M’cr Ritz.
JANUARY 14TH Leicester Academy, 15th Birmingham Institute.
FEBRUARY 1ST Nottingham Rescue Rooms.
The Fallen Leaves
Gentlemen mod punks.
SEPTEMBER 11TH London Camden Fiddler’s Elbow.
OCTOBER 30TH London 100 Club.
NOVEMBER 20TH Brighton Prince Albert.
The Scientists
16th SEPTEMBER Spicejazz Soho London. Can this one off by Australian garage gurus be for real?
The Meat Puppets
We are lead to believe that the amazing Meat Puppets, who you must see before you or they die, are doing four UK dates. Grateful Dead crossed w Husker Du. Desert punk psyche.
SEPTEMBER 23rd London Islington Academy, 24th M’cr Bread Shed, 25th Newcastle Cluny, 26th Dover Booking Hall
Fossil Fools
24th Sept Swindon Victoria. Tentative return by top XTC tribute band.
Alison Cotton
Psychedelic folk OCTOBER 27TH London Café Oto
The Fallen Women
Female Fall tribute band w guest vocalists incl me.
DECEMBER 5th London Lexington.
Nina Hamnett
Exhibition of the art of the underrated bohemian Fitzrovian, Charleston, East Sussex.
NEW FILMS
Ronnie’s, Ronnie Scott & His World Famous Jazz Club (Oliver Murray)
The Dig (Simon Stone) ★★★★★ Little Joe (Jessica Hausner) ★★★★ The News Of The World (Paul Greengrass) ★★★★ Nomadland (Chloe Zhao) ★★★★ County Lines (Henry Blake) ★★★★★
Animal Antics (Patrick Goddard) ★★★★★
OLD FILMS
Box Of Moonlight (Tom DeCillo, 1996) ★★★★★
Local Hero (Bill Forsyth, 1983) ★★★★★
Where Eagles Dare (Brian G Hutton, 1968) ★★★★★
The Big Gundown (Sergio Sollima, 1967) ★★★★★
The Sting (George Roy Hill, 1973) ★★★★★
Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977) ★★★★★
The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)★★★★★
Good Vibrations (Lisa Barros D’sa/Glen Leyburn, 2013)★★★★★
Caliber 9 (Fernado di Leon, 1972) ★★★★★
‘71 (Yann Demange, 2014) ★★★★★
Big Night (Campbell Scott/Stanley Tucci, 1996) ★★★★★
Jason & The Argonauts (Don Chaffey, 1963) ★★★★★
Goldstone (Ivan Sen, 2016) ★★★★★
Witness (Peter Weir, 1985) ★★★★★
Avengers Infinity War (Russo Brothers, 2018) ★★★★
Avengers Endgame (Russo Brothers, 2019) ★★★★
In Order of Disappearance (Hans Peter Molland, 2014)★★★★★
Iron Man III (Shane Black, 2013)★★★★★
Pauline A La Plage (Eric Rohmer, 1983) ★★★★★
Gone To Earth (Powell/Pressburger, 1950) ★★★★
The Odd Couple (Neil Simon, 1968) ★★★★★
Excalibur (John Boorman, 1981) ★★★★
Samurai 1 : Mushashi Miyamoto (Hiroshi Inagaki, 1954) ★★★★
Cache / Hidden (Michaek Haneke, 2005) ★★★★★ Babylon (Franco Rosso, 1980) ★★★★★
Summer In February (Christopher Menaul, 2013) ★★★★ Guardians of The Galaxy (James Gunn, 2014) ★★★★★
All Tomorrow’s Parties (Jonathan Caouette, 2009) ★★★★ Medea (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1969) ★★★★★
Force Majeure (Ruben Ostlund, 2015) ★★★★
Lift To The Scaffold (Louise Malle, 1958)★★★★★
Macbeth (Roman Polanski, 1971)★★★★★
OLD BOOKS
Rosemary Tonks - Emir (1963)★★★★★
Rosemary Tonks - The Bloater (1968) ★★★★★
John Berger/Jean Mohr - A Fortunate Man (1967) ★★★★★ Ann Quin - Berg (1964) ★★★★
Sir John Mandeville - The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (1357)★★★★ Sean Bythell - Diary of a Bookseller (2018)
Robert Aickman - The Inner Room (1988) Virginia Nicholson - Amongst The Bohemians (2003)
Joanna Moorhead - The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington (2017)
Betty May - Tiger Woman (1929)
Val Doonican - My Story, My Life (2009) Dave Graney - Workshy (2017)
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde - R L Stevenson (1985)
Hide & Seek - Dennis Potter (1973)
NEW BOOKS
Tessa Norton/Bob Stanley - Excavate!
Alan Stafford - Wilson, Keppel & Betty, Too Naked For The Nazis Peter Oborne - The Assault On Truth Nesrine Malik - We Need New Stories ★★★★★ Sean Bythell - Diary of a Bookseller (2018) ★★★★★
Robert Aickman - The Inner Room (1988) ★★★★★ Alicia Foster - Nina Hamnett Charlie Hill - I Don’t Want To Go To The Taj Mahjal
Hill’s economic autobiography is a simplistic list of addresses, dead end jobs, cultural ephemera, and brief assignations, garnished with two or three short paragraphs of barely formed reflection. And yet, in reducing his life to these most basic elements, it manages to be a more profound comment on existence then many more self-consciously analytical efforts. As if to confound Wittgenstein, it appears the unexamined life was worth living after all.
NEW COMICS
Joe Sacco - Paying The Land (2020)
NEW TV
Ghosts S2 (BBC, 2020)
Ghosts - Xmas Special 2020 (BBC, 2020) The Mandalorian S2 (Disney, 2020) ★★★★★ Call My Agent S3 (France 2, 2018)★★★★★
Call My Agent S4 (France 2, 2021) ★★★★★
The Trump Show (BBC, 2020-1)★★★★★
Lupin S1 (Netflix, 2021)★★★★★ Wandavision (Marvel, 2021)★★★★★
Stonehenge The Lost Circle Revealed (BBC, 2021) ★★★★★
Adam Curtis’ Can’t Get You Out Of My Head (BBC, 2021)★★★★★ Raiders Of The Lost Past With Janina Ramirez (BBC2, 2021) ★★★★
Mortimer & Whitehouse Gone Fishing S3 (BBC, 2020) ★★★★★
The Falcon & The Winter Soldier (Marvel, 2021) ★★★★★
Homeland s8 (Netflix, 2020)★★★★★
Into The Night S1 (Between a Dog & A Wolf, 2020) ★★★★
Unforgotten S4 (ITV, 2021) ★★★★
Inside No 9 S6 (BBC, 2021) ★★★★★ Great British Bake Off S11 (C4, 2020) ★★★★★
An Evening With Tim Heidecker (Youtube, 2020) Time (BBC, 2021) ★★★★★ Loki (Kate Herron, Marvel, 2021)
INTERNETS, RADIOS, YOUTUBES AND PODCASTS
Rob Auton’s Daily Podcast
Alastair Beckett-King on Youtube
Shawn Woods’ Mouse Trap Monday on Youtube
An Evening With Tim Heidecker (Youtube, 2020) ★★★★ Bridget Christie - Mortal (BBCR4)
Rosie Holt’s Youtube characters
THEATRE
Under Milk Wood - Dylan Thomas (National) ★★★★★
The Pin’s The Comeback (Noel Coward Theatre) ★★★★
This felt like it was from the 1870s, the 1950s and now all at the same time.
It was of a tradition at the same time as exploding it. It reminded me of THE RIGHT Size and it would be great if The Pin could hold the partnership together in the way they didn't as there's probably lots to find out about how elastic it can be, and what you can subsume into it.
A Victorian audience would have recognised it as Music Hall and a ‘50s audience would have recognised it as Absurdism, which Beckett knew was music hall anyway. Were they even in a theatre, really, them blokes? I hope it tours.
NEW RECORDS
Lady Leshurr - Quaranqueen
The Primevals - New Trip
Cult Figures - Deritend Vapour Trails - Celestial Scuzz ★★★★★
Robert Pollard - Before Computers (demos)
Kevin March - Last Night
Doug Gillard - Douglas Scott Gillard II
Guided by Voices - Earth Man Blues Gwenifer Raymond - Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain Ustad Saami - Pakistan Is For The Peaceful ★★★★★ The Blue Orchids - Speed The Day Dave Graney & The Mistly - Live At Byrds ★★★★★
Mainliner - Dual Myths ★★★★★
Hawkwind - 50th Anniversary Live
The Amorphous Androgynous w Peter Hammill - We Persuade Ourselves We Are Immortal
Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orcestrea - s/t
Major Murphy - Access
Eleventh Dream Day - Since Grazed Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg
Guided By Voices - Earth Man Blues
Fixed Horizon - Grenouille Lucinda Williams - Runnin’ Down A Dream
Krallice - Demonic Wealth
Catenary Wires - Birling Gap
Cub Scout Bowling Pins - Heaven Beats Iowa ★★★★
Pat Todd & The Rank Outsiders - There’s Pretty Things in Palookaville ★★★★
Robyn Hitchcock - The Man Upstairs ★★★★
Chris Forsyth - First Flight
Chris Eckerman - Where The Spirit Rests ★★★★
The Scientists - Negativity
David Grubbs & Ryley Walker - Husky Pants ★★★★ Shirley Collins - Heart’s Ease ★★★★★ Gary Louris - Jump For Joy ★★★★★
Fixed Horizon - Full Circle ★★★★
Trees Speak - Post Human ★★★★ William Loveday Intention - People Think They Know Me ★★★★★
Hawkwind - Somnia The Bevis Frond - Little Eden ★★★★★
Pat Todd & The Rank Outsiders - There’s Pretty Things In Palookaville ★★★★★
Goat - Headsoup Adele & The Chandeliers - First Date
Trees Speak - Post Human
Sun Ra Arkestra - Swirling ★★★★★
Phil Minton - Woke Up At 8 ★★★★★
Rudimentary Peni - The Great War Lucinda Williams - Southern Soul
NEW OLD RECORDS
V/A - Rough Guide To Avant-Garde Japan
Guided by Voices - Live At Irving Plaza (1996)
Damo Suzuki & Echo Ensemble - Live @ Green Door (2013) Heavenly - A Bout De Heavenly (1989-1996)
Martin Stone - Down But Not Out In Paris and London (1992-2013)
John Russell & Terry Day - Russell & Day (1979?)
Derek Bailey, Trevor Watts & Terry Day - At LTC (1972?) Sonny Rollins - Rollins In Holland (1967) ★★★★★
Robert Pollard - I Sell The Circus (demos) (2015) The Fall - St Helen’s Technical College (1981) ★★★★★
Charles Gayle, John Edwards, Mark Sanders - Seasons Changing (2017) ★★★★★
The Misunderstood - Children of The Sun(1965-66) ★★★★★
Dexter Gordon - Live In Chateauvallon (1978) ★★★★★
The Loft - Ghost Trains & Country Lanes (1984-2015)
And Also The Trees - s/t (1984)
Neil Young - Young Shakespeare (1971)
T2 - It’ll All Work Out In Boomland (1970)
The Outsiders - Count For Something (1976-78)
The Selecter - Too Much Pressure box (1980)
Brown Acid 11 - v/a (1969-73)
Fleur de Lys - Circles (1964-1969)
J Jazz Deep Jazz From Modern Japan vol 3 - V/A (1962-1985)
The Black Keys Present Hill Country Blues - v/a
Brown Acid 12 - v/a (1968-80)
Raw Material - s/t (1970)
Open Road - Windy Day (1971)
Dave Graney, Clare Moore, Georgie Valentino & Malcolm Ross - s/t (2017) ★★★★
Hangman’s Beautiful Daughters - Smashed Full Of Wonder (1987)
The Lipstick Killers - Strange Flash (1976-81)
The Hawks - Obviously 5 Believers (1979-81) ★★★★
v/a - Goitse A Thaisce (1960-2020) ★★★★★
v/a - Fire Draw Near (1940-2020) ★★★★★
OLD RECORDS
Cocteau Twins - Treasure (1984) ★★★★ Billy Bragg - Life’s A Riot (1983) ★★★★★
Billy Bragg - Brewing Up with (1984) ★★★★★
The Triffids - Born Sandy Devotional (1986) ★★★★
Siouxsie & The Banshees - A Kiss In The Dreamhouse (1982) ★★★★
Bunny Striker Lee - The Bunny Striker Lee Story (1967-80) ★★★★
V/A - Dub, A Journey Into Bass Culture (1970s) ★★★★
V/A - Dub, Original Bass Culture (1970s) ★★★★
V/A - Dub, More Bass Culture (1970s) ★★★★
Tomorrow’s Gift - Goodbye Future (1973) ★★★★
Jackson C Frank - s/t (1965) ★★★★
V/A - Down Home Blues, Chicago Fine Boogie (1947-1958)★★★★ Maggie Bjorklund - Shaken (2014)★★★★ June Tabor - Airs & Graces (1976) ★★★★★
John Martyn - The Very Best Of (1967-1996) ★★★★★ The Owl Service - The Garland Sessions (2007) ★★★★★
John Lee Hooker - Tantalising With The Blues (1965-70)★★★★★
Furry Lewis, Memphis Willie B, Memphis Slim - Bluesville 3 (1963?) ★★★★ Lightnin’ Hopkins - Prestige Profiles (1960-4) ★★★★★
Magic Slim - Live @ Ma Bea’s (1976) ★★★★
Jimmy Dawkins - Come Back Baby (1977) ★★★★
Allman Brothers - At Filmore East (1971) ★★★★ John Fahey - The Yellow Princess (1968) ★★★★★
Freedy Johnston - Can You Fly? (1992)★★★★ Julie Doiron - I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day (2009) ★★★★
Tragically Hip - Man Machine Poem (2016) ★★★★
Tragically Hip - We Are The Same (2009) ★★★★ Tortoise - Millions Now Living Will Never Die (1996) ★★★★★
Grant Lee Buffalo - Storm Hymnal (1993-98) ★★★★
Shiva Burlesque - Mercury Blues (1990) ★★★★ Yo La Tengo - President (1989) ★★★★★ Yo La Tengo - Fakebook (1990) ★★★★★ Yo La Tengo - That Is You La Tengo (1991) ★★★★ Yo La Tengo - May I Sing With Me? (1992) ★★★★ Yo La Tengo - Painful (3 cds) (1993) ★★★★ Tim Buckley - Dream Letter (1968) ★★★★★
Those Bastard Souls - Debt & Departure (1999) ★★★★★
Wanderlust - Prize (1995) ★★★★
Chain - Towards The Blues (1971) ★★★★
The Schramms - Omnidirectional (2019) ★★★★
Cannonball Adderley - Soul Zodiac (1972)
Fred Anderson - Quintessential Birthday Trio Vol II (2015)
Greg Bendian’s Interzone - Requiem For Jack Kirby (2001)
Nels Cline & Greg Bendian - Interstellar Space Revisited (1999)
The Beat - Bounce (2016) Nina Simone - To Be Free (1959-1993)
Swervedriver - 99th Dream (1998)
Road - s/t (1972)
Mudhoney - Morning In America (2019)
Necromandus - Orexis of Death (1973)
Julian Cope - Peggy Suicide (1991)
Ultravox - Rage In Eden (1981)
Siouxsie & The Banshees - Tinderbox (1986)
Blues Pills - Live In Paris (2017)
Gram Parsons - Alternate Takes (1973-4)
Mike Westbrook - Mama Chicago (1976)
The Fall - Grotesque (1980)
Truly - Fast Stories From Kid Coma (1995)
Echo & the Bunnymen - Evergreen (1997)
Echo & The Bunnymen - What Are You Going To Do With Your Life? (1999)
Blues Pills - Lady In Gold (2016)
Leo Bud Welch - The Angels In Heaven Done Signed My Name (2019)
The Black Keys - Chulahoma (2006) Nanci Griffith - One Fair Summer Evening (1988)
The Soft Boys - Invisible Hits (1983)
Robyn Hitchcock - Robyn Sings (2003)
Raw Material - s/t (1970)
Don Carlos & Gold - Them Never Know Natty Dread Have Him Credentials (1982)
Henry Junjo Lawes - Volcano Erruption (70s-80s)
Don Carlos - Day To Day Living (1982)
Bunny ‘Striker’ Lee - Full Up (1968-72)
Bunny Lee & Friends - Tape Rolling (1971-4) ★★★★
v/a - Trojan Roots Dancehall Box (‘70s, ‘80s)
Charlie Chaplin & Papa San - Respect Due (1986?)
Robert Forster - The Evangelist (2008) ★★★★★
John Stewart - California Bloodlines (1969) ★★★★
v/a - Trojan Dancehall Box (‘70s, ‘80s)
Don Carlos - In Dub (1980)
Yabby You - Deeper Roots (‘70s, ‘80s)
Yabby You - Deeper Roots Part 2 (‘70s, ‘80s)
Norma Winstone - Edge Of Time (1972) ★★★★
Atlas - Just Playin’ Rhythm & Blues (1967-71)
V/A - Alan Lomax Songbook (1939-76) ★★★★
Shirley Collins - Lodestar (2016) ★★★★★
The Go-betweens - Loving Shocks (1989) ★★★★
Red House Painters - Songs For A Blue Guitar (1996) ★★★★
Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats - Mind Control (2013)
The Damned - Music For Pleasure (1977) ★★★★
Skids - Days In Europa (1977)
Big Country - The Crossing (1983) ★★★★
Big Country - Steel Town (1984)
Jon Dee Graham - Escape From Monster Island (1997) ★★★★
The Fall - Live At The Witch Trials (1979) ★★★★★
10) WOKE CAUSES - THIS MONTH, GOOD LAW PROJECT, GET OFF MY MED RECORDS, GBNEWS ADVERTISERS
GOOD LAW PROJECT
LINK
It’s evident that the corrupt kleptocracy of Boris Johnson isn’t going to dislodged by Kier Starmer’s PMQ’s however forensic, or by the biased media, or by legal investigations in which the gvt essentially investigate themselves.
However, despite the threats to judiciary in the Queen’s speech, at present the gvt are required to obey the law.
Champagne socialist fox-whacking lawyer Jolyon Maugham’s donation funded Good Law Project seems to be better than the opposition currently at holding the gvt to account, and proving where they have broken the law, so if you can spare a pound crowd fund them, as they do seem to be making an impact.
MEDICAL RECORDS OPT OUT
LINK
Did you know that the gvt are about to sell all your medical records off to the highest bidder? Thought not. We weren’t consulted.
I don’t care about the privacy aspect, but I do object to my life being monetised to give leverage to some horrible massive info-tech company.
You can withdraw the gvt’s right to farm your medical history as if you were some kind of data-pig at the link above. THIS IS NOW DELAYED TO SEPTEMBER DUE TO OPPOSITION BUT STILL WORTH DOING
GBNEWS ADVERTISERS
Stop Funding Hate say - Advertising sales for GB News are reportedly handled by Sky Media.
We’re aware of at least one company who say they were unaware that they were going to appear on GB News and suspended those ads when they found out. If you work for a company that buys programmatic advertising from Sky, it may be worth checking with them to ensure that your ads aren’t placed on GB News.
A huge thanks to the Stop Funding Hate volunteers who have come together to help identify GB News advertisers.
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11) IN OUR COVID ERA LAMENTATIONS
Adam Schlesinger (Fountain of Wayne) (1967)
John Prine (outlaw country singer) (1946)
Henry Grimes (jazz bassist) (1935)
Dave Mountfield (Ornate Johnson) (1970)
Hal Wilner (arranger) (1957)
Tim Brooke-Taylor (Goodie) (1940)
Lee Konitz (jazz saxophonist) (1927)
Matthew Seligman (Soft Boy) (1955) Millie Small (ska singer) (1946)
Florian Schneider (Kraftwerk robot) (1947)
Bill Rieflin (drummer for hire) (1960)
Hugh McKenna (Tear Gas pianist) (1949)
Steve Weber (Holy Modal Rounder) (1942) Astrid Kirchherr (photographer) (1938)
Danny Ray Thompson (Sun Ra saxophonist) (1947)
Aubrey Burl (archaeologist) (1926)
Phil May (Pretty Thing) (1944) The Clacton Fin Whale (circa 2000)
Christo Vladimirov Javacheff (artist) (1930) Doll Tor stone circle (3300 BC)
Kay Carroll (The Fall) (1948)
Bob the Cat (73 bus) (2006) Alex Taylor (Shop Assistant, in 2005, and no-one knew)
Simon H Fell (jazz bassist) (1959)
Carl Reiner (director) (1922)
Ennio Morricone (architect of sonic dreams) (1928)
Keith Tippett (jazz pianist) (1947)
Jimmy Cobb (jazz drummer) (1929) Barbara Smoker (Humanist) (1923)
The Nuffield Theatre, Southampton
Tony Elliot (Time Out) (1942) Judy Dyble (folk singer) (1949)
Peter Green (blues guitarist) (1946)
Emitt Rhodes (power pop auteur) (1950) Annie Ross (jazz bohemian) (1930)
Joe Ruby (Scooby-Doo) (1933)
Craig Weatherhill (folklorist) (1950)
Don Weller (jazz saxophonist) (1940)
Simeon Coxe (Silver Apple) (1938) Diana Rigg (Avenger) (1938)
Toots Hibbert (reggae got soul) (1942)
Dele Fadele (carry bag man) (1962)
George Jeffrie (man’s-laughter maker) (1964)
Dave Kusworth (Brum punk Stone) (1960)
Gary Peacock (jazz bassist) (1935)
Doorkins (Southwark Cathedral Cat) (2005?)
Spencer Davis (Brumbeat pioneer) (1939)
Bunny Lee (dubmaster) (1940) The Cubbington Pear Tree (1770)
Fungie The Dingle Dolphin (1979) Jill Paton Walsh (humanist novelist) (1937)
Val Warner (poet) (1946)
Guy N Smith (Lord of The Crabs) (1939)
Richard Corben (decadent cartoonist) (1940)
David Johnson (Duke of Soho) (1960)
Leslie West (Mountain man) (1945)
- 2021 - Katharine Whitehorn (bedsitter cook) (1928)
Katharine Whitehorn (bedsitter cook) (1928)
Celia Drummond Ford (voice of Trees) (1950)
The Happy Man Tree (Stoke Newington Tree) (1870)
John Russell (guitar guru) (1954)
Marcel Uderzo (Asterisk artist) (1933)
Tom Stevens (Long Ryder and Magus) (1956)
Dougie Anderson (Coda’s Edinburgh record dealer (1952)
Captain Tom (Covid Walkman) (1920) Rynagh O’Grady (Ted’s Mary) (1954)
Mary Wilson (Supreme) (1944)
Chick Corea (Miles’ tinkler) (1941)
Iain Pattinson (You wanted to see me Prime Minister?) (1951)
U-Roy (Toastmaster) (1942)
Lawrence Ferlinghetti (bookstore beat) (1921)
Wink O’Bannon (Eleventh Dream Day) (1956)
Bunny Wailer (Wailer) (1947)
Doug Parkinson (Oz vocal celeb) (1946)
Milford Graves (temporal explorer) (1941)
Johnny Rogan (Byrds’ Boswell) (1953) Jessica Walter (Play Misty For Me) (1941)
Bertrand Tavernier (Round Midnight) (1941) Anita Lane (Oz punk chanteuse) (1958)
Barbara Ess (Theoretical Girl) (1944)
Michael Collins (Apollo 11) (1930)
Mohammed Ag Itale (Tinariwen) (1960)
Monte Hellman (Two Lane Blacktop) (1929)
Sonny Simmons (jazz hobo) (1933)
Charles Grodin (The American Tim Key) (1935)
Franco Battiato (Italian Fetus) (1945)
Yoshi Wada (bagpipe minimalist) (1943)
Ned Beatty (squealing piggy) (1937)
Davey Datblygu (Davey Datblygu) (1964)
S Clay Wilson (Captain Pissgums) (1941)
Peter Zinovieff (sonic pioneer) (1933)
Richard Donner (kebab pioneer) (1930) Alix Dobkin (feminist folksinger) (1940)
Patrick Sky (native American folksinger) (1940)
Tom O’Connor (raconteur) (1939)
Stewart Lee
2021-07-29T15:55:26+01:00
1) KING ROCKER NOW TV Our labour of love really landed. I arrogantly think it knocks most rockumentaries into a cocked hat and will cheer you up no end in the awful times. “I loved every minute” - Ben Dowell, The Times ★★★★ Financial Times ★★★★ Chortle “One of the best music documentaries of all time” - The Quietus “The new gold standard for rockumentaries” - The Scotsman All Press is collecting here. You can also watch it, ad-free, on NOW TV if you have that; NOW TV LINK 2) UNRELIABLE NARRATOR DOC BBCR4 I just did this piece of KRS1-style edu-tainment for BBCR4 with Resonance 104.4FM alumney Michael Umney, called Stewart Lee - Unreliable Narrator. Lots of comedians in it. You can listen here. 3) ASIAN DUB FOUNDATION The record store day dbl vinyl of Asian Dub Foundation’s Access Denied album includes a ‘neolithic’ remix of the no 1 single Comin’ Over Here (feat. Stewart Lee) Facebook Link The original 12” remains available... Bandcamp X Ray Production 4) TEN BOB / USE YOUR LOAF 7” ‘Ten Bob Each Way’ / ‘Use Your Loaf’ is a limited 7” single, featuring a brand-new Nightingales recording, their first since recording their ‘Four Against Fate’ album. B-sided with Stewart Lee and Nick Pynn covering the band’s second single, ‘Use Your Loaf’, a track that was for a mooted Nightingales tribute album, which didn’t happen after something got spilt on the laptop that had all the tracks on it. Fire Records/King Rocker Records. Order 7” here: https://fire-records.lnk.to/TenBobUseYourLoaf 5) LIVE DATES NEWS It looks like all the SNOWFLAKE TORNADO tour dates outstanding from 2020 will be shifted into 2022, starting in Jan, and below are the ones we know about so far. Local venues will contact you if they haven’t already. All the warm-up club...
Dave Marshy lives in N16 and works for Foxley’s, a large estate agent with branches all over London. He is 29 years old.
Every morning I go down to Starbucks for a coffee and a tiny biscuit. It used to be a second hand bookshop, but we hiked up the rent and sold it to Starbucks because N16 is ‘on the up’. I prefer coffee to books. Books are all the same - loads of lines and symbols and pieces of paper all stuck together. Once you have looked at a book it is done with and you have to throw it in the bin with the others. But there are loads of different kinds of coffee. Black, white, instant. Some people at Uni used to read books. Where are they now? Teaching. In Zone 6! Losers.
Next I drive to work at Islington Green in one of our green Foxley’s BMW Minis. Last year was the thirtieth anniversary of punk rock, which was invented here in London at The Screen On The Green in 1976. The city became a world centre of culture and fashion, adding at least 40% to current property values. To celebrate punk we had the entire fleet of Foxley’s BMW Minis decorated in a standardised Punk Rock livery. On the boot it says ‘Punk Is Not Dead’, and there can be no greater indication of punk’s ongoing importance than its adoption as a brand recognition tool by a vibrant estate agent like Foxley’s. An old punk stuck his head through the window when I was in a traffic jam on Essex Road and spat in my face. For a moment, I fell silent. As the spit dribbled down my chin, I realised that I deserved it.
Things like this seem to happen more and more often. Once I was showing a client round a live-work space in Cannonbury and she asked if there was access to the shared garden and I just looked at her and said, “What does it matter? It’s just property. We’re all prisoners. Prisoners of London! Do you think I wanted to be a Foxley’s estate agent? Isn’t there a country you’ve always wanted to visit? Let’s go! Let’s go there together now!” And then she walked out of the flat silently and drove away, leaving me there alone, staring at a crumpled up copy of London Lite.
Sometimes I forget that I am actually at work. Foxley’s has been designed to look like a cool Shoreditch type bar. There’s no boring desks or annoying chairs, just a long chrome fridge full of beer and energy drinks, and XFM piped in on a loop for ever and ever and ever and ever. Buying a home at Foxley’s is as much fun as spending the whole weekend at Jongelurs with all your mates from the office, drinking and laughing and drinking and laughing, with the music in the after-show club just too loud to hear what anyone is saying but you still manange to get off with the new girl and she hates herself for it and she hates you too and you realise London is Hell and that’s why you’re here. You’re a Foxley’s estate agent. It’s what you deserve.
After work, I go home and look at myself in the mirror and think about property prices, and my genital warts, and my impotence, and my cocaine problem and then I smash my head repeatedly into the mirror, crying and vomitting and remembering the hopes and dreams I entertained as a child. I used to play the French horn. Then I go to bed and dream of RATS TEARING MY FACE OFF! The next day I get up and go to Starbucks. And it all starts all over again.
Dave Marshy was talking to Stewart Lee
Stewart Lee
2007-01-23T16:48:53+00:00
Dave Marshy lives in N16 and works for Foxley’s, a large estate agent with branches all over London. He is 29 years old. Every morning I go down to Starbucks for a coffee and a tiny biscuit. It used to be a second hand bookshop, but we hiked up the rent and sold it to Starbucks because N16 is ‘on the up’. I prefer coffee to books. Books are all the same - loads of lines and symbols and pieces of paper all stuck together. Once you have looked at a book it is done with and you have to throw it in the bin with the others. But there are loads of different kinds of coffee. Black, white, instant. Some people at Uni used to read books. Where are they now? Teaching. In Zone 6! Losers. Next I drive to work at Islington Green in one of our green Foxley’s BMW Minis. Last year was the thirtieth anniversary of punk rock, which was invented here in London at The Screen On The Green in 1976. The city became a world centre of culture and fashion, adding at least 40% to current property values. To celebrate punk we had the entire fleet of Foxley’s BMW Minis decorated in a standardised Punk Rock livery. On the boot it says ‘Punk Is Not Dead’, and there can be no greater indication of punk’s ongoing importance than its adoption as a brand recognition tool by a vibrant estate agent like Foxley’s. An old punk stuck his head through the window when I was in a traffic jam on Essex Road and spat in my face. For a moment, I fell silent. As the spit dribbled down my chin, I realised that I deserved it. Things like this seem to happen more and more...
The little-known act which is currently leading the public vote for the Edinburgh Fringe "Comedy God" award has made a triumphant return to the city.
Comedian Stewart Lee brought Frank Chickens onto the stage in front of a packed crowd at the Festival Theatre.
The Edinburgh Comedy Awards, formerly the Perriers, are in their 30th year and new sponsors Foster's launched a vote to find an all-time "comedy god".
Lee's e-mail rant against the award went viral.
About 100,000 people, 50% of the vote, have so far chosen the obscure Anglo-Japanese act over household names such as Michael McIntyre, Eddie Izzard, Lee Evans and Jimmy Carr.
There is just over a week before the award, which is open to all the acts nominated for the Fringe award since 1981, is announced.
Lee, who has been appearing in Edinburgh since 1987, said the Fringe should be about "art for art's sake".
He told BBC Scotland: "It should not be about attaching a brand to a high-profile celebrity."
But Lee, who as the writer of Jerry Springer The Opera is used to controversy, said he did not intend to launch a campaign.
He said: "I literally sent one e-mail when I was annoyed by the competition.
"I don't have a twitter account or blog or anything like that.
Kazuko Hohki
"Then it kicked off and hundreds of thousands of people have been voting for Frank Chickens as all time comedy god.
"The first thing I did was to try to get in touch with them to apologise, in case they had been pushed into something they did not want to be part of."
Kazuko Hohki, lead member of Frank Chickens, told BBC Scotland she was "amused" by all the attention.
She said the group, which currently has 14 members, was a collection of Japanese "misfits" who sought her out in London.
Hohki said she did not understand stand-up comedy, mainly because her English lanaguage skills were not good enough to listen to someone talking for an hour.
She said Frank Chickens were not comedians, they are a band of performance artists.
Hohki, who said that the Chickens only performed a handful of times each year, said she would be very pleased to pick up the award if they were to win.
"We have a saying in Japanese," she said.
"Dumpling from the shelf - It is something than runs over you without you expecting it or knowing it even existed.
Lee, whose Festival Theatre show was launching his new book How I Escaped My Certain Fate, added: "The interesting thing about communication these days is that when some big company blunders into something without really thinking about it there is the possibility now for the public to voice their annoyance, which never used to exist."
"I think increasingly you are going to get large swathes of the public saying. Let's just wreck this."
The Foster's Comedy Awards will be announced on 28 August.
Stewart Lee
2010-08-19T12:36:41+01:00
The little-known act which is currently leading the public vote for the Edinburgh Fringe "Comedy God" award has made a triumphant return to the city. Comedian Stewart Lee brought Frank Chickens onto the stage in front of a packed crowd at the Festival Theatre. The Edinburgh Comedy Awards, formerly the Perriers, are in their 30th year and new sponsors Foster's launched a vote to find an all-time "comedy god". Lee's e-mail rant against the award went viral. About 100,000 people, 50% of the vote, have so far chosen the obscure Anglo-Japanese act over household names such as Michael McIntyre, Eddie Izzard, Lee Evans and Jimmy Carr. There is just over a week before the award, which is open to all the acts nominated for the Fringe award since 1981, is announced. Lee, who has been appearing in Edinburgh since 1987, said the Fringe should be about "art for art's sake". He told BBC Scotland: "It should not be about attaching a brand to a high-profile celebrity." But Lee, who as the writer of Jerry Springer The Opera is used to controversy, said he did not intend to launch a campaign. He said: "I literally sent one e-mail when I was annoyed by the competition. "I don't have a twitter account or blog or anything like that. [caption id="attachment_2457" align="alignleft" width="304"] Kazuko Hohki[/caption] "Then it kicked off and hundreds of thousands of people have been voting for Frank Chickens as all time comedy god. "The first thing I did was to try to get in touch with them to apologise, in case they had been pushed into something they did not want to be part of." Kazuko Hohki, lead member of Frank Chickens, told BBC Scotland she was "amused" by all the attention. She said the group, which currently has 14...
Last night I had dinner with the molecular microbiologist Professor Keith Gull. He discussed the information overload that has taken shape in academia his lifetime, and how it has affected the working methods of his students. Over spinach and egg, Professor Gull identified the need to be able to extract the relevant points from the unprecedentedly vast mass of material now available as a key skill in the contemporary data-dense environment. Tangentially, it seems to me that all 21st century musicians are likewise potentially swamped in a vast range of influences largely unavailable to their recent predecessors.
This World Wide Web that you all have now has made pretty much everything that ever was available, by legal or illegal means. But Wolf People are one of the few groups to funnel this oceanic torrent of endless sonic information into a fine and purposeful point. And that fine and purposeful point is their second album proper, Fain.
The peripheral early seventies British underground influences that Wolf People acknowledge on their website playlists - Linda Hoyle and Affinity, Arzachel, Tractor, Beau, Thundermother, High Tide, May Blitz, Arcadium and The Way We Live - were all familiar to me as a post-punk fundamentalist teenager in the early 80s, but in name only. Theirs were the already culturally obsolete gatefold albums with gloomily meaningful sleeves spilling out of the racks in the second hand shop in the underpass by Moor Street Station at low low prices, that our generation thrust aside in search of 12" singles by angry ironists on the Rough Trade and Vindaloo labels. This dopey beardo wizard shit was kulturally verboten. It was never coming back, granddad, and without the open-access information experiment of the newfangled Internet, could a band like Wolf People ever have sounded quite the way it does?
"I don't think it could have, or at least not in the form it's taken now", concedes Wolf People's founder, vocalist, and co-guitarist (with Joe Hollick) Jack Sharp. "We were very much involved in collecting records and sampling, and interested in '60's and '70's subculture (as well as hip hop) in the "pre internet age", but things were a lot harder to come by when you didn't have the almost brain numbing instant access to pretty-much-everything-ever that you have now. Getting involved in online record collecting communities around 2002/2003, when we were in our early twenties, had a massive impact on Tom and myself, and it still provides a lot of inspiration and ways of finding music that is still off the radar even now."
Having burrowed out of Bedford in the mid-noughties, Wolf People are a formidable hybrid. Yes, they're crate-digging record collector completists with time on their hands and the sort of international file-trader connections that mean they can legitimately say "There has always been a 1970s Finnish progressive rock influence on our music." But, crucially, they're also dedicated musicians demonstrating, with their zen-mastery of Tom Verlaine type twin guitar starbursts and Pythagorean progressive rock timekeeping, the lost art of what long dead rock scribes used to call 'chops'.
"We'll probably look back and realise what idiots we were being!" volunteers Sharp. "I suppose it's strange that we're using the internet as a tool to reference a craft of music making that would otherwise be extinct or buried." If only Wolf People been able to enjoy the housing benefit scams, generous student grants, aristocratic major label patronage, and communal squat culture that bought their spiritual Seventies forebears endless practice time. Had they been relieved of the obligation to sustain themselves, we'd have seen Wolf People's debut mini-masterpiece, 2010's Steeple, some years ahead of schedule.
I'm worried I've made Wolf People sound like mere historical revivalists, the prog-blues-folk-rock equivalent of those people who dress up as cavaliers at weekends and lose once more battles already lost long ago. Crucially, there's something else entirely going on in their rehearsal room. We know the technology now exists to clone and revive an extinct woolly mammoth from DNA found in frozen specimens perfectly preserved in arctic ice-fields, which is arguably partly what Wolf People have done, referencing artists on the missing presumed extinct Holyground label, for example. But what if we were to take that mammoth and cross-breed it with a similarly re-vivified sabre tooth tiger?
It was on the closing pair of tracks on Wolf People's last album Steeple, namely Banks of Sweet Dundee Parts 1 and 2, that their unique selling point became clear. Wolf People are positing an alternate early Seventies musical reality that nearly, but never quite actually, happened. Yes, Fairport Convention's A Sailor's Life, the extended epics of Trees' unbeatable 1970 album On The Shore, and bits of Carolanne Pegg's '73 solo album, posit a British folk music informed by then contemporary rock practice, with extended modal soloing and driving rhythm sections.
And yes, the title track alone of Traffic's John Barleycorn Must Die album, and The Battle Of Evermore from Led Zeppellin IV, and bits of the and the inexplicably English sounding German band Carol of Harvest's eponymous 1978 release, suggest a more densely entwined, more fertile, future for this unlikely crossbreed. But it was a future that was never quite fulfilled, Traffic wandering off into a flutey jazz fog, and Led Zeppellin climbing the Giant's Causeway to an immortality not tainted by folksy flavors.
"I think subconsciously, we're trying to make the type of records we would like to find," says Jack. "I love Trees and Fairport and Mr Fox, but I find myself thinking that there aren't enough groups like that, and sometimes I want it to be heavier. So we've tried to stretch both the folk and the heavy element as far as it will go in either direction and see what happens." I think the modest Wolf Person is selling the band short. Fain doesn't sound stretched. Its eight substantial songs sound, given the incompatible diversity of its sources, implausibly integrated.
Empty Vessels skewers California '60s folk rock rhythm guitar with Hollick's insurgent soloing; All Returns' truncated hairy funk licks, from bassist Dan Davis and drummer Tom Watt, suddenly bristle into the red, finally unable to contain themselves, bursting free of a psalmodic structure, like The Stooges' We Will Fall re-tooled by jazz monks; When The Fire Is Dead In The Grate is the album's first stone classic, a funky folk-metal workout that trails off into a compellingly extended coda, both guitarists circling and dovetailing and spiraling; Athol is a downbeat minor key boogie, like an uncommonly reflective Canned Heat gone native somewhere in the Suffolk fens.
Massed witches' sabbat backing vocals swell and rise under the arching leads of the painfully disciplined Hesperus, the song dissolving into a peat bog superfuzz sphagnum moss sludge; Answer drapes hop-harvest harmonies over pointillist pin pricks of lead guitar; Thief's Can-style atomic bomb blast opening spills over analogue synth noise into an all-but unaccompanied plaintive folk ballad vocal, that breaks down into collapsing arpeggios of twin guitars; and NRR sounds like it was written to make Hell's Angels, and their molls, attending an outdoor blues-rock/rock-blues festival in a disused WWII airfield in 1973, do that dance where they bend sideways and bump their butts together, the rather self-conscious set closer that would once have provoked mass applause and the ritualized discarding of bras.
Music fans like to speculate on what-if's. What if The Fall had followed Hex Enduction Hour with more of the same, instead of switching track to escape expectation? What if The Buzzcocks had held on to and harnessed the high art aspirations of Howard Devoto alongside the pop art punch of Pete Shelley? What if Jimi Hendrix had made that album with Miles Davis? What if Television had run in the songs for their belated 3rd album live, and found all the jumping-off points they discovered in the years spent woodshedding Marquee Moon? What if all the great songs the final line-up of The Byrds squandered in half-realised solo projects had made one last brilliant band album? And so on.
If you've ever listened to those furtive early '70s fusions of folk and rock and wondered if there was another way those superficially incompatible genres might have intertwined, then Wolf People offer an answer, with Fain's patchouli-scented stews of perfurmed garden pre-punk, each shadowed by a creeping deep country darkness of backwater occult imagery, utilitarian King James Bible lyricism, and knowing nods to primordial melodies, that already lurk deep in the collective subconscious. Re-organising the re-available past, Wolf People cast a cup of bones against the back wall, and play the runes in the patterns they fall in.
Stewart Lee
2013-03-20T18:49:40+00:00
Last night I had dinner with the molecular microbiologist Professor Keith Gull. He discussed the information overload that has taken shape in academia his lifetime, and how it has affected the working methods of his students. Over spinach and egg, Professor Gull identified the need to be able to extract the relevant points from the unprecedentedly vast mass of material now available as a key skill in the contemporary data-dense environment. Tangentially, it seems to me that all 21st century musicians are likewise potentially swamped in a vast range of influences largely unavailable to their recent predecessors. This World Wide Web that you all have now has made pretty much everything that ever was available, by legal or illegal means. But Wolf People are one of the few groups to funnel this oceanic torrent of endless sonic information into a fine and purposeful point. And that fine and purposeful point is their second album proper, Fain. The peripheral early seventies British underground influences that Wolf People acknowledge on their website playlists - Linda Hoyle and Affinity, Arzachel, Tractor, Beau, Thundermother, High Tide, May Blitz, Arcadium and The Way We Live - were all familiar to me as a post-punk fundamentalist teenager in the early 80s, but in name only. Theirs were the already culturally obsolete gatefold albums with gloomily meaningful sleeves spilling out of the racks in the second hand shop in the underpass by Moor Street Station at low low prices, that our generation thrust aside in search of 12" singles by angry ironists on the Rough Trade and Vindaloo labels. This dopey beardo wizard shit was kulturally verboten. It was never coming back, granddad, and without the open-access information experiment of the newfangled Internet, could a band like Wolf People ever have sounded quite the way it does?...
It seems tenuous, but appropriate, to give the book a recommended listening list too.
When I imagine Luther's music it's a cross between the following.
Alexander Spence - Oar - Sundazed - SC11075 is the album the wayward Moby Grape member recorded in 1968 having busted out of Bellevue Hospital.
13th Floor Elevators - Easter Everywhere - Decal - CDLIKM002 is for me the best of the 60's Austin Texas band's albums.
Roky Erickson - Gremlins Have Pictures - Demon - Fiend CD66 is a compilation of their leader's later, solo stuff.
Black Sun Ensemble - s/t - Camera Obscura - CAM040 is a re-issue of debut of the mid-80's Tucson instrumental band, led by Jesus Acedo.
Various Artists - The Tucson Sound 1960-1968 - Bacchus - BA002LP is what it says it is, and probably isn't on CD.
Being a fan of the Tucson band Giant Sand first led me to the South West in 1995, and whether they like it or not, they seem inextricably bound up with their environment. Giant Sand - Chore Of Enchantment - Loose - VJCD113 is probably their best album. OP8 - OP8 Featuring Lisa Germano - Thirsty Ear - THL57030.2 is a Giant Sand collaboration with Lisa Germano. I bought it in Adelaide in 1997 and it was always on when I was writing there. Giant Sand - Selections Circa 1990-2000 - Loose VJCD121, a compilation of later recordings is a good introduction.
The night I, the actor Kevin Eldon and the man Ben Moor arrived in Tucson in September 1995 was the launch of the first album by local supergroup The Friends Of Dean Martinez, in the cellar of Hotel Congress. The Friends Of Dean Martinez - The Shadow Of Your Smile - Sub Pop - SP306b is the desert rock/cocktail lounge hybrid soundtrack to the imaginary screenplay of this book
Opening the show in the lobby of Hotel Congress was the late Rainer Ptáçek, who played the version of George Harrison's Within You Without You included on.. Rainer - Nocturnes - Glitterhouse- GRCD363. The previous year I'd seen him play The Weavers in Stoke Newington. It was packed. Robert Plant was there. At Hotel Congress a few people milled around, not paying attention, a prophet without honour …
Probably the most famous Tucson band these days is Calexico, a Giant Sand spin off more self consciously attuned to a regional sound. Their second album, Calexico - The Black Light - City Slang - 08707-2, was out about the time I really set to on the text and was good for atmosphere.
The opening of the book fell into place one night in March 97 in the Arkaba motel, Adelaide, Austalia, while under the influence of repeated playings of … The Beasts Of Bourbon - Gone - Red Eye - REDCD58
Finally, the following three spoken word albums, which include little instrumental snatches of Calexico, were bought at The Singing Wind Bookshop in Arizona, which is, as far as I know, the sole outlet for them. Lawrence Clark Powell is a local historian and all 3 of these cd's are brilliant and changed the way I thought about the region
Lawrence Clark Powell's Southwest:
Volume I: Southwest, an Essay On The Land
Volume II: Where Water Flows
Volume III: Revista Nueva Mexicana
If you're interested try writing to Singing Wind Audio, Box 2197, Benson, AZ 86502, USA
Stewart Lee
2001-06-01T15:04:23+01:00
It seems tenuous, but appropriate, to give the book a recommended listening list too. When I imagine Luther's music it's a cross between the following. Alexander Spence - Oar - Sundazed - SC11075 is the album the wayward Moby Grape member recorded in 1968 having busted out of Bellevue Hospital. 13th Floor Elevators - Easter Everywhere - Decal - CDLIKM002 is for me the best of the 60's Austin Texas band's albums. Roky Erickson - Gremlins Have Pictures - Demon - Fiend CD66 is a compilation of their leader's later, solo stuff. Black Sun Ensemble - s/t - Camera Obscura - CAM040 is a re-issue of debut of the mid-80's Tucson instrumental band, led by Jesus Acedo. Various Artists - The Tucson Sound 1960-1968 - Bacchus - BA002LP is what it says it is, and probably isn't on CD. Being a fan of the Tucson band Giant Sand first led me to the South West in 1995, and whether they like it or not, they seem inextricably bound up with their environment. Giant Sand - Chore Of Enchantment - Loose - VJCD113 is probably their best album. OP8 - OP8 Featuring Lisa Germano - Thirsty Ear - THL57030.2 is a Giant Sand collaboration with Lisa Germano. I bought it in Adelaide in 1997 and it was always on when I was writing there. Giant Sand - Selections Circa 1990-2000 - Loose VJCD121, a compilation of later recordings is a good introduction. The night I, the actor Kevin Eldon and the man Ben Moor arrived in Tucson in September 1995 was the launch of the first album by local supergroup The Friends Of Dean Martinez, in the cellar of Hotel Congress. The Friends Of Dean Martinez - The Shadow Of Your Smile - Sub Pop - SP306b is the desert rock/cocktail...
The notion of status has always been crucial to Stewart Lee’s stand-up, whether it be his place in the world or how he interacts with his audience.
Anyone who’s read the annotated transcripts of his shows knows the attention he pays to subtly ensuring he is always on the back foot. Despite critical acclaim and a fan base substantial enough to finally offer him financial security, he needs to be the underdog battling against perceived injustices.
Tornado/Snowflake addresses this obsession more explicitly than any of his previous shows, even 41st Best Stand Up Ever which made status its title. Lee’s focus with the new show is tighter and closer to home, after a long battle with the big concepts of Brexit.
In the first half, the comic first lowers his standing though sardonic grumbles about his physical decay – growing greyer, fatter and more deaf in the two years since his last show. Ageing may be a comic staple, but Lee expresses the indignities beautifully.
Then he turns to to the gap between his hard-earned artistic kudos and his lesser commercial standing, overshadowed by big-budget comedians on Netflix – a platform which cannot even offer the right blurb of his Content Provider series, instead using the breathless description of the preposterous B-movie Sharknado.
In the second half, it’s his place in the cultural landscape that’s under consideration, as a politically-correct liberal in a mainstream kicking back against such inclusive values.
The evening has been billed as two separate shows, but each half is thematically so similar, they can be considered as one – not least because some of the comedians with the biggest streaming deals are those with the least moral scruples.
Names are named as righteous complaints exaggerate into the viciously rancorous, from Jimmy Carr’s callous material to Josh Widdecombe’s shallowness.
Needless to say Ricky Gervais gets a kicking both before and after the interval, for so successfully monetising a fake victimhood, complaining on a global platform that he’s being silenced by the snowflake liberals. Lee isn’t the only comic who needs to play the underdog…
Here his tortured anguish as he strains to embody that idea of an edgelord comic literally ‘saying the unsayable’ is a powerfully ridiculous performance, made stronger by the commitment in both time and energy to the piece, way beyond the point most comics would have given up.
That’s always been his shtick, of course, and it is overused almost to the point of self-parody in the first half as he repeats the false description of his work on Netflix with varying emphasis. It’s not the only part Tornado that feels a little like Lee uncharacteristically retreading old topics, even if his execution and the detail in structuring the threads into a coherent and rewarding show is rarely matched.
He’s on slightly unadventurous ground, too, when he closes part one with an Alan Bennett parody. It is well-done – dubious soft Yorkshire accent notwithstanding – but a relatively simple conceit for Lee. Far better is the literary parody in the second half, with Enid Blyton’s non-PC work being skewered with more pointed vigour.
Indeed, Snowflake is probably the stronger half, from its an ironic shaggy-dog story about a spider bit, his piss-take of the Bernard Manning style of comedy, a sarcasm-laden response to Tony Parsons’s unnuanced criticism of his use of ‘the c-word’, and an ever-more ridiculous examples of the phrase ‘political correctness gone mad’ being misunderstood by his elderly gran.
Throughout, Lee mixes stubborn professional jealousy with more justifiable complaints. His takedown of Phoebe Waller-Bridge is pure iconoclasm, playfully mocking the heroine-worship that’s built up around her. And Dave Chapelle – a comic with some questionable content – is instead mocked for his ostentatious Hollywood ego, although the real joke is the way Lee’s own, more troubled, ego fails to cope with the arrogant interloper.
Although the broad sweeps of Lee’s work take in familiar liberal arguments, there’s a weight and a detail that provides substantial food for thought. As with so much of his work, it’s the sort of comedy that you’ll recall days or weeks after the gig as situations he describes re-present themselves. Or if you sit down for some shark-based movie action.
Stewart Lee
2019-11-08T13:35:00+00:00
The notion of status has always been crucial to Stewart Lee’s stand-up, whether it be his place in the world or how he interacts with his audience. Anyone who’s read the annotated transcripts of his shows knows the attention he pays to subtly ensuring he is always on the back foot. Despite critical acclaim and a fan base substantial enough to finally offer him financial security, he needs to be the underdog battling against perceived injustices. Tornado/Snowflake addresses this obsession more explicitly than any of his previous shows, even 41st Best Stand Up Ever which made status its title. Lee’s focus with the new show is tighter and closer to home, after a long battle with the big concepts of Brexit. In the first half, the comic first lowers his standing though sardonic grumbles about his physical decay – growing greyer, fatter and more deaf in the two years since his last show. Ageing may be a comic staple, but Lee expresses the indignities beautifully. Then he turns to to the gap between his hard-earned artistic kudos and his lesser commercial standing, overshadowed by big-budget comedians on Netflix – a platform which cannot even offer the right blurb of his Content Provider series, instead using the breathless description of the preposterous B-movie Sharknado. In the second half, it’s his place in the cultural landscape that’s under consideration, as a politically-correct liberal in a mainstream kicking back against such inclusive values. The evening has been billed as two separate shows, but each half is thematically so similar, they can be considered as one – not least because some of the comedians with the biggest streaming deals are those with the least moral scruples. Names are named as righteous complaints exaggerate into the viciously rancorous, from Jimmy Carr’s callous material to Josh...
Stewart Lee says during this date on a lengthy tour of his Content Provider show that runs into 2018 that he wants to give the illusion of structure.
But it’s definitely no illusion, with a set that masterfully weaves together subjects like Brexit, bondage and, inevitably, bringing down some of his grating comedy contemporaries a peg or two. There are some nods to the local crowd, with Morningside coming off worse for wear, and his controversial shopping habits when he’s in the city during August. The “post-fact” era with growing political division also gives him plenty to get his teeth into, while the narcissism, consumerism and rapidly shortening attention spans of the smartphone generation gain plenty of (admittedly deserving) bile.
He also jokes that now he’s playing the bigger venues, it’s meaning the wrong type of people are getting dragged along wondering where the proper jokes are. But despite a prolonged riff on how one part of the audience wasn’t keeping up, this show, with its conclusion proving the structure really is watertight, makes it clear, it were needed, that Lee is a worthy holder of the title he wryly highlights of one of the UK’s most critically acclaimed stand-ups.
Stewart Lee
2017-03-18T20:54:53+00:00
Stewart Lee says during this date on a lengthy tour of his Content Provider show that runs into 2018 that he wants to give the illusion of structure. But it’s definitely no illusion, with a set that masterfully weaves together subjects like Brexit, bondage and, inevitably, bringing down some of his grating comedy contemporaries a peg or two. There are some nods to the local crowd, with Morningside coming off worse for wear, and his controversial shopping habits when he’s in the city during August. The “post-fact” era with growing political division also gives him plenty to get his teeth into, while the narcissism, consumerism and rapidly shortening attention spans of the smartphone generation gain plenty of (admittedly deserving) bile. He also jokes that now he’s playing the bigger venues, it’s meaning the wrong type of people are getting dragged along wondering where the proper jokes are. But despite a prolonged riff on how one part of the audience wasn’t keeping up, this show, with its conclusion proving the structure really is watertight, makes it clear, it were needed, that Lee is a worthy holder of the title he wryly highlights of one of the UK’s most critically acclaimed stand-ups.
The booker at Dalston’s doughty Vortex club introduces the opening night of London Jazz Festival sponsored events defensively; “ It’s business as usual here at the Vortex”. The club crowns the bend in an underground river of London jazz venues, that once surfaced in the back room of the Red Rose in Finsbury park, but now wends from pub cellars in Stoke Newington, down to the self-consciously cutting edge space of Dalston Junction’s Cafe Oto, nurturing jazz’s experimental wing all year long. Tonight this tiny glass attic is packed with discerning twentysomethings and radical pensioners for a trio that seems hand-picked to appease them, representing a venn diagram of distinct but overlapping schools.
Ken Vandermark, on saxophones and clarinet, swifty rose to the top of the Chicago circuit in the ‘90s. With a drill instructor’s moustache and a green and black wardrobe, tonight he plays like a military man on a mission, making bold, definate statements, essaying a kind of volcanic be-bop. The double bassist Barry Guy’s generation of ‘60s British musicians shaped the sound of free improvisation in Europe. He has a painter and decorator’s face, and a ballet dancer’s grace, and plucks an extra fifth string at choice moments, its trebley tone suggesting twinkling stars, before returning to the collapsing sun rumble of beaten bass notes. Mark Sanders, the drummer, currently plays all over the country, all the time, with everyone. Tonight, he drops rubble or sprinkles fairy-dust, as appropriate. In the closing number, Vandermark blows hard and long on the clarinet and ends, literally, on a high note. Outside in Gillet Square one imagines there is a Chinook Helicopter waiting to wisk him away.
On the London Jazz Festival’s second night, a trio led by the German barbarian Peter Brötzmann, another modest coo for the Festival’s experimental fringe, has been invited into the temple of culture that is The Purcell Room. The saxophonist’s 1968 statement Machine Gun laid waste to jazz history and remains a sacred text for American noise rock bands anxious to claim a classy lineage. Brötzmann’s current trio consolidates his position on the front line of possibilities. The electric bassist X Pliakas plays like an escapee from a Norwegian Black Metal band who has run away to join the Free Jazz circus.
The drummer Michael Wertmuller can shift from a sustained, rhythmical assault on the rim of his snare, to a sudden low end battery of the entire kit that makes the audience, as one, gasp like somone had just pushed them off a precipice. Stage right stands Brötzman, sixty eight years old and looking like a Prussian general in sociology lecturer threads, riding the storm. When it subsides, he takes a long and lyrical solo, that appears to appropriate microseconds of Coltrane or Sonny Rollins, showing you what Brötzmann might have done, had he not chosen to make this thrilling and challenging space his own. A standing ovation coaxes the clearly exhausted trio back to the stage. Surely the London Jazz Festival’s other guests can just pack up and go home now? Peter Brötzmann, the big bad wolf of jazz, came to London, and he huffed and he puffed and he blew your house down.
Stewart Lee
2008-11-16T20:12:56+00:00
The booker at Dalston’s doughty Vortex club introduces the opening night of London Jazz Festival sponsored events defensively; “ It’s business as usual here at the Vortex”. The club crowns the bend in an underground river of London jazz venues, that once surfaced in the back room of the Red Rose in Finsbury park, but now wends from pub cellars in Stoke Newington, down to the self-consciously cutting edge space of Dalston Junction’s Cafe Oto, nurturing jazz’s experimental wing all year long. Tonight this tiny glass attic is packed with discerning twentysomethings and radical pensioners for a trio that seems hand-picked to appease them, representing a venn diagram of distinct but overlapping schools. Ken Vandermark, on saxophones and clarinet, swifty rose to the top of the Chicago circuit in the ‘90s. With a drill instructor’s moustache and a green and black wardrobe, tonight he plays like a military man on a mission, making bold, definate statements, essaying a kind of volcanic be-bop. The double bassist Barry Guy’s generation of ‘60s British musicians shaped the sound of free improvisation in Europe. He has a painter and decorator’s face, and a ballet dancer’s grace, and plucks an extra fifth string at choice moments, its trebley tone suggesting twinkling stars, before returning to the collapsing sun rumble of beaten bass notes. Mark Sanders, the drummer, currently plays all over the country, all the time, with everyone. Tonight, he drops rubble or sprinkles fairy-dust, as appropriate. In the closing number, Vandermark blows hard and long on the clarinet and ends, literally, on a high note. Outside in Gillet Square one imagines there is a Chinook Helicopter waiting to wisk him away. On the London Jazz Festival’s second night, a trio led by the German barbarian Peter Brötzmann, another modest coo for the Festival’s experimental...
My interview with Spike Milligan didn't exactly go as planned. I made an effort to arrive at his East Sussex address dead on 2pm, so I wasn't too early, or too late, trying to learn from the mistakes of previous grail-seekers, whose ignominious fates I'd witnessed in a wedge of press cuttings. I did the London journalist/local taxi driver bit that has become a staple feature of all Spike Milligan profile pieces. She recognised the address and was protective and loyal, even in casual conversation. "Let's just say, he has his good days, like all of us," she concluded, and dropped me off in a country lane with a name so silly that most journalists can't resist giving it an improprietous mention. And I joined the ranks of visitors who note that Milligan's rather squat and functional home is called The Blind Architect and wonder if the name has any significance. I hid my cigarettes in my bag. "He'll kill you if he sees them," a south London playwright warned me. "Try hard not to annoy him."
There's a short story Ray Bradbury wrote for Playboy in the 1950s that gives a cheesy poetic expression to the modern chaos theories it predates. A man is sent back to the prehistoric era by a newly invented time machine". He walks above the evolving plant and animal species on an energy pathway that he is warned never to leave.He steps off it for a moment. On returning to his own time he finds the human race replaced by hideous "were-ants in an unrecognisable dystopia. There is a butterfly crushed on the sole of his shoe.
It's arguable that any time traveller who went to the north African front circa 1941 and accidentally removed Spike Milligan from the equation would find himself returning to a similarly mutated present. "Peter Sellers and I saw ourselves as comic Bolsheviks," Milligan said last year to a Sunday newspaper of his groundbreaking 1950s radio programme, The Goon Show. "We wanted to destroy all that had come before and to create something totally new."
In tomorrow night's Omnibus documentary, which celebrates the man's life and work, John Cleese candidly admits that without the Goons and, more significantly, Milligan's late 1960s/1970s BBC2 TV series, Q, there would have been no Monty Python. Q set new boundaries for "broken" comedy, sidestepping the constraint of punchline by a series of neat escape devices, with Milligan leading a set of obviously bewildered, but tolerant, supporting actors into comic landscapes disturbingly unfamiliar to the viewer, but clearly intricately charted in the dusty map room of his mind. It's not an overstatement to say that Milligan is the wellspring of all the best modern British comedy, from which flows the Pythons, the "alternative" comedians of the 1980s, and finally the surreal flights of fancy of Reeves and Mortimer today, even though he disowns these most recent offspring as noise and nonsense. I make a living out of writing comedy. Without Milligan I'd still be a horticultural researcher. I owe him a great deal.
The buzzwords, catch phrases and scripts of the post-war alternative comedy that Milligan almost single-handedly sired, all learnt off by heart by successive generations, inform every pub conversation in the land and have achieved the status of modern folk tales. The Newbury bypass protestors kept their spirits up by chanting Monty Python scripts to each other from their treehouses. In the wake of the release of a BBC Enterprises video of the best of Q and the Omnibus documentary which Milligan claims not to remember having participated in, even though he is interviewed at enormous length we all have a chance to assess just how different things might have been without him, and to laugh along at some of the funniest and definitely the most original humour of the post-war era. And, above all, I can get to meet Spike Milligan. Cool!
The third Mrs Milligan, Shelagh, opened the door. "Oh," she said, a little shocked, peering around the frame. Suddenly I felt unwelcome, like a salesman or a historically disliked relation. "You must be from The Sunday Times. We've been trying to contact you all morning. We'd hoped you'd have a mobile phone. Spike's not well today, you see. He's still in bed and..." I guessed that "not well" was a well-worn euphemism. Something, predictably, must have thrown Milligan out of orbit that morning, and I just didn't have it in my heart to press the point. I suppose I'll never get to be Bob Woodward, and I'll never interview Spike Milligan after all.
"It doesn't matter," I said to Shelagh. "I don't mind, I half expected this, but," I continue, when it becomes clear she's just going to leave me standing on the step, "can I come in and phone a minicab back to town?"
Inside, a younger woman appears on a balcony over the hall, and they're both looking around as if they're scared of puncturing the silence. "It's all right," she says, coming downstairs, "I'll run you back in the mini."
So I'm out the back door in seconds and squeezed into a bucket seat, out of danger, and listening to small talk about the weather we've been having lately. "Can you tell him it doesn't matter," I say. "I think Spike Milligan has more than earned the right to stay in bed any time he likes, if he wants to." And I hope it doesn't sound sarcastic, because it wasn't meant to be.
Milligan's manic depression is legendary, and it's tempting to play the "mad genius" trump card in an effort to explain the fantastic quantum leap of comic imagination that his 1950s Goon Show scripts represent. There simply isn't a precedent for them, and no glib juggling of exacerbating factors such as his arrival in an alien England from the colonial Indian culture he grew up in, or the black humour that was de rigueur on the war-time front line, or his near death in shelling at Monte Cassino and subsequent medical discharge, will explain them.
The best part of the Q compilation video features Milligan dressed up as a Germanic Rhinemaiden in a light comic opera, where, instead of singing his vocal parts, he simply blows raspberries. It is inexplicably hilarious. In the Omnibus documentary it is Denis Norden, of all people, who comes closest to an explanation of Milligan's skill, which sidesteps cultural and social factors, and concentrates instead on the simple architecture of comedy. "Spike," he says, "had a feeling for how long things should go on ... before they stopped."
Back at the station I phone the paper from one of those red call boxes I never see anymore. I'm on my own in a Sussex market town in the middle of the afternoon for no good reason at all, and suddenly everything seems strange. Across the car park there are sheep being lined up in red metal pens for shearing, or sale, or slaughter, or something, bleating and jostling. Apparently there was a piece in the Sunday Express, all infidelity and illegitimate children, that had upset Milligan the day before, and I feel vaguely sordid by association with a publicity mechanism that has driven a depressive old man to his bed.
On the train home I wonder if there's any way of salvaging the piece, and then give up and get talking to a nice woman who wants to quit her job to become an archeologist. A load of pubescent schoolgirls get on somewhere and I duck down out of the way. Later, as they get off, they wave at me and shout catch phrases from Fist of Fun, the television comedy show I co-wrote.
There's a notebook full of unanswered questions in my bag and a tape recorder I bought from a second-hand electrical shop specially for the occasion. I wish I had the magic Milligan escape engine. "Stands. Walks towards camera. Says, `What are we going to do now?
What are we going to do now?' Repeat to fade."
Stewart Lee
1996-04-14T16:39:29+01:00
My interview with Spike Milligan didn't exactly go as planned. I made an effort to arrive at his East Sussex address dead on 2pm, so I wasn't too early, or too late, trying to learn from the mistakes of previous grail-seekers, whose ignominious fates I'd witnessed in a wedge of press cuttings. I did the London journalist/local taxi driver bit that has become a staple feature of all Spike Milligan profile pieces. She recognised the address and was protective and loyal, even in casual conversation. "Let's just say, he has his good days, like all of us," she concluded, and dropped me off in a country lane with a name so silly that most journalists can't resist giving it an improprietous mention. And I joined the ranks of visitors who note that Milligan's rather squat and functional home is called The Blind Architect and wonder if the name has any significance. I hid my cigarettes in my bag. "He'll kill you if he sees them," a south London playwright warned me. "Try hard not to annoy him." There's a short story Ray Bradbury wrote for Playboy in the 1950s that gives a cheesy poetic expression to the modern chaos theories it predates. A man is sent back to the prehistoric era by a newly invented time machine". He walks above the evolving plant and animal species on an energy pathway that he is warned never to leave.He steps off it for a moment. On returning to his own time he finds the human race replaced by hideous "were-ants in an unrecognisable dystopia. There is a butterfly crushed on the sole of his shoe. It's arguable that any time traveller who went to the north African front circa 1941 and accidentally removed Spike Milligan from the equation would find himself returning...
SOME people think Jerry Springer is the host of an infamous freak-show which exploits inarticulate human misery for the entertainment of the middle classes. This, of course, is half the fun. But until you've been in the grungier parts of the United States it's hard to realise that this high priest of self-expression is perhaps also the greatest satirist on television, holding a mirror of disgust to the place where the American soul used to be.
Richard Thomas has set himself the task of operatising the peculiar human dramas of Springer, and captures the desperate mimicry of lives that are meaningless until televised in music which parodies everything from Bach chorales to ragtime and gospel. This is not a show to take granny to: it relies heavily upon the unarguable notion that swear-words set to sophisticated music are irreducible funny.
Jerry Springer: the Opera is exactly what it says on the tin, a succession of human exhibits whose big moment has come to tell their slack-jawed loved ones and gawping millions stuff that would be far too mortifying to say in private. Maybe we've seen it all before: a man discovers his girlfriend is a pre-op transvestite, while he is revealed as a gay thanatomaniac? Old hat..... but as in the real Jerry, these stories develop their own momentum, the stage gradually fills with guests of increasingly intricate perversion and a battery of beloved catchphrases in response to the stage audience's growing loathing: "Talk to the hand, the face ain't listening...". Short and varied enough to maintain a suitable level of hilarity, the show nods to more traditional operatic forms with rhapsodic asides as the characters reveal ever more about themselves: thus a wistful threnody to the many joys of coprophilia - you get the picture. Commercial breaks are supplied by the studio audience and are a hideously accurate pastiche of the pervasive white noise of American life: "Give it to Jesus, or alternatively die"; "No motivation? No worries, no trouble, Novocaine", set to a jolly Tom Lehrer-like medley of tunes.
The six singers really sweat for their supper, each performing a number of characters with appropriate pathos and raucousness, in music which demands range as well as technique. Martin Lowe vamps indefatigably on the piano, Rick Bland is an uncannily lifelike Jerry and Andrew Brooke as the mythical bouncer Steve will have more to do when a fight director has been hired. The surprise ending of this semi-staged performance leaves room for more, and I don't think we need worry unduly about Jerry: like all American superheroes, he is of course immortal.
Stewart Lee
2001-08-24T16:13:19+01:00
SOME people think Jerry Springer is the host of an infamous freak-show which exploits inarticulate human misery for the entertainment of the middle classes. This, of course, is half the fun. But until you've been in the grungier parts of the United States it's hard to realise that this high priest of self-expression is perhaps also the greatest satirist on television, holding a mirror of disgust to the place where the American soul used to be. Richard Thomas has set himself the task of operatising the peculiar human dramas of Springer, and captures the desperate mimicry of lives that are meaningless until televised in music which parodies everything from Bach chorales to ragtime and gospel. This is not a show to take granny to: it relies heavily upon the unarguable notion that swear-words set to sophisticated music are irreducible funny. Jerry Springer: the Opera is exactly what it says on the tin, a succession of human exhibits whose big moment has come to tell their slack-jawed loved ones and gawping millions stuff that would be far too mortifying to say in private. Maybe we've seen it all before: a man discovers his girlfriend is a pre-op transvestite, while he is revealed as a gay thanatomaniac? Old hat..... but as in the real Jerry, these stories develop their own momentum, the stage gradually fills with guests of increasingly intricate perversion and a battery of beloved catchphrases in response to the stage audience's growing loathing: "Talk to the hand, the face ain't listening...". Short and varied enough to maintain a suitable level of hilarity, the show nods to more traditional operatic forms with rhapsodic asides as the characters reveal ever more about themselves: thus a wistful threnody to the many joys of coprophilia - you get the picture. Commercial breaks are supplied...
Twenty or so years ago, I had a friend whose flat was clearly infested by hundreds of rats that she never saw. We’d come in, put the Happy Shopper bags on the kitchen table, go to the loo, and return to see the sacks shredded and everything attractive to rodents disappeared into the cavity walls. Either that or there was a really hungry flatmate who was usually out whenever my friend was in. And wasn’t paying any rent. And left tiny oblong droppings under the units.
But the rats have been in the walls of the world all along it seems, just waiting for us to go to the bathroom for a quick number two. And now the Jacob’s Crackers of truth are stuffed up the chimney stack of our shared certain doom. Or something.
For example, the last time I heard black lesbians being blamed for everything was a few years back, when a rich white dad explained how bias in favour of black lesbians was the reason his son wasn’t assured his rightful Oxbridge place. But, after the year when we finally managed to hurl our civilisation over the 1.5C threshold that will destroy everything, Elon Musk tells us the LA inferno was down to employing black lesbian firefighters. The Trumptatorship will pin the blame for the climate crisis on anyone but the oil industry, and as far as I know black lesbians aren’t especially flammable.
This is just one example of the bullshit tsunami suddenly engulfing the world, the rats breaking out of the walls as one, funnelled and amplified by the pragmatic obedience to Trump pledged by the dark tech-lords Elon Musk of Twitter (currently X), Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, and wrecker of the Washington Post and Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, the latter of whom just gave Donald $1m, and Melania a further $40m to make a documentary about herself. Why? At least Imelda Marcos had 6,000 interesting shoes.
(Perhaps Melania could make a series about how she met Donald? Bizarrely, Melania’s relationship with Trump began when he chatted her up while on a date with a woman actually called Celina Midelfart, heiress to the Norwegian Midelfart fortune. It’s sad to think that Melania prevented the possibility of a Midelfart-Trump dynasty. I’d have put up with the rise of the far right worldwide if it meant I got to read news about the social lives of the Midelfart-Trumps.)
I’ve written before about my BNP-voting auntie, who 20 years ago forwarded on to me an Islamophobic tract she had been emailed which, I noted, was written by an academic who did not exist from a university that didn’t exist either. “Never mind,” she said, “I still think it makes a lot of good points.”
Nascent neo-Nazis are looking for confirmation bias for their worst instincts, but back in the good old days at least they had to look. Now social media, stripped deliberately of safeguards and, in Twitter’s case, re-algorithmed to steer far right, will ping lies straight on to your phone unbidden. One in five British adults aged between 28 and 44 would now prefer a dictatorship to a democracy, apparently. Hopefully they will have the consistency not to vote.
We can’t let Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos reshape our reality, and have to encourage every friend, relative, celebrity and institution to disconnect from them. I opened a Facebook account for the first time last year – to find a lost cat – and shut it down for ever last week; I opened a Twitter account two years ago to follow feeds about archaeology, art and jazz, but like millions of others I went to Bluesky at new year, leaving David Baddiel, Robin Askwith and that woman who makes woodcuts of moss to their lonely fates, the Titanic dance band in full flow, as an iceberg in the shape of Prime Minister Tommy Robinson looms out of the mist.
And last week, a long-term physical media addict, I weaned myself off the midnight hit of instant Amazon shopping. Where once my cart creaked, I instead bought a new uncensored edition of Rose Macaulay’s 1918 feminist sci-fi fable What Not direct from publishers Handheld Press, who sent me a personalised thank-you. Twenty years I’ve been buying shit off Amazon and all Jeff Bezos ever did was suggest that I might be interested in buying books written by me, and films I appeared in.
Realistically, we should now be imposing the same boycotts on Musk’s hideous fascist US that we once did on apartheid South Africa; and which we clearly should impose on Afghanistan now, where it appears the thwack of leather on willow trumps the sound of the keys turning in the locks that imprison women all over the country. It’s just not cricket. Oh hang on! Sorry. It just is cricket!
So sit your kids, and their grandparents, down. Tell them not to believe anything they see on Facebook, Twitter, Threads or Amazon TV without checking it somewhere reliable. Make your family into a little Lindisfarne for this era of lies, somewhere we can wait out the information dark age, like monks poring over illuminated manuscripts as the black dragon sails of Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos flutter on the horizon, until the future fascists either tear themselves apart, or slaughter objective truth wholesale.
Stewart Lee
2025-01-19T22:30:44+00:00
Wow! That escalated quickly. Last time I filed my supposedly funny column, only two weeks ago, Los Angeles wasn’t on fire; Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg hadn’t abandoned the guardrails that restrict neo-fascist lies, or “free speech” as they are now known; the US hadn’t threatened to invade Canada and Greenland; Elon Musk and Jordan Peterson hadn’t declared the sniff-conked sunbed fraudster Tommy Robinson the new Nelson Mandela; and the next US president, though already an adjudicated sexual abuser, wasn’t actually a convicted felon who would have been in prison were he not in the White House. Jesus! I only popped out for some (oat) milk. Twenty or so years ago, I had a friend whose flat was clearly infested by hundreds of rats that she never saw. We’d come in, put the Happy Shopper bags on the kitchen table, go to the loo, and return to see the sacks shredded and everything attractive to rodents disappeared into the cavity walls. Either that or there was a really hungry flatmate who was usually out whenever my friend was in. And wasn’t paying any rent. And left tiny oblong droppings under the units. But the rats have been in the walls of the world all along it seems, just waiting for us to go to the bathroom for a quick number two. And now the Jacob’s Crackers of truth are stuffed up the chimney stack of our shared certain doom. Or something. For example, the last time I heard black lesbians being blamed for everything was a few years back, when a rich white dad explained how bias in favour of black lesbians was the reason his son wasn’t assured his rightful Oxbridge place. But, after the year when we finally managed to hurl our civilisation over the 1.5C threshold that will destroy...
"Smug elitist liberalism. Who is this cunt? …I hate Stewart Lee. He's like Ian Huntley to me," reads a listless Lee to a backdrop of soothing jazz. These are only a couple of gems from his extensive collection of hilariously disproportionate and unwarranted hate-mail. All too often misunderstood in a career marked distinctively with little commercial outreach, Stewart Lee has performed boldly original and outstanding stand-up for over twenty years. However, whilst staying faithful to the punk-rock ethos of alternative comedy and to political correctness, Lee has arguably reached the heights of his 'mainstream' success so far, having recently been awarded Best Male Comic at the British Comedy Awards after completing the second series of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle for BBC2.
The rise of alternative comedy coincided with the Thatcher era, fertilised by the humble beginnings of Peter Rosengard's Comedy Store in a Soho strip-club in 1979, compered by the prolific Alexei Sayle. As a movement it was fundamentally a reaction against the tiresomely right-winged, casually sexist and racist humour that predominated in working men's clubs (the likes of Roy 'Chubby' Brown, Bernard Manning and Jim Davidson), but was also towards a preference for more experimental approaches to explore and exploit the conventional 'set-up, punch-line' structure of the archetypal joke. Nowadays whenever the term 'alternative comedy' is wielded, the question that prevails is 'alternative to what?'. Stewart Lee's Carpet Remnant World, apparently blandly named to deter the new TV-fame found audience, certainly contrasts the stagnant tide of much of contemporary mainstream stand-up.
Accompanied by both the flashing lights and smoke that one could associate with Live at the Apollo and by the experimental krautrock of Amon Duul II, Stewart Lee walked out onto the stage. Rather fittingly for us viewing Carpet Remanent World at Nottingham's Playhouse Lee was upon the same stage that Trevor Griffith's play Comedians was first performed, the play which precociously questioned the moral nature of stand-up back in 1975. What then unfolds in Carpet Remnant World is a heavily self-analytical exegesis and profoundly post-modern piece of stand-up where Lee satirises everything from the banality of 'McIntyre-branded' observational and topical comedy to the so-called 'boundary pushing', Boyle-esque humour that is too often just an excuse for easy laughs at the expense of vulnerable targets. Disillusioned by modern society, Lee leads us to ponder comedy's metaphysical nature and coaxes us to laugh at the lazily contrived forms of stand-up that we are so frequently served-up and have become jaded into accepting as the norm.
His masterful and divisive control of the crowd makes for a delightful journey, as he springs a double bluff or turns on us for laughing where we should not. Lee's stage presence is nothing short of compelling: self-assured but more importantly self-aware. Even an untimely loss of voice served only to enhance his performance, providing a layer of gruff desperation.
Lee's unique take on the 'middle-aged-man-with-a-child' routine sees him swigging from a wine bottle, despairingly resembling only remnants of a past self - what could once have been scathing political satire now amusingly confined to a dilute Scooby-Doo frame of reference.
Carpet Remnant World, though deliberately less provocative than previous works, is no less potently funny and in a way more thoughtful. In a show allegedly "about nothing", Lee expressed from the offset that by its closure the disparate ideas of his routine would be strung together to create the "illusion of structure". Indeed, following a brief pseudo-failure of timing, Lee concludes with a meaningless through-line on the discovery of a utopic carpet remnant world that leaves an impression of pseudo-success.
There are many souvenirs one can gather from Carpet Remnant World, but at the very least it demonstrates the capacity for stand-up comedy as a form of art to be perceived with the same depth and sense of purpose as theatre, film or literature. As Griffiths wrote in Comedians, "A joke that feeds on ignorance starves its audience. We have the choice. We can say something or we can say nothing. Most comics feed prejudice and fear and blinkered vision, but the best ones… illuminate them".
Stewart Lee is touring the UK with 'Carpet Remnant World' and will finish up in August at the Edinburgh Fringe.
Stewart Lee
2012-03-27T14:06:43+01:00
"Smug elitist liberalism. Who is this cunt? …I hate Stewart Lee. He's like Ian Huntley to me," reads a listless Lee to a backdrop of soothing jazz. These are only a couple of gems from his extensive collection of hilariously disproportionate and unwarranted hate-mail. All too often misunderstood in a career marked distinctively with little commercial outreach, Stewart Lee has performed boldly original and outstanding stand-up for over twenty years. However, whilst staying faithful to the punk-rock ethos of alternative comedy and to political correctness, Lee has arguably reached the heights of his 'mainstream' success so far, having recently been awarded Best Male Comic at the British Comedy Awards after completing the second series of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle for BBC2. The rise of alternative comedy coincided with the Thatcher era, fertilised by the humble beginnings of Peter Rosengard's Comedy Store in a Soho strip-club in 1979, compered by the prolific Alexei Sayle. As a movement it was fundamentally a reaction against the tiresomely right-winged, casually sexist and racist humour that predominated in working men's clubs (the likes of Roy 'Chubby' Brown, Bernard Manning and Jim Davidson), but was also towards a preference for more experimental approaches to explore and exploit the conventional 'set-up, punch-line' structure of the archetypal joke. Nowadays whenever the term 'alternative comedy' is wielded, the question that prevails is 'alternative to what?'. Stewart Lee's Carpet Remnant World, apparently blandly named to deter the new TV-fame found audience, certainly contrasts the stagnant tide of much of contemporary mainstream stand-up. Accompanied by both the flashing lights and smoke that one could associate with Live at the Apollo and by the experimental krautrock of Amon Duul II, Stewart Lee walked out onto the stage. Rather fittingly for us viewing Carpet Remanent World at Nottingham's Playhouse Lee was upon the...
Stewart Lee returns to TV with this new show, and when he left - all of ten years ago - I mourned his passing. Together with Richard Herring he crafted two shows (Fist of Fun & TMWRNJ) which were full of life, joy, and intelligence.
A favourite memory from the show involves a repeated joke where a guest would make a lazy ‘political’ gag at a soft target, only for Stewart and Richard to deconstruct it to the point of absurdity and humiliation.
It was a surprise to me, then, that the ostensible targets of Stewart Lee’s new show were so soft. Celebrity books, Harry Potter, slapstick British sitcoms. He is no longer the arrogant young star, but a paunchy middle aged man, who has experienced some of life’s indignities, and his sarcasm veers close to bitterness. The intelligence still burns brightly, and the forensic analysis is combined with a new, daring, tendency to torture his audience by the repetition of a line until it becomes almost performance art. And I think that it is here that we find the real target of Mr Lee’s ridicule. Us - his audience.
Both shows so far have started by attacking some aspect of modern popular culture. We laugh along with him while he points out how ghastly they are. And then he slips in something like; ‘Have I read Harry Potter? No! But I have read the entire works of William Blake!’ which sounds a lot like literary snobbery. And we laugh along - only a bit more nervously. We are suddenly not so sure of our ground. Is he saying, not in so many words, ‘You laugh at how crap celebrity books are, but you still buy them, don’t you? You are the people who make this stuff popular.’
So perhaps his targets are not so soft at all. Its easy to mock a celebrity biography, certainly. Not so safe to mock us for buying them. At one point - when discussing the credit crunch - he demands that all those watching on a flat screen TV they have not paid for turn off the set and read a book instead. You haven’t earned the right to watch, he says, you are the cause of all the problems.
Still, he makes me laugh but he makes me pay for the laughter with thought. The world needs more from Stewart Lee.
Stewart Lee
2009-04-09T10:32:43+01:00
Stewart Lee returns to TV with this new show, and when he left - all of ten years ago - I mourned his passing. Together with Richard Herring he crafted two shows (Fist of Fun & TMWRNJ) which were full of life, joy, and intelligence. A favourite memory from the show involves a repeated joke where a guest would make a lazy ‘political’ gag at a soft target, only for Stewart and Richard to deconstruct it to the point of absurdity and humiliation. It was a surprise to me, then, that the ostensible targets of Stewart Lee’s new show were so soft. Celebrity books, Harry Potter, slapstick British sitcoms. He is no longer the arrogant young star, but a paunchy middle aged man, who has experienced some of life’s indignities, and his sarcasm veers close to bitterness. The intelligence still burns brightly, and the forensic analysis is combined with a new, daring, tendency to torture his audience by the repetition of a line until it becomes almost performance art. And I think that it is here that we find the real target of Mr Lee’s ridicule. Us - his audience. Both shows so far have started by attacking some aspect of modern popular culture. We laugh along with him while he points out how ghastly they are. And then he slips in something like; ‘Have I read Harry Potter? No! But I have read the entire works of William Blake!’ which sounds a lot like literary snobbery. And we laugh along - only a bit more nervously. We are suddenly not so sure of our ground. Is he saying, not in so many words, ‘You laugh at how crap celebrity books are, but you still buy them, don’t you? You are the people who make this stuff popular.’ So perhaps...
The Flash is a book put together to raise funds for Amnesty International.
There are 100 stories from 100 different writers.
Stewart has a short story in this collection.
Stewart Lee
2018-10-30T22:03:46+00:00
The Flash is a book put together to raise funds for Amnesty International. There are 100 stories from 100 different writers. Stewart has a short story in this collection.
...the BBC had a third moment of thrilling sanity and balls-finding this week: recommissioning Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle.
Initially axed after the first series, a campaign by Lee's fans resulted in Vehicle returning for a second series, to the relief of anyone with an interest in modern comedy. Lee doesn't really tell jokes — something which, ironically, he tells quite a lot of jokes about — but, instead, kind of ... jazzes around with language, hitting words, or images, over and over again until their unexpected reappearance on the off-beat (or the anticipation of it returning to the on-beat) forces out a snorty, honking, pig-goose laugh from the viewer. Or maybe that's just me.
This week's episode revolved around the word “crisps", and Lee's unbearable sibilance on pronouncing it. It's exactly the kind of single-minded, off-beat, quietly glorious thing that the BBC should be broadcasting. A significant bellwether in the schedules.
Yes, it was a good week for Auntie.
Stewart Lee
2011-05-05T22:18:23+01:00
...the BBC had a third moment of thrilling sanity and balls-finding this week: recommissioning Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle. Initially axed after the first series, a campaign by Lee's fans resulted in Vehicle returning for a second series, to the relief of anyone with an interest in modern comedy. Lee doesn't really tell jokes — something which, ironically, he tells quite a lot of jokes about — but, instead, kind of ... jazzes around with language, hitting words, or images, over and over again until their unexpected reappearance on the off-beat (or the anticipation of it returning to the on-beat) forces out a snorty, honking, pig-goose laugh from the viewer. Or maybe that's just me. This week's episode revolved around the word “crisps", and Lee's unbearable sibilance on pronouncing it. It's exactly the kind of single-minded, off-beat, quietly glorious thing that the BBC should be broadcasting. A significant bellwether in the schedules. Yes, it was a good week for Auntie.
Mick Collins, The Dirtbombs' front-man, is one of American garage punk's lone black voices.
In 2001, the Detroit band's Ultraglide In Black album hot-wired Seventies soul standards with scratchy guitars. Ten years later, Party Store offers chunky analogue facsimiles of famous Detroit techno tunes of the Eighties, attempting another cross-cultural hybridisation.
It's a fantastic conceit, digital music deprogrammed, Kraftwerk in reverse. Men are driven to drum like machines. Snatches of sampled song are imprecisely vocalised.
Pulverised guitars ape inexactly electronic noise. And a twenty minute slash at Carl Craig's Bug In The Bassbin sheds and shreds The Dirtbombs' punk straightjacket.
Stewart Lee
2011-01-23T12:25:58+00:00
Mick Collins, The Dirtbombs' front-man, is one of American garage punk's lone black voices. In 2001, the Detroit band's Ultraglide In Black album hot-wired Seventies soul standards with scratchy guitars. Ten years later, Party Store offers chunky analogue facsimiles of famous Detroit techno tunes of the Eighties, attempting another cross-cultural hybridisation. It's a fantastic conceit, digital music deprogrammed, Kraftwerk in reverse. Men are driven to drum like machines. Snatches of sampled song are imprecisely vocalised. Pulverised guitars ape inexactly electronic noise. And a twenty minute slash at Carl Craig's Bug In The Bassbin sheds and shreds The Dirtbombs' punk straightjacket.
"In contrast with (my) generation, which had spent most of its time online learning to code so that it could add crude butterfly animations to the backgrounds of its weblogs, the generation immediately following had spent most of its time online making incredibly bigoted jokes in order to laugh at the idiots who were stupid enough to think that they meant it. Except that after a while they did mean it, and then somehow at the end of it they were white supremacists. Was this always how it happened?"
Patricia Lockwood, London Review of Books, Feb 2019
1) NEW SHOW 2019/20 - SNOWFLAKE/TORNADO
I'm doing a new stand-up show for the back end of 2019 and the first half of 2020. National dates from Feb 2020 will be announced later in the year, but I am going to do less than last time, but with longer runs in bigger rooms to hit the same demand, sadly, as the length of the last run nearly killed me, as you can see from the BBC film of the show.
he initial London dates will be work in progress, with a free DVD of CONTENT PROVIDER for all ticket holders and fans of obsolete physical media. Tons of fun!
I will film this show/these shows in the Summer of 2020 for offloading to whatever content platforms are still viable at that stage in late capitalism's technologically-driven cultural decline.
David Johnson & John Mackay in association with Debi Allen/Curtis Brown present
STEWART LEE - SNOWFLAKE/TORNADO.
Double-bill of two new 60-ish minute sets, back to back nightly from "the world's greatest living stand-up" (Times).
Tornado questions a shipwrecked Stew’s position in the comedy marketplace after Netflix mistakenly lists his show as "reports of sharks falling from the skies are on the rise again. Nobody on the Eastern Seaboard is safe." What is anything? Is it this?
And Snowflake questions our worth in a collapsing society which no longer shares the liberal values we have for so long been keen to be seen to espouse, in a fairy-tale landscape of winter wonder. Tons of fun!
SNOWFLAKE/TORNADO Work-in-Progress and DVD LAUNCH
Leicester Square Theatre, London.
A run of work-in-progress gigs to celebrate the DVD launch of his celebrated last live show CONTENT PROVIDER.
Each ticket will include a very special limited edition copy of the new DVD, exclusively available to bookers of this live show.
Stewart will be signing copies after the show.
Sept 24th, 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th - 7pm start
Oct 1st , 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th Oct - - 8.45pm start
2 hrs including interval
£26.50 including DVD of Content Provider (RRP £19.95)
Stewart Lee - Snowflake/Tornado.
Leicester Square Theatre, London.
October - December 2019
Tues 29th October 8.45pm - Sat Dec 14th
No Mondays, No Sundays, & not Sat Nov 30th
January 2020
Thurs 2nd Jan 8.45pm - Sat 25th Jan
No Mondays, No Sundays, & not Jan 9th
8.45 pm Stewart on stage
2 hrs + interval
Tues, Weds, Thurs £27.50
Friday & Saturday£29.50
All shows are 14+ apparently. If you are under 14 you are too immature to enjoy my swearing and farts.
SEPTEMBER 2019
Tuesday 24th - WORK-IN-PROGRESS with Free 'Content Provider' DVD - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm - TICKETS
Wednesday 25th - WORK-IN-PROGRESS with Free 'Content Provider' DVD - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm - TICKETS
Thursday 26th - WORK-IN-PROGRESS with Free 'Content Provider' DVD - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm - TICKETS
Friday 27th - WORK-IN-PROGRESS with Free 'Content Provider' DVD - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm - TICKETS
Saturday 28th - WORK-IN-PROGRESS with Free 'Content Provider' DVD - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm - TICKETS
OCTOBER 2019
Tuesday 1st - WORK-IN-PROGRESS with Free 'Content Provider' DVD - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
Wednesday 2nd - WORK-IN-PROGRESS with Free 'Content Provider' DVD - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
Thursday 3rd - WORK-IN-PROGRESS with Free 'Content Provider' DVD - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
Friday 4th - WORK-IN-PROGRESS with Free 'Content Provider' DVD - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
Saturday 5th - WORK-IN-PROGRESS with Free 'Content Provider' DVD - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
"There's no-one else to touch him" Mark Wareham, Mail On Sunday *****
"Lee remains one of the best stand-ups in the country" ***** Metro
"The world's best living stand-up comedian" Dominic Maxwell, The Times
"He makes stand-up almost a moral pursuit, ... that makes the usual (and more popular) stand-ups seem crude and obvious." Alan Bennet, London Review Of Books.
"Proper, vicious prejudice - a self-proclaimed inhabitant of the moral high ground" Sarah Vine, Daily Mail
"A pot-bellied Bernard Manning for snowflakes" Tony Parsons, The Sun
"Woke, enlightened, professionally sensitive, BBC-approved comedian who can be guaranteed to dress to the left. The rancid tip of a cesspit." - Tony Parsons, GQ
"If I could bring one extinct thing back to life it would be Stewart Lee's sense of humour." Frankie Boyle, The Guardian
"The opposite of what really good comedy should be" Toby Young, Radio 4
"Truly, he is the Oscar Wilde of our times" - Gary Bushell, The Daily Star
NB - I DID 5 MONTHS IN TOTAL AT LST OF CONTENT PROVIDER BETWEEN 2016-2018, AND THEN 4 ROYAL FEST HALLS AND THEY ALL SOLD OUT.
ONCE THESE DATES ARE DONE I AM NOT COMING BACK FOR MORE THIS TIME SO GET TICKETS IF YOU WANT THEM.
2) SNOWFLAKE/TORNADO 2020 TOUR
Currently confirmed / onsale:
Jan / Feb 2020
Wednesday 29th January 2020 - Saturday 1st February 2020 - Snowflake / Tornado, Nottingham Playhouse. TICKETS HERE
Tuesday 18th - Friday 21st February 2020 - Snowflake / Tornado, Brighton Dome. ON SALE SOON.
Monday 24th - Saturday 29th February 2020 - Snowflake / Tornado, Oxford Playhouse. ON SALE SOON.
March 2020
Tuesday 17th March 2020 - Snowflake / Tornado, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury. ON SALE SOON.
Friday 27th / Saturday 28th March 2020 - Snowflake / Tornado, Theatre Royal, Newcastle. ON SALE SOON.
April / May 2020
Wednesday 29th April 2020 - Saturday 2nd May 2020 - Snowflake / Tornado, Salford Lowry. TICKETS HERE
More national dates are currently being added & confirmed & will be announced soon. They will be listed on the Live Dates page of the website & via this newsletter as they come in.
CONTENT PROVIDER has dropped off the BBC I-player.
I know they are allowed to put it on there three more times, but they do tend to need a nudge. Perhaps they will show it again. Who knows?
All four series of COMEDY VEHICLE are still up on there anyway. See how the world has changed for the worse in a decade. How quaint the liberal's manageable dilemmas of 2013 seem now.
The third, and perhaps best, series of COMEDY VEHICLE seems to be on Netflix in the UK and, I think, the US.
It seems you can also stream CARPET REMNANT WORLD and the first 3 series of COMEDY VEHICLE on Amazon, here and I think in the US. Beats me! And, as I said above, CONTENT PROVIDER will be available as an Old Skool physical media DVD in the Autumn.
Tons of fun!
6) oxide ghosts/wok in progress
Fire Records, Films and Comedy present: ONE NIGHT ON EARTH.
Stewart Lee Upfront Work-In-Progress Show/ Oxide Ghosts: The Brass Eye Tapes Film Screening presented by Michael Cumming.
Michael Cumming (Brass Eye), James Nicholls (Fire films) and I are now 1/3rd of the way through filming and editing and are looking for donations to complete the film below, which is about Birmingham post-punk survivors The Nightingales. Everyone who donates, no matter how big or how small*, will be featured in the end credits
*(I think this sentence, written by James from Fire, relates to the size of the donation, not the donor.)
9) Meanwhile, I Arrogantly Recommend Guided by Voices, Russ Tolman, Flamin’ Groovies, Topic Records, Stereolab, Catenary Wires, Meat Puppets, Acid Mothers Temple, Damo Suzuki, Fred Frith, Ben Moor & Jo Neary
The greatest American rock band of all time GUIDED BY VOICES play the UK for the first tome in nearly 2 decades, with two now sold out dates at London’s Village Underground 5th and 6th June.
Returning Paisley Underground pioneer and former True West guitaruist and songwriter RUSS TOLMAN has 4 UK dates. June 4th – Sheffield Greystones, 5th – Manchester Night People, 6th – Whitney Fat Lil’s, 7th – London Seabright Arms.
‘70s Byrds/Stones inheritors The Flamin’ Groovies, reunited with original vocalist Ray Looney, tour the UK. June 4th – Manchester Club Academy, 5th – Glasgow Oran Mor, 6th – Newcastle Cluny, 7th – London Under The Bridge, 8th – Southend Chinnerys.
There’s a celebration of 80 years of folk indie Topic Records at The Barbican on June 7th. Eliza Carthy, Martin Carthy, Lisa Knapp, Sam Lee, Alasdair Roberts, Olivia Chaney, Spiro, Chris Wood, Marry Waterson, Bernard Butler. TICKETS
Live shows from Godfathers of Indie, The Catenary Wires, fronted by Amelia Fletcher, OBE. June 7th - Welwyn Garden City Green Room, 14th – London St Pancras Old Church; July 12th - Oxford Wheatsheaf, 17th - Cambridge Portland Arms, 19th - Mcr Gullivers, 20th - Newcastle Cumberland Arms, 26th - 28th Indietracks Ripley.
Lysergic desert rock legends The Meat Puppets return. 7 June – Empire / Belfast, N. Ireland [TICKETS] 8 June – Dolan’s Warehouse / Limerick, Ireland [TICKETS] 9 June – Whelan’s / Dublin, Ireland [TICKETS] 10 June – Brudenell Social Club / Leeds, England [TICKETS] 11 June – Rebellion / Manchester, England [TICKETS]
Japanese Freak Folks Acid Mothers Temple tour the UK again. – 26th Jun. (wed) @ Bethnal Green Working Mens Club – London, 27th Jun. (thu) @ Exeter Phoenix – Auditorium, 28th Jun. (fri) @ “Glastonbury Festival 2019”, 28th Jun. (fri) @ Rough Trade Bristol – Bristol, 29th Jun. (sat) @ The Portland Arms – Cambridge, 30th Jun. (sun) @ Cafe Oto – London (matinee)
More endless tour dates from Can frontman Damo Suzuki June 26: London, Jazz Cafe, June 27: Brighton, The Hope and Ruin, June 28: Hastings, The Printworks
70th birthday 3 day residency for Fred Frith of Henry Cow at London’s Café Oto, June 28th - 30th. Frith’s solo guitar sets were, oddly, a big influence on my stand-up when I started out. TICKETS
Polymath writer and performance artist Ben Moor has a bunch of stuff happening. He has written a new show BOOKTALKBOOKTALKBOOK, co-starring Fringe comedy regular Jo Neary. There are a number of upcoming chances to catch this weird, funny, wise, mind-twisty, silly show about two authors at a bookreading. It concerns A.I., washing-up techniques, card tricks, bad novels, the love of books, and how long we should give people who we think might be running late.
Saturday 8th June 2019, 7.00pm Stoke Newington Literary Festival Ben is super-excited to be part of an amazing line-up here - there's a ton of great people talking about their for real books over the weekend in London's N16. Just get on a 73 bus! TICKETS
Sunday 8th July 2019 - Also Festival Jo is also performing her wonderful show Wife on Earth at this boutique festival in the Warwickshire countryside. There's also an array of brilliant speakers, music and activities.
Saturday 13th July 2019, 4.00pm - The Idler Festival Ben premiered BTBTB at the Idler Academy at last year's Port Eliot Festival. There's another chance to catch Wife on Earth at The Idler magazine's 2nd annual weekend of delights and surprises. At Fenton House in Hampstead.
Friday 26th July 2019 WOMAD Festival And finally (for now) the show is part of the World of Words stage at this awesome celebration of our planet's excellent human-produced sounds and ideas. Ben had the best time here last year, and says it's great to be returning.
Ben’s last show, PRONOUN TROUBLE, is also on again. It concerns The Hunting Trilogy, a series of cartoons directed by Chuck Jones, and the philosophical questions about time, friendship and uncertainty it raises. It also looks at a few cool things from the real world, and involves an ever-expanding reading list of book recommendations. Plus there are badges.
Thursday 13th & Friday 14th June 2019, 7.30pm - Etcetera Theatre As part of a Double Bill with the excellent Izzy Mant, and what Ben says is “her deeply funny and wonderfully frank examination of courtesy in a rude world”, Polite Club. Izzy's show begins at 9.00pm. TICKETS
Pronoun Trouble is also available as a DOWNLOAD from GoFasterStripe.
Will Brexit be delivered?
Can the government survive – or is a Corbyn victory inevitable?
Does Michael Gove, tipped by some as a future Conservative leader, have a plan to turn things around?
Book now to avoid disappointment.
Wed, 5 June 2019, 19:00 – 20:30 BST, Emmanuel Centre, 9-23 Marsham Street London SW1P 3DW
Stewart Lee
2019-06-04T08:00:53+01:00
"In contrast with (my) generation, which had spent most of its time online learning to code so that it could add crude butterfly animations to the backgrounds of its weblogs, the generation immediately following had spent most of its time online making incredibly bigoted jokes in order to laugh at the idiots who were stupid enough to think that they meant it. Except that after a while they did mean it, and then somehow at the end of it they were white supremacists. Was this always how it happened?" Patricia Lockwood, London Review of Books, Feb 2019 1) NEW SHOW 2019/20 - SNOWFLAKE/TORNADO I'm doing a new stand-up show for the back end of 2019 and the first half of 2020. National dates from Feb 2020 will be announced later in the year, but I am going to do less than last time, but with longer runs in bigger rooms to hit the same demand, sadly, as the length of the last run nearly killed me, as you can see from the BBC film of the show. he initial London dates will be work in progress, with a free DVD of CONTENT PROVIDER for all ticket holders and fans of obsolete physical media. Tons of fun! I will film this show/these shows in the Summer of 2020 for offloading to whatever content platforms are still viable at that stage in late capitalism's technologically-driven cultural decline. David Johnson & John Mackay in association with Debi Allen/Curtis Brown present STEWART LEE - SNOWFLAKE/TORNADO. Double-bill of two new 60-ish minute sets, back to back nightly from "the world's greatest living stand-up" (Times). Tornado questions a shipwrecked Stew’s position in the comedy marketplace after Netflix mistakenly lists his show as "reports of sharks falling from the skies are on the rise again. Nobody on the...
National Bound: Wills Morgan and Lucy Stevens in the Battersea Arts production of Jerry Springer: The Opera.
As a statement of intent, it could not be clearer. Just as soon as the last tuxedos are tucked away from Cole Porter's gentle musical Anything Goes, an altogether less housetrained beast is going to be unleashed on to the stage of the National Theatre next year.
Jerry Springer - The Opera, a cheeky, irreverent, and joyously filthy musical theatre satire on the TV chat show no one likes to admit to watching, will be Nicholas Hytner's first big production when his reign begins in April.
As a first choice it sends an unmistakable message that the years ahead are likely not only to be risky and exciting but revolutionary in a way that Sir Trevor Nunn's were not.
As a statement of intent, it could not be clearer. Just as soon as the last tuxedos are tucked away from Cole Porter's gentle musical Anything Goes, an altogether less housetrained beast is going to be unleashed on to the stage of the National Theatre next year.
Jerry Springer - The Opera, a cheeky, irreverent, and joyously filthy musical theatre satire on the TV chat show no one likes to admit to watching, will be Nicholas Hytner's first big production when his reign begins in April.
As a first choice it sends an unmistakable message that the years ahead are likely not only to be risky and exciting but revolutionary in a way that Sir Trevor Nunn's were not.
Hytner had to fight hard to drag the cult show, the hit of the Edinburgh Festival, out of the hands of a clutch of West End producers, including Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh. It is also a triumph for the Battersea Arts Centre in south London, one of the hottest cradles of theatrical talent. The show started there from fewer than 10 minutes of material on one of its famous "scratch nights". Over the past 18 months, its composer Richard Thomas and co-writer comedian Stewart Lee have developed and tinkered with it in front of live audiences.
Yesterday BAC's director, Tom Morris, said a new era was dawning at the National. "It's just amazing. The idea of the National Theatre audience chanting "Jerry! Jerry!" as Edinburgh ones did is the sort of thing you talk about late at night when you are very, very drunk.
"It's quite flabbergasting what Nick Hytner is doing. One of the things said about the National in the past was that it was a bit isolated. There was this idea that the best artists would just seep in if it sat back and waited.
"It's one thing to say I'm going to look outside the building, another to do so. Hytner has been out looking around lots of fringey places, from ourselves to the Arcola in Dalston, which is just fantastic. For him to have the courage to go with one of his finds is just, well, amazing. And, believe me, we have plenty more at BAC where that came from."
Although Hytner will not unveil his detailed vision until next month, the smoke signals coming out of the South Bank bunker are that he is thinking radical thoughts. Much of the change being talked of actually began in the twilight years of the Nunn regime, with the creation of The Loft space in the Lyttelton for edgy new work.
The sea of grey heads stereotype that has come to characterise the National's audiences is clearly about to change.
Jerry Springer will also be the first opera staged there, not that Covent Garden or the English National Opera have often been graced with tunes like "My boyfriend doesn't know I'm a man".
Hytner's choice of a musical as his first big signature production is also being seen as a mark of solidarity with Nunn, who has been roasted for his fondness for staging big Broadway musicals that quickly transfer to the West End.
Yesterday Hytner would not be drawn on his plans. "I've followed the development of Jerry Springer - The Opera since I saw it in a workshop production 18 months ago at Battersea Arts Centre. It's exactly the kind of work the National should be doing: bold, scabrous, funny, and beautiful. I'm delighted to be working with Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee on their ground-breaking new opera."
Thomas and Lee are still working on sections of the show, which was given a concert performance at Edinburgh. Julian Crouch, who designed Shockheaded Peter, another fringe theatre gem that built up a cult following, has also been brought on board.
· Adrian Noble will direct Ralph Fiennes in Ibsen's Brand in his last play for the Royal Shakespeare Company before he steps down as artistic director. It will then transfer for a limited run to the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London.
The spring season at Stratford also has The Taming of the Shrew paired with John Fletcher's rarely-performed sequel, The Tamer Tamed. Bill Alexander returns to direct Titus Andronicus. As You Like It, Cymbeline, Measure For Measure and Richard III complete the line up.
It's one of those dream concepts that catches everyone's imagination. Jerry Springer and opera: that's funny right? And extra buzz about this opera-comedy together by Stewart Lee, stand-up turned director, and Richard Thomas, whose CV includes an opera called Tourette's Diva.
They have slowly built this tribute to telly's king of dysfunctional relationships from tentative concert performances to try-out first act, all the time getting audience feedback and pointers about which way to head next. 'It's evolved in a weird, Labour Party-style public partnership with its financial supporters,' laughs Lee.
So although its official debut is not until now in Edinburgh, it has already attracted attention on a global scale. Its try-out in February at the Battersea Arts Centre drew audiences from as far afield as New York as well as promoters including Cameron Mackintosh, Andrew Lloyd Webber and National Theatre director Nick Hytner. There and then, Lee and Thomas were given offers of a West End run.
Luckily for us they resisted. This is Lee's 15th consecutive year on the Fringe and Thomas is not far behind with 11 visits. The festival is their artistic home and they wanted to give the show one last tweak for Edinburgh, cutting 40 minutes of good but not quite perfect material before what seems like the inevitable commercial transfer. 'I wanted to do it right, to really finish it off,' says Thomas, a self-taught composer. 'And Edinburgh's a great place to do it. It's the greatest festival on earth.'
Lee and Thomas are two men who know they're on a roll. Sitting opposite me in a quiet corner above their Clapham rehearsal room, they babble away in a high-speed barrage of enthusiasm, the one barely giving room for the other to speak. 'I thought we'd get a real backlash from the opera crowd,' says Thomas. 'That it would be seen as too lowbrow or undignified. But in fact, they really liked it.'
Lee chips in: 'I don't know anything about opera, so I just treated it like a comedy script that needed editing. But then when the opera people were coming in and going: "This is the funniest thing I've ever seen," I went and saw some opera and I thought, well, it probably is. If you've only ever seen West End musicals or opera, this is probably astonishing. It's written by people who have worked in comedy and know what is really funny, instead of what someone wrongly imagines as funny.'
Set in the dying days of The Jerry Springer Show, the first act features three sets of guests with guilty secrets. Interspersed are solos in which they reveal their real secrets (the man who says he likes to wear diapers really likes shitting his pants). Act two is set inside the mind of Jerry Springer as he descends into hell. The two men have used the conventions of the TV programme to inform the opera. 'In Jerry Springer,' says Lee, 'he says: "What's your problem then?" and you're straight into where you want to be. The programme has really harsh edits. That means you dispense with intros and outros or having to have things that are in the same key thrown together.'
The idea first came to Thomas as he watched The Jerry Springer Show and saw lots of fat people shouting at each other incoherently: just like in opera. 'Opera is an extreme form,' he says. 'So if you're going to write an opera, you may as well use an extreme subject. If the guests are screaming at each other - 'You pervert, you sicko, you motherfucker" - the music can go against that: the subtext can come through.'
The two had a meeting with Springer himself ('I think of him as Saint Mephistopheles,' says Thomas), who gave his tacit agreement to the project and may even turn up in person when he appears at the Edinburgh Television Festival. Are there any legal complications I ask? 'Er...' says Thomas, uncharacteristically panicked. 'I can't really say.'
So why does he think it's taking off in such a big way? 'It genuinely is pretty funny,' he says. 'It's tight. It's not boring. All the things you associate with opera, it isn't. But musically, we've got fantastic singers who have to be really good because it's complex stuff. I get a kick from the fact that people might be laughing over some serious, complex music.'
Stewart Lee
2002-12-05T18:25:01+00:00
National Bound: Wills Morgan and Lucy Stevens in the Battersea Arts production of Jerry Springer: The Opera. As a statement of intent, it could not be clearer. Just as soon as the last tuxedos are tucked away from Cole Porter's gentle musical Anything Goes, an altogether less housetrained beast is going to be unleashed on to the stage of the National Theatre next year. Jerry Springer - The Opera, a cheeky, irreverent, and joyously filthy musical theatre satire on the TV chat show no one likes to admit to watching, will be Nicholas Hytner's first big production when his reign begins in April. As a first choice it sends an unmistakable message that the years ahead are likely not only to be risky and exciting but revolutionary in a way that Sir Trevor Nunn's were not. As a statement of intent, it could not be clearer. Just as soon as the last tuxedos are tucked away from Cole Porter's gentle musical Anything Goes, an altogether less housetrained beast is going to be unleashed on to the stage of the National Theatre next year. Jerry Springer - The Opera, a cheeky, irreverent, and joyously filthy musical theatre satire on the TV chat show no one likes to admit to watching, will be Nicholas Hytner's first big production when his reign begins in April. As a first choice it sends an unmistakable message that the years ahead are likely not only to be risky and exciting but revolutionary in a way that Sir Trevor Nunn's were not. Hytner had to fight hard to drag the cult show, the hit of the Edinburgh Festival, out of the hands of a clutch of West End producers, including Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh. It is also a triumph for the Battersea Arts Centre in...
You don't need this record. No-one needs this record.
These sixteen low-fidelity self-released tracks by '70s American teens in thrall to Sabbath, Zeppelin, Tolkein, and weed are a desperate attempt to tickle the palettes of jaded hipster know-alls, and Numero Uno records knows it.
And yet, and yet... the school doodle satanic imagery, basement boogie band chops, febrile as-live production, and utterly sincere foolhardiness of these barely existent bands - Arrogance, Stoned Mace, Wrath - is nakedly compelling.
Stewart Lee
2014-03-17T00:56:13+00:00
You don't need this record. No-one needs this record. These sixteen low-fidelity self-released tracks by '70s American teens in thrall to Sabbath, Zeppelin, Tolkein, and weed are a desperate attempt to tickle the palettes of jaded hipster know-alls, and Numero Uno records knows it. And yet, and yet... the school doodle satanic imagery, basement boogie band chops, febrile as-live production, and utterly sincere foolhardiness of these barely existent bands - Arrogance, Stoned Mace, Wrath - is nakedly compelling.
Stewart Lee is pretending to be mildly crap. He keeps discussing how he is none too funny, but the point is that his commentary on his own shortcomings thereby turns into a droll running gag. He achieves this with deadpan relish. His delivery is, of course, characteristically sardonic, albeit with an amused glint in the eye. He also frequently stops to spell out how the mechanics of his routine are supposed to be working: po-faced mini-lectures on the art of being hilarious.
In Vegetable Stew (no fancy set, just a mic stand and a stool), he appears to be making excuses at the outset, stating that it’s a work in progress, not up to scratch yet. He's just trying out material that he hopes to use in his next BBC Two series of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle (due for broadcast in March 2011). This partially lets him off the hook, gives him some leeway. However, this is a distinctly smart bloke: an intellectually upmarket stand-up, palpably priding himself on that. So the game he's playing is more sophisticated than just allowing himself some slack patches. For sure, when he flags up his rudimentary shortlist of topics for the night, it sounds a ludicrously half-baked or semi-stewed hotchpotch: 1) charity; 2) Adrian Chiles; 3) the Government.
'He's taking the traditional principle that repetition is a comic device, and teasingly demonstrating how tedious it can be. Yeah, crisps... Crisps this... Crisps that...'
Lee is, moreover, soon digressing. One minute, he's telling us why he does benefit gigs and helps blind people cross the road whether they want to or not – because it makes him feel good and, at the gigs, he can pocket all the free snacks. Next thing you know, he's telling endless preposterous tall stories about his war-veteran granddad's addiction to crisps.
This is a slow burner. Indeed, the first half of the evening drags at points, with Lee taking a particularly long time to get the audience laughing en masse as he harps on about crisps, looping back to the subject over and over. This doesn't seem all that clever.
Lee is enjoying himself, though, deliberately baiting his punters and pushing the boundaries. Here he's taking the traditional principle that repetition is a comic device, and teasingly demonstrating how tedious it can be. Yeah, crisps... Crisps this... Crisps that. He is banging on like a pub bore who's been given a try-out spot. Then he takes you beyond that, adding increasingly fantastical elements to the satirical as he keeps plugging away, until eventually you buckle and start helplessly sniggering. Or at least, you begin to grin instead of gritting your teeth.
Maybe there's something faintly smug about Lee and his most eager fans: some mutual back-patting going on in the sharing of such knowingly self-referential jokes, his kind of metacomedy, his send-up of stand-up. When one of his lines fails to raise the roof or, indeed, gets only a few people clapping, he wryly analyses why it just bombed or why the unamused majority failed to appreciate his subtle brilliance.
Cavils aside, however, as the evening proceeds, and after the event too, you start to greatly appreciate his twisty wit and craft, his thematic structuring being considerably more taut than it appears at first sight. While seeming quite affable – fundamentally chatty, never hectoring – he is really slating the stupidities, moral hypocrisies and conundrums of contemporary society. By the end of the night, Vegetable Stew has become exhilaratingly caustic, morally complex (including self-criticism), and seriously thought-provoking. Lee particularly targets dumbed-down broadcasting, vacuous and insanely overpaid celebrities, and the nation's confused, half-seduced relationship with David Cameron and his upper-crust cronies.
And moving towards an absolutely storming finish, he half-mockingly reminisces about the simple pleasures of Thatcher-bashing alternative comedy in the 1980s. From there, he moves on to a fascinatingly slippery anecdote, recalling what he fleetingly imagined was a class-bridging friendship with Cameron, when they were both at Oxford University.
Oh, didn't I mention that Lee also comes with an acoustic guitar? He only does two musical numbers, but they're absolute corkers: mellifluous folk ballads shot through with cultural despair, radical irony and rage. This all culminates in an extraordinary barbed love song to the Bullingdon Club – the arrogantly thuggish and boozy, shamelessly elitist undergrad society of which Cameron, Boris Johnson and George Osborne were all members. Scorching.
Stewart Lee
2010-10-29T14:47:29+01:00
Stewart Lee is pretending to be mildly crap. He keeps discussing how he is none too funny, but the point is that his commentary on his own shortcomings thereby turns into a droll running gag. He achieves this with deadpan relish. His delivery is, of course, characteristically sardonic, albeit with an amused glint in the eye. He also frequently stops to spell out how the mechanics of his routine are supposed to be working: po-faced mini-lectures on the art of being hilarious. In Vegetable Stew (no fancy set, just a mic stand and a stool), he appears to be making excuses at the outset, stating that it’s a work in progress, not up to scratch yet. He's just trying out material that he hopes to use in his next BBC Two series of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle (due for broadcast in March 2011). This partially lets him off the hook, gives him some leeway. However, this is a distinctly smart bloke: an intellectually upmarket stand-up, palpably priding himself on that. So the game he's playing is more sophisticated than just allowing himself some slack patches. For sure, when he flags up his rudimentary shortlist of topics for the night, it sounds a ludicrously half-baked or semi-stewed hotchpotch: 1) charity; 2) Adrian Chiles; 3) the Government. 'He's taking the traditional principle that repetition is a comic device, and teasingly demonstrating how tedious it can be. Yeah, crisps... Crisps this... Crisps that...' Lee is, moreover, soon digressing. One minute, he's telling us why he does benefit gigs and helps blind people cross the road whether they want to or not – because it makes him feel good and, at the gigs, he can pocket all the free snacks. Next thing you know, he's telling endless preposterous tall stories about his war-veteran granddad's...
Before Stewart Lee starts his three hour set he issues a warning to any mobile phone users: if he sees anyone taking photos or texting he will “smash the phone with the microphone stand, then wank on it, and then take it to the backstage toilets and shit on it too”. He needn’t bother, though. He’s playing a home crowd; there’s no danger anyone’s going to miss a word.
In many ways a three-hour Stewart Lee gig at the Royal Festival Hall is a middle class comedy fan’s cummy sleep-wank heaven. This was not lost on Lee. He attacked the venue’s patrons immediately, calling the audience at the Southbank Centre “Guardian reading cunts”. It was the first in a long line of many shrewd, apt and hilarious put downs throughout the night. Looking slimmer of waist and less red of face, he looked healthy, seeming to move with more energy across the tastefully lit, bare stage.
My concerns about the RFH being too large for Stew’s muttered performances were unfounded. As much as he’d like you to think he doesn’t know how to do a huge room he does – the 2,500 seat venue quaked with laughter throughout, the jokes travelling from front to back. He employed a tactic familiar to his fans, dividing the room up based on how skilled, liberal and discerning they were. I was on the slow side of the room (the majority) and he expertly played to those seated behind him, turning them into High Command coven of Stewart Lee elites.
He seemed a man utterly relaxed within his craft. Stew, who I do not know well enough to address with such informality, played throughout the night with the crowd’s expectations.
A joke about your inner-tabloid-voice became an extended schizophrenic running gag; sabotaging his measured and reasonable diagnoses of a world besieged by bigoted rhetoric. That interplay of high-concept satire blended with the straight faced social justice makes the jokes hit harder. I am fully aware how glib that all sounds, but it’s his playfulness and great sense of the mood in the room that make it all hang together, seemingly effortlessly.
Politics was the order of the day in this set, although other comedians were the main victims of his painful liberal mastication. It’s something a number of my friends criticise Stew for, the smugness of his character being a thin mask for his genuine Oxbridge pseudery. That and his unrestrained bashing of other acts he’s deemed unworthy.
Personally it’s always been one of my favourite parts of his style; the faux-outrage at the insouciance of an audience failing to recognise his genius. He swept the laughable and tubby James Corden away in a single pithy line, describing the mere idea of his fandom “like a dog listening to classical music”.
You think this mutt appreciates counterpoint?!These jokes wouldn’t work if you didn’t think that some small part of Stew believed in it. Flawless delivery and a tight performance aid this too, although they are almost to be expected at this point. Putting aside his talent as a performer, it’s the mercurial cross-roads where the real Stewart Lee meets the character that is the most interesting. He must be a bit of a mean genius, surely? Maybe I’m falling into his trap.
Stew seems more comfortable in his fame, too. His acute awareness of the respect and admiration other comics hold for him was underscored with the dismissal of his comedy critics “They’re obsessed with me, the young comics. ‘I hate Stewart Lee, I’ve seen him 800 times.’”
He was never too self-satisfied though, a mistake many good comics have made. In recent years Eddie Izzard has looked like he is high on the stink of his own schtick. Jimmy Carr too, his pretend laugh replete with an erroneous assurance that he is “bloody funny ya know”.
Eddie Izzard recycles; he sniffs his own farts.It felt good to see that Stew has never stopped embracing the struggle – and it’s that crackle that makes comedy exciting and dangerous. That’s why he divides and taunts the audience so much throughout, because he has to have something to kick back against.
Still, I did feel that three hours is too much of one comedian for me. It’s an audacious idea – a performance of the six half-hour sets that will make up the next series of Comedy Vehicle. Even so, they’re always quite meaty topics and I did feel some fatigue towards the end, most likely caused by lack of time for digestion. If this was the length of a full show it would veer into masturbatory self-indulgence.
Having seen A Room With A Stew in January last year, I was half expecting to be bored as he talked his way down a well-travelled road. I was proved wrong on this count, much to my satisfaction.
Almost an hour of what I had seen at that preview show had been removed, and another twenty minutes expanded upon and changed. In a world where Jerry Seinfeld feels comfortable stating that he gets rid of only 10 percent of his old material each year.
Casting aside a full hour of material becomes a medallion of artistic integrity round Stewart Lee’s neck. The show would have been great with those bits in (they were my favourite part of the earlier performances), but obviously Stew is neither short of material or afraid of self-editing. I hope that little known fact is with people when they watch the program later this year – he chucked two episodes worth, for us!
As always though, the most interesting parts of any Stewart Lee show are the deconstructions, and it’s these points where his genius, yes genius really shows.It is oft-said and for that reason loses its impact, but Stewart Lee is a much better class of comedian than the TV viewing public are ever exposed to. Given the BBC’s shamefully passé taste of late (Mrs Brown’s Boys), it is a small miracle something unashamedly cerebral has made it onto the box at all.
His preoccupation with form is comparable only to the innovations of the jazz pioneers and visionaries that play throughout the intervals of the show. He is so adept at pulling apart the fabric of his comedy, breaking and folding, repeating and cultivating seat-twisting tension. It is jazz-comedy in a very pure, experimental way.
“Miles Davis has arrived”, it’s true, and he said it himself.
Before Stewart Lee starts his three hour set he issues a warning to any mobile phone users: if he sees anyone taking photos or texting he will “smash the phone with the microphone stand, then wank on it, and then take it to the backstage toilets and shit on it too”. He needn’t bother, though. He’s playing a home crowd; there’s no danger anyone’s going to miss a word. In many ways a three-hour Stewart Lee gig at the Royal Festival Hall is a middle class comedy fan’s cummy sleep-wank heaven. This was not lost on Lee. He attacked the venue’s patrons immediately, calling the audience at the Southbank Centre “Guardian reading cunts”. It was the first in a long line of many shrewd, apt and hilarious put downs throughout the night. Looking slimmer of waist and less red of face, he looked healthy, seeming to move with more energy across the tastefully lit, bare stage. My concerns about the RFH being too large for Stew’s muttered performances were unfounded. As much as he’d like you to think he doesn’t know how to do a huge room he does – the 2,500 seat venue quaked with laughter throughout, the jokes travelling from front to back. He employed a tactic familiar to his fans, dividing the room up based on how skilled, liberal and discerning they were. I was on the slow side of the room (the majority) and he expertly played to those seated behind him, turning them into High Command coven of Stewart Lee elites. He seemed a man utterly relaxed within his craft. Stew, who I do not know well enough to address with such informality, played throughout the night with the crowd’s expectations. A joke about your inner-tabloid-voice became an extended schizophrenic running gag; sabotaging his measured...
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 their meat being taxed. Stand up and fight!
While the Tories have been in Manchester all week lying about everything to the applause of half-empty rooms full of soul-dead ragdolls from haunted toy shops in 1960s British portmanteau horror films, I in turn have spent the past seven days deliberately eating far too much meat. Stand up and fight! Stand up and fight!!
Since Christmas, I have been trying to be vegan, but fear of Keir Starmer’s incoming Meat Tax ™ ® sent me into a frenzied Meat Panic ™ ®. I didn’t mind not eating meat for moral considerations, but not being able to eat meat because of a remainer’s Meat Tax ™ ® enraged me, as it was intended to, and I danced to Rishi Sunak’s pipe like a meat-crazed marionette. Stand up and fight! Stand up and fight!! Stand up and fight!!!
I stopped off at the butcher on the way to the cemetery where I exercise and ran out of the doorway trailing a string of fat bangers, as I stuffed my face with uncooked sausage meat to declare my opposition to the Meat Tax ™ ®, like a naughty dog in a 1950s newspaper cartoon. I stumbled, meat-mouthed, along the next stage of my Sanjeev Kohli-narrated Couch to 5K odyssey and the uncooked sausage tasted horrible. But the tang of Meat Freedom ™ ® it represented tasted good, like pushing a woke trans woman into a sewage-filled culvert. Stand up and fight! Stand up and fight!! Stand up and fight!!! Stand up and fight!!!!
But hang on! There was no Meat Tax ™ ®!! The Conservatives fabricated a policy that didn’t exist so they could oppose it and appear to come to the aid of Ordinary Hard-working People ™ ® whose necessary meat had suddenly become too expensive. It was easier to appear to be on the side of Ordinary Hard-working People ™ ® by taking a stand against a nonexistent Meat Tax ™ ® that they never really faced than it was to do anything to actually help them, like pushing forward environmentally friendly policies that would slow our progress towards the now inevitable extinction of all life on Earth. As the floods engulf them and their eyeballs fry in their heads, at least those Ordinary Hard-working People ™ ® will be glad Sunak and his lying gnomes stopped the Meat Tax ™ ®, which never existed anyway.
Even Sophy Ridge of Sky News, hardly a fellow traveller of pioneering investigative outfits such as Byline Times or Led By Donkeys, could not contain her frustration on Tuesday with the Tory MP Claire Coutinho as she doubled down on the imaginary Meat Tax ™ ®. In her speech to conference, Coutinho had made a joke – “It’s no wonder Labour seem so relaxed about taxing meat. Sir Keir Starmer doesn’t eat it and Ed Miliband is clearly scarred by his encounter with a bacon sandwich” – that was received with the usual approving automated Tory goose honks. Stand up and fight! Stand up and fight!! Stand up and fight!!! Stand up and fight!!!! Stand up and fight!!!!!
But to me the problem with this joke, in my capacity as Britain’s most consistently critically acclaimed standup comedian, is that the punchline is invalid because it comes off the back of a setup that is factually inaccurate. There simply is no proposed Labour Meat Tax ™ ®. When I do my triannual standup on the BBC and when I submit my regular tranches of liberal satire to the Observer, my jokes are meticulously checked for fairness and accuracy. Why, only last week I was engaged in a six-hour back and forth as to whether I could describe Daily Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley’s output in this column as “shit”, which I favoured, or as the less derogatory “effluent”. Liberal comedians are held accountable to standards. Tory politicians have none and Ofcom doesn’t enforce any at GB News. We fight with our arms tied behind our backs while they kick our nads off with winklepickers.
Perhaps, if we ever see the end of the sewage-stained tsunami of weaponised bullshit unleashed by the Brexit campaign, and sustained by unregulated social media and broadcasting rule-breaking that Ofcom seems unwilling to counter, we will look back at the past decade as a Second Dark Age of Falsehood, most of it emanating from the Conservative party or the Tufton Street gang of thinktanks that set its agenda.
What can we do? Give up? Or try to win our own little victories? You could register online to vote for the National Trust’s preferred candidates for the board by the 3 November registration deadline, for example, if you are a member, to counter Restore Trust’s landgrab. Or find some other tiny sliver of hope. Stand up. And fight.
Stewart Lee
2023-10-08T21:24:50+01:00
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 their meat being taxed. Stand up and fight! While the Tories have been in Manchester all week lying about everything to the applause of half-empty rooms full of soul-dead ragdolls from haunted toy shops in 1960s British portmanteau horror films, I in turn have spent the past seven days deliberately eating far too much meat. Stand up and fight! Stand up and fight!! Since Christmas, I have been trying to be vegan, but fear of Keir Starmer’s incoming Meat Tax ™ ® sent me into a frenzied Meat Panic ™ ®. I didn’t mind not eating meat for moral considerations, but not being able to eat meat because of a remainer’s Meat Tax ™ ® enraged me, as it was intended to, and I danced to Rishi Sunak’s pipe like a meat-crazed marionette. Stand up and fight! Stand up and fight!! Stand up and fight!!! I stopped off at the butcher on the way to the cemetery where I exercise and ran out of the doorway trailing a string of fat bangers, as I stuffed my face with uncooked sausage meat to declare my opposition to the Meat Tax ™ ®, like a naughty dog in a 1950s newspaper cartoon. I stumbled, meat-mouthed, along the next stage of my Sanjeev Kohli-narrated Couch to 5K odyssey and the uncooked sausage tasted horrible. But the tang of Meat Freedom ™ ® it represented tasted good, like pushing a woke trans woman into a sewage-filled culvert. Stand up...
‘What could’ve emerged as a monumental act of hubris is rescued by Lee’s humility, wit and intelligence. Together with annotated insight into three outstanding stand-up shows, he mingles obtuse autobiography with acute essays on the state of British comedy from the alternative era onwards.’ Paul Whitelaw, Word (10 Best Books of 2010)
‘…contained unexpectedly deep ruminations about truth, memory and performance, about where jokes come from and why obscenity is a good thing.’ Keith Miller, Times Literary Supplement
‘Never has anyone made me feel so close to the terrifying and occasionally exhilarating insanity that is stand-up comedy.’ Sam Mendes, Observer
‘It rules! Have you ever noticed how transcripts of stand-up shows can make for some of the best fun material going? … so long, so bitter – and so thoroughly enjoyable.’ - Dazed and Confused
‘Funny, honest and insightful throughout. It deserves to make its author even more than he appeared on HIGNFY … like the author’s stage act, it is elliptical, repetitious and, inevitably, solipsistic. But in a good way … in the hands of a lesser talent, this would be unbearably tedious, but Lee’s verbal dexterity and exhaustive knowledge manages to make the experience cumulatively hilarious.’ - John Naughton, Word magazine
‘’It’s not culled from the world of nature but what I’m reading at the moment, which I wished I’d saved for a sylvan glade somewhere, is ‘How I Escaped My Certain Fate’ (Faber & Faber) by the comedian Stewart Lee. Ostensibly, it’s but three transcriptions of Lee’s stand-up routines from the past ten years, in a book, for £12.99. A shocking liberty, you might think. But Lee, the 21st Century comic master of pause, intellectual zig zag and theoretical sally, has bolstered these baggy-pants photostats with profound forewords, self-mocking footnotes and painfully honest asides, resulting in a brutally funny masterpiece of Brechtian autobiography. I kid you not.’ - Caught By The River.net
‘Like Ezra Pound's notes on The Waste Land if they'd been more cutting, self-critical and in awe of Johnny Vegas ... Exceptionally funny and insightful.’ - Jay Richardson, The List
‘It is in these footnotes that we catch almost inadvertent glimpses of a Stewart Lee who seems as privately nice as he is publicly brave: he adores the mum who adopted him as a baby, is slightly defensive about his Oxford education, and is delighting in first-time fatherhood. Through it all, though, he holds his line about the cathartic qualities of comedy, though in truth this is the only stance available for that rarest of creatures, a genuinely principled comedian who has reached middle-age without compromising his integrity and still remains funny and relevant. Some observations are poignant … How I Escaped My Certain Fate will interest those who believe in the transformative potential of laughter, and provide food for thought for ambitious youngsters tempted to see the art of comedy as little more than a fast-track to quiz-show stardom. And while I eventually got slightly fed up with Lee wagging his finger at me, I have to concede that on most issues he is calmly, smugly, condescendingly, infuriatingly, hilariously correct.’ - Stephen Dixon, Irish Times
‘Lee is a master of deconstruction, a device he uses to great effect in his stand-up. He uses it here too: tons of footnotes expound bits of his set and provide insights – often hilarious – into the way his idiosyncratic brain works. This excellent book allows the reader a fascinating glimpse into how much heart and soul one man puts into making people laugh.’ - ***** Mickey Noonan, Metro
‘His marginalia offer an absorbing history of alternative comedy since the late 1980s, affectionate pen-portraits of misunderstood heroes, such as Johnny Vegas and Simon Munnery, and fascinating insights into his craft … the wonderful achievement of this book is that it makes you as excited as Lee is by the capabilities of a man in a dark room with a microphone.’ - Richard Godwin, Evening Standard
‘Required reading for comedy fans ... (Lee) is analytical, critical and perfectly willing to say when he finds himself proud of something he wrote, or occasionally ashamed. It is a fascinating insight into the process of creating comedy, and making months of work feel like a fresh, spontaneous show each night ... This book should win him some new fans and cement the dislike of old detractors. And it's impossible to imagine he would ever choose to do anything else.’ - Natalie Haynes, Observer
‘Where did it all go right? This idiosyncratic, consistently suprising and stimulating book spends almost 400 pages telling us. ... It's a simply remarkable piece of writing: funny, wise, partial, propulsive. And then there are the footnotes, which comment on the shows like some frank, deliciously-detailed DVD commentary ... His writing ... has the irony, honesty, petulance and righteous zeal that we Lee fans demand ... an essential, invigorating investigation into the art, craft and culture of stand-up comedy.’ - Dominic Maxwell, The Times
‘This is an autobiography, but without, Lee claims, personal detail – although that’s not strictly true. In tracing his professional career we gain just enough insight, such as why the Solihull-born comic needed to cover up his Oxbridge background. But the book doesn’t suffer at all from revealing little of his love life. On the contrary, his tale of being seduced by alternative comedy is far more potent … but this isn’t just a story of one-man’s journey, it’s a register, an assessment of every comedian he has met or been informed … this is a book for all comedians, for those who think they’re funny and those who appreciate those who make the effort.’’ - Brian Beacom, The Herald
‘(A) fascinatingly detailed account of what inspired, motivated and influenced his creativity ... the trials, insecurities and passions that have fuelled him over the past ten years are so honestly, amusingly, eloquently, and, often, viciously expressed that it only serves to further confirm his position as one of our leading 'alternative' national treasures.’ - **** Tim Arthur, Time Out
‘Stephen Fry described the late Peter Cook as 'the funniest man who ever drew breath'. We'll nick that and say Stewart Lee is the funniest man still drawing it. His pioneering, often poetic performances are the antithesis of working men's club schtick and this equally amusing book shines a light behind some of the finest routines to offend small-minded tabloid editors and the religious right. In its way this does for stand-up comedy what Martin Amis's Experience did for the novel.’ - Robert Bound, Monocle
‘It’s a sort of autobiography, but really just as much a book about the way British comedy has changed … usually, such copious asides are the sign of a very bad book but Lee pulls it off, mainly because his notes are invariably insightful, and frequently very funny.’’ - William Cook, Independent
‘Lee's bumper DVD extras-style assemblage echoes the revelatory sprawl of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest ... Stewart Lee has created a book which is at once a notable repository of technical insight, an invaluable insider's guide to three decades of British comedy, and as revealing a portrait of its author's life and opinions as even the most self-consciously confessional of conventional celebrity memoirs.’ - Ben Thompson, Independent on Sunday
‘Ever wonder how a comic constructs an act? How they layer and time riffs to generate laughs or howls of outrage? If so, you're in luck. In How I Escaped My Certain Fate, Stewart Lee offers the ultimate insider's guide to the process ...’ - Lee Randall, The Scotsman
‘‘Excessive self-commentary in a work of art, however, is popularly viewed with the kind of suspicion associated with other kinds of activity beginning with “self”. The autobiographical analysis of stand-up comedy in particular would seem to be an optimistically indulgent thing to offer the public. If you didn’t laugh the first time, a voice-over isn’t going to help. And yet Stewart Lee – stand-up comedian and recovering arts journalist – has done just that, and it works brilliantly … complementing the very well-written autobiographical narrative that connects the routines and the footnotes are such rich mini-essays that I reached the end wishing there was an index, in order to relocate such observations as Lee’s comparison of the Mighty Boosh’s offbeat comic timing to “dried stalks of spaghetti being dropped onto a china plate”. How I Escaped My Certain Fate is a sophisticated demonstration of the poetics of comedy by an artist who, like Wilde, has been moved to public contrarianism in the belief that there is “no sin except stupidity”.’’ - Jeremy Noel-Todd, Daily Telegraph
Stewart Lee
2012-12-31T12:57:41+00:00
‘What could’ve emerged as a monumental act of hubris is rescued by Lee’s humility, wit and intelligence. Together with annotated insight into three outstanding stand-up shows, he mingles obtuse autobiography with acute essays on the state of British comedy from the alternative era onwards.’ Paul Whitelaw, Word (10 Best Books of 2010) ‘…contained unexpectedly deep ruminations about truth, memory and performance, about where jokes come from and why obscenity is a good thing.’ Keith Miller, Times Literary Supplement ‘Never has anyone made me feel so close to the terrifying and occasionally exhilarating insanity that is stand-up comedy.’ Sam Mendes, Observer ‘It rules! Have you ever noticed how transcripts of stand-up shows can make for some of the best fun material going? … so long, so bitter – and so thoroughly enjoyable.’ - Dazed and Confused ‘Funny, honest and insightful throughout. It deserves to make its author even more than he appeared on HIGNFY … like the author’s stage act, it is elliptical, repetitious and, inevitably, solipsistic. But in a good way … in the hands of a lesser talent, this would be unbearably tedious, but Lee’s verbal dexterity and exhaustive knowledge manages to make the experience cumulatively hilarious.’ - John Naughton, Word magazine ‘’It’s not culled from the world of nature but what I’m reading at the moment, which I wished I’d saved for a sylvan glade somewhere, is ‘How I Escaped My Certain Fate’ (Faber & Faber) by the comedian Stewart Lee. Ostensibly, it’s but three transcriptions of Lee’s stand-up routines from the past ten years, in a book, for £12.99. A shocking liberty, you might think. But Lee, the 21st Century comic master of pause, intellectual zig zag and theoretical sally, has bolstered these baggy-pants photostats with profound forewords, self-mocking footnotes and painfully honest asides, resulting in a...
PREMIERES FEBRUARY 6TH ON SKY ARTS (Freeview channel 11) (9PM).
”FEROCIOUSLY ENTERTAINING” MOJO ★ ★ ★ ★
Comedian Stewart Lee and director Michael Cumming (Brass Eye, Toast of London), investigate a missing piece of punk history: Robert Lloyd, best known for fronting cult Birmingham bands The Prefects and The Nightingales, has survived under the radar for over four decades.
But how, if at all, does Robert want to be remembered? The anti-rockumentary King Rocker weaves the story of Birmingham’s undervalued underdog autodidact into that of the city’s forgotten public sculpture of King Kong, eschewing the celebrity interview and archive-raid approach for a free-associating bricolage of Indian food, bewildered chefs, vegetable gardening, prescription medicines, pop stardom and pop art.
Director: Michael Cumming
Brass Eye, Oxide Ghosts, Toast Of London Writer: Stewart Lee
Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle Producer: James Nicholls
The Chills: The Triumph and Tragedy of Martin Phillipps, The Ballad Of Shirley Collins
Featuring: John Peel, Frank Skinner, Nigel Slater, Robin Askwith, Samira Ahmed, Gina Birch, Marc Riley, Danny Fields, John Taylor, Paul Morley, Fuzzbox, Kevin Eldon, Nish Kumar, Bridget Christie, Andrew O’Neill, Seann Walsh and more.
KING ROCKER A film about Robert Lloyd and The Nightingales PREMIERES FEBRUARY 6TH ON SKY ARTS (Freeview channel 11) (9PM). ”FEROCIOUSLY ENTERTAINING” MOJO ★ ★ ★ ★ Comedian Stewart Lee and director Michael Cumming (Brass Eye, Toast of London), investigate a missing piece of punk history: Robert Lloyd, best known for fronting cult Birmingham bands The Prefects and The Nightingales, has survived under the radar for over four decades. But how, if at all, does Robert want to be remembered? The anti-rockumentary King Rocker weaves the story of Birmingham’s undervalued underdog autodidact into that of the city’s forgotten public sculpture of King Kong, eschewing the celebrity interview and archive-raid approach for a free-associating bricolage of Indian food, bewildered chefs, vegetable gardening, prescription medicines, pop stardom and pop art. Press for the film can be found here. Running Time: 90 Minutes Director: Michael Cumming Brass Eye, Oxide Ghosts, Toast Of London Writer: Stewart Lee Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle Producer: James Nicholls The Chills: The Triumph and Tragedy of Martin Phillipps, The Ballad Of Shirley Collins Featuring: John Peel, Frank Skinner, Nigel Slater, Robin Askwith, Samira Ahmed, Gina Birch, Marc Riley, Danny Fields, John Taylor, Paul Morley, Fuzzbox, Kevin Eldon, Nish Kumar, Bridget Christie, Andrew O’Neill, Seann Walsh and more. KingRockerFilm.com NEW OFFICIAL TRAILER - youtu.be/UEUuvN9S9I4 AUDIO TRAILER - soundcloud.com/firerecords/kingrocker
Today I took my four-year-old to London zoo, where I am currently appearing as the pre-recorded voice of a spider, Morgan Freeman having proved unavailable. A handler had a snowy owl on his wrist. The bird appeared comfortable with its “as seen in Harry Potter” tag, and was yet to do anything as drastic as appearing naked in Peter Shaffer’s Equus to shake it.
A man kept pushing a massive black camera into the owl’s distressed face, as it spun its head away 180 degrees, an ability I wish I had when members of the public on the tube say they don’t really like my act but their weird lonely uncle loves it and can they have a selfie for Twitter and what is my name anyway?
Hadn’t the snowy owl suffered enough, its numbers in worldwide decline, its cousins kept in cupboards by confused Daniel Radcliffe fans? But I didn’t have the stomach for direct confrontation, so I filtered my annoyance through my daughter. “Do you think the owl likes having his photo taken?” “No. He really hates it,” she replied, loudly and pointedly, realising instantly what I was trying to achieve. But the man clicked on as the owl shrank away. “Here’s the back of an owl’s head again, and here is one of its frightened face. They’re part of a study in human stupidity.”
I wish the owl had lunged at the photographer and torn out his eyes, and then vomited them up a week later as an owl pellet, taunting him with the hope his half-eaten orbs might be reintroduced to his vacant sockets, meaning he ended up with balls of dried owl vomit for eyes, chased for ever by children calling him “Captain Bird Sick Eye”. Seriously though, what has happened to you people?
On the last day of May, a dancing dog won a televised talent competition. But Britain was furious when it turned out that the dog was in fact two dogs, a TV-friendly front-dog, and an anonymous dog who had been doing all the difficult acrobatics. It was ever thus. Derren Brown has a hideous genius sibling, Darran Brown, whom the handsome TV illusionist keeps locked in a recycling bin, painstakingly planning the pranks that his photogenic brother then performs on the public. We have the culture we deserve. Anything more nuanced than a dancing dishonest dog appears wasted on us.
Craig Raine this month had a bewilderingly controversial poem published in the London Review of Books, a periodical so brilliantly removed from this fallen world that even its personal ads read like the last cris de coeur of ageing and despairing romantics, their lifelong immersion in profoundly meaningful literature having done little to prepare them for the gradual realisation that life itself is utterly meaningless, and that their long-awaited transformative moment of epiphany appears to have been lost permanently in the post.
Somehow Raine’s, to me at least, self-aware stanzas on growing old and irrelevant and impotent crossed passport control from Literary Island into the modern milieu of social media where, due to it not being either a photo of a celebrity’s buttocks or a film of an old woman falling down some steps, the work was quickly stamped to death like a defenceless duckling.
Imagine the brilliant but misanthropic jazz-racist Philip Larkin under similar contemporary scrutiny. Or even John Donne, whose belated religious fervour saw him picture the almighty as a lustful lover in Batter My Heart, Three-Person’d God. “Poet perv Donne wants God to bum him. Sick!” Thus would ye Twitter hath spaeke.
The veteran slow-core singer songwriter Mark Kozelek, similarly Twitter-traduced this month, may have enjoyed his temporary notoriety. Kozelek, it seems to me, has been dealing with critical deification since 1992 by creating an arsehole stage persona that works in dramatic opposition to accepted notions of the sensitive poet-musician.
Nonetheless, Twitter took him down for off-colour onstage comments about a female interviewer at a London show, without its army of armchair commentators having been there to know how these words played out contextually in a two-and-a-half-hour performance, or a two-and-a-half decade career. Or perhaps Kozelek is just an arsehole.
I know how it feels to be singled out for criticism by someone you admire. In 2005, Take That’s Robbie Williams walked out of my show at the Soho theatre, telling the usher he thought my voice was so boring I should do relaxation tapes. I still listen to Angels, but only while home-waxing my perineum or bleaching my anus.
It’s easy to blame Twitter, where ignorance is no barrier to an opinion, for these sudden flash-floods of uninformed judgment, but I also blame Simon Cowell and, by association, David Walliams, who knows better, for corroding the culture. In recent years Britain’s Got Talent has begun to feature the odd brilliant offbeat comedian – Latvia’s Gatis Kandis, Brighton’s Lorraine Bowen – who knowingly inhabit deliberately absurd personas, but are treated by all the judges as if they are mad, an embarrassment. Walliams here is a traitor, a double agent, who, unlike the human filth that makes up the rest of the panel, understands that these people are artists, having once been one himself, but doesn’t want to let on, in case it makes him look dangerously clever.
How would the great working-class surrealists of the music hall era fare against Cowell’s ignorant crew? Mr Pastry, who tangled himself in a tuba for 10 minutes, would be dismissed as a musician with no idea of how to hold his instrument. And Little Tich’s trademark failure to keep track of his hat, that so impressed JB Priestley, would be seen as evidence only of a lack of rehearsal.
Admitting his failure where the double dogs were concerned, Cowell said, “I didn’t really know what I was judging until afterwards so I felt like a bit of an idiot.” But this is true of everything he judges. He hasn’t begun to grasp even the beginnings of his inadequacy.
The idea that culture has “dumbed-down” is a cliche. So let’s rebrand the idea as the Failure of Nuance. And the failure of our entertainment and information brokers to float the idea of dualities of meaning, of context, has wider political and social consequences. Liam Byrne’s letter, his outgoing joke about the Treasury, was waved around repeatedly by David Cameron, and may have cost Labour an election. It’s the perfect example of the kind of contextually specific playfulness that is as unlikely to survive our current stupidity as the snowy owl.
Stewart Lee’s A Room With a Stew is at Leicester Square theatre from 21 September
Stewart Lee
2015-06-14T21:36:54+01:00
Today I took my four-year-old to London zoo, where I am currently appearing as the pre-recorded voice of a spider, Morgan Freeman having proved unavailable. A handler had a snowy owl on his wrist. The bird appeared comfortable with its “as seen in Harry Potter” tag, and was yet to do anything as drastic as appearing naked in Peter Shaffer’s Equus to shake it. A man kept pushing a massive black camera into the owl’s distressed face, as it spun its head away 180 degrees, an ability I wish I had when members of the public on the tube say they don’t really like my act but their weird lonely uncle loves it and can they have a selfie for Twitter and what is my name anyway? Hadn’t the snowy owl suffered enough, its numbers in worldwide decline, its cousins kept in cupboards by confused Daniel Radcliffe fans? But I didn’t have the stomach for direct confrontation, so I filtered my annoyance through my daughter. “Do you think the owl likes having his photo taken?” “No. He really hates it,” she replied, loudly and pointedly, realising instantly what I was trying to achieve. But the man clicked on as the owl shrank away. “Here’s the back of an owl’s head again, and here is one of its frightened face. They’re part of a study in human stupidity.” I wish the owl had lunged at the photographer and torn out his eyes, and then vomited them up a week later as an owl pellet, taunting him with the hope his half-eaten orbs might be reintroduced to his vacant sockets, meaning he ended up with balls of dried owl vomit for eyes, chased for ever by children calling him “Captain Bird Sick Eye”. Seriously though, what has happened to you people? On...
Stewart Lee breaks all the rules. Not the rules you're supposed to break. The other rules are the ones Stew breaks. The proper rules. You wouldn't expect anyone to break these rules but Stew breaks them. He breaks the rules that are proper.
That's what industry practitioners call the 'in'. Illustrating the process behind the process of illustration. You probably feel confused and disorientated.
Confused and disorientated because I've torn the unspoken bond between writer and artist. A bond you lot hold sacred. Like a sandwich of mushy hedonism between two slices of lie. Opening out the sandwich would be like breaking a rule nobody should break.
But Stew does open the sandwich. Because of the equivalence of the sandwich and the rule.
The equivalence I just drew.
I shouldn't be telling you this. But at the same time I'm not saying enough. You'd expect a journalist to include as many facts as possible. The last thing you expect from an arts practitioner is to hinge his material on filler.
Repeated filler.
You can't hinge material on repeated filler.
But the thing about 'can't' is it's a word. 'Can't' is a word, just like 'you' is a word. You can't hinge material on repeated filler. But you can't break the rules.
Stew can.
'Can' is also a word. Many comedians would make a joke about the word 'can' and its circumstantial proximity to the word 'Stew'. Many comedians would do that. Many comedians would foster great hanging gardens of hilarious wordplay involving words like 'can'.
And... 'stew'.
Because stew comes in cans. It's funny because of canned stew, the method of canning stew and the kind of stew that can be canned. There was even an extra 'can' in there. Many comedians would call this uncanny, which too would be amusing.
But no comedian would ever devote himself to the disassembly of comedy gold. No comedian would ever reveal the wiring under the board of such timeless gems as the use of a single phoneme as multiple signifiers. No comedian would ever unmask magic like that.
No comedian would sneer stoically at an audience through the oxymoron of smug apathy, unapologetically judge their laughter as lacklustre and push all their buttons in the process. No comedian can make a crowd laugh in fine bursts for several minutes just by satirically tuning a guitar. You can't be quiet, slow, static and cynical and still get an uproarious reception; it's against every comedic law in the book.
But if that book were a sandwich... Stew would break it open and spill the contents on your inner thigh. As though that sandwich were a rule.
That book is a sandwich. That sandwich is a rule. Because you see... what Stew does with rules is he breaks them.
(When sarcasm evolves, each new step necessarily splits the crowd. A lot of people are left completely in the dark. But us lucky remaining few are so transfixed that we are powerless but to embrace it. A good comedian is one you can't help imitating. A great comedian is one who makes such imitation look a lot easier than it is.
Stewart Lee
2010-10-29T14:44:05+01:00
Stewart Lee breaks all the rules. Not the rules you're supposed to break. The other rules are the ones Stew breaks. The proper rules. You wouldn't expect anyone to break these rules but Stew breaks them. He breaks the rules that are proper. That's what industry practitioners call the 'in'. Illustrating the process behind the process of illustration. You probably feel confused and disorientated. Confused and disorientated because I've torn the unspoken bond between writer and artist. A bond you lot hold sacred. Like a sandwich of mushy hedonism between two slices of lie. Opening out the sandwich would be like breaking a rule nobody should break. But Stew does open the sandwich. Because of the equivalence of the sandwich and the rule. The equivalence I just drew. I shouldn't be telling you this. But at the same time I'm not saying enough. You'd expect a journalist to include as many facts as possible. The last thing you expect from an arts practitioner is to hinge his material on filler. Repeated filler. You can't hinge material on repeated filler. But the thing about 'can't' is it's a word. 'Can't' is a word, just like 'you' is a word. You can't hinge material on repeated filler. But you can't break the rules. Stew can. 'Can' is also a word. Many comedians would make a joke about the word 'can' and its circumstantial proximity to the word 'Stew'. Many comedians would do that. Many comedians would foster great hanging gardens of hilarious wordplay involving words like 'can'. And... 'stew'. Because stew comes in cans. It's funny because of canned stew, the method of canning stew and the kind of stew that can be canned. There was even an extra 'can' in there. Many comedians would call this uncanny, which too would be...
An expanded reissue of the Seventies krautrockers Can's Tago Mago album stuffed the stocking of many a former head this Christmas, but front man Damo Suzuki has never become a nostalgia act. The former busker continues his endless global tour, spieling spontaneous vocalese over sympathetic sound-beds from ad-hoc assemblies of like-minded locals wherever he lands.
Here he is in Italy last year, growling groovy gibberish over locked rhythms, synth noise, and the interlocutions of a sensitive flautist, who engages in provocative conversational probing.
Three steps ahead of the moment, Suzuki somehow works towards perfectly pitched musical climaxes.
Stewart Lee
2012-02-19T21:33:24+00:00
An expanded reissue of the Seventies krautrockers Can's Tago Mago album stuffed the stocking of many a former head this Christmas, but front man Damo Suzuki has never become a nostalgia act. The former busker continues his endless global tour, spieling spontaneous vocalese over sympathetic sound-beds from ad-hoc assemblies of like-minded locals wherever he lands. Here he is in Italy last year, growling groovy gibberish over locked rhythms, synth noise, and the interlocutions of a sensitive flautist, who engages in provocative conversational probing. Three steps ahead of the moment, Suzuki somehow works towards perfectly pitched musical climaxes.
There are few things upon which I am qualified to express an opinion. I have no interest in sport, and only last night was shamed by a Bulgarian mini-cab driver who could not belive I didn’t know the World Cup was about to start. I cannot understand electricty, its meaning, or its practice. I have no skills in the areas of animal husbandry or agriculture, and my misguided adventures in world of farming ended in bankruptcy and a criminal conviction. I have no expertise in matters of the heart. But this Summer will mark the eighteenth time I have worked at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, so when broadsheet newspapers and inflight magazines make their annual requests for 1000 words on “the world’s greatest arts event and how to survive it!”, I know I am, in this one area at least, entitled to speak, even if what I say becomes increasingly desperate.
When I first performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1987, Edinburgh was a city where it made sense to stage a Fringe Festival. It was easy to understand how the previous thirty years had seen the city become the vast granite teat of the arts, drawing thousands of impoverished performers every year to suckle its poisonous opiated gall. Edinburgh was cheap, and so were we. Most people involved in the fringe lose money, and our arrangements reflected that. We slept in sleeping bags on the floors of empty assembly halls, and ate the city’s plentful supply of inexpensive fried foods, baked potatoes, and old, rotten shortbread stolen under cover of night from the bins behind the tourist tea-shops at the cobbled foot of the Royal Mile. And, as our accomodation had no running water, we washed in Infirmary Street Public Baths, where rows of cubicles compensated for the fact that many of the citizens of the Scottish capital still didn’t have their own baths or showers.
Today, Edinburgh is the last place you would encourage thousands of already broke would-be artists to come and spend a month losing money. Partly due to the profile of the fringe itself, the city’s stock has risen, and its affected and vain inhabtants now boast of having running water in their own homes. Consequently, Edinburgh is now a costly place to stay. Today, haggling is now frowned upon in supermarkets and chemists, when only twenty years ago it was complusary, and it’s easier to find a costly capuccino on South Bridge Street than a ten bob fish supper. Don’t look for Infirmary Street Baths either, where many of today’s top stars once cleaned themselves. It’s boarded up now, home only to rats and memories. Thus, where once the joy of staging one of an estimated 1500 shows that take place daily in Edinburgh each August would have cost you an arm and a leg, now it will cost you all your limbs, the limbs of any surviving releatives, and those of your unborn children.
Understand this. The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the greatest annual arts event in the world. Gripers and snipers who say it is a trade fair should visit the Montreal Comedy Festival if they want to see art reduced to commerce. The Edinburgh Fringe is a vast village fete, run on goodwill, naivete, hope, compromise and booze. When Annie Griffin’s disappointingly cynical satire Festival used an American Experimental Theatre group handing out turf to audiences as an example of the fringe’s preposterous nature, it missed the point. To the pure in heart there can be nothing finer or more moving than to find oneself being subjected to something sincere yet also utterly ill-conceived in a school hall somewhere in the middle of the afternoon.
Sure, the Fringe has its faults, the principal one being the Perrier Awards for Comedy. It’s sickening and indefensible to see comedians co-operating with a bottled water business owned by Nestle, who regularly top lists of unethical companies, and the amount of press coverage generated by the scheme always overshadows other aspects of the Fringe. And it’s true to say that the way TV executives see the Fringe as a one-stop-shop for scooping up new talent can lead to strange decisions being made in the hot-house atmosphere. But these problems are just scum floating on the surface of an otherwise largely unpolluted sea, so vast that it may seem impossible for you, as a punter or a performer, to navigate it.
If you are attending the Fringe for the first time as a performer, accept that nothing practical will come of it. You are in competition with literally 1000’s of other shows. In paying for your slot in the fringe programme, and renting your venue and a place to stay, you have already spent more than you can ever realistically hope to recoup, especially as the average fringe audience is, honestly, three people. I lost money for the first fifteen years I visited the fringe, but was able psychologically, to offset the experience as invaluable research and development. You are statistically unlikely to be reviewed, or discovered. But you will discover things about yourself and whatever it is you imagine you want to do by going to see absolutely everything you can, making connections with other performers, and arguing with them late into the night. The plays, performance art, and stand-up that I saw in my first few fringes burned so deeply into my brain that I know I’m still ripping them off to this day.
If you are attending the Fringe for the first time as a punter, how I envy you that first realisation of how utterly fantastic it is. But accept that the Fringe is unknowable. For a month this impossible matrix is assembled, never to be repeated, and if you saw ten shows a day all August, you would still only have explored a quarter of it. Comedy has colonised the evenings, where you’ll be able to see people you may have heard of in intimate spaces, but the long days stretch out packed with amazing things that you can easilly afford to take a chance on. Go and see anything at Aurora Nova at Saint Stevens, the home of international physical theatre, where even a flawed production will fascinate on some level. Creep through the endless claustrophobic tunnels of the Underbelly, a former charnell house, with its impossible mix of fringe names and unknown new talent. Throughout the city, you will see performances by people you have never heard of, that better anything else you have ever seen, and your childish faith in absolute justice will be shattered. But press on. Wear stout shoes to defeat the Escher drawing dimensions of the split level city. Keep moving, keep moving. There are hundreds of venues and any one could be your favorite. Eat a hearty breakfast. Do not waste time sleeping. And take a peak through every door.
Sometime in the mid-90’s, I walked into an archway near Waverly station in the small hours and watched an American man eat a whole jar of mayonnaise and then vomit it into a perfect circle to a backing track. Next, Nigel Kennedy took the stage with the comedian John Maloney, who accompanied the violinist on his bodhran for half an hour or so to an audience of thirty people or so in a completely unprepared performance. The event was not listed anywhere. I don’t remember paying anything. Did I dream it? Or was it just a manifestation of that unidentifiable, seemingly indestructible, wonder, the spirit of the fringe?
Stewart Lee
2006-07-08T19:24:33+01:00
There are few things upon which I am qualified to express an opinion. I have no interest in sport, and only last night was shamed by a Bulgarian mini-cab driver who could not belive I didn’t know the World Cup was about to start. I cannot understand electricty, its meaning, or its practice. I have no skills in the areas of animal husbandry or agriculture, and my misguided adventures in world of farming ended in bankruptcy and a criminal conviction. I have no expertise in matters of the heart. But this Summer will mark the eighteenth time I have worked at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, so when broadsheet newspapers and inflight magazines make their annual requests for 1000 words on “the world’s greatest arts event and how to survive it!”, I know I am, in this one area at least, entitled to speak, even if what I say becomes increasingly desperate. When I first performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1987, Edinburgh was a city where it made sense to stage a Fringe Festival. It was easy to understand how the previous thirty years had seen the city become the vast granite teat of the arts, drawing thousands of impoverished performers every year to suckle its poisonous opiated gall. Edinburgh was cheap, and so were we. Most people involved in the fringe lose money, and our arrangements reflected that. We slept in sleeping bags on the floors of empty assembly halls, and ate the city’s plentful supply of inexpensive fried foods, baked potatoes, and old, rotten shortbread stolen under cover of night from the bins behind the tourist tea-shops at the cobbled foot of the Royal Mile. And, as our accomodation had no running water, we washed in Infirmary Street Public Baths, where rows of cubicles compensated for the...
Ant and Dec had barely hosed the protective goose fat off David Walliams’s semi-aquatic body at the National Television Awards on Tuesday, before the furious Twittersphere exploded as Mrs Brown’s Boys beat both The Flea Bag and Ricky Gervais’s Afterlife for Best Comedy.
Furious alt right incels, whose loyalty Gervais cultivates indiscriminately online, were outraged. The stifling cult of political correctness had ensured that an old Irish woman had beaten their truth-telling hero, dubbed The Wokefinder General by the cultural critic Sarah Vine in the Daily Mail.
But the National Television Awards are voted for by the public, who, unlike the Hollywood elitists of the Golden Globes panel, have not been provided with review copies of every single show under consideration to help them make an informed choice. The public’s votes will necessarily be skewed towards the entry that has the highest viewing figures, or, for older viewers, towards the last show they remember watching before they dozed off, probably a repeat of Tim Wonnacott’s Bargain Hunt.
This is why my own critically acclaimed work always wins accolades voted for by carefully chosen panels of informed experts in their fields – Baftas, Olivier Awards, and British Comedy Awards for example – but is largely ignored in polls voted for by the public, who are not my target audience, though I tolerate their open-mouthed bafflement at my high-concept live shows.
British democracy appears to be working in the opposite way to the National Television Awards. Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Vampires Haircut Wall-Spaffer Spunk-Burster Fuck-Business Fuck-The-Families Get-Off-My-Fucking-Laptop Girly-Swot Big-Girl’s-Blouse Chicken-frit Hulk-Smash Noseringed-Crusties Death-Humbug Technology-Lessons Surrender-Bullshit French-Turds Dog-Whistle Get-Stuffed FactcheckUK@CCHQ 88%-lies Get-Brexit-Done Bung-A-Bob-For-Big-Ben’s-Bongs Johnson’s strategists seemed to believe that, as long as he wasn’t seen anywhere and didn’t really say anything, he could win the election.
Until recently, I had only ever seen one episode of Mrs Brown’s Boys, the 2011 Christmas Special Mammy’s Hairy Ass, which I watched on YouTube in the middle of the night drunk in a Kent hotel room alone. And it wasn’t even Christmas. In the title sequence Mrs Brown appears as a horned, half-woman, half-reindeer creature. I initially assumed Mrs Brown’s Boys featured some kind of demonic Krampus, stealing boys and killing them.
As it happens, I now believe, sincerely, that at the National Television Awards, the best woman won. And that woman is Agnes Brown, creator and star of Mrs Brown’s Boys. For me, The Wokefinder General’s Afterlife is a turgid effort. The valiant supporting cast struggle bravely to accommodate a poor central performance from The Wokefinder General himself, who just stares and wanders about, like Peter Green from Fleetwood Mac in the 1990s.
I don’t understand the thing with the woman in the video that The Wokefinder General keeps looking at. Is she supposed to be Jesus? Is the woman in the cemetery a ghost? Is he dead and he doesn’t know, like in that film? Is the heroin man The Wokefinder General’s penis, talking to him, leading him astray? Why is everyone just sighing all the time?
I don’t think The Flea Bag should have won either, as it is essentially just a Fortnum & Mason version of the Happy Shopper Mrs Brown’s Boys, which pre-dates The Flea Bag by five years. The working class Agnes Brown pioneered many of the televisual comedy techniques the privileged Phoebe Waller-Bee was mistakenly credited with having invented, even down to both their shows featuring a good-looking priest that everyone fancies.
In the July 2016 debut of The Flea Bag, Flea Bag suddenly turns to the camera while having anal sex and addresses the viewer, directly, straight down the lens. Having never seen anything like this before, I was worried that Flea Bag could see me through the television and so I quickly put my pyjama trousers back on and went to bed. Critics, however, were quick to praise this startling stylistic breakthrough.
But, 33 seconds into the February 2011 debut of Mrs Brown’s Boys, Agnes Brown also steps out of the scene to greet the viewer and speak to us personally, and this follows a tracking shot, worthy of Godard himself, over the heads of the clearly visible studio audience that deliberately reveals the whole artifice of situation comedy. The moment at the end of Mammy’s Hairy Ass, when Brown’s daughter, Cathy, toasts the viewer at home and wishes “A happy new year to you and your family” is a heart-warmingly direct address to the human soul. And its simple message of joy is comforting and touching in a way that Bag being sodomised by “Arsehole Guy” in episode one of The Flea Bag will never be, whatever Lucy Mangan says to her fellow liberal elitists in the Guardian.
Our class prejudice means we view Brown’s experimentation with form as naive, a sausage string of sad mistakes made by an idiot, whereas the same stylistic gestures in the hands of the expensively educated Waller-Bee are seen as the calculated choices of a professionally-styled genius. I am sure Waller-Bee would be the first to admit that, without the template established by Brown in Mrs Brown’s Boys, The Flea Bag would never have existed.
Waller-Bee and The Wokefinder General will live to fight another day. And their shows’ defeat at the hands of the arguably more thoroughly realised Mrs Brown’s Boys is not the catastrophe The Wokefinder General’s weaponised Twitter following believe. The important thing, in these dark times, is that a woman, and an old Irish working-class woman at that, was chosen as the people’s favourite, her victory a smack in the mouth for the rising forces of intolerance.
Waller-Bee and The Wokefinder General may be the Queen and King of Hollywood. But here at home, Mrs Brown is the people’s princess, the Queen of Hearts, Brigit the regal daughter of Dagda, of the Tuatha Dé Danann.
Stewart Lee
2020-02-02T16:17:15+00:00
Ant and Dec had barely hosed the protective goose fat off David Walliams’s semi-aquatic body at the National Television Awards on Tuesday, before the furious Twittersphere exploded as Mrs Brown’s Boys beat both The Flea Bag and Ricky Gervais’s Afterlife for Best Comedy. Furious alt right incels, whose loyalty Gervais cultivates indiscriminately online, were outraged. The stifling cult of political correctness had ensured that an old Irish woman had beaten their truth-telling hero, dubbed The Wokefinder General by the cultural critic Sarah Vine in the Daily Mail. But the National Television Awards are voted for by the public, who, unlike the Hollywood elitists of the Golden Globes panel, have not been provided with review copies of every single show under consideration to help them make an informed choice. The public’s votes will necessarily be skewed towards the entry that has the highest viewing figures, or, for older viewers, towards the last show they remember watching before they dozed off, probably a repeat of Tim Wonnacott’s Bargain Hunt. This is why my own critically acclaimed work always wins accolades voted for by carefully chosen panels of informed experts in their fields – Baftas, Olivier Awards, and British Comedy Awards for example – but is largely ignored in polls voted for by the public, who are not my target audience, though I tolerate their open-mouthed bafflement at my high-concept live shows. British democracy appears to be working in the opposite way to the National Television Awards. Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Vampires Haircut Wall-Spaffer Spunk-Burster Fuck-Business Fuck-The-Families Get-Off-My-Fucking-Laptop Girly-Swot Big-Girl’s-Blouse Chicken-frit Hulk-Smash Noseringed-Crusties Death-Humbug Technology-Lessons Surrender-Bullshit French-Turds Dog-Whistle Get-Stuffed FactcheckUK@CCHQ 88%-lies Get-Brexit-Done Bung-A-Bob-For-Big-Ben’s-Bongs Johnson’s strategists seemed to believe that, as long as he wasn’t seen anywhere and didn’t really say anything, he could win the election. Until recently, I had only...
Stewart Lee joins on the non-affordability of bands today, alternative comedy and the different classes of comedians, losing money on tour, his old band and fighting facism dressed as a man-wulf. STEWART LEE vs THE MAN-WULF continues to tour throughout 2026, ending at Leicester Square Theatre in December.
Stewart Lee
2026-04-21T19:12:10+01:00
Stewart Lee joins on the non-affordability of bands today, alternative comedy and the different classes of comedians, losing money on tour, his old band and fighting facism dressed as a man-wulf. STEWART LEE vs THE MAN-WULF continues to tour throughout 2026, ending at Leicester Square Theatre in December.
Ancient Australian bands currently setting vinyl speculators ablaze are crop-haired boogie-monster thug-visionaries like Coloured Balls, Aztecs and the mighty Buffalo.
But Tully were Sydney psychedelic jazz-folkies, given to third-eye dilating keyboard drones and sublime incantations to Krishna.
Their final 1972 album is reverentially re-released here with extra tracks. Occasional moments of soft rock blandness aside, Loving Is Hard operates in a rarified zone of velvet glove intensity and imminent transcendence, Shayna Stewart's diamond but delicate vocal slicing through the implausibly poised seven minute baroque acid-folk epic, Ice.
Stewart Lee
2013-06-23T22:00:52+01:00
Ancient Australian bands currently setting vinyl speculators ablaze are crop-haired boogie-monster thug-visionaries like Coloured Balls, Aztecs and the mighty Buffalo. But Tully were Sydney psychedelic jazz-folkies, given to third-eye dilating keyboard drones and sublime incantations to Krishna. Their final 1972 album is reverentially re-released here with extra tracks. Occasional moments of soft rock blandness aside, Loving Is Hard operates in a rarified zone of velvet glove intensity and imminent transcendence, Shayna Stewart's diamond but delicate vocal slicing through the implausibly poised seven minute baroque acid-folk epic, Ice.
Stewart Lee will tour to Dublin, Drogheda, Derry, Wexford, Cork, and Waterford in June 2026, his first tour to Ireland in 14 years.
June 2026
Monday 1st June 2026 - 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin - TICKETS
Tuesday 2nd June 2026 - Bord Gais Energy Theatre, Dublin - TICKETS
Wednesday 3rd June 2026 - The Tommy Leddy Theatre, Drogheda - TICKETS
Thursday 4th June 2026 - Millennium Forum, Derry - TICKETS
Friday 5th June 2026 - National Opera House, Wexford - TICKETS
Sunday 7th June 2026 - Opera House, Cork - TICKETS
Wednesday 10th June 2026 - Theatre Royal, Waterford - TICKETS
1. ALEXANDRA PALACE LONDON MAN-WULF RUN FEB 3RD-15TH 2026
STEWART LEE VS THE MAN-WULF. The unstoppable Man-Wulf show has another London run, having already done 12000 seats at Royal Festival Hall and 12000 seats at Leicester Sq Theatre. It’s sure to look great in the gothic confines of the Alexandra Palace theatre. My favourite show to perform and as the world gets worse the basic premise of the show – that the bully boys are taking over in music, comedy and TV cooking shows – only gets funnier. ALEXANDRA PALACE, 3rd – 15th Feb 2026, Tuesday to Saturday at 7.30pm plus Sunday matinees at 3.30pm Tickets on sale 30th July. BOOK HERE: https://www.alexandrapalace.com/whats-on/stewart-lee-vs-the-man-wulf/
2. NEW MERCH
Along with WAXFACE’s usual line of Stewart Lee merch there are new for 2025 t-shirts and hoodies on the Man-Wulf theme, all of the highest quality. I’d wear them myself but I’d look arrogant. Waste the money your Nan gave you for Xmas here - https://wax-face.com/stewart-lee
3. MAN-WULF BY THE PRIMEVALS
Glasgow’s garage punk veterans The Primevals announce a new single as featured in the new Stewart Lee vs The Man-Wulf U.K. tour. There are 3 versions. Side a I’m The Man-Wulf. Side b I’m The Man-Wulf (long nail edit). Plus a 9 minute I’m The Man-Wulf (long nail version) (I LOOOOOVE THIS!!). Vinyl sides a&b were released on a 7” 45 in January. https://primevals.bandcamp.com
John Mackay & Sally Homer, in association with Debi Allen/Curtis Brown present
STEWART LEE vs THE MAN-WULF
BRAND NEW SHOW
TOURING THROUGHOUT 2025/26 NB: TICKETS FOR THESE SHOWS WILL REMAIN AT THE ADVERTISED PRICE. SURGE PRICING IS IMMORAL AND TICKETMASTER AND OASIS ARE WANKERS, ENCOURAGED BY SUCCESSIVE TORY CULTURE SECRETARIES IN THEIR CRIMINAL ENDEAVOURS.
In this brand-new show, Lee shares his stage with a tough-talking werewolf comedian who hates humanity. The Man-Wulf lays down a ferocious comedy challenge to the culturally irrelevant and physically enfeebled Lee. Can the beast inside us all be silenced with the silver bullet of Lee's unprecedentedly critically acclaimed style of stand-up. The show will tour the UK throughout 2025 and 2026.
Wednesday 8th July 2026 - Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury - TICKETS
Thursday 9th July 2026 - Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury - TICKETS
Friday 10th July 2026 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Saturday 11th July 2026 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Thursday 16th July 2026 - Perth Theatre, Perth - TICKETS
September 2026
Thursday 3rd September 2026 - King's Theatre, Portsmouth - TICKETS
Friday 4th September 2026 - Pavillion, Weymouth - TICKETS
Saturday 5th September 2026 - Hall For Cornwall, Truro - TICKETS
Thursday 10th September 2026 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Friday 11th September 2026 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Wednesday 16th September 2026 - Marina Theatre, Lowestoft - TICKETS
Thursday 17th September 2026 - Marina Theatre, Lowestoft - TICKETS
Friday 18th September 2026 - Castle Theatre, Wellingborough - TICKETS
Saturday 19th September 2026 - The Central Theatre, Chatham - TICKETS
Sunday 20th September 2026 - The Central Theatre, Chatham - TICKETS
October 2026
Thursday 1st October 2026 - The Spa Centre, Scarborough - TICKETS
Monday 12th October 2026 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Tuesday 13th October 2026 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Friday 23rd October 2026 - New Theatre, Peterborough - TICKETS
6. SNOWFLAKE/TORNADO
Stewart’s 2019 touring show Snowflake/Tornado, which was originally broadcast as a BBC Special in Autumn 2022 is now available to buy or rent “on demand” from www.mediagarageproductions.com
Both shows also appear to be free as part of the current Amazon Prime rosta, but buy them from us to defeat American fascism. We are currently preparing a physical release of these shows but it’s got delayed as I got pneumonia and have been bogged down in picking through a wealth of possible, and very exciting, audio extras, where the material worked much better than in the broadcast show itself.
Derek Bailey formed COMPANY in 1976. The premise was an effectively simple one; invite a group of musicians to improvise together, in various ad-hoc formations, with as little pre-planning as possible. COMPANY 2025 (for Derek Bailey) celebrates this endeavour, and also marks the twentieth anniversary of Derek’s passing.
Khabat Abas (cello)
Julia Brüssel (violin)
John Butcher (saxophones)
Teresa Hackel (recorders)
Charles Hayward (drums)
Petra Heller (tap dance)
Pat Thomas (piano, electronics)
Matt Wand (electronics)
Alex Ward (electric guitar, clarinet)
Mark Wastell (percussion)
Compered by Stewart Lee
COMPANY 2025 (for Derek Bailey) includes musicians that participated in original COMPANY events organised by Derek; John Butcher (1990/91/92/95), Pat Thomas (1990/91), Alex Ward (1988/90/94, 2002), Mark Wastell (1999, 2000/01) and Matt Wand (1992/93), alongside performers new to the form; Khabat Abas, Charle Hayward, Teresa Heckel, Petra Heller and Julia Brüssel. Over two evenings, these ten musicians will combine in various group formations, chosen by a particular individual just moments before going on stage. The whole event will be compered by Derek Bailey devotee, Stewart Lee. COMPANY 2025 (for Derek Bailey) curated by John Butcher, Tim Fletcher, Ian Greaves and Mark Wastell.
9. DR JOHN COOPER CLARKE AND SPECIAL GUESTS – REMEMBERING JOHNNY GREEN. CADOGAN HALL, LONDON, WEDS DEC 3RD.
Join the legendary Dr John Cooper Clarke, alongside special guests Richard Hawley and Stewart Lee, for an evening celebrating the life and legacy of Road Manager extraordinaire, Johnny Green. Best known as The Clash’s Road Manager during their meteoric rise, Johnny chronicled this unforgettable chapter in his acclaimed memoir, A Riot of Our Own (available for purchase in the foyer). In the 1980s, his journey took him across the Atlantic, working with icons like Willie Nelson and Joe Ely. For the past 15 years, Johnny was the ever-reliable Gentleman Companion to John Cooper Clarke, ensuring he was on time and on song for every one of his many gigs. The evening also features performances from special guests and friends: Mike Garry, Freya Beer, Luke Wright, Toria Garbutt, Clare Ferguson-Walker, Tim Wells, and Johnny’s son, Earl Broad. A passionate cycling enthusiast, Johnny was a devoted follower of the Tour de France. His behind-the-scenes book, Push Yourself A Little Bit More, is a must-read for fans of the sport. He also penned a regular column for Rouleur magazine, offering hilarious and alternative insights into the cycling world. The entertainment world has lost a true original, and this evening is its way of remembering Johnny Green. All profits from the event will go to Johnny’s chosen charity, Médecins Sans Frontières. TICKETS HERE
This great BBC podcast explains why capitalism has fucked your post.
11.I ARROGANTLY RECOMMEND
ITHELL COLQUHOUN – BETWEEN TWO WORLDS. This vast, timely, majestic, bewitching and unmissable career retrospective moves from Cornwall to Tate Britain until October 19th and you can hear me waffling on on the accompanying audio app too. https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/burra-and-colquhoun
DANIEL KITSON – A MONTH OF SUNDAYS FOR MEDICAL AID FOR PALESTINE. Daniel Kitson is hosting and curating a month of Sunday afternoon benefits for medical aid for Palestine at Up The Creek London, from Sunday Sept 7th. Once again he has not asked me, but there are lots of people on who exactly copy me so that’s the same I suppose. Anyway, it’s not really about me is it. You have to look at the wider issue.
DAVID LANCE CALLAHAN The acoustic minimalist troubadour and chronicler of crumbling Albion continues his sacred trek. SEPTEMBER: 19th NOTTINGHAM JT Soar; 20th SWANSEA Tangled Parrot; 21st BRISTOL Knowle Constitutional Club; 28th LONDON Lexington Resonance FM benefit with Jowe Head and Luke Haines etc.
HOWE GELB 40th Anniversary tour solo celebration of desert-rock-disruptors Giant Sand. SEPT 21st Moth Club Hackney London, 22nd Rough Trade, Denmark St, London 5.30pm acoustic set and q&a with me. Support from hot new ticket Witney K on 22nd.
EDWYN COLLINS Orange Juice’s indiepop originator OCT 2nd S’hampton Central Hall, 3rd Brighton St Georges, 4th London RFH, 6th Norwich Epic, 7th Manchester Albert Hall, 8th Newcastle Boiler Shop
14 ICED BEARS Unexpected re-emergence of Rob Secula’s lysergic proto-shoegazers. OCT 2nd The Victoria, Hackney, London.
THE EX 3 DAY RESIDENCY. Holland’s amazing anarcho-jazzers The Ex have a 3 day residency at London’s Café Oto OCT 2ND - 4TH. All nights have sold out, except the first one, which I am compering, so make of that what you will. https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/the-ex-three-day-residency-25/
WAVE PICTURES One of the great British indie rock bands make their annual circuit of our land. OCT 3rd Liverpool Rough Trade, 9th London Earth, 10th B’ham Hare & Hounds, 11th Reading South Street.
MISTY AT FIFTY! Misty in Roots, Britain’s most mystical home-grown radical roots rockers hit their half century. If you don’t go YOU ARE LIKE A CABBAGE IN THIS SOCIETY! OCT 3rd Reading Sub89, 24TH London Electric Ballroom, 30th Brighton Concorde
THE MAGPIE ARC Country-folk-indie conglomerate. OCT 17th Cast Doncaster, 18th Indoor Festival of Folk (North), Victoria Hall, Settle (with Edgelarks, Frankie Archer, The Bookshop Band, The Magpie Arc and Ashley Hutchings in conversation with Matthew Bannister), 19th Cluny 2 Newcastle, 23rd South Street Reading, 24th Water Rats London, 25th Ragged Bear Festival, Nuneaton (with The Men They Couldn’t Hang, Greenman Rising, Gaz Brookfield), 26th Acapela Studio Cardiff, 30th Gloucester Guildhall, NOV 1st Met Bury, 2nd Robin 2 Bilston
THE LOVELY EGGS’ 20TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR Durable art-punk DIY duo continue to dazzle into their third decade. OCT 22nd Edinburgh Belle Angele, 23rd Glasgow Oran Moor, 24th Newcastle Uni, 25th Leeds Brudenell, 26th Brighton Concorde 2, 27th London Garage, 28th Cardiff Globe, 29th B’ham Castle & Falcon, 30th M’cr Academy 2, 31st Nottingham Metronome, NOV 1st Bristol Trinity. I will open for them at the Brighton show.
PROLAPSE I was so excited by the unexpected return of Prolapse that I actually had a prolapse, and I can’t even make any of their dates, so it was all for nothing. Prolapse – contact me for comps to me! You have spent enough over the years!! OCT 26th London Lexington, 27th Sheffield Sydney & Matilda, 28th Leicester International, 30th M’cr Star & Garter, 31st Oxford Common Ground.
BEN MOOR – THREE THING DAY. The wry wordsmith has another linguistically lush meta-fiction ready to drop. Ben says...
Already in the diary for next year, a performance at one of my favourite places in the world - I've done lots of shows here over the years and they have always been an absolute delight.
BEN EDGE – CHILDREN OF ALBION. The punk-ruralist painter has a new exhibition at the Fitzrovia Chapel, London, 6th – 26th November.
BOB MOULD Hardcore punk pioneer of Husker Du/Sugar lineage. NOV 18th Glasgow Oran Mor, 19th Leeds Brudenell, 20th London Dome
SAINTS 73-79 Superb! The original line-up of the Australian Punk progenitors, but with Mudhoney's Howlin’ Mark Arm deputising for the departed Chris Bailey (a gentleman and a scholar who once came to one of my shows and told me his tales afterwards!). His original co-writer and co-guitarist Ed Kuepper remains undimmed and the authentic ‘70s rhythm section will rattle your bones. NOVEMBER 21ST Bristol Trinity, 22nd Leeds Project, 23rd Glasgow Garage, 24th M’cr Academy 2, 26th London Camden Electric
DREAM SYNDICATE You must see this enduring American rock institution who impossibly combine free-jazz styled freakouts with classic solid literary songwriting. JAN 30TH London Garage, FEB 1st M’cr Band On The Wall.
IN OUR LAMENTATIONS 2025
Barre Phillips (Jazz bassman, 1934)
Bob Grover (Brighton Piranha, 1956)
Riro (Japanese sea otter, 2007)
Nora Orlandi (Spaghetti symphonist, 1933)
Ed Askew (Acid folkie, 1940)
Tony Slattery (The vile blows of the world made him reckless, 1959)
Eleonora Giorgi (Young, violent and dangerous, 1953)
David Thomas (Ube Pere, 1953)
Mike Peters (He alarmed Wales, 1959)
James Baker (Hoodoo victim of beastly scientists, 1954)
Larry Lee (Ozark Mountain Devil, 1947)
Wizz Jones (The Lazy Farmer, 1939)
David Briggs (He signalled the test of our whistles, 1943)
Kimble Rendall (Hoodoo Guru from year zero, 1957)
Jack Katz (First Kingdom comics guy, 1927)
Ed Smylie (Saved Apollo 13 with sellotape, 1914)
George Wendt (Barfly Freak Fan, 1948)
Peter David (He turned Hulk grey for peanuts, 1956)
Loretta Switt (Hilarious dish of MASH, 1937)
Louis Moholo (S African freedom-drummer, 1940)
Hunt Powers (Spaghetti star, 1929)
Simon House (Hawkstrings, 1948)
Colin Conflict (He could not win a nuclear war, 1963)
David Kaff (He had a good time all the time, 1946)
Daniel Postgate (Together, we held Bagpuss in Totnes, 1963)
Lalo Schifrin (He entered the dragon, 1932)
Brian Wilson (He wished they all could be California girls, 1942)
Junior Byles (His locks be curly, 1948)
Terry Draper (He called occupants of interplanetary craft, 1951)
Jill Sobule (She kissed a girl, 1959)
Terry Manning (Stax to the max, 1947)
Roy Ayers (Coffy percolator, 1943)
Edip Akbayram (Turkish funk soul brother, 1950)
Ozzy Osborne (He married a sociopath and pre-empted grunge, 1948)
Hulk Hogan (Worthless steroid-addled Trump-loving metafiction, 1953)
Tom Lehrer (He poisoned the pigeons, 1928)
Allan Ahlberg (Peepoo understands WWII implicitly, 1938)
Terry Reid (Funky folk bluesman, 1949)
Stewart Lee
2025-09-01T07:00:37+01:00
IRISH ANNOUNCEMENT Stewart Lee will tour to Dublin, Drogheda, Derry, Wexford, Cork, and Waterford in June 2026, his first tour to Ireland in 14 years. June 2026 Monday 1st June 2026 - 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin - TICKETS Tuesday 2nd June 2026 - Bord Gais Energy Theatre, Dublin - TICKETS Wednesday 3rd June 2026 - The Tommy Leddy Theatre, Drogheda - TICKETS Thursday 4th June 2026 - Millennium Forum, Derry - TICKETS Friday 5th June 2026 - National Opera House, Wexford - TICKETS Sunday 7th June 2026 - Opera House, Cork - TICKETS Wednesday 10th June 2026 - Theatre Royal, Waterford - TICKETS 1. ALEXANDRA PALACE LONDON MAN-WULF RUN FEB 3RD-15TH 2026 STEWART LEE VS THE MAN-WULF. The unstoppable Man-Wulf show has another London run, having already done 12000 seats at Royal Festival Hall and 12000 seats at Leicester Sq Theatre. It’s sure to look great in the gothic confines of the Alexandra Palace theatre. My favourite show to perform and as the world gets worse the basic premise of the show – that the bully boys are taking over in music, comedy and TV cooking shows – only gets funnier. ALEXANDRA PALACE, 3rd – 15th Feb 2026, Tuesday to Saturday at 7.30pm plus Sunday matinees at 3.30pm Tickets on sale 30th July. BOOK HERE: https://www.alexandrapalace.com/whats-on/stewart-lee-vs-the-man-wulf/ 2. NEW MERCH Along with WAXFACE’s usual line of Stewart Lee merch there are new for 2025 t-shirts and hoodies on the Man-Wulf theme, all of the highest quality. I’d wear them myself but I’d look arrogant. Waste the money your Nan gave you for Xmas here - https://wax-face.com/stewart-lee 3. MAN-WULF BY THE PRIMEVALS Glasgow’s garage punk veterans The Primevals announce a new single as featured in the new Stewart Lee vs The Man-Wulf U.K. tour. There are 3 versions. Side a I’m The Man-Wulf....
What better way to understand ourselves than through the eyes of comedians - those who professionally examine our quirks on stage daily? In this touching and witty book, award-winning presenter and comic Robin Ince uses the life of the stand-up as a way of exploring some of the biggest questions we all face. Where does anxiety come from? How do we overcome imposter syndrome? What is the key to creativity? How can we deal with grief?
Informed by personal insights from Robin as well as interviews with some of the world's top comedians, neuroscientists and psychologists, this is a hilarious and often moving primer to the mind. But it is also a powerful call to embrace the full breadth of our inner experience - no matter how strange we worry it may be!
Stewart Lee
2018-10-15T17:38:30+01:00
I wrote the foreword for Robin Ince's new book. What better way to understand ourselves than through the eyes of comedians - those who professionally examine our quirks on stage daily? In this touching and witty book, award-winning presenter and comic Robin Ince uses the life of the stand-up as a way of exploring some of the biggest questions we all face. Where does anxiety come from? How do we overcome imposter syndrome? What is the key to creativity? How can we deal with grief? Informed by personal insights from Robin as well as interviews with some of the world's top comedians, neuroscientists and psychologists, this is a hilarious and often moving primer to the mind. But it is also a powerful call to embrace the full breadth of our inner experience - no matter how strange we worry it may be!
Once, Richard Thomas’s Jerry Springer the Opera, to which I contributed unpopular elements, held the TV hate record, with 62,000 complaints. But last week it was out-hated by the BBC’s saturation coverage of Prince Philip’s death, which didn’t even win four Olivier awards and had no singing coprophiles. BBC appeasements of unappeasable bad faith actors backfire reliably. More than 110,000 people, missing EastEnders under lockdown, protested the all-channel mourning. That said, the complaints of our day were proper complaints, etched on to stone tablets and delivered by pigeons, not these “e-posts” they have now which any idiot can send. Indeed, it turns out that 116 of the people complaining were complaining that it was too easy to complain.
It is sad that an old lady has lost her companion of 73 years, grieving alone. And the supposedly controversial comments made by Prince Philip, that critics foregrounded, aren’t that bad, given that he was born 100 years ago and left normal life for the ermine cocoon of royalty in 1947. No one would expect Rip Van Winkle to wake up and understand the complex terminology of 21st-century transgender rights. Sadly, the duke was too far ahead of the zeitgeist to be declared a warrior of anti-wokeness and get a lucrative book deal. But only just.
The Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine’s agenda-setting tribute last week showed how the most tragic and personal event can be press-ganged into the Conservatives’ fabricated culture war. Though the duke was forbidden from expressing his own opinions in life, Vine has grafted hers on to him in death, riding his memory towards the hell of her own choosing, a Pale Horsewoman of the Apocalypse astride Bernie Clifton’s ostrich.
For Vine, Prince Philip’s passing represented, “more than the end of a single life; it represents the end of an era. Of a set of values and personal qualities that seem to have less and less and less place in the modern world; a kind of joyous, unapologetic masculinity that nowadays would – and routinely is – described by many as toxic.” For Vine, the unwitting Duke of Edinburgh is a symbol of that most oppressed minority of all – men! Unwilling to let the Jordan Peterson of carriage-driving rest unmolested, Vine goes on.
“The thing that always struck me as so wonderful about Prince Philip was the fact that he was unequivocally and unapologetically a bloke. It wasn’t only his tendency to put his foot in it. He lived simply and practically, never happier than when barbecuing sausages in the rain on a hillside in Scotland, and then putting those sausages into his mouth, the mouths of his family, or the mouths of delighted passersby. Or doing something complicated with a sausage. In other words, he knew what it meant to be a man. A real, grown-up man. And that, I’m afraid, makes him a rare gem in this day and age, when women are encouraged to consider even the offer of a sausage as an act of patriarchal micro-aggression. But you can’t fight nature. Or sausages. Men like him are as rare as genuine imported European sausages these days, because the modern world seems to despise them, and sausages, so much. How many young men growing up today, their minds addled with crazy brain powders, their Fairy Liquid hands as soft as their woke faces, even like sausages? Sausages that society no longer treats as treats but as toxins, that require the sternest eradication at the hands of the Commissars of Woke. But if toxic masculinity is loyalty, duty, courage, wisdom and sausages, so be it. Farewell then, Prince Philip, Prince among men, Duke of Sausage. Aw! Truly, this man was the Wokefinder General!”
Vine’s fixation on the duke’s admiration for sausage holds water. His pet name for the Queen was “sausage”. But Vine’s assertion that the duke channels the same masculine power that high-school incels claim they are denied is a stretch. If we look closely at the duke’s “politically incorrect gaffes” they suggest instead both a self-aware literary meta-commentary on his own persona, and a tentative embracing of woke values. Taken in isolation, the duke’s quip, “If you stand here much longer you’ll go home with slitty eyes”, to an English student in China in 1986, seems ill-judged. But two months later, to an English student in the Amazon basin, he said: “If you stand here much longer you will come home with a working knowledge of the shamanic properties of the ayahuasca root.” And a year earlier, to an English student in the Australian outback, he said: “If you stand here much longer you will come home able to make complex topographical mental maps by singing tunes in which microtonal shifts in pitch represent the rising and falling of contours. And chuck spears!” The duke displayed both a woke sensitivity to indigenous traditions, and a woke awareness of the obsolescence of his colonialist obligations.
The anti-woke infotainer Andrew Neil had hoped to use the duke as an avatar of anti-wokeness on his new anti-woke GB news show, Woke Watch. Neil denies knowing who I am online, as anti-woke Peter denied the woken Christ, but in reality I know the Weetabix-tonsured Wokefinder well. After the duke passed, Wheat-Head Zoomed me – an Olivier award-winning theatre director, remember – for artistic advice.
“Leapy my old friend,” Bisc-hair blabbed, “the comedy agency Blue Book Artist Management, who are also working the anti-woke market, reckoned they could get me the duke to mock the woke weekly. I don’t want to have to use Laurence Fox, although it would be cheaper. Do you think one could animate a hologram of Prince Philip’s head, like Patrick Moore on Gamesmaster?” “Yes Andy,” I replied, “then you could just make the Duke of Edinburgh say whatever you wanted him to say.”
Stewart Lee
2021-04-18T14:48:44+01:00
Once, Richard Thomas’s Jerry Springer the Opera, to which I contributed unpopular elements, held the TV hate record, with 62,000 complaints. But last week it was out-hated by the BBC’s saturation coverage of Prince Philip’s death, which didn’t even win four Olivier awards and had no singing coprophiles. BBC appeasements of unappeasable bad faith actors backfire reliably. More than 110,000 people, missing EastEnders under lockdown, protested the all-channel mourning. That said, the complaints of our day were proper complaints, etched on to stone tablets and delivered by pigeons, not these “e-posts” they have now which any idiot can send. Indeed, it turns out that 116 of the people complaining were complaining that it was too easy to complain. It is sad that an old lady has lost her companion of 73 years, grieving alone. And the supposedly controversial comments made by Prince Philip, that critics foregrounded, aren’t that bad, given that he was born 100 years ago and left normal life for the ermine cocoon of royalty in 1947. No one would expect Rip Van Winkle to wake up and understand the complex terminology of 21st-century transgender rights. Sadly, the duke was too far ahead of the zeitgeist to be declared a warrior of anti-wokeness and get a lucrative book deal. But only just. The Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine’s agenda-setting tribute last week showed how the most tragic and personal event can be press-ganged into the Conservatives’ fabricated culture war. Though the duke was forbidden from expressing his own opinions in life, Vine has grafted hers on to him in death, riding his memory towards the hell of her own choosing, a Pale Horsewoman of the Apocalypse astride Bernie Clifton’s ostrich. For Vine, Prince Philip’s passing represented, “more than the end of a single life; it represents the end...
ACCESS DENIED, the new album from Asian Dub Foundation! Out 18-9-2020.
Asian Dub Foundation release their new album “Access Denied” for X-Ray Productions , with collaborations featuring incendiary Palestinian shamstep warriors 47 soul, radical UK comedian Stewart Lee, and climate activist supreme Greta Thunberg.
The album showcases ADF in full spectrum mode from the tough Jungle Punk sound of “Stealing The Future” and “Mindlock” through to the orchestral meditations of “Realignment” and the reggae lament of the title track.
Unbowed and undeterred Asian Dub Foundation continue their sonic opposition to the powers that be and “Access Denied” kicks harder and higher than ever.
Stewart Lee
2020-09-18T18:38:38+01:00
ACCESS DENIED, the new album from Asian Dub Foundation! Out 18-9-2020. Asian Dub Foundation release their new album “Access Denied” for X-Ray Productions , with collaborations featuring incendiary Palestinian shamstep warriors 47 soul, radical UK comedian Stewart Lee, and climate activist supreme Greta Thunberg. The album showcases ADF in full spectrum mode from the tough Jungle Punk sound of “Stealing The Future” and “Mindlock” through to the orchestral meditations of “Realignment” and the reggae lament of the title track. Unbowed and undeterred Asian Dub Foundation continue their sonic opposition to the powers that be and “Access Denied” kicks harder and higher than ever.
The availability of everything dissolves the presumed linear progression of popular culture. Thirty years ago, pop music scorched away its immediate past, and no legal reissues or illegal weblogs enabled the immediate reformatting of forgotten forms.
The Trypes, New Jersey practitioners of the 'Hoboken Sound', alongside The Feelies and The Willies, were amongst the first post-punks to glance backwards, sticking a neat new wave skinny black tie on the fuzzy Sixties New York grooves of The Velvet Underground and the chiming minimalism of various Seventies downtown droners. Enjoy their previously disparate eleven track output, finally fixed in time and space.
Stewart Lee
2012-05-27T22:00:26+01:00
The availability of everything dissolves the presumed linear progression of popular culture. Thirty years ago, pop music scorched away its immediate past, and no legal reissues or illegal weblogs enabled the immediate reformatting of forgotten forms. The Trypes, New Jersey practitioners of the 'Hoboken Sound', alongside The Feelies and The Willies, were amongst the first post-punks to glance backwards, sticking a neat new wave skinny black tie on the fuzzy Sixties New York grooves of The Velvet Underground and the chiming minimalism of various Seventies downtown droners. Enjoy their previously disparate eleven track output, finally fixed in time and space.
Stewart Lee’s latest show boasts value for money as he delivered two hours and twenty minutes of largely new material, where he takes seemingly familiar subject matter to abstract and hilarious new territory.
Lee opened many of his segments at the Philharmonic Hall with an ostensibly simple and recognisable situation such as the affrontingly ignorant opening gambit of a cabbie (‘these days if you say you’re English, you get locked up and thrown in jail, don’t you?) He then deconstructs his subject through pain-staking repetition until it becomes something bigger. Suddenly one cabbie’s poorly thought through conversation starter becomes a signifier for the whole confused and restrictive notion of national identity which Lee then gently prods until it bursts at its incongruous seams before our eyes.
At which point he takes it further with a satirical anecdote about a friend who didn’t know he was a Latvian despite appearing ‘like a racist caricature of a Latvian’ complete with ‘those Latvian shoes,’ which are just blood-soaked bales of hay with holes in.
Part of the pleasure of Lee’s style is that he doesn’t simply make the audience laugh, he takes them on an exploration of why things are funny – in this case his brilliantly bizarre imagery of Latvian stereotyping shows the tendency for prejudice, to grotesquely depict its subject until it bears no resemblance to reality; a treatment which Lee subverts to great effect as he become a parody of bigotry.
Elsewhere a similar technique of elaborate and repetitious deconstruction is used to send up a variety of subjects such as UKIP’s immigration stance. Lee traces the unwanted changes some of their members seem to fear of immigrants from the Polish ‘coming over here and mending things’, through the pesky influx of Neolithic farming techniques all the way back to the inception of matter (‘I don’t remember being asked if I wanted a Big Bang’.)
The pertinence of Lee’s political satire comes from the skill with which he offsets his tireless logic against the irrational and contradictory opinions of some figures, reaching surreal comic heights in the process.
Though Lee takes pleasure in admitting that the show is not a polished article (he says he wrote the twenty minute encore in his hotel room), this deliberately haphazard feel gives his intricately assembled ideas a spontaneous energy which contrasts with his arid delivery to create a thoroughly absorbing and achingly funny show.
Stewart Lee
2013-10-15T18:26:43+01:00
Stewart Lee’s latest show boasts value for money as he delivered two hours and twenty minutes of largely new material, where he takes seemingly familiar subject matter to abstract and hilarious new territory. Lee opened many of his segments at the Philharmonic Hall with an ostensibly simple and recognisable situation such as the affrontingly ignorant opening gambit of a cabbie (‘these days if you say you’re English, you get locked up and thrown in jail, don’t you?) He then deconstructs his subject through pain-staking repetition until it becomes something bigger. Suddenly one cabbie’s poorly thought through conversation starter becomes a signifier for the whole confused and restrictive notion of national identity which Lee then gently prods until it bursts at its incongruous seams before our eyes. At which point he takes it further with a satirical anecdote about a friend who didn’t know he was a Latvian despite appearing ‘like a racist caricature of a Latvian’ complete with ‘those Latvian shoes,’ which are just blood-soaked bales of hay with holes in. Part of the pleasure of Lee’s style is that he doesn’t simply make the audience laugh, he takes them on an exploration of why things are funny – in this case his brilliantly bizarre imagery of Latvian stereotyping shows the tendency for prejudice, to grotesquely depict its subject until it bears no resemblance to reality; a treatment which Lee subverts to great effect as he become a parody of bigotry. Elsewhere a similar technique of elaborate and repetitious deconstruction is used to send up a variety of subjects such as UKIP’s immigration stance. Lee traces the unwanted changes some of their members seem to fear of immigrants from the Polish ‘coming over here and mending things’, through the pesky influx of Neolithic farming techniques all the way back to...
The show is a double bill of two, new, sixty-minute sets – weirdly, delivered in the opposite order to the title. Tornado is centered around Netflix incorrectly attributing the synopsis of Sharknado to Lee’s series Comedy Vehicle. The first half is funny and well paced, it sees bits on mainstream comedians who haven’t had their comedy special synopses tampered with – Ricky Gervais and Jimmy Carr both, fairly, fall victim. Lee also talks at length about rotisserie chickens and ends the set with a ropey impression of Alan Bennett reading allowed from a Bennett-fied Sharknado – brilliant.
The second half is equally as layered, sharp and silly. Snowflake focuses on the absurdity of wokeness and despite its ubiquity, the fact is, it still has little effect on the content we’re shown. In this part we return to the Netflix synopsis of Ricky Gervais’ latest comedy output, which states ‘Gervais says the unsayable’. For several minutes, Lee performs an almost-silent, drawn out impression of Gervais attempting to say words, getting increasingly more ridiculous and causing the audience to cry with laughter. Lee defends wokeness with a heavy dose of ridicule and plenty of self-awareness, ruminating that ultimately it has made no difference as the two best-selling comedians (Gervais and Carr) are still paid to make unnecessarily controversial shows. On a lighter note, we also hear about Lee’s nan’s confusion between ‘political correctness’ and ‘health and safety’ and her frustration at not being allowed to eat soup wherever she wants.
In Snowflake/Tornado, like all of Lee’s shows, jokes wind together and segway seamlessly with earlier references often slipping back into the monologue just as you forget about them. Snowflake/Tornado sees heaps of new material whilst still featuring Lee’s calling cards; repetition, in-jokes and plenty of audience berating. On multiple occasions, Lee stops the audience to critique their reactions and explain why the joke we missed was funny. However, in a change to normal proceedings, the show ends with a tender moment, as Lee very genuinely thanks the audience for attending the show. A heartwarming moment acknowledging the lack of stand-up shows over the last two years and all that came with it.
A recording of Snowflake/Tornado will be coming to the BBC later this year, details to be confirmed. Throughout August, Stewart Lee will be performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, with his next tour beginning in September. Further details are available here.
Stewart Lee
2022-07-07T11:55:49+01:00
The show is a double bill of two, new, sixty-minute sets – weirdly, delivered in the opposite order to the title. Tornado is centered around Netflix incorrectly attributing the synopsis of Sharknado to Lee’s series Comedy Vehicle. The first half is funny and well paced, it sees bits on mainstream comedians who haven’t had their comedy special synopses tampered with – Ricky Gervais and Jimmy Carr both, fairly, fall victim. Lee also talks at length about rotisserie chickens and ends the set with a ropey impression of Alan Bennett reading allowed from a Bennett-fied Sharknado – brilliant. The second half is equally as layered, sharp and silly. Snowflake focuses on the absurdity of wokeness and despite its ubiquity, the fact is, it still has little effect on the content we’re shown. In this part we return to the Netflix synopsis of Ricky Gervais’ latest comedy output, which states ‘Gervais says the unsayable’. For several minutes, Lee performs an almost-silent, drawn out impression of Gervais attempting to say words, getting increasingly more ridiculous and causing the audience to cry with laughter. Lee defends wokeness with a heavy dose of ridicule and plenty of self-awareness, ruminating that ultimately it has made no difference as the two best-selling comedians (Gervais and Carr) are still paid to make unnecessarily controversial shows. On a lighter note, we also hear about Lee’s nan’s confusion between ‘political correctness’ and ‘health and safety’ and her frustration at not being allowed to eat soup wherever she wants. In Snowflake/Tornado, like all of Lee’s shows, jokes wind together and segway seamlessly with earlier references often slipping back into the monologue just as you forget about them. Snowflake/Tornado sees heaps of new material whilst still featuring Lee’s calling cards; repetition, in-jokes and plenty of audience berating. On multiple occasions, Lee stops...
Last week, Donald Trump falsely attributed admirable human qualities to a dog. Many Trump supporters have done the same to the president. The hero dog, Trump explained on Monday, had played an important part in the operation that saw the Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi “die like a dog”, the president managing to both praise dogs and use them as a metaphor for cowardice, in the same speech.
An American journalist friend has told me, confidentially, that the heroic Belgian malinois has been put out to stud, touring puppy farms in the key Republican-voting states of Trump’s supporter base. Patriot puppy farmers can breed their bitches with the canine assassin, who is priced at $10,000 per penetration or $300,000 for a day’s companionship in a private kennel. Extra canoodling time increases the chances of impregnation incrementally, with profits given to Trump’s legal defence fund. You couldn’t make it up!
Supportive breeders will be able to charge proud puppy purchasers top rates to own a dog spawned from the semen of the very hound that left Baghdadi, in the words of the president’s official press conference statement last Monday, “whimpering and crying and screaming all the way”, an emotional state the virile sex-animal is also expected to induce in satiated bitches.
I should have seen this unbelievable state of affairs – the post-rationalised monetisation of a military operation – coming. The American novelist Jarett Kobek, who wrote to me years ago asking if he could quote a bit of my standup in a book, is now a regular correspondent. While Kobek’s 2017 opus The Future Won’t Be Long shows he could have spent his life writing the kind of classic New York novel critics love, 2016’s superb content-form fusion I Hate the Internet and this year’s ecstatically disorienting Only Americans Burn in Hell explode ideas of literary taste and style to slice open his homeland’s poisoned abdomen. But real life seems to have a habit of providing Kobek with experiences that confirm his paranoia.
On 1 September, Kobek emailed me from New York to say: “I had the strangest experience of my life the other night. I was at the Comedy Store and watched the guy who shot Osama bin Laden do his tight five about shooting Osama bin Laden.” I assumed Kobek, who has written extensively on jihadist terrorism, was using me as an unwitting pawn in some satirical experiment understood only by him, but he confirmed the experience.
“He [Robert J O’Neill] came out years ago, against Navy Seal protocol or whatever, to take credit, and has sort of gone through the entire gamut of celebrity, but I assure you none of that was as weird or as surprising as seeing him come up and do his material, which absolutely 100% killed.” Kobek, you will not be surprised to learn, is, like me, a virtue-signalling snowflake.
Three weeks later, the same story drifted across my digital consciousness. The internet, now a sort of digital camera obscura, showed me a clip where, as a prank, the American comedian David Spade had secured Bin Laden’s assassin a slot at the Comedy Store. He and another American comedian, Whitney Cummings, fed the likable former Seal lines through an earpiece (like Frankie Boyle and Russell Howard, O’Neill used writers), and secretly filmed the show. This was the very same performance Kobek had attended.
O’Neill tells the crowd he shot Bin Laden because he was “tired of taking my shoes off at the fucking airport”. In his military service, O’Neill continues, he got “two silver stars, four bronze stars of valour and a ton of pussy”. While trading on a certain amount of jingoism, the act also works, perhaps unintentionally, as a parody of normal comedy. How, for example, would the SAS man who shot three IRA members in Gibraltar describe his experiences, were he obliged to do so on Live at the Apollo in the style of Chris Ramsey?
In closing, O’Neill’s puppeteers allow him the blackly comic observation: “My favourite thing about killing Osama bin Laden is that it finally ended all the wars in the Middle East.” One wonders if, as O’Neill exits past a bewildered looking Kobek sporting a Guns N’ Roses T-shirt, he is at all traumatised by his past and whether his assassination-induced celebrity acts as any kind of balm? Perhaps Spade and Cummings intended to explore this idea. I don’t know. I didn’t feel culturally equipped to decode whatever was going on and no criticism of the piece is intended.
Meanwhile, in a White House press conference on the subject of the hero dog, defence secretary, Mark Esper, who will tour the animal sex farms with the national canine gigolo, said the assassin hound could be guaranteed to “perform a tremendous service”. And in the unlikely event that America’s sex-dog is unable to rise to the occasion, General Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, has confirmed that he will personally hand-milk the malfunctioning malinois into whatever receptacle the customers provide and that he will get the job done however long it takes. God bless America!! We are through the looking glass here, people!!!
Perhaps the first-born spawn of the soldier-hound could be offered to dog-loving 10 Downing Street, to live alongside Dilyn dog, as a sweetener to stop Boris “Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Vampires Haircut Wall-Spaffer Spunk-Burster Fuck-Business Fuck-The-Families Get-Off-My-Fucking-Laptop Girly-Swot Big-Girl’s-Blouse Chicken-Frit Hulk-Smash Noseringed-Crusties Death-Humbug Technology-Lessons Surrender-Bullshit French-Turds” Johnson making too much fuss about that unfortunate incident in Northamptonshire. After all, as President Trump said: “Driving on the wrong side of the road happens.”
Stewart Lee
2019-11-03T14:59:02+00:00
Last week, Donald Trump falsely attributed admirable human qualities to a dog. Many Trump supporters have done the same to the president. The hero dog, Trump explained on Monday, had played an important part in the operation that saw the Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi “die like a dog”, the president managing to both praise dogs and use them as a metaphor for cowardice, in the same speech. An American journalist friend has told me, confidentially, that the heroic Belgian malinois has been put out to stud, touring puppy farms in the key Republican-voting states of Trump’s supporter base. Patriot puppy farmers can breed their bitches with the canine assassin, who is priced at $10,000 per penetration or $300,000 for a day’s companionship in a private kennel. Extra canoodling time increases the chances of impregnation incrementally, with profits given to Trump’s legal defence fund. You couldn’t make it up! Supportive breeders will be able to charge proud puppy purchasers top rates to own a dog spawned from the semen of the very hound that left Baghdadi, in the words of the president’s official press conference statement last Monday, “whimpering and crying and screaming all the way”, an emotional state the virile sex-animal is also expected to induce in satiated bitches. I should have seen this unbelievable state of affairs – the post-rationalised monetisation of a military operation – coming. The American novelist Jarett Kobek, who wrote to me years ago asking if he could quote a bit of my standup in a book, is now a regular correspondent. While Kobek’s 2017 opus The Future Won’t Be Long shows he could have spent his life writing the kind of classic New York novel critics love, 2016’s superb content-form fusion I Hate the Internet and this year’s ecstatically disorienting Only Americans...
This month, the former Perrier Awards for Comedy on the Edinburgh Fringe have been taken over by Foster's, the beer company. The main award, which usually goes to an unknown turn, remains. But Foster's has also invited the public to vote for a "Comedy God" from all the nominees of the last 30 years. This is idiotic.
Most of the 173 individual and company names on the list remain cult concerns, with little or no film or audio evidence of their existence. So how can they be voted for in an informed way? Some of the names listed represent actual shows that were nominated for awards, such as Will Adamsdale's Jackson's Way. Others are performers themselves, such as The Mighty Boosh, who were nominated for a piece I directed, called Arctic Boosh, in 1999. It's like asking whether Martin Amis the writer is better than Trainspotting the book. And the entrance criteria have changed so much over 30 years as to make comparison between eras a nonsense.
In a grumpy email to the organisers, I suggested that the Japanese performance art group Frank Chickens, who were nominated way back in 1984, may well be the best thing on the list for all any of the voters know. By a delightful happenstance, disgruntled voters got wind of this, hit their keyboards and the Chickens, who recently regrouped, are currently on course to be named Foster's Comedy Gods, ahead of contemporary, brand-consolidating stadium fillers like Michael McIntyre and Russell Howard.
But the administrative errors in Foster's now discredited poll are trivial compared to the questions it throws up about the ethics of corporate sponsorship: questions that are suddenly newly significant as we enter the era of Dave Cameron's "Big Society". Dave tells us that the way forward for areas of life that once received public funding, or that might have benefited from it, lies in partnerships with charitable organisations and businesses. But charitable organisations have ethical agendas, businesses want bang for their buck, and the moral scruples of their supposed beneficiaries have to take a back seat when the cash starts flowing. For example, not a single one of the Fringe performers on the list of potential "Gods" was asked for permission before being used to drive traffic towards Foster's. The artists' compliance and gratitude are simply taken for granted.
And businesses' bankrolling comes with caveats. It's easier to lure company money to fund a monkey sanctuary than to secure it for a study of intestinal lice, yet both are an important part of our understanding of our environment. Sexy causes snag the stash. And in the case of arts sponsorship, do big corporations want to be associated with awkward and uncompromising art?
Sainsbury's benefits from its reputation for arts philanthropy, but withdrew DVDs of Jerry Springer the Opera (which I co-wrote) from its shelves after complaints from rightwing Christian agitators. It's a safe bet that the Foster's public vote should have enabled the brewers to hitch their brand to the kind of big name that usually wins such popularity contests, but it may be that Foster's instead learns a little of what the Fringe really is: an event that for six decades has been essentially bankrolled by loss-making performers in an unmediated celebration of artistic diversity. Frank Chickens might be said to embody this rather more convincingly than a famous comedian.
The Big Society is coming. This fringe comedy teacup storm is a tiny echo of the full implications. Batten down the hatches.
Stewart Lee
2010-08-03T15:18:13+01:00
This month, the former Perrier Awards for Comedy on the Edinburgh Fringe have been taken over by Foster's, the beer company. The main award, which usually goes to an unknown turn, remains. But Foster's has also invited the public to vote for a "Comedy God" from all the nominees of the last 30 years. This is idiotic. Most of the 173 individual and company names on the list remain cult concerns, with little or no film or audio evidence of their existence. So how can they be voted for in an informed way? Some of the names listed represent actual shows that were nominated for awards, such as Will Adamsdale's Jackson's Way. Others are performers themselves, such as The Mighty Boosh, who were nominated for a piece I directed, called Arctic Boosh, in 1999. It's like asking whether Martin Amis the writer is better than Trainspotting the book. And the entrance criteria have changed so much over 30 years as to make comparison between eras a nonsense. In a grumpy email to the organisers, I suggested that the Japanese performance art group Frank Chickens, who were nominated way back in 1984, may well be the best thing on the list for all any of the voters know. By a delightful happenstance, disgruntled voters got wind of this, hit their keyboards and the Chickens, who recently regrouped, are currently on course to be named Foster's Comedy Gods, ahead of contemporary, brand-consolidating stadium fillers like Michael McIntyre and Russell Howard. But the administrative errors in Foster's now discredited poll are trivial compared to the questions it throws up about the ethics of corporate sponsorship: questions that are suddenly newly significant as we enter the era of Dave Cameron's "Big Society". Dave tells us that the way forward for areas of life that...
I’ve always rather liked Stewart Lee. He is one of those comedians who has plied his trade for decades, but without becoming stuck in a repetitive rut, unlike so many of his peers. He deserves a place in some sort of hall of fame for co-writing and co-directing the excellent Jerry Springer: The Opera, but his admirers have long testified to the versatility and intelligence of his stand-up material, which will see him use meta-comedic techniques to simultaneously entertain his audience while slyly subverting the expectations of a mainstream comic performer. To put it another way, he may tell as good a knob gag as anyone else, but he’ll also manage to place it within a social and historical context that elevates it to the very greatest heights of knobbery.
Unfortunately, Lee has been accused of a very different sort of knobbery this year, thanks to a lengthy post on his website, entitled “From the metro-lib-elite desk of Stewart Lee”, in which he celebrated various public figures, whom he described as being “on the pedestal”, while castigating others, whom he described as being “in the pedal bin”. Some of the names in both categories were familiar and unsurprising. The likes of Gareth Southgate, Greta Thunberg and Marcus Rashford have long since ascended to secular sainthood, while merely saying the words “Donald Trump”, “Jacob Rees-Mogg” and “the Daily Mail” is guaranteed to lead to hearty booing and hissing.
So far, so audience-pleasing. But there are plenty of names in both categories, listed without explanation, that might make many of Lee’s admirers wonder if he is doing some clever piece of postmodern irony, or if, instead, he is being a bit of a knob. I wonder whether the likes of Alexei Sayle, Ash Sarkar and (naturally) Owen Jones can really be described as modern-day heroes, just as I fail to see what offence Tom Tugendhat, Stig Abell and Jimmy Fallon have visited upon Lee. Without further explanation, the list becomes simply a collection of eccentric opinions that could either be seen as quixotically challenging or simply attention-seeking, depending on one’s view of Lee and his comedy.
I believe that Lee is not simply some blowhard wokester, unlike Frankie Boyle, whose public conversion from gleefully offensive provocateur to stoic, principled man of integrity remains one of the more unusual journeys undertaken by many of those on the left. There is obviously a good deal of humour in his choices: some of those who attract his opprobrium include “fishermen”, “Poland” and “Christian with megaphone & siren, Camden”. But it is hard to read his lists and not recall his words from 2014, which have proved to be an unlikely prophecy of what audiences today expect from their comedians. “Hear that applause? That’s what I like. I’m not interested in laughs. I prefer applause. ‘Is it supposed to be funny?’ That’s what the critics say. No, it isn’t. I’m not interested in laughs. People say, ‘Did you see Stewart Lee?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Was it funny?’ ‘No, but I agreed the fuck out of it.’”
The repetition of the words “I’m not interested in laughs” seems crucial. At a time where right-wing comedians are limited in number (probably because our feckless Bunter of a Prime Minister has put them all out of work by being a bigger joke than they are), it is no longer the job of the likes of Lee and Boyle to elicit humour from poking fun at the failings of those in authority. There are few really entertaining jokes, after all, that can be wrung from the manifold failings of a failing government.
So the role of the comedian shifts. No longer are they standing up on stage in a bid to entertain their audience, but to bring together a disparate group of people to glory in their own righteousness. The former comic is therefore faced with a different task to making them laugh. They are now rabble-rouser in chief, a totemic and quasi-evangelical figure whose role is to inspire and excite their listeners, and, ideally, to allow them to leave the auditorium feeling better about the world, and themselves, confirmed in the righteousness of their opinions and views.
Things have happened in the conjoined field of politics and entertainment over the past few years that I would once have believed impossible. I remember being staggered that the singer Paloma Faith once asked — of all people — Owen Jones to tour with her as a support act. Yet today this seems less surprising. Jones, Sarkar or any number of high-profile left-wing figures would perform ably in front of a like-minded audience of young, liberal concert-goers, convincing them of their shared idealism and hard-won values, and making them feel suitably excited about their own integrity. As a way of getting the punters going, it certainly beats a support slot from some Sheeran-esque singer-songwriter, anxiously checking his Apple watch in case he will be home too late for his dinner of haricot beans on sourdough toast. Expect to see more of it in the future.
What the reaction to Lee’s post has demonstrated, especially — predictably — in the polarised world of social media, is that Left and Right now both view themselves as the standard-bearers for decency and integrity. The presence of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader did untold damage to the left’s reputation for unquestionable moral superiority, just as the continued installation of Alexander “Boris” Johnson as our Prime Minister has dismantled any reluctantly accepted concepts of Conservative professionalism. We no longer have any faith in our elected leaders, and so we turn to other, more acceptable figures to inspire and guide us. Many of Lee’s pedestal-bearers are lazily described as “national treasures”, just as many of his bin-dwellers have been much-castigated. The only real surprise, in fact, is how conservative his views are. If he had dared to describe both Corbyns (rather than simply the deranged Piers) as undesirable, one imagines that a certain sector of his readership would have been infuriated.
Lee is an intelligent man, and I believe a thoughtful one. Unfortunately, every revolution has its thinkers, along with those who carry out their instructions with brute force rather than nuance. Our increasingly polarised and angry age is not looking for entertainment any more, but for preachers. Those who have the biggest pulpit and the largest congregation, stand the greatest chance of getting their voices heard, regardless of the sense of what they are saying. They don’t want to be figures of fun any longer, drawing laughter. Instead, they want applause. And that is what they will get, even as the jeers and anger on the other side grow ever-louder, and ever-more irreconcilable.
Stewart Lee
2022-01-05T13:17:03+00:00
I’ve always rather liked Stewart Lee. He is one of those comedians who has plied his trade for decades, but without becoming stuck in a repetitive rut, unlike so many of his peers. He deserves a place in some sort of hall of fame for co-writing and co-directing the excellent Jerry Springer: The Opera, but his admirers have long testified to the versatility and intelligence of his stand-up material, which will see him use meta-comedic techniques to simultaneously entertain his audience while slyly subverting the expectations of a mainstream comic performer. To put it another way, he may tell as good a knob gag as anyone else, but he’ll also manage to place it within a social and historical context that elevates it to the very greatest heights of knobbery. Unfortunately, Lee has been accused of a very different sort of knobbery this year, thanks to a lengthy post on his website, entitled “From the metro-lib-elite desk of Stewart Lee”, in which he celebrated various public figures, whom he described as being “on the pedestal”, while castigating others, whom he described as being “in the pedal bin”. Some of the names in both categories were familiar and unsurprising. The likes of Gareth Southgate, Greta Thunberg and Marcus Rashford have long since ascended to secular sainthood, while merely saying the words “Donald Trump”, “Jacob Rees-Mogg” and “the Daily Mail” is guaranteed to lead to hearty booing and hissing. So far, so audience-pleasing. But there are plenty of names in both categories, listed without explanation, that might make many of Lee’s admirers wonder if he is doing some clever piece of postmodern irony, or if, instead, he is being a bit of a knob. I wonder whether the likes of Alexei Sayle, Ash Sarkar and (naturally) Owen Jones can really be described...
Nineties pop-pickers remember Cherry's adventurous hip-hop hits, but her apprenticeship with Bristol's Roland Kirk inspired beatniks Rip Rig And Panic, and a childhood spent with her stepfather the trumpeter Don Cherry, make her the ideal collaborator for the Scandinavian free jazz trio The Thing, interpreting fifties and sixties New Thing, and seventies American sleaze punk, source material.
Her swinging vocals on The Stooges' Dirt, for example, coax the saxophonist Mats Gustafsson into an uncharacteristically louche lope.
The unprocessed Cherry sounds sushi raw, and her free-blowing players scrabble enthusiastically at the set's wobbly melodic fencing.
Stewart Lee
2012-06-12T11:23:39+01:00
Nineties pop-pickers remember Cherry's adventurous hip-hop hits, but her apprenticeship with Bristol's Roland Kirk inspired beatniks Rip Rig And Panic, and a childhood spent with her stepfather the trumpeter Don Cherry, make her the ideal collaborator for the Scandinavian free jazz trio The Thing, interpreting fifties and sixties New Thing, and seventies American sleaze punk, source material. Her swinging vocals on The Stooges' Dirt, for example, coax the saxophonist Mats Gustafsson into an uncharacteristically louche lope. The unprocessed Cherry sounds sushi raw, and her free-blowing players scrabble enthusiastically at the set's wobbly melodic fencing.
In January, a sulphurous cloud of French pollution drifted across from France to further stink out vast areas of Surrey, its stench so powerful that it overwhelmed the natural foul odours of Eric Clapton, who dwells silently in the hideous region, a subterranean blues truffle.
It was as if the smelly Gallic gas glob did not respect international borders, and had imagined it could just blow around on the wind wherever it liked, a giant goose feather fashioned only from farts, irrespective of our exemption from the Schengen area agreement. Clearly, a continent-wide environmental strategy is required.
In other apocalyptic news, last month all 10 million Swedes were sent leaflets warning them to prepare for Russian invasion by stockpiling their cellars with Swedish staples like meatballs, delicious cakes and pornography.
Our own response to the perceived Russian threat has been to delay the visa of the Putin-backing billionaire Roman Abramovich, who I once stood next to while watching 80s Los Angeles band the Long Ryders in a venue he owned. This was perhaps the only point of overlap in the simplistic Venn diagram of Russian oligarchs and alternative country pioneers, apart from the brief period when Oleg Deripaska played pedal steel for Jason & the Scorchers.
But the threat of Russian invasion is especially problematic in the peacenik nude bathing utopia of Sweden which, in 1980, took official measures to discourage retailers from selling war toys to children. Not knowing one end of a gun from another, Swedes will be fighting the oncoming Russian hordes in the streets with Buckaroos ™, Fuzzy Felts ™ and Slimes ™.
Ironically, street combat with apparently harmless toys is exactly the kind of unpredictable surrealist strategy favoured by Putin’s art-school propaganda adviser Vladislav Surkov, and will either result in an unexpected Swedish victory, or a Russian counter attack involving Stretch Armstrongs ™, Mutons ™, and Kerplunks ™.
I envy the Swedes the simplistic certainty of the threat of Russian invasion. Here Brexit means that, like the ladies in the flashbacks in The Handmaid’s Tale, we are sleepwalking into a rightwing coup without noticing. What supplies should we stockpile in our British cellars to survive subjugation by the Brexiteers? French horns? Kraftwerk bootlegs? Experts?
Those hated experts were in conspicuously short supply last week as the environment secretary M Gove responded to demands from the corrupt fat cats of the unelected EU that we take more serious steps to stop choking ourselves, our European neighbours, and our whole planet to death.
Have they learned nothing in their Brussels ivory tower? This is exactly the kind of interfering attitude that brought about Brexit. If British people want to choke themselves and their children to death in a foul smog of car fumes that is up to us, and it’s not for beret-wearing traitors like Monsieur Jacques Delors, Madame Michèle Yvette Marie-Thérèse Jeanne Honorine Alliot-Marie and Monsieur Eddie Izzard to tell us we can’t.
British air pollution levels are above those recommended by the World Health Organisation for 90% of our population, and fall far short of the meddling EU’s less stringent recommendations. But when we leave the deplorable EU the untrustworthy adopted nest-cuckoo M Gove has promised we will actually aim to better the shit EU’s environmental standards, even as he flounders towards deregulated food supply life rafts made of his friend Donald Trump’s maggoty meats.
The literary stereotype of an orphan is of a meek and hopeful lamb child. But take it from me, all orphans lie, and M Gove is no exception. Last week, in the heat of the Windrush backdraft, the vengeful adoptee also claimed, counterintuitively, that Brexit “has made the UK more welcome to migration and more open to more people entering”. The shamans of the Lakota nation, searching for someone to fulfil the ritual role of the heyoka, the crazy backwards clown, for whom all truths are inverted, need look no further than M Gove for their future holy fool.
You don’t have to be Doubting Thomas ®, from God®’s The Bible ™, to doubt the airy assurances M Gove bubbles through his lying goldfish lips. Pirate Liam Fox sees a buccaneering Britain, bustling with freebooting Tom of Finland businessmen in unbuttoned shirts, thigh length sea-chaps and skull medallions, and is unlikely to allow its forthcoming post-Brexit economic miracle to be hampered by costly self-imposed environmental legislation, me hearties.
Clearly, the pollution crisis needs a top-to-bottom strategy, with the immediate elimination of the internal combustion engine as its ultimate goal. M Gove has promised to phase out diesel- and petrol-driven cars by 2040, a tiny flatus puff in a vast tornado, 22 years of slow death away.
As usual M Gove and his west London friends, essentially the human equivalent of the all-controlling Orangutan priests in the dystopia of Planet of the Apes, will find a way of remaining untouched in their airtight Notting Hill survival biospheres, their constituents choking to death beneath the Westway outside.
The £19,000-a-year Notting Hill Preparatory school has begun fitting £5,000 air filters to each of its classrooms, and who can blame it. But one looks forward to an M Gove government implementing the same safety measures in every state school across the country, perhaps employing cost-cutting subcontractors with the same bottom-line attention to detail as the Grenfell Tower cladders.
Breathable air for school children, it appears, is to become an economic privilege, like private education, not a basic human right. When I blagged into a private school on an orphan’s charity bung in 1979, I was taken aback by the playing fields, the chapel, and the Welsh mountain geography-trip cottage. Back in those halcyon days, I took the idea that I’d be able to breathe the air as read.
Stewart Lee
2018-06-03T17:56:34+01:00
In January, a sulphurous cloud of French pollution drifted across from France to further stink out vast areas of Surrey, its stench so powerful that it overwhelmed the natural foul odours of Eric Clapton, who dwells silently in the hideous region, a subterranean blues truffle. It was as if the smelly Gallic gas glob did not respect international borders, and had imagined it could just blow around on the wind wherever it liked, a giant goose feather fashioned only from farts, irrespective of our exemption from the Schengen area agreement. Clearly, a continent-wide environmental strategy is required. In other apocalyptic news, last month all 10 million Swedes were sent leaflets warning them to prepare for Russian invasion by stockpiling their cellars with Swedish staples like meatballs, delicious cakes and pornography. Our own response to the perceived Russian threat has been to delay the visa of the Putin-backing billionaire Roman Abramovich, who I once stood next to while watching 80s Los Angeles band the Long Ryders in a venue he owned. This was perhaps the only point of overlap in the simplistic Venn diagram of Russian oligarchs and alternative country pioneers, apart from the brief period when Oleg Deripaska played pedal steel for Jason & the Scorchers. But the threat of Russian invasion is especially problematic in the peacenik nude bathing utopia of Sweden which, in 1980, took official measures to discourage retailers from selling war toys to children. Not knowing one end of a gun from another, Swedes will be fighting the oncoming Russian hordes in the streets with Buckaroos ™, Fuzzy Felts ™ and Slimes ™. Ironically, street combat with apparently harmless toys is exactly the kind of unpredictable surrealist strategy favoured by Putin’s art-school propaganda adviser Vladislav Surkov, and will either result in an unexpected Swedish victory, or...
I have about 150 albums by Derek Bailey.
I first heard of him in 1995. I think, quietly, his music changed my life.
By 1966, the 36 year old one-time session musician had abandoned tunes altogether to invent a totally new language for the guitar. Derek’s music was based entirely on improvisation and operated outside any pre-existing idiom.
He literally reinvented the instrument.
Derek played with tap-dancers, and poets, and Japanese progressive rock bands, and anyone who sparked his imagination. I met him once, but we communicated mainly by e-mail and letter.
He lived in a little house in Hackney, before finally moving to Barcelona where he was given freedom of the city.
Despite being one of the genuine musical geniuses of the 20th century, Derek was never remotely patronising, describing the most out-there ideas in a bluff Yorkshire burr, and even at its most abstract and opaque, his music resonates with humour and love. Derek’s partner asked me to speak at his funeral last year.
Derek and I had swapped stand-up comedy tapes.
I knew he liked Chic Murray, so I did his routine about going to the doctors.
What can I say? It was a privilege
Stewart Lee
2007-01-01T19:36:10+00:00
I have about 150 albums by Derek Bailey. I first heard of him in 1995. I think, quietly, his music changed my life. By 1966, the 36 year old one-time session musician had abandoned tunes altogether to invent a totally new language for the guitar. Derek’s music was based entirely on improvisation and operated outside any pre-existing idiom. He literally reinvented the instrument. Derek played with tap-dancers, and poets, and Japanese progressive rock bands, and anyone who sparked his imagination. I met him once, but we communicated mainly by e-mail and letter. He lived in a little house in Hackney, before finally moving to Barcelona where he was given freedom of the city. Despite being one of the genuine musical geniuses of the 20th century, Derek was never remotely patronising, describing the most out-there ideas in a bluff Yorkshire burr, and even at its most abstract and opaque, his music resonates with humour and love. Derek’s partner asked me to speak at his funeral last year. Derek and I had swapped stand-up comedy tapes. I knew he liked Chic Murray, so I did his routine about going to the doctors. What can I say? It was a privilege
Mark Jorgensen visits the Lowry for an alternative comedy experience
IF comedians were films – which granted, they aren't - Stewart Lee is the type you'd watch at the Cornerhouse rather than the Odeon.
He is the only comedian in the world who can tell you the exact time, content and rationale of a 'joke' well in advance, yet still make it funny.
The cover of his book, How I Escaped My Certain Fate – The Life and Deaths of a Stand-Up Comedian, proudly features two quotes; one from The Sun referring to him as the worst comedian in Britain, while the other from The Guardian dubs him the best.
While my opinion is more than firmly pitched with the latter, there is a distinct divide with Stewart Lee that either you 'get him' or you don't.
It's worth noting, of course, this is very much intentional on Lee's part.
His act is meticulously and brilliantly crafted with an intentionally anti-comedy steer, leaving him often (over)dubbed a 'comedian's comedian'.
Much A-Stew About Nothing is Lee's latest tour and his introduction at the Lowry explained that this show will comprise of three main segments which will go on to form the new series of his excellent BBC3 show Comedy Vehicle, along with "seven minutes of optional encore", written on a piece of paper.
The suggestion of an 'optional encore' underpins how Lee approaches the audience. For an act to introduce at the start that he has an encore lazily prepared "if you want it", illustrates Lee's intentionally sneery-yet-almost-sneakily-affectionate approach to his show. It's a monologue that you are there to observe, rather than participate.
With this in mind, he explained that the last time he played at the Lowry, the show was ruined by a "crazy Maltese gentleman" in the crowd, resulting in Lee having to personally pay back the audience ticket fees. Whether this is true was unclear, but it gave the perfect base to craft his inimitably tongue-in-cheek contempt for the audience and his surroundings.
Although perhaps an unlikely yet earnest slip of the tongue, 'accidentally' referring to being in Manchester as opposed to Salford (which he later referred to as being "Just a couple of museums and a dock – not even a book shop"), he used both qualms brilliantly as sarcastic reference points throughout the show, casually and almost sympathetically, later referring to Greater Manchester as a 'racially-divided EDL heartland'.
The subject matter for the show included politics, Thatcher's death, artisan alcohol 'connoisseurs', a wildlife piece about Johnny Morris, but undoubtedly the stand-out part of the show was a section on UKIP deputy leader Paul Nuttall's comments on skilled and educated Bulgarian migrants who come to the UK for low paid manual labour work.
Lee recalled Nuttall (or 'Nuttalls' as he perpetually and intentionally mispronounced) suggesting they should stay at home for the benefit of their own country ("as we all know, one of UKIP's fundamental objectives is a commitment to the development of the Bulgarian economy").
Using the old 'they come over here taking our jobs...' adage, he expertly ridiculed the comments using gradually increasing and repetitive fervour; from the Huguenots of medieval France, to the Anglo-Saxons, Neolithics, to the first fish to ever set fin onto land before finishing wonderfully on grey matter.
"Before there was nothing, a void, and we liked that. Then you come over here, with your big bang, forming the basis for everything that has ever existed, ever." He concluded that with his level of insight, perhaps Nuttall(s) should have stayed in Liverpool for the better of the city, much to the approval of the Manchester, sorry Salford, crowd.
The second half of the show in particular was Stewart Lee at his very best.
The ability to take a relatively innocuous statement or notion, pick a standpoint (usually the opposite to what he actually thinks), lead the audience on a bizarre journey of repetition - with the odd nugget of intelligent detail or insight casually dropped in just to confirm if you weren't already aware that he knows exactly what he's talking about – almost past the point of being funny and back again, is what makes him arguably the finest stand up in the country.
On the strength of the material in Much A-Stew About Nothing, the next series of Comedy Vehicle promises to be as good as I hoped it would be, and I really can't recommend enough you getting tickets next time he's in Manchester.
Sorry, Salford.
Whatever.
Stewart Lee
2013-10-08T18:22:48+01:00
Mark Jorgensen visits the Lowry for an alternative comedy experience IF comedians were films – which granted, they aren't - Stewart Lee is the type you'd watch at the Cornerhouse rather than the Odeon. He is the only comedian in the world who can tell you the exact time, content and rationale of a 'joke' well in advance, yet still make it funny. The cover of his book, How I Escaped My Certain Fate – The Life and Deaths of a Stand-Up Comedian, proudly features two quotes; one from The Sun referring to him as the worst comedian in Britain, while the other from The Guardian dubs him the best. While my opinion is more than firmly pitched with the latter, there is a distinct divide with Stewart Lee that either you 'get him' or you don't. It's worth noting, of course, this is very much intentional on Lee's part. His act is meticulously and brilliantly crafted with an intentionally anti-comedy steer, leaving him often (over)dubbed a 'comedian's comedian'. Much A-Stew About Nothing is Lee's latest tour and his introduction at the Lowry explained that this show will comprise of three main segments which will go on to form the new series of his excellent BBC3 show Comedy Vehicle, along with "seven minutes of optional encore", written on a piece of paper. The suggestion of an 'optional encore' underpins how Lee approaches the audience. For an act to introduce at the start that he has an encore lazily prepared "if you want it", illustrates Lee's intentionally sneery-yet-almost-sneakily-affectionate approach to his show. It's a monologue that you are there to observe, rather than participate. With this in mind, he explained that the last time he played at the Lowry, the show was ruined by a "crazy Maltese gentleman" in the crowd,...
FRANKIE Boyle would have you believe that comics hitting 40 lose their potency, the righteous anger that compels them to mock the Queen's anatomy on comedy panel shows. At 41, Stewart Lee is not about to let this lie and meticulously dissects the Glaswegian's assertion, as he does everything else in this show, with playful aggression and measured sarcasm.
One of the genuinely thrilling aspects of seeing Lee is trying to ascertain just how deep his distaste for something extends before he blows it up into one of his elaborate set-pieces, especially as some of the targets are so close - his employers at the BBC and a Sunday newspaper are guilty by association of the emergence of the "Russell comedian" and the rise of Jeremy Clarkson.
Yet it's Clarkson's partner in politically incorrect sniggering, Richard Hammond, who bears the brunt of Lee's ire. And just so any tabloid newspapers or bootleggers posting out-of-context YouTube clips of him denouncing his ex-schoolmate understand, he truly wishes Hammond had died in his car crash, with all the jollying contempt the Top Gear presenters reserve for Gordon Brown's blindness or the "myth" of climate change.
His last routine, some furious grandstanding at the vacuity of advertising, is rendered all the sweeter for taking a pop at the cider sponsors of the Glasgow Comedy Festival, which, despite flirting with self-parody, is a suitably impressive climax. As a coda, he adds something allegedly shocking in contemporary stand-up, a seemingly genuine attempt to do something sincerely and well, singing Steve Earle's Galway Girl.
Stewart Lee
2010-03-18T17:27:45+00:00
FRANKIE Boyle would have you believe that comics hitting 40 lose their potency, the righteous anger that compels them to mock the Queen's anatomy on comedy panel shows. At 41, Stewart Lee is not about to let this lie and meticulously dissects the Glaswegian's assertion, as he does everything else in this show, with playful aggression and measured sarcasm. One of the genuinely thrilling aspects of seeing Lee is trying to ascertain just how deep his distaste for something extends before he blows it up into one of his elaborate set-pieces, especially as some of the targets are so close - his employers at the BBC and a Sunday newspaper are guilty by association of the emergence of the "Russell comedian" and the rise of Jeremy Clarkson. Yet it's Clarkson's partner in politically incorrect sniggering, Richard Hammond, who bears the brunt of Lee's ire. And just so any tabloid newspapers or bootleggers posting out-of-context YouTube clips of him denouncing his ex-schoolmate understand, he truly wishes Hammond had died in his car crash, with all the jollying contempt the Top Gear presenters reserve for Gordon Brown's blindness or the "myth" of climate change. His last routine, some furious grandstanding at the vacuity of advertising, is rendered all the sweeter for taking a pop at the cider sponsors of the Glasgow Comedy Festival, which, despite flirting with self-parody, is a suitably impressive climax. As a coda, he adds something allegedly shocking in contemporary stand-up, a seemingly genuine attempt to do something sincerely and well, singing Steve Earle's Galway Girl.
Four decades after his first appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15, Columbia Pictures' Spider-Man movie has honoured the original adolescent anti-hero with an undisclosed budget so high that, according to its director, "if you knew how much it was, it would give you a nosebleed". Spider-Man once survived attack from an alien entity disguised as his own costume, but can this durable character emerge unscathed from Hollywood?
In 1962, when the 40-year-old comic-book hack Stan Lee submitted his latest idea, his publisher, Martin Goodman, was not encouraging. The teenage orphan Peter Parker, having been bitten by a radioactive spider, might have spun webs, climbed walls and swung between skyscrapers, but he nearly never made it out of the notebook. "Goodman said I must have lost my marbles," says Lee, reciting a well-rehearsed story he doesn't sound the least bit tired of. "He said it wouldn't work, for three reasons. One, he said people hated spiders, so nobody was going to buy a book called Spider- Man. Two, he said teenagers could only be sidekicks, not main characters. And three, he didn't like the fact that Peter Parker had a lot of problems - money worries, girls didn't like him, boys didn't like him, family issues, allergies, asthma, ingrowing toenails.
He said I didn't understand what a hero was. He said heroes didn't have problems, and that's why they're heroes." Eventually, the first Spider-Man strip ran in the final issue of the failing Amazing Fantasy title, where it could do little harm. Lee got Steve Ditko to draw the character, thinking that his spindly style would suit the insect-human better than the robust approach of his usual artist, Jack Kirby, who had carved out the imposing figure of the Incredible Hulk. Favourable fan response swiftly made Spider-Man the flagship character of the fledgling Marvel Comics Group.
Lee's tale of the creation of Spider-Man is imbued, in hindsight, with a delicious irony. It has grown with the telling, because he is a natural storyteller. But behind his modest exterior and luxuriant moustache, he's also aware of the importance of maintaining the integrity of a myth, be it his own or that of the characters he sired. As the movie prepublicity reaches saturation point here, it's easy to forget what a radical concept Spider-Man once was, and how he broke the mould of the medium that spawned him.
Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, is set among the post-war comic-book publishing houses of New York. It describes a generation of wartime Jewish and European immigrant draughtsmen fulfling frustrated fantasies of fighting the Nazi enemy they left behind in four-colour comic-book strips where Stars-and-Stripes-clad avengers obliterate axis battalions. Lee himself, formerly Stanley Lieber, appears in
the book as a supporting character. At the start of the 1960s, superheroes remained largely lantern-jawed patriots. But when Lee put a New York teenager, Peter Parker, in a spider suit, it was as if he sensed the social changes that were to define the decade.
After Ditko's departure in 1965, Lee and a variety of artists made the Spider-Man comics into a check list of groovy countercultural concerns. Parker's future romantic lead, Mary Jane Watson, tried out as a go-go dancer; his first love, Gwen Stacy, railed against the chauvinism of his employer, the newspaper editor J.Jonah Jameson; and credible black characters filtered into the supporting cast, articulating civil rights rhetoric. In June 1971, when Spider-Man saved his hallucinating roommate from the effects of an unspecified drug, Lee struck a blow against the McCarthy-era legacy of the Comics Code Authority. Amazing Spider-Man #97 was the first comic book since the 1950s to run without the cover bearing the authority's official seal of approval.
Eventually, Lee assumed an executive role as younger writers took over his creations, and watched in despair as Spider-Man starred in a late-1970s live-action television show. "It was so juvenile," he rails. "Spider- Man had no personality and no humour. Each week, a fellow would come up and say, 'Hey! Someone's committing a crime', and Peter Parker would say, 'I'd better put on my mask and go and stop them.' It was one-dimensional. I'm reluctant to say that TV and film are less sophisticated than comic books, but their adaptations are often not as good as the comics themselves."
Traditionally, comics fans cower before the latest superhero blockbuster with a mixture of excitement and apprehension. But a forthcoming Daredevil movie starring the stoat-faced Ben Affleck aside, Lee's creations seem to be in good hands. The Oscar-winner Ang Lee is overseeing an Incredible Hulk movie, and Spider-Man is not the disaster comic-book cross- overs nonnally are, even though it has its faults. Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane Watson is reduced from a feisty heroine into a piece of screaming meat; the motivation of Spider-Man's archenemy, the Green Goblin, is muddy, and his comically inexpressive mask ironically conceals the genuinely terrifying face of Willem Dafoe; there's a gauche metaphor for New Yorkers' solidarity after September 11 in the final reel; and the action sequences have the airless, computer-generated sheen of Tomb Raider video games. But Tobey Maguire is appropriately bewildered as Peter Parker, and the script doesn't try to turn a lightweight story into something dark and meaningful. As "event" movies go, it's far better than most. It broke box- office records in the United States, taking $114m in its opening weekend, and it suggests that a Spider-Man franchise, if handled with more care than Warner Bros' Batman, might have a substantial shelf life.
Much of the credit for the movie's success must go to the director and polymath Sam Raimi. In his insistence that Peter Parker be played by Maguire, an oddball leading man who's about as quirky as one might expect a major studio to allow. Raimi reveals an understanding of the character from his past as a childhood fan. "In Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's creation," Raimi explains diplomatically, "the beauty of it was always that Peter Parker was one of us. He's not good-looking, he's not popular, he's picked on and he's from a lower-middle-class family.
He's not a square-jawed, handsome, confident fellow. He's insecure. So, when he becomes a hero, it's almost like we become the hero too. That's what drew me to the stories." Watching him sitting smoking in a London hotel room, one can't help but sympathise with Raimi. His CV includes both collaborating on Coen brothers scripts and producing the Xena: Warrior Princess television series, and he moves between high and low culture as easily as Lee slipped Shake- speare and Kafka quotes into superhero punch-ups. But tackling a character as famous as Spider-Man comes with inherent problems. "I was aware, all through the making of the movie, of fans' expectations," he explains wearily. "Spider-Man's a very important character in the minds of a lot of people, and I don't think they want him messed with."
As well as fan opposition, Raimi had to clear substantial changes with his executive producer at Marvel Comics, who was anxious about how alterations to the character would affect merchandising opportunities. These problems presumably weren't present on Raimi's art-house thriller A Simple Plan, which wasn't expected to launch a raft of Billy Bob Thornton action figures at pocket-money prices.
As he reflects on the project, the admirably ego-less Raimi looks shell-shocked. "I tried not to put myself on the screen. This isn't Sam Raimi's Spider-Man. It's Stan Lee's Spider-Man. But I was susceptible to all this criticism. Some film-makers are artists. Others are craftsmen. I look at myself as an entertainer. What I want to do is give the audience a good time. That's when I feel fulfilled. It's pitiful. I'm going: 'Please like this.'
So, when I read so much displeasure with the choices, it's disquieting." Raimi is being unduly modest. He is a craftsman. Filming his first feature, 1982's Evil Dead, on a budget of $385,000, he patented "the shaky-cam", a camera mounted on a plank of wood to simulate the approach of supernatural entities. Twenty years later, it is still terrifying. So, just as the comic book characters might be smothered in a big budget, are Raimi's talents hidebound by the film's computer-generated world? Does he feel removed from the finished product?
"Well, I feel more out of the process. On Evil Dead, I literally ran through the woods with the camera. and sometimes got knocked on my ass. That is different to sitting with a team of animators, colourists and visual-effects designers, all commenting on how there should be more background haze, or how we could create a little shadow. But I'm going to get back to that Evil Dead kind of visceral film-making soon. I don't know how, but it's been growing in my heart."
There'll be no time for a purge between projects, though. Raimi has already signed on for the sequel and has bought shares in Marvel Comics, whose rather doubtful recent financial profile will have been stabilised somewhat by his own hard work on the Spider-Man movie. He says that when Lee saw a rough cut of Spider-Man, he cried. "I was afraid to ask why he cried. Was he so upset or was he moved by it?" laughs Raimi. "I want him to like it," he adds, serious again.
But now the job is done, and at least the version of Spider-Man currently reaching his largest audience ever is both recognisable to readers and satisfactory to the studios. Spider-Man, now a valuable commodity, has been redefined, and in his blurred boundaries you can see the thumb-prints of many more creative talents than the original two-man team that brought him to life in 1962. Lee spoke to me the day after attending the premiere and was clearly elated. And Raimi has also earned himself a few brownie points with comics aficionados. The opening credits thoughtfully attribute the creation of the character to both Lee and Ditko. Did Raimi invite Ditko to see the movie? "Er ... no. I never met the man. I wish I would have invited him, but I didn't. I felt I should mention him in the credits, and I still don't know if l did the right thing. It's only through reading articles, not knowing the real story, that I thought his name should be in there. We still don't really know who created Spider-Man."
Four decades after his first appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15, Columbia Pictures' Spider-Man movie has honoured the original adolescent anti-hero with an undisclosed budget so high that, according to its director, "if you knew how much it was, it would give you a nosebleed". Spider-Man once survived attack from an alien entity disguised as his own costume, but can this durable character emerge unscathed from Hollywood? In 1962, when the 40-year-old comic-book hack Stan Lee submitted his latest idea, his publisher, Martin Goodman, was not encouraging. The teenage orphan Peter Parker, having been bitten by a radioactive spider, might have spun webs, climbed walls and swung between skyscrapers, but he nearly never made it out of the notebook. "Goodman said I must have lost my marbles," says Lee, reciting a well-rehearsed story he doesn't sound the least bit tired of. "He said it wouldn't work, for three reasons. One, he said people hated spiders, so nobody was going to buy a book called Spider- Man. Two, he said teenagers could only be sidekicks, not main characters. And three, he didn't like the fact that Peter Parker had a lot of problems - money worries, girls didn't like him, boys didn't like him, family issues, allergies, asthma, ingrowing toenails. He said I didn't understand what a hero was. He said heroes didn't have problems, and that's why they're heroes." Eventually, the first Spider-Man strip ran in the final issue of the failing Amazing Fantasy title, where it could do little harm. Lee got Steve Ditko to draw the character, thinking that his spindly style would suit the insect-human better than the robust approach of his usual artist, Jack Kirby, who had carved out the imposing figure of the Incredible Hulk. Favourable fan response swiftly made Spider-Man the flagship character of the...
The Seventies prog survivor Peter Hammill is stripped of the embellishments of Van Der Graaf Generator, naked but for piano or guitar, on seven recent live cd's. Hammill's declamatory plainsong refutes standard rock procedure, and when he touches your heart, it's usually via the cerebral cortex.
His piano pieces have an epic Weimar whiff, whilst the sixty-four year old's brutally pragmatic guitar suggest an anglicised answer to the lo-fi American weird-beard school.
Hammill will free your mind and, though your ass won't be following anytime soon, he remains a national treasure.
Stewart Lee
2012-02-26T20:12:30+00:00
The Seventies prog survivor Peter Hammill is stripped of the embellishments of Van Der Graaf Generator, naked but for piano or guitar, on seven recent live cd's. Hammill's declamatory plainsong refutes standard rock procedure, and when he touches your heart, it's usually via the cerebral cortex. His piano pieces have an epic Weimar whiff, whilst the sixty-four year old's brutally pragmatic guitar suggest an anglicised answer to the lo-fi American weird-beard school. Hammill will free your mind and, though your ass won't be following anytime soon, he remains a national treasure.
During the encore (though he never left the stage) of Stewart Lee's latest show, he suggested the convoluted nature of his performances make him "impossible to review", and I'm tempted to agree - or at least admit it seems unfair to do so while he road tests material for his next TV series.
The current Room With A Stew tour is a work-in-progress for three episodes of Lee's brilliantly original Comedy Vehicle, and finds him in typically antagonistic form, regularly admonishing the audience for not keeping up - or missing the best jokes - as well as recalling the halcyon days when he played to a more elite crowd in the Arts Centre's tiny Studio venue.
It's familiar turf for anyone who has seen him before, and despite the repetitiveness of his reprimands and diatribes he plays the frustrated middle-aged intellectual to perfection as well as belly laughs from a fiercely partisan crowd.
The loyalty of his supporters is also what enables Lee to perform disjointed practice sessions - he read the encore from notes - in 1,500-seat halls.
Their reward was typically clever, unconventional material - which ranged from Lee's futile attempts at Islamaphobic observational comedy (“to get the Daily Mail off my back”) to national identity to urine - and while there's undoubtedly work to be done, it was as enjoyable as it was fascinating to get a glimpse "behind the wizard's cloak" of one of the UK's bravest comics.
Stewart Lee
2015-02-09T21:51:17+00:00
During the encore (though he never left the stage) of Stewart Lee's latest show, he suggested the convoluted nature of his performances make him "impossible to review", and I'm tempted to agree - or at least admit it seems unfair to do so while he road tests material for his next TV series. The current Room With A Stew tour is a work-in-progress for three episodes of Lee's brilliantly original Comedy Vehicle, and finds him in typically antagonistic form, regularly admonishing the audience for not keeping up - or missing the best jokes - as well as recalling the halcyon days when he played to a more elite crowd in the Arts Centre's tiny Studio venue. It's familiar turf for anyone who has seen him before, and despite the repetitiveness of his reprimands and diatribes he plays the frustrated middle-aged intellectual to perfection as well as belly laughs from a fiercely partisan crowd. The loyalty of his supporters is also what enables Lee to perform disjointed practice sessions - he read the encore from notes - in 1,500-seat halls. Their reward was typically clever, unconventional material - which ranged from Lee's futile attempts at Islamaphobic observational comedy (“to get the Daily Mail off my back”) to national identity to urine - and while there's undoubtedly work to be done, it was as enjoyable as it was fascinating to get a glimpse "behind the wizard's cloak" of one of the UK's bravest comics.
STOP PRESS. PEA GREEN BOAT LIVE AT WILTON’S MUSIC HALL LONDON, THURS 22ND OCTOBER
With Charlotte Keeffe (Trumpet & Flugelhorn ~ Charlotte Keeffe’s RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW, Sound Brush, London Jazz Composers Orchestra),Thurston Moore(Guitar – Thurston Moore Band, Sonic Youth), andMark Wastell(Drums –Derek Bailey’s Company, David Sylvian, Maggie Nicols).
STOP PRESS, A PODCAST, XS MALARKEY, M’CR, SAT 11TH JULY
Joking Apart: Stewart Lee asks Robert Lloyd to explain old jokes
2 episodes of an exciting new podcast featuring the comedian Stewart Lee and his mentor, the Birmingham punk legend Robert Lloyd of Prefects, Nightingales and King Rocker repute.
Saturday 11th July
Doors: 1.30 Show: 2pm
Tickets £15 (£13 XS Malarkey members)
On sale July 1st
1. THINGS PEOPLE GAVE ME
People have been very kindly giving me things on this tour – a superbly apposite Don Patterson book with an accompanying name I couldn’t read so could not thank, a spare Art Ensemble Of Chicago album, some Steve Lacy, 3 Australian grunge classics – and it is always so faffy in the queue at the end I can never thank people properly.
I am very grateful for these undeserved things.
That is all. I just wanted to say that.
2. PEA GREEN BOAT AND BOOK TOUR
I will have a book out, illustrated by David Waywell, of my old live show Pea Green Boat in September. The first of four proposed live book events are on sale now but the Liverpool one has sold out..
FROM AWARD-WINNING COMEDIAN AND BESTSELLING AUTHOR STEWART LEE
Stewart Lee to release a brilliantly dark comedic retelling of Edward Lear’s The Owl and the Pussycat – alongside a UK book tour.
“I am having problems relating to my crew member, having never been a great fan of cats, nor they of birds. Why have we been press ganged into service together? What can they hope to achieve by sending this absurd duo out to sea? I am an owl. The Cat is a cat...”
In Pea Green Boat, Stewart Lee and David Waywell create a dark, grotesque retelling of The Owl and the Pussycat in which Edward Lear's characters are revealed to be catastrophically poorly-equipped for maritime travel. Told through the increasingly deranged diary of the Owl, the real story is unmasked – he cannot open the honey jar due to his lack of opposable thumbs, he is terrified the cat will eat him in his sleep, and he struggles to play the guitar despite having no fingers. As hunger, exhaustion and poor navigation take their toll, it becomes clear that these two creatures should never have been put in a boat together.
Inspired by Stewart Lee’s cult 2001 stage piece, Pea Green Boat blends Lee’s fascination with Edward Lear with his own comedy. Now, with David's gothic-comic illustrations, the story is brought vividly, hilariously and unsettlingly to life.
About the author:
Stewart Lee began performing stand-up in 1988 and won the Hackney Empire New Act of the Year in 1990. He co-wrote the libretto for Jerry Springer: The Opera, which won four Olivier Awards, and is known for his BAFTA-winning BBC series Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle. His major live shows include Carpet Remnant World, Much A Stew About Nothing, Snowflake/Tornado, Basic Lee and Stewart Lee vs The Man-Wulf.
He is also the bestselling author of How I Escaped My Certain Fate, Content Provider, and March of the Lemmings.
David Waywell (Illustrator)
David Waywell is a writer and illustrator based in the North West. He holds a PhD in Romantic Literature from the University of Liverpool and is the author of The Secret Lives of Monks and Second-Class Male (written as Stan Madeley)
3. Stewart Lee PLUS MUSICIANS PERFORM PEA GREEN BOAT
Stewart Lee performs his darkly comic tale based on Edward Lear’s ‘The Owl & The Pussy- cat’ with live improvised musical accompaniment. These live shows mark the publication of PEA GREEN BOAT by Stewart Lee and illustrated by David Waywell, and, at Leicester Square Theatre, every ticket includes a hardback copy (RRP £16.99 Ebury) to be collected at the performance. Copies will be available to buy at other venues. Suitable for age 16+.
‘It’s the Edward Lear / Stewart Lee Mash-Up that I’ve been waiting for!’ Harry Hill
Wed 9 Sept 2026, 7:30pm Liverpool Music Room, Royal Philharmonic with WILL SERGEANT (Echo & The Bunnymen) on ambient guitar (SOLD OUT)
Thurs 22nd October, Wilton’s Music Hall London. With Charlotte Keeffe (Trumpet & Flugelhorn ~ Charlotte Keeffe’s RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW, Sound Brush, London Jazz Composers Orchestra), Thurston Moore (Guitar – Thurston Moore Band, Sonic Youth), and Mark Wastell (Drums – Derek Bailey’s Company, David Sylvian, Maggie Nicols). https://wiltons.org.uk/whats-on/stewart-lees-pea-green-boat/
Tue 1 Dec 2026, 7pm - London Leicester Square Theatre
Wed 2 Dec 2026, 7pm - London Leicester Square Theatre
Thur 3rd Dec 2026, 7pm - London Leicester Square Theatre
Tickets go on sale on Friday, 24th April 2026 go to www.stewartlee.co.uk/pgb. Further dates and accompanying musicians to be announced.
4. The Dig
I cycled around Hackney for a day earlier this year to promote the East London Second Hand vinyl stores’ Dig initiative.
Here’s a compilation of the evidence that people seem to have enjoyed.
I am now writing 1000 funny words a week for Carole Cadwalladr’s new on-line newspaper The Nerve, run by people who were sacked or quit when Tories and Telegraph/Times types took over The Observer.
The Observer is in a moral death spiral, witch sackings and redundancies, clearly only bought for THE BRAND.
But THE NERVE is immediately ace. Sign up here and it would also really be great if you could pay them £6.95 a month as the 5 women at the helm sunk all their redundancy money into it.
Carole understands that the only story in town is how the tech-bros choose what news we see and how we understand the world, and The Nerve will address this head on.
It’s the only news that matters. Please send the link below and this begging request to anyone you can. . https://www.thenerve.news
Along with WAXFACE’s usual line of Stewart Lee merch there are new for 2025 t-shirts and hoodies on the Man-Wulf theme, all of the highest quality. I’d wear them myself but I’d look arrogant. Waste the money your Nan gave you for Xmas here
AND! Back in stock! We have restocked our most popular tees including All The Cheeses, YOU CAN PROVE ANYTHING WITH FACTS, "I don't think that, I think the opposite of that", and the hit comic book STEWART LEE VS. THE MAN-WULF tee!
All these are available NOW on preorder and will be shipping on April 11th!
Order now via wax face and love all the different cheeses and tees too!
Glasgow’s garage punk veterans The Primevals’ new single is featured in the new Stewart Lee vs The Man-Wulf U.K. tour. There are 3 versions. Side a I’m The Man-Wulf. Side b I’m The Man-Wulf (long nail edit). Plus a 9 minute I’m The Man-Wulf (long nail version). Vinyl sides a&b were released on a 7” 45 in January. https://primevals.bandcamp.com
AND all the tracks are now subsumed into a new mega-mix 12” album, including the extended version of the track as a slow blues, and remixes with big beats and jazzy sax that take it in a whole new direction https://primevals.bandcamp.com/album/im-the-man-wulf-lp
8. STEWART LEE VS THE MAN-WULF
John Mackay & Sally Homer, in association with Debi Allen/Curtis Brown present
STEWART LEE vs THE MAN-WULF BRAND NEW SHOW
UK TOURING THROUGHOUT 2026
The tragedy of this show is that world events are advancing towards its core conceit at such a speed that it is sharpened daily, even as we as a civilisation head into HELL. But here’s the original blurb...
Lee shares his stage with a tough-talking werewolf comedian who hates humanity. The Man-Wulf lays down a ferocious comedy challenge to the culturally irrelevant and physically enfeebled Lee. Can the beast inside us all be silenced with the silver bullet of Lee's unprecedentedly critically acclaimed style of stand-up.
Wednesday 8th July 2026 - Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury - TICKETS
Thursday 9th July 2026 - Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury - TICKETS
Friday 10th July 2026 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Saturday 11th July 2026 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Monday 13th July 2026 - King's Theatre, Glasgow - TICKETS
Tuesday 14th July 2026 - King's Theatre, Glasgow - TICKETS
Wednesday 15th July 2026 - Playhouse, Edinburgh - TICKETS
Thursday 16th July 2026 - Perth Theatre, Perth - TICKETS
Friday 17th July 2026 - Eden Court, Inverness - TICKETS
September 2026
Thursday 3rd September 2026 - King's Theatre, Portsmouth - TICKETS
Friday 4th September 2026 - Pavillion, Weymouth - TICKETS
Saturday 5th September 2026 - Hall For Cornwall, Truro - TICKETS
Thursday 10th September 2026 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Friday 11th September 2026 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Saturday 12th September 2026 - William Aston Hall, Wrexham - TICKETS
Sunday 13th September 2026 - Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton - TICKETS
Wednesday 16th September 2026 - Marina Theatre, Lowestoft - TICKETS
Thursday 17th September 2026 - Marina Theatre, Lowestoft - TICKETS
Friday 18th September 2026 - Castle Theatre, Wellingborough - TICKETS
Saturday 19th September 2026 - The Central Theatre, Chatham - TICKETS
Thursday 24th September 2026 - Bristol Beacon, Bristol - TICKETS
Friday 25th September 2026 - Bristol Beacon, Bristol - TICKETS
Saturday 26th September 2026 - Bristol Beacon, Bristol - TICKETS
Tuesday 29th September 2026 - Truck Theatre, Hull - TICKETS
Wednesday 30th September 2026 - Truck Theatre, Hull - TICKETS
October 2026
Thursday 1st October 2026 - The Spa Centre, Scarborough - TICKETS
Friday 2nd October 2026 - Alhambra Theatre, Bradford - TICKETS
Saturday 3rd October 2026 - Alhambra Theatre, Bradford - TICKETS
Tuesday 6th October 2026 - Festival Theatre, Malvern - TICKETS
Wednesday 7th October 2026 - Festival Theatre, Malvern - TICKETS
Thursday 8th October 2026 - Belgrade Theatre, Coventry - TICKETS
Friday 9th October 2026 - Belgrade Theatre, Coventry - TICKETS
Saturday 10th October 2026 - Belgrade Theatre, Coventry - TICKETS
Monday 12th October 2026 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Tuesday 13th October 2026 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Saturday 17th October 2026 - Waterside Theatre, Aylesbury - TICKETS
Sunday 18th October 2026 - Hippodrome, Birmingham - TICKETS
Friday 23rd October 2026 - New Theatre, Peterborough - TICKETS
Saturday 24th October 2026 - Tyne Theatre & Opera House, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Sunday 25th October 2026 - Tyne Theatre & Opera House, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Friday 30th October 2026 - Pavilion Theatre, Worthing - TICKETS
Saturday 31st October 2026 - Lighthouse, Poole - TICKETS
November 2026
Sunday 1st November 2026 - Devonshire Park Theatre, Eastbourne - TICKETS
Thursday 5th November 2026 - City Hall, Salisbury - TICKETS
Friday 6th November 2026 - The Anvil, Basingstoke - TICKETS
Saturday 7th November 2026 - New Wimbledon Theatre, Wimbledon - TICKETS
Monday 9th November 2026 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Tuesday 10th November 2026 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Wednesday 11th November 2026 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Thursday 12th November 2026 - Chelmsford Theatre, Chelmsford - TICKETS
Friday 13th November 2026 - Chelmsford Theatre, Chelmsford - TICKETS
December 2026
Friday 4th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Saturday 5th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Saturday 5th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Tuesday 8th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Wednesday 9th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Thursday 10th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Friday 11th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Saturday 12th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Saturday 12th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Monday 14th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Tuesday 15th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Wednesday 16th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Thursday 17th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Friday 18th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
9. UP THE ANTI, FUNDRAISER FOR THE N LONDON HUNT SABOTEURS, MONDAY JULY 6TH, LECIS SQ THEATRE, LONDON, 8.45 PM
Join an incredible line up of comedians for a night of laughter in aid of the North London Hunt Saboteurs. Featuring Daniel Fox, Harry Badger, James Gill, Horn Walsh, Sue Jerkins, Shappi Coarse-Angling, Alasdair Bear-Baiting, and Stewart Eel.
NLHS take part in direct action to deter and intervene in organised bloodsports in the countryside around London and beyond.
All profits will go to their work.
The Trawl Marina Purkiss and Gemma Forte had me on their unashamedly political podcast. They are twin national treasures. You can find it in the usual places.
Alexei Sayle Podcast I just done this again with the Podfather of Alternative Comedy. Usual outlets.
12. FESTIVALS I will be doing short stand-up sets at the following festivals
DEER SHED 24TH – 26TH JULY, BLADERSBY PARK, N YORKS https://deershedfestival.com Sleaford Mods, Angeline Morrison, New Eves & The Adam Buxton Band. The village fete vibe of indie rock!
Mogwai, Dry Cleaning, Scientist, Tamikrest, Charlotte Church Pop Dungeon, Motrik, New Eves, My New Band Believe, Madra Salach.
KRANKENHAUS, 28TH-30TH AUGUST, MUNCASTER CASTLE, LAKE DISTRICT. It’s the best music festival in the world but don’t tell anyone about it. Sea Power, House Of All, Laura Cannell, Fallen Women, Stereolab, lectures, talks, walks, mountains. All the fun of the farm!
END OF THE ROAD 3rd – 6th SEPT, LARMER TREE GARDENS, DOREST. Pulp, Lucinda Williams, Caroline, Brighde Chaimbeul, Mozart Estate, David Thomas Broughton, Gnod.
13. THE MELT IT! TOUR
The documentary film about The Iceman, that I am in a bit, is on tour. Please support it and him.
"In the 1980s and 1990s, Anthony Irvine was a comedian and cabaret performer. His act was a little unusual. As the Iceman, he went on stage... to melt ice. Literally. He’d bring a large block of ice onto the stage then proceed to melt it (or fail to melt it) in a variety of creative ways. Among his fans were Mike Myers, Stewart Lee and Bill Bailey. In 2010, when Robert Wringham wrote his book about this era of comedy, the Iceman could not be found. But a few years later, Anthony Irvine popped up again. This time as a visual artist called Aim. What was going on? Starring - Anthony Irvine & Robert Wringham with Stewart Lee, Jo Brand, Mark Thomas, Robin Ince, Ronni Ancona, Simon Munnery, Neil Mullarkey & Stuart Semple. Producers - Mark Cartwright & Robert Wringham (You are nothing / New Escapologist).
Executive Producer - Michael Cumming (Toast of London / Brass Eye / King Rocker). Director - Mark Cartwright.
“It’s art, it’s odd, it’s fun and you need to see it.” Mark Thomas (Comedian)
"An affectionate and heartfelt celebration of a man who pioneered the idea of melting ice on stage. Immensely charming." Arthur Matthews (Father Ted / Toast of London)
“This film is n...ice. You must see it. It’s important.” - Iain Lee (TV / Radio)
JULY SCREENING DATES
Documentary screening + Q&A with producers Robert Wringham & Mark Cartwright.
The Angels of Mons Exhibition, Southport. A free exhibition opens at The Atkinson in Southport until 17th October.
Produced in partnership with Mons Memorial Museum, it explores one of the most enduring supernatural legends of the First World War — the belief that St George and ghostly archers appeared to protect British troops at the Battle of Mons in 1914, a legend sparked in part by Arthur Machen's short storyThe Bowmen.
The exhibition examines how religion, propaganda and the need for hope shaped wartime belief, and why such stories took such a powerful hold on the public imagination.
Robert Lloyd Parry's Machen event, Southport. Writer and performer Robert Lloyd Parry will be hosting a fringe event at the Bijou Cinema in Southport on Saturday 25th July. The event schedule is still to be announced, but will include screenings, discussions and readings.
ALISON COTTON The violin-toting mystic hits the road
JULY
1 - LONDON - The Old Church, Stoke Newington (SEE ANNA LAETITIA BARBAULD’S GRAVE TOO)
2 - BRIGHTON - The Rose Hill
3 - NORWICH - The Holloway
BEN MOOR& JO NEARY - BOOKTALKBOOKTALKBOOK. This superb piece explodes the idea of the literary event with kaleidoscopic brilliance. Hen and Chickens London on Sunday 5th July
OH-SEES Mighty psyche-punk juggernaut. JULY 14th & 15th Leeds Irish Centre, 16th & 17th London Earth.
MY NEW BAND BELIEVE Lithe Black Midi spin-out
19thJul – London, UK – Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre (Rough Trade 50 w/caroline) 21-23rdAug – Bannau Brycheiniog, UK – Green Man Festival
22ndOct – Newcastle, UK – Cluny 2
23rdOct – Edinburgh, UK – Cabaret Voltaire
26thOct – Liverpool, UK – District
27thOct - Cardiff, UK- The Globe
28thOct – Brighton, UK - Concorde 2
MILLIONS OF DEAD COPS Hardcore originators. New Cross Inn, London August 10th
THE BATS Reliably heartbreaking NZ veterans make a rare UK tour
AUGUST 12th/13th Lexington London, 14th Leeds Brudenell, 16th Newcastle Cluny, 19th B’ham Hare & Hounds
BOOTHBY GRAFFOE & ANTONI0 FORCIONE – WOT ITALIAN. Boothby and Antonio are reviving this solid classic slice of virtuoso music and comedy. A must see. All over UK from 30th Aug – 14th Nov. Dates here
THE ROOM Bunnymen/Teardrops-adjacent 80s Liverpool psychedelic survivors return in dishevelled majesty. SEPT 11TH Future Yard Birkenhead album launch. November 13that Dublin Castle London with St Vitus Dance & Vernons Future.
CARLTON MELTON The psychedelic warlords manifest in physical form.
SEPT 17th Hastings Tough Love, 19th London Strongroom, 19th Glastonbury King Arthur, 20th Brighton Daltons, 22nd Cardiff Fuel, 23rd N’hampton Lab, 24th Liverpool Lost Are Skate Shop, 25th Todmorden Golden Lion w Cosmic Dead, 26th MATINEE Todmorden Golden Lion w Cosmic Dead, 27th Margate Bar Nothing
LEMONHEADS Melodic hardcore countryfied punk cherub soldiers on
30 Sep: Electric, Sheffield, UK
01 Oct: De La Warr, Bexhill, UK
02 Oct:Troxy, London, UK
03 Oct: UEA, Norwich, UK
05 Oct: Boiler Shop, Newcastle, UK
06 Oct: SWG3, Glasgow, UK
07 Oct: Albert Hall, Manchester, UK
09 Oct: Electric, Bristol, UK
10 Oct: O2 Institute, Birmingham, UK
11 Oct: Rock City, Nottingham, UK
DELINES Cinematic symphonic country rock sophisticates. OCTOBER 2nd Glasgow GUU, 3rd Gosforth Civic, 4th Leeds City Varieties
BUFFALO TOM Former hardcore types mellowed into folkish indie power trio. OCT 6th Belfast Limelight, 7th Edinburgh La Belle Angelle, 9th M’cr Band On The Wall, 10TH London Village Underground
THE LONG RYDERS Another go-round for the indefatigable alt country pioneers, now one of the world’s greatest live bands
OCT 6th Liverpool Caverm
7th Newcastle Cluny,
8th Kendal Brewery,
10th Leeds Old Woolen,
13th Nottingham Metronome,
15th London Electric Ballroom,
16th St Leonards Piper,
17th Canterbury Gulbenkian
BORIS Brain melting Japanese heavy-psyche legends return.
OCT 10th Bristol Strange Brew, 11th Newcastle Digital, 12th Glasgow Oran Moor, 13th Leeds Brudenell, 14th M’cr Gorilla, 15th London Brixton Electric, 16th Brighton Concorde 2
BOTTLE ROCKETS Alt-country initiators in rare UK jaunt OCT 16th North Shields Three Tanners, 20th Bristol Lanes, 21st London Lexington
WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM Eco-conscious doom metal.
08/11 Manchester, UK @ Damnation Festival
09/11 London, UK @ 02 Academy Islington
DAMNED/SAINTS (73-78) TOUR
The original Damned line-up, minus Brian James but with Rat Scabies back on drums, were amazing when I saw their 50th anniversary show earlier this year. And they are supported by an authenticated version of Australian punk pioneers The Saints with original co-frontman Ed Kuepper present, but the late Chris Bailey’s guitar and vocal duties covered by the dream team of The Birthday Party’s Mick Harvey and super-saints fan Mark Arm of Mudhoney respectively, understandably favours the group’s early thrash sound rather than Bailey’s more songwriterly work. But what a pairing! NOV 25TH Brighton Dome, 27th London British Airways Arc (?), 28th Bristol Beacon, 30th M’cr Academy, Dec 1st N’castle City Hall, Dec 2nd Derby Valiant, Dec 5th B’ham Academy
GOAT Ersatz Scandinavian mystics take their festival field filling ritual rock all the way to the Royal Albert Hall in 2027 April 25th Glasgow SWG3, 26th Cambridge Junction, 28th London RAH, 29th Bristol Prospect, 30th M’cr Victoria Warehouse. I think this will be especially amazing at the RAH, despite its bouncy acoustics.
18. IN OUR LAMENTATIONS 2026
Gunter Schickert (G.A.M guitar man, 1949)
Amos Poe (He squashed a banana in the street, 1949)
Sly Dunbar (definitive dub drummer, 1952)
Sal Buscema (Marvel mastercraftsman, 1936)
Catherine O’Hara (Fucking hilarious, I wish we’d met, 1954)
Philippe Gaulier (Our clown enemy, our clown king, 1943)
Pete Frame (Master music-mapper, 1942)
Kenny Morris (Banshee basher, 1957)
Fred Smith (Low end televisionary, 1948)
Mark Kennedy (Australia’s premier prog-psyche percussionist, 1951)
Eliane Radigue (electro-francais, 1932)
John Hammond (Blues believer, 1942)
Walter Martino (The Goblin groover, 1952)
Country Joe McDonald (The psychedelic fishman, 1942)
Augie Myers (The pseudonymous Sir Douglas himself, 1940)
Phil Campbell (Motorheadbanger, 1961)
Dolores Keane (De voice of De Dannan and dat, 1953)
John Dee Graham (Skunks originator and US punk facilitator, 1959)
Matt Kwasniewski-Kelvin (Black Midi founder, 2000)
Bob Weir (Now dead deadman, 1947)
TK Carter (The Chef in The Thing, 1956)
Chip Taylor (The Wild Thing, 1940)
Ben Keaton (Father Austin Purcell, 1956)
Terry Cox (He drove the impossible folk-jazz fusion, 1937)
Sam Keith (Quirky comics guy, 1963)
Pete Dello (He could not let Maggie go, 1942)
Andrew Bodnar (He loved the sound of breaking glass, 1954)
Terry Sullivan (Dry Ice drummer, 1938)
Sheila Burnette (That funny woman from all those things, 1931)
Diana Green (Omaha The Cat Dancer, 1954)
Alex Pretti (Nurse, 1998)
Greg Elmore (He was a miracle worker, 1946)
Mike Westbrook (Blakean British jazzman, 1936)
Patrick Campbell-Lyons (Psychedelic Nirvana, 1943)
David Wiffen (He lost his driving wheel, 1942)
Bill Leader (British folk magnate, 1929)
Beverley Martin (Auntie aviator, 1947)
Sonny Rollins (my jazz gateway jazzman finally crosses the Bridge, 1930)
Marjane Satrapi (Actual graphic novelist, 1969)
Dave Greenslade (Gangsters theme genius, 1943)
Roy Hattersley (He looked at me in a lamplit library, 1932)
Stranger Cole (Bangarangaman, 1942)
David Hockney (He admired legs, 1937)
Steve Barrow (The Rough Guide To Reggae, 1945)
Matthew Biggs (A lovely gardener who was kind to me, 1960)
Michael Pennington (My first Hamlet, 1943)
Michael Keating (Villa!, 1947)
JH Prynne (Poetic licensee, 1936)
Desmond Morris (Birmingham surrealist, 1928)
Dave Mason (He had a hole in his shoe, 1946)
Andy Kershaw (He opened our ears to the world, 1956)
Mike Westbrook (Solid Gold Cadillac, 1936)
Glen Baxter (Surreal draftsman, 1944)
The Major Oak, Sherwood Forest (Mythic tree, c 1000)
Stewart Lee
2026-06-30T09:00:56+01:00
FROM THE TOUR HOTEL DESK OF STEWART LEE July 2026 STOP PRESS. PEA GREEN BOAT LIVE AT WILTON’S MUSIC HALL LONDON, THURS 22ND OCTOBER With Charlotte Keeffe (Trumpet & Flugelhorn ~ Charlotte Keeffe’s RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW, Sound Brush, London Jazz Composers Orchestra),Thurston Moore(Guitar – Thurston Moore Band, Sonic Youth), andMark Wastell(Drums –Derek Bailey’s Company, David Sylvian, Maggie Nicols). https://wiltons.org.uk/whats-on/stewart-lees-pea-green-boat/ STOP PRESS, A PODCAST, XS MALARKEY, M’CR, SAT 11TH JULY Joking Apart: Stewart Lee asks Robert Lloyd to explain old jokes 2 episodes of an exciting new podcast featuring the comedian Stewart Lee and his mentor, the Birmingham punk legend Robert Lloyd of Prefects, Nightingales and King Rocker repute. Saturday 11th July Doors: 1.30 Show: 2pm Tickets £15 (£13 XS Malarkey members) On sale July 1st 1. THINGS PEOPLE GAVE ME People have been very kindly giving me things on this tour – a superbly apposite Don Patterson book with an accompanying name I couldn’t read so could not thank, a spare Art Ensemble Of Chicago album, some Steve Lacy, 3 Australian grunge classics – and it is always so faffy in the queue at the end I can never thank people properly. I am very grateful for these undeserved things. That is all. I just wanted to say that. 2. PEA GREEN BOAT AND BOOK TOUR I will have a book out, illustrated by David Waywell, of my old live show Pea Green Boat in September. The first of four proposed live book events are on sale now but the Liverpool one has sold out.. FROM AWARD-WINNING COMEDIAN AND BESTSELLING AUTHOR STEWART LEE Pea Green Boat STEWART LEE EBURY SPOTLIGHT | 3RD SEPTEMBER 2026 | £16.00 | ISBN: 9781529988604 | HARDBACK Stewart Lee to release a brilliantly dark comedic retelling of Edward Lear’s The Owl and the Pussycat –...
Most of the television I watch has some sort of soporific purpose, or at the very least is kind of there for passive enjoyment, to help me unwind, to offer mild escapism etc etc. And this is not necessarily a slight on the majority of what I watch. We're not huge TV-watchers in my household, and generally turn to it towards the end of the evening once work/chores/general cultural stimulation are out of the way/no longer an enjoyable or viable prospect. However, one series is proving a little more thought-provoking - Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle.
As this clip illustrates, Lee increasingly pulls apart his stand-up routines, becoming ever more self-critical and self-aware, stepping away from the initial narrative to pull apart a punchline or critique a particular train of thought. It starts with otters and estate agents and ends up somewhere very, very different.
The routines are generally challenging, yet ultimately satisfying, for this deconstruction. As an audience, I think we are increasingly aware of the standard tropes, methods and techniques of performance (in this case comedy), and Lee plays on this understanding.
He is lucky in that he has been in stand-up long enough to have built up a strong, loyal following. This material generally benefits from a supportive audience, willing to see where his routine may go. These routines would be a lot different, and perhaps a lot less effective, if they were performed in front of a 'cold' audience looking for cheap laughs. It requires patience.
Lee plays on the type of audience he has built up, and attracts. They want to work a little, they want to pick out and appreciate the more obtuse references, and they want to see him picking apart the conventions of stand-up comedy. He plays to a literate, and a comedy-literate audience.
This type of comedy is kind of like comedy with footnotes. Indeed, his recent book is full of them, and dissects his comedy in much the same way his performance does.
This adds a sense of danger that the best stand-up should offer. At any point the routine could completely fall in on itself. Half the fun is in seeing just how far he can probe and push things, whilst still keeping it entertaining. Also, like some of the best stand-up, it has the duality of appearing off-the-cuff, whilst also, on reflection, seeming incredibly controlled, considered and skilful. The pacing and the timing are exquisite, but are pushed to their very limits.
So, why this sort of comedy?
Well, perhaps we, as an audience, are looking for a less linear narrative in storytelling, in whatever genre. We are bombarded by all kinds of sources in our everyday lives. No longer do we experience world events purely through the simplicity of an evening news broadcast or a newspaper report. Our world is a multimedia one, in the broadest sense of the word. We are (or think we are) increasingly media savvy. We can spot a cliché a mile off. We collate and consume multiple sources in coming to our understanding of the world. We need something more complex than a linear story.
Maybe the deconstruction is there because the audience will be desconstructing anyway - it just pre-empts the audience, by acknowledging the 'act' and the nuts and bolts that hold it together, before (or as) the audience does. This is also an opportunity for some unexpected laughs - as this is comedy, after all.
Perhaps this form of comedy also reflects (and even indulges and legitimises) our solipsism. It is a self-consciously and deliberately self-absorbed routine. It echoes our self-centred nature, where we constantly deliberate our thoughts and actions, as well as others' perceptions and conclusions about us. Here is the internal narrative made stand-up routine. By so overtly mirroring the thought patterns of the 'Me' Generation (for want of a less horrible and lazy term), perhaps it also challenges that worldview, and illustrates how limited it can be.
Or maybe this is all cod-philosophy and pseudo-intellectualism, and it is just all about otters. Because otters are inherently funny, aren't they?
Stewart Lee
2011-05-18T22:02:58+01:00
Most of the television I watch has some sort of soporific purpose, or at the very least is kind of there for passive enjoyment, to help me unwind, to offer mild escapism etc etc. And this is not necessarily a slight on the majority of what I watch. We're not huge TV-watchers in my household, and generally turn to it towards the end of the evening once work/chores/general cultural stimulation are out of the way/no longer an enjoyable or viable prospect. However, one series is proving a little more thought-provoking - Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle. As this clip illustrates, Lee increasingly pulls apart his stand-up routines, becoming ever more self-critical and self-aware, stepping away from the initial narrative to pull apart a punchline or critique a particular train of thought. It starts with otters and estate agents and ends up somewhere very, very different. The routines are generally challenging, yet ultimately satisfying, for this deconstruction. As an audience, I think we are increasingly aware of the standard tropes, methods and techniques of performance (in this case comedy), and Lee plays on this understanding. He is lucky in that he has been in stand-up long enough to have built up a strong, loyal following. This material generally benefits from a supportive audience, willing to see where his routine may go. These routines would be a lot different, and perhaps a lot less effective, if they were performed in front of a 'cold' audience looking for cheap laughs. It requires patience. Lee plays on the type of audience he has built up, and attracts. They want to work a little, they want to pick out and appreciate the more obtuse references, and they want to see him picking apart the conventions of stand-up comedy. He plays to a literate, and a comedy-literate...
The psychedelic pioneer and former Thirteenth Floor Elevator Roky Erickson was presumed destroyed by LSD and electric shock therapy and this 1980 comeback, painstakingly produced by Creedence Clearwater Revival's Stu Cook, remained unreleased outside Europe.
Erickson bayed schlock horror lyrics, his philosophical musings now abandoned, over then unfashionably chiseled hard rock riffs. But this apparently inane idiom made perfect sense to a Texan teen visionary raised on b-movies.
Two Headed Dog, I Think Of Demons, and Bloody Hammer are fluid, lucid, honest and chilling.
And there's shimmering electric autoharp, from Cold Sun's Bill Miller, throughout.
Stewart Lee
2012-03-04T12:33:51+00:00
The psychedelic pioneer and former Thirteenth Floor Elevator Roky Erickson was presumed destroyed by LSD and electric shock therapy and this 1980 comeback, painstakingly produced by Creedence Clearwater Revival's Stu Cook, remained unreleased outside Europe. Erickson bayed schlock horror lyrics, his philosophical musings now abandoned, over then unfashionably chiseled hard rock riffs. But this apparently inane idiom made perfect sense to a Texan teen visionary raised on b-movies. Two Headed Dog, I Think Of Demons, and Bloody Hammer are fluid, lucid, honest and chilling. And there's shimmering electric autoharp, from Cold Sun's Bill Miller, throughout.
Stand-up and writer Stewart Lee has been described as ‘the comedian’s comedian’, with a distinctive performance style that drew critical acclaim for his BAFTA Award-winning BBC series; Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle.
Pleasingly, not only are we big fans of his, but he is also a big fan of us. Ahead of his own appearance on our Royal Festival Hall stage with Content Provider in April, Lee kindly took a moment to share his memories of six favourite Southbank Centre performances.
The Southbank Centre has been a central pole of my cultural tent since I moved to London 30 years ago, with early 1990s shows hosted by the London Musicians' Collective being especially important to my post-provincial discovery of cool metro-shit.
It was very difficult to pick a top six, with gigs by Lee Ranaldo and William Hooker, Hawkwind, Television, The Soft Boys, Shirley Collins, Sonic Youth, Acid Mothers' Temple, The Stooges, Faust, Ornette Coleman, Iva Bittova, Sonny Rollins, Boredoms, Evan Parker, Alan Tomlinson and Harry Hill doing John Cage, and Camille Paglia in her leather trousers all lodging in the memory. How does one get to curate a Meltdown? Is it gauche to just ask? Anyway, here's six heavy hitters.
Derek Bailey and The Ruins
The Purcell Room
3 April 1997
Twenty-one years ago and this was a life changing gig. Free jazz guitar pioneer Derek Bailey was playing with Japanese improvisation duo The Ruins. At one point, lost in a reverie, he wandered into the back wall of the building, clanging his guitar into it. The Southbank type stiffs in the room seemed embarrassed. Uncle Derek did it again and seamlessly incorporated his accident into his arsenal. I realised you had to roll with what happens. What happens in the room is the gig. I went on to win Celebrity Mastermind answering questions on Derek Bailey.
Tony Conrad
Queen Elizabeth Hall
30 September 1998
Minimalist drone avatar Tony Conrad played one wavering note on the violin for a hour and then stopped, and in the moment he stopped I was forced to contemplate the vastness of the gulf between absence and presence.
Patti Smith & Kevin Shields' The Coral Sea
Queen Elizabeth Hall
22 June 2005
Patti Smith's poetry uncoupled from rock backing, and Kevin Shields' abstract guitar whoosh unleashed from the framing device of My Bloody Valentine. And we were near enough to the front to see exactly what effects pedals he was using, and on what settings.
John Peel Tribute Night
Queen Elizabeth Hall
12 October 2005
The Fall, in a peak late period incarnation, at the bottom of the bill; country chanteuse Laura Cantrell; the sublime protest reggae of Misty in Roots; New Order playing a Joy Division set with an appropriately busted guitar amp; and Delia Smith.
Peter Brotzmann & Full Blast
Purcell Room
November 2008
Pinned to the walls by the German free jazz saxophonist's unforgettable noise trio.
In Search of Nic Jones / The Nightingales
Queen Elizabeth Hall / Purcell Room
28 May 2011
In 2011 The Southbank Centre invited me to curate a three day 'Austerity Binge' in tandem with my stand-up run at the Royal Festival Hall, and I gave myself some tough choices. This night saw missing-in-action folk hero Nic Jones, and supportive friends and collaborators, trawl his much-missed back catalogue. Nextdoor Birmingham's Beefheart-channeling post-punk survivors The Nightingales played the set of a lifetime, Robert Lloyd leaving the stage to roam the royal venue and compromise its dignity. I scampered between both stages in a daze.
Stewart Lee brings Content Provider, his most successful full-length stand-up show ever to Royal Festival Hall for three nights between 19 and 23 April.
Stewart Lee
2018-03-26T13:05:42+01:00
Stand-up and writer Stewart Lee has been described as ‘the comedian’s comedian’, with a distinctive performance style that drew critical acclaim for his BAFTA Award-winning BBC series; Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle. Pleasingly, not only are we big fans of his, but he is also a big fan of us. Ahead of his own appearance on our Royal Festival Hall stage with Content Provider in April, Lee kindly took a moment to share his memories of six favourite Southbank Centre performances. The Southbank Centre has been a central pole of my cultural tent since I moved to London 30 years ago, with early 1990s shows hosted by the London Musicians' Collective being especially important to my post-provincial discovery of cool metro-shit. It was very difficult to pick a top six, with gigs by Lee Ranaldo and William Hooker, Hawkwind, Television, The Soft Boys, Shirley Collins, Sonic Youth, Acid Mothers' Temple, The Stooges, Faust, Ornette Coleman, Iva Bittova, Sonny Rollins, Boredoms, Evan Parker, Alan Tomlinson and Harry Hill doing John Cage, and Camille Paglia in her leather trousers all lodging in the memory. How does one get to curate a Meltdown? Is it gauche to just ask? Anyway, here's six heavy hitters. Derek Bailey and The Ruins The Purcell Room 3 April 1997 Twenty-one years ago and this was a life changing gig. Free jazz guitar pioneer Derek Bailey was playing with Japanese improvisation duo The Ruins. At one point, lost in a reverie, he wandered into the back wall of the building, clanging his guitar into it. The Southbank type stiffs in the room seemed embarrassed. Uncle Derek did it again and seamlessly incorporated his accident into his arsenal. I realised you had to roll with what happens. What happens in the room is the gig. I went on to win...
To anyone who hasn’t been to one of Stewart Lee’s shows before it’s worth pointing out that in his stand up Lee plays an amped up version of himself that is more bitter, angry and insufferably woke than he is in person, and in the process he often berates and taunts the audience. Tonight is no exception as he kicks thing off by threatening to do hilariously unspeakable things to any mobile phones he finds in use during the performance.
An angry and energetic Lee then does some searing material on Brexit, pouring a big bowl of scorn on those who claim they voted leave for reasons not motivated by racism: “We only wanted bendy bananas, and now here we are in a chaotic furnace of hate!” His greatest disdain, though, is reserved for the Machiavellian right-wing power couple, Michael Gove and Sarah Vine who he describes as “Neil and Christine Hamilton for the 2 Girls 1 Cup generation”.
A power struggle then begins between Lee and the two stern faced ushers flanking either side of the stage. Lee insists that they sit down as A) they’re making it difficult for the audience to laugh B) there are plenty of seats in the auditorium which is the worst selling night of the tour. When he learns that they are actually security guards he seems bemused. “What for? There’s so few of you that I could fight you all myself!”
The second half brings some Trump gags that precisely mirror the Brexit material from the first half. One idiot in the audience, not getting that this is a ruse pointing the similar motives behind the result in Brexit and the US election, bellows out the punchlines before they land. An exasperated Lee declares “You’re the kind of bloke who goes to see Othello and shouts, ‘Don’t get jealous mate. She’s not been unfaithful to you!'”
The show ends with a high brow visual gag incorporating a Romanticism era painting, Mr Lee in period costume and a selfie stick. It’s been a great night of comedy and Lee’s hit ratio, at least for me, has been pretty high as I’ve laughed hard and long. I head out to the merch stall to buy one of Lee’s books and wait to see if Stewart will be out to sign it. He doesn’t appear. Perhaps he’s scared of the security guards.
Stewart Lee
2018-03-24T22:39:40+00:00
To anyone who hasn’t been to one of Stewart Lee’s shows before it’s worth pointing out that in his stand up Lee plays an amped up version of himself that is more bitter, angry and insufferably woke than he is in person, and in the process he often berates and taunts the audience. Tonight is no exception as he kicks thing off by threatening to do hilariously unspeakable things to any mobile phones he finds in use during the performance. An angry and energetic Lee then does some searing material on Brexit, pouring a big bowl of scorn on those who claim they voted leave for reasons not motivated by racism: “We only wanted bendy bananas, and now here we are in a chaotic furnace of hate!” His greatest disdain, though, is reserved for the Machiavellian right-wing power couple, Michael Gove and Sarah Vine who he describes as “Neil and Christine Hamilton for the 2 Girls 1 Cup generation”. A power struggle then begins between Lee and the two stern faced ushers flanking either side of the stage. Lee insists that they sit down as A) they’re making it difficult for the audience to laugh B) there are plenty of seats in the auditorium which is the worst selling night of the tour. When he learns that they are actually security guards he seems bemused. “What for? There’s so few of you that I could fight you all myself!” The second half brings some Trump gags that precisely mirror the Brexit material from the first half. One idiot in the audience, not getting that this is a ruse pointing the similar motives behind the result in Brexit and the US election, bellows out the punchlines before they land. An exasperated Lee declares “You’re the kind of bloke who goes to...
Once the alternative music fan’s holiday camp-based festival of choice, All Tomorrow’s Parties has had a troubled recent history. The promoter’s business practices recently went from being the target of indie messageboarders’ ire to attracting the disapproving attention of Private Eye. The regularly liquidated and resurrected company has cancelled and relocated events at a moment’s notice, debts and refunds have gone unpaid, and only a few weeks ago Pontins was informing inquisitive emailers that the event, curated by the comedian Stewart Lee, would not be going ahead.
In the end it does go ahead, if not entirely smoothly. Saturday’s headliner John Cale pulls out the day before he’s due to perform, tweeting that the bookers “let us all down”. Having come all the way from Austin, Texas, 60s psych pioneer Roky Erickson agrees to play his set “for you guys”, despite having “not seen eye to eye with a certain organisation”. Lee shrugs off accountability by beginning his “hits” set with five minutes of jokes about the acts due to play the third stage being transferred to Manchester, accessible via shuttlebus, and advising customers to direct all chalet-based complaints to 80s post-hardcore heroes Mission of Burma.
Not everybody is unhappy. Of all people, austerity antiheroes Sleaford Mods announce that ATP “have really looked after us”. Like Lee, the laptop-punkers have acknowledged the ironic dilemma of gaining lucrative popularity off the back of an underdog persona. Still, while the experience may not be as rousing as seeing them perform in your local sticky-floored toilet venue, the Mods prove able to fill a large festival stage with just two scruffy members, a computer, a microphone and a lifetime’s worth of pent-up rage.
Saturday sees Lee’s beloved the Fall promoted to Cale’s empty slot. Looking like a besuited cross between a sozzled frog and exile-era Napoleon, Mark E Smith growls through a number of different microphones, the principal one making it sound like he’s singing through a dented kazoo. The set threatens to peter out at the halfway mark when Smith turns his guitarist’s amplifier volume to zero and instructs his group to leave the stage. But they’re soon back for a searing rendition of Theme from Sparta FC, followed by further barked new wave numbers and an encore which Smith sings from behind a curtain.
Given ATP’s woeful reputation, the festival is surprisingly busy. Its concert halls are packed with punters enthusiastically lapping up the supposedly niche music of Ex-Easter Island Head, who literally mallet their guitars to create crashing Sonic Youth-meets-Liars no-wave instrumentals, and even Skatgobs: three grown men who make half an hour of guttural gibberish noises without any musical accompaniment whatsoever. Rapturous responses are received by cult psych-rock groups such as Philadelphia’s mind-warping Bardo Pond, fronted by effortlessly cool singer and flautist Isobel Sollenberger, and Bristol’s the Heads, presumably named after the body part they best like to bang.
Clearly there’s still a market for connoisseur-curated seaside festivals showcasing alt-music legends and esoteric curiosities, even if ATP’s capacity to deliver may be diminishing for good.
Stewart Lee
2016-04-21T12:50:25+01:00
Once the alternative music fan’s holiday camp-based festival of choice, All Tomorrow’s Parties has had a troubled recent history. The promoter’s business practices recently went from being the target of indie messageboarders’ ire to attracting the disapproving attention of Private Eye. The regularly liquidated and resurrected company has cancelled and relocated events at a moment’s notice, debts and refunds have gone unpaid, and only a few weeks ago Pontins was informing inquisitive emailers that the event, curated by the comedian Stewart Lee, would not be going ahead. In the end it does go ahead, if not entirely smoothly. Saturday’s headliner John Cale pulls out the day before he’s due to perform, tweeting that the bookers “let us all down”. Having come all the way from Austin, Texas, 60s psych pioneer Roky Erickson agrees to play his set “for you guys”, despite having “not seen eye to eye with a certain organisation”. Lee shrugs off accountability by beginning his “hits” set with five minutes of jokes about the acts due to play the third stage being transferred to Manchester, accessible via shuttlebus, and advising customers to direct all chalet-based complaints to 80s post-hardcore heroes Mission of Burma. Not everybody is unhappy. Of all people, austerity antiheroes Sleaford Mods announce that ATP “have really looked after us”. Like Lee, the laptop-punkers have acknowledged the ironic dilemma of gaining lucrative popularity off the back of an underdog persona. Still, while the experience may not be as rousing as seeing them perform in your local sticky-floored toilet venue, the Mods prove able to fill a large festival stage with just two scruffy members, a computer, a microphone and a lifetime’s worth of pent-up rage. Saturday sees Lee’s beloved the Fall promoted to Cale’s empty slot. Looking like a besuited cross between a sozzled frog...
Comedian and columnist Stewart Lee joins Nish and Coco to discuss the week’s big stories.
They talk about Donald Trump’s deadly and yet utterly confusing war with Iran, as the US President continues to contradict his own statements about the Strait of Hormuz and peace talks, almost in the same breath.
It certainly means a new, live, UK sketch show has plenty of material - but how should comedy respond to the challenging times we are all living through?
Plus - why having a weekly opinion column is good for your mental health and why news organisations need to do more to tackle the lies and extreme rhetoric coming from politicians.
Don’t forget to leave a review - it gives the show a boost and we love to see your comments.
Stewart Lee
2026-03-26T11:53:46+00:00
Comedian and columnist Stewart Lee joins Nish and Coco to discuss the week’s big stories. They talk about Donald Trump’s deadly and yet utterly confusing war with Iran, as the US President continues to contradict his own statements about the Strait of Hormuz and peace talks, almost in the same breath. It certainly means a new, live, UK sketch show has plenty of material - but how should comedy respond to the challenging times we are all living through? Plus - why having a weekly opinion column is good for your mental health and why news organisations need to do more to tackle the lies and extreme rhetoric coming from politicians. Don’t forget to leave a review - it gives the show a boost and we love to see your comments.
Twenty years ago, Trunk records collated fun compilations of sleazy kitsch. Today, the label uncovers treasures from the immediate past that cast critical light on the present.
Classroom Projects, music made by British junior school children in the '60s and '70s, includes everything from a surging choral rendition of Mike Batt's Bright Eyes to a chilling music-concrete reading of the folk standard The Lyke-Wake Dirge.
Like all great art, Maria Miller and Michael Gove take note, these Classroom Projects weren’t results driven.
Stewart Lee
2013-09-30T22:03:34+01:00
Twenty years ago, Trunk records collated fun compilations of sleazy kitsch. Today, the label uncovers treasures from the immediate past that cast critical light on the present. Classroom Projects, music made by British junior school children in the '60s and '70s, includes everything from a surging choral rendition of Mike Batt's Bright Eyes to a chilling music-concrete reading of the folk standard The Lyke-Wake Dirge. Like all great art, Maria Miller and Michael Gove take note, these Classroom Projects weren’t results driven.
Julian Cope's first novel, 131, opens with its protagonist, a former rock star brilliantly named Rock Section, trapped in an aircraft toilet, covered in his own excrement. "Your novel begins at the point where many would end," I suggest. "Yes," agrees Cope, "it's the same as 'Like A Hurricane' by Neil Young. Straight in with the lead guitar solo, no messing about. I consciously began the book with utter humiliation, his brown trousers all round his ankles. I thought, 'Yes. The only way is up.'"
In his legendary solo performance piece The Furtive Nudist, the late shaman-clown and zen-ventriloquist Ken Campbell claimed he was able to move around the world entirely undressed and entirely unnoticed, because the last thing anyone was expecting to see was a naked man, and therefore passers-by just screened the image out of the collective consciousness. Likewise, as I move among the ancient standing stones of the Wiltshire village of Avebury early on a Tuesday morning in June in the company of local resident Julian Cope, who is dressed as a cross between an '80s peace convoy anarchist and a WWII Nazi flying ace, what's remarkable is not how much attention he draws, but how little.
"I can be lying in bed and then forty seconds later I am dressed," he rationalizes, from behind impenetrable shades, standing on a bank above the stone circle, as sheep bleat into my 1995 Sanyo TRC-570M Dictaphone behind him, "but small communities have room for a local figure like this. All the old guys round here that come and do building and plumbing for our house saw Hendrix in Bath in 1967 and they've all got a crush on him. They don't see him as a guy, but as an exotic peacock creature. There's always room for one fucker. Everyone's got space in their hearts for one mad cunt." Cope could be describing the berdache, the sacred 'man-woman' of the Zuni people, allowed to stand both within and without the community, as well as describing himself. But which self is he describing?
Stew & Julian Cope
Fifty-six year old psychedelic survivor Julian Cope has played many roles since he emerged, a nice lower middle class boy from Tamworth, Staffs, immersing himself into the nascent post-punk scene of late 70s Liverpool alongside Echo & The Bunnymen and the denizens of Eric's. "Wylie, McCulloch and Pete Burns only had to fall out of bed and spend 8p and they were in Liverpool. It was their birthright. They were royalty as far I was concerned. I had only been into Tamworth."
Cope's been the chart-topping early 80s pop pin-up of The Teardrop Explodes; the damaged Scott Walker/Syd Barrett hybrid of the early solo years; the shamanic shaven-headed eco-rocker of Peggy Suicide, Jehovakill, Autogeddon and 20 Mothers; and finally the definitive 21st century experimental cult artist, holed up in his Wiltshire fastness, self-releasing everything from the Viking Detroit pagan punk metal of Brain Donor to the Miles Davis meets Tangerine Dream drones of Queen Elizabeth, to the street-protest commune rock chants of Black Sheep, via the lysergic balladry of his solo records.
As a writer, Cope's similarly versatile. His two volumes of memoirs were reliably entertaining dry runs for his more vital works; 1996's Krautrocksampler critically rehabilitated dead-in-the-water German pre-punk and changed the sound of alterno-rock forever, long before the world wide web brought the forgotten past back within instant reach; 2007's Japrocksampler did the same for the even more vilified and obscure sounds of 60s and 70s Japan; and the unlikely archaeological texts, the two hefty volumes of studies of prehistoric sacred sites, The Modern Antiquarian and The Megalithic European, sold ancient history to skeptics in the beat-prose of Lester Bangs and even aroused the interest of professional professors, when Cope posited the persuasive notion of stone circles as ur-rock & roll performance spaces, drawing on a personal experience denied to the dusty haired experts.
But now Cope comes to us in his most bewildering guise to date, that of the writer of the world's first "time-shifting Gnostic hooligan road novel", 131, named after a Sardinian highway and published, no less, by TS Eliot's heavyweight literary imprint, Faber and Fucking Faber! "Harper Collins was so massively corporate you could use voodoo on them. It was so hard to even have a meeting about The Modern Antiquarian so I was in control of the situation. But Faber is more intellectual. They want to be rock & roll but they can also invoke spirits of TS Eliot and Robert Graves."
Was the 'literary novelist' another of Cope's off the peg guises? "I did go into character to write it," he confesses, "not as a novelist, but as an anti-novelist, because I figured no novelist would have been privileged enough to have lived such an extreme existence as I have. I had done things that a novelist would have to imagine."
If Cope ever sounds immodest, remember these self-aggrandising proclamations arrive from the mouth of a balloon-pantalooned biker Messerschmitt pilot standing in a sheep field. Context is not a myth. And Cope, the shaman-clown, has certainly stage managed set and setting this morning. He can be as arrogant as he likes, and he knows it, as long as he's surrounded by sheep and dressed like a Black Metal Worzel.
Worrying about which experiences of Cope's inform 131 quickly becomes a futile exercise, as facts and fiction interweave in a novel, conceptually and stylistically, unlike any other. An aging musical cult figure, DH Lawrence disciple and archaeology maven called Rock Section arrives in Sardinia in pre-soiled trousers to investigate the deaths of football hooligan friends he flew to the Island with way back in the 1990 world cup. They were apparently slain by Barry Herzog, a former DJ and promoter, who is now the figurehead of a quasi-fascist cult based on his prison writings, which are disproportionately, and accurately, hostile to Narnia-author CS Lewis.
Section is accompanied by his researcher Anna, whom Cope deftly avoids making into a standard love interest cipher, even though she and Section eventually become entangled. There's not even any physical description of Anna's actual appearance until about ¾ of the way through the book, Cope concentrating instead on her driving skills and archaeological knowledge. "That's deliberate," he admits. "Rock Section is so cunted he doesn't even notice her. He's a former rock star. He's not even interested in other people." The pair travel in a different culturally significant hire car every day as Rock Section takes a road trip to oblivion via a succession of prehistoric monuments, where he endures lengthy and illuminating past-life experiences as an early man in a pre-lapsarian wilderness.
Or at least I think that's what happens. There were whole swathes of 131 where I couldn't tell what was going on, which time stream we were in, or whether Rock Section was real or a past-life fantasy version of himself. But I didn't care. Some of Cope's digressions into ancient history, nationalist politics, and pop cultural ephemera were real, others imaginary, and some could have been either. (I know there was an early 70s Danish freak-folk band called Furekaben, but did they really soundtrack a Scandinavian exploitation biker movie? Was there an early 70s Sardinian cave-based proto-punk scene? Didn't Jim Morrison die in Paris in 1971?)
Cope admits this confusion was a deliberate strategy. "My very useful and very intense literary agent Robert Kirby said "the way you write reminds me of Cervantes and Dante. You've got to get this book out fast." I demand of the reader to the point where they don't know what's real and what's not real. I was very pragmatic about cultural references. I said, this is going to be like a road movie but the characters aren't going to be driving in any car that isn't incredibly symbolic. Even when stuck behind trash it will be post war Italian trash that means something."
Any anxieties about the literal sense of 131 are swept asunder by Cope's audacious prose style, which carries the reader along on a wave of unrelenting energy. I read it in one sitting. If I stopped I felt I wouldn't be able to get back on. The words were moving too fast. Like many of Cope's musical endeavors, 131 plunders high and low culture, stealing from artists of accepted stature, and from those abandoned by the canon. Its less obvious debt is to (the now terminally unfashionable) DH Lawrence, with his brilliantly bombastic and heavily symbolic rants. Some of Anna and Rock Section's psychiatrically self-knowing exchanges appear to be built brick by brick on similar scuffles in Women In Love or The Rainbow.
Cope's interest in Lawrence as a character has been ongoing, though I couldn't work out how many of Lawrence's actual books, beyond the Sardinian travelogues, he had actually read. About seven years ago I encountered Cope by chance in the car park of a service station on the M4. He was on his way back from DH Lawrence's childhood home in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, where Lawrence set Sons And Lovers. "I'd been writing there. Lawrence fascinated me as the perfect vehicle for the character of Rock Section." Cope transposed Section from his own adolescence in Tamworth eastwards to the similar midland town of Nottingham. "I thought, "Great, you can rent Sons And Lovers cottage, so I went up there and realized Old Tamworth was like Eastwood, so I attached my own childhood onto Eastwood and had Rock Section come from there. Nottingham's relationship to Liverpool was the same as Tamworth's relationship to Birmingham. Tamworth was Birmingham overspill. I walked to school with Selwyn Brown, the keyboard player from Steel Pulse."
131 also has something of the flavour of the breathless blitzkrieg amphetamine deadline splurges of anonymous booze hacks knocking out accidentally experimental biker books and hippy sex and drug trash on their infinite monkey typewriters for the New English Library in the early 70s. Rock Section and pals' battle against Italian football hooligans during Italia 90 shares the same brutal and immoral enjoyment of senseless violence as a Sven Hassel Nazi novel or a Robert E Howard barbarian brawl. "It took me so long to research it," Cope explains, "that I knew how it would work, following the route of the 131 etc, that when I finally went for it I knew it so well that I could just draw it down from the heavens."
Cope's sentence structures collapse into rhythmic repetition and editorially suspect sub-clause clusters, three at one point all ending in the same three words, and all heroically deliberate. One section attempts to convey a character's drugged confusion by repeating variations on the same three letters for five pages. The fool persists in his folly. He becomes wise. Likewise the eighty minute drones of Cope's Queen Elizabeth records were a conscious choice. "Yes," he agrees, "I didn't just stumble across a sound and then forget to turn it off. And I worked really hard on the cadences of the book, on the rhythms. That's the musician part of me. People will get it who wish to get it but I don't want to turn on tossers."
"It's like Christianity," Cope says, brilliantly comparing his fiction debut with a major world religion of some 2000 years standing, "If you're going to stand on street corners shouting you're only going to pick up people who are utterly lost. I don't want people attaching themselves to me who are lost. I want them to already be in some way on a trip. It's demanding but great art is demanding. I really wanted to write something that people could complete themselves."
But who is equipped to review 131? It's clearly set out what it intended to do, and it succeeds on its own terms, and there's enough points where its experiments with conventional literary devices are successful enough for skeptical critics to concede that Cope can really write, but who is 131 for?
"It doesn't do what 21st century fiction is supposed to do and I had no desire to do that or any respect to any lit conventions," Cope declares. As his Brain Donor project posited a kind of pre-civilisation rock & roll, so 131 could almost be described as pre-literary.
The Icelandic sagas are defined by an absence of the individual. There's no first person narrator in any of them. But in 131 there are so many different Copes that, as he does via the many guises of his musical and literary careers, he almost becomes anonymous. 131 finds Cope engaged in a staged Socratic dialogue with various possible versions of his past and future selves.
Rock Section is a Cope gone wrong long term, his drug intake hampering his forward process rather than enhancing it; Judge Barry Herzog is the fascist Cope, the guru turned nasty, still surrounded by groupies into late middle age, and using his celebrity to spew hate; then there's that other Cope, the stone-worshipping tribesman and son of Old Tüpp, that Rock Section meets in some visionary parallel world, which lost me if I'm honest. But I accept this may be my fault. Cope albums I didn't click with as the deadline to file the review approached revealed themselves in full splendor months, years later. There's a good reason last year's Revolutionary Suicide opens with three dirges, and saves the good stuff to last, but at the time it just seemed like bad sequencing. Cope was making us work.
"I gave Judge Barry Herzog all the good lines," Cope confesses and in one sense he enjoyed being able to indulge in a playful silliness, via the mouths of his creations, that might sit ill with followers' perceptions of Cope himself. One of Section's street-poet acolytes has penned a piece called Knee My Wounded Heart At Bury, just one of many laugh out loud moments punctuating 131's stream of consciousness narrative and dam-burst digressions on race, history, culture and drugs.
"People looking for versions of themselves might find themselves too," Cope reflects as we pose for photos in sight of the swelling mound of Silbury Hill. "What's essential is that everybody in the book is a cunt. Of a kind. I stopped doing TV because I couldn't hope to make sense in two minute sections. So instead I just became an utterly mysterious force. You complete projects. The most important thing is completing a project. I can't make it better than this. It fucked me up to write a novel but surely it should. If you've got commitment, you can't beat it."
A decade ago now, I interviewed Cope for The Sunday Times. He stood above me in his kitchen on a work surface, peering at me through sunglasses, and declaiming at me, as I sat below on a low stool, in a wonderfully staged piece of self-conscious theatre that I surrendered to unquestioningly. It feels like last week, to be honest, but at the time Cope said, "I know I'm not current, and I don't believe I'm timeless. But I am in my forties, and I'm in sight of fifty. And once you're over fifty, sixty's not far away. And then you are allowed to be legendary. So I just have to keep my head down and keep working. And then I can be legendary."
"All morning," I admit to him, after what has been an in some ways frustrating attempt to pin Cope's sparkling magpie mind down to explain his intentions with and hopes for 131, "I've been searching for what a paper would call the pull quote, some kind of pithy sentence that sums up what the piece is all about. I suppose that's it, what you just said. "If you've got commitment you can't beat it." That's the bit they'd pull out, that's what you could say about the book, both from the reader's and the writer's point of view." But I don't know if Cope is listening. He's already off towards the road, through the West Kennet stone avenue, talking about his next book, a manual for life which is to be called Pagan Defensive Driving. If anyone can write a book as good as that title, it's Julian Cope.
(Ever the gnostic, Cope worked through the musical background of the novel by recording in the guises of the various imaginary musical entities mentioned in the book, from 70s Sardinian drone rockers that never were, to 90s novelty football rave anthems. A selection is available here, many free to download.)
Stewart Lee, writer/clown
Stewart Lee
2014-06-27T18:51:13+01:00
[caption id="attachment_7227" align="aligncenter" width="395"]Julian Cope[/caption] Julian Cope's first novel, 131, opens with its protagonist, a former rock star brilliantly named Rock Section, trapped in an aircraft toilet, covered in his own excrement. "Your novel begins at the point where many would end," I suggest. "Yes," agrees Cope, "it's the same as 'Like A Hurricane' by Neil Young. Straight in with the lead guitar solo, no messing about. I consciously began the book with utter humiliation, his brown trousers all round his ankles. I thought, 'Yes. The only way is up.'" In his legendary solo performance piece The Furtive Nudist, the late shaman-clown and zen-ventriloquist Ken Campbell claimed he was able to move around the world entirely undressed and entirely unnoticed, because the last thing anyone was expecting to see was a naked man, and therefore passers-by just screened the image out of the collective consciousness. Likewise, as I move among the ancient standing stones of the Wiltshire village of Avebury early on a Tuesday morning in June in the company of local resident Julian Cope, who is dressed as a cross between an '80s peace convoy anarchist and a WWII Nazi flying ace, what's remarkable is not how much attention he draws, but how little. "I can be lying in bed and then forty seconds later I am dressed," he rationalizes, from behind impenetrable shades, standing on a bank above the stone circle, as sheep bleat into my 1995 Sanyo TRC-570M Dictaphone behind him, "but small communities have room for a local figure like this. All the old guys round here that come and do building and plumbing for our house saw Hendrix in Bath in 1967 and they've all got a crush on him. They don't see him as a guy, but as an exotic peacock creature. There's always...
Stewart Lee's final, and most punishing, BAFTA and multiple-British Comedy Award winning BBC2 stand-up series;
recorded live at The Mildmay Club in Stoke Newington, it features six half hour sets on Wealth, Islamophobia, Patriotism, Death, The Migrant Crisis, and Childhood Memories.
Chris Morris returns as the hostile interrogator, picking apart Britains most consistently critically acclaimed stand-up.
A family-sized bucket of extras includes deleted routines, film items, unreleased audio, and gut-spilling interviews.
Stewart Lee
2018-10-15T17:07:46+01:00
Stewart Lee's final, and most punishing, BAFTA and multiple-British Comedy Award winning BBC2 stand-up series; recorded live at The Mildmay Club in Stoke Newington, it features six half hour sets on Wealth, Islamophobia, Patriotism, Death, The Migrant Crisis, and Childhood Memories. Chris Morris returns as the hostile interrogator, picking apart Britains most consistently critically acclaimed stand-up. A family-sized bucket of extras includes deleted routines, film items, unreleased audio, and gut-spilling interviews.
Marc takes in some of the world’s best works of art while staying in London. Wondering whether stand-up comedy counts as art, Marc puts the question to Stewart Lee, one of Great Britain’s most renowned comics. Hear how they both struggle to get their work to the stage (and in Stewart’s case, get into legal battles over it) and judge for yourself. This episode is sponsored by Adam and Eve. Visit www.adamandeve.com and use offer code WTF to receive 50% off almost any product.
Stewart Lee
2010-08-11T18:42:48+01:00
Marc takes in some of the world’s best works of art while staying in London. Wondering whether stand-up comedy counts as art, Marc puts the question to Stewart Lee, one of Great Britain’s most renowned comics. Hear how they both struggle to get their work to the stage (and in Stewart’s case, get into legal battles over it) and judge for yourself. This episode is sponsored by Adam and Eve. Visit www.adamandeve.com and use offer code WTF to receive 50% off almost any product.
Seinfeld was a sitcom about nothing. Stewart Lee now presents a standup show about nothing - or so he wants us to think. He's a middle-aged dad, you see, and "nothing happens to me now". So what can he write about? The answer is the process itself. This is Lee at his most self-referential and metatextual, if not always his most exciting. It's not just his own jokes he deconstructs tonight, but the impulse behind the show, his career, his self. "I don't know who I am any more," he says - and, with a persona composed of this many subversions and quadruple bluffs, that's hardly surprising.
Not that a strong personality doesn't come across. More bilious than ever, Lee gripes at his fellow comics, at his fairweather new audience, at the "feral, Lord of the Flies" online world.
There's self-disgust, too: he apologises for the bittiness and badness of this show. But none of this can be taken on trust. It's becoming a tic with Lee to tell a true story then admit he made it all up. It's a trick we now see coming, which can be a wearying feeling. His cerebral pose, and disdain for jokes and convention, is a sort of trick, too: it certainly doesn't stop him defaulting to jokes and convention when he fancies a big laugh. Reading out eccentric or abusive material culled from the internet, as Lee does here, is a standup standby these days; and his routine about Tim Rice, Anneka Rice and basmati rice is as cheap as laughs come (and none the worse for it).
That was part of a piece about celebrity Tories, the opening half hour of the show having ranged from Bin Laden to Dale Farm to the Libyan uprising.
Later, Lee puts to bed the claim that comedians never joke about Islam, and seeks comic inspiration as he drives up and down the M4. It's enjoyable to see Lee in this looser format - even if, as he admits, the show lacks cohesion. There are also fewer instances of that highwire skill he has of making us laugh without knowing why.
Closest is a riff on political history with reference points culled from his son's Scooby-Doo DVD: an experimental spin on the comedy of new parenthood. At such moments, Lee demonstrates that an uneventful life need be no barrier to provocative comedy.
Stewart Lee
2011-11-24T13:04:45+00:00
Seinfeld was a sitcom about nothing. Stewart Lee now presents a standup show about nothing - or so he wants us to think. He's a middle-aged dad, you see, and "nothing happens to me now". So what can he write about? The answer is the process itself. This is Lee at his most self-referential and metatextual, if not always his most exciting. It's not just his own jokes he deconstructs tonight, but the impulse behind the show, his career, his self. "I don't know who I am any more," he says - and, with a persona composed of this many subversions and quadruple bluffs, that's hardly surprising. Not that a strong personality doesn't come across. More bilious than ever, Lee gripes at his fellow comics, at his fairweather new audience, at the "feral, Lord of the Flies" online world. There's self-disgust, too: he apologises for the bittiness and badness of this show. But none of this can be taken on trust. It's becoming a tic with Lee to tell a true story then admit he made it all up. It's a trick we now see coming, which can be a wearying feeling. His cerebral pose, and disdain for jokes and convention, is a sort of trick, too: it certainly doesn't stop him defaulting to jokes and convention when he fancies a big laugh. Reading out eccentric or abusive material culled from the internet, as Lee does here, is a standup standby these days; and his routine about Tim Rice, Anneka Rice and basmati rice is as cheap as laughs come (and none the worse for it). That was part of a piece about celebrity Tories, the opening half hour of the show having ranged from Bin Laden to Dale Farm to the Libyan uprising. Later, Lee puts to bed the...
How do you write a one-size fits all stand-up comedy show to tour around divided Brexit Britain?
Stewart Lee found himself having to do exactly that, as he dragged his resilient Content Provider show around the dis-united kingdom for eighteen months and 214 dates, in the wake of the referendum.
Captured in leave-voting Southend-On-Sea, Content Provider sees the country's most consistently critically acclaimed stand-up at the zenith of his powers and the peak of physical collapse, on a stage strewn with obsolete physical media, as he attempts to understand his place in a digital dystopia.
Stewart Lee
2019-07-18T20:33:49+01:00
How do you write a one-size fits all stand-up comedy show to tour around divided Brexit Britain? Stewart Lee found himself having to do exactly that, as he dragged his resilient Content Provider show around the dis-united kingdom for eighteen months and 214 dates, in the wake of the referendum. Captured in leave-voting Southend-On-Sea, Content Provider sees the country's most consistently critically acclaimed stand-up at the zenith of his powers and the peak of physical collapse, on a stage strewn with obsolete physical media, as he attempts to understand his place in a digital dystopia.
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 of often unreliable Earth mysteries compendiums. Nonetheless, they set this particular boy off, seeking out ancient sites whenever possible. Now everything has wilted but I still have calves of iron, and I can identify the outline of a hilltop earthwork from a moving car on a motorway as surely as a falcon seeing a field mouse 500 feet below.
Through childhood and adolescence I worked towards my targets, assembling my own apostolic archive of similar but unrelated 70s texts, light on detail and heavy on conjecture. Where were these places of power? I would see them! “You and your old ruins!” my gran would cluck dismissively, as I politely requested we broke our Morris Marina journey southwest to the caravan site, at Stanton Drew or Glastonbury.
And when I stumbled in my cub-scout shorts to find the Longstone Barrow, which I had only seen in a blurred pamphlet picture, my divorcee dad waited patiently in a car at the bottom of Challacombe Common, counting down the functional alcoholic hours to opening time. God bless him! Today I feel his pain. But we were all weird walking blind back then, confused men with their hands on the shoulders of the equally confused man in front, seeking silhouettes of standing stones in the mists of imaginary moors.
And then, in the closing hours of the 20th century, came Julian Cope’s The Modern Antiquarian, a landmark practical tome for the would-be site-seeker, served up in its own mud-proof slipcase, synthesising archaeology, folklore, grid references, helpful full-colour maps, parking advice and a small smidgeon of Cope’s own eccentric interpretations, often later validated by reluctantly admiring academics. The stones were stages! Rock and roll! It was a game-changer, and Cope opened up the crack in the Devil’s Grave of our folkloric landscape to all, like the wizard of Alderley Edge.
But Weird Walk is not The Modern Antiquarian. If anything, the three Weird Walkers, whoever they may be, have returned the love of folk tales, ancient sites and the perambulations that lead one to their locations even more defiantly to the realm of the gentleman and gentlewoman amateurs who first documented them. The sensibly shod 17th-century parson, mapping the megaliths between funerals and marriages, and the aristocratic antiquary, pleading with some Cornish farmer to spare the collapsed burial chamber whose capstone he had earmarked for a pigsty, would recognise the Weird Walkers as kindred spirits. No one knows who they are, or what they are doing.
And yet, in their costly boots and cagoules, they seem to have stumbled into something. They walk the landscape in the shadows of the seasons as we used to experience them before they blurred, reminding us of how we once measured out the increments of our humanity, and etched it into rock and earth, in the annual cycles of rotting and rebirth. When we lose this knowledge, we are lost. We’re probably lost anyway to be honest, but fuck it, let’s go down drunk and walking weird.
Dartmoor is a weird place; temporal dislocation comes with the territory. Wayfinding is not easy among this gorse, these rambling tors and secluded brooks. And when an autumn mist descends, you can be transported: a bronze age farmer to your left, a medieval tin miner to your right, and up ahead the lord of the manor has antiquarian ambitions. He’s just repositioned those stones. The earth gnomes don’t approve.
The stretch of moor between the storied Warren House Inn and the foreboding interwar plantation of Fernworthy Forest is classic Dartmoor; the grasses are thick underfoot and marshy ground emerges without warning, saturated by the capricious weather. Long ago, the moorland here would have rolled uninterrupted and Fernworthy’s ancient monuments would have been as exposed as their neighbours at Merrivale or the Grey Wethers. Now, the break with the moor is absolute, and dark evergreens offer up an entrance out of a Grimm’s tale. Once inside, the silent monoculture can provide even the warmest October day with an eerie chill.
Near the edge of the forest sits Assycombe double stone row, Fernworthy’s planters helpfully leaving a gap between the saplings for the stones to breathe. Although little known, it is a remarkable monument that seems to tumble down its grassy hill, the irregular miniliths descending like a dragon’s spine from an initial menhir to a large blocking stone at the foot of the slope.
Assycombe is one of the many stone rows on Dartmoor thought by early antiquarians, such as Richard Polwhele, to be “Druid ways”. They are scattered across the landscape, sometimes barely discernible, but always potent in their imaginative value. Walking these ancient lines creates an access point, a connection to those who walked them long ago.
Following the track from Assycombe, deeper into the plantation, will eventually bring you to the reservoir that dominates the area. Built during the second world war, its construction was not without incident. Fernworthy Farm, which could trace its ancestry back to the Middle Ages, was among the buildings demolished to make way for the dam and reservoir. When it was standing, locals told of a curse laid upon the farm by the earth gnomes who dwell beneath the moor.
So infuriated were the gnomes by the quarrying of their finest granite to rebuild the farmhouse at Fernworthy that they stole the firstborn child of the farmer who had committed the sin. On Dartmoor, “don’t upset the gnomes” seems to come pretty high on the list of folk rules.
Working around the body of water as it lies today, it’s an easy stroll to the mysterious stone circle of Froggymead, its name nodding to its marshy location. A bronze age circle of some 29 stones, it is a wonderfully meditative place. Stone rows, albeit damaged by all that tree planting, can be seen to the north and south of the site. Froggymead (also known as Fernworthy stone circle) makes a vibe-laden picnic spot and, from here, there’s the option to continue out of the forest to the Grey Wethers.
Consisting of two stunning stone circles, the Grey Wethers are one of the megalithic highlights of this part of the world. Their position makes them even more appealing – you’re likely to be sharing the circles with relatively few visitors or perhaps only the skylarks that dance overhead.
From the Grey Wethers, you can head back through the forest for a pint at the Warren House Inn: a fine place to wind up after a day’s yomping. Its fire has been burning solidly since the current building was put up in 1845 and, as one of the highest and most isolated pubs in England, visitors have often welcomed the warmth, especially when autumn arrives.
The inn has its share of tales told around the fire, a favourite being “The Salted Corpse”. This yarn tells of a traveller staying overnight who opens up an intriguing chest in his room. To his horror, he finds himself gazing upon the face of a dead man. Suspecting murder, he rushes to the landlord, who casually informs him that “tis only father”, the old man having been salted down and stored until the trip can be made from the remote inn to Lydford for burial.
Dartmoor is not as out of the way as it once was, and we would hope that there is less need to reach for the salt cellar these days. However, this land has somehow managed to retain a peculiar flavour of isolation well into the 21st century, and, especially away from its most-frequented spots, it still holds almost limitless possibilities for exploration.
Walk notes
Covered on map OS Explorer OL28. There are several parking spots near the Warren House Inn (SX 67423 80944) and from here we made our way across the moor to Fernworthy Forest. As with any moorland walking, this is a map and compass job, best done with pals and all the requisite gear. We entered the forest at SX 66068 81902. Assycombe stone row can be found at SX 66096 82641. From here, you can walk through the forest, skirting the reservoir, to Froggymead at SX 65486 84127. The walk can be extended out of the trees to the Grey Wethers at SX 63869 83134. The nearby Bronze Age settlement of Grimspound (SX 70051 80904) is a two miles walk across the moor from the Warren House Inn and is highly recommended. Absolutely rife with vibes.
Tigh nam Bodach, Perth and Kinross
Tigh nam Bodach is one of Britain’s most enigmatic and isolated ritual sites. This simple pagan shrine sits below snow-capped peaks in a side valley of the mighty Glen Lyon, the longest enclosed glen in Scotland and, according to Sir Walter Scott, the “loneliest and loveliest” too. Outside a modest yet beautifully constructed shelter sits a family of Gaelic myth, headed by a mysterious goddess, the Cailleach. The goddess, her husband (the Bodach of the shrine’s name) and their children are all represented by strangely humanoid stones, which have been shaped over millennia by the fast-flowing Allt na Cailliche stream. At Beltane, on 1 May, locals take the stone family from their house to watch over the land and ensure its fertility, ritually returning them inside on Samhain, 1 November.
The journey to Tigh nam Bodach often begins by driving some 10 miles down a single-track road through stunning scenery to Lubreoch dam at the western end of Glen Lyon. The road runs out at the enormous dam, which holds Loch Lyon at bay in the name of hydroelectricity. From here, a rough track climbs around the loch through a towering landscape of mountains and waterfalls for around six miles to the shrine.
In its eastern section, near the dam itself, the loch has an unusually industrial aspect; the many waterfalls that tumble down from on high are occasionally directed by steel outflow pipes beneath the track. Thankfully, no structures other than a handy wooden bridge interfere with the magnificent Eos Eoghannan waterfall that soon crosses your path, its ravine populated with rowan and birch.
Running through modern Scottish and Irish mythology, the legend of the Cailleach may well have begun life in literature before tumbling into the world of folklore. The goddess is a shaper of mountains and wild places, a bringer of storms and winter. Although it is unclear how old the animistic practices associated with Tigh nam Bodach actually are (some say they were developed in the 18th or 19th centuries by shepherds), the place names in this landscape certainly suggest a venerable association with the goddess.
Turning away from the loch, the track leads you up towards even more impressive mountains, speckled with snow. Here there are streams to cross that can feel more like rivers following a downpour. After the stepping stone crossing of Allt Meurain stream, you climb into Glen Cailliche. This is very much the goddess’s territory, with the powerful Allt na Cailliche running alongside the track. When the shrine is finally spied, it is hard not to run over the marshy ground in excitement, greeting (but not handling, of course) the sacred stones like old friends. The family’s modest home is modelled on a shieling, the simple house once used by farmers in the summer months up in the glens.
Sitting in front of Tigh nam Bodach is a moving experience. The stones themselves seem genuinely imbued with life, appearing at once vulnerable and impervious to the whims of time. Pilgrims have left items around the shrine – a wooden star, a ram’s horn, a piece of shining quartz. Few sites tell of our connection to the seasons and the land like this. In its simple, localised ritual practice, Tigh nam Bodach encapsulates an ancient relationship. The Celtic scholar Anne Ross noted that when the land was flooded, extending the loch for the new dam, there were fewer folk to carry out the ritual. Happily, it has been maintained by Glen Lyon’s shepherds, and, if anything, attachment to the custom has grown even stronger in these parts. When further hydroelectric work threatened to encroach upon the Cailleach’s hidden glen, the plans were soon nixed by concerned locals and academics. Here, the stones still matter.
Walk notes
This walk is covered on OS Explorer OL48. The simplest way to access the site is to find a spot to park at Lubreoch Dam (grid reference NN 45932 41892). You can then walk around Loch Lyon and up to Tigh nam Bodach (NN 38053 42711) which is around six miles away. There are streams to cross, so waterproof footwear is a must. This is a remote one – there’s no phone signal and, being subject to the vicissitudes of the Scottish weather, the right gear is essential. Make sure you have a route mapped and take a pal. Situated at the opposite end of Glen Lyon to Tigh nam Bodach is the village of Fortingall (a fifty-minute drive from Lubreoch Dam), a small place with a hefty mythic pedigree. Fortingall is home to a famous ancient yew tree (some parking at NN 74156 47011), which is thought to be between 2,000 and 3,000 years old. The remnants of three stone circles lie at the eastern edge of the village, close to the River Lyon. Another monument, Càrn na Marbh or “the cairn of the dead”, began life as a Bronze Age burial mound before it was opened in the 14th century to hold the bodies of Fortingall’s plague victims. Further antiquities can be seen in the church, including a Celtic handbell and fragments of Pictish stones.
Trellech, Monmouthshire
Trellech is, in some respects, an uncertain place. The village’s very name is contested – you’ll encounter signs for Tryleg, Trelleck, Trellech and Trelech, depending on the angle of your approach.
There is, however, one thing that Trellech is very definite about: a deep affection for its ancient sites and layers of lore. Trellech’s Rosetta Stone lies inside the church of St Nicholas. Here, the sculpted side panels of a 17th-century sundial bear witness to the village’s mysteries: its mound, its stones and its Virtuous Well. Once standing proud in the village centre, the sundial was moved indoors to protect it from the elements. Observing the venerable, chiselled image of three pagan standing stones within this medieval church is a remarkable thing, and it is certainly worth pretending you can read Latin and donning the attitude of a Jamesian academic as you decipher the inscription, mumbling, “MAIOR SAXIS – greater in its stones; MAXIMA FONTE – greatest in its well”, as though unravelling some ancient riddle.
The mound commemorated on the sundial is known as Tump Terret. Its associated inscription laments “Oh! How many are buried here!” – a reference to the legend that the mound is the resting place of those slain in a conflict between the last crowned Anglo-Saxon English king, Harold Godwinson, and the Welsh. The site has now been identified as the remnants of a small Norman castle which belonged to the De Clare family.
Tump Terret itself emerges ziggurat-like, past swanky barn conversions and their attendant SUVs. This is the remaining motte of the motte and bailey castle, and today its sides ripple with possible paths to the summit, an undulating inverted bowl of green. A summer house was once built on the top of the mound, with flagrant disregard for the supposed curse that befalls those who disturb it. The view over the surrounding landscape perhaps warranted tempting fate. Not far from Tump Terret, and accessed by tracking the route of a stream across a sheep field, lie the three megaliths of Harold’s Stones, a monument that definitely deserves to be more widely known.
The stones have a similar feel to Avebury’s menhirs, whose ancient sacred alignments are juxtaposed with layers of subsequent history within the bounds of an idyllic village. Unlike Avebury’s stones, however, these three are composed of a conglomerate rock called pudding stone, which holds vivid quartz pebbles and lends the megaliths an almost brutalist concrete quality.
Sunrise is the perfect time to visit Harold’s Stones. The early bird is rewarded with a slow reveal of colour, as the stones morph from deep blacks to a complex collection of hues drawn from lichen, shadowed grooves and the unusual conglomerate rock itself.
The folklore, as ever, has had its say on the stones. In one tale, they are said to have arrived in the village when flung from the Black Mountains by the wizard Jack o’ Kent during one of his regular chucking competitions with the devil, although their current name derives from the idea that they mark the site of the defeat of three Welsh elders by King Harold. Their true origins lie much earlier, in the bronze age, but perhaps talk of Harold preserves a folk memory of the stones’ use as an assembly point for those fighting the English king, or even as a site of conflict with the invaders from beyond Offa’s Dyke. However, Trellech’s most important venue may be the well that is found a short walk from Harold’s Stones.
The village is powerfully linked to natural springs and deep wells, and the current Virtuous Well is the last of many ancient springs to be in use here. It is sited next to a stream which flows energetically beneath its footbridge, while nearby trees offer up the colourful tied rags that accompany so many holy springs. Also known as St Anne’s Well, it was once a big draw for pilgrims, the water said to ease ailments of the eyes in particular.
On stepping down into the sunken stone horseshoe of the well, the great age of the place is apparent. Water seeps across ancient flagstones that lead to an arched recess within the far wall. Here, a basin collects the water that bubbles from the underworld, while further recesses provide space for offerings or perhaps cups for those who would have drunk the iron-rich water, the mineral evident in a reddish build-up of sediment between the paving and the wall.
The Virtuous Well remains a meditative place, a reminder of the network of sacred springs in these parts, not least in nearby Ninewells Wood. The well is captured beautifully on a striking modern interpretation of Trellech’s sundial at the village crossroads. Cut from the trunk of a single tree, it incorporates all of the nearby sites of interest. The sculpture is the latest entry in a long tradition of Trellech acknowledging its sites and stories. This is cherished land. And if history is a wondrous palimpsest on these islands, perhaps it is nowhere more so than in this small Monmouthshire village.
Walk notes
There is a small car park at SO 50087 05282. From here you can take in the key sites. The Church of St Nicholas (and its famous sundial) is at SO 50042 05483, and Tump Terret is located at SO 49978 05354. From the Tump, you can follow a signposted path across a sheep field and over the road to Harold’s Stones (SO 49929 05144). On your way to the stones, make a stop at the modern interpretation of the sundial described above (SO 50053 05238). The Virtuous Well can be found at SO 50298 05101. You can soak up the area’s connections to sacred waters with a visit to nearby Ninewells Wood, a beautiful Wye Valley woodland (parking 1.6 miles from Trellech at SO 51501 03827) once renowned for its healing springs. Spotter’s badge if you can find the haunting carving of a fox’s face on the stone stile at SO 51403 03482. It is said to have been the creation of a French prisoner held here during the Napoleonic Wars.
This is an edited extract from Weird Walk (Watkins, £19.99).To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
Stewart Lee
2023-10-28T13:15:27+01:00
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 of often unreliable Earth mysteries compendiums. Nonetheless, they set this particular boy off, seeking out ancient sites whenever possible. Now everything has wilted but I still have calves of iron, and I can identify the outline of a hilltop earthwork from a moving car on a motorway as surely as a falcon seeing a field mouse 500 feet below. Through childhood and adolescence I worked towards my targets, assembling my own apostolic archive of similar but unrelated 70s texts, light on detail and heavy on conjecture. Where were these places of power? I would see them! “You and your old ruins!” my gran would cluck dismissively, as I politely requested we broke our Morris Marina journey southwest to the caravan site, at Stanton Drew or Glastonbury. And when I stumbled in my cub-scout shorts to find the Longstone Barrow, which I had only seen in a blurred pamphlet picture, my divorcee dad waited patiently in a car at the bottom of Challacombe Common, counting down the functional alcoholic hours to opening time. God bless him! Today I feel his pain. But we were all weird walking blind back then, confused men with their hands on the shoulders of the equally confused man in front, seeking silhouettes of standing stones in the mists of imaginary moors. And then, in the closing hours of the 20th century, came Julian Cope’s The Modern Antiquarian, a landmark practical tome for the would-be site-seeker, served up in its own mud-proof...
Many years ago, while wearing a Navajo jacket, I was accused of cultural appropriation. I told the zealot harassing me the jacket was a gift from a Native American shaman-clown, under whom I had studied. She backed down, humiliated, like Major General Arthur St Clair before the forces of Little Turtle and the Potawatomi, at the Battle of a Thousand Slain, on 4 November 1791.
My accuser and I began a short but tempestuous relationship, based on the thrill of committing ever more offensive ideological thought crimes. One sick night, I imagined a public library with deliberately inadequate disabled access, while she made a scale model of a unisex toilet and then vandalised it. Within weeks, our imaginary atrocities exhausted, our twisted affair ended. But I realised there may have been some truth in my ex-lover’s accusations of cultural insensitivity. Luckily, I still had the receipt for the jacket and so I returned the racist garment to Camden market, where I had bought it while shopping drunk months earlier.
The idea of “cultural appropriation” is a minefield, especially in the “political correctness gone mad” times that we live in now, in today’s “politically correct” world of “so-called” “political correctness” “gone mad”. But I don’t doubt for a moment that Michael Gove’s decision to quote the rap singer Stormzy in a tweet on Tuesday was without malice. If Gove isn’t a Stormzy fan how would the blotchy foundling know that the rapper’s hit Shut Up included the phrase “I set the trends dem man copy”? Daniel Hannanananananananan’s decision to reply to Gove’s tweet with the emphatic urban phrase “Big man ting!” is less easy to justify. As the words do not relate to a specific Stormzy lyric, one can only assume Hannanananananananan thought them appropriate simply because Stormzy is black.
It would be interesting to see if Hannanananananananan felt comfortable saying “Big man ting!” in person to a black person – Sir Trevor McDonald, Lizzo, Anthony Braxton, or Michelle Obama for example – while explaining his views on Brexit. “Absolutely nobody is talking about threatening our position in the single market. Big man ting!” In short, would a “Big man ting” in the mouth of Daniel Hannanananananananan seem uncomfortable, or would it be a perfect fit, as if it had always belonged there?
In the interests of full disclosure I must confess that I sing some Stormzy in my current show, Snowflake/Tornado. A line from Crown, “heavy is the head that wears the crown”, helps the audience understand the pressures I have faced since the Times declared me the “world’s greatest living standup”. But no one has suggested that I am racist quoting Stormzy, perhaps because I do not work for a man who has called black people “picaninnies” with “watermelon smiles”.
Minds immeasurably superior to mine have suggested that Gove’s controversy-generating tweet was manufactured on his behalf by culturally savvy Conservative content providers, primed to cause plausible online distractions while dog-whistling to the coveted Arsehole Vote, historically a key part of any Tory victory.
But Dominic Tosser Raab explained last week he thinks “people don’t give a … er … toss about social media”, which is why his party doesn’t spend money on re-editing news footage to smear their opponents online. Except that it does. Never mind. Tosser is probably confused, like when he didn’t know the difference between sea and land. And anyway, if the Conservatives wanted to woo arseholes, they could just let Jacob Rees-Mogg open his mouth, instead of hiding him on a remote Somerset fen, like the flesh-eating recluse played by Don Henderson in The Ghoul (Freddie Francis, 1975), who said his hitchhiker victims deserved to be cooked and eaten because they lacked the common sense to not be cooked and eaten.
It is likely that Gove, however, feels a genuine connection to Stormzy. Both men, for example, have been accused of using class A drugs, a charge Stormzy denies. But a young black man accused of class A usage would face the full force of the law, whereas an elderly white Conservative politician like Gove can admit to having snuffled as much cocaine as he likes and the offence is soon forgotten. Least said soonest mended, I always say. Gove was further traduced for saying Stormzy, who supported the Grenfell fire victims and funds scholarships to Cambridge University, should leave politics alone because he is “a far, far better rapper than he is a political analyst”. Black people, it seems, need to carry on singing and dancing for their masters and leave the thinking to big brains like Michael Gove.
But is this interpretation of Gove’s words unfair? What if Gove is such a Stormzy fan that he is afraid he will lose his idol from music to politics, and then there will be no more of the rap music that he loves? Is Gove trying to put Stormzy back in the black box simply because he loves him too much?
If the online comment sewer is flowing beneath this piece this week, doubtless readers will ask why this column isn’t questioning the Labour party’s ongoing open-goal antisemitism shambles. This is a legitimate criticism, except that we have the entire rest of the media to ask that question repeatedly while, as usual, the Conservatives’ relentless top-down racism remains relatively unexamined.
It’s a startling fact that 25% of the prison population is from a BAME background, whereas none of it is from parliament, perhaps due to the unequal systems of punishment Gove’s non-conviction proves are in play. Had Gove been imprisoned for his drug offences, as he should have been, his fluency in urban slang would have been a great asset inside. “Ah! Stop it!! It hurts!!! My haggis nozzle!!!! Big man ting!!!!!”
Stewart Lee
2019-12-01T22:26:17+00:00
Many years ago, while wearing a Navajo jacket, I was accused of cultural appropriation. I told the zealot harassing me the jacket was a gift from a Native American shaman-clown, under whom I had studied. She backed down, humiliated, like Major General Arthur St Clair before the forces of Little Turtle and the Potawatomi, at the Battle of a Thousand Slain, on 4 November 1791. My accuser and I began a short but tempestuous relationship, based on the thrill of committing ever more offensive ideological thought crimes. One sick night, I imagined a public library with deliberately inadequate disabled access, while she made a scale model of a unisex toilet and then vandalised it. Within weeks, our imaginary atrocities exhausted, our twisted affair ended. But I realised there may have been some truth in my ex-lover’s accusations of cultural insensitivity. Luckily, I still had the receipt for the jacket and so I returned the racist garment to Camden market, where I had bought it while shopping drunk months earlier. The idea of “cultural appropriation” is a minefield, especially in the “political correctness gone mad” times that we live in now, in today’s “politically correct” world of “so-called” “political correctness” “gone mad”. But I don’t doubt for a moment that Michael Gove’s decision to quote the rap singer Stormzy in a tweet on Tuesday was without malice. If Gove isn’t a Stormzy fan how would the blotchy foundling know that the rapper’s hit Shut Up included the phrase “I set the trends dem man copy”? Daniel Hannanananananananan’s decision to reply to Gove’s tweet with the emphatic urban phrase “Big man ting!” is less easy to justify. As the words do not relate to a specific Stormzy lyric, one can only assume Hannanananananananan thought them appropriate simply because Stormzy is black. It...
Advantages: Master of the craft performs finely honed routines about significant stuff.
Disadvantages: Repeats much material from previous years.
Stewart Lee's new Edinburgh show is a literal egg box of laughs. Having spent much of the year in his hard-pressed job as a stand-up comedian (the hardest job in the world apparently) writing new routines and plagiarising his own substantial back catalogue for next year's BBC series 'Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle,' the squashed Albert Finney conjured up the conceit of using a box of numbered eggs to randomly determine each night's set-list. Unless you're attending the half-price preview before the Fringe has really begun, in which the comedian confesses he hasn't learned all of the routines yet, and an audience member is offered the more limited selection of choosing any three eggs from the front row of three. It spoils the sense of adventure somewhat, but the tickets were only £5 so there's no reason to complain. You want the moon on a stick.
Despite being advertised as 'a mix of new material, and material that's so old it seems new' (unless you approached the show on the malfunctioning EdFringe website where it was bizarrely billed as a tragic comedy about a frustrated obituary writer befriending a very old woman), much of the material is taken directly from the comedian's previous three stand-up tours, that fans might like to imagine qualify as a trilogy insofar as there were three of them in relatively close proximity. As of yet, there's none of the cocky absurdity of Lee's nineties work, which is a shame, but the material is still some of the strongest on the Fringe, and works as something of a greatest hits collection of 21st century Stewart Lee. It's just a shame that long-time fans will have heard much of this before, as will anyone who purchased his DVDs.
Consciously avoiding the story and crescendo elements of his usual hour-long shows, the three routines (whatever they may be) are self-contained entities bridged by Lee checking a piece of scrap paper and announcing 'now I'll talk about political correctness,' but his twenty years of experience in professional stand-up still allow him to refer back to previous material when it becomes relevant again, creating some sense of progression and structure. Lee's on-stage persona is self-assured without being arrogant, self-deprecating without seeking pity and, most of all, intimidatingly smart, and the issues he explores in detail in these twenty-minute routines are mature and thought-provoking.
From personal issues with the low standards of the general public to his justified fears of being misinterpreted, Lee paints a detailed picture of the life of a stand-up comedian and the responsibilities that come with the job, all inspired by a second-hand LP of Franklyn Ajaye that he admits he's never felt the need to actually listen to. Religion is inevitably discussed again, Lee being no stranger to reprisals after co-writing and directing 'Jerry Springer: The Opera' and suffering from the partially successful protests of right-wing Christian fundamentalists, and political correctness is discussed in a more reasoned manner than you'd expect from the Stand, illustrated with experiences from Lee's own life now he's reached the ancient milestone of forty.
For fans, 'Scrambled Egg' promises to be an exciting show that invites a return visit, but is disappointing for being based largely in material that's not yet so old that it seems new. While the material is essentially as scattered and arbitrary as Lee's previous shows, the self-contained pieces don't permit the grand finales that proved so rewarding in the comedian's 2004 and 2005 shows, but depending on the material selected, there's still a chance to see the performer's trademark mental breakdown set-piece. For non-fans, this is a great opportunity to see one of the best comedians in the country ploughing through finely honed routines without any weak links, a show that informs as much as it amuses. At the very least, you might leave knowing more about jazz than you did before.
'Stewart Lee: Scrambled Egg' is on at the Stand One, Sundays to Thursdays from 3rd to 24th August 2008 (not 8th, 9th, 15th, 16th, 22nd or 23rd) at 7:45pm, lasting one hour. Tickets cost £10.
Summary: 'In a town where no-one dies, a frustrated obituary writer befriends a very old woman.'
Stewart Lee
2008-07-31T13:46:24+01:00
Advantages: Master of the craft performs finely honed routines about significant stuff. Disadvantages: Repeats much material from previous years. Stewart Lee's new Edinburgh show is a literal egg box of laughs. Having spent much of the year in his hard-pressed job as a stand-up comedian (the hardest job in the world apparently) writing new routines and plagiarising his own substantial back catalogue for next year's BBC series 'Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle,' the squashed Albert Finney conjured up the conceit of using a box of numbered eggs to randomly determine each night's set-list. Unless you're attending the half-price preview before the Fringe has really begun, in which the comedian confesses he hasn't learned all of the routines yet, and an audience member is offered the more limited selection of choosing any three eggs from the front row of three. It spoils the sense of adventure somewhat, but the tickets were only £5 so there's no reason to complain. You want the moon on a stick. Despite being advertised as 'a mix of new material, and material that's so old it seems new' (unless you approached the show on the malfunctioning EdFringe website where it was bizarrely billed as a tragic comedy about a frustrated obituary writer befriending a very old woman), much of the material is taken directly from the comedian's previous three stand-up tours, that fans might like to imagine qualify as a trilogy insofar as there were three of them in relatively close proximity. As of yet, there's none of the cocky absurdity of Lee's nineties work, which is a shame, but the material is still some of the strongest on the Fringe, and works as something of a greatest hits collection of 21st century Stewart Lee. It's just a shame that long-time fans will have heard much of...
After ten years studying Shakespeare, electronica guru Drew Daniel returns to exorcise childhood daemons.
Daniel's teenage fandom of Black Metal - the Scandinavian thrash hybrid sometimes, but not exclusively, inspired by Satanism and Nazism - sits awkwardly with his gay adult self.
Selections from Darkthrone, Mayhem and friends are re-imagined as plausible and sinuous '90s club anthems.
An's Let There Be Ebola Frost sports soulful female vocals.
Hellhammer's Maniac is satanic drum 'n' bass. Smiley subversion dances away the devil.
Stewart Lee
2014-06-22T21:41:12+01:00
After ten years studying Shakespeare, electronica guru Drew Daniel returns to exorcise childhood daemons. Daniel's teenage fandom of Black Metal - the Scandinavian thrash hybrid sometimes, but not exclusively, inspired by Satanism and Nazism - sits awkwardly with his gay adult self. Selections from Darkthrone, Mayhem and friends are re-imagined as plausible and sinuous '90s club anthems. An's Let There Be Ebola Frost sports soulful female vocals. Hellhammer's Maniac is satanic drum 'n' bass. Smiley subversion dances away the devil.
Emerging alone beneath the vast dome of the Roundhouse in jeans and a plain green shirt, Steve Earle looks like someone who has arrived to fix a washing machine, rather than the man who reclaimed roots rock in the ‘80s and cleared the path for the Alternative Country generation. Earle’s angry 2004 album The Revolution Starts Now was a superb example of The Hardcore Troubadour and friends in full country-grunge mode, but here the absence of any accompanists is desperately evident in songs like The Devil’s Right Hand, as increasingly brutal downstrokes of the guitar struggle to fill a void. In contrast, the gentler, fingerpicked numbers, including Earle’s signature song My Old Friend The Blues, give the Roundhouse the feel of an intimate folk club.
Then a large, pear-shaped man in black arrives, portending doom, to provide programmed beats for selections from last year’s Washington Square Serenade album. Earle decamped to New York to walk the streets that shaped the ‘60s protest singers and tonight we’re treated to a cut-and-paste Big Apple of downtown A trains, alphabet city, and seventh avenue, over a budget backdrop that sounds like a 1992 trip-hop version of the Steve Earle sound. In the increasingly restless standing area before the stage, even elderly Uncut magazine subscribers recognise this hybrid as an ill-advised experiment. We should admire an established artist like Earle for challenging his audience, thirty years into his career, but only an unaugmented Sparkle And Shine really sparkles and shines, and even Earle’s wife, and opening act, Alison Moorer, looked kind of shifty during her vocal contributions to the latin-flavoured, genre-crossing landgrab City Of Immigrants.
Earle was alone again for a closing run of crowd-pleasers, but the room had already thinned around the edges when Earle took up the mandolin for a beautiful version of The Galway Girl, reminding us of what he’s capable of.T
Stewart Lee
2008-02-24T20:03:40+00:00
Emerging alone beneath the vast dome of the Roundhouse in jeans and a plain green shirt, Steve Earle looks like someone who has arrived to fix a washing machine, rather than the man who reclaimed roots rock in the ‘80s and cleared the path for the Alternative Country generation. Earle’s angry 2004 album The Revolution Starts Now was a superb example of The Hardcore Troubadour and friends in full country-grunge mode, but here the absence of any accompanists is desperately evident in songs like The Devil’s Right Hand, as increasingly brutal downstrokes of the guitar struggle to fill a void. In contrast, the gentler, fingerpicked numbers, including Earle’s signature song My Old Friend The Blues, give the Roundhouse the feel of an intimate folk club. Then a large, pear-shaped man in black arrives, portending doom, to provide programmed beats for selections from last year’s Washington Square Serenade album. Earle decamped to New York to walk the streets that shaped the ‘60s protest singers and tonight we’re treated to a cut-and-paste Big Apple of downtown A trains, alphabet city, and seventh avenue, over a budget backdrop that sounds like a 1992 trip-hop version of the Steve Earle sound. In the increasingly restless standing area before the stage, even elderly Uncut magazine subscribers recognise this hybrid as an ill-advised experiment. We should admire an established artist like Earle for challenging his audience, thirty years into his career, but only an unaugmented Sparkle And Shine really sparkles and shines, and even Earle’s wife, and opening act, Alison Moorer, looked kind of shifty during her vocal contributions to the latin-flavoured, genre-crossing landgrab City Of Immigrants. Earle was alone again for a closing run of crowd-pleasers, but the room had already thinned around the edges when Earle took up the mandolin for a beautiful version...
By his own admission, the writer of this piece was in the audience for my 2008 show in Stoke on Trent where I performed the original routine, though he says he hated the show so much he never came to see me again.
Stewart Lee
2015-07-30T23:15:30+01:00
By his own admission, the writer of this piece was in the audience for my 2008 show in Stoke on Trent where I performed the original routine, though he says he hated the show so much he never came to see me again.
For a man who professes to dislike the internet so much, Stewart Lee is an ardent fan on one of its trendiest aspects: the meme.
His act is almost entirely based around the recurrence of motifs: building them up in the audience's mind and returning back to them again and again, hoping that the growing conspiracy of insider knowledge that he creates in the auditorium will repay with bigger laughs with every reoccurence.
The most wicked part of this conceit is that Lee is so naked in its pursuit - actively bragging about the emptiness of his show while taking close to £20 a seat from a near-sell out Theatre Royal crowd - and that the audience loved it.
So he gets away with a show that has Scooby Doo, self-aggrandising shop names, and the acts of other comics as its main themes, and does so with enviable panache, deceitful confidence and a still-growing fan base after more than two decades as a professional comedian.
He can do this because as well as pursuing an almost Platonic study of comedy he is very funny. Alongside the metaphysical dispositions there are very good gags, both of the bold, crude kind, and slow burning jokes that take hold after a few cogs have turned in the listener's head.
Lee made much of his previous visits to Norwich at the Art Centre and the Playhouse, and was perhaps too close with an observation that his style of comedy works better in smaller venues.
It deserves Theatre Royal-sized audiences and their big belly laughs though.
Stewart Lee
2012-03-11T14:00:55+00:00
For a man who professes to dislike the internet so much, Stewart Lee is an ardent fan on one of its trendiest aspects: the meme. His act is almost entirely based around the recurrence of motifs: building them up in the audience's mind and returning back to them again and again, hoping that the growing conspiracy of insider knowledge that he creates in the auditorium will repay with bigger laughs with every reoccurence. The most wicked part of this conceit is that Lee is so naked in its pursuit - actively bragging about the emptiness of his show while taking close to £20 a seat from a near-sell out Theatre Royal crowd - and that the audience loved it. So he gets away with a show that has Scooby Doo, self-aggrandising shop names, and the acts of other comics as its main themes, and does so with enviable panache, deceitful confidence and a still-growing fan base after more than two decades as a professional comedian. He can do this because as well as pursuing an almost Platonic study of comedy he is very funny. Alongside the metaphysical dispositions there are very good gags, both of the bold, crude kind, and slow burning jokes that take hold after a few cogs have turned in the listener's head. Lee made much of his previous visits to Norwich at the Art Centre and the Playhouse, and was perhaps too close with an observation that his style of comedy works better in smaller venues. It deserves Theatre Royal-sized audiences and their big belly laughs though.
It's curious thing that Stewart Lee's annual press outing has, in recent years, come when he starts carving his shows into three half hour segments to fit the remit of his television series - Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle.
Lee describes tonight as a "work-in-progress" despite this show running throughout the Edinburgh Fringe and touring the UK for the last two months. Still, however it is served, Lee's ‘stew' is a highly seasoned one as ever.
Although employing his familiar tropes of repetition, deconstruction and long-form subversion, the 45-year-old is much looser in style than he once was and also less surly, if no less scathing.
Targets as diverse as Ben Fogle and Ed Miliband are despatched with a mix of long and short form assaults. Meanwhile, UKIP deputy Paul Nuttall prompts a classic Lee rant, effectively a treatise on the benefits of immigration.
Touching familiar bases of lampooning his own fame, the whims of the comedy business, Lee goes beyond just pleasing his fans with more of the same. This is particularly the case with his final third that sees him muse on the ravages of age and family life, sufficient to drive a middle-aged man to become a ‘connoisseur' of specialist beers with evermore unlikely names - Hogwarts Bukake anyone?
It's impossible to believe that we could ever lose Lee's incisiveness to an olde English novelty beer-induced stupor, and, indeed, as ever he doth protest too much. However, he's packaged, there is a clarity to Lee that not even his own over-embroidering can hide.
Stewart Lee
2013-11-08T18:41:16+00:00
It's curious thing that Stewart Lee's annual press outing has, in recent years, come when he starts carving his shows into three half hour segments to fit the remit of his television series - Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle. Lee describes tonight as a "work-in-progress" despite this show running throughout the Edinburgh Fringe and touring the UK for the last two months. Still, however it is served, Lee's ‘stew' is a highly seasoned one as ever. Although employing his familiar tropes of repetition, deconstruction and long-form subversion, the 45-year-old is much looser in style than he once was and also less surly, if no less scathing. Targets as diverse as Ben Fogle and Ed Miliband are despatched with a mix of long and short form assaults. Meanwhile, UKIP deputy Paul Nuttall prompts a classic Lee rant, effectively a treatise on the benefits of immigration. Touching familiar bases of lampooning his own fame, the whims of the comedy business, Lee goes beyond just pleasing his fans with more of the same. This is particularly the case with his final third that sees him muse on the ravages of age and family life, sufficient to drive a middle-aged man to become a ‘connoisseur' of specialist beers with evermore unlikely names - Hogwarts Bukake anyone? It's impossible to believe that we could ever lose Lee's incisiveness to an olde English novelty beer-induced stupor, and, indeed, as ever he doth protest too much. However, he's packaged, there is a clarity to Lee that not even his own over-embroidering can hide.
Tony Oxley floated Free Improvisation’s Northern English spearhead on implausibly arrhythmic pulses in the ‘60s.
A rigorous retrospective could have included collaborations with talents as diverse as Georgie Fame and Cecil Taylor, but this appropriate 75th birthday celebration offers five unreleased slices of Oxley accompanying more sympathetic souls.
Most welcome is a thirty minute 1993 scuffle with the pointillist piano of an uncharacteristically minimal Pat Thomas, Matt Wand’s leaky sampler, and the stellar guitar tones Derek Bailey.
Stewart Lee
2013-11-24T21:12:34+00:00
Tony Oxley floated Free Improvisation’s Northern English spearhead on implausibly arrhythmic pulses in the ‘60s. A rigorous retrospective could have included collaborations with talents as diverse as Georgie Fame and Cecil Taylor, but this appropriate 75th birthday celebration offers five unreleased slices of Oxley accompanying more sympathetic souls. Most welcome is a thirty minute 1993 scuffle with the pointillist piano of an uncharacteristically minimal Pat Thomas, Matt Wand’s leaky sampler, and the stellar guitar tones Derek Bailey.
The only available room in Birmingham last Tuesday night was an Airbnb on Edward Street. Usually the Birmingham tourist board are giving them away free, with incentivising jars of Bovril and vouchers for the legendary Hurst Street cafe Mr Egg. “Eat like a king for under a pound!”
But tonight, Birmingham was buzzing. There was a heavy police presence, and Ladypool Road had run out of balti, which I assumed was because I was the opening comedian for local blue-collar Beefheartian post-punk survivors the Nightingales at the Hare & Hounds in King’s Heath.
However, when I got into the room, I found I was overlooking the International Convention Centre, the home of the room-gobbling 2018 Conservative party conference. After last year’s standup stage-invasion debacle, I was surprised security checks had allowed a comedian like me within sight of the conference, and would like those responsible for this oversight to be spanked senseless in Josef K’s broom cupboard.
Perhaps I avoided being on the radar of security staff looking out for comedians because I am “about as funny as a bonfire in a burning orphanage. I thought comedy was sposed 2 b funny”, as you will doubtless say in the below-the-article comments online, Mr TrueBritExitEuropeKremlinbot19.
On Wednesday morning, staring over my laptop at the Conservative party conference venue, I assumed it would be easy to shit out Sunday’s thousand-word screed of liberal elite humour, but I was sick of the Tories, so I trawled the papers for other stories. Tuesday’s Independent newspaper headline “Planning glitch delays sex robot brothel”, a sentence in which almost every word suggests a story in its own right, seemed promising. But then I saw a photo of a sad-faced blond sex robot staring blankly out of the page, and I felt she had suffered enough ignominy without me adding to her woes.
I had the same feeling of mercy when I witnessed a mouse-faced Michael Gove eating wasabi peas alone in a Costa Coffee at Knutsford services last week, and quietly binned my latest Gove-mocking tract.
Then, that afternoon, in the van from Birmingham to Hackney’s fashionable Moth Club, Nightingales guitarist James Smith showed me a clip on his phone of Theresa May prancing uneasily to an Abba record, like a mantis with an inner ear infection.
Dead Cat strategies attempt to distract the public from some impending political disaster, but this was off the scale. Theresa May hadn’t so much thrown the dead cat on the table as slit it open, scooped out its guts, swallowed them whole, and worn its eviscerated feline body as some kind of hideous hat of gore.
Nonetheless, her idiotic Dead Cat Dance was received with loyal approval by the usual snap-on tools of democracy. James Cleverly, Conservative MP for Braintree, who despite having the word clever in his own name and the word brain in that of his constituency, found time to tweet, stupidly, “Great to see Theresa May dance on to the stage to Dancing Queen by ABBA. Classy.” This was something no one else anywhere in the world was thinking, as they watched, cringing with embarrassment, through their splayed fingers.
Meanwhile the Telegraph, a monochromatic shit-sheet which is given away free with water in WH Smiths, opined “Journalists gasped. Politicians burst into applause and laughter. Abba’s Dancing Queen played loud, and Theresa May shimmied her way to the podium.” Presumably I have spent my entire life misunderstanding the idea of shimmying. If I am ever hit by a car and have to crawl towards the edge of the road to die, trailing my guts behind me, I will be sure to think of myself as “shimmying” into the gutter.
And while her colleagues continue to nail Corbyn hard to the floor for his shortcomings, the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg remains a friendly face that Theresa May visibly looks for in a difficult press conference, knowing she will throw her an easy question bone. Kuenssberg tweeted, “PM massive sense of humour alert – comes on to Dancing Queen, jigs about – hall loves it.” But I thought humor woz sposed 2 b funny.
If May’s ill-advised advisers were hoping to use her Dead Cat Dance as a distraction from the impossibility of reaching a satisfactory Brexit solution, they may have misjudged the situation. Mung-bean munching musicians hate it when Conservatives appropriate their work. Johnny Marr commanded David Cameron not to like the Smiths, and presumably must now have extended that embargo to For Britain poster boy Morrissey too.
Abba have already expressed concern about the abuse of their work for political ends, and threatened to sue the far-right anti-immigration Danish People’s party for appropriating Mamma Mia. Former Hep Star Björn Ulvaeus himself has described Brexit as “a disaster”, and as the Eurovision song contest’s most famous winners, Abba embody the spirit of pan-European cooperation that anti-immigration, anti-European Tories on the far right of the party seek to undermine.
Avatars of the 70s Keep Britain Tidy campaign, Abba were early adopters of the sort of environmental concerns that the Tories’ drive towards a deregulated post-Brexit Britain will abandon. And in featuring such arch historical rivals as a yellow-haired woman and a brown-haired woman, and a fat bearded man and a thin clean-shaven man, working in perfect harmony, Abba showed that different people could cooperate for the common good, rather than fight their fellows like horrid Brexit rats.
It’s highly likely that Theresa May’s Dead Cat Dance will end in Swedish pop anger, and the spin-wazzocks that talked her into it will soon distance themselves from their suggestion. There is no solution to the Conservatives’ impasse. Theresa’s Dead Cat Dance aimed to ensure that people talked about her moves, however humiliating, rather than her speech. And you fell for it. The Winner Takes It All would have been better walk-on music. “I’ve played all my cards, and that’s what you’ve done too / Nothing more to say / No more ace to play.”
Stewart Lee
2018-10-07T19:03:00+01:00
The only available room in Birmingham last Tuesday night was an Airbnb on Edward Street. Usually the Birmingham tourist board are giving them away free, with incentivising jars of Bovril and vouchers for the legendary Hurst Street cafe Mr Egg. “Eat like a king for under a pound!” But tonight, Birmingham was buzzing. There was a heavy police presence, and Ladypool Road had run out of balti, which I assumed was because I was the opening comedian for local blue-collar Beefheartian post-punk survivors the Nightingales at the Hare & Hounds in King’s Heath. However, when I got into the room, I found I was overlooking the International Convention Centre, the home of the room-gobbling 2018 Conservative party conference. After last year’s standup stage-invasion debacle, I was surprised security checks had allowed a comedian like me within sight of the conference, and would like those responsible for this oversight to be spanked senseless in Josef K’s broom cupboard. Perhaps I avoided being on the radar of security staff looking out for comedians because I am “about as funny as a bonfire in a burning orphanage. I thought comedy was sposed 2 b funny”, as you will doubtless say in the below-the-article comments online, Mr TrueBritExitEuropeKremlinbot19. On Wednesday morning, staring over my laptop at the Conservative party conference venue, I assumed it would be easy to shit out Sunday’s thousand-word screed of liberal elite humour, but I was sick of the Tories, so I trawled the papers for other stories. Tuesday’s Independent newspaper headline “Planning glitch delays sex robot brothel”, a sentence in which almost every word suggests a story in its own right, seemed promising. But then I saw a photo of a sad-faced blond sex robot staring blankly out of the page, and I felt she had suffered enough ignominy...
LUNCHTIME at the Jerwood Space in South London: three comics and a director, eating risotto. The team behind Stewart Lee's new play, Johnson and Boswell - Late But Live, consisting of Lee, Simon Munnery (Johnson), Miles Jupp (Boswell) and director Owen Lewis, are taking a well-earned rest.
"My main worry is that Boswell is supposed to be smaller than Johnson," says Munnery. In reality, Jupp (Archie the Inventor in Balamory) towers above him. "So part of my preparation for the role is to have risotto every lunchtime. I'm also trying to eat as much of Miles's risotto as I can."
The talk around the table is of Galway, where Lee was doing a gig the previous night. All three comics are also doing solo shows on the Fringe and Lewis is directing a second play. Galway went well, Lee says, though he's concerned that he's starting to sound like Samuel Johnson.
Lee was approached by producer Iain Gillie to write a two-hander about the two disgruntled gents on their 1773 road trip to the Highlands and Islands. Or at least, he says, that's what it was before he went to Galway. "I don't know what they've been doing with it while I've been away. It could be a puppet show by now."
"There's a Greek chorus," says Munnery, helpfully. The great thing about talking to comedians is that you never know when they're joking.
In the play, the pair rock up in the Traverse in 2007, "late but live", to re-launch their travel books, cashing in on the fad for celebrity memoirs.
Post-risotto, Jupp rehearses his introduction. Lee, who wrote Jerry Springer: The Opera and directed last year's Talk Radio, has written a sharp script which takes no prisoners.
Enter Munnery, who slips into a prim RP accent to deliver Johnson's acerbic lines, meeting Jupp's eagerness with a waspish cynicism: "As a dog returns to its vomit, so I have returned to the land of the deep-fried pizza..."
Lee says that, deep-fried pizza additions aside, many of Johnson's original lines sound remarkably modern. "I like the idea of comedy fans coming along and really laughing at good jokes from 230 years ago, and not knowing that's what they are."
He started writing expecting to exploit the comic potential in the differences between Scotland then and now, but in the rehearsal room the piece started to change. "The more interesting thing is the relationship between these two people," he says now. "We all thought it was going to be a bit of fun, but the second half has become quite a different thing, quite an ambitious thing to do.
"Johnson is like Peter Cook in decline, he's fed up with being the perfect wit. He lets Boswell down."
It helps that Jupp and Munnery fit their roles so well. Munnery is himself something a master of the acerbic one-liner, and when Lee ran into Jupp in a pub in Shepherd's Bush, he looked into his young, plaintive face and knew he'd found his Boswell.
"My relationship with Miles is similar to Johnson and Boswell's relationship," says Munnery, deadpan. "He writes down things I say."
"That's because I'm trying to make sense of them," counters Jupp sharply.
Twenty yellow buckets are stacked up tantalisingly at the edges of the rehearsal space. They belong, Lee says, to the physical theatre bit in the second half. Iain Gillie arrived with them one day on his motorbike.
I'm still trying to visualise producer, motorbike and buckets when Lee strides into his next analogy: "I wrote this really complicated bit of physical theatre involving lots of stuff and left them to it. It's a bit like doing a big shit and leaving them to clean it up!"
"And all we've done is spread it about," says Jupp, as if on cue.
As I leave the rehearsal, I'm cursing the power of a visual imagination. And Lee is still cackling.
• Johnson and Boswell - Late But Live is at the Traverse, Edinburgh, 7-26 August (not 13 or 20)
Stewart Lee
2007-07-27T19:22:10+01:00
LUNCHTIME at the Jerwood Space in South London: three comics and a director, eating risotto. The team behind Stewart Lee's new play, Johnson and Boswell - Late But Live, consisting of Lee, Simon Munnery (Johnson), Miles Jupp (Boswell) and director Owen Lewis, are taking a well-earned rest. "My main worry is that Boswell is supposed to be smaller than Johnson," says Munnery. In reality, Jupp (Archie the Inventor in Balamory) towers above him. "So part of my preparation for the role is to have risotto every lunchtime. I'm also trying to eat as much of Miles's risotto as I can." The talk around the table is of Galway, where Lee was doing a gig the previous night. All three comics are also doing solo shows on the Fringe and Lewis is directing a second play. Galway went well, Lee says, though he's concerned that he's starting to sound like Samuel Johnson. Lee was approached by producer Iain Gillie to write a two-hander about the two disgruntled gents on their 1773 road trip to the Highlands and Islands. Or at least, he says, that's what it was before he went to Galway. "I don't know what they've been doing with it while I've been away. It could be a puppet show by now." "There's a Greek chorus," says Munnery, helpfully. The great thing about talking to comedians is that you never know when they're joking. In the play, the pair rock up in the Traverse in 2007, "late but live", to re-launch their travel books, cashing in on the fad for celebrity memoirs. Post-risotto, Jupp rehearses his introduction. Lee, who wrote Jerry Springer: The Opera and directed last year's Talk Radio, has written a sharp script which takes no prisoners. Enter Munnery, who slips into a prim RP accent to deliver...
In my capacity as a stand-up comedian, I was asked by the New Statesman to produce a defence of comedy in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The problem was that, like Josef K in The Trial, I was not aware of the exact nature of the charges. Apparently, comics attend Edinburgh only in the hope of snagging a TV gig, while the proliferation of comedy has both wrecked the Fringe as a hotbed for alternative theatre and dumbed audiences down into stand-up leeches, willing only to go and see 40 minutes of knob jokes, rather than 40 minutes of Brecht. What a shock. As a comedian myself, I'd assumed we were loved. Suddenly, I feel I have been living a lie.
So what is our defence? It is fair to say that most comics go to Edinburgh in the hope of some career advancement. Despite increased audience numbers, most shows still lose money - often thousands of pounds. It is difficult for a young comedian to justify a personal loss of up to £10,000 for the sheer pleasure of performing alone. Without TV gigs, corporate work or bookings at chicken-in-a-basket chains like the Comedy Store or Jongleurs, no stand-up makes enough to shrug off that kind of loss. At best, most Edinburgh-bound stand-ups hope to raise their profile among promoters, or simply to become better comedians, having had the luxury of performing their own hour in their own space for a month. Believe it or not, there is huge camaraderie among comics, despite the spiky portrayals in Annie Griffin's recent satirical film Festival. Television executives who snaffle talent from the Fringe should be viewed with suspicion any- way. Most acts are working all year all over the country. Any suit who snags them during some expenses-paid trip north isn't really serious about his job, and should be spat at in the street.
Besides which, these days the TV deal isn't what it was. With the advent of cable and digital TV, there's a lot of televisual static that needs filling today. Who better to do it than stand-up comedians, who can work without a script, and will perform, literally, for peanuts? BBC3 comedy shows are made on one-third of the budget for BBC2 shows ten years ago, even before factoring in inflation. A hack of a stand-up comic, with the kind of bland material that will play well at Christmas parties, Jongleurs or the Comedy Store, will make more in a year than a new comic on a TV development deal, and 20 minutes of jokes will last them a lifetime. Television isn't necessarily attractive: there's a whole generation of youngsters carving out their own alternative circuit in major cities who view it with suspicion.
The proliferation of comedy at the Fringe is not self-generated. Remember, one of the wonderful things about the Fringe is that it does not have an artistic policy. You pay for your space, and if people come, then you'll come back. The growth is in response to public demand, and I doubt that it has been at the expense of theatre. The Fringe has simply become bigger.
Even in the unlikely case that comedy may have stolen audiences from theatre, there may be reasons for this. London has the biggest comedy-club circuit in the world, and the Edinburgh Fringe rewards comic risk-takers. Stand-up in Britain advances in leaps, and despite what you may see on television, is becoming ever more fascinating at the grass roots. American, Australian and Canadian comedians come to this country because they want to be a part of it. This gives the lie to the - admittedly arguably facetious - last point on the charge sheet: that stand-up on the Fringe has dumbed audiences down to the point where they are willing only to go and see 40 minutes of knob jokes, rather than 40 minutes of Brecht.
On the contrary, an audience that has seen Will Hodgson, Will Adamsdale, Simon Munnery, Josie Long or Daniel Kitson will probably have been dumbed up. And surely, in the 21st century, we are beyond condemning a performance for its subject material. There are lousy knob gags. And there are sublime ones. There are knob gags that are infinitely superior to a poor-quality production of Brecht, and which contain more poetry and wit than the average theatre production. All human life begins with a knob gag. There is much that comedy can learn from theatre; but there is probably more, about pacing, accessibility, simplicity of staging and the way to sell strange ideas to suspicious crowds, that theatre can learn from comedy. And I speak, albeit arrogantly, both as an Olivier Award-nominated theatre director and as a working comic.
We live in strange times. The government drip-feeds us facts on a need-to-know basis and it appears that whole areas of discussion - such as suggesting there are links between the London bombings and Iraq, or criticising religious belief - are prohibited. On the night after the last round of London bombings I saw a young Asian comic, Paul Chowdhry, talking on stage about how the public's fear of Asian men meant he was finally able to get a seat on the Tube, and sometimes had the entire network to himself. Comedy can respond to events with a speed that theatre cannot match. And even apolitical absurdity is an appropriate response to mass panic. We laugh in the face of death.
Perhaps there is too much comedy. And this piece is biased anyway: I have chosen the best examples to shore up the case for the defence. The best way for those of us who work in comedy to respond to criticism is simply to be better, to raise our game to meet the challenge of the times. If we don't, then we will die like dogs, and the shame of it will outlive us.
Stewart Lee
2005-08-01T18:20:56+01:00
In my capacity as a stand-up comedian, I was asked by the New Statesman to produce a defence of comedy in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The problem was that, like Josef K in The Trial, I was not aware of the exact nature of the charges. Apparently, comics attend Edinburgh only in the hope of snagging a TV gig, while the proliferation of comedy has both wrecked the Fringe as a hotbed for alternative theatre and dumbed audiences down into stand-up leeches, willing only to go and see 40 minutes of knob jokes, rather than 40 minutes of Brecht. What a shock. As a comedian myself, I'd assumed we were loved. Suddenly, I feel I have been living a lie. So what is our defence? It is fair to say that most comics go to Edinburgh in the hope of some career advancement. Despite increased audience numbers, most shows still lose money - often thousands of pounds. It is difficult for a young comedian to justify a personal loss of up to £10,000 for the sheer pleasure of performing alone. Without TV gigs, corporate work or bookings at chicken-in-a-basket chains like the Comedy Store or Jongleurs, no stand-up makes enough to shrug off that kind of loss. At best, most Edinburgh-bound stand-ups hope to raise their profile among promoters, or simply to become better comedians, having had the luxury of performing their own hour in their own space for a month. Believe it or not, there is huge camaraderie among comics, despite the spiky portrayals in Annie Griffin's recent satirical film Festival. Television executives who snaffle talent from the Fringe should be viewed with suspicion any- way. Most acts are working all year all over the country. Any suit who snags them during some expenses-paid trip north isn't really serious...
Forming four years after their fellow New Yorkers The Fleshtones, The Fuzztones' take on Sixties punk is fundamental to the point of religious fanaticism, with bad trip condensed vocals, paranoid analogue organ sounds, and loping slide guitar.
If The Fleshtones sound like they'd buy you a beer, The Fuzztones would spike your drink with something nasty.
Fifty-nine year old frontman Rudi Protrudi makes a virtue of his increasingly inappropriate obsessions on the psych-blues of Old, confessing “I'm old, old and dirty. If I can't cut the mustard, baby, I can always lick the lid!", which somehow absolves the entire album, and focuses you on its considerable, if lurid, charms.
Stewart Lee
2011-05-08T19:46:01+01:00
Forming four years after their fellow New Yorkers The Fleshtones, The Fuzztones' take on Sixties punk is fundamental to the point of religious fanaticism, with bad trip condensed vocals, paranoid analogue organ sounds, and loping slide guitar. If The Fleshtones sound like they'd buy you a beer, The Fuzztones would spike your drink with something nasty. Fifty-nine year old frontman Rudi Protrudi makes a virtue of his increasingly inappropriate obsessions on the psych-blues of Old, confessing “I'm old, old and dirty. If I can't cut the mustard, baby, I can always lick the lid!", which somehow absolves the entire album, and focuses you on its considerable, if lurid, charms.
Most comedians who consider themselves dangerous like to make an awful lot of fuss about it. They shout and scream and intimidate the audience with their angry, righteous indignation – after all, that’s what Bill Hicks did (sometimes), and he was damn good. But in life, the most dangerous things don’t telegraph themselves, their stealth being the most lethal of their weapons.
Which is where Stewart Lee comes in.
He makes no fuss. He saunters onto the stage, unconcerned about the audience’s presence. He speaks slowly, deliberately, unafraid of pausing, or silence or even appearing vulnerable. Yet under this placid exterior is possibly the most fearless, audacious and challenging comedian working today. He’s unafraid of taking stand-up into seriously uncomfortable areas, compelling the audience to laugh against their basic instincts of decency. Many shock-jock comics claim to say the unsayable, Lee actually delivers, and with a devastating understated style.
Lee, infamously, has been in a lot of hot water this year, not for his stand-up but for Jerry Springer: The Opera. A fun, well-constructed and impressively staged work playing with the ideas of heaven, hell and confessional chat shows. Most who saw it would have seen little to offend, except perhaps the profligate swearing, of which they were warned in advance. But he was persecuted by spiteful Christian organisations, received tens of thousands of death threats and saw a project of which he was proud – and considered theologically sound – evaporate.
This is his considered answer to them. And his response is certainly not to turn the other cheek. Instead, since you might just as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, he has produced the most disgustingly blasphemous routine you are likely to encounter, pushing even the most open-minded non-believer’s tolerance to breaking point. The daring is breathtaking as he elicits gales of guilty laughter from an unwilling audience who are surely condemning themselves to hell, too. Lee himself professes to be uneasy in performing this toughest of material, and it’s easy to see why. This is what makes him so astoundingly courageous, because he charges so valiantly beyond any reasonable person’s comfort zone, including his own.
It’s heavyweight stuff. Lee is not your ‘gateway drug’ into comedy, but a crack cocaine of an act for those who find they can no longer get a high from the softer comedy of Peter Kay, most the Jongleurs roster, or Joe Pasquale – Lee’s other bete noire, next to the Christian church. Even the more accessible early routines, before he tackles Jesus, trot through the July 7 bombings and his favourite topic, the death of a much-loved icon (last year, Diana, this year the Pope).
In these, relatively less inflammatory topics, he maintains a keen sense of the absurd, beautifully highlighted by his brilliantly paced delivery, which slowly and subtly peels away new layers of fine material. Among all the talk Lee inevitably attracts for his boundary-pushing content, the point is easily overlooked that his work is also powerfully hilarious - the perfect mix of heavyweight topics, expert timing and fantastic lines proving an irresistible force.
Such a combination is, literally breathtaking.
This is surely the most impressive, intelligent and shockingly funny stand-up on the Fringe, if not the world.
Stewart Lee
2005-08-07T22:43:42+01:00
Most comedians who consider themselves dangerous like to make an awful lot of fuss about it. They shout and scream and intimidate the audience with their angry, righteous indignation – after all, that’s what Bill Hicks did (sometimes), and he was damn good. But in life, the most dangerous things don’t telegraph themselves, their stealth being the most lethal of their weapons. Which is where Stewart Lee comes in. He makes no fuss. He saunters onto the stage, unconcerned about the audience’s presence. He speaks slowly, deliberately, unafraid of pausing, or silence or even appearing vulnerable. Yet under this placid exterior is possibly the most fearless, audacious and challenging comedian working today. He’s unafraid of taking stand-up into seriously uncomfortable areas, compelling the audience to laugh against their basic instincts of decency. Many shock-jock comics claim to say the unsayable, Lee actually delivers, and with a devastating understated style. Lee, infamously, has been in a lot of hot water this year, not for his stand-up but for Jerry Springer: The Opera. A fun, well-constructed and impressively staged work playing with the ideas of heaven, hell and confessional chat shows. Most who saw it would have seen little to offend, except perhaps the profligate swearing, of which they were warned in advance. But he was persecuted by spiteful Christian organisations, received tens of thousands of death threats and saw a project of which he was proud – and considered theologically sound – evaporate. This is his considered answer to them. And his response is certainly not to turn the other cheek. Instead, since you might just as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, he has produced the most disgustingly blasphemous routine you are likely to encounter, pushing even the most open-minded non-believer’s tolerance to breaking point. The daring...
In 1993, The Scud Mountain Boys typified an emergent generation of professorial American songwriters with the same respect for the plangent Americana of Big Star and Gram Parsons their forebears showed to Robert Frost and John Cheever.
Indeed, after leaving the band rudderless in the late nineties, Joe Pernice pursued a literary career alongside his solo recordings.
The Alternative Country originators reform to drop ten apparently effortless slices of slowburning, immaculately harmonised, perfect grown-up guitar pop, gilded with lyrics both studiously modest and painfully precise.
Stewart Lee
2013-08-25T21:36:45+01:00
In 1993, The Scud Mountain Boys typified an emergent generation of professorial American songwriters with the same respect for the plangent Americana of Big Star and Gram Parsons their forebears showed to Robert Frost and John Cheever. Indeed, after leaving the band rudderless in the late nineties, Joe Pernice pursued a literary career alongside his solo recordings. The Alternative Country originators reform to drop ten apparently effortless slices of slowburning, immaculately harmonised, perfect grown-up guitar pop, gilded with lyrics both studiously modest and painfully precise.
The Smiths - The Smiths - Rough Trade - Rough 61 Vocals – Morrissey, Guitars, Harmonica – Johnny Marr, Bass – Andy Rourke, Drums – Mike Joyce. Reel Around The Fountain; You’ve Got Everything Now; Miserable Lie; Pretty Girls Make Graves; The Hand That Rocks The Cradle; Still Ill; Hand In Glove; What Difference Does It Make?; I Don’t Owe You Anything; Suffer Little Children. Recorded at Pluto in Manchester, Eden in London, Matrix in London and Strawberry in Manchester, Winter 1983.
Released 1984 (UK), peaked at number 2.
The 80’s was an unlovely decade, politically, culturally, and musically, and tribal options for young music fans were unappetising. If you needed a sense of belonging, you could opt for the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal and sew a shiny Saxon patch onto your denim jacket, or become a crusty-goth and follow New Model Army, Skeletal Family and Southern Death Cult around drab Midland towns with an Army And Navy kitbag. Across the Atlantic, American bands like Hüsker Dü, Sonic Youth and REM were already doing amazing things, mixing psychedelia, avant garde noise and roots rock influences into a robust post-punk template. But they were far away. So is it any wonder that, in the months preceding the initial stirrings of The Smiths, even Lloyd Cole’s first album had seemed like a lifeline to would-be sensitive types without their own flag to wave.
When John Peel first started playing The Smiths’ debut single, Hand In Glove, in 1983, it was clear they would immediately find their own fanatical constituency. A 1984 Go-Betweens gig at Aston university saw a man with Morrissey hair dressed in Morrissey clothes cavorting with Morrissey moves at the front of the stage. How strange it must have been for the literate Australian expatriates to look down and realise their poetry reading, outcast fan-base was already moving on to a more easily assimilated idol. And when The Smiths’ eponymous album finally appeared, even though every song on it was familiar from bootlegs of Troy Tate’s scrapped studio versions that circulated with the cider at parties, it was an instant classic.
There can’t have been many albums stranger and more provocative than The Smiths to scale the heights of number 2 in the UK charts. Before the advent of the CD reissues and the full scale exhumation of the past, The Smiths’ twangy guitars and 60’s beat group stylings sounded vital and unprecedented, even though Johnny Marr’s Roger McGuinn flourishes were lost in a muggy mix and the keyboard parts, played by a bloke from Mike And The Mechanics, seemed somewhat superfluous. And in an era where the apogee of proto-Goth, post punk fashion was to go onstage looking like a mascara smeared Native American tribesman in a bin liner, The Smiths’ studied drabness seemed almost chic. Above all, in 1984, the weird Polytechnic literary criticism that passed for music journalism found its perfect fodder in Morrissey’s lyrics, which played multi-layered, ironic games with meaning, sexual identity, notions of the unreliable narrator, and saucy seaside postcard humour. In the 70’s spliffs were rolled on Led Zep and Yes gatefold sleeves, while Tolkienesque artwork was perused for clues. The lyrics on The Smiths offered a far more satisfying opportunity for detective work, even if some of Morrissey’s more oblique strategies were soon to explode in his scrumpled face.
The Smiths is an unashamedly provincial and nostalgic album. It couldn’t be written today, when there is a Weatherspoons pub in every high street and all city centres sport cobbled pavements and the same thirty shops. Morrissey’s imagery was defiantly not from London, and reflected the last gasp of a culturally specific notion of the North reflected by the 60’s kitchen sink dramas from which much of the band’s sleeve art was culled. The album’s vocabulary evokes a pre-lapserian age, where Morrissey could speak to confused adolescents about their confused adolescent sexuality using metaphors that today no-one would dare touch. Thus, The Smiths’ epic opener, Reel Around The Fountain, explores the loss of sexual innocence with lines that are at once lascivious, sleazy and impossibly romantic, over a woozy, hazy backing. The narrator of The Hand That Rocks The Cradle appears both touched and somehow enflamed by a child’s defencelessness. And Suffer Little Children is clearly a sincerely meant, if perhaps ill advised, elegy for the young victims of the Moors Murders, that, if it were any more musically or lyrically sophisticated, would seem unjustifiably offensive. Morrissey buckled in the predictable tabloid shit-storm that followed, and attempted to clarify his position. He’s since learned that a great artist need never explain or apologise.
Returning to The Smiths two decades later and listening anew, the enduring and absurd myth of Morrissey’s miserableness is instantly exploded. Here are dozens of hilarious lines that comfort and yet also mock the introspective audience that made the album their own. “I know I need hardly say how much I love your casual way but please put your tongue away”, pleads the protagonist over Miserable Lie’s full-on rockabilly rhythm, and who could have been stupid enough to take Still Ill’s “I decree today that life is simply taking and not giving. England is mine! It owes me a living.”, seriously? Rock’s idea of humour still only stretches as far as covering Simon and Garfunkel songs as if they were punk classics, or getting a rap about smoking dope onto Top Of The Pops. The Smiths, in contrast, evidences a genuine and timeless wit.
By the time The Queen Is Dead came out many of the band’s first fans had stopped listening to The Smiths. It was an Oedipal thing I think. What choice did a young man have when faced with something that exerted so powerful an influence on his life but to reject it. Nonetheless, their quiffs never quite grew out. And in the 90’s, when Cornershop and a host of NME journalists crucified Morrissey over his pre-Britpop use of Nationalistic imagery, might it not be fair to say that part of their anger was an attempt to annihilate the memory of their devoted, unquestioning teenage selves that snapped up The Smiths the day it hit the racks? I saw Morrissey again for the first time in nearly 20 years at his recent Royal Albert Hall show. It felt good to be back. He is that rare thing, a proper, old fashioned star. Relax, Smiths fans, and listen to that first album again. You were right all along.
Stewart Lee
2004-06-01T18:05:09+01:00
The Smiths - The Smiths - Rough Trade - Rough 61 Vocals – Morrissey, Guitars, Harmonica – Johnny Marr, Bass – Andy Rourke, Drums – Mike Joyce. Reel Around The Fountain; You’ve Got Everything Now; Miserable Lie; Pretty Girls Make Graves; The Hand That Rocks The Cradle; Still Ill; Hand In Glove; What Difference Does It Make?; I Don’t Owe You Anything; Suffer Little Children. Recorded at Pluto in Manchester, Eden in London, Matrix in London and Strawberry in Manchester, Winter 1983. Released 1984 (UK), peaked at number 2. The 80’s was an unlovely decade, politically, culturally, and musically, and tribal options for young music fans were unappetising. If you needed a sense of belonging, you could opt for the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal and sew a shiny Saxon patch onto your denim jacket, or become a crusty-goth and follow New Model Army, Skeletal Family and Southern Death Cult around drab Midland towns with an Army And Navy kitbag. Across the Atlantic, American bands like Hüsker Dü, Sonic Youth and REM were already doing amazing things, mixing psychedelia, avant garde noise and roots rock influences into a robust post-punk template. But they were far away. So is it any wonder that, in the months preceding the initial stirrings of The Smiths, even Lloyd Cole’s first album had seemed like a lifeline to would-be sensitive types without their own flag to wave. When John Peel first started playing The Smiths’ debut single, Hand In Glove, in 1983, it was clear they would immediately find their own fanatical constituency. A 1984 Go-Betweens gig at Aston university saw a man with Morrissey hair dressed in Morrissey clothes cavorting with Morrissey moves at the front of the stage. How strange it must have been for the literate Australian expatriates to look down...
Stewart Lee's comedy vehicle looks like a clown car.
His show appears to be a stand-up gig in a nightclub, with added sketches, and Stewart Lee himself looks like a middle-aged man in a suit that's straining at the buttons. It's not a comedy suit though, like Harry Hill's trademark collars.
It's more like the suit of a man who was surprised to find his old jacket didn't fit any more but decided there was no point in buying a new one because he's been the same size all of his life.
I mention the suit because Stewart Lee, who went from Fist Of Fun to penning Jerry Springer The Opera, is 40 now. A difficult age when, if he's not careful, stand-up patter starts to sound like a one-man edition of Grumpy Old Men - or just plain envy.
Each week on his show Lee will be bitching about something. Tonight, it's books - specifically celebrity hardbacks, the tragic lives genre, Dan Brown - whatever sells by the shed-load.
Reading between the lines, Lee might just be really peeved that his own debut novel didn't match the dizzying sales figures enjoyed by the likes of Chris Moyles or Jeremy Clarkson. No wonder he can't stick Harry Potter.
"I've read the complete works of the romantic poet and visionary William Blake!" he blurts out at one point. You half-expect him to grab the cameraman by the lapels and scream: "I went to Oxford!!"
Fortunately, most of the time, Lee is very funny. As funny as Moyles though?
Watch and decide for yourself.
Stewart Lee
2009-03-16T11:03:48+00:00
Stewart Lee's comedy vehicle looks like a clown car. His show appears to be a stand-up gig in a nightclub, with added sketches, and Stewart Lee himself looks like a middle-aged man in a suit that's straining at the buttons. It's not a comedy suit though, like Harry Hill's trademark collars. It's more like the suit of a man who was surprised to find his old jacket didn't fit any more but decided there was no point in buying a new one because he's been the same size all of his life. I mention the suit because Stewart Lee, who went from Fist Of Fun to penning Jerry Springer The Opera, is 40 now. A difficult age when, if he's not careful, stand-up patter starts to sound like a one-man edition of Grumpy Old Men - or just plain envy. Each week on his show Lee will be bitching about something. Tonight, it's books - specifically celebrity hardbacks, the tragic lives genre, Dan Brown - whatever sells by the shed-load. Reading between the lines, Lee might just be really peeved that his own debut novel didn't match the dizzying sales figures enjoyed by the likes of Chris Moyles or Jeremy Clarkson. No wonder he can't stick Harry Potter. "I've read the complete works of the romantic poet and visionary William Blake!" he blurts out at one point. You half-expect him to grab the cameraman by the lapels and scream: "I went to Oxford!!" Fortunately, most of the time, Lee is very funny. As funny as Moyles though? Watch and decide for yourself.
Last month I was in Languedoc, formerly the fabled Cathar country, a remote outpost of heroic resistance to oppressive distant rulers. This month I am in Edinburgh. Plus ça change.
I don’t feel happy away from home at the moment. Like you, I have a terrible feeling that in the last three months the society we know has been slipping away, and the values we treasured systematically discarded, as the traditional opposition parties flutter away uselessly like old unspooled audio tape, wound round a lamppost at a dual carriageway junction.
A government of crackhead burglars has breached the window locks, smashing porcelain statuettes in a National Trust property, as they blow through looking for something disposable they can flog on fast to their dodgy mates, an Xbox, an iPhone, an ancient forest or a publicly owned bank.
Meanwhile, the centre-right squabble about whether to allow leftwing people to vote for an old leftwing man to lead an old leftwing party, or whether to allow it to be led by one of three wooden spoons with faces drawn on them that, if viewed from a certain angle, might look reassuringly like some of the people that are already in power.
But here I am in the comforting four-week fiction of the Edinburgh fringe, the Kos national stadium of the arts. And I am but a lotus eater, eating a fried lotus supper from the Clam Shell chippy on the Royal Mile, and washing it down with sugary lotus-ade. Burp.
Once again, the same venues have sprung up in the same bars and parks and beer gardens, and there are clowns and jugglers, puppeteers and children’s entertainers, circuses and bread. Yum yum. Ha ha.
Last night at 2am stars burst overhead. But I missed them because I was looking in the gutter. A stream of hot dog’s urine was carrying along a crumpled four-star review of my standup show from the Daily Telegraph, reflections of meteorites glittering gold and yellow around its incoherent bet-hedging. The image seemed profound, but in the clear light of the morning, as I poured out desiccated haggis for the kids, its exact meaning escaped me.
I’m so frightened now of real events I daren’t look at legitimate newspapers. Is it true the Conservatives are brazenly closing down official channels of opposition to strong-arm councils into allowing their friends and donors in the fossil fuels industry to frack everywhere, even under formerly protected national parks? Yes it is. Why isn’t this being stopped?
Amber Rudd, energy secretary, says shale gas must play a part in our energy supplies. But I thought if we got all this stuff out of the ground we would all die? And here, north of the border, the scrapping of wind farm subsidies bites, but will leave the death cult of Daily Telegraph readers delighted. Meanwhile, I am watching a clown and eating battered lotus burger, with lotus stains all over my Batman trainers.
Even the artists that ought to be complaining are all just drunk in a Grassmarket bar. And any that say anything, if they happen to be gay or “ethnics” or “women posing as comedians”, will be dismissed as evidence of a leftwing media cabal that controls the country (not terribly effectively, under the circumstances), and then be threatened with rapes and beatings and burnings. And that’s just by the newspaper critics.
When something is playing on your mind, you see evidence of it everywhere. Hence religion. Once I longed for forgiveness – and a ghost appeared to me, in Wolverhampton, and forgave me. But I still do not believe in ghosts, and anyway, the person whose ghost it was would never have chosen to visit Wolverhampton. Alive or dead. So I know it was not real.
As a result of the same mental process, the precious few shows I have managed to see here in Edinburgh, in between performing myself and occupying the children, begin to bleed meanings that probably aren’t there. Am I going mad with post-election grief and fear, or was the kids’ show, Our Teacher’s a Troll, at Summerhall, really a call to overthrow a corrupt government?
In the lean two-performer piece, an evil troll, imaginatively conjured from empty space by flickering lights, takes over a school, chews children’s heads off, sets the survivors to work in a gold mine, and eventually humiliates and oppresses even the compliant staff who thought they might benefit from collaborating with it. Sound familiar?
The troll, brilliantly, justifies its cruel actions by reference to a garbled reading of natural law, not dissimilar to the survival-of-the-fittest theorising that appears to underscore neoliberal free-market dogma, as espoused by the current crop of Conservative trolls from Sajid Javid to George “pencils” Osborne.
Of course, the two dozen under-eights sitting around me weren’t necessarily responding to the story on this level, although a caricature of a dissembling politician seemed universally recognisable, even to infants barely able to speak, who gurgled self-aggrandisingly at his appearance, like horrible West End theatre audiences do at a joke about some supposedly unfashionable brand of kitchenware.
It appears that all is lost until two small children, Holly and Sean, emerge from the silent compliant mass to ask the troll “Why?” Why does he govern them in the way that he does? Under their persistent questioning the troll, and his belief system, eventually crumble. And I left the theatre feeling a little less hopeless, feeling that all it might take to stop the juggernaut of unfairness is for someone, anyone at this stage, to ask why. A child could do it. So why not then a funny, little old man?
Maybe I am projecting my own anxieties on to the piece? Would a kids’ show consciously carry such weight? Or is it natural that any thoughtful piece of art should do so?
The similarly thoughtful young comedian Nish Kumar is currently appearing on the fringe with a show that explains, with knowing playfulness, why, in his opinion, there are no good rightwing comedians and no good leftwing action films, and how he takes the different pleasures he as a human needs from both, ideologically different, genres.
Likewise, it would be hard to imagine an effective children’s show written in support of child slavery and government by oppression and intimidation. It wouldn’t seem right to justify these things to children. But perhaps the market for it would be there. So let’s see someone write one, and let the market decide.
Stewart Lee
2015-08-16T13:34:44+01:00
Last month I was in Languedoc, formerly the fabled Cathar country, a remote outpost of heroic resistance to oppressive distant rulers. This month I am in Edinburgh. Plus ça change. I don’t feel happy away from home at the moment. Like you, I have a terrible feeling that in the last three months the society we know has been slipping away, and the values we treasured systematically discarded, as the traditional opposition parties flutter away uselessly like old unspooled audio tape, wound round a lamppost at a dual carriageway junction. A government of crackhead burglars has breached the window locks, smashing porcelain statuettes in a National Trust property, as they blow through looking for something disposable they can flog on fast to their dodgy mates, an Xbox, an iPhone, an ancient forest or a publicly owned bank. Meanwhile, the centre-right squabble about whether to allow leftwing people to vote for an old leftwing man to lead an old leftwing party, or whether to allow it to be led by one of three wooden spoons with faces drawn on them that, if viewed from a certain angle, might look reassuringly like some of the people that are already in power. But here I am in the comforting four-week fiction of the Edinburgh fringe, the Kos national stadium of the arts. And I am but a lotus eater, eating a fried lotus supper from the Clam Shell chippy on the Royal Mile, and washing it down with sugary lotus-ade. Burp. Once again, the same venues have sprung up in the same bars and parks and beer gardens, and there are clowns and jugglers, puppeteers and children’s entertainers, circuses and bread. Yum yum. Ha ha. Last night at 2am stars burst overhead. But I missed them because I was looking in the gutter....
When I last saw Stewart Lee perform in 2005, he was even more bitter than usual – worn down by the self-appointed defenders of religion who took issue with ‘blasphemous’ hit show Jerry Springer: The Opera.
The unlikely target of his vitriol was Joe Pasquale – who stands at the opposite end of the comic spectrum from the boundary-pushing Lee. After accusing Pasquale of plagiarising other comedians’ jokes, Lee spent considerable time building up to a punchline so vile, offensive and (if you believe in the concept) blasphemous, that Pasquale could never steal it.
It’s a relief to find Lee has calmed down somewhat in the intervening two years. However, one can surmise from this show’s title (a reference to a recent Channel 4 list programme) and that of his DVD, Stewart Lee: 90s Comedian, that he retains his unhealthy preoccupation with not being as famous as other, lesser, comics, or as famous than he once was himself.
As he points out, he’s pushing 40, it’s 17 years since he won a ‘New Act of the Year’ award, and yet he’s still playing a venue for ‘up and coming’ talent.
It’s all just part of his routine, of course, but Lee is running the risk of becoming tiresome. Joking about not being very famous any more shows you’ve got your feet on the ground – joking about it all the time just makes you a bit unappealing. But this is Stewart Lee, and although he may have many preoccupations, being ‘appealing’ is not one of them.
For one thing, the man is a comedy snob, who’s not above chastising his audience for finding the wrong bits funny. He’s not that keen on getting to know us either, preferring to stick to what he’s rehearsed.
He’s dressed plainly, almost all in black – an apparent attempt to fade into the background, which is unusual for someone who makes their living on stage. As he talks he plods listlessly about the stage, toying with his mic lead and looking at his shoes.
For Lee, less is more. The pace of his show is much slower than most comedians’ – he likes to build in long silences, and tense build-ups to his defiantly cerebral punchlines. He is also less rambling than most, although he does manage to cover sardines, Tom O’Connor and entomologists, and there’s a brilliant bit inspired by a press release about ‘the values of the Carphone Warehouse’.
He also revels in freaking the audience out with occasional bizarre turns. At one point he spends a good five minutes lying down with his back to us, for the sake of a joke about Only Fools and Horses. Later he drops his mic for a while and wanders around shouting at us.
All in all, Lee succeeds in making the audience feel pretty awkward. It might not be an achievement that many comedians would aim for, but if you can embrace it, it only makes the show funnier.
Stewart Lee
2007-12-23T18:41:03+00:00
When I last saw Stewart Lee perform in 2005, he was even more bitter than usual – worn down by the self-appointed defenders of religion who took issue with ‘blasphemous’ hit show Jerry Springer: The Opera. The unlikely target of his vitriol was Joe Pasquale – who stands at the opposite end of the comic spectrum from the boundary-pushing Lee. After accusing Pasquale of plagiarising other comedians’ jokes, Lee spent considerable time building up to a punchline so vile, offensive and (if you believe in the concept) blasphemous, that Pasquale could never steal it. It’s a relief to find Lee has calmed down somewhat in the intervening two years. However, one can surmise from this show’s title (a reference to a recent Channel 4 list programme) and that of his DVD, Stewart Lee: 90s Comedian, that he retains his unhealthy preoccupation with not being as famous as other, lesser, comics, or as famous than he once was himself. As he points out, he’s pushing 40, it’s 17 years since he won a ‘New Act of the Year’ award, and yet he’s still playing a venue for ‘up and coming’ talent. It’s all just part of his routine, of course, but Lee is running the risk of becoming tiresome. Joking about not being very famous any more shows you’ve got your feet on the ground – joking about it all the time just makes you a bit unappealing. But this is Stewart Lee, and although he may have many preoccupations, being ‘appealing’ is not one of them. For one thing, the man is a comedy snob, who’s not above chastising his audience for finding the wrong bits funny. He’s not that keen on getting to know us either, preferring to stick to what he’s rehearsed. He’s dressed plainly, almost all in...
Lewis Floyd Henry is a busker, one man band and Youtube phenomenon from South East London, channelling Jimi Hendrix, delta blues, and hip hop through an electric guitar, a tiny foot-operated drum kit, and a sound rig strapped to a pram.
Despite its low-budget beginnings, One Man And His 30w Pram can sound vast, when Guardian Angels and Magic Carpet update Hendrix's soulful cosmic visionary acid-blues, as well as authentically folksy.
It's doubtful you'll hear a more arresting opening to an album this year than Sacred Gardens. Jaded reviewers nationwide drop piles of promotional bribes and cry, 'Who is this guy?'
Stewart Lee
2011-02-20T20:25:55+00:00
Lewis Floyd Henry is a busker, one man band and Youtube phenomenon from South East London, channelling Jimi Hendrix, delta blues, and hip hop through an electric guitar, a tiny foot-operated drum kit, and a sound rig strapped to a pram. Despite its low-budget beginnings, One Man And His 30w Pram can sound vast, when Guardian Angels and Magic Carpet update Hendrix's soulful cosmic visionary acid-blues, as well as authentically folksy. It's doubtful you'll hear a more arresting opening to an album this year than Sacred Gardens. Jaded reviewers nationwide drop piles of promotional bribes and cry, 'Who is this guy?'
Imagine Richard Youngs as the junior member of a cabal of prolific and puritanical English musician-mystics, including The Fall's Mark E Smith, Van der Graaf Generator's Peter Hammill, Martin Carthy and The Clangers' composer Vernon Elliot, and still his nature will elude you.
Youngs turns his hand once more, on what I think is genuinely his 136th album, to a threateningly exact folk minimalism, his wracked vocal astral projecting into a subspace void of tranquilised acoustic guitar arpeggios and truncated electric blues licks. Don't let Youngs be the kind of genius that's discovered after the event.
He's here, right now, and he's improving with age.
Stewart Lee
2011-09-20T01:34:43+01:00
Imagine Richard Youngs as the junior member of a cabal of prolific and puritanical English musician-mystics, including The Fall's Mark E Smith, Van der Graaf Generator's Peter Hammill, Martin Carthy and The Clangers' composer Vernon Elliot, and still his nature will elude you. Youngs turns his hand once more, on what I think is genuinely his 136th album, to a threateningly exact folk minimalism, his wracked vocal astral projecting into a subspace void of tranquilised acoustic guitar arpeggios and truncated electric blues licks. Don't let Youngs be the kind of genius that's discovered after the event. He's here, right now, and he's improving with age.
Having successfully turned Johnson and Boswell into stand-up comics at the Fringe last year, the writer Stewart Lee has now tried the same trick for Elizabeth I and Walter Raleigh. Simon Munnery goes from Johnson to a queen in whiteface and wig. Miles Jupp becomes the breech-wearing explorer-cum- spy-cum-poet from Budleigh Salterton. The result, sad to say, is an undernourished hour that might muscle its way into your affections in a smaller, scuzzier room, but which looks stiff as an iron ruff in the Cow Barn.
Some, mostly solo, moments shine. Jupp, a revelation as Boswell, again gives plenty of fizz as his historical figure-turned-compere: “Without the potato, your Scottish national diet would consistent solely of alcohol and cigarettes.” Elizabeth's withering addresses are the highlight, even if Munnery might as well be delivering them in his League Against Tedium persona: “To the Italians I say this: Rome wasn't built in a day. Perhaps it could have been if you hadn't been so busy speaking with your arms.” But Elizabeth and Raleigh plays like a polished first draft waiting for its big idea to reveal itself. They stick galleons on their heads to depict a naval battle, but this cute, Thunderbirds FAB-style staging is undermined by their awkwardness with the props. Raleigh's thwarted designs on his queen is conveyed in fairly generic master-and-servant badinage. Without more connection between the players the show trails off badly. Even Jane Watkins's period music sometimes only adds to the stiltedness.
There are some great ideas buried in here. “When I was 3, my father had my mother killed,” Munnery announces. “Is it any wonder that I have commitment issues?” But a few great lines, a nice slide-screen cameo by Jimmy Carr and a bit of tomfoolery amid the crowd add up to neither a proper play nor a jamboree. Owen Lewis's production will surely loosen up as the month progresses.
Stewart Lee
2008-08-05T20:11:11+01:00
Having successfully turned Johnson and Boswell into stand-up comics at the Fringe last year, the writer Stewart Lee has now tried the same trick for Elizabeth I and Walter Raleigh. Simon Munnery goes from Johnson to a queen in whiteface and wig. Miles Jupp becomes the breech-wearing explorer-cum- spy-cum-poet from Budleigh Salterton. The result, sad to say, is an undernourished hour that might muscle its way into your affections in a smaller, scuzzier room, but which looks stiff as an iron ruff in the Cow Barn. Some, mostly solo, moments shine. Jupp, a revelation as Boswell, again gives plenty of fizz as his historical figure-turned-compere: “Without the potato, your Scottish national diet would consistent solely of alcohol and cigarettes.” Elizabeth's withering addresses are the highlight, even if Munnery might as well be delivering them in his League Against Tedium persona: “To the Italians I say this: Rome wasn't built in a day. Perhaps it could have been if you hadn't been so busy speaking with your arms.” But Elizabeth and Raleigh plays like a polished first draft waiting for its big idea to reveal itself. They stick galleons on their heads to depict a naval battle, but this cute, Thunderbirds FAB-style staging is undermined by their awkwardness with the props. Raleigh's thwarted designs on his queen is conveyed in fairly generic master-and-servant badinage. Without more connection between the players the show trails off badly. Even Jane Watkins's period music sometimes only adds to the stiltedness. There are some great ideas buried in here. “When I was 3, my father had my mother killed,” Munnery announces. “Is it any wonder that I have commitment issues?” But a few great lines, a nice slide-screen cameo by Jimmy Carr and a bit of tomfoolery amid the crowd add up to neither a proper...
In March this year a cheap Channel 4 clip show, The 100 Best Stand-Up Comedians Ever, placed me at number 41, sandwiched in-between Johnny Vegas and Dara O’Brien. This was a hugely flattering position to find oneself in, if something of a tight squeeze. But unfortunately, it was a result of a public vote, and you, the public, consistently vote ‘Del Boy falling through the bar on Only Fools And Horses’ as the funniest TV moment ever, and are therefore not to be trusted. The only people who know less about stand-up than the public are critics. So here are some tips for the nation’s stand-up comedy reviewers.
1) When a comedian makes fun of a bald man in the audience it is probably not as spontaneous as you may imagine. Do not embarass yourself by describing a comedian saying ‘Did you get that jumper for Christmas?’as a ‘Coltrane-like moment of improvisational genius’.
2) Rock and pop critics with no ear for music review rock and pop music in terms of its lyrical content or imagined cultural significance, rather than its actual sound. Likewise, comedy critics, with no ear for comedy, often focus on the subject matter of stand-up routines, at the expense of rhythm or shifts of tone and pace. But we have all seen stand-up that is distinguised merely by its subject matter, with nothing stylistic to offer. It is Ben Elton’s last TV series, Get A Grip, and I bet you didn’t like that either, did you, critic?
3) Try to review the show itself, not the response in the room. Many comedy critics, with no working knowledge of stand-up, will review a show based on how it was received by the audience on the night, as if they were some kind of critics’ focus group. But just because a comedian gets no laughs doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t any good. Can you see through this? Or will you have to reasses your opinion of the act when they become massive and play to laughing arenas by writing a review that begins, “You know, I am coming round to Steve Naughty...”
4) Please bear in mind that Bill Hicks was not the first person to speak into a microphone about sex and politics. Do not use him as a point of comparison for all other stand-ups. Working stand-ups see hundreds of comedians ever year, and are more likely to learn from them in real time than they are from listening to old stand-up records. That’s your job. Because you are a loser.
5) Finally, do not try to get my attention by giving me a bad review because you are involved in an Oedipal power struggle with me due to having been obsessed with me as a teenager, and are now ashamed of your adolescent former self. I never even knew you loved me, and I forgive you your betrayal.
Stewart Lee
2007-09-09T20:00:09+01:00
In March this year a cheap Channel 4 clip show, The 100 Best Stand-Up Comedians Ever, placed me at number 41, sandwiched in-between Johnny Vegas and Dara O’Brien. This was a hugely flattering position to find oneself in, if something of a tight squeeze. But unfortunately, it was a result of a public vote, and you, the public, consistently vote ‘Del Boy falling through the bar on Only Fools And Horses’ as the funniest TV moment ever, and are therefore not to be trusted. The only people who know less about stand-up than the public are critics. So here are some tips for the nation’s stand-up comedy reviewers. 1) When a comedian makes fun of a bald man in the audience it is probably not as spontaneous as you may imagine. Do not embarass yourself by describing a comedian saying ‘Did you get that jumper for Christmas?’as a ‘Coltrane-like moment of improvisational genius’. 2) Rock and pop critics with no ear for music review rock and pop music in terms of its lyrical content or imagined cultural significance, rather than its actual sound. Likewise, comedy critics, with no ear for comedy, often focus on the subject matter of stand-up routines, at the expense of rhythm or shifts of tone and pace. But we have all seen stand-up that is distinguised merely by its subject matter, with nothing stylistic to offer. It is Ben Elton’s last TV series, Get A Grip, and I bet you didn’t like that either, did you, critic? 3) Try to review the show itself, not the response in the room. Many comedy critics, with no working knowledge of stand-up, will review a show based on how it was received by the audience on the night, as if they were some kind of critics’ focus group. But...
The redoubtable independent production company, Farty Television, have offered £100million to take over the digital channel BBC Three, which is facing a radical on-line only future, due to government assaults on the licence fee.
Though public fondness for BBC Three rests largely on the reputations of quality programs like Gavin and Stacey (Baby Cow), Pulling (Silver River), The Mighty Boosh (Baby Cow) Little Britain (BBC), and 15 Storeys High (BBC), Farty Television's cheap and cheerful BBC3 filler (Snuffle Farty's Good Farts, and Live at the Farthouse), has been a vital ingredient of the channel's identity, and a tragic part of its appeal to the elusive 16 to 16-and-a-half years old demographic.
Farty Television's BBC Three shows have usually been heavily weighted towards featuring farts managed by Farty Television's sister company Farty Management, the farts' fees often going towards servicing debts incurred whilst working in Edinburgh with Farty Television's live wing, Farty Promotions. But the ongoing existence of a public marketplace, such as BBC Three, for Farty Management's farts remains vital.
If Farty Management's farts catch the public imagination they can be sent out on lucrative tours, where the farts are released into vast sports auditoriums for delighted audiences to smell. Farty International can't allow the fart elevating platform of BBC Three to disappear, as it is vital fan wafting their farts towards the open mouths of the public.
Beyond BBC Three, Farty Television's program portfolio is vast in width, if not always rich in quality; Farty Fartball (BBC2), Smelly Farter Farts (Paramount), The Fart Zone (Paramount), Unfarted (ITV), Fart Gentlefarts Fart (Sky), The Fart Show (BBC1), I Love My Farts (BBC1), Farty Phil's TV Fart (ITV1), Farty Old Farts (BBC2), Farty Farton's Well Farty Farts (BBC3), That Sunday Night Fart (BBC3), Farter (BBC Radio 4), Fart Hunt (ITV1), Fart, Fart and Fart (BBC2), You Can Chose Your Farts (ITV1), Fart To Fart (BBC3), Farts for Lunch (BBC Radio 2), Touch Me, I'm Farty Farter (BBC3), The Three Day Fart (C4), The Fart Gang (BBC2), The Farts On A Plate (C4), Three Farts In A Fart (BBC2), Farts Now And Then (UKTV), Farts and Farters (BBC1), Animal Farts and Farters (BBC1), The Nightmare Fart Next Door (C5), and The Nightmare Fart Next Door Extreme(C5).
Perhaps Farty Television are aware that being able to slap a BBC logo on their product would, despite the ongoing attempts of freemarket evangelists to discredit and destroy the idea of public broadcasting, give it a credibility abroad and at home that its content alone might not. But would the BBC Three brand be part of the deal anyway?
The Farty company, and its many subsidiaries, are built in the image of its founder, Donald Farty. Farty prides himself on the fact that, even though he is now the director of a successful multinational content provider, he still has a nose for farts. Donald Farty remains involved at grassroots level in the entrapment of new farts, and is still excited by the process. 'If I am out in a bar or a toilet and I smell a smelly fart, or see one coming out of someone's bum, I gulp it up into my mouth and run home with the fart stuck in there. Then, at home, I burp the new fart out into a screw top jar and trap it so I can explain the benefits of Farty Management to it. Sometimes, in the end, the farts escape, or leak out, or loose their smelliness, but the brilliant thing is there are always new farts out there for me to catch. And there always will be. There will always be farts. I think so anyway.'
Farty Television's plans for BBC Three promise that 'all existing contracts would be honored', indicating though any of the channel's current deals with independent content providers would be safe, though crucially it says nothing about renewing or extending them. And when it says 'all original commissions would be made by UK companies', which UK companies would these be? Perhaps some of the many other smaller independents, which have all been assiduously bought up by Farty Television over the last decade or so, such as Farty Smelle, Fartbox, Flaming Farts, and Topical Farts.
Perhaps Farty could appear to fulfil any broadcasting industry obligation to make contracts with a host of other content suppliers, while in fact just channeling more and more farts quietly through up his own backdoor. There is of course no suggestion that this is what the company is intending to do. The ancient BBC forefather Lord Reith, clearly unfamiliar with modern notions of hot-desking and the virtual office, rose spinning from his tomb today to demand that whatever fixtures and fittings remain of BBC3 be destroyed as a precautionary measure, to prevent their appropriation by what he sees as the enemies of Reithian values.
'No blade of grass, not a pane of glass, not a plug socket, or a doorknob or a light fitting must remain,' he bellowed, shaking his gory locks. 'Destroy it all. Raise BBC Three to the ground lest she fall into the hands of these rapacious railroad privateers. And make no mistake, Farty are pirates. Their extension of a helping hand towards BBC3 is merely a rapacious digital land-grab disguised as an act of philanthropy, no more convincing that Vladimir Putin's concerned humanitarian excursions into ailing former Soviet states. To accommodate Farty's empire-building ambition in what was a publicly owned arena would be a betrayal of everything the BBC stood for, worse than the David Attenborough baby polar bear scandal and when those actors all mumbled in that historical drama last year. If I wasn't already dead I would kill myself.'
Can it be right that Conservative cuts to the license fee weaken areas of the BBC so that they can no longer be serviced fully, and yet these areas still remain attractive to private companies? Then, having been made non-viable by the government, these assets, despite having been established by public funding, are suddenly attractive to, and then sold on to, the government's friends in big businesses to exploit, depriving the public of seeing the benefits of their own decades long investment? It's happened in every other area of British life from Postage to Energy to Transport to Education to Health. It appears to be a deliberate strategy. Why shouldn't it happen in the, if anything even more important, area of Youth Orientated Comedy Television too?
Or was Farty's proposal even serious? Perhaps not. In the last few weeks Farty's PR wing appear to have hired some bright spark from the Vladislav Surkov school of propaganda, distributing disorientating headline grabbing stories that land with heavy impact in an increasingly desperate and ephemeral news pond but which, while placing Farty in the public eye, may not serve to distract from the standards of much of its product and the nature of its business practices.
Stewart Lee
2015-01-21T18:56:17+00:00
The redoubtable independent production company, Farty Television, have offered £100million to take over the digital channel BBC Three, which is facing a radical on-line only future, due to government assaults on the licence fee. Though public fondness for BBC Three rests largely on the reputations of quality programs like Gavin and Stacey (Baby Cow), Pulling (Silver River), The Mighty Boosh (Baby Cow) Little Britain (BBC), and 15 Storeys High (BBC), Farty Television's cheap and cheerful BBC3 filler (Snuffle Farty's Good Farts, and Live at the Farthouse), has been a vital ingredient of the channel's identity, and a tragic part of its appeal to the elusive 16 to 16-and-a-half years old demographic. Farty Television's BBC Three shows have usually been heavily weighted towards featuring farts managed by Farty Television's sister company Farty Management, the farts' fees often going towards servicing debts incurred whilst working in Edinburgh with Farty Television's live wing, Farty Promotions. But the ongoing existence of a public marketplace, such as BBC Three, for Farty Management's farts remains vital. If Farty Management's farts catch the public imagination they can be sent out on lucrative tours, where the farts are released into vast sports auditoriums for delighted audiences to smell. Farty International can't allow the fart elevating platform of BBC Three to disappear, as it is vital fan wafting their farts towards the open mouths of the public. Beyond BBC Three, Farty Television's program portfolio is vast in width, if not always rich in quality; Farty Fartball (BBC2), Smelly Farter Farts (Paramount), The Fart Zone (Paramount), Unfarted (ITV), Fart Gentlefarts Fart (Sky), The Fart Show (BBC1), I Love My Farts (BBC1), Farty Phil's TV Fart (ITV1), Farty Old Farts (BBC2), Farty Farton's Well Farty Farts (BBC3), That Sunday Night Fart (BBC3), Farter (BBC Radio 4), Fart Hunt (ITV1), Fart, Fart...
Lee announces this as his "first mid-thirties pretentious one-man show", but it retains his trademark comic perspective.
The idea is that Lee, having been commissioned to write a treatment of an Edward Lear biopic to star Ray Winstone(!), becomes simultaneously obsessed with Lear's nonsense poem and with his own problems living in a flat without a toilet. No, really, it all meshes together after a fashion.
His technique goes beyond deadpan: he applies a scathing literal analysis to irrational material to make it even funnier. An owl shares a boat with a cat, its natural predator: "Why was this allowed to happen?" How do they open the jar of honey when neither has opposable thumbs? What chords can the owl manage on its small guitar? Is the turkey that marries them at the end of the poem ordained? ...that sort of thing.
He augments his main material with bits of writing he has found on the street, and his performance with slides, a live cellist and Simon Munnery in a huge false beard as Lear and in a Michael Caine voice as Winstone. There's a hint of Ken Campbell about this kind of monologue, but Lee brings a darker intelligence to bear on the absurdity of it all.
How many small plastic toy egg casings could be hidden in, for example, a Michael Gove? And, if we knew this figure, and had an accurate idea of potential volunteer multiple plastic toy egg couriers, could we extrapolate from it the volume of goods that might be secretly transported, in this fashion, both in and out of our ring-fenced island nation? And why is knowing this number an important part of planning for the no-deal Brexit that our uncooperative friends in George Soros’s Europe, and the traitorous MPs who collaborate with them, are cruelly forcing on us through no fault of our own?
A civil servant I was in Woodcraft Folk with 43 years ago regularly texts me about bizarre developments in the National Centre For No-Deal Planning, despite risking her job to do so. “They’ve got us hard at work finding out how we get components and medicines and essential items into the country, if or when the supply lines break down. Don’t forget to stockpile toilet roll, Stewey! It may end up being the only viable form of currency!! LOL!!!”
On Wednesday morning, Tallulah (not her real name) informed me, she was told to coordinate the clandestine purchase, via thousands of press-ganged schoolchildren and cross-Channel swimmers, of as many Kinder ™ eggs and tubs of Vaseline ®, respectively, as she could acquire without arousing suspicion.
“Suspicion of what?” I asked. “I don’t know,” Tallulah answered, “but we don’t want to set off a Kinder ™ egg and Vaseline ® buying panic. I have to go now. Dominic Cumming has just come in. He’s wearing really tight cycling shorts and glaring at everyone like a horrible owl.”
Kinder ™ eggs and Vaseline ®. What was Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Vampires Haircut Wall-Spaffer Spunk-Burster Fuck-Business Fuck-The-Families Get-Off-My-Fucking-Laptop Turds Johnson up to now? I wondered.
Later on, I read that our lying, self-serving prime minister had visited Leeds prison the previous day, in a non-election campaign visibility stunt, last week’s booing Scots folk a distant memory.
Boris Johnson’s colleague Michael Gove, a known former cocaine user, owns a £493 Manchu cabinet and has nothing illegal in his underpants. Johnson himself famously only managed to avoid eating some cocaine by fortuitously sneezing it all away as he tried to ingest it, in an incident he described as an “inconclusive event”.
A 38-year-old father of one, caught with a quarter of a kilogram of cocaine in his underpants last May, is currently detained for four and a half years in Leeds at Her Majesty’s pleasure, while better-connected powder enthusiasts are asked to form a government, at Her Majesty’s invitation. It’s almost as if there is one law for upper-class Conservative drug-dabbling MPs and another for working-class drug mules.
During his prison visit, Watermelon was photogenically amused, for the benefit of the compliant press and the gullible public, by an x-ray showing how anally inserted Kinder ™ egg interiors can be used to smuggle into prison everything from tobacco and drugs to mobile phone parts. Kinder ™ egg suppositories are already responsible for a greater flow of goods annually than the government’s botched Brexit ferry scheme.
If I was prime minister, on seeing the anal Kinder ™ x-ray, I would have said: “It gives a whole new meaning to the words ‘Kinder Surprise ™’!” The electorate would have thought I was hilarious, but Wall-Spaffer appeared to have missed the magic moment and blown it. Later on I would come to realise that his magpie mind had merely moved on to other things.
On Thursday morning at 12.30am, Tallulah texted me again. She had gone back into the National Centre For No-Deal Planning, having forgotten her mobile phone, and swiftly secreted herself under a desk when she heard strange snuffling coming from a frosted-glass side room. She pressed her phone up to the opaque window and I listened in.
“You must do it, Michael,” said a voice, that of Turds Johnson. “You are in charge of no-deal planning. We need to test my plan and I can’t let anyone find out about it. You are my most loyal servant.”
“I am so not, Boris!” It was Michael Gove, squealing as he spoke. “I stabbed you in the back, remember? Why do I have to do this? Can’t Cumming do it? It is undignified. May I remind you that I am the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster?” Suddenly there was a loud slurping.
“Cumming,” Letterbox exploded, “you can’t eat Vaseline ®, man. It’s not a food. Put the lid back on.” Dominic Cumming’s musical and mellifluous voice protested: “But Vaseline ® is delicious, Boris. I ate it in Russia every day and it kept me warm, like a Bovril made of grease. It is wrong treacle, old Popeye Cumming’s petroleum spinach. And anyway, it’s all over my hands now. So I can just lick it off, whether you like it or not. Besides which, Boris, we may all have to develop a taste for non-standard foods, like Vaseline ®, or insects, in the darkness before the New Dawn.”
“Stop eating the Vaseline ®, Cumming!” It was Spunk-Burster again. “Eat up all the Kinder ™ chocolate. We need to dispose of the evidence. No one must know my plan.”
Then Gove appeared to be shouting, something about how he now realised from personal experience how important it was to reach a deal. And then Tallulah’s phone went dead.
As the sun rose on Thursday, I watched Breakfast TV and hoped she would call again. Bumboys, Gove and Cumming appeared bleary-eyed at a press conference. Cumming had a brown mouth and sticky hands and he kept sucking his fingers when he thought no one was looking. Gove goved silently into the distance, like a shell-shocked air-man. Boris stepped forward and proudly announced that, in an all-night strategy session, great strides had been made in no-deal planning.
Stewart Lee
2019-08-18T22:47:54+01:00
How many small plastic toy egg casings could be hidden in, for example, a Michael Gove? And, if we knew this figure, and had an accurate idea of potential volunteer multiple plastic toy egg couriers, could we extrapolate from it the volume of goods that might be secretly transported, in this fashion, both in and out of our ring-fenced island nation? And why is knowing this number an important part of planning for the no-deal Brexit that our uncooperative friends in George Soros’s Europe, and the traitorous MPs who collaborate with them, are cruelly forcing on us through no fault of our own? A civil servant I was in Woodcraft Folk with 43 years ago regularly texts me about bizarre developments in the National Centre For No-Deal Planning, despite risking her job to do so. “They’ve got us hard at work finding out how we get components and medicines and essential items into the country, if or when the supply lines break down. Don’t forget to stockpile toilet roll, Stewey! It may end up being the only viable form of currency!! LOL!!!” On Wednesday morning, Tallulah (not her real name) informed me, she was told to coordinate the clandestine purchase, via thousands of press-ganged schoolchildren and cross-Channel swimmers, of as many Kinder ™ eggs and tubs of Vaseline ®, respectively, as she could acquire without arousing suspicion. “Suspicion of what?” I asked. “I don’t know,” Tallulah answered, “but we don’t want to set off a Kinder ™ egg and Vaseline ® buying panic. I have to go now. Dominic Cumming has just come in. He’s wearing really tight cycling shorts and glaring at everyone like a horrible owl.” Kinder ™ eggs and Vaseline ®. What was Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Vampires Haircut Wall-Spaffer Spunk-Burster Fuck-Business Fuck-The-Families Get-Off-My-Fucking-Laptop Turds...
Peter Hammill spent forty-five years declaiming stentorian English experimental rock. Gary Lucas traded avant-blues tongues with Captain Beefheart and co-wrote the explosive ballads that branded Jeff Buckley.
Their unlikely collaboration ought to fail. Lucas draws ghostly delta guitar shapes in air, while the Van Der Graaf Generator frontman, who usually appears shrouded in incense clouds of cathedral organ or sepulchral piano, stands naked, intoning significant statements. Momentarily their trajectories overlap, incandesce brilliantly, and drift apart again.
Stewart Lee
2014-02-09T20:11:57+00:00
Peter Hammill spent forty-five years declaiming stentorian English experimental rock. Gary Lucas traded avant-blues tongues with Captain Beefheart and co-wrote the explosive ballads that branded Jeff Buckley. Their unlikely collaboration ought to fail. Lucas draws ghostly delta guitar shapes in air, while the Van Der Graaf Generator frontman, who usually appears shrouded in incense clouds of cathedral organ or sepulchral piano, stands naked, intoning significant statements. Momentarily their trajectories overlap, incandesce brilliantly, and drift apart again.
Even when first pedalling short sharp Seventies shocks Wire were essentially conceptual artists, sculpting minimal cubist punk.
Thirty-five years later, all pushing sixty, their third album this century seems to be a typically tidy modern rock record, albeit one that also unfolds within invisible inverted commas. The Artful Dodger dropped aitches of old are replaced with neutralised, classless vowels.
Everything sounds pitch-shifted to perfection.
Moreover recalls Wire's original noise-burst blueprint, Please Take purloins the tasteful glacial pop of their Eighties incarnation, and Adapt sports an unashamedly affecting descending chord sequence a more austere Wire might once have thought mawkish. Still they evolve.
Stewart Lee
2011-01-09T01:38:13+00:00
Even when first pedalling short sharp Seventies shocks Wire were essentially conceptual artists, sculpting minimal cubist punk. Thirty-five years later, all pushing sixty, their third album this century seems to be a typically tidy modern rock record, albeit one that also unfolds within invisible inverted commas. The Artful Dodger dropped aitches of old are replaced with neutralised, classless vowels. Everything sounds pitch-shifted to perfection. Moreover recalls Wire's original noise-burst blueprint, Please Take purloins the tasteful glacial pop of their Eighties incarnation, and Adapt sports an unashamedly affecting descending chord sequence a more austere Wire might once have thought mawkish. Still they evolve.
The Conservatives’ unpunished corruption has finally driven the bullshit-bombarded press corps bananas. On Tuesday, the indefatigably starstruck Laura Kuenssberg squandered brave whistleblowers’ testimony in a disgraceful Panorama, reordering the reality of Boris Johnson’s criminality, making it seem like the heroic Shakespearean struggle of an undeniably brilliant politician with his all-too-human shortcomings, somehow worthy of comparison with Keir Starmer’s work curry.
Meanwhile, Sky News’s diligent Sam Coates, unravelling in frustration like a spiralised parsnip, became indistinguishable from a costumed YouTube politico, bellowing desperate but accurate accusations at the centipede of smirking lawbreakers and liars emerging from Downing Street’s chthonic portal. One more display of such journalistic integrity and Nadine Dorries will be looking for a way of privatising him.
The deliberately delayed Sue Gray report finally hit cyberspace on Wednesday, promising clarity at last despite 11th-hour attempts to discredit its author. Between shows in a Bath hotel room I fell upon Gray’s opening paragraph greedily: “Would to heaven that the reader, emboldened and momentarily ferocious as he reads, finds his wild and savage path through the desolate marshes of these dark and poisonous pages, without disorientation; for, unless he brings in his reading a rigorous logic and a tension of mind equal at least to his distrust, the mortal emanations of this text will soak his soul, as water sugar. It is not right that everyone should read the pages that follow; only a few will be able to savour this bitter fruit with impunity. Consequently, shrinking soul, turn on your heels and go back before penetrating further into such uncharted, perilous wastelands.”
Oh. Do excuse me, my dear friend. That is, in fact, the opening of the heady 1869 proto-surrealist memoir Les Chants De Maldoror by the pseudonymous Comte de Lautréamont, a staple bedside read suddenly less weird than the world and one that my news-muddled mind confused with the document in question.
The Sue Gray report, in turn, begins like this: “On 8 December 2021 the Prime Minister asked the Cabinet Secretary to carry out an investigation into allegations relating to gatherings in No 10 Downing Street and the Department for Education during November and December 2020.”
And yet, to me, the details of both decadent and incoherent texts now seem oddly interchangeable. So I have assembled the following revelation from sentences drawn from both Lautréamont and Gray. Can you identify the sources of Les Chants De Sue Gray, by Sue Gray, aged 64 and a ½?
“The official replied: ‘We would like to do speeches tomorrow when we have your drinks that aren’t drinks. I shall wrap my body with balmy garlands.’ The Deputy Cabinet Secretary provided a karaoke machine. When they were three yards apart they suddenly and spontaneously fell upon one another like two lovers and embraced with dignity and gratitude.
“There was excessive alcohol consumption by some individuals. A mountebank would be jealous of them. One individual was sick, wiped out by the vengeance of the inexorable god. There was a minor altercation between two other individuals, as the chance encounter on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella. Red wine was spilled on one wall and on a number of boxes of photocopier paper. I dreamt I had entered the body of a hog, that I could not easily get out again, and that I was wallowing in the filthiest slime.
“On the 18 December 2020 at 13.19, an invitation was reissued, in the eternity of a horrible and universal night. Instead of ‘Wine & Cheese Evening’ it subsequently read ‘End of Year Meeting with Wine & Cheese’. Woe to the sperm whale who would fight against a louse. The special adviser stated: ‘I’m sure it will be fine – and I applaud the gesture – but a 200-odd person invitation for drinks in the garden of No 10 is somewhat of a comms risk in the current environment.’ The shining worm said to me: ‘You, take a stone and kill her.’
“Wine was available, music was played from a laptop on top of a printer and a number of those present drank excessively. Carnal desire followed this demonstration of friendship. A number of individuals gathered near a child’s swing/slide in the garden, damaging it by leaning on and playing with it. Lice are capable of committing as much harm as their imagination meditates.
“It was unfortunately the case that details of some events only became known to me and my team through reporting in the media. I am already satisfied with the amount of evil which he does to you, O human race. Given the piecemeal manner in which events were brought to my attention, it is possible that events took place which were not the subject of investigation. The justice brought by the laws is worth nothing.
“The hardship under which citizens across the country worked, lived and sadly even died while observing the Government’s regulations and guidance rigorously are known only too well. An extreme power can alone show so much contempt for the faithful who obey it. Every citizen has been impacted by the pandemic. The people would sooner or later disappear from the Earth, like the autumn leaves. Everyone has made personal sacrifices, some the most profound, having been unable to be with loved ones in their last moments or care for vulnerable family and friends. A prolonged breath of sadness, which one would think would be the murmur of your sweet breeze, passes, leaving ineffaceable traces, on the soul deeply shaken, and you recall the memory of your lovers.”
The justice brought by the laws is worth nothing. I leave for work on Wednesday night and it still looks as if Johnson will weather even this. Opposition parties must unite to save British democracy. These are its death throes. The candle gutters.
Stewart Lee
2022-05-29T14:27:40+01:00
The Conservatives’ unpunished corruption has finally driven the bullshit-bombarded press corps bananas. On Tuesday, the indefatigably starstruck Laura Kuenssberg squandered brave whistleblowers’ testimony in a disgraceful Panorama, reordering the reality of Boris Johnson’s criminality, making it seem like the heroic Shakespearean struggle of an undeniably brilliant politician with his all-too-human shortcomings, somehow worthy of comparison with Keir Starmer’s work curry. Meanwhile, Sky News’s diligent Sam Coates, unravelling in frustration like a spiralised parsnip, became indistinguishable from a costumed YouTube politico, bellowing desperate but accurate accusations at the centipede of smirking lawbreakers and liars emerging from Downing Street’s chthonic portal. One more display of such journalistic integrity and Nadine Dorries will be looking for a way of privatising him. The deliberately delayed Sue Gray report finally hit cyberspace on Wednesday, promising clarity at last despite 11th-hour attempts to discredit its author. Between shows in a Bath hotel room I fell upon Gray’s opening paragraph greedily: “Would to heaven that the reader, emboldened and momentarily ferocious as he reads, finds his wild and savage path through the desolate marshes of these dark and poisonous pages, without disorientation; for, unless he brings in his reading a rigorous logic and a tension of mind equal at least to his distrust, the mortal emanations of this text will soak his soul, as water sugar. It is not right that everyone should read the pages that follow; only a few will be able to savour this bitter fruit with impunity. Consequently, shrinking soul, turn on your heels and go back before penetrating further into such uncharted, perilous wastelands.” Oh. Do excuse me, my dear friend. That is, in fact, the opening of the heady 1869 proto-surrealist memoir Les Chants De Maldoror by the pseudonymous Comte de Lautréamont, a staple bedside read suddenly less weird than the...
“Really shitty move, after seeing the show in Liverpool, to sell me a blank dvd, real fucking scummy actually, 3rd time seeing Stewart lee, won't bother again, I would have just gave you a tenner if you needed it that badly, but selling people who have already paid to see you blank dvds? That's pathetically scummy, cheers.”
If you have a problem with merch just e-mail us and we will replace it.
Obviously, as far as I know all the DVDs work (there have been maybe 2 or 3 that haven’t in 20 years of selling them), but as I am sure you appreciate it’s not possible for me to check each one personally before sale as the man-hours involved would mean it would not be cost-effective to sell anything at all. If anyone out there would like an unpaid internship sitting alone in a warehouse in Southend feeding one dvd after another into a dvd player to check them all, do contact me.
Even with the venue’s percentage we are still selling DVDs at about 25% less than they would cost in shops or from Amazon (and that is after a ticket for my show costs, for example, 1/3rd of what Greg Davis charges, for a work that will be much shorter and much worse than mine.)
The merchandise stall is basically run at break-even point, and we can’t afford to sell stuff in some venues where the size of the venue’s commission, if it’s over 20%, would mean we made an actual loss. But I feel standing on the stall and signing stuff helps to formalise and organise any interactions punters want, and people going home with an object, I suspect, probably helps to sustain the audience long term.
If you do have problems with the merchandise by all means contact us, but please remain civil, as the young woman who opens your email at a far away office the next morning is in no way responsible for the tragedy that has befallen you, and should not have to deal with abusive language.
2. NEW MERCH
Along with WAXFACE’s usual line of Stewart Lee merch there are new for 2025 t-shirts and hoodies on the Man-Wulf theme, all of the highest quality. I’d wear them myself but I’d look arrogant. Waste the money your Nan gave you for Xmas here
Glasgow’s garage punk veterans The Primevals announce a new single as featured in the new Stewart Lee vs The Man-Wulf U.K. tour.
There are 3 versions
Side a I’m The Man-Wulf
Side b I’m The Man-Wulf (long nail edit)
Plus a 9 minute I’m The Man-Wulf (long nail version) (I LOOOOOVE THIS!!)
Vinyl sides a&b were released on a 7” 45 in January.
See The Primevals live JUNE 27th London Hope & Anchor, 28th Preston Ferret.
John Mackay & Sally Homer, in association with Debi Allen/Curtis Brown present
STEWART LEE vs THE MAN-WULF
BRAND NEW SHOW
NB: TICKETS FOR THESE SHOWS WILL REMAIN AT THE ADVERTISED PRICE. SURGE PRICING IS IMMORAL AND TICKETMASTER AND OASIS ARE WANKERS, ENCOURAGED BY SUCCESSIVE TORY CULTURE SECRETARIES IN THEIR CRIMINAL ENDEAVOURS.
In this brand-new show, Lee shares his stage with a tough-talking werewolf comedian who hates humanity. The Man-Wulf lays down a ferocious comedy challenge to the culturally irrelevant and physically enfeebled Lee. Can the beast inside us all be silenced with the silver bullet of Lee's unprecedentedly critically acclaimed style of stand-up.
The show will tour the UK throughout 2025 and 2026.
Wednesday 18th June 2025 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Friday 20th June 2025 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Saturday 21st June 2025 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Saturday 21st June 2025 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
July 2025
Saturday 5th July 2025 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 6th July 2025 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 6th July 2025 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Saturday 12th July 2025 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 13th July 2025 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 13th July 2025 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
September 2025
Monday 8th September 2025 - Lighthouse, Poole - TICKETS
Tuesday 9th September 2025 - Lighthouse, Poole - TICKETS
Wednesday 10th September 2025 - Hall For Cornwall, Truro - TICKETS
Thursday 11th September 2025 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS
Friday 12th September 2025 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS
Saturday 13th September 2025 - Westlands Entertainment Venue, Yeovil - TICKETS
Sunday 14th September 2025 - Westlands Entertainment Venue, Yeovil - TICKETS
Tuesday 16th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
Wednesday 17th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
Thursday 18th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
Friday 19th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
Saturday 20th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
Wednesday 24th September 2025 - Hippodrome, Darlington - TICKETS
Thursday 25th September 2025 - Gala, Durham - TICKETS
Friday 26th September 2025 - Theatre Royal, Glasgow - TICKETS
Saturday 27th September 2025 - Playhouse, Edinburgh - TICKETS
Sunday 28th September 2025 - His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen - TICKETS
October 2025
Friday 3rd October 2025 - Aberystwyth Arts Centre – Great Hall, Aberystwyth - TICKETS
Tuesday 7th October 2025 - Milton Keynes Theatre, Milton Keynes - TICKETS
Wednesday 8th October 2025 - Milton Keynes Theatre, Milton Keynes - TICKETS
Thursday 9th October 2025 - Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS
Friday 10th October 2025 - Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS
Saturday 11th October 2025 - Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS
Wednesday 15th October 2025 - Grand Theatre, Swansea - TICKETS
Thursday 16th October 2025 - Grand Theatre, Swansea - TICKETS
Friday 17th October 2025 - Bristol Beacon, Bristol - TICKETS
Saturday 18th October 2025 - Bristol Beacon, Bristol - TICKETS
Tuesday 21st October 2025 - Storyhouse, Chester - TICKETS
Wednesday 22nd October 2025 - Storyhouse, Chester - TICKETS
Thursday 23rd October 2025 - Opera House, Buxton - TICKETS
Friday 24th October 2025 - Opera House, Buxton - TICKETS
Saturday 25th October 2025 - The Baths Hall, Scunthorpe - TICKETS
Wednesday 29th October 2025 - Cast, Doncaster - TICKETS
Thursday 30th October 2025 - Cast, Doncaster - TICKETS
Friday 31st October 2025 - Harrogate Theatre, Harrogate - TICKETS
November 2025
Saturday 1st November 2025 - Harrogate Theatre, Harrogate - TICKETS
Sunday 2nd November 2025 - Harrogate Theatre, Harrogate - TICKETS
Monday 3rd November 2025 - Tyne Theatre & Opera House, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Tuesday 4th November 2025 - Tyne Theatre & Opera House, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Friday 7th November 2025 - The Anvil, Basingstoke - TICKETS
Saturday 8th November 2025 - Rose Theatre, Kingston - TICKETS
Sunday 9th November 2025 - Rose Theatre, Kingston - TICKETS
Tuesday 11th November 2025 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Wednesday 12th November 2025 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Thursday 13th November 2025 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Friday 14th November 2025 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Saturday 15th November 2025 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Monday 17th November 2025 - Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham - TICKETS
Tuesday 18th November 2025 - Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham - TICKETS
Wednesday 19th November 2025 - Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham - TICKETS
6. Snowflake/Tornado
Stewart’s 2019-2022 touring show Snowflake/Tornado, which was originally broadcast as a BBC Special in Autumn 2022 is now available to buy or rent “on demand” from www.mediagarageproductions.com
Both shows also appear to be free as part of the current Amazon Prime rosta, but buy them from us to defeat American fascism.
We are currently preparing a physical release of these shows but it’s got delayed as I got pneumonia and have been bogged down in picking through a wealth of possible, and very exciting, audio extras, where the material worked much better than in the broadcast show itself.
7. BENEFITS / FESTIVAL STAND-UP SETS 2025
(the usual 30 mins greatest hits shit, except Green Man where I may do something a bit more deep as the tent is quite good)
5TH JUNE SUGAR TRANS COMEDY GALA, PLEASANCE, LONDON.
I am one of the token straights on this legal aid benefit with Jordan Gray, Kemah Bob, Stuart Goldsmith, Sam Nicoresti, Dee Allum, Jen Ives, Alex Franklin, Sam Williams, Frankie Thompson, Ella The Great and Ciara O'Connor.
18TH – 20TH JULY Toldpuddle Martyrs’ Festival, Tolpuddle, Dorset. I will be doing 20 mins on a mixed bill here one night. Looks great. https://www.tolpuddlemartyrs.org.uk/festival
14th – 17th AUGUST Green Man, Bannau Brycheiniog. Alan Sparkhawk, Big Special, Boss Morris, Bridget Hayden, Broadside Hacks, Daisy Rickman,Gwenno, Asha Puthli, Kneecap, Richard Dawson, Wet Leg, Yard Act
22nd – 24th August Krankenhaus, Muncaster Castle, Lake District Sea Power, Arab Strap, the legendary Throwing Muses, Jane Weaver, The Lovely Lovely Lovely Eggs, the awesome Richard Dawson, the amazing Nightingales who are currently ON FIRE!, that King Rocker film, the quirky Personal Trainer, the mesmerising Ex-Easter Island Head, the hypnotic Alison Cotton. www.krankenhausfestival.com
28th – 31st August End Of The Road, Larmer Tree Gardens, Dorset. Black Country New Road, Goat, Lisa O’Neill, Throwing Muses, Vieux Farka Toure, The Bug Club, Ex-Easter Island Head, Broadside Hacks celebrate The Incredible String Band, Jackie-O Motherfucker, Six Organs Of Admittance, The New Eves, Jim Ghedi, Bridget Hayden, Daisy Rickman, Tropical Fuck Storm, Adam Buxton, Celya AB, Gina Birch.
8. IDLER FEST 11-13 JULY, HAMPSTEAD HEATH, LONDON
I will be amongst the knobheads being grilled at the Idler magazine’s annual 3 day garden party. It’s a lovely event. “FENTON HOUSE & GARDEN, HAMPSTEAD, LONDON. The Idler Festival is a weekend of philosophy and merriment, comedy, talks, music, workshops and salons in the bucolic surroundings of Fenton House and gardens near Hampstead Heath.
You’ll be entertained and enlightened by the Idler’s favourite thinkers, comedians, writers, and musicians. There’ll be walks, ukulele, bibliotherapy, agony aunts, beekeeping and plenty of time to loaf under the apple trees. There’ll be dancing lessons on the lawn, loafing to DJs in the orchard and salons in the house. Join us for our dream garden party.
Headlining a stellar line up will be comedians Michael Palin and Stewart Lee and former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. Plus Daisy Dunn, Miranda Sawyer, a mini pilgrimage with Guy Hayward, evensong on Sunday and much more to be announced. “Britain’s best arts and literary festival,” Spectator”
The *Untsiad at The Cockpit Theatre, London on 20th July. In the 1720s, Alexander Pope, one of Britain's greatest ever poets, commenced work on "THE DUNCIAD", his blisteringly satirical attack on all the contemporary hacks he hated, those hopeless literary dunces who prospered at his expense in the service of the Great Goddess Dulness.
300 years later, Andy Croft Esq., of SMOKESTACK BOOKS, North-East England's premier Marxist-Leninist Poetry Imprint, commissioned Master Martin Rowson, caricaturist, scribbler, collagist, ranter & SMOKESTACK POET, to reimagine Pope's MASTERPIECE, widening his remit to traduce the Legion Dunces of all kinds that infest the MODERN AGE.
This Master Rowson duly did in 2050 lines of furious heroic couplets, published in Dec. MMXXIV A.D. as "THE "UNTSIAD", perforce to sell the thing through the Rascal Bezos's foul AMAZON.
FOR YOUR DELIGHT. "THE *UNTSIAD" has been adapted by Mister Nicholas Revell & The Author into A PERFORMANCE PIECE FOR 12 VOICES, with Nicholas REVELL & Rosie HOLT, Mr Jack KLAFF, Miss Clare FERGUSON-WALKER, Mr Mark Steel, Mr Stewart LEE, Mr Arthur SMITH, Commissar Andy CROFT, Dame Eliza CARTHY MBE, Mr Tim MCINNERNY, Master Matt COPSON, Martin Rowson
10. CODE : DAMP AT THE BFI, LONDON, WEDS 25TH JUNE
CODE: DAMPExperimental Mixtape. Curated by Sophie Sleigh-Johnson.+ Q&A with Sophie Sleigh-Johnson, hosted by Stewart Lee
A new book on the dark shadows of 1970s British TV comedy, centred around the work of Leonard Rossiter, provides the inspiration for a new Experimenta Mixtape in which, as ever, no further information is provided in advance of the event.
The textures, domestic surrealism and atavistic underbelly of the British television sit-com are unpicked and excavated in singular, idiosyncratic fashion in Sophie Sleigh-Johnson’s strange, new book CODE: DAMP, and this one-off, adjunct, ExperimentaL, film and television, cut-up, screening mix. With references to The Fall, the situationists, medieval musical instruments, 1970s horror, and Holsten Pils, Sleigh-Johnson’s world is at once: weird, wonderful and frightening.
11. I ARROGANTLY RECOMMEND
SONGHOY BLUES The Mali Clash. JUNE 1st Sheffield Crookes, 2nd Leeds Brudenell, 4th B’ham Castle & Falcon, 6th London Islington Assembly Hall, 7th Bristol Thekla
JOE MCPHEE The astounding American free jazz saxophonist has three shows at London’s Café Oto, with slightly different combos of people each night, JUNE 3RD, 4TH and 6th.
MARK WILLIAMS, THE HILL OF DREAMS. June 3rd – August 2nd. Barnabas Art House, Newport, Wales. A new exhibition by Mark Williams, inspired by the life and work of Arthur Machen. An official opening night takes place on 3rd June, from 6pm - 9pm, with refreshments available and the artwork featured is for sale.
BO NINGEN Japanese art psyche-punks JUNE 5th Liverpool Arts, 7th London Dome.
DAVID LANCE CALLAHAN I cannot arrogantly recommend enough the former Moonshake and Wolfhounds man’s amazing solo folk-blues-noise workouts, nailing the state of the world over a superb stripped down sound in some great small venues that we all should support.
JUNE 5th Birmingham Rock’n’roll Brewhouse, 6th Sheffield Bishop’s House, AUGUST 3rd Chilterns Awamu Together Festival
EXETER COMEDY FESTIVAL 5th-8th JUNE
Last year's inaugural Exeter Comedy Festival was a joy - great programme, delicious pizza and special late-night acts too!
Again - what a brilliant set of comedians - Christie, Hegley, Long, Adamsdale etc.
TICKETS ON SALE NOW Includes another work-in-prog from Ben Moor at 16.00pm Saturday 7th June A THREE THING DAY - WORK-IN-PROGRESS
THE FALLEN LEAVES Mod-punk veteran assassins. June 8th Southsea Edge of The Wedge, SEPT 27th London Dublin Castle
0H-SEES I am a late adopter of the extreme noise power of this veteran combo, amazing live, who share the same t-shirt provider as me.
JUNE 9th Edinburgh Liquid,
15th Bristol Marble Factory,
16th M’cr Ritz,
18th Glasgow Galvanisers,
20th Leeds Irish Cent,
21st B’ham Digbeth Crossing,
23rd London Electric Ballroom,
24th London Earth,
25th Brighton Chalk.
ITHELL COLQUHOUN/THE NIGHT SIDE OF NATURE. Two Colquhoun canvasses are the clever hook to see works by a number of new female mystic artists, on sale at Purdy Hicks Gallery, 25 Thurloe St, London SW72LQ, June 12th-August 9th.
ITHELL COLQUHOUN – BETWEEN TWO WORLDS. This vast, timely, majestic, bewitching and unmissable career retrospective moves from Cornwall to Tate Britain from June 13th – October 19th and you can hear me waffling on on the accompanying audio app too. https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/burra-and-colquhoun
THE BIG EXPRESS Dan Barrow covers an XTC album solo in its entirety at The Dublin Castle, Camden, London, Sunday June 15th 8pm
LEN PRICE 3 Durable punk-mods. JUNE 18th – 229 London
CHRIS ECKMAN Former frontman of dark alt country progenitors The Walkabouts in what I think is his first UK date this century. June 19th Water Rats, London
THE PRIMEVALS Scottish garage punkers and Man-Wulf theme-players, 27th June, Hope & Anchor, London.
SKEP WAX WEEKENDER July 17th – 20th, Islington, London
Four nights of radical indiepop - Thursday and Friday evening at the Lexington, Saturday evening at Islington Town Hall, Sunday (4pm) back at The Lexington: see full line-up below. The 'Weekender' ticket will admit you to all four nights.
Day tickets are available for each of the four shows.
Thursday (The Lexington) Jeanines, Sassyhiya, Panic Pocket
Friday (The Lexington) The Would-Be-Goods, The Orchids, Swansea Sound
Saturday (Islington Assembly Room) Heavenly, Lightheaded, Crumbs
Sunday (The Lexington), Marlody, The Gentle Spring, Special Friend
Venue addresses: The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Rd, London, N1 9JB.
Islington Assembly Hall, Upper St, London, N1 2UD. (The venues are less than a mile apart.)
Heavenly's new 7" single will go on sale at this event.
Ticket prices include £1.50 Venue Levy for Islington Town Hall.
The Lexington is 18+ admission, The Islington Assembly Hall is 16+ https://wegottickets.com/f/13685
MARTIN SIMPSON Folk guitarist who mines the hidden connections between British and American traditional musics with taste and virtuosity. JULY 21st Croydon Ruskin House. SEPT 6th Howden Shire Hall
MILLIONS OF DEAD COPS / MDC American hardcore heroes of NO KKK NO FASCIST USA chant fame. AUG 4th – New Cross Inn, London
THE NEW CHRISTS!!!!! The audaciously named Australian Detroit-style punk legends reform and tour the UK. AUG 13th M’cr Night & Day, 14th Glasgow Stereo, 15th London Oslo.
EDWYN COLLINS Orange Juice’s indiepop originator SEPT 27th Glasgow Theatre Royal, 29th Buxton Opera House, 30th Bath Komedia. OCT 2nd S’hampton Central Hall, 3rd Brighton St Georges, 4th London RFH, 6th Norwich Epic, 7th Manchester Albert Hall, 8th Newcastle Boiler Shop
THE MAGPIE ARC Country-folk-indie conglomerate.
OCT 17th Cast Doncaster,
18th Indoor Festival of Folk (North), Victoria Hall, Settle (with Edgelarks, Frankie Archer, The Bookshop Band, The Magpie Arc and Ashley Hutchings in conversation with Matthew Bannister),
19th Cluny 2 Newcastle,
23rd South Street Reading,
24th Water Rats London,
25th Ragged Bear Festival, Nuneaton (with The Men They Couldn’t Hang, Greenman Rising, Gaz Brookfield),
26th Acapela Studio Cardiff,
30th Gloucester Guildhall,
NOV 1st Met Bury,
2nd Robin 2 Bilston
THE LOVELY EGGS’ 20TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR Durable art-punk DITY duo continue to dazzle into their third decade.
OCT 22nd Edinburgh Belle Angele,
23rd Glasgow Oran Moor,
24th Newcastle Uni,
25th Leeds Brudenell,
26th Brighton Concorde 2,
27th London Garage,
28th Cardiff Globe,
29th B’ham Castle & Falcon,
30th M’cr Academy 2,
31st Nottingham Metronome,
NOV 1st Bristol Trinity
BOB MOULD Hardcore punk pioneer of Husker Du/Sugar lineage.
NOV 18th Glasgow Oran Mor, 19th Leeds Brudenell, 20th London Dome
SAINTS 73-79 Superb! The original line-up of the Australian Punk progenitors, but with Mudhoney's Mark Arm deputising for the departed Chris Bailey (a gentleman and a scholar who once came to my show!).
His co-writer and co-guitarist Ed Kuepper remains undimmed and the rhythm section will rattle your bones.
NOVEMBER 21ST Bristol Trinity,
22nd Leeds Project,
23rd Glasgow Garage,
24th M’cr Academy 2,
26th London Camden Electric Ballroom.
12. IN OUR LAMENTATIONS 2025
Barre Phillips (Jazz bassman, 1934)
Bob Grover (Brighton Piranha, 1956)
Riro (Japanese sea otter, 2007) Nora Orlandi (Spaghetti symphonist, 1933)
Ed Askew (Acid folkie, 1940)
Tony Slattery (The vile blows of the world made him reckless, 1959)
David Lynch (He erased our heads, 1946) Landy Randerson (Museum access pioneer, 1949)
Garth Hudson (Bandolier, 1937)
Brian Murphy (Instantly aged actor, 1932)
Rab MacWilliam (Hackney historian, 1951)
Barry Goldberg (His flag was electric, 1941)
Peter Yarrow (He left on a jetplane, 1938)
Snowy Fleet (Easybeater, 1939)
Jamie Muir (Absolute fucking rhythmical genius, 1942)
Mike Ratledge (Moon in June Soft Machine man, 1943)
Gabriel Yacoub (Malicorne muso of French folk, 1952)
Bill Fay (Christian mystic songwriter seer, 1943) Roberta Flack (Made Ewan MacColl sexy, 1937)
Gene Hackman (an actor who knew when not to,1930)
Jay Rayner’s Observer restaurant column (1999)
David Johansen (New York Doll, 1950)
Bill Dare (Even his socks were funny, 1959)
Johnny Green (A gentleman, a dandy, and always a pleasure,)
Ken Parker (The Blue Bender, 1943) Edweena Banger (Her nose bled, 1959)
John Cassady (Planetary penman, 1971)
Joey Molland (His finger was bad, 1947)
Peter Farrelly (Fruuppster, 1949)
Jesse Colin Young (He got it together, 1941)
Brian James (Lord of The Damned, 1955)
Roy Ayers (Good vibes, 1940)
Bob Rupe (Brilliant Gutterball and Silos bottom end) Nadia Cassini (Starcrash starlet, 1949) Nike Arrighi (The Devil Rides Out, 1944)
Bill Smith (Original Corrie, 1936)
DG Hessayon (Garden expert who answered my questions, 1928)
Elliot Ingber (Winged Eel Fingerling, 1941) Leanne Cowie (Scientific drummer, 1964?)
George Foreman (Meat griller, 1949)
Michael Hurley (He’s gone back to Capistrano, 1941)
Dave Allen (At Home He’s A Bassist, 1955)
Alastair MacKinven (Country teaser and artist, 1971)
Clem Burke (Magic Christian Plimsoul & Elvis Ramone, 1954)
Larry Tamblyn (He loved that dirty water, 1943)
Clive Revill (The Emperor strikes back, 1930)
Amadou Bagayoko (blind bluesman, 1955)
Max Romeo (Wet-dreaming devil chaser, 1944) Clodagh Rogers (Northern Irish Spider-Woman, 1947)
Pope Francis (Relatively inoffensive pope, 1936) Eleonora Giorgi (Young, violent and dangerous, 1953)
David Thomas (Ube Pere, 1953)
Mike Peters (He alarmed Wales, 1959)
James Baker (Hoodoo victim of beastly scientists, 1954)
Larry Lee (Ozark Mountain Devil, 1947)
Wizz Jones (The Lazy Farmer, 1939)
David Briggs (He signalled the test of our whistles, 1943)
Kimble Rendall (Hoodoo Guru from year zero, 1957)
Jack Katz (First Kingdom comics guy, 1927)
Ed Smylie (Saved Apollo 13 with sellotape, 1914)
George Wendt (Barfly Freak Fan, 1948)
Peter David (Turned Hulk grey, 1956)
Stewart Lee
2025-06-02T08:02:02+01:00
1. A LIVERPUDLIAN WRITES A Liverpudlian comedy fan e-mailed to say; “Really shitty move, after seeing the show in Liverpool, to sell me a blank dvd, real fucking scummy actually, 3rd time seeing Stewart lee, won't bother again, I would have just gave you a tenner if you needed it that badly, but selling people who have already paid to see you blank dvds? That's pathetically scummy, cheers.” If you have a problem with merch just e-mail us and we will replace it. Obviously, as far as I know all the DVDs work (there have been maybe 2 or 3 that haven’t in 20 years of selling them), but as I am sure you appreciate it’s not possible for me to check each one personally before sale as the man-hours involved would mean it would not be cost-effective to sell anything at all. If anyone out there would like an unpaid internship sitting alone in a warehouse in Southend feeding one dvd after another into a dvd player to check them all, do contact me. Even with the venue’s percentage we are still selling DVDs at about 25% less than they would cost in shops or from Amazon (and that is after a ticket for my show costs, for example, 1/3rd of what Greg Davis charges, for a work that will be much shorter and much worse than mine.) The merchandise stall is basically run at break-even point, and we can’t afford to sell stuff in some venues where the size of the venue’s commission, if it’s over 20%, would mean we made an actual loss. But I feel standing on the stall and signing stuff helps to formalise and organise any interactions punters want, and people going home with an object, I suspect, probably helps to sustain the audience...
I have recently been touring my new show, 41st Best Stand-Up Ever, before its current six week residency at the Soho theatre. The title reflects my position in a dubious Channel 4 rundown of stand-ups earlier this year. I was surprised to be placed at all, but the very existence of such a list does tell us something of the increasing cultural currency of stand-up, once the most despised of art forms.
When I started on the London circuit in 1989 no-one even really reviewed stand-up. It would have been considered the equivalent of trying to review farts. But today there are professional comedy critics, who make their living from analysing the relative merits of different jokesmiths. So much has changed. Fart critics, however, remain unwaged gentelemen amateurs, much misunderstood and rarely invited to contribute to broadsheet newspapers. Perhaps they will find a place on Channel 4’s forthcoming show The 100 Best Farts Ever, which represents an admirable effort to upgrade the quality of the station’s output.
As I sit in the car on tour, I pontificate to my fascinated opening acts, Henning Wehn and Stephen Carlin, about the good old days of the London Comedy Circuit, before anyone realised you could make a living as a stand-up, and when there was only one branch of Jongleurs. For my generation, the year zero of the comedy circuit is 1979, which saw the establishment of The Comedy Store and The Comic Strip. A new wave of comedians set themselves up in opposition to the hegemony of bowtie sporting ‘70’s working men’s club racists and high-faluting ‘60s Oxbridge satirists. Before then, as far as I understood it, there was not a traditon of alternative comedy in Britain. But it seems I was wrong.
Visiting the Time Out offices to prepare for this self-aggrandising puff-piece, I happened upon a copy of the magazine from November 1907, back when it was called Time Out Gentlemen’s Weekly. I expected the comedy listings from the period to be a predictable list of Music Hall Performances, complete with the disgraceful blackface artists, camp drag acts, regional stereotypes and supposedly risque musical performers we know from archive footage, but even then it appears, London boasted an Alternative Comedy Circuit, run by performers and promoters disillusioned with the mainstream. The Time Out of November 1907 has responded to this sudden proliferation of new talent by appending these events to its Music Hall listings for the first time under the new term “Alternative Cabaret”, which I had previously been led to believe had been first coined by Malcolm Hardee in the mid-70’s. He lied, as usual.
Predictably, very few of the venues we know today have survived from Alternative Comedy’s original 1907 wave. The Leicester Square Comedy Store of 1979 was, it appears, a rebranded version of the 1907 venue The Comedy Whores, run by the Comedy Store owner Don Ward’s mother, where prostitutes told amusing stories about omnibuses, wives and snuff to punters inbetween tricks. A 1907 version of Jongleurs, on the site of the supposedly original Battersea franchise, advertises “Marmite, Rhubard, Beef, Hot Potatos, Porter, Dancing, Cushions and some comedy”. Other than that, only Downstairs At The King’s Head in Crouch End is familliar in the 1907 listings, even then under the stewardship of a young Peter Graham, who still books the acts today whilst fingering his original gas-operated 1907 lighting board.
Interestingly, even in the very early days of Alternative Comedy’s real first wave, radical pockets of performers found the gradual coalescion of an acceptable style constricting, just as they do today. Many, it appears, felt compelled to host evenings for comic splinter groups, whose very existence implied a formal critique of the emerging new orthodoxy. Robin Ince’s Book Club, Josie Long’s Sunday Night Adventure Club and Andrew Maxwell’s Full Mooners all find their historical precedents in 1907 listings for regular gigs entitled Tobin Mince’s Spekky Gang, Gypsy Lou’s Monday Night Knitting Circle, and Eamon Magoo’s Gruel Spooners.
Time Out’s comedy listings have played their part in making London the unrivalled stand-up comedy capital of the world for longer, it seems, than any of us realised. And faced with a comic legacy that stretches back even further than previously imagined, the idea of rating the 100 best stand-ups of all time seems increasingly absurd. That said, I am remain officially the 41st best ever, and I hereby consign the stand-up comedians of 1907 to the dustbin of history where they belong.
Stewart Lee
2007-10-11T19:40:22+01:00
I have recently been touring my new show, 41st Best Stand-Up Ever, before its current six week residency at the Soho theatre. The title reflects my position in a dubious Channel 4 rundown of stand-ups earlier this year. I was surprised to be placed at all, but the very existence of such a list does tell us something of the increasing cultural currency of stand-up, once the most despised of art forms. When I started on the London circuit in 1989 no-one even really reviewed stand-up. It would have been considered the equivalent of trying to review farts. But today there are professional comedy critics, who make their living from analysing the relative merits of different jokesmiths. So much has changed. Fart critics, however, remain unwaged gentelemen amateurs, much misunderstood and rarely invited to contribute to broadsheet newspapers. Perhaps they will find a place on Channel 4’s forthcoming show The 100 Best Farts Ever, which represents an admirable effort to upgrade the quality of the station’s output. As I sit in the car on tour, I pontificate to my fascinated opening acts, Henning Wehn and Stephen Carlin, about the good old days of the London Comedy Circuit, before anyone realised you could make a living as a stand-up, and when there was only one branch of Jongleurs. For my generation, the year zero of the comedy circuit is 1979, which saw the establishment of The Comedy Store and The Comic Strip. A new wave of comedians set themselves up in opposition to the hegemony of bowtie sporting ‘70’s working men’s club racists and high-faluting ‘60s Oxbridge satirists. Before then, as far as I understood it, there was not a traditon of alternative comedy in Britain. But it seems I was wrong. Visiting the Time Out offices to prepare for this...
During this morning's trawl through the bank holiday weekend email spam I spotted a plea for support from divisive stand-up comedian Stewart Lee.
"Dear all," it read, "Overlooked National Treasures The Nightingales (and Subway Sect) are closing my SOUTH BANK CENTRE AUSTERITY BINGE on Monday 30th May. Here are two great reviews from the current tour. Please twat this if you are a tweeter."
It was a plea for attendance and cultural support on a wet night when most of that London were journeying back from their renovated Cornish fishing village, or still apologising for inappropriate behaviour at the Sunday night barbecue. I'd turned up out of a sense of duty (I'd written a preview piece for the magazine) and curious nostalgia (the Nightingales were one of my teenage indie-kid obsessions) and, truth be told, signs weren't good. With less than ten minutes to go, there were barely ten supporters visible amidst the school-hall fluorescence of The South Bank's Purcell Room. One female punter muttered ominously, something about having "seen him recently, and he looked broken, ruined."
But by the dimming of the lights the hall was healthily half full, and Subway Sect effortlessly dispelled any fears of ruined reunion, the acerbic, attenuated Vic Godard leading his 2011 model band through a nervy set of cheese-wire sharpness, spitting out peculiar pop songs, rich in political anger and English scorn.
Yet nothing in Subway Sect's admittedly excellent return could have prepared for the astonishing revelation of Rob Lloyd's Nightingales. Formed out of the ashes of blackly-comic Birmingham punk upsetters The Prefects, Nightingales Mk. 1 existed from 1979 to '86, Black Country Magic Banders spinning Daedalian indie skronk around Lloyd's slashing gnomic utterances. Since reforming in 2004, Nightingales Mk 2 have survived - like post-punk fellow-travellers The Fall - as an ever-shifting cast of players, a tightly schooled all-ages boot-camp in the employ of one man's absurdist poetic invective.
Recently retrained at Jochen Irmler's Faust Studio, tonight Lloyd and founder Prefects guitarist Alan Apperley field a side barely three weeks old. Bassist Andreas Schmid, a Faust Studio apprentice, is suitably young and severe, the possible leader of some Marxist-Leninist '70s student cell, in academic black suit and socialist haircut. Skinny in black jeans and black western shirt, hair like squid-ink candy floss, rhythm guitarist Matt Wood resembles a teenage Horrors offcast, while from behind her own heavy witch-black fringe ex-Violet Violet drummer Fliss Kitson pounds out the glam-kosmische bin rhythms. As Lloyd takes the stage - stout, bespectacled, wily smile flickering between joy and contempt - the image is complete; it is the embittered Marxist history teacher fronting the school band, the academy in peril.
With no time for nostalgia, tonight The Nightingales ignore any notion of greatest hits in favour of joyous reinvention. Feeding off the hard-drilled energy of these junior initiates, Apperley spins frayed Bo Diddley riffs around Lloyd's tumbling psychedelic eavesdroppings, allowing the singer to recycle, reinvent and repurpose thirty years of vituperative notebook aphorisms, constructing an intense, breathless narrative from the recycled past to the scorched present. And, like some Christ-like curmudgeon, newly risen to grouse again, Lloyd feeds off the audience fervour, growing stronger, yet ever wary; grinning broadly, flicking the Vs, and mouthing "What the f---?!"
With every repurposed song - plus a combative cover of Gary Glitter's I Didn't Know I Loved You (Till I Saw You Rock & Roll) - the band become yet more powerful, Apperley and the kids locked in a heavy zig-zag groove as Lloyd bellows out caustic images from his mordant world-view, like some Black Country Stuart Staples, holidaying in the window of an Arndale Pound Shop. The cumulative effect is one of euphoric delight, of old knowledge in the hands of new disciples. "Dig the depth of the furrow of mirth that I can plough," sings Lloyd on The Overreactor. Tonight The Nightingales hit an epic new low. Catch them when they're at it again.
Stewart Lee
2011-05-31T20:46:09+01:00
During this morning's trawl through the bank holiday weekend email spam I spotted a plea for support from divisive stand-up comedian Stewart Lee. "Dear all," it read, "Overlooked National Treasures The Nightingales (and Subway Sect) are closing my SOUTH BANK CENTRE AUSTERITY BINGE on Monday 30th May. Here are two great reviews from the current tour. Please twat this if you are a tweeter." It was a plea for attendance and cultural support on a wet night when most of that London were journeying back from their renovated Cornish fishing village, or still apologising for inappropriate behaviour at the Sunday night barbecue. I'd turned up out of a sense of duty (I'd written a preview piece for the magazine) and curious nostalgia (the Nightingales were one of my teenage indie-kid obsessions) and, truth be told, signs weren't good. With less than ten minutes to go, there were barely ten supporters visible amidst the school-hall fluorescence of The South Bank's Purcell Room. One female punter muttered ominously, something about having "seen him recently, and he looked broken, ruined." But by the dimming of the lights the hall was healthily half full, and Subway Sect effortlessly dispelled any fears of ruined reunion, the acerbic, attenuated Vic Godard leading his 2011 model band through a nervy set of cheese-wire sharpness, spitting out peculiar pop songs, rich in political anger and English scorn. Yet nothing in Subway Sect's admittedly excellent return could have prepared for the astonishing revelation of Rob Lloyd's Nightingales. Formed out of the ashes of blackly-comic Birmingham punk upsetters The Prefects, Nightingales Mk. 1 existed from 1979 to '86, Black Country Magic Banders spinning Daedalian indie skronk around Lloyd's slashing gnomic utterances. Since reforming in 2004, Nightingales Mk 2 have survived - like post-punk fellow-travellers The Fall - as an ever-shifting...
Last Summer, Richard Dawson was invited by Tyne & Wear Museums to visit their vaults, and spend half an hour a piece responding to objects found there.
The Glass Trunk is a mesmerising and pungent selection of seven eerily keened faux folk songs, forced into form from scrapbook scraps and forgotten family papers, and interspersed arrestingly with the tumbling snapped shards of Rhodhri Davies’ pedal harp and Dawson's ugly-beautiful electric guitar. Penetrating the heart of the archive’s hidden stories, Dawson draws out hidden truths in strong bold strokes.
Stewart Lee
2013-09-08T11:31:00+01:00
Last Summer, Richard Dawson was invited by Tyne & Wear Museums to visit their vaults, and spend half an hour a piece responding to objects found there. The Glass Trunk is a mesmerising and pungent selection of seven eerily keened faux folk songs, forced into form from scrapbook scraps and forgotten family papers, and interspersed arrestingly with the tumbling snapped shards of Rhodhri Davies’ pedal harp and Dawson's ugly-beautiful electric guitar. Penetrating the heart of the archive’s hidden stories, Dawson draws out hidden truths in strong bold strokes.
“What are days for?”, asks the curmudgeonly poet, Philip Larkin, is his poem, Days, questioning the very point of living. He is unable to offer any real comfort, concluding, “Ah, solving that question / brings the priest and the doctor / in their long coats / running over the fields.” For Larkin, the idea of Days, and what to do with them, represents the problem of existence boiled down to its barest essentials. I have a similar relationship with shelves, and The Observer have invited me to solve it, at your expense.
I love shelves, and if only I could work out exactly which of the many books, comics, records and compact discs that I own I should fill them with, and how many shelves I require to do this, I have always imagined my life would be complete. At the age of 43, I am finally in a solid looking house, with my solid looking family, where I imagine, uncharacteristically, I will stay for some time. I am well on the way, through my own efforts and those of contracted shelving professionals, to having the shelving system I have dreamed of since childhood, most of it concealed in nooks, cellars and the designated shelf room, so as not to destroy the internal integrity of our long dreamed of living space. But even as the shelves approach their final configuration, it seems the same doubts and fears about life and its purpose linger on, as if the answer to everything did not lie in the construction of shelving systems after all. I had truly imaged it would. I wonder where this profound faith in shelving began.
When I was about 5 years old, I bought a copy of an American comic book called Captain Marvel, off the lower rung off a revolving rack of True Detective, Soft Porn and pulpy thriller magazines, in a newsagents on the A34 just outside Birmingham. I was snagged. Not only did the tale of Captain Marvel, virtually crucified by aliens in a shiny chrome cyber-cross, blow my toddling mind, it also appeared to be part of a much wider cosmology, - the Marvel universe, where thousands of colourfully clad characters wended in and out of the plots of each other’s interlinked monthly comics, creating a vast multi-layered epic storyline which I now ached to understand.
But it was 1973. Spider-man was not the all-conquering global brand he is today. American comic books, regarded mainly as valueless filth, weren’t regularly distributed. They made their way, usually to seaside towns and motorway service stations, as ballast in ships or bundles of worthlessly discounted rubbish. The dedicated comics stores were few and far between. I scouted the newsagents in far flung estates on the borders of the suburbs, for goldmine trash at marked down prices, in cardboard boxes by the door, as did so many comics fans of my age. Then I took my finds home, and filed them, in a complex system of boxes in my wardrobe, trying to match up the fragmented and incomplete runs of broken storylines, gaps in the action looming out like broken teeth where perfunctory newsagent distribution systems had broken down. And one Summer, a doctor my mother worked for, came round while convalescing, and hammered me up a set of shelves, upon which my comics then sat, near complete runs of Marvel Two In One, Ghost Rider and Deathlok standing proud in line as evidence of my tenacity.
Like most comic book fans I had little to show for my life – no sports trophies, no prizes, and I never achieved anything much until I suddenly and unexpectedly passed my eleven plus – but I had scrimped and scouted to assemble this four colour archive, and there it was, shelved. The world was a mess – war and power cuts and three days weeks, and teeth smashed out by bullies and tussles over weekend access – but here was chaos co-ordinated.
Like most comics readers, I briefly betrayed myself in my early adolescence, abandoning comics until I was eighteen or so, and finding similar absolutes, and maxims to match Peter Parker’s uncle’s peerless advice, ‘With great power comes great responsibility’, in literature and music. My first musical love was The Fall, who even in 1982 had a back catalogue that was uncharacteristically convoluted, and stirred the same Linnean impulse Captain Marvel had, with Saturday afternoons spent scouting the record stores, of the pre-internet age, to plug the gaps.
Since then, I’ve always been attracted to artists and genres which are ultimately unknowable and undefinable, because of the musicians’ unstoppably prolific tendencies, and because of the many tributaries that feed in and out of their work, that must all be explored and understood in the quest for completion. By my late twenties my record collection had to be measured in feet rather than counted in terms of individual items. I have to stress, it wasn’t an especially expensive acquisition. I’ve been getting review copies since I started doing radio and reviewing in the mid-90s, and I spent vast swathes of my twenties and thirties hanging around far-flung provincial towns waiting to do stand-up gigs, passing the afternoons in second hand book shops and record shops. During the nineties, cd’s rendered vinyl largely worthless, and I’d return from Northern treks laden with discs. During the noughties, mp3 technology inflicted the same body blow to the value of cd’s, and everything you might ever have wanted is out there somewhere at 99p, easily traced through Amazon marketplace.
In the last decades, the long empty afternoons also yielded cut-price books by the dozen, which I acquired for an imaged alcoholic retirement. I pictured myself old and bearded and blubbery, lying on the floor drinking malt whisky and expanding my mind, a self-indulgent vision now sidelined by fatherhood. At the late great Book Barn in Bristol, in closing down sales across the land, and in back rooms in Hay On Wye and Alnwick and Sedbergh, we thrifty readers picked over the carcass of the publishing industry for hours on end, turning up forgotten fifty pence fiction by the plastic bag full. My only real expense was my comics habit, but I was always on hand to write features and articles on the form for newspapers and radio, I had my weekly music reviews column in a Sunday paper, I was a writer and sometime novelist myself, and so everything was professionally relevant. But gradually, over twenty years of acquisition, I was swamped. My shelving capacity could not keep up.
In a shared house in Tooting I cannibalised wine boxes and fruit crates into vinyl shaped storage mechanisms. In an attic room in Balham, I used bricks and planks dragged from a demolished building to go floor to ceiling, in CD sized strips. In a failed relationship in Finsbury Park I sawed poisonous MDF into a bespoke system filling a spare room, and breathed the dust for three years in a mausoleum of recorded music. At my two bedroom Stoke Newington bachelor pad, I inherited three alcoves’ worth of chunky wooden slats, already in place, and a friendly set carpenter turned one wall into an edifice of clunky jewel cases and vinyl spines. By the time my wife moved in with me in 2006, she was required to edge around stacks of unread fiction, garish comic books, curling vinyl and clattering cd boxes. No-one could live like this. And when our son was born, most of my painstakingly assembled archive went into storage, so that our child had room to live and a space to sleep.
A friend of mine, Andy, has devoted his life to literature, his enormous cranium swollen with learning. His shelves always impressed me. Books only made it on to the main section when they had been fully digested, and yet still it was crammed and carefully alphabetised. What an achievement. And yet, last Christmas at the Gay Hussar in Soho, he told me he had given away all his books. He had two children. “They need places to play,” he said, “a home should be a home, not a monument to my victories over books.” I was crestfallen. Andy made me question myself. We were in limbo, my little tribe. The unconfirmed promise of a TV series was keeping us hanging on for the possibility of affording a family home in Hackey, otherwise we would downsize and head West towards our spiritual homelands near the Severn. But when I finally did get the finances to stay in the city, I struggled with what do with the dead weight of cultural information I had imprisoned in its Dalston lock-up.
I calculated the scale of the problem. Those prolific genius artists were just the start of it – I had six feet of Fall CDs, five feet eight of Miles Davis, five foot six of Sonic Youth and its solo spin-offs, five foot two of John Coltrane, four foot eleven of the free improviser Derek Bailey, four foot four of Robert Pollard and Guided By Voices, three feet of Bob Dylan, two foot eight of The Byrds and various tributaries, two foot six of the Texan outsider artist Jandek, and two foot four of the saxophonist Evan Parker; I had twenty feet of European improvised music, twenty feet of jazz, fourteen feet a piece of British folk music, reggae, and blues, seven feet of Japanese psychedelia, and six foot each of music from Tucson Arizona, New Zealand and 1970s Germany. Even after a massive cull, I reckon I still had three hundred and fifty feet of recorded sound which I imagined I needed to keep. And don’t talk to me about i-pods. They haven’t built the i-pod that can cope with that. And I want inlay cards, and accompanying essays and the physical contact with the physical objects and the memories they evoke.
On the print media front I had about one hundred feet of fiction, much of it unread, eighteen feet of poetry which improves my soul, six feet of books about stone circles, twelve feet of folklore, religion and the occult, and three feet of the forgotten Welsh mystic Arthur Machen. I’ve got ten feet of inky specialist music fanzines from the 80s and 90s, Bucketful of Brains and No Depression, that I needed for journalistic fact checking before Wiipedia. And I’m dragging probably seventy feet of comics, which I am now saving for my son, who will come to despise them, and me for loving them.
And all this stuff, in the digital age, is literally worthless financially, and losing any value it had daily. There’s nothing here a burglar would even bother with. I’m aware I’m a social relic, from an age when you walked through the shopping centre with an un-bagged album under your arm to show like-minded souls who you were, and when the book as an object was quietly fetishised. Now kids stake out their personal space with knives and guns and gadgets, and working stiffs flip falsified pages of virtual books on kindles. I’m like a character in a dystopian science fiction novel, holed up in a cave full of cultural artefacts, waiting for the young Jenny Agutter to arrive in a tinfoil mini-skirt, fleeing a poisonous cloud on the surface, to check out my stash, and ask me, ‘Who exactly were the Quicksilver Messenger Service? Who was this Virginia Wolf? What kind of man was Jonah Hex?”
Negotiating my friend Andy’s abandonment of his lifetime of books, and my own deranged tendency to keep everything, as if to prove that I existed, I have set myself a limit to my shelf space, a generous one by the average person’s standards, but a limit nonetheless. Each month I carve out a little more length, and unbox a few more treasures. It’s a slow process. But there is a finite point. And the rest must go. Cool stuff rears up out of the cardboard. I had forgotten, for example, that I had every album The Volcano Suns ever made, reprints of all Barry Windsor Smith’s Conan comics, and over a dozen hardback copies of Francis Brett Young’s Shropshire novels that I have never read. These finds thrill me still, just like when I was a boy. I know I will never absorb all my archive, but it’s enough to bask in its glow. But philosophically, I remain none the wiser than I did when I first racked my Marvel comics on the wall of my bedroom, age eight or nine. To paraphrase Larkin, ‘What are shelves for? Ah, solving that question / brings the priest and the doctor / in their long coats / running over the fields.”
Stewart Lee
2010-07-18T20:31:26+01:00
“What are days for?”, asks the curmudgeonly poet, Philip Larkin, is his poem, Days, questioning the very point of living. He is unable to offer any real comfort, concluding, “Ah, solving that question / brings the priest and the doctor / in their long coats / running over the fields.” For Larkin, the idea of Days, and what to do with them, represents the problem of existence boiled down to its barest essentials. I have a similar relationship with shelves, and The Observer have invited me to solve it, at your expense. I love shelves, and if only I could work out exactly which of the many books, comics, records and compact discs that I own I should fill them with, and how many shelves I require to do this, I have always imagined my life would be complete. At the age of 43, I am finally in a solid looking house, with my solid looking family, where I imagine, uncharacteristically, I will stay for some time. I am well on the way, through my own efforts and those of contracted shelving professionals, to having the shelving system I have dreamed of since childhood, most of it concealed in nooks, cellars and the designated shelf room, so as not to destroy the internal integrity of our long dreamed of living space. But even as the shelves approach their final configuration, it seems the same doubts and fears about life and its purpose linger on, as if the answer to everything did not lie in the construction of shelving systems after all. I had truly imaged it would. I wonder where this profound faith in shelving began. When I was about 5 years old, I bought a copy of an American comic book called Captain Marvel, off the lower rung off...
'Forget house music, the truly hip have moved on...to folk," predicted the style magazines a year or so ago, probably as an excuse to run some shots of heroin-addled waifs dressed up as Morris dancers. The folk revival never happened, of course, but Eliza Carthy, at 22 the youngest recording artist of the venerable Waterson-Carthy clan, English folk's royal family, has transcended the hype with a brilliant third solo album, the double set Red Rice (out now on Topic Records).
Martin Carthy has been the shire horse of the English folk scene since the 1960s (barring brief membership of Steeleye Span), nobly shouldering the burden of tradition while his contemporaries went electric. Norma Waterson sang with the Watersons, the vocal harmony quartet whose recordings of the likes of John Barleycorn and Here We Come A-Wassailing helped English folk to consolidate a sense of identity distinct from Celtic music, and provided the model for every sketch show parody of an English folk group ever since. She was a surprise nomination for the Mercury prize in 1996.
But their daughter, the fiddler and singer Eliza Carthy, has a pierced face and a love of the Orb as well as a natural feel for interpreting traditional music. "In the current musical climate
everybody is hearing everything," she explains in a forthright Yorkshire burr. "People are so universal in their tastes, these days, I think it's unrealistic to box them up." Fair enough, but Eliza's own press release proclaims her "the future of folk". "Well, that's what I am. I'm a folk singer. I'm not trying to hide that, but the folk scene is, in fact, very eclectic. The people in my band can turn their minds to anything."
Carthy is caught between two worlds: the archival and valuable parochialism of her predecessors and the fact that, like anybody in their twenties today, she's a global citizen, by default. Initially Red Rice appears to embody this dichotomy almost too literally. The first CD, Red, takes jazz inflections, occasional drum'n'bass beats and a full band to traditional tunes and Carthy's original compositions. The second, Rice, leaves them more or less unmolested.
On the opening track of Carthy's last album, the gauche dub reggae effects filtered into the fiddle tune Cuckold Came out of the Amery genuinely grated, but here the mixing of styles doesn't seem forced in any way. "That's 'cos it wasn't," says Carthy. "I didn't really set out to experiment or anything. What happened on the drum'n'bass tracks is that I've got some friends in Halifax, Paul and Shack, that do that, and put on raves and events, and we just got really drunk and went into their little studio and started messing around with loops while I just played."
While it's possible to trace the genesis of some of Carthy's leaps into the unknown, others eem almost alchemical. There's a version of the forgotten folk standard 10,000 Miles, on Red, that is without precedent. The adolescent Carthy approached the song in a predictably downbeat tone on her 1996 debut, Heat, Light and Sound. Nic Jones had already pulled off the definitive melancholy take on 1977's The Noah's Ark Trap. "That's where I first heard it," Carthy admits. "A very nice album. My dad gave me his copy of it about three years ago.
I expect he would like it back by now." On Red's version, the accordionist Martin Green establishes an upbeat, optimistic melody, utterly at odds with the sadness of the song, that breathes a whole new life into it and makes it all the more affecting.
Early reports compared the Rice CD unfavourably to Red, and it's true that material such as The Miller and the Lass, and Tuesday Morning, and the fact that one Lucy Adams is credited with "singing, feet, and clogs" might make it too stereotypically "trad" for all but the most austere folk adept, but, in many ways, the thrills and spills of Red serve to soften up the suspicious listener for Rice. And, of course, it is easy to forget that a lot of unadulterated English folk music is just really, really weird, anyway. Blow the Winds and Benjamin Bowmaneer are stark, empty and quite disturbing, Carthy's lone piano and vocal on the latter bowing to the influence of June Tabor, the Nico-like folk diva who first brought out the gothic Weltschmerz dormant in English folk. A sleeve note that reads, "The traditional material on this album is all English and out there. Not to exclude anyone or anything, but just because we can," indicated that the role of an interpreter of English material is one close to Carthy's heart.
Was this inevitable, growing up in the family she did?
"I've developed a real passion for it," she says. "It started off as a nostalgia thing - I knew all the words to my parents' songs, it was my childhood, but then I found myself thinking, 'I would quite like to be involved. I would like to have that sort of thing for myself.'" And how does that square with being an innovator? "Traditions evolve, and then if they stop you can't just latch onto the end of it and go, 'Ah well, that's it then.' As soon as a tradition has faded a bit, you can pick and choose from the whole of it and start developing it again...which is what I'm doing."
And what is life like in the Waterson-Carthy family? Are there ever musical differences? "Well, my dad fairly indoctrinated me with all his likes and dislikes before I ever got into choosing music, and so I would never play anything he'd hate anywhere near him. My mum really can't hack ambient music at all. Especially the Orb. It sends her heart funny. It gets her scared and spooks her out a bit." This news comes as a disappointment. An Orb remix of the Watersons' For Pence and Spicy Ale album would have been a record worth hearing.
With a fluency in modern and traditional music, an accessible album reverent enough to placate purists and innovative enough to draw in outsiders, guest spots on Billy Bragg and American country rockers Wilco's forthcoming LP of unreleased Woody Guthrie songs, and a possible role in the American all-women Lilith Fair tour, Eliza Carthy may yet be an international star of English folk in the next century. Topic Records clearly thinks so, and there's obviously some thought and marketing budget behind the striking visual identity to the Red Rice package. Isn't there?
"Yes and no," Carthy concedes. "They think you won't get anywhere unless you do a bit of marketing. It was received positively at first, but now people have started to get a bit fed up. People are going, 'Oh she's had another makeover!' and 'Oh, she's had another face piercing.' I'm not gonna take it out for the picture, am I? It's like 'Okay, folkie, get back in your box! You're taking the piss!' But you never know," she concludes nobly, "people have to pick on you for something, don't they?"
Stewart Lee
1998-06-07T17:21:28+01:00
'Forget house music, the truly hip have moved on...to folk," predicted the style magazines a year or so ago, probably as an excuse to run some shots of heroin-addled waifs dressed up as Morris dancers. The folk revival never happened, of course, but Eliza Carthy, at 22 the youngest recording artist of the venerable Waterson-Carthy clan, English folk's royal family, has transcended the hype with a brilliant third solo album, the double set Red Rice (out now on Topic Records). Martin Carthy has been the shire horse of the English folk scene since the 1960s (barring brief membership of Steeleye Span), nobly shouldering the burden of tradition while his contemporaries went electric. Norma Waterson sang with the Watersons, the vocal harmony quartet whose recordings of the likes of John Barleycorn and Here We Come A-Wassailing helped English folk to consolidate a sense of identity distinct from Celtic music, and provided the model for every sketch show parody of an English folk group ever since. She was a surprise nomination for the Mercury prize in 1996. But their daughter, the fiddler and singer Eliza Carthy, has a pierced face and a love of the Orb as well as a natural feel for interpreting traditional music. "In the current musical climate everybody is hearing everything," she explains in a forthright Yorkshire burr. "People are so universal in their tastes, these days, I think it's unrealistic to box them up." Fair enough, but Eliza's own press release proclaims her "the future of folk". "Well, that's what I am. I'm a folk singer. I'm not trying to hide that, but the folk scene is, in fact, very eclectic. The people in my band can turn their minds to anything." Carthy is caught between two worlds: the archival and valuable parochialism of her predecessors and...
Late in my life I have become the owner of a house with a garden. But there are very few gardens in the area of the inner city where I live and naturally my garden has become a focus of envy from the deserving poor.
Last Sunday I was in my garden, drinking fine champagne from the bottle and playing croquet on the lawn with my pantalooned children, when I began to notice some of the people with no gardens from other less salubrious parts of the borough straddling my fence. They were probably jealous of my lawn and flowerbeds, and wished they could have them, which they can’t because they are mine and I must deserve them otherwise why would they have come into my possession?
I squirted the grasping interlopers in their puzzled faces with greenfly spray and then poked them off the fence with a hoe, sending them tumbling down into the fly-tipped mattresses and old nappies below in the council flats’ parking area. Then I went off to smash up some champagne bottles so I could fix broken glass to the top of the fence, in order to lacerate off the interlopers’ buttocks and genitals should they try to climb the fence again, the vile cockroaches. A newt lives below the steps up to the house. I am kind to it.
Later in the day I became aware that the North London Hang Gliding Club were holding their monthly glidepast in the sky above my garden, with the usual and inevitable consequences. Soon the bodies began falling, the mortal shells of poor misguided souls who mistakenly hoped they could find their way into my garden from the air, and had clung to the glider wings, like kittens gone viral on Twitter, but not cute enough to earn their own hashtags.
Illustration by David Foldvari
Luckily, I had already taken the precaution of suspending cricket nets from the tree branches that hang over the garden to catch the falling corpses, which I then threw into the compost to decompose out of sight. My neighbour, who is Australian, has taken to bribing the glider pilots to have their flying fun further south, so that any stowaways make their fatal final landfall in the nearby boroughs of Islington or Camden, rather than onto our immaculate lawns, solving the immediate problem.
At around teatime I was wearing small tight white tennis shorts and drinking champagne again, while playing swingball with a TV producer friend from the media, when I heard a noise coming from the old sewer below the patio. The ongoing escalation of these constant interruptions, all in one afternoon remember, was rapidly becoming tiresome.
Handing Alan my champagne and racket, and crouching down on my bare knees by the manhole cover, I heard a voice say, “Please can we come in your garden? We haven’t got a garden where we live.” And I said, “No, get back in that sewer, you no garden people. I’m very sorry that you haven’t got a garden but this is my garden and I deserve it.” And I walked away. But the tapping continued.
I listened again. “Please, it’s really horrible in the sewer. We’ve been crawling through it for days. And back at the other end of it there’s no food and a man trying to behead us.” This changed things, I suppose. A straightforward narrative based on simple avaricious envy of my garden had been complicated to encompass a basic human desire for survival, a trickier thing to dismiss out of hand.
But as I considered the problem, the manhole lid started coming off. Luckily, I managed to force the woman beneath it back down into the sewer, kicking her in the face and punching her. And then I slammed the cover back down, at least buying myself a little more time to ponder the moral dilemma her plea had posited.
Then, still wrapped in thought, I put a really big flowerpot on the manhole cover so that she and the other people without gardens couldn’t get into my garden through their hole. This solved the problem to an extent. They still hadn’t got gardens but at least they weren’t in my garden. They were trapped in a sewer underneath my garden, dying, which was better I think. And also, their deaths would hopefully deter any other people without gardens from trying to come through the sewer into my garden, which they can’t, because it’s mine.
I wondered if it was really humane to have people trapped in a sewer and dying just for trying to get into your garden. Then it came to me. The real cruelty lay in my allowing people to go into the sewer in the first place. So I found an old drainage plan on the internet, noting that the sewer surfaced somewhere out on Hackney Marshes, which had recently been occupied by a sadistic fascist death cult hellbent on the murder of anyone they disagreed with even remotely, which was unfortunate, but hardly my fault.
I got into the armoured 4x4 I use for the school run, and drove round to the sewer opening, where the people without gardens were getting in, and poured petrol all over it and blew it up in a massive explosion, so that all the people without gardens who had been going into the sewer could stay where they were and die there from being starved and beheaded, like they were supposed to, rather than dying in a sewer on the way into my garden which is mine.
And then I thought, if only there were something I could do to make the whole world fairer so that the people trying to get into my garden didn’t feel the need to try and get into my garden in the first place. But there just isn’t I suppose.
And so I laze in my garden, champagne glass in hand, the bubbles popping in the sun, as the fence wobbles and buckles, and bodies block out the light as they tumble into the cricket nets, and the manhole cover over the sewer rumbles and grumbles. Later I will raise the fence an inch or so and stick more glass on the top of it, and roll another old flowerpot over the manhole cover. And before bed I will tighten the nets once more and empty the day’s catch into the compost. But for now, I will swing here in my hammock, sipping my champagne, and sniffing my freshly-mowed lawn in the dying of the midsummer day.
Stewart Lee is curating the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in April 2016, and A Room with a Stew is playing Edinburgh and London.
Stewart Lee
2015-06-28T21:30:10+01:00
Late in my life I have become the owner of a house with a garden. But there are very few gardens in the area of the inner city where I live and naturally my garden has become a focus of envy from the deserving poor. Last Sunday I was in my garden, drinking fine champagne from the bottle and playing croquet on the lawn with my pantalooned children, when I began to notice some of the people with no gardens from other less salubrious parts of the borough straddling my fence. They were probably jealous of my lawn and flowerbeds, and wished they could have them, which they can’t because they are mine and I must deserve them otherwise why would they have come into my possession? I squirted the grasping interlopers in their puzzled faces with greenfly spray and then poked them off the fence with a hoe, sending them tumbling down into the fly-tipped mattresses and old nappies below in the council flats’ parking area. Then I went off to smash up some champagne bottles so I could fix broken glass to the top of the fence, in order to lacerate off the interlopers’ buttocks and genitals should they try to climb the fence again, the vile cockroaches. A newt lives below the steps up to the house. I am kind to it. Later in the day I became aware that the North London Hang Gliding Club were holding their monthly glidepast in the sky above my garden, with the usual and inevitable consequences. Soon the bodies began falling, the mortal shells of poor misguided souls who mistakenly hoped they could find their way into my garden from the air, and had clung to the glider wings, like kittens gone viral on Twitter, but not cute enough to...
Sun Zoom Spark takes its title from a song by Anthony Frost’s beloved Captain Beefheart, the Mojave desert avant-blues auteur and abstract neo-primitivist who died in 2010. Much has been written already of the importance of music in Frost’s work. Perhaps, on arriving in Cornwall, critics can’t help but expect artists to cite the light and the landscape as their major muses, so it’s counter-intuitive to find Frost turning away, perhaps quite deliberately, from the view out over the sea from his Penzance studio window, to surfaces littered with scratched CDs, and a spattered radio playing 6 Music’s tasteful mix of hipster art rock all day.
From this endless audio slipstream he snatches snappy titles for the works the sounds inform. “I have a notebook of titles for paintings, things I hear on the radio, snippets of phrases. Look. Beautiful burnout. Future babble. Autotune. This phrase ‘desert wolf growl’ was in a review of a solo album by Drumbo from Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band. I paint the picture and then fit the title to it. But this exhibition was different because I knew the paintings were going to be titled after Captain Beefheart songs. I only titled them last week. Strictly Personal. Bat Chain Puller. Look. That looks like a bat chain puller, doesn’t it. And you can see why that one is Shiny Beast.”
Coming of age just at the right time to absorb the last fading rays of psychedelia and the first gluey fumes of punk, to this day Frost still knows much more about mysterious contemporary music genres like dubstep, happy hardcore, and grime than a man in his early sixties might reasonably be expected to. And it seems to me that Frost creates like a free jazz improviser, painting himself into unknown corners and then trying to extemporise his way out of them. He chooses various canvases without apparent thought, buying “every size of stretched canvas that the company makes because I thought the different shapes of the canvas would dictate what I produced. The use of different materials gets more and more prominent as I’m getting older.”
Frost’s methods echo John Cage’s experiments with unpredictability, and the formal rules by which free improvising musicians engage with the unfamiliar and the unexpected. I once saw the saxophonist Evan Parker duet brilliantly with a leak in a Cheltenham theatre roof, that dripped into an unhelpfully sonorous tin bucket, an event I’m sure Frost would relate to. He goes on, “I use a lot of physical objects, and work with different materials to see what happens, to see what they present.
This time I worked my way through all the different canvases, with different materials - windsurf sails, fishing nets and such like - stuck down on them at random. I try to collage over the whole thing with all this beach stuff in a non-thinking way, to try and come to it as if it’s unfamiliar each time, so that when I come to paint over it I have to make sense of something I don’t understand. I put it all on a stretcher without thinking and then it’s a case of bringing it all together. Basically I collage and then I fill in and then I have to make something magical out of it. I discover things like drips, bleeds, dots, depressions, and I have to paint with them. That green bit there wasn’t what I wanted,” he says, gesturing at a piece, “but it was what happened. Accidents will happen. Obviously, I’ve learned to capitalise on them, but even so I don’t want them to be contrived.”
The Fluxus artist Emmett Williams coined the phrase “the topography of chance” to describe a catalogue of objects left on the desk of his friend Daniel Spoerri, and it’s too good a phrase not to invoke in relation to the unplanned landscapes Frost cajoles into being as underlay for his finished pieces. But two things strike me about Frost’s explanation of his methods. Firstly, he denies the pull of the local landscape, and of specifically Cornish influences, in favour of non-stop diet of pre and post punk noise, perhaps indicating an attempt to escape the shadow of The St Ives School. But his use of nautical detritus nevertheless serves, inadvertently, to give the pieces a specific geographical flavor. Those post-war painters are every bit as persuasive as the Godfather’s mobsters, of whom Michael Corleone famously said, “Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in.” Despite his best efforts, Frost’s ended up painting over sails and netting and beach junk, all of which is very Cornish. “Yeah,” he agrees, “but if I was in London I’d use whatever was lying about. But I am in Cornwall, so I just respond to the materials around me. Sails, rigging, windsurfing stuff. I’m like a beachcomber making use of what I’ve found.”
Secondly, though Frost appears to be contriving strategies to escape from himself, to paint and create almost subconsciously and automatically, isn’t this ultimately a doomed exercise? “Well, you can’t escape the fact that you’ve painted before, you can’t escape that,” he admits, “but I don’t want to. The bottom line is you can’t get away from the experience, the knowledge, the bit you use although you also try to suppress it. I want it to be almost free form but it can’t be because I can’t help the fact that it’s me doing it. But I’m always trying not to make something that is not strictly representational but something that is honest, real and truthful. This refers back to someone like Mark E Smith, from The Fall, because no matter what comes up in the world he is always going to make something that is real, not let himself off the hook. He is always the real thing.”
Tellingly, the last strand of Frost’s current creative splurge has a personal flavor. “The last thing I did before this exhibition was I ordered every paint that Golden Acrylic make, and I inherited my dad’s paints too, so I got all these colours I would normally not use. Like these grays….” Frost’s father was Terry Frost, one of the key players in the Cornish art scene, who died in 2003. He is amongst a number of artists whose influence is currently being reassessed in the Tate St Ives’ exhibition, The Far And The Near, which contextualises The St Ives School alongside De Kooning, Bonnard, and Matisse, showing how the ‘50s St Ives artists now have international standing.
If I were a dramatist staging Anthony Frost’s life, I’d use the scene where he finally uses his late father’s paints as a perhaps rather heavy handed way of showing someone coming to terms with their history. As we drive over the moors, having viewed the Tate exhibition, listening to a new CD reissue of Beefheart’s Bat Chain Puller, I ask Frost if he feels like he’s part of a tradition.
“My thing with my father was he was always referring to nature and landscape then he’d go all Russian constructivist, repeating images, and then there’d be a sun or a moon bursting out over the sea.
But I wanted to be totally abstract. I wanted to be different to my dad, totally abstract, and anything that seemed recognizable I’d just paint it out.” “But your paintings do communicate unambiguous feelings,” I suggest, “happiness, and positivity, so you’ve not avoided definite statements. And that painting, Tinned Teardrop, to me it’s a landscape.” “I suppose.”, Frost concedes, “I can see it’s almost an aerial view, from every angle going. That’s another thing I wouldn’t have done in the old days, turn all of the paintings around while I’m doing them. If its better upside down I’ll turn it round and paint it another way. If it helps me, I’m not bothered now.”
I’ve walked the landscape of the Penwith Peninsula many times, following old trails over open ground, between burial chambers, and stone circles and industrial archaeological remains. Driving through it now with Frost, past his cottage on the North Atlantic Coast, it takes on a different hue, as he points at the Zennor hilltop where Bryan Wynter set off explosives on Bonfire night, or the Gunard’s Head pub where his father’s artist friends played local farmers at cricket, or the Botallack cottage where Roger Hilton painted through the night. Time collapses a little bit.
And then the influence of a morning staring at Frost’s canvases kicks in, and I feel the fuzzy visual afterbuzz you sometimes get off a heavy dose of abstracts, and momentarily I’m above the landscape even as we pass through it at ground level, looking down as swathes of purple and green and brown knot themselves around rocky prehistoric outcrops and the pitted depressions of old mine workings, seeking to make the best of the hand they’ve been dealt.
Stewart Lee, writer/clown
Stewart Lee
2013-02-01T21:11:01+00:00
Sun Zoom Spark takes its title from a song by Anthony Frost’s beloved Captain Beefheart, the Mojave desert avant-blues auteur and abstract neo-primitivist who died in 2010. Much has been written already of the importance of music in Frost’s work. Perhaps, on arriving in Cornwall, critics can’t help but expect artists to cite the light and the landscape as their major muses, so it’s counter-intuitive to find Frost turning away, perhaps quite deliberately, from the view out over the sea from his Penzance studio window, to surfaces littered with scratched CDs, and a spattered radio playing 6 Music’s tasteful mix of hipster art rock all day. From this endless audio slipstream he snatches snappy titles for the works the sounds inform. “I have a notebook of titles for paintings, things I hear on the radio, snippets of phrases. Look. Beautiful burnout. Future babble. Autotune. This phrase ‘desert wolf growl’ was in a review of a solo album by Drumbo from Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band. I paint the picture and then fit the title to it. But this exhibition was different because I knew the paintings were going to be titled after Captain Beefheart songs. I only titled them last week. Strictly Personal. Bat Chain Puller. Look. That looks like a bat chain puller, doesn’t it. And you can see why that one is Shiny Beast.” Coming of age just at the right time to absorb the last fading rays of psychedelia and the first gluey fumes of punk, to this day Frost still knows much more about mysterious contemporary music genres like dubstep, happy hardcore, and grime than a man in his early sixties might reasonably be expected to. And it seems to me that Frost creates like a free jazz improviser, painting himself into unknown corners and then trying...
8th July - The Secret Spy Cops' Ball - Rob Newman, Evelyn Mok, Mark Steel, Stewart Lee, Jackson's Lane, London. For women tricked into relationships w undercover police. Most of the performers on the bill are adopted orphans, oddly. https://www.jacksonslane.org.uk/whats-on/the-secret-spycops-ball
Science, music, comedy, poor time-keeping and wonder collide in Space Shambles, presented in association with The Cosmic Shambles Network™ ®.
Part of the Festival of Science: Space.
Legendary astronaut Chris Hadfield™ and Robin Ince ® (host of Radio 4's Infinite Monkey Cage) are your hosts for the evening, plus an eclectic mess of surprise special guests for comedy lovers, music fans and science enthusiasts alike.
We are excited to announce that the first headliners joining us in June include Apollo™ ® astronaut Rusty Schweickart, theoretical physicist Jim Al-Khalili and science-comedy phenomenon Festival of the Spoken Nerd!
In the tradition of Nine Lessons and The Christmas Compendium of Reason, these huge shows have included guest appearances from Professor Brian Cox, Professor Alice Roberts, Charlotte Church, Skeletal Family, Hugh Grant, Dr Spunkfield Leominster, Pristeen Vagamutt, King Tinkale Omoono, Apollo™ ® astronaut Randy Vanwarmer, Sproutmaster Sprat, Dripknob The Weeping Physicist, The Drunken Astronomers, Laika and Uranus, The Gay Space Mice, Blind Lemon Jefferson, The Mad Aryabhatas, The Metaphysical Circus, Schooly D, Principal Ince's Magic Theatre, Mike Peters & The Alarm, Albert's Wanking Rocket Monkees, The Astronomers Royale, and Dara O'Briain.
Neal Jackson of Post Nearly Press conducted a lengthy interview with me, available as a stand-alone book here www.postnearlypress.com
I Arrogantly Recommend
1) Ben Moor - Pronoun Trouble. New show from the performance art genius.
13th June 2018
7.30pm Crystal Palace Festival
Bookseller Crow on the Hill
50 Westow Street
London SE19 3AF A wonderful bookshop, and you'll be able to buy some of the books mentioned in the talk here.
Just £5 tickets, and that will get you a drink and nibbles too! TICKETS ON SALE SOON
29th June - 1st July 2018 Also Festival
Compton Verney
Warwickshire
A compact weekend of terrific speakers, musicians, performers and makers - I'm thrilled to be invited. TICKETS
15th July 2018 Idler Festival
Fenton House
Hampstead Grove,
London NW3 6SP
This will be a wonderful weekend of talks by fascinating folk like Michael Palin, Sally Phillips and Carole Cadwalladr.
And I'll be performing a gentle Sunday morning version as part of the celebration of intelligent distraction. TICKETS
16th - 19th August 2018 Green Man Festival
Crickhowell
Brecon Beacons
The lecture can be located in the brainy enclave of Einstein's Garden.
I'm so glad to be returning to Green Man; this is always an amazing weekend of music, inspiration, fresh air and laughter. TICKETS
2) Drenched - Third Man Theatre Company.
I liked Third Man's work so much I became a patron of the company, essentially a vehicle for the visions of Dan Frost. They have a new show with dates so far in London this month and Edinburgh in August.
Daniel Drench. West Cornwall's most prolific and unstable storyteller, presents a bewildering and potentially moving interpretation of the classic Cornish folk tale 'The Mermaid of Zennor'.
Drenched is a one man comedy-theatre piece, challenging the form of a traditional solo performance with a combination of storytelling, character comedy and physical theatre.
Old Red Lion Theatre, Islington
2nd & 3rd July @ 7pm
4th July @ 9.30pm
Edinburgh Festival 2018
1-27 August - Pleasance Courtyard @ 3pm
3) Giant Sand. Howe Gelb's unexpectedly reactivated desert rock outfit.
5th June - Under The Bridge, London.
9th - Whelans, Dublin.
10th Oran Moor, Glasgow.
11th - Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh
4) Bardo Pond.
Mind blowing space trance rockers.
June 6th - 100 Club, London.
8th - Brudenell Social Club, Leeds.
5) Andy Moor.
Improv set from Ex guitarist. Café Oto, London.
7) The Rebel.
Weekly June Wednesday residency at The Windmill, Brixton, London, by the provocateur/troubadour/auteur and ex-Country Teaser.
8) Alan Wilkinson/Steve Noble/John Edwards.
Peerless sax/drums/bass free jazz trio.
Cafe Oto, London. June 26th.
9) Wolves In The Throne Room.
The environmentally concerned doom metal band play the following UK dates
JUN 23 The Garage London
JUN 25 La Belle Angele Edinburgh
JUN 26 Corporation Sheffield
JUN 27 The Invisible Wind Factory Liverpool,
JUN 28 The Globe Cardiff
10) PIGSPURT'S DAUGHTER
Daisy Campbell's memories of her father the performance art/comedy innvator Ken Campbell, is at Hampstead Theatre 11th-14th July TICKETS
11) Bridget Christie - What Now? (New stand-up show)
SEPTEMBER 2018
Friday 7th - WHAT NOW? - Tobacco Factory, BRISTOL - 8pm - 0117 902 0344 - TICKETS
Saturday 8th - WHAT NOW? - Tobacco Factory, BRISTOL - 8pm - 0117 902 0344 - TICKETS
Thursday 13th - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Thursday 20th - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Friday 21st - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Saturday 22nd - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
OCTOBER 2018
Friday 5th - WHAT NOW? - Theatre Royal, WINCHESTER - 8pm - 01962 840 440 - TICKETS
Saturday 6th - WHAT NOW? - Corn Exchange, EXETER - 7.30pm - 01392 665938 - TICKETS
Tuesday 9th - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Wednesday 10th - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Thursday 11th - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Friday 12th - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
NOVEMBER 2018
Thursday 1st - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Friday 2nd - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Saturday 3rd - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Tuesday 6th - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Wednesday 7th - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Thursday 8th - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Friday 9th - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Saturday 10th - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Saturday 24th - WHAT NOW? - Nuffield Theatre (NST City), SOUTHAMPTON - 7.30pm - 023 8067 1771 - TICKETS
12) WILSON DIXON
Jesse Griffin's dead-on parody of an American outlaw country singer, WILSON DIXON, has an intimate UK tour
June 2018
Monday June 25th - Soho Theatre, London - 020 7478 0100 - 9.30pm
Tuesday June 26th - Soho Theatre, London - 020 7478 0100 - 9.30pm
Wednesday June 27th - Soho Theatre, London - 020 7478 0100 - 9.30pm
Thursday June 28th - Soho Theatre, London - 020 7478 0100 - 9.30pm
Friday June 29th - Soho Theatre, London - 020 7478 0100 - 9.30pm
Saturday June 30th - Soho Theatre, London - 020 7478 0100 - 9.30pm Booking link
July 2018
Sunday July 1st - The Stand Comedy Club, Glasgow - 0141 212 3389 - 4.30pm Tickets
Sunday July 1st - The Stand Comedy Club, Edinburgh - 0131 558 7272 - 7.30pm Tickets
Tuesday July 3rd - The Stand Comedy Club, Edinburgh - 0131 558 7272 - 7.30pm Tickets
Wednesday July 4th - Chapter Arts, Cardiff - 029 2030 4400 - 7.30pm Tickets
Stewart Lee
2018-06-06T00:24:58+01:00
BENEFIT SHOWS 8th July - The Secret Spy Cops' Ball - Rob Newman, Evelyn Mok, Mark Steel, Stewart Lee, Jackson's Lane, London. For women tricked into relationships w undercover police. Most of the performers on the bill are adopted orphans, oddly. https://www.jacksonslane.org.uk/whats-on/the-secret-spycops-ball CAPRI-BATTERIE W STEWART LEE You can buy Bristol Fashion, an industrial jazz album which we improvised in an hour, here for £7. https://capri-batterie.bandcamp.com/album/bristol-fashion Space Shambles - Royal Albert Hall, June 15th. Science, music, comedy, poor time-keeping and wonder collide in Space Shambles, presented in association with The Cosmic Shambles Network™ ®. Part of the Festival of Science: Space. Legendary astronaut Chris Hadfield™ and Robin Ince ® (host of Radio 4's Infinite Monkey Cage) are your hosts for the evening, plus an eclectic mess of surprise special guests for comedy lovers, music fans and science enthusiasts alike. We are excited to announce that the first headliners joining us in June include Apollo™ ® astronaut Rusty Schweickart, theoretical physicist Jim Al-Khalili and science-comedy phenomenon Festival of the Spoken Nerd! In the tradition of Nine Lessons and The Christmas Compendium of Reason, these huge shows have included guest appearances from Professor Brian Cox, Professor Alice Roberts, Charlotte Church, Skeletal Family, Hugh Grant, Dr Spunkfield Leominster, Pristeen Vagamutt, King Tinkale Omoono, Apollo™ ® astronaut Randy Vanwarmer, Sproutmaster Sprat, Dripknob The Weeping Physicist, The Drunken Astronomers, Laika and Uranus, The Gay Space Mice, Blind Lemon Jefferson, The Mad Aryabhatas, The Metaphysical Circus, Schooly D, Principal Ince's Magic Theatre, Mike Peters & The Alarm, Albert's Wanking Rocket Monkees, The Astronomers Royale, and Dara O'Briain. As the show comes to the Royal Albert Hall for the very first time, expect an impressive collection of familiar faces - there's no telling who else might show up in this secret stew of stars. https://www.royalalberthall.com/tickets/events/2018/robin-ince-and-chris-hadfields-space-shambles/ Home Town Tales...
“Sphincter-poppingly angry, totally unamusing and uninsightful, and painfully, excruciatingly right-on. A bitter, politically correct member of the Remain-voting liberal elite. The type of comedy which is not designed to provoke laughter so much as solemn head-nodding and applause at the politically correct sentiment.” James Delingpole, Steve Bannon’s Breitbart News
"“I seem to have been radicalised into a one man crusade against Stewart Lee and his fans. This will probably occupy the rest of my life but mark my words the man will die and I will try to be the one that ends his life." Corbyngrad Mayor @SyedforLondon, Twitter
"“Stewart Lee is an archaic left wing relic. The old 'alternative comedian' crowd is now the Establishment - Milo Yiannopoulos is more on the zeitgeist. The 'alt' comics are that comfortable establishment, with their 'edgy' Apollo nights out on the BBC. Don't agree with all of his views, but at least people like Paul Joseph Watson can be funny about subjects that Lefties like Stewart Lee are shit-scared to go anywhere near." Brendan McCarthy, writer/artist of Judge Dredd and Mad Max : Fury Road, Twitter
Dear Covidians of Infectoland
I hope you are all well and have not suffered any loss.
Here I wait patiently to reassume my privileged duties, which I promise to perform henceforth with a greater sense of responsibility, having learned and listened under lockdown.
One day we will all be laughing again in some rooms.
I cannot embrace you all.
Your pal
Stew Art Lee
1) LIVE SHOWS UPDATE
I’m not even bothering with trying to list dates here this month, as so many are in flux...BUT...
1) All outstanding shows of the Snowflake/Tornado tour will be rescheduled/are being rescheduled for whenever they are allowed to happen.
The venues have your ticket money and this is helping them not collapse. I will do these shows. Don’t worry.
2) All little socially-distanced club gigs (that I had down for working out new stuff in November, in London, N’castle, E’bro & Glasgow), have been pulled, and will be rescheduled.
Again, the venues have your ticket money which is good for them, so take a chill pill daddi-o.
As for any December 3rd onwards club shows, these are currently still on.
For the record, unlike clay’s Grayson Perry, I do not believe that venues or artists that are struggling under covid are ‘dead wood’ which will be cut out by the covid.
Some of the best artists currently working in the world in comedy and music are stacking shelves and driving vans right now, and always will be, having not been lucky enough to enjoy the patronage of various massive publicly funded arts institutions.
In my experience, the best people have often found commercial viability elusive, and the pestilence only exacerbates this. SHIT FLOATS. As a rule, most profitable art is rubbish, and my own success only makes me doubt my worth.
The Nov club dates were also an effort to make money for small venues to ensure that the infrastructure that supports our artform survives.
Having not done any of these much in the past I did quite a few recently and I believe you will be able to find a stream of me talking to the Idler mag on Youtube.
There may be something popping up soon with Mod Postman Alan Johnson.
I interviewed RICHARD DAWSON for the Barbican livr stream of his brilliant concert last month and I think I will be doing something similar with SLEAFORD MODS in January.
I did a live stream with Boothby Graffoe, the Jake Thackray of Generation X, which was good but is gone now.
I will probably do another with BG at some point in the covid.
Also here is a trailer for a 2020 lockdown reimagining of Morgan Fisher’s 1980 project MINIATUTURES, out soon, on which I am lucky enough to appear alongside many of the original contributors https://youtu.be/2moh5nRlfnM
3) LTD EDTN PRINTS
All supposed merch you see of me on-line, like the YOU SAY YOU’RE ENGLISH football scarf or 100% PEARS t-shirts, is unofficial and I see nothing for it.
But these legit artists have made prints of my ANTI-TORY quips as lovely art to tie in with an exhibition by NEW NORTH PRESS that opens on Nov 20th - somehow.
There will – hopefully – also be a dedicated website with all the posters on it (www.revertingtotype.com), that will showcase the 150 prints from presses around the world, plus our 25 collaborative prints.
This is classier merch than a LITTLE BRITAIN action figure of a bloke pretending to be disabled.
4) KING ROCKER SHEFFIELD
Our documentary KING ROCKER has been selected for the Sheffield Documentary Festival but didn’t get screened due to Covid.
It will however, I am now allowed to announce, be on now free-to-air SKY ARTS, which has also recently covered PUNCHDRUNK THEATRE and IVOR CUTLER, in the 1st ¼ of next year.
Who would have thought that the weird arts brief of BBC4 would one day be fulfilled by SKY ARTS?
Comedian Stewart Lee and director Michael Cumming (Brass Eye) investigate a missing piece of punk history. Robert Lloyd, best known for fronting cult bands The Prefects and The Nightingales, has survived under the radar for over four decades. Anti-rockumentary King Rocker weaves the story of Birmingham’s undervalued underdog autodidact into that of the city’s forgotten public sculpture of King Kong, eschewing the celebrity interview and archive-raid approach for a free-associating bricolage of Indian food, bewildered chefs, vegetable gardening, prescription medicines, pop stardom and pop art.
Mediaeval minimalist Laura Cannell, whom my wife and I have been huge fans of since the Welsh free-jazz harpist Rhodri Davis recommended her work to me in the bar of the ex-Hungarian embassy in East Berlin over a decade ago, is “beyond excited” to announce her new release THESE FERAL LANDS, for which she asked me to write and mumble words for 4 of the 10 tracks.
Laura says...
“I am beyond excited to announce: THESE FERAL LANDS Volume I - Out Friday 13th November 2020. Feat. LAURA CANNELL + STEWART LEE + KATE ELLIS + POLLY WRIGHT + JENNIFER LUCY ALLAN. This is our Personal and Collective Folklore. PRE-ORDER Ltd Ed CD/DL NOW
ACCESS DENIED, the new album from Asian Dub Foundation! Out 18-9-2020.
Asian Dub Foundation release their new album “Access Denied” for X-Ray Productions , with collaborations featuring incendiary Palestinian shamstep warriors 47 soul, radical UK comedian Stewart Lee, and climate activist supreme Greta Thunberg.
The album showcases ADF in full spectrum mode from the tough Jungle Punk sound of “Stealing The Future” and “Mindlock” through to the orchestral meditations of “Realignment” and the reggae lament of the title track.
Unbowed and undeterred Asian Dub Foundation continue their sonic opposition to the powers that be and “Access Denied” kicks harder and higher than ever.
Stewart Lee completists, and art fans, can order this fabulous print, by agit-artist Cold War Steve, of Birmingham, called Benny’s Babbies from Birmingham Art Gallery.
The montage includes me, and many other far more significant Midlands figures i.e Steel Pulse, Kevin Rowlands, Mr Egg, Black Sabbath, and Robert LLoyd, and obviously any sales will help Birmingham’s superb art gallery, with its astonishing pre-Raphaelite selection and cool stuff by Laura Knight and Emmy Bridgwater, through the plague times.
A bostin Winterval gift for the Brummie, or ex-Brummie, in your life. £15.
We are all Benny’s Babbies. Ich bin ein Benny’s Babby.
Tim Wells’ first skinhead werewolf novel, MOONSTOMP, perfectly fused disparate strands of 70s New English Library pulp fiction, into story that was both viscerally entertaining and subversively thought-provoking.
He needs our help to publish its sequel and you would be doing me and him a favour of you bunged in as I want to read it ASAP.
ELECTRIC MUSIC by WOLFHOUNDS with sleeve notes by me -
The Trees. I have done sleeve-notes for the reissue of the complete back catalogue of superb 70s folk rock band THE TREES. https://www.firerecords.com/shop/
BEN MOOR’S NEW BOOK. Performance Artist and writer Ben Moor says,
“In lieu of the theatrical performances of Who Here's Lost? I have printed the text of the piece for to be read at leisure.
This would have been on sale after the show to people who missed half the jokes (I tend to go fast) and so they can try and work out just what it was they'd been watching. The book version also includes a selection of pieces I wrote in each of the last four decades"CLICK THIS LINK
PODCASTS DADDI-0!
(Podcasts are like radio shows but are on the internet and you can hear them at any time.
I have just found out about them.)
Erwin Saunders - This is one of those internet finds that one worries about sharing, and hesitates to recommend, a precious bloom that might wither on exposure to light.
There are 17 episodes which, oddly, have been numbered 1 - 17 in reverse order, so you need to start with 17 and work backwards.
Watch the 1st two without distraction, looking for the tiny points if light, ideally on a TV screen where you can see the backgrounds properly, and you will be hooked.
There is only one mis-step in the whole 2 hrs +, where “Erwin” obviously couldn’t resist using some footage he had shot some years ago, which is tonally slightly out of kilter with the rest of this brilliant labour of love.
I know that subscribers to this newsletter will treat Erwin Saunders’ work with the care and respect it deserves. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIptHpq0tre-Mnu2V1VOoww
Honeyland (Tamara Kotevska, Ljubo Stefanov) Days of The Bagnold Summer (Simon Bird)
The Laundromat (Stephen Soderbergh)
The Day Shall Come (Chris Morris)
Southern Journey Revisited (Tim Plester, Rob Curry)
NEW MUSIC
The Nightingales - Four Against Fate
Rich Hopkins & Luminarios - Live At El Lokal
The Dream Syndicate - Universe Inside
Wild Billy Childish - Kings Of The Medway Delta
Garcia Peoples - Nublu NYC 2019
Windy & Carl - Allegiance & Conviction
The Frees - Live From The End Of The Earth
Alan Wilkinson & Douglas Benford - Appointed Views
The Heartwood Institute - Tomorrow’s People
John Edwards - Just Another Day At Home
Adam Bohman & Douglas Benford - Ad Hoc & Words
Laura Cannell - The Earth With Her Crowns
Jack Sharp - Good Times Older
The Frees - Live To Air
The Frees - Lips That Bite
Fixed Horizon - Jungle
Jon Free - Spiralling
Richard Skelton - Border Ballads
Howe Gelb - Cocoon
The Primevals - Second Nature
Richard Youngs - Vistas
Darren Hayman - Home Time
Richard Youngs - Four Verses
V/A - Seito In The Beginning Woman Was The Sun
Lucinda Williams - Good Souls & Better Angels
Bob Dylan - Rough & Rowdy Ways
Billy Sedlmayr - Mean What You Say
Shirley Collins - Heart’s Ease
Alasdair Roberts - The Songs of My Boyhood
Boris - No
Slum of Legs - Slum Of Legs
Tobin Sprout - Empty Horses
Thurston Moore - By The Fire
Rhodri Davies - Telyn Rawn
Idles - Ultra Mono
Guided by Voices - Mirrored Aztec
The Cravats - Hoorahland
Alison Cotton - Only Darkness Now
Rachel Aggs - Visitations 0202
Richard Dawson - Republic of Geordieland
Shopping - All Or Nothing Tamikrest - Tamotait Hen Ogled - Free Humans Asian Dub Foundation - Access Denied Chuck Prophet - The Land That Time Forgot Cash Rivers & Sinners - Frankenstein’s New Nut Huggers Guided by Voices - Styles We Paid For Dope - Semi Legal On The Edge Of Culture
REISSUED OLD MUSIC
Tim Buckley - Live At The Electric (1968)
John Lee Hooker - Black Night Is Falling (1977)
The Heads - Reverberations Vol 1 (2005)
Barnabus - Beginning To Unwind (1971)
Miracle Legion - 4.20 Live At The Boot (2017)
V/A - Brown Acid The Tenth Trip (1969-74)
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Live At Woodstock (1969)
John Lee Hooker - Documenting The Sensation (1948-52)
Albert Ayler - New Grass (1969)
Guided by Voices - Doses of Nonchalance (1995)
The Fall - Tech College, St Helens Merseyside (1981)
Linda Hoyle - Pieces of Me (1971)
Day Of Phoenix - Mind Funeral (1971)
L7 - Smell The Magic - SubPop (1991) The Fall - Imperial Wax Solvent special edition (2008) Guided By Voices - Rara Avis (recent live) Gorgeous Space Virus - Shall We Go Skinny Dipping? (1992) Sume - The Sound of a Revolution (1973-6)
IN OUR COVID ERA LAMENTATIONS...
Adam Schlesinger (Fountain of Wayne) (1967)
John Prine (outlaw country singer) (1946)
Henry Grimes (jazz bassist) (1935)
Hal Wilner (arranger) (1957)
Tim Brooke-Taylor (Goodie) (1940)
Lee Konitz (jazz saxophonist) (1927)
Matthew Seligman (Soft Boy) (1955)
Millie Small (ska singer) (1946)
Florian Schneider (Kraftwerk robot) (1947)
Bill Rieflin (drummer for hire) (1960)
Hugh McKenna (Tear Gas pianist) (1949)
Steve Weber (Holy Modal Rounder) (1942)
Astrid Kirchherr (photographer) (1938)
Danny Ray Thompson (Sun Ra saxophonist) (1947)
Aubrey Burl (archaeologist) (1926)
Phil May (Pretty Thing) (1944)
The Clacton Fin Whale (circa 2000)
Christo Vladimirov Javacheff (artist) (1930)
Doll Tor stone circle (3300 BC)
Kay Carroll (The Fall) (1948)
Bob the Cat (73 bus) (2006)
Alex Taylor (Shop Assistant, in 2005, and no-one knew)
Simon H Fell (jazz bassist) (1959)
Carl Reiner (director) (1922)
Ennio Morricone (architect of sonic dreams) (1928)
Keith Tippett (jazz pianist) (1947)
Jimmy Cobb (jazz drummer) (1929)
Barbara Smoker (Humanist) (1923)
The Nuffield Theatre, Southampton
Tony Elliot (Time Out) (1942)
Judy Dyble (folk singer) (1949)
Peter Green (blues guitarist) (1946)
Emitt Rhodes (power pop auteur) (1950)
Annie Ross (jazz bohemian) (1930)
Joe Ruby (Scooby-Doo) (1933)
Craig Weatherhill (folklorist) (1950)
Don Weller (jazz saxophonist) (1940)
Simeon Coxe (Silver Apple) (1938)
Diana Rigg (Avenger) (1938)
Toots Hibbert (reggae got soul) (1942)
Dele Fadele (carry bag man) (1962)
George Jeffrie (man’s-laughter maker) (1964) Dave Kusworth (Brum punk Stone) (1960) Gary Peacock (jazz bassist) (1935) Doorkins (Southwark Cathedral Cat) (2005?) Spencer Davis (Brumbeat pioneer) (1939) The Cubbington Pear Tree (1770) Fungie The Dingle Dolphin (1979) Jill Paton Walsh (novelist) (1937)
Stewart Lee
2020-11-03T13:29:27+00:00
“Ghastly, puritanical, po-faced, sanctimonious, finger-wagging, Woke-Witchfinder-in-Chief” Toby Young, Twitter “Sphincter-poppingly angry, totally unamusing and uninsightful, and painfully, excruciatingly right-on. A bitter, politically correct member of the Remain-voting liberal elite. The type of comedy which is not designed to provoke laughter so much as solemn head-nodding and applause at the politically correct sentiment.” James Delingpole, Steve Bannon’s Breitbart News "“I seem to have been radicalised into a one man crusade against Stewart Lee and his fans. This will probably occupy the rest of my life but mark my words the man will die and I will try to be the one that ends his life." Corbyngrad Mayor @SyedforLondon, Twitter "“Stewart Lee is an archaic left wing relic. The old 'alternative comedian' crowd is now the Establishment - Milo Yiannopoulos is more on the zeitgeist. The 'alt' comics are that comfortable establishment, with their 'edgy' Apollo nights out on the BBC. Don't agree with all of his views, but at least people like Paul Joseph Watson can be funny about subjects that Lefties like Stewart Lee are shit-scared to go anywhere near." Brendan McCarthy, writer/artist of Judge Dredd and Mad Max : Fury Road, Twitter Dear Covidians of Infectoland I hope you are all well and have not suffered any loss. Here I wait patiently to reassume my privileged duties, which I promise to perform henceforth with a greater sense of responsibility, having learned and listened under lockdown. One day we will all be laughing again in some rooms. I cannot embrace you all. Your pal Stew Art Lee 1) LIVE SHOWS UPDATE I’m not even bothering with trying to list dates here this month, as so many are in flux...BUT... 1) All outstanding shows of the Snowflake/Tornado tour will be rescheduled/are being rescheduled for whenever they are allowed to happen. The...
No other stand-up comedian could start a show with the base declaration that he'd masturbate over our family pictures if he was forced to confiscate any mobile phones and then end it with the noble re-enactment of 19th century German artist Caspar David Friedrich's Wanderer Above A Sea of Fog.
That's Stewart Lee in a nutshell – the carefully constructed liberal elitist who's not afraid to go for the Frankie Boyle line here and there. But, of course, he debases the debasement in his "post-laughs" way.
There were times when he told the sell-out crowd – sell-out even with the empty seats – that he was tiring of "the character of Stewart Lee" and even though this was one of his usual contrivances the 48-year-old "ex-TV comic" was definitely more playful than usual.
On previous tours, Lee's serpentine delivery has often been hampered by presenting his show in half-hour blocks as a testing ground for his BBC2 series. He's been axed, gained weight but also got a lot funnier; now his stand-up is able to twist and turn over two glorious hours, like it did when he was "better" and used to play The Acorn in Penzance.
He told us that with a tour running from November last year to this April, he refused to dwell on Brexit and Trump in case he had to constantly rewrite his material, affecting the shows' monetisation.
Of course, that allowed him two set pieces, which opened both halves, brilliantly mirroring each other. It also allowed him to have an affectionate pop at the Cornish – he'd researched that we're educationally superior to much of the nation yet we voted overwhelmingly to leave the European Union. Were we racist or, simply, c***s?
Many of Lee's tropes were repeated in Content Provider – for example, the splitting of the audience into the intellectuals who get it and those at the back ("there's something on", "what is it?", "don't know", "let's go") who are holding up proceedings by being behind the beat.
There's also his superiority – aimed at us ("who knows more about stand-up, you or me?" and "I believe it was I who once said…") and other, lesser comedians.
His feud with Russell Howard is reignited. He couldn't understand it as he only ever told one joke about Howard … but it was 55 minutes long. His hilarious, relentless impression of cool, young comedians asking him why he picked on Howard was a masterclass in physical, absurdist humour.
His way with a mocking diatribe is untouchable, particularly when aimed at anyone under 40 – an impression of a 32-year-old playing with his phone was comedy heaven.
It derailed slightly in the second half with a long, rambling section about how our grandparents' generation had to make do while today's young folk are absorbed in artifice and consumerism. Lee hammered the point home via bondage sex, but we got what he was saying and it just wasn't that funny.
He ended back on track with that powerful artistic reinvention, which via one simple but effective visual joke held up a mirror to the narcissistic, selfie generation.
Content Provider is the most enjoyable Stewart Lee show for years, especially after his last TV series which aimed, and failed, to take comedy way out into some darkly acerbic hinterland.
Long may he keep on returning to Cornwall, even if there's a possibility some of us are racist c***s.
Stewart Lee
2017-02-23T21:53:12+00:00
No other stand-up comedian could start a show with the base declaration that he'd masturbate over our family pictures if he was forced to confiscate any mobile phones and then end it with the noble re-enactment of 19th century German artist Caspar David Friedrich's Wanderer Above A Sea of Fog. That's Stewart Lee in a nutshell – the carefully constructed liberal elitist who's not afraid to go for the Frankie Boyle line here and there. But, of course, he debases the debasement in his "post-laughs" way. There were times when he told the sell-out crowd – sell-out even with the empty seats – that he was tiring of "the character of Stewart Lee" and even though this was one of his usual contrivances the 48-year-old "ex-TV comic" was definitely more playful than usual. On previous tours, Lee's serpentine delivery has often been hampered by presenting his show in half-hour blocks as a testing ground for his BBC2 series. He's been axed, gained weight but also got a lot funnier; now his stand-up is able to twist and turn over two glorious hours, like it did when he was "better" and used to play The Acorn in Penzance. He told us that with a tour running from November last year to this April, he refused to dwell on Brexit and Trump in case he had to constantly rewrite his material, affecting the shows' monetisation. Of course, that allowed him two set pieces, which opened both halves, brilliantly mirroring each other. It also allowed him to have an affectionate pop at the Cornish – he'd researched that we're educationally superior to much of the nation yet we voted overwhelmingly to leave the European Union. Were we racist or, simply, c***s? Many of Lee's tropes were repeated in Content Provider – for example,...
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 Julie Etchingham’s gleaming teeth.
Leave had no arguments or facts, just pornographically arousing soundbites and lies they knew were lies, but which they calculated might stick to a wall in a depressed town somewhere, if flung with enough force, like compacted pellets of Priti Patel’s shit.
Even Remain’s Amber Rudd, the Countess Bathory of Energy and Climate, seemed clever by comparison to Boris, who managed to make the word “expert” a pejorative term. Nonetheless, it was bleakly obvious that the audience’s disillusion led them to favour the Leavers’ lies.
I wondered how Leave could rationalise their blind stab in the dark and live with the untruths they had told. And my mind turned again to Michael Gove, who, to put their relationship in terms of Gove’s beloved Dennis Wheatley, is the supplicant Simon Aron to Boris’s satanic Mocata, their joint prize the mummified phallus of Conservative party power. “Only they who love without desire shall have power granted them in their darkest hour!”
As I have confessed before, in 1992 I was a gag writer on a doomed Channel 4 show, A Pig in a Poke. The experimental satire programme broke new ground by positioning its performers on balsa ladders in a smoke-filled Bat Cave, while they delivered belligerent journalistic monologues to camera, the stylistic integrity of which I and the comedian Richard Herring were encouraged to compromise with jokes.
Lucky Richard was assigned to Poke’s most affable hosts, the restaurant critic Tracey MacLeod and her colleague, the rapper LL Cool J, who plied him with fudge and polystyrene all day, while I was understandably ignored by my master, a capable young comic newspaper columnist called Michael Andrew Gove.
Gove attended one writers’ round-table meeting a week, where all he did was badger the producers to book the former BBC newsreader Jan Leeming, upon whom he was oddly fixated, before leaving with all the office washroom’s toilet rolls secreted in his satchel.
Instead of asking me for jokes, Gove would make me wait on the fire escape outside his Notting Hill flat, occasionally emerging to assign me mundane tasks, such as taking his weekly washing – usually just seven white pants, seven white vests, fourteen grey socks and one yellowing sock – to the dry cleaners.
One week, the old Greek couple in Dryee-Fast seemed unduly amused by Gove’s unusually bulky package. “Tell Michael we try and try but can’t get the stains outta the crotch this time!” they laughed, unravelling a full-size fur suit, the reasonably realistic costume of an unidentified Gove-size rodent. I rolled up the outfit and returned it to Gove without comment. I needed this job. I couldn’t afford to rock the boat. Scruples were a luxury I didn’t have.
Later that day, Gove suddenly appeared beside me on the fire escape, high above the Notting Hill street. He had a habit of sneaking up on you. “Ah, Lee,” he said, “contemplating the incalculable, I see?” “Mr Gove?” I asked, as I felt his hand upon the small of my back, applying gentle pressure.
“The leap, Lee. If you were to leap now, Leapy Lee, from this fire escape, what would happen?” “I’d die I think, Mr Gove,” I answered, unsure where this line of questioning was going. “Perhaps,” Gove countered, “and experts would agree with you, I am sure. But would it not be thrilling to find out if one could profit from such a bold leap?” “There’s nothing to find out, Mr Gove,” I replied, “no one could survive that leap. This is the seventh floor.” “Was it not our lord Christ,” Gove hissed, returning inside, “who urged us to consider the lemming.” I don’t think Christ did say that, did he? Wasn’t it “consider the lily”? What did Gove mean?
The next day, Gove suddenly emerged from his room, carrying a brown parcel, and told me he was going for a walk on Wormwood Scrubs common. “Carry on, Lee,” he called, “with whatever it is A Pig in a Poke pay you for.” I availed myself of my absent master’s sofa and tried in vain to think of a funny introduction for Jan Leeming, should Gove’s ambition of grilling her ever find favour with the producers.
Gove had a crackpot idea that he and Leeming should appear together, both dressed as some kind of rat, and jump off a high diving board into a swimming pool, and he had offered me a bonus, out of his own pocket, if I could contrive a scenario – somehow related to the week’s news – that would convince the producers this would be a good idea.
In Gove’s office, his phone rang persistently and in the end I thought it best to enter, against his strict orders, and answer it. The producer of Pig in a Poke was saying something about how Gove was needed immediately for an urgent overdub of haughty snorting, but my eyes were adjusting to the dark. Gove’s previously unseen office slowly revealed itself to me in the full depth of its demented insanity.
Tiny, tiny... rodents – some soft and grey, some brown with black stripes, in paintings, posters, wallcharts, thumb-tacked magazine clippings and poorly executed crayon drawings, hurling themselves fatally in their thousands over the cliff of their island home; or crudely taxidermied and mounted, eyes glazed and little paws frozen stiff – on every available surface.
Lemmings. Hundreds and hundreds of lemmings. Michael Gove was obsessed with lemmings. And I wasn’t about to let him hurl himself to his death on my watch, although, had I known what he would become, to do so would have been the most moral course of action. I ran to Wormwood Scrubs common.
On a patch of waste ground, upon a filthy mattress, prostrate beneath the abandoned silo from which he had jumped, lay Michael Gove, winded, but alive, and dressed in the lemming costume – for that is what it was – that the dry cleaners had laughed at, the crotch dark once more.
Gove’s eyes flashed open inside the circle of fake fur that surrounded his excited face. “Am I dead?” he bellowed. “Am I dead, Lee?” “No Michael,” I said, “you’re not dead.” “Experts,” he said, “what do they know? Help me up, boy! Help me up!!”
Stewart Lee
2016-06-19T10:22:29+01:00
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 Julie Etchingham’s gleaming teeth. Leave had no arguments or facts, just pornographically arousing soundbites and lies they knew were lies, but which they calculated might stick to a wall in a depressed town somewhere, if flung with enough force, like compacted pellets of Priti Patel’s shit. Even Remain’s Amber Rudd, the Countess Bathory of Energy and Climate, seemed clever by comparison to Boris, who managed to make the word “expert” a pejorative term. Nonetheless, it was bleakly obvious that the audience’s disillusion led them to favour the Leavers’ lies. I wondered how Leave could rationalise their blind stab in the dark and live with the untruths they had told. And my mind turned again to Michael Gove, who, to put their relationship in terms of Gove’s beloved Dennis Wheatley, is the supplicant Simon Aron to Boris’s satanic Mocata, their joint prize the mummified phallus of Conservative party power. “Only they who love without desire shall have power granted them in their darkest hour!” As I have confessed before, in 1992 I was a gag writer on a doomed Channel 4 show, A Pig in a Poke. The experimental satire programme broke new ground by positioning its performers on balsa ladders in a smoke-filled Bat Cave, while they delivered belligerent journalistic monologues to camera, the stylistic integrity of which I and the comedian Richard Herring were encouraged to compromise with jokes. Lucky Richard was assigned to Poke’s most affable hosts, the restaurant critic Tracey MacLeod and...
How I Escaped My Certain Fate By Stewart Lee Published by Faber
Stewart Lee is one of the country's most respected comedians, a tireless generator of new material and the inspiration for 'national treasure' Ricky Gervais, which is the cue for the start of this part-memoir/part-show transcript. During a lull in performing stand-up, in which he co-wrote Jerry Springer: the Opera, he went to see Ricky Gervais and felt an unfamiliar jealousy. This was his thing. He soon returned to the stage.
This book documents that time, from post Jerry Springer-illness and depression to the three shows that cemented his reputation as the comedian for his generation (Stand-Up Comedian, 90s Comedian, 41st Best Stand-Up Ever), from tour diaries, to the genesis for ideas to his life behind the scenes while putting together the shows.
As an added bonus you get transcripts of each show, so you can deconstruct and absorb Lee's unique slow pacing and appreciate the way jokes build through familiarity, misdirection and repetition. As an added bonus to the added bonus, the transcripts are lovingly footnoted with the stories behind jokes, tour anecdotes, bibliographic material and asides.
This is a comedic book about comedy, perhaps the finest book ever put together about stand-up comedy, and certainly the funniest book you will read all year.
Ricky Gervais should be quaking in his flanimal pyjamas at the publication of the works of a true mastermind, and possibly the funniest person in the country.
Stewart Lee
2010-12-31T12:56:15+00:00
How I Escaped My Certain Fate By Stewart Lee Published by Faber Stewart Lee is one of the country's most respected comedians, a tireless generator of new material and the inspiration for 'national treasure' Ricky Gervais, which is the cue for the start of this part-memoir/part-show transcript. During a lull in performing stand-up, in which he co-wrote Jerry Springer: the Opera, he went to see Ricky Gervais and felt an unfamiliar jealousy. This was his thing. He soon returned to the stage. This book documents that time, from post Jerry Springer-illness and depression to the three shows that cemented his reputation as the comedian for his generation (Stand-Up Comedian, 90s Comedian, 41st Best Stand-Up Ever), from tour diaries, to the genesis for ideas to his life behind the scenes while putting together the shows. As an added bonus you get transcripts of each show, so you can deconstruct and absorb Lee's unique slow pacing and appreciate the way jokes build through familiarity, misdirection and repetition. As an added bonus to the added bonus, the transcripts are lovingly footnoted with the stories behind jokes, tour anecdotes, bibliographic material and asides. This is a comedic book about comedy, perhaps the finest book ever put together about stand-up comedy, and certainly the funniest book you will read all year. Ricky Gervais should be quaking in his flanimal pyjamas at the publication of the works of a true mastermind, and possibly the funniest person in the country.
What was the overarching feeling following Stewart Lee's Carpet Remnant World?
It was exhaustion. It is a relentless bombardment of sophisticated, crafted comedy and scrutinising of his audience.
Claiming he has no new material because his life consists of nothing more than watching Scooby Doo with his son and driving to gigs, Lee opts for a studious exploration of the art of comedy itself. The homogeneity of observational anecdotes was pulverised and every joke was deconstructed with masterly precision.
His entrance (rock music, synchronised lighting and a smoke machine) mocked "big entrances" of contemporary comics; he purposely told bad or overly long jokes to test people' sensibilities and his deadpan snobbery and manipulative wrong-footing always kept him one step ahead. He expects everyone to work hard for their laughs; they are permanently under his judging gaze. His well-known techniques and intransigence form a series of in-jokes that help Lee separate the "Jimmy Carr crowd".
It was not just punters and other comics - poor Michael McIntyre, Frankie Boyle, Russell Kane and even Bill Hicks - however who felt the brisance: he read out abusive comments from his fiercest internet detractors to a jazz backing track. He sublimely blended the sardonic and irascible with tongue-in-cheek.
A more professional and consummate craftsman in stand-up cannot be found. Stewart Lee's razor-sharp anti-comedy makes Carpet Remnant World a staggeringly funny and intricate addition to his impressive back catalogue.
More than that, it is an experience; a gruelling one, both emotionally and - bizarrely - physically, but hugely rewarding.
Stewart Lee
2012-03-27T14:07:59+01:00
What was the overarching feeling following Stewart Lee's Carpet Remnant World? It was exhaustion. It is a relentless bombardment of sophisticated, crafted comedy and scrutinising of his audience. Claiming he has no new material because his life consists of nothing more than watching Scooby Doo with his son and driving to gigs, Lee opts for a studious exploration of the art of comedy itself. The homogeneity of observational anecdotes was pulverised and every joke was deconstructed with masterly precision. His entrance (rock music, synchronised lighting and a smoke machine) mocked "big entrances" of contemporary comics; he purposely told bad or overly long jokes to test people' sensibilities and his deadpan snobbery and manipulative wrong-footing always kept him one step ahead. He expects everyone to work hard for their laughs; they are permanently under his judging gaze. His well-known techniques and intransigence form a series of in-jokes that help Lee separate the "Jimmy Carr crowd". It was not just punters and other comics - poor Michael McIntyre, Frankie Boyle, Russell Kane and even Bill Hicks - however who felt the brisance: he read out abusive comments from his fiercest internet detractors to a jazz backing track. He sublimely blended the sardonic and irascible with tongue-in-cheek. A more professional and consummate craftsman in stand-up cannot be found. Stewart Lee's razor-sharp anti-comedy makes Carpet Remnant World a staggeringly funny and intricate addition to his impressive back catalogue. More than that, it is an experience; a gruelling one, both emotionally and - bizarrely - physically, but hugely rewarding.
Multi-award-winning comedy nights Always Be Comedy is finally exploiting those sweet, sweet contacts… WITH A GIG-THEMED PODCAST!
Guests curate their ideal comedy gig: who would they have open? Close? What dream moment from their gigging days would they love re-enact at this gig? And what live comedy nightmare from their past must not happen again under any circumstances? There’s this and so much more.
And we kick off with Always Be Comedy first-ballot hall of famer and “friend” of the night: Stewart Lee
About us:Host James Gill launched Always Be Comedy in 2011; since then the cream of the comedy world have called ABC their second home. James is a comedian and former journalist, with more than two decades of experience interviewing some of the biggest film, TV and sports stars on the planet… this has got a bit self-aggrandising but we want you to know it’s not ABC’s first rodeo.ABC’s Tim Lewis has worked at the biggest and best comedy and entertainment shows in Britain and is invariably tech-ing half the shows at the Edinburgh Festival each year (these aren’t his words, so please don’t accuse him of bragging).Always Be Comedy won Best Pro Comedy Night at the 2023 Chortle awards, having previously won Best Comedy Show at the Joe.co.uk Awards.
Stewart Lee
2023-03-28T23:27:55+01:00
Always Be Comedy - S1 EP3 - Stewart Lee Multi-award-winning comedy nights Always Be Comedy is finally exploiting those sweet, sweet contacts… WITH A GIG-THEMED PODCAST! Guests curate their ideal comedy gig: who would they have open? Close? What dream moment from their gigging days would they love re-enact at this gig? And what live comedy nightmare from their past must not happen again under any circumstances? There’s this and so much more. And we kick off with Always Be Comedy first-ballot hall of famer and “friend” of the night: Stewart Lee About us:Host James Gill launched Always Be Comedy in 2011; since then the cream of the comedy world have called ABC their second home. James is a comedian and former journalist, with more than two decades of experience interviewing some of the biggest film, TV and sports stars on the planet… this has got a bit self-aggrandising but we want you to know it’s not ABC’s first rodeo.ABC’s Tim Lewis has worked at the biggest and best comedy and entertainment shows in Britain and is invariably tech-ing half the shows at the Edinburgh Festival each year (these aren’t his words, so please don’t accuse him of bragging).Always Be Comedy won Best Pro Comedy Night at the 2023 Chortle awards, having previously won Best Comedy Show at the Joe.co.uk Awards.
Comedians don’t make it easy for us, the maggoty masses, to love them. Turn on the TV and you’d be forgiven for thinking that the British laughter racket is entirely ruled by bright eyed bouncy young pups eager to sell their souls to pithy panel shows and advertising campaigns for that fast-track route to the lucrative arena stages, chat show sofas and Christmas book tie-ins. Exhibit A: Rob Brydon, who was once a character actor of renown, capable of crafting a keenly observed and compassionate show such as Human Remains, now sells cereal flakes that come in a cardboard box, and holidays on oceanic cruise liners that resemble floating prisons for UKIP people.
We unavoidably find ourselves observing a world of entertainment that rewards Michael McIntyre and shuns Jerry Sadowitz; that martyrs Bill Hicks yet would never harbour an equivalent on primetime TV. Frankie Boyle manages to dash the streak of humanity that lurks within him with such flashes of withering cruelty that he can never truly be loved. Peter Kay remembers stuff while sweating in Blackpool. Jimmy Carr mocks the disabled then looks startled. Jack Whitehall honks in tight trousers. Many Russells say many things, each with one eyebrow archly raised. Some Northerners notice that London is different to Bolton. It’s just good enough really.
In this world of chaos, confusion, political failings and economic instability, humour is an increasingly valuable currency that’s key to stopping the majority of citizens grabbing an AK and spraying their local Arndale. Below-par comedians and political hypocrisy are two topics that Stewart Lee writes especially well about, not to mention all those little things in modern life that piece together to create a mental mosaic of a country of people that is, at least collectively, borderline insane.
A satirist in the vein of the other satirists who usually get mentioned when the word is lazily deployed to illustrate people who tell jokes without bouncing across the stage in bright blouses (Aristophanes, Jonathan Swift, Vladimir Putin), Lee has long occupied a unique hard-won position, being simultaneously palatable, aesthetically-pleasing and BBC-friendly, yet subversive in his content and delivery. His niche has been carved by being droll, informed and Oxford-clever, but without ever using long words or a squeaky voice, or trashing Indian restaurants as an undergraduate.
Instead he is prone to repeating a single word, phrase or image to such an extent that it becomes, by turns, silly, then funny, then boring, then annoying, then anxiety-inducing, then funny, then awkward, then boring, then funny again. This only works in his stand-up routines though; in print it would just be a piss-take.
I wouldn’t be so pretentious and unoriginal as to note the jazz-styled construction of both Stewart Lee’s latter-day TV shows and the recent newspaper columns that are collated here: meandering but thematically cohesive, surprising but rarely improvised, repetitive to the point of hypnotic. Wild but controlled. Only a lazy hack on a diminishing word rate at Q magazine would do that. However, I will observe that unlike many of the jazz greats, he does all of this while not on heroin. Lee has, he says, survived in the jazz hands business by exploiting the goodwill of once-teenage fans who have grown up “and now work as journalists and regional cultural tsars.” He attributes Britpop’s Damon Albarn’s success to this too. And not doing heroin (Lee, not Albarn who, as the odds, one ex-girlfriend and a round of interviews in 2014 suggest, has – as with hats, musicals and cartoon monkeys – certainly dabbled).
Lee’s political observations are particularly prescient right now, as the rats jump their respective ships and a shower of excrement reigns down upon us all (this may be a mixed and lazily scatological metaphor, but I think it is self-sustaining). Sitting ducks like Margaret Thatcher (dead) and Grant Shapps (not dead) are given short shrift, as is David William Donald Cameron who “will leave no legacy, [while] Rebekah Brooks will be a stain upon the saddle of time’s swift stallion”. Lee is highly poetic in his put-downs: Michael Portillo is a “Cuprinol wood goblin”, Jimmy Savile “a secret glam rock Dracula”. Alex Salmond is the subject of an entire column based largely around his name being misheard as “I like salmon” at an imaginary buffet. And as someone rumoured to be distantly related to Her Royal Twiglet via the old pit villages of rural Durham myself, I was pleased to see Kate Middleton described as “a peasant-spawned serf-girl, sodden with the primordial mire of the Swindon–shadowed swamplands.”
Having worked with Michael Gove on a short-lived early 90s TV show called A Stab In The Dark (Google it and marvel at Gove the satirist, looking exactly as he does a quarter century later, only a little less like a red salamander and/or a burnt penis), Lee is particularly fascinated by the erstwhile, metaphorically stab-happy Tory contender. As far back as 2012 he observed: “I have seen Gove’s political career as, firstly, a bid to get accepted by those post sporty cunts – Cameron, Boris, George ‘Pencils’ Osborne etc – and then, secondly, as an attempt to get revenge on them somehow.” I read this piece on the very day that Gove did exactly that and, verily, I nearly declared Lee a post-punk prophet, a sage of the stage, but then remembered we all suspected this anyway. But still. It’s like he is a tiny man with a tiny laptop, writing live from inside the reader’s head.
With much journalism now finding a home online, the contemporary critic and commentator finds his or herself faced with a new era of kneejerk reaction and below the line comments, each designed to peck away at one’s soul like a trapped budgie at the final frayed splinter of cuttlefish. Refusing to become disheartened by the keyboard-rattling idiocy of human worms with all the intellectual flexibility of a Tunnock’s Teacake but with easy access to a fast broadband connection, this is something that Lee plays with, peppering his prose with deliberate errors (Dennis Roussos, Dizzy Rascal, ‘Witchfinder General Mary Hopkin’), then sitting back to watch the “Typical Grauniad” comments come in. He prints some of the best responses here without comment. Clearly there’s no need, as each offers some Whitehouse-esque righteous indignation. The woman, not the provocative proto-industrial band, obviously.
Beneath the slightly jaded tone of one who has watched his beloved Hackney become a Petri dish for twats who piss in his garden, and a Dan Ashcroft-esque suspicion that the idiots are indeed winning (and, broadly speaking, they are), Lee writes best about those things he is genuinely passionate about: music, literature, comedy, mythology, humanity and actual social mobility, rather than the phrase “social mobility”, which is just two words that sometimes fall out of politicians’ mouths like gold molars or errant cords of semi-digestible pulled pork. Recalling a childhood reading of The Owl Service by Alan Garner he describes being “sucked into a sphagnum bog of sexy druidical Celtoid mytho-poetics”. He confides in joining the National Trust “in the spirit of class hatred” and files his membership cards alongside the first four Crass albums. Haven’t we all?
I’m glad that Stewart Lee exists and is given televisual air-time and newspaper space in which to deftly weave webs of thought that bridge the gap between wonderment and weary cynicism. Content Provider is a fun read for disheartened liberals and an unfunny heap of words whose combination is punishable with death by either firing squad or Top Gear repeats for others. It is full of truths and lies and it made me laugh twenty times, after which point I stopped counting, and resumed digging my bunker at the bottom of the garden.
Stewart Lee
2016-08-06T23:14:07+01:00
Comedians don’t make it easy for us, the maggoty masses, to love them. Turn on the TV and you’d be forgiven for thinking that the British laughter racket is entirely ruled by bright eyed bouncy young pups eager to sell their souls to pithy panel shows and advertising campaigns for that fast-track route to the lucrative arena stages, chat show sofas and Christmas book tie-ins. Exhibit A: Rob Brydon, who was once a character actor of renown, capable of crafting a keenly observed and compassionate show such as Human Remains, now sells cereal flakes that come in a cardboard box, and holidays on oceanic cruise liners that resemble floating prisons for UKIP people. We unavoidably find ourselves observing a world of entertainment that rewards Michael McIntyre and shuns Jerry Sadowitz; that martyrs Bill Hicks yet would never harbour an equivalent on primetime TV. Frankie Boyle manages to dash the streak of humanity that lurks within him with such flashes of withering cruelty that he can never truly be loved. Peter Kay remembers stuff while sweating in Blackpool. Jimmy Carr mocks the disabled then looks startled. Jack Whitehall honks in tight trousers. Many Russells say many things, each with one eyebrow archly raised. Some Northerners notice that London is different to Bolton. It’s just good enough really. In this world of chaos, confusion, political failings and economic instability, humour is an increasingly valuable currency that’s key to stopping the majority of citizens grabbing an AK and spraying their local Arndale. Below-par comedians and political hypocrisy are two topics that Stewart Lee writes especially well about, not to mention all those little things in modern life that piece together to create a mental mosaic of a country of people that is, at least collectively, borderline insane. A satirist in the vein of...
Club Z returns again for more brainwashing of the highest order. Simon Munnery (alias Alan Parker) is The League Against Tedium, a super-being of 1984 proportions who is better than us.
He uses a large screen with hidden messages and short sketches to command his all-seeing, all-knowing, all- powerful, all-baloney facade over us. A range of stars - including Kevin Eldon, Jason Freeman and Stewart Lee - have their potential talent colossally wasted in sketches that were probably thought of as a passing indulgence.
But Munnery's super-geek host with a trendy mike-staff is not bad. I confess the majority of my nine laughs were as a result of his beady- eyed Kenneth Williams-on-something-strong expressions.
There were multiple cock-ups, pyrotechnics, music and props.
But the bottom line was the huge audience which was laughing at largely poor material, delivered by decent solo stand-ups.
Stewart Lee
1997-08-28T19:17:56+01:00
Club Z returns again for more brainwashing of the highest order. Simon Munnery (alias Alan Parker) is The League Against Tedium, a super-being of 1984 proportions who is better than us. He uses a large screen with hidden messages and short sketches to command his all-seeing, all-knowing, all- powerful, all-baloney facade over us. A range of stars - including Kevin Eldon, Jason Freeman and Stewart Lee - have their potential talent colossally wasted in sketches that were probably thought of as a passing indulgence. But Munnery's super-geek host with a trendy mike-staff is not bad. I confess the majority of my nine laughs were as a result of his beady- eyed Kenneth Williams-on-something-strong expressions. There were multiple cock-ups, pyrotechnics, music and props. But the bottom line was the huge audience which was laughing at largely poor material, delivered by decent solo stand-ups.
“Dear Jim’ll. Please can you fix it for me to a) Go all upside down in a Typhoon plane like in Top Gun; b) Go in parliament drunk with my best friend Nadine and shout “boring” at the square politicians; c) Have a massive party with all food in a massive stately home for free; d) Give all my friends lordly old-sounding titles like in Game of Thrones; e) Get Winston Churchill’s autograph. I haven’t heard about any of the bad stuff relating to you by the way, so jog on! Yours Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Wall-Spaff Deep-State Letterbox Johnson (58 years old).” Well done. Now go. Go. Can you just… Just go. Go. Don’t start playing the piano. There are your shoes. Have you got your water bottle? Go. Just go.
I believe it was I who wrote, in this column on 19 August 2018, before the Brexiter foreign secretary Boris Johnson was even prime minister, “Those in positions of power – journalists, fellow Conservative party members wondering how things will pan out, people biding their time on the divided opposition benches, trembling television presenters in search of ‘balanced arguments’ in the face of blatant lies and transparent manipulation – know what this incubus is and what it is doing, and how it is prepared to put our futures at risk to achieve it. And yet they do not hold Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Johnson to account. They will not shrink Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Johnson to snuff box size and sink him into the black lake of legend where he belongs. They will have to live with their failure. And, sadly, so will we.” Though I take no pleasure in having so conclusively predicted the chaos Johnson would ultimately unleash, I am happy to be paid twice for the same 117 words.
Johnson leaves behind him a Conservative party stripped of talent, containing only psychopaths, compliant yes-people loyal to an egomaniac, and those too tarnished and damaged to seek gainful employment elsewhere. It is like the worst lineup of the Fall ever. And I speak as a fan. Now the party must dredge a solid from the chodbin to serve as a leader, like a plumber reaching down into a blocked toilet bowl hoping he can scoop out a clump of filth firm enough to sculpt into the shape of something presidential, a poodoo doll for the European Research Group’s proto-fascist plans.
One of the few good things about the delayed climate change inferno finally sweeping fatally across the frazzled UK is that it may focus the minds of those involved in the idiotic moron burlesque of this year’s Tory party leadership hustings; a sick medieval ritual where bits of rotten meat on sticks, covered in black flies and alive with grey maggots, are waved in front of baffled peasants who have no say in which one will finally be garlanded with flowers by a secret cabal of geriatric life-hating death-priests, or the Conservative party membership as you call them.
At the start of the week the British far right’s anti-woke candidate of choice, the equal-opportunities offender Kemi Badenoch, was unable to commit to the 2050 net zero target, still hung up on the idea that it was uncompetitive to lead the world on this issue. We will need to be competitive when we are bartering our teeth for old bits of melted Tupperware full of boiled urine in a scorched wasteland of soggy asphalt and bent railway tracks. And when everything is on fire again next year, will we still be sending refugees to Rwanda if they arrive from a burned-out village inside the M25?
“Hello. This is reception. Just a quick call to let you know your bed is on fire.” As Britain finally got its belated climate crisis wake-up call, the stupidity of wasting any time debating penises, toilets, wokeness, the Rwanda dead cat, and redoing Brexit, whatever Brexit is supposed to mean this week, was exposed. There is only one real issue. The imminent death of all life on earth. Then there’s a massive drop off before you hit the next most important thing, the even more imminent cost of living crisis. Then everything else is irrelevant. Everything will die. Everything. Enjoy your anti-woke toilets. Twats.
And yet… The Daily Mailran a think piece blaming the Met Office for “spreading alarm and scolding us with doom-laden lectures” by someone called Stephen Robinson, his role as a “speech writer and consultant” for “companies operating in the energy sector” glossed over; luxury communist Ash Sarkar winced patiently, as if at a foolish baby, on Jeremy Vine as TalkRadio’s Mike Parry trashed net zero and cited Romans seeing sunspots and growing vines in Scotland or something; and the Daily Telegraph’s Christopher Hope, whom no one addresses by his nickname of “Chopper”, appeared on Sky News blaming the wildfires on someone dropping a cigarette. Repeatedly? All over the country?
The pursuit of false balance in the climate change debate (there is no debate) finally drove even the BBC placeman Andrew Marr into the accommodating arms of LBC, where he now bleats truth to power like a heroic lamb: “I for one have had enough of being told by pallid, shadowy old businessmen and lazy, ignorant hacks and sleazy lobbyists – who aren’t real scientists, any of them – that the science is wrong, and that what is happening, isn’t happening. Enough… And if you don’t believe me go outside, why don’t you, and have a brisk walk right now.” Andrew! Calm down!! Don’t have a brisk walk!!! And for God’s sake don’t try to work out your frustrations on the rowing machine!!!! We need you!!!!!
Only 4% of the Conservative party members, who choose our next prime minister, say hitting net zero is one of their top three priorities. It’s too late isn’t it? We are already dead.
Stewart Lee
2022-07-24T14:15:07+01:00
“Dear Jim’ll. Please can you fix it for me to a) Go all upside down in a Typhoon plane like in Top Gun; b) Go in parliament drunk with my best friend Nadine and shout “boring” at the square politicians; c) Have a massive party with all food in a massive stately home for free; d) Give all my friends lordly old-sounding titles like in Game of Thrones; e) Get Winston Churchill’s autograph. I haven’t heard about any of the bad stuff relating to you by the way, so jog on! Yours Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Wall-Spaff Deep-State Letterbox Johnson (58 years old).” Well done. Now go. Go. Can you just… Just go. Go. Don’t start playing the piano. There are your shoes. Have you got your water bottle? Go. Just go. I believe it was I who wrote, in this column on 19 August 2018, before the Brexiter foreign secretary Boris Johnson was even prime minister, “Those in positions of power – journalists, fellow Conservative party members wondering how things will pan out, people biding their time on the divided opposition benches, trembling television presenters in search of ‘balanced arguments’ in the face of blatant lies and transparent manipulation – know what this incubus is and what it is doing, and how it is prepared to put our futures at risk to achieve it. And yet they do not hold Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Johnson to account. They will not shrink Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Johnson to snuff box size and sink him into the black lake of legend where he belongs. They will have to live with their failure. And, sadly, so will we.” Though I take no pleasure in having so conclusively predicted the chaos Johnson would ultimately unleash, I am happy to be paid twice for...
Stewart Lee was over the top, spending most of his time on stage talking about vomit.
The co-writer of the controversial show, Jerry Springer The Opera, even talked about vomiting into the arse of Jesus Christ.
Lee is supposed to be a ground-breaking comedian and writer, but I found little entertainment value in his material.
It was not funny. It was a sad and deliberate attempt to see how far he could go.
This was ultimate sick humour, and if anyone thought it funny, they must be sick as well.
He joked about the IRA, whom he described as "gentlemen bombers" and the recent London bombings.
Some members of the audience found it too much and walked out, including Brighton actress Carol Cleveland of Monty Python fame.
She quipped: "I am running out to find a doctor. This guy is sick and needs help."
Stewart Lee
2005-10-12T23:13:27+01:00
Stewart Lee was over the top, spending most of his time on stage talking about vomit. The co-writer of the controversial show, Jerry Springer The Opera, even talked about vomiting into the arse of Jesus Christ. Lee is supposed to be a ground-breaking comedian and writer, but I found little entertainment value in his material. It was not funny. It was a sad and deliberate attempt to see how far he could go. This was ultimate sick humour, and if anyone thought it funny, they must be sick as well. He joked about the IRA, whom he described as "gentlemen bombers" and the recent London bombings. Some members of the audience found it too much and walked out, including Brighton actress Carol Cleveland of Monty Python fame. She quipped: "I am running out to find a doctor. This guy is sick and needs help."
Actually, it's both. This funny, raunchy, foul-mouthed and very twenty-first centure musical about trash TV has got it all
A rare sound burst on to the stage last week: that of musical theatre floating on real invention and engaged with a recognisable world. I've heard it only three times in the past five years: in Shockheaded Peter, which called its glorious self a 'junk opera'; in Tamasha's Bollywood skit, Fourteen Songs, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and in Adam Guettel's beautiful bluegrass Floyd Collins - which has yet to receive a big production. Now Kombat Opera has unleashed this sound at BAC with a concert performance of Richard Thomas's Jerry Springer: The Opera. It's very funny, fairly foul-mouthed and superbly sung. In an age in which most musicals are retro (the National's Christmas show is a revival of South Pacific), here's a voice from the future.
There could be nothing more suitable for a satire on Springer than a form which allows the great Confessor to elide himself with Christ. Jerry Springer: The Opera opens with a chorus who send the word 'Jerry' sobbing and soaring through the auditorium, elongating the vowels so that what you seem to hear is a 'Kyrie'. It ends with the furrowed interrogator rising from the arms of a bodyguard who has cradled him, pieta-style, to ascend the stairs that forever separate him from the sinners below.
And what better form than opera to display explosive melodrama in which everyone shouts at the same time? The shouters here include a 'chick with a dick' and a man who wants his girlfriend to pin him up in diapers. Each of them does to perfection the shoulder-swaggers, the power-play with the chairs, and the dive into schmaltz: 'This Is My Jerry Springer Moment' must become an iconic song. And if you should even start to think that this is pointlessly enjoyable, attend to the final chorus - 'Jews 'n' blacks can go to hell. New York Democrats as well' - sung by a would-be lap dancer, her backwoodsman husband, who prefers flowers to people, and a jigging line of Ku Klux Klansmen.
Stewart Lee
2001-08-26T16:14:40+01:00
Actually, it's both. This funny, raunchy, foul-mouthed and very twenty-first centure musical about trash TV has got it all A rare sound burst on to the stage last week: that of musical theatre floating on real invention and engaged with a recognisable world. I've heard it only three times in the past five years: in Shockheaded Peter, which called its glorious self a 'junk opera'; in Tamasha's Bollywood skit, Fourteen Songs, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and in Adam Guettel's beautiful bluegrass Floyd Collins - which has yet to receive a big production. Now Kombat Opera has unleashed this sound at BAC with a concert performance of Richard Thomas's Jerry Springer: The Opera. It's very funny, fairly foul-mouthed and superbly sung. In an age in which most musicals are retro (the National's Christmas show is a revival of South Pacific), here's a voice from the future. There could be nothing more suitable for a satire on Springer than a form which allows the great Confessor to elide himself with Christ. Jerry Springer: The Opera opens with a chorus who send the word 'Jerry' sobbing and soaring through the auditorium, elongating the vowels so that what you seem to hear is a 'Kyrie'. It ends with the furrowed interrogator rising from the arms of a bodyguard who has cradled him, pieta-style, to ascend the stairs that forever separate him from the sinners below. And what better form than opera to display explosive melodrama in which everyone shouts at the same time? The shouters here include a 'chick with a dick' and a man who wants his girlfriend to pin him up in diapers. Each of them does to perfection the shoulder-swaggers, the power-play with the chairs, and the dive into schmaltz: 'This Is My Jerry Springer Moment' must become an iconic...
Thirty-five years into his career, the Lincolnshire folk singer and guitarist Martin Simpson has perfected a professorial fusion of British and American forms. The Sheffield Apprentice's provenance blurs in a hillbilly hootenanny, a transcript of an archive interview with the Kentucky musician Banjo Bill Cornet arcs around BJ Cole's swooping pedal steel, and there's a cinematically vast slide guitar reading of In The Pines. But proficient and tasteful as Simpson is, his guests Dick Gaughan and June Tabor, both blessed with instantly affecting individual voices, steel the honours on Jamie Foyers and Strange Affair respectively.
Stewart Lee
2011-09-12T21:38:40+01:00
Thirty-five years into his career, the Lincolnshire folk singer and guitarist Martin Simpson has perfected a professorial fusion of British and American forms. The Sheffield Apprentice's provenance blurs in a hillbilly hootenanny, a transcript of an archive interview with the Kentucky musician Banjo Bill Cornet arcs around BJ Cole's swooping pedal steel, and there's a cinematically vast slide guitar reading of In The Pines. But proficient and tasteful as Simpson is, his guests Dick Gaughan and June Tabor, both blessed with instantly affecting individual voices, steel the honours on Jamie Foyers and Strange Affair respectively.
On the day before Mothering Sunday I got up early and drove alone to Birmingham to put flowers on my mother's and my grandmother's graves, a timeless act of ancestor worship. Two years ago, when I took my then three-year-old son with me, he accidentally flung a 2ft-long branch into the door panel of a passing hearse. The resounding clang made the passengers inside it, and the followers in the rest of the funeral cortege, scowl and stare at both of us in anger and shock. Safari park aerial-snapping apes had nothing on us, the monkey-man and his cub, making futile war upon the newly dead.
Now time has passed, I hope the incident is remembered by the relatives as an amusing family anecdote, rather than the final indignity in the wretched carnival of endless misery and systematic humiliation we laughably call someone's life. The Co-operative Funeralcare website is diplomatically disappointed in the lack of respect shown to funeral corteges nowadays, conceding "the pace and pressures of life have increased", but does not include "attack by tree-wielding child" in the list of insensitive hazards mourners may face.
Last weekend one of the graves bore a picture of the Virgin Mary alongside the fresh flowers, I assume in respect of Mothering Sunday. Christianity has efficiently co-opted keynotes of earlier faiths (the God reborn in spring, the God born of human woman, and the conflation of Mary with various pre-Christian mother goddesses) and it certainly has more in common with the pagan religions it assimilated than, for example, the current lineup of the Sugababes does with the classic 1998 Mutya-centric lineup. I wouldn't normally have made the Mary-mother goddess link, but I had this column hanging over me, and was desperately on the lookout for random event linkage, assumed meanings, and funny paragraph endings, the third of these proving especially elusive.
On Mother's Day, we went to see the Ice Age Art exhibition at the British Museum. The oldest piece of identifiable human art ever made turned out to be a tiny sculpture of a pregnant woman. Conveniently for me, with the deadline for this column approaching, it appeared that pregnant women were the main concern of ice age artists, although, about 40,000 years ago, some visionary goofball did come up with the idea of putting a lion's head on a man's body. As the exhibition notes explain, the so-called Lion Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel is the first example of the human mind imagining something that didn't exist. "Assuming," my wife countered, "that there wasn't a man in the Hohlenstein-Stadel area struggling through life with the head of a lion." Women say the funniest things.
But the lion man was a blip, presumably greeted by acres of tablet outrage akin to the Sex Pistols' Grundy interview, and the lion-headed man disappeared from human consciousness until his re-emergence in 1985 in the form of Lion-O from Thundercats. The ice-age artists swiftly returned to the more acceptable business of making more and more pregnant women. Everybody loves mothers.
My favourite mother goddess survivals are Sheela na gigs, the courageously obscene female carvings brazenly cracking their crannies in rural church nooks. A few years ago, when I was walking on Long Mynd in Shropshire, I popped into the church in Church Stretton to seek out the especially pungent Sheela reputed to reside there. "Can I help you?" asked the priest suspiciously, finding me staring at the roof like someone planning on stealing it. I decided to come clean. "Yes reverend," I said, biting the bullet, "I am looking for your obscene fertility goddess. I know you've got one. Now where have you hidden her?" Needless to say, he was delighted. Everybody loves mothers.
The priest took me outside to point out a haunting and all but eroded figure above a now bricked-up entrance, her legs wide open to the north wind. "In the old days people liked their coffins to enter the church through this doorway," he said, "and that way the dead got the blessing of the new God, and perhaps the blessing of the old goddess too." The doorway was Norman, so this ancient mother-worship had survived in secret, in the fabric of this particular Shropshire church, until at least the 12th century, despite efforts to move the celebrants towards a more dignified substitute. Looking closer, I noticed the Sheela's own little doorway had been plugged too, and rather indecorously, probably by a late Victorian, with a single and censorious stone. Shame. I thought everybody loved mothers.
In the 1990s, the comedian Simon Munnery had a joke that ran: "Everybody loves nature. Except when it's growing out of cups." I used to hear it as the self-justifying statement of a typically hygiene-averse intellectual, such as the young Simon himself, using philosophy to justify his dirty crockery to disgusted visitors, such as me. But, like many of his gags, now it seems to have a deeper dimension, reflecting how any aesthetic or moral values we see in nature have been put there by us in the act of observing.
To paraphrase Simon, everybody loves mothers, as long as they restrict their fertility to the outlines demarked by the social and moral norms of the age they find themselves in, and don't have the audacity to give birth too young, or too old, or too regularly, or at too great a cost to the state, or to a child that they share with another parent of the wrong race or gender. Like mould in a mug, nature itself just is. Natural processes just are. The attribution of values is exactly the sort of lion's head on man's body move that makes us the brilliantly deluded creatures we are.
The cemetery had been busier than usual the day before Mothering Sunday. And if I hadn't bought my ice-age art tickets in advance we wouldn't have got into the show the next day. Last week, it seemed to me there were mothers everywhere, and that some unseen force was organising events in my life into the shape of the newspaper column I was contracted to provide. Either that or, like ice-age man, I was slipping back into a bicameral state, and hearing my own thoughts as if they were the voices of spirits. There's a contrivance about dividing yourself into observer and protagonist in order to fill column inches. I don't know if I'm cut out for it. Does Dom Joly have this problem? Who wrote this? Am I … am I God?
Stewart Lee is currently curating The Alternative Comedy Experience on Comedy Central, Tuesdays at 11pm David Mitchell is away.
Stewart Lee
2013-03-17T14:01:27+00:00
On the day before Mothering Sunday I got up early and drove alone to Birmingham to put flowers on my mother's and my grandmother's graves, a timeless act of ancestor worship. Two years ago, when I took my then three-year-old son with me, he accidentally flung a 2ft-long branch into the door panel of a passing hearse. The resounding clang made the passengers inside it, and the followers in the rest of the funeral cortege, scowl and stare at both of us in anger and shock. Safari park aerial-snapping apes had nothing on us, the monkey-man and his cub, making futile war upon the newly dead. Now time has passed, I hope the incident is remembered by the relatives as an amusing family anecdote, rather than the final indignity in the wretched carnival of endless misery and systematic humiliation we laughably call someone's life. The Co-operative Funeralcare website is diplomatically disappointed in the lack of respect shown to funeral corteges nowadays, conceding "the pace and pressures of life have increased", but does not include "attack by tree-wielding child" in the list of insensitive hazards mourners may face. Last weekend one of the graves bore a picture of the Virgin Mary alongside the fresh flowers, I assume in respect of Mothering Sunday. Christianity has efficiently co-opted keynotes of earlier faiths (the God reborn in spring, the God born of human woman, and the conflation of Mary with various pre-Christian mother goddesses) and it certainly has more in common with the pagan religions it assimilated than, for example, the current lineup of the Sugababes does with the classic 1998 Mutya-centric lineup. I wouldn't normally have made the Mary-mother goddess link, but I had this column hanging over me, and was desperately on the lookout for random event linkage, assumed meanings, and funny...
It was the summer of 1984. I was 16. I wanted, finally, to see the Fall. I’d been fixated on the group since a 1981 Peel session suddenly flipped somehow from irritating me beyond reason to enthralling me beyond imagination. Provocative repetition. Monotonous drones. Withering sarcasm. I’m lucky I was struck by something so utterly superb when I was in my culturally vulnerable teenage state, otherwise you could be sitting here reading an article about Toto.
I saw an advert saying the Fall were playing at a rock festival in Cornwall and persuaded my mum, against her better judgment, to let me go, alone, with a sleeping bag and a tent. The rolling grassland sloped down to a stage, shadowed by the ancestral home of Lord Eliot, unlikely benefactor of one of the last gasps of the real 60s counterculture. The Elephant Fayre.
Wafty pre-Raphaelite women wandered bare-breasted. Terrifying crusties, friendly if approached, roamed the site. In ignorant bliss I saw the then‑unknown to me John Martyn, fortuitously abandoning his gloopy 80s jazz funk to return spectacularly to his 70s echoplex experiments, and Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, of whom I was similarly unaware, deliver a set of entrancing faux-naivety.
The Fall, Mark E Smith centre, on the main stage at the Elephant Fayre, July 1984. Photograph: Gentleman_Dude/Flickr
Darkness fell. A woman gave me free homemade tea and I sat in a little tent and watched a band I never caught the name of play a three-hour-long version of the Beatles’ The Fool on the Hill. It was only many years later, remembering the experience, that I realise it was unlikely anyone played The Fool On the Hill for three hours, and that the tea was probably slightly stronger than I realised at the time.
In another tent, a lone Rastafarian and I sat together and watched John Carpenter’s The Thing, when film still felt special, in those pre-DVD days. A screaming scientist turned into a weird mutant dog. “Lord Jesus Christ,” said my companion, his hand on my shoulder, blowing sinsemilla into my face.
A hippy antiques dealer lectured me by moonlight about the ninth-century Welsh monk chronicler Nennius, on whom I had written my O-level history project, and gave me a copy of a solo single by Dave Oberlé, of 70s medievalists Gryphon, which I have never since seen listed in any official discography. Did it even exist?
The Fall took the stage by the light of burning torches, the classic two-drum-kit line-up, now augmented by American guitarist Brix. Without a word of greeting, the group dropped into the spindly descend of Smile. I’m listening to a bootleg tape now and touching the entry ticket, still tucked into the cassette box, and I relive the exhilaration of experiencing the stolen riff of Elves for the first time, and a vast 10-minute version of the soon-retired Garden, still my favorite Fall song, with Brix singing the “Jew on a motorbike” refrain through some strange dub-effects pedal. I can taste the wet air in my lungs, see the black-clad couple in front of me, and I realise that the rest of my life, which can have such profound and disorientating pleasures in it, is going to be both wonderful and frightening.
The next day, my dad and his new wife, holidaying somewhere in Devon, intercepted me in Exeter. On the way home we stopped at Gordano services and I shat blood into a toilet bowl, the first signs of a stomach disorder that has since been my constant companion. As have the Fall. Next month I will see them for the 48th time.
Stewart Lee
2015-11-15T13:10:33+00:00
It was the summer of 1984. I was 16. I wanted, finally, to see the Fall. I’d been fixated on the group since a 1981 Peel session suddenly flipped somehow from irritating me beyond reason to enthralling me beyond imagination. Provocative repetition. Monotonous drones. Withering sarcasm. I’m lucky I was struck by something so utterly superb when I was in my culturally vulnerable teenage state, otherwise you could be sitting here reading an article about Toto. I saw an advert saying the Fall were playing at a rock festival in Cornwall and persuaded my mum, against her better judgment, to let me go, alone, with a sleeping bag and a tent. The rolling grassland sloped down to a stage, shadowed by the ancestral home of Lord Eliot, unlikely benefactor of one of the last gasps of the real 60s counterculture. The Elephant Fayre. Wafty pre-Raphaelite women wandered bare-breasted. Terrifying crusties, friendly if approached, roamed the site. In ignorant bliss I saw the then‑unknown to me John Martyn, fortuitously abandoning his gloopy 80s jazz funk to return spectacularly to his 70s echoplex experiments, and Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, of whom I was similarly unaware, deliver a set of entrancing faux-naivety. The Fall, Mark E Smith centre, on the main stage at the Elephant Fayre, July 1984. Photograph: Gentleman_Dude/Flickr Darkness fell. A woman gave me free homemade tea and I sat in a little tent and watched a band I never caught the name of play a three-hour-long version of the Beatles’ The Fool on the Hill. It was only many years later, remembering the experience, that I realise it was unlikely anyone played The Fool On the Hill for three hours, and that the tea was probably slightly stronger than I realised at the time. In another tent, a...
Series 4 of SLCV is recorded now. I am still touring the material.
January 2016
Tuesday 19th - 7.30pm - A ROOM WITH A STEW - PLYMOUTH - Theatre Royal, 01752 267222, - TICKETS
Wednesday 20th - 7.30pm - A ROOM WITH A STEW - TRURO - Hall For Cornwall, 01872 262466 - TICKETS
Sunday 24th - 7.30pm - A ROOM WITH A STEW - NOTTINGHAM - Playhouse, 0115 941 9419 - SOLD OUT
Monday 25th - 8pm - A ROOM WITH A STEW - WREXHAM - William Aston Hall, 0844 888 9991 - TICKETS
Wednesday 27th - 7.30pm - A ROOM WITH A STEW - BRIGHTON - Brighton Dome, 01273 709709 - TICKETS
Friday 29th - 8pm - A ROOM WITH A STEW - SOUTHEND ON SEA - Palace Theatre, 01702 351135 - SOLD OUT
Sunday 31st - 7.30pm - A ROOM WITH A STEW - WOLVERHAMPTON - Grand Theatre, 01902 429212 - TICKETS
February 2016
Tuesday 2nd - 8pm - A ROOM WITH A STEW - CAMBRIDGE - Corn Exchange, 01223 357851 - TICKETS
Thursday 4th - 8pm - A ROOM WITH A STEW - BOURNEMOUTH - Pavillion, 0844 576 3000 - TICKETS
Friday 5th - 8pm - A ROOM WITH A STEW - TUNBRIDGE WELLS - Assembly Hall Theatre, 01892 530613 - TICKETS
Tuesday 9th - 8pm - A ROOM WITH A STEW - COVENTRY - Warwick Arts Centre, 024 7652 4524 - TICKETS
Wednesday 10th - 7.30pm - A ROOM WITH A STEW - LEEDS - West Yorkshire Playhouse, 0113 213 7700 - SOLD OUT
Thursday 11th - 7.30pm - A ROOM WITH A STEW - LEEDS - West Yorkshire Playhouse, 0113 213 7700 - SOLD OUT Saturday 20th - 8pm - A ROOM WITH A STEW, Festival Theatre, Chichester - 01243 781312 - TICKETS
March 2016
Monday 14th, 7pm – Royal Festival Hall, London, A Room With A Stew - Marathon Night 4 hrs show.
This is positively the last performance of all the SLCV material, all six half hours.
The series may have actually started being shown by then. TICKETS HERE or on 0207 960 4200.
(Please note - tickets are only on sale to South Bank subscribers until WEDNESDAY 20th JANUARY, when they will go on general sale).
Unpaid Charity Benefit Shows
Feb 6th 2016 – Hackney Homeless, Hackney Empire
March 3rd 2016 – South London Cares, Lecis Sq Theatre
May 5th 2016 – Depression, Union Chapel, London
Other live s-up Dates
(mainly 30 mins sets w some previews)
APRIL 2016
April 29th – May 1st Mach Comedy Fest, N Wales
MAY 2016
3rd – 4th Museum of Comedy, London
5th Proud Archivist, London
9th Betsey Trotwood, London
10th LOL Angel, London
11th-12th Museum of Comedy, London
16th Happy Monday, London
17th Lolitics, London
18th Susan Murray in Walthamstow
19th Museum of Comedy, London
23rd Nice n Spiky, Islington
24th Star, Plumstead, London
25th Jane Bom Bayne’s, Brighton
26th Brian Gittins’, Brighton
JUNE 2016
7th – 9th Soho Theatre, London
13th Tattershall Castle, London
14th Lol Angel, London
15th – 16th Museum of Comedy, London
20th Nice n Spiky, Islington
23rd Mostly Comedy, Hitchin
17th – 30th Soho Theatre, London
JULY 2016
1st – 3rd, ATP, Keflavik, Iceland
4th-7th Soho Theatre, London
5th Chippenham Comedy Festival
SEPT 2016
2nd – 4th End Of The Road
9th Martin Soan’s gig, South London
24th Union Chapel, London
OCT 2016
7th Bush Hall, London
10th Happy Mondays, London
ALL TOMORROW’S PARTIES 2016
ATP is thrilled to announce that their second ATP 2.0 festival at Pontins camp in Prestatyn, North Wales is to be curated by comedian and writer Stewart Lee, on 15th - 17th April 2016. Buy Tickets HERE All Tomorrow’s Parties 2.0 will be held at Pontins Holiday Camp in Prestatyn, North Wales, 15th-17th Apr 2016. https://www.atpfestival.com/events/atp042016/tickets
Ordinarily overseen by musicians, 2016’s All Tomorrow’s Parties line-up is hand-picked by acclaimed comedian, writer and renowned music enthusiast Stewart Lee,who joins the few alternative cultural figures who’ve curated the festival in the past including the Simpsons’ Matt Groening (2010) and visual artists Jake and Dinos Chapman (2015). Stewart Lee will also be performing stand-up comedy over the festival weekend.
All Tomorrow’s Parties site of Pontins in Prestatyn, North Wales – chosen for its easy reach for both international and UK customers – benefits from all the facilities you’d expect to find in a holiday camp, including an indoor swimming pool, football pitch, basketball and tennis courts, a crazy golf course, go-kart track, air hockey, a large arcade games area, and a beautiful sandy beachfront only a few hundred metres walk away. All attendees are provided with a chalet as part of the ticket price, which includes beds, a bathroom and a kitchen.
JOHN CAGE’S INDETERMINACY 16
The hit experimental music tour is back for more, with Steve Beresford, Tania Chen and me, randomising Cage’s comments as instructed to order. Dates so far, details to be announced, are…
2016
March 20th – TBC
April 26th – London Café Oto
June 21st – Reading TBC
MY CULTURAL YEAR 2015
Here is a list of everything I can remember hearing, reading and seeing last year
NEW FILMS
The best
By Our Selves (Andrew Kotting 2015) *****
The rest
Sean The Sheep (Ardman 2015)
Avengers Age Of Ultron (Joss Wheedon 2015)
Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)
The American Epic Sessions (Bernard McMahon, 2015)
Star Wars The Force Awakens (JJ Abrahams 2015)
The worst
Spongebob Squarepants : Sponge Out Of Water (Paul Tibbit, 2015) *
James Bond – Spectre (Sam Mendes, 2015) *
OLD FILMS
Scrooged (Richard Donner 1988)
Cat People (Jaques Tourneur 1942)
Guns of Navarone (J Lee Thompson 1961) ****
A Barrel Full Of Dollars (Demofilo Fidani 1971) *
Zulu (Cy Endfield 1964) ****
Tam Lin (Roddy McDowell 1970) ****
Something Wicked This Way Comes (Jack Clayton 1983) ****
Brave (Andrews/Chapman 2012) ****
And The Crows Will Dog Your Grave (Juan Bosch 1972)
The Dirty Fifteen (Nunzio Malasomma 1968)
Any Gun Can Play (Enzo Catellari 1967)
Bandidos (Massimo Dallamano 1967)
Arizona Colt/The Man From Nowhere (Michele Lupo 1966) *
Arizona Colt – Hired Gun/Arizona Colt Returns (Sergio Martino 1970) *
Blue (Silvio Narizzano 1967)
Sabata (Gianfranco Parolini 1969)
Adios Sabata/Indio Black (Gianfranco Parolini 1970) *
Black Jack (Gainfranco Baldanelo, 1969)
Awkward Hands/Clumsy Hands (Rafael Marchent, 1970)
Short & Happy Life Of The Brothers Blue (Luigi Bazzoni, 1973) ****
Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993) *****
A Colt In The Fist Of The Devil (Gianfranco Badanello, 1967)
Taste of Death (Sergio Merolle 1968) ****
You Are A Carrion And I Will Kill You/Fdral Man (M Estaba, 1974) *
Navajo Joe (Sergio Corbucci 1966)
Five Man Army (Italo Zingarelli 1969)
Silver Saddle (Lucio Fulci 1978)
Death Rides A Horse (Giulio Petroni, 1967)
The Rats (John Laifa, 2002)
Pom Poko (Isao Takahata 1994) ****
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (Steven Herek,1989) ****
Big (Penny Marshall 1988)
My Name Is Nobody (Sergio Leone, Tonino Valerii 1973) ****
The Tramplers (Albert Band, 1965)
Tails You Lose (Piero Pierotti, 1969)
Nest of Vipers/Night of The Serpent (Giulio Petroni, 1969) ****
In A Colt’s Shadow (Giovanni Grimaldi, 1965)
Savage Gringo/Gunman Called Nebraska (Antonio Roman, 1966)
The Moment To Kill (Guilano Carnimeo, 1968)
Full House For The Devil (Giovanni Fago, 1968)
Tequila Joe (Enzo Dell’Aquilla, 1968)
Gremlins (Joe Dante, 1984)
Requiem For A Gringo/Duel In The Eclipse (Eugenio Martin 1968)
Gentleman Killer (Giorgio Stegani, 1967)
Kill The Wicked (Tanio Bocia, 1967) ***1/2
Addams Family Values (Barry Sonnenfeld 1993) ****
Ratatouille (Brad Bird 2007) ****
This Our Still Life (Andrew Kotting, 2011) ****
Adios Hombre (Mario Caiano, 1967) *
High Plains Drifter (Clint Eastwood, 1973)
King Of Comedy (Martin Scorcese 1983) ****
Shango (Eduardo Mulargia, 1970)
The Hills Run Red (Carlo Lizzani, 1966)
The Fog (John Carpenter 1980) ****
Dr No (Terrence Young 1962)
Cut-throats Nine (Joaquin Luis Romero Marchent, 1971)
A Stranger In Town (Luigi Vanzi, 1966)
The Stranger Returns ( Luigi Vanzi, 1967)
Local Hero (Bill Forsyth, 1983) ****
A Town Called Bastard (Robert Parrish, 1971)
The Wizard Of Oz (Victor Fleming 1939)
Scrooge (Ronald Neame 1970) ****
The Nightmare Before Christmas (Tim Burton 1993) ****
Yurusarezaru Mono (Sang-il Lee, 2013) *****
The Return Of Martin Guerre (Daniel Vigne 1982) *****
NEW BOOKS
Richard King - Original Rockers – Richard King
Grayson Perry – Playing To The Gallery *****
Alan Warner – Tago Mago
Kim Gordon – Girl In A Band ****
Paul Panic - I Thought Solihull Was For Snobs
Viv Albertine - Clothes Music Boys
Zoe Williams - Get It Together *****
Nina Lyon - Uprooted ****
OLD BOOKS
Dion Fortune - The Demon Lover (1927)
John Majors – My Old Man (2012) ****
George G Gilman - Edge The Loner (1971)
George G Gilman - Edge $10 000 American (1971)
Oliver Double - Getting The Joke (2012)
Ray Bradbury - Farewell Summer (2006)
TV NEW AND OLD
The Clash, New Year’s Day 1977 (BBC4)
Columbo Seasons 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Catastrophe (C4)
Katie Morag (CBBC)
Gogglebox (C4)
First Dates (C4)
Toast Of London (C4)
Dance Rebels (BBC4)
This Week (BBC1)
Question Time (BBC1)
Endeavour (ITV)
Midsommer Murders (ITV)
Lewis (ITV)
MAGAZINES AND PAPERS
Guardian, Independent, Observer, Mojo, Record Collector, Shindig, Wire, Private Eye, Viz, London Review Of Books, New Humanist, Faunus, Machenalia
RADIO
Today Prog (BBCR4)
The Opera Hour (Resonance 104.4FM)
The Fall Live In Gateshead (BBC 6 MUSIC)
Short Cuts (BBCR4)
John Osborne - Don’t Need The Sunshine (BBCR4)
The Honeydripper (Resonance 104.4 FM)
THEATRE 2015
The best
Tree – Daniel Kitson (Old Vic)
Robert LePage – 887 (Edinburgh International Festival)
War Horse (NT, Talk of London)
Clock Strikes Noon – Jethro Compton (C Venue, Edinburgh)
Ahnen – Tanztheatre Wuppertal, Pina Bausch (Saddlers Wells)
The rest
The Boy Who Bit Picasso (United Artists/Oxford Playhouse)
The Passion Of Jesus (Trafalgar Square)
Puddles’ Pity Party (Assembly, Edinburgh)
The Tiger Who Came To Tea (Pleasance, Edinburgh)
Our Teacher’s A Troll (Paines Plough, Summerhall, Edinburgh)
Land Of The Dragon (Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh)
HP Lovecraft’s Statement of Randolph Carter (The Space, Edbro)
Grid Iron – Light Boxes (Summerhall, Edinburgh)
Blood Red Moon – Jethro Compton (C Venue, Edinburgh)
The Piper (Underbelly, Edinburgh)
Rattlesnake’s Kiss – Jethro Compton (C Venue, Edinburgh)
Matilda (RSC, Cambridge Theatre)
COMEDY 2015
The best
Mark Steel – Who Do I Think I Am? (Assembly, Edinburgh)
The rest
Tony Law – Enter The Tone Zone (LST)
Nick Mohammed – Dracula The Musical (Soho)
Harmon Leon (PBH Free Fringe, Edinburgh)
Zoe Coombs Marr – Dave (Underbelly, Edinburgh)
Shazia Mirza – (Stand, Edinburgh)
Paul Sinha – Postcard From The Z List (Stand, Edinburgh)
Andrew Doyle – Minimalism (Stand, Edinburgh)
Sarah Franken – Who Keeps Making All These People? (Stand, Edibrgh)
Alex Horne – Monsieur Butterfly (Pleasance, Edinburgh)
Lewis Shaffer - £5 Until Famous (Just The Tonic, Edinburgh)
Steve Carlin (PBH Free Fringe, Edinburgh)
Eleanor Tiernan (PBH Free Fringe, Edinburgh)
Martin Mor – Funny Stuff For Happy People (Stand, Edinburgh)
Toby Adams – Quivertip (Free Festival, Edinburgh)
John Luke Roberts (PBH Free Fringe, Edinburgh)
Lolly (Pleasance, Edinburgh)
Nick Doody (PBH Free Fringe, Edinburgh)
Ghost Bus Tour (On a bus, Edinburgh)
Jo Neary (Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh)
Sophie Hagen (Soho Theatre)
GIGS 2015
The best
Wolf People (Great Portland Street)
Kaleidoscope/The Misunderstood (Great Portland St)
Richard Dawson (Bloomsbury)
Bevis Frond (Lexington)
Ex-Easter Island Head (BBC Potterow, Edinburgh)
Richard Youngs/Sun Ra Arkestra (Summerhall, Edinburgh)
The Ex (Summerhall, Edinburgh)
Ex-Easter Island Head (Union Chapel)
The rest
Carla Bozulich (Café Oto)
Maggie Nicols & Caroline Kraabel & Charlotte Hug/The Glowering Figs/ Alan Wilkinson & Malcolm Bruce & Jim Lebaigue (Ryan’s Bar)
Chameleons Vox (Islington Academy)
Sheffield Morris Men 40th Anniversary Day (Sheffield City Centre)
Alan Wilkinson & Akode (Ryan’s Bar)
Radio Birdman (Dome)
Evan Parker/Alexander Schlippenbach/Paul Loven (Café Oto)
Terry Edwards and Neil Frazer (Caley Bar, Edinburgh)
Honeyblood (BBC Potterow, Edinburgh)
Waterboys (Princes St Gardens, Edinburgh)
Captain’s Bar Sunday Session (Captain’s Bar, Edinburgh)
Blueswater (Jazz Bar, Edinburgh)
King Crimson (Hackney Empire)
Patti Smith (Roundhouse)
The Fall (Clapham Grand)
ART
Grotte de Niaux
Herman Nitsch (Summerhall)
HISTORICAL SITES
Stonehenge
Danebury Rings
Figsbury Ring
Hestercombe
Fountains Abbey
Mitchells Fold Stone Circle
Temple of Nodens, Lydney Park
Grotte de Niaux
Puliaurens
Perypertuse
Queribus
Montsegur
Carcassonne
Viles des Termes
Arques
Puivert
ALBUMS I LISTENED TO IN THEIR ENTIRITY OLD SCHOOL THIS YEAR IN ONE SITTING AT A DESIGNATED DEVICE
NEW RECORDS – 2015
The best
The Wolfhounds – Middle Aged Freaks
Pat Todd & The Rank Outsiders – 14th & Nowhere
The Wave Pictures – Great Big Flamingo Burning Moon
The Fall – Sub-Lingual Tablet
Trash Kit – Confidence
The Nightingales – Mind Over Matter
Terrakaft – Alone
Robert Pollard – Faulty Superheroes
Eliza Carthy & Tim Eriksen – Bottle
Phil Minton – A Donut’s End
Walter Salas Humara – Curve And Shake (Blue Rose)
Stick In The Wheel – From Here (From Here)
Sleaford Mods – Key Markets
Laura Cannell – Beneath Swooping Talons
Jason Isbell – Something More Than Free
Bardo Pond – Record Store Day Trilogy
Ricked Wicky – King Heavy Metal
Ricked Wicky – Swimmer To Liquid Armchair
Ricked Wicky – I Sell The Circus
The rest
Darren Hayman – Chants For Socialists
The Waterboys - Modern Blues
The Primevals - Tales Of Endless Bliss
Mark Kozelek - Sings Christmas Carols
Cedell Davis – Last Man Standing
Bob Dylan – Shadows In The Night
White Hills – Walks For Motorists
Ricked Wicky – I Sell The Circus
Nick Pynn - Waterproof
Chris Forsyth – Intensity Ghost
Sonny Simmons & Moksha Samnyasin – Nomadic
Songhoy Blues – Music In Exile
Moon Duo – Shadow Of The Sun
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds – Chasing Yesterday
Steve Earle – Terraplane
Damon & Naomi – Fortune
Echo & The Bunnymen – Meteorites
Ryley Walker – Primrose Green
Blue Pills – Live Freak Valley Festival
Richard James – All The New Highways
Jennifer Walshe – Historical Documents of the Irish Avant-Garde
The Catenary Wires – Red Red Skies (Elefant)
The Hazey Janes – Language Of Faint Theory (Armellodic)
Wire – Wire (Pink Flag)
Giant Sand – Heartbreak Pass
Tender Prey – Organ Calzone (Bird)
Sun Kil Moon – Universal Themes (Caldo Verde)
Listening Center – Cycles/Other Phenomena (Deep Distance)
Carlton Melton – Out To Sea
Datura 4 – Demon Blues
Miranda Lambert – Automatic
Children of Leir – s/t
White Manna – Pan
Rich Hopkins & Luminarious – Enchanted Rock
Orange Humble Band – Depressing Beauty
Elle Osborne – It’s Not Your Gold Shall Me Entice
Simon Love – It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time
The Chills – Silver Bullets
Dark Horses – Tunnel At The End Of The Light (Dark Horse)
Robert Forster – Songs To Play (Tapete)
Kim & Leanne – True West (Guilt Free)
Shopping – Why Choose? (Fatcat)
REISSUES, NEW OLD LIVE RECORDINGS, AND COMP’S – 2015
Guided by Voices – Suitcase 4 (*****) was exceptional.
I also loved
Alan Jefferson - Galactic Nightmare
Julian Cope – Trip Advizer
Rhodri Davies –Pedwar
Steel Pulse – Handsworth Revolution w radio sessions
Primevals – Sound Hole
The Sunset Strip – Stone Lazy
REM – Dreaming In Paradise, Live 1983
The Sound – Box Set 1984-87
John Coltrane – A Love Supreme
I also heard
021 – All Was Nothing
V/A – Punk 45 Extermination Nights In The Big City, Cleveland 75-82
V/A – Punk 45 Burn Rubber City Burn, Akron Ohio 75-80
D Bailey, Joelle Leander, George Lewis, Evan Parker – 28 Rue Dunois
Simple Minds – Sparkle In The Rain
Michael Chapman – Window
The Stones – Three Blind Mice
Twink – Think Pink (1969)
Burning Spear – Social Living/Living Dub
Elyse Weinberg – Greaspaint Smile
Guardian Angel – Into Lightnin’ (1972)
DM3 – West of Anywhere
Amanaz – Africa (1975)
Nikki Sudden – Tel Aviv Blues (2002)
Son Volt – Trace (2005)
V/A Heavy Soul
OLD OLD RECORDS THAT I LISTENED TO IN 2015
The Fall – Hex Enduction Hour
The Dream Syndicate – The Days Of Wine & Roses
The Dream Syndicate – The Day Before Wine & Roses
Tangerine Dream – Electronic Meditation
Tangerine Dream – Alpha Centauri
Tangerine Dream - Zeit
Sonny Rollins - Freedom Suite
Sonny Rollins – East Broadway Rundown
Paul Kossof - Back Street Crawler
Fleetwood Mac – Men Of The World (68-70 singles, outtakes)
The Flesh Eaters – Dragstrip Riot
John Coltrane – My Favorite Things
John Coltrane – My Favorite Things, Live At Newport
John Coltrane – Last Performance At Newport
Julian Cope – Revolutionary Suicide (2013)
Richard And Thomas Frost
Ash Ra Temple – Ash Ra Temple (1971)
Aphrodite’s Child – End Of The World
Steeleye Span – Below The Salt (1972)
Mountain – Nanucket Sleighride (1971)
The Go-Betweens – Liberty Belle & Black Diamond Express
The Go-Betweens – Tallulah
Kim Salmon – Hey Believer
Dark – Dark Round The Edges
Fleetwood Mac – Boston (1970)
McCoy Tyner – Sahara (1972)
Echo & The Bunnymen - Evergreen
Cream – Disraeli Gears
Can – Tago Mago
The Backbeat Band - Backbeat
Stiff Little Fingers – Inflammable Material
Black Crowes & Jimmy Page – Live At The Greek (2000)
Andrew Hill – Change
Matt Walker & Ashley Davis – S/T (2005)
Dave Graney – You Wanna Be There But... (2004)
Big Star – Best Of Big Star
Black Sabbath – Master Of Reality
Black Sabbath – Paranoid
Amigos de Maria – Rock (1968)
The Saints – Howling (1996)
Canned Heat – Live At Topanga Coral (1970)
Morrissey – You Are The Quarry
Derek Bailey – Guitar, Drums and Bass
Link Wray – Great Guitar Hits (1972)
Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin – 2
Led Zeppelin – 3
Led Zeppelin – 4
Led Zeppelin – Houses Of The Holy
Led Zeppelin – Physical Graffiti
Led Zeppelin – Presence
Led Zeppelin – In Through The Out Door
Led Zeppelin – Coda
Meat Puppets – Meat Puppets II
Uriah Heep – Salisbury
Buffy Sainte-Marie – Little Wheel Spin And Spin (1966)
The Chameleons – Script of The Bridge
Dirty Blues Band – Dirty Blues Band (1968)
Edgar Broughton Band – Wasa Wasa (1969)
Edgar Broughton Band – Sing Brother Sing (1970)
Edgar Broughton Band – Edgar Broughton Band (1971)
Pearl Jam – Backspacer (2009)
Durutti Column – The Return Of The Durutti Colum (1979)
Broadcast – Work And Non-Work (1997)
The Primevals - Dig
Dennis Wilson – Pacific Ocean Blue
Durutti Column – LC
Steve Wynn – What I Did After My Band Broke Up (2004)
The Pink Fairies – Never Never Land (1971)
The Doors – The Doors (1967)
The Doors – Strange Days (1967)
The Doors – Waiting For The Sun (1968)
The Doors – The Soft Parade (1969)
The Doors – Morrisson Hotel (1970)
The Doors – LA Woman (1971)
The Grateful Dead – Birth Of The Dead
The Grateful Dead – The Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead – Anthem of The Sun
The Streets – Original Pirate Material (2002)
The Streets – A Grand Don’t Come For Free (2004)
The Streets – The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living (2006)
The Streets – Everything Is Borrowed (2008)
The Streets – Computers And Blues (2011)
Lee Morgan – City Lights (1956)
Lee Morgan – The Cooker (1956)
The Chameleons – What Does Anything Mean Basically? (1985)
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Creedence Clearwater Revival (1968)
Creedence Clearwater Revival – Bayou Country (1969)
Creedence Clearwater Revival – Green River (1969)
Creedence Clearwater Revival – Willy & The Poor Boys (1969)
Creedence Clearwater Revival – Cosmo’s Factory (1970)
Creedence Clearwater Revival – Pendulum (1970)
Ultravox! – Ultravox! (1976)
Ultravox – Systems of Romance (1978)
Stud – Stud
Catherine Ribeiro & Alpes - s/t
Catherine Ribeiro – Ame Debout
Robin Williamson – Myrrh
Miranda Lambert – Kerosene
Laura Cannell – Quick Sparrows Over The Black Earth
Wendy Saddington & Copperwine – Live (1971)
Hula Hula – s/t (2013)
James Griffin – Just Like Yesterday
David Kilgour & The Heavy Eights – Left By Soft
Patti Smith Group – Horses (1975)
Bliss – Return To Bliss (1969)
Scott Morgan’s Hydromatics - Powerglide
Scott Morgan’s Powertrane – Ann Arbor Revival Meeting (2002)
The Solution – Communicate
Scott Morgan – Medium Rare 1970-2000
Jake Holmes – Letter To Katherine December
Sonic’s Rendezvous Band – Detroit
The Fall – ReMit (2013)
The Fall- The Remainderer (2013)
The Fall – Ersatz Gb (2011)
V/A Virgin Front Line Presents Roots (2014)
V/A Trojan Presents Dub (2011)
V/A Trojan Foundation Dub (2010)
V/A Virgin front Line Presents Dub (2014)
V/A Island Presents Dub (2014)
Lee Perry – Disco Devil
Death – Death III (1976-80)
Nervous Norvus – Stone Age Woo
Khmer Rouge – New York/London 1981-86
Jean Michel Jarre – Oxygene (1976)
Downsiders – All My Friends Are Fish
John Coltrane – Crescent
Cowboy Junkies – Trinity Session
Bert Jansch – Bert Jansch
Suzanne Vega – Suzanne Vega
10 00 Maniacs – In My Tribe
Mark Kozelek – Sings Christmas Carols
Miles Davis – Carnegie Hall
Joe Henderson – Page One
Dexter Gordon – Doin’ Alright
Geoff Wayne – War Of The Worlds
Nancy Wilson and Cannonball Adderly –s/t
Stewart Lee
2016-01-19T16:22:48+00:00
LIVE DATES ROOM WITH A STEW Series 4 of SLCV is recorded now. I am still touring the material. January 2016 Tuesday 19th - 7.30pm - A ROOM WITH A STEW - PLYMOUTH - Theatre Royal, 01752 267222, - TICKETS Wednesday 20th - 7.30pm - A ROOM WITH A STEW - TRURO - Hall For Cornwall, 01872 262466 - TICKETS Sunday 24th - 7.30pm - A ROOM WITH A STEW - NOTTINGHAM - Playhouse, 0115 941 9419 - SOLD OUT Monday 25th - 8pm - A ROOM WITH A STEW - WREXHAM - William Aston Hall, 0844 888 9991 - TICKETS Wednesday 27th - 7.30pm - A ROOM WITH A STEW - BRIGHTON - Brighton Dome, 01273 709709 - TICKETS Friday 29th - 8pm - A ROOM WITH A STEW - SOUTHEND ON SEA - Palace Theatre, 01702 351135 - SOLD OUT Sunday 31st - 7.30pm - A ROOM WITH A STEW - WOLVERHAMPTON - Grand Theatre, 01902 429212 - TICKETS February 2016 Tuesday 2nd - 8pm - A ROOM WITH A STEW - CAMBRIDGE - Corn Exchange, 01223 357851 - TICKETS Thursday 4th - 8pm - A ROOM WITH A STEW - BOURNEMOUTH - Pavillion, 0844 576 3000 - TICKETS Friday 5th - 8pm - A ROOM WITH A STEW - TUNBRIDGE WELLS - Assembly Hall Theatre, 01892 530613 - TICKETS Tuesday 9th - 8pm - A ROOM WITH A STEW - COVENTRY - Warwick Arts Centre, 024 7652 4524 - TICKETS Wednesday 10th - 7.30pm - A ROOM WITH A STEW - LEEDS - West Yorkshire Playhouse, 0113 213 7700 - SOLD OUT Thursday 11th - 7.30pm - A ROOM WITH A STEW - LEEDS - West Yorkshire Playhouse, 0113 213 7700 - SOLD OUT Saturday 20th - 8pm - A ROOM WITH A STEW, Festival Theatre, Chichester...
'But, right, the thing about Riot Grrl is that, like, they didn’t know what it was at the time. It was proto-Riot Grrrl. It’s, like, punk for women, like, proto-punk.'
There’s a guy behind me in the queue for the chip shop. He must be about 20, long hair, kind-of posh sounding. He beat-boxes under his breath, and he’s mansplaining Riot Grrl to his girlfriend. Badly. At one point he refers to her mates as 'norms' because they go clubbing. I fucking hate him. To be honest I fucking hate both of them, privileged art-student types talking about why the Rocky Horror Picture Show is too mainstream to be a cult film, and whether The Raincoats are a punk band or not. I hate them. I want to punch the boy one in the face. And because I’m pretty sure he is exactly what I was like 15 years ago, only less well spoken, I hate myself as well. I hate myself for being so judgey, and for having such an instinctive chip on my shoulder about privilege, for the fact I’m pretty sure I was that kid once. I hate myself now, I hate the version of myself then, and I fucking hate this kid behind me. I’m in a 40-minute queue for a chip shop, and I hate that too. It’s one of only two places to buy hot food on site, and it’s not even a real chip shop, the chips are frozen, the sausages and chicken legs in the heated counter are shrivelled and burnt. They ran out of fish hours ago. I hate this. And because I’m aware how much of a snob that makes me, I hate myself for hating it.
And that is the pervading mood of Stewart Lee’s ATP. It’s not just me. This is a mardy-arse event, everyone seems grumpy. It’s awkwardly male, astonishingly stroppy. And, well, that’s kind of perfect, isn’t it? Lee is a grumpy man, at least on stage (he’s very affable if you catch him off-stage), he’s booked a lot of other grumpy men: The Fall,, Sleaford Mods, and 13th Floor Elevators frontman Roky Erikson. Famously grumpy men Ted Chippington and John Cale haven’t even turned up. That’s how grumpy they are.
People are bitching a lot - about the facilities, about the scheduling changes, the cancellations, the poor organisation, the 'slippery cunt' who runs the ATP brand (I hear this constantly, especially when I talk to bands) the fact that it’s virtually impossible to get into any of the decent comedy events because the rooms are so small. Anything really. Just to have a moan. It’s like everyone is taking part in some sort of gigantic performance art piece. Which, when you think about it, is actually a very Stewart Lee idea. I start to suspect he’s done it on purpose.
It’s a theory born out by the setting - Pontins Prestatyn is bloody awful. None of the bars take cards but the only two cash machines on site are constantly out of order. There’s chips with everything, but they’re not very nice. By Sunday morning there’s no bog roll in any of the gents loos, which is a cruel trick to play on people sharing chalets. Speaking of chalets, you may have paid for the room, but it turns out you’ve not paid for the electricity - that has to be bought separately. The more of this you encounter the funnier it gets. This is a dour, indie version of Hi-De-Hi!, with Paul Shane replaced by Mark E Smith, and Su Pollard played by Josie Long.
I spent my childhood summers going to places like this; cheaper than Butlins, one up from going camping, and I remember always loving it. So what’s wrong with me? When did I become such a wanker? When did I start missing craft ales and decent coffee? When did I start caring that the girl in Java Cafe made my latte with scorching hot milk, burning the coffee and making it undrinkable? WHY DO I CARE? I start to add another layer of self loathing into the cycle of mardy-bum whingeing. I am a wanker. Stewart Lee has made feel like a wanker. Fuck. That is actually genius.
All the petulant misery, all the moaning, all the self-loathing - it’s perfect. It’s the best possible way to frame the astonishingly good set of bands Lee, and whichever 'slippery cunt' books these things, has put together. When you see The Fall burning faces off and baffling with equal measure, with Mark E Smith opening the show by telling someone in the wings to “get fucked”, it makes sense. When you see Datblygu ranting in Welsh it means every bit as much as Sleaford Mods’ ranting in English, despite not understanding a word, and The Raincoats' grudging acceptance of the disappointment and tedium of the female experience actually works better in this environment than the focussed anger of the bands they inspired.
If the atmosphere of navel gazing petulance frames the grumpy contingent, it makes the detonations of real joy that pepper the weekend feel five times as exhilarating. It’s why the quietly angry, but always exuberant Josie Long is as sensible a piece of scheduling as The Fall. It’s why Blue Aeroplanes’ funky-dancing proper-indie, and Trash Kit’s sulky, twitchy, post-punk feel so irresistible. Why Shonen Knife were very nearly the best thing at the whole weekend. It’s why Charlotte Church completely owned Saturday night.
Charlotte Church deserves her own paragraph here. Fuck, she deserves her own article. I could write a novel about that performance. No-one is quite sure what to expect from this, she’s billed as ‘Charlotte Church’s Late Night Pop Dungeon’, and the general expectation is a DJ set of pop bangers, and a nice come down from a full day of creased brows and self-loathing. It isn’t a DJ set. It’s so much better. She’s put together a faultless band and learned a set of idiosyncratic covers, opening with the flashback music from Twin Peaks (she can still sing classical!) before - WHAT THE FUCK - doing Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Closer’, Bowie’s ‘Girl Loves Me’, Sugababes’ ‘Overload’, En Vogue, Basement Jaxx, Neutral Milk Hotel, Super Furry Animals… it goes on, and it is amazing. We’d spent two days being unceasingly annoyed: the glitter-bomb release was orgasmic.
You can pick a ton of holes in this ATP weekend (and everyone did), but when you step outside of the experience, when you appreciate it as a whole, when you remember Dutch Anarcho-punks The Ex’s astonishing saturday-night face-melter, or the irrepressible joy of Shonen Knife on Friday, or The Bell Rays' force-of-nature rock n’ soul party, it’s a hard misery-guts that doesn’t admit to an exhilarating time.
I don’t think Stewart Lee planned to aggravate his guests to the extent they’d force themselves into their own situationist art prank. I’d like to believe he did, but it’s unlikely. Instead the melting pot of farce, coincidence, anger and joy created that all by itself. A perfect storm. A unique alchemical reaction. We loved, we hated and, fucking hell, we moaned, but we also partied and came away richer for it. Well played, ATP. Well played.
Photo by Callum Barton
Stewart Lee
2016-04-18T12:38:33+01:00
'But, right, the thing about Riot Grrl is that, like, they didn’t know what it was at the time. It was proto-Riot Grrrl. It’s, like, punk for women, like, proto-punk.' There’s a guy behind me in the queue for the chip shop. He must be about 20, long hair, kind-of posh sounding. He beat-boxes under his breath, and he’s mansplaining Riot Grrl to his girlfriend. Badly. At one point he refers to her mates as 'norms' because they go clubbing. I fucking hate him. To be honest I fucking hate both of them, privileged art-student types talking about why the Rocky Horror Picture Show is too mainstream to be a cult film, and whether The Raincoats are a punk band or not. I hate them. I want to punch the boy one in the face. And because I’m pretty sure he is exactly what I was like 15 years ago, only less well spoken, I hate myself as well. I hate myself for being so judgey, and for having such an instinctive chip on my shoulder about privilege, for the fact I’m pretty sure I was that kid once. I hate myself now, I hate the version of myself then, and I fucking hate this kid behind me. I’m in a 40-minute queue for a chip shop, and I hate that too. It’s one of only two places to buy hot food on site, and it’s not even a real chip shop, the chips are frozen, the sausages and chicken legs in the heated counter are shrivelled and burnt. They ran out of fish hours ago. I hate this. And because I’m aware how much of a snob that makes me, I hate myself for hating it. And that is the pervading mood of Stewart Lee’s ATP. It’s not just...
Hmmm... writing about stand-up comedy when you're not a stand-up comedian is tricky... Like writing about sausage production when you aren't involved in the production of sausages - what you end up with is a piece that probably puts you off the product whatever you say.
Lee is a comedian who frequently requires perseverance (a bit like that above meaningless metaphor). As he suggests in his own show, staring balefully down the lens of the camera 'I imagine watching this at home you'd find this terribly tedious'. The argument against this style of comedy is that comedy is frequently perceived as a form of escapism rather than as an art-form in itself. But that's the argument that justifies switching television channels from Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy to The A-Team: the latter is more instantly accessible - but the former will last forever as a significant cultural moment.
Similarly, sticking with Lee (if you can find him late at night on BBC2), and
learning to find his nuanced comedy funny is a worthwhile and rewarding exercise.
Stewart Lee is a difficult comedian to like, and when you do like him - he's a difficult comedian to persuade other people to like.
The problem is there are the bare minimum of traditional jokes - no catchphrases and almost no enclosed, defined moments of humour. His routines rely on his spending time building a rapport with the audience - then challenging that rapport thereby daring the audience to stay with him. All of this is blended with a self-mockery. Lee, in the best style of a preacher, approaches his craft with a theme. He describes the theme at the beginning of his set, unpacks the theme during the set, and then explains how the theme has worked - and somehow he manages to do all this comedically. In his fabled comeback set, '90s Comedian, this technique was an essential one. In the midst of being accused of blasphemy and receiving hate mail from right wing Christians for his work on Jerry Springer: The Opera, Lee decided to devote the second half of his show to a single, visceral anecdote that combined alcohol induced emesis with an encounter with Christ. The first half of his show involved his attempts to prepare the audience in time for the second half. Somehow, he gets away with it.
His television series, Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle is a condensed and truncated version of his live shows. Each episode follows a similar format - he opens his routine with a more traditional set of stand-up anecdotes, follows this with a more abstract piece illustrating the first half in which he 'acts' as a character or characters in conversation. These two halves are punctuated by filmed inserts showing him in interview with producer Armando Iannucci who, in the role of a BBC executive, criticises Lee's lack of jokes and idiosyncratic approach to comedy. The episodes all end with an elaborately filmed piece drawing the themes of the set together - the first episode, for example, depicted Lee dressed as Godzilla defending a model city from a giant lobster, while the second depicted Lee besieging an isolated house dressed as a pearly king/biker arms with a shotgun.
It's almost impossible to relay Lee's comedy after the event - his style is such that repeating his lines or trying to re-enact his anecdotes are guaranteed to not be funny. Lee's comedy relies so much on both seeing the whole routine and on his tone, the silences between the lines, even his posture. Disconcertingly, it's difficult to relay Lee's comedy even when talking to someone who has seen a whole episode. Watching Lee is an hilarious ordeal. When you get him it makes it much easier to stick with him - but if you fail to make that first step then you're lost. But Lee helps you along the path to finding him funny. His sets are designed carefully to guide you (or manipulate you depending on your cynicism) towards the laughs. I know this because his book, effectively a transcription of his three most notable routines with footnotes, describes the skills and techniques Lee employs to hold the audience.
Of course - it would be useless if, to understand Lee's comedy, you needed to read his book in advance. Fortunately, like his book, his routines come with footnotes. The filmed inserts in the television episodes are part of this trick - they undercut the frequently contentious, apparently arrogant content of the main stand-up by mocking both Lee personally and his style. These moments act as points of reference, driving the theme of the set home, but also as breathing spaces, allowing the audience to take stock before Lee proceeds towards more contentious material. This is the key to Lee's style - he refuses to compromise but also refuses to leave the audience behind. Those he loses are almost collateral damage, grudgingly sacrificed in the knowledge that if they fail to find Lee funny in half an hour, they probably won't be able to persevere for an hour or more of his live show. As such, Lee hones his audience . He suggests in his book, mockingly but not without reason, he has carefully selected his audience - and it is clear even in the limited time-spans of these television episodes how he manages to do this.
So - love him or loathe him, or love him and loathe him (it is possible), you need to understand Lee's place in the hierarchy of current stand-up comedy. He stands apart from recent, stadium behemoths such as Michael McIntyre, Russell Brand and Frankie Boyle partially by being less popular - but this position allows him the freedom to mock his fellow comedians 'from below' - and his moments of self-reflexivity allows him to do so without appearing genuinely jealous or bitter. In this way, he is, perhaps, the most ethical of comedians.
Stewart Lee
2011-05-16T22:09:27+01:00
Hmmm... writing about stand-up comedy when you're not a stand-up comedian is tricky... Like writing about sausage production when you aren't involved in the production of sausages - what you end up with is a piece that probably puts you off the product whatever you say. Lee is a comedian who frequently requires perseverance (a bit like that above meaningless metaphor). As he suggests in his own show, staring balefully down the lens of the camera 'I imagine watching this at home you'd find this terribly tedious'. The argument against this style of comedy is that comedy is frequently perceived as a form of escapism rather than as an art-form in itself. But that's the argument that justifies switching television channels from Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy to The A-Team: the latter is more instantly accessible - but the former will last forever as a significant cultural moment. Similarly, sticking with Lee (if you can find him late at night on BBC2), and learning to find his nuanced comedy funny is a worthwhile and rewarding exercise. Stewart Lee is a difficult comedian to like, and when you do like him - he's a difficult comedian to persuade other people to like. The problem is there are the bare minimum of traditional jokes - no catchphrases and almost no enclosed, defined moments of humour. His routines rely on his spending time building a rapport with the audience - then challenging that rapport thereby daring the audience to stay with him. All of this is blended with a self-mockery. Lee, in the best style of a preacher, approaches his craft with a theme. He describes the theme at the beginning of his set, unpacks the theme during the set, and then explains how the theme has worked - and somehow he manages to do all...
The guitarist Lee Ranaldo's songs were among the New York art rockers Sonic Youth's most beautiful, his extended tonal workouts mixing Deadhead riffing with minimalist repetition, unencumbered by the ironic fascinations with kitsch pop culture that dates his colleagues' work.
Ranaldo's extracurricular activities usually display solid downtown experimental sensibilities, but this solo album offers grown-up alterno-rock writ large.
Xtina As I Knew Her is seventies Neil Young lost in Eighties No Wave New York, a Crazy Horse' vamp stained with darkly psychedelic post punk droplets, a school run soundtrack for former plaid-shirted grungers not yet ready to let go.
Stewart Lee
2012-03-18T21:21:01+00:00
The guitarist Lee Ranaldo's songs were among the New York art rockers Sonic Youth's most beautiful, his extended tonal workouts mixing Deadhead riffing with minimalist repetition, unencumbered by the ironic fascinations with kitsch pop culture that dates his colleagues' work. Ranaldo's extracurricular activities usually display solid downtown experimental sensibilities, but this solo album offers grown-up alterno-rock writ large. Xtina As I Knew Her is seventies Neil Young lost in Eighties No Wave New York, a Crazy Horse' vamp stained with darkly psychedelic post punk droplets, a school run soundtrack for former plaid-shirted grungers not yet ready to let go.
If someone invited you to a two- hour stand-up routine by an ultra post-modern comedian, so sophisticated that he satirises himself, his audience and all the big names on the circuit, you might pass and ask to see a panto instead.
But Stewart Lee's humour is the opposite of pretentious. Sure, his new show, Carpet Remnant World (I'll come to the title later), is clever, and riddled with oblique references - you're expected to know about Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls, and see the absurdity in the Vatican changing its doctrine on Purgatory. But he isn't showing off - he just assumes you're on his intellectual level. And if you're not, he doesn't want you there anyway. As he keeps saying to any Jimmy Carr fans in the audience: "It's not for you," adding, for his loyal fans, "It'll soon be back to just us."
At the same time he is mock-baffled that the BBC hasn't commissioned him for a third series - it hasn't had time to make a decision. "They're too busy commissioning 200 episodes of Russell Howard and writing Rob Brydon a blank cheque."
In his deadpan, "passive aggressive", middle-aged and bitter way, Lee brilliantly deconstructs and savages other comedians' techniques, so when a joke's not going very well, he says, you slip in a reference to rectal bleeding. Or just add a bit, and then a bit more, and eventually you get a laugh. "In the trade we call it Boyle's law."
If his Michael McIntyre prancing is funny, then his riff on what he calls "observational comedy" is funnier still, as in those comedians who endlessly say, "have you noticed the way ...?". As he puts it: "You can't just go on stage and ask a load of questions without a punchline. Can you?" Of course, the twist is that he is indulging in "observational comedy" about comedy itself.
This sort of meta-comedy, if it can be called that, is the seam running through the show. Take his self-deprecation. He says he's got no material because his life consists of watching Scooby-Doo with his son, and driving round the North Circular. In the hands of another comedian, being told they've got no jokes would be annoying. It's been done before. But Lee pushes it further. Towards the end of the first half, he starts looking at the prompts scrawled on his hand. He does it so subtly, just as you would if you actually had forgotten your script, that for a moment I thought, yeah, actually, you are rubbish. But as the first half fizzles and you realise the fizzling is the joke, the laugh is on you for falling for it.
It's not all so convoluted - there are one-liners too. Such as: "My wife wants me to have a vasectomy." Sigh. "Hardly any point." And there are meta-one-liners, such as: "That was a joke ... They do stick out." Then there are moments of sheer silliness, like the Scooby-Doo riff. Having watched the same cartoon 180 times, it's his only frame of reference. So when he goes into observational comedy mode, the question he keeps asking is: "You know those jungle canyon rope bridges, right, you know, the ones that are always broken ...?"
And what of the show's title? It refers to the carpet remnant store he finds himself going into, on one of his lonely motorway drives. But its true significance comes clear only at the end. Suddenly, a show that you thought was just a meandering two hours of deadpan half-baked material-free nonsense - as he keeps telling you it is - comes together, tight as a ball of string. At the beginning, he tells you what will happen one minute from the end, to "create an illusion of structure". Except it's not an illusion at all - it's just brilliantly post-modern.
Stewart Lee
2011-11-27T13:12:29+00:00
If someone invited you to a two- hour stand-up routine by an ultra post-modern comedian, so sophisticated that he satirises himself, his audience and all the big names on the circuit, you might pass and ask to see a panto instead. But Stewart Lee's humour is the opposite of pretentious. Sure, his new show, Carpet Remnant World (I'll come to the title later), is clever, and riddled with oblique references - you're expected to know about Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls, and see the absurdity in the Vatican changing its doctrine on Purgatory. But he isn't showing off - he just assumes you're on his intellectual level. And if you're not, he doesn't want you there anyway. As he keeps saying to any Jimmy Carr fans in the audience: "It's not for you," adding, for his loyal fans, "It'll soon be back to just us." At the same time he is mock-baffled that the BBC hasn't commissioned him for a third series - it hasn't had time to make a decision. "They're too busy commissioning 200 episodes of Russell Howard and writing Rob Brydon a blank cheque." In his deadpan, "passive aggressive", middle-aged and bitter way, Lee brilliantly deconstructs and savages other comedians' techniques, so when a joke's not going very well, he says, you slip in a reference to rectal bleeding. Or just add a bit, and then a bit more, and eventually you get a laugh. "In the trade we call it Boyle's law." If his Michael McIntyre prancing is funny, then his riff on what he calls "observational comedy" is funnier still, as in those comedians who endlessly say, "have you noticed the way ...?". As he puts it: "You can't just go on stage and ask a load of questions without a punchline. Can you?" Of course,...
Here's eight real-time improvisations by Charlotte Hug, bowing, plucking, and scraping the viola, with studiedly inchoate vocal accompaniment. A Romantic whiff surrounds the affair, suggested in part by sleeve shots of the black frock coated musician, poised to perform, against abstract arty scribbles.
Like Caspar David Friedrich's mountaintop wanderer, facing into a sea of fog, Hug charts a forward progress into a chaotic weather system of layered keening sounds and sporadic scrambles, voice eventually indecipherable from viola, identity subsumed into art.
Stewart Lee
2011-10-23T20:20:53+01:00
Here's eight real-time improvisations by Charlotte Hug, bowing, plucking, and scraping the viola, with studiedly inchoate vocal accompaniment. A Romantic whiff surrounds the affair, suggested in part by sleeve shots of the black frock coated musician, poised to perform, against abstract arty scribbles. Like Caspar David Friedrich's mountaintop wanderer, facing into a sea of fog, Hug charts a forward progress into a chaotic weather system of layered keening sounds and sporadic scrambles, voice eventually indecipherable from viola, identity subsumed into art.
It's 18 years since Stewart Lee and Richard Herring first played the Edinburgh festival, though you wouldn't guess it to look at them. They're no spring chickens - Lee is 37, Herring 38 - but they haven't got the glazed nervousness of many festival veterans, or so many booze-broken veins. With just hours to go until their solo shows, Lee looks alert but relaxed, if perhaps a tad constipated; the only word to describe Herring is sleek. With their sunglasses and their black zip-up tops, you might take them for the kind of modern rock stars who prefer herbal tea to cocaine.
That might be appropriate, given that when Lee and Herring were on their way up, comedy was being described as the new rock'n'roll. But if ever they shared that view, they were disabused of it at the end of the 1990s. After two successful TV series, Fist of Fun and This Morning With Richard Not Judy, they had the plug pulled on them by the BBC. "We got treated so badly," says Herring. "It got cut off just as it was getting somewhere interesting." As performers, they have never again been so famous, though Lee's involvement with the "blasphemous" Jerry Springer - the Opera has earned him a certain notoriety.
The woman they blame for all this is Jane Root, then controller of BBC2. "It was really frustrating in as much as the shows got really good reviews," says Lee. "It was just the person taking over who didn't like them." The corporation justified its decision on the basis of poor audience figures, leading the comedians to claim that the scheduling was so erratic even they didn't always know when their programme was going out. Does it still rankle? You bet.
But in a funny way, they also have reason to be grateful to Root. If she had commissioned a third series, they might have ended up crushed under the kind of fame now visited upon Little Britain's Matt Lucas and David Walliams. "I don't think either of us would have enjoyed that level of notoriety," says Herring, wincing at the thought of punters yelling out "Moon on a stick!" a la "Yeah but no but ... " "I think Stewart would probably have killed himself."
"It was probably a narrow escape," Lee agrees. "I really didn't like it when we were D-list celebrities and people shouted things at us in the street." Still, he wouldn't mind a little more material success. He describes how his friend Walliams cruised past him in a sports car full of blonde models, all waving and laughing. "That really cheered me up," he says gloomily.
But that's not what it's all about. As comedians who started out in the alternative 1980s (they met while studying at Oxford university), Lee and Herring retain that era's contempt for the sell-out. "There's nothing we've done that we're embarrassed about," says Lee. "I think if we'd started doing lots of adverts or presenting the National Lottery people would have been disappointed."
Who did take the money and run? Ben Elton, Herring says without a second's hesitation. Younger readers may know Elton as a novelist and the man behind the rock musicals We Will Rock You and Tonight's the Night, but he was once seen as a radical comedian, a shiny-suited challenge to Thatcherite values. They're keen to see how he handles his return to stand-up later this year.
"The most interesting thing about Elton in the last five years," says Lee, "is the way that he's become a despised figure. You know you have to give titles to your stand-up shows; if I was Ben Elton I'd call it Fascinating Betrayal and try and justify my position. Instead, I expect he's going to dismiss that and then talk about fatherhood, or try and regain a bit of ground. It'll be like the elephant in the living room: you can't discuss Ben Elton's massive boil of hypocrisy that needs to be lanced."
It has been a bumpy ride since This Morning With Richard Not Judy. Herring made good money writing for Al Murray's TV series Time Gentlemen Please, and produced a book, Talking Cock, inspired by his own live show about penises. Lee directed a pilot or two for TV, and Simon Munnery's BBC2 series Attention Scum!, which was nominated for a Golden Rose of Montreux award. There was no shortage of work, though usually as individuals rather than as a double act. But things had a way of turning sour. Herring felt let down by the way Talking Cock was marketed. Lee had a flashback as Jane Root (her again) cancelled Attention Scum!
Herring kept faith with Edinburgh, but last year's show, The Twelve Tasks of Hercules Terrace, "was all about getting depressed and wondering where your life's going". Lee, meanwhile, welcomed the new millennium by giving up stand-up entirely. The audiences for his live shows had begun shrinking almost as soon as he disappeared from TV. "I just started to feel I was drifting above the stand-up, not really involved, so I quit and just wrote for newspapers and lived off what I'd saved."
Then he got diverted by Jerry Springer - the Opera, the show that he co-wrote with the comedian and musician Richard Thomas. A cult hit at London's BAC, containing a reported 8,000 obscenities, it became a succès de scandale after being picked up by the National Theatre, transferring to the West End and finally being broadcast by BBC2. Only last year did Lee find both the time and the inclination to return to live comedy.
He wasn't overawed by the thought of working with the National. As the director of Jerry Springer, he was asked how he would scale up a production that had been created for the far smaller BAC - and said that he would hire bigger actors. But as someone who has spent much of his life defending a "low" artform from "highbrow" critics, Lee felt vindicated by his opera's success. One critic, he recalls, talked of a fringe sensibility jumping into the mainstream. "Now, whenever that happens, these things tend to work. When the BBC finally had the confidence to put Harry Enfield on BBC1, it got 8m viewers. Likewise Absolutely Fabulous."
Even comedians underestimate their audiences, Herring points out. "I have two sets, and I'll sometimes go into the easy cock-joke set if I think there's no point in trying, but the majority of people really want something clever and interesting and different - on TV and elsewhere. Most people are really up for it."
"Most", of course, is not "all". The BBC's decision to broadcast Jerry Springer - the Opera provoked a protest campaign spearheaded by the pressure group Christian Voice. More than 60,000 complaints were received, and death threats were made to BBC executives.
Given Lee's disdain for established religion, you might have expected him to relish the controversy. Not a bit of it. "We never tried to cause offence," he maintains. "He was very upset by it," agrees Herring, himself a confirmed Christian-baiter. "But I'm amazed he wasn't delighted. Just think - to have the most complained-about TV show ever!" He savours the irony of the BBC, which had spurned the duo six years before, getting payback in this roundabout way. "I think that's just a fantastic turnout."
After radio shows, TV, books, and highly structured live shows, this year they're both back to comedy at its simplest - two entertainers trying to make people laugh. If they ever did want to be superstars, that's no longer the case. "My ultimate ambition is to carry on working until I die," says Herring, "and being massively successful can actually stop you doing good stuff."
"I remember being here in 1987," Lee says, "and seeing Arthur Smith, Jerry Sadowitz and Malcolm Hardee, and thinking, 'That looks like a really good life - to be able to keep coming back to Edinburgh, doing increasingly strange but sustainable things.' You start off thinking you'd like to be Ben Elton, then you look at what happened to him and you think, 'That'd be awful.' Being Arthur Smith - that'd be fantastic." Looking back at it, he says, "The 1990s were kind of a write-off. First comedy was the new rock'n'roll. Then there was lad thing. Then you had the increasing dominance of commercial chains like Jongleurs. If you look at the circuit now, there's a lot of little weirdos scrabbling around, setting up their own little places. It's a lot more like the circuit that we caught the tail-end of in the 1980s."
There are lots of exciting young people, too. They "sort of like" Lee and Herring. Not that they're ready to relax yet. "Nearly always in Edinburgh there's at least a day or two when you feel like throwing yourself off a bridge," Herring says. "And there are lots of bridges here," Lee points out.
· Stewart Lee is at the Smirnoff Underbelly, Edinburgh (0870 745 3083) until August 28. How To Write an Opera about Jerry Springer, featuring Stewart Lee and Richard Thomas, is at the Assembly Rooms (0131-226 2428) on August 16 and 17. Richard Herring is at the Pleasance Courtyard (0131-556 6550) until August 29.
Stewart Lee
2005-08-08T00:20:40+01:00
It's 18 years since Stewart Lee and Richard Herring first played the Edinburgh festival, though you wouldn't guess it to look at them. They're no spring chickens - Lee is 37, Herring 38 - but they haven't got the glazed nervousness of many festival veterans, or so many booze-broken veins. With just hours to go until their solo shows, Lee looks alert but relaxed, if perhaps a tad constipated; the only word to describe Herring is sleek. With their sunglasses and their black zip-up tops, you might take them for the kind of modern rock stars who prefer herbal tea to cocaine. That might be appropriate, given that when Lee and Herring were on their way up, comedy was being described as the new rock'n'roll. But if ever they shared that view, they were disabused of it at the end of the 1990s. After two successful TV series, Fist of Fun and This Morning With Richard Not Judy, they had the plug pulled on them by the BBC. "We got treated so badly," says Herring. "It got cut off just as it was getting somewhere interesting." As performers, they have never again been so famous, though Lee's involvement with the "blasphemous" Jerry Springer - the Opera has earned him a certain notoriety. The woman they blame for all this is Jane Root, then controller of BBC2. "It was really frustrating in as much as the shows got really good reviews," says Lee. "It was just the person taking over who didn't like them." The corporation justified its decision on the basis of poor audience figures, leading the comedians to claim that the scheduling was so erratic even they didn't always know when their programme was going out. Does it still rankle? You bet. But in a funny way, they also...
The set-up: Stewart Lee is currently Britain's best standup comedian. No poll will ever crown him that, and he has certainly not made the money or the heavy impact of, say, Billy Connolly or Eddie Izzard. But if we are judging this on who causes most laughter, provokes most thought, and does both in new ways, then Lee owns the podium.
His career began brightly in the mid-1990s, when he wrote and performed some excellent work in a double act with Richard Herring. By 2001, however, television had lost interest in him, and he had lost interest in standup, devoting much of his time instead to a new musical called Jerry Springer - The Opera. This became a big success, before almost collapsing under the weight of protest from Christians who had heard about its irreverent portrayal of Christ, and were provisionally offended. Lee was subjected to a hate campaign, which he lost much sleep and money over.
Yet it is strange how often a comic's best work comes out of turmoil and failure. (See also Chris Rock, Ellen DeGeneres and Margaret Cho.
Lee had already returned to standup the previous year, but in this show, for the first time, he addressed what he had gone through. "An insane overreaction to religious censorship" is how he describes his performance in the DVD extras. "Doing it makes me quite miserable a lot of the time, if I do it properly."
Funny, how? The phrase "anti-comedy" has begun to adhere to Lee's work since its renaissance - and the fact that he has a style worth naming tells you a lot - but to my mind the description isn't right. Yes, he leaves punchlines unspoken and deconstructs his own jokes, but so do many comics. Yes, he speaks in a drab, affectless monotone. Yes, he is sarcastic, deadpan, outwardly miserable, obsessed with technique and fourth-wall-breaking - to the extent that this show begins with him telling the audience that he won't pick on them if they go to the toilet, before peering into the camera to explain that we can press pause to do the same. ("And I won't even know that it's happening.")
What is most distinctive about his work, however, is not that it is anti-comedic, but that it is so theatrical. Lee has since analysed this performance in a book, which picks apart the fine decisions behind every laugh, yet it is just as important that he performed it with such dramatic intensity. The long pauses are what Lee commands a room with, the repetitions, the climbing down into the audience, the delivery of some bits with his back turned, the sudden dropping of the microphone and deciding just to shout. There are comedians who risk all kinds of rudeness, but how many dare to take themselves this seriously? The exciting feeling with Lee is that he is completely in control of what he is doing, yet he could do anything - as witnessed by the extraordinary moment where, in the wake of the 7/7 attacks, he gets this audience to applaud the "gentleman bombers" of the IRA.
While later, in a bravura last half-hour, he sneaks up on just about the most extremely blasphemous image that any Christian could imagine - Christ splaying open his own anus for Lee to vomit into, since you ask — before coolly setting out his reasons.
Lee used to like saying that his critical reputation oscillates, roughly, on a five-year cycle. This must be why, six years after I first saw it, I am still deluded into thinking that 90s Comedian is the best standup show I've ever seen.
Comic cousins: Steven Wright, Neil Hamburger, Chris Morris, Tim Vine, Simon Munnery.
Steal this: "In January last year, the Vatican issued an official statement reminding Dan Brown readers that the books are largely fictional and full of historically unverifiable information." [Pause.]
Stewart Lee
2012-09-13T23:21:57+01:00
The set-up: Stewart Lee is currently Britain's best standup comedian. No poll will ever crown him that, and he has certainly not made the money or the heavy impact of, say, Billy Connolly or Eddie Izzard. But if we are judging this on who causes most laughter, provokes most thought, and does both in new ways, then Lee owns the podium. His career began brightly in the mid-1990s, when he wrote and performed some excellent work in a double act with Richard Herring. By 2001, however, television had lost interest in him, and he had lost interest in standup, devoting much of his time instead to a new musical called Jerry Springer - The Opera. This became a big success, before almost collapsing under the weight of protest from Christians who had heard about its irreverent portrayal of Christ, and were provisionally offended. Lee was subjected to a hate campaign, which he lost much sleep and money over. Yet it is strange how often a comic's best work comes out of turmoil and failure. (See also Chris Rock, Ellen DeGeneres and Margaret Cho. Lee had already returned to standup the previous year, but in this show, for the first time, he addressed what he had gone through. "An insane overreaction to religious censorship" is how he describes his performance in the DVD extras. "Doing it makes me quite miserable a lot of the time, if I do it properly." Funny, how? The phrase "anti-comedy" has begun to adhere to Lee's work since its renaissance - and the fact that he has a style worth naming tells you a lot - but to my mind the description isn't right. Yes, he leaves punchlines unspoken and deconstructs his own jokes, but so do many comics. Yes, he speaks in a drab, affectless...
Nicky Morgan believes that children should be taught that the UK is ‘in the main’ a Christian country. Photograph: John Stillwell/PA
On 28 December I performed my annual progress around a Midlands motorway triangle, through sluggish bank holiday traffic, to venerate relatives’ graves. My eight-year-old daughter accompanied me, leavening my loneliness, and I made the dutiful day delightful by insisting we listen to Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds in its entirety. Don’t you wish I was your dad?
We enjoyed impersonating the portentous tones of Richard Burton at appropriately banal points in our pilgrimage; “No one would have believed, in the last days of Christmas 2015, the length of toilet queues at Strensham services. And yet, slowly and surely, the desperate motorists drew towards the lavatories.” The day was like an episode of The Trip, but with two Rob Brydons, both of whom could only do Richard Burton.
Between you and me, I have struggled with what Christmas means this year. I dip into the Christian tradition that is my cultural heritage with a yearly mass. And I enjoy Yule ritual that predates the belief system dominant in these islands this last millennium, recently replaced by television, political correctness gone mad, rampant consumerism, and gays.
But inappropriate weather skews the season. Things should bloom in spring. That’s why the church dumped the resurrection on to the festival of the fertility goddess Ostara, giving converts some rebirth-themed continuity.
Where the Easter Bunny fits remains mysterious, though rabbits’ reproductive capacity makes them, like Olive and George Osmond, folkloric symbols of fecundity. Indeed, in Utah, the Easter Osmond, clad in flares and enormous teeth, flings a boiled egg, smeared with semen, at childless Mormons.
The festival is in flux. Are the obsolete snowflake decorations of today’s un-wintery, wet, warm Christmas now merely a race memory of the days when we had definable seasons, rather than just climatic blandness interrupted by catastrophes?
Approaching the cemetery, I said to my daughter, “I do not believe in an afterlife, so why am I putting flowers on graves?” “It makes you feel nice,” she said, “and it is nice to remember people.” She was right, and rational, but, crucially, she was also humane and sensitive. I tidied up the headstones and placed pot plants. “My life will be forever autumn, now you’re not here,” I sang, an atheist at Christmas, enacting ancestor worship, in lieu of a lamb to love.
My children’s mother is Catholic. We tolerate each other’s views with diligent determination, bending magnanimously in the face of educational or cultural obstacles. The children have friends of all faiths and none. I hope they will learn about religions, and non-religious beliefs, in enough detail to allow us all to reference them confidently. And I’d like standup comedy audiences of young people to be well versed enough to appreciate my clever jokes about consubstantiation and Islamic taboos, instead of just staring in fear.
The Christmas assemblies I attended this year were, given that the children of parents professing Christian beliefs were a minority, understandable compromises of utilitarian poesy, recalling the Wookiees’ Life Day celebrations, in the suppressed 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special. (This remains the most thematically coherent of the original’s seven sequels, The Force Awakens lacking both Bea Arthur doing a recipe, and a miniaturised Jefferson Starship.)
I want my kids to appreciate the stories informing Milton and Blake, and The Life of Brian and Lenny Bruce, without being told they must believe them. And I think that a diverse religious education could dilute extremism. A child sees that a multiplicity of faiths must mean none can be absolutely true and that, irrespective of whether a God exists, these supposedly revealed truths, in all their manifestations, evidence our desire to dramatise experience.
And so I welcomed the November high court judgment, by Mr Justice Warby, that the religious studies GCSE should reflect multiple beliefs and non-beliefs. And, despite being a card-carrying secularist, I have been diligently reading the children The Pop-up Book of the Nativity every night over Christmas as part of their liberal education, to the particular irritation of my 28-year-old son.
War of the Worlds finished (“Can anybody hear me? Come in. Come in.”). Radio 4’s Beyond Belief began. It was. The panellists discussed the afterlife. Shaunaka Rishi Das, a Hindu, believed, like George Lucas and the Jedi Knights, that the spirit continues to live on as energy after the body has died.
Dr Shuruq Naguib, Lancaster University Islamic studies lecturer, accepted an afterlife because doing so is one of the pillars of Islam and she is a Muslim and so therefore she believed in it, a circuitous position I imagined unlikely to make for enlightening listening.
And the writer and broadcaster Peter Stanford, the thinking person’s Catholic content provider, said he embraced the afterlife, but with the considered professional caution that plays well with the target demographic.
All believed in life after death. And so, for a moment, did I, as listening to this show in a traffic jam on the M40 was my idea of hell. “There should be a scientist there,” said my eight-year-old, with the wisdom of a child, “to spoil everyone’s fun.”
I thought, “I am going to front a radio discussion on whether the Loch Ness monster is a dinosaur, an alien, or a ghost, without anyone to suggest it probably isn’t anything at all,” but then at the 15-minute mark a doctor was interviewed to provide balance and my prejudice was pricked.
Then the news came on. A small story, secreted suspiciously in the builder’s cleft between Christmas and new year, revealed that education secretary Nicky Morgan had announced the high court findings need have “no impact” on schools’ religious teachings. There was no obligation on schools to cover non-religious views, and students should be told Britain is “in the main Christian”, even though it demonstrably isn’t, and we obviously need to work out what cultural cohesion can replace the binding agent of faith.
A spokesperson, who may have been glossing off-piste, said the minister sought to prevent a “creeping ratchet effect” of humanist attempts to make the curriculum fairer. Always use the word “creeping” if you want to imply evil. You could put the word “creeping” in front of the words “Dame Vera Lynn” and see her become a pariah overnight.
I thought about Nicky Morgan, and I was overcome with a feeling of profound despair that made a dark day darker, as a generation’s chances faded. And I wondered how something so obvious to children could be hidden from the person responsible for their education. “Can anybody hear me? Come in. Come in.”
Stewart Lee
2016-01-03T19:33:01+00:00
Nicky Morgan believes that children should be taught that the UK is ‘in the main’ a Christian country. Photograph: John Stillwell/PA On 28 December I performed my annual progress around a Midlands motorway triangle, through sluggish bank holiday traffic, to venerate relatives’ graves. My eight-year-old daughter accompanied me, leavening my loneliness, and I made the dutiful day delightful by insisting we listen to Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds in its entirety. Don’t you wish I was your dad? We enjoyed impersonating the portentous tones of Richard Burton at appropriately banal points in our pilgrimage; “No one would have believed, in the last days of Christmas 2015, the length of toilet queues at Strensham services. And yet, slowly and surely, the desperate motorists drew towards the lavatories.” The day was like an episode of The Trip, but with two Rob Brydons, both of whom could only do Richard Burton. Between you and me, I have struggled with what Christmas means this year. I dip into the Christian tradition that is my cultural heritage with a yearly mass. And I enjoy Yule ritual that predates the belief system dominant in these islands this last millennium, recently replaced by television, political correctness gone mad, rampant consumerism, and gays. But inappropriate weather skews the season. Things should bloom in spring. That’s why the church dumped the resurrection on to the festival of the fertility goddess Ostara, giving converts some rebirth-themed continuity. Where the Easter Bunny fits remains mysterious, though rabbits’ reproductive capacity makes them, like Olive and George Osmond, folkloric symbols of fecundity. Indeed, in Utah, the Easter Osmond, clad in flares and enormous teeth, flings a boiled egg, smeared with semen, at childless Mormons. The festival is in flux. Are the obsolete snowflake decorations of today’s un-wintery, wet, warm Christmas now merely...
Released to support the care services during the 2020 Coronavirus outbreak, this exclusive Limited Edition CD features new music from a range of international Electronic Music musicians working together in Isolation!
Collated, performed on, engineered and produced by U.K. based EM journalist/musician Mark Jenkins, author of the recently published (and extremely well-received) book: ‘Tangerine Dream: 50 Years’, ‘Isolation’ brings together the talents of musicians from around the world to produce this Limited Edition CD recorded by everyone concerned in “isolation” and giving the Electronic Music scene its opportunity to pay tribute to the NHS in 2020, the year when all our lives were changed is so may ways!
While the global health crisis prevents bands from performing or even from recording together, some of the finest electronic music creators from around the world have collaborated as solo artists to create ‘Isolation’, this unique CD album of new music.
Each artist has added layers to tracks by Internet upload, until each piece was complete and ready for mixing in London.
In this way without meeting one another in person, electronic music artists show that they can still collaborate and remain creative even during these difficult times.
The music covers a whole range of EM styles and features sublimely atmospheric and ethereal pieces, throbbing passages of “Berlin School” style sequencing, dreamy, melodic synth leads, soaring guitar improvisations and ethereal and abstract sound painting - all with some assistance from acoustic instrumentation, plus some vocal work and voice-overs … a bit of everything really, and it all gels together extremely well!
Here is the list of ‘Isolation’ collaborators…
Bernard Szajner (from ZED, France - synthesizers & samples)
Kurt Ader (from S-A-W - Schmoelling - Ader - Waters, Germany – synthesizers)
Dominique Perrier (from SPACE ART, Holland – synthesizers)
Gerald Gradwohl (from TANGERINE DREAM, Austria – guitar)
Santi Pico (from NEURONIUM, Spain – guitar)
Julia Messenger (from Klaus Schulze’s Wahnfried, Australia – voice)
Ernesto Romeo (from KLAUSS, Argentina – synthesizers)
Robert Berry (from the band “3” with Keith Emerson & Carl Palmer, USA – bass)
Bill Fox (from SOUNDSCAPES RADIO, USA – guitar / synthesizers)
Hannah Chappell (from CELLISTICA, UK – cello)
Dave Gate (from LAND OF YRX, UK) - modular synthesizers)
Don Slepian (from SYNARIOS, USA – synthesizers)
Remy Stroomer (from DESERTED ISLAND MUSIC, Holland - synthesizers
Phrozenlight (Holland – synthesizers)
Special guests: Stewart Lee with Luke Lee and Daisy Lee (UK - as THE STOKE NEWINGTON ISOLATION UNIT – guitar / ocarina / dulcimer / water glasses / drums / effects)
Collated and Produced (all tracks) in the UK by: Mark Jenkins (synthesizers / samples / piano / flute / fx)
Kurt Ader uses KaPro samples and the Korg Kronos
Mark Jenkins thanks Arturia and Behringer
My thanks to all these wonderful and talented musicians who have taken part in the ‘Isolation’ project - Mark Jenkins - London 2020
PLEASE GIVE THIS PROJECT YOUR SUPPORT - The large portion of the profits from ‘Isolation’ will be distributed in the most appropriate form amongst sections of the care services involved with the Coronavirus health crisis.
We at CD Services will select for our area of the country, while Mark Jenkins and his contributors will donate to the emergency appeal for help in the Coronavirus crisis by Age UK, and to related organisations in their own countries.
‘Isolation’ is released on 1st June 2020.
V/A: ISOLATION Track List:
01. JENKINS - GRADWOHL - PHROZENLIGHT: Euthymios The Hesichast (5:09)
02. PERRIER - JENKINS: The Logic Of Sacrifice (4:13)
03. JENKINS - BERRY: Citizens of Mechanicsburg (4.38)
04. FOX - SLEPIAN - JENKINS: Rain, Purity, Pestilence (5.36)
05. JENKINS - CHAPPELL - FOX - GATE: I Can Change The Past, And The Future (4.41)
06. JENKINS - PICO: The Scalding Light (4.41)
07. ROMEO - STROOMER - GATE: I’m Taking Back Those Eyes You Stole From Me (4.55)
08. SZAJNER - JENKINS: Isolated With Ghosts (5.44)
09. ADER - JENKINS: The Son Becomes The Father (3.40)
10. PHROZENLIGHT - JENKINS: Drifting Memories (4.03)
The DaVinci Suite [featuring the LONDON SYNTHESIZER ORCHESTRA on 13a]
11. JENKINS - MESSENGER: The Lightning In Her Eyes (5.12)
12. SLEPIAN - JENKINS: Happiness Is A Crimson Field (3:56)
13. STROOMER - JENKINS: a. People Of Accomplishment / b. See You On The Other Side (9.28) 14. LEE - LEE - LEE: Some Cruel Bedlam (5.32)
Stewart Lee
2021-01-18T22:47:41+00:00
Released to support the care services during the 2020 Coronavirus outbreak, this exclusive Limited Edition CD features new music from a range of international Electronic Music musicians working together in Isolation! Collated, performed on, engineered and produced by U.K. based EM journalist/musician Mark Jenkins, author of the recently published (and extremely well-received) book: ‘Tangerine Dream: 50 Years’, ‘Isolation’ brings together the talents of musicians from around the world to produce this Limited Edition CD recorded by everyone concerned in “isolation” and giving the Electronic Music scene its opportunity to pay tribute to the NHS in 2020, the year when all our lives were changed is so may ways! While the global health crisis prevents bands from performing or even from recording together, some of the finest electronic music creators from around the world have collaborated as solo artists to create ‘Isolation’, this unique CD album of new music. Each artist has added layers to tracks by Internet upload, until each piece was complete and ready for mixing in London. In this way without meeting one another in person, electronic music artists show that they can still collaborate and remain creative even during these difficult times. The music covers a whole range of EM styles and features sublimely atmospheric and ethereal pieces, throbbing passages of “Berlin School” style sequencing, dreamy, melodic synth leads, soaring guitar improvisations and ethereal and abstract sound painting - all with some assistance from acoustic instrumentation, plus some vocal work and voice-overs … a bit of everything really, and it all gels together extremely well! Here is the list of ‘Isolation’ collaborators… Bernard Szajner (from ZED, France - synthesizers & samples) Kurt Ader (from S-A-W - Schmoelling - Ader - Waters, Germany – synthesizers) Dominique Perrier (from SPACE ART, Holland – synthesizers) Gerald Gradwohl (from TANGERINE DREAM,...
What is wrong with the following gag? "John Whittingdale: a man who, if he saw the aurora borealis twinkling over a Scandinavian snowfield would only see a missed opportunity for a public-private finance initiative."
According to Stewart Lee's account of his critics' ("young comics") reaction to it, quite a lot of his peers think there is quite a lot wrong with it – because it doesn't really make any sense. You can't conceive of any sort of PFI that could be attached to the Northern Lights, and such a thing would be beyond the ingenuity of the supposed philistine Whittingdale. So, no, it doesn't "work", and so in that sense it cannot be a joke, but the audience found it funny and, as Lee asserts during his stand-up shtick, it is a joke because it has the structure and rhythm of a joke.
But then, in an acrid interview with his script editor, Chris Morris, Lee admits that the joke doesn't work, and grovels for forgiveness for its abject nature – "don't think I'm not ashamed of it", and admits that he wrote another bit on the end of the joke about it not being a joke just to try to cover up his initial comic incompetence. That, too, is very funny.
Lee, then, with Morris, is the only comedian – and that does seem an inadequate term for this intelligent, thoughtful, almost philosophical figure – who thoroughly critiques his act as he is doing it, and then critiques the critique, in his interviews with Morris, sometimes contradicting the first analysis, mostly ironically, sometimes not. It makes for a complex sort of texture and, with Lee's characteristic mordancy, a sometimes difficult one.
His account of the death of a pet mouse when he was aged about eight was too real to be truly repulsive, but it contained some distasteful detail, always rendered to devastating comedic effectiveness. Thus, when his mum tried to persuade the boy Stewart that the mouse could be somehow revived by pouring brandy into its bloodied and clearly dead mouth, and trying to warm it up using a hairdryer, which left its fur at the back ruffed up like a glam rocker's collar, the mouse suddenly resembled Dave Hill out of Slade. There then follows a disturbing sequence reconstructing the childhood tragedy, with the members of Slade in giant mouse costumes in an airing cupboard magically knocking out "Merry Xmas Everybody".
Lee also follows Ricky Gervais's example in making a joke out of eczema. Strange to say, Lee actually reminds me of Tommy Cooper, albeit in a morbid key, because Cooper just used to make the silliness flow and go where it wanted, and Lee does the same. Nothing to be ashamed of there.
All of which just leaves me time to take my leave of The Cruise, which I have been following for some weeks now. Yet again, there is very little happening on board, and I did wonder what it might be like if Stewart Lee got a few bookings on the Regal Princess. But I was very pleased to see that Timothy is continuing to make his incremental journey from help-desk person to low-to-mid-range celebrity by getting his gig as a tour guide. Looking resplendent in his "whites", it can only be a matter of time before he brings his showbiz quality onshore and turns full time. I wish him, and all abroad The Cruise, the very best on the next stage of their journey.
Stewart Lee
2016-03-25T09:38:36+00:00
What is wrong with the following gag? "John Whittingdale: a man who, if he saw the aurora borealis twinkling over a Scandinavian snowfield would only see a missed opportunity for a public-private finance initiative." According to Stewart Lee's account of his critics' ("young comics") reaction to it, quite a lot of his peers think there is quite a lot wrong with it – because it doesn't really make any sense. You can't conceive of any sort of PFI that could be attached to the Northern Lights, and such a thing would be beyond the ingenuity of the supposed philistine Whittingdale. So, no, it doesn't "work", and so in that sense it cannot be a joke, but the audience found it funny and, as Lee asserts during his stand-up shtick, it is a joke because it has the structure and rhythm of a joke. But then, in an acrid interview with his script editor, Chris Morris, Lee admits that the joke doesn't work, and grovels for forgiveness for its abject nature – "don't think I'm not ashamed of it", and admits that he wrote another bit on the end of the joke about it not being a joke just to try to cover up his initial comic incompetence. That, too, is very funny. Lee, then, with Morris, is the only comedian – and that does seem an inadequate term for this intelligent, thoughtful, almost philosophical figure – who thoroughly critiques his act as he is doing it, and then critiques the critique, in his interviews with Morris, sometimes contradicting the first analysis, mostly ironically, sometimes not. It makes for a complex sort of texture and, with Lee's characteristic mordancy, a sometimes difficult one. His account of the death of a pet mouse when he was aged about eight was too real...
The Feelies sprouted in New Jersey in 1976, their debut Crazy Rhythms following in 1980, a re-tread of The Velvet underground's melodic moments played with a neurotic, new wave, energy. Here Before is only their fifth album in thirty-five years.
Glenn Mercer's Loud Reed-style, New York school, vocals have slipped an octave but those simple chords still circle in simple patterns, sometimes in downbeat acoustic mode, other times in a propulsive electric splurge. Morning Comes is a model of controlled tension.
On And On dares a dramatic mid-point mood shift. The Feelies offer art-house indie rock comfort food of a superior calibre.
Stewart Lee
2011-05-16T19:38:01+01:00
The Feelies sprouted in New Jersey in 1976, their debut Crazy Rhythms following in 1980, a re-tread of The Velvet underground's melodic moments played with a neurotic, new wave, energy. Here Before is only their fifth album in thirty-five years. Glenn Mercer's Loud Reed-style, New York school, vocals have slipped an octave but those simple chords still circle in simple patterns, sometimes in downbeat acoustic mode, other times in a propulsive electric splurge. Morning Comes is a model of controlled tension. On And On dares a dramatic mid-point mood shift. The Feelies offer art-house indie rock comfort food of a superior calibre.
Lol Coxhill, who died last year, exemplified the sort of celebrated English eccentric artist and free spirit currently being priced and legislated out of existence. Here he is, live in Paris, in one of his final recordings, with his fellow soprano saxophone virtuoso Michael Doneda.
Their opening nineteen minute dialogue buries half-familiar snatches of melody in sonorous sonar scrapes and twinkling star-cloths of winking notes. Coxhill pursued an ongoing, and quietly heroic, struggle to reach an unknown destination, by an eternally uncharted route.
Stewart Lee
2013-08-04T11:13:34+01:00
Lol Coxhill, who died last year, exemplified the sort of celebrated English eccentric artist and free spirit currently being priced and legislated out of existence. Here he is, live in Paris, in one of his final recordings, with his fellow soprano saxophone virtuoso Michael Doneda. Their opening nineteen minute dialogue buries half-familiar snatches of melody in sonorous sonar scrapes and twinkling star-cloths of winking notes. Coxhill pursued an ongoing, and quietly heroic, struggle to reach an unknown destination, by an eternally uncharted route.
Sheffield based fans of the self styled 'forty-five-year-old functioning alcoholic, vasectomised father of two’ had been looking forward to the last weekend in January ever since tickets for his show went on sale in autumn of last year. Yes, you guessed correctly, Stewart Lee was back in town this weekend with his new stand up show Much A-Stew About Nothing.
Sheffield is the only place on the tour outside of London where Lee has chosen
to play more than one night [NOTE: This is incorrect. This tour included 2 nighters in Sheffield, Brighton, Newcastle, Bristol & 3 nights in Salford] and it was also the place he filmed his Carpet Remnant World DVD last year, saying he liked audiences here.
Apparently we like him quite a lot too, as he sold out almost two thousand seats over two nights at The Crucible. Although he is often branded an 'alternative' comedian, Lee's audience is apparently not so niche in Sheffield.
The show began with Lee bounding on stage wearing his usual uniform of black suit and grey converses and explaining that the night would be structured around three half hour segments, each one dedicated to a certain topic. These were three of the six half hour segments he had recorded for the third series of his BAFTA Award-winning BBC2 programme, Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle. On the night I attended, one was about racism, one about immigration and the other about pornography and the death of imagination in our young people. Cheery stuff, he said in his characteristically deadpan manner, and then he had us in the palm of his hand for the next two hours.
Highlights of the show included his monologue about Paul Nuttall of ‘the UKIPs’ which built and built to the point of absurdity and a description of the recent Paxman and Russell Brand interview as ‘like watching a monkey throwing its own excrement at a foghorn’. In his own inimitable style, Lee analysed and deconstructed his own material as he went along. This was most brilliantly demonstrated during a ‘phone call’, a concept familiar to his fans, where he lamented the lack of a big laugh to end the first half and of course prompted one in the process.
If you liked Stewart Lee before, this tour is more of the same and will have you hooting with laughter. It was a thrill to watch someone who is, put simply, so bloody clever. Unlike anything you’ll ever see from ‘those Mock the Week b*****ds’, as he so delicately puts it, this is an intelligent and unique style of comedy that asks the audience to anticipate the joke. He takes us into surreal imaginary scenarios whilst simultaneously commenting upon some of the most talked about issues of our times, but the main point is that he’s just plain hilarious.
I can’t wait to watch it all again when it’s on our screens this spring.
Stewart Lee
2014-02-10T12:49:35+00:00
Sheffield based fans of the self styled 'forty-five-year-old functioning alcoholic, vasectomised father of two’ had been looking forward to the last weekend in January ever since tickets for his show went on sale in autumn of last year. Yes, you guessed correctly, Stewart Lee was back in town this weekend with his new stand up show Much A-Stew About Nothing. Sheffield is the only place on the tour outside of London where Lee has chosen to play more than one night [NOTE: This is incorrect. This tour included 2 nighters in Sheffield, Brighton, Newcastle, Bristol & 3 nights in Salford] and it was also the place he filmed his Carpet Remnant World DVD last year, saying he liked audiences here. Apparently we like him quite a lot too, as he sold out almost two thousand seats over two nights at The Crucible. Although he is often branded an 'alternative' comedian, Lee's audience is apparently not so niche in Sheffield. The show began with Lee bounding on stage wearing his usual uniform of black suit and grey converses and explaining that the night would be structured around three half hour segments, each one dedicated to a certain topic. These were three of the six half hour segments he had recorded for the third series of his BAFTA Award-winning BBC2 programme, Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle. On the night I attended, one was about racism, one about immigration and the other about pornography and the death of imagination in our young people. Cheery stuff, he said in his characteristically deadpan manner, and then he had us in the palm of his hand for the next two hours. Highlights of the show included his monologue about Paul Nuttall of ‘the UKIPs’ which built and built to the point of absurdity and a description of...
Stewart Lee and Michael Cumming (Brass Eye / Toast), are attempting to find funding to finish a documentary they have been making on the resilient Birmingham post-punk band The Nightingales.
Find out about it here, see a taster, and maybe get involved.
How does a working class autodidact, with no visible means of support, maintain his role as the leader of a cult British underground band into its fifth decade? Comedian and writer Stewart Lee (Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle) , director Michael Cumming (Brass Eye, Toast) and James Nicholls (Fire Records, Fire Films) investigate the mysterious existence of Robert Lloyd (The Prefects, The Nightingales, Robert Lloyd and the New Four Seasons), Britain's ultimate post-punk survivor.
Robert Lloyd's Prefects played with The Clash on the White Riot tour in 1977, and their ongoing incarnation, as Birmingham's Captain Beefheart suffused post-punk poets The Nightingales, recorded more John Peel sessions than any other band. Ever.
Buoyed by endless critical acclaim, but hampered by ongoing commercial indifference, Lloyd has nonetheless continued to tour and record, The Nightingales' affairs managed by drummer Fliss Kitson, from a Wolverhampton shipping container, and Lloyd himself, from the isolated borderland mountain fastness of Wellington, Shropshire, surrounded by prehistoric remains and industrial archaeology.
Lloyd, a post-punk flaneur, sometime postman, and master snug room raconteur, appears to have maintained a lifestyle outside the system via a succession of hustles, often involving an encyclopaedic knowledge of horse racing and pre-punk musical weirdness.
But what were the social, cultural and economic circumstances that enabled and sustained such outsider artists in the punk and post-punk eras, and how has the world changed to the point where such figures are unlikely to flourish in the same way today? Lloyd's own odyssey echoes how abstract notions of social mobility, of the value of culture and music, have changed in the last five decades.
In an odd coincidence, Lloyd's current home, the Shropshire market town of Wellington, in the shadow of the Wrekin, is also where the comedian Stewart Lee was born, though he only spent nine days there before being dispatched to an orphanage, and has not been back since.
Further chance collisions abound. For a brief period the skyline of '70s concrete Birmingham was defined by Nicholas Monroe's unloved, and soon sold off pop art sculpture, of the giant ape, King Kong. Missing and presumed lost for years, this icon of Birmingham was eventually discovered prostrate in a Lake District garden, before being critically rehabilitated in an exhibition of great British public sculpture at the Henry Moore Gallery in Leeds in 2017.
As a child, Stewart was fascinated by the sculpture, and in a strange piece of synchronicity Lloyd compared his onstage persona to Monroe's Kong in a triumphant post-gig rant in King's Cross this year. The parallels make the point of comparison too good to ignore. King Rocker will shadow Lloyd's story with that of Birmingham's forgotten, and rediscovered, giant art ape, King Kong.
Stewart Lee
2018-12-19T14:54:13+00:00
King Rocker Stewart Lee and Michael Cumming (Brass Eye / Toast), are attempting to find funding to finish a documentary they have been making on the resilient Birmingham post-punk band The Nightingales. Find out about it here, see a taster, and maybe get involved. WEBSITE: https://www.kingrockerfilm.com/ Socials (nothing posted yet) FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/kingrockerfilm/ TWITTER: https://twitter.com/kingrockerfilm Further Info How does a working class autodidact, with no visible means of support, maintain his role as the leader of a cult British underground band into its fifth decade? Comedian and writer Stewart Lee (Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle) , director Michael Cumming (Brass Eye, Toast) and James Nicholls (Fire Records, Fire Films) investigate the mysterious existence of Robert Lloyd (The Prefects, The Nightingales, Robert Lloyd and the New Four Seasons), Britain's ultimate post-punk survivor. Robert Lloyd's Prefects played with The Clash on the White Riot tour in 1977, and their ongoing incarnation, as Birmingham's Captain Beefheart suffused post-punk poets The Nightingales, recorded more John Peel sessions than any other band. Ever. Buoyed by endless critical acclaim, but hampered by ongoing commercial indifference, Lloyd has nonetheless continued to tour and record, The Nightingales' affairs managed by drummer Fliss Kitson, from a Wolverhampton shipping container, and Lloyd himself, from the isolated borderland mountain fastness of Wellington, Shropshire, surrounded by prehistoric remains and industrial archaeology. Lloyd, a post-punk flaneur, sometime postman, and master snug room raconteur, appears to have maintained a lifestyle outside the system via a succession of hustles, often involving an encyclopaedic knowledge of horse racing and pre-punk musical weirdness. But what were the social, cultural and economic circumstances that enabled and sustained such outsider artists in the punk and post-punk eras, and how has the world changed to the point where such figures are unlikely to flourish in the same way today? Lloyd's own odyssey...
To Elon Musk, I say this! To perform one Nazi salute at Donald Trump’s inauguration, while simultaneously offering full support to European neo-Nazis, might be considered a misfortune. To perform two Nazi salutes at Donald Trump’s inauguration, while simultaneously offering full support to European neo-Nazis, begins to look like carelessness.
I didn’t write that joke. I have cannibalised it from one by the gay Irish Victorian Oscar Wilde, a typical diversity hire who would have achieved nothing had his work not been promoted by the famously woke 19th-century British establishment. Luckily, Wilde was dead long before he had the opportunity to emigrate to the US and take an air traffic controller job from a more deserving straight white male, where his gayness would have caused planes to crash.
And dead also is Wilde’s contemporary Little Tich, the resilient dancing midget, whose spectacular gravity-defying boots can still be seen on display in Bloomsbury’s bijoux Museum of Comedy, alongside Tommy Cooper’s fez and a jar of thoughts John Cleese was forbidden from articulating owing to political correctness. But I dread to think of the havoc a capering music hall midget might have wrought on today’s international flight paths. It is a relief that Trump has targeted the diversity policies that could lead, directly up the gently sloping access ramp of woke inclusivity, to millions of appalling aviation disasters.
Call me a textbook member of the tofu-munching north London wokerati, but I am proud to live in a world where people of shorter stature, while still entitled to dance in funny shoes if they so desire, can also be air traffic controllers. And call me a textbook member of the cinnamon latte-guzzling liberal elite, but it does seem wrong for the new president of the US to blame dwarf diversity hires and lazy amputees and those pesky epileptics for an air crash, without any evidence, especially when he’s reportedly just laid off loads of air traffic controllers.
On a recent Friday in York, I had a lovely north African tapas lunch with a longstanding comedy promoter who, though still young, was old enough to remember working for a special bowling alley in Blackpool, where small people in crash helmets mounted on little trolleys were ricochetted down the aisles at speed towards clusters of vulnerable skittles by violently drunk stag parties. In the end, this massively popular seaside attraction – dwarf bowling – closed early, not because someone in Blackpool had a belated anxiety about whether it was ethical, but because of the injuries sustained by those being bowled down the lanes by the intoxicated revellers.
In the 1920s, Blackpool’s midgets lived in their own Midget Town on top of the Blackpool Tower, where tourists paid to see them go about their daily business in suitably scaled-down settings. It was a living. But when Midget Town finally closed, the pre-PC future offered only pantomime, seasonal work and bowling. It’s a world Trump would like to return to.
Ah, well! Meet our potential major trading partner, whose return, according to Boris Johnson, was to be celebrated as another welcome victory over the woke. Witnessing the adjudicated sex abuser and convicted felon’s inauguration, Johnson, perhaps scenting his own second chance in the offing, related in the Daily Mail how, as the “invisible pulse of power surged” from the battered bible into the hand of Trump: “I saw the moment the world’s wokerati had worked so hard to prevent.” I can’t even be bothered to write anything funny about a man who could pen something so cynical, stupid and self-serving. I wish Johnson, the wounded wild pig of world politics, wandering around the central reservation wailing, having been winged by a passing Winnebago, would just fuck off. For ever.
Too many of our politicians and pundits seem willing to take a wait-and-see approach to the wild swings of Trump’s pendulous wrecking balls. We should stand strong against Trump alongside Canada, the harmless honey bear of international politics suddenly rearing up like an animatronic grizzly in an 80s B-movie. Keir Starmer is in danger of being on the wrong side of history, his only consolation being that, at the current rate of collapse, there may not be much history left. Like the natural world Starmer wishes to destroy, it seems history may be a finite resource.
“Drill, baby, drill!” cries Trump, as Los Angeles burns and Greenland’s permafrost unfreezes to the point where the previously unexploitable country may actually be worth him invading. Meanwhile, Starmer’s cry is the same but more complex and no less stupid. “Build a third runway and drill in the Rosebank oilfield, baby, build a third runway and drill in the Rosebank oilfield! And while you’re at it, lock up peaceful environmental protesters too. Especially the elderly.”
Starmer can’t really criticise Trump’s planet-pulverising withdrawal from the Paris agreement, let alone his baseless hostility to a phalanx of imaginary disabled air traffic incompetents, when he too has decided to throw all life on Earth under the bus, despite having once been an idealistic teenager who left his “village and went to the city of Leeds” and “discovered a whole new world of indie bands – like Orange Juice and the Wedding Present”. Bless!
I began this supposedly funny column on Monday morning, when the US president was still saying Starmer was “very nice” and there’d be no UK tariffs. Then I travelled to Oxford to do a show, and one takeaway coffee and a homemade sausage sandwich later, the UK seemed to have drifted back into Trump’s target zone, depending on which interpretation of his last mouth-fart of vengeful gobbledy-vomit you chose to believe. There’s no point trying to make plans around the whims of Trump. Starmer may as well throw cake at a hippo or try to cajole a box jellyfish. Go to Brussels on bended knee and beg for brotherhood.
Stewart Lee
2025-02-09T13:08:23+00:00
To Elon Musk, I say this! To perform one Nazi salute at Donald Trump’s inauguration, while simultaneously offering full support to European neo-Nazis, might be considered a misfortune. To perform two Nazi salutes at Donald Trump’s inauguration, while simultaneously offering full support to European neo-Nazis, begins to look like carelessness. I didn’t write that joke. I have cannibalised it from one by the gay Irish Victorian Oscar Wilde, a typical diversity hire who would have achieved nothing had his work not been promoted by the famously woke 19th-century British establishment. Luckily, Wilde was dead long before he had the opportunity to emigrate to the US and take an air traffic controller job from a more deserving straight white male, where his gayness would have caused planes to crash. And dead also is Wilde’s contemporary Little Tich, the resilient dancing midget, whose spectacular gravity-defying boots can still be seen on display in Bloomsbury’s bijoux Museum of Comedy, alongside Tommy Cooper’s fez and a jar of thoughts John Cleese was forbidden from articulating owing to political correctness. But I dread to think of the havoc a capering music hall midget might have wrought on today’s international flight paths. It is a relief that Trump has targeted the diversity policies that could lead, directly up the gently sloping access ramp of woke inclusivity, to millions of appalling aviation disasters. Call me a textbook member of the tofu-munching north London wokerati, but I am proud to live in a world where people of shorter stature, while still entitled to dance in funny shoes if they so desire, can also be air traffic controllers. And call me a textbook member of the cinnamon latte-guzzling liberal elite, but it does seem wrong for the new president of the US to blame dwarf diversity hires and lazy...
One in five of the roots rock revisionary Howe Gelb's incessant releases sees his untrammeled talent torrent coagulate fully coherently. Album fifty. It's that time again. Doubling his blurred collective Giant Sand to twelve with pedal steel and mariachi brass, hence the elongated name, Gelb's country rock opera assimilates every style he's dabbled with, from cocktail crooning to ambient tex-mex grunge. The impressionistic lyrics are uncommonly honed, the immersive widescreen Americana harnessed to the story of one man's attempt to thwart fate. Hallucinatory production notes, imagining Tucson as a dreamlike Lynch-Lurman musical, fix it in the mind like a cactus spine.
Stewart Lee
2012-06-17T19:49:25+01:00
One in five of the roots rock revisionary Howe Gelb's incessant releases sees his untrammeled talent torrent coagulate fully coherently. Album fifty. It's that time again. Doubling his blurred collective Giant Sand to twelve with pedal steel and mariachi brass, hence the elongated name, Gelb's country rock opera assimilates every style he's dabbled with, from cocktail crooning to ambient tex-mex grunge. The impressionistic lyrics are uncommonly honed, the immersive widescreen Americana harnessed to the story of one man's attempt to thwart fate. Hallucinatory production notes, imagining Tucson as a dreamlike Lynch-Lurman musical, fix it in the mind like a cactus spine.
George Osborne chewed his pencil nervously. It tasted funny. He worried where it had been. But his fellow Bullingdon boy Nat Rothschild had assured him he had burned all those pencils. Maybe this one had escaped the inferno.
It was Wednesday evening. Our conscience-stricken chancellor required sustenance. Lashed by the twin madames of ethics and economics, a weakened George Osborne had his servant call Byron Hamburgers, a deluxe tenderised meat patty outlet with branches all over west London. Soon a flattened circle of meat lay near the chancellor's left hand, the rich aroma inflaming both of his proud equine nostrils, and making one of his white legs tremble excitedly. George Osborne would need all the strength he could muster to sign off the punitive savings his heart told him the country deserved. And only an expensive meat parcel could supply that strength. George Osborne bit into the Byron burger. He felt the elasticated waistband of his underpant tighten, cutting the blood to his round buttocks, as he drove his pencil down hard upon the signature space of the spending review. There! The deed was done.
The scenario above is sheer satirical fantasy, of course, and it is lazy of the left to make political capital out of the fact that the chancellor made welfare savings while eating a burger, even if it was a more expensive burger than any the average welfare claimant could ever afford. But it is hardly a state secret that Byron burgers are extremely popular with the right-wing politicos who dwell in the leafy paradise of west London. Byron is run by Tom Byng, a member of the same Old Etonian cabal as David Cameron himself and Boris Johnson. And the mass of juicy meat that top Tories ate in Byng's previous restaurant, Zucca, saw it described as the de facto works canteen of the Cameron set. Even Nicholas Clegg extols Byron Burger's succulent flattened beef pads. The coalition has bonded over Byron burgers, and all its key players are proud to stand before their fellows and declare, "Ich bin ein Byronburger".
But at what cost? The political class live in a west London playground no longer sullied by the unsightly poor, who have been ousted by housing benefit cuts and rent hikes. But where have they gone? And can the right's sudden and conspicuous consumption of Byron burgers be mere coincidence? Check Byron's progress on Google maps and you'll see the shaped-meat retailer's eastern push follows the line of London's gentrification, and the enforced economic exodus of its underclass, in a microcosmic reflection of national trends towards the disappearance of the dispossessed. The crushed-beef chain's surge into once neglected areas like Hoxton and Tower Hamlets, while welcomed by venal estate agents looking for evidence that their patch is up and coming, is bad news for indigenous people. Chelsea types, in their pink trousers and yellow jumpers, are coming, displacing ordinary people, even as they themselves are ousted from the verdant pasture of their own west London homelands by the property power of Russian mafia and wealthy Arab spring escapees. New Byron branches in Manchester and Liverpool reflect similar spurts of gentrification. The rich are eating at Byron in places where the poor once ate at Chicken Cottage, a name I will appropriate for my rural retreat when I too am finally displaced from the capital.
The food press spin on the old Etonian Tom Byng's company is that it represents a kind of credible indie alternative to the corporate McDonald's and Burger King chains. But earlier this month The Times reported that Jacob Rothschild, the father of Osborne's Bullingdon Club associate Nat Rothschild, is considering buying Byng's big burger business, though his plan to rename it as Bilder Burger has been seen as a potential PR disaster.
Crazed conspiracy theorists have placed the Rothschilds at the centre of bizarre and sinister speculations for centuries, but can their proposed annexation of Byron Hamburgers at this stage in Osborne's savings programme mean nothing? The Rothschild family's investments and intelligence are said to have determined the favourable outcome of the Battle of Waterloo, thus inflating the value of British currency. Why, in a time of austerity, has Osborne suddenly pledged millions to preserve the site of the battlefield? Is there a connection?
David Cameron's (now largely abandoned) appeals to the faith community to make his noble Big Society dream a reality seemed to exploit the possibility of eternal life as a reward for good works, hoping that the promise of heaven might incentivise the faithful into charitable actions, absolving the state of its financially unsustainable duty of care. But Cameron's doubtless sincere belief that the human spirit has a life, a value even, beyond the physical vessel that carries it is not one that is shared by Osborne's savings programme.
A pragmatic and bold realist, Osborne is, in essence, trying to balance the books in regard to the cost of the physical presence, in Britain, of each individual citizen. Does an individual earn the nation more, in the long term, than it costs the nation to keep them alive? And if not, how can the costs they generate be offset? We must continue our progress away from intensive care and out on to an abandoned trolley in a lonely hospital corridor. Is there some way of, to coin a current coalition buzzword, monetising the actual physical presence of the individual citizen?
Byron's standard 6oz classic burger retails at £6.75. The average British person weighs 12st. There are 224 ounces in a stone. 224 x 12 = 2688. 2688 divided by 6 = 448. 448 x £6.75 = £3,024. In partnership with Byron, as the chain plays its part in the ongoing displacement and disappearance of the poor, Osborne is theoretically able to offer a return of up to £3,024 on potential meat provision units which, if left to deteriorate at their current level, may be nothing but a lifelong drain on the national balance.
Osborne knows this partnership offers a drastic solution, which may prove unpopular with the electorate, even one primed to view benefit claimants as the enemy. Revealing the full extent of the programme's current operating levels will take caution. In the meantime, Clegg, Osborne, Cameron and their friends continue to eat Byron burgers with gusto. It is almost as if they are trying to dispose of the evidence.
Stewart Lee is curating a week of recordings of the best stand-ups in the world ever, as The Alternative Comedy Experience, from the 8-12 July at the Stand, Edinburgh. Tickets at www. thestand.co.uk
Stewart Lee
2013-06-30T13:48:14+01:00
George Osborne chewed his pencil nervously. It tasted funny. He worried where it had been. But his fellow Bullingdon boy Nat Rothschild had assured him he had burned all those pencils. Maybe this one had escaped the inferno. It was Wednesday evening. Our conscience-stricken chancellor required sustenance. Lashed by the twin madames of ethics and economics, a weakened George Osborne had his servant call Byron Hamburgers, a deluxe tenderised meat patty outlet with branches all over west London. Soon a flattened circle of meat lay near the chancellor's left hand, the rich aroma inflaming both of his proud equine nostrils, and making one of his white legs tremble excitedly. George Osborne would need all the strength he could muster to sign off the punitive savings his heart told him the country deserved. And only an expensive meat parcel could supply that strength. George Osborne bit into the Byron burger. He felt the elasticated waistband of his underpant tighten, cutting the blood to his round buttocks, as he drove his pencil down hard upon the signature space of the spending review. There! The deed was done. The scenario above is sheer satirical fantasy, of course, and it is lazy of the left to make political capital out of the fact that the chancellor made welfare savings while eating a burger, even if it was a more expensive burger than any the average welfare claimant could ever afford. But it is hardly a state secret that Byron burgers are extremely popular with the right-wing politicos who dwell in the leafy paradise of west London. Byron is run by Tom Byng, a member of the same Old Etonian cabal as David Cameron himself and Boris Johnson. And the mass of juicy meat that top Tories ate in Byng's previous restaurant, Zucca, saw it...
19th - 23rd April 2018.
Content Provider has been touring to sold out theatres throughout divided Brexit Britain for nearly two years and is Stewart Lee's most successful full-length show ever.
Join him on these special evenings as he finally abandons two hours of monetisable material and performs the show for the very last time. When it's gone it's gone.
Stewart is 50 years old in 2018 and, after performing these shows, he intends to take the longest break from stand-up he's had since his four year disappearance at the start of the century.
April 2018
Thursday 19th - Content Provider, Festival Hall, Southbank, London - 020 3879 9555 - 7.30pm - TICKETS Friday 20th - Content Provider, Festival Hall, Southbank, London - 020 3879 9555 - 7.30pm - TICKETS Monday 23rd - Content Provider, Festival Hall, Southbank, London - 020 3879 9555 - 7.30pm - TICKETS
Feb 7th, Hackney Empire, London.
Belter for the Shelter is back! Join us for an evening of top class comedy in aid of Hackney Winter Night Shelter.
Returning for a fourth time, Belter is bringing yet another stellar line-up of comedians to the Hackney Empire to help raise money for the Shelter's vital work with local homeless people.
All money raised on the night goes towards keeping people off the streets of Hackney this winter and providing them with a hot meal and warm bed.
Providing the gags for the good cause will be Bridget Christie,
Dane Baptiste,
Kevin Eldon,
Kevin McAleer,
Lolly Adefope,
Michael Legge,
Stewart Lee
and the evening will be compered by Daniel Kitson.
This event has always sold out and this year promises to be no different so act quickly to make sure you don't miss out!
British comedy has undergone an elitist 'stitch-up', with poorer performers being 'priced out' of success, Stewart Lee has claimed.
The respected comic also railed against the BBC for allowing its forthcoming Edinburgh Fringe coverage to be dominated by one of the industry's most powerful agents... and vowed to try to use Comedy Central's Alternative Comedy Experience to try to dent the status quo.
Speaking before the second series begins filming tonight, Lee said he hopes some future episodes might exclusively feature acts from the Free Fringe.
The 45-year-old, who curates and is executive producer of the show, said: 'There's a crisis of social mobility in this country and way down the list of important things is the crisis of social mobility of stand-up comedians. 'But it is a sort of microcosm of what's going on, in as much as if you've not
got money, you're being priced out now.'
Lee revealed that he has asked producer Colin Dench: 'Is there any way of getting Comedy Central to do an Alternative Comedy Experience next year with three, four, maybe even six episodes from the Free Fringe? And only use acts from the Free Fringe?'
Many of the acts in the second series, which is being taped at The Stand in Edinburgh, have performed or will be performing free shows on the Fringe, even if those weren't their main festival run.
They include Robin Ince, Josie Long, Simon Munnery, Paul Foot, John Hegley, Michael Legge, Nish Kumar, Helen Arney, Liam Mullone, Lou Sanders, Trevor Lock, Grainne Maguire, Helen Keen and Fern Brady. While returning act Henning Wehn pointedly mocked the Free Fringe model in a 2011 routine.
'Obviously we're not trying to co-opt the Fringe's reputation and we'll have to talk to the venues about it,' Lee stresses. 'But it would be great.'
Earlier this year, he spoke out against the 'tiny coterie' of comedy agencies such as Off The Kerb and his former management, Avalon, for making television shows that 'disproportionately' featured their own clients.
And today he reiterates: 'Comedy on television is completely stitched up by two or three agencies and production companies In Cahoots with the Big Four [venues] at the Fringe, spending money on their own talent and getting their own talent into debt', justifiable by those acts 'being seen in the Big Four by
TV people and journalists'.
'If you could actually have a television show where a criteria of entry was that you had to be in the Free Fringe, that would really start to rock the boat.'
He singles out the BBC, for whom he is currently writing the third series of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, and Open Mike Productions, affiliated with Off The Kerb, for particular criticism.
His proposal, he suggests, 'would throw down a challenge to the BBC to make its Edinburgh coverage more in-depth than announcing three months in advance that Open Mike Productions are going to have a night from Edinburgh in which the bill is already largely confirmed.'
Edinburgh Comedy Fest Live will be broadcast on BBC Three and hosted by Off The Kerb clients Kevin Bridges - who is not otherwise performing at the festival - and Adam Hills, who has a limited nine-show run.
Other Off The Kerb acts on the bill are Ivo Graham, Neil Delamere, Seann Walsh, Simon Evans, Marlon Davis, Charlie Baker and Phill Jupitus.
However, it also features comedians from other stables: Andrew Lawrence, Stephen K Amos, Jason Byrne, Romesh Ranganathan, Hal Cruttenden, Tom Stade, Des Clarke, Gary Delaney, Joe Wilkinson, Russell Kane, Roisin Conaty and Lee Nelson.
'They're such a brilliant production company that they've been able to look into the future using their clairvoyant skills and anticipate what the highlights of the Fringe will be,' Lee mutters sarcastically.
'Which is absolutely superb, because it makes the whole point of journalists, the public and even acts going there, largely irrelevant. You could ask Open Mike, "Am I going to be one of the highlights of the Fringe?" and they can tell you, "No, we decided in June" and don't bother going, save yourself ten grand.'
He adds that 'one of the things about [comedy] 30 years ago was that it was relatively egalitarian. I think it's weird that Comedy Central, a commercial broadcaster could help to reverse that trend, because it doesn't seem like something the BBC are interested in doing.'
He confesses to creative tension with the BBC over Comedy Vehicle, citing the corporation's concern at his plan to give an entire episode over to the show's 'programme associate' Baconface.
Comedy Central are shooting a set from the Canadian comic from the 80s at midnight on Friday night at the Stand. And the enigmatic figure in a Mexican wrestler's mask draped in bacon may yet appear as part of the Alternative Comedy Experience.
'At the moment, Baconface is in negotiation with the BBC,' Lee states. 'I want him to do one of the episodes but there's anxiety about whether you can have half an hour of a man whose face you can't really see, with bacon over it, talking.
'Hopefully they'll be some stuff we can put in Alternative Comedy Experience and some stuff for the BBC but I don't know what he's doing. Baconface seems to have annoyed Richard Webb, producer of the BBC show, who doesn't want him to do it.'
The first series of The Alternative Comedy Experience tripled the audience for its slot, easing the commercial channel's concerns 'about people's accents or what they looked like' and so giving Lee greater authority in the selection of the comics featured for the second series.
'They were very supportive but nervous because it wasn't like anything they'd ever done, a lot of weird acts,' he said.
'Now they've really got behind it. We didn't have anyone we didn't want last time but this year we haven't had to make a case for any of them, they've give us more of a free hand and I'm absolutely delighted by some of the people on it.'
Other acts appearing over the second series are David O'Doherty, Isy Suttie, Paul Sinha, Tony Law, Susan Calman, Kevin Eldon, Andrew Lawrence, Andy Zaltzman, Stephen Carlin, Bridget Christie, Kevin McAleer, Alfie Brown, Ginger and Black, Maeve Higgins and David Kay.
Reprising the show's format, where Lee speaks to the acts backstage, he explains
'I didn't want it to be like Des O'Connor, where he gets his researchers to ask the comedians before what their jokes are and he sets them up with feedlines. I genuinely wanted to ask why they'd done certain things. And it was really good fun.
'People have said to me, "I thought you were a horrible wanker. But when I saw you talking to them, having a really good time, then I thought you were probably all right."
'Sometimes, when you see an interviewer like Jonathan Ross, there's a status thing going on where he's either a sycophant or trying to let the celebrity know that he's the king of brokering fame deals. But I think all those acts said something interesting about their work.
'The one person in the last series I don't think I got the measure of was Boothby Graffoe. He's old school, like a Red Coat. And he was "on", even in the interview. I know him quite well but I never really found out much about how he writes or what makes him want to do comedy. He's a consummate performer.'
Graffoe is now followed by McAleer, Hegley, Hayridge and Eldon, older acts confounding 'Comedy Central's worries about demographics' he points out delightedly.
'I wanted it to be a spread from people in their twenties to others in their sixties and seventies, and I got much closer to that this time. That kind of thing doesn't matter anymore, because young people are used to jumping around on YouTube and iTunes, they don't necessarily only want to see stuff by people who look their age.'
Lee dismisses criticism that the previous series' edit wasn't giving the performers 'room to breathe', pointing out that there was 'a longer continuous run of one person's act than you would get on Live at The Apollo'. But he added: 'The edit will be more sympathetic to the material this time because we've all had a chance to see the first series.'
He foresees the show continuing for several years - 'there's loads of people in their forties, fifties and sixties that we haven't used' - even if, ultimately, it's sowing the seeds of its own demise.
'The fact that this outlet exists and people can see it might encourage them to think there's more point in doing a more interesting act,' he reasons.
'It could be, that in the same way Live At The Apollo and Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow have created a generation of more mainstreamy acts, maybe this will show that there's interest in slightly different things.
'Then you'll have to cancel it when everyone likes it!' he cackles.
Lee suggests that he will take a sabbatical from stand-up in the next three years. If the BBC confirm that they want the fourth series of Comedy Vehicle by spring next year, 'I'll do that in 2015, tour a big show in 2016 and then I think I'll stop for a bit.'
He has two young children with Christie, his wife, 'and for the first few years after they were born, it made sense for me to do lots of work and for Bridget to look after them because I was doing better. But things are really picking up for her at the moment and we're on a kind of rota, so I'm hoping she can do more and I can do less. We'll see.'
Stewart Lee
2013-07-08T21:33:21+01:00
British comedy has undergone an elitist 'stitch-up', with poorer performers being 'priced out' of success, Stewart Lee has claimed. The respected comic also railed against the BBC for allowing its forthcoming Edinburgh Fringe coverage to be dominated by one of the industry's most powerful agents... and vowed to try to use Comedy Central's Alternative Comedy Experience to try to dent the status quo. Speaking before the second series begins filming tonight, Lee said he hopes some future episodes might exclusively feature acts from the Free Fringe. The 45-year-old, who curates and is executive producer of the show, said: 'There's a crisis of social mobility in this country and way down the list of important things is the crisis of social mobility of stand-up comedians. 'But it is a sort of microcosm of what's going on, in as much as if you've not got money, you're being priced out now.' Lee revealed that he has asked producer Colin Dench: 'Is there any way of getting Comedy Central to do an Alternative Comedy Experience next year with three, four, maybe even six episodes from the Free Fringe? And only use acts from the Free Fringe?' Many of the acts in the second series, which is being taped at The Stand in Edinburgh, have performed or will be performing free shows on the Fringe, even if those weren't their main festival run. They include Robin Ince, Josie Long, Simon Munnery, Paul Foot, John Hegley, Michael Legge, Nish Kumar, Helen Arney, Liam Mullone, Lou Sanders, Trevor Lock, Grainne Maguire, Helen Keen and Fern Brady. While returning act Henning Wehn pointedly mocked the Free Fringe model in a 2011 routine. 'Obviously we're not trying to co-opt the Fringe's reputation and we'll have to talk to the venues about it,' Lee stresses. 'But it would be...
There are tickets on sale for my Glasgow gig via the illegal touts at GetMeIn in Row S. If they are bought, the ticketholders will be personally thrown out by me.
NEW LONDON CONTENT PROVIDER DATES
Because all the London Leicester Sq Content Provider dates sold out here is another three month block of the SAME SHOW at the SAME VENUE, Leicester Sq Theatre, at the SAME TIME, 7pm, from November this year until Jan 2018.
Weds 1st Nov - Sat 9th Dec 2017
Tuesday to Saturday, except there is a performance on Monday 4th December
Tues 2nd Jan to Wed 31st Jan 2018
Monday to Saturday
Not Fri 24, Sat 25, Thur 30 Nov 2017 (DAYS OFF) Not Tue 9th, Thurs 11th, Fri 12th, Sat 13th Jan 2018 (DAYS OFF)
The following link will take you to the Leicester Square Box Office
Tuesday 3rd - Content Provider - CHESTER - Storyhouse - 0845 647 7868 - 8pm - ON SALE SOON
Wednesday 4th - Content Provider - SCARBOROUGH - The Spa Theatre - 01723 821888 - 8pm - TICKETS
Thursday 5th - Content Provider - HARROGATE - Royal Hall - 01423 502116 - 8pm - ON SALE SOON
Sunday 8th - Content Provider - BRISTOL - Colston Hall - 0844 887 1500 - 7.30pm - TICKETS
Monday 9th - Content Provider - BRISTOL - Colston Hall - 0844 887 1500 - 7.30pm - TICKETS
Thursday 12th - Content Provider - NORTHAMPTON - Royal & Derngate - 01604 624811 - 8pm - TICKETS
Friday 13th - Content Provider - CRAWLEY - The Hawth - 01293 553636 - 8pm - ON SALE SOON
Saturday 14th - Content Provider - St. ALBANS - Alban Arena - 01727 844488 - 8pm - ON SALE SOON
Tuesday 17th - Content Provider - LINCOLN - New Theatre Royal - 01522 519999 - 8pm - ON SALE SOON
Wednesday 18th - Content Provider - CHELMSFORD - Civic Theatre - 01245 606505 - 8pm - ON SALE SOON
Thursday 19th - Content Provider - READING - Hexagon - 0118 960 6060 - 8pm - TICKETS
Friday 20th - Content Provider - BEXHILL ON SEA - De La Warr Pavilion - 01424 229111 - 8pm - ON SALE SOON
November 2017
Wednesday November 1st - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Thursday November 2nd - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Friday November 3rd - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Saturday November 4th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Tuesday November 7th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Wednesday November 8th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Thursday November 9th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Friday November 10th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Saturday November 11th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Tuesday November 14th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Wednesday November 15th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Thursday November 16th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Friday November 17th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Saturday November 18th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Tuesday November 21st - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Wednesday November 22nd - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Thursday November 23rd - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Tuesday November 28th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Wednesday November 29th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS
December 2017
Friday December 1st - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Saturday December 2nd - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Monday December 4th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Tuesday December 5th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Wednesday December 6th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Thursday December 7th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Friday December 8th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Saturday December 9th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS
January 2018
Tuesday January 2nd - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Wednesday January 3rd - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Thursday January 4th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Friday January 5th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Saturday January 6th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Monday January 8th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Wednesday January 10th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS
Monday January 15th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Tuesday January 16th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Wednesday January 17th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Thursday January 18th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Friday January 19th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Saturday January 20th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Monday January 22nd - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Tuesday January 23rd - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Wednesday January 24th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Thursday January 25th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Friday January 26th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Saturday January 27th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Monday January 29th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Tuesday January 30th - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS Wednesday January 31st - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS
More dates TBC Mainly in June, Sept, Oct, Nov.
Check the LIVE PAGE ON WEBSITE.
Tours by other comedians are available.
Unpaid Charity Benefit Shows
As usual, I continue to work tirelessly for charity, usually alongside the same do-gooders.
March 21st - Hilarity for Charity. South & North London Care. Leics Sq Th, London. Jessica Fostekew, Dane Baptiste, Tony Law, Stewart Lee, Lolly Adefope, Norman Lovett, Andy Zaltzman and more tbc. TICKETS
Other charity shows are available.
Global Globules with Baconface
On Wednesdays at 11pm on Resonance 104.4 fm and on the station website, the barely present cult Canadian stand-up comedian Baconface continues to play lengthy and mainly uninterrupted selections from his late brother's extensive record collection of '60s and '70s psychedelia, progressive rock, free jazz, folk, acid folk, folk rock, acid rock, electronic music, and ethnoforgeries.
In association with the Chilliwack Office of Leisure. [Repeated Saturday 4am.] The shows can also be heard here.. http://www.baconfacecanada.com/listen
And also here, with pictures... http://www.baconfacecanada.com/global-globules/
Resonance is a groundbreaking 24/7 radio station which broadcasts on 104.4 FM to central London, DAB to Greater London, nationally on Radioplayer and live streamed to the rest of the world.
Other fictional men with masks made of bacon playing vintage psychedelia are not available.
Stewart Lee
2017-03-06T14:44:42+00:00
Get Me In Tout Alert There are tickets on sale for my Glasgow gig via the illegal touts at GetMeIn in Row S. If they are bought, the ticketholders will be personally thrown out by me. NEW LONDON CONTENT PROVIDER DATES Because all the London Leicester Sq Content Provider dates sold out here is another three month block of the SAME SHOW at the SAME VENUE, Leicester Sq Theatre, at the SAME TIME, 7pm, from November this year until Jan 2018. Weds 1st Nov - Sat 9th Dec 2017 Tuesday to Saturday, except there is a performance on Monday 4th December Tues 2nd Jan to Wed 31st Jan 2018 Monday to Saturday Not Fri 24, Sat 25, Thur 30 Nov 2017 (DAYS OFF) Not Tue 9th, Thurs 11th, Fri 12th, Sat 13th Jan 2018 (DAYS OFF) The following link will take you to the Leicester Square Box Office CLICK HERE FOR THE LEICESTER SQUARE THEATRE BOX OFFICE All dates listed in full at the gigs page. Other extra dates by other comedians are available. CONTENT PROVIDER TOUR Autumn 2017 dates are currently being booked. More dates will be added as they are confirmed. All updates will be made at the gigs page. March 2017 Wednesday 8th - Content Provider - MALVERN - Festival Theatre - 8pm - 01684 892277 TICKETS Thursday 9th - Content Provider - GUILDFORD - G Live - 8pm - 01483 369350 TICKETS Friday 10th - Content Provider - GUILDFORD - G Live - 8pm - 01483 369350 TICKETS Saturday 11th - Content Provider - CHELMSFORD - Civic Theatre - 7.45pm - 01245 606505 SOLD OUT (Extra Date Added: 18th October) Tuesday 14th - Content Provider - NOTTINGHAM - Playhouse - 8pm - 0115 941 9419 TICKETS Wednesday 15th - Content Provider - LANCASTER - Grand -...
Stewart Lee is to become the first comedian to do a book launch on a barge.
Lee will read from his new book MARCH OF THE LEMMINGS, from the deck of WORD ON THE WATER, the floating bookshop moored on the Regent's Canal in Granary Square, near London's King's Cross, on Sunday 15th September at 2pm. (N1C4AA)
"As there is no room for listeners on the boat, I will address them as they stand on the shore," says Lee, "I will be like Christ talking from a fishing boat, or a Viking leader making laws from the island of the Icelandic Tingwall parliament."
The reading will be followed by a raucous free jazz set from the trio of ALAN WILKINSON, STEVE NOBLE and JOHN EDWARDS, perched dangerously on the barge's roof. "The badly thought out event is sure to cause no end of problems, and may set back the cause of the written word, and all jazz, for decades", confessed Lee.
"Some of the book, which deals almost exclusively with Brexit and was completed in March, now feels irrelevant", says Lee, "but much of it is so prophetic it is as if it was written by an omnipotent God, bending reality to his will, which frightens me to be honest"
Attendees may want to bring rainwear, and flasks, or money to buy their own food and drink from one of Granary Square's many artisanal delicacy outlets. If anyone has any quality books they want to donate to WORD ON THE WATER, they would be gladly received.
"You need to bear in mind that the water is dark, lonely and dangerous," warned Lee. "In fact Paddy, who co-runs the shop, recently fell in the canal and broke his leg."
LEMMINGS LONDON BOOK LAUNCH Stewart Lee is to become the first comedian to do a book launch on a barge. Lee will read from his new book MARCH OF THE LEMMINGS, from the deck of WORD ON THE WATER, the floating bookshop moored on the Regent's Canal in Granary Square, near London's King's Cross, on Sunday 15th September at 2pm. (N1C4AA) "As there is no room for listeners on the boat, I will address them as they stand on the shore," says Lee, "I will be like Christ talking from a fishing boat, or a Viking leader making laws from the island of the Icelandic Tingwall parliament." The reading will be followed by a raucous free jazz set from the trio of ALAN WILKINSON, STEVE NOBLE and JOHN EDWARDS, perched dangerously on the barge's roof. "The badly thought out event is sure to cause no end of problems, and may set back the cause of the written word, and all jazz, for decades", confessed Lee. "Some of the book, which deals almost exclusively with Brexit and was completed in March, now feels irrelevant", says Lee, "but much of it is so prophetic it is as if it was written by an omnipotent God, bending reality to his will, which frightens me to be honest" Attendees may want to bring rainwear, and flasks, or money to buy their own food and drink from one of Granary Square's many artisanal delicacy outlets. If anyone has any quality books they want to donate to WORD ON THE WATER, they would be gladly received. "You need to bear in mind that the water is dark, lonely and dangerous," warned Lee. "In fact Paddy, who co-runs the shop, recently fell in the canal and broke his leg." You can also buy March Of The Lemmings...
Stewart Lee is a stand-up comedian known for his anti-populist, deconstructive approach to stand-up, his nonchalant delivery and his undulating repetition. He is also an author, director and columnist. He has a BBC Two stand-up series called Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle.
Stewart Lee loves Leicester. He says that, as a child, he ‘used to look at the picture of the fattest man who ever lived, Daniel Lambert, who was from Leicester, in the Guinness Book of Records and dream of Leicester.’ He tells me that, in the ‘90s, he was fond of the German Psychedelic Progressive rock record shop ‘Ultima Thule’ which was near the station. I can’t contain my jealousy for those studying at DMU at the time as Lee says he ‘always seemed to be doing gigs at the Poly and then eating lovely curries after.’ Particular praise goes to the night porter in the bar at the Mercure Hotel, Lee looks forward to ‘his deadpan sense of humour’ every time he stays there.
He also thinks that Leicester is ‘an example of multiculturalism working, on the whole, that disproves a lot of the stuff we hear at the moment, though I appreciate a lot of effort goes in to making this work.’
Most importantly though, in 2004 he met fellow comedian Bridget Christie at a party above an Indian restaurant while they were both appearing at the comedy festival. He is now married to Bridget and they have two children. Lee says that, as a result of having stand-up comedians for parents, their children ‘meet all kinds of people when we do Edinburgh and in our lives generally because the spread of people that do comedy is so vast - all races, religions, social classes etc - which has already had a really good effect on them I think.’
This, in my opinion, must have been very different to how Lee grew up. This is based on the fact that he grew up in Solihull, the same place that I grew up. It’s very different from the vibrant multicultural society of Leicester. When I tell Lee that Solihull now has its own comedy festival called ‘Lolihull’ it becomes clear that he will never perform at it. I get the feeling that he’s been constantly eluding me for years as he tells me that, not only did he perform at my university many times in the ‘90s, but in 2005, he performed in a pub in Knowle. If only eleven year old me had taken the ten minute walk from my house to the highstreet of Knowle, I could have been turned away from the pub for being eleven. Lee’s vowed never to return after ‘all the sisters of people I used to vaguely know turned up to gawp at me and prove that I was wrong to have left small town England for London. Then some weirdo who was now a born again Christian tried to convert me afterwards. It was awful.’
Lee isn’t a stranger to criticism, The Daily Telegraph say that ‘Stewart Lee is not funny and has nothing interesting to say.’ The Sun says that he’s ‘the worst comedian in Britain. As funny as Bubonic Plague. The Birmingham Sunday Mercury says that ‘"His whole tone is one of complete, smug condescension.“
Lee’ comedy isn’t for everyone, and that’s just the way he seems to like it. I haven’t been trawling through reams of reviews to find these quotes. I’ve simply lazily copy and pasted these quotes from Lee’s website, the covers of his DVDs, the back of his books, and his tour posters. He prints the above criticisms in an attempt to dissuade people who wouldn’t enjoy his work from watching, reading or attending it. Engaging with the criticism in such an unabashed manner suggests that he is immune to their insults. He says that the criticism does strengthen you, but agrees that it can make you unhappy and bitter.
When I asked him about the next series of Alternative Comedy Experience, the stand-up TV show he created and curated, I was told that there wouldn’t be one because Comedy Central don’t want one. ‘It got good figures but with the wrong age group’ Lee says. Perhaps one of the executives at Comedy Central will soon find themselves on one of Lee’s posters, as they were quoted in the Guardian as saying that "Cynical clever comedy like Stewart Lee is all very well but we don’t find it being shared on line by our target demographic.” Lee calls this ‘a real shame. As it was the only worthwhile piece of original programming on the channel.’
On the subject of criticism, he says that “What is annoying is to be criticised for things you haven’t done or said, or to be criticised by people making wrong assumptions about why or how you have done the things you have done, or to be criticised by people who don’t know anything about what you do, based on their own prejudices.”
Unfortunately this is exactly what happened to Lee when he visited Leicester back in 2005. There was a particularly strong opposition to Jerry Springer The Opera, co-ordinated by an ‘especially unpleasant Tory councillor’. Lee directed and co-wrote the script for the musical about the eponymous talk show host which features depictions of Jesus, God and Satan amongst other biblical characters. As Lee documents in his book How I Escaped My Certain Fate and in his 2005 stand-up show 90’s Comedian, there was a vicious campaign to get the show banned. Christian pressure group ‘Christian Voice’ rallied the forces of ignorance to protest against the show, which won four Laurence Olivier Awards, claiming it was blasphemous. Lee says that ‘the bishop of Leicester invited me to a debate in the Cathedral which he assured me would be reasonable and I fell for it.’ Lee debated with Resham Singh Sandhu, who has since served a stint as ‘High Sherriff of Leicester’ which is actually a thing. A primarily ceremonial, archaic thing which involves wearing silly clothes, but a thing none the less.
Lee says that the former High Sherriff ‘didn’t seem to think not knowing anything about the subject in hand was any reason not to have a violent opinion about it’ and that, in the spirit of open minded debate, the Sherriff used his opening remarks to pray that the show would be banned. Lee relives this moment again and again in his mind, realising that this was the point he should have walked out and left them to thrash it out amongst themselves.
‘They say you only regret the things you didn’t do, and not walking out at that point will haunt me for the rest of my life. In a slurry of unpleasant experiences associated with trying to tour the show, Leicester was probably the point at which my patience ran out and my spirit was finally broken, so I always associate that with Leicester too sadly.’
Lee’s bittersweet feelings towards Leicester are perfectly summed up by the 2005 Valentines’ edition of the Leicester Mercury. Lee and his wife were stopped in the street by the local paper and asked if they had romantic memories of Leicester. Lee says that ‘In the next day’s Leicester Mercury page 5 was a picture of us in a heart shaped border captioned 'romance in Leicester’, and page 3 was a picture of me arguing with Resham Singh Sandhu, captioned “face of hatred” or something like that.’
Understandably, Lee can’t see himself venturing into the world of musical theatre again anytime soon. He says that his Jerry Springer collaborator Richard Thomas has an idea he’d like the two to work on, and Harry Hill’s X-Factor musical was a reminder how great big shows can be, but the thought of the stress of it is off putting. ‘I never want to do anything so well known that I have to meet people like Resham Singh Sandu again, and if you’re spending money to make a big show sadly you are obliged to promote it and raise its profile.’
Despite having many other talents, he mainly seems interested in continuing with stand-up. In my continued efforts to badger someone into opening a new comedy club in Leicester, I asked if he’d be interested in opening a comedy venue with the same ethos as Alternative Comedy Experience. Lee says that it would be too much effort and that he doesn’t know how people do it. ‘I might do it when I leave London when I am old, and book all my mates, and force them to bring me newspapers from the big city.’
Lee wrote for On the Hour with comedy giants such as Steve Coogan, Armando Ianucci and Chris Morris, and has continued to work with them on other projects. He’s no longer interested in experimenting with film as they all have with Alpha Papa, In the Loop and Four Lions. He tells me that he spent 1997 – 2005 almost getting a script made: ‘I had Peter Fonda, Daryll Hannah, Alan Rickman all lined up but it kept falling apart around changing Hollywood fashions. I went backwards and forwards to New York and LA losing money. Never again.’
Neither would he entertain the idea of being given his own panel show, saying that he’d just use the time to write more stand-up ‘which would pay more than a panel show, and wouldn’t mean I was seen by 4 million people, who would then hassle me in the street and try and secretly take pictures of me with my kids on their camera phones.’
Lee has previously talked about success and critical acclaim making it harder to write. I asked him if it was getting any easier, he said that ‘It gets harder. My brain is slowing. My knees hurt.’ Despite this, he still hopes to be performing when he reaches the age of 75. In fact, he’s looking forward to it ‘It’s a reason to live. It will be hilarious to be an old grumpy man’ and if he makes it to 90 then he might even reunite with former double act partner Richard Herring. I hope that the 65 year old me finally catches up with Lee and is there to see it. But what will he talk about? What will the issues of the future be? ‘I expect I’ll be talking about the same things as I am now. Farts and UKIP.’
You can see Stewart Lee discussing both farts and UKIP in A Room With A Stew on the 12th of February at De Montfort Hall.
Stewart Lee
2015-02-01T00:37:32+00:00
Stewart Lee is a stand-up comedian known for his anti-populist, deconstructive approach to stand-up, his nonchalant delivery and his undulating repetition. He is also an author, director and columnist. He has a BBC Two stand-up series called Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle. Stewart Lee loves Leicester. He says that, as a child, he ‘used to look at the picture of the fattest man who ever lived, Daniel Lambert, who was from Leicester, in the Guinness Book of Records and dream of Leicester.’ He tells me that, in the ‘90s, he was fond of the German Psychedelic Progressive rock record shop ‘Ultima Thule’ which was near the station. I can’t contain my jealousy for those studying at DMU at the time as Lee says he ‘always seemed to be doing gigs at the Poly and then eating lovely curries after.’ Particular praise goes to the night porter in the bar at the Mercure Hotel, Lee looks forward to ‘his deadpan sense of humour’ every time he stays there. He also thinks that Leicester is ‘an example of multiculturalism working, on the whole, that disproves a lot of the stuff we hear at the moment, though I appreciate a lot of effort goes in to making this work.’ Most importantly though, in 2004 he met fellow comedian Bridget Christie at a party above an Indian restaurant while they were both appearing at the comedy festival. He is now married to Bridget and they have two children. Lee says that, as a result of having stand-up comedians for parents, their children ‘meet all kinds of people when we do Edinburgh and in our lives generally because the spread of people that do comedy is so vast - all races, religions, social classes etc - which has already had a really good effect on them...
If you’ve ever played dominoes, you’ll know that while the first number has to match with the next, the last may not match with the first. I’m afraid this came to mind when I went to see Stewart Lee and Friends at his one-off Silver Stewbilee show at the Festival Theatre on 18th August.
There is an assumption that if someone makes you laugh, whoever makes them laugh will make you laugh too. Eh, no! Going by the comedy crowd laughter, I was in the minority but mostly the rest of the acts failed to reach my funny bone. There was neither programme nor flyer so the guests on the bill were a mystery. Some were a great surprise and a real pleasure to see, like the daft and novel Bridget Christie as A. Ant and amazingly Franz Ferdinand, both of whom gave terrific performances. Apart from them, I’ll move on.
This was Stewart Lee's night. The evening was a celebration of his 20-odd years in stand up and to promote his book , How I escaped my Certain Fate: The Lives and Deaths of a Stand up Comedian. The title, How I escaped my Certain Fate, comes from a punk song by Mission of Burma and was played at the end of the gig by Franz Ferdinand. Nice touch!
I came across Lee by chance on his late-night TV show Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle and immediately liked his style. He is observant and topical. He uses repetition like a fairy tale in his own comic flights of fantasy, maybe to make sure the audience stays up to speed with his sharp, self-referential Borgesian style.
He used old and new material in the gig with his intelligent melding and observation of societal bigotry and liberalism. He covered the urban myths around country living, Gaelic as an ancient Scottish polari, Braveheart, crisps, charity and a certain topical news team named as the Seven Dwarves. Clever, original and funny.
Stewart Lee
2010-08-19T22:08:00+01:00
If you’ve ever played dominoes, you’ll know that while the first number has to match with the next, the last may not match with the first. I’m afraid this came to mind when I went to see Stewart Lee and Friends at his one-off Silver Stewbilee show at the Festival Theatre on 18th August. There is an assumption that if someone makes you laugh, whoever makes them laugh will make you laugh too. Eh, no! Going by the comedy crowd laughter, I was in the minority but mostly the rest of the acts failed to reach my funny bone. There was neither programme nor flyer so the guests on the bill were a mystery. Some were a great surprise and a real pleasure to see, like the daft and novel Bridget Christie as A. Ant and amazingly Franz Ferdinand, both of whom gave terrific performances. Apart from them, I’ll move on. This was Stewart Lee's night. The evening was a celebration of his 20-odd years in stand up and to promote his book , How I escaped my Certain Fate: The Lives and Deaths of a Stand up Comedian. The title, How I escaped my Certain Fate, comes from a punk song by Mission of Burma and was played at the end of the gig by Franz Ferdinand. Nice touch! I came across Lee by chance on his late-night TV show Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle and immediately liked his style. He is observant and topical. He uses repetition like a fairy tale in his own comic flights of fantasy, maybe to make sure the audience stays up to speed with his sharp, self-referential Borgesian style. He used old and new material in the gig with his intelligent melding and observation of societal bigotry and liberalism. He covered the urban myths...
Six years since his death, instant composition's original zen master has been busy in absence as usual, with a reissue of his superb 1983 solo Concert In Miwaukee, some newfound 1972 recordings of the Iskra 1903 trio, and this previously unheard late period gem, scratched out in Stockwell in 2000.
The Yorkshire yogi plays electric guitar here, snaking sustained hums over simpatico bustle from the saxophonist John Butcher and the percussionist Gino Robair, and sneaking round the back of the sound to tickle everyone unawares, like a naughty free jazz ghost. Pan walks abroad. The string-stretching satyr of non-idiomatic improvisation is back. Again.
Stewart Lee
2011-12-04T01:12:15+00:00
Six years since his death, instant composition's original zen master has been busy in absence as usual, with a reissue of his superb 1983 solo Concert In Miwaukee, some newfound 1972 recordings of the Iskra 1903 trio, and this previously unheard late period gem, scratched out in Stockwell in 2000. The Yorkshire yogi plays electric guitar here, snaking sustained hums over simpatico bustle from the saxophonist John Butcher and the percussionist Gino Robair, and sneaking round the back of the sound to tickle everyone unawares, like a naughty free jazz ghost. Pan walks abroad. The string-stretching satyr of non-idiomatic improvisation is back. Again.
In the 1980s, the pornographic bookshop (bad) where we bought amyl nitrate was opposite the feminist bookshop (good), where we hung around skim-reading Spare Rib and Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (1970), to try to get dates with the clever feminists, who saw through us immediately.
The feminist bookshop (good) had a camera set up in its window to covertly photograph male fans of pornography (bad) coming and going from the pornographic bookshop. If this seems a depressing state of affairs, look on the bright side. In 1986, a small provincial town could still support two independent bookshops!
Our purchases complete, we would stand opposite the feminists’ camera position, waving our bottles of amyl nitrate around, so the feminists would know we only wanted to get high, and not degrade women by looking at pictures of them nude. How did they resist us?
Ten years ago, I inherited a vintage Singer sewing machine from my mother. During my childhood, she became expert at hand-making perfect costumes of whatever character was my current favourite. When I was five, in 1973, her Hartley Hare from Pipkins costume was perfect, functioning alcoholic eyes and all; in 1977, my mother’s Captain Britain tabard was unique, the obscure Marvel superhero being resistant to official merchandising; and I doubt there were many boys lucky enough to attend their 10th birthday party in a one-piece zip-up costume of the Welsh experimental film-maker and poet Iain Sinclair.
This summer, I had planned to take the children, Six and Nine, to the United States on a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to pay homage to the unmarked paupers’ graves of my favourite 47 significant pre-first world war blues harmonica players. It was to be a journey I am sure they would have looked back on with some fondness, or at least tolerance, in later life at least.
But I imagined a difficult American situation, where a delightful pea-soup restaurant waitress, who has been nothing other than charming this last hour, asks us in parting what we think of good ole Donald Trump, kickin’ Muslamic ass. My daughter, Six, would doubtless say “Donald Trump is a smelly poo-poo head”. It is her habit to regurgitate wholesale the adult discourse she overhears around our dinner table, without necessarily understanding it.
In the ensuing conversational difficulties, we would then be gunned down by aggrieved onlookers, and hung naked from poplar trees as a warning to any other visiting snowflakes considering casting doubt on the composition and cleanliness of the 45th US president’s head.
So instead of being murdered in a roadside diner, we are going on a self-guided tour of major European cities, before the administrative gates that make our access to them so easy are finally lowered in 2019, in an elaborate star-studded ceremony featuring Elizabeth Hurley, Ian Botham, Public Image Ltd and a racist calypso from DJ Mike Read.
Last year, when we visited France, I made sure the children always wore lapel badges, which I bought on the internet, of the EU flag. No one would be in any doubt of our political affiliations. Any awkwardness could be immediately abated by enthusiastic lapel-gesturing.
At the French holiday camp, Six and Nine made friends with some Belgian children of similar ages, Zes and Negen. And though, being English, we were unable to speak any foreign languages, least of all Belgian, we made our feelings about the complex pros and cons in the argument for European political and economic unity understood to the Walloons by pointing at the badges and pretending to cry, over and over again.
Of course, 12 months later, the situation is much worse, and the British, or more specifically the English, have gone from being regarded by the Europeans as the cool kids who gave the world the Beatles, James Bond, and football, to being a kind of embarrassing, weird family of angry and confused hooligans, whose garden is full of used nappies, old wet copies of Fiesta Readers’ Wives, and rusted tricycle frames.
A man on a secondhand record stall in the street market of a Pyrenean village last summer pretended he was not going to sell me a first pressing of Catherine Ribeiro’s 1972 classic Paix, despite my EU badge, due to assumed political differences. “Ah, Brexit,” he said, “no seminal stream-of-consciousness Parisienne street-poet space rock for you, monsieur!” But the tension was palpable. We needed to raise our game.
I realised I could use my mother’s sewing machine to clothe my very family itself, this summer, in unambiguously pro-European Union garments, exactly the sort of bespoke outfits we would need to ensure safe passage across the continent in these troubled times.
The McCall’s Patterns M5500 Children’s Knight, Prince and Samurai Costumes kit, which I found for $8.91 on the internet, had the basic shapes I needed for my pro-European Union suits. And while European Union patterned dressmaking material is not available in and of itself, European Union flags 15ft square are available for about £1.50 each online. These were the tools!
By upscaling the size of the patterns I was also able to provide templates for my wife and I, and by the end of June I had cut and stitched four perfect medieval-style European Union two-pieces for us to wear as we make our way across divided Europe. For headgear, I copied our clearly pro-EU queen, and wove plastic yellow daisies in European Union star formations into the brims of four blue wickerwork hats. Four pairs of blue-and-yellow trainers set off our ensembles perfectly.
In Germany, the still extant Wanderjahre tradition sees young people wander the country for a fixed period, dressed in stovepipe hats and bell-bottoms, singing for their sausage suppers in inns and bars. This, I realised, could be the model for our ritual journey, our pilgrimage of contrition.
Six plays the French horn, Nine is a skilled oboist, and I own a theremin, while my wife can shriek. I have arranged a version of the song I Apologize by the 1980s Minneapolis hardcore punk band Hüsker Dü for our family quartet, and I plan to spend the summer performing it in our pro-European garb at a succession of significant European sites.
And when their children, standing in the ruins of ravaged Britain, ask my children what they did to try and sabotage Brexit, they can answer, “We stood outside the Stasi Museum, and Notre-Dame, and the astronomical clock, clad in European Union costumes that our father stitched himself, and used our oboe and our horn to apologise.”
Stewart Lee
2017-07-09T19:16:13+01:00
In the 1980s, the pornographic bookshop (bad) where we bought amyl nitrate was opposite the feminist bookshop (good), where we hung around skim-reading Spare Rib and Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (1970), to try to get dates with the clever feminists, who saw through us immediately. The feminist bookshop (good) had a camera set up in its window to covertly photograph male fans of pornography (bad) coming and going from the pornographic bookshop. If this seems a depressing state of affairs, look on the bright side. In 1986, a small provincial town could still support two independent bookshops! Our purchases complete, we would stand opposite the feminists’ camera position, waving our bottles of amyl nitrate around, so the feminists would know we only wanted to get high, and not degrade women by looking at pictures of them nude. How did they resist us? Ten years ago, I inherited a vintage Singer sewing machine from my mother. During my childhood, she became expert at hand-making perfect costumes of whatever character was my current favourite. When I was five, in 1973, her Hartley Hare from Pipkins costume was perfect, functioning alcoholic eyes and all; in 1977, my mother’s Captain Britain tabard was unique, the obscure Marvel superhero being resistant to official merchandising; and I doubt there were many boys lucky enough to attend their 10th birthday party in a one-piece zip-up costume of the Welsh experimental film-maker and poet Iain Sinclair. This summer, I had planned to take the children, Six and Nine, to the United States on a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to pay homage to the unmarked paupers’ graves of my favourite 47 significant pre-first world war blues harmonica players. It was to be a journey I am sure they would have looked back on with...
From the belatedly Christianised northern Swedish village of Korpolombolo, the girls and boys of Goat arrive in leathers and feathers.
Their kitchen cauldron soup of Can Kraut grooves, ritualistic chants, and black acid suggests they used Julian Cope's Faber-endorsed cult rock overview, Copendium, as a rulebook.
Begin at Goathead, where surging mercurial lead guitar battles big mama blues wailing over bent boogie rhythms, before melting into a spooked satanic acoustic folk guitar fade.
And the eight minute Ded Some Aldrig Förändras/Diarabi is the Viking voodoo workout you've been waiting all year for.
Stewart Lee
2012-12-16T19:52:13+00:00
From the belatedly Christianised northern Swedish village of Korpolombolo, the girls and boys of Goat arrive in leathers and feathers. Their kitchen cauldron soup of Can Kraut grooves, ritualistic chants, and black acid suggests they used Julian Cope's Faber-endorsed cult rock overview, Copendium, as a rulebook. Begin at Goathead, where surging mercurial lead guitar battles big mama blues wailing over bent boogie rhythms, before melting into a spooked satanic acoustic folk guitar fade. And the eight minute Ded Some Aldrig Förändras/Diarabi is the Viking voodoo workout you've been waiting all year for.
Stewart Lee gave up stand-up comedy in 2001 after deciding that his material was "arch, cynical, tired, fake, conceited, formulaic and flat". He threw his energies into co-writing and directing Jerry Springer: the Opera, which earned him an Olivier Award, opprobrium and no money. In 2004, he began his comeback as an "alternative" comedian, and this book is the story of that comeback.
It takes the form of transcripts of his three shows, Stand-up Comedian (2005), '90s Comedian (2006) and 41st Best Stand-up Ever (2008), each copiously footnoted, explaining and critiquing his material and techniques, and with excursions into his life, his health, his friends, his comedy heroes and his mum.
I was in the audience for all three of these shows. They were hilarious then and are still hilarious on the page. But would I laugh so much if I hadn't been there, if I couldn't remember Lee's slow, bitter, weary, irony-saturated delivery? Take no chances: buy this book and get the DVDs of the shows as well (helpfully listed in a discography, along with appendices including a long narrative poem about stand-up and a truly hilarious discussion with Johnny Vegas about Russell Brand). And if you get the chance, go and see Stewart Lee perform. Because the material is non-arch, uncynical, energetic, genuine, modest, original and as spiky as a range of mountains. Oh, and did I say hilarious?
Stewart Lee
2011-08-07T13:23:14+01:00
Stewart Lee gave up stand-up comedy in 2001 after deciding that his material was "arch, cynical, tired, fake, conceited, formulaic and flat". He threw his energies into co-writing and directing Jerry Springer: the Opera, which earned him an Olivier Award, opprobrium and no money. In 2004, he began his comeback as an "alternative" comedian, and this book is the story of that comeback. It takes the form of transcripts of his three shows, Stand-up Comedian (2005), '90s Comedian (2006) and 41st Best Stand-up Ever (2008), each copiously footnoted, explaining and critiquing his material and techniques, and with excursions into his life, his health, his friends, his comedy heroes and his mum. I was in the audience for all three of these shows. They were hilarious then and are still hilarious on the page. But would I laugh so much if I hadn't been there, if I couldn't remember Lee's slow, bitter, weary, irony-saturated delivery? Take no chances: buy this book and get the DVDs of the shows as well (helpfully listed in a discography, along with appendices including a long narrative poem about stand-up and a truly hilarious discussion with Johnny Vegas about Russell Brand). And if you get the chance, go and see Stewart Lee perform. Because the material is non-arch, uncynical, energetic, genuine, modest, original and as spiky as a range of mountains. Oh, and did I say hilarious?
“If you had to kill Stewart Lee how would you do it? Stab his eyes out? Shotgun to the knees? Brain with heavy object?” Xpijonipsy, Twitter, 16/10/19, since removed
1) SNOWFLAKE/TORNAD0 - LIVE (London & Touring)
I THINK ALL LONDON DATES ARE NOW SOLD OUT BUT... THERE WILL BE SUPPLEMENTARY DATES AT THE ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL, LONDON, JUNE 27TH, 28TH AND JULY 1ST, 2ND, 3RD, AND THESE ARE ON SALE NOW.
I'm doing a new stand-up show for the back end of 2019 and the first half of 2020.
More national dates from Feb 2020 will be announced later in the year, I am going to do less shows than last time, but with longer runs in bigger rooms to hit the same demand.
I will film this show/these shows in the Summer of 2020 for offloading to whatever content platforms are still viable at that stage in late capitalism's technologically-driven cultural decline.
David Johnson & John Mackay in association with Debi Allen/Curtis Brown present STEWART LEE - SNOWFLAKE/TORNADO.
Double-bill of two new 60-ish minute sets, back to back nightly from "the world's greatest living stand-up" (Times).
Tornado questions a shipwrecked Stew’s position in the comedy marketplace after Netflix mistakenly lists his show as "reports of sharks falling from the skies are on the rise again. Nobody on the Eastern Seaboard is safe." What is anything? Is it this?
And Snowflake questions our worth in a collapsing society which no longer shares the liberal values we have for so long been keen to be seen to espouse, in a fairy-tale landscape of winter wonder. Tons of fun!
This is the link for physical media version via MEDIA GARAGE via AMAZON. MEDIA GARAGE is the only legit outlet for physical media and anyone else selling it isn’t me and I don’t get the money. DVD LINK
Right now there is nothing free to view of me on Netflix or Amazon. I’m not part of a package of multi-artists shows the Network can buy from a particular production company and I’m not prepared to give stuff away free to the platforms.
Also, you can buy everything from me at live shows, which is best, as both I and the taxman see a slice of the action in this honest and straightforward farmers’ market style transaction.
I will even have a card machine this time around to facilitate drunken impulse mass-purchases, at rates beyond your actual means.
I am trying to get STAND-UP COMEDIAN back in circulation but the original producers have put the original contract in storage and have warned us that it is costly to locate it.
3) King Rocker Doc
Michael Cumming (Brass Eye), James Nicholls (Fire films) and I are looking for donations to complete the film below, which is about Birmingham post-punk survivors The Nightingales.
Everyone who donates, no matter how big or how small*, will be featured in the end credits.
*(I think this sentence, written by James from Fire, relates to the size of the donation, not the donor.)
March of the Lemmings - Brexit in Print and Performance 2016-2019
Faber have published March of the Lemmings.
Drawing on three years of newspaper columns, a complete transcript of the 'Content Provider' stand-up show, and Lee’s caustic footnote commentary, March of the Lemmings is the scathing, riotous record the Brexit era deserves.”
5) LAURA CANNELL’S MODERN RITUAL
I am contributing some words to a new performance by mediaeval minimalist the mighty Laura Cannell, at London’s King’s Place on July 11th - https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/
6) MUSIC FROM SHOWS
PEOPLE KEEP ASKING ME AFTER GIGS; "WHAT IS THAT BIT OF MUSIC FROM ‘CONTENT PROVIDER’ OR ‘SNOWFLAKE/TORNADO’?". So, here goes...
CONTENT PROVIDER
PRE-SHOW Was mainly tracks from Bounce (2016) by The Beat, and Black Bombers (2016) by Black Bombers
PRE-SHOW - Oh Yeah - Can (Tago Mago, 1971), Halleluhwah - Can (Tago Mago, 1971), Pinch - Can (Ege Bamyasi, 1972), If I’m In Luck I Might Get Picked Up - Betty Davis (Betty Davis, 1973)
INTERVAL - Auto Chip 2014 - 2016 - The Fall (Sub Lingual Tablet, 2014), Auto (2024) Chip Replace Live - The Fall (Live Uurop VIII- XII, 2014), Fibre Book Troll - The Fall (Sub Lingual Tablet, 2014)
WALK-OUT - Stiff Little Fingers - My Dark Places (No Going Back, 2014), Dave Graney - Ultrakeef (Zippa DeeDoo, 2019)
7) I ARROGANTLY RECOMMEND THE FOLLOWING JANUARY EVENTS
1) New Year’s Day Morris Dancing & Folk Events.
i) Abingdon Traditional MORRIS MEN: New Year's Day - 12:30pm The Punch Bowl, Market Place OX14 3HG; 1:30pm King's Head & Bell, East St Helen's Street OX14 5EA
ii) Aldbury MORRIS MEN : New Year's Day - 12:00 noon, The Valiant Trooper, Aldbury HP23 5RW; 1:00pm - The Greyhound, Aldbury HP23 5RT TBC
iii) Alvechurch MORRIS MEN : New Year's Day - Mummers' Play around Alvechurch (at The Crown in Withybed Green)
iv) Ashdown Forest MORRIS MEN : New Year's Day - 1:00 pm - The New Inn, Hadlow Down TN22 4HJ
v) Blackmore MORRIS MEN : New Year's Day - 1:00 pm, Leather Bottle, Blackmore CM4 0RL
vi) Dartington MORRIS MEN : New Year's Day - 1:00 pm. Hope Cove, Devon TQ7 3HQ About 2:00pm we will adjourn to the Hope and Anchor Inn.
vii) Etcetera MORRIS MEN : New Year's DaySpectacular - 12:30pm, The Wonder, Batley Rd, Enfield EN2 OJG. We will be joined by dancing friends from Hertfordshire Holly and Camden Clog, as well as other Cotswold Morris dancers. Followed by music and song in the bar.
viii) Kennet MORRIS MEN : New Year's Day - Dancing about 12:30 pm followed by music and song until 3:00pm Calleva Arms, Silchester RG7 2PH
ix) Mersey MORRIS MEN: New Year's Day - 12:00 noon The Plasterers Arms Hoylake Wirral CH47 2DJ
x) Monkseaton MORRIS MEN : New Year's Day - 12:00 noon outside the Ship Inn, Monkseaton and then afterwards in the Ship Inn. follow us as we dance in all the pubs in Monkseaton during the afternoon: Black Horse, Monkseaton Arms, Front Street Tap House & Left Luggage Room
xi) Ripley Morris - New Year's Day - 12:30pm Red Lion Hognaston
xii) Rose and Castle Morris : New Year's Day - 12:00 noon, The Boat, Stoke Bruerne with Queen's Oak, followed by "musical diversions"
xiii) Taunton Deane MORRIS MEN : New Year's Day - 12:30 pm for 1:00pm: Bradford on Tone - The White Horse Inn TA4 1HF
xiv) Towersey Morris : New Year's Day - 1:00pm onwards: White Hart, Moneyrow Green, Holyport SL6 2ND by invitation of Taeppa's Tump - including the Towersey Mummers Play
xv) Yateley MORRIS MEN : New Year's Day - 1:00 pm, The Cricketers, Hartley Wintney RG27 8QB - with Mummers Play
2) Adlington MORRIS MEN and Mummers
Friday 3rd January – Alderley Mummers Play, Macclesfield & district tour - 8:00 pm Church House, Church Lane, Sutton Lane Ends, SK11 0DS; 9:00 pm Gawsworth, The Harrington Arms, Church Lane, off Congleton Road, SK11 9RR; 10:00 pm Macclesfield, The Waters Green Tavern, 96 Waters Green, SK11 6LH
3) Kennet MORRIS MEN
4th January 1:30pm - Tutts Clump Wassail - our traditional wassailing of the has been continuous ever since its planting... 6 years ago.
4) Letchworth MORRIS MEN
Saturday 4th January - 6:30pm Dunton Wassail , Church Farm, Dunton SG18 8RR with Bedford MORRIS MEN
5) Datchet Border Morris
Sunday 5th January - Brightwell Wassail, 2:00pm Red Lion, Brightwell Street, Brightwell-cum-Sotwell OX10 0RT
6) Leominster MORRIS MEN
Twelfth Night - Monday 6th January 7:00pm - The Wassail - the first event revived after the side was re-formed in 1983, this year at The Bell, Tillington, Hereford HR4 8LE
7) Silurian Border MORRIS MEN
1st Saturday after 12th Night - 6th January Wassail in Much Marcle. 7:00pm dancing followed by an atmospheric torchlight procession into ancient cider orchards. After the Ceremony of singing, carousing and general merriment there will be music and Mummers at the Slip Inn, Much Marcle. Silurian would like to remind all participants that there is real fire involved - come prepared!
8) Haxey Hood Game
violent communal folk football, Haxey, Lincolnshire. Jan 6th
9) Hinckley Bullockers
1st Saturday after 12th Night - 6th January - Tour of Sharnford and Sapcote starting 9:40am The Countryman. 23 Leicester Rd, Sharnford, LE10 3PP
10) Saturday 11th January
Hedgerley Wassail, 2:00pm White Horse, Village Lane Hedgerley SL2 3UY
11) Brackley MORRIS MEN
Saturday 11th January Somerton Wassail, 4:00pm Somerton Village Hall, Heyford Rd, Somerton, Bicester OX25 6LN
Twelfth Night - Saturday 11th January 8:00pm - Here We Come A Wassailing - The Wheatsheaf, 2 Church Street Willingdon Eastbourne BN20 9HP with Merrie England Mummers
14) Burhead, N East Scotland.
Burning The Clavie. A barrel is set fire to. Jan 11th.
15) VARIOUS PLOUGH SUNDAY EVENTS
i) Jockey MORRIS MEN : 1st Saturday after 12th night - 11th January - Birmingham City Centre, usually starting at St. Martin’s Church in The Bull Ring at 10:00am where we have our Plough blessed for the start of the agricultural year with Red Leicester Morrismen & Mersey Morris Men
ii) Goathland Ploughstots. 1st Sunday after 12th Night - 12th January 10.45am, Blessing of the Plough Service, St Mary's Church, Goatland.
iii) Claro Sword: Plough Sunday 12th January St. John's Parish Church Knaresborough, North Yorkshire. Claro Sword perform traditional Yorkshire Longsword at the 10.30 Plough-blessing service and afterwards wheel the plough to Knaresborough Market Place for more dancing.TBC
iv) Grimsby MORRIS MEN : Plough Sunday - 12th January - 12.00 pm The White Hart, Ludford; 1.00 pm Market Place, Binbrook; 1.30 pm The Plough, Binbrook. Dancing, wassail cermony and the North Kelsey Plough Play.
16) Cambridge MORRIS MEN
Plough Monday - 13th January - 11:30am Comberton Duck Pond, Green End, Comberton, Cambridgeshire CB23 7DY performing East Anglian Molly dances here then followed by private shows at various schools through the day. In the evening we join the Balsham Ploughboys in a tour of their village as Cotswold Dancers, visiting many hospitable families and the village pubs.TBC
17) PETER BROTZMANN
German Free Jazz Sax giant, Café Oto, London, Weds 15th Jan
18) THE BELLRAYS
Veteran US Punk-soul band, a live sensation, UK tour.
Jan 15th Southsea Wedgewood, 16th Bristol Louisiana, 17th Newport Le Pub, 19th Halifax Lantern, 21st Edinburgh Voodoo Rooms, 22nd Glasgow Broadcast, 23rd Newcastle Cluny, 24th Middlesburgh Westgarth, 25th Brighton Prince Albert, 26th London Oslo.
19) Carhampton and Roadwater, Somerset.
Wassailing Parties enter orchards to bless the trees. 17th Jan
20) Taunton Deane MORRIS MEN
Friday 17th January - Sheppy’s Cider Wassail, 6:30pm Bradford on Tone TA4 1ER
21) Peterborough MORRIS MEN
1st Saturday after 12th Night - 18th January - lead the Whittlesea Straw Bear procession 10:30am-3:30pm with many other dance teams followed by Sunday 19th January, Straw Bear Church Service. - A Morris display as part of the Plough Service.
22) Goathland Ploughstots.
The Saturday following The Blessing - 18th January 9.30 am Tour of Goathland and surrounding area, starting from the The Reading Room, Goathland, North Yorkshire
23) Mari Lwyd EVENTS 10th - 18th Jan.
A skeletal Welsh horse prances about. The Boot Pub, London, WC1H 8BS, 6.30pm 10th Jan; Caerleon, S Wales, 6.30 11th Jan, The Goldcroft; Chepstow Bridge, Wye Valley, 1.30 pm, 18th Jan
24) Sunday 19th January
Spriggan Mist Wassail, 3:00pm London Stone, Church Street, Staines TW18 4EP
25) ANTHONTY BRAXTON
American saxophonist, composer and jazz mathematician. Café Oto, London Jan 19th - 21st.
26) Claro Sword
Plough Sunday 26th January St. Andrew's Church Aldborough, nr Boroughbridge, North Yorkshire. Claro Sword perform traditional Yorkshire Longsword at the 10.30 plough-blessing service. TBC
27) Up Helly Aa.
Frightening Viking Fire festival. Lerwick, Shetland 28th Jan.
8) MY CULTURAL YEAR 2019 UPTO DEC 22ND
NEW FILMS (2018/9)
The best 3 new films I saw this year were...
Ant Man & The Wasp (Peyton Reed) ★★★★★
Mandy (Panos Cosmatos) ★★★★★
Cold War (Paweł Pawlikowski) ★★★★★
Here’s my year’s new film viewing in order
Ant Man & The Wasp (Peyton Reed) ★★★★★
Mandy (Panos Cosmatos) ★★★★★
Happy New Year, Colin Burstead (Ben Wheatley) ★★★★
Christopher Robin (Marc Forster)★
Arcadia (Paul Wright) Captain Marvel (Anna Boden/Ryan Fleck)
Shazam (David Sandberg)
The Dirt (Jeff Tremaine)
Solo (Ron Howard) ★★★★
Spider-man : Into The Spider-verse (Peter Ramsey)
Avengers : Infinity War (Russo Brothers)
Avengers : Endgame (Russo Brothers)
Keepers (AKA The Vanishing) (Kristoffer Nyholm)
Toy Story 4 (Josh Cooley)
Fighting With My Family (Stephen Marchant) ★★★★
Spider-Man : Far From Home (Jon Watts)
Midsommar (Ara Aster) ★ Can You Ever Forgive Me (Marielle Heller) ★★★★
John Wick 3 Parabellum (Chad Stahelski)
The Sisters Brothers (Jaques Audriard)
Black Panther (Ryan Coogler)
Cold Pursuit (Hans Petter Molland)
The Commuter (Jaume Collet-Serra) ★★★★
Cold War (Paweł Pawlikowski) ★★★★★
Jumanji The Next Level (Jack Kasdan) ★
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (Q Tarantino) ★★★★
OLD FILMS
Get Hard (Etan Cohen, 2015) ★
Pete’s Dragon (David Lowery, 2015)
Howard’s End (James Ivory, 1992) ★★★★★
Unforgiven (Lee Sang-il, 2013) ★★★★
A Street Cat Named Bob (Roger Spottiswode, 2016)
Last Days Here (Don Argott, 2012)
Spider-man Homecoming (Jon Watts, 2017) ★★
Romeo + Juliet (Baz Luhrmann, 1996)
Ride For A Massacre (Gianni Puccini, 1967)
Superman (Richard Donner, 1978) The Lobster (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2015)
Murder On The Orient Express (Kenneth Branagh, 2017) ★★★★
A Matter Of Life And Death (Powell & Pressburger, 1946) ★★★★★ The Witches (Nick Roeg, 1990) Edie (Simon Hunter, 2017)
The Thomas Crown Affair (Norman Jewison, 1968)
The Monuments Men (George Cluney, 2014) ★★★★
Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993) ★★★★★ Elizabeth The Golden Age (Shekar Kapur, 2006)
Stranded (Serge Ou, Andy Nehl, 2015)
The Italian Job (Peter Collinson, 1969)
Doc (Frank Perry, 1971)
The Tooth Fairy (Michael Lembeck, 2010) ★★★★
The World’s End (Edgar Wright, 2013) ★★★★ Mary Poppins (Robert Stevenson, 1964)
Southern Comfort (Walter Hill, 1981) ★★★★★ The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965) ★★★★★
Behind The Candelabra (Stephen Soderberg, 2013) ★★★★
The Post (Steven Spielberg, 2017)
Bruce Almighty (Tom Shadyac, 2003)
Dead Snow (Tommy Wirkola, 2009) Maleficent (Robert Stromberg, 2014) Hot Pursuit (Anne Fletcher, 2015) ★★★★
The Incredibles (Brad Bird, 2004)
Catch Me If You Can (Stephen Spielberg, 2003) ★★★★
Killdozer (Jerry London, 1974)
Titanic (James Cameron, 1997)★
Deathstalker II (Jim Wynorski, 1987) The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963) ★★★★ Mrs Brown (John Madden, 1997) ★★★★ Nina Simone, What Happened? (Liz Garbus, 2015)
Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977) ★★★★★
The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kirschner, 1980)
Howl (Paul Hyett, 2015)
Ant-Man (Edgar Wright/Peyton Reed, 2015) ★★★★
Spider-man (Sam Raimi, 2002) ★★★★
Teenwolf (1985, Rod Daniel)
Empire Of The Ants (Bert L Gordon, 1977)
In The Mouth Of Madness (John Carpenter, 1994) ★★★★
Oxide Ghosts (Michael Cumming, 2017) ★★★★★ Poor Pretty Eddie (Richard Robinson, David Worth, 1975) ★★★★ The Mask Of Zorro (Martin Campbell, 1998) ★★★★
Mickey One (Arthur Penn, 1965) ★★★★★
Lost Soul – Doomed Journey of R Stanley (D Gregory, 2014) ★★★★ TNT Jackson (Chiro Santiago, 1974)
The Mummy (Stephen Sommers, 1999) ★
John Wick (Chad Tahelski, 2014) ★★★★★
Father Figures (Lawrence Sher, 2017) ★★★★
As Good As It Gets (James Brooks, 1997)
The Ring (Hideo Nakata, 1998)
Box Of Moonlight (Tom Dicillo, 1997) ★★★★ Fly Away Home (Carol Ballard, 1996) ★★★★
Ghost Stories (A Nyman, J Dyson, 2017)
Harry Potter’s Secret Chamber (C Columbus, 2002)
Bone Tomahawk (S Craig Zahler, 2015)
Sharknado (Anthony Ferrante, 2013)
Living In Oblivion (Tom Dicillo, 1995)
If (Lindsay Anderson, 1968) ★★★★
Gangsters - Play For Today (Philip Saville, 1975) ★★★★
The King’s Speech (Tom Hooper, 2010)
Django (Sergio Corbucci, 1966) ★★★★★
The Fugitive (Andrew Davis, 1993)
Captain America (Joe Johnston, 2011)
Iron Man (John Favreau, 2008) ★★★★
Iron Man 2 (John Favreau, 2010)
Incredible Hulk (Louis Leterrier, 2008) ★
Thor (Kenneth Brannagh, 2011)
Avengers Assemble (Joss Whedon, 2012)
Iron Man 3 (Shane Black, 2012) ★★★★
Thor Dark World (2013, Alan Taylor)
Captain America The Winter Soldier (Joe Russo, 2014)
Avengers Age Of Ultron (Joss Whedon, 2015)
Captain America - Civil War (Russo bros, 2016) ★
The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980) ★★★★★
My Name Is Nobody (Sergio Leone/Tonio Valeri, 1973)★★★★ Spy (Paul Feig, 2015) ★★★★
The King Of Comedy (Martin Scorsese, 1982) ★★★★★
Never Too Young To Rock And Roll (Dennis Abbey, 1976) ★
Tentacles (Ovidio Assonitis, 1977)
Dave Made A Maze (Bill Watterson, 2017)
Three Days of The Condor (Sydney Pollak, 1975)★★★★
The Sixth Sense (M Knight Shyamalan, 1999)★★★★
Aguirre, The Wrath Of God (Werner Herzog, 1972) ★★★★★
Cherry Tree Lane (Paul Andrew Williams, 2010)
Look Who’s Back (David Wendt, 2015) ★★★★★
Shirley Valentine (Lewis Gilbert, 1989) ★★★★
Sexy Beast (Jonathan Glazer, 2001) ★★★★
Dinner for Schmucks (Jay Roach, 2010) ★★★★
True Grit (Cohen Brothers, 2010)
Incident At Loch Ness (Zach Penn, 2004) ★★★★★
Identity Theft (Seth Gordon, 2013) ★★
For Your Eyes Only (John Glen, 1981)
The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock, 1936) ★★★★★
Unknown (Jaume Collett-Serra, 2011) ★★★★
Taken (Pierre Morel, 2008) ★★★★
Taken 2 (Oliver Megaton, 2012)
Taken 3 (Oliver Megaton, 2015)
The Grey (Joe Carnahan, 2012)
Non-Stop (Jaume Collet-Serra, 2014) ★★★★
Brain Damage (Frank Henenlotter, 1988) ★★★★★
Run All Night (Jaume Collet-Serra, 2015)
Horror Hospital (Anthony Balch, 1973)
King Kong Escapes (Ishirō Honda, 1967)
No Such Thing (Hal Hartley, 2002) ★★★★
The Doors (Oliver Stone, 1991) ★
All Is By My Side (John Ridley, 2013) ★★★★
Blow Up (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966) ★★★★★
V For Vendetta (James McTiege, 2005)
Tremors (Ron Underwood, 1990) ★★★★
Get Santa (Chris Smith, 2014) ★★★★★
NEW BOOKS
Their Brilliant Careers – Ryan O’Neill ★★★★★ and Only Americans Burn In Hell – Jarett Kobek ★★★★★ were both brilliant works of fiction.
Tim Wells’ Moonstomp skinhead-horror ‘70s NEL pastiche was smartly observed and laugh out loud funny.
And if you like HEX ENDUCTION HR by THE FALL you will love Paul Hanley’s study of the album.
Andy Burnham – The Old Stones ★★★★
Their Brilliant Careers – Ryan O’Neill ★★★★★
Only Americans Burn In Hell – Jarett Kobek ★★★★★
Matthew Cutter – Closer You Are ★★★★
Faunus – ed. James Machine ★★★★
Ranking Roger - I Just Can’t Stop It
Tim Wells - Moonstomp ★★★★
Dylan Jones - Wichita Lineman ★
Have A Bleedin’ Guess - Paul Hanley ★★★★★
Pianos, Toys & Topical Tips For Improvisers - Andy Hamilton
Dave Haslam - A Life in 35 Boxes
Nick Hunt - The Parakeeting of London ★★★★
OLD BOOKS
Rosemary Tonks – The Bloater (1968) ★★★★
Forbes Stuart - The Magic Bridle (1974) ★★★★★
Mike Scott - Adventures of a Waterboy (2012)
Uwe Johnson - The 3rd Book About Achim (1961)
Heathcote Williams - Boris Beast of Brexit (2016) ★★★★★ Olivia Laing - The Lonely City (2016)
Chris Palling - Reading Allowed (2017)
Steve Aylett - Lint (2005)★★★★★
Kieron Winn - The Mortal Man (2015)
COMICS
Kamandi The Last Boy On Earth (Jack Kirby) anthology
Sensational She Hulk 1 - 12 (John Byrne, 1989)
Prison Planet 6 - Johnny Ryan (2018)
TV NEW AND OLD
Comedians Of The World (Netflix) ★ ABC Murders (BBC1) ★★★★ Catastrophe s 4 (C4)
The Easybeats to AC/DC (BBC4)
Question Time w F Bruce (BBC2) ★
This Week w Andrew Neil (BBC2)
Sky News
Sky Daily Papers review
BBC News Daily Papers review
BBC News 24
Horrible Histories (CBBC) ★★★★
Endeavour s 2(ITV) ★★★★★ Grace & Frankie (S1) (Netflix)
Don McCullin (BBC4) ★★★★
Arena Blues Night (BBC i-player) ★★★★
Derry Girls (C4)
Norsemen (S2, Netflix) ★★★★
Endeavour (2019, ITV)
First Dates (C4) ★★★★ Russian Doll (Netflix) The Night Manager (Suzanne Bier, BBC, 2016) ★★★★ Broadchurch Series 1, 2 (BBC1, 2013-15) ★★★★ Fleabag S2 (BBC3)
Hunted s2, s3 (C4) ★★★★
Ryan Gander, My Selfie And I (BBC4)
Line Of Duty, s5 (BBC1) ★★★★ Walks of Life (BBC1) ★
Rock Island Line (BBC4) Ghosts (BBC2) ★★★★★ Mum S 1-3(BBC2) ★★★★★ Young And Promising S 1-3 (C4) ★★★★
Walks Of Life (BBC1) ★
John Lee Hooker The Boogie Man (BBC4)
The Twilight Zone S 1 (1959)★★★★★ Bewitched (S1 1964) ★★★★
After Life (Netflix) ★
Gangsters S1, 1976 (BBC) ★★★★★
The Cameron Years (BBC) ★★★★★
Question Time (BBC) ★
Hans Teeuwen - Real Rancour ★★★★
The Beatles Made On Merseyside (BBC4?) ★★★★
Prince Andrew Interview (BBC)
War Of The Worlds (BBC)
Father Ted, s1 & 2 (C4) ★★★★★
Gene Clark The Byrd Who Flew Alone (BBC 2013)
MAGAZINES AND PAPERS
Shindig, Record Collector, Viz, Mojo, Guardian, Machenallia, Faunus, Observer, Guardian
RADIO
Iggy Pop (6 Music) ★★★★★
Marc Riley (6 Music) ★★★★★ Amo Amas A Musical w Mary Beard (Radio 4)
James O’Brien (LBC) ★★★★★ Sheilagh Fogarty (LBC)
Eddie Mair (LBC) ★★★★
Maajid Nawaz (LBC) ★★★★
Mark Steel’s In Town (Forest of Dean) (Radio 4) ★★★★★
Late Junction (R3) ★★★★
Louis Theroux (6 Music) ★★★★
Why Woodstock Still Matters (BBC World Service) ★★★★
Sean Keaveney (6 Music)
Dead Ringers Election Special (BBC Radio 4) ★★★★
The worst radio I heard was, as usual, The Today Program (BBC Radio 4)
Peter Fleming : Have You Seen? (Machynlleth Fest) ★★★★
Jamali Maddix, Felicity Ward, Lolly Adefope, Martin & Vivian Soan, Rosie Jones & Harry Hill (LST) ★★★★★
Paul Currie - Release The Baboons (Free Fringe, Edinburgh) ★★★★ Rosie Jones (Pleasance, Edinburgh) ★★★★
Hannah Gadsby - Douglas (South Bank Centre)
John Kearns (Soho Theatre)
GIGS
The second of Guided By Voices’ two London nights was one of the greatest things of any sort I have ever experienced. The sheer joy of it stayed with me for months.
And Madness’ 40th Anniversary show was special too.
Patti Smith (Roundhouse, London) ★★★★ The Fallen Women (Lexington, London) ★★★★ Shirley Collins (Roundhouse, London) ★★★★ Jackie Oates (Water Rats, London) ★★★★
The Zeros (Shacklewell Arms, London) ★★★★
21 Pilots (Wembley Arena) ★★★★★
Stiff Little Fingers/Eddie & Hot Rods/Vapors (Forum) ★★★★★
John Paul Jones, Thurston Moore & Steve Noble (100 Club)
Evan Parker & John Russell (Vortex) ★★★★
Long Ryders (Islington Town Hall) ★★★★ Islet (Machynlleth Festival) ★★★★
Robert Forster (Union Chapel)
Peter Case/Sid Griffin (Leytonstone Ex-Servicemen’s) ★★★★
Endless Boogie (Oslo, London) ★★★★
Chameleons Vox (Dingwalls) ★★★★
The Nightingales (Sea Change) Sandra Kerr & John Faulkner & Bagpuss (Sea Change) ★★★★
Guided by Voices (Village Undergound, London, Weds) ★★★★★
Guided by Voices (Village Underground, London, Thurs) ★★★★★★
Russ Tolman (Seabright Arms)
Flamin’ Groovies (Under The Bridge)
Alan Wilkinson, Steve Noble, John Edwards (Nomadic Community Garden, Brick Lane) ★★★★ Stereolab/Vanishing Twin (Shepherd’s Bush Empire)
King Crimson (Royal Albert Hall)
Meat Puppets (ULU) ★★★★★
Archie Shepp (Ronnie Scotts) ★★★★
Bob Dylan & Neil Young (Hyde Park) ★★★★★
The Long Ryders (Hare & Hounds, Birmingham)
Crockenjambe (Mortain Piscine Jardin, Normandy)
Blueswater (Surgeon’s Hall, Edinburgh) ★★★★
Adam Kadabara/The Bucket Boy (Royal Mile, Edinbugh)
Trad, Gras Och Stenar (Troxy, London) ★★★★★
Steve Noble, John Edwards, Alan Wilkinson (Word On The Water, London) ★★★★ Kate Tempest (Hammersmith Odeon) ★★★★
Thurston Moore Group (ULU) ★★★★
The Ex, Xavier Charles, Ada Rave, Zweditu Johannes, Marion Coutts, Alexander Hawkins (Café Oto) ★★★★★
Chris Cacavas (Slaughtered Lamb)
Madness (Roundhouse) ★★★★★
RECORDS I LISTENED TO IN THEIR ENTIRITY OLD SCHOOL THIS YEAR IN ONE SITTING AT A DESIGNATED LISTENING DEVICE
NEW RECORDS – 2018/2019
My ten favourite new records this year were...
1.Richard Dawson - 2020 - The best and most essential new record of the year for me, a state of the nation observation of incredible compassion in art-folk form
2.Long Ryders – Psychedelic Country Soul - Unexpectedly viable reunion record from alt country pioneers concluding unfinished business
3.Bangles/The Three O’Clock/Dream Syndicate/Rain Parade – 3x4 - Unexpectedly viable 4-way project of 80s LA psychedelic bands covering each others’ work
4. The Beasts – Still Here - Unexpectedly viable record by surviving members of Australian blues-psyche-garage punks
5. Trash Kit - Horizon Afro-highlife-postpunk hybrid of life-affirming power
6.Guided By Voices – Sweating The Plague - Best of many albums this year by veteran Ohio mod-prog band
7&8. Dry Cleaning - Sweet Princess & Boundary Rd Snacks And Drinks - Sneery literary dirty realist post-punk that flips my wig
9. Slagheap - Slagheap The shouty girl version of 1981 Fall kick ass
10. Major Stars - Roots of Confusion - Boston psych veterans continue to lay down impossibly dense grooves
Here’s Everything new in the order that I heard it
21 Pilots – Trench
Baby Grandmothers – Merkurius ★★★★
Bottle Rockets – Bit Logic
Lee Ranaldo – Live At Rough Trade East ★★★★
Guided by Voices – Zeppelin Over China
Namer – January
Long Ryders – Psychedelic Country Soul ★★★★★
Black Bombers – Vol 4
Julian Cope – John Balance Enters Valhalla
Traden – s/t ★★★★
Richard Youngs – Memory Ain’t No Decay ★★★★
Richard Youngs – Dissident ★★★★ Tropical Fuckstorm – A Laughing Death In The Meatspace
The ACC – Beautiful At Night
Dream Syndicate – These Times
Sleaford Mods – Eton Alive
Amor – Sinking Into A Miracle
Howe Gelb – Label Pop Session
The Blackeyed Susans – Christmas Songs Bangles/3 O’Clock/Dream Syndicate/Rain Parade – 3x4 ★★★★★
Guided by Voices – Warp And Woof
The Beasts – Still Here ★★★★★
The Beat – Public Confidential
Deniz Tek – Lost For Words
Rob Snarski – Sparrow & Swan ★★★★
Son Volt – Union
The Comet Is Coming – Trust In The Lifeforce Of The Deep Mystery
Evan Parker & Paul G Smyth – Calenture & Light Leaks ★★★★
Bevis Frond – We’re Your Friends, Man ★★★★★
Guided By Voices – Sweating The Plague ★★★★★
Belbury Poly & Sharron Kraus – Chanctonbury Rings
Russ Tolman – Goodbye El Dorado
Robert Forster – Inferno
Rich Hopkins, Lisa Novak & Luminarios – Back To The Garden
Hugo Race – Taken By The Dream Laura Cannell – The Sky Unturned ★★★★
The Flesh Eaters – I Used To Be Pretty
Meat Puppets – Dusty Notes Trash Kit - Horizon ★★★★★
John Pierce O’Reilly - Mus Mea Whistling Arrow - Whistling Arrow ★★★★ Eliza Carthy - Restitute ★★★★
Dave Graney & The Mistly - Zippa Dee Doo ★★★★
Pat Todd - The Past Came Calling ★★★★
Hawklords - Brave New World
Chris Holiman - Welcome To The Underground Sacred Paws - Run Around The Sun ★★★★
The Waterboys - Where The Action Is ★★★★
Jack Waterson - Adrian Younge Presents Smitten - Cassettes (Live On Tape) ★★★★ Otoboke Beaver - Itekoma Hits ★★★★
Darren Hayman - 12 Astronauts
Howe Gelb - Gathered
Eyelids - Maybe More
Dope feat. Fuck Authority - 13 Black Math
The Blue Orchids - The Magical Record Of
The Aints - Play The Saints (73-78) Live
Fixed Horizon - X ep ★★★★
Dry Cleaning - Sweet Princess ★★★★★ Kate Tempest - The Book Of Traps & Lessons ★★★★
Richard Dawson - 2020 ★★★★★ Slagheap - Slagheap ★★★★★
Peter Hammill - X ★★★★
Hawkwind - All Aboard The Skylark
Hawkwind - Acoustic Days
Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Colorado ★★★★
The Utopia Strong - s/t
Billy Sedlmayr - Harlem River Drive Laura Cannell & Polly Wright - Sing As The Crow Flies ★★★★
The Elevator Mood - s/t Stick In The Wheel - Against The Loathsome Beyond
Bob Mould - Sunshine Rock
Major Stars - Roots of Confusion ★★★★★
Dream Syndicate - 2020 album ★★★★
Suns of The Tundra - Murmuration
Chris Cacavas - Home Recordings 1
Dry Cleaning - Boundary Road Snacks And Drinks ★★★★★
Billy Childish & CTMF - Last Punk Standing ★★★★
Billy Childish & CTMF - In The Devil’s Focus ★★★★
Jeff Kelly - Beneath The Stars, Above The River
NEW OLD RECORDS (REISSUES, ARCHIVES, COMPS)
TOP 5 OLD RECORDS....
Simon Bonney – Past Present Future (1992-99) ★★★★★
V/A - J Jazz, Deep Jazz From Japan 2 (1969-1983)★★★★★
Gorgeous Space Virus - We Paint Our Smiles (1994) ★★★★★
Dick Gaughan - The Harvard Tapes (1982) ★★★★★
The Bellrays - It’s Never Too Late To Fall In Love With (1998-2019) ★★★★★
The Gorgeous Space Virus album is a collection of never released recordings by a trippy-shoegazing-spacerock-noise band that were mainstays of London’s indie toilets in the early ‘90s. Their failure to thrive proves once again that success is not a meritocracy. This 25 years too late bandcamp d/l collection shows that we nearly had our own Englische Cosmische musiche in the vein of Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, Sonic Youth etc. And, on a personal level, it flips me back to being young and thin and drunk and deafened and thrilled to be alive in the big city as I started on the circuit, not knowing that this precarious but brilliant life was as exciting as it would ever get.
And....
Big Front Yard – Big Front Yard (1975) ★★★★
Endless Boogie – Endless Boogie 1 (2005) ★★★★
Dave Kusworth – The World Of Dave Kusworth (1984-2012)
Simon Bonney – Past Present Future (1992-99) ★★★★★
The Fall – Bend Sinister (1986) ★★★★
King Crimson - A Mojo Anthology (1969-2019)★★★★
Zior - Before My Eyes Go Blind (1974-2018) ★★★★
V/A - J Jazz, Deep Jazz From Japan 2 (1969-1983)★★★★★
John Coltrane - Blue World (1964) ★★★★★
V/A - J Jazz, Deep Jazz From Japan (1969-1984)
V/A - Brown Acid, The 8th Trip (1968-1977)
Ski Patrol - In Dub (1981) ★★★★
Townes van Zandt - Sky Blue (1973)
Gorgeous Space Virus - We Paint Our Smiles (1994) ★★★★★
Fleetwood Mac - Transmissions (1967-68)
The Springfields - Singles (1986-91) ★★★★
V/A - Brown Acid, The 9th Trip (1968-1974)
OLD RECORDS THAT I LISTENED TO IN ORDER IN 2019
Rollin’ Thunder – Howl (1987) ★★★★
The Fall – Hex Enduction Hour (1982) ★★★★★
The Moody Blues – Days of Future Passed (1967)
The Records – Crashes (1980) Bobbie Gentry – The Delta Sweet (1968) ★★★★
The Beatles – Revolver (1966) ★★★★★
The Beatles – Magical Mystery Tour (1967) ★★★★★
The Beatles – Past Masters II (1965-70) ★★★★★
Goldie – Timeless (1995) ★★★★★ Patti Smith – Land (1974-2002) ★★★★
The Beatles – White Album (1968) ★★★★★ Delaney & Bonnie & Friends- D&B Together (1972)
Dangtrippers – Days Between Stations (1987)
The Grass Roots – Where Were You When I Needed You? (1966)
The Moody Blues – In Search Of The Lost Chord (1968)
Dangtrippers – Transparent Blue Illusion (1991)
Ginhouse – Ginhouse (1971) Heaven & Earth – Refuge (1971) Saffron Summerfield – Sailsbury Plain (1974) Saffron Summerfield – Fancy Meeting You Here! (1976)
Neu! – Neu! (1972) ★★★★
Neu! – Neu! 2 (1973)
Träd, Gräs & Stenar – Ajin Schvajin Draj (2002) ★★★★
Träd, Gräs & Stenar – Homeless Cats (2009)
Neu! – ’75 (1975)
Man – Revelation (1969) ★★★★
Man – 2 0z Plastic With A Hole In The Middle (1969) ★★★★
Man – Man (1971)
Man – Do You Like It Here Now? (1971)
Man – Live At The Padget Rooms, Penarth (1972)
Man – Be Good To Yourself At Least Once A Day (1972)
Man – Back Into The Future (1973) ★
Man – Rhinos, Winos & Lunatics (1974) ★
Man – Slow Motion (1975)
Man – Maximum Darkness (1975)
Hard Meat – Hard Meat (1970)
Hard Meat – Through A Window (1970)
Help Yourself – Help Yourself (1971)
Help Yourself – Strange Affair (1972)
The Droogs – Mad Dog Dreams (1989)
Richard Youngs – This Is Not A Lament (2017) ★★★★ Sharon Tandy – You Gotta Believe It’s .. (1967-69) Karin Krog & Dexter Gordon – Some Other Spring (1970) ★★★★★ Karin Krog & Archie Shepp – Hi-Fly (1976) ★★★★★ Karin Krog – Different Days, Different Ways (1974) ★★★★★
RL Burnside – Burnside on Burnside (2001)
21 Pilots – Vessel (2013) Karin Krog – Joy (1968) ★★★★★
Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & The Trinity – Open (1967)
Three Mile Pilot - Na Vucca Do Lupu (1992) ★★★★
Polvo – Exploded Drawing (1996) ★★★★
The Droogs – Kingdom Day (1987)
Salvatore Camarata - Jungle Adventure (1966) ★★★★★
Karin Krog & Michael Legrand – You Must Believe In Spring (1974)
The Zeros – Right Now (1999)
The Zeros – Don’t Push Me Around (1977) ★★★★
Map Of Wyoming – Round Trip (1998)
Map Of Wyoming – Trouble Is (2000)
Erkin Koray – S/t (singles) (1970-77)
Greer – Between Two Worlds (1973) Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & The Trinity – Streetnoise (1969)
V/A – 5 Days Married, Sng & Dnce Frm N Greece (1928-58) ★★★★
Alexis Zoumbas – Lament For Epirus (1926-28) ★★★★
The Sneetches – Slow (1990)
Epic Soundtracks – Rise Above (1992)
Diabolus – Diabolus (1971) Julie Tippetts – Sunset Glow (1975) ★★★★★
Mad River – Jersey Sloo (1967)
Lawrence Hammond – Coyote’s Dream (1976)
Sneaky Pete Kleinow – Cold Steel (1973)
Hector Penalosa – Hector! (1987) Annette Peacock – I’m The One (1972) ★★★★
Lifeguards – Waving At The Astronauts (2011) ★★★★
Takeovers – Turn To Red (2006)
Takeovers – Bad Football (2007)
Tobin Sprout – Live At The Horseshoe Tavern (2014) ★★★★★
Guided By Voices - Mag Earwhig (1997) ★★★★
Keene Brothers – Blues & Boogie Shoes (2006) ★★★★★
Tommy Keene – You Hear Me, Retrospective (1983-2009)★★★★★
Ricked Wicky – I Sell The Circus (2015) ★★★★
Ricked Wicky – King Heavy Metal (2015) ★★★★
The Beat – I Just Can’t Stop It (1980) ★★★★★
Tobin Sprout – Carnival Boy (1996)
Hugo Race – No But It’s True (2012)
Paul Bley – Mr Joy (1968) ★★★★ Annette Peacock – X-Dreams (1978) ★★★★
Paul Bley – Turning Point (1964-8) ★★★★ Quickspace – Superplus EP (1995) Annette Peacock – The Perfect Release (1979)
Eddie & The Hot Rods – Teenage Depression (1976)
Betty Davis – They Say I’m Different (1974) ★★★★★ Linda Hoyle – Pieces Of Me (1971) ★★★★ Affinity – Affinity (1970) ★★★★ Nina Simone – Jazz As Performed In An ..... (1958) ★★★★★
Bevis Frond – Example 22 (2015) ★★★★
Bevis Frond - White Numbers (2013) ★★★★★
Bevis Frond – The Leaving Of London (2011) ★★★★
Jacobites – Robespierre’s Velvet Basement (1985) ★★★★
Jacobites – Howling Good Times (1993)
Hatfield & The North – The Rotters’ Club (1975) ★★★★
Michael Legrand – Legrand Jazz (1958)
Robert Lloyd – Me And My Mouth (1990)
Scritti Politti – Early (1978-81) ★★★★★
Paul Bley – Live In Haarlem (1966)★★★★
Chris Whitley – War Crime Blues (2004)
Chris Whitley – Poison Girl (1992)
Terminal Hoedown – John Peel Session (1992) ★★★★
Robert Lloyd – Unreleased Second Solo Album (1991) Fanny – Charity Ball (1971)
Ferrodyne – St John’s Day (2011) Fanny – Fanny (1970) Uncle Dog – Old Hat (1971)
Paul Bley – Blood (1966) ★★★★ Chris Williamson – The Changer And The Changed (1975)
Soft Machine – BBC Radio 1968 – 1971 ★★★★
Gnidrolog – Live (1972)
Pylon – Gyrate (1980)
Robert Wyatt – Live At Drury Lane (1974) ★★★★★
Pylon – Chomp (1983)
Pylon – Live (1983)
Robert Wyatt – Rock Bottom (1974) ★★★★
National Health – National Health (1978)
The Noseflutes – Girth (1985) ★★★★
Eric Burdon & The Animals – Winds of Change (1967)★★★★
Eric Burdon & The Animals – The Twain Shall Meet (1968) Buffy Sainte-Marie – She Used To Wanna Be A Ballerina (1971)
Eric Burdon & The Animals – Love Is (1968) ★★★★
Eric Burdon – Declares War (1970) Buffy Sainte-Marie – Many A Mile (1965) ★★★★
Graham Parker – Howlin’ Wind (1976)
Grachan Moncur III – Some Other Stuff (1965) ★★★★
Graham Parker – Heat Treatment (1976)
Graham Parker – Stick To Me (1977)
Graham Parker – Squeezing Out Sparks (1979)
The Spartan Dreggs – Forensic R’n’B (2011) ★★★★
The Spartan Dreggs – Dreggradation (2013) ★★★★
Chris Whitley – Dirt Floor (1997) ★★★★
Guru Guru – UFO (1970)
Robert Forster – Songs To Play (2015)
Grachan Moncur III – New Africa (1969)
Grachan Moncur III – One Morning I Woke Up Very Early (1970)
Mike Wilhelm – Wilhelm (1976) ★★★★
Chris Whitley – Perfect Day (2001)
Neil Young – Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1970) ★★★★★
Neil Young – Weld (1991) ★★★★
Julian Cope – Rite 2 (1997) ★★★★
Neon Sardinia - S’Akkabadòra-Hèmina (2014) ★★★★
The Chameleons – Strange Times (1986) ★★★★
Endless Boogie – Vibe Killer (2017) ★★★★
Canned Heat w John Lee Hooker – Carnegie Hall (1971)
Green Man – What Ails Thee? (1975)
Pat Todd – Holding Onto Trouble’s Hand (2008) ★★★★
Pat Todd – Blood & Treasure (2016) ★★★★
13th Floor Elevators – Easter Everywhere (1967) ★★★★★
John Lee Hooker – Tantalising With The Blues (1969)★★★★★
Son Volt - American Central Dust (2009) ★★★★
John Lee Hooker - In Person (1974) Stereolab - Peng! (1991) ★★★★★ Stereolab - Switched On (1992) ★★★★★ Stereolab - Transient Random Noise Bursts (1993) ★★★★ Stereolab - Space Age Bachelor Pad Music (1993) ★★★★ Stereolab - Mars Audiac Quintet (1994) ★★★★
John Lee Hooker - I Feel Good (1969)
John Lee Hooker - That’s Where It’s At! (1969) ★★★★★
Guided by Voices - Human Amusements (2003 ) ★★★★★
John Lee Hooker - Don’t Look Back (1997)
John Lee Hooker - You Miss ‘Im... I Got ‘Im (1970)★★★★
John Lee Hooker - Mr Lucky (1991)
The Lazy Cowgirls - Tapping The Source (1992) Stereolab - Instant 0 In The Universe (2003)
John Lee Hooker - And 7 Nights/On The Waterfront (1966)
V/A - The Story of Trojan Records (1967 - 74)
Archie Shepp - Rufus (1963) ★★★★
Alan Price - O Lucky Man (1973)
The Noseflutes - Several Young Men Ignite... (1986)
Archie Shepp - Fire Music (1965) ★★★★
Stan Getz - Mickey One (1965)
The Steppes - Drop Of The Creature (1986)
Died Pretty - The Trace ep’s (1993)
Died Pretty - Lost (1988)
Died Pretty - Using My Gills As A Roadmap (1998)
Hawkwind - Into The Woods (2017)
Hawkwind - The Machine Stops (2016)
Hawkwind - Onward (2012)
Hawkwind - Live Sonic Attack (1977-82)
Yes - Close To The Edge (1972)
Ram Jam - Ram Jam (1977)
Ram Jam - Portrait of The Artist As A Young Ram (1978)
Kevin Junior - Ruins (2009) ★★★★
21 Pilots - s/t (2009)
Johnny Jenkins - Ton-Ton Macoute (1970)
Yes - Yes (1969) ★★★★
Yes - Time And A Word (1970) ★★★★
Dennis Wilson - Pacific Ocean Blue (1977)
The Verve - Urban Hymns (1997) ★★★★
The Pogues - Rum, Sodomy & The Lash (1985) ★★★★★
Neal Casal - Rain, Wind & Speed (1996) ★★★★
Träd, Gräs & Stenar - Tack Fur Kaffet (2017)★★★★
The Chamber Strings - Month of Sundays (2001) Yoko Ono - Plastic Ono Band (1970) ★★★★
Day Of Phoenix - Wide Open N-Way (1970) ★★★★★ The Savage Rose - The Savage Rose (1968) ★★★★
Can - Tago Mago (1971) ★★★★★
Can - Monster Movie (1969) ★★★★★
Can - Ege Bamyasi (1972) ★★★★
Livin’ Blues - Hell’s Session (1969)
Osanna & Luis Bacalov - Milano Calibro 9 s/t(1972) ★★★★
Nino Ferrer - Nino & Radiah Et Le Sud (1974) ★★★★
Edgar Froese - Ambient Highway 2 (2003)
Eric Burdon Band - Sun Secret (1973)
The Animals - The Complete Animals (1964-5)
Eddie & The Hot Rods - Life On The Line (1979)
Creepy John Thomas - Brother Bat Bone (1970) ★★★★
Creepy John Thomas - s/t (1969)
Sonny & Linda Sharrock - Black Woman (1969) ★★★★★
Christmas - Lies to Live By (1974)
Amon Duul - Collapsing (1969)
Cozmic Corridors - s/t (1973) ★★★★
And Also The Trees - Listen For The Rag & Bone Man (2007)
And Also The Trees - s/t (1984) ★★★★
And Also The Trees - Virus Meadow (1984) ★★★★
And Also The Trees - The Millpond Years (1986)
Portsmouth Sinfonia - Plays The Popular Classics (1973)
Portsmouth Sinfonia - Hallelujah (1974)
‘Igginbottom - ‘Igginbottom’s Wrench (1969) ★★★★★
And Also The Trees - Green Is The Sea (1993)
Van Der Graaf Generator - Aerosol Grey Machine (1969) ★★★★★
Ted Chippington - Non Stop Party Hits (1984)★★★★★
And Also The Trees - From Horizon to Horizon (1992) ★★★★
Joe Henderson & Alice Coltrane - The Elements (1973) ★★★★★
Osanna - Paleopoli (1973)
Van Der Graaf Generator - The Least We Can Do .. (1970) ★★★★
Van Der Graaf Generator - H to He (1970)
Peter Hammill - Fool’s Mate (1971)
Van Der Graaf Generator - Do Not Disturb (2015)
Van Der Graaf Generator - Pawn Hearts (1971) ★★★★
And Also The Trees - Angelfish (1996)
Osanna - L’uomo (1971)
The New Trolls - Concerto Grosso (1971)
The New Trolls - Searching For A New Land (1972)
V/A - DJ Format’s Psych Out (1967 - 76)
The Cosmic Jokers - Galactic Supermarket (1974)
The Cosmic Jokers - Planeten Sit-In (1974)
Osanna - Palepoli (1972)
The Fall - Live At The Witch Trials (1978) ★★★★★
The Fall - Early Fall (1977-79) ★★★★★
The Fall - Dragnet (1979) ★★★★★
Gomorrha - Trauma (1971)
Guru Guru - UFO (1971)
Agitation Free - Last (1974) ★★★★
Yatha Sidhra - Meditation Mass (1973)
Jane - Together (1972)
Steamhammer - Mk II (1969)
Cosmic Jokers - Gilles Zeitschiff (1974)
Mandu - To The Shores Of His Heaven (1974)
La Dusseldorf - Viva (1978)
Walkabouts - Scavenger (1991)
Walkabouts - Acetylene (2005)
Cosmic Jokers - Sci-Fi Party (1974)
Clay Alison - Electric Banana (1982) ★★★★
Steeleye Span - Hark! The Village Waits (1970) ★★★★
Steeleye Span - Ten Man Mop (1972)
The Stark Reality - Acting, Thinking, Feeling (1968-70)
Lightnin’ Hopkins - California Mudslide (1969)
Neal Casal - Sweeten The Distance (2012)
11:59 - This Our Sacrifice Of Praise (1974)
John Mayall - Blues Breakers w Eric Clapton (1966)
Fleetwood Mac - The Warehouse Tapes (1970) ★★★★
The Black Angels - Death Song (2017)
Fleetwood Mac - Pious Bird Of Good Omen (1969)
Van Morrison - Astral Weeks (1968) ★★★★★
Neal Casal - Traces (2004)
V/A - B Music, Drive In, Turn On, Freak Out (2008)
Spirit - 12 Dreams of Dr Sardonicus (1970) ★★★★★
Black Oak Arkansas - s/t (1971) Jesse Mae Hemphill - Get Right Blues (2003) ★★★★
Everything But The Girl - Eden B-sides and demos (1984)
Summerhill - Lowdown (1989) ★★★★★
Van Morrison - Astral Weeks (1968) ★★★★★
Summerhill - I Want You (1988)
Van Morrison - Moondance (1970)
Chicken Shack - 40 Blue Fingers (1968)
Summerhill - Lowdown Revisited (1987-90) ★★★★
The Doors - Live Boston (1970) ★★★★
The Doors - Absolutely Live (1970) ★★★★
The Doors - Alive She Cried (1968) ★★★★
Jim Hendrix - People Hell & Angels (1968-70)
Jimi Hendrix Experience - Smash Hits (1968) ★★★★★
Skatalites - Legendary Skatalites In Dub (1975)
The Paul Butterfield Blues Band - In My Own Dream (1968)
Sunbirds - No Sun No Shadow (1986-1997) ★★★★
The Belltower - Popdropper (1991)
Paul Schutze - Site Anubis (1996)
Boxhead Ensemble - Electric Guitar (2017)
Gary Lee Conner - The Purple Outside (1989)★★★★
Chris Cacavas & Junkyard Love - s/t (1989) ★★★★
Extra Life - Dream Seeds (2012)
The Savage Rose - Babylon (1972)
Stars of Heaven - Sacred Heart Hotel (1986) ★★★★★
The Rose Of Avalanche - First Avalance (1985)
The Rose Of Avalanche - Always There (1986)
Titus & Ross - s/t (1970)
White Heaven - Out (1991)
Goliath - Goliath (1970) ★★★★★
Leong Lau - Dragon Man (1976)
Human Instinct - Stoned Guitar (1970)
The Great Western Squares - Judas Steer (1997)
The Great Western Squares - Almost Sober (1998)
HISTORIC SITES
Symond’s Yat Hill Fort, Forest of Dean
The Staunton Longstone, Forest of Dean
Mitchell’s Fold stone circle, Shropshire
Stowe Garden, Buckinghamshire Barbury Castle, Wiltshire
Avebury Stone circle, Wiltshire
Harold’s Stones, Trelleck, Monmouthshire The Virtuous Well, Trelleck, Monmouthshire
The Hedge Puzzle, Symonds Yat
British Camp Hill Fort, Malvern, Worcs
Rollright Stones, Oxfordshire Graves of Nelly Power, Champagne Charlie, H Campbell, Abney Park
Queens Wood 16th c ditches, Highgate, London
Parkland Walk, 19th c railway line, London
Grime’s Graves Neolithic Flint Mine, Norfolk
An Arthur Machen walk via Verulam Buildings, Gray’s Inn
Kelvedon Hatch Nuclear Bunker, Essex
Owain Glyndwr’s Parliament House, Machynlleth
Raglan Castle, Monmouthshire
Rodborough Iron Age Earthworks, Gloucestershire
Domfront city and Chateau, Normandy
Utah Beach & museum, Normandy
Unstan Chambered Tomb, Orkney
Ness of Brodgar excavation, Orkney
St Magnus Cathedral, Orkney
Tomb of The Otters, Orkney
Churchill Barriers, Orkney
Broch of Borwich, Orkney
Yesnaby WWII gun emplacements, Orkney
Ring of Brodgar, Orkney
Stones of Stennes, Orkney
Barnhouse Neolithic Village, Orkney
Old Man of Hoy, Hoy, Orkney
Dwarfie Staine Neolithic Tomb, Hoy, Orkney
Midhowe Cairn, Rousay, Orkney
Midhowe Broch, Rousay, Orkney
Knowe of Yarso, Rousay, Orkney
Blackhammer Cairn, Rousay, Orkney
Taversoe Tuick, Rousay, Orkney
The Earl’s Palace, Kirkwall, Orkney
The Bishop’s Palace, Kirkwall, Orkney
Knap of Howar, Papa Westray, Orkney
South Cairn, Holm of Papa, Orkney
North Cairn, Holm of Papa, Orkney
Tomb of The Eagles, South Ronaldsay, Orkney
Castle Bloody burial chamber, Shapinsay, Orkney
Mor Stein, Shapinsay, Orkney
Burroughston Broch, Shapinsay, Orkney
HMS Tern WWII Airfield, Orkney
St Briavel’s Castle, Gloucestershire
ART EXHIBITIONS, INSTALLATIONS & MUSEUMS
Anglo Saxon Kingdoms – British Library ★★★★★
Wolverhampton City Art Gallery
Bill Viola/Michaelangelo (Royal Academy) ★★★★
Don McCullin (Tate Britain) ★★★★
Edward Burne Jones (Tate Britain) ★★★★★
Tate Britain general
London Canal Museum
Eric Gill’s stations of the cross, Westminster Cathedral
Nicholas Monro’s King Kong, Penwith ★★★★★
Manga, British Museum
Art In The City, Gloucester
Bayeux Tapestry, Normandy ★★★★★
Grayson Perry - J Cope’s Grand Tour (Infirmary, Ed’bro) ★★★★ Phoebe Traquair Murals (Mansfield Traquair Cent, Ed’bro) ★★★★
Martin Creed’s Scotsman Steps, Edinburgh
The Orkney Experience, Kirkwall, Orkney
Rackwick Folk Life Museum, Hoy, Orkney
Orkney Museum, Kirkwall, Orkney
William Blake (Tate Britain) ★★★★
The Clash’s London Calling (Museum of London) ★
Anthony Gormley (Royal Academy) ★★★★
STARS OF TRACK AND FIELD
Greta Thunberg
Radiohead
Ken Clarke Jess Phillips Gina Miller
Led By Donkeys Carole Cadwalladr Bonnie Greer Hannah Miller (Granada Reports) Samira Ahmed
Robin Askwith
THE GLORIOUS DEAD
Scott Walker 1943
Ranking Roger 1963
Ian Cognito 1958
Chewbacca 1944
Mike Wilhelm 1942 Judith Kerr 1923
Roky Erickson 1947
Gary Duncan 1946
Peter Fonda 1940
Neil Casal 1968
Peter Nicholls 1927
Barrie Masters 1956
Larry ‘The Mole’ Taylor 1942
Jonathan Miller (1934)
Tony Brennan (1966) - In the Autumn of 1986 a student called Tony Brennan set up a bi-weekly comedy gig in Oxford, that ran like a real comedy club. In doing so he brought student comedy in Oxford from the late ’50s into the late ‘70s. This meant that, though still behind the curve, it was 20 years ahead of where it had been. I did my first ever half hour supporting him, and without the encouragement Tony provided it would have been a harder road to stand-up. Tony - who was also a Morris Dancer and a tiddly winks master - became a diplomat, noted for his ability to do bespoke stand-up shows for the diplomat community, and died tragically early after a long fight against cancer.
FOOD
Grey Peas (Great Western Pub, Wolverhampton)
Grey Peas that I made myself (my house)
Baked potato w tuna (my house) A mackerel pie (my house)
QU0TES OF THE YEAR
Miserable trousers, cufflinks clink, I’m nice about you. – Nice About You, Guided by Voices (2019)
We know that however well we succeed, fifty ‘experts’ (people who acquire theoretical knowledge without using it) will pour cold water on the result. And the five years later, grudgingly, and ten years later, publicly, refer to it incessantly to intimidate future electronic composers. - Rosemary Tonks, The Bloater, 1968
In contrast with (my) generation, which had spent most of its time online learning to code so that it could add crude butterfly animations to the backgrounds of its weblogs, the generation immediately following had spent most of its time online making incredibly bigoted jokes in order to laugh at the idiots who were stupid enough to think that they meant it. Except that after a while they did mean it, and then somehow at the end of it they were white supremacists. Was this always how it happened? - Patricia Lockwood, London Review of Books, Feb 2019
This is the Trump way. Fire, fire, fire with the blunderbuss and don’t worry if a shot or two hits an innocent bystander. Keep moving forwards - even as your opponents return fire. Never seriously consider the criticisims, just loose off more shots. It is a strategy that has benefitted Britain’s Trump tribute act, Boris Johnson. As an opinion columnist on The Telegraph , Johnson specialised in offence, from writing in 2002 that the Queen loved the Commonwealth because “it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving picaninnies” to his recent descriptions of Muslim women in burqas “looking like letterboxes”. Such comments are deliberate provocation, pushing the boundaries of what it is permissible for a senior politician to say. IN AN ATTENTION ECONOMY, THEY ARE HARD CURRENCY. Any backlash can be portrayed as “political correctness gone mad” or “liberal Stalinism”. Even having to say sorry can be taken as proof that once again, the liberal totalitarians have triumphed. It is a game in which every path leads to victory. Yes, it is divisive, but for every voter who is repulsed, the calculation is, another is attracted. - Helen Lewis, New Statesman, 7th June 2019
There’s a large audience for this kind of thing and comedy marketers are hip to it. A 2016 Joe Rogan special was titled, simply, Triggered. A new special from Bill Burr that offers subtle critiques of the turn against political correctness was nevertheless promoted by Netflix with a selection of clips from a rant in which Burr appears to mock the #MeToo movement, feminists, and the like. This year’s MTV Video Music Awards were hosted by 46-year-old comic Sebastian Maniscalco, whose opening monologue mocked millennials and teens. “If you feel triggered or you feel offended by anything I’m saying here or anything the musical artists are doing,” he said, “they’re providing a safe space backstage where you’ll get some stress balls and a blankie and also Lil Nas X brought his horse which will double as an emotional support animal.” Those who turned to Google afterwards wondering how an aging comedian wound up on MTV sneering at young people the network has been struggling to reach might have happened across a Forbes article listing Maniscalco, who also released a Netflix special of his own this year, as one of the top ten highest paid comedians in the world in 2018, having earned an estimated $15 million. Chappelle was third, having earned $35 million. This “mutated McCarthy era” has treated the comics on that list particularly well….. As far as comedy is concerned, “cancel culture” seems to be the name mediocrities and legends on their way to mediocrity have given their own waning relevance. They’ve set about scolding us about scolds, whining about whiners, and complaining about complaints because they would rather cling to material that was never going to stay fresh and funny forever than adapt to changing audiences, a new set of critical concerns, and a culture that might soon leave them behind. In desperation, they’ve become the tiresome cowards they accuse their critics of being—and that comics like Bruce, who built the contemporary comedy world, never were. - OSITA NWANEVU, The New Republic, Sept ‘19
I’ve found it hard to get this article in print. One editor explained reluctance to publish on the grounds that the newspaper’s political team had cultivated excellent insider sources and publishing my piece would invite charges of hypocrisy. There was a searing honesty of sorts to this remark. Papers and media organisations yearn for privileged access and favourable treatment. And they are prepared to pay a price to get it. This price involves becoming a subsidiary part of the government machine. It means turning their readers and viewers into dupes. This client journalism allows Downing Street to frame the story as it wants. Some allow themselves to be used as tools to smear the government’s opponents. They say goodbye to the truth. Social media has provided new ways of breaking the boundaries of decent, honest journalism. Of course political journalists have always entered into behind-the-scenes deals with politicians, but this kind of arrangement has gained a new dimension since Boris Johnson entered Downing Street with the support of a client press and media. As a former lobby correspondent (on the Evening Standard, the Sunday Express and The Spectator) I understand the need for access. The job of lobby journalists is to produce information. But there is now clear evidence that the prime minister has debauched Downing Street by using the power of his office to spread propaganda and fake news. British political journalists have got chillingly close to providing the same service to Boris Johnson that Fox News delivers for Donald Trump. - Peter Oborne, Open Democracy, October 2019
Stewart Lee
2019-12-31T09:00:46+00:00
“If you had to kill Stewart Lee how would you do it? Stab his eyes out? Shotgun to the knees? Brain with heavy object?” Xpijonipsy, Twitter, 16/10/19, since removed 1) SNOWFLAKE/TORNAD0 - LIVE (London & Touring) I THINK ALL LONDON DATES ARE NOW SOLD OUT BUT... THERE WILL BE SUPPLEMENTARY DATES AT THE ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL, LONDON, JUNE 27TH, 28TH AND JULY 1ST, 2ND, 3RD, AND THESE ARE ON SALE NOW. I'm doing a new stand-up show for the back end of 2019 and the first half of 2020. More national dates from Feb 2020 will be announced later in the year, I am going to do less shows than last time, but with longer runs in bigger rooms to hit the same demand. I will film this show/these shows in the Summer of 2020 for offloading to whatever content platforms are still viable at that stage in late capitalism's technologically-driven cultural decline. David Johnson & John Mackay in association with Debi Allen/Curtis Brown presentSTEWART LEE - SNOWFLAKE/TORNADO. Double-bill of two new 60-ish minute sets, back to back nightly from "the world's greatest living stand-up" (Times). Tornado questions a shipwrecked Stew’s position in the comedy marketplace after Netflix mistakenly lists his show as "reports of sharks falling from the skies are on the rise again. Nobody on the Eastern Seaboard is safe." What is anything? Is it this? And Snowflake questions our worth in a collapsing society which no longer shares the liberal values we have for so long been keen to be seen to espouse, in a fairy-tale landscape of winter wonder.Tons of fun! SOLD OUT - CHECK DAILY FOR RETURNS at the Leicester Square Theatre here: https://leicestersquaretheatre.ticketsolve.com/shows/873600232 SNOWFLAKE/TORNADO Work-in-Progress and DVD LAUNCH Leicester Square Theatre, London. FEW TICKETS AVAILABLE CHECK DAILY FOR RETURNS AT LEICESTER SQUARE THEATRE BOX OFFICE: https://leicestersquaretheatre.ticketsolve.com/shows/873600232 Stewart Lee...
In the psychedelic 60s stop-frame animation children’s television series Trumpton, all the characters have identifying proper names – the fireman Captain Flack, the state stormtrooper Police Constable Potter, and the mysterious dungeon-dwelling economist Gideon Pencils Osborne. The mayor of Trumpton, however, was known only as The Mayor, and neither his actual name nor his political affiliations were ever revealed, though he smelt of pubs and Wormwood Scrubs and too many rightwing meetings.
All over the land last week, Tory mayors dreamed of similar anonymity, hoping that if no one knew anything about them, and their campaign literature didn’t reveal they belonged to the Tory party, people might at least vote for them by accident, thinking they were someone else. “Oh! Andy Street was the West Midlands’ Tory mayor candidate? I thought I was voting for the glamorous, and now deceased, Welsh wrestler Adrian Street. I liked it when he pulled out Jimmy Savile’s hair in 1971.”
At the time of filing this week’s so-called “funny” column, I don’t know the results of Thursday’s mayoral elections, but the Tory campaign was a chilling indication of the depths to which the cornered, cowardly and corrupt Conservative party will sink in the endlessly deferred general election. Expect a tsunami of unsubstantiated claims in viral-video hit pieces, designed to cause a maximum impact to the Overton window in the time between their unannounced appearance and their sudden disappearance due to legal considerations.
Last week, the Observer and Greenpeace revealed that, just as dark money secretly pays for fake grassroots groups such as Restore Trust to discredit the National Trust for unstated reasons, so Conservative party workers have set up dozens of fake community Facebook groups. These then weaponise anti-Ulez sentiment against Sadiq Khan anonymously, and provide a platform for antisemitic and Islamophobic content and fantasies about the incumbent London mayor’s assassination. Carelessly, the Conservative London mayoral candidate, Susan Hall, has somehow managed to join six of them, one after another, like a hapless clown stepping on a succession of garden rakes and then wondering why its teeth are all smashed.
Perhaps Hall enjoyed the post about Khan that asked why “dark forces” can’t “take out this money-grabbing little parasite” in the same way they did Diana, Princess of Wales. (It’s a foolish hope anyway, to be honest, as to do so would require Khan to be in a relationship with Dodi Fayed, while appearing to be pursued at fatally high speed by French paparazzi through a Parisian road tunnel. This would be a stretch, even for the secret black ops teams of the deep state, given that Fayed is now deceased.)
In Wednesday’s PMQs, Catherine West, the Labour MP for the woke seat of Hornsey and Wood Green, asked Sunak directly about his party’s complicity in the dangerous astroturfed Facebook groups his own workers had secretly set up. Meanwhile, the Tory benches looked like the Pogles doing a rehearsed reading of the bunker scene in Downfall. West made specific reference to Hall’s membership of the hate groups, and of their platforming of users’ death fantasies about Sadiq Khan.
“Will he close down these Facebooks which have been begun by Conservative members of staff… begun by Conservative members of staff,” West said, repeating her key point over the usual Tory braying and honking, “and will he investigate the role of the current candidate, and her membership of those disgraceful racist sites?” It was a simple question, surely. But it was one that Sunak pretended not to have understood, instead answering a different question that no one had asked, outside the echoing cave of lies, cash-register kerchings, and Jilly Cooper-audiobook sex scenes that plays on an endless loop through Sony Walkman speakers inside his miniature head.
“Mr Speaker, the election tomorrow will be fought on the substance of the issues that Londoners face,” the prime minister dissembled, never acknowledging any aspects of West’s question. Meanwhile, the baffling Penny Mordaunt sat behind him, laughing along with his gilded evasions like something horrifying that predicts your death from inside a glass funfair box.
How can Sunak live with himself? If he believes elections can be won on the issues themselves, why is his party, which renamed one of their main social media accounts Factcheckuk to spread lies during the 2019 election debates, putting so much time and effort into disinformation, and into concealing the fact that it is Conservative staff spreading it? Like Hal 9000, Sunak’s mission is too important to allow truth to jeopardise it.
Just as Schrödinger’s Rwanda is both perfectly safe for migrants and a terrifying deterrent to them, so Schrödinger’s Sunak believes that only facts matter, while at the same overseeing the deliberate dissemination of disinformation. Is Sunak one of the worst men on Earth? Does he have a soul? Does he have a heart? Does he have shame? Or is he just a husk in Adidas Samba trainers, a goblin with a swimming pool, an egg that is unambiguously bad?
And is Sunak, to use a phrase coined by contributors to the Facebook group his party set up, “a money-grabbing parasite” whose government’s filtering of millions of public cash into his own family’s Infosys company, and whose cautious relationship with tax, make Khan’s Ulez hits on motorists for clean air initiatives look like change found down the back of the family sofa Boris Johnson courted that pole dancer on, before her business was awarded £126,000 of our money. Ah! I already feel nostalgic for the days when the figures filtered by Tories from the public purse still numbered in the low hundred-thousands.
But who will save us from orchestrated Tory lies in the election campaign? The powerless news castrati at Robbie Gibb’s captured BBC? The unregulated far-right grifters and moonlighting MPs at the inexplicably Ofcom-excused GB News? The Tory propagandists at the Telegraph and the Mail? Carol Vorderman, it’s going to have to be you, isn’t it?
Stewart Lee
2024-05-05T19:58:13+01:00
In the psychedelic 60s stop-frame animation children’s television series Trumpton, all the characters have identifying proper names – the fireman Captain Flack, the state stormtrooper Police Constable Potter, and the mysterious dungeon-dwelling economist Gideon Pencils Osborne. The mayor of Trumpton, however, was known only as The Mayor, and neither his actual name nor his political affiliations were ever revealed, though he smelt of pubs and Wormwood Scrubs and too many rightwing meetings. All over the land last week, Tory mayors dreamed of similar anonymity, hoping that if no one knew anything about them, and their campaign literature didn’t reveal they belonged to the Tory party, people might at least vote for them by accident, thinking they were someone else. “Oh! Andy Street was the West Midlands’ Tory mayor candidate? I thought I was voting for the glamorous, and now deceased, Welsh wrestler Adrian Street. I liked it when he pulled out Jimmy Savile’s hair in 1971.” At the time of filing this week’s so-called “funny” column, I don’t know the results of Thursday’s mayoral elections, but the Tory campaign was a chilling indication of the depths to which the cornered, cowardly and corrupt Conservative party will sink in the endlessly deferred general election. Expect a tsunami of unsubstantiated claims in viral-video hit pieces, designed to cause a maximum impact to the Overton window in the time between their unannounced appearance and their sudden disappearance due to legal considerations. Last week, the Observer and Greenpeace revealed that, just as dark money secretly pays for fake grassroots groups such as Restore Trust to discredit the National Trust for unstated reasons, so Conservative party workers have set up dozens of fake community Facebook groups. These then weaponise anti-Ulez sentiment against Sadiq Khan anonymously, and provide a platform for antisemitic and Islamophobic content and...
Because all the London Leicester Sq Content Provider dates sold out here is another three month block of the SAME SHOW at the SAME VENUE, Leicester Sq Theatre, with the SAME JOKES at the SAME TIME, 7pm, from November this year until Jan 2018. Leave voters planning to walk out in disgust will need to book early.
Weds 1st Nov - Sat 9th Dec 2017
Tuesday to Saturday except there is a performance on Monday 4th December
On Wednesdays at 11pm on Resonance 104.4 fm and on the station website, the barely present cult Canadian stand-up comedian Baconface continues to play lengthy and mainly uninterrupted selections from his late brother's extensive record collection of '60s and '70s psychedelia, progressive rock, free jazz, folk, acid folk, folk rock, acid rock, electronic music, and ethnoforgeries.
In association with the Chilliwack Office of Leisure. [Repeated Saturday 4am.] The shows can also be heard here.. http://www.baconfacecanada.com/listen
And also here, with pictures... http://www.baconfacecanada.com/global-globules/
Resonance is a groundbreaking 24/7 radio station which broadcasts on 104.4 FM to central London, DAB to Greater London, nationally on Radioplayer and live streamed to the rest of the world.
Other fictional men with masks made of bacon playing vintage psychedelia are not available.
More DAILY TELEGRAPH BULLSHIT
As usual, The shit Daily Telegraph is full of utter shit and naked political bias where its comedy coverage is concerned. In a desperate and contrived article from April 4th, by Rozina Sabur, the paper suggests that comedians' careers are being harmed if they perform anti-Brexit material, and it achieves this mainly by cut and pasting comments made by Marcus Brigstocke somewhere else, and twisting them to appear to say something they probably didn't. It may be the case that the premise of the article is true, but there is no hard evidence in Sabur's piece to back this up.
According to Sabur, "a number of comedians have described scripting their take on Britain leaving the European Union for left-wing audiences in London, only to face unamused audiences when they take their acts out to the rest of the country", but it is only able to find Marcus Brigstocke as an example of this 'number'. The only other comedian Sabur mentions is me, in a vague non-committal sentence which says, "Comedian Stewart Lee has also spoken of some audience members' reactions to his material poking fun at leave voters during his shows.", but does not clarify what the reaction I am talking about is, or where I said this, which would make a massive difference.
I have spoken about this idea on stage as a joke, and in print about how it might affect circuit comedians whose audiences expect their Friday night fun demands to be met, as has Stephen Grant prophetically on Chortle. In reality the reaction to my Brexit material on the road has been only positive, though I suggest on stage that it may not be, for dramatic and comic effect. I am playing to the biggest and most enthusiastic audiences of my career at present all over the UK, hopefully comprised exclusively of Guardian reading liberal Remain voters, and the bit where I call Leave voters racists and cunts provokes a delighted reaction during and after the show, from grateful punters, many weeping hot tears of snowflake thanks, especially in heavily Leave voting areas, where they are clearly desperate for the comforting release of pent-up emotion that sometimes only laughter can provide.
A simple five second Google would have found Sabur more examples of touring stand-ups, (Nish Kumar, Josie Long, Bridget Christie, Al Murray), doing well, nationally, out of anti-Brexit-themed shows than it would of comics suffering from covering the subject, although again this does not necessarily prove anything, as the experiences of the unknown foot-soldiers of club comedy won't show up in searches, so the impression would be skewed. But Sabur didn't bother to check anyway.
Nonetheless, when I wrote unpaid for photocopied fanzines in the '80s and '90s they told us we needed three examples of something before we were allowed to identify a trend. The Daily Telegraph thinks barely two will do, presumably having downgraded the numbers required in order to justify their twat comedy critic Dominic Cavendish's ongoing quest to prove there's a new vanguard of popular right wing comedians on the Edinburgh Fringe, of which he also can only ever seem to find the same two every year. If only there were a third!
"Comedians tell how anti-Brexit jokes are damaging their careers as audiences outside of London walk out in offence.
Rozina Sabur.
Comedians have told how anti-Brexit jokes are killing their careers as audiences outside of London walk out in offence. A number of comedians have described scripting their take on Britain leaving the European Union for left-wing audiences in London, only to face unamused audiences when they take their acts out to the rest of the country.
Marcus Brigstocke has been touring the country with a set that includes 20 minutes of material on Brexit, it is his first tour that has seen members of the audience walking out "every night" in anger. He revealed that a number of his fans were unlikely to return to his shows in future, following the jokes. "People have been angry; people have walked out of shows and people have booed. A lot of the people that I think of as my audience will not be back - they won't come again - they're that angry," he told BBC Radio 4.
Brigstocke said he did not want to turn his audience off, but said, "for the first time ever on tour I have people walking out every night - not hoards, but some. That's unsettling. I have never before dealt with a subject as divisive and upsetting (including passionate criticisms of religion etc.). It's a challenge I would usually enjoy but (perhaps because I'm not doing it well enough) it is proving to be a nightmare. It seems that for the most part Brexit is not just the hideous social and political turn we have taken as a country but is also comedic poison."
Comedian Stewart Lee has also spoken of some audience members' reactions to his material poking fun at leave voters during his shows.
Aaron Brown, editor of the British Comedy Guide, said: "I consume a lot of comedy - mostly TV, also some live - and would say the comedy world's reaction has been almost exclusively negative. Many jokes essentially paraphrase as 'shooting ourselves in the foot', and the rest rely on lazily branding 52 per cent of the voters as racist." "
Sabur writes, "Comedians have told how anti-Brexit jokes are killing their careers as audiences outside of London walk out in offence."
But all Sabur actually has to go on is that Marcus Brigstocke has said some people walked out and may not come back. To extrapolate from this that his career is being 'killed', whether you like him or not, is nonsense. It maybe that the people that didn't walk out will all come back and bring two Remain-voting friends next time. And to make the singular comedian Brigstocke into the plural 'comedians', without naming a single other example of the trend you are trying to imagine, is fundamentally dishonest and an example of bad journalism that should have been rejected by any decent editor, and sent back to substantiate its claims.
From a nakedly commercial point of view, it would make sense for a comedian to be pro-remain. It's sad but true that the elderly Leave voting audience will die off sooner than they younger Remain voting audience, and the Remain voting audience have higher disposable incomes to spend on comedy.
In the 172 comments below Sabur's thick piece, no-one mentions me, which is superb as it means I am off the radar of these moronic Daily Telegraph reading cunts, as I am with Daily Mail reading cunts too, although Telegraph reader Paul Mynn is annoyed with the imagined material of a fictional comedian; "Lee Herring is a twerp. Let's build a wall round London to keep the toerags in. And they can pay for it!" Where I am concerned, the inaccurate paper has the readers and writers it deserves.
Nonetheless, the shit Daily Telegraph has still managed to put me in a bad mood on my birthday. And it makes me worry, if the right wing press can be this shoddy and biased covering comedy about Brexit how can we trust what they tell us about Brexit itself? And if you are a journalist reading this, no I am not prepared to comment on this in your crappy clickbait paper, or appear on bent Radio 4 news either.
POST-SCRIPT - I have just checked my email and found this Sabur tried to contact me yesterday, at 3.59 pm on April 4th, via my agent, for comment for this piece before it ran at 6.49 pm the same day, an doubtless labour-intensive intensive 2hrs and 50 minutes later. I am camping in a wood and don't have a smartphone, so didn't get the email, a narrow escape. Nonetheless, the piece is still rubbish. And so is Brexit.
Stewart Lee
2017-04-05T18:26:35+01:00
NEW LONDON CONTENT PROVIDER DATES Because all the London Leicester Sq Content Provider dates sold out here is another three month block of the SAME SHOW at the SAME VENUE, Leicester Sq Theatre, with the SAME JOKES at the SAME TIME, 7pm, from November this year until Jan 2018. Leave voters planning to walk out in disgust will need to book early. Weds 1st Nov - Sat 9th Dec 2017 Tuesday to Saturday except there is a performance on Monday 4th December Tues 2nd Jan to Wed 31st Jan 2018 Monday to Saturday Not Fri 24, Sat 25, Thur 30 Nov 2017 (DAYS OFF) Not Tue 9, Sat 13 Jan 2018 (DAYS OFF) CLICK HERE FOR THE LEICESTER SQUARE THEATRE BOX OFFICE All dates listed in full at the gigs page. Other extra dates by other comedians are available. CONTENT PROVIDER TOUR Autumn 2017 dates are currently being booked. More dates will be added as they are confirmed. All updates will be made at the gigs page. April 2017 Saturday 29th - Content Provider - MACHYNLLETH COMEDY FESTIVAL - The Mach Arena - 7pm - SOLD OUT Sunday 30th - Content Provider - MACHYNLLETH COMEDY FESTIVAL - The Mach Arena - 7pm - SOLD OUT May 2017 Wednesday 3rd - Content Provider - SOUTHAMPTON - Mayflower Theatre - 7.30pm - 02380 711811 TICKETS Thursday 4th - Content Provider - COVENTRY - Warwick Arts Centre - 8pm - 024 7652 4524 TICKETS Friday 5th - Content Provider - KINGSTON - Rose Theatre - 8pm - 020 8174 0090 TICKETS Saturday 6th - Content Provider - KINGSTON - Rose Theatre - 8pm - 020 8174 0090 TICKETS Monday 8th - Content Provider - BROMLEY - Churchill Theatre - 8pm - 020 3285 6000 TICKETS Thursday 11th - Content Provider - COVENTRY -...
It’s Thursday morning. Boris Johnson, who made a former KGB agent’s son a lord and attended sexy parties at his fairytale hacienda, has failed to hand over his mobile phone to the Covid inquiry as some secret spies said there might be all stuff on it. Johnson has also spaffed out another child, this time in wedlock, but the announcement of the birth was delayed by a week, which has inadvertently helped to detract from his ducking and diving and lying, like when he got that jack russell cross that we never see any more. The baby, Frank Alfred Odysseus Red Herring Picaninny Bum Boys Letterbox Johnson, also fulfils the same function as when Johnson started talking about how he liked to make model buses out of crates, in 2019, to game malleable search-engine algorithms away from his Brexit bus lies. As with so many of Johnson’s promises, we are yet to see any evidence of his ability to fashion a single model bus from crates. Perhaps he broke them all throwing them at Dilyn the dog. And trying to father a child every time he abuses the rules isn’t a long-term strategy, even for a man as profligate as the former prime minister.
It’s Thursday morning. Yesterday, at prime minister’s questions, the MP for Newark, Robert Jenrick, doubled down on his decision to paint over welcoming murals of Mickey Mouse in a processing centre for unaccompanied migrant minors on the grounds that many of them were teenagers, so the images weren’t “age appropriate”. Perhaps the teenage refugees would have related better to a mural of Mickey Mouse wanking into a crusty sock? Or deciding that vinyl is actually cool. Or being a massive miserable pain in the arse for six years. In contrast to Jenrick’s hastily concocted excuse, the minister for migration and borders, Lord Murray of Blidworth, told former child refugee, and top Jamaican sound system operator, Lord Dubs that the initial decision to paint the murals was a mistake by some cowboy contractors. Perhaps they were supposed to write “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here” in the Conservatives’ blue Franklin Gothic font over a painting of the two-year-old Syrian boy Alan Kurdi dead on a beach near Bodrum in 2015.
It’s Thursday morning. Meanwhile, despite having said she is resigning, the pedal bin-brained Mid Bedfordshire MP Nadine Dorries continues to draw her £84,000 salary, presumably continues to pay her daughters a combined salary of £80,000 a year from the public purse and has found time to write an exoneration of Johnson (The Plot) for which she has already received a £20,500 advance from the craven vultures circling the decomposing corpse of her political career at the disgraceful HarperCollins, the sort of facile company that publishes exclusively the kind of books you buy as an afterthought at a supermarket checkout, along with some senna pods. Conservative connivance, Conservative cruelty and Conservative corruption are everywhere. But look at the front pages! A BBC presenter may or may not have done something appalling, according to accusations in the Sun that appear to be cautiously recalibrated hourly as I hastily rewrite this in the closing minutes before the 10am Thursday deadline.
Rishi Sunak, who has not found time to comment on Johnson’s current bout of rule-bending, said he was “shocked and concerned” by the Sun’s story, but fell short of repeating that his main priority was stopping the boats. Taking moral guidance from a Sun story is like making travel plans based on maps given to you by the Flat Earth Society. Conspiracy theorists theorise conspiratorially that the BBC presenter scandal is a convenient way for rightwing Tory media, or the media as they are better known, to spaff attention away from the Conservatives’ continuing woes. But this would require cooperation at the highest level between government and, for example, Rupert Murdoch, whose recent prosecco and crisps party was attended by Johnson, Sunak, Grant Shapps, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Oliver Dowden, Liz Truss, Brandon Lewis, Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, Peter Gurney, Peter Davy, Dan’l Whiddon, Harry Hawke, and Sky TV’s Kay Burley and all.
Perhaps by the time you read this, the details of the twisty BBC tale will be clear. Earlier last week, even the perpetually hi-vissed Jeremy Vine’s decision to document every waking moment of his life with a camera mounted on his bicycle helmet could not stop Twitter’s stinking finger of suspicion from pointing inaccurately at his indignant Bendy Toy ™ ® face. “11am. I get off my bike and stand at a urinal. As you can see, no motorists are currently telling me to f*** off.” This BBC-cash-for-photos-of-a-17-year-old story may yet have been clarified as you scoff your Sunday muffin. But what is definitely true already is that the Sun ran photos of naked 16-year-old Page 3 girls all the time from 1970 until 2003. (Now the law’s changed, Google can’t even show you the 1983 Samantha Fox shoot that accompanied the headline: “Sam, 16, quits A-levels for ooh-levels!”, though it can show you an image of Mickey Mouse, irrespective of your age or immigration status.)
And what is also certain is that, as multiple globules of Tory turds hit multiple overheating fans in the hottest days ever recorded on Earth, the BBC presenter story absolutely isn’t the main story. But we sit here on our collective sofa, like colostomy bags with clown faces daubed on us in shit, sucking up buckets of queasy filth through straws, bleating our half-understood opinions out on to social media networks that farm us for data like pigs, consuming this calculated crap. We deserve to burn.
Stewart Lee
2023-07-16T18:28:31+01:00
It’s Thursday morning. Boris Johnson, who made a former KGB agent’s son a lord and attended sexy parties at his fairytale hacienda, has failed to hand over his mobile phone to the Covid inquiry as some secret spies said there might be all stuff on it. Johnson has also spaffed out another child, this time in wedlock, but the announcement of the birth was delayed by a week, which has inadvertently helped to detract from his ducking and diving and lying, like when he got that jack russell cross that we never see any more. The baby, Frank Alfred Odysseus Red Herring Picaninny Bum Boys Letterbox Johnson, also fulfils the same function as when Johnson started talking about how he liked to make model buses out of crates, in 2019, to game malleable search-engine algorithms away from his Brexit bus lies. As with so many of Johnson’s promises, we are yet to see any evidence of his ability to fashion a single model bus from crates. Perhaps he broke them all throwing them at Dilyn the dog. And trying to father a child every time he abuses the rules isn’t a long-term strategy, even for a man as profligate as the former prime minister. It’s Thursday morning. Yesterday, at prime minister’s questions, the MP for Newark, Robert Jenrick, doubled down on his decision to paint over welcoming murals of Mickey Mouse in a processing centre for unaccompanied migrant minors on the grounds that many of them were teenagers, so the images weren’t “age appropriate”. Perhaps the teenage refugees would have related better to a mural of Mickey Mouse wanking into a crusty sock? Or deciding that vinyl is actually cool. Or being a massive miserable pain in the arse for six years. In contrast to Jenrick’s hastily concocted excuse, the...
Watching Stewart Lee perform is akin to observing a sea squirt settling on a rock and attempting to eat itself. One of the scene's smartest talents, Lee is back on the Fringe, gnawing away at comedy conventions. Not for him the easy laughs, Lee's are increasingly shows of an altogether more complex persuasion.
It's his 25th year in Edinburgh, and Lee's feeling creatively spent, recent fatherhood and tedious drives to gigs leaving him high and dry. But this is Stewart Lee; things are seldom what they seem.
With a backdrop of rolls of carpet behind him, Lee mocks us first with some topical stand-up, from Osama Bin Laden to Andres Breivik and Jeremy Clarkson. 'This isn't for you,' deadpans Lee at the Jimmy Carr fans in the audience and 'those up the back', before indulging in a highly amusing rant about Twitter's 'surveillance culture', and his trips to a sea of 'World of . . .' establishments.
Just as one gag is done, Lee starts deconstructing it - 'I mean the opposite of what I just said' - complete with long-winded explanation.
The die-hard fans are in residence, the young man in front appearing to combust before Lee has let out a sound; elsewhere, some lame clapping hecklers enjoy short shrift.
Those unfamiliar with Lee's donnish semantics may well miss some of the funnier observations he's making about comedy, in this crazily weaved narrative of a show, but Lee cares not a jot as he goes hell for (the World of) leather, bringing a typically caustic end to an intentionally drawn out show
Stewart Lee
2012-08-16T14:54:14+01:00
Watching Stewart Lee perform is akin to observing a sea squirt settling on a rock and attempting to eat itself. One of the scene's smartest talents, Lee is back on the Fringe, gnawing away at comedy conventions. Not for him the easy laughs, Lee's are increasingly shows of an altogether more complex persuasion. It's his 25th year in Edinburgh, and Lee's feeling creatively spent, recent fatherhood and tedious drives to gigs leaving him high and dry. But this is Stewart Lee; things are seldom what they seem. With a backdrop of rolls of carpet behind him, Lee mocks us first with some topical stand-up, from Osama Bin Laden to Andres Breivik and Jeremy Clarkson. 'This isn't for you,' deadpans Lee at the Jimmy Carr fans in the audience and 'those up the back', before indulging in a highly amusing rant about Twitter's 'surveillance culture', and his trips to a sea of 'World of . . .' establishments. Just as one gag is done, Lee starts deconstructing it - 'I mean the opposite of what I just said' - complete with long-winded explanation. The die-hard fans are in residence, the young man in front appearing to combust before Lee has let out a sound; elsewhere, some lame clapping hecklers enjoy short shrift. Those unfamiliar with Lee's donnish semantics may well miss some of the funnier observations he's making about comedy, in this crazily weaved narrative of a show, but Lee cares not a jot as he goes hell for (the World of) leather, bringing a typically caustic end to an intentionally drawn out show
The first half, Tornado, stems from the comedian’s discovery that his Comedy Vehicle TV show mistakenly spent two years on Netflix with the description from American sci-fi horror film Sharknado 3 as its listing.
This discovery, alongside the Times calling him the “world’s greatest living stand-up”, causes Lee to assess his own place in the comedy landscape.
Tornado is a brilliant set, that has more clear jokes than any of Lee’s previous work that I can remember, and even sees him doing impressions of Alan Bennett.
Dave Chappelle, Leonard Cohen, and Josh Widdicome are all discussed and Brighton itself is lauded/berated (it can be quite hard to tell) for having two comic shops, but none received as much attention as much as the comedian’s favourite topic, Stewart Lee himself.
The second half, Snowflake, is a less structured set than Tornado and is a little weaker for it in a purely comic sense.
It sees Lee addressing politics and the downfall of political correctness in recent years.
The set did include a couple of bits that were familiar such as an array of responses to a Christian evangelist asking Lee: “Jesus is the answer, what is the question?”.
But these were only done in passing and the sheer amount of material in the show means it can’t be held against the comedian.
Some of Lee’s extended riffs can feel more like endurance tests for both audience and performer than anything else.
One such bit came in the second half when Lee discusses what a comedian “saying the unsayable” would really be like. The six-minute demonstration that follows tested the patience of many, but other, similarly long routines certainly land.
One was a long enactment of a week’s worth of workplace conversations, while another was a less obviously worked bit about Tony Parsons’ cess pit, which eventually had Lee saying: “Thank God the laughter has stopped. Can it be noted by the local paper that I actually had to stop the laughter.”
Snowflake/Tornado isn’t perfect then, but with Stewart Lee offering some genuine insight alongside perhaps more jokes than ever before, it certainly shouldn’t be missed.
Stewart Lee
2020-02-21T19:27:02+00:00
The first half, Tornado, stems from the comedian’s discovery that his Comedy Vehicle TV show mistakenly spent two years on Netflix with the description from American sci-fi horror film Sharknado 3 as its listing. This discovery, alongside the Times calling him the “world’s greatest living stand-up”, causes Lee to assess his own place in the comedy landscape. Tornado is a brilliant set, that has more clear jokes than any of Lee’s previous work that I can remember, and even sees him doing impressions of Alan Bennett. Dave Chappelle, Leonard Cohen, and Josh Widdicome are all discussed and Brighton itself is lauded/berated (it can be quite hard to tell) for having two comic shops, but none received as much attention as much as the comedian’s favourite topic, Stewart Lee himself. The second half, Snowflake, is a less structured set than Tornado and is a little weaker for it in a purely comic sense. It sees Lee addressing politics and the downfall of political correctness in recent years. The set did include a couple of bits that were familiar such as an array of responses to a Christian evangelist asking Lee: “Jesus is the answer, what is the question?”. But these were only done in passing and the sheer amount of material in the show means it can’t be held against the comedian. Some of Lee’s extended riffs can feel more like endurance tests for both audience and performer than anything else. One such bit came in the second half when Lee discusses what a comedian “saying the unsayable” would really be like. The six-minute demonstration that follows tested the patience of many, but other, similarly long routines certainly land. One was a long enactment of a week’s worth of workplace conversations, while another was a less obviously worked bit about Tony...
I will, without exception, take the opportunity to use an ampersand wherever possible. Except on those points where it seems ugly. I am an aesthetic writer, would be the point. I'm also a big fan of Stewart Lee , to the point where I buy those weird anachronisms that DVDs are fast becoming. But lest (I went there) you think this is going to be a glut of sycophancy I'd like to kick off with the biggest problem that this latest show, If You Prefer A Milder Comedian Please Ask For One, has.
It's the show. Or rather, that it always feels like a show. There's a performative aspect, a Brechtian distancing to the whole thing which, on a retrospective re-watching of his earlier live releases: Stand Up Comedian, 90s Comedian & (see?) 41st Best Stand Up Ever, seems like it's been increasing year on year. If you'll forgive a clumsily reductive synopsis of this collection then the major theme is a deconstruction of the idea, action and execution of stand up comedy. And to look at that description and hold it up to my criticism seems to show me up for a fool. I realise that if the idea is to deconstruct the medium then assuming a position outside the performance proper allows for a more subjective discursive…
But it's not that that bothers me, in fact it's the moments where unexpected difficulties drag Stewart Lee out of his rote role that are some of the show's funniest and most honest. It's the carefully chosen instances of rage and frustration, despair and collapse, the degree to which the set seems to be led by these pre-planned emotional peaks and troughs, rather than them occurring, or seeming to occur, more naturally. It may be that Stewart Lee's just not the actor he used to be, or that the energy and bile which spurred on the invectives of an angry young man have passed with age. But the added artifice tips the scales from real to make-believe.
It may be a problem with the medium, or not the medium as such, more our expectations of it. The limitations that we project onto it. It's telling that at one point, while talking to a woman with the temerity to leave mid-rant, Lee refers to the show as art, a label which you could never think to apply to ninety-nine percent of stand up. To my mind some of finest moments in stand up, the key moments of such luminaries as Bill Hicks and Richard Pryor, are those of the greatest pathos, where someone turns pain or tragedy or merely sadness into something uplifting, even beautiful. The performer gives something of themselves and the shared connection is so much stronger than the commonality of a conversation with a difficult call-centre worker or being vexed by someone of the opposite gender behaving according to stereotype.
I'm not sure that this is a review, really. It's hard to discuss the DVD without either getting into the specifics of jokes or just telling you over and over that I think it's funny. The material's as sharp as ever, a spring-board of formulaic jokes by which to get onto the meat of Lee's work and the deliberately wearying repetition of ideas and lines, it's hard to describe but it is hilarious. Sometimes Lee's work, including an extended run about Richard Hammond's death is easier to admire than enjoy but where that's the case it's also usually the point. No matter what specious articles in the Daily Mail or the flat-out lunatics on Richard Hammond fansites (it's a sad truth that such things exist) say…
But I digress, I am digression. For all its issues the show is expertly constructed, Lee working the audience like some demonic puppet master with fewer actual jokes than Tim Vine uses between the wings and the microphone. And, after all that, when finishing with a song Lee reveals a much better voice than I would have given him credit for, his libretto-writing background clearly in evidence. I may think it's the weakest of his sets, but on his worst day Stewart Lee is a more interesting and importantly, funnier comic than most.
(See, an ampersand in that last sentence would have looked stupid.)
Stewart Lee
2010-11-23T17:34:10+00:00
I will, without exception, take the opportunity to use an ampersand wherever possible. Except on those points where it seems ugly. I am an aesthetic writer, would be the point. I'm also a big fan of Stewart Lee , to the point where I buy those weird anachronisms that DVDs are fast becoming. But lest (I went there) you think this is going to be a glut of sycophancy I'd like to kick off with the biggest problem that this latest show, If You Prefer A Milder Comedian Please Ask For One, has. It's the show. Or rather, that it always feels like a show. There's a performative aspect, a Brechtian distancing to the whole thing which, on a retrospective re-watching of his earlier live releases: Stand Up Comedian, 90s Comedian & (see?) 41st Best Stand Up Ever, seems like it's been increasing year on year. If you'll forgive a clumsily reductive synopsis of this collection then the major theme is a deconstruction of the idea, action and execution of stand up comedy. And to look at that description and hold it up to my criticism seems to show me up for a fool. I realise that if the idea is to deconstruct the medium then assuming a position outside the performance proper allows for a more subjective discursive… But it's not that that bothers me, in fact it's the moments where unexpected difficulties drag Stewart Lee out of his rote role that are some of the show's funniest and most honest. It's the carefully chosen instances of rage and frustration, despair and collapse, the degree to which the set seems to be led by these pre-planned emotional peaks and troughs, rather than them occurring, or seeming to occur, more naturally. It may be that Stewart Lee's just not the...
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 (a regular presence on David Cameron's Spotify account) might not. Sid Vicious, Pete Doherty and Screaming Lord Sutch can step down. Gary Barlow is now the most offensive rock'n'roller of all!
Rock'n'roll has always given young people the means to offend the petty sensibilities of society, from Elvis Presley's lascivious legs and Freddie Garrity's cruel dances, via the furious bile of punk rock'n'rollers the Jags, Bad Manners and the Pork Dukes, to the sexual explosives of Bucks Fizz's Eurovision thighs, Miley Cyrus's plucked chicken wrecking-ball lick, and Dennis Roussos's diaphanous sack.
But for me, and many other part-time pop cultural critics, rock'n'roll as an art form of offence appeared to have reached its apogee in the work of the late GG Allin. Allin delighted the American hardcore rock'n'roll scene of the late 80s and early 90s by performing naked, having swallowed vast amounts of laxatives, before bellowing violently misanthropic lyrics, maiming himself, defecating on stage, throwing his excrement into the crowd, and inflicting often actionable degrees of physical damage on audience members. But at heart, Allin was still an entertainer, pledged to put on a good show for the paying public, no different to TV's Dara O'Briain or world war two's Dame Vera Lynn.
Though he had always promised to commit suicide during a show, a defeated Allin finally walked off stage in Manhattan in June 1993, sporting just soiled briefs, his body smeared with blood and droppings, and into a fatal heroin overdose. Gary Barlow, in contrast, performed before the Queen at her Diamond Jubilee concert wearing a scrupulously clean thong, received an OBE for his services to charity in 2012, and once climbed Kilimanjaro with Fearne Cotton for Comic Relief, the latter an image more disturbing than anything a Google of Allin will throw up.
But, to paraphrase an old vaudeville act, who is the real sick man? Is it GG Allin, singing Bite It You Scum in dirty knickers, beating himself over the head with the microphone until his skull bleeds, masturbating furiously, and kicking audience members in the teeth? Or is it Gary Barlow of Take That, in his suit and tie, conscientiously following his accountant's advice to invest in a tax avoidance scheme, while soliciting other people's money for charity and denying the most vulnerable members of society the benefit of his personal financial contribution? It is Gary Barlow. Obviously.
In Hated, a documentary about his former employer, GG Allin's drummer, Donald "Dino Sex" Sachs, suggests Allin's scatological, sadomasochistic performances had some satirical purpose, or were a form of social commentary; that Allin intended to compare his own zany plop antics with "a society that's going crazy with violence". I wish that were true, though I'm not sure Allin's posthumous body of work has the rigorous theoretical scaffolding required to sustain a consistent ideological or aesthetic position. That said, there doesn't seem to have been much difference between Allin's private faces and his public faeces.
Gary Barlow is a far more complex character than GG Allin, despite also choosing to place his artworks within the broad field of light entertainment. Though convicted of an appallingly violent assault in 1989, Allin was nonetheless a kind of punk bouffon, and one that the clown guru Philippe Gaulier would have recognised, inviting us to hate him, self-consciously taking on the mantle of the folk devil. In contrast to Allin, Gary Barlow accepted an OBE publicly for his good works, despite privately playing his part in closing hospitals, schools, shelters, and women's refuges across the land. Allin's life was a performance. Barlow's life is an act.
The paper trail linking Gary Barlow to a homeless man expiring in an empty building is convoluted. Allin's culpability follows a more obvious sequence of cause and effect. He ate laxatives. This caused him to soil himself. He then threw his filth around, and if it hit you in the face you might get an illness. But compared with Barlow's tax avoidance, Allin's actions seem simple, uncontrived, honest – noble, even. His onstage offences were transient, as ephemeral as the sudden impact of a ball of dung in the eye. But who knows at what age Barlow began planning to present the public face of a charitable do-gooder, while secretly scheming to deprive the weak and vulnerable of succour, if indeed he ever did so? To quote Karlheinz Stockhausen's oft-misunderstood comments on the 9/11 atrocity, Barlow's career might be the devil's "greatest work of art that is possible in the whole cosmos". Allin aimed to be the ultimate rock'n'roll degenerate, but as an icon of filth, Barlow has surpassed him.
To be charitable to Barlow, we might perhaps see the same sort of satirical purpose in songs like "Back For Good", "Shine" and the other ones, all of which now taste of ashes and earwax, that defenders of GG Allin attribute to songs like "Kiss Me In The Gutter" and "Suck My Ass It Smells". In creating this "Gary Barlow" character, who raises money for charity while simultaneously trampling our shared values into the urinal trough, was Barlow in fact (like the comedy of Jimmy Carr or Ricky Gervais at its best) holding up a mirror to society, magnifying our hypocrisy through the lens of his own actions? Who can say? But the fact remains, today's young people, anxious to offend as ever, need to embrace the opportunity Barlow has offered them to discover an avatar of offence that is entirely appropriate to our corrupt era.
Grubby T-shirts of Vicious and Cobain and Doherty all seem so 20th century. In the current climate of cuts and austerity, drugs and violence are silly schoolyard crimes compared with massive corporate and individual tax avoidance. In 1976, Vivienne Westwood made T-shirts of a violent masked criminal. Couldn't some enterprising young fashion designer today employ Barlow's Cameron-endorsed visage as a similar cipher for off-the-peg prêt-a-porter moral transgression? How brilliantly and thrillingly offensive would it be for today's teens to parade around in T-shirts bearing the smiling face of Gary Barlow, OBE?
Stewart Lee is appearing free for charity at standup comedy benefits almost weekly for the rest of the year, as usual. See stewartlee.co.uk for details
Stewart Lee
2014-05-18T13:16:45+01:00
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 (a regular presence on David Cameron's Spotify account) might not. Sid Vicious, Pete Doherty and Screaming Lord Sutch can step down. Gary Barlow is now the most offensive rock'n'roller of all! Rock'n'roll has always given young people the means to offend the petty sensibilities of society, from Elvis Presley's lascivious legs and Freddie Garrity's cruel dances, via the furious bile of punk rock'n'rollers the Jags, Bad Manners and the Pork Dukes, to the sexual explosives of Bucks Fizz's Eurovision thighs, Miley Cyrus's plucked chicken wrecking-ball lick, and Dennis Roussos's diaphanous sack. But for me, and many other part-time pop cultural critics, rock'n'roll as an art form of offence appeared to have reached its apogee in the work of the late GG Allin. Allin delighted the American hardcore rock'n'roll scene of the late 80s and early 90s by performing naked, having swallowed vast amounts of laxatives, before bellowing violently misanthropic lyrics, maiming himself, defecating on stage, throwing his excrement into the crowd, and inflicting often actionable degrees of physical damage on audience members. But at heart, Allin was still an entertainer, pledged to put on a good show for the paying public, no different to TV's Dara O'Briain or world war two's Dame Vera Lynn. Though he had always promised to commit suicide during a show, a defeated Allin finally walked off stage in Manhattan in June 1993, sporting just soiled briefs, his body smeared with blood and droppings, and into a fatal heroin overdose. Gary Barlow,...
Jarett Kobek in conversation with Stewart Lee
Monday 23 October 2017, 7pm - 8.30pm
Islington Assembly Hall, London, N1 2UD * MOVED TO BARBICAN!!!!
Jarett Kobek's novel I Hate the Internet, a satire of the Internet age and Silicon Valley, earned him cult status in the US and praise from the likes of Bret Easton Ellis.
Join Kobek for an evening with another fan - standup comedian Stewart Lee - as he discusses his new novel, The Future Won't Be Long. A California-based Turkish-American writer, Kobek is also the author of several other books, including ATTA, a psychedelic biography of 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta, and Soft & Cuddly, a monograph on an obscure computer game for the ZX Spectrum.
Standard tickets are £20, or £30 including a copy of The Future Won't Be Long.
SHIRLEY COLLINS DOC - RIO CINEMA LONDON 29TH OCT 4.30pm
Widely regarded as the 20th century's most important singer of English traditional song, Shirley Collins stood at the epicenter of the folk music revival during the 1960s and 70s.
But in 1980 she developed a disorder of the vocal chords known as dysphonia, which robbed her of her unique singing voice and forced her into early retirement.
Rob Curry and Tim Plester's brilliant documentary sets out to explore the story behind the icon, and chronicles Shirley's battle, at the grand old age of 80, to rediscover that voice she lost so many years previously and suggests that, during these turbulent and increasingly untethered times, we might just need Shirley Collins now more than ever.
IAIN SINCLAIR + STEW 30TH OCT, LRB BOOKSHOP, LONDON
Iain Sinclair has been writing about London for most of his adult life. The Last London (Oneworld) is the culmination of Iain's London project, although 'project' is far too determined a word to describe a body of work so many-layered, so prodigiously polyvalent.
Because all the London Leicester Sq Content Provider dates sold out here is another three month block of the SAME SHOW at the SAME VENUE, Leicester Sq Theatre, with the SAME JOKES at the SAME TIME, 7pm, from November this year until Jan 2018.
Leave voters planning to walk out in disgust will need to book early.
Weds 1st Nov - Sat 9th Dec 2017
Tuesday to Saturday - except there is a performance on Monday 4th December
Tues 2nd Jan to Wed 31st Jan 2018 - Monday to Saturday
Not Fri 24, Sat 25, Thur 30 Nov 2017 (DAYS OFF)
Not Tue 9, Sat 13 Jan 2018 (DAYS OFF)
Other extra dates by other comedians are available. More national dates to follow for Feb-April 2018, and then this must end.
TOP TIPS - I ARROGANTLY RECOMMEND
DREAM SYNDICATE uk TOUR
The 1980s California band sounded, and now sound again, like The Fall playing Credence Clearwater Revival, fronted by Dashiell Hammett... on acid!!!
Their new incarnation mixes noir-ish lyricism with stretched out punk-psyche jams. Monday 30 October, Tues 31st 2017 - The Lexington, London, UK Wednesday 01 November 2017 Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, UK Thursday 02 November 2017 The 1865, Southampton, UK
WILSON DIXON - ONLY UK SOLO SHOW
Sunday 5th Nov, 6.45, The Bill Murray, Islington, London
My favorite New Zealand comedian Jesse Griffin, in his guise of country singer Wilson Dixon, does a lone solo show.
You may have seen Wilson on tour with me a decade or so ago. Griffin's C&W character is far better than the usual genre parodists as it is done with a real love and knowledge of the form, the song structures and lyrics reflecting the cosmic cowboy tunes of Guy Clarke or Townes Van Zandt, refracted through a bewildering stoned-rural-mystic persona.
The foolish Kiwi comedian has booked a gig on Bonfire Night, unaware we will all be burning Catholic effigies, so help him out please.
I was on good terms with Sean Hughes when I started out, and reconnected with him earlier in this decade.
His 1990 fringe show was, in retrospect, a game changer for UK/Irish/Antipodean stand-up generally.
He was encouraging to me in confusing periods, and endlessly provocative on other occasions.
Here is a pair of podcasts of us in better times a few years back, with Sean in a dry season and a witty and wise mood.
23rd OCT JARRET KOBEK + STEW EVENT Jarett Kobek in conversation with Stewart Lee Monday 23 October 2017, 7pm - 8.30pm Islington Assembly Hall, London, N1 2UD * MOVED TO BARBICAN!!!! Jarett Kobek's novel I Hate the Internet, a satire of the Internet age and Silicon Valley, earned him cult status in the US and praise from the likes of Bret Easton Ellis. Join Kobek for an evening with another fan - standup comedian Stewart Lee - as he discusses his new novel, The Future Won't Be Long. A California-based Turkish-American writer, Kobek is also the author of several other books, including ATTA, a psychedelic biography of 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta, and Soft & Cuddly, a monograph on an obscure computer game for the ZX Spectrum. Standard tickets are £20, or £30 including a copy of The Future Won't Be Long. Running time: 90 minutes, no interval. To book tickets go to THIS HAS NOW BEEN MOVED TO THE FROBISHER AUDITORIUM AT THE BARBICAN, HERE SHIRLEY COLLINS DOC - RIO CINEMA LONDON 29TH OCT 4.30pm Widely regarded as the 20th century's most important singer of English traditional song, Shirley Collins stood at the epicenter of the folk music revival during the 1960s and 70s. But in 1980 she developed a disorder of the vocal chords known as dysphonia, which robbed her of her unique singing voice and forced her into early retirement. Rob Curry and Tim Plester's brilliant documentary sets out to explore the story behind the icon, and chronicles Shirley's battle, at the grand old age of 80, to rediscover that voice she lost so many years previously and suggests that, during these turbulent and increasingly untethered times, we might just need Shirley Collins now more than ever. Stewart Lee hosts. http://riocinema.org.uk/RioCinema.dll/WhatsOn?Film=9759698 IAIN SINCLAIR + STEW 30TH OCT, LRB...
Andrew Haydon: What do you normally get asked in interviews?
Stewart Lee: Well, it depends. Local newspapers haven’t ever seen you and they ask you where you get your ideas from, what you think of political correctness, are there any topics that are unacceptable, you know [does a voice] “Are there things that you can’t joke about, though?” And I answer them all the same. Then they ask me a question about Jerry Springer: The Opera, except they call it “Jerry Springer: The Musical”. And I go “It was Jerry Springer: The Opera” and they go “Oh yes”. Then they say, “You’re very controversial, aren’t you?” Because they’ve read that somewhere, but they’ve never seen anything you’ve done, so it’s really hard to talk about it. That’s normally what local newspapers do, because they’ve got to turn round loads of interviews in a day. Then, at the other end of the spectrum, you get 20-year-olds on an art school course that are writing a thesis about you, asking you questions about Brecht and things like that.
AH: Really?
SL: Yeah. That bit tonight is slightly taking the piss of out these theses I read about myself. They send you this 6,000 word bound thing. I mean, it’s interesting. I’ve got about three dozen of them now. Some things you sort of intend, and other things… But that’s good fun as well. They sort of know a bit about theory and practice and ideas and they get a bit nearer to… They’re not so bothered about “Are you a comedian?” You’re just an artist of some sort, so actually they sometimes ask better questions but then they often think that things that all stand-ups do are very avant garde and amazing: just changing things in the moment, or there not being a fourth wall. And there’s never any fourth wall in stand-up…
AH: There’s that thing about “performing yourself”? Or an idea of yourself?
SL: Although, the really good thing about that is lots of performers they have a question about “what is the motivation of the character? Why are they there?” And, like, with him, with me – I call him him – it’s explicitly that it’s his job, so he has to do it. And he’s also, now, got these financial obligations to family…
AH: There’s a character arc, isn’t there?
SL: He’s got to do this job. And then the drama, such as it is, comes from his failure to do it because he gets distracted by his own paranoia, annoyance, genuine passion about things, disappointment with the audience, all sorts of things like that. Whether it’s a two-hour show like those or a half-hour block in Comedy Vehicle, now, really, the sort-of formula is that he’s got this thing that he wants to talk about, which he’s got to do because that’s his job, but then some other problem gets in the way and he gets distracted by it. What I like about it is, in stand-up you don’t have to think “What’s my motivation?” The person’s got a reason to be on stage, which is that they’re an entertainer. They’ve got to fill up time. Their motivation is that they’ve got to fill up time…/
[That’s quite bleak, isn’t it? Like Beckett or something]
SL: But you’ve kind of avoided this whole thing you get with character comics. I mean, there’s lots of really good ones, but sometimes it seems like they’ve made a problem for themselves. Like, why is this postman on stage? Why is this flight attendant on stage? Y’know? That’s not to criticise them, ‘cause obviously there’s loads of brilliant people [doing that], but…
AH: Is there a frustration for you that there’s all the irony, and all the meta-comedy… Do you get to a point where it feels self-deleting?
SL: When you go to Wrexham, people have come out because something’s gone there. When you go to Inverness, people have come out because something’s gone there. And what I like about stand-up is that one some level it’s tradesman’s stuff, you know? You’ve got to do this job. And they have to go away thinking that they’ve seen something that’s recognisably stand-up. But the good thing about it is because it’s such an obvious form – like, the form of stand-up is a man or a woman is at a microphone. I don’t even like it really when people put head mics on, because there’s this really powerful image there [mimes mic]. That’s the rules of that. It’s got a form like a sonnet. You know what it is and everyone understands what a stand-up’s supposed to be. So, actually, that does give you a degree of lee-way to experiment within that, ‘cause you’ve got these clear parameters. So, I like the fact that you can do both things. And, recently, an interesting thing is that ten years ago people would say, “my favourite comics are you, and Josie Long, and Simon Munnery” or something – weird people – and now I’ve got into this area where people come and see you, they might also see, y’know, John Bishop, or something. And they think you’re kind of part of *that*.
They can see you’re different to it, but… It’s interesting. And then, sometimes, really good theatre places say, “Do you want to develop a one man show that isn’t stand-up?” And I have done things like that in the past, but now I think with the stand-up there’s no incentive to, ‘cause actually the recognizable form and rules of stand-up are so strong that if I’ve got something I want to talk about, or something I want to do with sound or light or music or whatever, I can probably do it in one of those shows. And, I can do it in the Trojan horse of it being a form of mainstream entertainment, and I can get people that would never go to the National Theatre or the Battersea Arts Centre, or wherever, to watch something that sometimes is borderline avant garde. And they like it. And they wouldn’t go to it if they were told that it was A Highbrow Thing, which is a shame, but sort of true.
AH: Although presumably being on telly once every two years or so for a series helps, though, right? Like a big advert.
Yeah. It sort of grows incrementally every time. But then it was anyway. It’s difficult to know. Some people go on telly every week for years, but because their demographic aren’t people who go out… You never know what’s going to happen. It’s a constant source of frustration to promoters that a fairly mainstream impressionist on BBC1 who gets 8 million viewers a week, they put him on the road and he’ll get less than me. Like nothing. Like ten people.
AH: And not because they’re not good…
SL: Not because they’re not good, it’s just that different kinds of people go out to things. It’s the same with advertising. Advertisers don’t necessarily pay a premium for some sorts of shows that get a lot of viewers, because the people that watch them don’t buy anything. Whereas something that appeals to 16 to 35-year-old gay men will have premium rate advertising because they go out and buy products and do things, they’re not in a system where they have to pay for, y’know, kids or something. So there’s not always a correlation. You remember the Lighthouse Family? That band? They were massive. Number one singles. Everything. I remember when I lived in Finsbury Park they put them on in Finsbury Park, in the park, and they had to cancel it because they sold like 200 tickets or something, because people who buy [those records] don’t go out. So it’s kind of weird. But tonight; Friday night; West End: two thirds of the people have never seen me before some of them may never have even seen anything you’ve done anywhere, they’ve just come to “some comedy”. Which I quite like, actually. I pretend that I don’t like it, but I do like it.
AH: So, no more theatre stuff then?
SL: I’m 47 now. The amount of years I’ve got left on stage are ticking away. There’s still loads to find out about this. I’ve kind of crossed the point where [swallows rest of sentence]. Also, it’s very flexible and cost-effective. And I’m my own boss. And in terms of my wife doing stand-up as well, and childcare or whatever, it’s sort of unrivalled. I mean, if I was to have to rehearse something… the days start to disappear… It’s easier working evenings and getting babysitters, so it’s kind of weirdly flexible. And also, I’ve now passed a point with it where it’s become quite an interesting project to think “Right, how much of this can you do?” And also, the things that change in my life changes… Like this series, a lot of it is about trying to make sense of… Like, it’s not a struggle; life. It’s a struggle, like, getting the kids into school and things like that, but we’ve got somewhere to live and trying to think about how do you write about that without becoming someone doing stuff about Ocado deliveries. And obviously it’s because he feels that he’s not entitled to it. So he feels…
AH: That is interesting.
SL: Well, it’s true as well.
AH: I mean, is it hard to accept because of the disparity in…
SL: Well, I have done this for a long time. I like all sorts of comedy. I like all sorts of music. I like all sorts of art and literature. And I know that there is no objective correlation between someone doing well and being any good. And so I don’t… It doesn’t make me feel any sense of “worth”.
AH: Do you secretly suspect a negative correlation?
SL: Yeah, I do. Yeah. And, again, I try to address that in this show…
AH: Is there a fifteen-year-old you sitting on your shoulder saying/ you’ve sold out?
SL:/yeah, yeah. You’ve sold out. And also I’m aware that there are… Ok, in Edinburgh, for example, really, that was supposed to be, that was billed as “Work in Progress”. And normally I do the “work in progress” shows in The Stand, in the cellar there; and it’s really good fun and costs eight quid and whatever. But I did it in a big room this year. And I did it in the big room ‘cause in order to stay in London to do these theatre runs, we bought a house in London and it’s smashed to bits – a broken house – the only kind of house you can afford in London. Even if you’re on telly. And we’ve got to do it up. And I thought, “If I do the big room and it fills up, I can fix the roof” right? So I made a decision about the art based on practical considerations. Which I’ve never done before. Then there’s a knock-on effect from that, which is that at least one of the two bits I did every day had to be bankable. ‘Cause there were 600 people in there and I want them to come back. So I never went on and did all… I didn’t do what I would have done in the little room to the hardcore, which would be to basically risk throwing the gig because I thought, this is a lot of people to play for, it could be an audience for the future. I need them to come back. So this year, on two or three occasions, I’ve made choices about things that are based on economics, that I’ve never done before. It’s quite interesting. So I suppose that is the beginning of it chipping away… I didn’t cover as much new ground as I should have done in Edinburgh.
AH: Is that what this run is for? To make up lost ground?
SL: Oh, no. I’d booked this anyway. I’ve got five now. I’ve got four that I know off by heart, I’ve got one that’s all written…
AH: And then the Jeremy Corbyn thing is… It’s new…?
SL: Well, it sort of is, although, weirdly, ten minutes of it was in before, and it was about a cat called Paul Nuttall from UKIP and it had a different spin on it. But weirdly, since May, I tried it and it just… No one’s interested. Like, it’s gone. It’s like you were talking about the civil war or something. It’s just off the face of the earth. Gone.
AH: Is it a bit like the Cameron thing?
SL; The Pig?
AH: Yeah. {recounts circumstances of hearing the Cameron/Pig thing while at at theatre festival in Serbia, and how weird it was trying to explain it…] And it’s gone in two days…
SL: In a way, is Twitter almost like the Two Minute Hate?
AH: Like, your masters are quite happy…
SL; It spent itself, didn’t it?
AH: You were at Oxford at almost exactly the same time…
SL: A bit younger. They were in the third year when I was in the first year, all that lot.
AH: You didn’t meet them, obviously…
SL: No. And this is the awful thing about all that: say you’re a clever 17-year-old, and your school says you should apply to Oxford. You don’t want to because you think it was full of snobs, you know. Do you know Arts Emergency? They’re trying to improve access to university for kids who will be the first in their family to go to uni… And, I think, you know what? It’s like the world. You never even meet them [snobs at Oxford]. All the time I was there I never came across them. I got into some of their balls, because I would do music or comedy at them, and you’d get a free ticket, but even then it wasn’t the ones that you read about – it wasn’t those ones – it was this whole other layer of middle-class people, y’know. So I’m saying, it’s nothing like that. And about a week later that story breaks, and of course kids don’t want to apply now. And I thought; accidentally, just by being who they are, and being involved with those societies, whether Cameron did that pig thing or not, they’ve ruined social mobility. Because people will go, “Oh, is that what happens at a top university? I won’t apply then.” They create that impression.
I got the impression that people were angry and making those jokes precisely because they kind of knew that the Tories were like that anyway. That’s a funny thing about Twitter now. And I think it will sort of change comedy in that, ten years ago, that week some comedians would have done some jokes about it but Twitter’s like an infinite number of monkeys. There’s a million people all writing jokes about Cameron and a pig. Only a hundred of them need to be any good and all the jokes are done. So I think, weirdly, that’s good for people like me because [this] is not about lines, what I do. A guy that writes – ‘cause all the guys on panel shows have writers – was saying that they look on Twitter to check things haven’t been done, because otherwise people on Twitter go [does a whiny voice] “I made that up”.
AH: You’re not on Twitter.
SL: I look on it. But I don’t want to…
AH: No.
SL: I think I would get involved in the…
AH: [asks badly framed question about panel shows]
SL: Most panel shows are a recreation of the sorts of social situations I spend my whole life trying to avoid. I think they’re bad, ultimately. Most of the people on them spend more money on writers than they get paid [to appear]. They see it as a chance to get spotted, so they throw everything at it. It’s very exploitative in a way. There’s also a thing that’s really wrong about it, in that it pretends to be improvised – they’re a kind of mixture of improvisation and people working off prepared notes – but the thing about improvisation in theatre or music is that it’s a team effort, right? And you sometimes step out of the spotlight because you create something for someone else, and you think about the good of the whole. And no one does that on those shows. So it’s competitive improvisation. Which is a contradiction in terms. It doesn’t really make any sense when you think about it.
AH: You work with a lot of other comedians, though, so you’re not pessimistic about the state of UK comedy…?
SL: The thing is, when kids say to you afterwards, “how do you become a comedian?” I can give them that book How I Escaped My Certain Fate and say, well, there’s stuff in here about how I write, have ideas… What’s changed is economics. When I came to London in 1989 my rent was £50 a week I got a temping job that paid £105 a week, travel was like £15 a week, and you could live on £40. Then, after the temping job, I got a job doing freelance research for a publisher, which paid about £200 a week, and was flexi-time, and I did fewer hours as I got more gigs. That job now would be an unpaid internship. And it would be “How lucky for me to find a way into publishing”. But I didn’t want to work in publishing. Also, I started, there were only about 80 comics in the UK – alternative comedians, you know – so you’d start getting paid a bit if you were half decent, but you got paid in cash. You got a door-split. You might get £30 on a Tuesday night. That’s over half your rent. Now, even a little circuit-gig, the tickets go through an online agent because people book online, and it goes into your bank account, so you have to declare it, so you’re seeing 25% less of it. Plus rent, in real terms, is three or four times higher. So the sort of jobs you used to do while you were trying to be a comedian would now be things that you wouldn’t get paid for, because the idea is that you need the experience to do something else. So the economics is…
The circuit in the eighties, obviously there were Oxbridge people, and there were middle class people, but there was a real spread of types of people. It’s much more difficult to have that now. It’s like everything. The net’s tightened a bit. I don’t really know what the future is. Also, like, a lot of the young comics, the types of people that in our day would have said no to things – because they think they’re a bit naff, or because they had some weird principles – now say yes to them. But they have to say yes to them, because they don’t get paid for anything. And it’s much harder to…Pursuing your artistic vision is a sort of economic luxury created by a society that has loopholes in it. Those loopholes were squats, cheap rent, student grants, enterprise allowance…
AH: And, probably for the decade before you, the dole…
SL; Even easier then. I mean, in the seventies it gave birth to alternative comedy and punk rock and whatever. Geoff Dyer wrote a really good piece about how he finished college, came to London, lived in a squat, did part-time jobs, and just read a lot. Then, by the end of that, he knew what he wanted to do. That’s gone. In the old days, there were lots of people getting by. They weren’t any harm to anyone. It feels like something maybe shifted slightly, culturally, with people’s aspirations as well? I remember a bit after I’d left university I was quite surprised that everybody wanted to live in nice places rather than just muddling by in the cheapest places…
I also think there are funny things happening again. There are so many of these competitions, like X-Factor and stuff, I think people think you win a competition to be famous. What you don’t do is graft around for years figuring things out. The weird thing about all that art and music that was produced by the unofficial subsidy of dole-culture, that’s what “Cool Britannia” is. That’s what Cameron holds up as our cultural exports, but they were entirely produced by an unofficial subsidy culture that’s been entirely eradicated.
AH: Part of me doesn’t want to sign up to too much pessimism…
SL; Well, I am pessimistic. I’m from a lower-middle-class family, but I wouldn’t have gone to university – my mum would not have encouraged me to go to university – if I’d been taking on a £28,000 debt. It’s not the sort of thing we would have done. And she wouldn’t have thought there was any point studying English for three years for that debt. What I probably would have done is gone to London three years earlier and tried to get on with stand-up and done it in a slightly more muddled way than I would have done had I not spent three years reading books. It *might* not have made any difference, who knows?
AH: You would have done stand up definitely?
SL: I wanted to do it from 15, 16…
AH: And this is after you saw Ted Chippington supporting The Fall… What about that grabbed you?
SL: About stand-up?
AH: When you’re a 16-year-old, and you see a guy *supporting* The Fall and then you see The Fall, you don’t think, “That’s it! I want to be in The Fall” you think, I want to be Ted Chippington…
SL: Well, I couldn’t play the guitar. [laughs]
AH: You could have learnt.
SL: Well, no, look, I wanted to write comedy. And I liked comedians. But I’d never seen one… I thought you had to be energetic, happy, confident… Like you wanted to please people. I know that’s not entirely true of Dave Allen, who I liked as a kid, but Ted Chippington seemed like he didn’t want to be there. I think I thought, I can do that. And it was sort of noxious and adolescent and irritating… It was all the things you might like about a band or something. And it just seemed, it was just… You see certain things that people… Like, about ten years ago you had all these documentaries about punk rock made by people five years older than me making out it was the best thing ever. And of course it was, because they were all 18 when it happened. But for people ten years older than them, it was The Doors, wasn’t it? You’re very susceptible to things at that age. So the best thing you can hope is that you’re lucky enough to encounter something that actually does have some value, because you’re going to carry that thing with you whatever. That’s the thing that’s going to… I was just lucky, I think, that between 14 and 21; I ran across enough things that gave me the tools to do this in my life. Not all of them comedy. Bit of Live Art. Things like that.
SL: Well, I saw it without really knowing what it was.
AH: This was in Birmingham?
SL: Yeah. When I was about 15/16 I had a friend who was always into stuff. Went to see a guy called Anthony Howell, which I thought was idiotic for the first half of it, at Birmingham Art Gallery. He moved furniture around for half an hour and then he ended up getting inside a wardrobe and it fell over. I was so embarrassed by it I was sitting on my hands and laughing with embarrassment. And then the second half he did it all again by lantern light and with buckets of water as well, and I kind of went oh, right, fuck, this is really good, and by the end… I didn’t really know what it was but I thought it was brilliant. Funnily enough, I met him a couple of years ago. He teaches tango now, and he’s a poet.
Another thing was the BBC. John Peel would play not just music but he’d play sessions by people like Eric Bogosian. Eric Bogosian is now the star and director of some American cop show, but in the 80s he was on threshold of stand-up and performance art and he’d do these odd monologues… There’s a parody of him, actually, in the portmanteau film New York Stories, where Nick Nolte’s wife Rosanna Arquette is unfaithful to him with a character that is clearly a piss-take of Eric Bogosian and he performs in a kind of candlelit cellar, like walks up to people and shouts in their faces… Whoever wrote it obviously really fucking hated Eric Bogosian [laughing]. He wrote Talk Radio. Anyway. That kind of thing would be on.
And also, a lot of the people who would be early stand-ups would be from a Live Art background and then kind of went back to it. Like, one of the first gigs I went to was Oscar McLennan who’s now the sort of person who gets grants round the world to do Live Art pieces and performance art concepts, but he did a sort of show that I went to see at Warwick Arts Centre when I was 16. ‘cause, in the provinces, you knew this alternative comedy thing was happening, but you couldn’t see it anywhere. You were desperate. And it was like stand-up, well, it wasn’t really, he ended up crawling round on the floor lit by this light that was on the floor and complaining about his family…
AH: I saw a show at Warwick last night with a slightly similar ending, oddly…
SL: Did you? What was that?
AH: It was called Weaklings. It was a, it’s an adaptation of a blog by, do you know the writer Dennis Cooper?
AH: Aw. Well, someone’s done a stage adaptation of his blog.
SL: I’m in that blog! But, yeah. It’s… This sounds really arrogant, right, but… I get a better class of celebrity. I get people like that. It makes me laugh. You get these funny people like Grayson Perry and Will Self… Yeah, it’s funny that, um… It’s quite costly, because they say hello afterwards, and you want to give them lots of stuff, and you lose money on the merch. table every night, giving it away. It’s funny to have crossed over. But it’s a relief, because you become slightly more distant from the comedy community, I suppose. Because you’re not in normal gigs all the time…
AH: Is that maybe partly to do with it being very clannish when you’re all young and then everyone gets married and has kids and…
SL: Well, also that there’s an awkward thing now where I am like this thing that gets written about in a positive way, so really they ought to hate you. Except that I’m not bad enough. It’s confusing. The young ones will want to hate you out of some entirely understandable Oedipal thing. That’s the job of the younger generation: to hate you and older acts. But because I’m of that generation where you could afford, economically, to be more experimental, they can’t really write you off. Because you’ve got a flexibility that just through sheer time and chance and economics has been denied them. So it’s difficult. They sort of want to hate you, but they can’t hate you as much as they’d like to. And also, on a slightly cynical level, I get in there first. I can kind of intuit what the next thing used to slag me off will be, and I take it on as a positive thing.
AH: Like what?
SL: Like, “You’re a champagne socialist” And I say, “Yeah, I am, but I have prosecco” or whatever, and I’ve seen Charlotte Church saying that, and I know she got it from me, and good luck to her. Or, “You don’t know about anything, you’re out of touch”, or “What have you got to say now you live in a house?” Yeah, ok, fine. Take it all on, make it like… And what those things actually do, is they create problems to be solved. And that is the thing. I’ve seen poor old McIntyre’s been getting some bad reviews on this tour. Even from like – begrudgingly, even a liberal broadsheet would concede that he had various undeniable skills, previously, and would give him a three or a four, and now they’re giving him twos, and I suspect that’s because there’s no grit in that oyster any more.
Because he’s carried on talking about these things. And yet you know he’s got a £7 million house. But he’s not that kind of character that can turn on himself. Or eat himself. Because he’s a broadly positive, happy sort of thing. Whereas with me, nothing would make him happy. And in fact, as you said earlier, even the fact that loads of people are coming, would itself be a problem. He would assume that was not any good.
AH: And I suppose, you only have to be funny. You’re not being elected. You don’t even have to be right.
And also, when you said, “you don’t have to be right”, that’s the other good thing; although I talk about things that I think are true or interesting, there’s another element to that which is that he’s self-obsessed, he wants to give a good account of himself, he’s arrogant, so they’re skewed by those things as well, so they don’t have to be exactly right, the things that you say, because there’s this filter.
But, when you said, “Do you want to do these one-man-shows and theatre?” another reason I don’t want to is because I’m really interested in what it’ll be like to be sixty-five being him on stage. Because I think it’ll be funnier. Because. To be petulant and to have a sort of adolescent sense of wanting to be taken seriously, all those things can only be funnier, surely, coming from an elderly man. It’ll become even more absurd. I’m really looking forward to it.
I’ve made a concerted effort in the last twelve months to lose weight and get fit. Partly because we’ve got this house and this debt, and partly, as I say on stage, because things are fucked. Like, all the other fall-back things like getting money from DVDs, TV, whatever, there’s no future in it, it’s fucked. The right [wing] have got hold of Über and Amazon and AirB’n’B and these things that undercut you, like they’ve got hold of iTunes so they don’t have to pay you anything and they’re all dodging their tax and they sort of want to destroy your livelihood. I think it’s a weird kind of thing, it’s almost like they hate creatives on some level. But live stuff, it’ll be the last thing to go. So I thought, I’ve just got to stay fit enough to do it. And that meant trying to lose three stone, basically.
So I could think, I’ve got to be able to do this. Forever. Because it’ll be hilarious. To keep coming back every couple of years with this much stuff would be…
Do you know that band, Guided by Voices? Fucking hilarious. The guy releases about seven albums a year of two to three minute long power pop songs with progressive rock leanings recorded on four-tracks, and they’re mainly pretty good and it’s like there’s not really – if you like slightly pretentious melodic indie rock – there’s not really any point of comparison. They’re obviously the best. Then there’s this massive dropping off before anyone else. And he’s sort of done it by sheer attrition really. Just by sheer weight of numbers. He’s written more great songs than anyone else in that vein and he’s like really old now – well, he’s like 57 or so… And like, The Fall as well, are a big inspiration in that way. I mean, there’s all sorts of really unpleasant things about it, but it keeps rolling along, and and gets more like itself. To a point that, only in the last five years, really, you think “Oh, this is what he’s been hearing for the last thirty years” and only now have they really got it. By a process of elimination they’ve arrived at this… The other good thing about The Fall or something, is it’s sort of sustainable. It’s mainly grooves. Not lines or moments, it’s about this kind of atmosphere, that you kind of get into. Each half-hour set has got a bit like “The Things that are on Rod Liddle”, or about the BAFTAs, it’s not really about lines… just kind of keep going and probing it and making this sort of sound like a drone and see what happens. That’s the fun bit. The middle of every half hour of those is like a ten minute… and like the urine one where I’m shouting at the audience about the ghosts attacking me. You just create this sort of space framed by conventional stand up where this other thing can happen.
AH: Is it relevant that they’re very visual?
SL: Well, it’s a new thing. I read things about myself: that I talk in a monotone and stand still, and I think it’s funny ‘cause I know that actually I do quite extreme things with physical stuff, like run round the room, pretend to be attacked by ghosts, fall over, and do things with huge silences where I’m not moving… And again, that’s not necessarily from stand-up.
AH: Anything you’d like to add?
SL: No. But, it was just… It was very nice to be written about by you, irrespective of it being positive, in that it wasn’t caught up in lots of things that um… I mean I gave up for a bit in about 2000/2001 because I got loads of bad reviews that were criticising me – criticising as mistakes – things that I’d actually chosen to do. Like people in the Independent, I remember saying, “At one point he seems to lose the audience for fifteen minutes, but gradually claws the room back from complete silence, despite the fact that he has alienated everyone in it.” And I’d think, well, that’s what I meant to do. And, weirdly, the better you get at some things, the more, sometimes, if you act it well…
I was in Dublin doing the bit where I complain about all the dead comedians and the audience not getting it, and I saw this woman on the front row with her phone out doing something. And I went, “What are you doing? Are you looking at your phone?” And I thought, well, I can’t break off, I’ve got to roll with this. So I went to her, “Why would you get your phone out when I’m talking about people I know that have committed suicide? What is wrong with you? Why would you be on your phone? Get out.” you know. And she went. Then I got home and I thought “Hmm, I’ll Google that.” So I put my name into Twitter and she was a Sunday Times journalist, right? And she’d thought she was seeing this famous comedian having a mental breakdown on stage, so what she was doing was going on Twitter to tell everyone. And then she went out, and she went on Twitter, and she was all “I can’t believe it, I’ve just seen Stewart Lee having a mental breakdown on stage.” And she thought she’d got some exclusive, some scoop, and she was obviously off to write it up and try to get it in the paper, that I’d thrown this gig in Dublin by going nuts, and then a couple of other people went to her, “You know that’s part of the act?” And she said, “Well, from where I was seeing it looked pretty real.” And people were going, “Yeah, but it’s, y’know..” Because she’d left, you see. And I thought, “Wow.” It actually becomes a sort of problem if you make things look like they’re real, people don’t think you’ve got any skills. They just think you’re… It’s a shame people stopped her. ‘Cause I would actually have liked that story to come out. That would have been really interesting to see what would happen.
That’s another thing about the act at the moment, I sort of find things funny, but then I also find it funny that they exist. See, that diarrhoea-on-the-flag thing didn’t really work tonight, normally it becomes really like people are almost sick with… It goes on so long… Normally it goes through waves of not being funny and then it comes back. It didn’t really ever reach the scale of velocity tonight. I don’t know why. Who knows? Maybe, like, I didn’t do funny enough sounds or something, I don’t know, but. With that, part of what’s funny about it to me, why I get the giggles while I’m doing it, is thinking that it will be on television. And then you think of how angry people will be…
AH: [rambling observation from me that maybe irony is once more the new sincerity]
About five or six years ago I wrote, I think it’s If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, my sort of angle on that was that the most controversial thing you could do was to be sincere in a world of irony. But, it’s not possible night after night with the amount of gigs I do now, to put yourself genuinely in that level of… you can’t really have those feelings every night. You can’t do it, so in a way now I contrive things to get me stuff to work off but in a way, weirdly, that was sort of the show at the apex of honesty, that one If You’d Prefer a Milder Comedian, it was about seven years ago. And then, as I got more popular and had to do more shows I couldn’t *mean it* every night, you know, and I had to do what probably actors do, which is to develop ways of convincingly faking it and that is like to create little problems and little strategies…
The problem is now you’ve achieved being a convincing actor, so now… [laughs]
AH: …you’re scaring Sunday Times journalists.
SL: Actually, I contacted her editor… She was filming it! That’s right! She filmed it on her camera. So I went to her, “Don’t film it”, and then I contacted the paper to say, a) you’re not allowed to film anyway, and b) this is a bit that I’m working on, so I don’t want it posted up, but she’d deleted all her tweets. But it’s really out of order. Makes you think what vampires they are. Like she sees someone she thinks is having a breakdown and her response is to film it…
[interview turns into an untranscribe-able conversation about the ethics of journalism, public interest, and somehow a comparison with war photographers… They go and get the tube…]
Andrew Haydon: What do you normally get asked in interviews? Stewart Lee: Well, it depends. Local newspapers haven’t ever seen you and they ask you where you get your ideas from, what you think of political correctness, are there any topics that are unacceptable, you know [does a voice] “Are there things that you can’t joke about, though?” And I answer them all the same. Then they ask me a question about Jerry Springer: The Opera, except they call it “Jerry Springer: The Musical”. And I go “It was Jerry Springer: The Opera” and they go “Oh yes”. Then they say, “You’re very controversial, aren’t you?” Because they’ve read that somewhere, but they’ve never seen anything you’ve done, so it’s really hard to talk about it. That’s normally what local newspapers do, because they’ve got to turn round loads of interviews in a day. Then, at the other end of the spectrum, you get 20-year-olds on an art school course that are writing a thesis about you, asking you questions about Brecht and things like that. AH: Really? SL: Yeah. That bit tonight is slightly taking the piss of out these theses I read about myself. They send you this 6,000 word bound thing. I mean, it’s interesting. I’ve got about three dozen of them now. Some things you sort of intend, and other things… But that’s good fun as well. They sort of know a bit about theory and practice and ideas and they get a bit nearer to… They’re not so bothered about “Are you a comedian?” You’re just an artist of some sort, so actually they sometimes ask better questions but then they often think that things that all stand-ups do are very avant garde and amazing: just changing things in the moment, or there not being a fourth wall. And there’s never any fourth wall in stand-up… AH: There’s that thing about...
The contradictions of the Brexit era confound comedy. Having publicly extolled the virtues of Northern Ireland’s access to the single market on Tuesday, Rishi Sunak was momentarily so engorged by exciting economics he forgot the ideological implications of what he was saying, while Tory advisers chewed off their feet backstage. The Tory Brexiter Sunak is now a more enthusiastic supporter of the EU than the Labour remainer Keir Starmer. An unrepentant remainer until I die, do I now vote Tory? Was this the secret Tory plan all along?
Brexit has reversed the polarities of Sunak’s and Starmer’s brains. It’s like Face/Off, where John Travolta becomes Nicolas Cage and Nicolas Cage becomes John Travolta, but with the exciting martial arts sequences replaced by Sunak, who went to prep school and has the personal GDP of a South American dictatorship, accusing grammar-school grafter Starmer, whose dad was a toolmaker, of being a north London metropolitan elitist. Again.
The Labour leader maintains a public opposition to the single market and the customs union to keep voters in the so-called red wall onside. This is pointless. Let’s face facts. The dispirited red wall voters gravitate towards any apparent beacon of hope. And who can blame them? Starmer may as well try to get a swarm of flies to do a coordinated, Red Arrows-style aeronautical display. Even if he holds the red wall’s attention for a moment, all it will take is another Farage fascist-lite to roll up with a frothing pint and a pair of Vera Lynn’s stained knickers on a stick, promising all the kingdoms of the Earth, and the red wall voters will be off. There! I’ve said it. Sod the sodding red wall sods and bugger every bugger who voted for Brexit.
And before you say I am a north london metropolitan elitist who never ventures farther south than the Islington branch of Watitrose, I have just spent 48 hours in Swansea making hardened Welsh people laugh, although admittedly I took a bag of Waitrose snacks with me.
And I’m not especially sorry that hard man of Brexit Steve Baker’s mental health suffered due to Brexit. Boohoo! Since the day after the 2016 referendum I’ve been on high blood pressure medication, which has made me deranged and impotent, while the lives and futures and careers of dozens of people I know have been ruined for ever. Where’s my TV sob story? They should put Baker in a bird cage wearing Tom Waits’s glasses, like Renfield in Dracula, and make him eat flies. Hopefully, he is well enough to continue denying the climate crisis with his Net Zero Watch group, as it is important we hear a balanced view of the inevitable extinction of all life on Earth from a depressed man who thinks God is talking to him in High Wycombe.
And I’m glad Sarah Vine has lost friends over Brexit, as she whined in her recent column in the Daily Mail, a paper that only exists to make nice people want to end their lives. I lost friends due to her Brexit too. We all have. The difference is, the friends I lost were Brexiters and thus either easily led or evil, so weren’t worth knowing, whereas Vine will have driven away the few decent people in her orbit. She makes Brexit about her social life as our economy is overtaken by those of European countries whose citizens used to want to come here for a better life and some nice trainers. You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off! Remember?
The contradictions continue. The foolish Brexiter Michael Gove attended a secret summit with clever remainers, aiming to solve Brexit in the national interest. Gove, a sentient but malign dong with a halibut’s lips and the eyes of a Philippine tarsier, got what he wanted – Brexit. But now he is seeking the assistance of clever people who said it wouldn’t work anyway in order to try and make it work anyway. Explain that to your children as they wonder what happened to all the salad. And their future prospects.
Last week, the tarsier-eyed dong enabled a new high in Conservative contradictions, saying parents whose children don’t attend school regularly should have child benefits stopped. Covid kids have just been through two years of hell in isolation, milestones missed, friendship groups fragmented. The first time I, an adult man, went out after lockdown – to a cautious afternoon party in a garden – I couldn’t separate one voice from another, a barking dog burned my brain and I wondered how we ever used to cope with crowds. I still do. Imagine being 11, thrust into the crush of school corridors after two years indoors. And imagine being a parent asking for help and finding, thanks to 13 years of Tory neglect, there’s a two-year wait for a child mental health consultation. Join the dots, Gove, or shut up. Redeem yourself!
Ironically, it was in 2017 that the Conservatives decided families with more than two children shouldn’t have extra child benefits. But children are expensive. Boris Johnson has at least seven and was finding it difficult to make ends meet on his prime minister’s salary of £164,951. The Tory donor and banker Richard Sharp facilitated an £800,000 loan to help him out. Sharp didn’t disclose this when interviewed for the £160,000-a-year BBC chair role. Sharp is a former director of the Tufton Street thinktank the Centre for Policy Studies that campaigns for the abolition of the licence fee and maintains that the BBC is biased. The average parent of more than two children, of course, can’t offer a man keen to dismantle the BBC the chairmanship of the BBC as leverage for sorting them out with a few quid. The whole lot of them have to go. Now. We’re done here.
Stewart Lee
2023-03-05T13:48:29+00:00
The contradictions of the Brexit era confound comedy. Having publicly extolled the virtues of Northern Ireland’s access to the single market on Tuesday, Rishi Sunak was momentarily so engorged by exciting economics he forgot the ideological implications of what he was saying, while Tory advisers chewed off their feet backstage. The Tory Brexiter Sunak is now a more enthusiastic supporter of the EU than the Labour remainer Keir Starmer. An unrepentant remainer until I die, do I now vote Tory? Was this the secret Tory plan all along? Brexit has reversed the polarities of Sunak’s and Starmer’s brains. It’s like Face/Off, where John Travolta becomes Nicolas Cage and Nicolas Cage becomes John Travolta, but with the exciting martial arts sequences replaced by Sunak, who went to prep school and has the personal GDP of a South American dictatorship, accusing grammar-school grafter Starmer, whose dad was a toolmaker, of being a north London metropolitan elitist. Again. The Labour leader maintains a public opposition to the single market and the customs union to keep voters in the so-called red wall onside. This is pointless. Let’s face facts. The dispirited red wall voters gravitate towards any apparent beacon of hope. And who can blame them? Starmer may as well try to get a swarm of flies to do a coordinated, Red Arrows-style aeronautical display. Even if he holds the red wall’s attention for a moment, all it will take is another Farage fascist-lite to roll up with a frothing pint and a pair of Vera Lynn’s stained knickers on a stick, promising all the kingdoms of the Earth, and the red wall voters will be off. There! I’ve said it. Sod the sodding red wall sods and bugger every bugger who voted for Brexit. And before you say I am a north london...
The American saxophonist David S Ware died last month, at the age of 62. His final album, here leading a quartet including the ubiquitous William Parker on bass, offers three ecstatically elongated workouts typical of his approach. Ware's sound was forged in the slipstream of John Coltrane's explosive and expansive late sixties experiments, and he viewed his own cosmic free-jazz in spiritual and spatial terms. His contemporary Steve Lacy's final recordings seemed valedictory. Here, Ware is still aiming his horn at the stars.
Stewart Lee
2012-11-04T12:36:37+00:00
The American saxophonist David S Ware died last month, at the age of 62. His final album, here leading a quartet including the ubiquitous William Parker on bass, offers three ecstatically elongated workouts typical of his approach. Ware's sound was forged in the slipstream of John Coltrane's explosive and expansive late sixties experiments, and he viewed his own cosmic free-jazz in spiritual and spatial terms. His contemporary Steve Lacy's final recordings seemed valedictory. Here, Ware is still aiming his horn at the stars.
Easter is the time of eternal symbols: the fictitious egg-abandoning rabbit; the female mantis, biting off its mate's head during a loveless copulation; and, perhaps most profound, the newborn orphan lamb's greedy suckling at the laughing prime minister's eagerly proffered teat, a scene re-enacted every Easter by a local actor in the village of Chadlington, before a barn of frightened Oxfordshire children and their sympathetically lactating nannies.
Centuries pass, nature's ancient cycles overlaid by each epoch's successive blooming of ephemeral religious belief. But this year, Easter was the time of election campaigns and, tired from my standup tour but obliged to file the second of my "a comedian observes the election" columns, I was vulnerable to symbols.
On Good Friday, I took my children to Trafalgar Square to witness a re-enactment of Christ'
s passion. Jesus, a charismatic Russell Brand figure from biblical times, excited a populace desperate for answers, but seemed reluctant to give specific ones, preferring to pronounce mysteriously about wineskins, his profound thoughts eventually forming the basis of an enduring bestseller.
The production was given a surprisingly contemporary air of tragedy by the 21st-century passerby's tendency to wander along, pose for a selfie with the agony of Christ as a diverting backdrop, and then wander off again to the Trocadero centre. "Here's me and Josie with the expiring saviour." Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
My own Easter epiphany, during the actor-Christ's actual crucifixion, was itself compromised by a lady from the theatre company handing me an out-of-date leaflet saying, "Buy tickets for The Life of Christ and receive 20% off The Nativity if booked before 31 March 2015." How dare they do this in my father'
s house? The actor who played Jesus was brilliant. He had to get down off the cross, clean his wounds, re-engage with the character, and then do the 90-minute show again for the 3pm matinee. Truly this man was the son of God.
The last time I'd stood all day in Trafalgar Square was 25 years and one week ago, in the poll tax demonstration, my buttocks squashed against the Imperial Units plaque by phalanxes of mounted police, unaccountable in those pre-camera-phone days, clumsy protesters bumping their teeth out against truncheons right, left and centre.
Today we know that most of the supposed troublemakers were probably undercover police officers. Indeed my first marriage fell apart four years in when I discovered that "Jean", whom I met that very day beneath the trampling hooves of a horse named Raisa, was in fact junior police constable Alan Ripley in blond dreadlocks and a Back to the Planet T-shirt, with his winky tucked permanently between his legs.
Current legislation would make it impossible to arrange a similarly sized protest today, though driving a tank through central London to reinstate a punchy TV personality can be organised at a moment's notice. And the massed re-enactment of Jesus's maddeningly obtuse calls for social justice, in front of thousands of members of the public, was also fine, as no one ever listened to anything Jesus said anyway.
Though necessarily painted with broad strokes, the epic production showed how the gamesmanship of religious leaders and Roman administrators led to Christ's crucifixion. But I found myself seeing the saviour's face not in that of David Cameron, despite the lamb-suckler's attempt to portray himself as our political messiah, but in the face of another idealist who, like Jesus, found himself caught in a political crossfire. You know him. His name is Nicholas William Peter Lemsip Nutkin Horsebrass Bladderwrack Clegg. The man better known to you as Nicholas "Nick" Clegg.
Nick Clegg too was betrayed, not by a kiss in the Gethsemane garden, but by a handshake in the rose garden. And, selflessly, Nick Clegg sacrificed his career, if not his life, to keep Cameron's most savage Conservatives muzzled, so that we might not suffer quite as much as we might have done otherwise. And given a choice between him and some actual criminals, you would choose the latter, and abandon him to his fate. Nick Clegg. King of the Liberal Democrats. You did not recognise him when he came.
And now I wonder, what of that suckled lamb, the unwitting political pawn? The naked children climbing the Giant's Causeway on the cover of Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy were so traumatised by their childhood association with the group's first dodgy album that they all grew up to be attention-seeking TV chefs - Stefan Gates, Gregg Wallace, Rusty Lee, and the Hairy Bikers. In 10 years, when you see a violent and red-faced sheep, drunkenly bleating its shame in a Cotswold field, will you recognise it as, like Nick Clegg, just another casualty of this filthy campaign?
Stewart Lee
2015-04-12T09:31:01+01:00
Easter is the time of eternal symbols: the fictitious egg-abandoning rabbit; the female mantis, biting off its mate's head during a loveless copulation; and, perhaps most profound, the newborn orphan lamb's greedy suckling at the laughing prime minister's eagerly proffered teat, a scene re-enacted every Easter by a local actor in the village of Chadlington, before a barn of frightened Oxfordshire children and their sympathetically lactating nannies. Centuries pass, nature's ancient cycles overlaid by each epoch's successive blooming of ephemeral religious belief. But this year, Easter was the time of election campaigns and, tired from my standup tour but obliged to file the second of my "a comedian observes the election" columns, I was vulnerable to symbols. On Good Friday, I took my children to Trafalgar Square to witness a re-enactment of Christ' s passion. Jesus, a charismatic Russell Brand figure from biblical times, excited a populace desperate for answers, but seemed reluctant to give specific ones, preferring to pronounce mysteriously about wineskins, his profound thoughts eventually forming the basis of an enduring bestseller. The production was given a surprisingly contemporary air of tragedy by the 21st-century passerby's tendency to wander along, pose for a selfie with the agony of Christ as a diverting backdrop, and then wander off again to the Trocadero centre. "Here's me and Josie with the expiring saviour." Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. My own Easter epiphany, during the actor-Christ's actual crucifixion, was itself compromised by a lady from the theatre company handing me an out-of-date leaflet saying, "Buy tickets for The Life of Christ and receive 20% off The Nativity if booked before 31 March 2015." How dare they do this in my father' s house? The actor who played Jesus was brilliant. He had to get down off the...
The saxophonist Sam Rivers, who died last December, was ousted from Miles Davis' mid-sixties quintet for his unfettered free playing, but on his final British dates, in 2004, he seemed constrained fronting a big band playing his own formal compositions.
Happily, this posthumous double CD, a 2007 set by his classic ‘70s trio of the drummer Barry Altschul and the bassist Dave Holland, a fellow early free jazz adopter, sits comfortably amidst conflicting styles, segueing from squawky dissonance to lyrical, tonal, melodic improvisation.
Stewart Lee
2012-11-18T21:32:12+00:00
The saxophonist Sam Rivers, who died last December, was ousted from Miles Davis' mid-sixties quintet for his unfettered free playing, but on his final British dates, in 2004, he seemed constrained fronting a big band playing his own formal compositions. Happily, this posthumous double CD, a 2007 set by his classic ‘70s trio of the drummer Barry Altschul and the bassist Dave Holland, a fellow early free jazz adopter, sits comfortably amidst conflicting styles, segueing from squawky dissonance to lyrical, tonal, melodic improvisation.
Sadly, TV Critic Omer Ali at Time Out, who is clearly a fan of sorts, wanted to like The Perfect Fool but found himself too compelled to compare it unfavourably to Killing Paparazzi by Robert M Eversz, and we must respect him for this. I think I can pull "excellent … especially good" out of this, but it would seem dishonest to do so. I was glad Omer noticed that I had tried to twist events this way and that, as plot device and emotional background, but sad that he thought I had failed roundly. At this stage I don’t get a knock to my ego from bad reviews, I just worry about how it will affect sales and the chance of getting to publish again. - S.Lee
"The main thing linking these 2 books is the central importance of an act of bestiality caught on camera acquires in both, as well as a female lead trying to escape her past. Excellent stand-up comedian Lee tries – as he does with all the conceits in his novel – to twist the event this way and that, as plot device and emotional background, but fails roundly…. Killing Paparazzi is zippy stuff, all the more so compared with Lee’s work, which tiringly takes us from Balham – bedsit territory where he’s at his best – to Arizona, involving, amongst other things, Hopi myths, the blooming Holy Grail, and Soviet space dog Laika, zzz … A list of comedians-turned-novelist would be longer than this review, and compared to most of them I wanted Lee to carry it off, but then I finally understood Emperor Josef II’s rebuke to Mozart, ‘too many notes’. ….. Lee spends the best of his efforts drawing his cast list together in ways that are all too obvious. The prose is mechanical, and fails to capture any of the visual elisions in his mind. This isn’t writing, it’s directing traffic."
Oh dear. That said, History has shown Emperor Josef II to be wrong about WA Mozart, who is now highly regarded, but dead.
S Lee
Stewart Lee
2001-07-01T14:14:58+01:00
Sadly, TV Critic Omer Ali at Time Out, who is clearly a fan of sorts, wanted to like The Perfect Fool but found himself too compelled to compare it unfavourably to Killing Paparazzi by Robert M Eversz, and we must respect him for this. I think I can pull "excellent … especially good" out of this, but it would seem dishonest to do so. I was glad Omer noticed that I had tried to twist events this way and that, as plot device and emotional background, but sad that he thought I had failed roundly. At this stage I don’t get a knock to my ego from bad reviews, I just worry about how it will affect sales and the chance of getting to publish again. - S.Lee "The main thing linking these 2 books is the central importance of an act of bestiality caught on camera acquires in both, as well as a female lead trying to escape her past. Excellent stand-up comedian Lee tries – as he does with all the conceits in his novel – to twist the event this way and that, as plot device and emotional background, but fails roundly…. Killing Paparazzi is zippy stuff, all the more so compared with Lee’s work, which tiringly takes us from Balham – bedsit territory where he’s at his best – to Arizona, involving, amongst other things, Hopi myths, the blooming Holy Grail, and Soviet space dog Laika, zzz … A list of comedians-turned-novelist would be longer than this review, and compared to most of them I wanted Lee to carry it off, but then I finally understood Emperor Josef II’s rebuke to Mozart, ‘too many notes’. ….. Lee spends the best of his efforts drawing his cast list together in ways that are all too obvious. The...
Or listen to the unabridged 'Fist of Fun' series here.
Stewart Lee
2018-10-30T23:09:56+00:00
This audio collection of early 90's Lee And Herring radio stuff has stood up well over the years. It's deleted, but you might still be able to find it on amazon. Or listen to the unabridged 'Fist of Fun' series here.
Peter Philipson, guitarist of the missed Starless And Bible Black, leads a Manchester collective through a superb set of traditional British songs, played in a pedal steel laden early Seventies West Coast style, with guest vocalists from folk's fringes.
Jenny McCormick walks the primrose path of The Wicker Man's satanically seductive Gently Johnny; Elle Osborne's Under The Leaves hangs suspended in a steel walled echo chamber; Jim Causley's strident Out With My Gun In The Morning sounds like the 80s psychedelic revivalists Rain Parade playing Fairport Convention; and James Raynard charts a determined course through the churning haze of The Roaming Journeyman.
Here's to volume two.
Stewart Lee
2012-02-01T01:36:01+00:00
Peter Philipson, guitarist of the missed Starless And Bible Black, leads a Manchester collective through a superb set of traditional British songs, played in a pedal steel laden early Seventies West Coast style, with guest vocalists from folk's fringes. Jenny McCormick walks the primrose path of The Wicker Man's satanically seductive Gently Johnny; Elle Osborne's Under The Leaves hangs suspended in a steel walled echo chamber; Jim Causley's strident Out With My Gun In The Morning sounds like the 80s psychedelic revivalists Rain Parade playing Fairport Convention; and James Raynard charts a determined course through the churning haze of The Roaming Journeyman. Here's to volume two.
The b-side of this indie-pop single, Crying Song, features Stew crying.
Following-up their critically acclaimed self-titled debut album, Evans the Death return with their third single in the form of "Catch Your Cold," one of the highlights of their excellent LP. One of the first songs written by the band, guitarist Dan Moss says of "Catch Your Cold": "The sentiment behind it is pretty simple. I like the ending, we mucked about with different tape speeds and delays to try and take the listener on a psychedelic journey." Insanely catchy and bursting with youthful energy, "Catch Your Cold" is the kind of tune that makes you realize that there is still plenty of joy to be found in good old guitar pop. Look out too for B-side "Crying Song" for which the band persuaded comedian Stewart Lee to sob uncontrollably over their rambunctious musical backing.
Stewart Lee
2018-10-30T22:26:06+00:00
The b-side of this indie-pop single, Crying Song, features Stew crying. Following-up their critically acclaimed self-titled debut album, Evans the Death return with their third single in the form of "Catch Your Cold," one of the highlights of their excellent LP. One of the first songs written by the band, guitarist Dan Moss says of "Catch Your Cold": "The sentiment behind it is pretty simple. I like the ending, we mucked about with different tape speeds and delays to try and take the listener on a psychedelic journey." Insanely catchy and bursting with youthful energy, "Catch Your Cold" is the kind of tune that makes you realize that there is still plenty of joy to be found in good old guitar pop. Look out too for B-side "Crying Song" for which the band persuaded comedian Stewart Lee to sob uncontrollably over their rambunctious musical backing.
In this era of alternative facts and fake news it is important to state the undeniable truth of the matter. Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle was one of the funniest television programmes ever, period, as Donald Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer would surely put it. Or rather: Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle was one of the funniest television programmes made in recent times for the sneering amusement of the metropolitan liberal elite to which Lee himself self-mockingly claims to belong. Indeed, in addition to the mockery of classic metropolitan liberal elite targets, such as “the UKIPs”, self-mockery was another reason the programme was so funny.
Lee’s politics, his age, his curmudgeonly hostility to the modern world – all came in for a subversive sidelong look. As did his now well-established persona as the (right-)think- ing person’s comedian, over the course of excerpts from the pastiche interview (with either Chris Morris or Armando Iannucci) that, in each episode, framed a monologue on a single theme in front of a theatre audience. The themes ranged from toilet books to Islamopho- bia. The show won awards, critical praise and decent viewing figures. Naturally, the BBC cancelled it last year, citing budget cuts, in order to concentrate on “scripted comedy”. What an untrustworthy world it is, indeed, when a quiz show such as the honourably long- lived but now somewhat tired Have I Got News for You can run to over fifty seasons and Stew- art Lee isn’t given a fifth.
It seems true enough, on the other hand, that not everybody has warmed to a performer once accused by a Daily Telegraph critic of show- ing contempt for his audience, and who is not shy of complaining to his audience that a joke deserves a bigger laugh than it got. The abra- sive priorities have always been there in his routines since Lee emerged in the early 1990s – collaborating with Richard Herring, writing radio shows, performing and directing. He veered away from stand-up for a while: a novel, The Perfect Fool, appeared in 2001 and around the same time, he co-wrote Jerry Springer: The opera, which put some Christ- ian groups into a tremendously unchristian frenzy, and had the Daily Mail howling over its supposed 8,000 obscenities. For those unfa- miliar with Lee’s work: If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask for One is the sardonic title he used at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival a few years ago, and gives fair warning of what to expect.
His new show shares its punning title with a recent collection of his newspaper columns: Content Provider. The suggestion of spread- ing joy here should not be taken to mean that he has himself become a milder comedian; it is the callow new media phrase that matters more here. For a start, Lee warns the audience that any mobile phones interrupting him will be located and destroyed. Then he slips from explaining that his stage set consists of other comedians’ DVDs to explaining how he buys up second-hand copies of his own to make a supplementary profit on them – albeit a profit measured in pence. The path to profit is described in a knowingly smug tone, suggest- ing that this is a serious business and getting one over on his fellow comics really matters.
Both set and initial self-send-up imply redundancy is on Lee’s mind – being out- moded or outmanoeuvred, personally and politically. Content Provider turns on the joke that it has to be sturdy enough to survive the triggering of Article 50 and the Trump presi- dency. The “alternative fact” era, for instance, may appear to the unwary eye to be identical to the “post-fact” era that preceded it, but it is, actually, only as old as Kellyanne Conway’s attempt to explain away Spicer’s erroneous remarks about the numbers attending Trump’s inauguration and the Women’s March the following day. Content Provider is its senior by several months – a long time in political sat- ire terms. So the truism is true: comedy is all about the timing.
It appears to be about knowing your audi- ence, too. Lee perfectly times the line “it wasn’t just racists that voted for Brexit . . . it was cunts as well” to explode as he hits that expletive (only 7,999 to go); and the Leicester Square crowd obligingly give that one a big enough laugh. The same material receives a less gratifying response in Leave-voting parts of the country, Lee notes. He might need luck taking Comedy Provider on tour.
Fortunately, it is far from being all Brexit this and Trump that – all fire and left-wing brimstone. These signs (or sins) of our times are parts of a wider pattern, elements in the kind of vituperative narrative arc that often distinguishes Lee’s solo live shows, as does the manner of his delivery – deadpan, some- times hushed, likely to gather force as the material gets more absurd – from a whisper to a scream, via notes scrawled on the back of his hand. Younger comedians who hail him as “maaaaate” and tell him what he should be doing inspire one such sarcastic crescendo; the Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle, who is old enough, but not wise enough, to know better, merely merits a naughty aside. Somewhere on the stage lurks a copy of Caspar David Fried- rich’s “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog” – a ludicrously sublime yet hackneyed figure amid the archaic stacks of stand-ups’ DVDs. Even those who do not belong to the sneering metropolitan elite should be able to appreciate a world-weary gag like that when they see one.
Stewart Lee
2017-01-25T17:28:33+00:00
In this era of alternative facts and fake news it is important to state the undeniable truth of the matter. Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle was one of the funniest television programmes ever, period, as Donald Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer would surely put it. Or rather: Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle was one of the funniest television programmes made in recent times for the sneering amusement of the metropolitan liberal elite to which Lee himself self-mockingly claims to belong. Indeed, in addition to the mockery of classic metropolitan liberal elite targets, such as “the UKIPs”, self-mockery was another reason the programme was so funny. Lee’s politics, his age, his curmudgeonly hostility to the modern world – all came in for a subversive sidelong look. As did his now well-established persona as the (right-)think- ing person’s comedian, over the course of excerpts from the pastiche interview (with either Chris Morris or Armando Iannucci) that, in each episode, framed a monologue on a single theme in front of a theatre audience. The themes ranged from toilet books to Islamopho- bia. The show won awards, critical praise and decent viewing figures. Naturally, the BBC cancelled it last year, citing budget cuts, in order to concentrate on “scripted comedy”. What an untrustworthy world it is, indeed, when a quiz show such as the honourably long- lived but now somewhat tired Have I Got News for You can run to over fifty seasons and Stew- art Lee isn’t given a fifth. It seems true enough, on the other hand, that not everybody has warmed to a performer once accused by a Daily Telegraph critic of show- ing contempt for his audience, and who is not shy of complaining to his audience that a joke deserves a bigger laugh than it got. The abra- sive priorities have always...
In 2002 I was invited to submit a 5000 word piece for a book of writing by comedians called Sit Down Comedy. I sent them the following poem, inspired by my time as Sadowitz's support act, and as a teenage punter in the 80's observing that dying days of the 1st wave of post-punk stand-up in Britain.
The publishers said they liked it but felt they couldn't publish a poem as it would put potential buyers off. I knocked out all the commas, didn't change a word, and resubmitted it as prose, and they ran it. Here is I'll Only Go If You Throw Glass in its original form.
As of writing this, July 2004, it has been performed live twice, once at Lewisham Library and once at Apples And Snakes Spoken Word Night, Battersea Arts Centre.
They say you play Bangor University Student Union twice in your career.
I'll be there in an hour, for the second time.
I had run out of money. There was nothing on the horizon,
At least nothing for me, nothing I could call mine.
Respective heads Of TV comedy dept's had played musical chairs again.
The ones that liked me missed their seats, and sighed,
And waited for sackings or suicides.
I grew pallid in Stoke Newington and bled into the toilet bowl.
After six months lost in the NHS system,
I cashed my last cheque for a consultation with a show-biz physician.
He prodded my liver and banned me from drinking.
So here was I, sober and dry, returning to the stand-up circuit to die,
Scrabbling for loose change, and at my age.
But I had a trade, see, something to fall back on,
Like a plumber or an electrician,
And I was going again, just a little ashamed,
To Bangor University Student Union.
Bangor was the worst stand-up gig on the National Comedy Network.
It took pride in its hostility, and so, like the entire city of Glasgow,
Was regarded with suspicion.
"If you don't do the required time", explained the Entertainments Officer,
Complicit in the scheme,
"Your fee will be reduced according to how short your set has been."
Yes, last time I was in Bangor teenage drunks threw plastic glasses.
Experiences like this had crushed my faith in the masses.
"I'll only go if you throw glass," I said, wittily, from the stage,
And security guards dodged the shards to enter the melee.
It was a good line, and it was funny,
But it wasn't one of mine, and he still docked my money.
"I'll only go if you throw glass",
Was an old standard from an old stand-up,
Malcolm Tracey.
And Malcolm Tracey was coming.
To Bangor.
With me.
Now he sits in the car un-speaking, reading pornography and smoking,
With Scott Walker quietly exploding on his personal stereo.
He will not shut the window. And it is starting to snow.
I don't think you can begin to understand what Malcy's presence means to me,
At this strange stage in what I call my so-called career.
I'll try and explain.
Five hours earlier, at the top of a council block in Finchley
I rang the bell and waited to be met by Malcolm's mother.
The door swung in and there she stood, pinch faced, small and shrewish,
An apron tied around her waist and a rolling pin in hand,
As if assembled to express some absurd ideal of everything I'd feared.
"Who are you and what do you want?", she hissed through lipstick lips.
"I'm Tim and I have come," I said, "To pick up Malcy, your only
son.
I am going to Bangor to perform. And he's coming too as my support."
"You don't look old enough," she said, and took my hand and stroked
my hair.
And studying my sick-thin face, she laughed and led me in.
From the kitchen she called out, "It's a young man called Tim."
Malcy grunted from a box room, a fifty year old teenage boy.
I looked over my shoulder and glimpsed him through a door,
Going about his business, crouched upon the floor.
A black suit shape beside the bed, scratching at his balding head,
He stuffed debris into a bag and searched for cigarettes.
Malcy's mother sat me down and chattered as she worked.
Something about tranquillisers and did I want some grub?
Not that Service Station muck, but something she would rustle up.
We came to an agreement and she made me a packed lunch.
She boxed it up in Tupperware and sat it next to Malcy's fare,
Identical in all respects, a cake, an apple and some crisps.
I drank my tea and looked around. It had come to this.
Going back to the Bangor for two hundred and fifty quid.
Thirty five and finished, and not allowed to drink.
But I would be accompanied by my one consolation.
Malcolm Tracey, formerly known as Mal Co-ordinated.
Malcy was the missing link
Between the perfume and the stink.
Between cheap Channel 5 stand-up filler,
Between a million sneering panel shows,
Between the alleged death of The Spirit Of The Fringe,
Between the stage of the Hackney Empire
And the screen of the Empire Leicester Square,
Between squatted 1970's gigs in Stepney
And the comedy colonisation of the provinces,
Between the transfiguration of the mainstream,
Between a new generation of prancing nonces,
Between all that and more,
Back to the first time anybody chalked upon a board
The noble phrase,
That presaged change,
And turned the ripple to a wave,
The secret signal to the brave,
"Alternative Cabaret".
No-one knew how Malcy had begun,
Where he had sprung from and how he had grown.
Nor where he had gone to for most of the 90's,
When he appeared to disown his progeny,
And tied his talent in a sack and drowned it in the sea.
The history, such as it was, was contradictory.
Lisa Appignanesi's book on Cabaret
Included a photo of him in the final chapter.
He was wild haired in a leotard and snarling like a panther,
At a venue called the Earth Exchange that the comedy circuit left to rot
Long before my first try-out spot.
A pamphlet I bought at Leicester Art Gallery
Tied Malcy in to 70's Arts Lab anarchy.
Victoria Wood once mentioned him
When asked who had inspired her to begin.
A journalist called John Connor
Wrote a book on the fringe in Edinburgh.
But he had an ideological axe to grind,
And Malcy's work got left behind.
Someone told me it was Malcy who first coined the term "Alternative Cabaret".
Working in South Devon in 1972, he used it to advertise a Punch and Judy Show.
From inside a stripy tent he increased the violence content,
And threw in an act of anal sex between wooden puppets.
In the beer garden of a plush hotel Malcy found he'd caused offence,
And was compelled to grab his effigies and flee from the South West.
Then there were the years of petty crime and drugs,
The years spent dancing naked in Soho in gay clubs,
And rumours of unsavoury acts and criminal convictions,
And of time spent in prison for unspecified actions.
On release Malcy played folk clubs and festivals
Until the Alternative Comedy scene coalesced.
He never had an act as such, it seemed, but still stormed the gigs
With only a harmonica, a pack of cards,
A dirty pair of y-fronts, and a bag of different wigs.
Somehow he could usually hold a crowd.
You could almost hear them thinking aloud,
"Can this be it? It's fucking shit."
They sat bewildered and entranced, waiting for Mal, as if by chance,
To achieve something recognisable, something tangible and definable.
But he never did.
A harmonica solo, a poem, a song and then a joke.
A magic trick, a puppet show, and then a puff of smoke.
A purple wig, an inflatable pig,
A visceral torrent of abuse, a shambling dance in a tight red suit.
And then the climax, the coup de grace.
Malcy turned round and dropped his pants.
I first saw him in '84, at a club in Birmingham supporting The Fall.
The disgruntled fans showed their disdain for Malcy's refusal to entertain.
Leaning drunk upon the mike stand with a beer bottle in each hand,
He told the same joke again and again,
Until they tried to shift him with polystyrene
Cups and empty cans.
Acknowledging defeat he said, "I'll only go if you throw glass,"
The immortal line, that would one day be mine.
But a shoe connected with his head, and he died upon his arse.
The performance was recorded and released as a seven inch single.
I knew every shout and jeer and each embarrassed giggle.
But I did not know what I had seen. Had Malcy failed, or did he succeed?
All I knew was that somewhere, beyond the suburbs where I went to school,
It seemed there were heroic deeds, irrational acts and holy fools.
I next saw Malcy in Edinburgh in 1987,
Falling drunk down the Fringe club stairs at a quarter past eleven,
Raising his glass and cursing heaven, dressed as Vladimir Lenin.
And two years later at the Glastonbury Festival,
Punching an inflatable woman in the face at the other end of the cabaret tent.
My girlfriend called it a disgrace. She had a point I must confess.
Three months later, I moved to London. My fledgling career had begun.
I won five hundred pounds in a new acts competition,
Got signed up to an agency with a handshake and no conditions.
They took me to the top floor of a tiny West End office
And pointed out across the land, beyond the upstairs rooms of pubs,
At the uncharted territories of student union premises
That they promised would collapse and fall into our waiting laps.
And soon I was out on the road, only twenty one years old,
And support act to none other than Mal Co-ordinated.
Or, as he was currently billed, Malcolm Tracey, formerly Mal Co-ordinated.
Times had changed, for the better in that respect at least.
Malcy didn't drive. So I chauffeured him hundreds of miles
Between bizarrely scheduled dates. Aberdeen to Derby in a day.
Malcy was paid a thousand pounds a show, of which he gave me sixty.
Somedays he was convivial, other days withdrawn.
Somedays he was charming, other days a bore.
Once in Leeds, or Bradford, he made me give him thirty pounds.
I had run into an ex-girlfriend and slept at her house.
Malcy had booked me a hotel room and felt I should pay.
I couldn't tell if he was joking. But he kept my money anyway.
Each night, I did my fifteen minutes then watched him work,
Knocking back the drinks rider, smoking in the dark.
Nearly two decades since he first wrote "Alternative Cabaret",
Malcy's act, such as it was, had reached its apogee.
After ten minutes' faff with harmonicas and cards and wigs and coats,
Malcy held up a massive picture of four small brown stoats.
Then he began an hour's speculation on their interconnected relationships,
occasionally gesturing at individual stoats with a pointed wooden stick.
Sometimes it worked, and the students were spellbound.
But Malcy seemed to be seeing how he could confound
Expectations, amusing himself at the punters' expense,
as if holding them in contempt.
And in the closing ten minutes,
When the space had thinned and the crowd was sparse,
Malcy could always win them back
By dropping his trousers and showing his arse.
But even this traditional display, with which he had all but made his name,
Seemed to be dispatched in a perfunctory way.
In short, Malcy's heart wasn't in it.
As we travelled the country, it became clear to me
Malcy wasn't that concerned about his comedy career.
It was of secondary importance to a social network he maintained,
Which indulged his other interests up and down the land.
In Aberdeen a small fat man met Malcy after the show,
And they retired to practice card tricks in a hotel room,
Sharing junk food from the garage and a can of Irn Bru,
Lamenting Malcy's conflict with the Magic Circle crew.
In Nottingham he was ensnared by the executive committee
Of The Robert Silverberg Appreciation Society,
For whose newsletter Malcy had appraised
The over-rated science fiction writer.
In Sheffield, Malcy was the sometime beau
Of a seventeen stone widow,
Who had needs that only he could satisfy, apparently.
In Bristol, fluff-faced comic book fans
Offered him a copy of Superman
From the early 70's
Which they knew Malcy, a famous collector, would not be able to resist.
It included the first appearance of The Super Moby Dick of Space,
A sentient, speaking whale in a short red cape
Who patrolled the cosmos defending The American Way.
I assumed Malcy's interest was an ironic pose,
But he was hurt by the suggestion and didn't speak till we reached Preston.
Malcy loved the Super Moby Dick of Space.
He felt that its creator was touched by divine intervention,
Chosen to communicate something beyond his comprehension.
The route of our already strangely scheduled tour was further complicated
By the side-trips Malcy insisted on making,
And the peculiar rituals he was determined to observe.
After an average to bad show at Lancaster University,
Malcy made me drive him twelve miles to the coast
Where he stood on the sea-front and took off his coat
And urinated in the face of a statue of Eric Morecambe,
who hailed from the area, or at least had done.
He explained that he tried to do this at least once a year,
and considered Ernie Wise a genius unsung.
Malcy had sworn he would never play Glasgow,
But on the way to Stirling he insisted we drive through
The city center while he, sporting a ginger wig and clutching a haggis,
Leaned out of the car window shouting, "Remember Culloden! That was tragic!",
At small children and old women.
Each day, Malcy would buy the dullest post-card of the town we were in,
Inscribe it with the same description of an imaginary Italian
Holiday and post it to an address in Ealing
That he had chosen at random from the telephone directory.
On an Irish leg, driving between Belfast, Dublin and Cork,
Malcy insisted on eating only at tiny tea-rooms,
Where he would order a baked potato, with no butter, filling or salad,
And then seek out the chef to compliment him on the meal.
Whenever we were in Devon he always tried to have sex with men,
But even in Exeter's only gay night club,
The local queens could tell the difference
Between real lust and some situationist conceit.
Whenever we played a town with two 'b's' in its name,
Malcy would order me two full English breakfasts in bed
And have them both delivered to my room at 5.45 a.m.
The cost of the two meals would then be deducted from my fee.
But I grew to love these idiosyncrasies,
Just as I grew to love Malcy,
Over and above his act,
In spite of himself.
Malcy used to live in Peckham then, before he moved back to his Mum's.
At the end of our two month trip I finally dropped him in his street.
He did not invite me in for tea, say goodbye or thank me.
Three months later in Edinburgh, Malcy performed his 'farewell' show,
In a room above a shop.
The signs had been there I suppose, but I still seemed hard to believe.
What would Malcy do instead? He was dis-institutionalised.
After midnight Malcy stuck his face through a curtain
And addressed us for a quarter of an hour in the persona of a head
which had no body and was floating in the air.
Then he laid his props upon the floor the harmonica, the wigs, the pack of cards
and invited us to speculate upon the perfect order
That these elements might integrate for the ultimate comic effect.
Malcy lit an oil lamp, and sealed his mouth with masking tape.
He arranged his props in every possible way,
Like some Mondrian ballet,
Until at last, at half past one,
With wigs scattered all around the room,
He admitted it could not be done,
And that the totems of his trade were powerless
To someone who no longer cared.
Even against his will Malcy was still funny,
But the friends that I took with me said it was a waste of money.
Sold out for three weeks, then that was it, Malcy pack up and disappeared.
The Guardian said the show was shit. The Observer disagreed.
Five years later I saw Malcy on Oxford street,
Hunched up, head down, staring at his feet.
I waved at him, but I don't think he noticed me.
When the money well ran dry and I went back to my old promoters,
They laughed as if vindicated somehow and said they could find me something.
Two weeks headlining on what remained of the student circuit that I'd help create.
Of course I'd need a support.
Had I heard Malcolm Tracey was back on the boards?
No. He lives with his mum now in her council flat,
No-one knows where he's been but he's blown all his cash.
It'll be just like the old days.
But if he really sucks promise you call
And we'll send someone up to replace him.
Malcy came in the kitchen where I sat with his Mum.
He looked older but content in an indefinable way,
As if the black cloud that always used to surround him had risen away.
"Malcy," I said, "it's Tim. Remember me?"
"Ah Tim, yes. Did I see you on the TV?
Good luck to you son, they'd never have me. I dare say I could have made it
if I'd given it a try but sometimes these opportunities,
Well they just pass one by.
Now. Bangor. In Wales.
I assume that you'll drive.
Goodbye Mother, I am sure that we will meet again.
But if I should die, think only this of me.
The stash of porn under the bed goes to kids with cerebral palsy.
Everyone needs a wank mother, don't you agree.."
"Goodbye Malcy," she said, and passed him his packed lunch.
Malcy kissed his mother on the cheek and handed me his props.
"Sight gags dear boy. You can't have too many.
You're still travelling light I assume?
You think that wig, not matter how funny,
Is too cheap for the likes of you."
Malcy woke soon after Oswestry.
So far I'd restrained my self from asking him
Where he'd been the past ten years. It seemed somehow impolite.
Instead I said how much I had enjoyed his farewell show, in Edinburgh so long
ago,
When he had spent an hour trying to align his funny props for maximum effect.
"Yes. Well I got there in the end you know, while I've been away.
I was five years gone before I realised anyone might have missed me."
"What do you mean Malcy," I asked him.
"The problem was I'd taped up my mouth. You remember, you were there,
So I couldn't play the harmonica
Or recite even the simplest joke or sing a silly song.
It was all very well moving wigs about but even to a foreign ear there's something
in
The rhythm of a perfect gag that can incite the involuntary act
Of laughter, and I believe, there are absurd images that transcend
Any cultural conditioning
And whack us on our funny bones at a primeval level."
My head was spinning. I'd never heard Malcy wax theoretical
On comedy before.
He'd always seen it as a chore.
What did he mean?
"A certain shape, a certain sound, a certain colour and a certain move,
Combined at a special moment and timed
To perfection, will send a pulse of laughter out,
So powerful the earth will crack, the lightning flash, the sky turn black,
And everything will alter."
I felt a little bit afraid hearing Malcolm Tracey talk this way,
But kept my eyes upon the road and looked for signs to Bangor.
"Everything I need to implement this comic day of judgement
Is in that bag on your back seat or here inside my skull.
And when I work my wonders
Everything I've fought against will wither, die and fall.
Can we stop for a piss soon?"
We checked into the Regency Hotel, opposite the station.
Outside the rain was chucking down and waves were crashing on the shore.
I thought about the prophecy that Malcy had just made,
And wondered what exactly he'd been doing while away.
If he really had the power that he seemed to think he did,
Then having him as my opening act might not be ideal.
If Malcy had stumbled upon some comic formulae
That unleashed the energies he had described
Then if I had to follow him I would surely die,
And with it being Bangor I needed to do the time
Agreed, or with the petrol and the rooms I'd be in negative equity.
I went into the hotel bar to get a drink and steady my nerves,
And then I remembered I wasn't well enough.
But as I sat there smoking I realised there were two options.
Either Malcolm was a superbeing, or he'd just flipped and lost it.
Tragically it seemed to me the second was most likely.
I resolved to get through the gig tonight, then have a think in the cold hard
light
Of day as to whether my childhood hero really was going to pay his way.
If he looked like a liability I could just put him on the train,
Phone the promoters and have them find me someone new,
Who I could hook up with before the next show.
I knocked and Malcy¹s door.
"Showtime," I said. "Come in," he lay upon the bed,
Naked except for socks and an orange wig over his cock.
"Get dressed Malcolm," I said, "Bangor Uni will dock our fee
If we're not there by six thirty for an ineffectual sound-check.
This is no time for messing around."
"On the contrary dear boy," said Malcy, "there¹s never been
a better time for it."
What can I say?
Malcy did ok.
His fifteen minutes came and went largely without incident.
At first he faltered, as well he might,
After ten years out of the light.
But he cut such an eccentric figure with his tight red suit
And revolving roster of wigs that the student pricks were initially too confused
To go in for the kill, and before they knew it
He had their good will. Twelve minutes in
Malcy put down his puppet rubber chicken
And reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out a piece of paper.
I wondered if it contained some spell, some charm, or incantation,
With which he would make good his boast of earlier that day,
To bring the mountains crashing down and make the doubters pay.
But instead it was a poem he said he'd written that week,
About his relationship with his estranged daughter.
In all the time I'd spent with him, Malcy had never mentioned her.
He read it sincerely in slow measured tones.
It was funny, but not cute, and clearly heartfelt.
The audience fell silent, with occassional laughs,
But they came in the right places, and Malcy rode the pauses.
At the end they applauded but I noticed from my corner
That a girl by the toilets was crying.
Then as if to acknowledge the hiatus he'd caused,
Malcy bent over and pulled down his pants,
Showed his arse to the students and bowed.
I need not have worried.
Malcy still had it, and more.
After his set my own seemed a bore, if not to the crowd then to me.
Once more I was learning from Malcolm Tracey.
But hey, what the hell, we both did our time.
The cunt from the union paid us both fine and nobody had to go hungry.
As we walked back to the Regency Hotel Malcy stopped for a piss by the chip shop.
"Though I say it myself," he said, to himself, "that went rather
well.
It might have been my best gig ever.
Yes. I was on fire, so I think I'll retire. Things really can't get any better."
Outside the Hotel Malcy stood on the steps and looked at the sea and the sky.
"A drink before bed," Malcy smiled. I said, "I'm sorry I need to
get some kip in.
I didn't tell you before but tomorrow I¹m afraid we are both due in Glasgow."
To my surprise, Malcy took it in his stride.
"Good. Then we'd best be off early.
If you don't mind there's a stop I should like to make somewhere West of Greenock."
It had been a long time since I'd had to drive Malcy to his assignations.
But I felt kind of proud to have him around
And agreed, just this once, that I¹d take him.
At Wemys Bay Malcy pointed the way across the sea by ferry.
"We'll go to Bute, to a beach I know, and there we will put on a show
To live in the halls of memory."
Tired and confused I acquiesced and drove the car on to the boat.
Malcy hurried to the bar, already on his second jar,
By the time I'd bought the tickets.
I didn't think to question him, I'd seen it all before.
He'd have a plan, to see a certain man or dally with a whore.
But when we drove on to the land he took control and directed me
A little way, to Skelpsie Bay, some way South West of Rothesay.
I parked the car above the beach, in the distance I saw Arran,
And in the rain I helped Malcy get all the props we could carry
And take them to the shore.
He handed me a pint glass that he'd brought with him from Bangor,
And told me to keep it safe as he would need it later.
Across the sand he dragged his bags and set them up upon some rocks,
That stretched some way into the sea, a small performance promontory.
And as I watched him from the beach he got down on his knees and reached
Into his pocket and pulled out his old harmonica.
The wind carried the notes away, but I assume he started to play
And as he did so little heads began to break above the waves
Malcy was surrounded on three sides by dolphins bobbing on the tide
Clicking, waiting, watching him, wondering when he'd begin.
"I'll test my theory," he cried, "on these far superior minds."
And in between the wind and spray I think I heard Malcy say
The first line of his tried and tested set.
The story of a gherkin boy who lived inside a burger,
The suicide note of mouse or something or other,
A funny kind of lullaby sung to a sleepless child,
I knew the pay-off, but before he spat it out Malcy called,
"Throw the glass, throw it at me now."
"What?", I answered him, appalled,
As Malcy stuck an orange wig upon his sodden hair,
And blew a last harmonica blast that cut the soggy air.
"I'll only go if you throw glass", he shouted.
I threw it towards the waiting rocks. It shattered with a crash.
The sea grew calm and duck pond still and then there was a splash.
The dolphins dived beneath the waves.
Skulls cracked smiles in ancient graves.
A shadow fell across my face.
The Super Moby Dick of Space!
But no a cloud had crossed the sun.
I looked back. Malcy? He was gone.
And lying there upon the rocks,
His harmonica, alone, unloved.
I hung around the beach till dusk looking for Malcolm Tracey.
If he had come back across the beach footprints would have betrayed him.
If he'd swum underwater out to sea he'd have to have swum a mile from me
Without breaking the surface.
I had to confront my fear. Malcolm Tracey had disappeared.
I drove back to the ferry and phoned the promoters
To tell them my support act had spontaneously combusted.
But back in London they pre-empted me. There had been a complaint.
Malcy's poem had made a student cry. This wasn't what comedy was for.
Admittedly in any other form of art, tugging the strings of someone's heart
Would be considered worthy. But not in stand-up comedy.
Malcy was sacked and there would be a new support waiting for me
When I arrived in Glasgow.
There's nowhere to hide in the Universtity of Strathclyde.
The venue's on the top floor of a tower.
You're crushed into a backstage room that doubles as an office
And it was there that I met Malcolm Tracey's young replacement.
A local lad, slotted in, new to the game, hungry, keen.
He was playing Jongleurs gigs up and down the country
And storming every one.
He wasn't interested in doing the Glastonbury,
How was that gonna help his career?,
But would do a couple of Edinburghs to snag
A Perrier nomination and blag a TV deal.
I felt old and irrelevant, like someone cutting peat
While dreaming of electric fires and cursing their wet feet.
I offered him a cigarette, but he didn't smoke.
I said the rider was no use to me, and he packed it away
In his sports bag.
A pretty young girl flounced in and said it was time.
My support act stood and left the room and I went out into the hall
And watched him walk onto the stage.
The crowd applauded his entrance but his opening line,
Something about how he resembled an Australian soap star,
Hardly caught fire.
It shrivelled in the spotlight and then curled up and died.
He tried a condemnation of the students' refusal to laugh,
And then flipped onto his belly, begging for their love.
But the tricks of the trade were just tricks of the trade.
The Emperor stood naked. The crowd were betrayed.
The boy floundered, dry mouthed, then looked around,
And bent his head, and bit his lip and bedded in for a battle.
Something was different. Something had changed.
I felt Malcy's harmonica in my pocket and put it to my mouth.
It might have been seawater, or it might have been spittle,
But as I ran my tongue along the openings I could feel that it was wet.
I pursed my lips and filled my cheeks and blew the liquid out.
For Tony Allen, The Amazing Mr Smith, Andrew Bailey, Steve Bowditch, Arnold Brown, Ted Chippington, John Cooper Clarke, John Dowie, Greg Fleet, Steve Frost, Boothby Graffoe, The Greatest Show On Legs, Malcolm Hardee, The Iceman, Kevin MacAleer, Oscar McLennan, Simon Munnery, Paul Ramone, Gerry Sadowitz, Andy Smart, Arthur Smith, Martin Soan.
Stewart Lee
2002-01-01T12:43:12+00:00
In 2002 I was invited to submit a 5000 word piece for a book of writing by comedians called Sit Down Comedy. I sent them the following poem, inspired by my time as Sadowitz's support act, and as a teenage punter in the 80's observing that dying days of the 1st wave of post-punk stand-up in Britain. The publishers said they liked it but felt they couldn't publish a poem as it would put potential buyers off. I knocked out all the commas, didn't change a word, and resubmitted it as prose, and they ran it. Here is I'll Only Go If You Throw Glass in its original form. As of writing this, July 2004, it has been performed live twice, once at Lewisham Library and once at Apples And Snakes Spoken Word Night, Battersea Arts Centre. They say you play Bangor University Student Union twice in your career. I'll be there in an hour, for the second time. I had run out of money. There was nothing on the horizon, At least nothing for me, nothing I could call mine. Respective heads Of TV comedy dept's had played musical chairs again. The ones that liked me missed their seats, and sighed, And waited for sackings or suicides. I grew pallid in Stoke Newington and bled into the toilet bowl. After six months lost in the NHS system, I cashed my last cheque for a consultation with a show-biz physician. He prodded my liver and banned me from drinking. So here was I, sober and dry, returning to the stand-up circuit to die, Scrabbling for loose change, and at my age. But I had a trade, see, something to fall back on, Like a plumber or an electrician, And I was going again, just a little ashamed, To Bangor University...
Mixing unorthodox jazz music with a deliberately screwed up pre-show announcement, and entering the vicinity wearing incongruous trainers, the audience are at once given a clue as to just how complex, multi-layered, and stand alone Stewart Lee’s A Room With A Stew is going to be.
Constantly breaking all the unwritten rules about how a comedian is supposed to act, his routine is inimitable, admirable, and at times ostentatious – obnoxiously sneering at the audience, consulting his notes, and perfectly replicating a parody of amateur comedians.
Providing a detailed description of the anatomy of a joke, and self-deprecating about his rise to middle-class status, his brilliantly created stand-up is not only impossible to steal, it’s also impossible to replicate, meaning he has a style of performing that as well as being thought-provoking and laugh-out-loud enjoyable, is also timeless.
Ostensibly a “work in progress”, the truth is he’s been performing this routine for years: every minute of it is deliberate, systematically controlled, and hilariously contagious, pulling the audience in and using them as collaborators, leaving most wondering which of his opinions are actually genuine.
The way he juxtaposes intellectualism with idiotic moments is particularly enjoyable, and whether it’s nostalgic urine related jokes, or well executed metaphors about the younger generations political naivety, Stewart Lee will have you perpetually laughing for the entirety of the performance.
Stewart Lee
2015-08-27T00:27:55+01:00
Mixing unorthodox jazz music with a deliberately screwed up pre-show announcement, and entering the vicinity wearing incongruous trainers, the audience are at once given a clue as to just how complex, multi-layered, and stand alone Stewart Lee’s A Room With A Stew is going to be. Constantly breaking all the unwritten rules about how a comedian is supposed to act, his routine is inimitable, admirable, and at times ostentatious – obnoxiously sneering at the audience, consulting his notes, and perfectly replicating a parody of amateur comedians. Providing a detailed description of the anatomy of a joke, and self-deprecating about his rise to middle-class status, his brilliantly created stand-up is not only impossible to steal, it’s also impossible to replicate, meaning he has a style of performing that as well as being thought-provoking and laugh-out-loud enjoyable, is also timeless. Ostensibly a “work in progress”, the truth is he’s been performing this routine for years: every minute of it is deliberate, systematically controlled, and hilariously contagious, pulling the audience in and using them as collaborators, leaving most wondering which of his opinions are actually genuine. The way he juxtaposes intellectualism with idiotic moments is particularly enjoyable, and whether it’s nostalgic urine related jokes, or well executed metaphors about the younger generations political naivety, Stewart Lee will have you perpetually laughing for the entirety of the performance.
The nation will fall. The monarchy will collapse. The ravens are leaving the Tower of London. They flee not in anticipation of another Landrover-crash Prince Andrew interview, but because they are bored by virus London’s lack of bustle. I understand. Without live music, live comedy, and live yoghurt, London is the congested, polluted, overpriced hell-hole flat-capped northern friends telegram me from trams to tell me it is. But, despite this, London and the UK as a whole remain a final destination of choice for pestilential locust swarms of cockroach migrants (™ ® the Sun). They flee political instability, food shortages, chemical weapons, guided missiles, environmental collapse, and national radio stations where late-80s Samantha Fox singles still top the playlists. And so would you.
These pull factors should have been addressed by some benign but effective pan-European political entity. Such a body, if it existed, could enforce the just distribution of migrants across the continent according to the ability of respective nations to accommodate them, rather than by their ability to shirk their moral responsibilities on waves of pint-pot populism. After all, we may as well formulate fair formulae for the redistribution of the new diaspora now. In less than 30 years, people from Surrey will be seeking shelter from the smouldering sun in still-soggy Strathclyde. We need to know if independent Scotland will be ethically obliged to accommodate refugees from Guildford. Would they learn to fit in? Is it possible to batter and fry an entire branch of Waitrose?
In the second week of August I heard home secretary P Patel boast about the divisiveness of her asylum overhaul: “The left are going to have a meltdown.” The Tory mean girls love the idea of lefty spasms. Earlier this month Merkin Dwabney, the Brexit party MEP and former editor of Ladwang magazine, imagined angry lefties “choking on their granola in Islington”. The public association of political progressives with healthy grain-based foodstuffs and shock-induced throat trauma has become an end in itself for the unscrupulous British right, irrespective of any hard evidence of the left’s difficulties with cereal consumption.
Patel’s ongoing assault upon the migrant millions was framed both to placate heartless islanders and to fan the flames of an electorally expedient culture war. Lefties would be spewing up their Fairtrade hand-knitted woollen muesli into their Islington sawdust eco-toilets made of tofu and placentas and scented blah blah briefs blah dinner party blah blaby blab blab Remainer blab shit piss wank.
But even as Patel envisioned attitudes to migrants as a way to make annoyed lefties gag on their corduroy polytechnic media studies mung bean casserole transgender Port Isaac Ocado bleurgh wap wap scallops copy and paste wap smashed avocado, I wondered how long it would be before Britain witnessed an incident, like the discovery of the body of three-year-old Alan Kurdi on a Turkish beach in 2015, that would show the wickedness of Patel’s weaponised words.
Remember little Alan, suddenly sensitive newspaper cartoonists? Perhaps N Farage could camera-phone a sea-swollen cadaver to Breitbart? Maybe Sky TV’s ex-SAS pundit Phil Campion, Arron Banks’s football lad Igor, could float fake bodies into shot? Or perhaps washed-up migrant corpses could be strung along the Dungeness skyline from pylons like wind-buffeted plastic bags, a decomposing phantasmagoria to deter the desperate.
Would this work? The desperate are, predictably, desperate to reach Britain. And who can blame them? The post-Brexit boom years are imminent. If we hadn’t wanted the world’s starving and brutalised millions to head here we shouldn’t have spent so much money telling everyone we were soon to be a world-beating buccaneering nation, or forced them all to speak our language in the 18th century, or to covet the Beatles, James Bond, Twiggy and the Mini Cooper in the 1960s.
Liam Fox was Brexit’s pantalooned pied pirate piper, his jolly hornpipe of prosperity and freedom carried by the breeze to hungry ears in Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, Ethiopia, Chad, Eritrea, Syria and Sudan. The Foxmeister is a buccaneering Brexiteer gripping the bucking buccaneering Brexit bronco between his splayed white thighs. Migrants cannot resist the charismatic Fox.
Why would any asylum seeker, steering a supermarket inflatable with lolly stick paddles, settle for France or Germany, where they will be made to eat straight bananas and where kettles are illegal (™ ® Boris “I Shook Hands With Everyone” Johnson and Michael Gove)? Freewheelin’, bucaneerin’, bendy banana, boiled water Britain is within sight, with its £350m a week extra health spend and randomly distributed exam grades. Anyone could end up at a Russell Group university, given the right postcode! The opportunities for those who work hard here are limitless, bound only by the algorithm. All hail the Algorithm. Algorithm! Algorithm! I have been chosen! Farewell my friends!! I go to a better place!!! Warwick University!!!! With its outstanding on-campus arts centre!!!!!
In the end, the UK’s own Alan Kurdi moment came quickly, but the pause in culture-war hostilities evaporated fast. A 16-year-old Sudanese boy died in the Channel in a toy dinghy 12 days ago, and an undignified bad faith blame game began. But will you picnic on the beach, Britannia, while the bodies bloat into bluebottle birth pools around you? I think you will. Will you, Brexit Britain, still accommodate the government that sees such sights as collateral damage in attempts to make lefties sick up their whole-food gluten-free lesbian blah blah? I think you will. Will you say this Sudanese boy deserved to die? Yes. You definitely will. You already did. I saw it, however briefly, burning “below the line”, on the Daily Mail website.
Take that! Press send! Now, pass me my champagne, Karam! This week’s Observer column is done! They eat this acrid fog! Yes, I’m very lucky to be working during the pandemic. And so are you, Karam. Have a glass yourself. I’m not a monster.
Stewart Lee
2020-08-30T10:39:20+01:00
The nation will fall. The monarchy will collapse. The ravens are leaving the Tower of London. They flee not in anticipation of another Landrover-crash Prince Andrew interview, but because they are bored by virus London’s lack of bustle. I understand. Without live music, live comedy, and live yoghurt, London is the congested, polluted, overpriced hell-hole flat-capped northern friends telegram me from trams to tell me it is. But, despite this, London and the UK as a whole remain a final destination of choice for pestilential locust swarms of cockroach migrants (™ ® the Sun). They flee political instability, food shortages, chemical weapons, guided missiles, environmental collapse, and national radio stations where late-80s Samantha Fox singles still top the playlists. And so would you. These pull factors should have been addressed by some benign but effective pan-European political entity. Such a body, if it existed, could enforce the just distribution of migrants across the continent according to the ability of respective nations to accommodate them, rather than by their ability to shirk their moral responsibilities on waves of pint-pot populism. After all, we may as well formulate fair formulae for the redistribution of the new diaspora now. In less than 30 years, people from Surrey will be seeking shelter from the smouldering sun in still-soggy Strathclyde. We need to know if independent Scotland will be ethically obliged to accommodate refugees from Guildford. Would they learn to fit in? Is it possible to batter and fry an entire branch of Waitrose? In the second week of August I heard home secretary P Patel boast about the divisiveness of her asylum overhaul: “The left are going to have a meltdown.” The Tory mean girls love the idea of lefty spasms. Earlier this month Merkin Dwabney, the Brexit party MEP and former editor of...
Stewart Lee is one of the men behind Jerry Springer - The Opera and so when he announced that he would perform his own solo play, directed by award-winning writer/actor Will Adamsdale, you could expect seats to go like hot cakes. If nothing else, there were likely to be a few fireworks and, with luck, blasphemy might be on the agenda.
The simple set also promises drama, consisting of little except a round table surrounded by chairs but topped by a sinister, hanging noose.
Lee opens proceedings by announcing that he is Judas and then explains to those who might be fooled by the beanie, scarf and high-laced DM's that this is indeed the man who betrayed Jesus for twenty (sic) pieces of gold. The price is specified by a hoped-for theologian in the second row, who is rewarded with a bag of nuts (from the 98p shop by the tube station?).
Judas then runs through the story of his own and Jesus' final week, leading up to a last supper that requires serious audience participation but at least offers everyone some cheap wine and a few loaves of bread.
The fifty-minute performance is delivered in the style of a stand-up routine by the chunky man, who covers almost every inch of the auditorium and involves and feeds the far fewer than 5,000 in attendance. As a performer, Lee seems very relaxed but this may have been a front as he seemingly got lost amongst his lines on more than one occasion but that might have been a deliberate manifestation of character.
The audience seemed a little bemused by the whole thing, with surprisingly few laughs at what ultimately became a deconstruction of the Gospels in search of laughs or at the very least some wry smiles.
If a top writer decides to attack this material, one might have expected something with more bite and shock effect. What we actually got was a series of sometimes amusing musings about an innocent man who got caught up in events but not the something special that we had all surely been hoping for.
Stewart Lee
2007-01-20T21:00:45+00:00
Stewart Lee is one of the men behind Jerry Springer - The Opera and so when he announced that he would perform his own solo play, directed by award-winning writer/actor Will Adamsdale, you could expect seats to go like hot cakes. If nothing else, there were likely to be a few fireworks and, with luck, blasphemy might be on the agenda. The simple set also promises drama, consisting of little except a round table surrounded by chairs but topped by a sinister, hanging noose. Lee opens proceedings by announcing that he is Judas and then explains to those who might be fooled by the beanie, scarf and high-laced DM's that this is indeed the man who betrayed Jesus for twenty (sic) pieces of gold. The price is specified by a hoped-for theologian in the second row, who is rewarded with a bag of nuts (from the 98p shop by the tube station?). Judas then runs through the story of his own and Jesus' final week, leading up to a last supper that requires serious audience participation but at least offers everyone some cheap wine and a few loaves of bread. The fifty-minute performance is delivered in the style of a stand-up routine by the chunky man, who covers almost every inch of the auditorium and involves and feeds the far fewer than 5,000 in attendance. As a performer, Lee seems very relaxed but this may have been a front as he seemingly got lost amongst his lines on more than one occasion but that might have been a deliberate manifestation of character. The audience seemed a little bemused by the whole thing, with surprisingly few laughs at what ultimately became a deconstruction of the Gospels in search of laughs or at the very least some wry smiles. If a top...
In 2002, I accessed the 3,000-year-old subterranean ceremonial chamber of Pendeen Fogou in north-west Cornwall, by crawling through a 2ft-deep river of liquid cow slurry. Once inside, I was transformed and it was worth it. On Wednesday, I crawled through filth again, as I tried to read the Daily Mail as research for this column. But, unlike my Pendeen Fogou epiphany, the experience provoked only nausea. What a week in British politics it’s been!
The multifaceted transport secretary, Grant Shapps, historically manifests himself in many different identities. On Monday, as Grant Shapps, he addressed Brexit Britain by video on the benefits of Brexit, while bestriding a ride-on lawnmower. “Now thanks to Brexit,” Shapps boasted, snake-oil style, “we’ve been able to ditch the Vnuk law” (requiring car insurance to also cover ride-on lawnmowers and golf buggies). “And in these difficult financial times,” Shapps concluded, as if the difficult financial times were nothing to do with him and his party, “that’s going to help the average motorist save about 50 quid.” This, of course, more than makes up for the Office for Budget Responsibility’s estimated 4% Brexit hit to the UK economy over the next 15 years. Ride-on lawnmowers are free! But until all ride-on home-horticulture vehicles are free this Brexit bonus will ring hollow!
Typically, the EU had already repealed the Vnuk law during the Brexit transition phase anyway, while we neglected to do so. At least when creating fake online reviews for his businesses Shapps used to hide behind implausible pseudonyms – Michael Green, Sebastian Fox or Corinne Stockheath. (Corinne Stockheath is a name that never existed anywhere outside Shapps’s fecund imagination, although it seems you can now follow her on Twitter). Next time Shapps bestrides a ride-on lawnmower to fib about Brexit and ride-on lawnmowers, he should do it as one of his made-up identities. The ride-on lawnmower is the choice mode of transport for Corinne Stockheath, apparently.
“Perhaps the grass can be just a little bit greener,” Shapps soliloquised in closing like a stupid arse, before ride-on lawnmowering off into the sunset. Perhaps the grass can be greener, Grant, but not on the roadside verges of Kent, where backed-up lorry drivers have made the green grass all yellow. And brown. Because of Brexit. Indeed, transport select committee chairman, Huw Merriman MP, recently stepped in human excrement while on a fact-finding mission to a Kent lay-by. Hopefully, this gave him some idea of the benefits of Brexit.
And how those stranded lorry drivers must envy the speed at which Shapps’s ride-on lawnmower is able to travel. Cramped in their stationary cabs at night they dream of doing two miles an hour in a field on a ride-on lawnmower, mowing away the letters Vnuk in a heavy-handed Brexit metaphor as inane as it is dishonest.
Is this the best you’ve got, Brexiters? A £50 reduction on ride-on lawnmower insurance that the EU had already scrapped anyway? Ah well. It will now be cheaper to trim the grass of the sunlit uplands. Perhaps Corinne Stockheath could get on with mowing the lawns while Shapps himself concentrates on scraping the barrels.
It’s Wednesday morning. A quarter of a century ago, I made the mistake of getting out of a Jeep in the Lake Bonney Riverlands of South Australia, and suddenly every square centimetre of my face and body was covered in swarming black flies. That’s what the news feels like now: so many sick stories coming at you all at once. What is it you want me to satirise this week, liberals of Observer-land? Brexit-supporting holidaymakers incensed by passport controls they voted for? Or Nadine Dorries’s downstreamed tennis pitch dyslexia? Covid cash millions in disappearing suitcases? Or billions wasted on contracted cronies? Sexual misconduct in the cabinet? Or frontbench porn from the internet? Broken replacement red wall funding promises? Or the end of educational Erasmus opportunities? Raw sewage discharging or more fines for partying? Lawnmower insurance dividends or government human trafficking? Channel 4 cultural vandalism or care home Covid scandalism. Which of these news flies to swat first? Answer me!
I stumble around Southend-on-Sea, where I worked the night before, looking at newspapers in shops. I can see from the front of the Daily Mail that the disappointing Dan Hodges is squatting splay-thighed on his milking stool, desperately tugging the last squits of black poison from the dry udders of Angela Rayner’s Leg-Gate story like a zombie farmhand. For money. I know that if I were to read the Mail’s Leg-Gate coverage I’d get 1,000 words from it, but that means either visiting the Daily Mail website or buying a physical copy, both of which help the horrible paper, and so are not morally acceptable options.
It’s 12.15pm. I go into M&S to buy my usual lunch: a 120g tray of British coronation chicken slices and some egg mayonnaise. In the queue, I browse the newspaper rack’s Daily Mail for free. I get stuck into a double spread that purports to prove Rayner found her sexual objectification delightful via an old interview that actually proves the exact opposite. But suddenly it’s time for me to scan my proteins. Thinking on my feet, I do the only moral thing and slip the Daily Mail into my bag unpaid for.
I sat on the clifftop with my chicken products and my stolen Daily Mail. Maybe it was all the egg mayonnaise, but after the first couple of pages, I vomited slightly into my mouth, so I put the Daily Mail in a dog excrement bin and decided to run with the ride-on lawnmowers. These people only want you to talk about them anyway. Life’s too short to put yourself through that kind of shit.
Stewart Lee
2022-05-01T16:41:29+01:00
In 2002, I accessed the 3,000-year-old subterranean ceremonial chamber of Pendeen Fogou in north-west Cornwall, by crawling through a 2ft-deep river of liquid cow slurry. Once inside, I was transformed and it was worth it. On Wednesday, I crawled through filth again, as I tried to read the Daily Mail as research for this column. But, unlike my Pendeen Fogou epiphany, the experience provoked only nausea. What a week in British politics it’s been! The multifaceted transport secretary, Grant Shapps, historically manifests himself in many different identities. On Monday, as Grant Shapps, he addressed Brexit Britain by video on the benefits of Brexit, while bestriding a ride-on lawnmower. “Now thanks to Brexit,” Shapps boasted, snake-oil style, “we’ve been able to ditch the Vnuk law” (requiring car insurance to also cover ride-on lawnmowers and golf buggies). “And in these difficult financial times,” Shapps concluded, as if the difficult financial times were nothing to do with him and his party, “that’s going to help the average motorist save about 50 quid.” This, of course, more than makes up for the Office for Budget Responsibility’s estimated 4% Brexit hit to the UK economy over the next 15 years. Ride-on lawnmowers are free! But until all ride-on home-horticulture vehicles are free this Brexit bonus will ring hollow! Typically, the EU had already repealed the Vnuk law during the Brexit transition phase anyway, while we neglected to do so. At least when creating fake online reviews for his businesses Shapps used to hide behind implausible pseudonyms – Michael Green, Sebastian Fox or Corinne Stockheath. (Corinne Stockheath is a name that never existed anywhere outside Shapps’s fecund imagination, although it seems you can now follow her on Twitter). Next time Shapps bestrides a ride-on lawnmower to fib about Brexit and ride-on lawnmowers, he should do it...
In life we all have different guises. There are times at work where we have to dress up our serious side and play the professional. Then at home we can kick off this costume and return to our default role of leading goofball. I mean, this blog I write is another form of characterisation: it is and isn’t me. Despite being far from articulate on this, I’m far more articulate here than I am in real life. In my day-to-day existence I couldn’t hold an audience for five minutes; I don’t have the verbosity to hold someone’s attention. But on here, I have time to pause, to think, to hone and check before pushing send. I don’t see your faces when you read this. Therefore, I’m unconcerned by what you think of me; consequently, I write more personally and honestly about art, religion and politics. In real life I wouldn’t challenge someone on what they watch, practice or think because I’d be worried about hurting someone’s feelings. Herein, lies the pleasure of the arts: it allows you to present your opinions without seeing the reactions of others.
Stewart Lee is a comedian and character. In real-life he is avuncular, a paroxysmal laugher, satisfied with the success he's attained. On stage he is something else: embittered and strained, dissatisfied with the level he's reached. Lee is going through something of a renaissance with this the fourth series of his Comedy Vehicle. No comedian, other than Russell Howard, has had a show devoted to their stand-up for such a sustained period of time (even then Howard’s is more of a magazine show with content deliberately unitised for YouTube viewing). Lee, on the other hand, is a comic that doesn’t ‘chunk’ routines for easy edification- his work will not go viral. Rather, he plots his work with the precision of a playwright: lines that appear inconsequential at the beginning will resonate by the end. Creator of TV masterpiece The Wire, David Simon was once asked his philosophy on screenwriting; his response, ‘Fuck the casual viewer.’ Lee is the same: he is not interested in people who have one eye on Mock The Week whilst they play Candy Crush on their phone, instead he wants people that will invest time in him and be rewarded for their patience. He is the closest thing comedy comes to theatre.
Lee nearly lost patience with stand-up altogether. Following his successful 90's partnership with Richard Herring, he found himself in a rut. His stand-up was regarded without being celebrated. The routines he wrote were well crafted with a Dali eye for the surreal, but they were no masterpieces. By Lee’s own admission, his character didn’t make sense when he was young. People thought he was too precocious, too studenty to be taken seriously. Considering a move away from comedy, he collaborated with Richard Thomas on Jerry Springer: the Opera, a smash hit that was enjoyed by Joe Public and Seb Critic. Unfortunately, a payday was to elude Lee with the Christian-right picketing the show, crying blasphemy. The ensuing lawsuit ate into Lee's profits, leaving him disconsolate. Unwilling to be silenced, Lee took his rage to the stage, turning in a bravura performance in his show 90’s Comedian. Lee begins the show by drawing a circle in chalk around him, a move conceived by Medieval clowns to protect themselves from heresy. Lee proceeds to use his freedom to rail against the restrictive thinking of the Church. The fact that this is done with a closing 40 minute routine that sails so close to blasphemy that the audiences goodwill could capsize at anytime makes it a career turning-point, proving that people could be receptive to long-form jokes.
Lee is now one of the most venerated comedians on the circuit. In a Channel 4 poll he ranked 41 in the World’s Best Stand-Up Comedians – just one place behind Bernard Manning. If only he was more racist. He regularly sells out his tour show, writes a weekly column for The Guardian and is the (self) appointed spokesperson for alternative comedy. Comedians such as John Robins argue that this position is undeserved: Lee’s Second Coming has made him rich, which makes his stand against commercial comedy ring hollow. This is true to an extent: I remember seeing Lee play the Channel 4 sponsored Udderbelly venue in Edinburgh 2007, yet today he attacks comedians that play the big venues. On the other hand, he has used his name to promote other comedians through his curated show, The Alternative Comedy Experience, in which left-field acts have gained screen time on Comedy Central. Despite his growing reputation, Lee’s persona comes from the resentment of his wilderness years. The fact he is now critically acclaimed doesn’t make it any better. Instead of objecting to no one liking him, he now objects to the people who don’t get him. Why when he’s got a loyal following are some people not on board? Why when he’s getting 5 star reviews do people write in to the BBC to tell him his show isn’t funny? Why when he’s clearly a genius do people think he’s incompetent?
Lee’s genius lies in using these slights to make his arrogance more palatable. His recent show begins with a joke that falls flat. He turns to the camera and makes a play out of it, remarking, ‘Where do they get this crowd from? Normally, my audience would go ‘Ha, Ha! Imagine liking Mock The Week.’ Lee has orchestrated his own downfall to make his ensuing pomposity seem less cruel and more ridiculous. In reminding the audience he is against the ropes, they root for him when he hits back. (I don’t know James Corden personally, but he’s always going on in interviews about how brilliant I am. And the feeling is not reciprocated. Britain’s loss is America’s loss also). Lee has cultivated too strong a following to ever be up against it: he is Ali, feigning rope-a-dope to floor his opponents.
For the comedians on the end of Lee's ire, he is a traitor: comedy is a hard enough fight without its participants turning on one another. For me and many of Lee’s fans, it is refreshing: many of his millionaire targets have made their money through selling cheap observations, therefore it’s gratifying to see them pay the price for this. Opponents would argue that Lee’s televisual status makes these attacks nasty and pernicious - Lee Mack being one- but Lee is no household name: if you showed the casual viewer a picture of him, they would say, ‘Terry Christian has let himself go. Leonardo DiCaprio has let himself go. Todd Carty has let himself go. Morrissey has let himself go. KD Lang has let herself go.’ They wouldn’t know who he is. He remains an obscure figure. As long as that stays the same, he is well within his right to stand outside the tent and piss in.
Even though I love Stewart Lee, I cannot guarantee you will like him. I think this fact alone indicates why he is an artist and not an entertainer. Artists write for themselves; entertainers for an audience. Stewart Lee is not an entertainer. His Comedy Vehicle is not entertainment. But only a fool would deny that it isn’t comedy.
Stewart Lee
2016-03-06T11:51:27+00:00
In life we all have different guises. There are times at work where we have to dress up our serious side and play the professional. Then at home we can kick off this costume and return to our default role of leading goofball. I mean, this blog I write is another form of characterisation: it is and isn’t me. Despite being far from articulate on this, I’m far more articulate here than I am in real life. In my day-to-day existence I couldn’t hold an audience for five minutes; I don’t have the verbosity to hold someone’s attention. But on here, I have time to pause, to think, to hone and check before pushing send. I don’t see your faces when you read this. Therefore, I’m unconcerned by what you think of me; consequently, I write more personally and honestly about art, religion and politics. In real life I wouldn’t challenge someone on what they watch, practice or think because I’d be worried about hurting someone’s feelings. Herein, lies the pleasure of the arts: it allows you to present your opinions without seeing the reactions of others. Stewart Lee is a comedian and character. In real-life he is avuncular, a paroxysmal laugher, satisfied with the success he's attained. On stage he is something else: embittered and strained, dissatisfied with the level he's reached. Lee is going through something of a renaissance with this the fourth series of his Comedy Vehicle. No comedian, other than Russell Howard, has had a show devoted to their stand-up for such a sustained period of time (even then Howard’s is more of a magazine show with content deliberately unitised for YouTube viewing). Lee, on the other hand, is a comic that doesn’t ‘chunk’ routines for easy edification- his work will not go viral. Rather, he...
The most controversial and brilliant live show of the year was Stewart Lee's 90s Comedian, a riposte to the fundamentalist Christians whose wrong-headed and misinformed protests against the BBC's screening of Lee's West End hit Jerry Springer The Opera, last January have cost Lee dearly, financially and psychologically. Deluged with hate mail and threatened with the cancellation of the Springer tour and a prosecution for blasphemy, Lee attempted to meet prejudice with thoughtful explication.
When that didn't work, he wrote his sell-out Edinburgh show, which demonstrated what blasphemy really could be when it tried. Let's hope the BBC will uphold free expression by televising that too.
Greatest dignity in the face of bigotry: Stewart Lee
Stewart Lee
2005-12-18T23:16:51+00:00
The most controversial and brilliant live show of the year was Stewart Lee's 90s Comedian, a riposte to the fundamentalist Christians whose wrong-headed and misinformed protests against the BBC's screening of Lee's West End hit Jerry Springer The Opera, last January have cost Lee dearly, financially and psychologically. Deluged with hate mail and threatened with the cancellation of the Springer tour and a prosecution for blasphemy, Lee attempted to meet prejudice with thoughtful explication. When that didn't work, he wrote his sell-out Edinburgh show, which demonstrated what blasphemy really could be when it tried. Let's hope the BBC will uphold free expression by televising that too. Greatest dignity in the face of bigotry: Stewart Lee
Two things spring immediately to mind when confronted with the title to this show. It's an opera?
Surely it's just a single joke tenuously stretched over two hours?
Don't be dissuaded. It may have the structure of a conventional opera, and sure, it seems a bit of a one-trick pony at first. However the novelty value alone is enough to carry the show along enthusiastically to the end of the first half.
The show takes the form of one of Jerry's less subdued episodes. Chicks-with-dicks go head to head against slut junkies. Mullet-headed trailer trash beat on their wives in a barrage of foul-mouthed one-liners: "When you're dead and buried in the grass, I'll dig you up and fuck you up the ass," sung with uninhibited gusto by professionals. It then shifts into a more fantastical setting, building to an outrageous Miltonic climax in parts both offensive and hysterical.
It'd be false not to say it's only funny because people sing rude words, but fuck it, it works. The production's faultless, the performances are fantastic and there are enough laughs to go round, thanks to the better half of Lee and Herring having a hand in the script. If this isn't sold out every night, they might as well burn the Assembly Rooms to the ground.
Thrills: Talk to the hand, cos the face ain't listening.
Spills: Oh my God, I was wrong. It was Earth all along...
James Lyon
Director Stewart Lee explains the joys of Springer, and what happens when the voice of a soprano meets the language of a Soprano...
"We were interested in ethics and the human condition, about reconciliation and love. These are the things that people can relate to. Even if you can't see anything of yourself in a man who likes to dress up as a baby and shit his pants, you can empathise which his despair and frustration. I certainly do. I cry sometimes, when I watch it, actually. It's quite overwhelming.
"And yes, there's a lot of swearing, but after the first 15 minutes you just become immune to it. There's a song near the beginning called "What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fucking fucking fuck," which isn't shocking at all, but it gets a big laugh. It's just stupid swearing. There's another bit when a woman sings "Cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt!" and the fact that she is doing so over beautiful harmonies and melodies means that a totally different message is conveyed."
jerry springer: the opera- assembly rooms until aug 26 (not 13,20). 14.35 - £14.50 (£12.50)
Stewart Lee
2002-08-07T17:21:55+01:00
Two things spring immediately to mind when confronted with the title to this show. It's an opera? Surely it's just a single joke tenuously stretched over two hours? Don't be dissuaded. It may have the structure of a conventional opera, and sure, it seems a bit of a one-trick pony at first. However the novelty value alone is enough to carry the show along enthusiastically to the end of the first half. The show takes the form of one of Jerry's less subdued episodes. Chicks-with-dicks go head to head against slut junkies. Mullet-headed trailer trash beat on their wives in a barrage of foul-mouthed one-liners: "When you're dead and buried in the grass, I'll dig you up and fuck you up the ass," sung with uninhibited gusto by professionals. It then shifts into a more fantastical setting, building to an outrageous Miltonic climax in parts both offensive and hysterical. It'd be false not to say it's only funny because people sing rude words, but fuck it, it works. The production's faultless, the performances are fantastic and there are enough laughs to go round, thanks to the better half of Lee and Herring having a hand in the script. If this isn't sold out every night, they might as well burn the Assembly Rooms to the ground. Thrills: Talk to the hand, cos the face ain't listening. Spills: Oh my God, I was wrong. It was Earth all along... James Lyon Director Stewart Lee explains the joys of Springer, and what happens when the voice of a soprano meets the language of a Soprano... "We were interested in ethics and the human condition, about reconciliation and love. These are the things that people can relate to. Even if you can't see anything of yourself in a man who likes to dress...
Clues to the causes of the tragedy of Grenfell Tower are at last emerging, and they do appear to be providing some comfort. For example, people who died in the fire, according to Jacob Rees-Mogg, lacked “common sense”. The inferno could thus be viewed as a useful cull of some of society’s least valuable members, a purification by fire that the eugenicists of the 1930s would recognise as entirely valid.
Rees-Mogg’s own home, the £2.9m, 17th-century Gournay Court, is built of red sandstone and Bath stone, and has not been thoughtlessly smothered with explosive material. But were it to suddenly turn into an unprecedentedly fierce inferno, it is certain that Rees-Mogg would have had the common sense to tell Nanny to evacuate the family immediately; not down a blazing narrow tower block fire escape, of course, but down the impressive internal staircase, which rises from the east end of Gournay’s inner hall to the first floor and has decorated covered urns as finials and pendants on the newel posts, its balusters forming an arcade in the Jacobean fashion.
Having already established that firefighters were to blame for the deaths, apparently for having no experience of firefighting in a building that was actually covered in material designed to burst into flame, we now learn that the dead are to blame for their own deaths anyway, for being too stupid to stay alive.
Meanwhile, we will have to wait until the back end of next year for a decision on the culpability of the contractors. Appropriate blame has, however, managed to be apportioned to the once lauded firefighters and feckless residents through the first phase of the report and Jacob Rees-Mogg’s personal LBC radio trumpet respectively.
Bizarrely, Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Vampires Haircut Wall-Spaffer Spunk-Burster Fuck-Business Fuck-the-Families Get-Off-My-Fucking-Laptop Girly-Swot Big-Girl’s-Blouse Chicken-frit Hulk-Smash Noseringed-Crusties Death-Humbug Technology-Lessons Surrender-Bullshit French-Turds Get-Stuffed Johnson who, when mayor of London, responded to London assembly member Andrew Dismore’s criticisms of his cuts to fire services budgets by telling him to “get stuffed!”, remains at large.
But is there no muck sticky enough to stick to Johnson and his gang of total liars? I’m not even a real journalist, just a minor comedy celebrity with enough plausible columnist skills to conceal that fact I’ve been placed here in an act of cynicism to drive traffic through a dying medium, but even I can see that Johnson gets a free pass.
Two weeks ago the rightwing press, or “the press” as it is perhaps more accurately known, ran photos of Jeremy Corbyn asleep on a train at 9am while travelling to campaign in Scotland. Corbyn should have been watching England playing New Zealand at rugby so sleeping meant he was unpatriotic and anti-English; a bit like Stalin who, in 1938, famously chose to sleep through the premiere of the light-hearted Russian comedy film Volga-Volga in Moscow, rather than watch England play Scotland at Twickenham.
Well, not only was I also asleep when England beat New Zealand, I didn’t even know there was a rugby tournament until I saw Corbyn sleeping through it. And if not being interested in rugby makes me unpatriotic then fashion an effigy of me out of old trousers, charge people a penny to see me, throw me on a bonfire and toast my immolation with hot cider, for a patriot I be not. That said, the picture of snoozin’, England-hatin’ Corbyn doubtless did some electoral damage. As would the cameraphone film of Boris Johnson being hurried out of Addenbrooke’s hospital, after an unscheduled publicity op went pear-shaped on Halloween, in a hail of boos and jeers from staff and patients, if anyone had seen it. The footage has had an intermittent presence online, as a result of copyright claims, and never made the national news.
This was fortunate for Dominic Cummings, because it wouldn’t have been possible to dismiss a whole hospital’s worth of unsolicited Johnson-booers as undercover Labour party activists, like the dad with the sick kid in Whipps Cross who questioned Johnson’s honking promise trumpets to TV cameras the prime minister insisted weren’t there, even as he spoke into them to deny their existence. If only the media had been so circumspect in its coverage of Ed Miliband eating that bacon sandwich in a funny way in 2014, maybe there would have been no EU referendum and Jo Cox would still be alive.
This is why the suppression of the report into Russian electoral meddling and underhand media manipulation is important. Not because it is about Russia specifically, but because it concerns electoral meddling and underhand media manipulation. Twitter knows that Russian accounts paid for Brexit adverts; and Cardiff University’s Crime and Security Research Institute’s 2017 study suggested fake Russian “sock puppet” accounts were, for example, behind the rapid spread, that March, of a politically weaponised and cynically decontextualised image of a Muslim woman walking past victims of the Westminster Bridge attack.
We know the Conservatives specifically, and Leave-supporting organisations generally, employ similar tactics, despite Fiona Bruce getting her facts wrong on Halloween Question Time concerning the legality of Vote Leave’s campaign, an error for which no BBC apology has been forthcoming. And we know the Conservatives manipulate media because the crusading liberal investigative journalist Piers Morgan called them out for it on Wednesday, after government propagandists re-edited and circulated online an interview with Keir Starmer on Good Morning Britain to replace his thorough explanation of Labour’s complicated Brexit fudge, with him saying nothing, as if he had no answer.
Why should the current government care about Russian media manipulation? They are too busy getting on with it, and getting away with it, themselves. And no one at the cuckolded BBC will call them out on it.
Stewart Lee
2019-11-10T01:28:51+00:00
Clues to the causes of the tragedy of Grenfell Tower are at last emerging, and they do appear to be providing some comfort. For example, people who died in the fire, according to Jacob Rees-Mogg, lacked “common sense”. The inferno could thus be viewed as a useful cull of some of society’s least valuable members, a purification by fire that the eugenicists of the 1930s would recognise as entirely valid. Rees-Mogg’s own home, the £2.9m, 17th-century Gournay Court, is built of red sandstone and Bath stone, and has not been thoughtlessly smothered with explosive material. But were it to suddenly turn into an unprecedentedly fierce inferno, it is certain that Rees-Mogg would have had the common sense to tell Nanny to evacuate the family immediately; not down a blazing narrow tower block fire escape, of course, but down the impressive internal staircase, which rises from the east end of Gournay’s inner hall to the first floor and has decorated covered urns as finials and pendants on the newel posts, its balusters forming an arcade in the Jacobean fashion. Having already established that firefighters were to blame for the deaths, apparently for having no experience of firefighting in a building that was actually covered in material designed to burst into flame, we now learn that the dead are to blame for their own deaths anyway, for being too stupid to stay alive. Meanwhile, we will have to wait until the back end of next year for a decision on the culpability of the contractors. Appropriate blame has, however, managed to be apportioned to the once lauded firefighters and feckless residents through the first phase of the report and Jacob Rees-Mogg’s personal LBC radio trumpet respectively. Bizarrely, Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Vampires Haircut Wall-Spaffer Spunk-Burster Fuck-Business Fuck-the-Families Get-Off-My-Fucking-Laptop Girly-Swot Big-Girl’s-Blouse...
Three decades after its initial release, the former advertising jingle writer Jeff Wayne wants to take his era-defining concept album adaptation of HG Wells’ The War Of The Worlds on the road. The live version of the thirteen-million selling 1978 classic is to be a mixture of stadium rock show and musical theatre, two simplistic forms of large scale live art not renowned for their ability to communicate the kind of intellectually slippery knowledge embodied by Wells’ book. Today, most people’s idea of the Victorian science-fiction classic is second or third hand, and takes the shape of the iconic images of Martian Tripod fighting machines, handed down through often cavalier cinema adaptations. But The War Of The Worlds is not so much a novel, as a meditation on the era of Empire, with supporting dramatic evidence. Civilisation’s strengths and weaknesses are exposed as it is put under pressure by seemingly unstoppable alien colonists.
Though music fans of a certain age may wrongly remember Wayne’s progressive rock folly as a fabulously overblown piece of kitsch, where Thin Lizzy’s Phil Lynott did battle with Martian invaders in a duet with Julie Covington, and David Essex argued with Richard Burton about a Nietzschean notion of mankind’s manifest destiny, it was in fact not insensible to the peculiar strengths of Wells’ original. Abetted by various big names of the day that Punk was about to consign to oblivion, Wayne attempted to render Wells’ terrifying vision as best he could. And he pulled it off. The War Of The Worlds album is sincere in its intentions, genuinely gripping, and ceaselessly inventive, given the technological limitations of the time. Unlike Ben Elton’s Queen musical, Jeff Wayne’s The War Of The Worlds was not performed ironically or in inverted commas by its participants, as if in some pre-emptive act of damage limitation. Everyone gave their all. And you’d have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by the Justin Hayward’s Forever Autumn, the journalist character’s lament for his lost love, even thought it began life as a Lego commercial.
At 62, Jeff Wayne, also an ex-tennis pro, exudes a healthy glow. And he loves HG Wells’ The War Of The Worlds. “There’s no doubt that when I approached it my dream was to write honestly and passionately. What made me want to attempt making the album wasn’t the sci-fi ‘shoot ‘em up and knock ‘em down ‘ part of it, but the fact that HG was writing about Martians, not as some freaky aliens, but as an analogy for good and evil. He was criticising the British Empire, which at the time was spreading its tentacles around the world. It resonates today because it doesn’t matter which side of the coin of democracy or religion you are on, it’s all about conquering or being conquered. That’s what suckered me into HG Wells.” Wayne’s enthusiasm drove the project along. “Two thirds of the money in the album was my life savings so I did it my way. This was going to be out there on its own, whether it was good bad or indifferent.” Wayne’s stepmother Doreen Wayne, author of the 1968 romantic best-seller Love Is A Well-Raped Word, stream-lined and scripted the story, softening some its more unforgiving philosophical aspects, but with such economy that her opening line, as intoned by Richard Burton on the album, now sounds definitive. “No-one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space.” Cue the music.
In the Autumn of last year, Wayne was to be found in his massive country pile towering over models of the The War Of The Worlds live experience, like some insane Titan. “There’s two different types of production planned. This production,” he says, pointing at miniature Martian fighting machines stomping through a stadium, “is not the Wembley touring one. This is giant scale, for audiences of approximately 25 000 up. We want to start it off in Beijing just before the Olympic games and then tour very selective venues, like how Cirque Du Soleil tour, taking a week or two to set up and then doing thirty nights.” Wayne turns his attention to a different model. “The tour that I am doing with The War Of The Worlds is this arena sized tour, going to Wembley Arena, the Manchester Evening News Arena, places like that. I’m conducting a ten-piece band and a forty eight-piece string section. There’ll be a forty foot high Martian Fighting Machine, and this will be very impressive for the audience, and it will fire a heat ray, which is a Martian weapon, and the hull swivels and tilts and telescopes up and down a bit. And we are using large projections of animations and still images and lights and surround-sound so hopefully we’ll entertain the audience.”
So far so good. But Wayne continues. “Anybody who knows the album knows there’s certain parts that are performed as characters, and those are being performed live. The one exception is Richard Burton. He’s coming to life as a three dimensional head that suspends over the audience doing exactly what has been heard on the album.” Dave Clark of the Dave Clarke Five directed a hologram of Lawrence Olivier’s head in his 1986 West End musical TIME. It was not received well. The windswept desert of large-scale commercial theatre is littered with enormous abandoned holographic heads, their half sunken shattered visages serving as a terrible warning to ambitious producers. But of course, technology has moved on. “We are digitising images that Richard Burton’s late wife Sally has provided for us,” explains Wayne, who now has the air of Doctor Frankenstein, “The whole process is that there is a gentleman who is an uncanny Richard Burton look-alike and, with make-up and bits and pieces he really becomes a very much genuine looking look-alike of Richard Burton. He is filmed and the digitised images go over him then he sits for a sculpture of his head which then gets projected onto this 3D head and it becomes Richard Burton.” Ironically, Wells’ novel addresses man’s hubris, and his arrogant belief that science can make him a God. Perhaps Jeff Wayne needs to read it again.
This possible error of taste apart, if anyone is equipped to bring Wells’ novel into the unlikely form of a stadium-sized, rock circus it is Jeff Wayne. He has a fanatical enthusiasm for Wells’ book, and having secured the rights to it in all media except film in 1975, has a paternal, protective relationship with the text. Whether Wells would approve, however, of the mobile phone ring-tones available with the new edition of the album is debateable. Wayne’s album itself has survived for thirty years with its legend unblemished. But it is of its time. Why would Wayne risk puncturing the hermetically sealed bubble that surrounds its mid-70’s genesis, and compromising its integrity by staging it? “Well, why don’t you ask me that at the end of the tour, and let’s see if we haven’t blown it.”, he laughs. You can’t help but wish him well.
Jeff Wayne’s The War Of The Worlds opens on the 13th April Bournemouth International Centre
Stewart Lee
2006-03-12T18:43:44+00:00
Three decades after its initial release, the former advertising jingle writer Jeff Wayne wants to take his era-defining concept album adaptation of HG Wells’ The War Of The Worlds on the road. The live version of the thirteen-million selling 1978 classic is to be a mixture of stadium rock show and musical theatre, two simplistic forms of large scale live art not renowned for their ability to communicate the kind of intellectually slippery knowledge embodied by Wells’ book. Today, most people’s idea of the Victorian science-fiction classic is second or third hand, and takes the shape of the iconic images of Martian Tripod fighting machines, handed down through often cavalier cinema adaptations. But The War Of The Worlds is not so much a novel, as a meditation on the era of Empire, with supporting dramatic evidence. Civilisation’s strengths and weaknesses are exposed as it is put under pressure by seemingly unstoppable alien colonists. Though music fans of a certain age may wrongly remember Wayne’s progressive rock folly as a fabulously overblown piece of kitsch, where Thin Lizzy’s Phil Lynott did battle with Martian invaders in a duet with Julie Covington, and David Essex argued with Richard Burton about a Nietzschean notion of mankind’s manifest destiny, it was in fact not insensible to the peculiar strengths of Wells’ original. Abetted by various big names of the day that Punk was about to consign to oblivion, Wayne attempted to render Wells’ terrifying vision as best he could. And he pulled it off. The War Of The Worlds album is sincere in its intentions, genuinely gripping, and ceaselessly inventive, given the technological limitations of the time. Unlike Ben Elton’s Queen musical, Jeff Wayne’s The War Of The Worlds was not performed ironically or in inverted commas by its participants, as if in some...
I join a host of actual stars celebrating the life of comedian/musician Steve Brown at London’s Savoy Theatre this Monday 16th Sept. The line-up includes: Laura Mvula, Steve Coogan, Charlie Baker, Jenna Boyd, Alfie Brown , Lennie Brown, Rory Bremner, Rob Brydon, Tori Burgess, Sally Cheng, Jon Culshaw, Michael Fenton-Stevens, Scott Graham, Harry Hill, Martin Johnston, Marie Lawrence, Stewart Lee, Rachel Leskovac, Grayson Perry, Jan Raven, Howard Samuels, Nicola Sloan, Stranger Stranger, Rosie Strobel, Emma Jay Thomas, Paul Thornley, Jack Whittle.
They will be singing the songs of Steve Brown alongside The Matt Backer Big Band.
Lyricist and composer Steve Brown sadly passed away earlier this year; he had a stellar career. As a writer of musical theatre, he co-created (with Justin Greene) Spend, Spend,Spend(1998) – about the football pools winner Viv Nicholson. As a comedian, he worked closely with Rory Bremner, Harry Hill and Steve Coogan on TV shows and tours, most notably starring as the bandleader Glenn Ponder in the latter’s Alan Partridge talk showKnowing Me, Knowing You(1994).
Brown also produced acclaimed debut albums by the singer-songwriters Rumer and Laura Mvula. The latter was nominated in 2013 for the Mercury prize he also wrote the Wonky Donkey jingle for Ant and Dec’s SM:TV and played kazoo on Flux Of Pink Indians’ The Fucking Cunts Treat Us Like Pricks. Steve Brown and Harry Hill developed the 2014 X Factor musicalI Can’t Sing, produced by Simon Cowell. In 2022, their show about the New Labour years Tony! (The Tony Blair Rock Opera) took residence at the Park Theatre in North London and went on a regional tour.
Harry Hill said: ‘Steve wrote great songs for all of us, he made us all sound smarter and funnier than we ever were - and here we are, all together to celebrate what he gave us. It’s going to be brilliant.'
4) STEVE WYNN, WALTHAMSTOW TRADES, SEP 22ND 2PM
I will be interviewing the Dream Syndicate front man and solo artist Steve Wynn about his brilliant new book I Wouldn’t Say It If It Wasn’t True, and Steve will do a solo set.
5) SAMHAIN RITUAL, EARTH, HACKNEY, LONDON OCT 29TH
Weird Walk magazine presents Stewart Lee introducing wyrd musicians headlined by Daisy Rickman, 6pm Earth, Hackney, London. Tickets: https://thesamhainritual.eventbrite.com There may be Were-action, costume pending.
6) TALES OF THE WEIRD BRITISH LIBRARY NOV 2ND
I’m hosting an event with the novelists Daisy Johnson and Andrew Michael Hurley as part of this folk-horror lit fest at the British Library on Nov 2nd
Michael Cumming’s Oxide Ghosts, a blurred documentary about Chris Morris’ Brass Eye, is on the road again. Michael and I are both appearing at the 21st Nov event in Finsbury Park, London. Other dates, and other guests, are available
“Reviewing a new Stewart Lee show is the easiest work in the world if your audience already knows who Lee is and what he does. Then you just stand by the side of the road, maybe dressed in the uniform of the typical Stewart Lee fan (all London media-hipster-type denim waistcoat and caramel twill rollups, topped with a herringbone baker boy) and you point the traveller in the right direction (Basic Lee now streaming on Sky Comedy until 24th August).You can also reassure them and say it’s “more of the usual” and, in that smug way that all true fans of Lee are said to display, give them a knowing wink and say it’s fearsome stuff and blisteringly good.
But if your audience doesn’t know Lee, then the work becomes more difficult…
You begin by mumbling “Lee is kind of like… but nothing like…”
Daniel Kitson and Simon Munnery are widely cited as his main similarities but it’s also Tony Hancock’s pathos with a dash of Steve Martin’s eclectic brilliance; the misanthropy of George Carlin with a hint of Don Rickles willingness to jump off the stage and pick a fight. Then again, it’s nothing like that. Lee is uniquely Lee; the beats are familiar but the paths taken on his long rambles are entirely his own.
Basic Lee is Lee’s attempt to return to pure standup after some higher concept (and more expensive) shows, including his last (Snowflake/Tornado) which involved a large shark’s head. He presents an argument about the evolving nature of standup comedy, starting with the oldest material he’d written, and working his way to the present day. But that’s not really “the show”.
Skim the surface and you might describe the show as a series of encounters between Lee and his audience. What you don’t get are jokes or punchlines, or, certainly, not in the traditional sense. Jokes are there but delivered as if through a meat grinder. It’s up to you to pick the bones from the gristle.
The fun is in the asides, the digressions, and the continual baiting of the audience. “It’s like jazz,” says Lee at one point, adopting the voice of those insufferable types who constantly whine on about how watching Stewart Lee is like listening to jazz.
But it is like listening to jazz. He plays with motifs and form, and then, just in case you missed the influence, riffs on the history of jazz. We should only be thankful that he doesn’t break out a trombone and give us a 20-minute exploration of the Phrygian Minor scale (maybe on his next tour when he promises to adopt a Wolfman mask).
Gary Winogrand, the great(est) American street photographer, once said, “I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed”. With Lee, you sense he’s performing material to see what it looks like when performed as standup. He constantly talks about himself doing standup; reminding us that The Times once described him as “the world’s greatest living stand-up comedian”. He talks about the role he’s played in popularising long-form stand-up and delivers a particularly biting (but fair) verdict on Phoebe Waller Bridge’s breaking of the fourth wall in Fleabag. Yet Lee draws back how insufferably egotistical this would be by leaning into the insufferable character he’s playing.
This gives rise to the tension underlying the drama on stage; that of an artist trying to create art inside a genre unaccustomed to art and against an audience hostile to the entire venture. It’s tightly crafted, even as it often feels like it’s falling apart. At one point, he liberally takes the old Pagliacci joke, made most famous by its appearance in Alan Moore’s Watchman, and offers it as his own. It’s theft but I’m constantly reminded of Lewis Hyde’s seminal book on the nature of disruptive imagination, Trickster Makes This World. “Trickster isn’t a run-of-the mill liar and thief. When he lies and steals, it isn’t so much to get away with something or get rich as to disturb the established categories of truth and property and, by so doing, open the road to possible new worlds.”
At which point, I can hear Lee’s voice pointing out that only “another monotonous, passive-aggressive man” would reference a little-known book on anthropology to recommend a standup special.
But that’s just it. To love Lee’s work is to loathe yourself for enjoying comedy pulled apart so you can see how it’s done. I am that monotonous passive-aggressive man. Why the hell can’t I just enjoy jokes? Why can’t I just go see Tim Vine, like everybody else?
I saw “Basic Lee” four times on tour, proving (as if this needs proof) that I am that insufferable bore. I can explain why each one was so very different. I first saw it at the start of the run, in the Leicester Square Theatre in Soho. Lee had just broken his foot and hobbled around the stage with a large protective boot on his foot. He kept wincing in pain, which lent the show pathos. That night he thanked the audience for helping make it the best show of the run (to that point). I saw it again once again in Salford, and twice in Liverpool, including the show that Lee would claim to have been his worst.
From my place in the audience, ranging from the front row to almost the back row, the standard never dipped. Some nights, Lee extemporised more than he would on other nights, but it was never easy to spot which bits were new. “That bit normally doesn’t get a laugh,” he’ll say, though, of course, that bit always got a laugh.
The version of Basic Lee now showing on Sky Comedy is perhaps the purest distillation of the run’s material. It also adopts a few of his familiar tricks you might know from his TV series and other specials, especially the commentary he addresses straight to camera. It’s another of the things he does so well, creating a paratext to the main text; asides functioning like footnotes and adding another layer of abstraction to the entire proceeding.
And, still, none of that really explains Lee, which is why his comedy is worth return visits. Compared to many stand-ups who play familiar games (“blah, blah, rhythm of a joke” as Lee puts it), Lee deliberately places himself on the edge between success and failure. But even writing that is to borrow from Lee, who mocks those of us who point out that it’s best when it’s failing. But that’s why Stewart Lee remains a paradox. The closer you get to enjoying his work, the more he pushes you away; the more you loathe his work, the more he wants to draw you closer.
See if you’re on the inside or the outside of his comedy on Sky Comedy.”
9) STEWART LEE VS THE MAN-WULF
John Mackay & Sally Homer, in association with Debi Allen/Curtis Brown present
STEWART LEE vs THE MAN-WULF BRAND NEW SHOW
LEICESTER SQUARE THEATRE, LONDON
3rd December 2024 – 17th January 2025 AND UK TOURING THROUGHOUT 2025
NB: TICKETS FOR THESE SHOWS WILL REMAIN AT THE ADVERTISED PRICE. SURGE PRICING IS IMMORAL AND TICKETMASTER AND OASIS ARE WANKERS, ENCOURAGED BY SUCCESSIVE TORY CULTURE SECRETARIES IN THEIR CRIMINAL ENDEAVOURS.
In this brand-new show, Lee shares his stage with a tough-talking werewolf comedian from the dark forests of North America who hates humanity. The Man-Wulf lays down a ferocious comedy challenge to the culturally irrelevant and physically enfeebled Lee. Can the beast inside us all be silenced with the silver bullet of Lee's unprecedentedly critically acclaimed style of stand-up?
Stewart Lee, ("the world's greatest living stand-up comedian" The Times), is in danger of being left behind. He's approaching sixty with debilitating health conditions, his TV profile has diminished, and his once BAFTA award winning style of stand-up seems obsolete in the face of a wave of callous Netflix-endorsed comedy of anger, monetising the denigration of minorities for millions of dollars. But can Lee unleash his inner Man-Wulf to position himself alongside comedy legends like Dave Chapelle, Ricky Gervais and Jordan Peterson at the forefront of side-splitting stadium-stuffing shit-posting?
Opening at Leicester Square Theatre in December 2024 the new show will tour to UK cities throughout 2025.
Leicester Sq Theatre, London 3rd Dec 2024 – 17th Jan 2025 7pm, except for 6pm and 8.30 pm Sat 4th Jan. 0207 734 2222 www.leicestersquaretheatre.com
STEWART LEE vs THE MAN-WULF 2025 TOUR SCHEDULE
January 2025
Sunday 19th January 2025 - Mayflower Theatre, Southampton - TICKETS
Monday 20th January 2025 - Dorking Halls, Dorking - TICKETS
Tuesday 21st January 2025 - Dorking Halls, Dorking - TICKETS
Wednesday 22nd January 2025 - The Alban Arena, St. Albans - TICKETS
Thursday 23rd January 2025 - The Alban Arena, St. Albans - TICKETS
Friday 24th January 2025 - Symphony Hall, Birmingham - TICKETS
Saturday 25th January 2025 - Symphony Hall, Birmingham - TICKETS
Sunday 26th January 2025 - Symphony Hall, Birmingham - TICKETS
Tuesday 28th January 2025 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
Wednesday 29th January 2025 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
Thursday 30th January 2025 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
Friday 31st January 2025 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
February 2025
Saturday 1st February 2025 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
Monday 3rd February 2025 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Tuesday 4th February 2025 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Wednesday 5th February 2025 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Thursday 6th February 2025 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Friday 7th February 2025 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Saturday 8th February 2025 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Monday 10th February 2025 - The Marlowe, Canterbury - TICKETS
Wednesday 12th February 2025 - Chelmsford Theatre, Chelmsford - TICKETS
Thursday 13th February 2025 - De Montfort Hall, Leicester - TICKETS
Friday 14th February 2025 - De Montfort Hall, Leicester - TICKETS
Saturday 15th February 2025 - Wycombe Swan, High Wycombe - TICKETS
Sunday 16th February 2025 - Wycombe Swan, High Wycombe - TICKETS
Tuesday 18th February 2025 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Wednesday 19th February 2025 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Thursday 20th February 2025 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Friday 21st February 2025 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Saturday 22nd February 2025 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
April 2025
Tuesday 1st April 2025 - Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield
Wednesday 2nd April 2025 - Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield
Thursday 3rd April 2025 - New Theatre, Peterborough - TICKETS
Friday 4th April 2025 - Palace Theatre, Southend - TICKETS
Saturday 5th April 2025 - Palace Theatre, Southend - TICKETS
Sunday 6th April 2025 - Palace Theatre, Southend - TICKETS
Tuesday 22nd April 2025 - Royal & Derngate, Northampton - TICKETS
Wednesday 23rd April 2025 - Royal & Derngate, Northampton - TICKETS
Monday 28th April 2025 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Tuesday 29th April 2025 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Wednesday 30th April 2025 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
May 2025
Thursday 1st May 2025 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Tuesday 6th May 2025 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Wednesday 7th May 2025 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Thursday 8th May 2025 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Friday 9th May 2025 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Saturday 10th May 2025 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Monday 12th May 2025 - Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton - TICKETS
Thursday 15th May 2025 - King's Theatre, Portsmouth - TICKETS
Friday 16th May 2025 - The Forum, Bath - TICKETS
September 2025
Tuesday 16th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
Wednesday 17th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
Thursday 18th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
Friday 19th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
Saturday 20th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
October 2025
Friday 17th October 2025 - Bristol Beacon, Bristol
Saturday 18th October 2025 - Bristol Beacon, Bristol
10) WORK IN PROG DATES NEW SHOW
Small club dates of these seem to sell in a few hours as the venues announce them to their lists but I will be doing some ½ hrs of new material at various festivals and bigger gigs between now and Dec, and a small venue London run at the hidden gem of The Museum of Comedy, where you can see Little Titch’s actual amazing boots and marvel at a massive collection of jackets and hats belonging to various handsy comedians of the ‘60s and ‘70s, many now the subjects of criminal investigations.
In November I will be doing various new material shows at the Museum of Comedy in London.
Stewart’s 2019 touring show Snowflake/Tornado, which was originally broadcast as a BBC Special in Autumn 2023 is now available to buy or rent “on demand” from www.mediagarageproductions.com
Both shows also appear to be free as part of the current Amazon Prime rosta. Hopefully I can give them a physical release at some point.
12) CHARITY COOKBOOK
I did a charity performance of Pea Green Boat at the Belgrade Coventry this year for Leamington LAMP and the students put the money into the quality printing of a cookbook (in hardback). There’s a kitchen at the heart of the building and all the students and teachers cook for each other once a week and share recipes. They collected them and one student illustrated the book really beautifully. They are for sale for £15 - so they have re-invested the money into something fabulous that will continue to bring them some income.
I read Philip Larkin’s High Windows for the Philip Larkin Society. I’m also doing a podcast on Larkin’s jazz reviews later in the year.
14) I ARROGANTLY RECOMMEND SOME HAPPENINGS
MELT BANANA Japanese art rock geniuses return. SEP 10th Carlisle Brickyard, 11th Edinburgh Mash House, 12th Glasgow Stereo, 17th Ipswich Baths, 24th Cardiff Globe. A must!!!
LLOYD COLE Solo tour by the godfather of arch introspective indie
SEPT
13th Guildford G Live,
14th Bury St Edmonds Apex,
16th B’ham Town Hall,
18th Shrewsbury Severn,
19th Lytham St Anne’s Lowther Pavillion,
21st Hamilton Town House,
22nd Greenock Beacon,
24th Whitley Bay Playhouse,
25th Ilkley King’s Hall,
26th Sheffield City Hall
CAROL VORDERMAN The Pepper Potts of pinko politics uses maths and memory to hold the world to account. 21st London QEH https://www.carolvordermanlive.com
ALFIE BROWN The very good stand-up comedian Alfie Brown tours his OPEN HEARTED HUMAN ENQUIRY show. alfiebrowncomedian.com
MARK RADCLIFFE AND MARC RILEY LIVE SEPT 26th Shepherd’s Bush Empire London NOV 3rd Shrewsbury Severn, 5th Crewe Lyceum, 10th Warrington Parr Hall.
MUDHONEY Grunge godheads still growling, SEPT 27th Brighton Concorde 1, 28th M’cr New Century, 29th Glasgow St Luke’s, OCT 1st Bristol Academy, 2nd London Electric Ballroom
LONG RYDERS Another final chance to see the resurrected and now seemingly immortal Alt Country Punk pioneers – like the Clash gone Nashville – The Long Ryders.
OCTOBER 10th Glasgow Oran Mor, 11th Birkenhead Future Yard, 13th M’cr Band On The Wall, 14th Nottingham Metronom2, 16th London 229, 18th St Leonards Piper
TIRZAH GARWOOD Beyond Ravilious, Dulwich Picture Gallery London, 19 November 2024–26 May 2025.
The first major exhibition devoted to the artist and designer Tirzah Garwood (1908–1951) since 1952. Best known until now as the wife of Eric Ravilious and as the author of the autobiography Long Live Great Bardfield, Garwood excelled as a fine artist and printmaker. Her diverse and enchanting works are gems of the mid-20th century.
THE DAMNED Black Album/Strawberries line-up, with hard-wristed Holy Grail headhunter Rat Scabies back on drums. DEC 4th Newcastle NX, 5th Glasgow Barrowlands, 6th M’c Academy, 8th Leeds Academy, 9th Nottingham Rock City, 10th W’hampton Halls, 12th Bristol Beacon, 13th S’hampton Guuildhall, 14th Eastbourne Winter Gardens, 16th Cambs Corn X, 18th London Roundhouse
15) IN OUR LAMENTATIONS 2024
Tony Oxley (Sheffield’s Sunny Murray, 1938)
John M Burns (His modesty blazed, 1939)
John Pilger (News terrier, 1939)
David Soul (The covered man, an inspiration 1943)
Annie Nightingale (Gateway drug, 1940)
Pitchfork (Signal to noise, 1996) Mary Weiss (She led the pack, 1948)
Chris Karrer (Archangel’s Thunderbirdman, 1947)
Iasos (Greek space muso, 1947)
Phil Niblock (NY art noise, 1933)
Pluto Shervington (Ram Goat Liver Eater, 1950) Tisa Farrow (Zombies ripped her flesh, 1951)
Norman Jewison (Rollerball Superstar, 1926)
Neil Kulkarni (Era-enhancing music critic, 1972)
Wayne Kramer (He kicked out the jams motherfucker, 1945)
Steve Brown (He left Avalon and taught the world to sing, 1954)
Christopher Priest (Dorset future-ist, 1943)
Aston “Family Man” Barrett (dub bass headcase, 1946)
Ian Lavender (Don’t tell him, Pike, 1946)
Damon Suzuki (Krautrock witness cuddled me & Noel Fielding, 1950)
John Rotheroe (Shire Book Seer, 1935)
Steve Wright (massive old-skool pro made it look easy, 1954)
Alan Tomlinson (Jazz trombonist, dry northern wit, beatnik, 1947)
Ewen Mackintosh (Office secondary superstar, 1973) Jenni Nuttall (Chaucerian)
Richard Lewis (Worthwhile American comedian, 1947)
Nick Dimbleby (Sculptor of note, scholar, gentleman, comedy fan, 1946)
Edward Bond (Whitehouse-infuriator, 1934)
Karl Wallinger (Waterboys’ prime period pianist, 1957)
Eric Carmen (Raspberry sensation, 1949)
Wally Shoup (Hard-blowin’ hero, 1944)
The Wye Salmon (pollution-fucked fish)
Paul Brett (Crazy World guitarist, 1947)
Shane Baldwin (Vice Squad drummer and punk scribe, 1963)
John Sinclair (Beatnik, 1941)
Carl Andre (None more brick, 1935)
Graeme Naysmith (Pale Saint) Marian Zazeela (Eternal Musician, 1940)
Shelley Ganz (Unclaimed but claimed, at last, 1959)
Steve Albini (Big blackhead, 1962)
Dennis Thompson (He also kicked out the jams motherfucker, 1948)
Gary Floyd (Double happy dick punk, 1953)
Roger Corman (King of the Bees, 1926)
Doug Ingle (The Iron Butterfly, 1945)
Gerry Conway (Folk drummer for hire and tool of anti-CND propaganda, 1947)
Nicholas Ball (His house bled to death, 1946)
Larry Page (Wild thingy, 1936) Francois Hardy (Chanteuse genieuse, 1944)
Arthur Gaps Hendrickson (Selectaman under pressure, 1951)
James Chance (He contorted himself, 1953)
Donald Sutherland (Kilroy was here, 1935)
Dexter Romwebber (Guitar jet, 1966)
Clarence Frogman Henry (Anthropomorphic blues amphibian, 1937)
Randy Fuller (He fought the law also, 1944) Lucy Rimmer (She fell briefly on a birthday)
Callum The Highland Red Deer (Killed by twat tourists)
Mark Found (Sound recordist and model railway specialist) Shelly Duvall (She shone, 1949) Wendy Ritson (Centipede violinist, 1934) Jean Williams (Complex Feminine bassist, 1951)
Bob Newhart (I ripped him off, 1929)
Toumani Diabate (Mali kora master, 1965)
Jerry Miller (He was purple and lived under the sea, 1943)
John Mayall (Bluesbreaker broken at last, 1933) Irene Schweizer (German jazznius, 1941)
Jack Karlson (Succulent Chinese meal, 1942) Catherine Ribeiro (Oh! My heart is broken! An angel! A true star!1941)
Anthony O’Neill (Brú na Bóinne architect)
Pete Bailey (Josefus/Stone Axe vox)
Brian Trueman (Dangermouseman, 1932) Rebecca Horn (Concerto anarchist, 1944)
James Earl Jones (He made shit sparkle, 1931)
Dean Roberts (Thela-maturgist, 1975)
Brother Marquis (He had 99 problems and a bitch weren’t one, 1966)
Zoot Money (Ran madly towards Tim Kirkby’s dad’s beach hut, 1942)
Herbie Flowers (He walked on the wild side, 1938)
Pat Collier (He vibrated,1952)
Steve Kille (Dead Dead Meadow Man)
Gavin Webb (Master’s Apprentice,1947)
Alan Delon (Man In A Girl On A Motorcycle, 1935)
Stewart Lee
2024-09-14T08:00:23+01:00
1) ROBYN HITCHCOCK AT EARTH THIS SATURDAY 14TH I am compering British psychedelic legend Robyn Hitchcock’s show at Earth in Hackney, London this Saturday September 14th, and doing a 30 min greatest hits set. https://earthackney.co.uk/events/robyn-hitchcock-14th-sep-earth-london-tickets-pwq7y/ 2) GLOUCESTER HISTORY FESTIVAL THIS SUNDAY 15TH https://www.gloucesterhistoryfestival.co.uk/events/stewart-lee-in-conversation/ I am in conversation with the Goth antiquarian Janina Ramirez this Sunday 15th 3) STEVE BROWN MEMORIAL NIGHT LONDON SAVOY THIS MONDAY SEPT 16TH https://www.thesavoytheatre.com/shows/why-we-love-steve-brown I join a host of actual stars celebrating the life of comedian/musician Steve Brown at London’s Savoy Theatre this Monday 16th Sept. The line-up includes: Laura Mvula, Steve Coogan, Charlie Baker, Jenna Boyd, Alfie Brown , Lennie Brown, Rory Bremner, Rob Brydon, Tori Burgess, Sally Cheng, Jon Culshaw, Michael Fenton-Stevens, Scott Graham, Harry Hill, Martin Johnston, Marie Lawrence, Stewart Lee, Rachel Leskovac, Grayson Perry, Jan Raven, Howard Samuels, Nicola Sloan, Stranger Stranger, Rosie Strobel, Emma Jay Thomas, Paul Thornley, Jack Whittle. They will be singing the songs of Steve Brown alongside The Matt Backer Big Band. Lyricist and composer Steve Brown sadly passed away earlier this year; he had a stellar career. As a writer of musical theatre, he co-created (with Justin Greene) Spend, Spend,Spend (1998) – about the football pools winner Viv Nicholson. As a comedian, he worked closely with Rory Bremner, Harry Hill and Steve Coogan on TV shows and tours, most notably starring as the bandleader Glenn Ponder in the latter’s Alan Partridge talk show Knowing Me, Knowing You (1994). Brown also produced acclaimed debut albums by the singer-songwriters Rumer and Laura Mvula. The latter was nominated in 2013 for the Mercury prize he also wrote the Wonky Donkey jingle for Ant and Dec’s SM:TV and played kazoo on Flux Of Pink Indians’ The Fucking Cunts Treat Us Like Pricks. Steve Brown and Harry Hill developed the 2014 X Factor musical I Can’t Sing, produced by Simon Cowell. In 2022, their show about the New Labour years Tony! (The Tony Blair Rock Opera) took residence at the Park...
Despite being the first British punks to sign an album deal, for this eponymous 1977 debut, The Boys disappeared from the movement’s mythology, perhaps unsurprisingly.
Sick On You sounds so silly it could be a contemporaneous punk parody and maybe fundamentalists baulked at the band’s boogie woogie piano and boozy lecherousness.
But First Time is a memorable slice of punchy power pop that transcends its times, and Tenement Kids makes an impassioned case for rock’s currently reduced role in encouraging social mobility.
A second disc of rarities sweetens the package.
Stewart Lee
2013-06-16T01:52:35+01:00
Despite being the first British punks to sign an album deal, for this eponymous 1977 debut, The Boys disappeared from the movement’s mythology, perhaps unsurprisingly. Sick On You sounds so silly it could be a contemporaneous punk parody and maybe fundamentalists baulked at the band’s boogie woogie piano and boozy lecherousness. But First Time is a memorable slice of punchy power pop that transcends its times, and Tenement Kids makes an impassioned case for rock’s currently reduced role in encouraging social mobility. A second disc of rarities sweetens the package.
While bands elsewhere moaned melodramatically about the fascist state, in 1981 Spaniards fumbled out of an actual dictatorship in the wake of a failed coup.
The forty two bands presented in this landmark survey of Spanish post-punk, dubbed the 'siniestro' sound, took shelter in big hair and a spiky solipsism, heavily indebted to the jagged neo-psychedelia and doomed glamour of early Cure, Banshees, U2, and Bunnymen.
Sombras sounds like a typically top notch mid-80s edition of the Juan Peel show.
Stewart Lee
2014-05-25T22:02:35+01:00
While bands elsewhere moaned melodramatically about the fascist state, in 1981 Spaniards fumbled out of an actual dictatorship in the wake of a failed coup. The forty two bands presented in this landmark survey of Spanish post-punk, dubbed the 'siniestro' sound, took shelter in big hair and a spiky solipsism, heavily indebted to the jagged neo-psychedelia and doomed glamour of early Cure, Banshees, U2, and Bunnymen. Sombras sounds like a typically top notch mid-80s edition of the Juan Peel show.
AXA Wealth International head of proposition Simon Willoughby on his love of stand-up comic Stewart Lee and how he wishes financial services could be more like him.
Some of you may recall my chance meeting with the comedian Jimmy Carr last year, and due to my inability to retain sufficient composure when trying to engage him in conversation, how I became the unfortunate victim of his cutting wit.
Well, you'll be pleased to know that I recently managed to strike-up a brief and vaguely coherent discussion with my all time favourite comedian after a show in Leicester Square. He even signed my DVD.
Stewart Lee, whose third Comedy Vehicle series has just finished on BBC2, tends to polarise opinions.
If you've come across him, you're likely to be either an addicted fan of his comic style or hate him with a vengeance.
As an example of the latter, the Daily Mail described him as a "Slime pit of bitterness".
To prove this point, when I asked my wife if she wanted to come to the show, she said "Oh, no. I can't stand him. I'm going to the ballet instead".
Apparently diverse interests are the key to a successful marriage, so I went on my own.
It was one of the best stand-up shows I've ever seen, and while I waited in a wine bar off Leicester Square for the ballet-follower to return from her rather more highbrow entertainment, I reflected on why I like Stewart Lee and his particular brand of humour.
I concluded that, as he would say, "The comedian Stewart Lee" is everything I wish the financial services sector would be, but only infrequently is.
Stewart Lee has been around since the late 80s and although his recent TV series' have brought his talent to a wider audience, something you suspect he secretly hates, he's never altered his style to court wider popularity.
He's avoided TV panel shows as well as observational comedy. In my view he's never sold out.
He's not afraid to challenge conventional thinking and tackle social injustice by using his own brand of subtle satire and verbal dexterity to put across an alternative view on a topic.
This has the effect of shaming his audience into considering a different way of thinking without beating them over the head.
Finally he's also not afraid to deconstruct the art of stand-up and lay bare the techniques and processes around which his act is supposed to be built.
He's able to do this because he has the confidence and skill to do so and still make people laugh even though he's already told them why they really shouldn't.
I'd like to work in a financial services sector that was a little braver, that never submits to vested interest groups and always chooses to do what's best for the end client.
While I think that is the direction of travel, wouldn't it be great if we were there already?
I'd like to work in a sector that was self confident enough to deal with social consequences of advice exclusion and the real life impact this could have.
I'd also like to work in a sector that was more willing to accept that large parts of what it does right now will need to change in the future and to openly seek to meet these challenges rather than trying to defend the past.
In a nutshell, I'd like the financial services sector to be more like Stewart Lee.
Of course the irony is "The comedian Stewart Lee" would be horrified by such a thought, although I think the Stewart Lee I met would probably allow himself a quiet chuckle.
Stewart Lee
2014-05-14T19:44:38+01:00
AXA Wealth International head of proposition Simon Willoughby on his love of stand-up comic Stewart Lee and how he wishes financial services could be more like him. Some of you may recall my chance meeting with the comedian Jimmy Carr last year, and due to my inability to retain sufficient composure when trying to engage him in conversation, how I became the unfortunate victim of his cutting wit. Well, you'll be pleased to know that I recently managed to strike-up a brief and vaguely coherent discussion with my all time favourite comedian after a show in Leicester Square. He even signed my DVD. Stewart Lee, whose third Comedy Vehicle series has just finished on BBC2, tends to polarise opinions. If you've come across him, you're likely to be either an addicted fan of his comic style or hate him with a vengeance. As an example of the latter, the Daily Mail described him as a "Slime pit of bitterness". To prove this point, when I asked my wife if she wanted to come to the show, she said "Oh, no. I can't stand him. I'm going to the ballet instead". Apparently diverse interests are the key to a successful marriage, so I went on my own. It was one of the best stand-up shows I've ever seen, and while I waited in a wine bar off Leicester Square for the ballet-follower to return from her rather more highbrow entertainment, I reflected on why I like Stewart Lee and his particular brand of humour. I concluded that, as he would say, "The comedian Stewart Lee" is everything I wish the financial services sector would be, but only infrequently is. Stewart Lee has been around since the late 80s and although his recent TV series' have brought his talent to a wider...
Our first ever guest on Book Shambles was Stewart Lee, and with his new book, March of the Lemmings, just releasedhe’s back in the studio this week with Robin to chat about it. Given the new book is about Brexit, there’s a lot of chat about Brexit, finding the comedy in, but also talk of Steve Jones, William Blake, Marvel comics and what Robin and Stew need to do to make sure they remain members of the metropolitan liberal elite…
To hear the extended edition of this, and all, episodes, support the podcast at patreon.com/bookshambles
Stewart Lee
2019-10-03T20:29:20+01:00
Our first ever guest on Book Shambles was Stewart Lee, and with his new book, March of the Lemmings, just released he’s back in the studio this week with Robin to chat about it. Given the new book is about Brexit, there’s a lot of chat about Brexit, finding the comedy in, but also talk of Steve Jones, William Blake, Marvel comics and what Robin and Stew need to do to make sure they remain members of the metropolitan liberal elite… To hear the extended edition of this, and all, episodes, support the podcast at patreon.com/bookshambles
Ruth is phoning her favourite late-night phone-in. "Barry," she enthuses to the host, "you are a prick in the conscience of the nation." Night after night in the small hours, talk radio host Barry Champlain listens to the deranged, the bigoted, the heart-broken and the plain stupid as they pour out their tears, bile and bewilderment over the airwaves. So successful is his show that it is about to go national, but there is one last crazy night to get through.
The first show from the new Comedians Theatre Company, dedicated to letting stand-ups get their teeth into meaty drama, this revival of Eric Bogosian's 1980s play is a curious choice. Inspired by the murder of liberal radio talk show host Alan Berg, Bogosian's play pre-dates the rise of the rightwing shock jock, and as an excavation of the American psyche looks rather dated. It fails to tell us much we don't already know about a misfit America of religious maniacs, racists and deranged pet-lovers whose provincialism means their understanding of the world doesn't extend beyond their own navels.
With a much sharper production than we are offered here from Stewart Lee, and in a more intimate space than the Udderbelly, this might work better. The show should be as unsettling as an anonymous dirty phone call, rather than light and cosy. The team of comics are good as the disembodied voices who phone in, but although Phil Nichol works hard as Champlain, he lacks the sense of despair and savagery that the host should feel about the nation as he listens to the poison oozing across the airwaves. As a result, it is Will Adamsdale's over-the-top comic turn as a drug-befuddled teenager who lingers in the mind.
Stewart Lee
2006-08-08T14:21:22+01:00
Ruth is phoning her favourite late-night phone-in. "Barry," she enthuses to the host, "you are a prick in the conscience of the nation." Night after night in the small hours, talk radio host Barry Champlain listens to the deranged, the bigoted, the heart-broken and the plain stupid as they pour out their tears, bile and bewilderment over the airwaves. So successful is his show that it is about to go national, but there is one last crazy night to get through. The first show from the new Comedians Theatre Company, dedicated to letting stand-ups get their teeth into meaty drama, this revival of Eric Bogosian's 1980s play is a curious choice. Inspired by the murder of liberal radio talk show host Alan Berg, Bogosian's play pre-dates the rise of the rightwing shock jock, and as an excavation of the American psyche looks rather dated. It fails to tell us much we don't already know about a misfit America of religious maniacs, racists and deranged pet-lovers whose provincialism means their understanding of the world doesn't extend beyond their own navels. With a much sharper production than we are offered here from Stewart Lee, and in a more intimate space than the Udderbelly, this might work better. The show should be as unsettling as an anonymous dirty phone call, rather than light and cosy. The team of comics are good as the disembodied voices who phone in, but although Phil Nichol works hard as Champlain, he lacks the sense of despair and savagery that the host should feel about the nation as he listens to the poison oozing across the airwaves. As a result, it is Will Adamsdale's over-the-top comic turn as a drug-befuddled teenager who lingers in the mind.
Formed in Berlin in 1967, and fusing analogue electronics with Eastern scales, Agitation Free are unfairly forgotten in favor of Krautrock contemporaries Can, Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk.
Their 2007 induction into the Tokyo Tower Progressive Rock Wax Museum prompted three reunion shows, filleted here for release. The band's best album, the epically abstract Last, is largely ignored in favor of more manageable tracks from their first two, re-born as rock-tastic world music hybrids with unwelcome hints of Top Gear incidental cues.
Look out! The 1968 Pink Floyd are driving a Range Rover Evoque through a crowded Moroccan souq.
Stewart Lee
2012-01-12T00:49:54+00:00
Formed in Berlin in 1967, and fusing analogue electronics with Eastern scales, Agitation Free are unfairly forgotten in favor of Krautrock contemporaries Can, Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk. Their 2007 induction into the Tokyo Tower Progressive Rock Wax Museum prompted three reunion shows, filleted here for release. The band's best album, the epically abstract Last, is largely ignored in favor of more manageable tracks from their first two, re-born as rock-tastic world music hybrids with unwelcome hints of Top Gear incidental cues. Look out! The 1968 Pink Floyd are driving a Range Rover Evoque through a crowded Moroccan souq.
When so-called Islamic State destroyed historic sites in Iraq, I was wary of making judgments of other cultures, and gave these exuberant young men the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps shattering the statues was mere high spirits, like when Greeks trample wedding crockery? Or perhaps it was the fault of MI5?
Of course, we also sacrifice our heritage to ideology. Say goodbye to Paolozzi’s Tottenham Court Road murals, trashed by terrorists of Transport for London; to Oxford’s ancient Port Meadow horizon, occluded by death-cult developers; and perhaps to the BBC, the greatest cultural achievement of any 20th-century democracy, soon to be poleaxed by free-market fundamentalists as pernicious as the statue-smashers of so-called Islamic State.
Admittedly, the BBC has not been good at preserving its history. In 1990, when I first visited White City’s iconic doughnut, since sold off to a “Luxembourg-based consortium”, I saw Hamble from Play School abandoned in a skip, Del Boy’s van rusting under an awning, and the decomposing body of Lord Reith propped up in a mobile toilet.
The BBC mislaid much of its finest footage: the moon landings; the Beatles on Top of the Pops; and the Troughton-era Doctor Who serial, “Embarrassment of the Inseminoids”, where Doctor Who lands on Mars with a sign on his Tardis saying “Martian Benders” and punches Jamie in the sporran when his tea arrrives cold.
In the wake of the licence freeze, the BBC plans to move the youth channel BBC3 online and halve its budget. As a middle-aged, middle-class man, I hate pretty much everything on BBC3. Snog Marry Avoid is just one of many BBC3 show titles that resist parody. The channel has the creepy vibe of a sleazy art teacher trying to coax sixth-form girls into the pub. But BBC3 isn’t aimed at me. And it shouldn’t be.
That said, it has its evangelical supporters, prepared to do anything to preserve it. In January, my 90s manager, Jon Thoday of Avalon, maker of Russell Howard’s Good News, and Jimmy Mulville of Hat Trick Productions, which has an impressive record of critical hits, floated a philanthropic proposal to buy the channel for the nation, a bit like when those nice Greeks sent those Trojans that lovely wooden horse which worked out so well for everyone.
In a piece authored for public broadcasting enthusiasts the Sunday Times, the sages described as “talented” the BBC3 controller who contracted Avalon to make Live at the Electric, for which the channel intended to “assemble the hottest acts on the brink of breaking through to the public consciousness”. A demonstrable majority of these hot acts were managed by the management wing (Avalon Management) of the production company (Avalon Productions) making the show, their journey into public consciousness smoothed by their management’s control of the BBC3’s public consciousness gateway. It’s like a pig farmer being paid to make a publicly funded prize pig programme featuring his own pigs, when he owns the podiums on which the prize pigs are appraised. And it’s a fabulous taster of how the Avalon-Hat Trick BBC3 might work.
A crucial part of this jörmungandrian cycle is that companies that manage acts need to persuade TV execs to pay them to make shows featuring these acts. But if you could buy your own ready-made channel, you could broadcast your own acts whenever you liked, ramping up profiles, and coining in your percentage of subsequent live work. In its client Al Murray, who has now formed a genuine political party, Avalon might even have parliamentary presence as well as its own TV channel. Perhaps one day our political and media scene will be as respected as Italy’s.
Outlining his hopes on Radio 4 last month, Mulville, anxious to emphasise the importance of a BBC3 that he “happens to believe in”, skirted the fact that BBC1 was enjoyed by 10 times more young people than BBC3, saying, “I happen to have young children in that demographic”, and dismissed BBC4 as “basically BBC2 for Oxbridge people”. But I happen to have an immediate family who never experienced the privileges of further education, and they love BBC4. As an Oxbridge snob myself, I find the channel a bit lowbrow, but it calms me after reading Old Norse and playing chess against cyborgs of my former professors.
Mulville, who happens to have attended Cambridge, is typical of a certain kind of media magnate who, despite enjoying the benefits of a liberal education himself, sees the proletariat as pigs to be farmed, leaning over the balcony like some Groucho Club Marie Antoinette, dismissing the peasants’ demands for more Lucy Worsley with a cry of “Let them watch Hotter Than My Daughter.”
The main obstacle to the duo’s buying a bargain-priced BBC3 appears to be acquiring the frequency it is broadcast on. The easily accessible channel 7 of the EPG spectrum is reserved for public broadcasters. “We would need the help of the BBC to convince the government to allow that,” they conceded on Radio 4. I thought of the emergent oligarchs of collapsing communist Russia, snaffling the ideologically dismantled infrastructure, the BBC an ailing hog, drawing out marks on its own back for butchers, who maintain they only wanted to preserve its meat for the nation. “We happen to love bacon.” The 300,000 signatories wanting to save BBC3 weren’t necessarily signing up for the carve-up.
Lawyers love loopholes, and prey on a precedent. If the BBC3 frequency is, unprecedentedly, reallocated, then public broadcasting is holed below the waterline, the whole thing is up for grabs and we’ll lose the very idea of public broadcasting to the free-market fundamentalists within a decade, as surely and shoddily as we lost the Post Office. Maybe BBC3’s would-be buyers and the BBC Trust don’t realise this. Maybe they realise this all too well. Maybe, fundamentalists of the free market, that’s what they want?
And if I went to talk to someone at the BBC Trust about this, would I find myself faced with another government-friendly, west London billionaire, and end up floating face down in a £5m sub-basement swimming pool?
We need a BBC Trust that comprises communicators who have pursued ideas for their own sake, not necessarily for gain. Grayson Perry, Lenny Henry, Mary Beard, Brian Cox, Caitlin Moran, Jarvis Cocker, Meera Syal, Victoria Wood, Rowan Williams and Tinky Winky. And yes, this is my proposed shortlist for the next Doctor Who, that curious, questing, idealistic creature who embodies everything we so want to believe should also define the BBC.
Stewart Lee
2015-03-15T09:30:05+00:00
When so-called Islamic State destroyed historic sites in Iraq, I was wary of making judgments of other cultures, and gave these exuberant young men the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps shattering the statues was mere high spirits, like when Greeks trample wedding crockery? Or perhaps it was the fault of MI5? Of course, we also sacrifice our heritage to ideology. Say goodbye to Paolozzi’s Tottenham Court Road murals, trashed by terrorists of Transport for London; to Oxford’s ancient Port Meadow horizon, occluded by death-cult developers; and perhaps to the BBC, the greatest cultural achievement of any 20th-century democracy, soon to be poleaxed by free-market fundamentalists as pernicious as the statue-smashers of so-called Islamic State. Admittedly, the BBC has not been good at preserving its history. In 1990, when I first visited White City’s iconic doughnut, since sold off to a “Luxembourg-based consortium”, I saw Hamble from Play School abandoned in a skip, Del Boy’s van rusting under an awning, and the decomposing body of Lord Reith propped up in a mobile toilet. The BBC mislaid much of its finest footage: the moon landings; the Beatles on Top of the Pops; and the Troughton-era Doctor Who serial, “Embarrassment of the Inseminoids”, where Doctor Who lands on Mars with a sign on his Tardis saying “Martian Benders” and punches Jamie in the sporran when his tea arrrives cold. In the wake of the licence freeze, the BBC plans to move the youth channel BBC3 online and halve its budget. As a middle-aged, middle-class man, I hate pretty much everything on BBC3. Snog Marry Avoid is just one of many BBC3 show titles that resist parody. The channel has the creepy vibe of a sleazy art teacher trying to coax sixth-form girls into the pub. But BBC3 isn’t aimed at me. And it...
Stewart Lee branches out into high culture while staying rooted in comedy for this postmodern revue
Stewart Lee's writing is becoming increasingly confident. Having won plaudits and awards for his stripped down standup material and for the overblown Jerry Springer – The Opera, his new work Late But Live falls somewhere – very roughly – between the two: an imaginary revue hosted by two 18th-century literary greats.
Namely, these are the wit-of-the-age, English writer and lexicographer Samuel Johnson, and his Scottish friend and biographer James Boswell. Taking on such challenging subject matter, Lee's script makes the delicate business of fusing historical accuracy with postmodern trickery look effortless. More impressive still, it displays a level of wit that holds up against Johnson's: dry jokes at the expense of the Traverse Theatre, for example, keep things fresh, literary, and close to home.
Two excellent comedians – Simon Munnery (Johnson) and Miles Jupp (Boswell) – are playing the two leads, furthering the show's late-night appeal. However, neither part is cast perfectly: though otherwise excellent, Jupp's evident Englishness is sometimes hard to ignore. He is more than capable of delivering punchlines in deadly fashion but Munnery's bug-eyed stare does not fit with Johnson's dry style.
This is a minor quibble, however, as Late But Live is only very loosely authentic. Like Boswell's biography of Johnson, Lee's emphasis is on conveying an impression of events, rather than creating a rigidly accurate account, a fact played upon in the characters' interactions. Happily for such an high-brow concept, the show will appeal as much to those with no prior knowledge of the original authors as to those who love them already, making Late But Live an intellectual success and, just as importantly, a hoot.
Stewart Lee
2007-08-11T19:47:04+01:00
Stewart Lee branches out into high culture while staying rooted in comedy for this postmodern revue Stewart Lee's writing is becoming increasingly confident. Having won plaudits and awards for his stripped down standup material and for the overblown Jerry Springer – The Opera, his new work Late But Live falls somewhere – very roughly – between the two: an imaginary revue hosted by two 18th-century literary greats. Namely, these are the wit-of-the-age, English writer and lexicographer Samuel Johnson, and his Scottish friend and biographer James Boswell. Taking on such challenging subject matter, Lee's script makes the delicate business of fusing historical accuracy with postmodern trickery look effortless. More impressive still, it displays a level of wit that holds up against Johnson's: dry jokes at the expense of the Traverse Theatre, for example, keep things fresh, literary, and close to home. Two excellent comedians – Simon Munnery (Johnson) and Miles Jupp (Boswell) – are playing the two leads, furthering the show's late-night appeal. However, neither part is cast perfectly: though otherwise excellent, Jupp's evident Englishness is sometimes hard to ignore. He is more than capable of delivering punchlines in deadly fashion but Munnery's bug-eyed stare does not fit with Johnson's dry style. This is a minor quibble, however, as Late But Live is only very loosely authentic. Like Boswell's biography of Johnson, Lee's emphasis is on conveying an impression of events, rather than creating a rigidly accurate account, a fact played upon in the characters' interactions. Happily for such an high-brow concept, the show will appeal as much to those with no prior knowledge of the original authors as to those who love them already, making Late But Live an intellectual success and, just as importantly, a hoot.
London: Jerry Springer - the TV show - has long been a staple of daytime television. While others tackle such weighty issues as the state of the health system, Springer referees an unending army of guests from some weird American hinterland in programmes titled Pregnant by a Transsexual or I Refuse to Wear Clothes.
Now, this highly addictive televisual experience has been turned into an operatic one. As Richard Thomas, co-creator and composer points out: "It's got tragedy. It's got violence. There are people screaming at each other and you can't understand what they're saying. It's perfect for opera."
Jerry Springer has been chosen by Nicholas Hytner to be the first production of his opening season, and theatregoers will be treated to Jerry Springer's (Michael Brandon) trailer-trash "guests" singing operatic confessionals before battering each other.
One of the main challenges faced by those involved in the production, directed by comedian Stewart Lee, has been getting opera singers comfortable with fighting each other in the mega-confrontations that have come to be the norm on the show.
This was why fight co-ordinator Terry King, who has worked with Kenneth Branagh and Ralph Fiennes, was drafted at the last minute: "It was decided there needed to be more of an element of physical confrontation," he says.
"I was given a brief by the director, and then it was easy to concoct whatever kind of violence needed to happen."
As on the original, the same themes - from betrayal to rage - re-occur time and again, and the outcome is always the same: a fundamental difference of opinion. King has laughed like a drain throughout: "I find the show hugely amusing. It shocks. It has dubious taste, but throughout it is beautifully sung; the music is stirring; if you don't listen to the words, you almost have a different experience." - The Independent
Stewart Lee
2003-04-28T18:53:06+01:00
London: Jerry Springer - the TV show - has long been a staple of daytime television. While others tackle such weighty issues as the state of the health system, Springer referees an unending army of guests from some weird American hinterland in programmes titled Pregnant by a Transsexual or I Refuse to Wear Clothes. Now, this highly addictive televisual experience has been turned into an operatic one. As Richard Thomas, co-creator and composer points out: "It's got tragedy. It's got violence. There are people screaming at each other and you can't understand what they're saying. It's perfect for opera." Jerry Springer has been chosen by Nicholas Hytner to be the first production of his opening season, and theatregoers will be treated to Jerry Springer's (Michael Brandon) trailer-trash "guests" singing operatic confessionals before battering each other. One of the main challenges faced by those involved in the production, directed by comedian Stewart Lee, has been getting opera singers comfortable with fighting each other in the mega-confrontations that have come to be the norm on the show. This was why fight co-ordinator Terry King, who has worked with Kenneth Branagh and Ralph Fiennes, was drafted at the last minute: "It was decided there needed to be more of an element of physical confrontation," he says. "I was given a brief by the director, and then it was easy to concoct whatever kind of violence needed to happen." As on the original, the same themes - from betrayal to rage - re-occur time and again, and the outcome is always the same: a fundamental difference of opinion. King has laughed like a drain throughout: "I find the show hugely amusing. It shocks. It has dubious taste, but throughout it is beautifully sung; the music is stirring; if you don't listen to the words,...
Stewart Lee is getting old. He’s never been a particularly lively fellow or offered up much of a cheery persona, but these days his style is even further absorbed by a sense of weariness and disappointment. Perhaps its fatherhood that’s done this, although more than anything else that seems to bring him contentment. It’s difficult to put your finger on frankly.
There has been much said about the sadness of clowns and despite being the 41st best stand-up of all time, Stewart Lee seems at face value to be one of the more glum performers on the circuit today. He seems to be bothered by something. Admittedly he’s always suffered from a variety of itching issues prodding away at his inner psyche, but this latest one is about comedy and naturally with humour playing such an important role in his life it’s getting to him a fair old bit.
Lee is nagged by the public’s perception of what is funny, he’s annoyed by the latest breed of popular comedians, and he’s exasperated by modern television culture. He is also nagged by his mother on the subject of why he fails to be as funny as Tom O’Connor, a subject which, in the tradition of bothersome antagonism he chooses to pass on to us, persistently harassing the audience with one single Tom O’Connor witticism throughout the show. This particular behaviour displays Lee’s confidence, skill and power as an established stalwart of the comedy circuit.
Recounting the joke for many minutes he repeats himself again and again; it starts off funny, then becomes dull, next tiresome, then irritating, then through sheer dogged persistence it manages to circumnavigate the patience and humour of the audience returning back to its home city of funny, but with added celebrity status its welcome has doubled. But still Lee continues, knowingly repeating the same line again and again as he tests the audience’s willingness to indulge him.
A daring feat, and one that proves his place as the 41st best stand-up ever. In fact I’ll go so far as to suggest he was robbed… he should be at least number 39.
Stewart Lee
2007-08-01T21:49:33+01:00
Stewart Lee is getting old. He’s never been a particularly lively fellow or offered up much of a cheery persona, but these days his style is even further absorbed by a sense of weariness and disappointment. Perhaps its fatherhood that’s done this, although more than anything else that seems to bring him contentment. It’s difficult to put your finger on frankly. There has been much said about the sadness of clowns and despite being the 41st best stand-up of all time, Stewart Lee seems at face value to be one of the more glum performers on the circuit today. He seems to be bothered by something. Admittedly he’s always suffered from a variety of itching issues prodding away at his inner psyche, but this latest one is about comedy and naturally with humour playing such an important role in his life it’s getting to him a fair old bit. Lee is nagged by the public’s perception of what is funny, he’s annoyed by the latest breed of popular comedians, and he’s exasperated by modern television culture. He is also nagged by his mother on the subject of why he fails to be as funny as Tom O’Connor, a subject which, in the tradition of bothersome antagonism he chooses to pass on to us, persistently harassing the audience with one single Tom O’Connor witticism throughout the show. This particular behaviour displays Lee’s confidence, skill and power as an established stalwart of the comedy circuit. Recounting the joke for many minutes he repeats himself again and again; it starts off funny, then becomes dull, next tiresome, then irritating, then through sheer dogged persistence it manages to circumnavigate the patience and humour of the audience returning back to its home city of funny, but with added celebrity status its welcome has doubled. But...
In the Forest of Dean, an undiscovered stone circle emerged from the moss; in the east Midlands, the former high sheriff of Derbyshire herself was swept away by floodwater; and on Remembrance Sunday, searching the cemetery for war dead, I was lead instead by a cawing crow to the hidden grave of the music hall comedian Herbert Campbell, whom Max Beerbohm thought embodied Britain herself, as “a mystical union between beef and thunder”. Stone, moss, water. Birds, beef and thunder. Strange days indeed. Can you hear me, mother?
But who would have thought the days would become so strange that the 2008 Liam Neeson thriller Taken would serve as the perfect election allegory for the Farage-Conservatives non-pact and Donald Trump’s role in enabling it? Or am I losing my mind? Bear with me. This month, I have only watched action films from the last decade, all starring a taciturn Liam Neeson. I’m 10 years late to the Taciturn Avenging Father meme, but I love Neeson’s dad-goes-mad movies and they may even have saved me.
The taciturn Neeson always plays a depressed, often suicidal, taciturn middle-aged man whose family patronise and undervalue him. But he regains his status when his loved ones are put in situations that require him to deploy the “very particular set of skills” he developed in an earlier career as a taciturn assassin, a taciturn spy, a taciturn mercenary, a taciturn policeman, a taciturn air marshal or, perhaps somewhat implausibly in Cold Pursuit, as a taciturn municipal snowplough operator.
As we all know from watching American standup comedians on Netflix, middle-aged men are the most oppressed minority on Earth right now, fact, and have been denied any sort of platform to talk about this, except for their multimillion-dollar Netflix specials. Neeson’s films tap into this sense of impotent obsolescence. Indeed, I imagine myself as the lead character in one, compelled to save my family with my own “very particular set of skills”.
And then I remember the only set of skills I ever developed was in my previous job as a horticultural researcher. And I doubt one would be able to take out Albanian sex traffickers or Russian mobsters with the Linnaean taxonomic system, however taciturn the former horticultural researcher explaining it.
Neeson’s mainstream thriller career was derailed somewhat when, earlier this year, he confessed to once harbouring murderous thoughts towards random black people, while promoting his latest thriller, the aforesaid Cold Pursuit, in which a taciturn municipal snowplough driver takes revenge on his son’s murderers by killing them with a municipal snowplough.
Due to Neeson’s comments, the proposed quadrilogy of Pursuit films is now on hold, meaning we will never see Smelly Pursuit, Sticky Pursuit, and Tiled Pursuit, in which a taciturn municipal sewage operative, a taciturn municipal beekeeper and a taciturn municipal bathroom installation worker wreak horrible revenge on their sons’ killers with some slurry, some honey and some grout respectively.
But don’t be put off watching 2008’s Taken, the near-perfect metaphor for the forthcoming Brexit election. In the movie, Liam Neeson’s 17-year-old daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) wants to be free to fly the nest and make her own choices, like Brexit Britain, or at least 52% (and falling) of Brexit Britain.
In Paris, feckless Kim-Britain is captured by Marko (Arben Bajraktaraj), who is in fact the head of a sex-trafficking ring and intends to auction her off to a corrupt businessman, Raman (Nabil Massad), to use and exploit for his own ends. Marko is Nigel Farage here, obviously, arranging the annexation of Kim-Britain by businessman Raman, who is Donald Trump, and even looks like him, if he were to be cast as a djinni in the Republican party Christmas production of Aladdin.
Taken’s bent French police chief, Jean-Claude Pitrel (Olivier Rabourdin), thinks he can manipulate this situation to his own financial gain and he represents Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Vampires Haircut Wall-Spaffer Spunk-Burster Fuck-Business Fuck-The-Families Get-Off-My-Fucking-Laptop Girly-Swot Big-Girl’s-Blouse Chicken-Frit Hulk-Smash Noseringed-Crusties Death-Humbug Technology-Lessons Surrender-Bullshit French-Turds Get-Stuffed Johnson.
But Pitrel soon finds he cannot control Farage-Marko’s followers after all and in Taken 2 he is tortured to death by an Albanian. Here the metaphor breaks down a little, as Turds’s worst-case scenario, sadly, is merely that he loses the election and is bounced back to his chickenfeed £250k-a-year job at the Daily Telegraph, Britain’s worst newspaper, which gave my new standup show a four-star review last week.
Where Taken diverges from the reality of the Brexit election is in the absence of any credible Liam Neeson figure to save the nation. Jo Swinson previously worked for Viking FM. Jeremy Corbyn admires drain and manhole covers. At present, it doesn’t look as if either is about to beat the Brexit alliance with a previously concealed and very particular set of skills. Skills they have acquired over very long careers. Skills that make them a nightmare for people like Turds, Farage and Trump. Maybe they could bewilder the baddies with a nonstop playlist of soft rock and then incapacitate them with a heavy bit of civic ironwork.
I want to dream this fantasy into being. I want some enlarged prostate avenger to emerge from the political wilderness and say: “If you let my country go now, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you, but if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you and I will beat you in an election through legitimate democratic mechanisms.” But I am not sure such a figure exists. And anyway, in the words of every Liam Neeson action movie villain ever, at the end of the day: “It was all just business. It wasn’t ever personal.”
Stewart Lee
2019-11-17T12:15:17+00:00
In the Forest of Dean, an undiscovered stone circle emerged from the moss; in the east Midlands, the former high sheriff of Derbyshire herself was swept away by floodwater; and on Remembrance Sunday, searching the cemetery for war dead, I was lead instead by a cawing crow to the hidden grave of the music hall comedian Herbert Campbell, whom Max Beerbohm thought embodied Britain herself, as “a mystical union between beef and thunder”. Stone, moss, water. Birds, beef and thunder. Strange days indeed. Can you hear me, mother? But who would have thought the days would become so strange that the 2008 Liam Neeson thriller Taken would serve as the perfect election allegory for the Farage-Conservatives non-pact and Donald Trump’s role in enabling it? Or am I losing my mind? Bear with me. This month, I have only watched action films from the last decade, all starring a taciturn Liam Neeson. I’m 10 years late to the Taciturn Avenging Father meme, but I love Neeson’s dad-goes-mad movies and they may even have saved me. The taciturn Neeson always plays a depressed, often suicidal, taciturn middle-aged man whose family patronise and undervalue him. But he regains his status when his loved ones are put in situations that require him to deploy the “very particular set of skills” he developed in an earlier career as a taciturn assassin, a taciturn spy, a taciturn mercenary, a taciturn policeman, a taciturn air marshal or, perhaps somewhat implausibly in Cold Pursuit, as a taciturn municipal snowplough operator. As we all know from watching American standup comedians on Netflix, middle-aged men are the most oppressed minority on Earth right now, fact, and have been denied any sort of platform to talk about this, except for their multimillion-dollar Netflix specials. Neeson’s films tap into this sense of...
Theatregoers will be aware that it is a rare night when the queue for the men’s outstrips the queue for the women’s toilet. The toilet queue as a feminist issue has been discussed by Caroline Criado Perez in her book, Invisible Women. Where could I have been where the length of the comfort break queue was so out of kilter with reality?
I was not at the darts, snooker or a Chuck Norris convention, instead I was at a colosseum in Watford watching the scourge of Tony Parsons and Brexiteers, lifebelt to the liberal elite, Stewart Lee. His new double bill Snowflake/Tornado is brilliantly and painfully funny. His extended routine on what Ricky Gervais saying the unsayable would really be like, which is ten minutes in the company of a free jazz yodeller who has recently had intrusive and numbing dental surgery and has a Werther’s original stuck in their throat, worried me for fear that the combination of failing to go to the loo in the interval and now losing all control via tearful giggling may ultimately upset the equilibrium of my bladder.
It is the show that I should have avoided as there is an inescapable sense that that there really is no point in continuing with my own career when something this good is out there. I take heart in knowing that my shows are cheaper at least.
Stewart Lee continues to increase the amount of absurdity and clowning in this show, though his trousers remain on for the entirety in this show. He notes that there are likely to be sons brought by fathers in the audience, fathers who believe that bringing their children to see this “culturally significant” comedian will be a bonding exercise and an attainment of kudos, but the young will then sit there, nonchalant and unimpressed. I was fortunate to have a family in front of me where exactly that was happening. At times when I thought I could laugh no more, I would catch a side glance of a bemused face with hints of disdain and the laughter would be reignited.
It is good to know that despite the number of tickets he can sell, Stewart Lee still has the artistic credentials which mean some people leave the auditorium and saying, “Well I’m sorry, Bob, but I did not get that at all.” It reminds me of a night in Newcastle when two annoyed men were heard discussing my show in the urinals, “He’s no Kevin Bridges is he?”.
The best encore I have ever had was at a comedy club in Manchester where one table were still booing. During a particularly critically successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe, Nick Helm had a couple walk out of his show halfway through. He ran after them, out of the venue, across the cobbles, bellowing, “Next time, don’t just look at the stars, read what the review says.” (This is a precis of the anecdote)
I was surprised by how male Stewart Lee’s audience were. They were not dissimilar to an audience that you might see at a Wedding Present gig where you bemoan the number of podgy, grey and bald men in the audience and then catch your reflection in the mirror behind the bar.
Being podgy, grey and bald is not a requirement for enjoyment of Stewart Lee, though occasionally a knowledge of Steel Pole Bath Tub or bands that have only ever been mentioned in The Wire magazine might add an extra moment of bonding.
This week I also took a trip to the cinema.
Greta Gerwig’s Little Women is beautifully shot, performed and structured. Gerwig fractures the narrative like a Donald Cammell movie, jumping back, forth and around the lives of the four sisters. Some fans of the novel dislike this approach, but for me it gave certain scenes tremendous emotional punch and entangled the audience in the frequently confused relationships between siblings and the speed from love to hate and back again.
Introducing the film, the cinema manager mentioned how pleased she was to see some men in the audience as until now, the screenings had been almost entirely female (imagine the loo queues). It surprises me how sex specific entertainment still is, or indeed, life as a whole.
On Saturday night trains I see the boys laughing with boys, the girls laughing with girls and the quartet of middle aged straight couples uneasily doing that “We’re all swingers in Pinner” fake flirting which might hide forbidden hopes. I forget who wrote that men’s stories are considered tales for everyone and women’s stories are still seen as stories for women. When The Piano was released some decades ago, I remember being told it was “a woman’s picture”, perhaps because it was directed by a woman, starred a woman and had some costumes in it and pretty music. It also had the lead woman being punished for her truculence by having her finger chopped off by an angry Sam Neill. This did not please all the women who saw it.
I have no grand conclusion save to say, whether man or woman, go and see Stewart Lee’s new show and Greta Gerwig’s new film for the simple reason they are creatively brilliant and excellent ways to spend approximately 130 minutes. Who knows, perhaps Netflix will describe Snowflake/Tornado as “Four sisters learn who they are during a civil war fought between humans and sharks in nineteenth century America.”
Stewart Lee
2020-02-03T16:07:15+00:00
Theatregoers will be aware that it is a rare night when the queue for the men’s outstrips the queue for the women’s toilet. The toilet queue as a feminist issue has been discussed by Caroline Criado Perez in her book, Invisible Women. Where could I have been where the length of the comfort break queue was so out of kilter with reality? I was not at the darts, snooker or a Chuck Norris convention, instead I was at a colosseum in Watford watching the scourge of Tony Parsons and Brexiteers, lifebelt to the liberal elite, Stewart Lee. His new double bill Snowflake/Tornado is brilliantly and painfully funny. His extended routine on what Ricky Gervais saying the unsayable would really be like, which is ten minutes in the company of a free jazz yodeller who has recently had intrusive and numbing dental surgery and has a Werther’s original stuck in their throat, worried me for fear that the combination of failing to go to the loo in the interval and now losing all control via tearful giggling may ultimately upset the equilibrium of my bladder. It is the show that I should have avoided as there is an inescapable sense that that there really is no point in continuing with my own career when something this good is out there. I take heart in knowing that my shows are cheaper at least. Stewart Lee continues to increase the amount of absurdity and clowning in this show, though his trousers remain on for the entirety in this show. He notes that there are likely to be sons brought by fathers in the audience, fathers who believe that bringing their children to see this “culturally significant” comedian will be a bonding exercise and an attainment of kudos, but the young will then sit...
Watching your audience numbers shrink from 1,800 to 70 in the space of just one day might raise the spectre of a Spinal Tap-style career tailspin. But that wasn’t the case for Stewart Lee, as he moved on from his show at the Barbican on Saturday night to his second York area sell-out of the weekend – Brawby Village Hall, the venue for The Shed’s 23rd birthday party.
This gig was part of an extended series of UK dates intended, in part, to showcase and hone new material ultimately destined for the next series of his award-winning BBC2 Comedy Vehicle programme.
Most of the gigs are in large venues but Lee feels a close connection to The Shed – one of a number of smaller venues that he chose when he returned to stand-up after a four year absence some time ago.
The gig saw him at the top of his game, with a brilliant set lasting almost two and a half hours. His performance skills were consummate, and it was a pleasure to watch him draw in and manipulate an audience without a reliance on observational humour and telegraphed punchlines.
What sets Lee apart from his peers is his ability to engage on a deeper level with the multi-faceted nature of ideas and beliefs, and to explore the absurdities and contradictions that confront anyone trying to assert definitive positions in personal and political life.
So it is that Islamophobia, religious belief and nationalism are put under the microscope, pulled apart and held up for scrutiny by a comedian with a taste for the surreal and a sharp, politically astute, wit.
A new warmth
The familiar Lee tropes of deconstructing the whole process and reviewing himself and the audience were, of course, woven into a fluid and wide-ranging mix.
It is sometimes said – by his fans and detractors, for differing reasons – that Stewart Lee can appear remote and distant. For me, the experience is akin to having a great night out with someone, whilst at the same time being troubled by the nagging thought that they’re sizing you up and might be about to deck you.
I really like that aspect to his performance and, although it is still part of his armoury, I feel that he has added a new warmth as well. There was a real connection between him and an audience who go to see him expecting more than the average comedian can deliver.
His star is rising, and he is now enjoying much greater commercial success. His inventiveness and the skill with which he crafts his material mean that it is happening purely on merit, and without any need to dumb it down to pull in the punters. That’s rare, indeed.
The evening was nicely rounded off by Snake Davis, who stepped out of the audience to perform a short piece of music that gave the audience a moment to reflect after one of the best comedy performances I’ve seen for a long time.
Stewart Lee
2015-06-08T15:45:56+01:00
Watching your audience numbers shrink from 1,800 to 70 in the space of just one day might raise the spectre of a Spinal Tap-style career tailspin. But that wasn’t the case for Stewart Lee, as he moved on from his show at the Barbican on Saturday night to his second York area sell-out of the weekend – Brawby Village Hall, the venue for The Shed’s 23rd birthday party. This gig was part of an extended series of UK dates intended, in part, to showcase and hone new material ultimately destined for the next series of his award-winning BBC2 Comedy Vehicle programme. Most of the gigs are in large venues but Lee feels a close connection to The Shed – one of a number of smaller venues that he chose when he returned to stand-up after a four year absence some time ago. The gig saw him at the top of his game, with a brilliant set lasting almost two and a half hours. His performance skills were consummate, and it was a pleasure to watch him draw in and manipulate an audience without a reliance on observational humour and telegraphed punchlines. What sets Lee apart from his peers is his ability to engage on a deeper level with the multi-faceted nature of ideas and beliefs, and to explore the absurdities and contradictions that confront anyone trying to assert definitive positions in personal and political life. So it is that Islamophobia, religious belief and nationalism are put under the microscope, pulled apart and held up for scrutiny by a comedian with a taste for the surreal and a sharp, politically astute, wit. A new warmth The familiar Lee tropes of deconstructing the whole process and reviewing himself and the audience were, of course, woven into a fluid and wide-ranging mix. It...
Since it was founded in 1982, The Wire magazine has covered a vast range of alternative, experimental, underground and non-mainstream music. Now some of that knowledge has been distilled into The Wire Primers: a comprehensive guide to the core recordings of some of the most visionary and inspiring, subversive and radical musicians on the planet, past and present.
Each chapter surveys the musical universe of a particular artist, group or genre by way of a contextualizing introduction and a thumbnail guide to the most essential recordings.
A massive and eclectic range of music is celebrated and demystified, from rock mavericks such as Captain Beefheart and The Fall; the funk of James Brown and Fela Kuti; the future jazz of Sun Ra and Ornette Coleman; and the experimental compositions of John Cage and Morton Feldman. Genres surveyed and explained include P-funk, musique concrète, turntablism, Brazilian Tropicália, avant metal and dubstep.
The Wire Primers is a vital guide to contemporary sounds, providing an accessible entry point for any reader wanting to dig below the surface of mainstream music.
Stewart has written a chapter on The Fall for this book.
Stewart Lee
2018-10-30T21:58:40+00:00
Since it was founded in 1982, The Wire magazine has covered a vast range of alternative, experimental, underground and non-mainstream music. Now some of that knowledge has been distilled into The Wire Primers: a comprehensive guide to the core recordings of some of the most visionary and inspiring, subversive and radical musicians on the planet, past and present. Each chapter surveys the musical universe of a particular artist, group or genre by way of a contextualizing introduction and a thumbnail guide to the most essential recordings. A massive and eclectic range of music is celebrated and demystified, from rock mavericks such as Captain Beefheart and The Fall; the funk of James Brown and Fela Kuti; the future jazz of Sun Ra and Ornette Coleman; and the experimental compositions of John Cage and Morton Feldman. Genres surveyed and explained include P-funk, musique concrète, turntablism, Brazilian Tropicália, avant metal and dubstep. The Wire Primers is a vital guide to contemporary sounds, providing an accessible entry point for any reader wanting to dig below the surface of mainstream music. Stewart has written a chapter on The Fall for this book.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) finally called Russia’s bluff last week and banned its enhancement-addled athletes, many of them little more than skin sacks full of amphetamines and Calpol, from major world sporting events for the next four years. Perhaps it was this that saw sister organisation the World Anti-Lying Agency (Wala) inspired to flex its usually feeble muscles on Thursday morning, by banning the Conservative party from standing in the next election irrespective of the result, a decision I am proud to admit I had a small hand in.
Early on Wednesday morning, the day before the election, I found myself once more at Heston services on the M4, rated Britain’s worst service station in 2017. The dystopian plaza was deserted, but for a snivelling figure who bumped into me as he staggered from a toilet, sneezing green-tinged blood into his cupped hands. It was Michael Gove, from Dominic Cumming’s The Conservative Party ™ ®, for whom Heston services is something of a second home.
Gove and I had been on vague nodding terms for a few weeks nearly 30 years ago, when I was a lowly writer on a forgotten Channel 4 satire show he had fronted, A Bump Up the Konk. And we had encountered each other again in a queue at the Costa Coffee in windswept Heston services in September last year. A few months earlier I had made an offensive joke comparing Gove’s sexual proclivities to those of animals, in a standup set that saw the Times newspaper describe me as “the world’s greatest living standup comedian”.
Gove indicated, confidently, that he remembered me, and that he was aware of the material, and an awkward conversation ensued near the muffins. But when I plucked up the courage to ask him, directly, “What are you going to do about the mess you have made of everything?” there was a deep sadness in Gove’s two eyes that suggested he would have liked the opportunity to unburden himself of his shame, like a constipated man looking wistfully at a toilet. Gove was that constipated man. Maybe I should have been that toilet.
Momentarily hostilities froze. It was like the Christmas Day football truce in the no man’s land between the political trenches. If I could have been Gove’s confessor that September morn, his sewer of unburdening, maybe I could have saved Britain from being sacrificed on the altar of the vengeful orphan’s ambition. But the coffee came. And I went.
How odd it was to run into Gove again at the same location this week. “Ah, Leapy Lee,” sniffled Gove. “Been at the mince pies I see! I enjoyed your description of our last meeting. But at least that encounter was real. This one however is entirely fictional, as I hope you will make clear should you write about it. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s the blurring of fact and fiction. In fact, Leapy, far from running into me in a toilet doorway on Wednesday morning, you were in fact at home, trying to contrive a column you could file on Thursday morning that would still make sense on Sunday, irrespective of the election result.”
“We’re through the looking glass Michael, as you know,” I said, leading him to a Costa booth and offering him a coffee. “What’s true and what’s false doesn’t matter any more. Your colleagues in the Conservative party have seen to that. And right at this very moment, in reality, you are on television telling the press the prime minister pocketed that reporter’s phone with the picture of the boy on the coats on it so he could concentrate on answering his questions, a lie on a par with saying ‘the cocaine was merely resting in my nose, officer’.”
Gove’s rheumy eyes seemed as if they were about to fill with tears of shame, and he dabbed at them with a snotted rag, a sure shortcut to conjunctivitis. “Is this off the record, Leapy?” he all but blubbed. “Do you think I am proud of what I have become? We re-edited Keir Starmer and the BBC news and pushed it all out online; we lied about a Labour activist punching a staffer; we lied about numbers of hospitals and numbers of nurses and even numbers of trees; we lied about appearing on Andrew Neil’s show and we’ve been lying about the EU for 20 years. We concealed bad receptions at public events and hid in fridges and fled from legitimate scrutiny. And an independent body has declared 88% of our online advertising fundamentally dishonest. 88%! And I’m at the centre of it all, Leapy, wheeled out daily to cover for people who probably despise me. I know that a victory won through lying and cheating isn’t worth celebrating. This isn’t what I got into politics for. But I must win Leapy, I must win.”
“Michael,” I said, looking into Gove’s pre-conjunctival pools, “we’re both adopted. I understand your pain. You are one whom the vile blows and buffets of the world have so incensed that you are reckless what you do to spite it. But this isn’t the answer. The way to erase the mark of Cain is to try to be better than the world that gave rise to you, not to lie and cheat your way to the top in an act of feral revenge. And by the way,” I concluded, holding up my hidden phone, “this isn’t off the record.”
Within 24 hours, my evidence was with Wala, and by Thursday afternoon the Conservative party was banned from the next election. Except it wasn’t. I never met Gove last Wednesday and I didn’t submit my findings. And Wala does not exist. Nothing was done and no one was punished, again. And I wonder how we find our way back to a functioning democracy.
Stewart Lee
2019-12-15T21:21:31+00:00
The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) finally called Russia’s bluff last week and banned its enhancement-addled athletes, many of them little more than skin sacks full of amphetamines and Calpol, from major world sporting events for the next four years. Perhaps it was this that saw sister organisation the World Anti-Lying Agency (Wala) inspired to flex its usually feeble muscles on Thursday morning, by banning the Conservative party from standing in the next election irrespective of the result, a decision I am proud to admit I had a small hand in. Early on Wednesday morning, the day before the election, I found myself once more at Heston services on the M4, rated Britain’s worst service station in 2017. The dystopian plaza was deserted, but for a snivelling figure who bumped into me as he staggered from a toilet, sneezing green-tinged blood into his cupped hands. It was Michael Gove, from Dominic Cumming’s The Conservative Party ™ ®, for whom Heston services is something of a second home. Gove and I had been on vague nodding terms for a few weeks nearly 30 years ago, when I was a lowly writer on a forgotten Channel 4 satire show he had fronted, A Bump Up the Konk. And we had encountered each other again in a queue at the Costa Coffee in windswept Heston services in September last year. A few months earlier I had made an offensive joke comparing Gove’s sexual proclivities to those of animals, in a standup set that saw the Times newspaper describe me as “the world’s greatest living standup comedian”. Gove indicated, confidently, that he remembered me, and that he was aware of the material, and an awkward conversation ensued near the muffins. But when I plucked up the courage to ask him, directly, “What are you going...
Our labour of love really landed. I arrogantly think it knocks most rockumentaries into a cocked hat and will cheer you up no end in the awful times.
“I loved every minute” - Ben Dowell, The Times
★★★★ Financial Times
★★★★ Chortle
“One of the best music documentaries of all time” - The Quietus
“The new gold standard for rockumentaries” - The Scotsman
The film receives its hometown premier in Birmingham, as the King Rocker Christmas Special at the Midland Arts center on Sat 18th December, preceeded by a Q&A with me and dir Michael Cumming, and followed by a performance by the Nightingales. https://macbirmingham.co.uk/event/king-rocker-q-a
I will also be hosting a thing about the film at the Laugharne Weekend Festival in Carmarthenshire on the 3rd of October, where I will also interview Alexei Sayle live on the same day. https://www.thelaugharneweekend.com/line-up
GALLIVANT SCREENING
I will be hosting a 25th anniversary screening of one of my favourite films, Gallivant, with its director, and its star, Andrew and Eden Kotting respectively, at the Kino in Hastings on Sat 11th Sept.
This is a great opportunity to see this unforgettable masterpiece on a big screen. https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/kinoteatr/t-rnkomn
Comedy fans may like to note that in the ‘90s the recently late Sean Lock collaborated on both a short and a feature with Andrew Kotting, with whom he shared a disruptive surrealist ethos, clearly visible in Sean’s massively overlooked early ‘00s sit-com 15 Storeys High, and still glimpsed in his format-challenging 21st century panel show work. Small world.
LAURA CANNELL
The avant-folk dronemädchen Laura Cannell has been releasing an ep a month throughout the pandemic.
I wrote and mumbled some words for the latest, August Sounds, also featuring Welsh harpist Rhodri Davies, whose book {below} I done some words for too and that. Available here as cd or dl. http://www.lauracannell.co.uk
Laura Cannell and Kate Ellis also bring the much delayed live incarnation of their These Feral Lands recording project to London’s King’s Place on Feb 18th 2022.
I wrote words for four of the tracks and will attempt to do something with them on the night. I thought about where I was conceived, and where I was born, plugged the details I know into the folklore of both regions, and tried not to get in the way of Laura and Kate’s mediaeval trance music steamroller. https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/contemporary/laura-cannell-with-stewart-lee-kate-ellis-these-feral-lands/
UNRELIABLE NARRATOR DOC BBCR4
I did this piece of KRS1-style edu-tainment for BBCR4 with Resonance 104.4FM alumney Michael Umney, called Stewart Lee - Unreliable Narrator. Lots of comedians in it.
The record store day dbl vinyl of Asian Dub Foundation’s Access Denied album includes a ‘neolithic’ remix of the no 1 single Comin’ Over Here (feat. Stewart Lee) Facebook Link
‘Ten Bob Each Way’ / ‘Use Your Loaf’ is a limited 7” single, featuring a brand-new Nightingales recording, their first since recording their ‘Four Against Fate’ album.
B-sided with Stewart Lee and Nick Pynn covering the band’s second single, ‘Use Your Loaf’, a track that was for a mooted Nightingales tribute album, which didn’t happen after something got spilt on the laptop that had all the tracks on it.
Fire Records/King Rocker Records.
All the SNOWFLAKE/TORNADO tour dates outstanding from 2020 will be shifted into 2022, starting in Jan, and below are the ones we know about so far. Local venues will contact you if they haven’t already.
All the warm-up club dates you may have bought tickets for have been slotted in to Nov and Dec, covid willing, and venues will contact ticket holders.
Please do not hassle venues about all this. They will contact you. We will get there! I am planning on re-writing the SNOWFLAKE half of SNOWFLAKE/TORNADO to reflect our drastically altered world and will make as good a recording as possible of the abandoned original SNOWFLAKE available at some point. It’s all bacon!
January 2022
Tuesday 4th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Wednesday 5th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Thursday 6th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Friday 7th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Saturday 8th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Monday 10th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Tuesday 11th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Wednesday 12th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Thursday 13th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Saturday 15th January 2022 - Theatre Royal, Norwich - TICKETS
Monday 17th January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford
Tuesday 18th January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford
Wednesday 19th January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford
Thursday 20th January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford
Friday 21st January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford
Saturday 22nd January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford
Tuesday 25th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Wednesday 26th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Thursday 27th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Friday 28th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Saturday 29th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Sunday 30th January 2022 - Theatre Royal, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
February 2022
Wednesday 2nd February 2022 - St. David's Hall, Cardiff - TICKETS
Thursday 3rd February 2022 - Rose Theatre, Kingston - TICKETS
Friday 4th February 2022 - Westlands Entertainment Venue, Yeovil - TICKETS
Saturday 5th February 2022 - Westlands Entertainment Venue, Yeovil - TICKETS
Tuesday 8th February 2022 - Town Hall, Cheltenham - TICKETS
Wednesday 9th February 2022 - Town Hall, Cheltenham - TICKETS
Thursday 10th February 2022 - De Montfort Hall, Leicester - TICKETS
Friday 11th February 2022 - Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry - TICKETS
Saturday 12th February 2022 - Festival Theatre, Malvern - TICKETS
Sunday 13th February 2022 - Hippodrome, Birmingham - TICKETS
Friday 25th February 2022 - The Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Saturday 26th February 2022 - The Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Sunday 27th February 2022 - The Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Monday 28th February 2022 - The Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury - TICKETS
March 2022
Wednesday 2nd March 2022 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS
Thursday 3rd March 2022 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS
Friday 4th March 2022 - Lighthouse, Poole - TICKETS
Saturday 5th March 2022 - Playhouse, Salisbury
Sunday 6th March 2022 - De La Warr Pavillion, Bexhill On Sea - TICKETS
Wednesday 9th March 2022 - Theatre Royal, Wakefield - TICKETS
Thursday 10th March 2022 - Opera House, Buxton - TICKETS
Friday 11th March 2022 - The Courtyard, Hereford - TICKETS
Saturday 12th March 2022 - Grand Theatre, Swansea
Monday 14th March 2022 - King's Theatre, Glasgow - TICKETS
Tuesday 15th March 2022 - King's Theatre, Glasgow - TICKETS
Wednesday 16th March 2022 - The Sands Centre, Carlisle - TICKETS
Thursday 17th March 2022 - Royal Hall, Harrogate
Tuesday 22nd March 2022 - Churchill Theatre, Bromley - TICKETS
Wednesday 23rd March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Thursday 24th March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Friday 25th March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Saturday 26th March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Sunday 27th March 2022 - Royal & Derngate, Northampton - TICKETS
Tuesday 29th March 2022 - City Hall, Sheffield - TICKETS
Wednesday 30th March 2022 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Thursday 31st March 2022 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
April 2022
Friday 1st April 2022 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Saturday 2nd April 2022 - Storyhouse, Chester - TICKETS
Tuesday 19th April 2022 - Wyvern Theatre, Swindon - TICKETS
Thursday 21st April 2022 - The Hawth, Crawley - TICKETS
Friday 22nd April 2022 - The Hexagon, Reading - TICKETS
Sunday 24th April 2022 - Mayflower Theatre, Southampton - TICKETS
Tuesday 26th April 2022 - Cliffs Pavilion, Southend On Sea - TICKETS
Wednesday 27th April 2022 - The Central Theatre, Chatham - TICKETS
Thursday 28th April 2022 - Derby Theatre, Derby - TICKETS
Friday 29th April 2022 - Lyceum Theatre, Crewe - TICKETS
Saturday 30th April 2022 - Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield - TICKETS
May 2022
Tuesday 3rd May 2022 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
Wednesday 4th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
Thursday 5th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
Friday 6th May 2022 - St. George's Hall, Bradford - TICKETS
Saturday 7th May 2022 - Gala Theatre, Durham - TICKETS
Sunday 8th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Tuesday 10th May 2022 - Palace Theatre, Watford - TICKETS
Wednesday 11th May 2022 - Palace Theatre, Watford - TICKETS
Thursday 12th May 2022 - Assembly Hall Theatre, Tunbridge Wells
Friday 13th May 2022 - The Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS
Saturday 14th May 2022 - The Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS
Sunday 15th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, Plymouth - TICKETS
Tuesday 17th May 2022 - Corn Exchange, Cambridge - TICKETS
Wednesday 18th May 2022 - Corn Exchange, Cambridge - TICKETS
Thursday 19th May 2022 - The Baths Hall, Scunthorpe - TICKETS
Saturday 21st May 2022 - New Theatre, Peterborough - TICKETS
Sunday 22nd May 2022 - The Grand, Wolverhampton - TICKETS
Monday 23rd May 2022 - Hippodrome, Bristol - TICKETS
Tuesday 24th May 2022 - Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury - TICKETS
Wednesday 25th May 2022 - The Forum, Bath - TICKETS
Friday 27th May 2022 - Wycombe Swan, High Wycombe - TICKETS
Saturday 28th May 2022 - Winding Wheel, Chesterfield - TICKETS
June 2022
Tuesday 7th June 2022 - Mercury Theatre, Colchester
Wednesday 8th June 2022 - Mercury Theatre, Colchester
Friday 17th June 2022 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Saturday 18th June 2022 - Hippodrome, Darlington - TICKETS
Sunday 19th June 2022 - Festival Theatre, Edinburgh - TICKETS
Sunday 26th June 2022 - Theatre Royal, Plymouth - TICKETS
Wednesday 29th June 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Thursday 30th June 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
July 2022
Friday 1st July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Saturday 2nd July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 3rd July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 3rd July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
I would be delighted if, if you are coming to see me, you could do your best to get vaccinated, irrespective of what the gvt or the venue insist upon.
I doubt that my snowflake audience will contain many people who deny the existence of Covid or believe the vaccine is George Soros or Bill Gates trying to put tiny Transformer robots into your blood. But I and my team will be interacting with over 150 000 people on the next leg of the tour, and I would like to minimise our risk, and the risk to my audience, so meet me half way.
I will be selling and signing stuff as usual, I hope, but I won’t be shaking hands to thank you all this time around, and will probably be positioned behind some kind of screen like William Shatner in Airplane 2. Sad.
MEDIA GARAGE SALE
My trusted sales partner Media Garage has compacted all my available stand-up dvds into one convenient on-line marketplace, with most available to d/load too.
Remember, if you buy here we will pay tax on these purchases, and help with British schools and hospitals, whereas many major physical media suppliers and streaming services have found ways to avoid declaring their profits, as have NETFLIX, the utter bastards.
AMERICANS - stop moaning about not being able to see me and visit MEDIA GARAGE!
To try and promote King Rocker I have been pimping myself about like Priss Fotheringham on every Podcast going, alone or with dir M Cumming (Brass Eye, Toast), saying the same things in the same room in the same clothes to all different people, all of whom were very kind.
I don’t know what a podcast is really but I think you go on the internet and click on something.
As my grandfather once said, in 1983, “Do you know, in America, there are shops that only sell Kentucky Fried Chicken?” I enjoyed being on the internet with all these people enormously, but will put some blue water between me and the next wedge.
David Baddiel told me it was good to be on the internet, though. These are available..
A rambling chat in which I fail to promote King Rocker at the expense of a Marxist analysis of culture and history from the inventor of Alternative Comedy ™ ®
Dir Michael Cumming and I discuss King Rocker with Britain’s top film guru and skiffle enthusiast, who has been very supportive of the no-budget project.
Andy Miller and John Michinson’s long running and much loved books podcast. I discuss the waspish poet and novelist Rosemary Tonks with them, Nicky Birch and Jennifer Hodgson.
This is a marvellous ongoing Podcast which is unashamedly civilised in an unenlightened era, and this episode is full of great writing, batshit radiophonic music and clever women.
North London echo chamber fun sure to irk people of all political persuasions with the forensically-minded folk devil for the far right and snowflake do-gooder Owen Jones, and me, talking about King Rocker and more general stuff. His current run of ‘casts has some great guests.
Informed Wolverhampton-based comedy and music enthusiast of uncommon warmth and knowledge talks to me about KING ROCKER and what the Gray Pays ‘n’ Bacon are like at the Great Western pub.
I asked Adam if I could go on this massively popular podcast and he said yes which was very kind of him. It was fun hearing his Mark E Smith story from the horse’s mouth and he asked me hard questions of the type I usually avoid.
I answer questions from various utterly delightful members of the Idler’s thoughtful middle class readership from their wine and book filled homes.
They are the real stars here! You will emerge from watching this in love with at least one of them.
In this episode of The Last Line, James talks to comedian Stewart Lee about his new film King Rocker, a documentary about Robert Lloyd, lead singer of 70’s post-punk band The Nightingales.
During their conversation they discuss the new film, its central protagonist Robert Lloyd, stand up comedy, Stewart’s propensity to defend stand up comedians against the views of the general public and his reluctance to participate in podcast interviews.
There’s an interview with Michael Cumming on this podcast too, link below.
Sometime in March you will be able to hear me eat a really lovely Sri Lankan mutton curry from the Kolama restaurant, Soho, with bon viveur jazz pianist Jay Rayner. (I see how this works now!)
This is the most showbiz thing I have ever done, and I am glad it was with jazzy Jay Rayner.
This is a new series of docu-chats on different esoteric subjects.
You have to pay for them because they are finished pieces of work not just some fuckers talking or wandering about.
I have appeared on three of them - on Hawkwind, Penda’s Fen and John Carpenter’s Apocalypse Trilogy.
I saw Auton’s new stand-up show at Soho Theatre this month. It is full of brilliant one-liners, that linger with you for days, but are delivered with low energy casualness that makes them seem effortless rather than the result of real hard work and talent.
About two thirds through the show quietly glides from chatty stand-up mode into a more theatrical structured shape, Auton musing on life in a psychedelic bubble. It’s on tour. Book here https://www.robauton.co.uk/past-productions
03/09/21 Corsham, Pound Arts
05/09/21 Swindon, Arts Centre
07/09/21 Leeds, Hyde Park Bookclub
08/09/21 Newcastle, The Stand
09/09/21 York, The Crescent
11/09/21 Exeter, Phoenix
12/09/21 Assembly Festival, Coventry
13/09/21 Sheffield, The Leadmill
17/09/21 Kettering Arts Centre
18/09/21 Edinburgh, The Stand
19/09/21 Glasgow, The Stand
22/09/21 Manchester, Frog and Bucket
23/09/21 Chorley, Little Theatre
30/09/21 Aldershot, West End Arts Centre
02/10/21- Reading, South Street
The Nightingales
Birmingham post punk veterans and KING ROCKER stars.
SEPTEMBER 3rd Birmingham Moseley Folk Festival.
OCTOBER 28TH M’cr Gullivers,
29th Newport Le Pub,
30th Exeter Cavern,
31st Lewes Con.
NOVEMBER 1st Sheffield Greystones,
3rd London Lexington,
4th B’ham Hare & Hounds,
5th Bristol Rough Trade,
6th Southsea Wedgewood,
7th Bedford Esquires,
8th London Lexington W BLUE ORCHIDS & TED CHIPPINGTON,
9th Barrow-in-Furness Underground,
10th Glasgow Hugh & Pint,
11th Edinburgh Caves,
12th Middlesbrough Westgarth,
13th Hebden Bridge Trades,
14th Leicester Cookie,
DECEMBER 18th Birmingham MAC w King Rocker film
Ruts
DC Dub punks SEPTEMBER 10TH Liverpool Positive Vibrations, 25th Newcastle Northumbria Uni
Sleaford Mods
Angry loud man and quiet piano man. SEPTEMBER 2ND End of The Road fest. NOVEMBER 26TH Oxford Academy. DECEMBER 2ND London Printworks, 3rd Brighton Dome
Hawkwind
Psychedelic survivors. SEPTEMBER 11th Cambridge Corn Exchange, 12th Leamington Spa Assembly, 17th Swindon Mecca, 27th M’cr Ritz. OCTOBER 28TH London Palladium.
The Wolfhounds
Cheesewire indie kitchen sink realists NOVEMBER 5TH London 229, 19th Middlesbrough Westgarth, 20th Preston Ferret
Bo Ningen
Lots of dates from Japanese noise-niks. SEPTEMBER 4th M’cr Pscyh Fest, OCTOBER 1st Bristol Fleece, 2nd Ramsgate Music Hall, 3rd S’hampton Loft, 6th B’ham Hare & Hounds, 7th Sheffield Record Junkee, 8th L’pool District, 9th Glasgow Stereo, 10th Bristol Fleece, 12th Oxford Bullingdon, 13th London Village U’ground, 14th Brighton Chalk
The Primevals
Glasgow garage rockers, our own Flamin’ Groovies. SEPTEMBER 3rd Middlesbrough Westgarth. NOVEMBER 27TH London Hope & Anchor.
The Catenary Wires
Overqualified theoretical popticians SEPTEMBER 4TH London Amersham Arms, 10th Rainham Oast, 12th Brighton Prince Albert, 24th Oxford Fusion, 25th Coventry Coal Vaults.
The Chameleons
M’cr post punk visionaries on another victory lap. SEPTEMBER 8th Bedford Esquires, 25th Holmfrith Picture Dome. NOVEMBER 12TH Minehead Shine On. DECEMBER 14TH Huddersfield Parish, 16th Blackpool Waterloo, 17th/18th M’cr Ritz. JANUARY 14TH Leicester Academy, 15th Birmingham Institute. FEBRUARY 1ST Nottingham Rescue Rooms.
The Fallen Leaves
Gentlemen mod punks. SEPTEMBER 11TH London Camden Fiddler’s Elbow. OCTOBER 30TH London 100 Club. NOVEMBER 20TH Brighton Prince Albert.
Ben Moor
The performance artist/playwright/monologist Ben Moor is out and about with three new shows.
Who Here’s Lost marries the usual plaintive and beautiful parallel world wonderings with jarringly funny wordplay.
Booktalkbooktalkbook is a two hander with the mighty Jo Neary, about a book talk that swallows itself in a hall of mirrors full of Russian dolls.
Pronoun trouble is a trademark infringing exploration of the Bugs Bunny multiverse.
WHO HERE'S LOST? AT THE CONSTITUTIONAL, FARSLEY - 11th SEPTEMBER 2021
WHO HERE'S LOST? AT GREATER MANCHESTER FRINGE - 24th SEPTEMBER 2021
BOOKTALKBOOKTALKBOOK AT GREATER MANCHESTER FRINGE - 25th SEPTEMBER 2021
2.30pm SUNDAY 26th SEPTEMBER 2021 HEN & CHICKENS THEATRE BAR
109 ST PAUL'S ROAD, LONDON N1 2NA
BOOKTALKBOOKTALKBOOK
Described online as “an awkward joy,” “an extraordinary piece of work by all concerned,” and “a mandatory booking at every book festival in the country,” please book now for a very different afternoon of books and talks and books and talks and books. TICKETS ARE ON SALE NOW.
The price includes £1.50 Annual Membership to the Hen & Chickens Theatre Club, which is a great club to be in.
PRONOUN TROUBLE / WHO HERE'S LOST / BOOKTALKBOOKTALKBOOK AT 41 MONKGATE YORK - OCTOBER 2021
The Scientists
16th SEPTEMBER Spicejazz Soho London. Can this one off by Australian garage gurus be for real?
Saturday 18th September - Sherman Theatre Cardiff
Sunday 19th September 2021 - Lighthouse Poole
Friday 24th September 2021 - The Landmark Ilfracombe
Saturday 25th September 2021 - Corn Exchange Exeter
Sunday 26th September 2021 - Playhouse Oxford
Thursday 30th September 2021 - Theatre Severn Shrewsbury
Friday 1st October 2021 - Canolfan y Celfyddydau / Arts Centre Aberystwyth
Saturday 2nd October 2021 - The Y Theatre Leicester
Tuesday 5th October 2021 - Octagon Yeovil
Thursday 7th October 2021 - Pavilion Worthing
Friday 8th October 2021 - Playhouse Liverpool
Saturday 9th October 2021 - Royal Hall Harrogate
Sunday 10th October 2021 - The Stables Milton Keynes
Tuesday 12th October 2021 - Theatre Royal Winchester
Thursday 14th October 2021 - The Lowry Salford
Friday 15th October 2021 - The Lowry Salford
Saturday 16th October 2021 - The Dukes Lancaster
Sunday 17th October 2021 - City Varieties Leeds
Wednesday 20th October 2021 - Forum Northallerton
Thursday 21st October 2021 - The Stand Edinburgh
Friday 22nd October 2021 - The Witham Barnard Castle
Saturday 23rd October 2021 - Haymarket Basingstoke
Sunday 24th October 2021 - Playhouse Norwich
Monday 1st November 2021 - The Stand Newcastle
Tuesday 2nd November 2021 - The Stand Glasgow
Wednesday 3rd November 2021 - Tivoli Theatre Aberdeen
Thursday 4th November 2021 - The Stand Edinburgh
Friday 5th November 2021 - The Stand Newcastle
Wednesday 10th November 2021 - Gala Theatre Durham
Thursday 11th November 2021 - The Arc Stockton
Friday 12th November 2021 - Queen's Hall Hexham
Saturday 13th November 2021 - Chorley Theatre Chorley
Sunday 14th November 2021 - Warwick Arts Centre Coventry
Thursday 18th November 2021 - Charter Hall Colchester
Friday 19th November 2021 - The Junction Cambridge
Saturday 20th November 2021 - The Junction Cambridge
Sunday 21st November 2021 - The Dome Brighton
Monday 22nd November 2021 - Playhouse Nottingham
Wednesday 24th November 2021 - Pontio Bangor
Thursday 25th November 2021 - Darwen Library Theatre Blackburn
Friday 26th November 2021 - Darwen Library Theatre Blackburn
Saturday 27th November 2021 - Performing Arts Centre Lincoln
Thursday 2nd December 2021 - Quarterhouse Folkestone
Friday 3rd December 2021 - Gulbenkian Canterbury
Sunday 5th December 2021 - Old Vic Bristol
Wednesday 8th December 2021 - Komedia Bath
Thursday 9th December 2021 - Comedy Hall Tiverton
Friday 10th December 2021 - MAC Birmingham
Saturday 11th December 2021 - MAC Birmingham
The Meat Puppets
We are lead to believe that the amazing Meat Puppets, who you must see before you or they die, are doing four UK dates. Grateful Dead crossed w Husker Du. Desert punk psyche. SEPTEMBER 23rd London Islington Academy, 24th M’cr Bread Shed, 25th Newcastle Cluny, 26th Dover Booking Hall
Fossil Fools
24th Sept Swindon Victoria, 9th Oct Water Rats London. Tentative return by top XTC tribute band.
Jonny & The Baptists - Dance Like It Never Happened
I saw Johnny & The Baptists’ current touring show at Soho Theatre in August.
A game you can play with yourself, once you’ve seen them, is to try and think how many comedy acts are actually both funnier and cleverer than Johnny and The Baptists.
There’s subversion everywhere - rhymes that resolutely rhyme with themselves defying the expectation to progress - alongside the undeniable star quality of Johnny’s voice and the subtly supportive nature, and quietly spectacular, guitar playing of Lord Paddy. And they seem like they love each other’s company and revel in each other’s talent which is a joy to behold.
I’ve seen nearly 35 years of comedy musical double acts, from Bill Bailey’s Rubber Bishops, Steve Gribbin’s Skint Video, Rebecca Front’s BoBo Girls, Richard Thomas’ Miles & Milner, and Helen Austin’s Two Girls Wot Sing in the ‘80s alterno days to watching Flight Of The Conchords come up through the ‘00s fringe.
At the top of that distinguished pile, I think The Baptists are the Conchords’ equals in cleverness and comic value, but their energy is frenetic and focussed rather than laid back and zonked. Some dates remain outstanding. Book here
Female Fall tribute band w guest vocalists incl me. DECEMBER 5th London Lexington.
Nina Hamnett
Exhibition of the art of the underrated bohemian Fitzrovian, Charleston, East Sussex.
NEW FILMS
Little Joe (Jessica Hausner) ★★★★ County Lines (Henry Blake) ★★★★★
Animal Antics (Patrick Goddard) ★★★★★
OLD FILMS
Box Of Moonlight (Tom DeCillo, 1996) ★★★★★
Local Hero (Bill Forsyth, 1983) ★★★★★
Where Eagles Dare (Brian G Hutton, 1968) ★★★★★
The Big Gundown (Sergio Sollima, 1967) ★★★★★
The Sting (George Roy Hill, 1973) ★★★★★
Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977) ★★★★★
The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)★★★★★
Good Vibrations (Lisa Barros D’sa/Glen Leyburn, 2013)★★★★★
Caliber 9 (Fernado di Leon, 1972) ★★★★★
‘71 (Yann Demange, 2014) ★★★★★
Big Night (Campbell Scott/Stanley Tucci, 1996) ★★★★★
Jason & The Argonauts (Don Chaffey, 1963) ★★★★★
Goldstone (Ivan Sen, 2016) ★★★★★
Witness (Peter Weir, 1985) ★★★★★
Avengers Infinity War (Russo Brothers, 2018) ★★★★
Avengers Endgame (Russo Brothers, 2019) ★★★★
In Order of Disappearance (Hans Peter Molland, 2014)★★★★★
Iron Man III (Shane Black, 2013)★★★★★
Pauline A La Plage (Eric Rohmer, 1983) ★★★★★
Gone To Earth (Powell/Pressburger, 1950) ★★★★
The Odd Couple (Neil Simon, 1968) ★★★★★
Excalibur (John Boorman, 1981) ★★★★
Samurai 1 : Mushashi Miyamoto (Hiroshi Inagaki, 1954) ★★★★
Cache / Hidden (Michaek Haneke, 2005) ★★★★★ Babylon (Franco Rosso, 1980) ★★★★★
Summer In February (Christopher Menaul, 2013) ★★★★ Guardians of The Galaxy (James Gunn, 2014) ★★★★★
All Tomorrow’s Parties (Jonathan Caouette, 2009) ★★★★ Medea (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1969) ★★★★★
Force Majeure (Ruben Ostlund, 2015) ★★★★
Lift To The Scaffold (Louise Malle, 1958)★★★★★
Macbeth (Roman Polanski, 1971)★★★★★
Tomb of Ligeia (Roger Corman, 1964) ★★★★
Massacre Time (Lucio Fulci, 1966) ★★★★
Bandidos (Massimo Dallamano, 1967) ★★★★
And God Said To Cain (Antonio Margheriti, 1970) ★★★★★
Dead Man’s Shoes (Shane Meadows, 2004) ★★★★★
Romeo + Juliet (Baz Luhrmann, 1996) ★★★★★
OLD BOOKS
Rosemary Tonks - Emir (1963)★★★★★
Rosemary Tonks - The Bloater (1968) ★★★★★
John Berger/Jean Mohr - A Fortunate Man (1967) ★★★★★ Ann Quin - Berg (1964) ★★★★
Sir John Mandeville - The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (1357)★★★★ Sean Bythell - Diary of a Bookseller (2018)
Robert Aickman - The Inner Room (1988) Virginia Nicholson - Amongst The Bohemians (2003)
Joanna Moorhead - The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington (2017)
Betty May - Tiger Woman (1929)
Val Doonican - My Story, My Life (2009) Dave Graney - Workshy (2017)
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde - R L Stevenson (1985)
Hide & Seek - Dennis Potter (1973)
M R James - Complete Ghost Stories (1904 - 35) ★★★★★
NEW BOOKS
Tessa Norton/Bob Stanley - Excavate!
Alan Stafford - Wilson, Keppel & Betty, Too Naked For The Nazis Peter Oborne - The Assault On Truth Nesrine Malik - We Need New Stories ★★★★★ Sean Bythell - Diary of a Bookseller (2018) ★★★★★
Robert Aickman - The Inner Room (1988) ★★★★★ Alicia Foster - Nina Hamnett Charlie Hill - I Don’t Want To Go To The Taj Mahjal
Hill’s economic autobiography is a simplistic list of addresses, dead end jobs, cultural ephemera, and brief assignations, garnished with two or three short paragraphs of barely formed reflection. And yet, in reducing his life to these most basic elements, it manages to be a more profound comment on existence then many more self-consciously analytical efforts. As if to confound Wittgenstein, it appears the unexamined life was worth living after all.
Tracey Thorn - My Rock ‘n’ Roll Friend ★★★★★
Will Sergeant - Bunnyman ★★★★
Hotel Art Head - Rhodri Davies & Nikos Veliotos I have written the intro for this new project exploring the interior design aesthetics travelling musicians’ hotel acommodation https://rhodridavies.bandcamp.com/merch/hotel-art-head-rhodri-davies-nikos-veliotis-art-book
NEW COMICS
Joe Sacco - Paying The Land (2020)
NEW TV
Ghosts S2 (BBC, 2020)
Ghosts - Xmas Special 2020 (BBC, 2020) The Mandalorian S2 (Disney, 2020) ★★★★★ Call My Agent S3 (France 2, 2018)★★★★★
Call My Agent S4 (France 2, 2021) ★★★★★
The Trump Show (BBC, 2020-1)★★★★★
Lupin S1 (Netflix, 2021)★★★★★ Wandavision (Marvel, 2021)★★★★★
Stonehenge The Lost Circle Revealed (BBC, 2021) ★★★★★
Adam Curtis’ Can’t Get You Out Of My Head (BBC, 2021)★★★★★ Raiders Of The Lost Past With Janina Ramirez (BBC2, 2021) ★★★★
Mortimer & Whitehouse Gone Fishing S3 (BBC, 2020) ★★★★★
The Falcon & The Winter Soldier (Marvel, 2021) ★★★★★
Homeland s8 (Netflix, 2020)★★★★★
Into The Night S1 (Between a Dog & A Wolf, 2020) ★★★★
Unforgotten S4 (ITV, 2021) ★★★★
Inside No 9 S6 (BBC, 2021) ★★★★★ Great British Bake Off S11 (C4, 2020) ★★★★★
An Evening With Tim Heidecker (Youtube, 2020) Time (BBC, 2021) ★★★★★ Loki (Kate Herron, Marvel, 2021)
Ghosts S3 (BBC, 2021) ★★★★★
INTERNETS, RADIOS, YOUTUBES AND PODCASTS
Rob Auton’s Daily Podcast
Alastair Beckett-King on Youtube
Shawn Woods’ Mouse Trap Monday on Youtube
An Evening With Tim Heidecker (Youtube, 2020) ★★★★ Bridget Christie - Mortal (BBCR4)
Rosie Holt’s Youtube characters
THEATRE
Under Milk Wood - Dylan Thomas (National) ★★★★★
The Pin’s The Comeback (Noel Coward Theatre) ★★★★
This felt like it was from the 1870s, the 1950s and now all at the same time.
It was of a tradition at the same time as exploding it. It reminded me of THE RIGHT Size and it would be great if The Pin could hold the partnership together in the way they didn't as there's probably lots to find out about how elastic it can be, and what you can subsume into it.
A Victorian audience would have recognised it as Music Hall and a ‘50s audience would have recognised it as Absurdism, which Beckett knew was music hall anyway. Were they even in a theatre, really, them blokes? I hope it tours.
Ben Moor - Who Here’s Lost? (Hen & Chickens) ★★★★
COMEDY
Jo Neary - Wife On Earth (Hen & Chickens) ★★★★
Rob Auton - Time (Soho Theatre) ★★★★
Johnny & The Baptists (Soho Theatre) ★★★★★
NEW RECORDS
Lady Leshurr - Quaranqueen
The Primevals - New Trip
Cult Figures - Deritend Vapour Trails - Celestial Scuzz ★★★★★
Robert Pollard - Before Computers (demos)
Kevin March - Last Night
Doug Gillard - Douglas Scott Gillard II
Guided by Voices - Earth Man Blues Gwenifer Raymond - Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain Ustad Saami - Pakistan Is For The Peaceful ★★★★★ The Blue Orchids - Speed The Day Dave Graney & The Mistly - Live At Byrds ★★★★★
Mainliner - Dual Myths ★★★★★
Hawkwind - 50th Anniversary Live
The Amorphous Androgynous w Peter Hammill - We Persuade Ourselves We Are Immortal
Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orcestrea - s/t
Major Murphy - Access
Eleventh Dream Day - Since Grazed Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg
Guided By Voices - Earth Man Blues
Fixed Horizon - Grenouille Lucinda Williams - Runnin’ Down A Dream
Krallice - Demonic Wealth
Catenary Wires - Birling Gap
Cub Scout Bowling Pins - Heaven Beats Iowa ★★★★
Pat Todd & The Rank Outsiders - There’s Pretty Things in Palookaville ★★★★
Robyn Hitchcock - The Man Upstairs ★★★★
Chris Forsyth - First Flight
Chris Eckerman - Where The Spirit Rests ★★★★
The Scientists - Negativity
David Grubbs & Ryley Walker - Husky Pants ★★★★ Shirley Collins - Heart’s Ease ★★★★★ Gary Louris - Jump For Joy ★★★★★
Fixed Horizon - Full Circle ★★★★
Trees Speak - Post Human ★★★★ William Loveday Intention - People Think They Know Me ★★★★★
Hawkwind - Somnia The Bevis Frond - Little Eden ★★★★★
Pat Todd & The Rank Outsiders - There’s Pretty Things In Palookaville ★★★★★
Goat - Headsoup Adele & The Chandeliers - First Date
Trees Speak - Post Human
Sun Ra Arkestra - Swirling ★★★★★
Phil Minton - Woke Up At 8 ★★★★★
Rudimentary Peni - The Great War Lucinda Williams - Southern Soul
Son Volt - Electro Melodies ★★★★
Guided By Voices - It’s Not Them! It Couldn’t Be Them! It Is Them! ★★★★
Billy Childish & CTMF - Where The Purple Iris Grows ★★★★
NEW OLD RECORDS
V/A - Rough Guide To Avant-Garde Japan
Guided by Voices - Live At Irving Plaza (1996)
Damo Suzuki & Echo Ensemble - Live @ Green Door (2013) Heavenly - A Bout De Heavenly (1989-1996)
Martin Stone - Down But Not Out In Paris and London (1992-2013)
John Russell & Terry Day - Russell & Day (1979?)
Derek Bailey, Trevor Watts & Terry Day - At LTC (1972?) Sonny Rollins - Rollins In Holland (1967) ★★★★★
Robert Pollard - I Sell The Circus (demos) (2015) The Fall - St Helen’s Technical College (1981) ★★★★★
Charles Gayle, John Edwards, Mark Sanders - Seasons Changing (2017) ★★★★★
The Misunderstood - Children of The Sun(1965-66) ★★★★★
Dexter Gordon - Live In Chateauvallon (1978) ★★★★★
The Loft - Ghost Trains & Country Lanes (1984-2015)
And Also The Trees - s/t (1984)
Neil Young - Young Shakespeare (1971)
T2 - It’ll All Work Out In Boomland (1970)
The Outsiders - Count For Something (1976-78)
The Selecter - Too Much Pressure box (1980)
Brown Acid 11 - v/a (1969-73)
Fleur de Lys - Circles (1964-1969)
J Jazz Deep Jazz From Modern Japan vol 3 - V/A (1962-1985)
The Black Keys Present Hill Country Blues - v/a
Brown Acid 12 - v/a (1968-80)
Raw Material - s/t (1970)
Open Road - Windy Day (1971)
Dave Graney, Clare Moore, Georgie Valentino & Malcolm Ross - s/t (2017) ★★★★
Hangman’s Beautiful Daughters - Smashed Full Of Wonder (1987)
The Lipstick Killers - Strange Flash (1976-81)
The Hawks - Obviously 5 Believers (1979-81) ★★★★
v/a - Goitse A Thaisce (1960-2020) ★★★★★
v/a - Fire Draw Near (1940-2020) ★★★★★
OLD RECORDS
Cocteau Twins - Treasure (1984) ★★★★ Billy Bragg - Life’s A Riot (1983) ★★★★★
Billy Bragg - Brewing Up with (1984) ★★★★★
The Triffids - Born Sandy Devotional (1986) ★★★★
Siouxsie & The Banshees - A Kiss In The Dreamhouse (1982) ★★★★
Bunny Striker Lee - The Bunny Striker Lee Story (1967-80) ★★★★
V/A - Dub, A Journey Into Bass Culture (1970s) ★★★★
V/A - Dub, Original Bass Culture (1970s) ★★★★
V/A - Dub, More Bass Culture (1970s) ★★★★
Tomorrow’s Gift - Goodbye Future (1973) ★★★★
Jackson C Frank - s/t (1965) ★★★★
V/A - Down Home Blues, Chicago Fine Boogie (1947-1958)★★★★ Maggie Bjorklund - Shaken (2014)★★★★ June Tabor - Airs & Graces (1976) ★★★★★
John Martyn - The Very Best Of (1967-1996) ★★★★★ The Owl Service - The Garland Sessions (2007) ★★★★★
John Lee Hooker - Tantalising With The Blues (1965-70)★★★★★
Furry Lewis, Memphis Willie B, Memphis Slim - Bluesville 3 (1963?) ★★★★ Lightnin’ Hopkins - Prestige Profiles (1960-4) ★★★★★
Magic Slim - Live @ Ma Bea’s (1976) ★★★★
Jimmy Dawkins - Come Back Baby (1977) ★★★★
Allman Brothers - At Filmore East (1971) ★★★★ John Fahey - The Yellow Princess (1968) ★★★★★
Freedy Johnston - Can You Fly? (1992)★★★★ Julie Doiron - I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day (2009) ★★★★
Tragically Hip - Man Machine Poem (2016) ★★★★
Tragically Hip - We Are The Same (2009) ★★★★ Tortoise - Millions Now Living Will Never Die (1996) ★★★★★
Grant Lee Buffalo - Storm Hymnal (1993-98) ★★★★
Shiva Burlesque - Mercury Blues (1990) ★★★★ Yo La Tengo - President (1989) ★★★★★ Yo La Tengo - Fakebook (1990) ★★★★★ Yo La Tengo - That Is You La Tengo (1991) ★★★★ Yo La Tengo - May I Sing With Me? (1992) ★★★★ Yo La Tengo - Painful (3 cds) (1993) ★★★★ Tim Buckley - Dream Letter (1968) ★★★★★
Those Bastard Souls - Debt & Departure (1999) ★★★★★
Wanderlust - Prize (1995) ★★★★
Chain - Towards The Blues (1971) ★★★★
The Schramms - Omnidirectional (2019) ★★★★
Cannonball Adderley - Soul Zodiac (1972)
Fred Anderson - Quintessential Birthday Trio Vol II (2015)
Greg Bendian’s Interzone - Requiem For Jack Kirby (2001)
Nels Cline & Greg Bendian - Interstellar Space Revisited (1999)
The Beat - Bounce (2016) Nina Simone - To Be Free (1959-1993)
Swervedriver - 99th Dream (1998)
Road - s/t (1972)
Mudhoney - Morning In America (2019)
Necromandus - Orexis of Death (1973)
Julian Cope - Peggy Suicide (1991)
Ultravox - Rage In Eden (1981)
Siouxsie & The Banshees - Tinderbox (1986)
Blues Pills - Live In Paris (2017)
Gram Parsons - Alternate Takes (1973-4)
Mike Westbrook - Mama Chicago (1976)
The Fall - Grotesque (1980)
Truly - Fast Stories From Kid Coma (1995)
Echo & the Bunnymen - Evergreen (1997)
Echo & The Bunnymen - What Are You Going To Do With Your Life? (1999)
Blues Pills - Lady In Gold (2016)
Leo Bud Welch - The Angels In Heaven Done Signed My Name (2019)
The Black Keys - Chulahoma (2006) Nanci Griffith - One Fair Summer Evening (1988)
The Soft Boys - Invisible Hits (1983)
Robyn Hitchcock - Robyn Sings (2003)
Raw Material - s/t (1970)
Don Carlos & Gold - Them Never Know Natty Dread Have Him Credentials (1982)
Henry Junjo Lawes - Volcano Erruption (70s-80s)
Don Carlos - Day To Day Living (1982)
Bunny ‘Striker’ Lee - Full Up (1968-72)
Bunny Lee & Friends - Tape Rolling (1971-4) ★★★★
v/a - Trojan Roots Dancehall Box (‘70s, ‘80s)
Charlie Chaplin & Papa San - Respect Due (1986?)
Robert Forster - The Evangelist (2008) ★★★★★
John Stewart - California Bloodlines (1969) ★★★★
v/a - Trojan Dancehall Box (‘70s, ‘80s)
Don Carlos - In Dub (1980)
Yabby You - Deeper Roots (‘70s, ‘80s)
Yabby You - Deeper Roots Part 2 (‘70s, ‘80s)
Norma Winstone - Edge Of Time (1972) ★★★★
Atlas - Just Playin’ Rhythm & Blues (1967-71)
V/A - Alan Lomax Songbook (1939-76) ★★★★
Shirley Collins - Lodestar (2016) ★★★★★
The Go-betweens - Loving Shocks (1989) ★★★★
Red House Painters - Songs For A Blue Guitar (1996) ★★★★
Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats - Mind Control (2013)
The Damned - Music For Pleasure (1977) ★★★★
Skids - Days In Europa (1977)
Big Country - The Crossing (1983) ★★★★
Big Country - Steel Town (1984)
Jon Dee Graham - Escape From Monster Island (1997) ★★★★
The Fall - Live At The Witch Trials (1979) ★★★★★
Echo & The Bunnymen - The Stars, The Oceans & The Moon (2018)
Echo & The Buynnymen - Ballyhoo (1980-87) ★★★★★
Orange Juice - Rip It Up (1982)
Orange Juice - Texas Fever (1984)
The Stone Roses - s/t (1989) ★★★★
The Screaming Trees - Buzz Factory (1989) ★★★★
Mark Lanegan - The Winding Street (1990) ★★★★★
Killdozer - For Ladies Only (1989) ★★★★
Magazine - Real Life (1978) ★★★★
The Stranglers - Peaches (1977-82) ★★★★★
Screaming Trees - Uncle Anaesthesia (1991)
Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan - Sunday At Devil Dirt (2008)
The Osiris Club - Blazing World (2014)
UB40 - Signing Off (1980)★★★★★
UB40 - Present Arms (1981) ★★★★★
UB40 - Present Arms In Dub (1981) ★★★★
WOKE CAUSES - THIS MONTH, GOOD LAW PROJECT, GET OFF MY MED RECORDS, GBNEWS ADVERTISERS
GOOD LAW PROJECT
LINK
It’s evident that the corrupt kleptocracy of Boris Johnson isn’t going to dislodged by Kier Starmer’s PMQ’s however forensic, or by the biased media, or by legal investigations in which the gvt essentially investigate themselves.
However, despite the threats to judiciary in the Queen’s speech, at present the gvt are required to obey the law.
Champagne socialist fox-whacking lawyer Jolyon Maugham’s donation funded Good Law Project seems to be better than the opposition currently at holding the gvt to account, and proving where they have broken the law, so if you can spare a pound crowd fund them, as they do seem to be making an impact.
MEDICAL RECORDS OPT OUT
LINK
Did you know that the gvt are about to sell all your medical records off to the highest bidder? Thought not. We weren’t consulted.
I don’t care about the privacy aspect, but I do object to my life being monetised to give leverage to some horrible massive info-tech company.
You can withdraw the gvt’s right to farm your medical history as if you were some kind of data-pig at the link above. THIS IS NOW DELAYED TO SEPTEMBER DUE TO OPPOSITION BUT STILL WORTH DOING
GBNEWS ADVERTISERS
Stop Funding Hate say - Advertising sales for GB News are reportedly handled by Sky Media.
We’re aware of at least one company who say they were unaware that they were going to appear on GB News and suspended those ads when they found out. If you work for a company that buys programmatic advertising from Sky, it may be worth checking with them to ensure that your ads aren’t placed on GB News.
A huge thanks to the Stop Funding Hate volunteers who have come together to help identify GB News advertisers.
Brands that we’ve seen so far include: Vodafone, Octopus Energy, Ovo Energy, Co-op, Ikea, LV, Virgin Media, Kelloggs, Deliveroo, Nivea, Kenco coffee, AA, Premier Inn, American Express, Benadryl (Johnson and Johnson), Wickes, Starbucks, Weetabix, Listerine (Pfizer), National Lottery, Boomin, Cadbury, Taylors coffee, Amazon, Cazoo, Microsoft, Google, Alpen (Weetabix), Beko Harvestfresh, Pinterest, Ladbrokes, Rana pasta, Burger King, Warburtons, The UK Government (EU resettlement scheme), Bosch, Specsavers, TalkTalk, trivagoWeekend, itchpet.com, MSC Cruises, Grolsch, Indeed recruitment, Motability, Feel Multivitamins, Green Flag, Clean G non alcoholic gin, Facebook,Volvo, Bazuka, fiverr, Motability, Ibuleve Gel, Toyota, Appeal home shading / blinds, People’s Postcode Lottery, Just Eat, Petit Filous, Direct Bullion, Compare the Market, Kardia Mobile, Bupa, Verisure, The Open University.
There’s more information here about Stop Funding Hate, and the impact of our campaign so far. If you’re able to help build our movement tackling toxic media in the UK and internationally, please consider becoming a committed supporter and making a regular donation.
11) IN OUR COVID ERA LAMENTATIONS
Adam Schlesinger (Fountain of Wayne) (1967)
John Prine (outlaw country singer) (1946)
Henry Grimes (jazz bassist) (1935)
Dave Mountfield (Ornate Johnson) (1970)
Hal Wilner (arranger) (1957)
Tim Brooke-Taylor (Goodie) (1940)
Lee Konitz (jazz saxophonist) (1927)
Matthew Seligman (Soft Boy) (1955) Millie Small (ska singer) (1946)
Florian Schneider (Kraftwerk robot) (1947)
Bill Rieflin (drummer for hire) (1960)
Hugh McKenna (Tear Gas pianist) (1949)
Steve Weber (Holy Modal Rounder) (1942) Astrid Kirchherr (photographer) (1938)
Danny Ray Thompson (Sun Ra saxophonist) (1947)
Aubrey Burl (archaeologist) (1926)
Phil May (Pretty Thing) (1944) The Clacton Fin Whale (circa 2000)
Christo Vladimirov Javacheff (artist) (1930) Doll Tor stone circle (3300 BC)
Kay Carroll (The Fall) (1948)
Bob the Cat (73 bus) (2006) Alex Taylor (Shop Assistant, in 2005, and no-one knew)
Simon H Fell (jazz bassist) (1959)
Carl Reiner (director) (1922)
Ennio Morricone (architect of sonic dreams) (1928)
Keith Tippett (jazz pianist) (1947)
Jimmy Cobb (jazz drummer) (1929) Barbara Smoker (Humanist) (1923)
The Nuffield Theatre, Southampton
Tony Elliot (Time Out) (1942) Judy Dyble (folk singer) (1949)
Peter Green (blues guitarist) (1946)
Emitt Rhodes (power pop auteur) (1950) Annie Ross (jazz bohemian) (1930)
Joe Ruby (Scooby-Doo) (1933)
Craig Weatherhill (folklorist) (1950)
Don Weller (jazz saxophonist) (1940)
Simeon Coxe (Silver Apple) (1938) Diana Rigg (Avenger) (1938)
Toots Hibbert (reggae got soul) (1942)
Dele Fadele (carry bag man) (1962)
George Jeffrie (man’s-laughter maker) (1964)
Dave Kusworth (Brum punk Stone) (1960)
Gary Peacock (jazz bassist) (1935)
Doorkins (Southwark Cathedral Cat) (2005?)
Spencer Davis (Brumbeat pioneer) (1939)
Bunny Lee (dubmaster) (1940) The Cubbington Pear Tree (1770)
Fungie The Dingle Dolphin (1979) Jill Paton Walsh (humanist novelist) (1937)
Val Warner (poet) (1946)
Guy N Smith (Lord of The Crabs) (1939)
Richard Corben (decadent cartoonist) (1940)
David Johnson (Duke of Soho) (1960)
Leslie West (Mountain man) (1945)
- 2021 -
Katharine Whitehorn (bedsitter cook) (1928)
Katharine Whitehorn (bedsitter cook) (1928)
Celia Drummond Ford (voice of Trees) (1950)
The Happy Man Tree (Stoke Newington Tree) (1870)
John Russell (guitar guru) (1954)
Marcel Uderzo (Asterisk artist) (1933)
Tom Stevens (Long Ryder and Magus) (1956)
Dougie Anderson (Coda’s Edinburgh record dealer (1952)
Captain Tom (Covid Walkman) (1920) Rynagh O’Grady (Ted’s Mary) (1954)
Mary Wilson (Supreme) (1944)
Chick Corea (Miles’ tinkler) (1941)
Iain Pattinson (You wanted to see me Prime Minister?) (1951)
U-Roy (Toastmaster) (1942)
Lawrence Ferlinghetti (bookstore beat) (1921)
Wink O’Bannon (Eleventh Dream Day) (1956)
Bunny Wailer (Wailer) (1947)
Doug Parkinson (Oz vocal celeb) (1946)
Milford Graves (temporal explorer) (1941)
Johnny Rogan (Byrds’ Boswell) (1953) Jessica Walter (Play Misty For Me) (1941)
Bertrand Tavernier (Round Midnight) (1941) Anita Lane (Oz punk chanteuse) (1958)
Barbara Ess (Theoretical Girl) (1944)
Michael Collins (Apollo 11) (1930)
Mohammed Ag Itale (Tinariwen) (1960)
Monte Hellman (Two Lane Blacktop) (1929)
Sonny Simmons (jazz hobo) (1933)
Charles Grodin (The American Tim Key) (1935)
Franco Battiato (Italian Fetus) (1945)
Yoshi Wada (bagpipe minimalist) (1943)
Ned Beatty (squealing piggy) (1937)
Davey Datblygu (Davey Datblygu) (1964)
S Clay Wilson (Captain Pissgums) (1941)
Peter Zinovieff (sonic pioneer) (1933)
Richard Donner (kebab pioneer) (1930) Alix Dobkin (feminist folksinger) (1940)
Patrick Sky (native American folksinger) (1940)
Tom O’Connor (raconteur) (1939)
Dusty Hill (ZZ Top) (1949)
Bob Sergeant (digital Beat producer) (194?)
Byron Berline (Byrds fiddler) (1944)
John Lawton (friend of Lucifer) (1947)
Una Stubbs (wooden woman) (1937)
Nanci Griffith (C&W poet) (1953)
Sean Lock (excrement genitals) (1963)
Brian Travers (UB40 blowhard) (1959)
I’m going to end on a note about Sean Lock, as these days not posting anything on Social Media, due to not actually being on social media, can be taken as callous indifference, and there tends to be a rush to comment in the light of any loss.
My condolences to his family and friends. S Lock always felt like he was in the year above me, due to me starting as a regular circuit comedian in 1989, and him being about 18 months ahead of me, so I never knew him in the way I did contemporaries like Harry Hill or Simon Munnery.
I liked the way S Lock combined whimsy and surrealism with casual arrogance and furious belligerence.
He did a routine - only once I think - at the Red Rose circa 1991 that is one of the funniest, most scatological, most surreal, and curiously the most humane, I ever saw and it made me weep with laughter, alone. It was about him doing stools in the shape of genitals, and then masturbating over them as they bumped together in the toilet bowl, an incident he relayed to the audience as if it were regrettable but also somehow understandably inevitable. S Lock thought this new bit was rubbish and never did it again, and whenever I asked him about it, and said it was the best thing he ever did, I think he thought I was being sarcastic, which often happens when I am being sincere. I thought 15 Storeys High was brilliant, one of the great British sit-coms, and like many I despaired of the BBC’s poor treatment of it.
I loved it and yet I could rarely find out when it was on due to sudden unpublicized rescheduling, back in the pre-iplayer days. I remember saying to S Lock that I couldn’t believe how radical the camerawork was in the 1st series and couldn’t quite believe they had had the guts to submit it. I think Sean despaired about what happened to the series too, and so did the co-writers Mark Lamarr and Martin Trenaman I expect. I remember Armando really lobbying for it in the press.
Its white working class world was exactly the sort of landscape the BBC now beats itself up about not accommodating, but 15 Storey’s towerblock vistas were more Vladimir and Estragon than Danny Dyer and Eastenders.
It suits my view of things to think that it was this despair that drove S Lock into arms of panel shows, but there he stood head and shoulders above the form, like a tall man in a ditch. It suits my view of him to think that, having found himself shipwrecked upon panel show island, he chose to beautify it as best he could, often coming close to subverting the genre. I doubt he liked me especially and on the few occasions we did meet we always seemed to be talking at cross purposes, usually ending in some misunderstanding, though we barely encountered each other this century. S Lock would not be drawn into criticizing other lesser but better known talents’ debt to his work, even when it was painfully obvious and borderline criminal.
He once advised me at length on his methods of avoiding post-show drinking, which involved hot baths and camper vans respectively, and I wish I had paid more attention. Like a lot of the free jazz types I know, and despite his dabblings in art with the film maker Andrew Kotting in the ‘90s and his avowed desire to make 15 Storeys look like a Nordic art film, S Lock would not discuss the idea that his work was anything other than entertainment, not with me anyway, but I have been told that I do tend to over-analyse things.
The amount of effort S Lock (and his writers) put into his panel show appearances, which left me astonished in my naivety the only time I ever tried to fit the square peg of me into the round hole of 8 Out Of 10 Cats (I thought it was all improvised!), contradicted this apparent casualness. In about 2005 I was trying to escape Avalon management, a solid career move of which S Lock was an early pioneer (“You’re breaking these kids’ hearts”, I remember him saying to the company’s promoters in Edinburgh in ’95 or so as they ran another hapless 20-something hopeful into insurmountable debt). I was in an Indian restaurant in Nottingham with S Lock and D Kitson and I was trying to persuade D Kitson to manage me as his ‘client’, as I wanted to be able to reach the small but discerning audiences he did, and without doing any television or publicity.
S Lock said we were a pair of fucking idiots. I don’t know why he was so annoyed, but wonder if he took my attempt to eschew popular mechanisms as a personal criticism. My favorite of S Lock’s stage outfits was a green Riddler costume he wore in Edinburgh’s Pleasance cabaret bar, but he always looked cool in a proto-Britpop Jarvis kind of way.
My favorite routine of his remains the aforesaid one where he masturbates over genital shaped pieces of excrement which are floating in a toilet. My favorite anecdote concerning him comes from Leicester Sq Theatre stage manager Jason Tribe, via tour manager James Hingley, and concerns a tramp, a dog, an open fire escape, and Liam Gallagher, but it is not mine to share.
S Lock was on the list of comedians to take my kids to see when they were old enough so they knew what good stand up was, which we have already begun working through, and which just got one shorter. I wish he had done another project like 15 Storeys High and whoever kept fucking up its scheduling should be ashamed, but it is hard work to build a world from the ground up twice. The last time we saw S Lock, out for a walk on a Spring day, he looked very unwell indeed but told us it was long covid.
The first two heavy reggae UB40 albums, on which the saxophone of the also recently departed Brian Travers was the lead instrument, are also superb in a way people who only know their pop career won’t believe.
But when UB40 went mainstream they sadly didn’t do it with any of the style and subversion S Lock, the rat in panel show comedy’s kitchen, did.
Stewart Lee
2021-08-26T09:00:19+01:00
KING ROCKER SCREENINGS Our labour of love really landed. I arrogantly think it knocks most rockumentaries into a cocked hat and will cheer you up no end in the awful times. “I loved every minute” - Ben Dowell, The Times ★★★★ Financial Times ★★★★ Chortle “One of the best music documentaries of all time” - The Quietus “The new gold standard for rockumentaries” - The Scotsman All Press is collecting here. You can also watch it, ad-free, on NOW TV if you have that; NOW TV LINK The film receives its hometown premier in Birmingham, as the King Rocker Christmas Special at the Midland Arts center on Sat 18th December, preceeded by a Q&A with me and dir Michael Cumming, and followed by a performance by the Nightingales. https://macbirmingham.co.uk/event/king-rocker-q-a I will also be hosting a thing about the film at the Laugharne Weekend Festival in Carmarthenshire on the 3rd of October, where I will also interview Alexei Sayle live on the same day. https://www.thelaugharneweekend.com/line-up GALLIVANT SCREENING I will be hosting a 25th anniversary screening of one of my favourite films, Gallivant, with its director, and its star, Andrew and Eden Kotting respectively, at the Kino in Hastings on Sat 11th Sept. This is a great opportunity to see this unforgettable masterpiece on a big screen. https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/kinoteatr/t-rnkomn Comedy fans may like to note that in the ‘90s the recently late Sean Lock collaborated on both a short and a feature with Andrew Kotting, with whom he shared a disruptive surrealist ethos, clearly visible in Sean’s massively overlooked early ‘00s sit-com 15 Storeys High, and still glimpsed in his format-challenging 21st century panel show work. Small world. LAURA CANNELL The avant-folk dronemädchen Laura Cannell has been releasing an ep a month throughout the pandemic. I wrote and mumbled some...
After a successful return to the UK’s TV screens earlier this year with his BBC show Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, our titular hero is embarking on a full tour. Who’s Laughing Now had a chat with to delve beneath the literate stand-up’s exterior and find out what to expect on his current jaunt, which stops off at Warwick Arts Centre on Friday October 23rd.
WLN: The show you’re currently touring is called If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One. What’s the essence of the show and how would you describe it for someone who isn’t familiar with your stand-up?
Stewart Lee: Well, you have to decide what an August Edinburgh show is called by April for the programme, and I was desperate. Then one day I was in a Caffe Nero and they rejected my loyalty card for some reason and I saw it said ‘if you prefer a milder coffee please ask for one’ on the back. I was already thinking about writing something about the incident so it seemed to suggest a design and concept for the show.
As it happened, the meaning of the show changed. Being annoyed about a coffee loyalty card is a waste of time really, so what should a 40+ comedian in the age of outrageous offensive comedy be annoyed about? Top Gear’s grouchy middle-aged maleness is presumably aimed at me, but leaves me cold. What do I care about? Am I angry or just disappointed? That’s what the show’s about.
But on top of all that this material is filtered through a formal experimentation with the idiom of stand-up, stretching time, patience tone etc which viewers of the TV show will be familiar with.
WLN: How would you describe your relationship with fans? You put a lot of material on your website for download, with MP3s of radio appearances and links to videos from your TV shows. Is that a conscious decision to continue to give ‘value’ to the people who are interested in your comedy and attend your shows?
SL: It’s mainly so people don’t have to buy it off my old management Avalon, who did really terrible deals with their own clients for productions they made where the buy-outs mean we get nothing when they put the material up on iTunes.
WLN: You’ve done a series of DVD and CD releases with Go Faster Stripe. What is it about their DIY aesthetic which made you want to get involved with them, especially with their first release?
SL: Well, according to my management, back in 2005, no-one wanted to put out anything I was doing, although I suspect Avalon may have been trying to drive up my market value by witholding me from sale without my knowledge. This Cardiff guy Chris Evans was a comedy fan who ran a kids’ clothing company on the net and heard no-one wanted to film 90s Comedian so he set up a company to do it, for £58,000 less than my previous DVD cost to film and we split the profits, meaning I make more by selling GFS stuff out of a box after gigs than I do from anything of mine that is in the shops.
WLN: For your Comedy Vehicle series you recorded some interviews with Armando Iannucci for the red button extras. How did the idea for those initially come about? They looked like they were a lot of fun to make, as well as being fun to watch.
SL: I can’t remember whose idea it was. Arm turned up and I had told him to give me a hard time, as if he hated me, and the whole thing was improvised.
WLN: What place do you think there is for satire or thought-provoking comedy in a society where sections of the public are offended by things which don’t reflect their own beliefs or values?
SL: Well, it’s essential. Absolutist ideas have to be questioned, even things you believe in. A priest I very much admired once said to me, ‘There is no faith without doubt.’
WLN: Which other comedians do you like or feel an affinity with, in terms of their style or approach to comedy?
SL: Kevin Macalleer, Simon Munnery, Harry Hill, Mike Wilmot, Boothby Graffoe, Jerry Sadowitz, Arnold Brown, Hans Teeuwen, Daniel Kitson and er…Lenny Bruce.
WLN: I believe you’re also a big music fan. What records have you been listening to the most recently?
SL: Richard Youngs’ Under Stellar Stream
Magic Christian – Evolver
Son Volt – American Central Dust
Green Pajamas – Poison In The Russian Room
Starless and Bible Black – Shape Of The Shape
And lots by the improv guitarist Derek Bailey as I am about to ‘do’ him on celebrity Mastermind.
WLN: What’s your favourite lie or inaccuracy that’s ever been said/written about you?
SL: A Daily Mail piece saying I wanted to kill Richard Hammond, and pretty much everything that was said about Jerry Springer The Opera.
WLN: What does your average day entail? What are the best and worst aspects of a life in comedy?
SL: Wake up 6.30 with my son, who is 2 & 1/2. Decide who is doing his breakfast. Try and deal with bills and correspondence in a cellar with no phone or email or mobile signal. Try and write. Do gig.
WLN: What kind of things typically inspire you when you’re writing or searching for ideas?
SL: Everything and nothing. Today I found it very funny that Damon Albarn is to be put in charge of the cultural side of the 2012 Olympics and think this may be the basis of my 2010 stand-up show.
WLN: Can you tell me one thing about yourself that most people won’t alread know?
SL: I am a member of the Friends Of Arthur Machen Society.
WLN: Who or what during your childhood most influenced where you are today?
SL: Age 7 + Marvel comics, esp Spider-man. With great power comes great responsibility.
Age 10 + the writer Ray Bradbury
Age 11 + my English teacher Bob Melhuish
Age 12+ The band The Fall
Age 15 + Samuel Beckett
Age 16 + Ted Chippington the stand-up comedian
WLN: What’s your favourite city that you’ve ever visited, either professionally or as a tourist?
SL: Florence.
WLN: What’s the best piece of advice anyone’s ever given you?
SL: Probably the above – without doubt there is not faith; the Rev Peter Wrenn.
WLN: What are you working on at the moment?
SL: A book about stand-up called How I Escaped My Certain Fate.
Book tickets for Stewart Lee’s show at Warwick Arts Centre by clicking here.
Stewart Lee
2009-10-17T15:46:49+01:00
After a successful return to the UK’s TV screens earlier this year with his BBC show Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, our titular hero is embarking on a full tour. Who’s Laughing Now had a chat with to delve beneath the literate stand-up’s exterior and find out what to expect on his current jaunt, which stops off at Warwick Arts Centre on Friday October 23rd. WLN: The show you’re currently touring is called If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One. What’s the essence of the show and how would you describe it for someone who isn’t familiar with your stand-up? Stewart Lee: Well, you have to decide what an August Edinburgh show is called by April for the programme, and I was desperate. Then one day I was in a Caffe Nero and they rejected my loyalty card for some reason and I saw it said ‘if you prefer a milder coffee please ask for one’ on the back. I was already thinking about writing something about the incident so it seemed to suggest a design and concept for the show. As it happened, the meaning of the show changed. Being annoyed about a coffee loyalty card is a waste of time really, so what should a 40+ comedian in the age of outrageous offensive comedy be annoyed about? Top Gear’s grouchy middle-aged maleness is presumably aimed at me, but leaves me cold. What do I care about? Am I angry or just disappointed? That’s what the show’s about. But on top of all that this material is filtered through a formal experimentation with the idiom of stand-up, stretching time, patience tone etc which viewers of the TV show will be familiar with. WLN: How would you describe your relationship with fans? You put a lot of material...
Eddie Prevost's AMM, who have just released their 25th album, remain a major force in free improvisation, and inspired the ‘60s Pink Floyd's edgier moments.
Paired with John Butcher, best known nowadays for aiming his horn exploratively into the architectural voids of site-specific recordings, he and the bassist Guillame Viltard complete a superficially conventional jazz trio.
Prevost surrenders the usual cymbal scraping for flick-wristed fluid drumming as Butcher blasts off from uncharacteristically bluesy runs into abstract twittering and air-swallowing clacks.
Stewart Lee
2012-12-02T01:54:44+00:00
Eddie Prevost's AMM, who have just released their 25th album, remain a major force in free improvisation, and inspired the ‘60s Pink Floyd's edgier moments. Paired with John Butcher, best known nowadays for aiming his horn exploratively into the architectural voids of site-specific recordings, he and the bassist Guillame Viltard complete a superficially conventional jazz trio. Prevost surrenders the usual cymbal scraping for flick-wristed fluid drumming as Butcher blasts off from uncharacteristically bluesy runs into abstract twittering and air-swallowing clacks.
Every generation feels it witnesses the slow death of its culture. Arriving in the glens in 1773, Johnson and Boswell were advised the real highlanders disappeared twenty years earlier. And having decamped to Cornwall in the fifties, the artist Ithell Colquhoun observed an apparently vanishing way of life in her memoir The Living Stones.
Closer to home, Childhood friends Ben Holton and Rob Glover, who played their first gig as Epic 45 in a concert at their Staffordshire school in 1997, believe they are the last generation to experience real village life in their region, as former rural communities become dormitories for commuters and struggle to maintain their unique identities in the shadow of identikit housing projects. Epic 45 make hazy, electro-acoustic, evocations of the English pastoral in the tradition of Talk Talk or The Durutti Column, and very pleasant they are too. However, there's the merest suggestion of a darker theme at play on their seventh album, Weathering.
Tracks entitled People Say This Place Is Dying or With Our Backs To The City, and emotionally directional sleeve shots of abandoned cottages and a woodland viewed through a PVC window frame, give their bucolic space blues something serious to grind against. A time bomb ticks underneath the village war memorial, and so we read these chiming cyclical guitar parts, moody atmospheric samples, found sounds, and oddly distant massed vocal parts, a little differently.
Epic 45 used to invoke, inoffensively but captivatingly, a nostalgically fictional English idyll. But now there seems to be something at stake, Weathering strikes deeper and more resonant notes.
Stewart Lee
2011-07-17T12:32:57+01:00
Every generation feels it witnesses the slow death of its culture. Arriving in the glens in 1773, Johnson and Boswell were advised the real highlanders disappeared twenty years earlier. And having decamped to Cornwall in the fifties, the artist Ithell Colquhoun observed an apparently vanishing way of life in her memoir The Living Stones. Closer to home, Childhood friends Ben Holton and Rob Glover, who played their first gig as Epic 45 in a concert at their Staffordshire school in 1997, believe they are the last generation to experience real village life in their region, as former rural communities become dormitories for commuters and struggle to maintain their unique identities in the shadow of identikit housing projects. Epic 45 make hazy, electro-acoustic, evocations of the English pastoral in the tradition of Talk Talk or The Durutti Column, and very pleasant they are too. However, there's the merest suggestion of a darker theme at play on their seventh album, Weathering. Tracks entitled People Say This Place Is Dying or With Our Backs To The City, and emotionally directional sleeve shots of abandoned cottages and a woodland viewed through a PVC window frame, give their bucolic space blues something serious to grind against. A time bomb ticks underneath the village war memorial, and so we read these chiming cyclical guitar parts, moody atmospheric samples, found sounds, and oddly distant massed vocal parts, a little differently. Epic 45 used to invoke, inoffensively but captivatingly, a nostalgically fictional English idyll. But now there seems to be something at stake, Weathering strikes deeper and more resonant notes.
1. T-SHIRT FRENZY - STEWART LEE “I DON’T THINK THAT’ T-SHIRTS
WAX FACE return to the crowded official Stewart Lee t-shirt marketplace with their most self-consciously cool design yet, cynically targeted at the ageing indie-hipster audience that make up Stewart's delusional following.
"I don't think that. I think the opposite of that.", is Stewart's philosophy of comedy boiled down to one zen-sized nugget, serving as a chest-sized signal to other secret adepts, and offering protection against psychic attack.
'I Don't Think That, I Think The Opposite Of That' is the Stewart Lee T-Shirt available on Pre-Order now via https://wax-face.com/stewart-lee
The T-Shirt available in two colourways.
Silk Screened and hand printed on Anthem Organic t-shirts. Shipping starts on April 21st
2. TV SNOWFLAKE TORNADO
Snowflake and Tornado are both on the BBC iplayer now.
The new stand-up show, BASIC LEE hits the road and the Royal Festival Hall.
April 2023
Thursday 13th April 2023 - Theatre Royal, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Friday 14th April 2023 - Theatre Royal, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Saturday 15th April 2023 - Theatre Royal, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Tuesday 18th April 2023 - Forum Theatre, Malvern - TICKETS
Wednesday 19th April 2023 - Forum Theatre, Malvern - TICKETS
Thursday 20th April 2023 - Westlands, Yeovil - TICKETS
Wednesday 26th April 2023 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Thursday 27th April 2023 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Friday 28th April 2023 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Saturday 29th April 2023 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Sunday 30th April 2023 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
May 2023
Tuesday 2nd May 2023 - Mercury Theatre, Colchester - TICKETS
Wednesday 3rd May 2023 - Mercury Theatre, Colchester - TICKETS
Thursday 4th May 2023 - Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS
Friday 5th May 2023 - Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS
Saturday 6th May 2023 - Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS
Friday 26th May 2023 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Saturday 27th May 2023 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Saturday 27th May 2023 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Sunday 28th May 2023 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
June 2023
Wednesday 28th June 2023 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Thursday 29th June 2023 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Friday 30th June 2023 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
July 2023
Saturday 1st July 2023 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 2nd July 2023 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 2nd July 2023 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
4. EDINBLUR
I will be doing a truncated compacted 70 min version of BASIC LEE, stripped of nuance and heavy on laffs, in the Edinburgh Fringe at The Stand’s New Town Theatre from Aug 11-20th at 1.50pm
Other top shows in the same space include Bridget Christie’s Who Am I?, Danny Bhoy’s Now Is Not A Good Time, the always exceptional Paul Sinha’s Pauly Bengali, Robin Ince’s Melons, and Heard It, by the mighty sin-eater of manly stand-up Seann Walsh.
And remember, because of the unique way The Stand is run, none of the less visible August acts go home financially ruined for ever.
5. JAZZ ABOUT ME
I am delighted to be the subject of a new album of improvised music which took me totally by surprise.
THE VA ALBUM SERIES.
This is a series of albums, each dedicated to and sent to a living person who has been an inspiration to those various artists who contribute to each album, hence the collective name VARIOUS ADMIRERS.
This is a non-profit venture made out of the love of music and the wish to thank the people each album is dedicated to with a collection of songs and pieces.
6. I ARROGANTLY RECOMMEND SOME 2023 HAPPENINGS AND THINGS
LOVELY EGGS TV -
It’s becoming abundnatly clear, under a government that consider the BBC too left wing and Channel 4 too niche, that if we don’t make our own alternative culture we will lose it.
6 Music staples the indefatigable indie-art duo The Lovely Eggs spent lockdown making the kind of ‘80s arts coverage television series subscribers to this email will love, all under their own steam and self-financed. And they are drip-feeding them week by week to you for free.
I’m in week 2, talking about 19th c comedians in a graveyard, at the height of my lockdown unwellness.
Quentin Smires is in it, who is ace.
And so is King Rocker director Michael Cumming, doing his funny art! See the shows now before they get pulled! https://www.thelovelyeggs.co.uk
They say...
“Never afraid to experiment, unfurl the flags and set sail into unknown territory, independent DIY psych punk duo The Lovely Eggs have done it again. This time they’ve made their own TV show: EGGS TV. Teaming up with artist Casey Raymond, Eggs TV embarks on a televisual odyssey, shining a light on alternative and underground art, music and British subculture, sucking you spiralling down the plughole into The Lovely Eggs’ distinctly odd and off the wall universe. Gruff Rhys stuck up a mountain, Stewart Lee’s tour of comedian’s graves, John Grant’s fridge magnet collection, David Shrigley’s ‘Stuff’, odd smells emanating from Katie Puckrik, Ian MacKaye waxing lyrical about a life in punk rock, Tim Presley, Cate Le Bon, Gwennifer Raymond, John Cooper Clarke, The Space Lady, Andy Votel, strange films from the minds of Quentin Smirhes, Bedwyr Williams and Michael Cummings, animation, music, poetry, bagpipes for the eyes and much much more. Sick of the pap offered by mainstream television, Eggs TV is an art/experimental TV channel featuring live performances, spoken word, art and animation. "It’s the type of show that used to exist in the deepest darkest corners of alternative TV programming, and EGGS TV is here to bring it back," said Holly. "We've known Casey since we worked together on a music video over 10 years ago and became pals. The idea of making a TV series together seemed like an absolutely brilliant and ridiculous thing to do, so we just cracked on with it."
The first episode will be released on The Lovely Eggs’ Youtube Channel on April 6th at 11am GMT.
The remaining 5 episodes will be released weekly via Youtube.
KIM NOBLE - LULLABY FOR SCAVENGERS Rend your heart and mind once again with more of Noble’s art-comedy genius
MARCH 15TH - APRIL 8TH London Soho Theatre
THE DAMNED/THE NIGHTINGALES 2 punk era legends of wildly differing levels of fame in one double bill.
MARCH 31ST Cardiff Great Hall, APRIL 1st Southend Cliffs, 4th Nottingham Rock City, 5th Liverpool Academy, 7th Newcastle NX, 8th Glasgow Academy, 10th Leeds Academy, 11th M’cr Albert Hall, 13th B’ham Town Hall, 15th Norwich Nick Rayns, 17th Brighton Dome, 18th S’hampton Guildhall, 20th/21st London Alexandra Palace,
ALASDAIR ROBERTS Songwriter re-wiring Scottish folk tradition
MARCH 28th London Sutton House, APRIL 1st Cambridge Blue Moon, 6th W’chester Hyde Tavern, 7th Oxford Florence Park Community Centre, JUNE 23RD London West Hampstead Arts, 24th London Barbican
ALASDAIR BECKETT-KING - The Interdimensional Alasdair Beckett-King.
I saw this sharp absurdist show in Edinburgh and it is brilliant.
APRIL 8th Bath Rondo,
13th Oxford Glee,
14th Birmingham Glee,
20th Aldershot West End,
21st New Milton Forest Arts,
22nd Brighton Komedia,
27th Norwich Arts Centre,
28th Bristol Comedy Box @ Hen & Chicken,
29th Tiverton Community Arts Cent
MAY 5th Maidstone Hazlitt,
6th Cambridge Junction,
11th Fareham Ashcroft,
12th Winchester Arc,
13th Swindon Arts,
16th Newcastle Stand,
17th Edinburgh Stand,
18th Glasgow Stand,
19th Belfast Limelight,
20th Derry/Londonderry Nerve,
27th M’cr Home,
28th Leeds Wardrobe
JUNE 27th London Leicester Sq Theatre
YO LA TENGO Gods of American indie APRIL 10TH Dublin 3Olympia, 12th M’cr New Century, 13th Bristol SWX, 14th London Palladium,
TONY! Tony Blair rock opera by Harry Hill and Steve Brown.
APRIL 15TH - MAY 21ST London Leicester Sq Theatre
BEN MOOR Various things, 18th April - 23rd May. The superbly gifted performance art comedian has two shows on the go. With Jo Neary he offers his amazing Russian Doll of a show BookTalkBookTalkBook, a sublime parody of literary events, at Machynlleth Comedy Festival on Sunday 30th April, and at The Hen and Chickens, Islington, London, on Tuesday 23rd May. I cannot recomment it enough. His current solo show Who Here's Lost? is at The Hen and Chickens on 18th and 19th April.
SONIC BOOM A middle class man ruins his mind so you don’t have to.
APR 19th M’cr Band On The Wall, 20th Glasgow Room 2, 22nd Leeds Brudenell, 27th London Studio 9294
IMPRESSIONS OF JOHN COLTRANE w Alan Skidmore, Dominic Lash
APRIL 21ST London Café Oto
THE OLDEST COMEDY CLUB IN BRITAIN is a documentary about Crouch End’s DOWNSTAIRS AT THE KING’S HEAD and Londoners can see screeiningds of it at the Art House cinema there from April 29th. I am in it as usual. TICKETS HERE
RICHARD DAWSON Genius art-folk-noise songwriter
APRIL 25th M’cr New Century, 26th Glasgow St Luke’s, 27th L’pool Tung, 28th Leeds City Varieties, MAY 3rd Cardiff Gate, 5th London Barbican
BLUE AEROPLANES Bristol beat poets APRIL 28TH London Electric Ballroom
THE FALLEN WOMEN APRIL 28th - The Moon, Cardiff; 29TH - The Ill Repute, Bristol.
HAWKWIND This current Hawkwind iteration channels their classic ‘70s space rock sound unashamedly, with keyboardist Thighpaulsandra of Coil, Cope and Spiritualised clearly living out a childhood dream. APRIL 28th Manchester Academy I, 29th April – Rock City Nottingham, 30th – Northern Kin Festival Durham, JUNE 16th – Hall for Cornwall, AUGUST 28th - Castell Roc, Chepstow Castle
SWELL MAPS C21 Surviving Swell Maps augmented w celebrity guests APRIL 29TH London Café Oto
ROSIE HOLT Satire’s Rosie Holt will be satirising the shit out of shit at the following places in 2023;
APRIL 29th Ipswich Corn Exchange,
30th Leeds City Varieties,
MAY 4th & 5th Bristol Hen & Chicken,
May 7th Salford Lowry,
JULY 1st Oxford Festival Marquee
ROBERT LLOYD (Nightingales), JANET BEVERIDGE BEAN (Eleventh Dream Day/Freakwater), LINDY MORRISON (Go-Betweens), MARK BEDFORD (Madness) & PETE BYRCHMORE (Membranes)
LONDON BUSH HALL, MAY 2ND
This is the event of the year in my mind - and I can’t go.
Nightingales frontman and post-punk steamroller Robert Lloyd (the star of the doc King Rocker that Michael Cumming and I made) has a long term sideline in brilliant blue collar country songs, like a Cannock Lee Hazelwood offering black country country and western.
Under lockdown he hatched a plan to document this other facet of his talent with Janet Beveridge Bean, of the legendary Chicago bands Eleventh Dream Day and Freakwater, on vocals.
And for one night only - May 2nd - they are performing this amazing soon-to-be-released set of tearjerkers at London’s Bush Hall, accompanied by a veritable Blind Faith made up of members of many of the bands I love the most in the world.
The Go-Betweens’ rightful drummer Lindy Morrison sits behind the traps with her trademark fills, Pete Byrchmore of The Membranes is on guitar, and the bass is Mark Bedford from Madness - and if you remember his playing on Robert Wyatt’s Shipbuilding you’ll know he’s adept at the sensitivity required here as he is at holding down a rocksteady rhythm.
DO NOT MISS THIS. IT CAN NEVER BE REPEATED.
Here’s a flyer. Tell your friends. 0208 222 6955. Or the Dice.fm ticket ap.
OTOBOKE BEAVER Japanese noise-girls
MAY 2nd London Electric Ballroom,
4th M’cr Club Academy,
5th Glasgow St Luke’s,
7th Belfast Empire,
8th Dublin Button Factory,
10th Bristol Fleece
LAUREN CONNORS & ALAN LICHT - Lucid guitar duo MAY 5TH/6TH London Café Oto
JOSIE LONG
The absolutely brilliant stand-up is on tour
MAY 12th Berwick-Upon-Tweed Maltings,
14th Salford Lowry,
18th Trebah Ampitheatre,
19th Ivybridge Watermark,
20th Clevedon Curzon,
27th Warwick Arts,
30th Lawrence Batley Huddersfield,
JUNE 3rd Giffnock Eastwood Park,
21st Wigan Old Courts,
22nd Halifax Square Chapel,
23rd Oxford Old Fire Station,
27th Druimfin Mull Theatre,
30th Cambridge Junction,
JULY 1st Folkestone Quarterhouse,
7th Stirling Tolbooth,
9th Exeter Phoenix TICKETS HERE
THE FALLEN LEAVES
Gentleman mod-punks
MAY 13th Camden Dublin Castle,
SEP 9th Camden Dublin Castle.
GAVIN BRYARS never failed us yet MAY 15TH/16th London Café Oto
HOUSE OF ALL M’cr post-punk supergroup, a kind of 6 Music evening show Asia, hit the road.
HANLEY HANLEY GREENWAY BRAMAGH!
LONG RYDERS Alt country pioneers return, again
MAY 19th Leamington Assembly,
20th London 229,
21st Leeds Brudenell,
22nd Glasgow Oran Moor,
23rd L’pool Cavern,
25th Brighton Patterns
LOOP Heavy psyche survivors
MAY 20th Dublin Wheelans, 21st M’cr Deaf Institute, 22nd Glasgow Room 2, 23rd Leeds Brudenell, 25th London Garage, 27th Norwich UEA
CHUCK PROPHET Chisel-cheeked Alt Country guitar-slinger
MAY 31st London Garage
JUNE 2nd Nottingham Metronome,
4th Oxford Bullingdon,
6th Leeds Brudenell,
7th Glasgow St Luke’s,
10th N’castle Cluny,
12th B’ham Hare & Hounds,
13th Bristol Fleece,
14th Southampton 1865
LAURA CANNELL Hypnotic fenland dronemadchen JUNE 17th London King’s Place
THE CHAMELEONS Most convincing line-up for years of the always emotionally edifying Big Music should-have-beens.
JUNE 20th Leeds Old Woollen,
21st L’pool Hangar 34,
22nd N’castle Riverside,
23rd Edinburgh Liquid Room,
24th Glasgow Garage,
26th Aberdeen Lemon Tree,
28th Norwich Epic,
29th Cambridge Junction,
30th Leamington Assembly,
JULY 1ST London Islington Assembly,
3rd Bristol Fleece,
4th Brighton Chalk,
7th Castleton Devil’s Arse,
8th Holmfirth Picturedrome
MUSIC FROM SUMMERISLE Various artists play the Wicker Man s/track, including Magnet (!), and Alasdair Roberts JUNE 24th London Barbican
BMX BANDITS Also-beens of classic Scottish indie JUNE 30TH Edinburgh Voodoo Rooms
ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN Another tilt at the infinite horizon from the cosmic scallies SEPT 12TH Nottingham Royal Concert Halls, 14th Edinburgh Usher Halls, 16th L’pool Bank Arena, 18th London Royal Albert Hall
BRITISH CRYPTIDS ON YOUTUBE In 1974 the producer of Hereford Wakes, David Emlyn Edwards, made a series of films about unknown animals in the United Kingdom.
The films were presumably destined to be sold to a UK broadcaster - either BBC or ITV - but they seem to only have been shown at schools and ended up languishing in public libraries.
The music for the series was written and produced by Hereford Wakes' Thorsten Schmidt, continuing his professional collaboration with David Emlyn Edwards.
The latest restoration to be released is 'The Woodwose of Cannock Chase'. If you enjoyed Hereford Wakes, we're sure you'll enjoy this too! https://youtu.be/loZwFNT8H_s
6. IN OUR LAMENTATIONS 2023
Ruggero Deodato (Junk genius, 1939)
Kelly Monteith (Lucky pants stand-up, 1942)
Alan Rankine (Associate musician, 1958)
Darryl Hunt (Pogue bass, 1950)
Jeff Beck (He happened ten years time ago, 1944)
Jane Suck (punk chronicler, 195?)
Yukihiro Takahashi (Sadistic Mika Man, 1952)
Ronald Blythe (Akenfieldsman, 1922)
Piers Haggard (hack genius of Claw and Quatermass, 1932)
Van Connor (sturdy psychedelic tree, 1967)
David Sutherland (Bash Street basher, 1933)
David Crosby (Byrdmaniac, 1941)
Tom Verlaine (Sui generis genius Televisionary, 1949)
Burt Bacarach (Musical cheesnius, 1928)
Eugene Cheese (chucklin’ cheesenius moocher, 1944)
Betty Boothroyd (croaky speaker, 1939)
Wayne Shorter (Shorter no longer, 1933)
David Lindley (Kaleidoscopic guitarist, 1944)
Keith Johnstone (Improvisational Canadian, 1933)
Rolly Crump (West Coast Pop Artist, 1930)
Paul O’Grady (Proudly woke drag act, 1955)
Peter Usborne (Generation-spooking publisher, 1937)
Stewart Lee
2023-04-03T20:17:21+01:00
1. T-SHIRT FRENZY - STEWART LEE “I DON’T THINK THAT’ T-SHIRTS WAX FACE return to the crowded official Stewart Lee t-shirt marketplace with their most self-consciously cool design yet, cynically targeted at the ageing indie-hipster audience that make up Stewart's delusional following. "I don't think that. I think the opposite of that.", is Stewart's philosophy of comedy boiled down to one zen-sized nugget, serving as a chest-sized signal to other secret adepts, and offering protection against psychic attack. 'I Don't Think That, I Think The Opposite Of That' is the Stewart Lee T-Shirt available on Pre-Order now via https://wax-face.com/stewart-lee The T-Shirt available in two colourways. Silk Screened and hand printed on Anthem Organic t-shirts. Shipping starts on April 21st 2. TV SNOWFLAKE TORNADO Snowflake and Tornado are both on the BBC iplayer now. Snowflake is here. & Tornado is here. 2. BASIC LEE The new stand-up show, BASIC LEE hits the road and the Royal Festival Hall. April 2023 Thursday 13th April 2023 - Theatre Royal, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS Friday 14th April 2023 - Theatre Royal, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS Saturday 15th April 2023 - Theatre Royal, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS Tuesday 18th April 2023 - Forum Theatre, Malvern - TICKETS Wednesday 19th April 2023 - Forum Theatre, Malvern - TICKETS Thursday 20th April 2023 - Westlands, Yeovil - TICKETS Wednesday 26th April 2023 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS Thursday 27th April 2023 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS Friday 28th April 2023 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS Saturday 29th April 2023 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS Sunday 30th April 2023 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS May 2023 Tuesday 2nd May 2023 - Mercury Theatre, Colchester - TICKETS Wednesday 3rd May 2023 - Mercury Theatre, Colchester - TICKETS Thursday 4th May 2023 - Yvonne...
Last year, Uncle Acid's home-burned CDR, the imaginary ‘70s horror movie soundtrack Blood Lust, became a genuine word of mouth phenomenon, as opposed to a carefully orchestrated major label master-plan masquerading as a word of mouth phenomenon.
Black as early Sabbath, but cautiously funky-assed and glittery in a groovy glam rock way, the mysterious and all but anonymous Cambridge coven could be Doom Metal's answer to The Darkness, an unlikely crossover no-one saw coming.
Blood Lust gets its first legitimate release in advance of a new album.
Stewart Lee
2012-11-25T22:01:28+00:00
Last year, Uncle Acid's home-burned CDR, the imaginary ‘70s horror movie soundtrack Blood Lust, became a genuine word of mouth phenomenon, as opposed to a carefully orchestrated major label master-plan masquerading as a word of mouth phenomenon. Black as early Sabbath, but cautiously funky-assed and glittery in a groovy glam rock way, the mysterious and all but anonymous Cambridge coven could be Doom Metal's answer to The Darkness, an unlikely crossover no-one saw coming. Blood Lust gets its first legitimate release in advance of a new album.
The Tom Waits of 2008 has ventured far from the conventional balladry his career began with in the early Seventies, and deep into the forest of weird, faux-experimental fairground music. Tonight he appears as a dishevelled hobo, complete with Tourettes spasms and ticks, standing in a circus ring. Birds have eaten his breadcrumb trail. There’s no way back out of the woods.
The Glitter and Doom Tour, its UK dates limited to two nights in Edinburgh Playhouse, costs £102.50 a ticket, and punters are required to show photo i.d on arrival. We were offered unsolicited advice on the unsuitability of ours after we had been let in, which I suppose is all part of the service for such a high ticket price. Waits takes the stage, the set resembling a carnival in a junkyard, forty minutes late, just as the slow handclap started, and then orchestrates the ebb and flow of applause. He stamps his feet. Pre-positioned dust rises in a cloud. He sings, all the lyrics rendered incomprehensible by the growl that grows more guttural with the years. The band clump their clownish reels, a square’s idea of weird. Every shift in mood, every gesture Waits makes, is shadowed by superbly slick and subtle lighting changes. But everything is calculated and pre-ordained. This isn’t a gig. It’s a theatre piece. And Waits and his band are actors, playing the role of a band in an American Gothic fantasy. During Eyeball Kid Waits puts on a shiny hat which reflects the light. There’s a standing ovation. The Edinburgh Fringe starts next week. At The Standing Order pub there’s a guy called Mr Methane who can fart the national anthem. These people need to get out more.
The band leave. Waits sits at the piano. He tells a funny story about something that supposedly happened last time he was in Edinburgh, but like a visiting hack American comic who hasn’t done his local research, maintains it involved swallowing a ‘bullfrog’ in someone’s ‘yard’. Everyone laughs. He dismisses requests, - “Those are all requests, but they’re your requests” – and even though we appreciate he’s in character as a grouchy genius, a little humility wouldn’t go amiss at these prices. Waits plays Innocent When You Dream and hands the chorus over to the crowd, the one moment in the evening when something genuine seemed to happen, before the band, now augmented by his son Sullivan on bongos, return for a closing set of more rootsy, less contrived material. His son? Tom Waits could have a son, sure, but would the shaking hobo-clown-huckster, and could the hobo-clown-huckster’s son afford sneakers? What is it we are watching exactly? The artifice of Waits’ latter-day act makes it difficult to respond to emotionally, as you never feel you’re reaching anything real, but now it’s being compromised by inappropriate footwear. At least make the boy pretend to have a club foot or something.
Nonetheless, the crowd are ecstatic. Was it an example of the West End musical effect, where high prices mean the audience have already invested so heavily, both financially and emotionally, in the event that it can’t fail? Or, like the medicine show shysters of old, whose schtick Waits’ has appropriated, is the old devil just a master salesman?
Stewart Lee
2008-07-27T20:11:21+01:00
The Tom Waits of 2008 has ventured far from the conventional balladry his career began with in the early Seventies, and deep into the forest of weird, faux-experimental fairground music. Tonight he appears as a dishevelled hobo, complete with Tourettes spasms and ticks, standing in a circus ring. Birds have eaten his breadcrumb trail. There’s no way back out of the woods. The Glitter and Doom Tour, its UK dates limited to two nights in Edinburgh Playhouse, costs £102.50 a ticket, and punters are required to show photo i.d on arrival. We were offered unsolicited advice on the unsuitability of ours after we had been let in, which I suppose is all part of the service for such a high ticket price. Waits takes the stage, the set resembling a carnival in a junkyard, forty minutes late, just as the slow handclap started, and then orchestrates the ebb and flow of applause. He stamps his feet. Pre-positioned dust rises in a cloud. He sings, all the lyrics rendered incomprehensible by the growl that grows more guttural with the years. The band clump their clownish reels, a square’s idea of weird. Every shift in mood, every gesture Waits makes, is shadowed by superbly slick and subtle lighting changes. But everything is calculated and pre-ordained. This isn’t a gig. It’s a theatre piece. And Waits and his band are actors, playing the role of a band in an American Gothic fantasy. During Eyeball Kid Waits puts on a shiny hat which reflects the light. There’s a standing ovation. The Edinburgh Fringe starts next week. At The Standing Order pub there’s a guy called Mr Methane who can fart the national anthem. These people need to get out more. The band leave. Waits sits at the piano. He tells a funny story about...
A few seats have been majicked up for the sold out Leics Sq Theatre run, so if you missed out here you are...
Stew
SNOWFLAKE/TORNADO - GOOD SEATS JUST RELEASED for Leicester Square Theatre run.
A slew of good seats at the Leicester Square Theatre throughout the October, November and December 2019 dates will be released for sale tomorrow (Thursday 12th Sept).
Stewart Lee is to become the first comedian to do a book launch on a barge.
Lee will read from his new book MARCH OF THE LEMMINGS, from the deck of WORD ON THE WATER, the floating bookshop moored on the Regent's Canal in Granary Square, near London's King's Cross, on Sunday 15th September at 2pm. (N1C4AA)
"As there is no room for listeners on the boat, I will address them as they stand on the shore," says Lee, "I will be like Christ talking from a fishing boat, or a Viking leader making laws from the island of the Icelandic Tingwall parliament."
The reading will be followed by a raucous free jazz set from the trio of ALAN WILKINSON, STEVE NOBLE and JOHN EDWARDS, perched dangerously on the barge's roof. "The badly thought out event is sure to cause no end of problems, and may set back the cause of the written word, and all jazz, for decades", confessed Lee.
"Some of the book, which deals almost exclusively with Brexit and was completed in March, now feels irrelevant", says Lee, "but much of it is so prophetic it is as if it was written by an omnipotent God, bending reality to his will, which frightens me to be honest"
Attendees may want to bring rainwear, and flasks, or money to buy their own food and drink from one of Granary Square's many artisanal delicacy outlets. If anyone has any quality books they want to donate to WORD ON THE WATER, they would be gladly received.
"You need to bear in mind that the water is dark, lonely and dangerous," warned Lee. "In fact Paddy, who co-runs the shop, recently fell in the canal and broke his leg."
Dear fans A few seats have been majicked up for the sold out Leics Sq Theatre run, so if you missed out here you are... Stew SNOWFLAKE/TORNADO - GOOD SEATS JUST RELEASED for Leicester Square Theatre run. A slew of good seats at the Leicester Square Theatre throughout the October, November and December 2019 dates will be released for sale tomorrow (Thursday 12th Sept). Book them here: Leicester Square Theatre Website MARCH OF THE LEMMINGS - LONDON BOOK LAUNCH Stewart Lee is to become the first comedian to do a book launch on a barge. Lee will read from his new book MARCH OF THE LEMMINGS, from the deck of WORD ON THE WATER, the floating bookshop moored on the Regent's Canal in Granary Square, near London's King's Cross, on Sunday 15th September at 2pm. (N1C4AA) "As there is no room for listeners on the boat, I will address them as they stand on the shore," says Lee, "I will be like Christ talking from a fishing boat, or a Viking leader making laws from the island of the Icelandic Tingwall parliament." The reading will be followed by a raucous free jazz set from the trio of ALAN WILKINSON, STEVE NOBLE and JOHN EDWARDS, perched dangerously on the barge's roof. "The badly thought out event is sure to cause no end of problems, and may set back the cause of the written word, and all jazz, for decades", confessed Lee. "Some of the book, which deals almost exclusively with Brexit and was completed in March, now feels irrelevant", says Lee, "but much of it is so prophetic it is as if it was written by an omnipotent God, bending reality to his will, which frightens me to be honest" Attendees may want to bring rainwear, and flasks, or money to...
Albert Ayler’s body was retrieved from the East River in Brooklyn on the 25th of November, 1970, a few months after his 34th birthday. The saxophonist grew up in Cleveland, left to find work as a musician playing in restaurants in Sweden in 1962, and returned to New York, changed and inspired, to take the American avant-garde jazz of the period further from its roots than anyone thought it could, or perhaps should, go. Ayler played at John Coltrane’s funeral, as if the baton were being handed on, but his mysterious death means we’ll never know exactly how he might have developed. For many, the apparent, uncompromising aggression of the raucous free jazz movement dubbed The New Thing encapsulated black anger. But Ayler’s music resisted definition, suggesting euphoric celebration and revolutionary fervor in equal measure.
Ayler’s obituary in the jazz magazine Downbeat struggled to categorise the saxophonist. Was the music he made – a mix of nursery rhyme melodies, military bugle blasts, raging spirituals, funereal dirges, and unrelenting improvisations of the harshest quality – really jazz at all? Faced with confusion, and often outright hostility, in his lifetime, Ayler claimed that history would be his judge. “One day the people will understand,” was his oft-repeated mantra. This year’s London Jazz Festival features two Ayler related performances, - a concert of his music by the guitarist Marc Ribot and Ayler’s bassist Henry Grimes, and a free afternoon show by the American saxophonist and Ayler-fan Caroline Kraabel. This is preceded by a screening of new documentary, My Name Is Albert Ayler, by the young Swedish director Kasper Collin. Does this flurry of officially sanctioned South Bank approval mean that the people do now, finally, understand Albert Ayler?
Collin’s film premiered at the ICA earlier this year. It’s a haunting mesh of old cine footage, paint-stripping live performances, and reflective interviews with surviving friends and family. A strange shot, of a semi-naked Ayler, starting silently into the camera, threads through the film, as if the subject is daring you to dismiss him. “I didn’t want to speculate about things to much,” explains the director, “I wanted to leave it up to the audience to decide.” Consequently, Collin avoids commentary and frames Ayler’s life with impressionistic images. On his first visit to Sweden we see footage of the midnight sun that fascinated him. His closing months in Brooklyn see him again obsessed by the sun, staring into it across the East River. And when Collin goes to Cleveland to meet relatives, his brother and collaborator the trumpeter Donald Ayler, and his sprightly father Edward, they get lost in a cemetery whilst looking for his grave. “The film was produced over a long time. I knew about Albert Ayler seeing the sun in Sweden maybe two years into the project. The film was a process. It wasn’t really scripted. I built it around recordings of Albert Ayler’s own voice. The contrast between his music and his soft, gentle voice was fantastic, because it is not the voice you are expecting.”
For Collin, Sweden is crucial to Ayler’s career. “Scandinavia was important for the development of American free-jazz and avant-garde music,” he suggests. “Albert Ayler felt more relaxed in Sweden. Probably there were some people here who believed in him. It helped him get confident, even If not everyone in Sweden like what he was doing. One big event was in the spring of 1962, when the jazz club The Golden Circle opened, and the had really great acts like Cecil Taylor and Sunny Murray.” Sunny Murray played drums with Ayler throughout the 60’s. A bear of a man whose memories of Ayler often trailed off into happy, helpless laughter, he toured here last month fronting a trio including two British musicians, the saxophonist Tony Bevan and the double bass player John Edwards. At the Red Rose in Finsbury Park, London, the response to their opening set, and the demographic diversity of the crowd, would have convinced Ayler that the people did, finally, understand. Does it seem strange to Sunny Murray that the saxophonist should leave his native land, only to discover the kindred spirits of the American avant-garde in far from home in Sweden.
“No not really,” he says, sat at the side of the stage, rolling a cigarette, “I haven’t figured out yet how me and Cecil Taylor ended up in Sweden, but I first met Albert when he came over to the club, wearing a very handsome cap, dressed very nice in his leather suit. He said he had been playing there in Sweden since he left the army. He said he had been playing his music alone in the forest by himself. Said he had been doing that a year. He asked if he could play with us. Back then Cecil was rather… not shy but… he just wasn’t outgoing at the time. It was such a weight having to carry The New Thing. Anyway, Cecil said, “I don’t know. I don’t think so.” So me and Jimmy Lyons, we said ‘Yeah, go home and get your horn.” So he split and he came back with this beautiful new sax, and that’s always a good sign, so we told him wait until we give him a signal,. Now, he hasn’t met Cecil yet see, and so then in the middle of the gig we said ‘come up’ and it was beautiful. Albert was like a magic streak of light in the air. So Cecil said to Albert “we’re going to Denmark, you can hang with the band if you want”.
“Albert was always saying ‘one day people will understand.’ He was right about that,” concludes Collin. “He would have been very glad that his music is more appreciated by a younger audience, coming to it from alternative rock. It’s not a real jazz thing anymore.”
The Ayler related gigs in the LJF are:
Friday 10 November: Marc Ribot’s Spiritual Unity, which features bassist Henry Grimes who played with Ayler, at the QEH, 7.30pm
Saturday 11 November: There’s a free afternoon gig inspired by Ayler by US saxophonist Caroline Kraabel at 4pm in QEH Front Room venue, after the film screening on the same day (where Grimes will be in conversation with journo Kevin Le Genre beforehand) at 2pm.
Stewart Lee
2006-10-08T19:29:09+01:00
Albert Ayler’s body was retrieved from the East River in Brooklyn on the 25th of November, 1970, a few months after his 34th birthday. The saxophonist grew up in Cleveland, left to find work as a musician playing in restaurants in Sweden in 1962, and returned to New York, changed and inspired, to take the American avant-garde jazz of the period further from its roots than anyone thought it could, or perhaps should, go. Ayler played at John Coltrane’s funeral, as if the baton were being handed on, but his mysterious death means we’ll never know exactly how he might have developed. For many, the apparent, uncompromising aggression of the raucous free jazz movement dubbed The New Thing encapsulated black anger. But Ayler’s music resisted definition, suggesting euphoric celebration and revolutionary fervor in equal measure. Ayler’s obituary in the jazz magazine Downbeat struggled to categorise the saxophonist. Was the music he made – a mix of nursery rhyme melodies, military bugle blasts, raging spirituals, funereal dirges, and unrelenting improvisations of the harshest quality – really jazz at all? Faced with confusion, and often outright hostility, in his lifetime, Ayler claimed that history would be his judge. “One day the people will understand,” was his oft-repeated mantra. This year’s London Jazz Festival features two Ayler related performances, - a concert of his music by the guitarist Marc Ribot and Ayler’s bassist Henry Grimes, and a free afternoon show by the American saxophonist and Ayler-fan Caroline Kraabel. This is preceded by a screening of new documentary, My Name Is Albert Ayler, by the young Swedish director Kasper Collin. Does this flurry of officially sanctioned South Bank approval mean that the people do now, finally, understand Albert Ayler? Collin’s film premiered at the ICA earlier this year. It’s a haunting mesh of old...
Long term Londoner and Alternative Country godfather Sid Griffin's twenty-first century bluegrass blueprint is a nostalgic negotiation with his native Kentucky's indigenous music.
Producer John Wood brokered Fairport Convention's sixties deals with British folk, and now he carves common ground between Carla Frey's fleet Western Swing fiddle, Griffin's mandolin, and his Scottish lieutenant Neil Robert Herd's Celtic flavoured songwriting contributions. Bowie's Heroes breathes anew as a stately banjo-driven cover, and the whirling reel Betsey Trotwood fairly ignites, but a sitar spangled Paint It, Black smacks of novelty.
The Coal Porters walk a fine line with bold barefacedness.
Stewart Lee
2012-08-23T01:58:49+01:00
Long term Londoner and Alternative Country godfather Sid Griffin's twenty-first century bluegrass blueprint is a nostalgic negotiation with his native Kentucky's indigenous music. Producer John Wood brokered Fairport Convention's sixties deals with British folk, and now he carves common ground between Carla Frey's fleet Western Swing fiddle, Griffin's mandolin, and his Scottish lieutenant Neil Robert Herd's Celtic flavoured songwriting contributions. Bowie's Heroes breathes anew as a stately banjo-driven cover, and the whirling reel Betsey Trotwood fairly ignites, but a sitar spangled Paint It, Black smacks of novelty. The Coal Porters walk a fine line with bold barefacedness.
In Edinburgh, where I write this, there is concern that the city’s newly opened branch of the Kremlin-backed news agency Sputnik is intended specifically to destabilise post-Brexit English-Scottish relations. Message to Putin: “Don’t worry, Vladimir baby! We can handle this one ourselves!!”
Nonetheless, let us compare the contrasting media manipulation strategies of Putin’s Russia and, for example, the Labour party, both of them organisations that have, at times, abandoned their leftwing core beliefs in an attempt to adapt to a shifting geopolitical landscape. If last week’s news is to be believed, Russia’s control of media extends as far as hacking staff at the New York Times. As well as the Kremlin getting to see funny cartoons of representational figures holding up signs with writing on them hours ahead of the rest of us, could this hack also mean Russia could plant false stories into American media at source?
Is Donald Trump, for example, whose rise is fuelling fears of forthcoming global nuclear war, actually a fictional creation of Russian propagandists intended to destabilise the west? Oddly, this is a more comforting proposition than the idea that he really exists.
In the autumn of 2015, it was suggested that Putin’s deliberately penis-shaped submarines, designed specifically to subconsciously exaggerate our perceptions of Russian genitalia, are poking around the transatlantic data cables to ensure the maverick anarcho-superpower’s ability to cut continental Europe off from America. Two campaigns working in opposition might then mean American media were full of Russian lies that we in Europe weren’t actually able to view.
On the other hand, this kind of strategy would be typical of Putin’s propaganda guru Vladislav Surkov, a surrealist artist who, despite dressing like a disgraced Top Gear presenter, uses creatively chaotic double-think to sculpt our perceptions of Russia as determinedly as Richard Dreyfuss mushes mashed potato into mountains in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
On the one hand, dope-fiend Russian athletes’ disqualification from the Rio feelgood festival was embarrassing; on the other, it creates the impression of a country of unpredictable law-defying crazies so convincingly Surkov himself may have masterminded it. There’s no way of knowing anymore. Surkov may even have written this. I may actually be him without my even knowing it.
In March 2015, I wrote, for this paper, a silly fantasy about a giant statue of a naked Putin landing in my garden. Reading the below-the-line internet comments later, I realised how thorough Russia’s determination to muddy the waters of opinion was; many of them were clearly generated by almost-literate Kremlin cyber-slaves, rather than by the usual neoliberal trolls taking time off from masturbating over old videos of Toby Young on a rowing reality TV show.
Briefly, I adopted a strategy of writing borderline meaningless gibberish about Russia to try and provoke weird responses from the full-time Kremlin-backed commenters. Indeed, in a column about the Eurovision Song Contest three months later I discreetly included the following irrelevant paragraph: “One may as well give the kosovorotka-marinading wazzocks something incomprehensible to feed to their bewildered brainstems. To me, then, Vladimir Putin is a giant, prolapsed female worker bee that sucks hot ridicule out of langoustines’ cephalothoraxes. Let’s see what crunchy, expansionist lavatory honey this notion causes the parthenogenetic Russian keyboard wendigos to inflate for us this week, in the shadow of Paul McGann and his art gnome.”
The problem here was twofold. Firstly, many Observer readers found this nonsense indistinguishable from my usual writing. (As has been pointed out by contributors many times, I am no AA Gill. Now that man can write!)
And, secondly, many of the pro-Putin below-the-line comments the incoherence provoked were, I suspect, actually placed by sassy readers attempting to parody the usual Kremlin posts.
Consider, for example, this convincingly odd submission from General Dreedle. “Russia is very well doing without your Opra Winfrey western pornography and youre decadent music. More lies about Ukraine which was only the size of a biscuit before transsexual won.”
Whether the supposed Observer contributor General Dreedle is real or not, the fact is Putin’s Russia has taken political propaganda to the next level, motherfuckers! Meanwhile, here at home, Jeremy Corbyn is filmed sitting on the floor of a train.
But politicians’ photo opportunities don’t only use tanks. In 2006, David Cameron, who went on to ruin Britain for ever, was photographed in Norway hugging a husky, as he launched the lie that he was unleashing the “greenest government ever”. But within a few years, Theresa May would close the Department of Energy and Climate Change and Conservative propagandists would have gone to any lengths to avoid David Cameron being photographed embracing an animal. (Indeed, now I find myself wondering, was Vladislav Surkov himself the unnamed source of the bought biographer Isabel Oakeshott’s Cameron pig-sex-face story? Or is Isabel Oakeshott herself a Kremlin creation? What kind of name is “Isabel Oakeshott”? Has anyone ever really been called that, in real life, ever?)
But instead of being photographed in a tank like a normal politician, Jeremy Corbyn last week chose to be filmed sitting on the floor of a train. While clearly intended to highlight the scandal of private rail company ownership, the Labour party’s release of the footage represents an entirely foreseeable own goal.
First, it provides the same two blokes that secretly write all the jokes for the comedians on all those shitty TV comedy panel shows with a picture of Jeremy Corbyn sitting on the floor, thus generating loads of pithy one-liners tying together the idea of the number of seats on a train with the number of seats in parliament, ie, “He should have gone and sat in his own back benches, there’s plenty of room there!”
Secondly, as the Corbyn floor film was taken on a train owned by a private company, that company had access to CCTV detailing the circumstances leading up to its creation and it is clearly in its own commercial interests to use that footage to discredit the images, whether the empty seats Corbyn chose to walk by were actually reserved or not.
The right in British politics, backed by business and media, is consolidating an unassailable hegemony. Our left needs to raise its game. If you ever got to see film of Putin sprawled on public transport, every single possible interpretation of the footage would already have been minutely mapped.
Stewart Lee
2016-08-28T22:41:28+01:00
In Edinburgh, where I write this, there is concern that the city’s newly opened branch of the Kremlin-backed news agency Sputnik is intended specifically to destabilise post-Brexit English-Scottish relations. Message to Putin: “Don’t worry, Vladimir baby! We can handle this one ourselves!!” Nonetheless, let us compare the contrasting media manipulation strategies of Putin’s Russia and, for example, the Labour party, both of them organisations that have, at times, abandoned their leftwing core beliefs in an attempt to adapt to a shifting geopolitical landscape. If last week’s news is to be believed, Russia’s control of media extends as far as hacking staff at the New York Times. As well as the Kremlin getting to see funny cartoons of representational figures holding up signs with writing on them hours ahead of the rest of us, could this hack also mean Russia could plant false stories into American media at source? Is Donald Trump, for example, whose rise is fuelling fears of forthcoming global nuclear war, actually a fictional creation of Russian propagandists intended to destabilise the west? Oddly, this is a more comforting proposition than the idea that he really exists. In the autumn of 2015, it was suggested that Putin’s deliberately penis-shaped submarines, designed specifically to subconsciously exaggerate our perceptions of Russian genitalia, are poking around the transatlantic data cables to ensure the maverick anarcho-superpower’s ability to cut continental Europe off from America. Two campaigns working in opposition might then mean American media were full of Russian lies that we in Europe weren’t actually able to view. On the other hand, this kind of strategy would be typical of Putin’s propaganda guru Vladislav Surkov, a surrealist artist who, despite dressing like a disgraced Top Gear presenter, uses creatively chaotic double-think to sculpt our perceptions of Russia as determinedly as Richard Dreyfuss...
Our labour of love Nightingales rockumentary King Rocker really landed. I arrogantly think it knocks most rockumentaries into a cocked hat and will cheer you up no end in the awful times.
“I loved every minute” - Ben Dowell, The Times
**** Financial Times
**** Chortle
“One of the best music documentaries of all time” - The Quietus
“The new gold standard for rockumentaries” - The Scotsman
You can now watch it, ad-free, on NOW TV if you have that here.
The film receives its hometown premier in Birmingham, as the King Rocker Christmas Special at the Midland Arts center on Sat 18th December, preceeded by a Q&A with me and dir Michael Cumming, and followed by a performance by the Nightingales. https://macbirmingham.co.uk/event/king-rocker-q-a
There are also these further screenings, where Michael and I will do a Q&A afterwards.
Stewart Lee says - "Following hot on the heels of our sell-out CONTENT PROVIDER t-shirt comes this tasteful ALL THE CHEESES design. The front celebrates Stewart's famous CHEESE joke while the rear print is a delightful tapestry of negative reviews from politicians and their media clients"
Available in two colourways - black t-shirt with liquid silver ink and navy t-shirt with golden yellow (cheese) ink. There is a front print and a back print on each shirt. Available HERE from Noon on Monday 25th Oct.
Stewart Lee said earlier: ‘There are at least 13 t-shirt designs out there based on lines from my stand-up that are nothing to do with me, and a scarf as well, so my hand has been forced into the land of quality endorsed garments. Here is another icily obtuse t-shirt which announces your fandom only to other adepts, and confuses the weak. It's available here from Wax Face, who also do t-shirts for Warren Ellis and the Osees, and make models of Iggy Pop's body and Daniel Clowes' comic book characters. Buy it for the prematurely aged pseudo-intellectual in your life today! As TV's James Acaster recently said, "Stewart Lee fans are like Radiohead fans. They have one big thing they like, and because it’s such a connoisseury thing to enjoy they’re like, “I don’t need anything else outside that. And I’m going to tell everyone that if they don’t get it they’re thick.” And they’re the worst kind of fans.” Come to think of it, that might be the next t-shirt!''
Tees are all unisex and are made by Bella-Canvas. High quality and 100% eco friendly production and no Sweatshops. Shirts come in all sizes and ship worldwide. Get yours before they sell out.
Black Tee Front
Black Tee Back
Navy Tee Front
Navy Tee Back
3) LAURA CANNELL
The avant-folk dronemädchen Laura Cannell has been releasing an ep a month throughout the pandemic.
I wrote and mumbled some words for the latest, August Sounds, also featuring Welsh harpist Rhodri Davies, whose book {below} I done some words for too and that. Available here as cd or dl. http://www.lauracannell.co.uk
Laura Cannell and Kate Ellis also bring the much delayed live incarnation of their These Feral Lands recording project to London’s King’s Place on Feb 18th 2022.
I wrote words for four of the tracks and will attempt to do something with them on the night.
I thought about where I was conceived, and where I was born, plugged the details I know into the folklore of both regions, and tried not to get in the way of Laura and Kate’s mediaeval trance music steamroller. https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/contemporary/laura-cannell-with-stewart-lee-kate-ellis-these-feral-lands/
4) LIVE DATES/LEICESTER SQUARE THEATRE NEWS
All the SNOWFLAKE TORNADO tour dates outstanding from 2020 will be shifted into 2022, starting in Jan, and below are the ones we know about so far. Local venues will contact you if they haven’t already.
All the warm-up club dates you may have bought tickets for have been slotted in to Nov and Dec, covid willing, and venues will contact ticket holders. Please do not hassle venues about all this. They will contact you. We will get there!
I am planning on re-writing the SNOWFLAKE half of SNOWFLAKE TORNADO to reflect our drastically altered world and will make as good a recording as possible of the abandoned original SNOWFLAKE available at some point. It’s all bacon!
January 2022
Tuesday 4th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Wednesday 5th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Thursday 6th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Friday 7th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Saturday 8th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Monday 10th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Tuesday 11th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Wednesday 12th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Thursday 13th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Saturday 15th January 2022 - Theatre Royal, Norwich - TICKETS
Monday 17th January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Tuesday 18th January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Wednesday 19th January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Thursday 20th January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Friday 21st January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Saturday 22nd January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Tuesday 25th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Wednesday 26th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Thursday 27th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Friday 28th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Saturday 29th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Sunday 30th January 2022 - Theatre Royal, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
February 2022
Wednesday 2nd February 2022 - St. David's Hall, Cardiff - TICKETS
Thursday 3rd February 2022 - Rose Theatre, Kingston - TICKETS
Friday 4th February 2022 - Westlands Entertainment Venue, Yeovil - TICKETS
Saturday 5th February 2022 - Westlands Entertainment Venue, Yeovil - TICKETS
Tuesday 8th February 2022 - Town Hall, Cheltenham - TICKETS
Wednesday 9th February 2022 - Town Hall, Cheltenham - TICKETS
Thursday 10th February 2022 - De Montfort Hall, Leicester - TICKETS
Friday 11th February 2022 - Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry - TICKETS
Saturday 12th February 2022 - Festival Theatre, Malvern - TICKETS
Sunday 13th February 2022 - Hippodrome, Birmingham - TICKETS
Friday 25th February 2022 - The Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Saturday 26th February 2022 - The Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Sunday 27th February 2022 - The Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Monday 28th February 2022 - The Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury - TICKETS
March 2022
Wednesday 2nd March 2022 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS
Thursday 3rd March 2022 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS
Friday 4th March 2022 - Lighthouse, Poole - TICKETS
Saturday 5th March 2022 - Playhouse, Salisbury - TICKETS
Sunday 6th March 2022 - De La Warr Pavillion, Bexhill On Sea - TICKETS
Wednesday 9th March 2022 - Theatre Royal, Wakefield - TICKETS
Thursday 10th March 2022 - Opera House, Buxton - TICKETS
Friday 11th March 2022 - The Courtyard, Hereford - TICKETS
Saturday 12th March 2022 - Grand Theatre, Swansea - TICKETS
Monday 14th March 2022 - King's Theatre, Glasgow - TICKETS
Tuesday 15th March 2022 - King's Theatre, Glasgow - TICKETS
Wednesday 16th March 2022 - The Sands Centre, Carlisle - TICKETS
Thursday 17th March 2022 - Royal Hall, Harrogate - TICKETS
Tuesday 22nd March 2022 - Churchill Theatre, Bromley - TICKETS
Wednesday 23rd March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Thursday 24th March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Friday 25th March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Saturday 26th March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Sunday 27th March 2022 - Royal & Derngate, Northampton - TICKETS
Tuesday 29th March 2022 - City Hall, Sheffield - TICKETS
Wednesday 30th March 2022 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Thursday 31st March 2022 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
April 2022
Friday 1st April 2022 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Saturday 2nd April 2022 - Storyhouse, Chester - TICKETS
Tuesday 19th April 2022 - Wyvern Theatre, Swindon - TICKETS
Thursday 21st April 2022 - The Hawth, Crawley - TICKETS
Friday 22nd April 2022 - The Hexagon, Reading - TICKETS
Sunday 24th April 2022 - Mayflower Theatre, Southampton - TICKETS
Tuesday 26th April 2022 - Cliffs Pavilion, Southend On Sea - TICKETS
Wednesday 27th April 2022 - The Central Theatre, Chatham - TICKETS
Thursday 28th April 2022 - Derby Theatre, Derby - TICKETS
Friday 29th April 2022 - Lyceum Theatre, Crewe - TICKETS
Saturday 30th April 2022 - Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield - TICKETS
May 2022
Tuesday 3rd May 2022 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
Wednesday 4th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
Thursday 5th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
Friday 6th May 2022 - St. George's Hall, Bradford - TICKETS
Saturday 7th May 2022 - Gala Theatre, Durham - TICKETS
Sunday 8th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Tuesday 10th May 2022 - Palace Theatre, Watford - TICKETS
Wednesday 11th May 2022 - Palace Theatre, Watford - TICKETS
Thursday 12th May 2022 - Assembly Hall Theatre, Tunbridge Wells
Friday 13th May 2022 - The Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS
Saturday 14th May 2022 - The Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS
Sunday 15th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, Plymouth - TICKETS
Tuesday 17th May 2022 - Corn Exchange, Cambridge - TICKETS
Wednesday 18th May 2022 - Corn Exchange, Cambridge - TICKETS
Thursday 19th May 2022 - The Baths Hall, Scunthorpe - TICKETS
Saturday 21st May 2022 - New Theatre, Peterborough - TICKETS
Sunday 22nd May 2022 - The Grand, Wolverhampton - TICKETS
Monday 23rd May 2022 - Hippodrome, Bristol - TICKETS
Tuesday 24th May 2022 - Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury - TICKETS
Wednesday 25th May 2022 - The Forum, Bath - TICKETS
Friday 27th May 2022 - Wycombe Swan, High Wycombe - TICKETS
Saturday 28th May 2022 - Winding Wheel, Chesterfield - TICKETS
June 2022
Tuesday 7th June 2022 - Mercury Theatre, Colchester
Wednesday 8th June 2022 - Mercury Theatre, Colchester
Sunday 12th June 2022 - Queen's Theatre, Barnstaple
Friday 17th June 2022 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Saturday 18th June 2022 - Hippodrome, Darlington - TICKETS
Sunday 19th June 2022 - Festival Theatre, Edinburgh - TICKETS
Monday 20th June 2022 - Perth Theatre, Perth - TICKETS
Tuesday 21st June 2022 - Perth Theatre, Perth - TICKETS
Wednesday 22nd June 2022 - Tivoli Theatre, Aberdeen - TICKETS
Thursday 23rd June 2022 - Tivoli Theatre, Aberdeen - TICKETS
Sunday 26th June 2022 - Theatre Royal, Plymouth - TICKETS
Wednesday 29th June 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Thursday 30th June 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
July 2022
Friday 1st July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Saturday 2nd July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 3rd July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 3rd July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
5) TO VAC OR NOT TO VAC
I would be delighted if, if you are coming to see me, you could do your best to get vaccinated, irrespective of what the gvt or the venue insist upon.
I doubt that my snowflake audience will contain many people who deny the existence of Covid or believe the vaccine is George Soros or Bill Gates trying to put tiny Transformer robots into your blood. But I and my team will be interacting with over 150 000 people on the next leg of the tour, and I would like to minimise our risk, and the risk to my audience, so meet me half way.
I will be selling and signing stuff as usual, I hope, but I won’t be shaking hands to thank you all this time around, and will probably be positioned behind some kind of screen like William Shatner in Airplane 2. Sad.
6) MEDIA GARAGE SALE
My trusted sales partner Media Garage has compacted all my available stand-up dvds into one convenient on-line marketplace, with most available to d/load too.
Remember, if you buy here we will pay tax on these purchases, and help with British schools and hospitals, whereas many major physical media suppliers and streaming services have found ways to avoid declaring their profits, as have NETFLIX, the transphobic bastards. AMERICANS - stop moaning about not being able to see me and visit MEDIA GARAGE! https://www.mediagarageproductions.com/store/
7) PODCASTS AND THAT
To try and promote King Rocker I have been pimping myself about like Priss Fotheringham on every Podcast going, alone or with dir M Cumming (Brass Eye, Toast), saying the same things in the same room in the same clothes to all different people, all of whom were very kind. I don’t know what a podcast is really but I think you go on the internet and click on something.
As my grandfather once said, in 1983, “Do you know, in America, there are shops that only sell Kentucky Fried Chicken?” I enjoyed being on the internet with all these people enormously, but will put some blue water between me and the next wedge.
David Baddiel told me it was good to be on the internet, though. These are available...
NEW! WHAT’S UPSET YOU NOW? W SEAN WALSH AND PAUL MCCAFFREY.
Dogs, cats, and comediennes of the ‘40s.
NEW! MARK ELLEN & DAVID HEPWORTH’s WORD PODCAST
This was really good fun but I am becoming same-anecdote man
PAUL CHOWDHRY’S PUDCAST
I chow down with the Chowdster!
8) I Arrogantly Recommend
LIVE EVENTS
Ithell Colquhoun
- Song of Songs The surrealist ascendent’s unseen privately owned works displayed alongside sympathetic contemporary artworks at Union London, Hannover Sq, until Nov 6th
Raucous smart post-punk trio NOVEMBER 4th Brighton Mutations Fest
Emily Young - Carving In Time
The mighty Emily Young - who carves monumental god like figures in the tradition of Blake and Epstein - has an exhibition at a commercial gallery, Tomasso at Marquis House in London, until 12th Nov
Alasdair Roberts
Scottish wyrd folk singer NOVEMBER 13th London Jazz Festival Nick Drake event, 19th Canterbury Gulbenkin
The Nightingales
Birmingham post punk veterans and KING ROCKER stars.
NOVEMBER 1st Sheffield Greystones,
3rd London Lexington,
4th B’ham Hare & Hounds,
5th Bristol Rough Trade,
6th Southsea Wedgewood,
7th Bedford Esquires,
8th London Lexington W BLUE ORCHIDS & TED CHIPPINGTON,
9th Barrow-in-Furness Underground,
10th Glasgow Hugh & Pint,
11th Edinburgh Caves,
12th Middlesbrough Westgarth,
13th Hebden Bridge Trades,
14th Leicester Cookie,
DECEMBER 18th Birmingham MAC w King Rocker film
The Fallen Leaves
Gentlemen mod punks.
NOVEMBER 20TH Brighton Prince Albert.
JANUARY 15TH Acton George & Dragon, 20th 100 Club, London + Downliners’ Sect & Masonics.
FEBRUARY 12th 229 London.
JUNE 11TH 100 Club, London.
Thurston Moore Group
Guitar Guru NOV 2ND London Omeara
Paul Currie
The fantastic Belfast surrealist clown-comedian Paul Currie is doing his new show TEET at Soho Theatre, London, from NOV 3RD - 6TH. I cannot recommend him enough. He is the teets! https://sohotheatre.com/shows/paul-currie-teet/
The Wolfhounds
Cheesewire indie kitchen sink realists
NOVEMBER 5TH London 229, 19th Middlesbrough Westgarth, 20th Preston Ferret
Martin Carthy
Ageless folk veteran NOV 11th Lewes Con Club, 27th Brighton Toy Museum, DECEMBER 1st Café Oto London
The Chameleons
M’cr post punk visionaries on another victory lap. NOVEMBER 12TH Minehead Shine On.
DECEMBER 14TH Huddersfield Parish, 16th Blackpool Waterloo, 17th/18th M’cr Ritz.
JANUARY 14TH Leicester Academy, 15th Birmingham Institute.
FEBRUARY 1ST Nottingham Rescue Rooms, 5th London Islington Assembly Hall
Archie Shepp
Jazz genius NOV 15th London Barbican
Faust
Krautrock noise veterans NOV 15th London Union Chapel
Yo La Tengo
Melodic/experimental New York survivors
NOV 16th Bristol SWX, 17th Cantebrury Colyer-Fergusson Bldg, 19th London Royal Festival Hall
Sleaford Mods
Angry loud man and quiet electronic man.
NOVEMBER 17th M’cr Academy, 18th Glasgow Barrowlands, 19th Aberdeen Lemon Tree, 21st Dublin Olympia, 24th Newcastle Academy, 25th Liverpool Academy, 26th Oxford Academy, 27th Nottingham Motorpoint, 30th Cardiff Tramshed,
DECEMBER 1st Bristol Academy, 2nd London Printworks, 3rd Brighton Dome
Trash Kit
High-life inflected post-punk NOVEMBER 19th + 20th Newcastle Brave Exhibitions Festival.
Their mums and dads probably owned Paul Simon’s Gracelands.
Len Price 3
Reliably thrilling Breton-bejumpered Mod-Punks NOV 19TH London Water Rats. Good to see them back.
Jackie Oates
Compelling contemporary folk singer NOVEMBER 24th Exeter Phoenix
The Primevals
Glasgow garage rockers, our own Flamin’ Groovies.
NOVEMBER 27TH London Hope & Anchor.
Dry Cleaning
Sing-speak post-punk poets
NOVEMBER 27th Nottingham Motorpoint, 30th Cardiff Tramshed.
DECEMBER 1st Hebden Bridge Trades, 2nd Norwich Arts Centre, 3rd Brighton Dome.
FEBRUARY 14th Liverpool Arts, 15th Dublin Button, 16th Belfast Empire,. 18th Edinburgh Summerhall, 19th Glasgow QMU, 20th Leeds Brudenell, 22nd Birmingham Mill, 23rd Bristol Marble, 25th Manchester Academy 2, 26th Sheffield Leadmill 2, 27th Nottingham Rescue.
MARCH 1st Southsea Wedgewood, 2nd Brighton Concorde 2, 3rd London Forum.
APRIL 1st Manchester 02 Ritz.
Swell Maps
Surviving members and associated acts DECEMBER 3rd + 4th, Café Oto, London
The Fallen Women
Female Fall tribute band w guest vocalists incl me. DECEMBER 5th London Lexington.
The Bohman Brothers
Dada-ish improvisors. DECEMBER 8th Brighton Rose Hill
John Butcher, Mark Sanders, John Edwards
Top free-improvisation trio DEC 8th London Iklecktik
Eliza Carthy
Folk superstar fiddler currently on top form, seen at Laugharne last month DEC 21st London Union Chapel
NEW FILMS
Little Joe (Jessica Hausner) **** County Lines (Henry Blake) *****
Animal Antics (Patrick Goddard) *****
OLD FILMS
Box Of Moonlight (Tom DeCillo, 1996) *****
Local Hero (Bill Forsyth, 1983) *****
Where Eagles Dare (Brian G Hutton, 1968) *****
The Big Gundown (Sergio Sollima, 1967) *****
The Sting (George Roy Hill, 1973) *****
Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977) *****
The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)*****
Good Vibrations (Lisa Barros D'sa/Glen Leyburn, 2013)*****
Caliber 9 (Fernado di Leon, 1972) *****
'71 (Yann Demange, 2014) *****
Big Night (Campbell Scott/Stanley Tucci, 1996) *****
Jason & The Argonauts (Don Chaffey, 1963) *****
Goldstone (Ivan Sen, 2016) *****
Witness (Peter Weir, 1985) *****
Avengers Infinity War (Russo Brothers, 2018) ****
Avengers Endgame (Russo Brothers, 2019) ****
In Order of Disappearance (Hans Peter Molland, 2014)*****
Iron Man III (Shane Black, 2013)*****
Pauline A La Plage (Eric Rohmer, 1983) *****
Gone To Earth (Powell/Pressburger, 1950) ****
The Odd Couple (Neil Simon, 1968) *****
Excalibur (John Boorman, 1981) ****
Samurai 1 : Mushashi Miyamoto (Hiroshi Inagaki, 1954) ****
Cache / Hidden (Michaek Haneke, 2005) ***** Babylon (Franco Rosso, 1980) *****
Summer In February (Christopher Menaul, 2013) **** Guardians of The Galaxy (James Gunn, 2014) *****
All Tomorrow's Parties (Jonathan Caouette, 2009) **** Medea (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1969) *****
Force Majeure (Ruben Ostlund, 2015) ****
Lift To The Scaffold (Louise Malle, 1958)*****
Macbeth (Roman Polanski, 1971)*****
Tomb of Ligeia (Roger Corman, 1964) ****
Massacre Time (Lucio Fulci, 1966) ****
Bandidos (Massimo Dallamano, 1967) ****
And God Said To Cain (Antonio Margheriti, 1970) *****
Dead Man's Shoes (Shane Meadows, 2004) *****
Romeo + Juliet (Baz Luhrmann, 1996) *****
Gallivant (Andrew Kotting, 1996) *****
OLD BOOKS
Rosemary Tonks - Emir (1963)*****
Rosemary Tonks - The Bloater (1968) *****
John Berger/Jean Mohr - A Fortunate Man (1967) ***** Ann Quin - Berg (1964) ****
Sir John Mandeville - The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (1357)**** Sean Bythell - Diary of a Bookseller (2018)
Robert Aickman - The Inner Room (1988) Virginia Nicholson - Amongst The Bohemians (2003)
Joanna Moorhead - The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington (2017)
Betty May - Tiger Woman (1929)
Val Doonican - My Story, My Life (2009) Dave Graney - Workshy (2017)
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde - R L Stevenson (1985)
Hide & Seek - Dennis Potter (1973)
M R James - Complete Ghost Stories (1904 - 35) *****
Gavin Lambert - The Slide Area (1959)****
NEW BOOKS
Tessa Norton/Bob Stanley - Excavate!
Alan Stafford - Wilson, Keppel & Betty, Too Naked For The Nazis Peter Oborne - The Assault On Truth Nesrine Malik - We Need New Stories ***** Sean Bythell - Diary of a Bookseller (2018) *****
Robert Aickman - The Inner Room (1988) ***** Alicia Foster - Nina Hamnett Charlie Hill - I Don't Want To Go To The Taj Mahjal
Hill's economic autobiography is a simplistic list of addresses, dead end jobs, cultural ephemera, and brief assignations, garnished with two or three short paragraphs of barely formed reflection. And yet, in reducing his life to these most basic elements, it manages to be a more profound comment on existence then many more self-consciously analytical efforts. As if to confound Wittgenstein, it appears the unexamined life was worth living after all.
Tracey Thorn - My Rock 'n' Roll Friend *****
Will Sergeant - Bunnyman ****
Hotel Art Head - Rhodri Davies & Nikos Veliotos I have written the intro for this new project exploring the interior design aesthetics travelling musicians' hotel acommodation https://rhodridavies.bandcamp.com/merch/hotel-art-head-rhodri-davies-nikos-veliotis-art-book
NEW COMICS
Joe Sacco - Paying The Land (2020)
NEW TV
Ghosts S2 (BBC, 2020)
Ghosts - Xmas Special 2020 (BBC, 2020) The Mandalorian S2 (Disney, 2020) ***** Call My Agent S3 (France 2, 2018)*****
Call My Agent S4 (France 2, 2021) *****
The Trump Show (BBC, 2020-1)*****
Lupin S1 (Netflix, 2021)***** Wandavision (Marvel, 2021)*****
Stonehenge The Lost Circle Revealed (BBC, 2021) *****
Adam Curtis' Can't Get You Out Of My Head (BBC, 2021)***** Raiders Of The Lost Past With Janina Ramirez (BBC2, 2021) ****
Mortimer & Whitehouse Gone Fishing S3 (BBC, 2020) *****
The Falcon & The Winter Soldier (Marvel, 2021) *****
Homeland s8 (Netflix, 2020)*****
Into The Night S1 (Between a Dog & A Wolf, 2020) ****
Unforgotten S4 (ITV, 2021) ****
Inside No 9 S6 (BBC, 2021) ***** Great British Bake Off S11 (C4, 2020) *****
An Evening With Tim Heidecker (Youtube, 2020) Time (BBC, 2021) ***** Loki (Kate Herron, Marvel, 2021)
Ghosts S3 (BBC, 2021) *****
Alma’s Not Normal (BBC2, 2021)
King Gary S2 (BBC1, 2021)
Great British Bake Off S5 (C4, 2021) *****
Four Hours At The Capitol (BBC, 2021) *****
Blair and Brown, The New Labour Revolution (BBC, 2021) *****
INTERNETS, RADIOS, YOUTUBES AND PODCASTS
Rob Auton's Daily Podcast
Alasdair Beckett-King on Youtube
Shawn Woods' Mouse Trap Monday on Youtube
An Evening With Tim Heidecker (Youtube, 2020) ****
Rosie Holt's Youtube characters
James O’Brien (LBC)
Alexei Sayle’s Imaginary Sandwich Bar S1 (BBC R4, 2016) Bridget Christie - Mortal (BBCR4)
Gideon Coe (BBC 6Music)
Marc Riley (BBC 6Music)
Eddie Mair (LBC)
Down The Line S1, S2 ( )
Tom Robinson (BBC 6Music)
THEATRE
Under Milk Wood - Dylan Thomas (National) *****
The Pin's The Comeback (Noel Coward Theatre) ****
This felt like it was from the 1870s, the 1950s and now all at the same time.
It was of a tradition at the same time as exploding it. It reminded me of THE RIGHT Size and it would be great if The Pin could hold the partnership together in the way they didn't as there's probably lots to find out about how elastic it can be, and what you can subsume into it.
A Victorian audience would have recognised it as Music Hall and a '50s audience would have recognised it as Absurdism, which Beckett knew was music hall anyway. Were they even in a theatre, really, them blokes? I hope it tours.
Ben Moor - Who Here's Lost? (Hen & Chickens) ****
COMEDY
Jo Neary - Wife On Earth (Hen & Chickens) ****
Rob Auton - Time (Soho Theatre) ****
Johnny & The Baptists (Soho Theatre) *****
NEW RECORDS
Lady Leshurr - Quaranqueen
The Primevals - New Trip
Cult Figures - Deritend Vapour Trails - Celestial Scuzz *****
Robert Pollard - Before Computers (demos)
Kevin March - Last Night
Doug Gillard - Douglas Scott Gillard II
Guided by Voices - Earth Man Blues Gwenifer Raymond - Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain Ustad Saami - Pakistan Is For The Peaceful ***** The Blue Orchids - Speed The Day Dave Graney & The Mistly - Live At Byrds *****
Mainliner - Dual Myths *****
Hawkwind - 50th Anniversary Live
The Amorphous Androgynous w Peter Hammill - We Persuade Ourselves We Are Immortal
Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orcestrea - s/t
Major Murphy - Access
Eleventh Dream Day - Since Grazed Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg
Guided By Voices - Earth Man Blues
Fixed Horizon - Grenouille Lucinda Williams - Runnin' Down A Dream
Krallice - Demonic Wealth
Catenary Wires - Birling Gap
Cub Scout Bowling Pins - Heaven Beats Iowa ****
Pat Todd & The Rank Outsiders - There's Pretty Things in Palookaville ****
Robyn Hitchcock - The Man Upstairs ****
Chris Forsyth - First Flight
Chris Eckerman - Where The Spirit Rests ****
The Scientists - Negativity
David Grubbs & Ryley Walker - Husky Pants **** Shirley Collins - Heart's Ease ***** Gary Louris - Jump For Joy *****
Fixed Horizon - Full Circle ****
Trees Speak - Post Human **** William Loveday Intention - People Think They Know Me *****
Hawkwind - Somnia The Bevis Frond - Little Eden *****
Pat Todd & The Rank Outsiders - There's Pretty Things In Palookaville *****
Goat - Headsoup Adele & The Chandeliers - First Date
Trees Speak - Post Human
Sun Ra Arkestra - Swirling *****
Phil Minton - Woke Up At 8 *****
Rudimentary Peni - The Great War Lucinda Williams - Southern Soul
Son Volt - Electro Melodies ****
Guided By Voices - It's Not Them! It Couldn't Be Them! It Is Them! ****
Billy Childish & CTMF - Where The Purple Iris Grows ****
David Lance Callahan - English Primitive 1 *****
Paul Rooney - Service Industries 1 *****
The Shadracks - From Human Like Forms ****
NEW OLD RECORDS
V/A - Rough Guide To Avant-Garde Japan
Guided by Voices - Live At Irving Plaza (1996)
Damo Suzuki & Echo Ensemble - Live @ Green Door (2013) Heavenly - A Bout De Heavenly (1989-1996)
Martin Stone - Down But Not Out In Paris and London (1992-2013)
John Russell & Terry Day - Russell & Day (1979?)
Derek Bailey, Trevor Watts & Terry Day - At LTC (1972?) Sonny Rollins - Rollins In Holland (1967) *****
Robert Pollard - I Sell The Circus (demos) (2015) The Fall - St Helen's Technical College (1981) *****
Charles Gayle, John Edwards, Mark Sanders - Seasons Changing (2017) *****
The Misunderstood - Children of The Sun(1965-66) *****
Dexter Gordon - Live In Chateauvallon (1978) *****
The Loft - Ghost Trains & Country Lanes (1984-2015)
And Also The Trees - s/t (1984)
Neil Young - Young Shakespeare (1971)
T2 - It'll All Work Out In Boomland (1970)
The Outsiders - Count For Something (1976-78)
The Selecter - Too Much Pressure box (1980)
Brown Acid 11 - v/a (1969-73)
Fleur de Lys - Circles (1964-1969)
J Jazz Deep Jazz From Modern Japan vol 3 - V/A (1962-1985)
The Black Keys Present Hill Country Blues - v/a
Brown Acid 12 - v/a (1968-80)
Raw Material - s/t (1970)
Open Road - Windy Day (1971)
Dave Graney, Clare Moore, Georgie Valentino & Malcolm Ross - s/t (2017) ****
Hangman's Beautiful Daughters - Smashed Full Of Wonder (1987)
The Lipstick Killers - Strange Flash (1976-81)
The Hawks - Obviously 5 Believers (1979-81) ****
v/a - Goitse A Thaisce (1960-2020) *****
v/a - Fire Draw Near (1940-2020) *****
OLD RECORDS
Cocteau Twins - Treasure (1984) **** Billy Bragg - Life's A Riot (1983) *****
Billy Bragg - Brewing Up with (1984) *****
The Triffids - Born Sandy Devotional (1986) ****
Siouxsie & The Banshees - A Kiss In The Dreamhouse (1982) ****
Bunny Striker Lee - The Bunny Striker Lee Story (1967-80) ****
V/A - Dub, A Journey Into Bass Culture (1970s) ****
V/A - Dub, Original Bass Culture (1970s) ****
V/A - Dub, More Bass Culture (1970s) ****
Tomorrow's Gift - Goodbye Future (1973) ****
Jackson C Frank - s/t (1965) ****
V/A - Down Home Blues, Chicago Fine Boogie (1947-1958)**** Maggie Bjorklund - Shaken (2014)**** June Tabor - Airs & Graces (1976) *****
John Martyn - The Very Best Of (1967-1996) ***** The Owl Service - The Garland Sessions (2007) *****
John Lee Hooker - Tantalising With The Blues (1965-70)*****
Furry Lewis, Memphis Willie B, Memphis Slim - Bluesville 3 (1963?) **** Lightnin' Hopkins - Prestige Profiles (1960-4) *****
Magic Slim - Live @ Ma Bea's (1976) ****
Jimmy Dawkins - Come Back Baby (1977) ****
Allman Brothers - At Filmore East (1971) **** John Fahey - The Yellow Princess (1968) *****
Freedy Johnston - Can You Fly? (1992)**** Julie Doiron - I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day (2009) ****
Tragically Hip - Man Machine Poem (2016) ****
Tragically Hip - We Are The Same (2009) **** Tortoise - Millions Now Living Will Never Die (1996) *****
Grant Lee Buffalo - Storm Hymnal (1993-98) ****
Shiva Burlesque - Mercury Blues (1990) **** Yo La Tengo - President (1989) ***** Yo La Tengo - Fakebook (1990) ***** Yo La Tengo - That Is You La Tengo (1991) **** Yo La Tengo - May I Sing With Me? (1992) **** Yo La Tengo - Painful (3 cds) (1993) **** Tim Buckley - Dream Letter (1968) *****
Those Bastard Souls - Debt & Departure (1999) *****
Wanderlust - Prize (1995) ****
Chain - Towards The Blues (1971) ****
The Schramms - Omnidirectional (2019) ****
Cannonball Adderley - Soul Zodiac (1972)
Fred Anderson - Quintessential Birthday Trio Vol II (2015)
Greg Bendian's Interzone - Requiem For Jack Kirby (2001)
Nels Cline & Greg Bendian - Interstellar Space Revisited (1999)
The Beat - Bounce (2016) Nina Simone - To Be Free (1959-1993)
Swervedriver - 99th Dream (1998)
Road - s/t (1972)
Mudhoney - Morning In America (2019)
Necromandus - Orexis of Death (1973)
Julian Cope - Peggy Suicide (1991)
Ultravox - Rage In Eden (1981)
Siouxsie & The Banshees - Tinderbox (1986)
Blues Pills - Live In Paris (2017)
Gram Parsons - Alternate Takes (1973-4)
Mike Westbrook - Mama Chicago (1976)
The Fall - Grotesque (1980)
Truly - Fast Stories From Kid Coma (1995)
Echo & the Bunnymen - Evergreen (1997)
Echo & The Bunnymen - What Are You Going To Do With Your Life? (1999)
Blues Pills - Lady In Gold (2016)
Leo Bud Welch - The Angels In Heaven Done Signed My Name (2019)
The Black Keys - Chulahoma (2006) Nanci Griffith - One Fair Summer Evening (1988)
The Soft Boys - Invisible Hits (1983)
Robyn Hitchcock - Robyn Sings (2003)
Raw Material - s/t (1970)
Don Carlos & Gold - Them Never Know Natty Dread Have Him Credentials (1982)
Henry Junjo Lawes - Volcano Erruption (70s-80s)
Don Carlos - Day To Day Living (1982)
Bunny 'Striker' Lee - Full Up (1968-72)
Bunny Lee & Friends - Tape Rolling (1971-4) ****
v/a - Trojan Roots Dancehall Box ('70s, '80s)
Charlie Chaplin & Papa San - Respect Due (1986?)
Robert Forster - The Evangelist (2008) *****
John Stewart - California Bloodlines (1969) ****
v/a - Trojan Dancehall Box ('70s, '80s)
Don Carlos - In Dub (1980)
Yabby You - Deeper Roots ('70s, '80s)
Yabby You - Deeper Roots Part 2 ('70s, '80s)
Norma Winstone - Edge Of Time (1972) ****
Atlas - Just Playin' Rhythm & Blues (1967-71)
V/A - Alan Lomax Songbook (1939-76) ****
Shirley Collins - Lodestar (2016) *****
The Go-betweens - Loving Shocks (1989) ****
Red House Painters - Songs For A Blue Guitar (1996) ****
Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats - Mind Control (2013)
The Damned - Music For Pleasure (1977) ****
Skids - Days In Europa (1977)
Big Country - The Crossing (1983) ****
Big Country - Steel Town (1984)
Jon Dee Graham - Escape From Monster Island (1997) ****
The Fall - Live At The Witch Trials (1979) *****
Echo & The Bunnymen - The Stars, The Oceans & The Moon (2018)
Echo & The Buynnymen - Ballyhoo (1980-87) *****
Orange Juice - Rip It Up (1982)
Orange Juice - Texas Fever (1984)
The Stone Roses - s/t (1989) ****
The Screaming Trees - Buzz Factory (1989) ****
Mark Lanegan - The Winding Street (1990) *****
Killdozer - For Ladies Only (1989) ****
Magazine - Real Life (1978) ****
The Stranglers - Peaches (1977-82) *****
Screaming Trees - Uncle Anaesthesia (1991)
Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan - Sunday At Devil Dirt (2008)
The Osiris Club - Blazing World (2014)
UB40 - Signing Off (1980)*****
UB40 - Present Arms (1981) *****
UB40 - Present Arms In Dub (1981) ****
Radiohead - In Rainbows (2007) *****
The Brave Little Abacus - Last Show @ Vic Geary Center (2012) *****
Sarofeen and Smoke - s/t (1970) ****
Blue Cheer - Outsideinside (1968) ****
Conqueroo - From The Vulcan Gas Company (1968) ****
Frank Morgan - City Nights (2004) ****
Peter Brotzmann - Machine Gun (1968) *****
Phil Minton - A Doughnut In One Hand (1998) *****
Chris Von Sneidern - The Wild Horse (2003)
Alexei Sayle - Cak! (1982) ****
Steve Wynn - Here Come The Miracles (2001) ****
Steve Wynn - Static Transmission (2003) ****
Andy Irvine - Old Dog Long Road Vol 1 (1961-2012) ****
Patti Smith - Land (1975-2002) *****
9) WOKE CAUSES - THIS MONTH, GOOD LAW PROJECT, GET OFF MY MED RECORDS, GBNEWS ADVERTISERS
GOOD LAW PROJECT
LINK
It's evident that the corrupt kleptocracy of Boris Johnson isn't going to dislodged by Kier Starmer's PMQ's however forensic, or by the biased media, or by legal investigations in which the gvt essentially investigate themselves.
However, despite the threats to judiciary in the Queen's speech, at present the gvt are required to obey the law.
Champagne socialist fox-whacking lawyer Jolyon Maugham's donation funded Good Law Project seems to be better than the opposition currently at holding the gvt to account, and proving where they have broken the law, so if you can spare a pound crowd fund them, as they do seem to be making an impact.
GBNEWS ADVERTISERS
Stop Funding Hate say - Advertising sales for GB News are reportedly handled by Sky Media.
We're aware of at least one company who say they were unaware that they were going to appear on GB News and suspended those ads when they found out. If you work for a company that buys programmatic advertising from Sky, it may be worth checking with them to ensure that your ads aren't placed on GB News.
A huge thanks to the Stop Funding Hate volunteers who have come together to help identify GB News advertisers.
Brands that we've seen so far include: Vodafone, Octopus Energy, Ovo Energy, Co-op, Ikea, LV, Virgin Media, Kelloggs, Deliveroo, Nivea, Kenco coffee, AA, Premier Inn, American Express, Benadryl (Johnson and Johnson), Wickes, Starbucks, Weetabix, Listerine (Pfizer), National Lottery, Boomin, Cadbury, Taylors coffee, Amazon, Cazoo, Microsoft, Google, Alpen (Weetabix), Beko Harvestfresh, Pinterest, Ladbrokes, Rana pasta, Burger King, Warburtons, The UK Government (EU resettlement scheme), Bosch, Specsavers, TalkTalk, trivagoWeekend, itchpet.com, MSC Cruises, Grolsch, Indeed recruitment, Motability, Feel Multivitamins, Green Flag, Clean G non alcoholic gin, Facebook, Volvo, Bazuka, fiverr, Motability, Ibuleve Gel, Toyota, Appeal home shading / blinds, People's Postcode Lottery, Just Eat, Petit Filous, Direct Bullion, Compare the Market, Kardia Mobile, Bupa, Verisure, The Open University.
There's more information here about Stop Funding Hate, and the impact of our campaign so far. If you're able to help build our movement tackling toxic media in the UK and internationally, please consider becoming a committed supporter and making a regular donation.
10) IN OUR COVID ERA LAMENTATIONS
Adam Schlesinger (Fountain of Wayne) (1967)
John Prine (outlaw country singer) (1946)
Henry Grimes (jazz bassist) (1935)
Dave Mountfield (Ornate Johnson) (1970)
Hal Wilner (arranger) (1957)
Tim Brooke-Taylor (Goodie) (1940)
Lee Konitz (jazz saxophonist) (1927)
Matthew Seligman (Soft Boy) (1955) Millie Small (ska singer) (1946)
Florian Schneider (Kraftwerk robot) (1947)
Bill Rieflin (drummer for hire) (1960)
Hugh McKenna (Tear Gas pianist) (1949)
Steve Weber (Holy Modal Rounder) (1942) Astrid Kirchherr (photographer) (1938)
Danny Ray Thompson (Sun Ra saxophonist) (1947)
Aubrey Burl (archaeologist) (1926)
Phil May (Pretty Thing) (1944) The Clacton Fin Whale (circa 2000)
Christo Vladimirov Javacheff (artist) (1930) Doll Tor stone circle (3300 BC)
Kay Carroll (The Fall) (1948)
Bob the Cat (73 bus) (2006) Alex Taylor (Shop Assistant, in 2005, and no-one knew)
Simon H Fell (jazz bassist) (1959)
Carl Reiner (director) (1922)
Ennio Morricone (architect of sonic dreams) (1928)
Keith Tippett (jazz pianist) (1947)
Jimmy Cobb (jazz drummer) (1929) Barbara Smoker (Humanist) (1923)
The Nuffield Theatre, Southampton
Tony Elliot (Time Out) (1942) Judy Dyble (folk singer) (1949)
Peter Green (blues guitarist) (1946)
Emitt Rhodes (power pop auteur) (1950) Annie Ross (jazz bohemian) (1930)
Joe Ruby (Scooby-Doo) (1933)
Craig Weatherhill (folklorist) (1950)
Don Weller (jazz saxophonist) (1940)
Simeon Coxe (Silver Apple) (1938) Diana Rigg (Avenger) (1938)
Toots Hibbert (reggae got soul) (1942)
Dele Fadele (carry bag man) (1962)
George Jeffrie (man's-laughter maker) (1964)
Dave Kusworth (Brum punk Stone) (1960)
Gary Peacock (jazz bassist) (1935)
Doorkins (Southwark Cathedral Cat) (2005?)
Spencer Davis (Brumbeat pioneer) (1939)
Bunny Lee (dubmaster) (1940) The Cubbington Pear Tree (1770)
Fungie The Dingle Dolphin (1979) Jill Paton Walsh (humanist novelist) (1937)
Val Warner (poet) (1946)
Guy N Smith (Lord of The Crabs) (1939)
Richard Corben (decadent cartoonist) (1940)
David Johnson (Duke of Soho) (1960)
Leslie West (Mountain man) (1945)
- 2021 -
Katharine Whitehorn (bedsitter cook) (1928)
Katharine Whitehorn (bedsitter cook) (1928)
Celia Drummond Ford (voice of Trees) (1950)
The Happy Man Tree (Stoke Newington Tree) (1870)
John Russell (guitar guru) (1954)
Marcel Uderzo (Asterisk artist) (1933)
Tom Stevens (Long Ryder and Magus) (1956)
Dougie Anderson (Coda's Edinburgh record dealer (1952)
Captain Tom (Covid Walkman) (1920) Rynagh O'Grady (Ted's Mary) (1954)
Mary Wilson (Supreme) (1944)
Chick Corea (Miles' tinkler) (1941)
Iain Pattinson (You wanted to see me Prime Minister?) (1951)
U-Roy (Toastmaster) (1942)
Lawrence Ferlinghetti (bookstore beat) (1921)
Wink O'Bannon (Eleventh Dream Day) (1956)
Bunny Wailer (Wailer) (1947)
Doug Parkinson (Oz vocal celeb) (1946)
Milford Graves (temporal explorer) (1941)
Johnny Rogan (Byrds' Boswell) (1953) Jessica Walter (Play Misty For Me) (1941)
Bertrand Tavernier (Round Midnight) (1941) Anita Lane (Oz punk chanteuse) (1958)
Barbara Ess (Theoretical Girl) (1944)
Michael Collins (Apollo 11) (1930)
Mohammed Ag Itale (Tinariwen) (1960)
Monte Hellman (Two Lane Blacktop) (1929)
Sonny Simmons (jazz hobo) (1933)
Charles Grodin (The American Tim Key) (1935)
Franco Battiato (Italian Fetus) (1945)
Yoshi Wada (bagpipe minimalist) (1943)
Ned Beatty (squealing piggy) (1937)
Davey Datblygu (Davey Datblygu) (1964)
S Clay Wilson (Captain Pissgums) (1941)
Peter Zinovieff (sonic pioneer) (1933)
Richard Donner (kebab pioneer) (1930) Alix Dobkin (feminist folksinger) (1940)
Patrick Sky (native American folksinger) (1940)
Tom O'Connor (raconteur) (1939)
Dusty Hill (ZZ Top) (1949)
Bob Sergeant (digital Beat producer) (194?)
Byron Berline (Byrds fiddler) (1944)
John Lawton (friend of Lucifer) (1947)
Una Stubbs (wooden woman) (1937)
Nanci Griffith (C&W poet) (1953)
Sean Lock (excrement genitals) (1963)
Brian Travers (UB40 blowhard) (1959)
Lee Scratch Perry (The Super Ape) (1936)
Michael Chapman (English primitive) (1941)
Norm Macdonald (acceptable face of US stand-up) (1959)
Tony Selby (Get Some In!) (1938)
Tom T Hall (Harper Valley songsmith) (1936)
Powell St John (Psychedelic Texan) (1940)
The White Stag of Bootle (2010?)
John Rossall (The Last Glam In Town) ()
Pat Fish (A Southern Mark Smith) (1957)
Jim Pembroke (psychedelic Anglo-Fin) (1946)
Rick Jones (Fingerbob Meal Ticket) (1937)
Alan Hawkshaw (Sausage on fork composer) (1937)
Takashi Mizutani (Les Rallizes dude) (1948)
I’m going to end on a note about Tony Selby, as these days not posting anything on Social Media, due to not actually being on social media, can be taken as callous indifference, and there tends to be a rush to comment in the light of any loss.
Condolences to his family and friends. I once had to stay at my friend Nigel Short’s house one night when my Mum was working.
His brother made me eat a maggot. We watched Tony Selby on TV in ‘Get Some In!’ and it seemed really funny.
Stewart Lee
2021-10-30T11:45:51+01:00
1) KING ROCKER CINEMA TOUR Our labour of love Nightingales rockumentary King Rocker really landed. I arrogantly think it knocks most rockumentaries into a cocked hat and will cheer you up no end in the awful times. “I loved every minute” - Ben Dowell, The Times **** Financial Times **** Chortle “One of the best music documentaries of all time” - The Quietus “The new gold standard for rockumentaries” - The Scotsman You can now watch it, ad-free, on NOW TV if you have that here. The film receives its hometown premier in Birmingham, as the King Rocker Christmas Special at the Midland Arts center on Sat 18th December, preceeded by a Q&A with me and dir Michael Cumming, and followed by a performance by the Nightingales. https://macbirmingham.co.uk/event/king-rocker-q-a There are also these further screenings, where Michael and I will do a Q&A afterwards. NOV 9th London Broadgate Everyman https://www.everymancinema.com/film-info/king-rocker-live-qa NOV 10TH Bristol Everyman https://www.everymancinema.com/film-info/king-rocker-live-qa NOV 11th Liverpool Everyman https://www.everymancinema.com/film-info/king-rocker-live-qa NOV 18TH Leeds Everyman https://www.everymancinema.com/film-info/king-rocker-live-qa DEC 16TH London Dalston Rio https://riocinema.org.uk/RioCinema.dll/WhatsOn?Film=13951901 Here’s one link that takes you to all the events; https://linktr.ee/kingrocker 2) RED LEICESTER T-SHIRT Stewart Lee says - "Following hot on the heels of our sell-out CONTENT PROVIDER t-shirt comes this tasteful ALL THE CHEESES design. The front celebrates Stewart's famous CHEESE joke while the rear print is a delightful tapestry of negative reviews from politicians and their media clients" Available in two colourways - black t-shirt with liquid silver ink and navy t-shirt with golden yellow (cheese) ink. There is a front print and a back print on each shirt. Available HERE from Noon on Monday 25th Oct. Stewart Lee said earlier: ‘There are at least 13 t-shirt designs out there based on lines from my stand-up that are nothing to do with me, and a scarf as...
Despite being named by The Times as the best current English-language comedian in the world, Stewart Lee insists that nobody really knows who he is. His absence from the panel show circuit, resistance to social media and use of multiple on-stage personae may be contributory factors.
In the first Full Disclosure of 2022, James tries his hand at getting to know the man behind the accolades. Tickets for his autumn show, Basic Lee are available now.
Stewart Lee
2022-01-13T01:27:58+00:00
Despite being named by The Times as the best current English-language comedian in the world, Stewart Lee insists that nobody really knows who he is. His absence from the panel show circuit, resistance to social media and use of multiple on-stage personae may be contributory factors. In the first Full Disclosure of 2022, James tries his hand at getting to know the man behind the accolades. Tickets for his autumn show, Basic Lee are available now.
Tickets for next year's Hackney Empire BELTER FOR THE SHELTER benefit for Hackney Winter Shelter go live at 11am on THURSDAY 1st NOV.
The show is on TUESDAY 19TH FEB 2019 and the bill so far is;
BRIDGET CHRISTIE
KEVIN ELDON
SOFIE HAGEN
HARRY HILL
ROSIE JONES
ATHENA KUGBLENU
NISH KUMAR
STEWART LEE
ROBERT NEWMAN
Going into it's 5th year with an incredible line up at the Hackney Empire to help raise money for the Shelter's vital work with local homeless people. All money raised on the evening goes towards keeping people off the streets of Hackney, providing them with a hot meal and warm bed throughout winter.
DEAR STEWART LEE MAILING LIST Tickets for next year's Hackney Empire BELTER FOR THE SHELTER benefit for Hackney Winter Shelter go live at 11am on THURSDAY 1st NOV. The show is on TUESDAY 19TH FEB 2019 and the bill so far is; BRIDGET CHRISTIE KEVIN ELDON SOFIE HAGEN HARRY HILL ROSIE JONES ATHENA KUGBLENU NISH KUMAR STEWART LEE ROBERT NEWMAN Going into it's 5th year with an incredible line up at the Hackney Empire to help raise money for the Shelter's vital work with local homeless people. All money raised on the evening goes towards keeping people off the streets of Hackney, providing them with a hot meal and warm bed throughout winter. Here is the tickets link. TICKETS
White Hills, New York's ageless Nigella Lawsons of kosmische punk, serve a delicious borscht of all the satisfying and shameful rock moves good taste denied us, which we nonetheless still crave.
In Your Room finds inarticulate lycanthrope chanting over pixilated keyboards, Hawkwind guitar smog, and biker soloing; The Internal Monologue is a brain-fogging bubblebath backwash of Seventies Herzog soundtrack synths; Forever In Space shoots The Stooges into the sun with a barking Nazi robot; Mist is a genetically modified psilocybin pea-souper. Buy it and eat it.
Stewart Lee
2013-08-19T12:39:52+01:00
White Hills, New York's ageless Nigella Lawsons of kosmische punk, serve a delicious borscht of all the satisfying and shameful rock moves good taste denied us, which we nonetheless still crave. In Your Room finds inarticulate lycanthrope chanting over pixilated keyboards, Hawkwind guitar smog, and biker soloing; The Internal Monologue is a brain-fogging bubblebath backwash of Seventies Herzog soundtrack synths; Forever In Space shoots The Stooges into the sun with a barking Nazi robot; Mist is a genetically modified psilocybin pea-souper. Buy it and eat it.
I'm all sold out for the Ed Fringe but here's eighteen tips of things likely to be better than me.
11.00 am Stand 1 Bridget Christie (the duchess of stand-up)
11.30 am Assembly George Sq - Derevo - Once (physical euro-theatre)
12.00 mid-day Stand 2 - Daniel Kitson (the arch-duke of stand-up)
3.15pm Bob's Blundabus - Grainne Maguire (politico-personal stand-up)
3.40pm Stand 3 Andy Zaltzman (stand-up from the red clown)
4pm Stand 1 Simon Munnery (Redondan king of comedy)
5.30pm Stand 1 Josie Long (the Angela Mason of stand-up)
5.45pm Three Sisters - Kunt & The Gang (childish swearing sex comedy)
6.45 Spiegeltent - Simon Munnery 30 Not Out (22nd) (go pay homage)
7.00 Pleasance Courtyard - Colin Hoult (character comedy)
7pm Summerhall Richard Dawson (18th only) (mind-fuck avant-folk)
7.30pm Assembly Hall - David O'Doherty (v low energy musical whimsy)
8pm Pleasance Courtyard Nish Kumar (stand-up) HIS TIME IS NOW!!
8pm Acoustic Music Centre - Dick Gaughan (SNP folk) (23rd only)
8.15pm Surgeon's Hall - Blueswater (blues-based edu-tainment)
10.10pm Underbelly - Christeene (sick gay disco dry-ice art wank)
10.00pm Traverse - Mouse by D Kitson (comedic ur-theatre)
10.35pm Stand 4 Will Franken (trans-gender reactionary comedy)
Remember, it is best wherever possible to avoid UNDERBELLY, PLEASANCE, & ASSEMBLY, and favour Stand, Free Fringe variants, Blundabus, Summerhall and others, as big venues are loss-making traps for acts and in hock to big agencies/production companies and PR spin-bullshit. Run by a cabal of English upper class twits, they should only be patronised as a last resort if the stuff on at them is culturally essential or requires your financial and/or moral support.
CONTENT PROVIDER BOOK
I have a new book out on August 4th, Content Provider, through Faber. "Over the last five years, often when David Mitchell has been on holiday, the comedian Stewart Lee has been attempting to understand modern Britain, and his own place in it, in a series of irregular newspaper columns.
Will Scotland become the Promised Land of the Left? Is it possible to live a life without crisps? Who was Grant Shapps? What does your Spotify playlist data say about you? Are Jeremy Corbyn and Stewart Lee really the new Christs? And so on.
Selected, introduced and, where necessary, explained by the author and corrected by readers, Content Provider is funny, grumpy, provocative, confusing and brilliant."
This clunky title, as well as being the same name as my next book, will be another full-on, finished, Carpet Remnant/41st Best/Milder Comedian type epic show, with an actual set, although the exact material is currently in freefall post-Brexit.
Until Nov the shows are work-in-progs and then I will tour it for about 18 months (everywhere in UK and EIRE, except Carlisle) into mid-2018, unless there is no demand for it or I get sick or bored. Here's some dates.
AUG
Stand, Edinburgh - Content Provider. SOLD OUT
OCT
11th - 15th, 18th - 20th Digital Content Provider w free DVD, Leicester Sq Theatre London
NOV (Digital Content Provider w free DVD) November 1st - Watford Colosseum - 7.30pm - 01923 571102 - TICKETS November 2nd - Liverpool Philharmonic Hall - 8pm - 0151 709 3789 - TICKETS November 3rd - Cambridge Corn Exchange - 8pm - 01223 357851 - TICKETS November 4th - Cardiff St. David's Hall - 8pm - 029 2087 8444 - TICKETS November 6th - Newcastle Upon Tyne Theatre Royal - 7.30pm - 08448 11 21 21 - TICKETS
NOV (Content Provider)
8th - 12th, 15th - 19th, 22nd 24th, 29th Leicester Sq Theatre, London
JAN 2017
2-7, 9-10, 12-14, 16-21, 23-28 Leics Sq Theatre
Unpaid Charity Benefit Shows
As usual, I continue to work tirelessly for charity.
Sept 14th - White Helmets Syria @ Union Chapel w Michael Legge, Bridget Christie, Nish Kumar, Eleanor Tiernan
Other live s-up Dates
(mainly 30 mins sets w some previews) August
19th Edinburgh Book Fest w Ian Ranking Roger
22nd Simon Munnery 30th Anniversary Show - incl Alan Parker's Urban Warriors, w me on guitar. SEPT
2nd - 4th End Of The Road
9th Martin Soan's gig, South London
12th Tattershall Castle, London
15th Soho Theatre, London
24th Union Chapel, London
27th Soho Theatre
28th Soho Theatre
29th Chippenham Com Fest, rescheduled OCT
1st Aldeburgh Comedy Festival
3rd Susan Murray's Covent Garden gig
4th and 5th Red Imp, London
6th Sevenoaks somewhere w Maff Brown
7th Bush Hall, London
10th Happy Mondays, London
Global Globules with Baconface
On Wednesdays at 11pm on Resonance 104.4 fm and on the station website, the barely present cult Canadian stand-up comedian Baconface continues to play lengthy and mainly uninterrupted selections from his late brother's extensive record collection of '60s and '70s psychedelia, progressive rock, free jazz, folk, acid folk, folk rock, acid rock, electronic music, and ethnoforgeries. In association with the Chilliwack Office of Leisure. [Repeated Saturday 4am.] The shows can also be heard here.. http://www.baconfacecanada.com/global-globules/
Live b'cacting of B's GGs is suspended during August for Resonance's annual Summer experimento-pause.
Resonance is a groundbreaking 24/7 radio station which broadcasts on 104.4 FM to central London, DAB to Greater London, nationally on Radioplayer and live streamed to the rest of the world.
Dead Funny Encore book
Comedian Robin Ince, the co-editor of the new comedians' horror fiction anthology, in which I have a piece, writes...
"Hello everyone. Dead Funny Encore is out. i am really pleased with it, as is Johnny Mains. Sorry it took longer than thought, but really couldn't be helped.
Starting at 6pm on Monday 8 August, and continuing 24/7 until they reach the end, a host of Edinburgh Fringe performers, writers, and politicians plus members of the public will stage a nonstop, out loud, live streamed reading of the recently published Chilcot Report, in its 2.6 million word entirety. Ian Rankin, Tommy Sheppard MP, Stewart Lee, Reg D Hunter, Arthur Smith, Francesca Martinez, Seann Walsh, Jo Caulfield, Simon Munnery, Tony Law, Ed Gamble, Stephen Frost, Michael Legge, Howard Read, Andy Askins, Andy Smart and many others have volunteered to take part.
The organisers have launched an appeal for more readers to sign up via iraqoutloud.com. Iraq Out & Loud is being organised by Fringe veterans Bob Slayer and Omid Djalili, and aims to bring the Fringe's creative community and international audience together to discuss and reflect on the conflict and the UK's role in it. At an approximate rate of 120 words per minute the reading is predicted to take over two weeks to complete. Iraq Out & Loud will take place in a garden shed, beside Bob Slayer's Blundabus on South College Street, with two readers each hour.
Tickets to be part of the small live audience in the shed go on sale on Monday 25th July, with four seats allocated per hour. Audience members also have the opportunity to take part in the live streamed reading. Stewart Lee said: "I like the length of the Chilcot Report, but am disappointed by the variety of content..." Ian Rankin said: "I was on my holidays when the Chilcot Report was published, so this is my best chance to get to read at least some of it. It's either that or wait for the film." Omid Djalili said: “Has there ever been a more current and brilliant Edinburgh Fringe Festival idea?" Tommy Sheppard MP said he was: “Delighted to do my part in drawing attention to this damning indictment of Tony Blair's government - pretty much every British military intervention he sanctioned made a bad situation worse.”
Bob Slayer said: "Producing this is going to be a truly mammoth undertaking, however I know I would totally regret not doing it much more than actually doing it..." A Gofundme appeal has been set up to cover out of pocket costs for staging the reading, any additional money raised will be donated to the International Rescue Committee, which provides aid to refugees and victims of armed conflict around the world.
SIMON MUNNERY AND FRIENDS
Famous Spiegeltent, 6.45, August 22nd. Simon Munnery marks his 30th year of Fringe shows with an unmissable, one-off gala. He'll be joined by Alan Parker: Urban Warrior, Buckethead, The League Against Tedium and a plethora of friends and very special guests spanning the serial innovator's three decades at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
EIGHTEEN ED FRINGE TIPS I'm all sold out for the Ed Fringe but here's eighteen tips of things likely to be better than me. 11.00 am Stand 1 Bridget Christie (the duchess of stand-up) 11.30 am Assembly George Sq - Derevo - Once (physical euro-theatre) 12.00 mid-day Stand 2 - Daniel Kitson (the arch-duke of stand-up) 3.15pm Bob's Blundabus - Grainne Maguire (politico-personal stand-up) 3.40pm Stand 3 Andy Zaltzman (stand-up from the red clown) 4pm Stand 1 Simon Munnery (Redondan king of comedy) 5.30pm Stand 1 Josie Long (the Angela Mason of stand-up) 5.45pm Three Sisters - Kunt & The Gang (childish swearing sex comedy) 6.45 Spiegeltent - Simon Munnery 30 Not Out (22nd) (go pay homage) 7.00 Pleasance Courtyard - Colin Hoult (character comedy) 7pm Summerhall Richard Dawson (18th only) (mind-fuck avant-folk) 7.30pm Assembly Hall - David O'Doherty (v low energy musical whimsy) 8pm Pleasance Courtyard Nish Kumar (stand-up) HIS TIME IS NOW!! 8pm Acoustic Music Centre - Dick Gaughan (SNP folk) (23rd only) 8.15pm Surgeon's Hall - Blueswater (blues-based edu-tainment) 10.10pm Underbelly - Christeene (sick gay disco dry-ice art wank) 10.00pm Traverse - Mouse by D Kitson (comedic ur-theatre) 10.35pm Stand 4 Will Franken (trans-gender reactionary comedy) Remember, it is best wherever possible to avoid UNDERBELLY, PLEASANCE, & ASSEMBLY, and favour Stand, Free Fringe variants, Blundabus, Summerhall and others, as big venues are loss-making traps for acts and in hock to big agencies/production companies and PR spin-bullshit. Run by a cabal of English upper class twits, they should only be patronised as a last resort if the stuff on at them is culturally essential or requires your financial and/or moral support. CONTENT PROVIDER BOOK I have a new book out on August 4th, Content Provider, through Faber. "Over the last five years, often when David Mitchell has been...
Stewart Lee is probably one of the first alternative comedians that burst onto the scene in the late eighties, as he says himself he has been doing stand-up for seventeen years, but despite forays into the world of journalism and his somewhat publicised involvement with the controversial Jerry Springer The Opera.
While these have obviously influenced Mr Lee, it certainly has not adversely affected the man's undoubted talent and charisma as a comedian. Playing to a capacity audience, a lot of whom could have only been a nursery school, is laid back style entertained throughout on a variety of subjects and had the audience glued to his every word.
If last night was anything to go by Stewart Lee maybe a 90's comedian, but he could till be attracting an audience when he himself is in his nineties.
Stewart Lee
2005-08-12T22:53:02+01:00
Stewart Lee is probably one of the first alternative comedians that burst onto the scene in the late eighties, as he says himself he has been doing stand-up for seventeen years, but despite forays into the world of journalism and his somewhat publicised involvement with the controversial Jerry Springer The Opera. While these have obviously influenced Mr Lee, it certainly has not adversely affected the man's undoubted talent and charisma as a comedian. Playing to a capacity audience, a lot of whom could have only been a nursery school, is laid back style entertained throughout on a variety of subjects and had the audience glued to his every word. If last night was anything to go by Stewart Lee maybe a 90's comedian, but he could till be attracting an audience when he himself is in his nineties.
Conservative politicians, and their husbands and wives, have always been obsessed with toilets. Last week's Daily Mail carried a full-page picture of Sarah Vine, partner of the education secretary, Michael Gove, emerging from a "bog standard" public toilet in Westminster, waving an ordinary toilet brush, and declaring that her family will be using public toilets in future, and not the private facilities selected for the ablutions of the families of her husband's Etonian colleagues.
It's easy to be cynical about a politician's spouse using their family to score political points, but finding the original picture of Vine emerging from the Westminster toilet online, before Conservative HQ had cropped it, reveals an image every bit as damaging as that famously suppressed photo of George Osborne poking a proboscis monkey with a pencil.
True, Vine is holding an apparently ordinary toilet brush, of the sort ordinary people like the late Jade Goody or that woman who put the cat in the bin might use, but zoom in on it and it appears that the handle is made from the ivory of the severely endangered African forest elephant, which sells at a million pounds an ounce, while the bristles have been fashioned from the tail hairs of the virtually extinct white rhino. Is this the sort of toilet brush that would wave in the hand of, for example, ordinary folk like Jimmy Pursey from Sham 69 or rap's Dizzy Rascal?
Meanwhile, the tiny brown flecks on Vine's toilet brush are revealed not to be the excrement of ordinary people, like Ray Winstone or Dappy, but tiny flakes of Green and Black's organic Maya Gold dark chocolate, the most expensive chocolate in the world. And the transparent sheet of toilet paper flapping from it is not the tracing paper type we might see wiping the bottoms of working-class heroes like White Dee or the late Bob Crow, but is in fact a gossamer-thin whisper of silk, provided by the top people's department store, Peter Jones of Sloane Square, official silk supplier to Michael Gove's family's bottoms.
View the picture in full, and Vine is not emerging from a "bog standard" public toilet at all, but from the marble edifice of Green Ernie's Church of England Toilet for Girls in Westminster, one of the least socially inclusive toilets in England. While the toilet is nominally open to the public, the majority of its customers are given keys on religious grounds, and a quarter on their ability to work the hand-dryers properly, and when you have factored in the exclusivity of its location and the wealth one would need to move into its economically cleansed catchment area today, the political exploitation of Vine's egalitarian toilet choice begins to look crass. What would Jesus do? It's impossible to say, but like the new pope, he would probably have chosen the tracing paper toilet tissue on purpose.
That said, it is difficult to criticise anyone for the choices they make where their family's toilets are concerned. The Free Toilets Movement, championed by the BBC TV personality Toby Young, aimed to liberate toilets from the interference of the state, allowing toilet users to make their own choices as regards soap brands, toilet paper texture, and whether the graffiti should be in Latin, like in Pompeii. In setting up the pioneering Hammersmith Free Toilet, Young won hearts and minds by explaining there was no guarantee that, once his new experimental toilet was built, his own family would even be allowed to use it. But then, just at the last minute, the rules changed and they were.
(In the interests of full disclosure, I must admit that I made enthusiastic use of fee-paying private toilet facilities during my teens, having been granted access to them via a bursary for "waifs and strays", and as a result of scoring highly in a test of my abilities to drown flies while using the boys' urinal trough. In the further interests of further full disclosure, I should also admit that I was privately tutored in this skill, during a family holiday in Malta in the mid-70s, by my grandfather, who had been a gunner in the RAF in the second world war.)
While it's difficult to censure Vine for making use of a system that was open to her, it's harder to accommodate the exploitation of that choice, of that cultural and geographical privilege, for political ends. The ginger tomcat from down the road came in through our cat-flap last night and defecated, twice, in the kitchen. It appears to have the same electronic cat-flap collar key as our cat, and so has unlimited access to the house. I saw the first piece of cat excrement, by the radiator, at about 8am this morning while giving the children their porridge. I cleaned it up, mopped the floor with disinfectant, and washed both of my hands, then slapped them together three or four times and shook them out twice, the international Oliver Hardy gesture for having completed an unpleasant task.
Later on, my wife, having seen the second piece of cat excrement, by the window, which I hadn't noticed, accused me of deliberately ignoring it. She said I had left it for her to remove, having misunderstood that when the three-year-old told her that Daddy had "seen the cat poo", she was referring to the first piece of cat excrement, which I had already dealt with. It was not even nine o'clock and already our day had descended into the usual accusation and counter-accusation.
But I bear the ginger cat that defecated in our kitchen no ill will. It did nothing wrong. There is no active moral dimension to the cat's choice of toilet location. Finding itself in our house, in an increasingly gentrified part of Hackney where less well-off cats will soon be a rarity, it merely took advantage of the best toilet facilities available to it. The cat is without blame. What would have annoyed me would have been if the cat had then written a thousand-word piece for the Daily Mail implying that the lovely kitchen it was privileged enough to be allowed to defecate in, by virtue of the accident of its postcode and its electronic collar access key, made it in some way morally superior to other cats.
Stewart Lee appears, in a performance of John Cage's Indeterminacy, as part of the Usurp Chance tour at Birmingham's CBSO Centre on Tuesday. Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle is on BBC2 on Saturdays at 10pm, except in Wales, where it appears randomly
Stewart Lee
2014-03-16T13:27:37+00:00
Conservative politicians, and their husbands and wives, have always been obsessed with toilets. Last week's Daily Mail carried a full-page picture of Sarah Vine, partner of the education secretary, Michael Gove, emerging from a "bog standard" public toilet in Westminster, waving an ordinary toilet brush, and declaring that her family will be using public toilets in future, and not the private facilities selected for the ablutions of the families of her husband's Etonian colleagues. It's easy to be cynical about a politician's spouse using their family to score political points, but finding the original picture of Vine emerging from the Westminster toilet online, before Conservative HQ had cropped it, reveals an image every bit as damaging as that famously suppressed photo of George Osborne poking a proboscis monkey with a pencil. True, Vine is holding an apparently ordinary toilet brush, of the sort ordinary people like the late Jade Goody or that woman who put the cat in the bin might use, but zoom in on it and it appears that the handle is made from the ivory of the severely endangered African forest elephant, which sells at a million pounds an ounce, while the bristles have been fashioned from the tail hairs of the virtually extinct white rhino. Is this the sort of toilet brush that would wave in the hand of, for example, ordinary folk like Jimmy Pursey from Sham 69 or rap's Dizzy Rascal? Meanwhile, the tiny brown flecks on Vine's toilet brush are revealed not to be the excrement of ordinary people, like Ray Winstone or Dappy, but tiny flakes of Green and Black's organic Maya Gold dark chocolate, the most expensive chocolate in the world. And the transparent sheet of toilet paper flapping from it is not the tracing paper type we might see wiping...
The title track of Tennessee's Jeff The Brotherhood's fourth album seesaws on a pulverising riff indebted to Hawkwind's Master Of The Universe. The hoary acid pirates have become a legitimate source of plunder for a distorted three-string guitar and drums garage-psyche duo. Elsewhere Sonic Youth's surging rock fixtures are appropriated, their experimental fittings ignored, and Eighties American hardcore's punishing intensity and velocity are welded to unexpectedly sugary power-pop melodies.
The Tropics buries Phil Spector moves in a dense descending guitar part.
Now the kids can download all rock history instantly, illegally and free, anticipate more previously unimaginable crossbreeds such as Heavy Days.
Stewart Lee
2011-01-23T20:30:26+00:00
The title track of Tennessee's Jeff The Brotherhood's fourth album seesaws on a pulverising riff indebted to Hawkwind's Master Of The Universe. The hoary acid pirates have become a legitimate source of plunder for a distorted three-string guitar and drums garage-psyche duo. Elsewhere Sonic Youth's surging rock fixtures are appropriated, their experimental fittings ignored, and Eighties American hardcore's punishing intensity and velocity are welded to unexpectedly sugary power-pop melodies. The Tropics buries Phil Spector moves in a dense descending guitar part. Now the kids can download all rock history instantly, illegally and free, anticipate more previously unimaginable crossbreeds such as Heavy Days.
Sleeve notes by Stew for this blistering live set by American-Dutch-Scandinavian free-improv quartet.
The Ex guitars meet Nilssen-Love/Vandermark Duo.
Lean Left throws together two explosive duos - the sax/drums collision course of Ken Vandermark and Paal Nilsson-Love with the piledriving guitarists from The Ex - to make up a positively apocalyptic quartet: an elemental musical force featuring Grade A international players zoning in and scrambling together rock, jazz, noise and blistering free improv into a highly-charged onstage assault, each member taking their sounds and bodies to the edge and often snapping out of the wilds and into glorious passages of regular rhythm. Recorded live at Café Oto, London in 2011.
Stewart Lee
2018-10-30T22:54:18+00:00
Sleeve notes by Stew for this blistering live set by American-Dutch-Scandinavian free-improv quartet. The Ex guitars meet Nilssen-Love/Vandermark Duo. Lean Left throws together two explosive duos - the sax/drums collision course of Ken Vandermark and Paal Nilsson-Love with the piledriving guitarists from The Ex - to make up a positively apocalyptic quartet: an elemental musical force featuring Grade A international players zoning in and scrambling together rock, jazz, noise and blistering free improv into a highly-charged onstage assault, each member taking their sounds and bodies to the edge and often snapping out of the wilds and into glorious passages of regular rhythm. Recorded live at Café Oto, London in 2011.
Most of the discussion around social media and TV focuses on the technologies being invented, or the potential business models (or lack of them) emerging. But we don't often talk about what it means for the writers, directors and other talent involved in making TV. This Guardian article shows a mixed picture, with Iain Morris, writer of The Inbetweeners, saying he loves Twitter, but the constant stream of feedback can be overwhelming:
“I watched the first three episodes of series three from abroad so effectively watched them via Twitter and I found it crippling. It made me rethink the fundamentals of how TV is made. Over nine months you make hundreds of decisions - character, plot, jokes. You used to get a review the following day from someone who had seen the whole and had an opinion of that - broadly they liked it or didn't, and there were good bits or bad bits. Now you see every decision you made being torn apart in real time as it goes out and it can cripple you".
This is one of the most interesting challenges facing creative talent right now - how is this new relationship with audiences changing the way you make your work? How much should you listen to the audience's response? What kind of techniques can you use to talk to your audience, and how can you maintain control of the world you are creating? This isn't about technology or 'transmedia', but a fundamental rethinking of how you tell stories, and in order to understand it, we need to look back a couple of decades to see how TV ended up being so cut off from its audience in the first place.
On Christmas Day 2008, the BBC showed a documentary about the making of Blackadder, the seminal comedy series starring Rowan Atkinson, to mark the 25th anniversary of the first series. Blackadder didn't really find its groove until the second series, when Ben Elton was recruited to the writing team by Richard Curtis, and in a conversation about how they met, Curtis offers a remarkable anecdote about what it was like to make TV in the 1980s:
“This was before the days of ratings … I still don't know how many people watched any episode of Blackadder. I used to wander round Shepherd's Bush, looking in people's windows, particularly people in basement flats, to see whether or not anyone was watching Blackadder [series] one … because I didn't know whether or not it had been successful otherwise."
Its remarkable now to recall how far removed from the audience TV makers were in the 'golden age' of the 1970s & 80s. With only a couple of channels, and no real competition for attention in the living room, shows were broadcast without any significant feedback loop. If you were lucky, you might get a review in the newspapers the next morning, and if you were very lucky you might win a BAFTA or RTS award, but other than that, if you wanted to find out what people thought about your shows, you would have to walk the streets, like Richard Curtis, looking in people's windows to see if they were watching. There might have been focus groups commissioned from audience research teams, but the results from these would be fed back to schedulers and commissioners, not the writers, producers and performers who were responsible for making the shows themselves.
We're in a different world now. In the last two years I've seen TV commissioners go from being critical of social media to avidly (and often agonisingly) watching twitter streams of their show's hashtag as the show goes on air. Making TV is different now, not just technically, but socially. There has probably never been a method of storytelling that was as far removed from its audience as TV was in the 70s and 80s, but nowadays TV is firmly back amongst the crowd, and hearing every mutter and comment is a strange and not altogether pleasant experience for some.
Here is a fantastic trailer for Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle on BBC2 which satirises the sometimes glib and pointless attempts to make TV work for a social media age. Kevin Eldon, playing a BBC Social Media Strategist, walks Stewart through a presentation about 'Social Stew' which includes Facebook homepages, cross linking with other BBC brands and mobile apps, none of which actually have anything to do with his style of comedy, or the show itself.
At the end, Stewart Lee agrees to recording a piece to camera, in which he says:
“In the mid-70s, 30 million people watched the Morecambe & Wise Christmas Special on BBC Television, and that's what television used to be about - participating in a massive shared experience that helped bind a fragmented country together. Why not watch Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle alone, on the iPlayer, in your own time, and be part of nothing?"
Its a great satire of a situation familiar to anyone who has worked in TV and New Media in the last few years. But this last statement rings hollow. According to Richard Curtis' memories of Blackadder in the 80?s, TV wasn't a massive shared experience, but an isolated one, with the storytellers on one side of the glass screen, and the audience, invisible, on the other.
It seems even stranger when you watch Stewart Lee's show, in which he subtly and expertly shifts register between the audience in the comedy club around him and the audience at home. In one masterly sequence in Episode 2 (about 21mins in), he is in the middle of an sketch about buying a house in rural Wales where he takes a pretend mobile phone call from an Estate Agent. Halfway through the call, he pauses, and looks furtively up at the audience a few times. This signals a shift in the conversation, which now becomes about whether the sketch is going well, with the imaginary Estate Agent offering advice on his act, all suggested solely through Lee's responses:
“[Lee looks up furtively at the club audience whilst pretending to hold a mobile phone]… about half the audience… [audience laughs]… well, more now, obviously… it did feel touch and go.. [looks up at audience, paces around]… yeah, I did think it was worth persisting with… [audience laughter]… some people really like it…. [listens some more before moving his hand from his ear and addressing the club audience] .. he says he would have bailed out of this bit on the phrase 'visible otters' [huge audience laughter]“
He then turns to one of the TV Cameras and resumes his conversation with the 'Estate Agent':
“What will the people at home make of it? I've absolutely no idea… it's the sort of thing that I think, if you're in the room can be quite exciting, but watching this at home I imagine would be terribly tedious [huge audience laughter, Lee turns to face the club audience and moves his hand from his ear].. he's reminded me that in Episode 1 of the first series, during a similar bit, about rappers, audience feedback shows that about 300,000 viewers turned off…[huge audience laughter]… well, you know… fuck 'em is what I say…"
Its a stunning routine, with subtle shifts of register between conversations with the imaginary estate agent, the club audience and the viewing audience at home signified only through body language and a script which seems hesitant and improvised, but is clearly incredibly tightly structured. Watching it, whether live in the room, at home as the broadcast goes out, or alone on the iPlayer, is a hilarious but unsettling experience, as the routine addresses you directly and makes you aware of the act of watching, and what this watching means to Lee as a performer.
It plays on all the tensions of making TV in an age in which the audience is measured and fetishised by broadcasters, but never really understood. Lee plays on the fear TV makers have of losing audience's attention, demonstrating his own consummate skill in 'working the room' for its attention, and the attention of those watching at home. By changing the register between private conversation (the imaginary Estate Agent) live performance (the comedy club) and broadcast audience (his comments directly to camera) he engages and unsettles us in ways that the Facebook gimmicks and throwaway apps of the 'Social Stew' sketch could never dream of doing.
Lee's comedy is based on stretching an idea to breaking point - reflecting it back to us, feeding on our reaction and then stretching it further still - not cutting it up into lovely bite-sized pieces for the web:
“I've already come up with my next show," says the astute funnyman. It's called Twitter Ye Not and the strapline will be something like 'The worse comedian in Britain today as funny as bubonic plague'. I'm annoyed by people who keep saying, 'why don't you go on Twitter its really good you have to say something funny in 140 characters'. I want to do completely the opposite. I want to explore one funny idea in 140 minutes."
This is what I'm interested in exploring right now. I have always been very inspired by Artangel, for their simple approach to commissioning - they go to very talented artists and ask what they would like to make next, then try and make it happen, regardless of the shape, duration or form of the project. They don't own their own infrastructure, they don't have to make ideas fit a schedule, and they aren't in thrall to the temporary hype around a certain platform or format. They trust talent, and understand that storytelling has to take the shape it needs to take to pack an emotional punch. This could be 140 characters, 140 minutes, or 140 years - whatever is necessary to get the tension just right, to make the audience feel like they're part of something unique, something that challenges them and makes them look at the world in a different way.
We're no longer like Richard Curtis, separated from the crowd and reduced to walking the streets, looking for signs of an audience's laughter through the windows of Shepherd's Bush basements. Its all out there now, transparent, readable and playful. We can let stories take their own shapes, speak in whatever register we want, and play with the crowd and their expectations. As the noise of the crowd returns, the golden age of TV seems more and more like a blip - a brief moment in time when storytellers were trapped in a glass box, separate from the laughter and feedback of the audience.
We've moved from broadcasting to a kind of call-and-response, from being behind the glass screen to being amongst the crowd. Its no surprise that some of the people doing this best are comedians with experience of a live crowd. The ability to deal with hecklers is going to be much more important than the ability to understand technology. Pacing, improvisation, being able to read an audience and understanding the right register to speak in - this is what we need to be exploring now.
Stewart Lee
2011-05-20T21:57:00+01:00
Most of the discussion around social media and TV focuses on the technologies being invented, or the potential business models (or lack of them) emerging. But we don't often talk about what it means for the writers, directors and other talent involved in making TV. This Guardian article shows a mixed picture, with Iain Morris, writer of The Inbetweeners, saying he loves Twitter, but the constant stream of feedback can be overwhelming: “I watched the first three episodes of series three from abroad so effectively watched them via Twitter and I found it crippling. It made me rethink the fundamentals of how TV is made. Over nine months you make hundreds of decisions - character, plot, jokes. You used to get a review the following day from someone who had seen the whole and had an opinion of that - broadly they liked it or didn't, and there were good bits or bad bits. Now you see every decision you made being torn apart in real time as it goes out and it can cripple you". This is one of the most interesting challenges facing creative talent right now - how is this new relationship with audiences changing the way you make your work? How much should you listen to the audience's response? What kind of techniques can you use to talk to your audience, and how can you maintain control of the world you are creating? This isn't about technology or 'transmedia', but a fundamental rethinking of how you tell stories, and in order to understand it, we need to look back a couple of decades to see how TV ended up being so cut off from its audience in the first place. On Christmas Day 2008, the BBC showed a documentary about the making of Blackadder, the seminal...
I will be in The National Gallery, London, on March 14th, from 7pm, talking about Joseph Wright’s Experiment With A Bird and William Hogarth’s The Graham Children. Some other celebs are doing their bits too See ya there Art Fans! NationalGallery.Org
2. NEW MERCH
Along with WAXFACE’s usual line of Stewart Lee merch there are new for 2025 t-shirts and hoodies on the Man-Wulf theme, all of the highest quality. I’d wear them myself but I’d look arrogant. Waste the money your Nan gave you for Xmas here
Glasgow’s garage punk veterans The Primevals announce a new single as featured in the new Stewart Lee vs The Man-Wulf U.K. tour.
There are 3 versions
Side a I’m The Man-Wulf
Side b I’m The Man-Wulf (long nail edit)
Plus a 9 minute I’m The Man-Wulf (long nail version) (I LOOOOOVE THIS!!)
John Mackay & Sally Homer, in association with Debi Allen/Curtis Brown present
STEWART LEE vs THE MAN-WULF BRAND NEW SHOW
UK TOURING THROUGHOUT 2025
NB: TICKETS FOR THESE SHOWS WILL REMAIN AT THE ADVERTISED PRICE. SURGE PRICING IS IMMORAL AND TICKETMASTER AND OASIS ARE WANKERS, ENCOURAGED BY SUCCESSIVE TORY CULTURE SECRETARIES IN THEIR CRIMINAL ENDEAVOURS.
In this brand-new show, Lee shares his stage with a tough-talking werewolf comedian who hates humanity. The Man-Wulf lays down a ferocious comedy challenge to the culturally irrelevant and physically enfeebled Lee. Can the beast inside us all be silenced with the silver bullet of Lee's unprecedentedly critically acclaimed style of stand-up.
STEWART LEE vs THE MAN-WULF Opened at Leicester Square Theatre in December 2024 the new show will tour to UK cities throughout 2025.
Tuesday 1st April 2025 - Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield - TICKETS
Wednesday 2nd April 2025 - Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield - TICKETS
Thursday 3rd April 2025 - New Theatre, Peterborough - TICKETS
Friday 4th April 2025 - Palace Theatre, Southend - TICKETS
Saturday 5th April 2025 - Palace Theatre, Southend - TICKETS
Sunday 6th April 2025 - Palace Theatre, Southend - TICKETS
Tuesday 22nd April 2025 - Royal & Derngate, Northampton - TICKETS
Wednesday 23rd April 2025 - Royal & Derngate, Northampton - TICKETS
Monday 28th April 2025 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Tuesday 29th April 2025 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Wednesday 30th April 2025 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
May 2025
Thursday 1st May 2025 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Friday 2nd May 2025 - The Mach Arena, Machynlleth Comedy Festival - TICKETS
Saturday 3rd May 2025 - The Mach Arena, Machynlleth Comedy Festival - TICKETS
Sunday 4th May 2025 - The Mach Arena, Machynlleth Comedy Festival - TICKETS
Tuesday 6th May 2025 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Wednesday 7th May 2025 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Thursday 8th May 2025 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Friday 9th May 2025 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Saturday 10th May 2025 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Monday 12th May 2025 - Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton - TICKETS
Thursday 15th May 2025 - King's Theatre, Portsmouth - TICKETS
Friday 16th May 2025 - The Forum, Bath - TICKETS
July 2025
Saturday 5th July 2025 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 6th July 2025 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 6th July 2025 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Saturday 12th July 2025 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 13th July 2025 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 13th July 2025 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
September 2025
Monday 8th September 2025 - Lighthouse, Poole - TICKETS
Tuesday 9th September 2025 - Lighthouse, Poole - TICKETS
Wednesday 10th September 2025 - Hall For Cornwall, Truro - TICKETS
Thursday 11th September 2025 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS
Friday 12th September 2025 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS
Saturday 13th September 2025 - Westlands Entertainment Venue, Yeovil - TICKETS
Sunday 14th September 2025 - Westlands Entertainment Venue, Yeovil - TICKETS
Tuesday 16th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
Wednesday 17th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
Thursday 18th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
Friday 19th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
Saturday 20th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
Wednesday 24th September 2025 - Hippodrome, Darlington - TICKETS
Thursday 25th September 2025 - Gala, Durham - TICKETS
Friday 26th September 2025 - Theatre Royal, Glasgow - TICKETS
Saturday 27th September 2025 - Playhouse, Edinburgh - TICKETS
Sunday 28th September 2025 - His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen - TICKETS
October 2025
Friday 3rd October 2025 - Aberystwyth Arts Centre – Great Hall, Aberystwyth - TICKETS
Tuesday 7th October 2025 - Milton Keynes Theatre, Milton Keynes - TICKETS
Wednesday 8th October 2025 - Milton Keynes Theatre, Milton Keynes - TICKETS
Thursday 9th October 2025 - Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS
Friday 10th October 2025 - Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS
Saturday 11th October 2025 - Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS
Wednesday 15th October 2025 - Grand Theatre, Swansea - TICKETS
Thursday 16th October 2025 - Grand Theatre, Swansea - TICKETS
Friday 17th October 2025 - Bristol Beacon, Bristol - TICKETS
Saturday 18th October 2025 - Bristol Beacon, Bristol - TICKETS
Tuesday 21st October 2025 - Storyhouse, Chester - TICKETS
Wednesday 22nd October 2025 - Storyhouse, Chester - TICKETS
Thursday 23rd October 2025 - Opera House, Buxton - TICKETS
Friday 24th October 2025 - Opera House, Buxton - TICKETS
Saturday 25th October 2025 - The Baths Hall, Scunthorpe - TICKETS
Wednesday 29th October 2025 - Cast, Doncaster - TICKETS
Thursday 30th October 2025 - Cast, Doncaster - TICKETS
Friday 31st October 2025 - Harrogate Theatre, Harrogate - TICKETS
November 2025
Saturday 1st November 2025 - Harrogate Theatre, Harrogate - TICKETS
Sunday 2nd November 2025 - Harrogate Theatre, Harrogate - TICKETS
Monday 3rd November 2025 - Tyne Theatre & Opera House, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Tuesday 4th November 2025 - Tyne Theatre & Opera House, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Friday 7th November 2025 - The Anvil, Basingstoke - TICKETS
Saturday 8th November 2025 - Rose Theatre, Kingston - TICKETS
Sunday 9th November 2025 - Rose Theatre, Kingston - TICKETS
Tuesday 11th November 2025 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Wednesday 12th November 2025 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Thursday 13th November 2025 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Friday 14th November 2025 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Saturday 15th November 2025 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Monday 17th November 2025 - Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham - TICKETS
Tuesday 18th November 2025 - Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham - TICKETS
Wednesday 19th November 2025 - Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham - TICKETS
6. SNOWFLAKE/TORNADO
Stewart’s 2019-2022 touring show Snowflake/Tornado, which was originally broadcast as a BBC Special in Autumn 2022 is now available to buy or rent “on demand” from www.mediagarageproductions.com
Both shows also appear to be free as part of the current Amazon Prime rosta, but buy them from us to defeat American fascism.
We are currently preparing a physical release of these shows but it’s got delayed as I got pneumonia and have been bogged down in picking through a wealth of possible, and very exciting, audio extras, where the material worked much better than in the broadcast show itself.
7. FESTIVAL STAND-UP SETS 2025 (the usual 30 mins greatest hits shit)
24th May 2025 Bearded Theory, Derbyshire
Iggy Pop, The Manics, Thee Sisters O’ Mercy, Yard Act, Left Field, Throwing Muses, The Selecter, The Lovely Lovely Eggs, my pals Asian Dub Foundation, Cool distaff Japanese Ramones Shonen Knife, The Alarm (!!!!???), Beans on Toast, dub legends Zion Train, Angeline Morrison, Miki Berenyi from off of The Shoegazing Lushes, The Vaselines, Stick In The Wheel, Paul Heaton, and afro-rock avatars W.I.T.C.H. www.beardedtheory.co.uk.
8. Benefit Shows
The Burning Parrot, Just Stop Oil fundraised, Walthamstow Trades, London, 8th April TICKETS
Me, Judy Boom, Henry Morris, Rosie Holt, Harley Brewer, Cameron Ford.
Daniel Kitson is hosting a series of benefits for Resonance FM Radio in London in March.
He says, “As part of my ongoing affection for London’s community arts radio station - Resonance FM - I have put together some benefit gigs throughout March. They’re at Up The Creek in Greenwich (London) every Monday night during March, i’m booking the acts and hosting the shows and i think they’ll be a lot of low key, chilled out, Monday night fun. Here’s the blurb:
“A Month of Mondays for Resonance FM. Daniel Kitson will host five Monday nights of very good comedians doing whatever they like to raise some money for London’s community arts radio station, Resonance FM. There’ll be a mix of new material, old material and some bits that are not and never will be material. .£10. There will definitely be one or two more acts added here and there. Also, you have to assume that if people get a better (paid) offer they may well cancel on the day but as things stand the bills are as follows
3rd - Lloyd Griffith, Roisin Conaty, Rose Matafeo, Sean Mcloughlin
10th – Rosie Jones, Ivor Dembina, Ania Magliano, Spencer Jones
17th – Rob Auton, Lucy Pearman, Bridget Christie.
24th – Ceyla AB, Andy Zaltzman, Sam Campbell
31st – Alice Sneddon, John Kearns
Tickets available now - HERE
He didn’t ask me, which means I am not one of the cool kids anymore.
9. IDLER FEST 11-13 JULY, HAMPSTEAD HEATH, LONDON
I will be amongst the knobheads being grilled at the Idler magazine’s annual 3 day garden party.
It’s a lovely event.
“FENTON HOUSE & GARDEN, HAMPSTEAD, LONDON. The Idler Festival is a weekend of philosophy and merriment, comedy, talks, music, workshops and salons in the bucolic surroundings of Fenton House and gardens near Hampstead Heath. You’ll be entertained and enlightened by the Idler’s favourite thinkers, comedians, writers, and musicians. There’ll be walks, ukulele, bibliotherapy, agony aunts, beekeeping and plenty of time to loaf under the apple trees. There’ll be dancing lessons on the lawn, loafing to DJs in the orchard and salons in the house. Join us for our dream garden party. Headlining a stellar line up will be comedians Michael Palin and Stewart Lee and former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. Plus Daisy Dunn, Miranda Sawyer, a mini pilgrimage with Guy Hayward, evensong on Sunday and much more to be announced. “Britain’s best arts and literary festival,” Spectator”.
In what seems to look like a concerted attack on the fabric of the arts in the UK, Wolverhampton Art School building is now scheduled for demolition. “Save the Wolverhampton school of art building from demolition . It is more than just an art school it is a land mark and part of Wolverhampton’s sky line and heritage. Hands off our Art school.”
As if further evidence were needed of the ongoing war against intelligence, Cardiff Uni’s Ancient History degree, and music department, are both threatened with going down. Those who do not understand history are condemned to vote for the same wrong things over and over again. Vote here to protect the past. And Wales is the LAND OF SONG surely?
“Along with several other departments and degrees, Cardiff University is cutting its entire Ancient History department. This threatens the livelihood of staff and the future of students, who have been told that they will graduate, but given no further information as to the future of their education. This is a devastating decision that threatens the future of the arts in Wales and the wider UK.
Cardiff University currently boasts a large Ancient History faculty but has now decided to let these hard-working and dedicated professionals go, in the name of profits. When did our universities become about money, rather than education? We stand in solidarity with our lecturers and supporting staff who stand to lose their livelihoods. These cuts disregard the importance of our subject and leave students feeling disrespected and left in the lurch. We pay thousands of pounds for our degrees, and should not have to worry that they will be swept out from under us, or have their content gutted.
The study of the classical world and ancient history is one of the primary foundations of higher education. The principles of democracy and law that it teaches reflect keenly on the current world and in today's political climate, it seems nonsensical to erase such vital education.
We as Ancient History students are writing this petition to demand that Cardiff University think twice about this decision, and take a different course of action than these devastating cuts. Please sign and share with all students, staff, alumni, and all who care about the arts and their future.”
And Cardiff’s music dept is also going down. Llion Williams wants you to sign a petition and says;
“I am writing this letter to the Vice Chancellor of Cardiff University to express my profound disappointment and outrage at the decision to cut the Music degree course at Cardiff University. This action represents a gross dereliction of duty and a deeply short-sighted betrayal of Wales's rich musical heritage.
As the capital city of Wales, Cardiff University has a unique responsibility to nurture and cultivate artistic talent within the nation. Music is not merely a frivolous pastime; it is an integral part of our cultural DNA, woven into the very fabric of our society. From the vibrant folk traditions to the contemporary sounds emerging from our cities and towns, music enriches our lives, fosters creativity, and strengthens our communities.
Cardiff, as the cultural heart of Wales, has long been the wellspring of musical inspiration for many. Our nation’s musical legacy is deeply intertwined with the lives and works of greats such as Ivor Novello, Alun Hoddinott, William Mathias, and Grace Williams, whose compositions have brought global recognition to Welsh music. To cut the Music degree course is to betray this rich history and the contributions that Welsh musicians have made to the world stage over centuries. This decision diminishes the role Cardiff has played in fostering Wales’s proud tradition of musical excellence and stifles future generations who could follow in these illustrious footsteps.
By eliminating the only dedicated music degree course in Cardiff, the University is effectively forcing aspiring musicians to seek their education elsewhere, likely in England. This not only undermines the aspirations of countless talented young people but also weakens Wales's capacity to produce world-class musicians and contribute to the global music scene.
Furthermore, Music, as a major component of creative industries, supports jobs, local businesses, and tourism, all of which have significant economic value. By cutting the Music degree, Cardiff University risks undermining the future contribution of Welsh musicians and artists to both the local and national economy.
This decision demonstrates a shocking lack of ambition and a profound disregard for the vital role of the arts in a thriving society. It suggests a preference for short-term gains over long-term cultural and economic benefits. Music education is not a luxury; it is an investment in the future, fostering critical thinking, creativity, and personal growth.
Music is also essential for mental health and well-being. Studies show that participating in music, either as a performer or audience member, reduces stress, fosters social cohesion, and improves cognitive function. Cutting this course disregards these well-documented benefits, not just for students but for society as a whole.
By abandoning a key cultural course such as music, Cardiff University is risking its own reputation as a leader in higher education and as a progressive institution. Universities are meant to be bastions of intellectual and cultural leadership, and this decision undercuts that role, diminishing Cardiff's standing both within Wales and internationally. Countries like Finland, known for their thriving music education programmes, have shown the world the power of the arts to build a cohesive and progressive society.
To discard such a cornerstone of our cultural identity is an act of cultural vandalism. It sends a chilling message that the arts are not valued in Wales, and that our aspirations for a vibrant and dynamic cultural landscape are being systematically dismantled.”
The first major exhibition devoted to the artist and designer Tirzah Garwood (1908–1951) since 1952. Best known until now as the wife of Eric Ravilious and as the author of the autobiography Long Live Great Bardfield, Garwood excelled as a fine artist and printmaker. Her diverse and enchanting works are gems of the mid-20th century.
ITHELL COLQUHOUN – BETWEEN TWO WORLDS Tate St Ives, Feb 1st – May 5th.
Coincidentally, I have a routine about Ithell in the new show!
“The first major exhibition of visionary artist Ithell Colquhoun. One of the most radical artists of her generation, Ithell Colquhoun was an important figure in British Surrealism during the 1930s and 1940s. An innovative writer and practicing occultist, Colquhoun charted her own course, investigating surrealist methods of unconscious picture-making and fearlessly delving into the realms of myth and magic. Colquhoun explored the possibilities of a divine feminine power as a path to personal fulfilment and societal transformation. Her understanding of the world as a connected spiritual cosmos brought her to Cornwall, where she deepened her creative explorations, inspired by the region’s ancient landscape, Celtic traditions, and sacred sites. This landmark exhibition of over 200 artworks and archival materials traces Colquhoun’s evolution, from her early student work and engagement with the surrealist movement, to her fascination with the intertwining realms of art, sexual identity, ecology and occultism. It culminates in a room dedicated to Colquhoun’s interpretation of the Tarot deck – her most accomplished fusion of her artistic and magical practice. Explore Colquhoun’s enthralling, multi-layered universe through writings, drawings, paintings, early theatre projects and mural designs, many of which have never been shown publicly before. The exhibition will debut at Tate St Ives in February 2025, journeying to Tate Britain from June to October 2025.”
THE FALLEN LEAVES Mod-punk veteran assassins
FEB 28th Bristol Thunderbolt,
MARCH 1st Guildford Holroyd,
8th Brighton Hope & Ruin,
22nd London Hope & Anchor,
MAY 3rd Stockton-On-Tees Volume,
4th N’Castle Billy Bootleggers,
31st London Dublin Castle,
June 8th Southsea Edge of The Wedge,
SEPT 27th London Dublin Castle.
CHUCK PROPHET Chuck’s last live tour was one of the greatest rock and roll shows I ever saw – real huckster guitar slinger stuff that they don’t make anymore. The Mount Rushmore of sandblasted country noir is on the road here again in 2025. Don’t miss. Honestly.
FEBRUARY
27th - Cambridge - Portland Arms
28th - Norwich - Arts Centre
MARCH
1st - Hassocks - Mid Sussex Music Hall
2nd - Bristol - Lantern
3rd - Birmingham - Hare & Hounds
4th - Southampton - 1865
5th - London - The Garage
NAPALM DEATH Birmingham’s grindcore godparents
MARCH
4th - Dublin Academy
5th – Glasgow Galvanisers’ Yard
6th – Newcastle Uni Union
7th – London Electric Ballroon
8th – Liverpool Academy
9th – Birmingham Institute
EMMY BRIDGWATER/SURREAL SOLIHULL 6th March – 31st May
Emmy Bridgwater was a great surrealist pioneer from my howetown. I suspect I may have delivered her newspaper. And, gossip-fans, Emmy was the woman the now noted surrealist Ithell Colquhoun’s surreal husband had an affair with. With Birmingham’s main gallery being in an ongoing state of closure you’re unlikely to see any of the artworks of Emmy’s they hold in situ, so maybe this slightly odd looking event will shed some light on her.
“Surreal Solihull - Solihull’s links to the Surrealist art movement will be celebrated this Spring with a new exhibition in Solihull town centre. ‘Surreal Solihull’ takes as its starting point the work of Solihull’s pioneering Surrealist artist and poet Emmy Bridgwater who founded and worked with the Birmingham Surrealists throughout the 1930s and 40s. As well as featuring several pieces painted, drawn and collaged by Emmy Bridgwater, 30 local artists have been commissioned to create new Surrealist art works which will be shown for the first time at the exhibition. Solihull Council’s Cabinet Member for Communities, Cllr Wazma Qais, said:“The ‘Surrealist Manifesto’ was published just over 100 years ago in 2024, but Surrealist art continues to influence contemporary art, fashion and interior design. ‘Surreal Solihull’ will shine a light on Solihull’s very own Surrealist, Emmy Bridgwater, and also provide a space for emerging and established contemporary local artists to engage with this exciting and thought- provoking art movement. I am excited to see what they will produce!” Contemporary artist, Helen Grundy, who regularly exhibits around the world, was thrilled to have been selected. She said: “Emmy Bridgwater was an important part of the Surrealist movement and I am delighted she is being rediscovered and her work is finding a new audience. “My piece ‘Bird Land’ is a homage to her work and promotes my belief that she is an inspiration to modern artists. In my piece she is a hybrid – part human, part bird – and she towers over a surreal imagined landscape that represents a dreamlike version of Solihull.” ‘Surreal Solihull’ will take place from 6 March – 31 May 2025 in an outdoor gallery on Solihull High Street. Full details of all the artists and supporting events will be available in February. Free to visit, it has been developed thanks to funding from West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) and in partnership with Solihull Council, Visit Solihull, The Mayor Gallery in London, the Emmy Bridgwater Estate and Solihull BID.”
EX-EASTER ISLAND HEAD Groovy minimalists. MARCH 8th London ICA. APRIL 20th Colchester Arts
STIFF LITTLE FINGERS Indefatigable punk progenitors
MARCH 11th Brighton Concorde, 12th Nottingham Rock City, 14th M’cr Academy, 15th N’castle City Hall, 17th Glasgow Barrowland, 18th York Barbican,
THE LOFT I never saw Pete Astor’s pioneering indie-folk-rock janglers The Loft, like an English middle class mid-60s Dylan with a post-punk rush, first time around, though I saw the Weather Prophets loads, and regular doses of Astor solo over the decades have been pleasurably unavoidable. But I am thrilled at the possibility of this, and new recordings show the band on great form. Age suits them it seems. MARCH 13th – M’cr Gullivers, 14th – B’ham Castle & Falcon, 15th – Nottingham JT Soar, 20th – Ramsgate Music Hall, 21st – Bristol Thunderbolt, 22nd – London Lexington, 23rd – Brighton Prince Albert, 27th – Leeds Lending Room, 28th – N’castle Cluny 2, 29th – Glasgow Mono
WILL ADAMSDALE – AI, AI, OH. Barbican March 13th – 15th
Adamsdale’s Jackson’s Way show in 2005 changed my approach to life and work. Here is his new show at the Barbican, London “Perrier Comedy and Fringe First winner Will Adamsdale presents a new autobiographical show about escape, creativity and technology.
Once upon a time a washed up London writer and technophobe went off-grid in a confused lockdown relocation… only to find that the grass ain’t always greener. The blank page stretched out like the endless fields. His only hope? His greatest enemy – technology. A story of bots, writer’s block and getting away from it all. Will Adamsdale is a Perrier Comedy and Fringe First award-winning comedian and theatre maker whose previous shows with Fuel include Jackson’s Way, The Receipt, The Human Computer, The Summer House, Jackson's Way: The London Jacksathon!, The Victorian in the Wall.” https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2025/event/fuelfest-ai-ai-oh-by-will-adamsdale
DAVID GRUBBS/SECLUDED BRONTE Chicago’s amazing art-folk-minimalist David Grubbs, of Gastr del Sol pedigree, is on the road here in March, with bendy sound-art cracked-actors Secluded Bronte tow.
“The Consume & Obey Podcast invites you to join multi-award-winning comedian Nick Helm and Nathaniel Metcalfe (collectively, The John Carpenter Appreciation Society/The JCAS) in their club house as they meet up to talk about what films they’ve been consuming that week. In this special at CULTPLEX, we'll be screening John Carpenter banger IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS and then jumping into a live podcast taping with Nick and Nat to discuss the film with the audience, and what films they've recently logged!
Film synopsisIN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS opens with Stephen King esque horror novelist Sutter Cane going missing and insurance investigator John Trent is set up to scrutinize the claim made by his publisher; he endeavours to retrieve a yet-to-be-released manuscript and ascertain the writer's whereabouts. Accompanied by the novelist's editor, Linda Styles, and disturbed by nightmares from reading Cane's other novels, Trent makes an eerie nighttime trek to a supernatural town in New Hampshire. This screening is 18+, and will feature subtitles to aid accessibility.The film will begin at the advertised time above.”
MEKONS/STEWART LEE April 4th – Signature Brew, Haggerston, London. I host an album launch show by welsh country punk legends! Superb secret special guests TBA
THE MAGPIE ARC Fabulous young British country-folk-rock act on the road, augmented by the mighty guitar legend Martin Simpson APRIL
HAWKWIND 2025. Another implausible trip for the psychedelic survivors, Dave Brock still imperious, even from his octogenarian stool.
APRIL 17th – Gateshead Glasshouse,
18th – Guildford G Live,
19th – Bournemouth Pavillion,
20th – B’ham Symphony Hall.
MAY 9th – Aylesbury Waterside,
10th – Liverpool Auditorium,
11th – M’cr Bridgewater Hall,
23rd – Sheffield City Hall,
25th – Cambridge Corn Exchange,
26th – London Barbican
RICHARD DAWSON Unmitigated art-folk genius, and funny with it
APRIL 23rd &
24th M’cr Stoller Hall,
25th Kendal Brewery Arts,
27th Leeds City Varieties,
29th London Clapham Grand,
MAY 1st Cardiff Gate,
2nd Notts Metronome,
17th Gateshead Glasshouse,
20th Edinbro Pleasance,
21st Glasgow St Lukes,
22nd L’pool Philharmonic,
23rd Brighton St Georhe’s ,
24th Folkestone Quarterhouse.
THE ICEMAN AT TABERNACLE GALLERY, NOTTING HILL, LONDON
April 28th – 4TH May
Anthony Irving Iceman (aim) says, “aim is surfacing from deepest Dorset for his first London show which is taking place at the Tabernacle Gallery in Notting Hill. Here is a group of paintings from the previous 10 years selected by aim himself. There is also a series of more recent paintings based on The Iceman’s ground-breaking Lecture at the Bill Murray Club in September 2024 where The Iceman explained his Block melting work in the form of an academic lecture. All aim’s paintings are based on the live performance and relational work of The Iceman who has spent his adult life melting Blocks of ice for reasons that escape most people.
The Iceman and aim are one and the same person. Humanly speaking, they coalesce as Anthony Irvine.“The Blocks live on”-that is the Iceman’s mantra and now aim’s as well. aim’s paintings have been described in numerous ways. He looks forward to hearing more adjectival phrases to describe his work during this run. aim is sometimes labelled as an ‘outsider’ artist because of the raw energy of his painting style and the idiosyncratic subject matter. But aim himself simply describes himself as a “painter with clear aims.”
Although in one sense the pieces could be described as obsessional self-portraits,in another sense they are paintings of ‘Everyman’ and “’Everywoman’ in life’s struggles and joys. Taking a leaf from Andy Warhol’s dictum that Business is the best kind of art to heart,The Iceman will be clearly delineating the prices of individual paintings. He will also be offering a wide spectrum of aesthetic merchandise for sale at bargain prices: Postcards, Posters, his ’75 braimnd new paintings’ art Book, his “Melt It! Book”, etchings, engravings, signed block photocopies on authentic fax paper, Melt It Badges and even his children’s book, “Lockdown Melter”, will all be available for purchase. Truly there is something for everyone. The Iceman will have a padlocked cash box on site and provide his own security for his priceless paintings and all goods. aim hopes visitors enjoy viewing his insightful canvases.
The opening do is at 7pm on 29th April 2025 [Thank you to “Music Business Associates” for kindly sponsoring the refreshments for that event] The Iceman/aim will be in the Tabernacle Gallery in person every day of the run. But he will not be shaking anyone’s hand, for health and safety reasons, due to the freezing effect of such a gesture. *Thank you to Artcetera, Bournemouth who generously supply aim with free quality cut-offs of mounting board upon which to paint.
**FYI The Iceman’s Blockbuster Documentary film “Melt It!The Film of the Iceman” is due to be released this year 2025”
MACHYNLLETH COMEDY FESTIVAL The greatest comedy festival in the world. Book your bell tent now to avoid disappointment. I am doing MAN-WULF 3 times, John Shuttleworth is on, Celya AB etc etc. Make sure to see Ben Moor’s Three Thing Day. May 2nd - 4th. Once visited, never forgotten.
DON’T TELL ANYONE ABOUT IT OR YOU WILL RUIN IT!!!!
ALSO ----- The Nightingales release their first studio album since 2022’s much-praised ‘The Last Laugh’. Celebrated in the Stewart Lee-narrated film King Rocker of 2020, where the curtain was raised on the magic of the “long serving punk/alternative rock volunteer” (The Quietus) Robert Lloyd, The Nightingales are as pertinent as ever as they release a poignant tirade on modern times heralded, quite rightly, as ‘The Awful Truth’.
Released on April 4th on Fire Records, their new album ‘The Awful Truth’ is a modern mutant music hall interpretation of the day’s news, a haunting jolt into realism narrated with all the angst of an insistent, slightly dishevelled late-night newscaster. BUY A BUNDLE HERE. https://thenightingales.org.uk
BOOTHBY GRAFFOE & ANTONIO FORCIONE May 28th, The Old Woollen, Leeds. A MUST!! ONE OFF SHOW!!!! “20 years ago a stand-up comedian made an album with a virtuoso guitarist. They did a bunch of shows and got a bunch of 5 star reviews. Then they toured Australia, and won a bunch of awards. One of which they left in an Italian restaurant in Adelaide.
SKEP WAX WEEKENDER July 17th – 20th, Islington, London
Four nights of radical indiepop - Thursday and Friday evening at the Lexington, Saturday evening at Islington Town Hall, Sunday (4pm) back at The Lexington: see full line-up below. The 'Weekender' ticket will admit you to all four nights. Day tickets are available for each of the four shows. Thursday (The Lexington) Jeanines, Sassyhiya, Panic Pocket Friday (The Lexington) The Would-Be-Goods, The Orchids, Swansea Sound Saturday (Islington Assembly Room) Heavenly, Lightheaded, Crumbs Sunday (The Lexington), Marlody, The Gentle Spring, Special Friend
Venue addresses: The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Rd, London, N1 9JB.
Islington Assembly Hall, Upper St, London, N1 2UD. (The venues are less than a mile apart.)
Heavenly's new 7" single will go on sale at this event.
Ticket prices include £1.50 Venue Levy for Islington Town Hall.
The Lexington is 18+ admission, The Islington Assembly Hall is 16+
MILLIONS OF DEAD COPS / MDC American hardcore heroes
AUG 4th – New Cross Inn, London
SAINTS 73-79 Superb! The original line-up of the Australian Punk progenitors, but with Mudhoney's Mark Arm deputising for the departed Chris Bailey (a gentleman and a scholar who once came to my show!).
His co-writer and co-guitarist Ed Kuepper remains undimmed and the rhythm section will rattle your bones. NOVEMBER 21ST Bristol Trinity,
22nd Leeds Project,
23rd Glasgow Garage,
24th M’cr Academy 2,
26th London Camden Electric Ballroom
13. IN OUR LAMENTATIONS 2025
Barre Phillips (Jazz bassman, 1934)
Bob Grover (Brighton Piranha, 1956)
Riro (Japanese sea otter, 2007) Nora Orlandi (Spaghetti symphonist, 1933)
Ed Askew (Acid folkie, 1940)
Tony Slattery (The vile blows of the world made him reckless, 1959)
David Lynch (He erased our heads, 1946) Landy Randerson (Museum access pioneer, 1949)
Garth Hudson (Bandolier, 1937)
Brian Murphy (Instantly aged actor, 1932)
Rab MacWilliam (Hackney historian, 1951)
Barry Goldberg (His flag was electric, 1941)
Peter Yarrow (He left on a jetplane, 1938)
Snowy Fleet (Easybeater, 1939)
Jamie Muir (Absolute fucking rhythmical genius, 1942)
Mike Ratledge (Moon in June Soft Machine man, 1943)
Gabriel Yacoub (Malicorne muso of French folk, 1952)
Bill Fay (Christian mystic songwriter seer, 1943)
Stewart Lee
2025-02-27T10:40:54+00:00
TWITTER, FACEBOOK, THREADS, AMAZON Get off the platforms! Fight American fascism! 1. NATIONAL GALLERY I will be in The National Gallery, London, on March 14th, from 7pm, talking about Joseph Wright’s Experiment With A Bird and William Hogarth’s The Graham Children. Some other celebs are doing their bits too See ya there Art Fans! NationalGallery.Org 2. NEW MERCH Along with WAXFACE’s usual line of Stewart Lee merch there are new for 2025 t-shirts and hoodies on the Man-Wulf theme, all of the highest quality. I’d wear them myself but I’d look arrogant. Waste the money your Nan gave you for Xmas here wax-face.com/stewart-lee 3. MAN-WULF BY THE PRIMEVALS Glasgow’s garage punk veterans The Primevals announce a new single as featured in the new Stewart Lee vs The Man-Wulf U.K. tour. There are 3 versions Side a I’m The Man-Wulf Side b I’m The Man-Wulf (long nail edit) Plus a 9 minute I’m The Man-Wulf (long nail version) (I LOOOOOVE THIS!!) Vinyl sides a&b released on a 7” 45 in January. https://primevals.bandcamp.com 4. BASIC LEE IS ON NOW TV https://www.nowtv.com/ie/watch/entertainment/collections/ultimate-comedy/asset/stewart-lee-basic-lee.../A5EK6949itCVNKaChrDXN You’ll have to subscribe though. Here is a thorough, and not entirely positive, review from a thoughtful young man on Youtube, still better than most pro-critics. https://youtu.be/kdOYgqCzJ4s?si=1uIZBn8tMWsAiS0h 5. STEWART LEE VS THE MAN-WULF John Mackay & Sally Homer, in association with Debi Allen/Curtis Brown present STEWART LEE vs THE MAN-WULF BRAND NEW SHOW UK TOURING THROUGHOUT 2025 NB: TICKETS FOR THESE SHOWS WILL REMAIN AT THE ADVERTISED PRICE. SURGE PRICING IS IMMORAL AND TICKETMASTER AND OASIS ARE WANKERS, ENCOURAGED BY SUCCESSIVE TORY CULTURE SECRETARIES IN THEIR CRIMINAL ENDEAVOURS. In this brand-new show, Lee shares his stage with a tough-talking werewolf comedian who hates humanity. The Man-Wulf lays down a ferocious comedy challenge to the culturally irrelevant and physically enfeebled Lee. Can...
Since the mid-nineties, Comet Gain have invoked a holy trinity of Eighties Twee Indie, Seventies Punk and Sixties soul sounds, their early ubiquity on the London circuit perhaps devaluing their currency.
But the patronage of their new producer Ryan Jarman, of the currently fashionable group The Cribs, provides fleeting focus for new fans. Comet Gain's trademark euphoric pop stomps are undimmed, but amongst nods to Prefab Sprout and the junkie poet Herbert Huncke, a track called Yoona Baines appropriates unexpectedly the liquid Largactil licks of The Blue Orchids, the band formed by The Fall founder and psychiatric nurse Una Baines.
Stewart Lee
2011-04-17T01:59:50+01:00
Since the mid-nineties, Comet Gain have invoked a holy trinity of Eighties Twee Indie, Seventies Punk and Sixties soul sounds, their early ubiquity on the London circuit perhaps devaluing their currency. But the patronage of their new producer Ryan Jarman, of the currently fashionable group The Cribs, provides fleeting focus for new fans. Comet Gain's trademark euphoric pop stomps are undimmed, but amongst nods to Prefab Sprout and the junkie poet Herbert Huncke, a track called Yoona Baines appropriates unexpectedly the liquid Largactil licks of The Blue Orchids, the band formed by The Fall founder and psychiatric nurse Una Baines.
On 10 May 2016, in the closing days of the Brexit campaign, at an impromptu speech in Cornwall, lying Boris Johnson again invoked the Brexiters’ foundation myth that the EU sought to ban bendy bananas. But voters who backed leaving the EU in order to get back the bendy bananas, which had not been taken off them anyway, must surely now be wondering, privately, if it was all worth it.
Last Monday, Jeremy Corbyn reluctantly declared his own “bespoke customs union” Brexit fudge with all the enthusiasm and conviction of a man held at gunpoint saying how well he is being treated. “The option of a new UK customs union with the EU would need to ensure the UK has a say in future trade deals,” he mumbled. “Also, I am allowed to coddle an egg on alternate Tuesdays.”
Apparently Corbyn’s Own Brexit Fudge ™ ® was offered to preserve the soft Irish border with Northern Ireland, as it will be impossible to re-bend a straightened Euro banana should a straight Irish banana need to cross into Northern Ireland, perhaps as part of an Irish child’s snack box, an Irish chimp’s dinner or as an Irish clown’s comedy prop.
Some Tory Brexiters have an almost blind faith in the idea that there may be some form of as yet nonexistent technological solution; Bernard Jenkin, interviewed by an increasingly scruffy Dobby the House Elf on Newsnight on Tuesday, said Wilf Lunn, the extravagantly mustachioed novelty bicycle inventor from Vision On and Magpie, was already working on a bespoke Border Banana Detector and Straightener ™ ®.
Lunn’s Borderbananandetecto-straightorbendomatic ™ ® would detect and straighten, or bend, any bananas crossing the border, so they would be the right banana type for the segment of the Irish island they were bound for. Jenkin’s attempt to demonstrate a prototype Borderbananandetecto-straightorbendomatic in the Newsnight studio backfired spectacularly after it lunged at political editor Nicholas Watt’s face and tried to peel it.
Honestly! You couldn’t make it up!! It’s an increasingly difficult time to be a comedian!!! (And before I forget. Message to Bernard “Jenkin”: Jenkin is a French name. No one is called “Jenkin” here. Your British name is Jenkins. Bernard Fucking Jenkins. So start using it.)
But Corbyn’s Own Brexit Fudge ™ ® is as impossible a proposition for the EU in its own way as Boris Johnson’s pre-referendum fantasy of the magic cake that grows again, no matter how much of it you eat; an idea the massive liar surely gleaned from a visit to one of the cloud lands at the top of the Faraway Tree, before sliding back down the slippery slip with his friends Darius, Marina, Petronella, and the Saucepan Man.
Whether you are a kamikaze-hard Brexiter or a diehard traitor Remoaner, the precision-applied works spanner of Corbyn’s Own Brexit Fudge ™ ® means hard Brexit is far less likely. Banzai! Boris Johnson’s dream of bendy bananas for ever withers on the banana vine, a cowed people cowering for eternity beneath the blow of the straight banana, a straight banana squished on a human face – for ever. But the culture war continues.
Last Monday, on the Twitter, the Mad Max writer and Milo Yiannopoulos cheerleader Brendan McCarthy called me a “decaying Morrissey impersonator and leftwing donut-eater” and declared: “It’s end times for the Oxbridge comedy establishment as their own Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown lashes out at an indifferent public.”
While I never knowingly eat doughnuts, “lashing out at an indifferent public” is a reasonable description of the impression I strive to create live, and detractors often inadvertently illuminate exactly the effect I aim for, their harshest criticisms helping me to sculpt the on-stage character of Stewart Lee.
But as I stood, on the 194th date of my current 220-date tour, on stage in Dartford last Sunday, in the first half-full theatre of the run, my hyperacoustic ears still ringing from a catastrophic sound operator error at Hereford Courtyard on Thursday, the room somehow just would not quite catch fire. I wondered if Mad Max McCarthy was right. Was it indeed “end times for the Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown of the Oxbridge comedy establishment”?
n April last year, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, Breitbart, the Spectator, ShortList and Spiked all ran the same demonstrably false story saying I was experiencing mass walkouts because of doing anti-Brexit jokes. This wasn’t the case, even in archly Eurosceptic Lincoln, although, to be fair, the people there may have struggled to find the exits without hard-working east Europeans to show them the way and carry their cauliflowers around. The only walkout of the tour was a very funny man in Canterbury, who shouted “I’ll wait for the DVD” as he left, but I don’t think his departure, unlike David Cameron’s, was Brexit-related.
Last year it was fun doing anti-Brexit material on tour. Brexiters in the room had won the referendum, after all, so as a Remoaner I was in a position of weakness punching up at them, as the comedian is required to be. Laughing Brexiters would come up afterwards and magnanimously get me to sign their books and DVDs “to a Leave-voting c*nt”, an amusing transaction that genuinely renewed my faith in humanity nightly. We could all be friends after all.
But on Monday, after Corbyn proposed his hard Brexit-sinking “bespoke customs union”, it seemed like no one was going to get exactly what they wanted out of Brexit now. There probably weren’t any winners, certainly not the Leave voters of Leave-voting Dartford, now condemned, even their figureheads agree, to an even less prosperous future.
So on stage in Dartford, I didn’t feel I quite understood how to pitch the Brexit stuff any more. In a situation where no one will win there were no winners to aim at. It was not clear any more which way was up, and I no longer knew which direction to punch upwards in.
Stewart Lee’s Content Provider continues to tour until April, when it is abandoned over three nights at the Royal Festival Hall
Stewart Lee
2018-03-04T19:49:43+00:00
On 10 May 2016, in the closing days of the Brexit campaign, at an impromptu speech in Cornwall, lying Boris Johnson again invoked the Brexiters’ foundation myth that the EU sought to ban bendy bananas. But voters who backed leaving the EU in order to get back the bendy bananas, which had not been taken off them anyway, must surely now be wondering, privately, if it was all worth it. Last Monday, Jeremy Corbyn reluctantly declared his own “bespoke customs union” Brexit fudge with all the enthusiasm and conviction of a man held at gunpoint saying how well he is being treated. “The option of a new UK customs union with the EU would need to ensure the UK has a say in future trade deals,” he mumbled. “Also, I am allowed to coddle an egg on alternate Tuesdays.” Apparently Corbyn’s Own Brexit Fudge ™ ® was offered to preserve the soft Irish border with Northern Ireland, as it will be impossible to re-bend a straightened Euro banana should a straight Irish banana need to cross into Northern Ireland, perhaps as part of an Irish child’s snack box, an Irish chimp’s dinner or as an Irish clown’s comedy prop. Some Tory Brexiters have an almost blind faith in the idea that there may be some form of as yet nonexistent technological solution; Bernard Jenkin, interviewed by an increasingly scruffy Dobby the House Elf on Newsnight on Tuesday, said Wilf Lunn, the extravagantly mustachioed novelty bicycle inventor from Vision On and Magpie, was already working on a bespoke Border Banana Detector and Straightener ™ ®. Lunn’s Borderbananandetecto-straightorbendomatic ™ ® would detect and straighten, or bend, any bananas crossing the border, so they would be the right banana type for the segment of the Irish island they were bound for. Jenkin’s attempt...
1. DAMON & NAOMI (and me) LIVE AT CAFÉ OTO, RECODINGS AVAILABLE
In January I hosted 3 nights of Damon & Naomi (Galaxie 500, Magic Hour, Damon & Naomi) at London’s Café Oto.
The encores of each night have come out on bandcamp and it is a very special recording with contributions from Mark Webber of Pulp, Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab & Monade & Source Ensemble, Richard Youngs from Richard Youngs, Jess Hickie-Kallenbach from Still House Plants, Alabaster DePlume from British contemporary jazz, Gina Birch from Raincoats & Red Krayola & Hangovers, and Marie Merlet from Malphino & Monade & Ikocherie, and features the sound of me throwing paper snow at the musicians.
January 3-5, 2026
Encores with friends at Café Oto, London
A Bandcamp exclusive!
Recorded by Billy Steiger
Mastered by Alan Douches at West West Side Music
“Thank you to the wonderful staff and audience at Café Oto, to Stewart Lee for being our compère and psychogeographical guide, and to all our friends for joining us on these closing sets of “covers.” “ – D&N
It’s the best comedy festival in the world, but don’t tell anyone about it!
We are screening the KING ROCKER movie with Q&A on Saturday morning, I am doing Man Wulf on Sunday, and on Saturday afternoon there’s this...
Joking Apart: Stewart Lee Asks Robert Lloyd to Explain Old Jokes. 2 Pilot episodes of an exciting new podcast featuring Stewart Lee and his mentor, the Birmingham punk legend Robert Lloyd of Prefects, Nightingales and King Rocker repute. Saturday May 2nd, 2 pm, Ysgol Bro Hydden – Main Hall
I am the reader of the audiobook of The Big Midweek, Steve Hanley from The Fall’s book about playing bass for two decades in the greatest British band, against twenty years of social change. You can hear it here...
I am now writing 1000 funny words a week for Carole Cadwalladr’s new on-line newspaper The Nerve, run by people who were sacked or quit when Tories and Telegraph/Times types took over The Observer. It is immediately ace.
Sign up here and it would also really be great if you could pay them £6.95 a month as the 5 women at the helm sunk all their redundancy money into it. Carole understands that the only story in town is how the tech-bros choose what news we see and how we understand the world, and The Nerve will address this head on. The only news that matters.
Please send the link below and this begging request to anyone you can. https://www.thenerve.news
Along with WAXFACE’s usual line of Stewart Lee merch there are new for 2025 t-shirts and hoodies on the Man-Wulf theme, all of the highest quality. I’d wear them myself but I’d look arrogant. Waste the money your Nan gave you for Xmas here
AND! Back in stock! We have restocked our most popular tees including All The Cheeses, YOU CAN PROVE ANYTHING WITH FACTS, "I don't think that, I think the opposite of that", and the hit comic book STEWART LEE VS. THE MAN-WULF tee!
All these are available NOW on preorder and will be shipping on April 11th!
Order now via wax face and love all the different cheeses and tees too!
Glasgow’s garage punk veterans The Primevals’ new single is featured in the new Stewart Lee vs The Man-Wulf U.K. tour.
There are 3 versions. Side a I’m The Man-Wulf. Side b I’m The Man-Wulf (long nail edit). Plus a 9 minute I’m The Man-Wulf (long nail version). Vinyl sides a&b were released on a 7” 45 in January. https://primevals.bandcamp.com
AND all the tracks are now subsumed into a new mega-mix 12” album, including the extended version of the track as a slow blues, and remixes with big beats and jazzy sax that take it in a whole new direction https://primevals.bandcamp.com/album/im-the-man-wulf-lp
John Mackay & Sally Homer, in association with Debi Allen/Curtis Brown present
STEWART LEE vs THE MAN-WULF BRAND NEW SHOW
UK TOURING THROUGHOUT 2026
NB: TICKETS FOR THESE SHOWS WILL REMAIN AT THE ADVERTISED PRICE. SURGE PRICING IS IMMORAL AND TICKETMASTER AND OASIS ARE WANKERS, ENCOURAGED BY SUCCESSIVE TORY CULTURE SECRETARIES IN THEIR CRIMINAL ENDEAVOURS.
The tragedy of this show is that world events are advancing towards its core conceit at such a speed that it is sharpened daily, even as we as a civilisation head into HELL. But here’s the original blurb...
Lee shares his stage with a tough-talking werewolf comedian who hates humanity. The Man-Wulf lays down a ferocious comedy challenge to the culturally irrelevant and physically enfeebled Lee. Can the beast inside us all be silenced with the silver bullet of Lee's unprecedentedly critically acclaimed style of stand-up. The show tours the UK throughout 2026.
Sunday 3rd May 2026 - The Mach Arena, Machynlleth Comedy Festival - TICKETS
Wednesday 6th May 2026 - The Playhouse, Weston Super Mare - TICKETS
Thursday 7th May 2026 - The Playhouse, Weston Super Mare - TICKETS
Friday 8th May 2026 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS
Saturday 9th May 2026 - Richmond Theatre, Richmond - TICKETS
Monday 11th May 2026 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Tuesday 12th May 2026 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Wednesday 13th May 2026 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Thursday 14th May 2026 - Floral Pavilion Theatre, New Brighton - TICKETS
Friday 15th May 2026 - Opera House, Buxton - TICKETS
Saturday 16th May 2026 - Stockton Globe, Stockton On Tees - TICKETS
Tuesday 19th May 2026 - Palace Theatre, Southend On Sea - TICKETS
Wednesday 20th May 2026 - Palace Theatre, Southend On Sea - TICKETS
June 2026
Monday 1st June 2026 - 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin - TICKETS
Tuesday 2nd June 2026 - Bord Gais Energy Theatre, Dublin - TICKETS
Wednesday 3rd June 2026 - The Tommy Leddy Theatre, Drogheda - TICKETS
Thursday 4th June 2026 - Millennium Forum, Derry - TICKETS
Friday 5th June 2026 - National Opera House, Wexford - TICKETS
Sunday 7th June 2026 - Opera House, Cork - TICKETS
Wednesday 10th June 2026 - Theatre Royal, Waterford - TICKETS
Sunday 14th June 2026 - Cambridge Arts Theatre, Cambridge - TICKETS
Monday 15th June 2026 - Cambridge Arts Theatre, Cambridge - TICKETS
Tuesday 16th June 2026 - Cambridge Arts Theatre, Cambridge - TICKETS
Thursday 18th June 2026 - Alban Arena, St. Albans - TICKETS
Friday 19th June 2026 - Alban Arena, St. Albans - TICKETS
Sunday 21st June 2026 - New Victoria Theatre, Woking - TICKETS
Tuesday 23rd June 2026 - Venue Cymru, Llandudno - TICKETS
Wednesday 24th June 2026 - Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield - TICKETS
Thursday 25th June 2026 - Grand Opera House, York - TICKETS
Friday 26th June 2026 - Grand Opera House, York - TICKETS
Saturday 27th June 2026 - Grand Opera House, York - TICKETS
Tuesday 30th June 2026 - Mercury Theatre, Colchester - TICKETS
July 2026
Wednesday 1st July 2026 - Mercury Theatre, Colchester - TICKETS
Thursday 2nd July 2026 - Mercury Theatre, Colchester - TICKETS
Saturday 4th July 2026 - The Hawth, Crawley - TICKETS
Tuesday 7th July 2026 - Lyceum, Crewe - TICKETS
Wednesday 8th July 2026 - Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury - TICKETS
Thursday 9th July 2026 - Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury - TICKETS
Friday 10th July 2026 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Saturday 11th July 2026 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Monday 13th July 2026 - King's Theatre, Glasgow - TICKETS
Tuesday 14th July 2026 - King's Theatre, Glasgow - TICKETS
Wednesday 15th July 2026 - Playhouse, Edinburgh - TICKETS
Thursday 16th July 2026 - Perth Theatre, Perth - TICKETS
Friday 17th July 2026 - Eden Court, Inverness - TICKETS
September 2026
Thursday 3rd September 2026 - King's Theatre, Portsmouth - TICKETS
Friday 4th September 2026 - Pavillion, Weymouth - TICKETS
Saturday 5th September 2026 - Hall For Cornwall, Truro - TICKETS
Thursday 10th September 2026 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Friday 11th September 2026 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Saturday 12th September 2026 - William Aston Hall, Wrexham - TICKETS
Sunday 13th September 2026 - Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton - TICKETS
Wednesday 16th September 2026 - Marina Theatre, Lowestoft - TICKETS
Thursday 17th September 2026 - Marina Theatre, Lowestoft - TICKETS
Friday 18th September 2026 - Castle Theatre, Wellingborough - TICKETS
Saturday 19th September 2026 - The Central Theatre, Chatham - TICKETS
Thursday 24th September 2026 - Bristol Beacon, Bristol - TICKETS
Friday 25th September 2026 - Bristol Beacon, Bristol - TICKETS
Saturday 26th September 2026 - Bristol Beacon, Bristol - TICKETS
Tuesday 29th September 2026 - Truck Theatre, Hull - TICKETS
Wednesday 30th September 2026 - Truck Theatre, Hull - TICKETS
October 2026
Thursday 1st October 2026 - The Spa Centre, Scarborough - TICKETS
Friday 2nd October 2026 - Alhambra Theatre, Bradford - TICKETS
Saturday 3rd October 2026 - Alhambra Theatre, Bradford - TICKETS
Tuesday 6th October 2026 - Festival Theatre, Malvern - TICKETS
Wednesday 7th October 2026 - Festival Theatre, Malvern - TICKETS
Thursday 8th October 2026 - Belgrade Theatre, Coventry - TICKETS
Friday 9th October 2026 - Belgrade Theatre, Coventry - TICKETS
Saturday 10th October 2026 - Belgrade Theatre, Coventry - TICKETS
Monday 12th October 2026 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Tuesday 13th October 2026 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Saturday 17th October 2026 - Waterside Theatre, Aylesbury - TICKETS
Sunday 18th October 2026 - Hippodrome, Birmingham - TICKETS
Friday 23rd October 2026 - New Theatre, Peterborough - TICKETS
Saturday 24th October 2026 - Tyne Theatre & Opera House, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Sunday 25th October 2026 - Tyne Theatre & Opera House, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Friday 30th October 2026 - Pavilion Theatre, Worthing - TICKETS
Saturday 31st October 2026 - Lighthouse, Poole - TICKETS
November 2026
Sunday 1st November 2026 - Devonshire Park Theatre, Eastbourne - TICKETS
Thursday 5th November 2026 - City Hall, Salisbury - TICKETS
Friday 6th November 2026 - The Anvil, Basingstoke - TICKETS
Saturday 7th November 2026 - New Wimbledon Theatre, Wimbledon - TICKETS
Monday 9th November 2026 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Tuesday 10th November 2026 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Wednesday 11th November 2026 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Thursday 12th November 2026 - Chelmsford Theatre, Chelmsford - TICKETS
Friday 13th November 2026 - Chelmsford Theatre, Chelmsford - TICKETS
December 2026
Friday 4th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Saturday 5th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Saturday 5th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Tuesday 8th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Wednesday 9th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Thursday 10th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Friday 11th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Saturday 12th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Saturday 12th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Monday 14th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Tuesday 15th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Wednesday 16th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Thursday 17th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Friday 18th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
9. SNOWFLAKE TORNADO / BASIC LEE
Stewart’s 2019-2022 touring show Snowflake/Tornado, which was originally broadcast as a BBC Special in Autumn 2022 is now available to buy or rent “on demand” from www.mediagarageproductions.com
Both shows also appear to be free as part of the current Amazon Prime rosta, but buy them from us to defeat American fascism.
We are currently preparing a physical release of these shows but it’s got delayed as I got pneumonia and have been bogged down in picking through a wealth of possible, and very exciting, audio extras, where the material worked much better than in the broadcast show itself.
10. BENEFIT SHOWS
1.ASYLUM AID/HACKNEY MIGRANY CENTRE BENEFIT, EARTH, LONDON, 19th April
Ticket Price: £10 - 40
Doors: 6pm
Age restriction: 16+
Popular entertainment for popular politics. Welcome to The Commons, a live gathering for everyone who’s noticed that everything feels a little bit broken, a little too expensive, and a lot on fire. Let’s talk about why, and how we can unite to change things. Hosted by Taskmaster’s Ivo Graham, The Commons is an evening of comedy, music and politics. While the mainstream media and wealthy elites argue that migrants and refugees are the root of all our problems, The Commons will look past the headlines to ask: Why are we getting poorer? Where is the money going? Who benefits from all of this division?
Expect comedy from Ivo Graham (our host), Stewart Lee, Blank Peng, and Tadiwa Mahlunge alongside speakers including Faiza Shaheen(Executive Director of Tax Justice UK), James Meadway (Director of the Progressive Economy Forum), and organisers from ACORN (the renters and community union) with more to be added.
The Commons is a space to come together, share ideas, laugh (if only to keep from crying), and go forward from in unity.
Change starts with a conversation. Let’s talk. All profits raised will be donated to Asylum Aid and Hackney Migrant Centre.
2.UP THE ANTI, FUNDRAISER FOR THE N LONDON HUNT SABOTEURS, MONDAY JULY 6TH, LECIS SQ THEATRE, LONDON, 8.45 PM
Join an incredible line up of comedians for a night of laughter in aid of the North London Hunt Saboteurs. Featuring Daniel Fox, Harry Badger, James Gill, Horn Walsh, Sue Jerkins, Shappi Coarse-Angling, Alasdair Bear-Baiting, and Stewart Eel.
NLHS take part in direct action to deter and intervene in organised bloodsports in the countryside around London and beyond.
All profits will go to their work.
12. CHURCHILL’S URINAL BY ROSIE HOLT, KING’S HEAD THEATRE, ISLINGTON LONDON 13TH MAY – 6th JUNE
I did a script editing pass on an early draft of this play last year, which was full of great funny ideas about the comedy of the culture war, and contributed some end of the pier gags to lower the tone of an otherwise sophisticated conceit, but it sounds like the writer-performer and the director have really moved it on and massively changed and upgraded the central thrust of it.
I am looking forward to seeing it in its first incarnation.
“Freshly installed in 11 Downing Street, a fearless female Chancellor of the Exchequer is determined to get rid of the ancient urinal in her grace-and-favour en-suite. Intrigue overflows into outrage when it transpires that the porcelain was first tinkled on by that undying icon of Britishness, Winston Churchill. Soon, the whole nation has a view on this storm in a pisspot. Join us for this rambunctious romp through the corridors of power and discover whether our fearless Chancellor’s grip on her Budget red box can survive the clamour for her Whitehall washroom to be awarded a Blue Plaque.
Known for her alter ego MP who has achieved more than seven million views with her online videos, and toured two stage shows nationally, satirist and Chortle award-winner Rosie Holt shares the world premiere of her new play, first seen in a reading at Shedinburgh last year. Directed by Dan Clarkson, whose previous show starring Rosie Holt The Crown Live sold out at the King’s Head Theatre, and whose other credits include Olivier Award nominees Potted Potter, and Potted Panto, as well as Biff To The Future which is currently on an extensive tour.
The Trawl Marina Purkiss and Gemma Forte had me on their unashamedly political podcast. They are twin national treasures. You can find it in the usual places.
Alexei Sayle Podcast I just done this again with the Podfather of Alternative Comedy. Usual outlets.
14. FESTIVALS I will be doing short stand-up sets at the following festivals
I will be doing short stand-up sets at the following festivals
BEARDED THEORY 20TH – 24TH MAY, CATTON PARK DERBYSHIRE https://beardedtheory.co.uk w Pixies, Damned, Maytals, Au Pairs, Nightingales & Ted Chippington. This is a great, friendly festival that totally feels like it is run for the benefit of the people, and it has a brilliant tent called Convoy Cabaret which is all proper hardcore anarcho-punk and traveller music.
DEER SHED 24TH – 26TH JULY, BLADERSBY PARK, N YORKS https://deershedfestival.com Sleaford Mods, Angeline Morrison, New Eves & The Adam Buxton Band. The village fete vibe of indie rock!
GREEN MAN 20TH – 23RD AUGUST, BANNAU BRYCHEINIOG NATIONAL PARKhttps://www.greenman.net
Mogwai, Dry Cleaning, Scientist, Tamikrest, Charlotte Church Pop Dungeon, Motrik, New Eves, My New Band Believe, Madra Salach.
KRANKENHAUS, 28TH-30TH AUGUST, MUNCASTER CASTLE, LAKE DISTRICT. It’s the best music festival in the world but don’t tell anyone about it. Sea Power, House Of All, Laura Cannell, Fallen Women, Stereolab, lectures, talks, walks, mountains. All the fun of the farm!
END OF THE ROAD 3rd – 6th SEPT, LARMER TREE GARDENS, DOREST. Pulp, Lucinda Williams, Caroline, Brighde Chaimbeul, Mozart Estate, David Thomas Broughton, Gnod.
15. CULT NIGHT 30th April Moth Club, London
Weird muso’s Grham Reynolds and Mike Lindsay soundtrack weird films The Portcullis and The Last Sacrifice and I introduce them.
SIMON LOVE Welsh purveyor of a certain kind of vintage indie pop.
2 April - The Waiting Room, London (album launch show)
3 April - Wales Goes Pop, The Gate, Cardiff
26 June - The Fighting Cocks, Kingston-Upon-Thames
28 June - Prince Albert, Brighton (Afternoon show)
BOHMAN BROTHERS AND CO Stunning sound artists the Bohman Brothers appear in various combo’s. April 2nd- Royal Albert, New Cross, London- TBA; April 17th Christ Church, John Marshall Hall, 27 Blackfriars Rd SE1 8NY, Teresa Hackel + Eiko Yamada (recorder duo), Rex Casswell (electric guitar), Phillip Marks (percussion), Paul Obermayer (electronics), Adam Bohman (amplified objects) Doors 7.15pm-Music 7.45pm., Venue- Suggestedfee £8/10 cash or card OTD https://horseimprovclub.wordpress.com/; April 21st, 22nd, 23rd – Café Oto, London Adam Bohman residency, https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/
RUTS DC Reggae-punks on the road. APRIL 4th London Electric Ballroom, MAY 22nd Dunfermline PJs, 28th Glasgow King Tut’s, AUG 21st Dublin Academy No
ROB AUTON The comedian poet philosopher is on tour with a new show called Can. “ This year my new show is an hour long story, written and performed by me. It is about a man who at one point in his life was the world's best motivational speaker, and then something happened. If you would like to come to one I'd love to see you there.” April 9 - Salford- Lowry Quays, April 10 - Lancaster- Dukes, April 11 - Birmingham- Rep The Door, April 15 - Bath- Rondo, April 16 - Cardiff- Sherman, May 2- Machynlleth Comedy Festival, May 26-30 LONDON SOHO THEATRE EXTRA DATES
COSMIC PSYCHOS Australian idiot-savants who have reduced rock and roll, and by association, life itself to its core essentials. Profound. But last time I had to leave ‘cos it was TOO LOUD. APRIL 7th Nottingham Bodega, 8th Glasgow Nice’n’Sleazy, 9th M’cr Pink Room, 10th London Dome, 11th Cardf Clwb Ifor Bach, 12th Brighton Green Door
ANDREW & EDEN KOTTING – THE EVERYWORLD Swedenborg House Gallery, London April 23rd – 5th June. As you may know Andrew is one of my favorite artists/filmmakers/people. He has inspired me for 30 years now and I appeared in a pedalo with Alan Moore in his film Swandown. This new installation is about his family’s life and the things they have accrued and involves the first ever worthwhile use of VR I have ever seen. And it’s at the mysterious and very cool Swedenborg Centre.
THE ROOM Bunnymen/Teardrops-adjacent 80s Liverpool psychedelic survivors return in dishevelled majesty. APRIL 24th Future Yard in Birkenhead 24thApril, 25th Aces & Eights London, SEPT 11TH Future Yard Birkenhead album launch. November 13that Dublin Castle London with St Vitus Dance & Vernons Future.
COWBOY JUNKIES Smoke-suffused Canadian country stoners. APRIL 29th Bath Komedia, 30th Bexhill De-La-Warr, MAY 3rd Edinburgh Queen’s Hall, 6th Sunderland Fire Station, 7th B’ham Town Hall, 11th London Palladium, 14th Norwich & Norfolk Festival
THE UTOPIA STRONG Snooker genius’ Steve Davis’ space-rocking outfit. May 8th N’castle Star & Shadow, 9th N’hampton Black Prince, 15th London St Mattias Stoke Newington, 17th Luton Castle, 20th Glasgow Cottiers, 22nd Cambridge Storey’s Field, 24th St Leonard’s Piper.
THE WAVE PICTURES Brilliant British indie rock band in the vein of Go-Betweens, Loft etc with a West Coast California psyche-blues twist … All the greats. MAY 9th - London @ Bush Hall -TICKETS
THE EX Heroically inspiring Dutch jazz-punks. MAY 20th London 100 Club, 21st B’ham Castle & Falcon, 22nd Glasgow Flying Duck, 23rd M’cr White Hotel.
TAE SUP WI’ A FIFER MAY 20TH – 24THJames Yorkston’s travelling highland roadshow this year features Kate Stables, Phil Jupitas & Kirsty Newton, The Elidas and Yorkston himself and visits MAY 20th St Andrews Byre, 21st Peebles Eastagte, 22nd Crief Strathearn, 23rd Lerwick Mareel, 24th Findhorn Universal Hall. taesup.co.uk
SUGAR Apparently they’ve reformed
05-23 London, England - O2 Forum Kentish Town
05-24 London, England - O2 Forum Kentish Town
05-26 Belfast, Northern Ireland - Ulster Hall
05-27 Dublin, Ireland - National Stadium
05-30 Bristol, England - Electric Bristol
05-31 Nottingham, England - Rock City
06-02 Glasgow, Scotland - Barrowland
06-03 Leeds, England - Irish Centre
06-04 London, England - Clapham Grand
TAMIKREST Malian blues-wranglers in snake-charming mode JUNE 8th Glasgow Rum Shack, 9th Leeds Belgrave, 11th Norwich Arts, 12th Bristol Strange Brew, 13th London Jazz Café, 15th M’cr Band On The Wall, 176th Bristol Hope & Ruin.
BEVIS FROND One of Britain’s all-time greats, frontman Nick Saloman now a 70-something psychedelic survivor still at the top of his game. Will it ever end? JUNE 5th M’cr Pink Room, 7th Edinburgh Sneaky Pete’s, 8th Gateshead Central Bar, 9th Leeds Attic, 10th London Moth Club (hosted by S Lee)
OH-SEES Mighty psyche-punk juggernaut. JULY 14th & 165th Leeds Irish Centre, 16th & 17th London Earth.
MILLIONS OF DEAD COPS Hardcore originators. New Cross Inn, London August 10th
LEMONHEADS Melodic hardcore countryfied punk cherub soldiers on
30 Sep: Electric, Sheffield, UK
01 Oct: De La Warr, Bexhill, UK
02 Oct: Troxy, London, UK
03 Oct: UEA, Norwich, UK
05 Oct: Boiler Shop, Newcastle, UK
06 Oct: SWG3, Glasgow, UK
07 Oct: Albert Hall, Manchester, UK
09 Oct: Electric, Bristol, UK
10 Oct: O2 Institute, Birmingham, UK
11 Oct: Rock City, Nottingham, UK
CARLTON MELTON The psychedelic warlords manifest in physical form.
SEPT 17th Hastings Tough Love, 19th London Strongroom, 19th Glastonbury King Arthur, 20th Brighton Daltons, 22nd Cardiff Fuel, 23rd N’hampton Lab, 24th Liverpool Lost Are Skate Shop, 25th Todmorden Golden Lion w Cosmic Dead, 26th MATINEE Todmorden Golden Lion w Cosmic Dead, 27th Margate Bar Nothing
DELINES Cinematic symphonic country rock sophisticates. OCTOBER 2nd Glasgow GUU, 3rd Gosforth Civic, 4th Leeds City Varieties
BUFFALO TOM Former hardcore types mellowed into folkish indie power trio. OCT 6th Belfast Limelight, 7th Edinburgh La Belle Angelle, 9th M’cr Band On The Wall, 10TH London Village Underground
JOHN DOWIE – JESUS MY BOY ALSO the Birmingham godfather of Alternative Comedy John Dowie has a transcript of his great monologue JESUS MY BOY out in paperback which I arrogantly recommend! https://poniesandhorsesbooks.com/product/jmb/
Jesus My Boy: A One-Man Play by John Dowie £11.00
From humble origins at the 1995 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, this one- man play has been performed in translation and in English throughout the world.
“Taking one of the oldest stories in the world, John Dowie achieves the almost impossible feat of giving it a fresh perspective by placing Joseph centre-stage. Marginalised in the Bible as well as in art and literature this is Joseph’s chance to give his version of the Madonna and Child story. Stepping out of the shadows and into the limelight, Joseph shakes off his image of a dutiful but sexless octogenarian and we see instead a man who is warm, funny, vulnerable yet unconditionally loving” Cathryn O’Neill, Glasgow Herald “John
“Dowie’s take on the biblical tale is a touching, affectionate and thoroughly absorbing piece of drama. Yes, there are jokes in this stunning monologue – and a couple of them are real belters – but this is not a rat-a-tat- tat gag fest, but a warm and intelligent treatment of perhaps the best-known tale. This truly is a divine comedy.” Steve Bennett, Chortle
“Jesus My Boy is an unusual hybrid: sympathetic to Christianity yet far from proselytising, intellectually rigorous yet easily acces- sible; simply staged but multi-layered; full of light humour and deep pain; it is, in short, a triumph of contrasts.” Andrew Burnet, The List Edinburgh
Finally, the wonderfully dry American comedian Jackie Kashian, who I did a lovely tour of Australia with 21 YEARS AGO!!!! has a new video/album out.
Gunter Schickert (G.A.M guitar man, 1949)
Amos Poe (He squashed a banana in the street, 1949)
Sly Dunbar (definitive dub drummer, 1952)
Sal Buscema (Marvel mastercraftsman, 1936) Catherine O’Hara (Fucking hilarious, I wish we’d met, 1954)
Philippe Gaulier (Our clown enemy, our clown king, 1943)
Pete Frame (Master music-mapper, 1942)
Kenny Morris (Banshee basher, 1957)
Fred Smith (Low end televisionary, 1948)
Mark Kennedy (Australia’s premier prog-psyche percussionist, 1951) Eliane Radigue (electro-francais, 1932)
John Hammond (Blues believer, 1942)
Walter Martino (The Goblin groover, 1952)
Country Joe McDonald (The psychedelic fishman, 1942)
Augie Myers (The pseudonymous Sir Douglas himself, 1940)
Phil Campbell (Motorheadbanger, 1961) Dolores Keane (De voice of De Dannan and dat, 1953)
John Dee Graham (Skunks originator and US punk facilitator, 1959)
Matt Kwasniewski-Kelvin (Black Midi founder, 2000)
Bob Weir (Now dead deadman, 1947)
TK Carter (The Chef in The Thing, 1956)
Chip Taylor (The Wild Thing, 1940)
Ben Keaton (Father Austin Purcell, 1956)
Terry Cox (He drove the impossible folk-jazz fusion, 1937)
Sam Keith (Quirky comics guy, 1963)
Pete Dello (He could not let Maggie go, 1942)
Andrew Bodnar (He loved the sound of breaking glass, 1954)
Terry Sullivan (Dry Ice drummer, 1938) Sheila Burnette (That funny woman from all those things, 1931)
Diana Green (Omaha The Cat Dancer, 1954)
Alex Pretti (Nurse, 1998)
Stewart Lee
2026-04-02T10:00:28+01:00
1. DAMON & NAOMI (and me) LIVE AT CAFÉ OTO, RECODINGS AVAILABLE In January I hosted 3 nights of Damon & Naomi (Galaxie 500, Magic Hour, Damon & Naomi) at London’s Café Oto. The encores of each night have come out on bandcamp and it is a very special recording with contributions from Mark Webber of Pulp, Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab & Monade & Source Ensemble, Richard Youngs from Richard Youngs, Jess Hickie-Kallenbach from Still House Plants, Alabaster DePlume from British contemporary jazz, Gina Birch from Raincoats & Red Krayola & Hangovers, and Marie Merlet from Malphino & Monade & Ikocherie, and features the sound of me throwing paper snow at the musicians. January 3-5, 2026 Encores with friends at Café Oto, London A Bandcamp exclusive! Recorded by Billy Steiger Mastered by Alan Douches at West West Side Music “Thank you to the wonderful staff and audience at Café Oto, to Stewart Lee for being our compère and psychogeographical guide, and to all our friends for joining us on these closing sets of “covers.” “ – D&N damonandnaomi.bandcamp.com/album/whats-past-is-prologue-live-at-caf-oto 2. MACHYNLLETH COMEDY FESTIVAL MAY 1ST – 3RD https://machcomedyfest.co.uk/category/year/2026/ It’s the best comedy festival in the world, but don’t tell anyone about it! We are screening the KING ROCKER movie with Q&A on Saturday morning, I am doing Man Wulf on Sunday, and on Saturday afternoon there’s this... Joking Apart: Stewart Lee Asks Robert Lloyd to Explain Old Jokes. 2 Pilot episodes of an exciting new podcast featuring Stewart Lee and his mentor, the Birmingham punk legend Robert Lloyd of Prefects, Nightingales and King Rocker repute. Saturday May 2nd, 2 pm, Ysgol Bro Hydden – Main Hall https://machcomedyfest.co.uk/show/2026/joking-apart-stewart-lee-asks-robert-lloyd-to-explain-old-jokes/ The King Rocker screening is at 11 am on Saturday https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002qc91 Stewart Lee Vs The Man-Wulf is on Sunday at 1.30 https://machcomedyfest.co.uk/show/2026/stewart-lee-stewart-lee-vs-the-man-wulf-4/ 3. THE...
The inevitable victory of the Scottish independence campaign and the subsequent collapse of the Labour vote in the sorry remnants of the UK will see the next election won by a coalition of The Ukip and The Conservative party. Then the Bullingdon boys' lack of appeal to the common man will eventually leave the country entirely crushed by The Ukip's steel-capped Hush Puppy, as a pipe and cardigan version of The Golden Dawn gradually reshapes society in its own image, smothering dissent under an enormous tartan travel rug of hate.
But whether one is a supporter of The Ukip's position on immigration or not, at least it is easy to grasp. The Ukip dislikes immigration even more than it loves smoking in pubs. But I was born here so I'm all right. What concerns me, as a professional creative, is the apparent incoherence of the anti-immigration party's arts policy, as this will have a direct effect on my own quality of life, financial future and access to touring theatre productions should I chose to leave London and live in a region.
The closing night's entertainment at The Ukip's conference, it transpired last week, took the form of a 45-minute routine by a comedian called Paul Eastwood, who did funny Asian accents, performed a traditional Midlands folk song which turned out to be an impression of a Muslim prayer call, and told three Asian women in the room that they looked a little bit lost. It sounds like any Christmas Day in our family in the 70s.
But without having attended The Ukip's party we can't be sure if Eastwood's act was an ironic parody of a pre-PC standup, whether the supposedly offensive material was daringly contrasted and contextualised by material from a more liberal and perhaps pro-immigration or anti-white perspective, or whether Eastwood was so beloved by the entire crowd, perhaps full of people of many different cultures, that his interaction with the three Asian ladies had more of the flavour of gentle tickling from a drunk and over-friendly Christmas uncle, than of outright racial provocation.
But what's interesting, for anyone considering working as an artist under the forthcoming Ukip government, or reading or seeing anything interesting ever again should The Ukip be elected, is the response of the party's leader, Nigel Farage, whose simple statement on the Eastwood incident swiftly and definitively unraveled decades of anxieties about The Political Correctness Gone Mad: "Enough is enough," declared Farage. "Let people tell their jokes! If what they say is inappropriate they won't earn a living because they won't get booked again." Pure. Simple. Classic. It's the kind of straight-talking, no-nonsense approach that has already endeared Farage to millions of nuance-resistant voters nationwide.
Unfortunately, Farage's definitive statement on ethics and taste in art, defining culture purely in terms of its market value, was compromised this week by the contradictory actions of his deputy leader, Paul Nuttalls. Nuttalls has been trying to prevent the gay comedy singing duo Jonny and the Baptists from completing the 17 dates of their current Stop Ukip Tour. The duo have the political edge of 80s alternative comedy but Jonny Donahoe has a pop soul voice to win X Factor. We took my sister-in-law to see them in Edinburgh and she loved it. That said, they're not stadium sized, and their 17 dates are mainly in 150-seater rooms. The idea that a tour of this size, performed by two men and one guitar, could "stop Ukip" is surely part of what makes it funny to call it The Stop Ukip Tour.
The Ukip's own press release on The Stop Ukip Tour is one of those strange press releases that describe the actions of the people responsible for issuing the press release as if they were actual news, with an independent life beyond the press release they have been written about in by themselves. It begins thus: "The Arts Council has come under fire for wasting public money on a political satire show due to start touring in the north west." But it hasn't. Because it didn't. It has only come under fire in this press release.
The Stop Ukip show itself has received no funding. Six of the 17 venues on the Baptists' tour receive no funding. The others perhaps have a contribution to running costs from a local authority, and Arts Council money. When I tour council-funded venues I am often surprised that they host people such as Roy Chubby Brown, Jim Davidson, hosts of dubious mediums, and Jon "Gaunty" Gaunt, who no doubt offend the sensibilities of arts administrators who learned their craft at polytechnics during the PC era of the 80s and 90s. But council-funded venues have complex briefs to balance populist, profit-making performances with things that tick aspirational arts boxes. Maybe Paul Nuttalls knows this, and deliberately issued one of those misleading statements, like Gove's one about teachers using the Mr Men to tell kids about Nazism, hoping it can cause maximum damage before it is discredited.
The Ukip's press release concludes, its doublespeak undimmed; "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and Ukip is very much the party of free speech but I… have written to the Arts Council about this… distasteful satire." Nuttalls's boss, Farage, meanwhile, sees the demand of the market as the only arbiter of taste, and does not believe judgments about the value of a performance can be substantiated above and beyond a simple measurement of its popularity.
Trying to shut down theatre productions, like burning books, always looks bad, I think. But saying anything is fine if it sells well seems philistine. To be fair to The Ukip, they are learning on the job, and formulating a coherent arts policy was never high on their agenda, which is concerned mainly with deterring foreigners. Even the Tories struggled to define the purpose and value of culture, with Maria Miller, the culture secretary, initially assessing it in purely commercial terms, even as Michael Gove insisted Middlemarch was inherently better than Twilight, despite the latter's vast commercial success in the free market. Given that these two intellectual titans struggled to find a workable definition of the value and purpose of culture, what hope is there for The Ukip? Well, should they need a culture secretary, The Ukip need look no further than the beloved mainstay of British entertainment who announced his intention of joining the party this week – Jethro. And Jethro says, "Bull'cks to Europe!"
Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle is on BBC2 at 10pm on Saturdays, except in Wales, where it appears randomly.
Stewart Lee
2014-03-09T13:31:51+00:00
The inevitable victory of the Scottish independence campaign and the subsequent collapse of the Labour vote in the sorry remnants of the UK will see the next election won by a coalition of The Ukip and The Conservative party. Then the Bullingdon boys' lack of appeal to the common man will eventually leave the country entirely crushed by The Ukip's steel-capped Hush Puppy, as a pipe and cardigan version of The Golden Dawn gradually reshapes society in its own image, smothering dissent under an enormous tartan travel rug of hate. But whether one is a supporter of The Ukip's position on immigration or not, at least it is easy to grasp. The Ukip dislikes immigration even more than it loves smoking in pubs. But I was born here so I'm all right. What concerns me, as a professional creative, is the apparent incoherence of the anti-immigration party's arts policy, as this will have a direct effect on my own quality of life, financial future and access to touring theatre productions should I chose to leave London and live in a region. The closing night's entertainment at The Ukip's conference, it transpired last week, took the form of a 45-minute routine by a comedian called Paul Eastwood, who did funny Asian accents, performed a traditional Midlands folk song which turned out to be an impression of a Muslim prayer call, and told three Asian women in the room that they looked a little bit lost. It sounds like any Christmas Day in our family in the 70s. But without having attended The Ukip's party we can't be sure if Eastwood's act was an ironic parody of a pre-PC standup, whether the supposedly offensive material was daringly contrasted and contextualised by material from a more liberal and perhaps pro-immigration or anti-white perspective,...
Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle marks the return of arguably one of Britain's finest stand up comedians and shows him at his masterful and hilarious best.
Each of the six episodes sees Stewart explore a different theme, in a stand-up routine illustrated with sketches featuring an ensemble cast of well known comic talent.
In each episode Stewart sets out to answer a question that addresses a specific aspect of modern life; "Why", for example, "is there a tide of banal books in bookshops threatening to engulf us? Does the world really need celebrity hardbacks?" Stewart's on a journey to find out - and meets some interesting authors along the way.
"Has political correctness really gone mad, or is it just that a lot of people confuse political correctness with health and safety legislation?" Stewart tries to pick his way through the PC minefield, and reveals how it only made him put on weight. Stewart sets out to discover the truth about popular television duo Ant and Dec, and visits a quaint English village where The Funniest Thing That's Ever Been On Television Ever has given rise to a unique rural tradition. Sort of.
Whatever the topic, Stewart addresses it with razor sharp wit, using every argument at his disposal to convey his point. And you'l have learned something along the way (which may or may not be true)
Stewart Lee
2018-10-15T17:03:54+01:00
Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle marks the return of arguably one of Britain's finest stand up comedians and shows him at his masterful and hilarious best. Each of the six episodes sees Stewart explore a different theme, in a stand-up routine illustrated with sketches featuring an ensemble cast of well known comic talent. In each episode Stewart sets out to answer a question that addresses a specific aspect of modern life; "Why", for example, "is there a tide of banal books in bookshops threatening to engulf us? Does the world really need celebrity hardbacks?" Stewart's on a journey to find out - and meets some interesting authors along the way. "Has political correctness really gone mad, or is it just that a lot of people confuse political correctness with health and safety legislation?" Stewart tries to pick his way through the PC minefield, and reveals how it only made him put on weight. Stewart sets out to discover the truth about popular television duo Ant and Dec, and visits a quaint English village where The Funniest Thing That's Ever Been On Television Ever has given rise to a unique rural tradition. Sort of. Whatever the topic, Stewart addresses it with razor sharp wit, using every argument at his disposal to convey his point. And you'l have learned something along the way (which may or may not be true)
I have been commissioned to write a libretto about Tarzan by an American minimalist composer who wishes to remain anonymous, and who, I suspect, will have little difficulty in doing so. My new patron initially thought the apeman story a worthy operatic subject, having noticed the inherent musicality of Tarzan's famous cry: "Ooh-ee-oh-ee-oh-ee-oh-ee-oh-ee-ooh". Our Tarzan must be a tenor, who looks good in a loincloth, and has the ability to sing and swing on a vine at the same time. In the world of opera, this significantly narrows the field. At first, I wondered if the raising of a human child by apes was an appropriate story for an opera, but as I began my research at the British Library this month, it suddenly seemed more relevant than ever.
Last weekend, Michael Gove maintained that Ukip members should be allowed to foster or adopt children, irrespective of their politics. Gove is ideally placed to comment as he is an adopted man and thus a huge asset for the Conservative party. Unlike his colleagues, Gove wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and by the time his friends from the Bullingdon Club had offered him theirs to lick he had moved on to knives and forks anyway, which I have often witnessed him deploy with forensic accuracy and dispassionate precision upon any morsel of food foolish enough to fall into his dish.
But do the politics of an adoptee's parents, or of anyone's parents, affect their children? Gove's adoptive family were Labour voters. He is a Conservative. Were Gove's biological parents Conservatives, and if so, is Conservatism something that is passed on genetically, like eczema? Was there nothing Gove's adoptive family could do to nurture his nature, just as Gregory Peck in The Omen could not change the fact that his adopted son Damien was the offspring of Satan and a goat? And is Gove's view on the Ukip parents an honest one, born of heartfelt personal experience, or is it, given Ukip's growing power, politically expedient to confirm to their supporters that they could make fit parents?
Deep in a British Library vault, I found a set of late-1880s letters exchanged between the then prime minister, Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, and the explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley. Stanley is famous for his catchphrase "Dr Livingstone, I presume", which finally rang true after decades of irrelevance when, quite by chance, he encountered a physician of that name at Lake Tanganyika in 1871. The letters shed some light on both the possible inspiration for Edgar Rice Burroughs's classic 1912 novel, Tarzan of the Apes, and on the current Ukip fostering controversy.
Exploring the Belgian Congo in 1889, Stanley was made aware of the existence of an abandoned boy, whom he presumed four years old, being raised by presumably friendly apes. In a derelict treehouse, documents and personal effects led Stanley to presume the child a British aristocrat. Stanley presumed to write to the prime minister, himself an aristocrat, asking if he should presume to take the noble child from the ape family that were raising him, quite successfully, irrespective of their simian ways. I began to search the archives for Cecil's reply. In the meantime, I instant-messaged Michael Gove to ask him what he would have done had he been in Cecil's position.
I have known Michael Gove personally for over half my life. We first met in 1985 at the launch party for a prestigious book, compiling poetry by and about privileged teenagers, called "Independent Voices III", in which we both featured. My poem, though of no value, was better than Gove's, which was a twisted and impotent declaration of moral superiority to the sort of bedpost-notching yahoo rugby boys whose interests he now serves. Seven years later, "Govey" remembered me and asked me to be a joke writer for the struggling comedy triple act he had formed with David Baddiel and the restaurant critic Tracey MacLeod. We still exchange Christmas cards.
"Hi. Nice 2 hear from U!" Gove texted back. "Glad the comedy is going well 4 U. In answer to your question, I think it would have been wrong in 1889, as it is now, to say that a child should be taken from a loving home when parents have been successfully looking after him or her for years, simply because they were apes and ate roots and grubs and lived in trees. Then, as now, we need less ideology when it comes to making sure children are in loving homes. Anyone who decided that being an ape, on what was by then a mainstream branch of the primate family tree, disbarred an individual from looking after children was sending a dreadful signal. C U @ Baddiel's @ NYEve! Lol! Govey."
Unlike Michael Gove's honest and straightforward reply, the then prime minister's response to Stanley's letters, when I finally uncovered it, was a familiar exercise in political pragmatism. In the three decades since the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species, many learned men had come to accept the shared ancestry of apes and humans, and the Women's Liberal Federation were uniting disparate suffrage organisations. Cecil's recommendations reflected match-fit political survival instincts that Darwinists would have recognised immediately.
"Should women get the vote," Cecil wrote to Stanley, "it seems inevitable to me that apes, who, if anything, seem to have more in common with men than women do, will soon be able to vote too. I see no reason to offend millions of potential supporters in British colonies by categorising them as unfit parents at such an early stage in ape-human relations. Despite my declared and well-documented hostility to apes, the boy must remain where he is."
Thankfully, today's politicians are noble enough to ignore Ukip's potentially vital role in deciding the future of government and make pronouncements based only on what is best for children. Gove's distant precursor, Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, put politics before the welfare of the young. And yet, within a century, the great apes were all but extinct. Cecil's fear of primates wielding political influence turned out to be a delusion as ludicrous as the idea that the Liberal Democrats might one day do the same.
Oddly, interior scenes for the 1984 Tarzan film Greystoke were shot at Hatfield House, the historic family home to Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, on whose orders a little lord's life was betrayed, perhaps providing the raw material for Burroughs's Tarzan. Was the production's location finder, I wonder, self-indulgently abusing their professional position to enjoy a personal private joke that only they, and they alone, could appreciate?
Stewart Lee's Carpet Remnant World DVD is out now.
Stewart Lee
2012-12-02T14:15:40+00:00
I have been commissioned to write a libretto about Tarzan by an American minimalist composer who wishes to remain anonymous, and who, I suspect, will have little difficulty in doing so. My new patron initially thought the apeman story a worthy operatic subject, having noticed the inherent musicality of Tarzan's famous cry: "Ooh-ee-oh-ee-oh-ee-oh-ee-oh-ee-ooh". Our Tarzan must be a tenor, who looks good in a loincloth, and has the ability to sing and swing on a vine at the same time. In the world of opera, this significantly narrows the field. At first, I wondered if the raising of a human child by apes was an appropriate story for an opera, but as I began my research at the British Library this month, it suddenly seemed more relevant than ever. Last weekend, Michael Gove maintained that Ukip members should be allowed to foster or adopt children, irrespective of their politics. Gove is ideally placed to comment as he is an adopted man and thus a huge asset for the Conservative party. Unlike his colleagues, Gove wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and by the time his friends from the Bullingdon Club had offered him theirs to lick he had moved on to knives and forks anyway, which I have often witnessed him deploy with forensic accuracy and dispassionate precision upon any morsel of food foolish enough to fall into his dish. But do the politics of an adoptee's parents, or of anyone's parents, affect their children? Gove's adoptive family were Labour voters. He is a Conservative. Were Gove's biological parents Conservatives, and if so, is Conservatism something that is passed on genetically, like eczema? Was there nothing Gove's adoptive family could do to nurture his nature, just as Gregory Peck in The Omen could not change the fact that...
How right he is. Stewart Lee doesn't need critics. He needs help.
But the show's producers omitted two key words from the show's title - Trapped In. It appears unsuspecting audiences will be Trapped In A Room With A Stew over the next few months.
And Stewart Lee has lost it. Clearly in the throes of a mid-life crisis, he tumbled onto the stage in a cowboy jacket, red-faced and drinking what appeared to be ribena - the crazy ones are always infantalised aren't they?
Speaking in non-sequiturs, inventing demands for racism that no one in his politically correct and liberal fanbase made - it was a worrying start. His hour and a half test gig turned out to be more of a cry for help.
At one point, he broke down as he recounted in hideous detail a childhood trauma where he was kicked into a urinal by several schoolboys. He later berated the audience for not laughing at this disturbing insight into his damaged mind.
I think I can speak for everyone who was there on Tuesday night when I say nobody understood what Stewart Lee was on about, and we were laughing because we were very afraid. Most concerningly, he began to eulogise stand up comics who had taken their own lives. He implied that we had driven them to it, and were likely to drive him to a similarly desperate act if we didn't start laughing more.
But we couldn't have driven his friends to suicide, many these deaths occurred before 50% of Tuesday's audience was even born and it was the first time we had come together to comprise that specific audience. Lunacy!
All I can say is, it was tragic and if anyone was there who was genuinely laughing they ought to feel ashamed of themselves.
No one is helping Stewart by laughing. Laughing only rewards negative behaviours and it will make it harder for him to come to terms with the clear deterioration of his mental state. Criticising Stewart won't help either; Stewart is not the man we once knew.
We all know it's inappropriate to discuss your bowel functions at length with strangers. We all know it's inappropriate to share the diminutive names you've given your wife's private parts. If I were to play armchair psychiatrist, I'd say it looks like some sort of a right brain disorder. Hey, I'm no expert - all I know is that he's over the edge.
We can't hold him responsible.
I blame his handlers, managers, producers. They're sapping the last drops of humour from the poor man, continuing to exploit him when he is clearly burnt out. It's Britney Spears all over again.
After a twenty-minute interval Stewart reemerged in his standard smart-casual garb, manly pint in hand. The small break had clearly helped him recover a little of his former self. He told jokes about national identity and Moldavians, and his cat Paul Nuttalls of the UKIPs, and everyone enjoyed it. It was really lovely to see.
What Stewart needs at this crucial juncture in his life, as he traverses the declining plains of middle age and early onset menopause - as he tests his new material - what Stewart needs is a critical friend. We must stop senselessly laughing because he's demanded we laugh in a megalomanic fervour.
It's up to us to set boundaries so that, when he goes out there on the telly in December, he doesn't look silly. Go and see his show and laugh with him - not at him - so he knows what's really funny and what's not. It will help him.
Odds are, you will still end up laughing anyway. It's not your fault, he's naturally very funny.
Stewart. If you, or anyone close to Stewart is reading this, there is a non-judgmental organisation called the Samaritans. You can reach them on this number 0845 790 9090.
We all love you and want to see you get the help you need.
Stewart Lee
2015-01-24T21:48:12+00:00
How right he is. Stewart Lee doesn't need critics. He needs help. But the show's producers omitted two key words from the show's title - Trapped In. It appears unsuspecting audiences will be Trapped In A Room With A Stew over the next few months. And Stewart Lee has lost it. Clearly in the throes of a mid-life crisis, he tumbled onto the stage in a cowboy jacket, red-faced and drinking what appeared to be ribena - the crazy ones are always infantalised aren't they? Speaking in non-sequiturs, inventing demands for racism that no one in his politically correct and liberal fanbase made - it was a worrying start. His hour and a half test gig turned out to be more of a cry for help. At one point, he broke down as he recounted in hideous detail a childhood trauma where he was kicked into a urinal by several schoolboys. He later berated the audience for not laughing at this disturbing insight into his damaged mind. I think I can speak for everyone who was there on Tuesday night when I say nobody understood what Stewart Lee was on about, and we were laughing because we were very afraid. Most concerningly, he began to eulogise stand up comics who had taken their own lives. He implied that we had driven them to it, and were likely to drive him to a similarly desperate act if we didn't start laughing more. But we couldn't have driven his friends to suicide, many these deaths occurred before 50% of Tuesday's audience was even born and it was the first time we had come together to comprise that specific audience. Lunacy! All I can say is, it was tragic and if anyone was there who was genuinely laughing they ought to feel ashamed...
Jerry Springer, trash TV personified, is the perfect subject for satirical treatment
You might think twice about putting a nappy fetishist centre stage in an opera. But the very funny, very foul-mouthed, superbly sung Jerry Springer: The Opera did exactly that, and turned out to be one of the most original events staged last year. But the work was unfinished.
Now this satirical tribute to trash telly is coming back, in an extended version, to the Battersea Arts Centre. It will not be short of an audience. For the concert performances last August there was no official press night and not much coverage, but the word of mouth was so enthusiastic that the show sold out without being advertised. Soon Hal Prince was emailing the composer, asking what was going on. Nicholas Hytner, who (encouragingly for frequenters of the South Bank) took the trouble to see the show, has said that the National would be interested in commissioning the composer's next opera.
That composer is Richard Thomas. He is - in a laid-back way - a man with a mission. He wants to prove to doubters that opera need not be posh, melancholy and expensive. It can be demotic, caustic and cheap.
Tom Morris, the artistic director at Battersea who commissioned the work, talks of Thomas's extraordinary gift for 'matching registers of speech to melody' and of the sheer beauty of his harmonies. In the sobbing confessionals, the violent confrontations, the impassioned soliloquies played out in front of Springer, Thomas has found a perfect operatic subject.
After all, what better form than opera to project melodramatic encounters in which 'people are always screaming at each other and you can't understand a word they say'? And the roaring participation of Springer audiences make Thomas's show ideal for live performance.
Thomas's route to opera was idiosyncratic. He studied classical piano as a child, but moved into jazz and rock, writing songs for bands. And then he took to comedy, working as part of a musical-based double-act - 'lots of synchronised swimming over the keyboard'.
He's made a trance version of the 'Lacrimosa' from Mozart's requiem; he's worked with Harry Hill; he's turned out a stream of television jingles. He's a big fan of the Sex Pistols, but found his all-time showstopper when, while working as an ice-cream seller in Vienna, he first heard Mozart's Queen of the Night's aria. At the moment, he's working on The Frank Skinner Show, turning out 'soundulikes' - of anything from the Stones to Planet of the Apes .
The Springer idea has its roots in his comedy life, which made him 'paranoid about boring an audience'. He had the brilliant idea of putting down hecklers by employing a singer to hurl back coloratura insults. In exquisite diction and perfect phrasing, the soprano used to warble at a member of the audience: 'Your mother sucks cock.'
Struck by the concept, Tom Morris suggested to Thomas that he develop it. The result was a song-cycle called Tourette's Diva: 12 arias in unrelated keys and tempi in which two mezzos engaged in a frenetic sparring match. The language was demotic; the pace was rapid; the music beautiful. Thanks, Morris guesses, to Thomas's exceptional gift for 'matching registers of speech to melody', it was an instant success. Gaining in confidence, Thomas came up with the idea for a piece featuring Springer, whom he thinks of as part-Mephistopheles, part-working-class hero.
He'd done his homework on the material: hours of watching the show in the small hours when pissed. He had an exact idea of the music he wanted to produce. There has, he points out, been a revolution in musical style since most big musicals were written. And a change of attitude in listening to music which comes in part form exposure to television: 'If you watch three minutes of ads, you'll probably see 30 or 40 styles of music.' He wanted to get a musical equivalent of the crude, snap edits in the Springer show, so he used brutal cuts, and avoided cadences. When he composed a big number featuring a would-be pole dancer, he made it swell like 'classic cheesy music theatre', and then - at a point when the song could run for another minute - cut it short. 'It's like graffiti-ing your own work.'
He uses singers with wonderful voices, but no one 'looks as if they've been sitting under a sun-lamp for the last year'. He likes it when his actors are 'fat, gangly and awkward'; he likes them in their early middle age. The result is a show that looks as well as sounds authentic, that is to say grotesque, raunchy, passionate.
I saw it last summer, in a packed, rapt auditorium. It felt like a mass for the masses, with the Springer figure identifying with Christ and the opening chorus sobbing 'Jerry' with vowels so elongated that it sounded like 'Kyrie'.
'I'm not a Catholic but I do like a requiem,' says Thomas. And it felt liberatingly irreverent. The guests included a 'chick with a dick', a backwoodsman who turned out to really like flowers but not to care for people, and a chorus line of Ku Klux Klansmen who jigged as they chanted 'Jews'n' blacks can go to hell. New York Democrats as well'. There was a crucial, thrilling song called 'This Is My Jerry Springer Moment'. And there was Diaper Man: a huge bloke who stripped down to a chunky pair of nappies and, with a dummy round his neck and a baby bonnet on his head, pleaded with his girlfriend to pin him up.
The show has been expanded since then, greatly helped by the development process - a series of public try-outs of work in progress - and the initiative of Battersea. Thomas offered little tasters from his first draft there, giving a beer away to anyone in the audience who came up with suggestions. Stewart Lee - Lee and Herring's Fist of Fun and other comedy adventures - has become involved, contributing to the libretto and directing. Avalon Promotions and Us Productions have invested in the show. But production money is needed if this is to have a further life. It deserves one.
The lazy convention has it that while films are full of innovation, theatre is creaking to a halt, shackled to the past. But it would be hard to find a movie to match this for invention and imagination.
Jerry Springer: The Opera will be at Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) from 5-23 February
Stewart Lee
2001-12-31T16:28:44+00:00
Jerry Springer, trash TV personified, is the perfect subject for satirical treatment You might think twice about putting a nappy fetishist centre stage in an opera. But the very funny, very foul-mouthed, superbly sung Jerry Springer: The Opera did exactly that, and turned out to be one of the most original events staged last year. But the work was unfinished. Now this satirical tribute to trash telly is coming back, in an extended version, to the Battersea Arts Centre. It will not be short of an audience. For the concert performances last August there was no official press night and not much coverage, but the word of mouth was so enthusiastic that the show sold out without being advertised. Soon Hal Prince was emailing the composer, asking what was going on. Nicholas Hytner, who (encouragingly for frequenters of the South Bank) took the trouble to see the show, has said that the National would be interested in commissioning the composer's next opera. That composer is Richard Thomas. He is - in a laid-back way - a man with a mission. He wants to prove to doubters that opera need not be posh, melancholy and expensive. It can be demotic, caustic and cheap. Tom Morris, the artistic director at Battersea who commissioned the work, talks of Thomas's extraordinary gift for 'matching registers of speech to melody' and of the sheer beauty of his harmonies. In the sobbing confessionals, the violent confrontations, the impassioned soliloquies played out in front of Springer, Thomas has found a perfect operatic subject. After all, what better form than opera to project melodramatic encounters in which 'people are always screaming at each other and you can't understand a word they say'? And the roaring participation of Springer audiences make Thomas's show ideal for live performance. Thomas's route...
Stew writes the sleeve notes to Glowering Figs' debut release.
Improv trio made up of Dave Fowler (drums), Ivor Kallin (upright electric bass/vocal), and Jerry Wigens (guitar).
The trio was formed in 2015 drummer Dave Fowler and bassist Ivor Kallin already provided the powerhouse rhythm section of free jazz group Ya Basta! and had developed a close understanding over nearly three decades, while Kallin and Wigens knew each other from the London Improvisers Orchestra and a shared interest in the fortunes of Leyton Orient FC. It was here that the idea of the trio emerged during one half-time interval. A purely instrumental unit at the outset, the Figs would soon integrate Kallin's unique vocal talents as part of their live set.
The name 'Glowering Figs' derives from a loose amalgam of the letters in 'Fowler' and 'Wigens', an angrier option than the initial 'hippier' alternative, 'Flowering Wigs'. The music in this recording is a selection of material from more than two hours of improvised live playing that took place on a one-day session in Autumn 2016.
Stewart Lee
2019-04-14T21:57:19+01:00
Stew writes the sleeve notes to Glowering Figs' debut release. Improv trio made up of Dave Fowler (drums), Ivor Kallin (upright electric bass/vocal), and Jerry Wigens (guitar). The trio was formed in 2015 drummer Dave Fowler and bassist Ivor Kallin already provided the powerhouse rhythm section of free jazz group Ya Basta! and had developed a close understanding over nearly three decades, while Kallin and Wigens knew each other from the London Improvisers Orchestra and a shared interest in the fortunes of Leyton Orient FC. It was here that the idea of the trio emerged during one half-time interval. A purely instrumental unit at the outset, the Figs would soon integrate Kallin's unique vocal talents as part of their live set. The name 'Glowering Figs' derives from a loose amalgam of the letters in 'Fowler' and 'Wigens', an angrier option than the initial 'hippier' alternative, 'Flowering Wigs'. The music in this recording is a selection of material from more than two hours of improvised live playing that took place on a one-day session in Autumn 2016.
........The first show I see is Stewart Lee at the Stand Comedy Club. His show is called Scrambled egg and is subtitled: Old Material and new.
In random order. (Notes towards a television project). The expected lack of flow given the show's title was evident the night I was there. It was a particularly disjointed night but when individual pieces are this good it almost doesn't matter. Lee's delivery is a quiet, minimalist hum, like comedy on a different sound wave - the ears gradually attune to the seeming sequence of repeated notes that suddenly reveal a relative cymbal crash of comedy.
His mechanism is reducto ad absurdum: taking the logic of an idea to beyond its nth degree - his journey often continues long after other comedians have stopped the car to let the laugh off, and he continues trundling along seemingly aimless roads that suddenly and unexpectedly turn in glittering comedy plazas. He is a brilliant comedian.
Unlike Lee, the onus on other comedians is to bring a "show" to Edinburgh, rather than an hour of stand-up. For it is a "show" that will win the awards.......
Stewart Lee
2008-08-23T14:00:10+01:00
........The first show I see is Stewart Lee at the Stand Comedy Club. His show is called Scrambled egg and is subtitled: Old Material and new. In random order. (Notes towards a television project). The expected lack of flow given the show's title was evident the night I was there. It was a particularly disjointed night but when individual pieces are this good it almost doesn't matter. Lee's delivery is a quiet, minimalist hum, like comedy on a different sound wave - the ears gradually attune to the seeming sequence of repeated notes that suddenly reveal a relative cymbal crash of comedy. His mechanism is reducto ad absurdum: taking the logic of an idea to beyond its nth degree - his journey often continues long after other comedians have stopped the car to let the laugh off, and he continues trundling along seemingly aimless roads that suddenly and unexpectedly turn in glittering comedy plazas. He is a brilliant comedian. Unlike Lee, the onus on other comedians is to bring a "show" to Edinburgh, rather than an hour of stand-up. For it is a "show" that will win the awards.......
Today I am scratchy-throated from laughing so much. The reason for my hoarseness? Stewart Lee's brilliant gig at the Liverpool Philharmonic last night. I haven't laughed so much and so hard in ages.
This was a very special night. I had heard about the gig via Stewart's newsletters in the summer and promptly booked my ticket, bagging a seat in the front row. The gig is part of Stewart's latest tour, entitled Content Provider, but it is still being run-in and won't officially start until later this month. As such the evening was a very relaxed affair and afforded us the chance to see material that may exist only for the evening, as Stew hones the show in preparation for a fully-fledged nationwide tour.
Though, having said that, if he does decided to drop anything then I don't envy him that decision; it's a show full of riches that riffs primarily on the preoccupations and interests of the under 40s, how accessible content is in the digital age, and how such technological advancements are making us stupid and lazy.
So many things had me laughing 'til I cried, including digs at Brexit, Game of Thrones, the difference between Tinder and dating agencies of the past and, in turn, the differences between jazz and folk, the two Russell's (Howard and Brand) and the intricacies of the touring business. But perhaps best of all, was a long and deliriously funny surreal pondering on the S&M practices of Stew's grandparents during the Second World War - I thought I'd broke a rib by that point!
Seated next to me at the front row was a guy who introduced himself and advised me before the show started that he had a very unique laugh. That laugh quickly became apparent almost as soon as Stew bounded on stage and I see that it has been discussed on twitter today. For what it's worth, I witnessed one bloke asking him to 'tone it down' during the interval before a steward came along and notified the guy that some 'complaints' had been made. But there was genuinely nothing he could do, this was his laugh, he wasn't putting it on, and I felt bad that people were singling him out. OK, it was a bit mad and a little distracting, but it was amusing too. People saying he should be banned from shows or that he ruined the night are talking out of their arse - and one person claimed she paid £100 for a front row seat - Um, I paid twenty-odd quid for mine, where do you get your tickets from?! I heard Stewart himself refer to it at the signing afterwards but not in the way that some are claiming on there; ie that it ruined the night. All he said was that he found improvising off script a little difficult with such a distraction, but it was clear that it was no skin off his nose. He's a professional comedian with 30 years experience - he can handle it!
Which brings me to the signing after the show. Each ticket holder was entitled to a FREE DVD of Stewart's latest series Comedy Vehicle, complete with an illustrated limited edition slipcase which Stewart signed for me - as you can see above. It was a real pleasure, not only to see your comedy hero perform live, but to meet him afterwards too was the icing on the cake. He's a genuinely lovely guy.
I will definitely be going to see him again.
Stewart Lee
2016-11-03T04:30:08+00:00
Today I am scratchy-throated from laughing so much. The reason for my hoarseness? Stewart Lee's brilliant gig at the Liverpool Philharmonic last night. I haven't laughed so much and so hard in ages. This was a very special night. I had heard about the gig via Stewart's newsletters in the summer and promptly booked my ticket, bagging a seat in the front row. The gig is part of Stewart's latest tour, entitled Content Provider, but it is still being run-in and won't officially start until later this month. As such the evening was a very relaxed affair and afforded us the chance to see material that may exist only for the evening, as Stew hones the show in preparation for a fully-fledged nationwide tour. Though, having said that, if he does decided to drop anything then I don't envy him that decision; it's a show full of riches that riffs primarily on the preoccupations and interests of the under 40s, how accessible content is in the digital age, and how such technological advancements are making us stupid and lazy. So many things had me laughing 'til I cried, including digs at Brexit, Game of Thrones, the difference between Tinder and dating agencies of the past and, in turn, the differences between jazz and folk, the two Russell's (Howard and Brand) and the intricacies of the touring business. But perhaps best of all, was a long and deliriously funny surreal pondering on the S&M practices of Stew's grandparents during the Second World War - I thought I'd broke a rib by that point! Seated next to me at the front row was a guy who introduced himself and advised me before the show started that he had a very unique laugh. That laugh quickly became apparent almost as soon as Stew bounded...
Stewart Lee has set the bar so high, he can hardly be criticised for not always vaulting it. At his best, he takes comedy out on new limbs: the pleasure of laughter combines with the thrill of working out what's so funny and why.
That happens less often tonight, while there's an occasional reliance on old tricks and hack jokes of the type Lee would eviscerate if he heard them elsewhere. Maybe duff gags about anal sex are the only remaining way Lee can find to subvert our expectations. Or maybe the show is still, after a month of previews in Edinburgh, a work in progress: Lee takes perverse pleasure in telling us it's just a try-out for his TV programme.
The first half is the weakest: there's some recycled material from his 2011 set about celebrity Tories, and a repetitive riff about TV animal rescue shows that, by his own admission, needs putting out of its misery.
Patience-stretching repetition is Lee's party piece, of course, and he leans on it here, with one skit about a little-Englander cabbie, and more successful one projecting Ukip's fears about Bulgarian immigration back into the past, via Huguenots and Anglo-Saxons, all the way to the Big Bang.
Later highlights include a riff on Lee's opposition to the closure of a Hackney jazz club, which toys with the liberal's fear of appearing racist; and a slippery routine cross-fertilising the frustrations of Lee's unromantic marriage with the solidarity he seeks to demonstrate with abused minorities. "That night," it concludes, "my black wife and my gay wife met in my subconscious..."
This is vintage Lee, as text and subtext play cat and mouse - even if the section in which it sits, about feeling middle-aged and out-of-touch, is fairly conventional. There's some teasing, pertinent stuff here; if only he'd hone it for the tour and not just for the telly.
Stewart Lee
2013-09-22T18:15:29+01:00
Stewart Lee has set the bar so high, he can hardly be criticised for not always vaulting it. At his best, he takes comedy out on new limbs: the pleasure of laughter combines with the thrill of working out what's so funny and why. That happens less often tonight, while there's an occasional reliance on old tricks and hack jokes of the type Lee would eviscerate if he heard them elsewhere. Maybe duff gags about anal sex are the only remaining way Lee can find to subvert our expectations. Or maybe the show is still, after a month of previews in Edinburgh, a work in progress: Lee takes perverse pleasure in telling us it's just a try-out for his TV programme. The first half is the weakest: there's some recycled material from his 2011 set about celebrity Tories, and a repetitive riff about TV animal rescue shows that, by his own admission, needs putting out of its misery. Patience-stretching repetition is Lee's party piece, of course, and he leans on it here, with one skit about a little-Englander cabbie, and more successful one projecting Ukip's fears about Bulgarian immigration back into the past, via Huguenots and Anglo-Saxons, all the way to the Big Bang. Later highlights include a riff on Lee's opposition to the closure of a Hackney jazz club, which toys with the liberal's fear of appearing racist; and a slippery routine cross-fertilising the frustrations of Lee's unromantic marriage with the solidarity he seeks to demonstrate with abused minorities. "That night," it concludes, "my black wife and my gay wife met in my subconscious..." This is vintage Lee, as text and subtext play cat and mouse - even if the section in which it sits, about feeling middle-aged and out-of-touch, is fairly conventional. There's some teasing, pertinent stuff here;...
This is the book that proves that Birmingham is not just the crucible of the Industrial Revolution, but the cradle of civilisation.
It’s the definitive guide to the 101 things that made the world what it is today – and all of them were made in Birmingham.
Read how Birmingham gave the world the wonders of tennis, nuclear war, the Beatles, 'that smell of eggs' and many more... 97 more.
It also includes a foreword by Stewart Lee called 'A Birmingham of the memory,' all about his relationship with the city.
"101 Things Birmingham Gave The World, is not a Birmingham of the memory. It is a living breathing thing, wrestling with the city's contradictions, press-ganging the typically arch and understated humour of the Brummie, and an army of little-known facts, both trivial and monumental, into reshaping its confusing reputation."
Stewart Lee
Written by: Jon Bounds, Jez Collins, Liz Cooke, Julia Gilbert, Simon Fox, Stuart Harrison, Craig Hamilton, Libby Hayward Bounds, Jon Hickman, Jon Neale, Steve Nicholls, Nick Stevens, Danny Smith, and Howard Wilkinson.
Cover design by Mark Murphy.
Edited by Jon Bounds and Jon Hickman, from an original idea by Craig Hamilton. Additional editorial support from Libby Hayward Bounds, Julia Gilbert, and Nick Moreton.
Stewart Lee
2018-10-30T21:48:15+00:00
This is the book that proves that Birmingham is not just the crucible of the Industrial Revolution, but the cradle of civilisation. It’s the definitive guide to the 101 things that made the world what it is today – and all of them were made in Birmingham. Read how Birmingham gave the world the wonders of tennis, nuclear war, the Beatles, 'that smell of eggs' and many more... 97 more. It also includes a foreword by Stewart Lee called 'A Birmingham of the memory,' all about his relationship with the city. "101 Things Birmingham Gave The World, is not a Birmingham of the memory. It is a living breathing thing, wrestling with the city's contradictions, press-ganging the typically arch and understated humour of the Brummie, and an army of little-known facts, both trivial and monumental, into reshaping its confusing reputation." Stewart Lee Written by: Jon Bounds, Jez Collins, Liz Cooke, Julia Gilbert, Simon Fox, Stuart Harrison, Craig Hamilton, Libby Hayward Bounds, Jon Hickman, Jon Neale, Steve Nicholls, Nick Stevens, Danny Smith, and Howard Wilkinson. Cover design by Mark Murphy. Edited by Jon Bounds and Jon Hickman, from an original idea by Craig Hamilton. Additional editorial support from Libby Hayward Bounds, Julia Gilbert, and Nick Moreton.
In this episode, Louis speaks to comedian, writer and 41st best stand-up ever, Stewart Lee.
Stewart tells Louis about taking aim at “Netflix comedians” in his new show, Stewart Lee vs. The Man-Wulf, what went wrong at a disastrous gig at the Royal Albert Hall, and what Elon Musk doesn't understand about comedy.
Stewart Lee
2026-03-24T13:04:12+00:00
In this episode, Louis speaks to comedian, writer and 41st best stand-up ever, Stewart Lee. Stewart tells Louis about taking aim at “Netflix comedians” in his new show, Stewart Lee vs. The Man-Wulf, what went wrong at a disastrous gig at the Royal Albert Hall, and what Elon Musk doesn't understand about comedy.
In the '90s Dylan Carson's Earth played glacially slow metal under the influence of Sabbath, holy minimalism and, if we're honest, heroin. In the noughties, a rehabilitated Carson refitted a still unflinchingly slow Earth with classy strings and early Fairport folk rock flavours.
Alone with distorted electric guitar as Drcarsonablbion, now he’s staked out sunblind in the desert to soundtrack a supposed Western with expansively frazzled bluesey instrumentals.
Fans of Neil Young's Dead Man score will recognise the recipe, but Carlson's spaghetti is thicker and heavier.
Stewart Lee
2014-06-15T12:27:19+01:00
In the '90s Dylan Carson's Earth played glacially slow metal under the influence of Sabbath, holy minimalism and, if we're honest, heroin. In the noughties, a rehabilitated Carson refitted a still unflinchingly slow Earth with classy strings and early Fairport folk rock flavours. Alone with distorted electric guitar as Drcarsonablbion, now he’s staked out sunblind in the desert to soundtrack a supposed Western with expansively frazzled bluesey instrumentals. Fans of Neil Young's Dead Man score will recognise the recipe, but Carlson's spaghetti is thicker and heavier.
Mid-90’s prole art threat re-forms 20th May at The Big Chill House, London.
LIVE WORK
BENEFITS
1) Monday 14th May – Oranoutangs at the Lyric. I’ve had to drop out of this.
2) Wednesday May 23rd – Benefit for Reprieve at Bloomsbury Theatre. http://www.thebloomsbury.com/event/run/1048.
I’ve had to pull out of this but it will be great.
3) Sunday June 10th Benefit for something at the Lyric @ The Lyric Hammersmith,
I will be running in the new s-up show, 41st Best Stand-Up Ever, at..
May 13th – Drill Hall, Freeschool Lane, Lincoln, Lincolnshire, LN2 1EY, Box office: 01522 873894
May 21st and 24th – Brighton Festival
May 29th – Electric Mouse, Carnaby Street, London. www.electricmousecomedy.com WITH BRIDGET CHRISTIE
May 31st 2007 – Offline Club, Brixton www.urban75.org/offline/, w Darren Heyman of Heffner group.
June 4th – Monday Club, London
June 7th – Drum and Monkey, Archway, London
June 11th – Electric Mouse, www.electricmousecomedy.com The New Globe, 359 Mile End Rd, E3 4QS. WITH BRIDGET CHRISTIE (King Charles II)
June 14th – Roar With Laughter, GJ's Bar, High Street, Colliers Wood, London, SW19 Box office: 0845 838 5191. WITH SIMON MUNNERY.
June 17th, Just The Tonic, Cabaret, Fletchergate, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, 0115 912 9000, WITH JOSIE LONG.
June 18th, Liverpool Comedy Festival, Unity Theatre, 1 Hope Place, Liverpool, L1 9BG, 0151 709 4988, www.unitytheatreliverpool.co.uk
June 25th & 26th - XS Malarkey, Wilmslow Road (next to Sainsbury's), Fallowfield, Manchester, info@xsmalarkey.com, door on the night, or from Ticket Web (08700 600 100 or www.ticketweb.co.uk , type in XS Malarkey as your keyword, £2 members, £4 non members, www.xsmalarkey.com
July 14th – Lattitude Festival, The Countryside, England.
July 17th - Show + tell's wonderfully fantastic edinburgh preview club, the old coffee house, 49 beak street Soho W1F 9SF (020 7437 2197) £5. WITH BRIDGET CHRISTIE.
July 19th – Short Fuse, Camden Head, Angel, London
July 21st – Chuckle Club, LSE, London
July 23rd – Amersham Arms, New Cross, London
July 24th – Ginglik, A toilet, Shepherd’s Bush, London
July 25th – Andy Zatlzman’s Political Animal @ Soho Theatre
July 26th – Sabotage @ Great Eastern Hotel, London EC2
July 27th – Soho Review Bar
41ST BEST STAND-UP EVER, NEW SHOW, EDINBURGH, TOURING AND SOHO THEATRE – more dates to follow – may not be on sale yet
July 28th – Taunton Festival
July 30th – The Stand, 333 Woodlands Road, Glasgow, G3 6NG Box office: 0870 600 6055. RESCHEDULED FROM FRIDAY 9TH MARCH.
August 2ndst + 1 month, 41st Best Stand-Up Ever, Udderbelly, Edinburgh, 7pm.
October 5th – Canterbury, Gulbenkian Theatre
October 7th – Southampton Nuffield
October 10th – Northampton Roadmenders
October 11th – Birmingham Glee Club
October 12th – Reading Concert Hall
October 14th – Cambridge Junction
October 19th – Wolverhampton Wulfrun
October 20th – North Yorkshire, Shed
October 21st – Leicester, Bottle Rocket
October 26th – Walton On Thames, somewhere
Octover 27th – Coventry, Belgrade
October 30th – High Wycombe, Town Hall
November 1st – Worcester, Huntington Hall
November 3rd and 4th – Cardiff Millennium Hall
November 10th – Kings Lynn, Corn Xchange
Nov 12th – December 22nd – 41st Best Stand-Up Ever, Soho Theatre, London
Interiors/Perverted By language
I am co-writing a site-specific theatre piece for the M’cr festival with Johnny Vegas. Interiors will premiere at the first-ever Manchester International Festival, a highbrow arts event which starts on June 28. Speaking at the festival’s launch, Vegas promised: ‘I'm breaking free of what theatre ought to be.’ On the 1st of July I will be reading a bit of a story from a new book of stories inspired by Fall song titles, called Perverted By Language, before a show by The Fall in M’cr.
JOHNSON AND BOSWELL – LIVE AND LATE
I am devising an improvised piece for the Traverse, for the second 2 weeks of the festival, in Edinburgh in August. Miles Jupp will be in this.
90’s COMEDIAN ON DVD – SECOND PRESSING + RICHARD HERRING DVD/ PEA GREEN BOAT
Cardiff Comedy mavericks Go Faster Stripe shot the show in February last year, and it’s available on DVD for only £10. I plan to flog these at gigs in late 2007 but the initial two print runs of 2000 are nearly sold out, and there is now a third run planned. Check their website to get them, and please don’t bootleg them all over the place and sell them on e-bay. I NEED THIS. www.gofasterstripe.com
Richard Herring, who I used to work with, has exactly copied me as usual by doing a DVD with Go Faster Stripe too, “The 12 Tasks Of Hercules Terrace”. New DVDs from Simon Munnery, Richard Herring, Robin Ince and Tony Law are in the pipeline from a company set up to market comedians not famous enough for large-scale releases.
My 2002 show Pea Green Boat will soon be out via GFS as an audio cd and limited edition vinyl 10” single.
WHAT’S ON?
I was writing for What’s On, doing funny columns. It went bust last week owing me a life-changing amount of money, having never paid me for anything. I’ll put the accursed columns up on the soon to be redesigned website, www.stewartlee.co.uk
THE FLASH
I have a very short story in this new book, The Flash. It can be purchased through Amazon here. If you want to buy copies, you can purchase them at a reduced rate of £5.50 by sending a cheque (or international money order if you are outside the UK) made out to H Garwood at the following address: 11 Haymans Point / Tyers Street / London / ENGLAND / SE11 5NT. Postage & package for additional copies is free in the UK.
Outside of the UK, it's $8 per book for up to 5 books with $16 for a package of more than 5 books.
Stewart Lee
2007-05-01T21:20:44+01:00
ALAN PARKER’S URBAN WARRIORS Mid-90’s prole art threat re-forms 20th May at The Big Chill House, London. LIVE WORK BENEFITS 1) Monday 14th May – Oranoutangs at the Lyric. I’ve had to drop out of this. 2) Wednesday May 23rd – Benefit for Reprieve at Bloomsbury Theatre. http://www.thebloomsbury.com/event/run/1048. I’ve had to pull out of this but it will be great. 3) Sunday June 10th Benefit for something at the Lyric @ The Lyric Hammersmith, I will be running in the new s-up show, 41st Best Stand-Up Ever, at.. May 13th – Drill Hall, Freeschool Lane, Lincoln, Lincolnshire, LN2 1EY, Box office: 01522 873894 May 21st and 24th – Brighton Festival May 29th – Electric Mouse, Carnaby Street, London. www.electricmousecomedy.com WITH BRIDGET CHRISTIE May 31st 2007 – Offline Club, Brixton www.urban75.org/offline/, w Darren Heyman of Heffner group. June 4th – Monday Club, London June 7th – Drum and Monkey, Archway, London June 11th – Electric Mouse, www.electricmousecomedy.com The New Globe, 359 Mile End Rd, E3 4QS. WITH BRIDGET CHRISTIE (King Charles II) June 14th – Roar With Laughter, GJ's Bar, High Street, Colliers Wood, London, SW19 Box office: 0845 838 5191. WITH SIMON MUNNERY. June 17th, Just The Tonic, Cabaret, Fletchergate, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, 0115 912 9000, WITH JOSIE LONG. June 18th, Liverpool Comedy Festival, Unity Theatre, 1 Hope Place, Liverpool, L1 9BG, 0151 709 4988, www.unitytheatreliverpool.co.uk June 25th & 26th - XS Malarkey, Wilmslow Road (next to Sainsbury's), Fallowfield, Manchester, info@xsmalarkey.com, door on the night, or from Ticket Web (08700 600 100 or www.ticketweb.co.uk , type in XS Malarkey as your keyword, £2 members, £4 non members, www.xsmalarkey.com July 14th – Lattitude Festival, The Countryside, England. July 17th - Show + tell's wonderfully fantastic edinburgh preview club, the old coffee house, 49 beak street Soho W1F 9SF (020 7437 2197) £5....
It wasn't, on the face of it, my idea of a stellar evening out: a workshop production of a chat-show-/opera. But Tom Morris, artistic director of Battersea Arts Centre (and brother of Chris as in Brass Eye), was brimming with enthusiasm for his new show. It seemed churlish to be deterred by the fact that his invitation combined two pet hates, south London and fringe theatre. Last time I combined the two I disgraced myself. My friend Shuna was playing Henry Purcell's wife in a play about the composer. She had to step onstage cradling a bloodied bundle of rags and say, "My babies, all dead – dead – all my dead babies." At this point I was overcome by a fit of giggles so bad that I had to stuff my shirtsleeve in my mouth. Clearly I wasn't grown-up enough for this kind of enterprise.
Luckily, Kombat Opera's production of Jerry Springer: the Opera is magnificently lacking in maturity, so it hit my level nicely. Instead of dead babies you get an adult American male who gets off on soiled diapers, or a hillbilly member of the Ku Klux Klan who harbours a much worse secret: "I prefer flowers to people." It is a work of utter comic genius. The concept is brilliantly simple. The libretto is drawn pretty much verbatim from Jerry Springer's real-life chat-show, but, with the exception of the actor playing Jerry, every exchange is sung with the idiom and musical sincerity of classical opera. The collision of low sentiment and high culture creates a tidal wave of comic energy.
The show opens with a chorus of trailer-trash who form the show's "audience" singing "J-e-rr-rr-y" with the fervour of a messianic requiem. Better still are the guests who spew their traumas and peccadillos as heartfelt arias. Gormless Charlene sings to her love-cheat boyfriend, Dwight: "I remember when we was young, we was full of hope, until we got addicted to crack and dope." A statuesque blonde, Kylie, reveals to her lover, Stan, that she's really a man, at which the chorus trill in shocked delight, "Chick with a dick!" Sadly, most lines are too profane to repeat in a family newspaper. The chorus is particularly foul-mouthed, bigoted and true to life, deriding a bisexual as a "faggot-loser", a lap-dancer as a "strip-slut", and everyone else as "assholes". It's opera, but not as we know it.
The first-night audience watched with a palpable sense of rapture. It was good to see Chris Morris among them, keeping up with bad taste everywhere – though the opera had even more to recommend it than low-rent laughs. The singing and direction are excellent. The music, composed by Richard Thomas, makes sly nods at everyone from Mozart to Sondheim, while holding its own as an original composition, and the libretto embraces every modern malaise going. Take celebrity-itis: the central refrain goes, "This is a Jerry Springer moment, we don't want this moment to end, so cover us in chocolate and throw us to the lesbians."
I had that rare, tingling feeling that I was witnessing something about to fly. I'd be amazed if the fully realised show doesn't become a West End hit, doing for opera what Adventures in Motion Pictures' Swan Lake did for ballet. When you look at it, there's little difference between the triangular relationship at the centre of Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier and the Springer opera's threesomes. Rosenkavalier's male lead, Octavian, is a man dressed as a woman, played by a woman, so it all comes down to chicks with dicks.
Inspired, I started to dream up similar ventures. EastEnders, for example, as a country and western musical, with Dolly Parton a ringer for Peggy Mitchell. You can just see her singing in plaintive, bell-like tones, "You're a slag Pat Butcher – you always were and you always will be." Crimewatch, meanwhile, could breathe new life into pantomime. When Nick Ross asks, "Have you seen this man?" the audience can shout, "He's behind you." And I'm keen on a Kabuki version of the porn classic Deep Throat. All-male casts mean you can't be accused of degrading women, and there's at least one foreign market sorted.
Stewart Lee
2001-09-02T16:24:47+01:00
It wasn't, on the face of it, my idea of a stellar evening out: a workshop production of a chat-show-/opera. But Tom Morris, artistic director of Battersea Arts Centre (and brother of Chris as in Brass Eye), was brimming with enthusiasm for his new show. It seemed churlish to be deterred by the fact that his invitation combined two pet hates, south London and fringe theatre. Last time I combined the two I disgraced myself. My friend Shuna was playing Henry Purcell's wife in a play about the composer. She had to step onstage cradling a bloodied bundle of rags and say, "My babies, all dead – dead – all my dead babies." At this point I was overcome by a fit of giggles so bad that I had to stuff my shirtsleeve in my mouth. Clearly I wasn't grown-up enough for this kind of enterprise. Luckily, Kombat Opera's production of Jerry Springer: the Opera is magnificently lacking in maturity, so it hit my level nicely. Instead of dead babies you get an adult American male who gets off on soiled diapers, or a hillbilly member of the Ku Klux Klan who harbours a much worse secret: "I prefer flowers to people." It is a work of utter comic genius. The concept is brilliantly simple. The libretto is drawn pretty much verbatim from Jerry Springer's real-life chat-show, but, with the exception of the actor playing Jerry, every exchange is sung with the idiom and musical sincerity of classical opera. The collision of low sentiment and high culture creates a tidal wave of comic energy. The show opens with a chorus of trailer-trash who form the show's "audience" singing "J-e-rr-rr-y" with the fervour of a messianic requiem. Better still are the guests who spew their traumas and peccadillos as heartfelt arias....
Whether Stewart Lee is still the “41st best stand-up ever” (Channel 4), “the world’s greatest living stand-up” (The Times) or a declining commodity in the post-PC age is one of the many conundrums the mercurial comic wrestles with in his latest show.
Or rather shows, as the performance is split between the first set’s ‘Tornado’ – during which Lee queries his position in the comedy marketplace after Netflix mistakenly describes his Comedy Vehicle TV series as about sharks falling from the sky – and second installment ‘Snowflake’, when he’s forced to question his worth in a world no longer in tune with the liberal values on which much of his work is based.
The latter is probably the marginally funnier set, even though its initial laughs seem to come from nothing at all – Lee quipping that it’s unfair on any reviewers present, who at least need something to go on. The notion of laughing at nothing (“but it is something”) is typical of Lee’s show, which veers between clever and absurd, and is often both at the same time.
The weary attitude (he claimed he’d been self-isolating in his hotel room hoping the show would be cancelled due to coronavirus), superiority complex and disdain for the audience are all present and correct too, but there’s a greater degree of playfulness to this performance – he puts on voices and even jumps about – and the finale comes as close to a personal element as I’ve seen him display, though its manifestation, in the form of an acoustic guitar number, is mercifully brief.
The chances of this marking a change of tack are about as likely as him ditching his membership of the ‘metropolitan liberal elite’ of course, but that’s just as well, as “the comedian Stewart Lee” – a character he claims is removed from the real one – has license to skewer a range of contemporaries and celebrities, from Ricky Gervais, Dave Chapelle and Jimmy Carr to Tony Parsons and Phoebe Waller-Bridge. All are subjected to varying degrees of vitriolic attack, but in each case the occasionally imbecilic mockery is grounded in intellectually considered argument – that same mix of clever and absurd that keeps Lee among the elite of stand-up comedy
Stewart Lee
2020-03-13T15:12:02+00:00
Whether Stewart Lee is still the “41st best stand-up ever” (Channel 4), “the world’s greatest living stand-up” (The Times) or a declining commodity in the post-PC age is one of the many conundrums the mercurial comic wrestles with in his latest show. Or rather shows, as the performance is split between the first set’s ‘Tornado’ – during which Lee queries his position in the comedy marketplace after Netflix mistakenly describes his Comedy Vehicle TV series as about sharks falling from the sky – and second installment ‘Snowflake’, when he’s forced to question his worth in a world no longer in tune with the liberal values on which much of his work is based. The latter is probably the marginally funnier set, even though its initial laughs seem to come from nothing at all – Lee quipping that it’s unfair on any reviewers present, who at least need something to go on. The notion of laughing at nothing (“but it is something”) is typical of Lee’s show, which veers between clever and absurd, and is often both at the same time. The weary attitude (he claimed he’d been self-isolating in his hotel room hoping the show would be cancelled due to coronavirus), superiority complex and disdain for the audience are all present and correct too, but there’s a greater degree of playfulness to this performance – he puts on voices and even jumps about – and the finale comes as close to a personal element as I’ve seen him display, though its manifestation, in the form of an acoustic guitar number, is mercifully brief. The chances of this marking a change of tack are about as likely as him ditching his membership of the ‘metropolitan liberal elite’ of course, but that’s just as well, as “the comedian Stewart Lee” – a...
I am doing some small shows to work out a rewrite of the SNOWFLAKE half of SNOWFLAKE/TORNADO which hits the road again to complete its interrupted tour next Spring.
The shows will be one hour and will be messy new material.
They will take place under social distance rules and regs and the rooms will be running at 1/3rd capacity.
Sometimes I will do a number of shows a night, all profits are going to the venues to help.
If Covid rules change and we are not allowed to perform they will be refunded or rescheduled.
At the moment, despite the new rule of 6, people are allowed to gather in venues.
Please support your local comedy club if you still want it to be there in the future.
S Lee
Stewart Lee's 2019/2020 show SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO is on hiatus (★★★★★ The Guardian), but 50 final dates are rescheduled for 2021.
See him rewrite and rework the sixty minutes of it that have been rendered irrelevant by events.
Sure to be shoddy as hell, but all proceeds go to the needy venue!
See "the world's greatest living stand-up" (The Times) close up in a socially-distanced, non-match fit state, shuffling towards something.
November / December 2020
The Bill Murray, Angel, Islington, London.
Wednesday 4th Nov 7 pm: TICKETS
Wednesday 4th Nov 8:45 pm: TICKETS
Wednesday 11th Nov 7 pm: TICKETS
Wednesday 11th Nov 8:45 pm: TICKETS
Sunday 15th Nov 7 pm: TICKETS
Sunday 15th Nov 8:45 pm: TICKETS
Monday 16th Nov 7 pm: TICKETS
Monday 16th Nov 8:45 pm: TICKETS
Tuesday 17th Nov 7 pm: TICKETS
Tuesday 17th Nov 8:45 pm: TICKETS
Wednesday 18th Nov 7 pm: TICKETS
Wednesday 18th Nov 8:45 pm: TICKETS
Thursday 19th Nov 7 pm: TICKETS
Thursday 19th Nov 8:45 pm: TICKETS
Sunday 22nd Nov 7 pm: TICKETS
Sunday 22nd Nov 8:45 pm: TICKETS
Monday 23rd Nov 7 pm: TICKETS
Monday 23rd Nov 8:45 pm: TICKETS
Tuesday 24th Nov 7 pm: TICKETS
Tuesday 24th Nov 8:45 pm: TICKETS
Wednesday 25th Nov 7 pm: TICKETS
Wednesday 25th Nov 8:45 pm: TICKETS
Thursday 26th Nov 7 pm: TICKETS
Thursday 26th Nov 8:45 pm: TICKETS
The Stand, Woodlands Rd, Glasgow.
Sunday 29th Nov 2pm: TICKETS
Sunday 29th Nov 4.30pm: TICKETS
Sunday 29th Nov 7pm: TICKETS
Sunday 29th Nov 9.30pm: TICKETS
The Stand, York Place, Edinburgh.
Monday 30th Nov 2pm: TICKETS
Monday 30th Nov 4.30pm: TICKETS
Monday 30th Nov 7pm: TICKETS
Monday 30th Nov 9.30pm: TICKETS
The Stand, High Bridge, Newcastle upon Tyne.
Tuesday 1st December 2pm: TICKETS
Tuesday 1st December 4.30pm: TICKETS
Tuesday 1st December 7pm: TICKETS
Tuesday 1st December 9.30pm: TICKETS
Stewart Lee
2020-09-11T00:00:36+01:00
Dear FANS I am doing some small shows to work out a rewrite of the SNOWFLAKE half of SNOWFLAKE/TORNADO which hits the road again to complete its interrupted tour next Spring. The shows will be one hour and will be messy new material. They will take place under social distance rules and regs and the rooms will be running at 1/3rd capacity. Sometimes I will do a number of shows a night, all profits are going to the venues to help. If Covid rules change and we are not allowed to perform they will be refunded or rescheduled. At the moment, despite the new rule of 6, people are allowed to gather in venues. Please support your local comedy club if you still want it to be there in the future. S Lee Stewart Lee's 2019/2020 show SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO is on hiatus (★★★★★ The Guardian), but 50 final dates are rescheduled for 2021. See him rewrite and rework the sixty minutes of it that have been rendered irrelevant by events. Sure to be shoddy as hell, but all proceeds go to the needy venue! See "the world's greatest living stand-up" (The Times) close up in a socially-distanced, non-match fit state, shuffling towards something. November / December 2020 The Bill Murray, Angel, Islington, London. Wednesday 4th Nov 7 pm: TICKETS Wednesday 4th Nov 8:45 pm: TICKETS Wednesday 11th Nov 7 pm: TICKETS Wednesday 11th Nov 8:45 pm: TICKETS Sunday 15th Nov 7 pm: TICKETS Sunday 15th Nov 8:45 pm: TICKETS Monday 16th Nov 7 pm: TICKETS Monday 16th Nov 8:45 pm: TICKETS Tuesday 17th Nov 7 pm: TICKETS Tuesday 17th Nov 8:45 pm: TICKETS Wednesday 18th Nov 7 pm: TICKETS Wednesday 18th Nov 8:45 pm: TICKETS Thursday 19th Nov 7 pm: TICKETS Thursday 19th Nov 8:45 pm: TICKETS Sunday...
Trojan records' vast back catalogue of essential Jamaican reggae is a valuable property, but how can Universal exploit an asset already so thoroughly strip-mined? Disc one of this five CD, budget priced, set The Story Of Trojan Records, features familiar UK reggae hits of the sixties and seventies - The Pioneers' Longshot Kick De Bucket, Ken Boothe's Everything I Own, Harry J All Stars' Liquidator - to snag casual consumers.
Disc five forces reggae fans to shell out for twenty-three genuinely unknown tracks, closing a box set that runs the gamut from the obvious to the obscure.
Stewart Lee
2011-08-28T22:04:28+01:00
Trojan records' vast back catalogue of essential Jamaican reggae is a valuable property, but how can Universal exploit an asset already so thoroughly strip-mined? Disc one of this five CD, budget priced, set The Story Of Trojan Records, features familiar UK reggae hits of the sixties and seventies - The Pioneers' Longshot Kick De Bucket, Ken Boothe's Everything I Own, Harry J All Stars' Liquidator - to snag casual consumers. Disc five forces reggae fans to shell out for twenty-three genuinely unknown tracks, closing a box set that runs the gamut from the obvious to the obscure.
I’d given up on ever again finding stand-up on TV funny, so Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle didn’t arouse antic expectations. But actually it is properly funny, and what makes him funny is instructive. He plays a character. It’s not him, it’s a performance. He’s not just a spooky, needy fat man telling jokes; Lee’s character is a spooky, needy fat man, a metropolitan socialist with a bucket of self-loathing, insecurity, thin skin and well-deserved doubts, telling jokes. He is a Corbynista Tony Hancock, and it’s a good creation, delivered with astute vehemence.
Lee points out that comedy has made him a member of the middle class, where he is hated, and you know this is an act because, in real life, Lee went to a public school — he was a contemporary of Richard Hammond, whom he once hilariously wished was dead — and then to Oxford; and he writes musicals. His mockable working- class persona is tee-hee gold. If you regret the passing of really whiny political humour and wondered who on earth was going to pick up the jester’s cap, look no further.
Stewart Lee
2016-03-06T17:36:15+00:00
I’d given up on ever again finding stand-up on TV funny, so Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle didn’t arouse antic expectations. But actually it is properly funny, and what makes him funny is instructive. He plays a character. It’s not him, it’s a performance. He’s not just a spooky, needy fat man telling jokes; Lee’s character is a spooky, needy fat man, a metropolitan socialist with a bucket of self-loathing, insecurity, thin skin and well-deserved doubts, telling jokes. He is a Corbynista Tony Hancock, and it’s a good creation, delivered with astute vehemence. Lee points out that comedy has made him a member of the middle class, where he is hated, and you know this is an act because, in real life, Lee went to a public school — he was a contemporary of Richard Hammond, whom he once hilariously wished was dead — and then to Oxford; and he writes musicals. His mockable working- class persona is tee-hee gold. If you regret the passing of really whiny political humour and wondered who on earth was going to pick up the jester’s cap, look no further.
https://www.stewartlee.co.uk/slcv4/tv-review/
Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye,
So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages,
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.
1) King Rocker Now TV
Thanks for watching our documentary KING ROCKER last Saturday on Sky Arts, and spreading the word, and crowd-funding it, if you did.
Our labour of love really landed. I arrogantly think it knocks most rockumentaries into a cocked hat and will cheer you up no end in the awful times.
“I loved every minute” - Ben Dowell, The Times
★★★★ Financial Times
★★★★ Chortle
“One of the best music documentaries of all time” - The Quietus
“The new gold standard for rockumentaries” - The Scotsman
An actual physical 12” EP of Asian Dub Foundation(feat. Stewart Lee)‘s Brexit day number 1 Comin’ Over Here will be out on March 26th and can be pre-ordered here...
Brilliantly, higher shipping costs on ADF’s Anti-Brexit anthem are due to...Brexit, but they will try and circumvent this.
The remixes are of other bits of the Paul Nuttalls routine and work great.
I can’t believe how well the ADF’s made this work. I was their mere tool.
3) TEN BOB/USE LOAF 7”
‘Ten Bob Each Way’ / ‘Use Your Loaf’ is a limited 7” single, featuring a brand-new Nightingales recording, their first since recording their ‘Four Against Fate’ album.
B-sided with Stewart Lee and Nick Pynn covering the band’s second single, ‘Use Your Loaf’, a track that was for a mooted Nightingales tribute album. ‘Ten Bob Each Way’ / ‘Use Your Loaf’ will be released 15th May on Fire Records/King Rocker Records.
It looks like all the SNOWFLAKE/TORNADO tour dates outstanding from 2020 will be shifted into 2022, starting in Jan, and below are the ones we know about so far. Thanks for bearing through all this with patience.
Local venues will contact you if they haven’t already. All the club dates you may have bought tickets for I will try and slot in in Dec 2021 and Jan 2022, covid willing. Please do not hassle venues about all this. They will contact you. We will get there!
I am planning on re-writing the SNOWFLAKE half of SNOWFLAKE/TORNADO to reflect our drastically altered world and will make as good a recording as possible of the abandoned original SNOWFLAKE available at some point. It's all bacon!
Currently, the following dates have been re-arranged;
Saturday 15th January 2022 - Theatre Royal, Norwich - TICKETS
Tuesday 25th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Wednesday 26th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Thursday 27th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Friday 28th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Saturday 29th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Sunday 30th January 2022 - Theatre Royal, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Tuesday 8th February 2022 - Town Hall, Cheltenham
Wednesday 9th February 2022 - Town Hall, Cheltenham
Sunday 13th February 2022 - Hippodrome, Birmingham
Friday 25th February 2022 - The Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Saturday 26th February 2022 - The Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Sunday 27th February 2022 - The Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Monday 28th February 2022 - The Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury - TICKETS
Wednesday 2nd March 2022 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter
Thursday 3rd March 2022 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter
Wednesday 9th March 2022 - Theatre Royal, Wakefield - TICKETS
Thursday 10th March 2022 - Opera House, Buxton - TICKETS
Wednesday 16th March 2022 - The Sands Centre, Carlisle - TICKETS
Wednesday 23rd March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Thursday 24th March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Friday 25th March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Saturday 26th March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Sunday 27th March 2022 - Royal & Derngate, Northampton - TICKETS
Saturday 2nd April 2022 - Storyhouse, Chester - TICKETS
Sunday 24th April 2022 - Mayflower Theatre, Southampton - TICKETS
Tuesday 3rd May 2022 - Theatre Royal, York TICKETS
Wednesday 4th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
Thursday 5th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
Friday 6th May 2022 - St. George's Hall, Bradford - TICKETS
Saturday 7th May 2022 - Gala Theatre, Durham - TICKETS
Sunday 8th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Friday 13th May 2022 - The Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS
Saturday 14th May 2022 - The Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS
Sunday 22nd May 2022 - The Grand, Wolverhampton - TICKETS
Monday 23rd May 2022 - Hippodrome, Bristol - TICKETS
Wednesday 29th June 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Thursday 30th June 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Friday 1st July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Saturday 2nd July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 3rd July 2022 (EARLY SHOW) - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 3rd July 2022 (LATE SHOW) - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
My trusted sales partner Media Garage has compacted all my available stand-up dvds into one convenient on-line marketplace, with most available to d/load too.
Remember, if you buy here we will pay tax on these purchases, and help with British schools and hospitals, whereas many major physical media suppliers and streaming services have found ways to avoid declaring their profits, as have NETFLIX, the utter bastards.
AMERICANS - stop moaning about not being able to see me and visit MEDIA GARAGE!
To try and promote King Rocker I have been pimping myself about on every Podcast going, alone or with dir M Cumming (Brass Eye, Toast), saying the same things in the same room in the same clothes to all different people, all of whom were very kind.
I don’t know what a podcast is really but I think you go on the internet and click on something.
As my grandfather once said, in 1983, “Do you know, in America, there are shops that only sell Kentucky Fried Chicken?” I enjoyed being on the internet with all these people enormously, but will put some blue water between me and the next wedge.
David Baddiel told me it was good to be on the internet, though. These are available..
AND THERE's A 3000W ARTICLE ABOUT ITALIAN WESTERNS IN VICE BY ME
A rambling chat in which I fail to promote King Rocker at the expense of a Marxist analysis of culture and history from the inventor of Alternative Comedy ™ ®
Dir Michael Cumming and I discuss King Rocker with Britain’s top film guru and skiffle enthusiast, who has been very supportive of the no-budget project.
Andy Miller and John Michinson’s long running and much loved books podcast. I discuss the waspish poet and novelist Rosemary Tonks with them, Nicky Birch and Jennifer Hodgson.
This is a marvellous ongoing Podcast which is unashamedly civilised in an unenlightened era, and this episode is full of great writing, batshit radiophonic music and clever women.
North London echo chamber fun sure to irk people of all political persuasions with the forensically-minded folk devil for the far right and snowflake do-gooder Owen Jones, and me, talking about King Rocker and more general stuff. His current run of ‘casts has some great guests.
Informed Wolverhampton-based comedy and music enthusiast of uncommon warmth and knowledge talks to me about KING ROCKER and what the Gray Pays ‘n’ Bacon are like at the Great Western pub.
I asked Adam if I could go on this massively popular podcast and he said yes which was very kind of him. It was fun hearing his Mark E Smith story from the horse’s mouth and he asked me hard questions of the type I usually avoid.
I answer questions from various utterly delightful members of the Idler’s thoughtful middle class readership from their wine and book filled homes.
They are the real stars here! You will emerge from watching this in love with at least one of them.
In this episode of The Last Line, James talks to comedian Stewart Lee about his new film King Rocker, a documentary about Robert Lloyd, lead singer of 70’s post-punk band The Nightingales.
During their conversation they discuss the new film, its central protagonist Robert Lloyd, stand up comedy, Stewart’s propensity to defend stand up comedians against the views of the general public and his reluctance to participate in podcast interviews.
There’s an interview with Michael Cumming on this podcast too, link below.
Sometime in March you will be able to hear me eat a really lovely Sri Lankan mutton curry from the Kolama restaurant, Soho, with bon viveur jazz pianist Jay Rayner. (I see how this works now!)
This is the most showbiz thing I have ever done, and I am glad it was with jazzy Jay Rayner.
This is a new series of docu-chats on different esoteric subjects.
You have to pay for them because they are finished pieces of work not just some fuckers talking or wandering about.
I have appeared on three of them - on Hawkwind, Penda’s Fen and John Carpenter’s Apocalypse Trilogy.
If you happened to be a fan of short-lived but brilliant early 80s California band TRUE WEST, as I was, you will be delighted to know that the country rock meets Television group’s entire recorded output is headed for an obsolete physical media 3 cd and accompanying 24 page booklet set, but needs a bit of crowdfunding.
My band, which only played four gigs, had a song named after True West’s lead guitarist.
Julie Doiron - I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day (2009) ★★★★
Tragically Hip - Man Machine Poem (2016) ★★★★
Tragically Hip - We Are The Same (2009) ★★★★
Tortoise - Millions Now Living Will Never Die (1996) ★★★★★
Grant Lee Buffalo - Storm Hymnal (1993-98) ★★★★
Shiva Burlesque - Mercury Blues (1990) ★★★★
Yo La Tengo - President (1989) ★★★★★
Yo La Tengo - Fakebook (1990) ★★★★★
Yo La Tengo - That Is You La Tengo (1991) ★★★★
Yo La Tengo - May I Sing With Me? (1992) ★★★★
Yo La Tengo - Painful (3 cds) (1993) ★★★★
Tim Buckley - Dream Letter (1968) ★★★★★
Those Bastard Souls - Debt & Departure (1999) ★★★★★
Wanderlust - Prize (1995) ★★★★
Chain - Towards The Blues (1971) ★★★★
The Schramms - Omnidirectional (2019) ★★★★
FOOD
Kolamba Sri Lankan restaurant, Soho, London
Daisy’s pasties
Duncan’s bacon sandwich
My Shepherd’s pie, w cabbage
12) IN OUR COVID ERA LAMENTATIONS
Adam Schlesinger (Fountain of Wayne) (1967)
John Prine (outlaw country singer) (1946)
Henry Grimes (jazz bassist) (1935)
Dave Mountfield (Ornate Johnson) (1970)
Hal Wilner (arranger) (1957)
Tim Brooke-Taylor (Goodie) (1940)
Lee Konitz (jazz saxophonist) (1927)
Matthew Seligman (Soft Boy) (1955)
Millie Small (ska singer) (1946)
Florian Schneider (Kraftwerk robot) (1947)
Bill Rieflin (drummer for hire) (1960)
Hugh McKenna (Tear Gas pianist) (1949)
Steve Weber (Holy Modal Rounder) (1942)
Astrid Kirchherr (photographer) (1938)
Danny Ray Thompson (Sun Ra saxophonist) (1947)
Aubrey Burl (archaeologist) (1926)
Phil May (Pretty Thing) (1944)
The Clacton Fin Whale (circa 2000)
Christo Vladimirov Javacheff (artist) (1930)
Doll Tor stone circle (3300 BC)
Kay Carroll (The Fall) (1948)
Bob the Cat (73 bus) (2006)
Alex Taylor (Shop Assistant, in 2005, and no-one knew)
Simon H Fell (jazz bassist) (1959)
Carl Reiner (director) (1922)
Ennio Morricone (architect of sonic dreams) (1928)
Keith Tippett (jazz pianist) (1947)
Jimmy Cobb (jazz drummer) (1929)
Barbara Smoker (Humanist) (1923)
The Nuffield Theatre, Southampton
Tony Elliot (Time Out) (1942)
Judy Dyble (folk singer) (1949)
Peter Green (blues guitarist) (1946)
Emitt Rhodes (power pop auteur) (1950)
Annie Ross (jazz bohemian) (1930)
Joe Ruby (Scooby-Doo) (1933)
Craig Weatherhill (folklorist) (1950)
Don Weller (jazz saxophonist) (1940)
Simeon Coxe (Silver Apple) (1938)
Diana Rigg (Avenger) (1938)
Toots Hibbert (reggae got soul) (1942)
Dele Fadele (carry bag man) (1962)
George Jeffrie (man’s-laughter maker) (1964)
Dave Kusworth (Brum punk Stone) (1960)
Gary Peacock (jazz bassist) (1935)
Doorkins (Southwark Cathedral Cat) (2005?)
Spencer Davis (Brumbeat pioneer) (1939)
Bunny Lee (dubmaster) (1940)
The Cubbington Pear Tree (1770)
Fungie The Dingle Dolphin (1979)
Jill Paton Walsh (humanist novelist) (1937)
Val Warner (poet) (1946)
Guy N Smith (Lord of The Crabs) (1939)
Richard Corben (decadent cartoonist) (1940)
David Johnson (Duke of Soho) (1960)
Leslie West (Mountain man) (1945)
- 2021 -
Katharine Whitehorn (bedsitter cook) (1928)
Katharine Whitehorn (bedsitter cook) (1928)
Celia Drummond Ford (voice of Trees) (1950)
The Happy Man Tree (Stoke Newington Tree) (1870)
John Russell (guitar guru) (1954)
Marcel Uderzo (Asterisk artist) (1933)
Tom Stevens (Long Ryder and Magus) (1956)
Dougie Anderson (Coda’s Edinburgh record dealer (1952)
Captain Tom (Covid Walkman) (1920)
Rynagh O’Grady (Ted’s Mary) (1954)
Mary Wilson (Supreme) (1944)
Chick Corea (Miles’ tinkler) (1941)
Iain Pattinson (You wanted to see me Prime Minister?) (1951)
U-Roy (Toastmaster) (1942)
Lawrence Ferlinghetti (bookstore beat) (1921)
Wink O’Bannon (Eleventh Dream Day) (1956)
Bunny Wailer (Wailer) (1947)
Doug Parkinson (Oz vocal celeb) (1946)
Milford Graves (temporal explorer) (1941)
Johnny Rogan (Byrds’ Boswell) (1953)
Stewart Lee
2021-03-25T17:02:34+00:00
Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote, The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licóur Of which vertú engendred is the flour; Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne, And smale foweles maken melodye, That slepen al the nyght with open ye, So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages, Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes, To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes; And specially, from every shires ende Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende, The hooly blisful martir for to seke, That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke. 1) King Rocker Now TV Thanks for watching our documentary KING ROCKER last Saturday on Sky Arts, and spreading the word, and crowd-funding it, if you did. Our labour of love really landed. I arrogantly think it knocks most rockumentaries into a cocked hat and will cheer you up no end in the awful times. “I loved every minute” - Ben Dowell, The Times ★★★★ Financial Times ★★★★ Chortle “One of the best music documentaries of all time” - The Quietus “The new gold standard for rockumentaries” - The Scotsman All Press is collecting here. Anyway, it appears you can now watch it, ad-free, on NOW TV if you have that; NOW TV LINK 2) COMIN’ OVER HERE 12” An actual physical 12” EP of Asian Dub Foundation(feat. Stewart Lee)‘s Brexit day number 1 Comin’ Over Here will be out on March 26th and can be pre-ordered here... Bandcamp | X Ray Production Brilliantly, higher shipping costs on ADF’s Anti-Brexit anthem are due to...Brexit, but they will try and circumvent this. The remixes are of other bits of the...
Rachel McCarron and Sean Breadin have already recorded the Pentacle Of Pips album as Venereum Arvum, its abstract drones and dark tones appealing to the sort of neo-folk fans who sell organic vegetables to fund their occult memorabilia collections.
Songs From The Barley Temple is a brighter, more welcoming, proposition. Modal, improvisational techniques, Bredin's exotic stringed instruments, and McCarron's pure and unaffected vocal revivify an erudite selection of traditional British songs.
Silver Dagger shines anew. A spritely reading of The House Carpenter dissolves into an abstract pagan fug.
The ideal October album.
Stewart Lee
2011-09-26T21:24:12+01:00
Rachel McCarron and Sean Breadin have already recorded the Pentacle Of Pips album as Venereum Arvum, its abstract drones and dark tones appealing to the sort of neo-folk fans who sell organic vegetables to fund their occult memorabilia collections. Songs From The Barley Temple is a brighter, more welcoming, proposition. Modal, improvisational techniques, Bredin's exotic stringed instruments, and McCarron's pure and unaffected vocal revivify an erudite selection of traditional British songs. Silver Dagger shines anew. A spritely reading of The House Carpenter dissolves into an abstract pagan fug. The ideal October album.
Four years ago Stewart Lee was mugged by a gang of teenage boys. He was in north London, walking home from the shops, and they surrounded him, threw fireworks at him and just when he thought he had scared them away, one of them came from behind and punched him in the head. “And almost, when I was being punched in the back of the head, I was thinking, ‘There might be a show in this,’” says Lee. That’s insanity, I say. “That’s the luck of being a stand-up. If a bad thing happens to you, it’s a short journey to it becoming a routine.”
In the case of Lee, the journey is never that short. The comedian, named the “greatest living stand-up” in a list published by The Times in 2018, has been wondering how to make a routine out of that “humiliating” incident for four years and counting — and it’s still not quite there, he says. “I know there’s probably the spine of an hour in that, but it’s not ready. It’s percolating. It probably needs some other incident to crossbreed with it.”
Lee is not a comedian who dashes things off or leaves things to chance. He likes to refer to himself — only semi-ironically — as “Britain’s master of the multi-callback ending” for his ability to weave stand-up hours that loop round and back in on themselves like an Escher painting, glorying in repetition, seeded punchlines, and seeming blind alleys that open out into triumphant waves of laughter. He leads his fans on a merry dance and they love to follow him. So much so that when he was performing his live show Tornado in Bexhill in March and a giant prop shark malfunctioned, falling from the ceiling too early and nearly killing him, the crowd thought it was all part of the plan. “I said, ‘Ah, that’s not supposed to happen,’ and everyone was going ‘ha ha ha’,” he says, miffed. It meant he couldn’t do his big ending. “But you can make something of that. A man saying, ‘I’m sorry I’ve not been able to do the important bit’ — the tragedy of that is funny. Isn’t it?”
Tornado comes to BBC2 this month as half of a double bill of filmed live shows. The other half is Snowflake, in which Lee tackles cancel culture and the “woke brigade” in typically astringent style, culminating in a routine that eviscerates Ricky Gervais’s supposedly “cancelled” controversial Netflix stand-up special, in which he “says the unsayable”. “Except he doesn’t. He says the sayable. As we all do. By definition,” Lee says witheringly.
When I see Lee perform Snowflake in Edinburgh on a sunny Saturday afternoon during the Fringe, that routine has added edge: a week earlier, Jerry Sadowitz’s show at the festival was actually cancelled when audience members and staff at the venue complained. Lee didn’t see it, but before the festival began he did recommend Sadowitz’s show on his website, with the caveat that his act “made conceptual sense when we all lived in a supposed liberal consensus”.
“The problem now is that there are comedians on our circuit that are specifically and explicitly from the right,” he adds. “So I think people can be forgiven for feeling differently about Jerry . . . The ground has shifted around him. Last time I saw him ten years ago, [his act] was still really good. But it’s a different world, unfortunately.”
We meet on a Monday as the Thistle Street Bar in Edinburgh’s New Town opens. Lee has just performed a morning work-in-progress show, titled Basic Lee, at the Stand comedy club. As usual, there’s not much “in progress” about it, the jokes about JK Rowling, jazz and the process of writing already finely tuned. Lee is in ebullient mood, although limping a bit (he did his knee in ten years ago doing a joke about Jeremy Clarkson “kicking a tramp to death” and it’s never been the same since, he tells me).
He is delighted by how the Rowling joke went down (“I can tell you now, without sounding arrogant, that is going to be a really, really good bit”) and an early-morning crowd who were very much on side. “They’re the Millwall fans of comedy,” he says proudly. “They’re loyal and tribal and they don’t like other comics. They say, ‘If you like me, you get bored of the other things.’ They’re thought of as snobs — but they push me on to do better things.”
He was less happy with the crowd for Snowflake on Saturday afternoon, when he didn’t perform the last part of his routine because the set-up didn’t go as well as he hoped. “There’s only really one thing that I can do,” Lee says. “And it’s a kind of duet with the audience, where you work off their responses, change it a lot some days, not so much other days.” He subscribes to the jazz pianist Thelonious Monk’s adage that what happens in the room is the show. “If the audience chooses to not understand something, you can have a go at them but in the end you have to let it go. Explain to them that they failed and now it’s not going to be what it was supposed to be. And that’s why it’s live.”
We decamp to the pub garden to escape some noisy drilling inside. About a decade ago, Lee realised that he was going deaf and he now wears a hearing aid, but still struggles with background noise. He thought he may have damaged his hearing from going to gigs and performing, but discovered belatedly that his deafness is hereditary. He spent the first year or so of his life in care before he was adopted and grew up in Solihull. He met his biological father for the first time in 2010 — “in a pub car park in Essex. The first thing I ever said to him was, ‘Hello, oh you’ve got hearing aids.’ And the first thing he ever said to me was, ‘Yes, all the men in your family go deaf and so will you.’ I thought, right, and I went and got tested. It’s made my act much better.”
For a few years before that he had been playing the same rooms he had for years and was wondering why his material was getting fewer laughs. He didn’t realise that he just couldn’t hear them. His shtick of coming down hard on audiences — “driving them forward to make them understand” — grew out of his deafness and by the time he realised, his onstage persona — frustrated, misanthropic, annoyed — had stuck.
The Stewart Lee who performs on stage is a character, though like all the best comedy characters, he is an exaggeration of all the things that are most irritating about him in real life. Such as? “He’s patronising, he doesn’t listen to other people, he’s repetitive, he doesn’t understand really obvious things, and although he’s broadly in the right position morally, he also gets pleasure from the vanity of thinking that he’s right.”
The real Stewart Lee lives in north London and is married to Bridget Christie, the award-winning comedian with whom he has two children, Daisy, 11, and Luke, 15. Is it a funny household? “No,” Lee says. “No, it’s not. Particularly not under lockdown. Comedians that live together don’t . . . perform.”
They do discuss comedy, although Lee says that Christie doesn’t like him watching her shows, so the last time he saw her perform live was in 2016. “It’s difficult with a male-female partnership; the assumption will always be — from the position of hostile parties — that the man is driving it along . . . That the man has done the best bits.”
They avoid talking about each other in their acts — partly, says Lee, because he couldn’t think of anything worse and partly because it distracts from the joke if people are imagining “Stewart Lee” whenever Christie says “my husband”. The boundaries are blurring a bit though, because Christie has written a new sitcom, The Change, for Channel 4, in which she plays a menopausal, married mother-of-two who leaves her useless husband (played by Omid Djalili) and disappears into the woods on a motorbike. “I said to her, ‘You know, when this comes out, everyone’s going to say that’s me.’ She said, ‘They’re not, because he likes football, and you don’t.’” He rolls his eyes. The other day, he says, Djalili asked him, “Have you ever wiped your arse on some toast?” as the character does in one scene. “No I haven’t done that! She’s made up all this stuff and people are going to think it’s me.”
He and Christie have one idea for a joint project that they might do one day when they are really old — “even if we’re not together any more” — based on their “really terrible” honeymoon in off-season Shetland. “Where it was dark 18 hours a day, and everything was dead and shut.”
In general, Lee is not keen on personal revelations in his comedy. He put a line in Snowflake about his son telling him off for breathing too loudly and agonised over it for ages. In the new work-in-progress show, he dangles a snippet of information about his early years in care before dismissing it.
“It’s other people’s lives, isn’t it? The circumstances leading to someone being put into care young . . . I probably come out of it a lot better than the people that were involved in that story. You don’t want to just drag them, without their consent, into the public eye. For what? Other people don’t seem to bother about that. I find the indiscriminate nature of people using other people’s lives and their personal stories quite shocking sometimes.”
Until recently, Lee had it all planned out — he’d perform a live show every two years until he was 60, then retire. He’s now 54 years old and his “Stalinist” ten-year plan fell apart in the pandemic. He’s now having to rush out Basic Lee faster than he would like because he doesn’t want to work next summer when his son is doing his GCSEs.
He still loves touring, and each time uses it as an opportunity to feed a new obsession. On his most recent tour, he sought out Victorian stained-glass windows in all the towns he visited. “Often the churches don’t even know they’re in there,” he says happily. He loves driving round the country, trying to get under the skin of the places he stops. “Touring comedians understand a lot more about where Brexit came from than any politician. You see the depletion of the towns . . .”
All of which is to day, he’s not going to stop performing at 60; in fact he thinks he’ll probably get better with age. “I did an interview with [the Teardrop Explodes singer] Julian Cope about ten years ago and he said, ‘Look, I know I’m a has-been at the moment. But if I can push through this I can become a legend.’ To keep going is better.”
Stand-up means survival to Lee. He thinks about it constantly. “If I’m really annoyed about something, I think, ‘I’ll slag them off on stage, that’ll show them.’ What do other people do? They kick the TV in, don’t they? Or go on Twitter? I don’t know how people that aren’t doing stand-up cope in their lives, really.”
Stewart Lee: Snowflake is on BBC2 tomorrow at 10.35pm; Tornado is on BBC2 on September 11. Basic Lee tours from September 6 to May 28 2023
Stewart Lee
2022-09-03T15:28:08+01:00
Four years ago Stewart Lee was mugged by a gang of teenage boys. He was in north London, walking home from the shops, and they surrounded him, threw fireworks at him and just when he thought he had scared them away, one of them came from behind and punched him in the head. “And almost, when I was being punched in the back of the head, I was thinking, ‘There might be a show in this,’” says Lee. That’s insanity, I say. “That’s the luck of being a stand-up. If a bad thing happens to you, it’s a short journey to it becoming a routine.” In the case of Lee, the journey is never that short. The comedian, named the “greatest living stand-up” in a list published by The Times in 2018, has been wondering how to make a routine out of that “humiliating” incident for four years and counting — and it’s still not quite there, he says. “I know there’s probably the spine of an hour in that, but it’s not ready. It’s percolating. It probably needs some other incident to crossbreed with it.” Lee is not a comedian who dashes things off or leaves things to chance. He likes to refer to himself — only semi-ironically — as “Britain’s master of the multi-callback ending” for his ability to weave stand-up hours that loop round and back in on themselves like an Escher painting, glorying in repetition, seeded punchlines, and seeming blind alleys that open out into triumphant waves of laughter. He leads his fans on a merry dance and they love to follow him. So much so that when he was performing his live show Tornado in Bexhill in March and a giant prop shark malfunctioned, falling from the ceiling too early and nearly killing him, the...
I wrote the intro to Andy Hamilton’s hefty new study of the musician Steve Beresford, Pianos, Toys, Music & Noise.
Maybe ask your local library to stock it or your dad to buy it! Here’s the info.
Steve is a major player in the second wave of British Free Improvisation, a lynchpin of the current scene, and a punk era collaborator with The Flying Lizards, Prince Far-I and The Slits.
He, I and Tania Chen toured Britain over the last decade performing John Cage’s Indeterminacy, and Steve appears playing toys and objects with me and Tania in King Rocker.
Comedy fans will know him as ‘man playing organ’ in a The Day Today sketch about executions, and as the director of music on Vic Reeves’ unnecessarily good album.
Steve Beresford's polymathic activities have formed a prism for the UK improv scene since the 1970s. He is internationally known as a free improviser on piano, toy piano and electronics, composer for film and TV, and raconteur and Dadaist visionary. His résumé is filled with collaborations with hundreds of musicians and other artists, including such leading improvisers as Derek Bailey, Evan Parker and John Zorn, and he has given performances of works by John Cage and Christian Marclay.
In this book, Beresford is heard in his own words through first-hand interviews with the author. Beresford provides compelling insight into an extensive range of topics, displaying the broad cultural context in which music is embedded. The volume combines chronological and thematic chapters, with topics covering improvisation and composition in jazz and free music; the connections between art, entertainment and popular culture; the audience for free improvisation; writing music for films; recording improvised music in the studio; and teaching improvisation. It places Beresford in the context of improvised and related musics – jazz, free jazz, free improvisation – in which there is growing interest.
Stewart Lee
2021-01-30T19:26:24+00:00
I wrote the intro to Andy Hamilton’s hefty new study of the musician Steve Beresford, Pianos, Toys, Music & Noise. Maybe ask your local library to stock it or your dad to buy it! Here’s the info. Steve is a major player in the second wave of British Free Improvisation, a lynchpin of the current scene, and a punk era collaborator with The Flying Lizards, Prince Far-I and The Slits. He, I and Tania Chen toured Britain over the last decade performing John Cage’s Indeterminacy, and Steve appears playing toys and objects with me and Tania in King Rocker. Comedy fans will know him as ‘man playing organ’ in a The Day Today sketch about executions, and as the director of music on Vic Reeves’ unnecessarily good album. Steve Beresford's polymathic activities have formed a prism for the UK improv scene since the 1970s. He is internationally known as a free improviser on piano, toy piano and electronics, composer for film and TV, and raconteur and Dadaist visionary. His résumé is filled with collaborations with hundreds of musicians and other artists, including such leading improvisers as Derek Bailey, Evan Parker and John Zorn, and he has given performances of works by John Cage and Christian Marclay. In this book, Beresford is heard in his own words through first-hand interviews with the author. Beresford provides compelling insight into an extensive range of topics, displaying the broad cultural context in which music is embedded. The volume combines chronological and thematic chapters, with topics covering improvisation and composition in jazz and free music; the connections between art, entertainment and popular culture; the audience for free improvisation; writing music for films; recording improvised music in the studio; and teaching improvisation. It places Beresford in the context of improvised and related musics – jazz, free...
IT not exactly something to boast about, but it was a gig in Liverpool which put Stewart Lee right off stand-up.
"I had a moment on stage at Rawhide where I thought I’ve got to stop doing this and I gave up from about 2001 to 2004," he reveals.
"A guy in the audience kept shouting at me "talk about illegal immigrants" and I went, why don’t you then?"
Stewart got the mouthy punter on stage to see what would happen, but security were having none of it and brought his experiment to a swift end.
"So I thought I can’t be bothered," he says. "It was a number of things, but that was one of them and I stopped gigging for three years."
Luckily the 41-year-old is firmly back in the stand-up groove and is relishing his latest tour of the UK which comes to the Playhouse next week.
The comedian, writer and director has been plying his trade for two decades, starting as a student at Oxford University where he studied English.
His interest in stand-up was fired by the alternative comedians he saw acting as support acts for bands in the early 1980s.
"In the immediate post punk era a lot of gigs were a lot more cabaret," he explains.
"Billy Bragg was like that, he used to have a country band on and some Japanese performance artists and a comedian. The first comics that I saw, apart from seeing the Two Ronnies as a kid, were opening for bands.
"When I was 15 I saw Ted Chippington open for The Fall at the Powerhouse in Birmingham and I can quite honestly say that was the point at which I thought I’d like to be a stand-up.
"Before then I didn’t think I could do stand-up because I thought you had to be confident and funny and talk about stuff people were interested in.
"But when I saw Ted Chippington I realised you could stand still and talk really quietly and not appear to be interested in the audience and I thought I could probably do that!"
Stewart went on to make his name in the 1990s in a comedy partnership with Richard Herring.
Then there was the acclaimed but controversial Jerry Springer the Musical which he co-wrote and directed, novel The Perfect Fool and, in the last few years, a host of stand-up shows and one-off TV appearances.
A new TV series - Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle - earlier this year brought him firmly back into the public eye.
"It’s really great," he says, punctuating his explanation with barks of laughter.
"I’ve never had so many offers of gigs and they’re filling up more then they ever have, and also they’re filling up with people that know what they’ve come to.
"Sometimes, particularly at weekends, people come to see some comedy and you’re not necessarily what they want.
"This time, having done the TV show, people know they’re coming to something quite slow, turgid, repetitive, so they don’t feel disappointed!"
He is, of course, being disingenuous.
Expect If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask for One to include his views on Richard ‘Hamster’ Hammond, coffeeshop loyalty cards, advertisers hijacking his favourite song and plenty of trademark intelligent irony.
He smiles: "Stand up was my first love, and it is again now having been all around the houses."
Stewart Lee
2009-11-13T16:00:20+00:00
IT not exactly something to boast about, but it was a gig in Liverpool which put Stewart Lee right off stand-up. "I had a moment on stage at Rawhide where I thought I’ve got to stop doing this and I gave up from about 2001 to 2004," he reveals. "A guy in the audience kept shouting at me "talk about illegal immigrants" and I went, why don’t you then?" Stewart got the mouthy punter on stage to see what would happen, but security were having none of it and brought his experiment to a swift end. "So I thought I can’t be bothered," he says. "It was a number of things, but that was one of them and I stopped gigging for three years." Luckily the 41-year-old is firmly back in the stand-up groove and is relishing his latest tour of the UK which comes to the Playhouse next week. The comedian, writer and director has been plying his trade for two decades, starting as a student at Oxford University where he studied English. His interest in stand-up was fired by the alternative comedians he saw acting as support acts for bands in the early 1980s. "In the immediate post punk era a lot of gigs were a lot more cabaret," he explains. "Billy Bragg was like that, he used to have a country band on and some Japanese performance artists and a comedian. The first comics that I saw, apart from seeing the Two Ronnies as a kid, were opening for bands. "When I was 15 I saw Ted Chippington open for The Fall at the Powerhouse in Birmingham and I can quite honestly say that was the point at which I thought I’d like to be a stand-up. "Before then I didn’t think I could do stand-up because...
This tremendous edition features the “41st best stand-up ever” looking back at early ‘80s Peel shows, the powerful influence of Ted Chippington, “12 seconds of studio dialogue on a Jason Crest acetate”, the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, how Robin Askwith, Barbara Windsor and Julian Cope became entangled, what happens when your trousers fall down onstage, the Norman Wisdom film that features the Pretty Things, British Americana, orienteering with Napalm Death, Mercury Rev’s broken piano and the football analogies you can apply to the Fall. Plus the words of wisdom pinned to his kitchen door.
Stewart Lee
2021-09-22T19:24:19+01:00
This tremendous edition features the “41st best stand-up ever” looking back at early ‘80s Peel shows, the powerful influence of Ted Chippington, “12 seconds of studio dialogue on a Jason Crest acetate”, the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, how Robin Askwith, Barbara Windsor and Julian Cope became entangled, what happens when your trousers fall down onstage, the Norman Wisdom film that features the Pretty Things, British Americana, orienteering with Napalm Death, Mercury Rev’s broken piano and the football analogies you can apply to the Fall. Plus the words of wisdom pinned to his kitchen door.
ONE of the most eagerly-anticipated world premieres of the Manchester International Festival has been this unique – and as it turns out rather extraordinary and poignant - show from Johnny Vegas and writer Stewart Lee, of Jerry Springer – The Opera fame.
So secret has it been that even its location is not divulged until you’re actually there. How it works is that twenty people at a time board a specially-chartered bus outside the Festival Pavilion twice a day.
They are given an estate agent’s description of a “two bedroom house, Old Trafford/Chorlton border” and are then taken to an ordinary-looking house, where they’re met by Jeffrey Parkin, also known as Johnny Vegas or, in another version of real life, Michael Pennington.
They are then shown around the property by its owner, who’s anxious to sell up so he can move to Montenegro but is equally anxious to point out the unique qualities of the house he’s been busy renovating.
So keen is he on his renovations, in fact, that he insists it’s “not renovation but romance”.
It would be unfair of me to reveal precisely what happens subsequently but a story gradually emerges in which IKEA, allen-keys and world cinema loom as large as love, inadequacy and self-delusion, with a final twist that’s genuinely poignant and thought-provoking.
Vegas/Pennington gives a remarkable, quick-witted performance, especially as many of the audience are obviously expecting something closer to his stand-up persona and are, perhaps, a little too eager to laugh.
Being so close to him throughout the performance can, no doubt, be a little disconcerting and, as the show ends, it’s difficult to know how exactly to react, beyond acknowledging that we’ve all just been part of something that’s genuinely special.
Stewart Lee
2007-07-06T00:37:28+01:00
ONE of the most eagerly-anticipated world premieres of the Manchester International Festival has been this unique – and as it turns out rather extraordinary and poignant - show from Johnny Vegas and writer Stewart Lee, of Jerry Springer – The Opera fame. So secret has it been that even its location is not divulged until you’re actually there. How it works is that twenty people at a time board a specially-chartered bus outside the Festival Pavilion twice a day. They are given an estate agent’s description of a “two bedroom house, Old Trafford/Chorlton border” and are then taken to an ordinary-looking house, where they’re met by Jeffrey Parkin, also known as Johnny Vegas or, in another version of real life, Michael Pennington. They are then shown around the property by its owner, who’s anxious to sell up so he can move to Montenegro but is equally anxious to point out the unique qualities of the house he’s been busy renovating. So keen is he on his renovations, in fact, that he insists it’s “not renovation but romance”. It would be unfair of me to reveal precisely what happens subsequently but a story gradually emerges in which IKEA, allen-keys and world cinema loom as large as love, inadequacy and self-delusion, with a final twist that’s genuinely poignant and thought-provoking. Vegas/Pennington gives a remarkable, quick-witted performance, especially as many of the audience are obviously expecting something closer to his stand-up persona and are, perhaps, a little too eager to laugh. Being so close to him throughout the performance can, no doubt, be a little disconcerting and, as the show ends, it’s difficult to know how exactly to react, beyond acknowledging that we’ve all just been part of something that’s genuinely special.
I wasn’t sure how well I was going to cope with Snowflake/Tornado, Stewart Lee’s current stand-up show. It’s not that I don’t love his work (I really do), but I just didn’t know how much capacity I had left to be toyed with. When you buy a ticket to a Stewart Lee show, you know this is part of the deal and you enter into it willingly, in exchange for the most incredibly well-crafted and funniest stand-up you will ever see. “Now I’m going to play with you,” he says, and he does and you fall for it and it’s hilarious.
Like many, my capacity to be played has been squeezed in recent times. Our nations glorious leadership, which every day spews cognitive dissonance over its subjects, has a lot to answer for. You’d think a pandemic would be dissonance enough, but no, it’s fun or expedient or something to mess with the truth and our heads. Just yesterday, a rabble pumped full of conspiracy theory handed to them by our not-a-complete-clown-in-chief mobbed two MPs and not-a-complete clown reportedly serenaded his new/old head communicator with I Will Survive. It’s always about you. It’s unbearable. When will it end?
I drank a gin in the theatre bar before the show and took a raspy breath – the kind you take before diving into the sea in January, or watching an episode of The Responder. Ultimately, I’ll feel better for this, less furious, you tell yourself, but equally I might cry and not stop for a long time.
Stewart’s show opened with an old favourite. “It’s safe to come on in,” it beckoned and we did. The bloke next to me laughed really loudly and rocked back and forth in his seat. I laughed really loudly and knew I was amongst my people. The hits kept coming – the complicated and exposed call back, the pretend egotism, the affectionate regional insults. Stewart shared his workings, before he played his verbal tricks and we willingly fell for every one of them.
There’s a foundation of morality and empathy to Stewart’s trickery and that’s why his shows work and his audiences are loyal. We are all in it together, done with not done to. The nation’s not-a-complete-clown has also revealed his clever tricks (how could he resist?) – dead cat, layering of untruths, jokey racism. The trickery treats us like idiots, ratchets up disbelief, tangles us in lies and mistrust, making us doubt what we thought we knew to be absolutely true. The laugh comes behind closed doors, well away from the audience. We’re not invited in for that part. We are the suckers left taking care of each other, growing sicker and more furious, having to jump into cold seas just to stay sane. We are not in safe hands.
During the show and for a brief moment, Stewart stepped out from behind his clown mask, broke the spell and made a touching connection with the audience. “I know how hard it’s been,” he said and I found it unexpectedly comforting and quite moving.
When you get your fill of empathy from a Stewart Lee show, that’s a sign of just how mad and dissonant things have become. It’s been an appalling two years and yet there we were, gathered together in a theatre, older and changed but still laughing together. It felt like an achievement.
Stewart Lee
2022-02-08T20:13:14+00:00
I wasn’t sure how well I was going to cope with Snowflake/Tornado, Stewart Lee’s current stand-up show. It’s not that I don’t love his work (I really do), but I just didn’t know how much capacity I had left to be toyed with. When you buy a ticket to a Stewart Lee show, you know this is part of the deal and you enter into it willingly, in exchange for the most incredibly well-crafted and funniest stand-up you will ever see. “Now I’m going to play with you,” he says, and he does and you fall for it and it’s hilarious. Like many, my capacity to be played has been squeezed in recent times. Our nations glorious leadership, which every day spews cognitive dissonance over its subjects, has a lot to answer for. You’d think a pandemic would be dissonance enough, but no, it’s fun or expedient or something to mess with the truth and our heads. Just yesterday, a rabble pumped full of conspiracy theory handed to them by our not-a-complete-clown-in-chief mobbed two MPs and not-a-complete clown reportedly serenaded his new/old head communicator with I Will Survive. It’s always about you. It’s unbearable. When will it end? I drank a gin in the theatre bar before the show and took a raspy breath – the kind you take before diving into the sea in January, or watching an episode of The Responder. Ultimately, I’ll feel better for this, less furious, you tell yourself, but equally I might cry and not stop for a long time. Stewart’s show opened with an old favourite. “It’s safe to come on in,” it beckoned and we did. The bloke next to me laughed really loudly and rocked back and forth in his seat. I laughed really loudly and knew I was amongst my...
I rarely go to the theatre, so the only thing I’ve seen recently is Stewart Lee’s show at the Dome in Brighton. If I go to see a play at the theatre – this is an awful confession, I invariably fall asleep.
But Stewart Lee, he’s such a brilliant and brave comedian, he’s my favourite. He doesn’t really do jokes, it’s just one long stream of consciousness, really, but everything he talks about I go along with and agree with him. It was a fabulous evening of two hours and it’s constant – you’re laughing all the time. He does have a final scene which is very, very clever, but I won’t give it away because he’s still on tour.
Stewart Lee
2017-04-09T14:04:36+01:00
I rarely go to the theatre, so the only thing I’ve seen recently is Stewart Lee’s show at the Dome in Brighton. If I go to see a play at the theatre – this is an awful confession, I invariably fall asleep. But Stewart Lee, he’s such a brilliant and brave comedian, he’s my favourite. He doesn’t really do jokes, it’s just one long stream of consciousness, really, but everything he talks about I go along with and agree with him. It was a fabulous evening of two hours and it’s constant – you’re laughing all the time. He does have a final scene which is very, very clever, but I won’t give it away because he’s still on tour.
Let’s get ready to rhumble! As heroic locals and beleaguered police battle to stop cocaine-fuelled hard-right rioters burning people to death, the laughing faces of ITV’s Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly hang suspended in the smoke shrouding buildings in Rotherham and Tamworth. Watch us wreck the mike!! Psyche!!!
The greatest trick Nigel Farage ever pulled, appearing in December’s I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, was looking normal to the ITV millions by eating a pizza covered with some penises. How Ant and Dec laughed as Nigel’s EU views were left un-factchecked by current affairs titans such as Britney Spears’s sister and a man from JLS. Psyche!
And now Britain burns in Farage-flavoured flames, minorities prepare escape packs, policemen are battered by cokehead patriots with swastika tattoos, and sausage rolls are looted from Greggs because blah blah blah Muslims. Are Ant and Dec proud? Straight up proovin’ we can getcha groovin’. This track’s boomin’! It ain’t no hype!
A 17-year-old boy, born and raised in Wales to parents from the safe country of Rwanda (which is largely Christian), has now been charged for last week’s horrendous murders. However, hysterical social media accounts had already claimed the perpetrator was a cross-channel Muslim from Syria, called Ali Al-Shakati, which translates as “I Have to Go to My Apartment”. I don’t know Arabic but I assume “Apartment” was his surname and “I Have to Go to My” was a string of unnecessary first names, like what those foreigners have.
Señor Apartment’s guilt was amplified online by Farage, bypassing the tedious opportunity of asking questions in the parliament he is paid to attend, who wondered, “Was this guy being monitored by the security services? … I just wonder whether the truth is being withheld from us,” having got his information from Andrew Tate, a misogynist influencer currently facing charges of human trafficking, and valid news source.
Farage works to the same schematic as lucratively rewarded libertarian Netflix standups. He’s not making a definitive statement that could get him in trouble. No. He’s just sayin’, just puttin’ it out there. And then he drops the mic and leaves his fans to get arrested. Ka-booom!
Stoking tension with speculation is stupid. But Farage isn’t stupid. Once broadcasters redubbed the barking of Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams because he was considered too charismatic. But today Ant and Dec invite Farage to eat penises in a clearing, and he has his own show on GB News, which is the same thing. Let’s get ready to rhumble!
The Tory party blamed the incoming Labour administration for the fire they set. Their own adviser Dame Sara Khan said Tories’ “inflammatory language” had “undermined social cohesion”. The right spent 15 years training a fat dog to shit in our house and now that it’s finally done loads of massive shits everywhere, they tell us it’s Labour’s fault for not killing the shitting dog five weeks ago. Or something.
Gaza ceasefire demonstrations, none of which ended in attempted mass murder, were “hate marches”, but the commentariat initially called the current would-be pogroms “protests”. The Tory Hampshire police and crime commissioner Donna Jones said the riots were “upholding British values”. Do these include making toddlers chant the word “paki”, and stealing sausage rolls? A BBC reporter even went as far as to describe one riot as a “pro-British march”, which is a bit like saying the Viking raid on Lindisfarne was a pro-Norse cruise.
On Monday’s Good Morning Britain, a load of old white men, including the home secretary’s embarrassing husband Ed Balls and the Daily Mail hate-gonk Andrew Pierce, source of endless fudged front pages, repeatedly shouted down Zarah Sultana’s attempts to explain the Legitimate Grievance Riots as a British Asian. And then Jeremy Vine, the monstrous Belial from Basket Case to his benign brother Tim, invited Farage’s Reform sidekick Richard Tice, of all people, on to his show to explain the violence, as a bin full of entrails and flies was unavailable.
Farage’s falsehoods threaten lives. We have to do better. Liberal legacy media flagellates itself when inaccurate. The reason my last column didn’t mention the Legitimate Grievance Riots was because I’m now filing six days early so the legal department can protect me, and the paper, from my incoherent “jokes”, having recently received a request for correction from a former Tufton Street commentator, and wrangled over the wording of a complaint from Mumsnet. It’s only Monday. By the time you read this you might be on fire.
My main job is comedy on stage, and I can’t afford to be banned for my carelessness in print from every venue in the world, a fate that recently befell two comedians I admire enormously, neither of whom are Ricky Gervais, Dave Chappelle or Jerry Seinfeld. Two months back I wanted to quit this column, done in by dramas, but a chance encounter with the 70s actor Judy Matheson of The Flesh and Blood Show fame, declaring herself an avid reader in a King’s Cross cafe, appealed to my vanity.
But the rightwing instigators of the Legitimate Grievance Riots aren’t restricted by factchecking. Farage choses online agitation over parliamentary presence. The evil Elon Musk declared “civil war is inevitable”, and recently allowed the worst offenders back on his now lawless X. This is handy if you are black because Tommy Robinson announces the towns chosen for next week’s riots on Musk’s platform so you can avoid them.
In 2020, Farage broadcast himself entering identifiable hotels used to house unprocessed migrants on social media. Earlier this year, the newsreader Geeta Guru-Murthy, someone Farage fans would want deported, casually called the hard-right figurehead’s language “inflammatory”. The enfeebled BBC demanded her apology. Now those hotels are on fire. Is that inflammatory enough for you? Let’s get ready to rhumble!
Stewart Lee
2024-08-11T19:14:52+01:00
Let’s get ready to rhumble! As heroic locals and beleaguered police battle to stop cocaine-fuelled hard-right rioters burning people to death, the laughing faces of ITV’s Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly hang suspended in the smoke shrouding buildings in Rotherham and Tamworth. Watch us wreck the mike!! Psyche!!! The greatest trick Nigel Farage ever pulled, appearing in December’s I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, was looking normal to the ITV millions by eating a pizza covered with some penises. How Ant and Dec laughed as Nigel’s EU views were left un-factchecked by current affairs titans such as Britney Spears’s sister and a man from JLS. Psyche! And now Britain burns in Farage-flavoured flames, minorities prepare escape packs, policemen are battered by cokehead patriots with swastika tattoos, and sausage rolls are looted from Greggs because blah blah blah Muslims. Are Ant and Dec proud? Straight up proovin’ we can getcha groovin’. This track’s boomin’! It ain’t no hype! A 17-year-old boy, born and raised in Wales to parents from the safe country of Rwanda (which is largely Christian), has now been charged for last week’s horrendous murders. However, hysterical social media accounts had already claimed the perpetrator was a cross-channel Muslim from Syria, called Ali Al-Shakati, which translates as “I Have to Go to My Apartment”. I don’t know Arabic but I assume “Apartment” was his surname and “I Have to Go to My” was a string of unnecessary first names, like what those foreigners have. Señor Apartment’s guilt was amplified online by Farage, bypassing the tedious opportunity of asking questions in the parliament he is paid to attend, who wondered, “Was this guy being monitored by the security services? … I just wonder whether the truth is being withheld from us,” having got his information from Andrew Tate,...
Making weekly London to Leicester rail journeys, Sandra Cross secretly taped hundreds of buffet announcements, and edited them into this thirty minute piece. Focusing tightly on the small, and usually unvarying, list of fayre generates a maddeningly mundane musicality. Seven minutes in the unprecedented non-availability of hot drinks suddenly seems catastrophic.
Different announcements, with vastly different emphasis and emotional resonances, can sound indefatigably enthusiastic about the quavers/ water combos, or audibly defeated. Marking the announcements as individual tracks might have offered the listener infinite random variations, but it seems fitting that we endure this album as the artist intended.
Stewart Lee
2011-07-17T11:24:46+01:00
Making weekly London to Leicester rail journeys, Sandra Cross secretly taped hundreds of buffet announcements, and edited them into this thirty minute piece. Focusing tightly on the small, and usually unvarying, list of fayre generates a maddeningly mundane musicality. Seven minutes in the unprecedented non-availability of hot drinks suddenly seems catastrophic. Different announcements, with vastly different emphasis and emotional resonances, can sound indefatigably enthusiastic about the quavers/ water combos, or audibly defeated. Marking the announcements as individual tracks might have offered the listener infinite random variations, but it seems fitting that we endure this album as the artist intended.
Wake up grandad and put your opinions in the pedal bin! If you even think you are well informed you are living a lie. What the world believes today depends on who is controlling legacy media’s last feeble news fronts, like the head-bobbing slaphead Jeff Bezos’s supine Washington Post, and on who programs digital social media sluices, such as Ketamine Ken’s Twitter, currently X, essentially an ape with a megaphone standing in a crowded marketplace shouting unsubstantiated rumours at babies, and showing pornographic photographs to children.
But was it ever thus? Did it just take the unalloyed unpleasantness of Elon Musk to make us see ourselves as we always were, toilet paper people fluttering on the whims of wealthy men’s media outlets, 8 billion dogshit golems, Frankingsteins made of farts?
A radio phone-in about social media on Monday made me understand, with sudden clarity, that horrible hysterical stories drive engagement more than thoughtful true ones. Sorry it took me so long. And so digital media surges right towards the money and JD Vance calls it freedom of speech, as if a barely sentient tapeworm reaching towards a clump of rotten offal was acting with some kind of moral imperative.
A black-cab driver tells a passenger imprisoned in their back seat that Keir Starmer defended the Southport killer’s father; your sister-in-law casually announces that most benefits are claimed fraudulently; and JD Vance informs Europe that it’s illegal to pray in your own home in Scotland. The world thinks what rich men want it to and the truth is a touring lineup of Lynyrd Skynyrd with no original members that you’re still listening to in the hope its version of Free Bird will kick ass.
So what is the point of writing supposedly funny columns about current affairs for a broadsheet newspaper like the Observer? An adjudicated sex abuser is in the American White House, Boris Johnson is in a moated manor house, and I’m supposed to poke fun at them from a three-bedroom terrace house. Liberal media has failed and it doesn’t have the funds to fight back.
I’ve been writing these columns for 14 years now, and fascism and sea levels are still on the rise despite me doing some really good jokes about both of them. I am comedy’s Cnut. Why feed myself through the news mincer when I’m still going to be looking at a world full of damp Hitlers when I die on the end of a Russian bayonet?
Sometimes these screeds take me a few hours, slipping out like baby giraffes, wobbly and slimy but standing. And sometimes they take me dead-eyed haemorrhoidal days on end to finish, baking in the back passage of my brain like something malevolent that gestates in Donald Trump’s colon after a week of KFC family bucket meals.
Over the years I have come to love negotiating acceptable levels of profanity with the patient section editors, and trying to bury odd ideas in the prose to see what the brilliant artist David Foldvari will do with them. On balance, I’ve spent 7,000 hours writing 400,000 words of remunerated sarcasm. It’s the longest piece of continuous employment I’ve ever had and is my last line of defence when people say, correctly, that I have never done a decent day’s work in my life.
I don’t think I did this job especially well for the first 150,000 words. Was there any real value in anything I wrote in those pre-Brexit days of comparative political equilibrium? How many trees died just because I found politicians like David “Dave” Cameron and George “Pencils” Osborne merely inchoately reprehensible, instead of utterly contemptible, in those simpler sillier times? And then, as Dave said, “doo, doo, doo, doo … Right.” And it was never the same again.
Brexit was the making of these spews. It sharpened them because it exposed an interconnected web of corruption worming through Westminster, and made me appreciate the privilege of having a platform to piss on people from. But how many forests fell fruitlessly, five years ago, when I finally revealed the full secret cabbalistic name of Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Vampires Haircut Wall-Spaffer Spunk-Burster Fuck-Business Fuck-the-Families Get-Off-My-Fucking-Laptop Girly-Swot Big-Girl’s-Blouse Chicken-frit Hulk-Smash Noseringed-Crusties Death-Humbug Technology-Lessons Surrender-Bullshit French-Turds Dog-Whistle Get-Stuffed FactcheckUK@CCHQ 88%-lies Get-Brexit-Done Bung-a-Bob-for-Big-Ben’s-Bongs Cocaine-Event Spiritual-Worth Three-Men-and-a-Dog Whatever-It-Takes I-Shook-Hands-With-Everyone Herd-Immunity I-Want-to-Thank-Po-Ling Squash-the-Sombrero Johnson? I had my own viral moment in miniature. But was it worth it?
And yet, as I wandered the streets in lockdown, ordinary Observer readers and their dogs regularly stood at reasonable distances and told me these columns made them feel less alone, and for a moment I understood how Christ felt when all those lepers told him he was a really great bloke. I doubt anything like that ever happens to Giles Coren. Or to Jesus, to be honest, who was probably sick to the back teeth of all those selfish lepers.
But here’s the rub. I appreciate that, as someone who is too tight to advertise his tours, and who has not been invited on to The Graham Norton Show, the market penetration achieved by online circulation of a popular Observer column probably sells me more than a few standup comedy seats. Maybe I need this. That said, twice as many people come to see me live as read the Observer, though this can be explained by lots of angry middle-aged men bringing their bored wives with them.
But since Elon Musk showed social media how to downgrade the visibility of liberal comment and monetise the outraged engagement caused by right-skewed clickbait, I have watched my online views wither. Social media is engineered to suppress the material you are reading now. If you have been directed to this column online somehow, then somewhere there’s a rightwing billionaire that needs to rejig his algorithms.
Stewart Lee
2025-03-16T14:50:12+00:00
Wake up grandad and put your opinions in the pedal bin! If you even think you are well informed you are living a lie. What the world believes today depends on who is controlling legacy media’s last feeble news fronts, like the head-bobbing slaphead Jeff Bezos’s supine Washington Post, and on who programs digital social media sluices, such as Ketamine Ken’s Twitter, currently X, essentially an ape with a megaphone standing in a crowded marketplace shouting unsubstantiated rumours at babies, and showing pornographic photographs to children. But was it ever thus? Did it just take the unalloyed unpleasantness of Elon Musk to make us see ourselves as we always were, toilet paper people fluttering on the whims of wealthy men’s media outlets, 8 billion dogshit golems, Frankingsteins made of farts? A radio phone-in about social media on Monday made me understand, with sudden clarity, that horrible hysterical stories drive engagement more than thoughtful true ones. Sorry it took me so long. And so digital media surges right towards the money and JD Vance calls it freedom of speech, as if a barely sentient tapeworm reaching towards a clump of rotten offal was acting with some kind of moral imperative. A black-cab driver tells a passenger imprisoned in their back seat that Keir Starmer defended the Southport killer’s father; your sister-in-law casually announces that most benefits are claimed fraudulently; and JD Vance informs Europe that it’s illegal to pray in your own home in Scotland. The world thinks what rich men want it to and the truth is a touring lineup of Lynyrd Skynyrd with no original members that you’re still listening to in the hope its version of Free Bird will kick ass. So what is the point of writing supposedly funny columns about current affairs for a broadsheet newspaper...
‘Ten Bob Each Way’ / ‘Use Your Loaf’ is a limited 7” single, featuring a brand-new Nightingales recording, their first since recording their ‘Four Against Fate’ album. Sided with Stewart Lee and Nick Pynn on ‘Use Your Loaf’, that was for a mooted Nightingales tribute album.
Stewart Lee
2021-02-15T00:52:13+00:00
‘Ten Bob Each Way’ / ‘Use Your Loaf’ is a limited 7” single, featuring a brand-new Nightingales recording, their first since recording their ‘Four Against Fate’ album. Sided with Stewart Lee and Nick Pynn on ‘Use Your Loaf’, that was for a mooted Nightingales tribute album.
Having scarcely been to a live comedy gig, Stewart Lee was surely a niche act to start on. His acerbic routine has been described by some as a parody of his alter-ego; by others as a deconstruction of stand-up comedy itself.
And even as a confessed Stewart Lee fan, I must admit that his style does not elicit the same sort of easy laughs as Jimmy Carr or Michael McIntyre – both comedians whose popularity Lee mocks with a heady mixture of artistic contempt and barely concealed professional jealousy.
‘Observational comedy!’, he laments, bemoaning his lack of surely deserved popular appeal, whilst implicitly taking aim at the elitism of his audience. You don’t simply laugh at a Stewart Lee joke, you nod in smug amusement, wearing the ironic face of someone who has understood all the layers of complexity therein. To laugh at the surface level content is to join the Stygian swamps of populism for which Lee reserves nothing but condescension and contempt. ‘Did you laugh at the Stewart Lee gig? No, but I agreed the f*** out of it!’
But here’s the thing. Lee’s comedy is premised on his bitterness and resentment that he lacks the commercial success of his comedic rivals despite his obvious superiority. Except, post-lockdown, this previously unknown comedian has filled theatres across the country. Over the last decade, his act has maintained its critical appeal, and now audiences flock in greater numbers than ever before. How, then, can Stewart Lee adapt to this popularity? Does his own success ironically put him into the same category as those he criticises: a populist, a predictable deliverer of numb sensation? How could he possibly square this glaring contradiction?
As it turns out, the answer is arrogance. Sheer, unadulterated arrogance. A form of arrogance that is utterly at odds with what the audience sees: a comedian rapidly advancing through middle age, his greying hair, his decaying form, this tragic image of a man struggling for relevance whilst insisting that his greatness remains undimmed. Thus throughout Snowflake/Tornado, he takes aim at the Guardian – where he writes a weekly column – as if he was personally insulted by their consistently positive reviews of his stand-up.
The subtext of all this pomposity, I think, is that his success means increasingly little in a society fractured by generation, culture and class. His narcissism represents the chasm between a self-congratulatory elite and ordinary working people. Lee isn’t resentful of his doting pundits – he’s frustrated that his critical success signifies nothing. Macbeth has seized the crown, and finds the sceptre empty and hollow. Admittedly, in this analogy, Macbeth seizes power not by killing the king, but by offering sardonic and layered comments parodying his own lack of said power. Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this irony from my hand?
Beneath it all, Snowflake/Tornado is a tour de force from a comedian who remains remarkably aware of the cultural trends of the younger generation. There’s no hint of ageing cynicism, at least beyond the slightly jaded references to Fortnite and Stormzy. “Heavy is the head that wears the crown” features at one point, though I won’t elaborate any further.
This cultural awareness distinguishes Lee from his Oxbridge predecessors John Cleese and Eric Idle, both of whom seem increasingly alienated from a society of gender pronouns and vanilla latte. Whereas Idle and Cleese bash ‘woke culture’ – a corrupted and largely meaningless term, I might add – Lee displays a sensitivity to shifting cultural norms. There’s no attempt to bash the poor, the young, gypsies or other ethnic minorities; no attempt to criticise the sensitivity of the ‘snowflake generation’.
After the performance, a friend (let’s call him Tony) asked me if I thought Snowflake/Tornado was a good introduction to Stewart Lee’s standup. Probably. Maybe. I’m not entirely sure.
Another friend said they felt the content was slightly less clever than the stuff they’d previously seen. Although I initially agreed, I now think the reason the act felt less sophisticated relates to the subtext of the pandemic, which has spelt disaster for the arts. Lee, who has produced documentaries on regional punk-rock bands, is a passionate supporter of theatre and the arts more generally. So there was a sense in which he was willing to suspend the ‘layers of irony’ to give people a good time, delighting in the attention of a live audience after three years of lockdown.
Finally, if you are lucky enough to go and see Snowflake/Tornado, make sure you know who Alan Bennett is. And JL Austin. And read up on the literature around 19th century Eastern-European sociology.
Stewart Lee
2022-02-23T19:44:26+00:00
Having scarcely been to a live comedy gig, Stewart Lee was surely a niche act to start on. His acerbic routine has been described by some as a parody of his alter-ego; by others as a deconstruction of stand-up comedy itself. And even as a confessed Stewart Lee fan, I must admit that his style does not elicit the same sort of easy laughs as Jimmy Carr or Michael McIntyre – both comedians whose popularity Lee mocks with a heady mixture of artistic contempt and barely concealed professional jealousy. ‘Observational comedy!’, he laments, bemoaning his lack of surely deserved popular appeal, whilst implicitly taking aim at the elitism of his audience. You don’t simply laugh at a Stewart Lee joke, you nod in smug amusement, wearing the ironic face of someone who has understood all the layers of complexity therein. To laugh at the surface level content is to join the Stygian swamps of populism for which Lee reserves nothing but condescension and contempt. ‘Did you laugh at the Stewart Lee gig? No, but I agreed the f*** out of it!’ But here’s the thing. Lee’s comedy is premised on his bitterness and resentment that he lacks the commercial success of his comedic rivals despite his obvious superiority. Except, post-lockdown, this previously unknown comedian has filled theatres across the country. Over the last decade, his act has maintained its critical appeal, and now audiences flock in greater numbers than ever before. How, then, can Stewart Lee adapt to this popularity? Does his own success ironically put him into the same category as those he criticises: a populist, a predictable deliverer of numb sensation? How could he possibly square this glaring contradiction? As it turns out, the answer is arrogance. Sheer, unadulterated arrogance. A form of arrogance that is utterly at...
Approaching Ohio's immortal Guided By Voices unaware of Robert Pollard's intimidating 110 album back catalogue, you'd hear superstars in waiting inexplicably pollarding a succession of singalong psyche-punk classics, thrilling seconds short of their becoming irresistible earworms.
And that's what you'd have heard thirty years ago too.
The Littlest League Possible, a knockout seventy-eight second celebration of the big fish in the small pond, that could snaffle sharks were the business not beneath it, crowns another dazzling display of wholly justifiable arrogance.
Stewart Lee
2014-02-16T19:56:34+00:00
Approaching Ohio's immortal Guided By Voices unaware of Robert Pollard's intimidating 110 album back catalogue, you'd hear superstars in waiting inexplicably pollarding a succession of singalong psyche-punk classics, thrilling seconds short of their becoming irresistible earworms. And that's what you'd have heard thirty years ago too. The Littlest League Possible, a knockout seventy-eight second celebration of the big fish in the small pond, that could snaffle sharks were the business not beneath it, crowns another dazzling display of wholly justifiable arrogance.
Two saxophone stars, the doughty German Peter Brötzmann and the Chicago attack dog Ken Vandermark, feature in an augmented Full Blast trio, their presence usually signifying relentless pulverisation ahead.
But the percussionist Michael Wertmuller has written a score, shadowing Gil Evans' arrangements for Miles Davis' Sketches Of Spain, and fusing jazz composition and noisy improvisation.
Big blowouts bracket considered passages. In the closing sections, strangely familiar phrases find Brötzmann nodding towards a ballad, microwaving memories of Sonny Rollins' Freedom Suite.
First timers can grasp the safety rails of structure. Converts will luxuriate in the lulls between lashings.
Stewart Lee
2012-01-22T19:44:46+00:00
Two saxophone stars, the doughty German Peter Brötzmann and the Chicago attack dog Ken Vandermark, feature in an augmented Full Blast trio, their presence usually signifying relentless pulverisation ahead. But the percussionist Michael Wertmuller has written a score, shadowing Gil Evans' arrangements for Miles Davis' Sketches Of Spain, and fusing jazz composition and noisy improvisation. Big blowouts bracket considered passages. In the closing sections, strangely familiar phrases find Brötzmann nodding towards a ballad, microwaving memories of Sonny Rollins' Freedom Suite. First timers can grasp the safety rails of structure. Converts will luxuriate in the lulls between lashings.
Jeremy Corbyn appeared at the Glastonbury CND festival, as part of an ongoing comeback more surprising than Dylan’s 1997 Time Out of Mind turnaround. Like Dylan, a contrary Corbyn refused to give his enthusiastic new fans what they wanted. A last-minute set amendment pledging to block Brexit would have displaced even the Wombles from all-time Glastonbury CND festival top fives. But Corbyn didn’t deliver. Once he had mountains in the palm of his hand, and rivers that ran through every day. He must have been mad. He never knew what he had, until he threw it all away.
Nonetheless, Nigel Farage, a stateless Twitter golem, its task complete but still rampaging around the internet with a torn-up Daily Express between its teeth, was instantly furious about the BBC coverage of Corbyn’s set. And rightly so. It is wrong of the BBC to use the licence fee to give airtime to politicians, and Farage has proven this more convincingly than anyone.
Suddenly cross Conservative commentators nationwide all knew what the Glastonbury CND festival was supposed to be, and who should be allowed to be on there, despite never having expressed any interest in attending it ever, because it obviously isn’t for Daily Telegraph readers, bastards, and people who hate humanity.
It would probably have been better, apparently, if the Saturday mid-afternoon slot had seen Dan “Dan” Hannananananan, dressed as a pound note, introducing Mike Read singing a racist calypso in a Jamaican accent over footage of migrants being beaten back into the sea with umbrellas. I am sure the audience reaction would have been memorable.
Personally, I think the Henley Regatta, instead of having loads of boats in it and being by a river, would be better if it featured Napalm Death, Kunt & the Gang, Yoko Ono, and some Grayson Perry plates that mocked sailing, and took place in a landlocked desert full of ferocious wolves. I suppose it’s not aimed at me.
Know this! There is a genuine photo online of Jeremy Clarkson and David Cameron shooting the breeze at the cheese bloke from Blur’s cheese and music festival in Oxfordshire in 2011. This image, more than any other, which should never have happened, told us that the 60s were finally over. Did Free Festival founder Wally Hope die so Jeremy Clarkson could eat a Groucho club cheesemaker’s pop cheese?
Tories like Cameron and Clarkson should not be at rock festivals. If two such turds had turned up at Glastonbury in the 80s they would both have been fatally stuffed face-first into a deep trench latrine by hordes of psilocybe-crazed convoy dwellers, the sound of Black Uhuru’s Youth of Eglington growing ever more faint as their fat pink ears filled with festival-goer faeces.
Ironically, Clarkson would have then escaped the far more ignominious fate of spending his twilight years manufacturing bespoke controversy to an ever-diminishing audience of impotent Level 42 fans who think ice cream is gay, like a failed dictator awaiting arrest, yet still making futile proclamations, in his supermarket denim-lined Amazon firestick bunker.
You! You awful people! You cannot have our festivals! You have taken everything else! Our health service! Our libraries! Our very air! Even our future! Leave us our filthy fields! We will always have Glastonbury! No pop music for you!
But what do I know? I attended the Glastonbury CND festival a dozen times or so, usually as a performer, from the mid-80s to the mid-00s. Every year the late Malcolm Hardee would host the comedy tent and open by observing, “I remember when this was all fields.” It never got old.
In 1992, still awake, I saw the sun rise over a misty morning meadow, profoundly empty, except for Jimmy Pursey from Sham 69, sitting high on an upturned wheelie bin, heroically topless, dragging on a cigarette and staring blurry-eyed into the distance, as if searching for an answer that had always eluded him. Either that or he’d forgotten where his tent was.
But, eventually, rather than being a cut and paste Shangri-La of freak rock and folkies and topless hippy chicks, the Glastonbury CND festival came to feel to me like it was full of music I didn’t like any more, squares taking ironic pictures of themselves in front of Lionel Richie, and privileged young people wandering around eating expensive street food while looking at their phones and saying how funny they thought Hayseed Dixie were.
The crusties were cleared out and the hipsters had moved in to gentrify their abandoned haunts. To be fair to the Glastonbury CND festival, I now feel the same about much of London, which I once loved beyond all reason, the city redeemed in comparison to the festival only by the quality of its toilet facilities.
The Glastonbury CND festival was changing. And I was changing too. At least we parted as friends.
Maybe I’m romanticising things. The festival movement was always, if not middle class, then at least more bohemian than Bolshevik. After my Glastonbury CND festival sets I was paid in food vouchers by the festival’s co-founder, an ex-debutante philanthropist called Arabella Churchill, granddaughter of our national icon, who still oversaw the circus and cabaret tents on what was now the site’s fringes, her death in 2007 severing a seam that ran back to the sensibility that first shaped the event in 1970.
Each year as I signed my chit I amused myself by trying to sneak Churchillian rhetoric into our perfunctory conversation. “How was your show?” “We’ve all been finding it hard, Arabella, with the flooding this year, but you know what it’s like. We will never surrender.”
Arabella Churchill just smiled wryly, stubbing out her massive cigar as she petted her poodle.
In the London Evening Standard, a weak anti-Corbyn humour piece by a man called Nick Curtis mocked the Glastonbury CND festival’s “perfect spread for ordinary, young, working-class music fans who can afford £238 for a ticket plus the cost of transport, organic falafel, and reiki sessions”. In the same awful paper, there are restaurant reviews for dinners for two that cost more than that, and they don’t come with thousands of different acts over hundreds of different stages. They come with some bread. And the tip doesn’t go to Greenpeace.
This year, Jeremy Corbyn’s logical appearance at the Glastonbury CND festival seems to have reminded people that 60s and 70s festivals emerged from an actual un-co-opted counterculture. Maybe they, and their attendees, will now re-embrace the radical spirit that spawned them, alongside the apparently unavoidable 21st-century follies of glamping, Goan seafoods and selfies with Jack Whitehall.
Oh, the times they are a-changing. Jang jangy jangy jang jangy jangy jang jangy jangy jang!
Stewart Lee
2017-07-02T22:35:58+01:00
Jeremy Corbyn appeared at the Glastonbury CND festival, as part of an ongoing comeback more surprising than Dylan’s 1997 Time Out of Mind turnaround. Like Dylan, a contrary Corbyn refused to give his enthusiastic new fans what they wanted. A last-minute set amendment pledging to block Brexit would have displaced even the Wombles from all-time Glastonbury CND festival top fives. But Corbyn didn’t deliver. Once he had mountains in the palm of his hand, and rivers that ran through every day. He must have been mad. He never knew what he had, until he threw it all away. Nonetheless, Nigel Farage, a stateless Twitter golem, its task complete but still rampaging around the internet with a torn-up Daily Express between its teeth, was instantly furious about the BBC coverage of Corbyn’s set. And rightly so. It is wrong of the BBC to use the licence fee to give airtime to politicians, and Farage has proven this more convincingly than anyone. Suddenly cross Conservative commentators nationwide all knew what the Glastonbury CND festival was supposed to be, and who should be allowed to be on there, despite never having expressed any interest in attending it ever, because it obviously isn’t for Daily Telegraph readers, bastards, and people who hate humanity. It would probably have been better, apparently, if the Saturday mid-afternoon slot had seen Dan “Dan” Hannananananan, dressed as a pound note, introducing Mike Read singing a racist calypso in a Jamaican accent over footage of migrants being beaten back into the sea with umbrellas. I am sure the audience reaction would have been memorable. Personally, I think the Henley Regatta, instead of having loads of boats in it and being by a river, would be better if it featured Napalm Death, Kunt & the Gang, Yoko Ono, and some Grayson Perry...
The admirable Brighton art rock band British Sea Power are now known simply as Sea Power, “due to a rise in a certain kind of nationalism in this world – an isolationist, antagonistic nationalism that we don’t want to run any risk of being confused with”. Rumour suggests that the British Cheese Board, the official voice of British cheese formed in 1995 to promote homegrown cheeses, has expressed similar anxieties and is soon to be renamed simply the Cheese Board, a move expected to cause some confusion on search engines and in kitchenware stores. Meanwhile, the neo-Nazi organisation the British Movement is expected to double down on the new associations of Britishness, rechristening itself the British British Movement.
Am I even allowed to make this joke without being branded a terrorist? Last week, the increasingly desperate Tory leadership candidate and pretend Kia driver Rishi Sunak announced his intention to widen the definition of “extremism” to include people who “vilify Britain” while being photographed in a flattering light at the taxpayer’s expense. Well, raise high the gallows, carpenters, and tighten the noose around my fat 54-year-old neck, because I think that modern, racist, anti-intellectual, internationally embarrassing, untrustworthy, corrupt, isolationist Brexit Britain is a grade-A bag o’ shite! And I am prepared to be put on a Prevent watchlist for my right to say so. No! Not the face! Not the face! Arrrgh! But last month, the Birmingham Commonwealth Games’ extravagant opening ceremony looked for the best in Brexit Britain. And here’s how it went.
First, the internationally acclaimed City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra accompanied a rousing rendition of God Save the Queen, though its chief executive has explained how Brexit could make European touring “so tricky as to become unviable”. Then Nobel peace prize laureate Malala Yousafzai stressed the importance of education, while elsewhere arts courses are cut and conscientious teachers make breakfast for kids too hungry to learn. We welcomed the world, but in reality former Ukip MEP Godfrey Bloom stands atop the white cliffs of Dover waving a rolled up newspaper and shouting: “Go back to Bongo Bongo Land!”
Next, an armoured mechanical bull entered the fray, inspired presumably by the nine-tonne bull sculptures cast by Trewin Copplestone to adorn the Bull Ring shopping centre in 1963, but mysteriously somehow “lost” during the 21st-century redesign, as good a metaphor as any for our actual attitude to our cultural inheritance. Monetise it or melt it down! At the end of the bull sequence, BBC presenters Andrew Cotter and Hazel Irvine mechanically declared that “the bull’s armour is lifted away and he is revealed as a symbol of light and love”. But where’s the armour gone? I hope someone was keeping track of it. To lose two Birmingham bulls may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose two Birmingham bulls and another Birmingham bull’s special armour looks like carelessness.
Diving’s Tom Daley was accompanied by a parade of LGBTQ+ flag-wavers, a powerful gesture as homosexuality remains illegal in more than half of the competing Commonwealth countries. But Elena Bunbury of the Conservative LGBT+ group has expressed anxiety about the leadership candidates’ culture-war weaponising of anti-LGBTQ+ feeling in their campaigns; and Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, caving in diplomatically to the conservative Christians of the global south, just reaffirmed that gay sex is a sin, a move that would set Jesus, as Justin knows full well, spinning in his grave, if Christ hadn’t taken the precaution of busting out of it after three days in a pre-emptive attempt to avoid mandatory posthumous subterranean rotation. Which Britain does this ceremony reflect, exactly?
I was in Birmingham on the day, for the Covid-delayed Midlands Arts Centre premiere of King Rocker, a documentary I made with Michael Cumming (Brass Eye, Toast of…) about Birmingham post-punk band the Nightingales and featuring the Nicholas Monro pop-art statue of King Kong that briefly bestrode the Bull Ring in 1972, before being abandoned, predictably, by the city. Bigging up my home town, I took my kids to see the world-beating pre-Raphaelite collection at the city’s art gallery, but all the art is in storage until 2024. In the museum, I proudly showed them Cold War Steve’s vibrant collage of Birmingham cultural figures, which includes me and Nightingales singer Robert Lloyd bottom right, looking on at Black Sabbath, Lady Leshurr and Benny from Crossroads. But, as my son drily observed, we are the only people not identified in the accompanying list of names, even though there is a 2in empty space that could easily have accommodated us. Bah! Prophets without honour! I hate Birmingham!
While the opening ceremony’s fatuous cavalcade of hypocrisy uncoiled across town I enjoyed King Rocker on the big screen in an alternative celebration of alternative Birmingham. In the two years since King Rocker’s Covid-softened release, the Nightingales have played to the biggest audiences in their four-decade-plus career, and, in a turn of events not unrelated to the film’s modest impact, a new version of Monro’s Kong has been erected with its back to the B4100 in the Jewellery Quarter, its massive monkey arse stopping traffic on Constitution Hill.
As I left Cannon Hill Park, I saw celebratory fireworks burst over the city and heard the distant drums of Duran Duran, whose John Taylor was lent his first amp by Nightingales guitarist Alan Apperley, and who declared Robert Lloyd a genius and an intellectual in the film. Much as I love Duran Duran, I know where I would rather have been that night. The problem is, any official attempt to celebrate the virtues of Brexit-era Britain is fundamentally incompatible with the corrupt, reactionary hellhole the Conservative party are turning it into. And so, the Birmingham Commonwealth Games opening ceremony was a just a great big Bull Ring full of bullshit.
Stewart Lee
2022-08-07T14:32:41+01:00
The admirable Brighton art rock band British Sea Power are now known simply as Sea Power, “due to a rise in a certain kind of nationalism in this world – an isolationist, antagonistic nationalism that we don’t want to run any risk of being confused with”. Rumour suggests that the British Cheese Board, the official voice of British cheese formed in 1995 to promote homegrown cheeses, has expressed similar anxieties and is soon to be renamed simply the Cheese Board, a move expected to cause some confusion on search engines and in kitchenware stores. Meanwhile, the neo-Nazi organisation the British Movement is expected to double down on the new associations of Britishness, rechristening itself the British British Movement. Am I even allowed to make this joke without being branded a terrorist? Last week, the increasingly desperate Tory leadership candidate and pretend Kia driver Rishi Sunak announced his intention to widen the definition of “extremism” to include people who “vilify Britain” while being photographed in a flattering light at the taxpayer’s expense. Well, raise high the gallows, carpenters, and tighten the noose around my fat 54-year-old neck, because I think that modern, racist, anti-intellectual, internationally embarrassing, untrustworthy, corrupt, isolationist Brexit Britain is a grade-A bag o’ shite! And I am prepared to be put on a Prevent watchlist for my right to say so. No! Not the face! Not the face! Arrrgh! But last month, the Birmingham Commonwealth Games’ extravagant opening ceremony looked for the best in Brexit Britain. And here’s how it went. First, the internationally acclaimed City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra accompanied a rousing rendition of God Save the Queen, though its chief executive has explained how Brexit could make European touring “so tricky as to become unviable”. Then Nobel peace prize laureate Malala Yousafzai stressed the importance of...
Comic Stewart Lee is nothing short of a contradiction.
He's a comedians' comedian who hates most comedians and an award winning comic who holds a blatant disregard for comedy awards.
Mr Lee spends much of the first half condemning the majority of the crowd for not being on his wavelength, while the second half is one long complaint that he has nothing to talk about.
Throughout Friday's show, which is part of the Glasgow Comedy festival, he attacks the conventions of popular comics such as Frankie Boyle (he describes the use of a shocking phrase at the end of a bad joke as "Boyle's Law"), Michael McIntyre and the fresh batch of young comedians he despairingly describes as "the Russells".
Half stand-up show, half lecture in which he breaks down the structure of stand-up, the audience leaves a Stewart Lee gig feeling they know an awful lot more about comedy than they did going in.
At the sold out King's Theatre, it is easy to tell that Mr Lee would feel far more at home at a smaller venue such as The Stand, or so he would have you believe.
He uses the crowd to great effect, playing them off one another — those in the stalls who understand the jokes and have been with him since the beginning, against those in the circle whom, he describes friends of fans, who can't be bothered thinking and would be more at home at a taping of Michael McIntyre's comedy road show.
Time and time again, he pulls the crowd in with shock and awe comments similar to that of Frankie Boyle, before lambasting the audience for enjoying them.
The venom is not just for other comedians and the audience, but he also saves some for himself.
He breaks down his own joke structures before launching into a 10 minute verbatim reading of online criticisms accompanied by jazz music while apparently drinking red wine straight out the bottle.
Stewart Lee is clearly not for everyone and watching him can be hard work — but it's rewarding.
A friend with whom I attended the show — and an aspiring stand-up — had never been to see Mr Lee in person and described the experience as being "one chalked off the bucket list".
While this is in stark contrast to the online vitriol around Stewart Lee and his "stupid smug face", you get the feeling that's just how he wants it.
Stewart Lee
2012-03-26T14:03:42+01:00
Comic Stewart Lee is nothing short of a contradiction. He's a comedians' comedian who hates most comedians and an award winning comic who holds a blatant disregard for comedy awards. Mr Lee spends much of the first half condemning the majority of the crowd for not being on his wavelength, while the second half is one long complaint that he has nothing to talk about. Throughout Friday's show, which is part of the Glasgow Comedy festival, he attacks the conventions of popular comics such as Frankie Boyle (he describes the use of a shocking phrase at the end of a bad joke as "Boyle's Law"), Michael McIntyre and the fresh batch of young comedians he despairingly describes as "the Russells". Half stand-up show, half lecture in which he breaks down the structure of stand-up, the audience leaves a Stewart Lee gig feeling they know an awful lot more about comedy than they did going in. At the sold out King's Theatre, it is easy to tell that Mr Lee would feel far more at home at a smaller venue such as The Stand, or so he would have you believe. He uses the crowd to great effect, playing them off one another — those in the stalls who understand the jokes and have been with him since the beginning, against those in the circle whom, he describes friends of fans, who can't be bothered thinking and would be more at home at a taping of Michael McIntyre's comedy road show. Time and time again, he pulls the crowd in with shock and awe comments similar to that of Frankie Boyle, before lambasting the audience for enjoying them. The venom is not just for other comedians and the audience, but he also saves some for himself. He breaks down his own...
William Blake wrote that we can see heaven in a wild flower and hold infinity in the palms of our hands. He also thought a massive flea with a bald man’s face and no pants on came into his bedroom at night, and I speak as a fan. But, like Blake would, I think we can see the world – and everything that is wrong with it – in a National Trust scone. Bear with me.
Until November last year, the Conservative-appointed Victoria and Albert Museum trustee Zewditu Gebreyohanes, formerly of the Tufton Street-linked thinktank Policy Exchange, was the director of Restore Trust. This is an organisation dedicated to parachuting its own preferred right-leaning candidates, including the evangelical Stephen Green, who has denied the existence of marital rape and once supported Uganda’s death penalty for some homosexuals, on to the seemingly impregnable board of the supposedly “woke” National Trust. What even is woke, anyway? It’s the kind of word Jonathan Gullis MP uses to describe anything he doesn’t like, like a Welsh-language edition of the Highway Code, olives on a pizza, or women in lace-up shoes.
Restore Trust is backed by Neil Record of the Tufton Street climate crisis denial bodies Global Warming Policy Foundation and Net Zero Watch. In November last year, Restore Trust director Gebreyohanes left to join the pro-Brexit free-market cheerleader the Legatum Institute, which shares senior fellows with various Tufton Street thinktanks and is funded by businessman Christopher Chandler’s Dubai-based Legatum Group. Legatum is also the chief backer of the loss-making GB News, along with the former banjo-playing twat from Mumford & Sons’ dad, Sir Paul Marshall, the would-be Telegraph buyer, who has shared Islamophobic material online. There are ponds full of frenziedly spawning toads with more dignity than this financier clusterfuck.
Having failed to discredit the National Trust at Restore Trust, Gebreyohanes made it her first job at the Legatum Institute to publish a report on 21 March called National Distrust, calling for the secretary of state for culture, media and sport and the Charity Commission to intervene in National Trust governance.
A 2019 report penned by Gebreyohanes’s former Tufton Street-linked Policy Exchange shaped Sunak’s criminalisation of climate protesters, so these documents are dangerous in the hands of a failing government desperately looking to create enemies it can appear to defeat. I’m going to write a report blaming the Princess of Wales for all potholes, bedbugs and haemorrhoids and see if it can get any traction in Sarah Vine’s Daily Mail column. But I suppose I’ll have to wait until Kate is well enough to be a legitimate tabloid target again.
Gebreyohanes’s National Trust report was immediately amplified in the Daily Telegraph, Britain’s worst newspaper, by the former National Trust chairman Sir William Proby, who repeated a false claim about National Trust procedures – namely, that National Trust trustees in effect select the National Trust council themselves – that the Telegraph, which appears to run whatever messages Restore Trust wants it to, has already had to apologise for when it printed it for the first time in November last year, so that apology obviously worked.
Currently, the Restore Trust website, reeking of desperation, criticises the National Trust not for wokeness, but for its inability to make “decent scones”, in response to a story that conveniently ran last weekend in the Mail. “Critics have condemned the use of a vegetable-based spread instead of butter in the baking as a ‘virtue-signalling betrayal’, in what looks like yet another woke row involving the charity,” reported both Chris Pollard and Daisy Graham-Brown, working as a Woodward and Bernstein-type team. The offending vegan scone was then pictured alongside a pot of decidedly non-vegan clotted cream.
In the same Mail story, Restore Trust’s chair, Cornelia van der Poll, a retired lecturer from the now closed private Oxford college St Benet’s Hall, “slammed the move”, seeing the scone as symptomatic of a wider malaise and saying: “It is unfortunate that the National Trust can’t even get scones right, let alone bigger issues such as properly looking after the properties in its care.” The report also quoted a sickened 64-year-old National Trust member from Bury St Edmonds (sic), who said: “I can’t stand the taste of the new scones,” adding: “They are flatter, drier and have an unappealing texture.” And the Eurosceptic MP Bill Cash, who, Pollard and Brown reported, “often has tea and scones in the House of Commons”, rose from his coffin of moist earth and rats to wonder, utterly nonsensically, if the National Trust will “stop selling Madeira cake because of historical events in Madeira”. But what are the Madeiran historical events Cash worries about? The island appears most notable for its six different species of identifiably different indigenous mice, each separated by high hills, ensuring they do not mix, a situation Cash, in his opposition to freedom of movement, would surely approve of.
But then the bombshell! Within days, the National Trust’s tirelessly diligent and heroic director of communications, Celia Richardson, had wasted her precious time to reveal that National Trust scones have been vegan for “many years”, and indeed in 2018 the Daily Mail itself invited readers to celebrate “truly scrumptious recipes from a new book by the National Trust”, including scones featuring no butter and “115g (4oz) of soft margarine”. Stick your Madeira cake in your Notting Hill bolthole, Bill Cash! Cornelia van der Poll!! You know nothing of scones, so why should we trust your opinions on the maintenance of historic properties? And guess what, National Trust member, 64, of Bury St Edmonds!!! The scones are the same! There’s something wrong with your mouth!!! And Bury St Edmonds isn’t even a real place!!!!
But why does Restore Trust want control of the National Trust so badly? Is it about the properties? The land? Or can it really be that Legatum’s Dubai-based backers just really love scones made with butter? I think we should be told.
Stewart Lee
2024-04-07T14:08:58+01:00
William Blake wrote that we can see heaven in a wild flower and hold infinity in the palms of our hands. He also thought a massive flea with a bald man’s face and no pants on came into his bedroom at night, and I speak as a fan. But, like Blake would, I think we can see the world – and everything that is wrong with it – in a National Trust scone. Bear with me. Until November last year, the Conservative-appointed Victoria and Albert Museum trustee Zewditu Gebreyohanes, formerly of the Tufton Street-linked thinktank Policy Exchange, was the director of Restore Trust. This is an organisation dedicated to parachuting its own preferred right-leaning candidates, including the evangelical Stephen Green, who has denied the existence of marital rape and once supported Uganda’s death penalty for some homosexuals, on to the seemingly impregnable board of the supposedly “woke” National Trust. What even is woke, anyway? It’s the kind of word Jonathan Gullis MP uses to describe anything he doesn’t like, like a Welsh-language edition of the Highway Code, olives on a pizza, or women in lace-up shoes. Restore Trust is backed by Neil Record of the Tufton Street climate crisis denial bodies Global Warming Policy Foundation and Net Zero Watch. In November last year, Restore Trust director Gebreyohanes left to join the pro-Brexit free-market cheerleader the Legatum Institute, which shares senior fellows with various Tufton Street thinktanks and is funded by businessman Christopher Chandler’s Dubai-based Legatum Group. Legatum is also the chief backer of the loss-making GB News, along with the former banjo-playing twat from Mumford & Sons’ dad, Sir Paul Marshall, the would-be Telegraph buyer, who has shared Islamophobic material online. There are ponds full of frenziedly spawning toads with more dignity than this financier clusterfuck. Having failed to discredit...
When the Frenchman Yann Tambour released his previous records as Thee Stranded Horse he was attempting mystery in a second language. Forgive Tambour. He plucks cascades of twinkling notes from a twenty-one string Kora, and his studiously subdued vocals, in French and English, now suggest the timeless tunes of some travelling Medieval troubadour, rather than the pre-natal blues of West Africa, a move North newly supported by suitably sparse string accompaniment.
The Malian Kora player Ballake Sissoko throws a fluttering coda over Shields, raising a bar that Tambour almost reaches himself in the extended closer, Halos, all visionary declamations and potent silences.
Stewart Lee
2011-04-09T21:53:09+01:00
When the Frenchman Yann Tambour released his previous records as Thee Stranded Horse he was attempting mystery in a second language. Forgive Tambour. He plucks cascades of twinkling notes from a twenty-one string Kora, and his studiously subdued vocals, in French and English, now suggest the timeless tunes of some travelling Medieval troubadour, rather than the pre-natal blues of West Africa, a move North newly supported by suitably sparse string accompaniment. The Malian Kora player Ballake Sissoko throws a fluttering coda over Shields, raising a bar that Tambour almost reaches himself in the extended closer, Halos, all visionary declamations and potent silences.
By next Summer you may have seen STEWART LEE VS THE mutha-fuckin' MAN-WULF in your local theatre, and although all other London shows are now sold out, in July '25 there are six (count 'em) performances in the symphonic surroundings of THE ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL in THAT LONDON.
The show promises to be the stupidest thing ever allowed to be performed at the prestigious South Bank Centre and follows a tradition of bi-annual week long sell outs of my runs at the National Temple Of Culture™ ®.
ALTERNATIVE COMEDY CASTRATED ON THE ALTAR OF TASTE!
OK WULF-FANS! By next Summer you may have seen STEWART LEE VS THE mutha-fuckin' MAN-WULF in your local theatre, and although all other London shows are now sold out, in July '25 there are six (count 'em) performances in the symphonic surroundings of THE ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL in THAT LONDON. The show promises to be the stupidest thing ever allowed to be performed at the prestigious South Bank Centre and follows a tradition of bi-annual week long sell outs of my runs at the National Temple Of Culture™ ®. ALTERNATIVE COMEDY CASTRATED ON THE ALTAR OF TASTE! Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall , LONDON SAT 5th 7.30pm, SUN 6th 3.30pm & 7.30pm, SAT 12th 7.30pm & SUN 13th, 3.30pm* & 7.30pm JULY 2025 *SPEECH TO TEXT PERFORMANCE Tickets go on sale Friday 11th October at 10 AM. HERE PLUS over 100 gigs in over 50 UK towns and cities on sale in 2025 – see https://www.stewartlee.co.uk/live-dates MORE DATES TO BE ADDED! TOUR CONTINUES INTO 2026!
Reardon, as his much-interrupted work on his memoirs attests, is an unreliable narrator, which was the topic of yesterday’s entertaining, inventive Archive on 4, presented by the stand-up and writer Stewart Lee. Lee begins his journey “walking along Cecil Court”, off the Charing Cross Road, which when Lee first arrived in London was lined with second-hand bookshops. “But do you trust me? Do you think I’m really on Cecil Court? Or would it be more impressive if we’d fabricated this with some clever sound design that I can just switch off?” Cue silence. “Or if we’d fabricated it, couldn’t we have fabricated something more impressive or atmospheric?” Cue howling winds and Lee shouting: “Somewhere like the Yorkshire moors, where I might speculate, loudly, on the persona of Nelly Dean, whose not necessarily trustworthy reminiscences Emily Brontë used to frame the story of Wuthering Heights.”
Lee has been preoccupied with unreliable narrators ever since his mother took him to see John Boorman’s Excalibur, which inspired a fascination with King Arthur. In the British Library he comes face to face with a 12th-century calfskin manuscript of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain. There are gales of laughter from the BL’s curator of medieval manuscripts, Julian Harrison, and the medievalist Hetta Howes as Lee reads out William of Newburgh’s assessment from 1190: “Everything this man [Geoffrey of Monmouth] said was made up . . . either from an inordinate love of lying or for the sake of pleasing the Britons.”
Lee is an obdurate obscurist and some of his more contemporary examples are niche (1960s experimentalist writers Rosemary Tonks and Ann Quin, performance poet Rob Auton). “You’re probably wondering when are we going to talk about an unreliable narrator you’ve heard of? That’s taught you not to trust me!” But then he brings on Nish Kumar to discuss (apparently reliably) Bob Dylan. The comedian Russell Kane talks of how he kept his late father alive for seven years in his stand-up because he “did not have the skill to tell an audience my dad was dead without spoiling the atmosphere of a gig”. Imaginatively produced by Michael Umney, this made for a stimulating hour.
Stewart Lee
2021-06-13T14:43:51+01:00
Reardon, as his much-interrupted work on his memoirs attests, is an unreliable narrator, which was the topic of yesterday’s entertaining, inventive Archive on 4, presented by the stand-up and writer Stewart Lee. Lee begins his journey “walking along Cecil Court”, off the Charing Cross Road, which when Lee first arrived in London was lined with second-hand bookshops. “But do you trust me? Do you think I’m really on Cecil Court? Or would it be more impressive if we’d fabricated this with some clever sound design that I can just switch off?” Cue silence. “Or if we’d fabricated it, couldn’t we have fabricated something more impressive or atmospheric?” Cue howling winds and Lee shouting: “Somewhere like the Yorkshire moors, where I might speculate, loudly, on the persona of Nelly Dean, whose not necessarily trustworthy reminiscences Emily Brontë used to frame the story of Wuthering Heights.” Lee has been preoccupied with unreliable narrators ever since his mother took him to see John Boorman’s Excalibur, which inspired a fascination with King Arthur. In the British Library he comes face to face with a 12th-century calfskin manuscript of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain. There are gales of laughter from the BL’s curator of medieval manuscripts, Julian Harrison, and the medievalist Hetta Howes as Lee reads out William of Newburgh’s assessment from 1190: “Everything this man [Geoffrey of Monmouth] said was made up . . . either from an inordinate love of lying or for the sake of pleasing the Britons.” Lee is an obdurate obscurist and some of his more contemporary examples are niche (1960s experimentalist writers Rosemary Tonks and Ann Quin, performance poet Rob Auton). “You’re probably wondering when are we going to talk about an unreliable narrator you’ve heard of? That’s taught you not to trust me!” But...
As you can imagine, it is a constant source of irritation to me that I am frequently ridiculed in academic circles for my supposed over-reliance on cultural comparisons drawn from the world of the Native American shaman clown.
And yet, in the light of the ascension of Jeremy Corbyn, I find myself taking familiar soundings once more from the sacred miracle caves of the south-western mesas. But our story starts in north London, last week.
“She corbyned you man,” laughed a teenager on the 73 on Tuesday. On the top deck of Boris’s faux Routemaster, despite being the third most critically acclaimed British standup of the century, I remain anonymous enough to eavesdrop. “To corbyn”. It’s a new verb, it would seem.
“You were corbyned man, well corbyned.” Listening in, I realised the phrase describes a situation where one of the youngster’s remarks had been deliberately misrepresented to some rival youths with the intention of compromising, perhaps fatally, his standing in their social milieu. It had only taken a weekend for the press treatment of the new Labour leader to make its way into the street argot of a younger generation.
“They corbyned Corbyn in the paper last night. They say he done that Diane Abbott once, back in the 70s when she was well fit,” offered a young lad to his chums by Camden tube on Thursday. “Yes, but what’s really appalling is that the Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine,” continued a well-scrubbed middle-class schoolgirl, “has apparently been doing Netflix and chill with Michael Gove for decades!”
And with that, the young Corbynistas stood outside the station miming projectile-vomiting into a dog excrement receptacle, until they were forcibly moved on by a uniformed security guard in the pay of a vast property-owning multinational corporation.
Now, none of the above stories are true. But I feel what they tell us about Jeremy Corbyn is true. Post-digital, tech-savvy, and able to Google the sources of Corbyn’s supposed comments, the vibrant young people on our capital’s streets, their veins coursing not with genetically modified skunk juice, but with the thrill of The New Politics™, saw through mainstream media’s misrepresentation of Corbyn immediately.
Illustration by David Foldvari
Why should Corbyn talk to Sky reporters? They’ll only corbyn him. The voters of tomorrow share clips of Corbyn speeches on social media, without having to cut to Andrew Wilson raising his eyebrow quizzically and then making a sneery face, before he slithers away to rub himself on the rim of Adam Boulton’s executive urinal.
There are big questions to be asked about the ethics of many of Corbyn’s fellow travellers, but so far the questions being asked most loudly, and which are calculated by his enemies to do the most damage, are mainly about his top button, his anthem-singing ability, his ex-girlfriend from 1978, and some free sandwiches, which he may or may not have stolen from the hand of a dying Spitfire pilot.
And while Corbyn introduced members of Hamas and Hezbollah to parliament using the ill-judged phrase “our friends”, David Cameron is genuinely real-life friends with both Rebekah Brooks of News International and Rachel Whetstone of Uber, and had Jeremy Clarkson jump out of a cake naked at his 50th birthday party.
It is too soon to say whose “friends” history will judge most harshly. Ex-polytechnics have refectories named after one-time “terrorists”, and commemorative slabs laid by Tony or Cherie will one day go the way of Jimmy Savile’s gravestone.
Leaning over the shoulder of a Daily Express reader on the 341 on Monday, I saw a prune-faced content-provider describe Corbyn as an “absurd Marxist”. As a new philosophical doctrine, Absurd Marxism sounds viable to me, whatever it is. We already live in the oxymoronic era of Caring Capitalism, and that doesn’t really seem to make sense either. If I were Corbyn I would own the title of Absurd Marxist with honour.
Absurdity, with a small a, has attached itself to Corbyn in a way that amplifies the ridiculousness of the world around him. He was mocked for making a vegan shadow environment secretary. Yet under David Cameron we have had an equalities minister who was against equal marriage, an anti-environmentalist environment secretary, and a culture secretary who loves torture porn and wants to dismantle the BBC. The government is ridiculous. Corbyn is its satirical shadow.
In many Native American societies the comedian, far from being a lowly fool who other children’s parents think doesn’t really have a proper job and so could host more play-dates, is considered to have an important, almost priestly, function.
The Lakota clown, the Heyoka, lives his life backwards, washing in dirt, wearing his clothes inside out, shivering in sunlight, violating taboos, and asking questions others dare not ask of those in power. Some plains people even gave their contraries, as these shaman clowns were known, important roles in battle, where their unpredictable behaviour and refusal to follow orders gave them massive advantages over their bewildered enemies. I cannot believe Corbyn has not made a detailed anthropological study of these comic visionaries.
At Taos Pueblo, New Mexico, in 2006, I was lucky enough to attend a massive outdoor Koshare ritual. Clowns ranged through the village, making erotic overtures to elderly disabled women, showing disdain for the beautiful, throwing food in the faces of dining Anglo-American dignitaries, hurling Christian crosses from the roofs of buildings, and doing all this to force onlookers to consider what kind of a society they wanted to live in, and to assess the professed values of the society they already had.
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Mainstream media condemns Corbyn’s actions. On social media, free from editorial interference, those same actions receive almost blanket approval. The satirical counterweight of the Corbyn shaman-clown has forced society to enact its own Socratic dialogue. Should we bow to Queens? Should we sing songs that profess spiritual and political beliefs we do not have? Should we speak to Sky reporters?
People on the right shake with fury at Corbyn, corbyning him mercilessly, while people on the old left tremble with anxiety over what further damage he may do to their already ruined party. But think of Corbyn, not as a politician, but as a totemic figure, a contrary, a shamanic clown come to throw the system’s failings into sharp relief, and I promise you can all enjoy his career as much as I am. The wailing. The gnashing of teeth. It’s going to be hilarious! What fun we will have! Maybe some good will even come of it.
Stewart Lee’s A Room With a Stew is at Leicester Square theatre, London WC2 from tomorrow
Stewart Lee
2015-09-20T22:33:23+01:00
As you can imagine, it is a constant source of irritation to me that I am frequently ridiculed in academic circles for my supposed over-reliance on cultural comparisons drawn from the world of the Native American shaman clown. And yet, in the light of the ascension of Jeremy Corbyn, I find myself taking familiar soundings once more from the sacred miracle caves of the south-western mesas. But our story starts in north London, last week. “She corbyned you man,” laughed a teenager on the 73 on Tuesday. On the top deck of Boris’s faux Routemaster, despite being the third most critically acclaimed British standup of the century, I remain anonymous enough to eavesdrop. “To corbyn”. It’s a new verb, it would seem. “You were corbyned man, well corbyned.” Listening in, I realised the phrase describes a situation where one of the youngster’s remarks had been deliberately misrepresented to some rival youths with the intention of compromising, perhaps fatally, his standing in their social milieu. It had only taken a weekend for the press treatment of the new Labour leader to make its way into the street argot of a younger generation. “They corbyned Corbyn in the paper last night. They say he done that Diane Abbott once, back in the 70s when she was well fit,” offered a young lad to his chums by Camden tube on Thursday. “Yes, but what’s really appalling is that the Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine,” continued a well-scrubbed middle-class schoolgirl, “has apparently been doing Netflix and chill with Michael Gove for decades!” And with that, the young Corbynistas stood outside the station miming projectile-vomiting into a dog excrement receptacle, until they were forcibly moved on by a uniformed security guard in the pay of a vast property-owning multinational corporation. Now, none of the above...
You may call me a nimby. There. I hope you enjoyed doing so and feel better now. But how would you feel if you woke up one day to find a 20ft-tall golden effigy of a naked Vladimir Putin in your garden?
I never used to have a back yard. But now, at 46, I finally do. And suddenly there are things I don’t want in it. And if objecting to a 20ft-tall golden effigy of a naked Vladimir Putin in my back yard is nimbyism, then poison my tea with invisible radioactive chemicals, discredit me in a Russian TV drama, secretly back an attempt to destabilise Ukraine, fund far-right isolationist parties all across Europe and write “NIMBY” on my forehead in Cyrillic script right now. For I am Nimby! Hear me roar!
By the time I had tried to navigate the council’s website to complain about the pointedly undressed polar bear-wrangler, the garish representation of the one-time KGB operative and hang-gliding daredevil had disappeared into the sky. Perhaps I had imagined it. A naked golden effigy of Vladimir Putin in my garden? Absurd! Far more likely the sun glancing off an upturned bucket, or a fallen stick that somehow seemed to assume the shape of the martial arts-obsessed macho man. I knew I shouldn’t have had that third bucket of salvia.
Apparently airborne via jet boosters concealed in its riding boots (the only item of clothing the golden Putin robot wears), it had soon alighted in another garden eight doors down, where it intimidated a family of broadminded north London Unitarians with its unapologetic masculinity. And the naked Putin continued with this bewildering behaviour all week, zooming around the blue winter sky at erratic intervals, the watery sun shining off its golden gluteus, as it took up a succession of provocative positions in public and private spaces, and then disappeared again, sometimes escorted by three children’s kites bearing the logo of our local authority.
Of course some residents are delighted. House prices in the formerly forbidding London borough where I have resided since the 90s have risen 800% in the past three decades. The street’s elderly working-class survivors, hoping to see out their days in familiar settings, dread being driven into the mansion tax bracket. They hope that the looming presence of a giant former communist kung-fu nudist will depress property prices, and spare them an annual penalty. To them, as he was to many of the Russian people, the topless tiger tranquilliser has messianic qualities. As does Myleene Klass.
Avaricious developers with interests in local housing stock, however, are delighted by the vast bare-bottomed Soviet statesman. Future purchases in the area are likely to be made with filthy Russian money anyway, and it is thought that the presence of the enormous international Fats Domino interpreter and human-rights champion may encourage expat oligarch cash to flow into their wealth troughs.
But to me, a British back-yard owner late in life, this huge Vladimir Putin, rising up naked in the stirrups so that his golden testicles swing low over the shire horse’s saddle, blocking out the sun, is nothing but a post-Glasnost eyesore.
Despite being a committed champagne socialist, I now wish the Russian revolution had never taken place. I am sure a giant statue of a modern-day Romanov royal would not have been quite so vulgar, and would have at least kept their pants on, if only for fear of nicking their bottom on a thorn, and bleeding to death.
The timing of the huge Putin’s incursions are perfect. The page on the local government website where you are supposed to report the sudden arrival of any oversized statues of naked international politicians seems to have some kind of glitch, making it impossible to log the Putin; paperwork that should have been sent out to neighbours appears to have been misplaced. We fear the establishment of a precedent, and then it will be impossible to stop the land being monopolised for the disporting of a succession of disrobed contemporary statespersons.
Suddenly those neighbours who chose to tolerate the bare-assed Putin may find themselves confronted with an office-block-sized effigy of Hungary’s Janos Ader in an elastic thong, a Wicker Man-style representation of Swaziland’s Mswati III in a purple peephole pantie, or a BT Tower-proportioned waxwork of Iceland’s Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, entirely naked, and bending over in a natural hot spring to pick up a puffin egg. No one wants to see that. Not even Olafur’s dog, Sámur, who is named after the dog of Gunnar of Hlíðarendi, one of the main characters in the Icelandic Njáls saga.
“Today, the presumption is in favour of planning permission,” I am advised, and knocking the trouserless Putin’s legs by moonlight with a hammer, I realise they are quite hollow, providing a space that technically qualifies as a development opportunity for affordable housing, sugaring the property magnate’s pill.
On Wednesday morning our cat, Chibnall (my wife remains a huge Broadchurch fan, despite the tide of popular opinion turning against her, while I prefer the Sharknado series of films), brought in a headless dove. I don’t think that little Chibnall had bitten the head off the bird herself, as its gaping neck was covered with burn marks. Viewing the super-sized Putin from the garden I saw that the statue’s pendulous buttocks seemed stained with scorches.
Had Putin’s covertly weaponised ass cheeks deliberately decapitated the dove, the worldwide symbol of peace, in a sick, pantomine-style satire of international opinion? If so, this was exactly the kind of counterintuitive conceptual-art-style gesture Putin’s adviser Vladislav Yuryevich Surkov would surely have originated. Deep within the Kremlin, Surkov submits to the executive a pencil drawing of a missile shooting out from the backside of a 200ft Putin. He is rewarded with offers of prostitutes, aftershave and new trousers, and told to take the rest of the week off.
The Quaker family who rent space in my cellar keep doves, so I went down to report the avian death. I was greeted by the familiar smell of boiling porridge, and on shaking hands with Old Man Urizel my palm was smeared with melted chocolate, as usual. Urizel expects nothing from the proper procedures. “History repeats itself,” he declares from beneath a broad-brimmed black hat, through a mouthful of hot oats, steeling himself to sit through another cycle.
Stewart Lee
2015-03-01T09:30:24+00:00
You may call me a nimby. There. I hope you enjoyed doing so and feel better now. But how would you feel if you woke up one day to find a 20ft-tall golden effigy of a naked Vladimir Putin in your garden? I never used to have a back yard. But now, at 46, I finally do. And suddenly there are things I don’t want in it. And if objecting to a 20ft-tall golden effigy of a naked Vladimir Putin in my back yard is nimbyism, then poison my tea with invisible radioactive chemicals, discredit me in a Russian TV drama, secretly back an attempt to destabilise Ukraine, fund far-right isolationist parties all across Europe and write “NIMBY” on my forehead in Cyrillic script right now. For I am Nimby! Hear me roar! By the time I had tried to navigate the council’s website to complain about the pointedly undressed polar bear-wrangler, the garish representation of the one-time KGB operative and hang-gliding daredevil had disappeared into the sky. Perhaps I had imagined it. A naked golden effigy of Vladimir Putin in my garden? Absurd! Far more likely the sun glancing off an upturned bucket, or a fallen stick that somehow seemed to assume the shape of the martial arts-obsessed macho man. I knew I shouldn’t have had that third bucket of salvia. Apparently airborne via jet boosters concealed in its riding boots (the only item of clothing the golden Putin robot wears), it had soon alighted in another garden eight doors down, where it intimidated a family of broadminded north London Unitarians with its unapologetic masculinity. And the naked Putin continued with this bewildering behaviour all week, zooming around the blue winter sky at erratic intervals, the watery sun shining off its golden gluteus, as it took up a succession...
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 TheAngel 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 Gormley's emotionally resonant secular sacred space with next. A toilet brush perhaps? Or maybe a vibrating anal probe? Except that Morrisons don't sell vibrating anal probes. They have standards.
Critics suggested a boycott of Morrisons. I suggest we continue to shop there, but always take a large Party Egg off the shelf and eat it, whole and unpaid for, before reaching the checkout. This is what I do at Sainsbury's on Green Lanes every week, as the hypocritical arts-patronising chain withdrew a DVD of mine from sale after protests from the religious right in 2005. At this rate, Sainsbury's will soon be bankrupt and I will be 18 stone of ersatz sausage meat.
Back in 1998, when he was first installed near the A1, all the Geordies hated the Angel. They ran around naked in Big Market, licking pease pudding off each other's hands, and bellowing the usual arguments about how many kids' football pitches the sculpture could have paid for. In the war against art and thought sport always seems to be the trump card. But can I be the only person who looks at the £8.92bn price tag of the London Olympics and thinks: "That could have paid for 1.8bn different 50-seater fringe theatre productions, each with the potential to change lives for ever, and none of them requiring the presence of Boris Johnson and the Dow Chemical Company?"
In the end Gormley won the battle for hearts and minds. His 2003 piece at Newcastle's Baltic, Domain Field, invited hundreds of sceptical locals to be caked in wet plaster and made into a massive piece of Art. Geordies love getting plastered, and suddenly the people took proud ownership of their Angel. It's fair to say Morrisons picked the wrong quasi-religious industrially themed icon to project a cut-price loaf on to. But the supermarket's action was not without precedent.
I do not believe in God, but the image of the Angel of the North moves me, as do the relics of our distant spiritual heritage strewn randomly around the British landscape: Stonehenge, the Cerne Abbas Giant, Ann Widdecombe, and the former archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. In March 2012, the stupid bookmakers Paddy Power celebrated the Cheltenham horse murdering festival by drawing a jockey overnight on to the 3,000-year-old chalky flanks of White Horse of Uffington. Paddy Power claim to have done no damage and instead their own blog invited us to think of them as "lovable scamps" and "mischief makers", the Horrid Henrys of wilful cultural vandalism.
Presumably the bronze age visionary Thongor of the Chalky Horse That Looks A Bit Like A Duck still sits, resigned to fixed fate, in whatever pre-Christian netherworld he now calls home and, like Gormley, concedes: "I'd rather the work was not used for commercial purposes, but it's out there now," unable and unwilling to deal with copyright matters connected to the appropriation of his Picasso-anticipating dream of equine energy to promoting betting shops and gambling debts.
It was early Sunday morning when I read about Morrisons. I had awoken in a bespoke yurt, in the green fields of the Machynlleth comedy festival, in the shadows of Snowdonia, and my annoyance with the heartbreaking illuminated baguette was doubtless sharpened by a weekend spent at this peerless boutique event, where culture never comes second to commerce. But I am a puritan relic of an age undreamed of, when the Clash wouldn't do Top of the Pops, even Mötley Crüe wouldn't play South Africa, and when, if John Peel did do advert voiceovers, he at least sounded slightly ashamed.
But those days are gone. Our last culture minister suggested that public art's only value was commercial, and our new culture minister supports ticket touts, suggesting culture's value is merely whatever the market wants to pay for it. In receipt of such mixed messages, is it any wonder Morrisons looked at the aching wingspan of Gormley's Angel and saw only an empty space that wasn't being maximally monetised?
And that's where we are now. Ancient forests can be destroyed, if equal amounts of trees are planted somewhere else, an inherent sense of place and historical resonance translated into the worth of its mere weight in wood. It's me that's out of step, I am sure. If we can advertise on ancient hill figures, and publicise on public art, I wondered, as I drove home across Wales, what other monetisable spaces, previously considered sacred, are we failing to optimise? And then it struck me. The subconscious itself is going to waste. What of those unmanageable moments, where we are struck by beauty and meaning we had not foreseen? They are what makes us human, admittedly, but is there some way to make them pay?
Aiming to cross the Severn by the M4, I stopped at Tintern Abbey, and dragged our sleeping children into the sunlight. Normally I would have pointed them at the romantic ruin and lectured them on how it inspired in Wordsworth, Turner and Tennyson the apprehension of the sublime. Instead, I forcibly marched them around the site, chanting: "Buy Morrisons bread! Gamble at Paddy Power! Buy Morrisons bread! Gamble at Paddy Power!" until, crying and ashamed, they begged me to stop.
Dovetailing through Caerleon, where the Welsh mystic Arthur Machen saw the Great God Pan, I wandered the woodland glades shouting at walkers, "Buy Morrisons bread! Gamble at Paddy Power! Buy Morrisons bread! Gamble at Paddy Power!" and then, somewhat distressed, I vomited in the churchyard of St Cadoc's, the residue forming the perfect outline of a Morrisons baguette upon an ancient grave.
We drove on, to the Aust service station on the M4, where, just short of the Severn Bridge, a Vauxhall Cavalier, belonging to Richey Edwards from the Manic Street Preachers, was found abandoned in February 1995. In the Costa Coffee I carved into my arm with a razor blade the words "Buy Morrisons bread! Gamble at Paddy Power!" Now no one could doubt my sincerity, my fitness for purpose in this brave new age. My arm hurts. My children are embarrassed. There is sick everywhere. And blood. Who do I invoice? There must be some way of getting all this thoughts and feelings shit to pay for itself? Come on!
Stewart Lee
2014-05-11T13:18:58+01:00
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 Gormley's emotionally resonant secular sacred space with next. A toilet brush perhaps? Or maybe a vibrating anal probe? Except that Morrisons don't sell vibrating anal probes. They have standards. Critics suggested a boycott of Morrisons. I suggest we continue to shop there, but always take a large Party Egg off the shelf and eat it, whole and unpaid for, before reaching the checkout. This is what I do at Sainsbury's on Green Lanes every week, as the hypocritical arts-patronising chain withdrew a DVD of mine from sale after protests from the religious right in 2005. At this rate, Sainsbury's will soon be bankrupt and I will be 18 stone of ersatz sausage meat. Back in 1998, when he was first installed near the A1, all the Geordies hated the Angel. They ran around naked in Big Market, licking pease pudding off each other's hands, and bellowing the usual arguments about how many kids' football pitches the sculpture could have paid for. In the war against art and thought sport always seems to be the trump card. But can I be the only person who looks at the £8.92bn price tag of the London Olympics and thinks: "That could have paid for 1.8bn different 50-seater fringe theatre productions, each with the potential to change lives for ever, and none of them requiring the presence of Boris Johnson and the Dow Chemical Company?" In the end Gormley won the battle for hearts and minds. His 2003 piece at...
A 2 hr film of the Content Provider Tour is on BBC on Saturday 28th July at 11pm, not earlier in the month on July 8th as previously announced.
Already the joke about the status of European migrants is dated.
BENEFIT SHOWS
8th July - The Secret Spy Cops' Ball - Rob Newman, Evelyn Mok, Mark Steel, Stewart Lee, Jackson's Lane, London. For women tricked into relationships w undercover police. Most of the performers on the bill are adopted orphans, oddly. https://www.jacksonslane.org.uk/whats-on/the-secret-spycops-ball
NIGHTINGALES DATES
I am supporting Birmingham post-punk Legends The Nightingales doing 15 mins of my 80s material on seven of their autumn tour dates.
Comedy DVD indie GO FASTER STRIPE, which came into being to film my 90s Comedian show and saved my career, have a new initiative.
Chris Evans of GFS says...
THREE free downloads when you sign up. PLUS everything we do from now on
Join our club for £5 a month. You'll get a digital download of everything we will put out from the moment you sign up.
We will send you at least one full length show a month, and the download will include all the usual GFS extras. And there's usually a lot of extras.
The shows will be available to club members a day or two before they are released to the public - you'll get an email to let you know.
As usual they can be downloaded or streamed directly from our website.
SIGN UP BONUS
As soon as you sign up you can download or stream your choice of any THREE shows we've recorded since we started. There's loads of great stuff here. Have a look at that list on the left hand side of the screen. Cor blimey.
PLUS you should expect the unexpected. The idea is mostly to be a digital download club, but if this is a success I'll be sending out badges and patches and all sorts.
FAQs How long do I have to sign up for?
You can unsubscribe from this crazy scheme at any time.
So I could just download the three free shows and eff off?
Yes you could. But we wouldn't be very pleased about it.
Wow, this sounds too good to be true.
Good.
How does it work?
When you sign up, you will get your own personal download area.
Then, you can choose your three free shows straight away to start filling it up, and any downloads you've previously bought will be automatically added in too.
Then, every time we release something it will appear by magic in your download area, slightly before the show is made available to everyone else.
We will send you an email when this happens.
What's in the pipeline?
We are putting the finishing touches to brand new shows by Mark Thomas, Rachel Fairburn, Simon Munnery, John-Luke Roberts, Nick Helm, David Trent, Richard Herring, Austentatious and loads more.
Can I sign up for a friend?
You better believe it. Yes. If you want to buy a club membership for a friend, enter their details on the signup page and enter your email at the bottom for billing purposes. You can then give your payment info to paypal, we will bill you, and they will get the goodies.
Is there any type of copy protection on the files?
No. We use the honour system here. All the files will be DRM free, so you can use them however you choose.
Why are you doing this?
Three reasons:
1. People have been asking me to organise a scheme like this for ages.
2. I'm now confident that we've got enough shows in post production to carry us though for at least a year.
3. Mainly though, no one buys DVDs anymore and I'm panicking.
29th June - 1st July 2018 Also Festival
Compton Verney
Warwickshire
A compact weekend of terrific speakers, musicians, performers and makers - I'm thrilled to be invited. TICKETS
15th July 2018 Idler Festival
Fenton House
Hampstead Grove,
London NW3 6SP
This will be a wonderful weekend of talks by fascinating folk like Michael Palin, Sally Phillips and Carole Cadwalladr.
And I'll be performing a gentle Sunday morning version as part of the celebration of intelligent distraction. TICKETS
16th - 19th August 2018 Green Man Festival
Crickhowell
Brecon Beacons
The lecture can be located in the brainy enclave of Einstein's Garden.
I'm so glad to be returning to Green Man; this is always an amazing weekend of music, inspiration, fresh air and laughter. TICKETS
2) Drenched - Third Man Theatre Company.
I liked Third Man's work so much I became a patron of the company, essentially a vehicle for the visions of Dan Frost. They have a new show with dates so far in London this month and Edinburgh in August.
Daniel Drench. West Cornwall's most prolific and unstable storyteller, presents a bewildering and potentially moving interpretation of the classic Cornish folk tale 'The Mermaid of Zennor'.
Drenched is a one man comedy-theatre piece, challenging the form of a traditional solo performance with a combination of storytelling, character comedy and physical theatre.
Old Red Lion Theatre, Islington
2nd & 3rd July @ 7pm
4th July @ 9.30pm
Edinburgh Festival 2018
1-27 August - Pleasance Courtyard @ 3pm
3) PIGSPURT'S DAUGHTER
Daisy Campbell's memories of her father the performance art/comedy innvator Ken Campbell, is at Hampstead Theatre 11th - 14th July TICKETS
4) Bridget Christie - What Now? (New stand-up show)
Jesse Griffin's dead-on parody of an American outlaw country singer, WILSON DIXON, has an intimate UK tour
July 2018
Sunday July 1st - The Stand Comedy Club, Glasgow - 0141 212 3389 - 4.30pm Tickets
Sunday July 1st - The Stand Comedy Club, Edinburgh - 0131 558 7272 - 7.30pm Tickets
Tuesday July 3rd - The Stand Comedy Club, Edinburgh - 0131 558 7272 - 7.30pm Tickets
Wednesday July 4th - Chapter Arts, Cardiff - 029 2030 4400 - 7.30pm Tickets
Stewart Lee
2018-07-03T11:29:51+01:00
CONTENT PROVIDER A 2 hr film of the Content Provider Tour is on BBC on Saturday 28th July at 11pm, not earlier in the month on July 8th as previously announced. Already the joke about the status of European migrants is dated. BENEFIT SHOWS 8th July - The Secret Spy Cops' Ball - Rob Newman, Evelyn Mok, Mark Steel, Stewart Lee, Jackson's Lane, London. For women tricked into relationships w undercover police. Most of the performers on the bill are adopted orphans, oddly. https://www.jacksonslane.org.uk/whats-on/the-secret-spycops-ball NIGHTINGALES DATES I am supporting Birmingham post-punk Legends The Nightingales doing 15 mins of my 80s material on seven of their autumn tour dates. Thu SEPT 20 OXFORD, THE CELLAR https://www.seetickets.com/event/the-nightingales/the-cellar/1227777 Fri SEPT 21 BRISTOL, THE EXCHANGE https://www.seetickets.com/event/nightingales/exchange/1227678 Sat SEPT 22 PORTSMOUTH, WEDGEWOOD ROOMS https://www.seetickets.com/event/the-nightingales/wedgewood-rooms/1225457 Tue OCT 2 BIRMINGHAM, HARE & HOUNDS https://www.skiddle.com/whats-on/Birmingham/Hare-And-Hounds/The-Nightingales/13216234/ Wed OCT 3 LONDON, MOTH CLUB https://www.seetickets.com/event/nightingales/moth-club/1227677 Thu OCT 4 CAMBRIDGE, PORTLAND ARMS https://www.wegottickets.com/greenmind/event/439332 Sat OCT 6 BRIGHTON, GREEN DOOR STORE http://www.wegottickets.com/event/439847 CAPRI-BATTERIE W STEWART LEE You can buy Bristol Fashion, an industrial jazz album which we improvised in an hour, here for £7. https://capri-batterie.bandcamp.com/album/bristol-fashion Home Town Tales The writer Maria Whatton and I are the joint authors of a new book of autobiographical fiction about Birmingham, Home Town Tales, which is out now. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hometown-Tales-Birmingham-Maria-Whatton/dp/147460594X/ Post Nearly Press Neal Jackson of Post Nearly Press conducted a lengthy interview with me, available as a stand-alone book here www.postnearlypress.com Go Faster Stripe Singles Club https://www.gofasterstripe.com/cgi-bin/website.cgi?page=club Comedy DVD indie GO FASTER STRIPE, which came into being to film my 90s Comedian show and saved my career, have a new initiative. Chris Evans of GFS says... THREE free downloads when you sign up. PLUS everything we do from now on Join our club for £5 a month. You'll get a digital download of everything we will put...
On this exceptional album's inner sleeve, a sixties bypass bisects a prehistoric earthwork, and the folklorist Ronald Hutton discusses seasonal rites. Within, a set of tuneful, tonal, slices of clean and cold electronica hums with post-war optimism, warped by echoes of the transcendentally bland music that underscored Seventies architects' pitches for concrete car parks.
The comforting irony cloud, that shadowed earlier Ghost Box label experiments in emotionally manipulative nostalgia, has evaporated.
Without anything so prescriptive as lyrics, The Advisory Circle offers a disarmingly sincere, pellucidly beautiful, and hauntingly disorientating exploration of your civilisation's problematic relationship with the landscapes of its past.
Stewart Lee
2011-07-10T00:42:54+01:00
On this exceptional album's inner sleeve, a sixties bypass bisects a prehistoric earthwork, and the folklorist Ronald Hutton discusses seasonal rites. Within, a set of tuneful, tonal, slices of clean and cold electronica hums with post-war optimism, warped by echoes of the transcendentally bland music that underscored Seventies architects' pitches for concrete car parks. The comforting irony cloud, that shadowed earlier Ghost Box label experiments in emotionally manipulative nostalgia, has evaporated. Without anything so prescriptive as lyrics, The Advisory Circle offers a disarmingly sincere, pellucidly beautiful, and hauntingly disorientating exploration of your civilisation's problematic relationship with the landscapes of its past.
On his role in the conception of the Alan Partridge universe, and an exclusive look into the teenage mind of Michael Gove, comedian and writer Stewart Lee joins Jay for this week’s episode of Out To Lunch.
Stewart and Jay enjoy a Sri Lankan feast from London’s Kolamba at Home: https://kolamba.co.uk/
Stewart Lee
2021-04-27T17:30:03+01:00
On his role in the conception of the Alan Partridge universe, and an exclusive look into the teenage mind of Michael Gove, comedian and writer Stewart Lee joins Jay for this week’s episode of Out To Lunch. Stewart and Jay enjoy a Sri Lankan feast from London’s Kolamba at Home: https://kolamba.co.uk/
In the early 90s multi-instrumentalist Mike Cosgrave was my flatmate in a shared post-student house in Tooting, South London. Today Mike has just released his third album, Deepwater Dropoff, with Celtic folk fusion group Sin è. Early line-ups of the group used to rehearse in our spare room, drowning out afternoon editions of Countdown as the rest of us sat downstairs wondering what to do with our lives. Sin è might have been closest to Mike's heart, but the part time metallurgist and would-be musician couldn't afford to be choosy. At one time Devon born Mike was simultaneously the least South American member of salsa group Asi Y Asa, the most conspicuously non-African contributor to Love Isaacs's Maha, and the token gentile guitarist in comedian Jim Tavares's Jewish Heavy Metal group Guns 'N' Moses. Thus it was with little excitement that I arrived at the China Pig jazz club, upstairs over an East London pub, on a bleak November night, to watch Mike sit in on guitar with something called Morphogenesis, the free music group of a bloke called Clive Hall who Mike had met in a jazz piano evening class at Morley College. "Come along," he said, "I don't know what it will be like but you might get something out of it."
"So, this is what a jazz gig is like," I thought to myself contemptuously, ascending into a dreary upstairs room where a dozen or so solitary men nursed drinks in silent anticipation. Though one of them was conspicuously and copiously facially pierced, I couldn't imagine myself bumping into any of these people at the bar of any of my usual indie rock haunts. Then the strangeness started to set in, as I became aware that the cluster of discarded rubbish and dishevelled lab apparatus set up in the corner of the room wasn't just a pile of junk waiting to be taken away in a skip, but actually the group's gear. Mike's guitar was laid flat on a table, robbed of any phallic posing power, and surrounded by matches and tiny bits of metal. Other surfaces ominously harboured a radio, some elastic bands strung over a kind of abacus, what looked like a hydrophonic gardening system, a miniature fishtank full of water, and a collection of children's toys, ironmongery and balloons. They were going to play this stuff? I'd seen
Sonic Youth and The Dream Syndicate scratch at their guitars with screwdrivers and vibrators; I even owned a Fred Frith/Lol Coxhill duets album, though I rarely listened to it while sober. In all, I considered myself a broadminded man, but this was clearly something else altogether. And I already didn't like it.
Then Morphogenesis, and my poor misguided friend Mike, moved out of the gloom to take their places: a half a dozen or so shady individuals who looked like they should have been manning a Baader-Meinhof Group terrorist cell, or else researching the growth of unusual moulds in an underground room somewhere. What followed was not music or entertainment as I understood it, but an undulating, formless wash of drones, clicks and bubbles, that resisted all formal development and didn't even allow any room for a solo on those carefully arranged elastic bands. There sat Mike, a man who could pick up any tune instantly and play it back to you note perfect, reduced to dropping matches onto his frets in absurd concentration, while a man stood behind him making irritating squeaking noises by rubbing a partially deflated pink balloon And when the balloon promptly burst in his hands, he reacted only with a smug expression which suggested the object's implosion was not actually a mistake, but part of a far greater artistic whole which I would never be able to understand. After 45 minutes or so the sounds mercifully subsided, and I hurried downstairs to get a drink, barely able to suppress my laughter at the most pretentious and pointless display I had ever witnessed.
Then in the crowded pub, something happened, as though a switch had been thrown in my brain. The sounds of pints of lager pouring from taps became raging torrents, background conversation suddenly seemed a meaningless babble of formless noise, and the deafening rattle of the loose change in my hand as I went to pay the barman so stunned me that I felt I could barely lift my glass. Exposure to Morphogenesis seemed to have altered the way I processed sound information, reducing words to gibberish and investing random elements of the general hubbub with a peculiar and disorientating significance. If someone had asked me a question, I'm not sure I would have remembered how to speak. Going back up the stairs for the second half, the sounds of my own footsteps on the floorboards were terrifyingly enormous, and I settled into a seat not a little shaken by the experience. When Morphogenesis lurched into life once more, everything was somehow different. The music became one with the sounds of buses rumbling alone the road outside, and in the quieter moments, the minute noises made by the pub cat jumping from one creaking chair to another seemed inexplicably complicitous in the whole experience, as if the group had somehow punctured the mental filter that separates sense from the senseless. Outside I raved about the gig to Mike so vociferously I think he assumed I was being sarcastic.
I've seen Morphogenesis and its various members in different combinations a few times since, though Mike was never invited to play with them again, and I own a couple of CDs and a vinyl copy of their 1986 debut Formative Causation. But nothing has ever equalled the power of my first experience of the group. Going to see them at London Musicians' Collective and ICA shows opened up a whole world of music that I would previously have dismissed out of hand. And though I now realise Morphogenesis aren't such an incredible maverick one-off, being part of a tradition you can trace back via AMM to John Cage, I think they purged me of a natural suspicion of the avant garde in all its forms, though this has led me down as many blind alleys as it has taken me to treasured places. My all time top 100 albums would still be mainly a predictable checklist of classic leftfield rock, but sometimes I find myself curiously engaged and thrilled by the sound of engines, generators, rushing water or even my own heartbeat, and I'm suddenly back on the staircase of the China Pig, caught somewhere between feeling conned and feeling converted.
Stewart Lee
2000-01-01T16:26:48+00:00
In the early 90s multi-instrumentalist Mike Cosgrave was my flatmate in a shared post-student house in Tooting, South London. Today Mike has just released his third album, Deepwater Dropoff, with Celtic folk fusion group Sin è. Early line-ups of the group used to rehearse in our spare room, drowning out afternoon editions of Countdown as the rest of us sat downstairs wondering what to do with our lives. Sin è might have been closest to Mike's heart, but the part time metallurgist and would-be musician couldn't afford to be choosy. At one time Devon born Mike was simultaneously the least South American member of salsa group Asi Y Asa, the most conspicuously non-African contributor to Love Isaacs's Maha, and the token gentile guitarist in comedian Jim Tavares's Jewish Heavy Metal group Guns 'N' Moses. Thus it was with little excitement that I arrived at the China Pig jazz club, upstairs over an East London pub, on a bleak November night, to watch Mike sit in on guitar with something called Morphogenesis, the free music group of a bloke called Clive Hall who Mike had met in a jazz piano evening class at Morley College. "Come along," he said, "I don't know what it will be like but you might get something out of it." "So, this is what a jazz gig is like," I thought to myself contemptuously, ascending into a dreary upstairs room where a dozen or so solitary men nursed drinks in silent anticipation. Though one of them was conspicuously and copiously facially pierced, I couldn't imagine myself bumping into any of these people at the bar of any of my usual indie rock haunts. Then the strangeness started to set in, as I became aware that the cluster of discarded rubbish and dishevelled lab apparatus set up...
Doug Shipton roots resolutely through second hand shops worldwide, scoring impossible obscurities for the Finders Keepers label, which offloads Hungarian Seventies funk, Turkish Sixties psychedelia, Australian biker movie soundtracks, Czech prog, and Iranian acid-folk onto jaded hipsters.
Diggers like Shipton seem drawn, almost morbidly, to the vainglorious attempts by artists far from the perceived epicentres of pop culture to assimilate then dominant Western styles into local idioms, and here he stitches forty-five snatches of such sounds into a seamless, kaleidoscopic, fifty-six minute trip through time and space, defying taste, mocking geography and shredding the Gergorian calendar.
Stewart Lee
2011-05-16T22:06:03+01:00
Doug Shipton roots resolutely through second hand shops worldwide, scoring impossible obscurities for the Finders Keepers label, which offloads Hungarian Seventies funk, Turkish Sixties psychedelia, Australian biker movie soundtracks, Czech prog, and Iranian acid-folk onto jaded hipsters. Diggers like Shipton seem drawn, almost morbidly, to the vainglorious attempts by artists far from the perceived epicentres of pop culture to assimilate then dominant Western styles into local idioms, and here he stitches forty-five snatches of such sounds into a seamless, kaleidoscopic, fifty-six minute trip through time and space, defying taste, mocking geography and shredding the Gergorian calendar.
Stewart Lee is back on the road after three years, and he comes back wonderfully refreshed and on marvellous form with this double header, Tornado/Snowflake.
Tornado, the first hour, starts with Lee reading out the wrong blurb that his show Comedy Vehicle was given on Netflix. It actually describes the B-movie Sharknado, in which sharks rain from the sky. The joke is teased out and weaves through the hour, as he chisels away at a favourite subject in his work, his perceived standing in comedy. Would anybody notice if they tuned in to his show after reading that description?
The mention of Netflix allows Lee to ruminate on the relationship between comedic talent and commercial worth, so he names names. Of course Ricky Gervais and Jimmy Carr are targets, but others too. There's a set piece about US comic Dave Chappelle, which, in typical Lee style, moves from description of fact to sublimely surreal invention as he describes an evening that starts backstage at Leicester Square Theatre and results a scary chase around Soho. This being Lee, he manages to get a fine Brexit joke in the telling of the tale as well.
In Snowflake, it's Tony Parsons, Ricky Gervais (again) and Phoebe Waller-Bridge who get it in the neck. The first is demolished in a gloriously pedantic essay on grammar, while Gervais is parodied for “saying the unsayable” in a lengthy riff that has no actual words, and Waller-Bridge is ridiculed for her “discovery” of addressing the audience directly. To be fair, she doesn't claim this, but Lee nicely deconstructs the iconic status bestowed on her as he acts out how everything from Shakespeare to weather forecasters may have looked if they had not had the same lightbulb moment.
There's so much comedy packed in that one could almost miss the deeper layers of Lee's material. But it's there, in the seemingly throwaway lines, or a detail in a lengthy tale, as he makes a deep dive into the post-PC age, and what those of a liberal bent are to make of it. But he likes to wrongfoot and tease the audience: as he slyly jokes at the top of the show, his fans have been "starved of the opportunity to participate in mass agreement" since he was last on tour.
While the trademarks of Stewart Lee shows – the sarcasm, the surreal invention, the faux self-regard and obsession with his place in the comedy firmament – are very much present here, he also introduces new elements to his performance: a playful physicality and literary spoofs. Despite the Alan Bennett section, complete with a passable imitation, slightly outstaying its welcome, he's on top form and it's great to have him back
Stewart Lee
2019-11-19T12:17:19+00:00
Stewart Lee is back on the road after three years, and he comes back wonderfully refreshed and on marvellous form with this double header, Tornado/Snowflake. Tornado, the first hour, starts with Lee reading out the wrong blurb that his show Comedy Vehicle was given on Netflix. It actually describes the B-movie Sharknado, in which sharks rain from the sky. The joke is teased out and weaves through the hour, as he chisels away at a favourite subject in his work, his perceived standing in comedy. Would anybody notice if they tuned in to his show after reading that description? The mention of Netflix allows Lee to ruminate on the relationship between comedic talent and commercial worth, so he names names. Of course Ricky Gervais and Jimmy Carr are targets, but others too. There's a set piece about US comic Dave Chappelle, which, in typical Lee style, moves from description of fact to sublimely surreal invention as he describes an evening that starts backstage at Leicester Square Theatre and results a scary chase around Soho. This being Lee, he manages to get a fine Brexit joke in the telling of the tale as well. In Snowflake, it's Tony Parsons, Ricky Gervais (again) and Phoebe Waller-Bridge who get it in the neck. The first is demolished in a gloriously pedantic essay on grammar, while Gervais is parodied for “saying the unsayable” in a lengthy riff that has no actual words, and Waller-Bridge is ridiculed for her “discovery” of addressing the audience directly. To be fair, she doesn't claim this, but Lee nicely deconstructs the iconic status bestowed on her as he acts out how everything from Shakespeare to weather forecasters may have looked if they had not had the same lightbulb moment. There's so much comedy packed in that one could almost...
Deadpan, unfazed, poker-face comic Stewart Lee is exactly the same in interviews as on stage. He talks slowly, rarely changes pitch and delivers long answers, usually with a sardonic payoff.
When he laughs, you take a deep breath: a small part of him, far below the surface, might actually be enjoying himself.
"I think it's funny when a comedian does a miserable joke then steps out of character to let you know it's a joke," he says, speaking to The Guide from Hackney.
"I like it when they hold their nerve."
Often it is the listeners who need to hold their nerve after a Lee workout.
"I don't want to be their friend. I want them to know I am going to do the show whatever. It's not necessarily to please them but if they like it they are welcome to enjoy it."
He breaks into a childish laugh and admits that be it on stage in Sheffield or Glasgow or Brighton, with off-the-cuff prods or more formal and stylistic methods and longer jokes, he likes to see how far he can push the crowd.
"It's good fun getting something to work that you thought wouldn't."
He often gets criticised because his material confirms the prejudices and reaffirms the beliefs that people already have. Two nights of Brighton crowds, much of whom could be called his target market, sounds right up that street.
"Brighton was one of the first places to really pick up with me. But it's funny, you say ‘target market', and you'd think it would be. The stereotype of my audience is Guardian-reading liberals, but actually over the past year it has become a lot more diverse.
"I like to pretend it is all Guardian-reading liberals, and to berate them for their predictability in coming to see me, but I think it's slightly more jumbled up than that now."
That is partly thanks to his hugely successful BBC show Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle.
"In Edinburgh I noticed there were a lot of shirt-wearing lads coming in, the sort of people you would expect would be at Jimmy Carr, wanting their photo taken with me."
New audiences are the last thing on his mind.
He's never done panel shows or chat shows and avoids social media.
Last year's Carpet Remnant World was two hours of a man at the point of breakdown, looking at the pointlessness of his life. Worrying about getting older, wondering what he had to write about. The show's conceit was that it was about nothing because very little happened to Lee.
"But it was about that exact thing: the idea of who are you if you are a parent, an observer of life, what are you supposed to talk about? It met that problem head on."
Lee artfully weaved a complex narrative over two hours.
"I've done that once – and at the moment I am trying to work out if there is a way of carrying the flavour of that into what I write for the next series of Comedy Vehicle, which is what this tour is.
"This tour will become series three of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, and at the moment I have one half hour which is about that feeling of nullification that being a parent gives you."
He has two children, aged two and six, with the recent Foster's Comedy Award winner, Bridget Christie. A gag in Carpet Remnant World ran as follows: "Winning a British comedy award is like having a sign around your neck saying, ‘Hey d****, come to this!"
Did he pass on the advice?
"I do worry, as anyone worries, that if you have an award you don't necessarily want people coming to see the award winner, because it is inevitably going to be a disappointment for them.
"I remember when Phil Nichol, who is a great comic, got the Perrier Award and a load of people came along and were angry and hated it.
"It was the same when I directed The Mighty Boosh in Edinburgh in 2000. After the award nominations were announced, all these people started coming to see it and there was silence because the wrong people came."
Lee has many signs around his neck. In 1990, barely out of Oxford, he won the Hackney Empire New Act Of The Year competition.
In 2012, Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle won a BAFTA for Best Comedy Programme.
And there was little except admiration from other humanists (and abuse from Christians) for his spoof musical, Jerry Springer: The Opera.
Neither Lee not Christie were aware that the latter's show, A Bic For Her, had the buzz around Edinburgh this year though.
"We don't go out at night and talk to anyone. I also imagine the sort of satirical articles I have written about the Foster's and Perrier awards would count against her.
"But it'll make it easier for us to organise our lives, and as I start to visibly fade away and become prematurely senile it would be great if she could do a tour next year."
He might even be able to tour biennially now.
"What I would like to do is do it every other year now and my wife could do the years in between.
"As I get older I find it harder to have ideas, partly because I dismiss things out of hand more quickly, and partly because nothing really happens to me any more.
"I don't have adventures. I don't interact with culture in any way. I just read newspapers and look after children. I don't have any experiences that I can write about so it's harder to come up with things."
So expect more invention from the comic's comic, because children are not a good source, for two reasons.
"Firstly: It is a fairly clichéd, well-worn subject. Secondly: it is someone else's life. The stuff I do ends up on television and YouTube now, so I can't talk about them because it is their lives, and their friends' parents will see it.
"Your children are a brilliant comic resource in your life, but they are other people so I don't think it's fair to go into too much detail. They're not a resource for me to pillage."
And while "the lack of material" means the first few weeks of a new show can be frightening, at least he gets a break from the offspring.
"At the beginning of a new show you feel sick and frightened. But by the time I get to Brighton I will be all right. And I do really enjoy it. Because for three hours no one is asking you any questions or getting you to do things or talking to you. So it's quite relaxing really."
Stewart Lee
2013-09-16T18:09:23+01:00
Deadpan, unfazed, poker-face comic Stewart Lee is exactly the same in interviews as on stage. He talks slowly, rarely changes pitch and delivers long answers, usually with a sardonic payoff. When he laughs, you take a deep breath: a small part of him, far below the surface, might actually be enjoying himself. "I think it's funny when a comedian does a miserable joke then steps out of character to let you know it's a joke," he says, speaking to The Guide from Hackney. "I like it when they hold their nerve." Often it is the listeners who need to hold their nerve after a Lee workout. "I don't want to be their friend. I want them to know I am going to do the show whatever. It's not necessarily to please them but if they like it they are welcome to enjoy it." He breaks into a childish laugh and admits that be it on stage in Sheffield or Glasgow or Brighton, with off-the-cuff prods or more formal and stylistic methods and longer jokes, he likes to see how far he can push the crowd. "It's good fun getting something to work that you thought wouldn't." He often gets criticised because his material confirms the prejudices and reaffirms the beliefs that people already have. Two nights of Brighton crowds, much of whom could be called his target market, sounds right up that street. "Brighton was one of the first places to really pick up with me. But it's funny, you say ‘target market', and you'd think it would be. The stereotype of my audience is Guardian-reading liberals, but actually over the past year it has become a lot more diverse. "I like to pretend it is all Guardian-reading liberals, and to berate them for their predictability in coming to see...
Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool: Eastern poetry, mushrooms and Schoenberg's composition classes emerged as recurring themes in Lee's randomly ordered readings from John Cage's anthology
Comedian, Observer commentator and experimental-music fan Stewart Lee has a great line about the branch of Nando's that displaced his favourite jazz club: "They ought to introduce a new menu which, through improvisation and chance procedure, redefines the parameters of what chicken could be."
His current project uses improvisation and chance procedure to redefine what a standup gig might become. In truth, it's not a standup show at all, given that Lee is seated and reading from a script - not his own, but John Cage's anthology of short stories, epigrams and mini-essays which the composer recorded in 1959 while his regular collaborator, David Tudor, performed improvised music in another room.
The minute-long readings, shuffled and read out in random order, produce an effect similar to riffling through the card index system of Cage's subconscious. Recurrent themes that emerged from this performance included musings on eastern poetry, Cage's scientific interest in mushrooms and recollections of Schoenberg's composition classes at UCLA, including a great piece of advice conveyed to a struggling young pianist that the key to playing a Beethoven sonata without mistakes is to avoid making any.
With the 60-second duration of each reading dictated by a stopwatch, Lee's delivery ranged from Pinteresque ponderousness to racing-commentator gabble; while the experienced Cage authorities and improvisers Tania Chen and Steve Beresford provided an entirely unrelated accompaniment using a prepared piano, a pair of Stylophones and bright, plastic laptops designed to teach children to spell. Some of Beresford's more alarming interjections might have been taken for signals to evacuate the building; as for the likelihood of jazz chicken appearing at Nando's, John Cage was once spotted in the Huddersfield branch of Pizza Hut, so stranger things have occurred.
Stewart Lee
2014-03-30T21:51:23+01:00
Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool: Eastern poetry, mushrooms and Schoenberg's composition classes emerged as recurring themes in Lee's randomly ordered readings from John Cage's anthology Comedian, Observer commentator and experimental-music fan Stewart Lee has a great line about the branch of Nando's that displaced his favourite jazz club: "They ought to introduce a new menu which, through improvisation and chance procedure, redefines the parameters of what chicken could be." His current project uses improvisation and chance procedure to redefine what a standup gig might become. In truth, it's not a standup show at all, given that Lee is seated and reading from a script - not his own, but John Cage's anthology of short stories, epigrams and mini-essays which the composer recorded in 1959 while his regular collaborator, David Tudor, performed improvised music in another room. The minute-long readings, shuffled and read out in random order, produce an effect similar to riffling through the card index system of Cage's subconscious. Recurrent themes that emerged from this performance included musings on eastern poetry, Cage's scientific interest in mushrooms and recollections of Schoenberg's composition classes at UCLA, including a great piece of advice conveyed to a struggling young pianist that the key to playing a Beethoven sonata without mistakes is to avoid making any. With the 60-second duration of each reading dictated by a stopwatch, Lee's delivery ranged from Pinteresque ponderousness to racing-commentator gabble; while the experienced Cage authorities and improvisers Tania Chen and Steve Beresford provided an entirely unrelated accompaniment using a prepared piano, a pair of Stylophones and bright, plastic laptops designed to teach children to spell. Some of Beresford's more alarming interjections might have been taken for signals to evacuate the building; as for the likelihood of jazz chicken appearing at Nando's, John Cage was once spotted in the Huddersfield branch...
Self-billed ‘90s comedian’ and ‘41st best stand up ever’– Stewart Lee – returned to Salford’s Lyric Theatre on Saturday afternoon with A Room with a Stew. His distant, arrogant, passive-aggressive onstage persona culminated in him declaring to the audience, “no one is equipped to review me”. This is because no one can fully understand the nuances of a performance of “high risk Brechtian theatre”. The routine consisted of half an hour of “Islamaphobic observational comedy” (in response to public demand), half an hour on urine, 45 minutes on UKIP, and finally, the Stewart Lee staple: the state of comedy. The state of comedy ‘bit’ was accompanied by the customary mental breakdown.
John Coltrane’s 15 minute avant-garde jazz interpretation of ‘My Favourite Things’ was played on repeat, and at full volume, in the half hour before Lee’s arrival. The show then began with a 15 minute introduction outlining the structure of the show and ridiculing two latecomers in the front row for buying their tickets on Gumtree for £80: “It’s not worth 80 quid, this. It’s barely even worth the 21 quid everyone else paid.”
Lee also displayed antipathy towards people bringing friends and lovers – an action that was seen to compromise audience quality. He described his ideal audience as one which responded to every joke with, “well, it’s a complex issue”, and one which had passed a history exam on arrival at the venue. As Lee stated in his TV series last year: “I’m not interested in laughs. I’m interested in creating a temporary liberal consensus that bursts on contact with air.”
As “the Lee Mack of cultural relativism”, Lee delivered his signature mix of Ted Chippington-style lowbrow and multifaceted highbrow. When north of the Watford Gap, Lee deliberately constructs an onstage persona of ‘social difference’ – in which the audience are comically treated with utter contempt. At the Lowry, his core following of “liberal Guardian readers” represented less the norm and more a diaspora. Furthermore, he suggested that all the young people present in the audience should leave, and return to their hobbies of Minecraft and bondage sex.
The show’s funniest moment came when the latecomers were asked to name an obscure country carrying no cultural stereotypes. The Gumtree customers chose Qatar – the choice was reluctantly accepted. Twenty minutes on his friend Lesley only recently discovering he was in fact Qatari followed. This was in spite of the fact that Lesley had participated in stereotypical Qatari traditions all his life – for example, setting fire to a puffin in a peddle bin, the ritual of pouring 19 month old beakers of urine while humming ‘Three Lions’, listening to Qatari radio under the bedclothes in the 1970s (this included Lee making goat noises for 5 continuous minutes), and nailing a fez to a llama’s head.
Harking back to his own satirical categorisation of satire as “anything with animals in it” in last year’s Comedy Vehicle, the hilarious UKIP routine revolved around his cat, named ‘Paul Nuttalls from the UKIPs’, and included 200 mini England flags and no toilet paper. Stew lives in multicultural Hackney – a London borough he describes as “like Jerusalem but more violent”. His three closest ‘neighbours’ are a 70 year old Rastafarian, an 85 year old Pakistani, and a 95 year old Jew – all of which were featured in the UKIP section.
After accusing comedy audiences (“like you people”) of murdering “all the dead comedians” due to inconsistent reactions to jokes, a heckler smugly suggested ‘Stew’ take his own life. Ten seconds of genuine anger from Lee followed.
Despite this moment of antagonism, A Room with a Stew was a hilarious and hugely entertaining show. I urge anyone reading this to wade through Stewart Lee’s brilliant back-catalogue and to tune in to Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle Series 4, to be aired on BBC 2 early next year.
Published in The Mancunion
Stewart Lee
2015-02-16T01:03:21+00:00
Self-billed ‘90s comedian’ and ‘41st best stand up ever’– Stewart Lee – returned to Salford’s Lyric Theatre on Saturday afternoon with A Room with a Stew. His distant, arrogant, passive-aggressive onstage persona culminated in him declaring to the audience, “no one is equipped to review me”. This is because no one can fully understand the nuances of a performance of “high risk Brechtian theatre”. The routine consisted of half an hour of “Islamaphobic observational comedy” (in response to public demand), half an hour on urine, 45 minutes on UKIP, and finally, the Stewart Lee staple: the state of comedy. The state of comedy ‘bit’ was accompanied by the customary mental breakdown. John Coltrane’s 15 minute avant-garde jazz interpretation of ‘My Favourite Things’ was played on repeat, and at full volume, in the half hour before Lee’s arrival. The show then began with a 15 minute introduction outlining the structure of the show and ridiculing two latecomers in the front row for buying their tickets on Gumtree for £80: “It’s not worth 80 quid, this. It’s barely even worth the 21 quid everyone else paid.” Lee also displayed antipathy towards people bringing friends and lovers – an action that was seen to compromise audience quality. He described his ideal audience as one which responded to every joke with, “well, it’s a complex issue”, and one which had passed a history exam on arrival at the venue. As Lee stated in his TV series last year: “I’m not interested in laughs. I’m interested in creating a temporary liberal consensus that bursts on contact with air.” As “the Lee Mack of cultural relativism”, Lee delivered his signature mix of Ted Chippington-style lowbrow and multifaceted highbrow. When north of the Watford Gap, Lee deliberately constructs an onstage persona of ‘social difference’ – in which...
The 2007/8 show was recorded at The Stand, Glasgow on April 7th '08 and was released on 28th of July through Real Talent.
You can buy online at amazon, play, etc.
Here's all the press from the tour.
It's come out really well and there's some good extras including a 45 minute interview conducted by Johnny Vegas and Stewart's performance at Pestival - 'the international Arts Pestival dedicated to raising awareness of the integral role insects play in the global ecosystem'.
Stewart Lee
2017-01-21T20:27:17+00:00
The 2007/8 show was recorded at The Stand, Glasgow on April 7th '08 and was released on 28th of July through Real Talent. You can buy online at amazon, play, etc. Here's all the press from the tour. It's come out really well and there's some good extras including a 45 minute interview conducted by Johnny Vegas and Stewart's performance at Pestival - 'the international Arts Pestival dedicated to raising awareness of the integral role insects play in the global ecosystem'.
"This is clearly the weakest of the four series you've done... is that deliberate?" asks Chris Morris' hostile interrogator, but, joking aside, this is a weaker episode than last week. Perhaps it has something to do with the subject: Islamaphobia
Stewart Lee
2016-03-10T15:27:58+00:00
"This is clearly the weakest of the four series you've done... is that deliberate?" asks Chris Morris' hostile interrogator, but, joking aside, this is a weaker episode than last week. Perhaps it has something to do with the subject: Islamaphobia
https://www.stewartlee.co.uk/slcv4/tv-pick/
You'd think the number of forgotten talents to dig up, canonise and induct into the music hall of fame would be finite. The 1990s have seen the back catalogues of Gram Parsons, Nick Drake and Sandy Denny annotated and anthologised. By now there's a familiar pattern to these critical resurrections. Stage one involves the CD reissues, and a chunky hardback biography. Stage two sees our abandoned Lazarus-like hero made the subject of a tribute album by various hip young alternative artists. And stage three sees the bloke from the Lemonheads and/or the woman from Throwing Muses citing said talent as their key influence, before the media looks for a fresh corpse to re-animate. But despite this, nobody could have foreseen the current flurry of interest surrounding the podgy Texan drunkard Bob Wills, the almost undisputed King of the Western Swing, and his legacy of literally hundreds of hissy two-and-a-half-minute tunes.
The country music critic Tad Richards called Wills's blend of country and big band jazz "the first fusion, the first crossover", but it accurately reflects the cross-pollinated environment he grew up in. Born in east Texas in 1905 to a poor farming family, most of whom played the fiddle, Wills learned blues songs from the cotton pickers he worked alongside, heard jazz horns blowing across the fields from his black neighbours, and imbibed a weird hybrid of the music of his friends and family's historic homelands - German polkas, Mexican waltzes and Scottish folk - at Texan square dances. By his teens, young Bob was stepping in for his fiddle-playing father when he was too drunk to perform with his band, and at 16 he headed east on a freight train, winning fiddle-playing competitions on a borrowed instrument in between stints as a barber, his love of music and its attendant hard living at odds with a desire to train as a preacher.
Last year, with Jonathan Cape's publication of Lone Star Swing, by the Somerset Maugham award-winning writer Duncan McLean, Wills was well on the way to fulfilling the first stage of becoming a cult figure. Having been bewitched by a Bob Wills record he found in an Edinburgh junkshop, McLean left his native Orkney to drive around Texas with money from his award's travel bursary, tracking down various bewildered nonagenarian associates of Wills. The shaky pickers and players recalled the musical scene in which they cut their teeth with varying, and endearingly rendered, degrees of clarity.
In the 1920s and 1930s music and commerce walked unashamedly hand in hand, Wills playing with the Aladdin Laddies for a radio show sponsored by the Aladdin Lamp Company, and flogging flour for the Burrus Mill and Elevator Company as one of the fabulously named Light Crust Doughboys. Today the charts ring to the sounds of the Pepsi Max Spice Girls in all but name, and Wills should be remembered as a commercial innovator if nothing else, eventually buying his own radio slots and selling them to the highest-bidding sponsor.
His band, the Texas Playboys, formed from Doughboys renegades, played short tunes to maximise the profits of juke joints where floozies charged partying field hands by the dance. Wills would nevertheless force half a dozen or so hot jazz solos in between the vocals of an ever-changing string of handsome crooners, conducting a band often 15 strong with magical swings of his bow. By the 1940s he was a household name.
Even so, when expatriate Welsh musician Jon Langford chanced upon a secondhand Bob Wills album in a Chicago thrift store some years back he had no idea who Wills was, or that he had just made a life-changing purchase. Last week saw the release of Bloodshot Records' The Pine Valley Cosmonauts Salute the Majesty of Bob Wills, for which Langford assembled a group of Chicago roots rock and post-punk luminaries to render lovingly anew all Wills's greatest hits. Steel Guitar Rag affirms the Playboys' genuinely innovative use of early guitar amplification; Robbie Fulks' vocal on Across the Alley from the Alamo really swings; and Brett Sparks, of the alternative-country art-school weirdos the Handsome Family, supplies suitably skewed singing on Roly Poly, a Wills original about an indiscriminate obese child, "Daddy's little fatty", who "eats everything from soup to hay". Stage two of Wills's return is complete.
Langford's career, meanwhile, has taken him from Leeds proto-punks the Mekons in 1977 to his Bob Wills album on a trajectory of unnerving synchronicities. Splitting at the end of the 1970s, disillusioned with trying to ply their wares in an increasingly thuggish marketplace, the Mekons re-emerged in the mid-1980s experimenting, initially uneasily, with roots musics, and eventually emigrating to America, where the Mekons and the Waco Brothers, Langford's country-rock supergroup side project, are held in the same esteem as the Clash.
"A prophet is without honour in his own country," he laughs, without a trace of bitterness. Oddly, when he happened upon McLean's book, Langford e-mailed him to chat online about Wills, only to find that the previous day McLean had been at an Inverness gallery, viewing an exhibition of Langford's western-style etchings.
Attempting to analyse the lure of Bob Wills, Langford admits some confusion. "It's weird. Bob Wills didn't die young and he didn't leave a particularly beautiful corpse, but he and the band would come off three months' tour and then record 40 songs in a day, which I suppose appeals to me as an aging punk rocker. But I like the fact that he was a traditional fiddle player experimenting with swing music. He was completely open to anything. And he was an amazing character. Onstage the band were trying to impress him, not the audience, and he'd get furious if anyone played the same solo twice."
But maybe Wills won't make stage three of the mythologisation process, all the same. The facts of his life are too well documented, and he's no shadowy Robert Johnson figure, although accounts can be contradictory. In her book Bob Wills Remembered, Rosetta Wills, a daughter by one of his four marriages, speaks of Wills's unpredictable generosity, and of how he kept a horse for each of the Texas Playboys at his ranch, even though many of them couldn't even ride. However, when Duncan McLean mentioned Wills to Lucille Kleypas, wife of one-time Playboys pianist Walt Kleypas, she responded with the damning indictment: "Bob Wills? Bob Wills was a big fat slob!"
There's already a surfeit of Bob Wills on CD, and Fremaux Records' Western Swing 1928-1944 is a good introduction to the overall scene. Once you shake your late 20th-century suspicions, there's an undeniable power to this music, but be warned of its addictive quality. McLean himself was unavailable for comment for this piece.
"He's gone to Texas again," said his publisher.
Stewart Lee
1998-11-22T17:25:26+00:00
You'd think the number of forgotten talents to dig up, canonise and induct into the music hall of fame would be finite. The 1990s have seen the back catalogues of Gram Parsons, Nick Drake and Sandy Denny annotated and anthologised. By now there's a familiar pattern to these critical resurrections. Stage one involves the CD reissues, and a chunky hardback biography. Stage two sees our abandoned Lazarus-like hero made the subject of a tribute album by various hip young alternative artists. And stage three sees the bloke from the Lemonheads and/or the woman from Throwing Muses citing said talent as their key influence, before the media looks for a fresh corpse to re-animate. But despite this, nobody could have foreseen the current flurry of interest surrounding the podgy Texan drunkard Bob Wills, the almost undisputed King of the Western Swing, and his legacy of literally hundreds of hissy two-and-a-half-minute tunes. The country music critic Tad Richards called Wills's blend of country and big band jazz "the first fusion, the first crossover", but it accurately reflects the cross-pollinated environment he grew up in. Born in east Texas in 1905 to a poor farming family, most of whom played the fiddle, Wills learned blues songs from the cotton pickers he worked alongside, heard jazz horns blowing across the fields from his black neighbours, and imbibed a weird hybrid of the music of his friends and family's historic homelands - German polkas, Mexican waltzes and Scottish folk - at Texan square dances. By his teens, young Bob was stepping in for his fiddle-playing father when he was too drunk to perform with his band, and at 16 he headed east on a freight train, winning fiddle-playing competitions on a borrowed instrument in between stints as a barber, his love of music and its...
Here's a special edition, pared down version of the our bloated Fist of Fun set.
This two disc set contains just the episodes and commentary tracks.
Finally, people with only a causial interest in early Lee and Herring can see what the fuss is all about.
It's Fist of Fun! And here are your hosts. One is Stewart Lee and the other one is known as Richard Herring.
And you can see all 12 episodes from both series of their crazy adventure on this double disc set.
Here's just some of the nostalgia on offer
- see if Stew gets his Moon on a Stick
- meet the Real Rod Hull (he is him!)
- revisit Simon Quinlank's hobbies
- see inside the Julia Sawalha shrine
- hear Rich say 'ahhh', and then Stew say 'not ahhh'.
The show features young versions of Peter Baynam, Kevin Eldon, Ben Moor, Ronni Ancona, Alistair McGowan and many other famous faces.
But that's not all - as a lovely bonus, modern day Rich and Stew have recorded commentary tracks for every episode and there are commentary tracks from Kevin Eldon, Ben Moor, and one from the Real Rod Hull and Simon Quinlank.
Stewart Lee
2019-03-17T11:04:58+00:00
Here's a special edition, pared down version of the our bloated Fist of Fun set. This two disc set contains just the episodes and commentary tracks. Finally, people with only a causial interest in early Lee and Herring can see what the fuss is all about. It's Fist of Fun! And here are your hosts. One is Stewart Lee and the other one is known as Richard Herring. And you can see all 12 episodes from both series of their crazy adventure on this double disc set. Here's just some of the nostalgia on offer - see if Stew gets his Moon on a Stick - meet the Real Rod Hull (he is him!) - revisit Simon Quinlank's hobbies - see inside the Julia Sawalha shrine - hear Rich say 'ahhh', and then Stew say 'not ahhh'. The show features young versions of Peter Baynam, Kevin Eldon, Ben Moor, Ronni Ancona, Alistair McGowan and many other famous faces. But that's not all - as a lovely bonus, modern day Rich and Stew have recorded commentary tracks for every episode and there are commentary tracks from Kevin Eldon, Ben Moor, and one from the Real Rod Hull and Simon Quinlank.
Disappointed rock tourists, wandering Carnaby Street forty years too late unaware the beat had moved East, could still stumble into The Fallen Leaves' 12 Bar Club residency and drink from the source. The sharp-dressed quartet play the hook-heavy sixties sounds of The Who and The Pretty Things in the seventies punk style of The Jam or Subway Sect, for whom guitarist Rob Symmons once slashed strings, through the treble-heavy fuzz haze of Eighties DIY indie-pop. If Only We'd Known is thirty-three minutes of genetically-engineered punk-pop perfection.
Stewart Lee
2013-03-31T19:29:06+01:00
Disappointed rock tourists, wandering Carnaby Street forty years too late unaware the beat had moved East, could still stumble into The Fallen Leaves' 12 Bar Club residency and drink from the source. The sharp-dressed quartet play the hook-heavy sixties sounds of The Who and The Pretty Things in the seventies punk style of The Jam or Subway Sect, for whom guitarist Rob Symmons once slashed strings, through the treble-heavy fuzz haze of Eighties DIY indie-pop. If Only We'd Known is thirty-three minutes of genetically-engineered punk-pop perfection.
Such is Stewart Lee’s influence on comedy, not only can he fill a 2,000-seat venue amid all the rest of the Fringe hoopla, but he can also persuade thousands of people to vote that an obscure Japanese avant-garde troupe they’ve never seen is the best comedy show ever – and yet do it in the name of integrity.
Well, at his Silver Stewbilee to mark his 25 years on the Fringe – or, more truthfully, to launch his new book How I Escaped My Certain Fate – comedy aficionados finally got to see what they were backing, with Frank Chickens’ first Fringe appearance since they were nominated for the Perrier that same year Lee first attended the festival.
He picked their name semi-randomly to illustrate how the Foster’s-backed poll to find the ‘comedy god’ of the past 30 years was biased towards modern favourites, unaware that the group was even still performing, albeit in a revised form. Seventeen of them, all in costumes, filled the stage at the close of this anniversary gig, and Michael McIntyre, they most certainly are not.
Thankfully, though, they are not pretentious tripe either – which must have been a real fear. With silly lyrics seemingly chosen for their sound rather than their meaning, they execute tightly choreographed dance routines that are as beautiful as they are bizarre. Nonetheless three songs, including their ‘greatest hit’ We Are Ninja (Not Geisha) and the preposterous My Husband Is A Spaceman, was probably enough to allow the audience to witness the spectacle without being left too baffled.
It was an unusual ending to a showcase that, despite all the hype about exciting mystery guests, was a largely predictable line-up of his friends who are already at the Fringe, all pretending to be someone else: Simon Munnery, Paul Putner, the actor Kevin Eldon, and his wife Bridget Christie. However, there were two surprises, one planned, one apparently not.
Eldon kicked off the show with smug Guardianista Paul Hamilton, the man who put the ‘wet’ in ‘po-wet’, delivering his verses about the real injustices in the world – such as inconsiderate campers at Glastonbury.
Putner adopted his long-forgotten guise of Earl Stevens, the slick American comic who never bothered to check his references before he came on stage, leaving him with a line in observational comedy about things no one could have observed. Belting out catchphrases from sitcoms that never made it across the Atlantic while mocking congressmen and Mets players somehow didn’t play with the Edinburgh crowd, even though he insists ‘this stuff killed at the Arkansas Chuckle Hut last week’. This massive in-joke is probably best enjoyed by serious comedy anoraks… so Lee’s audience lapped it up.
Munnery revived Alan Parker: Urban Warrior, still kicking against the system with pithy, often contradictory, slogans – ‘Ignorance is a weapon! Use it’ – and revolutionary placards, illegible to those of us at the back. Despite being a middle-aged man, or perhaps because of it, Parker’s naïve petulance plays as strongly as ever, thanks to whip-smart writing that’s stood the test of time.
Christie opened the second half as A Ant, another one for the cognoscenti, making a point about the tedious stereotypes that still burden female comedians – but combined with lots of deliberately puns around the word ‘ant’.
As for Lee’s own stand-up, the first half comprised the best of his more recent material, and the second a chance to do something newer, which he (inaccurately) predicted wouldn’t go down too well. Like his book, his live comedy now seems to come with sizeable footnotes such as ‘that’s poor choice of material for the start of the show’ or ‘I’m going to try to sell that joke to Channel 4’s Stand Up For The Week as it shows the requisite contempt for the poor’.
The comedy around which this meta-comedy formed firstly involved middle-class middle-aged city people like himself moving to the country only to find themselves desperate for company and entertainment, and secondly and his hilariously provocative routine about Scottish hero William ‘Braveheart’ Wallace, the well-known gay paedophile, which Lee can entirely justify after discovering that he himself is genetically Scottish, in a fine take on the ridiculous arbitrary nature of national pride.
One extended routine dominated the second half, a typically esoteric, elaborate and largely made-up take on charity, his war veteran grandfather and why Russell Howard is responsible for dying children. It may be new material, but aside from a few uncertain moments when he was setting out his stall, it’s already gelling well, culminating in a tidy punchline – albeit one taken from one of his much older jokes – and even managing a joke at the expense of Amnesty International, the bastards.
This is all delivered with the mastery of repetition and pregnant pauses we expect of Lee, yet still with enough of a twist to defy those very expectations.
Talking of surprises, the first came at the end of the first half, when a vocal heckler started yelling from the stalls ‘Tell us a joke.’ He quickly revealed himself to be Richard Herring, who stormed the stage to Lee’s genuine astonishment: ‘You brought a ticket?’ he gasped
Herring proceeded to berate his former double-act partner for the lies in his memoirs (of sorts) and ripped the volume up in front of his bemused face. It was strange and funny, but over far too quickly, just a tantalising reminder of a great partnership.
The second surprise came towards the end as Eldon reappeared as Tony Rudd, the Seventies character he played in Look Around You who predicted the future of music in 2000 would be the futuristic track Machadaynu. And blow me if he wasn’t backed by Franz bloody Ferdinand – who also performed Do You Want To? and Take Me Out to the audience’s delight.
The band reappeared after the Frank Chickens to help Lee live out a rock star fantasy – performing the lead vocals for a sprightly cover version of a song from Boston punk outfit Mission of Burma. The title? That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate. A good title for a book, that…
Stewart Lee
2010-08-19T21:46:19+01:00
Such is Stewart Lee’s influence on comedy, not only can he fill a 2,000-seat venue amid all the rest of the Fringe hoopla, but he can also persuade thousands of people to vote that an obscure Japanese avant-garde troupe they’ve never seen is the best comedy show ever – and yet do it in the name of integrity. Well, at his Silver Stewbilee to mark his 25 years on the Fringe – or, more truthfully, to launch his new book How I Escaped My Certain Fate – comedy aficionados finally got to see what they were backing, with Frank Chickens’ first Fringe appearance since they were nominated for the Perrier that same year Lee first attended the festival. He picked their name semi-randomly to illustrate how the Foster’s-backed poll to find the ‘comedy god’ of the past 30 years was biased towards modern favourites, unaware that the group was even still performing, albeit in a revised form. Seventeen of them, all in costumes, filled the stage at the close of this anniversary gig, and Michael McIntyre, they most certainly are not. Thankfully, though, they are not pretentious tripe either – which must have been a real fear. With silly lyrics seemingly chosen for their sound rather than their meaning, they execute tightly choreographed dance routines that are as beautiful as they are bizarre. Nonetheless three songs, including their ‘greatest hit’ We Are Ninja (Not Geisha) and the preposterous My Husband Is A Spaceman, was probably enough to allow the audience to witness the spectacle without being left too baffled. It was an unusual ending to a showcase that, despite all the hype about exciting mystery guests, was a largely predictable line-up of his friends who are already at the Fringe, all pretending to be someone else: Simon Munnery, Paul Putner,...
Stewart Lee is probably the most influential comic of the last 30 years. This a fact not lost on him, or indeed his audience, as he repeatedly reminds us during Tornado, the first half of his latest show. He makes The Times’ coronation of him as “the world’s greatest living stand-up” a centrepiece of the ridicule of his own act, alongside the five-star reviews he regularly receives in The Guardian, and has no hesitation in satirising the adulation his audiences have for him. But it’s true – he’s defined intelligent stand-up comedy for at least two decades, and his audiences are not only willing to stay the course with him through many of the more outré techniques he employs, but are actively excited by the prospect of them.
the mechanisms of his stand-up continue to test the same boundaries he’s been exploring for some time now
Indeed, this is where the show flirts with dangerous territory. I’ll avoid covering the content of the material itself, as much of this relies on being unfamiliar to the audience – although all the usual tropes of a Lee show are present. Flights of rage, apparent nervous breakdowns and opaque cultural references are the flesh and bones of his shows, and here are applied gamely in the pursuit of Lee’s bêtes noires – namely the public’s view of his works, and the repositioning of political correctness as wokeness. But the mechanisms of his stand-up continue to test the same boundaries he’s been exploring for some time now. He’s always been fascinated with deconstructing the form, and especially with seeing exactly how far he can push the tension and release at the core of stand-up.
This is what Lee is known and loved for amongst comedy fans – he’s seen as a pioneer, as a fearless innovator and an elevator of the genre to something more than just stand-up. But problems arise when these techniques remain unchanged; he points out the audience’s familiarity with his approach, as ever, but this time it really feels as if we’re right with him – or even one step ahead. Don’t get me wrong, the room is still filled with laughter, and at times it’s impossible not to wonder at the man’s sheer chutzpah, including a nearly 10-minute sketch on edgy comics “saying the unsayable” that includes basically no words. But where does he go from here?
a performer like Lee never really trades off nostalgia, and a left-turn feels more necessary than it’s ever been
The show lacks the unifying thread of some of his more accomplished scripts, and feels at times a little like a best-of. It’s to be expected, I suppose. It’s only natural for comics to return after an enforced 2-year hiatus with material that they know the audience will be receptive to, and Lee’s call-backs to previous routines get the laughs that such in-jokes naturally will. But a performer like Lee never really trades off nostalgia, and a left-turn feels more necessary than it’s ever been. His next show, Basic Lee, begins previewing this autumn, and apparently sees Lee “enter[ing] the post-pandemic era in streamlined solo stand-up mode” after “a decade of ground-breaking high concept shows involving overarched interlinked narratives, massive sets and enormous comedy props.”
The show sounds like exactly the chaser that Snowflake/Tornado naturally implies, and suggests Lee himself is aware of the difficulties of his approach no longer shocking his audience. Either way, the current tour is still a masterful show from a comic that stands head and shoulders above anyone else working in the UK today. His fearlessness remains unparalleled, his gall unmatched, and his set still feels like watching a magic trick. It’s at times excruciating, like a comedy hostage situation, but utterly essential viewing.
Stewart Lee
2022-03-30T18:42:37+01:00
Stewart Lee is probably the most influential comic of the last 30 years. This a fact not lost on him, or indeed his audience, as he repeatedly reminds us during Tornado, the first half of his latest show. He makes The Times’ coronation of him as “the world’s greatest living stand-up” a centrepiece of the ridicule of his own act, alongside the five-star reviews he regularly receives in The Guardian, and has no hesitation in satirising the adulation his audiences have for him. But it’s true – he’s defined intelligent stand-up comedy for at least two decades, and his audiences are not only willing to stay the course with him through many of the more outré techniques he employs, but are actively excited by the prospect of them. the mechanisms of his stand-up continue to test the same boundaries he’s been exploring for some time now Indeed, this is where the show flirts with dangerous territory. I’ll avoid covering the content of the material itself, as much of this relies on being unfamiliar to the audience – although all the usual tropes of a Lee show are present. Flights of rage, apparent nervous breakdowns and opaque cultural references are the flesh and bones of his shows, and here are applied gamely in the pursuit of Lee’s bêtes noires – namely the public’s view of his works, and the repositioning of political correctness as wokeness. But the mechanisms of his stand-up continue to test the same boundaries he’s been exploring for some time now. He’s always been fascinated with deconstructing the form, and especially with seeing exactly how far he can push the tension and release at the core of stand-up. This is what Lee is known and loved for amongst comedy fans – he’s seen as a pioneer, as a...
“Am I right in remembering you cultivate a colony of head lice in your cellar, Lee?” Nicola Bridgens, former artist in residence at London Zoo, for whom I once provided the voice of a depressed black widow in an insect house installation, called me, coveting my Pediculihumanuscapitis.
Ten years ago, my little boy had nits. But if Paley’s divine watchmaker exists, my precocious son argued, then he engineered lice to live in human hair. They were merely following their natures, so we should not exterminate them. Compromising, I decanted some specimens into a fish tank in the cellar, before destroying the rest like a Mexican god.
A Spectator-type dad at kids’ football told me I was “sentimentally prolonging the lives of lice that should perish. God invented threadworm, too,” he snorted. “I suppose I should allow them to party in my arsehole? Artificial improvements in survival statistics of any species preclude growth towards utopia, my friend, as do wheelchair ramps. See you next week, if you can escape your liberal bubble.”
Fellow late capitalists! Soon the market’s cruel spreadsheets will suggest the cost of saving a life outweighs the economic value of a life saved. Gagged medical professionals are already making terrible decisions about who to spare. But my colony of head lice thrives, nurtured on toe-nail clippings and sock skin. Whether my lice have inherent worth or not, for me the coronavirus crisis has given them religious significance.
Predictably, my teenage son no longer loves lice, but here I sit in the subterranean semi-dark, a generous single malt in one hand, a magnifying glass in the other, contemplating the lives of lice. “Where’s Dad?” the family ask upstairs, demanding wearisome interaction. “Oh, I expect he’s in the cellar,” my wife will say, resignedly, “with his fucking lice.”
Sometimes, as Call of Dutyrages above, the light of my mother’s memorial candle flickers through the white bodies of these translucent ghosts and my parasitical companions seem transcendentally beautiful, microscopic, ectoplasmic lobsters, carved from hoarfrost and ice.
I have been engulfed by many similarly odd epiphanies during these long, locked-down days. Last weekend, when Bob Dylan unexpectedly dropped the contemplative psalmody of Murder Most Foul, like many old men, I sat at my desk stunned, the terrifying world temporarily transformed. On Tuesday, bright blue blossom undulated slowly on a sunlit tree and I was transfixed. And on Sunday morning, a discombobulating BBC interview with Michael Gove captivated me, the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster momentarily the equal of lice.
On his west London doorstep, words, many not demonstrably untrue, were falling out of Gove’s unflapped face like molluscs made of sound. But glazed clouds of steam kept scudding over his inscrutable visage. Something hot was coming down the pipe into the front garden drain, out of shot to Gove’s right. Vaporising liquid wafted between Gove’s face and the camera, as if some unseen hand were attempting to wipe away stray flecks of cocaine from his nostrils with a sheet of greaseproof paper. Perhaps someone was emptying a hot bath. Or was Gove’s cohabitant making her morning micturition, like a tethered wayside pony in some 70s Cornish lane, its great, golden gallons heard spattering in doppler effect from the back window of a passing family car?
The problem with trying to write supposedly funny columns during the crisis is the speed news moves. Last week, when I filed on Wednesday, our prime minister seemed fair game, but by publication day he had tested positive, and deserved sympathy. Indeed, the Goves were finally handed their coveted bedpan of influence due to the viral indisposition of Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Vampires Haircut Wall-Spaffer Spunk-Burster Fuck-Business Fuck-the-Families Get-Off-My-Fucking-Laptop Girly-Swot Big-Girl’s-Blouse Chicken-frit Hulk-Smash Noseringed-Crusties Death-Humbug Technology-Lessons Surrender-Bullshit French-Turds Dog-Whistle Get-Stuffed FactcheckUK@CCHQ 88%-lies Get-Brexit-Done Bung-a-Bob-for-Big-Ben’s-Bongs Cocaine-Event Spiritual-Worth Three-Men-and-a-Dog Whatever-It-Takes I-Shook-Hands-With-Everyone Herd-Immunity Johnson.
Having previously hidden from scrutiny inside a fridge, Turds is now hidden from scrutiny inside a virus, perhaps because, last month, he “was at a hospital where, I think, there were actually a few coronavirus cases and I shook hands with everybody, you’ll be pleased to know, and I continue to shake hands, and I think it’s very important that we do”.
Hack standups hoping the ring of truth will nudge their tepid tales over the laughter line preface them with the weight-giving statement: “And this really happened, right.” Likewise Turds, who has spent his political, personal and journalistic life lying, now qualifies important announcements with the words: “I’m going to level with you folks,” a belated admission of the fact that even his followers don’t believe anything he says.
And yet I pity Turds, like me a shallow man in a deep well. “There is such a thing as society,” Turds babbled off-script in isolation, his words unapproved by the swiftly scurried-away Cumming, the PM accidentally refuting 33 years of Thatcherite thinking in a single bound. Doh!
Low-waged employees who would not have vaulted Patel’s threshold are suddenly key workers; foreign nationals toiling for the NHS, many of them piccaninnies or the letterbox-faced, are invited to ignore the expiration of their visas, and their lives, to save the nation that rejects them. What kind of city will we see builded here, in our green and Brexit land, from these ruins? Will it be walled? Or will it be infinite? And will the sewers be blocked with wet wipes and kitchen towels? Just one packet of toilet roll per customer, please! Step away from the hand-sanitiser!! Step away from the hand-sanitiser!!!
“We clutch at straws,” said Bridgens on the phone, “but London lice are resistant to toxins, so might be worth studying as we search for vaccines. And with kids not intermingling they’re in short supply. The world needs your lice, Lee.” Will people still want to hear my 30-minute routine about stupid things Tony Parsons has said when theatres reopen? There must be more to life. Lord, make use of my lice.
Stewart Lee
2020-04-05T17:51:28+01:00
“Am I right in remembering you cultivate a colony of head lice in your cellar, Lee?” Nicola Bridgens, former artist in residence at London Zoo, for whom I once provided the voice of a depressed black widow in an insect house installation, called me, coveting my Pediculi humanus capitis. Ten years ago, my little boy had nits. But if Paley’s divine watchmaker exists, my precocious son argued, then he engineered lice to live in human hair. They were merely following their natures, so we should not exterminate them. Compromising, I decanted some specimens into a fish tank in the cellar, before destroying the rest like a Mexican god. A Spectator-type dad at kids’ football told me I was “sentimentally prolonging the lives of lice that should perish. God invented threadworm, too,” he snorted. “I suppose I should allow them to party in my arsehole? Artificial improvements in survival statistics of any species preclude growth towards utopia, my friend, as do wheelchair ramps. See you next week, if you can escape your liberal bubble.” Fellow late capitalists! Soon the market’s cruel spreadsheets will suggest the cost of saving a life outweighs the economic value of a life saved. Gagged medical professionals are already making terrible decisions about who to spare. But my colony of head lice thrives, nurtured on toe-nail clippings and sock skin. Whether my lice have inherent worth or not, for me the coronavirus crisis has given them religious significance. Predictably, my teenage son no longer loves lice, but here I sit in the subterranean semi-dark, a generous single malt in one hand, a magnifying glass in the other, contemplating the lives of lice. “Where’s Dad?” the family ask upstairs, demanding wearisome interaction. “Oh, I expect he’s in the cellar,” my wife will say, resignedly, “with his fucking lice.”...
It would take some lateral thinking to place Dr Johnson on Jonathan Ross's chat-show sofa, but that was the inspiration for Stewart Lee's new play, Johnson and Boswell - Late but Live. But then, Lee is the man who made the screaming matches and social misfits of Jerry Springer's television show into an Olivier award-winning West End musical, Jerry Springer: the Opera.
Anything is possible with such a fertile mind.
The writer and comedian took Ross's BBC TV show as his starting point when the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh offered him an opportunity to stage a new work.
"I thought it would be funny having Johnson say the things he said then in a modern setting," he says
The play draws on the journals kept by Johnson - one of Britain's greatest men of letters, and one of the world's most famous curmudgeons - and his Scottish friend and future biographer James Boswell as they took a tour of the Highlands and Western Isles in 1773. Both published books about the journey.
Lee, who studied English at Oxford, was familiar with the journals and thinks that they expose a power struggle between Boswell the fan and Boswell the biographer.
"His book made me think of when people interview their heroes - do they let the fan in them take over, or do they try to do a proper interview? And Johnson's book made me think of people like Peter Cook. When he appeared on television he was expected to perform a version of himself - he could either roll with it, or sabotage it by being scathing."
Lee decided to set his play at a book launch, which goes horribly wrong. Boswell thinks he's the main draw, but Johnson misbehaves.
"Boswell and Johnson went to Scotland at an interesting time, just after the Battle of Culloden and the Act of Union. Contrasting that with today, when there's the Scottish Parliament and a new independent identity, seemed a useful device."
"But that all became window-dressing as I got more and more interested in their relationship. In the journals, you see that Boswell tells one kind of story and Johnson tells another, and often they are mutually incompatible."
"I wanted to show what two people are like when they have a different agenda and to question how much we can trust the record of a person's life when it's written by a fan. Did Boswell improve Johnson's witticisms, for example?"
Johnson and Boswell is Lee's second play for the respected Traverse.
"They have these late-night slots to fill, so they let them out to comics," he says with a sardonic humour that hides real modesty.
"I'm 40 next year and have won an Olivier, but I think it's important not to have a sense of entitlement."
Two comedians - Simon Munnery and Miles Jupp - play Johnson and Boswell, but the director, Owen Lewis, has a theatre background. For Lewis, Lee's fresh approach to theatre work has been profitable.
"Stewart looks at things differently to me," he says.
"He's experimental and wants things to be fun and is always going for more laughs, but not at the expense of the drama. And if we think something isn't quite right, he's got another funny line up his sleeve; you really don't work like that with playwrights."
Lee is also performing his new comedy 41st Best Stand-up Ever! nightly at the Udderbelly.
Unlike his 2005 Edinburgh show, which courted further controversy because of its anti-religious content, this is a gentler performance, about other people's perceptions of him after he was voted 41st best stand-up ever on a TV show.
"It's ridiculous, of course, but I wanted to explore how we are judged by others, and what is really of value in life," he says. "I got married last year and we had a baby this year, and it does make you think of where you derive your satisfaction and what is valuable."
When he started in the business nearly 20 years ago, Lee's stage persona was famously grumpy ("Now I'm going grey and have put on two stone I'm allowed to be," he says), but that is fading.
"When you wake up every day and find a little thing laughing at you, it's very difficult to be too serious."
But Lee's unwillingness to create any more rumpuses may have a more mundane explanation.
"Controversy doesn't necessarily sell tickets," he says.
"I'd just like to make enough money to be able to afford the stamp duty on a two-bedroom flat. I love my son dearly, but I don't want to sleep in the same room as him all my life."
Johnson and Boswell - Late but Live is at the Traverse Theatre (0131 228 1404) from tomorrow until Aug 26 (except Aug 13 and 20)
Stewart Lee - 41st Best Stand-Up Ever! is at Udderbelly (0870 745 3083) until Aug 27 (except Aug 15)
Stewart Lee
2007-08-06T19:32:25+01:00
It would take some lateral thinking to place Dr Johnson on Jonathan Ross's chat-show sofa, but that was the inspiration for Stewart Lee's new play, Johnson and Boswell - Late but Live. But then, Lee is the man who made the screaming matches and social misfits of Jerry Springer's television show into an Olivier award-winning West End musical, Jerry Springer: the Opera. Anything is possible with such a fertile mind. The writer and comedian took Ross's BBC TV show as his starting point when the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh offered him an opportunity to stage a new work. "I thought it would be funny having Johnson say the things he said then in a modern setting," he says The play draws on the journals kept by Johnson - one of Britain's greatest men of letters, and one of the world's most famous curmudgeons - and his Scottish friend and future biographer James Boswell as they took a tour of the Highlands and Western Isles in 1773. Both published books about the journey. Lee, who studied English at Oxford, was familiar with the journals and thinks that they expose a power struggle between Boswell the fan and Boswell the biographer. "His book made me think of when people interview their heroes - do they let the fan in them take over, or do they try to do a proper interview? And Johnson's book made me think of people like Peter Cook. When he appeared on television he was expected to perform a version of himself - he could either roll with it, or sabotage it by being scathing." Lee decided to set his play at a book launch, which goes horribly wrong. Boswell thinks he's the main draw, but Johnson misbehaves. "Boswell and Johnson went to Scotland at an interesting time,...
Gilles invites his absolute favourite stand-up comedian, Stewart Lee - who is also a keen record collector - to join him on the show, play some tunes, and tell us about his sources of inspiration. Expect an eclectic range of sounds, from two-tone to freewheeling jazz and punk, plus lots of stories from Lee, ahead of his new show debuting at London’s Alexandra Palace Theatre on the 3rd of February.
Elsewhere in the show, a special bunch of new releases from around the world and unknown gems from Gilles’ archives.
Produced by Reduced Listening for BBC Radio 6 Music
Stewart Lee
2026-01-31T19:35:28+00:00
Gilles invites his absolute favourite stand-up comedian, Stewart Lee - who is also a keen record collector - to join him on the show, play some tunes, and tell us about his sources of inspiration. Expect an eclectic range of sounds, from two-tone to freewheeling jazz and punk, plus lots of stories from Lee, ahead of his new show debuting at London’s Alexandra Palace Theatre on the 3rd of February. Elsewhere in the show, a special bunch of new releases from around the world and unknown gems from Gilles’ archives. Produced by Reduced Listening for BBC Radio 6 Music
https://www.stewartlee.co.uk/mp3/gilles-peterson/
'Hair is important," began Robert Forster, the co-frontman of the Go-Betweens, Australia's criminally underrated band, in an article on haircare for the Manchester fanzine Debris in 1987. "Hair is placed fairly and squarely upon your head, to be admired and cared for. At a younger age, I almost drifted into hairdressing, and thankfully didn't, but I have made a careful and practical study of hair ever since. You need know little more about hair than what I'm about to tell you."
Of course, Forster, a gigantic, glorious, preening flamingo of a man, or his writing partner Grant McLennan, who looks like an affably bewildered plumber's mate alongside such a glamorous figure, could have expounded for hours on other subjects; the subtlety of their songwriting, for example, or how their cultural isolation in suburban 1970s Brisbane allowed them to mix punk rock and folk rock without realising this was forbidden by the London style bibles. But the fact that Forster chose instead to talk at length about hair probably says more about the Go-Betweens' tragic failure to connect with the mass market they obviously deserved than any attempt at reasoned analysis ever could.
Forster and McLennan are currently back in the country for their second joint tour. The Go-Betweens fell apart in 1989, but in 1996 the French magazine Les Inrockuptibles voted them "third best band of the 1980s". Numbers one and two, the Smiths and the Pixies respectively, were obviously unavailable, so it fell to Forster and McLennan to play the celebratory Paris show, and they subsequently toured the world to exultantly appreciative audiences that they assumed had long forgotten them.
"Third Best Band of the 1980s", a typically Go-Betweens accolade, might have made a fine title for their greatest hits collection, but instead it's released this month under the name Bellavista Terrace. "We just wanted to do a kind of K-Tel Best of the Go-Betweens, for people who had never heard us but didn't want to wade through six albums," explains McLennan, "People can put it in their collection next to The Best of Gram Parsons."
McLennan isn't arrogant in citing such lofty company. In the 10 years it's taken the dust to settle, the Go-Betweens' back catalogue has grown in stature, even if it was hopelessly out of step with the plastic pop and stadium rock of the 1980s. A live 1987 radio session included with a limited-edition version of the album reveals the sometime fey folkies as formidable, feral rock'n'roll animals, Lindy Morrison's drums clattering with the chaotic splendour that squeamish 1980s studio engineers usually took great pains to airbrush out.
Also released this month is The Go-Betweens 1978-1979: The Lost Album, a collection of surprisingly sharp demo tapes for an album predating their official debut, Send Me a Lullaby, by two years. Here, Forster, McLennan and the then drummer, Tim Mustapha, played an addictive hybrid of 1960s beat pop and intriguing, writerly wordplay. "We didn't know what we were doing, and I wish we could have done that album properly," admits McLennan, "but in America they see us as some kind of lo-fi pioneers. Which is nice."
Only two years later, the duo had abandoned this style for the itchy, not always successful, art-pop of their first album. Remembering their youthful attempts at playing songs in waltz time, McLennan can't suppress a laugh. "I know what was going on there. We went to Melbourne. We started hanging around with people like Nick Cave and so we had to be a bit louder and weirder."
Having been corrupted by the big city, the Go-Betweens' sound did not really coalesce until 1983's Before Hollywood, a timeless album that sounds like Television backing mid-1960s Bob Dylan. It includes Cattle and Cane, McLennan's beautiful, Proustian reflection upon leaving his outback cattle-station home for boarding school, a song so perfect it almost seems like a millstone to him today.
"When you've recorded a song like Cattle and Cane, you know not many of those are gonna come along in a lifetime," he says, seeming not a little sad. "We did a midnight show in Melbourne in 1997 and the whole audience sang along word for word."
Tellingly, the sleeve of The Go-Betweens 1978-1979 pictures the teenage trio in Forster's bedroom, leaning against a wall festooned with iconographic images of "cool" - Bob Dylan, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Charlotte Rampling. "Brisbane was culturally starved," recalls Forster, "and life seemed far away. Grant knew about film and I had a knowledge of music and books, and together we built ourselves a fantasy world of Paris and New York, and dreamed of culture."
A decade later, the final line-up of the Go-Betweens had brought the boys' adolescent left-bank fantasies to life. Comprising Robert Vickers, an impossibly young-looking, modish bass player, Amanda Brown, the beautiful, classically trained violinist, Lindy Morrison, who would have fitted neatly into the Velvet Underground, and beatnik wordsmiths Forster and McLennan, with their seemingly inexhaustible supply of classic songs, the Go-Betweens themselves were finally an iconographic image.
"Yeah," Forster concurs, "towards the end we had become something we could once have put up on our own wall." McLennan agrees. "We were an interesting-looking pop group, but sometimes I think we broke up a little bit early. I'm glad we weren't more successful in a way, otherwise today we'd be touring the provinces with Culture Club. But it seemed to have run its course, like we'd reached our...what's that thing they put on milk?...expiry date."
But Forster and McLennan hint that they might consider reopening their musical milk carton. Interviewed separately, they politely defer to each other's talent, and won't commit to any future plans, as if using the interview to sound out each other's intentions, but McLennan admitted they had written a new song together. "We haven't got a title for it yet, but it was written in Byron Bay, which is a very pleasant place to write a song. If we were going to do something again, I don't think it would be a tour because we've done that now."
Forster skirts the issue but adds: "Whatever comes out, I'm enjoying the tour and we're playing well. I see no reason to hide in the closet under the bed saying, 'No, no, I was never in the Go-Betweens, I've never heard of them.' "
Currently touring as a duo, Forster and McLennan's 1997 live dates didn't feature the rest of the classic Go-Betweens line-up, and they won't be drawn on what re-forming the band would mean in real terms. They even have conflicting stories of the current whereabouts of their original drummer, Mustapha, which only serve to stoke their slightly absurd legend. "Tim Mustapha is now an actor on the Gold Coast," says Forster, while McLennan offers the tantalisingly meaningless sentence: "I think he was a pharmacist's assistant, but now he works in a musical capacity on the Great Barrier Reef."
Meanwhile, Forster's attention to his stage persona remains undimmed. "These days I'm feeling very comfortable in my yellow suit, which I wear with no tie, black shoes, make-up, and my hair just on the collar. With hairspray," he says. "Make sure that you mention that.
Hair is important." *
Stewart Lee
1999-05-16T17:32:50+01:00
'Hair is important," began Robert Forster, the co-frontman of the Go-Betweens, Australia's criminally underrated band, in an article on haircare for the Manchester fanzine Debris in 1987. "Hair is placed fairly and squarely upon your head, to be admired and cared for. At a younger age, I almost drifted into hairdressing, and thankfully didn't, but I have made a careful and practical study of hair ever since. You need know little more about hair than what I'm about to tell you." Of course, Forster, a gigantic, glorious, preening flamingo of a man, or his writing partner Grant McLennan, who looks like an affably bewildered plumber's mate alongside such a glamorous figure, could have expounded for hours on other subjects; the subtlety of their songwriting, for example, or how their cultural isolation in suburban 1970s Brisbane allowed them to mix punk rock and folk rock without realising this was forbidden by the London style bibles. But the fact that Forster chose instead to talk at length about hair probably says more about the Go-Betweens' tragic failure to connect with the mass market they obviously deserved than any attempt at reasoned analysis ever could. Forster and McLennan are currently back in the country for their second joint tour. The Go-Betweens fell apart in 1989, but in 1996 the French magazine Les Inrockuptibles voted them "third best band of the 1980s". Numbers one and two, the Smiths and the Pixies respectively, were obviously unavailable, so it fell to Forster and McLennan to play the celebratory Paris show, and they subsequently toured the world to exultantly appreciative audiences that they assumed had long forgotten them. "Third Best Band of the 1980s", a typically Go-Betweens accolade, might have made a fine title for their greatest hits collection, but instead it's released this month under the...
I will have a book out, illustrated by David Waywell, of my old live show Pea Green Boat in September. The first of four proposed live book events are on sale now but the Liverpool one has sold out..
FROM AWARD-WINNING COMEDIAN AND BESTSELLING AUTHOR STEWART LEE
Stewart Lee to release a brilliantly dark comedic retelling of Edward Lear’s The Owl and the Pussycat – alongside a UK book tour.
“I am having problems relating to my crew member, having never been a great fan of cats, nor they of birds. Why have we been press ganged into service together? What can they hope to achieve by sending this absurd duo out to sea? I am an owl. The Cat is a cat...”
In Pea Green Boat, Stewart Lee and David Waywell create a dark, grotesque retelling of The Owl and the Pussycat in which Edward Lear's characters are revealed to be catastrophically poorly-equipped for maritime travel. Told through the increasingly deranged diary of the Owl, the real story is unmasked – he cannot open the honey jar due to his lack of opposable thumbs, he is terrified the cat will eat him in his sleep, and he struggles to play the guitar despite having no fingers. As hunger, exhaustion and poor navigation take their toll, it becomes clear that these two creatures should never have been put in a boat together.
Inspired by Stewart Lee’s cult 2001 stage piece, Pea Green Boat blends Lee’s fascination with Edward Lear with his own comedy. Now, with David's gothic-comic illustrations, the story is brought vividly, hilariously and unsettlingly to life.
About the author: Stewart Lee began performing stand-up in 1988 and won the Hackney Empire New Act of the Year in 1990. He co-wrote the libretto for Jerry Springer: The Opera, which won four Olivier Awards, and is known for his BAFTA-winning BBC series Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle. His major live shows include Carpet Remnant World, Much A Stew About Nothing, Snowflake/Tornado, Basic Lee and Stewart Lee vs The Man-Wulf.
He is also the bestselling author of How I Escaped My Certain Fate, Content Provider, and March of the Lemmings.
David Waywell (Illustrator)
David Waywell is a writer and illustrator based in the North West. He holds a PhD in Romantic Literature from the University of Liverpool and is the author of The Secret Lives of Monks and Second-Class Male (written as Stan Madeley)
Book tour
Stewart Lee, plus musicians, perform PEA GREEN BOAT
Stewart Lee performs his darkly comic tale based on Edward Lear’s ‘The Owl & The Pussy- cat’ with live improvised musical accompaniment. These live shows mark the publication of PEA GREEN BOAT by Stewart Lee and illustrated by David Waywell, and, at Leicester Square Theatre, every ticket includes a hardback copy (RRP £16.99 Ebury) to be collected at the performance. Copies will be available to buy at other venues. Suitable for age 16+.
‘It’s the Edward Lear / Stewart Lee Mash-Up that I’ve been waiting for!’ Harry Hill
Wed 9 Sept 2026, 7:30pm Liverpool Music Room, Royal Philharmonic with WILL SERGEANT on ambient guitar
Tue 1 Dec 2026, 7pm London Leicester Square Theatre
Wed 2 Dec 2026, 7pm London Leicester Square Theatre
Thur 3rd Dec, 7pm London Leicester Square Theatre
Tickets go on sale on Friday, 24th April 2026 go to www.stewartlee.co.uk/pgb. Further dates and accompanying musicians to be announced.
2. DAMON & NAOMI (and me) LIVE AT CAFÉ OTO, RECODINGS AVAILABLE
In January I hosted 3 nights of Damon & Naomi (Galaxie 500, Magic Hour, Damon & Naomi) at London’s Café Oto.
The encores of each night have come out on bandcamp and it is a very special recording with contributions from Mark Webber of Pulp, Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab & Monade & Source Ensemble, Richard Youngs from Richard Youngs, Jess Hickie-Kallenbach from Still House Plants, Alabaster DePlume from British contemporary jazz, Gina Birch from Raincoats & Red Krayola & Hangovers, and Marie Merlet from Malphino & Monade & Ikocherie, and features the sound of me throwing paper snow at the musicians.
January 3-5, 2026
Encores with friends at Café Oto, London
A Bandcamp exclusive!
Recorded by Billy Steiger
Mastered by Alan Douches at West West Side Music
“Thank you to the wonderful staff and audience at Café Oto, to Stewart Lee for being our compère and psychogeographical guide, and to all our friends for joining us on these closing sets of “covers.” “ – D&N
I am the reader of the audiobook of The Big Midweek, Steve Hanley from The Fall’s book about playing bass for two decades in the greatest British band, against twenty years of social change. You can hear it here...
I am now writing 1000 funny words a week for Carole Cadwalladr’s new on-line newspaper The Nerve, run by people who were sacked or quit when Tories and Telegraph/Times types took over The Observer. It is immediately ace.
Sign up here and it would also really be great if you could pay them £6.95 a month as the 5 women at the helm sunk all their redundancy money into it. Carole understands that the only story in town is how the tech-bros choose what news we see and how we understand the world, and The Nerve will address this head on. The only news that matters.
Please send the link below and this begging request to anyone you can. https://www.thenerve.news
Along with WAXFACE’s usual line of Stewart Lee merch there are new for 2025 t-shirts and hoodies on the Man-Wulf theme, all of the highest quality. I’d wear them myself but I’d look arrogant. Waste the money your Nan gave you for Xmas here
AND! Back in stock! We have restocked our most popular tees including All The Cheeses, YOU CAN PROVE ANYTHING WITH FACTS, "I don't think that, I think the opposite of that", and the hit comic book STEWART LEE VS. THE MAN-WULF tee!
All these are available NOW on preorder and will be shipping on April 11th!
Order now via wax face and love all the different cheeses and tees too!
Glasgow’s garage punk veterans The Primevals’ new single is featured in the new Stewart Lee vs The Man-Wulf U.K. tour.
There are 3 versions. Side a I’m The Man-Wulf. Side b I’m The Man-Wulf (long nail edit). Plus a 9 minute I’m The Man-Wulf (long nail version). Vinyl sides a&b were released on a 7” 45 in January. https://primevals.bandcamp.com
AND all the tracks are now subsumed into a new mega-mix 12” album, including the extended version of the track as a slow blues, and remixes with big beats and jazzy sax that take it in a whole new direction https://primevals.bandcamp.com/album/im-the-man-wulf-lp
John Mackay & Sally Homer, in association with Debi Allen/Curtis Brown present
STEWART LEE vs THE MAN-WULF BRAND NEW SHOW
UK TOURING THROUGHOUT 2026
The tragedy of this show is that world events are advancing towards its core conceit at such a speed that it is sharpened daily, even as we as a civilisation head into HELL. But here’s the original blurb...
Lee shares his stage with a tough-talking werewolf comedian who hates humanity. The Man-Wulf lays down a ferocious comedy challenge to the culturally irrelevant and physically enfeebled Lee. Can the beast inside us all be silenced with the silver bullet of Lee's unprecedentedly critically acclaimed style of stand-up.
Sunday 3rd May 2026 - The Mach Arena, Machynlleth Comedy Festival - TICKETS
Wednesday 6th May 2026 - The Playhouse, Weston Super Mare - TICKETS
Thursday 7th May 2026 - The Playhouse, Weston Super Mare - TICKETS
Friday 8th May 2026 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS
Saturday 9th May 2026 - Richmond Theatre, Richmond - TICKETS
Monday 11th May 2026 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Tuesday 12th May 2026 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Wednesday 13th May 2026 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Thursday 14th May 2026 - Floral Pavilion Theatre, New Brighton - TICKETS
Friday 15th May 2026 - Opera House, Buxton - TICKETS
Saturday 16th May 2026 - Stockton Globe, Stockton On Tees - TICKETS
Tuesday 19th May 2026 - Palace Theatre, Southend On Sea - TICKETS
Wednesday 20th May 2026 - Palace Theatre, Southend On Sea - TICKETS
June 2026
Monday 1st June 2026 - 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin - TICKETS
Tuesday 2nd June 2026 - Bord Gais Energy Theatre, Dublin - TICKETS
Wednesday 3rd June 2026 - The Tommy Leddy Theatre, Drogheda - TICKETS
Thursday 4th June 2026 - Millennium Forum, Derry - TICKETS
Friday 5th June 2026 - National Opera House, Wexford - TICKETS
Sunday 7th June 2026 - Opera House, Cork - TICKETS
Wednesday 10th June 2026 - Theatre Royal, Waterford - TICKETS
Sunday 14th June 2026 - Cambridge Arts Theatre, Cambridge - TICKETS
Monday 15th June 2026 - Cambridge Arts Theatre, Cambridge - TICKETS
Tuesday 16th June 2026 - Cambridge Arts Theatre, Cambridge - TICKETS
Thursday 18th June 2026 - Alban Arena, St. Albans - TICKETS
Friday 19th June 2026 - Alban Arena, St. Albans - TICKETS
Sunday 21st June 2026 - New Victoria Theatre, Woking - TICKETS
Tuesday 23rd June 2026 - Venue Cymru, Llandudno - TICKETS
Wednesday 24th June 2026 - Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield - TICKETS
Thursday 25th June 2026 - Grand Opera House, York - TICKETS
Friday 26th June 2026 - Grand Opera House, York - TICKETS
Saturday 27th June 2026 - Grand Opera House, York - TICKETS
Tuesday 30th June 2026 - Mercury Theatre, Colchester - TICKETS
July 2026
Wednesday 1st July 2026 - Mercury Theatre, Colchester - TICKETS
Thursday 2nd July 2026 - Mercury Theatre, Colchester - TICKETS
Saturday 4th July 2026 - The Hawth, Crawley - TICKETS
Tuesday 7th July 2026 - Lyceum, Crewe - TICKETS
Wednesday 8th July 2026 - Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury - TICKETS
Thursday 9th July 2026 - Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury - TICKETS
Friday 10th July 2026 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Saturday 11th July 2026 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Monday 13th July 2026 - King's Theatre, Glasgow - TICKETS
Tuesday 14th July 2026 - King's Theatre, Glasgow - TICKETS
Wednesday 15th July 2026 - Playhouse, Edinburgh - TICKETS
Thursday 16th July 2026 - Perth Theatre, Perth - TICKETS
Friday 17th July 2026 - Eden Court, Inverness - TICKETS
September 2026
Thursday 3rd September 2026 - King's Theatre, Portsmouth - TICKETS
Friday 4th September 2026 - Pavillion, Weymouth - TICKETS
Saturday 5th September 2026 - Hall For Cornwall, Truro - TICKETS
Thursday 10th September 2026 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Friday 11th September 2026 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Saturday 12th September 2026 - William Aston Hall, Wrexham - TICKETS
Sunday 13th September 2026 - Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton - TICKETS
Wednesday 16th September 2026 - Marina Theatre, Lowestoft - TICKETS
Thursday 17th September 2026 - Marina Theatre, Lowestoft - TICKETS
Friday 18th September 2026 - Castle Theatre, Wellingborough - TICKETS
Saturday 19th September 2026 - The Central Theatre, Chatham - TICKETS
Thursday 24th September 2026 - Bristol Beacon, Bristol - TICKETS
Friday 25th September 2026 - Bristol Beacon, Bristol - TICKETS
Saturday 26th September 2026 - Bristol Beacon, Bristol - TICKETS
Tuesday 29th September 2026 - Truck Theatre, Hull - TICKETS
Wednesday 30th September 2026 - Truck Theatre, Hull - TICKETS
October 2026
Thursday 1st October 2026 - The Spa Centre, Scarborough - TICKETS
Friday 2nd October 2026 - Alhambra Theatre, Bradford - TICKETS
Saturday 3rd October 2026 - Alhambra Theatre, Bradford - TICKETS
Tuesday 6th October 2026 - Festival Theatre, Malvern - TICKETS
Wednesday 7th October 2026 - Festival Theatre, Malvern - TICKETS
Thursday 8th October 2026 - Belgrade Theatre, Coventry - TICKETS
Friday 9th October 2026 - Belgrade Theatre, Coventry - TICKETS
Saturday 10th October 2026 - Belgrade Theatre, Coventry - TICKETS
Monday 12th October 2026 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Tuesday 13th October 2026 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Saturday 17th October 2026 - Waterside Theatre, Aylesbury - TICKETS
Sunday 18th October 2026 - Hippodrome, Birmingham - TICKETS
Friday 23rd October 2026 - New Theatre, Peterborough - TICKETS
Saturday 24th October 2026 - Tyne Theatre & Opera House, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Sunday 25th October 2026 - Tyne Theatre & Opera House, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Friday 30th October 2026 - Pavilion Theatre, Worthing - TICKETS
Saturday 31st October 2026 - Lighthouse, Poole - TICKETS
November 2026
Sunday 1st November 2026 - Devonshire Park Theatre, Eastbourne - TICKETS
Thursday 5th November 2026 - City Hall, Salisbury - TICKETS
Friday 6th November 2026 - The Anvil, Basingstoke - TICKETS
Saturday 7th November 2026 - New Wimbledon Theatre, Wimbledon - TICKETS
Monday 9th November 2026 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Tuesday 10th November 2026 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Wednesday 11th November 2026 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Thursday 12th November 2026 - Chelmsford Theatre, Chelmsford - TICKETS
Friday 13th November 2026 - Chelmsford Theatre, Chelmsford - TICKETS
December 2026
Friday 4th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Saturday 5th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Saturday 5th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Tuesday 8th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Wednesday 9th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Thursday 10th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Friday 11th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Saturday 12th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Saturday 12th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Monday 14th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Tuesday 15th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Wednesday 16th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Thursday 17th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Friday 18th December 2026 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
10. SNOWFLAKE TORNADO / BASIC LEE
Stewart’s 2019-2022 touring show Snowflake/Tornado, which was originally broadcast as a BBC Special in Autumn 2022 is now available to buy or rent “on demand” from www.mediagarageproductions.com
Both shows also appear to be free as part of the current Amazon Prime rosta, but buy them from us to defeat American fascism.
We are currently preparing a physical release of these shows but it’s got delayed as I got pneumonia and have been bogged down in picking through a wealth of possible, and very exciting, audio extras, where the material worked much better than in the broadcast show itself.
11. UP THE ANTI, FUNDRAISER FOR THE N LONDON HUNT SABOTEURS, MONDAY JULY 6TH, LECIS SQ THEATRE, LONDON, 8.45 PM
Join an incredible line up of comedians for a night of laughter in aid of the North London Hunt Saboteurs. Featuring Daniel Fox, Harry Badger, James Gill, Horn Walsh, Sue Jerkins, Shappi Coarse-Angling, Alasdair Bear-Baiting, and Stewart Eel.
NLHS take part in direct action to deter and intervene in organised bloodsports in the countryside around London and beyond.
All profits will go to their work.
13. CHURCHILL’S URINAL BY ROSIE HOLT, KING’S HEAD THEATRE, ISLINGTON LONDON 13TH MAY – 6th JUNE
I did a script editing pass on an early draft of this play last year, which was full of great funny ideas about the comedy of the culture war, and contributed some end of the pier gags to lower the tone of an otherwise sophisticated conceit, but it sounds like the writer-performer and the director have really moved it on and massively changed and upgraded the central thrust of it.
I am looking forward to seeing it in its first incarnation.
“Freshly installed in 11 Downing Street, a fearless female Chancellor of the Exchequer is determined to get rid of the ancient urinal in her grace-and-favour en-suite. Intrigue overflows into outrage when it transpires that the porcelain was first tinkled on by that undying icon of Britishness, Winston Churchill. Soon, the whole nation has a view on this storm in a pisspot. Join us for this rambunctious romp through the corridors of power and discover whether our fearless Chancellor’s grip on her Budget red box can survive the clamour for her Whitehall washroom to be awarded a Blue Plaque.
Known for her alter ego MP who has achieved more than seven million views with her online videos, and toured two stage shows nationally, satirist and Chortle award-winner Rosie Holt shares the world premiere of her new play, first seen in a reading at Shedinburgh last year. Directed by Dan Clarkson, whose previous show starring Rosie Holt The Crown Live sold out at the King’s Head Theatre, and whose other credits include Olivier Award nominees Potted Potter, and Potted Panto, as well as Biff To The Future which is currently on an extensive tour.
The Trawl Marina Purkiss and Gemma Forte had me on their unashamedly political podcast. They are twin national treasures. You can find it in the usual places.
Alexei Sayle Podcast I just done this again with the Podfather of Alternative Comedy. Usual outlets.
15. FESTIVALS I will be doing short stand-up sets at the following festivals
I will be doing short stand-up sets at the following festivals
BEARDED THEORY 20TH – 24TH MAY, CATTON PARK DERBYSHIRE https://beardedtheory.co.uk w Pixies, Damned, Maytals, Au Pairs, Nightingales & Ted Chippington. This is a great, friendly festival that totally feels like it is run for the benefit of the people, and it has a brilliant tent called Convoy Cabaret which is all proper hardcore anarcho-punk and traveller music.
DEER SHED 24TH – 26TH JULY, BLADERSBY PARK, N YORKS https://deershedfestival.com Sleaford Mods, Angeline Morrison, New Eves & The Adam Buxton Band. The village fete vibe of indie rock!
GREEN MAN 20TH – 23RD AUGUST, BANNAU BRYCHEINIOG NATIONAL PARKhttps://www.greenman.net
Mogwai, Dry Cleaning, Scientist, Tamikrest, Charlotte Church Pop Dungeon, Motrik, New Eves, My New Band Believe, Madra Salach.
KRANKENHAUS, 28TH-30TH AUGUST, MUNCASTER CASTLE, LAKE DISTRICT. It’s the best music festival in the world but don’t tell anyone about it. Sea Power, House Of All, Laura Cannell, Fallen Women, Stereolab, lectures, talks, walks, mountains. All the fun of the farm!
END OF THE ROAD 3rd – 6th SEPT, LARMER TREE GARDENS, DOREST. Pulp, Lucinda Williams, Caroline, Brighde Chaimbeul, Mozart Estate, David Thomas Broughton, Gnod.
16. I ARROGANTLY RECOMMEND
ANDREW & EDEN KOTTING – THE EVERYWORLD Swedenborg House Gallery, London – 5th June.
As you may know Andrew is one of my favorite artists/filmmakers/people.
He has inspired me for 30 years now and I appeared in a pedalo with Alan Moore in his film Swandown. This new installation is about his family’s life and the things they have accrued and involves the first ever worthwhile use of VR I have ever seen. And it’s at the mysterious and very cool Swedenborg Centre.
LEONORA CARRINGTON THE SYMPTOMATUIC SURREAL Freud Museum London until June 28th. During her life, the British-born Mexican artist faced significant mental health challenges and spent time in a sanatorium in Spain. There, Carrington was encouraged to draw and created two paintings, including Down Below (1940), which is on display here. Depicting several figures in states of metamorphosis within the grounds of the sanatorium, the title reflects her experience. The exhibition mainly consists of drawings and includes the recurring motif of horses: an obsession of Carrington's and sometimes a symbol for portraying herself. Freud said horses resonated with psychoanalytic ideas about the structure of the mind, and objects from his personal collection feature here. There is also archival material, including photographs of Carrington with her partner, Max Ernst, taken by Lee Miller.
COWBOY JUNKIES Smoke-suffused Canadian country stoners. MAY 3rd Edinburgh Queen’s Hall, 6th Sunderland Fire Station, 7th B’ham Town Hall, 11th London Palladium, 14th Norwich & Norfolk Festival
THE UTOPIA STRONG Snooker genius’ Steve Davis’ space-rocking outfit. May 8th N’castle Star & Shadow, 9th N’hampton Black Prince, 15th London St Mattias Stoke Newington, 17th Luton Castle, 20th Glasgow Cottiers, 22nd Cambridge Storey’s Field, 24th St Leonard’s Piper.
THE WAVE PICTURES Brilliant British indie rock band in the vein of Go-Betweens, Loft etc with a West Coast California psyche-blues twist … All the greats. MAY 9th - London @ Bush Hall -TICKETS
THE EX Heroically inspiring Dutch jazz-punks. MAY 20th London 100 Club, 21st B’ham Castle & Falcon, 22nd Glasgow Flying Duck, 23rd M’cr White Hotel.
TAE SUP WI’ A FIFER MAY 20TH – 24THJames Yorkston’s travelling highland roadshow this year features Kate Stables, Phil Jupitas & Kirsty Newton, The Elidas and Yorkston himself and visits MAY 20th St Andrews Byre, 21st Peebles Eastagte, 22nd Crief Strathearn, 23rd Lerwick Mareel, 24th Findhorn Universal Hall. taesup.co.uk
RUTS DC Reggae-punks on the road. MAY 22nd Dunfermline PJs, 28th Glasgow King Tut’s, AUG 21st Dublin Academy No
SUGAR Apparently they’ve reformed
05-23 London, England - O2 Forum Kentish Town
05-24 London, England - O2 Forum Kentish Town
05-26 Belfast, Northern Ireland - Ulster Hall
05-27 Dublin, Ireland - National Stadium
05-30 Bristol, England - Electric Bristol
05-31 Nottingham, England - Rock City
06-02 Glasgow, Scotland - Barrowland
06-03 Leeds, England - Irish Centre
06-04 London, England - Clapham Grand
SLY AND THE FAMILY DRONE Immersive space-jazz-noise from the devious relations. May 29th The Blue Monk, Bermondsey, London. JUNE 26th/27th Ulverston Fell Foot Wood w the fantastic Nev Clay.
TAMIKREST Malian blues-wranglers in snake-charming mode JUNE 8th Glasgow Rum Shack, 9th Leeds Belgrave, 11th Norwich Arts, 12th Bristol Strange Brew, 13th London Jazz Café, 15th M’cr Band On The Wall, 176th Bristol Hope & Ruin.
BEVIS FROND One of Britain’s all-time greats, frontman Nick Saloman now a 70-something psychedelic survivor still at the top of his game. Will it ever end? JUNE 5th M’cr Pink Room, 7th Edinburgh Sneaky Pete’s, 8th Gateshead Central Bar, 9th Leeds Attic, 10th London Moth Club (hosted by S Lee)
ALISON COTTON The violin-toting mystic hits the road
JUNE
17 - LEEDS - Attic Leeds
18 - GLASGOW - The Glad Cafe
19 - NEWCASTLE - The Lubber Fiend
25 - WIRKSWORTH - Haarlem Artspace
26 - LAKE DISTRICT - Hyper Inverter Festival
27 - BARROW IN FURNESS - Full of Noises (GREAT VENUE IN A PARK!!)
28 - COVENTRY - The Tin Music Venue (matinee show )
JULY
1 - LONDON - The Old Church, Stoke Newington (SEE ANNA LAETITIA BARBAULD’S GRAVE TOO)
2 - BRIGHTON - The Rose Hill
3 - NORWICH - The Holloway
SIMON LOVE Welsh purveyor of a certain kind of vintage indie pop.
26 June - The Fighting Cocks, Kingston-Upon-Thames
28 June - Prince Albert, Brighton (Afternoon show)
OH-SEES Mighty psyche-punk juggernaut. JULY 14th & 165th Leeds Irish Centre, 16th & 17th London Earth.
MILLIONS OF DEAD COPS Hardcore originators. New Cross Inn, London August 10th
THE ROOM Bunnymen/Teardrops-adjacent 80s Liverpool psychedelic survivors return in dishevelled majesty. SEPT 11TH Future Yard Birkenhead album launch. November 13that Dublin Castle London with St Vitus Dance & Vernons Future.
LEMONHEADS Melodic hardcore countryfied punk cherub soldiers on
30 Sep: Electric, Sheffield, UK
01 Oct: De La Warr, Bexhill, UK
02 Oct:Troxy, London, UK
03 Oct: UEA, Norwich, UK
05 Oct: Boiler Shop, Newcastle, UK
06 Oct: SWG3, Glasgow, UK
07 Oct: Albert Hall, Manchester, UK
09 Oct: Electric, Bristol, UK
10 Oct: O2 Institute, Birmingham, UK
11 Oct: Rock City, Nottingham, UK
CARLTON MELTON The psychedelic warlords manifest in physical form.
SEPT 17th Hastings Tough Love, 19th London Strongroom, 19th Glastonbury King Arthur, 20th Brighton Daltons, 22nd Cardiff Fuel, 23rd N’hampton Lab, 24th Liverpool Lost Are Skate Shop, 25th Todmorden Golden Lion w Cosmic Dead, 26th MATINEE Todmorden Golden Lion w Cosmic Dead, 27th Margate Bar Nothing
DELINES Cinematic symphonic country rock sophisticates. OCTOBER 2nd Glasgow GUU, 3rd Gosforth Civic, 4th Leeds City Varieties
BUFFALO TOM Former hardcore types mellowed into folkish indie power trio. OCT 6th Belfast Limelight, 7th Edinburgh La Belle Angelle, 9th M’cr Band On The Wall, 10TH London Village Underground
DAMNED/SAINTS (73-78) TOUR
The original Damned line-up, minus Brian James but with Rat Scabies back on drums, were amazing when I saw their 50th anniversary show earlier this year. And they are supported by an authenticated version of Australian punk pioneers The Saints with original co-frontman Ed Kuepper present, but the late Chris Bailey’s guitar and vocal duties covered by the dream team of The Birthday Party’s Mick Harvey and super-saints fan Mark Arm of Mudhoney respectively, understandably favours the group’s early thrash sound rather than Bailey’s more songwriterly work. But what a pairing! NOV 25TH Brighton Dome, 27th London British Airways Arc (?), 28th Bristol Beacon, 30th M’cr Academy, Dec 1st N’castle City Hall, Dec 2nd Derby Valiant, Dec 5th B’ham Academy
18. IN OUR LAMENTATIONS 2026
Gunter Schickert (G.A.M guitar man, 1949)
Amos Poe (He squashed a banana in the street, 1949)
Sly Dunbar (definitive dub drummer, 1952)
Sal Buscema (Marvel mastercraftsman, 1936) Catherine O’Hara (Fucking hilarious, I wish we’d met, 1954)
Philippe Gaulier (Our clown enemy, our clown king, 1943)
Pete Frame (Master music-mapper, 1942)
Kenny Morris (Banshee basher, 1957)
Fred Smith (Low end televisionary, 1948)
Mark Kennedy (Australia’s premier prog-psyche percussionist, 1951) Eliane Radigue (electro-francais, 1932)
John Hammond (Blues believer, 1942)
Walter Martino (The Goblin groover, 1952)
Country Joe McDonald (The psychedelic fishman, 1942)
Augie Myers (The pseudonymous Sir Douglas himself, 1940)
Phil Campbell (Motorheadbanger, 1961) Dolores Keane (De voice of De Dannan and dat, 1953)
John Dee Graham (Skunks originator and US punk facilitator, 1959)
Matt Kwasniewski-Kelvin (Black Midi founder, 2000)
Bob Weir (Now dead deadman, 1947)
TK Carter (The Chef in The Thing, 1956)
Chip Taylor (The Wild Thing, 1940)
Ben Keaton (Father Austin Purcell, 1956)
Terry Cox (He drove the impossible folk-jazz fusion, 1937)
Sam Keith (Quirky comics guy, 1963)
Pete Dello (He could not let Maggie go, 1942)
Andrew Bodnar (He loved the sound of breaking glass, 1954)
Terry Sullivan (Dry Ice drummer, 1938) Sheila Burnette (That funny woman from all those things, 1931)
Diana Green (Omaha The Cat Dancer, 1954)
Alex Pretti (Nurse, 1998)
Greg Elmore (He was a miracle worker, 1946)
Mike Westbrook (Blakean British jazzman, 1936)
Patrick Campbell-Lyons (Psychedelic Nirvana, 1943)
David Wiffen (He lost his driving wheel, 1942)
Bill Leader (British folk magnate, 1929)
Stewart Lee
2026-04-30T11:24:31+01:00
1. PEA GREEN BOAT AND BOOK TOUR I will have a book out, illustrated by David Waywell, of my old live show Pea Green Boat in September. The first of four proposed live book events are on sale now but the Liverpool one has sold out.. FROM AWARD-WINNING COMEDIAN AND BESTSELLING AUTHOR STEWART LEE Pea Green Boat - STEWART LEE EBURY SPOTLIGHT | 3RD SEPTEMBER 2026 | £16.00 | ISBN: 9781529988604 | HARDBACK Stewart Lee to release a brilliantly dark comedic retelling of Edward Lear’s The Owl and the Pussycat – alongside a UK book tour. “I am having problems relating to my crew member, having never been a great fan of cats, nor they of birds. Why have we been press ganged into service together? What can they hope to achieve by sending this absurd duo out to sea? I am an owl. The Cat is a cat...” In Pea Green Boat, Stewart Lee and David Waywell create a dark, grotesque retelling of The Owl and the Pussycat in which Edward Lear's characters are revealed to be catastrophically poorly-equipped for maritime travel. Told through the increasingly deranged diary of the Owl, the real story is unmasked – he cannot open the honey jar due to his lack of opposable thumbs, he is terrified the cat will eat him in his sleep, and he struggles to play the guitar despite having no fingers. As hunger, exhaustion and poor navigation take their toll, it becomes clear that these two creatures should never have been put in a boat together. Inspired by Stewart Lee’s cult 2001 stage piece, Pea Green Boat blends Lee’s fascination with Edward Lear with his own comedy. Now, with David's gothic-comic illustrations, the story is brought vividly, hilariously and unsettlingly to life. About the author: Stewart Lee began...
On Wednesday night the infinite number of monkeys that usually write the editorial for the Daily Mail had fallen victim en masse to the zika virus. And so, having made something of a name for myself in Fleet Street, having filled in for David Mitchell here these past few months, I was called in at short notice to articulate a Daily Mail front-page question of profound significance to our destiny as a sovereign nation.
A nation, let us not forget, with justifiable and fair provision for successful businesses to establish their principal trading bases in Bermuda and Jersey.
Yea, I was to ask indeed a question significant profoundly also unto the fate of our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren, great-great-great-grandchildren, great-great-great-great-grandchildren, great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren and Michael Caine.
Whom wilst spakey for England? And, of course, by “England”, like Leo Amery MP in 1939, I meant the whole of the United Kingdom, although I did suggest to the paper’s proprietor, Viscount Biscuit, that the Scottish Daily Mail’s cover should not perhaps, in the current climate, feature the words “Whom Wilst Spakey For England” in massive letters.
Nonetheless. I was to ask again. Whom wilst spakey for England?
The front page of the Daily Mail, Thursday 4 February. Photograph: Associated Newspapers
And again askest I. Whom wilst spakey for England?
It was a question inspired by one of the most dramatic moments in the history of journalism.
The date was 2 February, 2016, the day after David Cameron returned from Europe, having just made an ambivalent statement regarding spurious migrants’ benefits, and waving a draft agreement from Brussels, saying to anyone who would listen, “I have in my hand a piece of paper.”
Next door to Harrods, the Daily Mail’s editor Paul Dacre was incensed and bellowed across the Tardis-like dimension-defying pen wherein his infinite and comatose monkeys slept: “Whom Wilst Spakey For England?”
And so, with my help, he hoped the entire front page of Thursday’s Daily Mail would do just that, voicing anger over the premier’s reluctance to enforce new obligations to Brussels, as surely as Neville Chamberlain had failed to constrain the paper’s old friend Adolf Hitler, chancellor of Nazi Germany, in 1939.
I was not, of course, to suggest there were any parallels whatever between the Nazis and the EU. Indeed, the Daily Mail would argue that one of the Union’s great achievements, along with Nato, has been to foster peace in Europe.
But I did realise it would play well with my temporary Daily Mail paymasters if I could somehow create the association of the EU and the Nazis in the subconscious minds of my readers, without appearing to endorse the idea officially.
But, I was prepared to suggest for money, just as in 1939, we were once more at a crossroads in our island history, and hopefully not at a roundabout, where all the exits have been blocked off, except the one where you have to go into a Euro-style cafe and be force fed accurately measured Toulouse sausages by women in French maid’s outfits and Islamic veils.
Whom wilst spakey for England?
In the small hours of Wednesday night I sat high above Kensington High Street and looked at the sleeping, sweating monkeys. And I knew that if I could pull off this front page, I could have their jobs. And if Viscount Biscuit paid me only a fraction of their daily monkey banana bill, I would still be rich beyond my wildest dreams.
Now was the time to write the most brilliantly incendiary front page ever, driving billions through the Daily Mail’s website, both those in furious, bewildered agreement and those who would be clicking through only to check if my insane opinion was for real.
Now was the moment and the moment was now. For in perhaps as little as 20 weeks’ time, ill-informed voters, stuffed with incoherent arguments, like hissing geese force-fed nostalgia and hate to produce an inedible pâté of groundless opinion, would be asked to decide nothing less than what sort of country we want to live in and bequeath to those who come after us.
Our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren, great-great-great-grandchildren, great-great-great-great-grandchildren, great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren and Michael Caine.
Whom wilst spakey for England? I would ask again. And again. Whom wilst spakey for England?
But could I write the inflammatory piece that would secure my financial future? Could I live with myself if I consolidated the Daily Mail’s case? Could I sleep soundly if my ambition tossed those infinite monkeys on to an infinite heap of banana skins?
Would our liberty, security and prosperity be better assured by submitting to a statist, unelected bureaucracy in Brussels, accepting the will of unaccountable judges and linking our destiny with that of a sclerotic Europe that tries to achieve the impossible by uniting countries as diverse as Germany and Greece?
Or would our liberty, security and prosperity be better assured by submitting to an elected Bullingdon bureaucracy here at home, accepting the will of demonstrably unaccountable politicians, and linking our destiny with that of a sclerotic Eurosceptic camp that tries to achieve the impossible by uniting personalities as diverse as Theresa May, former Ukip hat-wearer Winston McKenzie, and Michael Caine?
Whom wilst spakey for England? Who for England wilst spakey?
Were we to be a self-governing nation, free in this age of mass migration to opt out of the attempts of the wider European community to cooperate to solve the greatest refugee crisis since the second world war, strike trade agreements with tyrannical dictatorships whenever we choose, and dismiss codes of practice regarding environmental safeguards, pollution and human rights if they displease us, like some pusillanimous ostrich, sticking its stupid head into the rapidly dissipating sands of time?
Whom? Whom wilst spakey for England? For England whom wilst spake?
For years, we have been bombarded with propaganda from one side, principally the Daily Mail, and from the Daily Express, whose tangential relationship with the very notion of a newspaper hinges only on the slim fact that it contains words.
Should I be part of the problem? Or part of the solution?
Whom wilst spakey for England? For England whom wilst spake?
I nailed my courage to the sticking plate. I banished the monkeys from my mind and wrote the editorial. The rest is already history.
Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle (Series 4) will be on BBC2 soon
Stewart Lee
2016-02-07T20:40:13+00:00
On Wednesday night the infinite number of monkeys that usually write the editorial for the Daily Mail had fallen victim en masse to the zika virus. And so, having made something of a name for myself in Fleet Street, having filled in for David Mitchell here these past few months, I was called in at short notice to articulate a Daily Mail front-page question of profound significance to our destiny as a sovereign nation. A nation, let us not forget, with justifiable and fair provision for successful businesses to establish their principal trading bases in Bermuda and Jersey. Yea, I was to ask indeed a question significant profoundly also unto the fate of our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren, great-great-great-grandchildren, great-great-great-great-grandchildren, great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren and Michael Caine. Whom wilst spakey for England? And, of course, by “England”, like Leo Amery MP in 1939, I meant the whole of the United Kingdom, although I did suggest to the paper’s proprietor, Viscount Biscuit, that the Scottish Daily Mail’s cover should not perhaps, in the current climate, feature the words “Whom Wilst Spakey For England” in massive letters. So instead, Biscuit raided the padlocked underground safe where the imaginary photos of the magician’s excited dog are kept to provide a picture of Simon Cowell staring woefully into Cheryl Fernandez-Versini’s ear. Nonetheless. I was to ask again. Whom wilst spakey for England? The front page of the Daily Mail, Thursday 4 February. Photograph: Associated Newspapers And again askest I. Whom wilst spakey for England? It was a question inspired by one of the most dramatic moments in the history of journalism. The date was 2 February, 2016, the day after David Cameron returned from Europe, having just made an ambivalent statement regarding spurious migrants’ benefits, and waving a draft agreement from Brussels, saying to anyone who would listen, “I have in my hand a...
Today's rockabilly revivalists - Imelda May and Kitty, Daisy and Lewis - revere their sources.
But in the late seventies degenerate New Yorkers and track-marked Australians pointed their quiffs at the future, and bled post-punk noise over the music's bones.
This collection of Tav Falco's early recordings finds the legendary Memphis polymath howling off-key over perfectly out-of-synch broken blues from the Panther Burns band, featuring Big Star's Alex Chilton on uncharacteristically sloppy guitar and Jim Sclavunos on drums, later poached by an indebted Nick Cave.
Stewart Lee
2011-09-18T21:57:50+01:00
Today's rockabilly revivalists - Imelda May and Kitty, Daisy and Lewis - revere their sources. But in the late seventies degenerate New Yorkers and track-marked Australians pointed their quiffs at the future, and bled post-punk noise over the music's bones. This collection of Tav Falco's early recordings finds the legendary Memphis polymath howling off-key over perfectly out-of-synch broken blues from the Panther Burns band, featuring Big Star's Alex Chilton on uncharacteristically sloppy guitar and Jim Sclavunos on drums, later poached by an indebted Nick Cave.
If the United Kingdom can take one positive thing from the Covid-19 crisis, it is that the most powerful and virulent version of the virus is perceived globally as being British, faster and stronger than its puny foreign counterparts. And the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, has rightly declared this the sort of thing that makes our island nation “a much better country than every single one of the others”. Up yours Delors! Take back control!!
Due to festive blockages, I had to file this “so-called” “funny topical column” six days ago, though I’m not under as much stress this week as Boris Johnson’s anal sphincter. Indeed, there were only so many times the prime minister could blame Dilyn the dog before Carrie Symonds, the power behind the porcelain throne, realised some privileged knowledge had set her babyfather’s bowels aquiver. Stranded Dover hauliers must envy Johnson’s endless torrent of just-in-time perishable goods deliveries.
Last week my area moved into tier 4, a new tier that wasn’t even on the government’s own website the day it was announced. Like the notion of an “Australian-style Brexit”, tier 4 is a new piece of language intended to conceal quite how bad things really are by the use of meaningless words. “The virus is out of control,” admitted Matt Handcock, the crying piñata, on Sky News, looking like a bit-part actor in Chernobyl who realised the reactor was going to blow. Suddenly we were cut off from Europe, and from much of our usual food supply, a situation millions of people who knew what they were voting for voted for in 2016, so they were delighted.
Suddenly once-needy Europe seemed enthusiastic to cut us loose, a teenager backing away from necking someone with maggot-infested cold sores. On Sky News, entitled matching middle-class couples with matching children in matching JoJo Maman Bébé jackets justified their right to evacuate the tier 4 zone and kill the weak via some Waitrose shopper interpretation of manifest destiny. Twentysomething interns fled home to their mothers’ mince pies, filling crowded trains with death spores, as the whole online Covid map east of Dalston Junction turned the colour of the Martian red weed in War of the Worlds.
By the time you read this, you may be warming yourselves round burning bins in the ruins of Victorian gothic power stations, roasting tasty pensioners on spits made of dismantled 5G masts, and speaking a new form of English based on rhyming slang and half-remembered Smiley Culture lyrics. Britain, or more specifically the south of England, has somehow managed to platform the twin pestilences of both the current Conservative party front bench, and also a new and more virulent strain of the already terrifying Covid-19 catastrophe.
Like the gorgeous space virus in John Carpenter’s The Thing, or Jacob Rees-Mogg, the bespoke Kentish Covid-19 strain sees us as expendable host bodies in its path to full spectrum dominance. In the south-east it has mutated into a faster variant, perhaps because it is keen to get out of Kent, which is now made up entirely of bewildered Brexit voters in cognitively dissonant denial, enormous death-belching lorry parks, and laybys strewn with abandoned two-litre Coke bottles full of lorry drivers’ hot Covid-19-flavoured urine. Indeed, the acrid deposits made by thousands of tannin-fuelled truckers all along the A2 has already rendered Kent uninhabitable for generations to all humans except Iain Duncan Smith.
Our English Covid is a world-beating virus, displaying the buccaneering spirit, beloved by the buccaneering trade-buccaneer Liam Fox, that saw us conquer the world, invent the television and the telephone, and win two world wars single-handedly. Our unstoppable British Covid strain shows that yes, we can prosper mightily outside the EU. While not necessarily thinking of it as a friend, I regard the strain with fearful respect and trembling admiration, as I do sharks, black holes and the late Mark E Smith of the Fall.
I, meanwhile, am trying to rewrite the topical half of my repeatedly rescheduled 2020 tour show. But will anyone even remember Tony Parsons next year, let alone be interested in a 20-minute routine describing the various ways in which I imagine the epicurean Brexiter might manage the storage and dispersal of cess? I suspect not. A bit I wrote about attitudes to immigration eight years ago, however, appears to have endured. It has been sampled with surgical focus on a record, Comin’ Over Here by Asian Dub Foundation, and described by my nine-year-old as the only thing I have ever been involved in that isn’t awful. If you download it, and maybe all the remixes too, before New Year’s Eve it might be the Brexit day No 1, profits to Kent Refugee Action Group. And remember, channel-crossing migrants may be able to help us through this if they can bring in basic food supplies with them.
Appearing on what I am assured by the internet is a “banging tune” is a strange experience for a 52-year-old man who has let himself go badly. Asian Dub Foundation filmed a video in the gap between the first two lockdowns, that social historians are already calling Boris Johnson’s Perineum. I mimed a 1,000-year-old Anglo-Saxon poem in the original Anglo-Saxon, and felt like Alan Bennett fronting Public Enemy. Between takes in an empty Bermondsey warehouse, the quartet improvised a flute-led reading of John Coltrane’s arrangement of My Favourite Things, a strange moment of unalloyed beauty in a time of dearth, a privileged private performance when most stages are silent. I’ll never forget it. What did you do in the Covid wars, Dad? People who mimed to Anglo-Saxon poetry and swore in empty warehouses. They were the real heroes. Happy new year.
Comin’ Over Here by Asian Dub Foundation (ft Stewart Lee) is available to download, by New Year’s Eve please for the Brexit day No 1 slot, here: smarturl.it/cominoverhere
Stewart Lee
2020-12-27T21:11:04+00:00
If the United Kingdom can take one positive thing from the Covid-19 crisis, it is that the most powerful and virulent version of the virus is perceived globally as being British, faster and stronger than its puny foreign counterparts. And the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, has rightly declared this the sort of thing that makes our island nation “a much better country than every single one of the others”. Up yours Delors! Take back control!! Due to festive blockages, I had to file this “so-called” “funny topical column” six days ago, though I’m not under as much stress this week as Boris Johnson’s anal sphincter. Indeed, there were only so many times the prime minister could blame Dilyn the dog before Carrie Symonds, the power behind the porcelain throne, realised some privileged knowledge had set her babyfather’s bowels aquiver. Stranded Dover hauliers must envy Johnson’s endless torrent of just-in-time perishable goods deliveries. Last week my area moved into tier 4, a new tier that wasn’t even on the government’s own website the day it was announced. Like the notion of an “Australian-style Brexit”, tier 4 is a new piece of language intended to conceal quite how bad things really are by the use of meaningless words. “The virus is out of control,” admitted Matt Handcock, the crying piñata, on Sky News, looking like a bit-part actor in Chernobyl who realised the reactor was going to blow. Suddenly we were cut off from Europe, and from much of our usual food supply, a situation millions of people who knew what they were voting for voted for in 2016, so they were delighted. Suddenly once-needy Europe seemed enthusiastic to cut us loose, a teenager backing away from necking someone with maggot-infested cold sores. On Sky News, entitled matching middle-class couples with matching...
Across the city, under the auspices of newly formed estate agents Pennington Lee, Michael Pennington (aka stand-up Johnny Vegas) and Stewart Lee have devised an hour-long perambulation through a semi near Old Trafford with the title Interiors.
It's a skit on the obsession with design and property which swerves into something more disconcerting: Pennington, as vendor Jeffrey Parkin, whose 'design initiatives' on the house aren't quite finished, and who really wants to go into property in Montenegro, unravels - room by room, joke by joke - only inches away from his audience.
A wobble-spirited, wobble-bellied, Parkin, a more tentative persona than the abrasive Vegas, greets his spectators/prospective buyers at the door of the house (equipped with 'liquid flush-toilet' and 'water-dispensing body-wash shower'). He's all boasts in the kitchen, which has a fridge stuck with snaps of Montenegro, a weird gap where a load-bearing wall has been taken down (if it had been allowed to stay, half the audience 'would be ignored'), and a massively eulogised (totally standard) pan rack, 'modelled on sketches I did of the Humber Bridge'.
Things get a bit edgier in the sitting-room (unsafe gas fire, sofa with a grey blanket, standard lamp 'for atmos'), as he works out which would be the best still from Farinelli: Il Castrato to project as a subtly teasing cultural reference on his wall.
They get desperate in the bedroom, where an unseen partner has unstylishly intervened: the bed provokes a raging riff on Ikea, 'flat-pack paedophiles picking on the weak and vulnerable' and a stretch of wallpaper gets attacked with a scraper - 'It's not even wallpaper: it's a dirty protest. You just smear it on.' They get explained in the final and only finished room: a perfect, empty nursery. It's not greatly startling, this attack on consumerism, but it's finely done, and it's well worth doing. How did we get to the point where the word 'interior' always had a colour chart attached to it?
Stewart Lee
2015-06-14T00:45:32+01:00
Across the city, under the auspices of newly formed estate agents Pennington Lee, Michael Pennington (aka stand-up Johnny Vegas) and Stewart Lee have devised an hour-long perambulation through a semi near Old Trafford with the title Interiors. It's a skit on the obsession with design and property which swerves into something more disconcerting: Pennington, as vendor Jeffrey Parkin, whose 'design initiatives' on the house aren't quite finished, and who really wants to go into property in Montenegro, unravels - room by room, joke by joke - only inches away from his audience. A wobble-spirited, wobble-bellied, Parkin, a more tentative persona than the abrasive Vegas, greets his spectators/prospective buyers at the door of the house (equipped with 'liquid flush-toilet' and 'water-dispensing body-wash shower'). He's all boasts in the kitchen, which has a fridge stuck with snaps of Montenegro, a weird gap where a load-bearing wall has been taken down (if it had been allowed to stay, half the audience 'would be ignored'), and a massively eulogised (totally standard) pan rack, 'modelled on sketches I did of the Humber Bridge'. Things get a bit edgier in the sitting-room (unsafe gas fire, sofa with a grey blanket, standard lamp 'for atmos'), as he works out which would be the best still from Farinelli: Il Castrato to project as a subtly teasing cultural reference on his wall. They get desperate in the bedroom, where an unseen partner has unstylishly intervened: the bed provokes a raging riff on Ikea, 'flat-pack paedophiles picking on the weak and vulnerable' and a stretch of wallpaper gets attacked with a scraper - 'It's not even wallpaper: it's a dirty protest. You just smear it on.' They get explained in the final and only finished room: a perfect, empty nursery. It's not greatly startling, this attack on consumerism, but it's...
http://www.giantsand.com/ - Being a Giant Sand fan is what first led me to the South West, and Hotel Congress. Check out all the links here for other Arizona music.
http://www.thedavegraneyshow.com/ - for what it's worth it was Dave Graney's 2nd band The Moodists I was listening to for the moment I remembered for page 152.
http://www.myfirstband.com/
- Here's endless photos and biogs of US 60's Garage bands that never even made records.
ARIZONA http://www.hotelcongress.com/ - Hotel Congress, Tucson http://www.meteorcrater.com/ - Meteor Crater online. http://www.sanxaviermission.org/ - Mission San Xavier del Bac website. http://www.aztrogon.com/Local%20Info/Nogales/nogdirect.htm Nogales map. http://www.ci.tucson.az.us/camera-ie.html a website of Tucson with webcam. FREEMASONRY http://www.guigue.org/guitex28.htm tells us about early attempts to introduce The Craft to the USA FREEMASONS IN SPACE http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/biography/spacemason/ - a checklist of NASA masons. http://www.mt.net/~watcher/masonapollo.html More of the same. http://scenewash.org/lobbies/chainthinker/ctheory/mann/stupid31.html Information linking John F Kennedy to putting Masons on the moon. FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIANS http://www.chick.com/ is the ultimate on-line source for easy to digest, bite-sized Biblical weirdness. KING ARTHUR/HOLY GRAIL http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~tomgreen/arthur.htm - is a good overview of Arthur in history and myth http://www.a1.com/isms/holygrail.html explains how the Holy Grail is actually in Indiana http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/3636/indexe.htm is a comprehensive overview of assumed Grail locations http://www.nullensc.dircon.co.uk/jch/jch_anx1.htm#Holy%20Grail - how the Knights Templars got the Holy Grail. HOAX MOON LANDING http://www.webaxs.net/~noel/moon.htm Men didn't go to the moon. HOPI CULTURE http://www.psv.com/hopi.html is the official site of the Hopi Cultural Centre. http://www.nau.edu/~hcpo-p/ I did a number of re-writes in the light of information presented here. http://www.recycles.org/hopi/index.htm Chat and exchanges of views. http://www.nau.edu/~hcpo-p/arts/tihum.htm Information about katsina dolls. http://www.csulb.edu/~aisstudy/nae/chapter_1/001_002_1.09.txt - stuff about Walpi. MUSIC http://www.melbourne.net/beasts/beasts.html - The Beasts Of Bourbon. Their album Gone somehow helped me get this story into shape. http://www.borderlinebooks.com/us6070s/us60stop.html - Fuzz, Acid & Flowers is a great book that helped me find out all about the kind of bands Luther's is based on. http://www.giantsand.com/ - Being a Giant Sand fan is what first led me to the South West, and Hotel Congress. Check out all the links here for other Arizona music. http://www.thedavegraneyshow.com/ - for what it's worth it was Dave Graney's 2nd band The Moodists I was listening to for the moment I remembered for page 152. http://www.myfirstband.com/ - Here's endless photos and biogs of US 60's Garage bands that never even made records. PEYOTE http://www.roninpub.com/Peyote.html - suggested...
Sunday Night At The London Palladium (1955-74 ATV) Youthful Scouse Mod Jimmy Tarbuck, and an already skeletal Bruce Forsythe, host this insanely programmed institution of diamond-honed variety circuit stand-ups, proto-psychedelic beat pop, and people doing weird things with planks. Makes Live At The Apollo look like a content-driven engagement platform.
The Comedians (1971 - 79 Granada) Deftly edited showcase of effortlessly sexist and casually racist Seventies club comics of undeniable skill but no ambition. Their fifty interchangeable quips are interspersed with Dixieland jazz played by white people.
Wheeltappers' and Shunters' Social Club (1974-77 Granada) In a convincing studio mock-up of the sort of Working Men's Club already dying, fag smoke rises and Watneys flows as Bernard Manning and the Frank Skinner-faced Colin Crompton introduce fruity variety, terrible 70s pop, and sometimes unexpectedly palettable pre-Alternative stand-ups. Cannon and Ball's debut is stunning comedy theatre. The usual racist and sexist shit aside, visually and aesthetically this remains a high point of TV stand-up, which I rip off.
Boom Boom Out Go The Lights (1980-81 BBC2) Short-lived, two episode showcase for newfangled "Alternative Comedy", comprising the DNA of the next thirty years of British stand-up. Brightly-lit social workers drinking BBC orange squash fail to process the innovations of Rik and Ade's Dangerous Brothers double act, Pauline Melville, and masked machine-gunman Keith Allen, all inexplicably interspersed with feelgood r'n'b from Paul Jones.
O.T.T. (1982 Central) An over-excited Chris Tarrant reveals his inner-Rugby club social sec, hosting this Janus-faced late night aberration, featuring anti-Thatcher pop bands and communist Alexei Sayle, alongside race hate poster boy Bernard Manning and gratuitous 1970s female nudity, during which the young and unique black British comic Lenny Henry, and the Oxford fine art graduate Helen Atkinson Wood, wilted like whipped dogs.
Saturday Live (1985-88 Channel 4) Blabby Ben Elton shouts over a floodlit sheep-pen of caned casuals, and subtly distances himself from the weird and interesting acts he introduces (such as a brilliant Kevin McAleer with his unequalled owl slide show). Prefiguring the mass modern comedy phenomenon of Failed Irony, Harry Enfield's Loadsamoney scores big with the cash rich Thatcherites it ridicules.
Gas, Comedy Network (C4, Paramount 1997-98) The twin last gasps of straight stand-up on TV in the 20th century, then presumed by executives to "not really work". Endlessly repeated for years on late night cable under the terms of the acts' one-payment buy-out deals, and featuring many stars of the future - Noel Fielding, Lee Mack, Julian Barrat, Jason Byrne, Peter Kay - the shows typify the time when TV stand-up started to feel like worthless one-size fits all filler. Like peasants with free milk we lapped up what they offered us, only to see our virgin sets chopped into differently titled shows, and sliced into 79p audio-only I-tunes clips, for time immemorial.
Live At The Apollo, Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow, Stand Up For The Week (Open Mike Productions, BBC1, C4, 2008 +) Michael McIntyre's management's production outfit dominate the stand-up TV spectrum with a relatively narrow range of acts and approaches, mainly all managed by the production company's parent group and two other big agencies. Mutually masturbatory backroom trade-offs of Masonic complexity inflate their clients' lucrative private corporate gig rates by showing them working in front of vast crowds of laughing people and influential celebrities, which also convince the viewer at home that they are being entertained. Tight six minute sets with little to spook the horses, or with the consensus youth-danger flavor of Stand Up For The Week's ersatz controversialists, characterize three ruthlessly efficient steamroller stand-up vehicles that must, nevertheless, be congratulated for reinvigorating the notion of funny people talking on TV for the new century, even as they kill live club comedy by luring in the alchopop crowd with their TV-induced expectations of post-produced bulletproof content.
The Alternative Comedy Experience (Comedy Central 2013 +) The best stand-up showcase ever made for television places two dozen of the sort of comics broadsheet critics and other comedians rate way above all the shit the public and TV executives like, including the highest ever proportion of women on a TV stand-up show, in a dimly lit Scottish basement. Without any supportive cutaways to laughing claques of no-taste divs, the focus is thrown onto the naked material and the raw performances, not the spectacle and the showbiz. The hard short edits of Granada's The Comedians mesh impossibly with long extended routines in a Wheeltappers' and Shunters' live ambience that eschews the fake bonhomie of the Open Mike Productions showcases for an art house documentary style journey to the flourishing fringes of our rapidly emulsifying TV stand-up scene.
Paul Sinha's ability to spike obsessively detailed sport trivia through artful extended sets detailing the political and social concerns of an out-gay ex-doctor Hindu means club crowds are conned into loving him before they realise they're applauding a textbook liberal.
The low energy Scottish shuffler David Kay sounds like a mumbling old lady, twittering away unnoticed, bit concentrate for a moment and it's clear his uniquely odd worldview has the power to transform the dull mundanities of everyday existence into fascinatingly funny and surreal stories.
Like all the best Irish writers, Eleanor Tiernan sounds like she's bending an unruly English idiom, not historically her own, into service of an essentially Irish vision, a bleak but nonetheless blackly comic view of life, expressed in clipped economic sentences, illuminated with occasional florid flourishes.
Andy Zaltzman, his '60s satirist-shaped brain visibly bulging out of his enormous head, offers dictionary-dense demolitions of global political stupidity with a self-deprecating sleight of hand and a vast vocabulary.
Bridget Christie spouts old-school Eighties style feminist stand-up with a lightness of touch and a playful silliness her female forebears weren't encouraged to entertain, and is the comedian of choice for The South Bank's Women of The World Festival on March 8th.
Hated by crypto-fascist internet trolls the world-wide web over, Josie Long has found a fertile stream of heartfelt yet cuddly anti-capitalist invective, softened by her sentimental streak and occasional lapses into passionate frenzied faux-incoherence.
Stewart Lee
2013-02-01T18:35:11+00:00
Sunday Night At The London Palladium (1955-74 ATV) Youthful Scouse Mod Jimmy Tarbuck, and an already skeletal Bruce Forsythe, host this insanely programmed institution of diamond-honed variety circuit stand-ups, proto-psychedelic beat pop, and people doing weird things with planks. Makes Live At The Apollo look like a content-driven engagement platform. The Comedians (1971 - 79 Granada) Deftly edited showcase of effortlessly sexist and casually racist Seventies club comics of undeniable skill but no ambition. Their fifty interchangeable quips are interspersed with Dixieland jazz played by white people. Wheeltappers' and Shunters' Social Club (1974-77 Granada) In a convincing studio mock-up of the sort of Working Men's Club already dying, fag smoke rises and Watneys flows as Bernard Manning and the Frank Skinner-faced Colin Crompton introduce fruity variety, terrible 70s pop, and sometimes unexpectedly palettable pre-Alternative stand-ups. Cannon and Ball's debut is stunning comedy theatre. The usual racist and sexist shit aside, visually and aesthetically this remains a high point of TV stand-up, which I rip off. Boom Boom Out Go The Lights (1980-81 BBC2) Short-lived, two episode showcase for newfangled "Alternative Comedy", comprising the DNA of the next thirty years of British stand-up. Brightly-lit social workers drinking BBC orange squash fail to process the innovations of Rik and Ade's Dangerous Brothers double act, Pauline Melville, and masked machine-gunman Keith Allen, all inexplicably interspersed with feelgood r'n'b from Paul Jones. O.T.T. (1982 Central) An over-excited Chris Tarrant reveals his inner-Rugby club social sec, hosting this Janus-faced late night aberration, featuring anti-Thatcher pop bands and communist Alexei Sayle, alongside race hate poster boy Bernard Manning and gratuitous 1970s female nudity, during which the young and unique black British comic Lenny Henry, and the Oxford fine art graduate Helen Atkinson Wood, wilted like whipped dogs. Saturday Live (1985-88 Channel 4) Blabby Ben Elton shouts...
Stewart Lee's 2008 routine (one of three of his own shows he dissects and provides transcripts of in the book), is called "41st Best Stand Up Ever", prompted by Lee's bemusement at being placed so high in a TV all-time comedian chart. As Lee himself points out, such shows are just cheap screen time-eaters constructed of archive clips and talking heads prostituting themselves out of anything but a sacred feel for what they're intoning about. He also points out that the order of the list is shaped by the necessity of having the rude comics on after the 9pm watershed, hence inflating their position, plus they reflect the hot current performer who would almost certainly have disappeared from sight within two years. For this is what Stewart Lee, my personal Number 1 Best Stand Up Ever does; with his comedy and with this book, he deconstructs his act, comedy and himself.
Now I realise many of you, especially Americans, may not be familiar with Stewart Lee. He is very British and very niche. Half of the chapters are transcripts of three of his live acts in the Noughties. I'm already familiar with them, so they lose a bit set down on the page in terms of their entertainment. Readers can familiarise themselves with the acts as they are on YouTube, maybe before you read, or after, or even during. But this book is so much more than just reading some comedy scripts and their genesis.
How I Escaped My Certain Fate starts at Lee's disillusion with stand up during the early part of the new century. Psychologically and financially flayed raw by the furor surrounding the "Jerry Springer - The Musical" which he partly co-wrote but was fully swept up in the cries for prosecution under Britain's superannuated blasphemy laws. In one of the appendices Lee gives a trenchant critique of the art form of musical theatre, reflected in the early chapters by his own disbelief that he ended up being part responsible for possibly the most infamous one. A wounded Lee retires to lick his wounds and gradually the flame to return to stand up flickers back to life. But he is striving for a purity of the experience and the book takes off from this point. If Lee can at times make his audience uncomfortable, it is nothing that he himself isn't also feeling towards himself.
We see the serendipitous events in his life that he is able to weave into thematic material. Those he tweaks for comic/artistic purposes and those he leaves untouched. One can marvel at the connections he finds to link them up. But he goes so much further. This book is a supreme study in the use of language. Lee says he tells very few jokes. What he does is pitch a stage character to the audience. Fully conscious of how to bring them along with him, how to alienate them. He plots his routine like a musical score and everything revolves around the telling. The points that he challenges the audience. The points that he lulls them in. The points when he deliberately keeps them at arm's length. Then points where he flatters them, or divides them against themselves. Even the points where he is free to extemporise to overcome his confessed boredom at performing the same routine over and over again night after night. He considers and structures the minutiae of the flows in power and status relationships between his stage persona and the audience. He is plucking the stringed instrument of our emotions like a virtuoso.
How does this offer insight to a novelist? Through the crafting of his act. Through the precision of words chosen, of inflections and sounds. Every word of his routines, even to the 'ums' and 'ers' are deliberately laid down. But they look so conversational and natural that it is an art. And art is a key word in this book. Lee considers the mass commercial entertainment of any art form that is concerned with audience numbers which it then panders to reaffirming their preconceptions and values.
And then there is awkward, challenging, subversive art that demands the audience to work. Lee is ambivalent at different times as to whether comedy is high art, but his is certainly literary; not through his references and allusions, but through his appreciation of language. He also offers his seeking out of the traditional comic forms of the Bouffon in France and the shaman-clowns of Pablo Native Americans. Their concern with mocking established communal values as a way of both reaffirming them and providing the possibility of what lies beyond such conformity. Lee comes away with the notion of a sacred, ritualistic space on stage and draws a chalk circle around himself in one of his acts, as talismanic protection before the crowd. It's that attention to detail, that complete and wholesale hallowing of his craft that makes Lee top of the contemporary comedy tree.
If I have a criticism, it's that he doesn't quite show us all his art. While the material is faithfully excavated for its sources, I wish he would relate the process of the writing itself. Since every word is honed, it might have been interesting to see early drafts of lines. Words rejected, or cuts made for rhythm purposes. He also sells himself short I feel, by not taking us into the process by which he commits his act to memory, working out the gestures and the movements across the stage. As writers, we read in public book in hand. Imaging having to learn a whole hour's worth of your own text in order to be able to deliver it word-perfect from memory to an audience. Now that makes it art.
I urge you to read this book, but not necessarily for the laughs.
Stewart Lee
2011-06-26T13:16:34+01:00
Stewart Lee's 2008 routine (one of three of his own shows he dissects and provides transcripts of in the book), is called "41st Best Stand Up Ever", prompted by Lee's bemusement at being placed so high in a TV all-time comedian chart. As Lee himself points out, such shows are just cheap screen time-eaters constructed of archive clips and talking heads prostituting themselves out of anything but a sacred feel for what they're intoning about. He also points out that the order of the list is shaped by the necessity of having the rude comics on after the 9pm watershed, hence inflating their position, plus they reflect the hot current performer who would almost certainly have disappeared from sight within two years. For this is what Stewart Lee, my personal Number 1 Best Stand Up Ever does; with his comedy and with this book, he deconstructs his act, comedy and himself. Now I realise many of you, especially Americans, may not be familiar with Stewart Lee. He is very British and very niche. Half of the chapters are transcripts of three of his live acts in the Noughties. I'm already familiar with them, so they lose a bit set down on the page in terms of their entertainment. Readers can familiarise themselves with the acts as they are on YouTube, maybe before you read, or after, or even during. But this book is so much more than just reading some comedy scripts and their genesis. How I Escaped My Certain Fate starts at Lee's disillusion with stand up during the early part of the new century. Psychologically and financially flayed raw by the furor surrounding the "Jerry Springer - The Musical" which he partly co-wrote but was fully swept up in the cries for prosecution under Britain's superannuated blasphemy laws....
Here at WOS Manchester, we rarely get the chance to review comedy but Stewart Lee has the perfect theatrical connection - he co-wrote the ground breaking Jerry Springer - The Opera.
But what of his comedy act? Surely once you have seen one stand up comedian honing their material so that it relates to the audience, you have seen them all. Cue- funny stories rolling off the tongue followed by a spot of batting hecklers back and forth and you have the ingredients for a comedy night out.
But Stew is not your archetypal comedian, as his material bravely confounds all of your expectations. The format for his shows should not work but due to the skill and intelligence of the delivery, it works wonderfully. How many other comedians could repeat the same joke/story from a different angle and make you laugh through your hands?
Lee’s stories are, at times funny and yet quite sardoic, as he recalls his mother’s love of an old Tom O’Connor joke over his own material. We also hear how the BBC pulled the plug on a TV show he was comissioned to write. Their loss and our gain, as this intelligent genre-busting comedian is refreshingly different.
The Evening Standard have described him as a “squashed Albert Finney” which might be due to his disdain of middle England’s poster boy - Daily Mail collumnist Richard Littlejohn.
I particularly loved his take on Carphone Warehouse’s reaction to the Big Brother racism row. But the great thing about this show is the way Stewart seamlessly leaps from one unrelated topic to another. For example March Of The Mallards as opposed to the penguins because these ducks are dirtier and would not have received a U certificate if they were the subject of a documentary!
The audience on the night I went laughed hysterically, as did I. This clever comedian delivers his lines with pauses allowing the audience to guess the punchline. The respect that he gives his fans is reciprocated, as at the Lowry they cheered him to the rafters.
An excellent night out!
Stewart Lee
2008-02-25T22:01:13+00:00
Here at WOS Manchester, we rarely get the chance to review comedy but Stewart Lee has the perfect theatrical connection - he co-wrote the ground breaking Jerry Springer - The Opera. But what of his comedy act? Surely once you have seen one stand up comedian honing their material so that it relates to the audience, you have seen them all. Cue- funny stories rolling off the tongue followed by a spot of batting hecklers back and forth and you have the ingredients for a comedy night out. But Stew is not your archetypal comedian, as his material bravely confounds all of your expectations. The format for his shows should not work but due to the skill and intelligence of the delivery, it works wonderfully. How many other comedians could repeat the same joke/story from a different angle and make you laugh through your hands? Lee’s stories are, at times funny and yet quite sardoic, as he recalls his mother’s love of an old Tom O’Connor joke over his own material. We also hear how the BBC pulled the plug on a TV show he was comissioned to write. Their loss and our gain, as this intelligent genre-busting comedian is refreshingly different. The Evening Standard have described him as a “squashed Albert Finney” which might be due to his disdain of middle England’s poster boy - Daily Mail collumnist Richard Littlejohn. I particularly loved his take on Carphone Warehouse’s reaction to the Big Brother racism row. But the great thing about this show is the way Stewart seamlessly leaps from one unrelated topic to another. For example March Of The Mallards as opposed to the penguins because these ducks are dirtier and would not have received a U certificate if they were the subject of a documentary! The audience on...
This still-active Sydney combo's third album, from 1989, exemplifies a peculiarly Australian jazz-punk hybrid (see also Ed Kuepper's Laughing Clowns).
Mangrove swampland licks gutter in the loose-limbed shadow of Albert Ayler and his ecstatic ilk; saxes squawk over driving bass; a snowstorm of flailing drums blows grunge blueprints West to Seattle and into Mudhoney's laps.
Captain Beefheart's head spins 360 degrees on Blairin' Linda, the queerly spiritual Let's Make Garbage moulds magic out of mess, and Kissing Your Shadow's spluttering wah wah surges towards an unknowable ideal.
A second disc offers fifteen earlier and less unhinged tunes.
Stewart Lee
2012-01-01T01:28:03+00:00
This still-active Sydney combo's third album, from 1989, exemplifies a peculiarly Australian jazz-punk hybrid (see also Ed Kuepper's Laughing Clowns). Mangrove swampland licks gutter in the loose-limbed shadow of Albert Ayler and his ecstatic ilk; saxes squawk over driving bass; a snowstorm of flailing drums blows grunge blueprints West to Seattle and into Mudhoney's laps. Captain Beefheart's head spins 360 degrees on Blairin' Linda, the queerly spiritual Let's Make Garbage moulds magic out of mess, and Kissing Your Shadow's spluttering wah wah surges towards an unknowable ideal. A second disc offers fifteen earlier and less unhinged tunes.
In 2003, at the mid-point of their career, superstardom winked briefly at New Jersey's Fountains Of Wayne, when their hit single Stacey's Mom achingly anatomised adolescent trans-generational lust.
But their fifth album finds them back in the box marked ‘underappreciated guitar pop classicists', where their understatedly sharp, and wryly witty, portraits of suburban survivors' mid-life muddles pan out in thirteen perfectly structured songs. With old school moves like middle eights, key changes, vocal harmonies, and guitar solos, in all the right places, Sky Full Of Holes won't spook the horses, but engages instead both the heart and the head.
Stewart Lee
2011-08-21T19:42:05+01:00
In 2003, at the mid-point of their career, superstardom winked briefly at New Jersey's Fountains Of Wayne, when their hit single Stacey's Mom achingly anatomised adolescent trans-generational lust. But their fifth album finds them back in the box marked ‘underappreciated guitar pop classicists', where their understatedly sharp, and wryly witty, portraits of suburban survivors' mid-life muddles pan out in thirteen perfectly structured songs. With old school moves like middle eights, key changes, vocal harmonies, and guitar solos, in all the right places, Sky Full Of Holes won't spook the horses, but engages instead both the heart and the head.
Do you still enjoy coming to Edinburgh? Do you feel obliged to come every year?
"I do. You need to be at the heart of the comedy community, you need to see the new things that are coming through. I also think it’s good to get a clear run at something, working something out for three weeks every day in the same room."
Does it keep you relevant within the comedy community?
"In terms of needing to think yourself part of an emergent scene then I think it keeps me relevant on some level. Other comics will tell you, 'I don’t need to do Edinburgh any more' as if they’re better than it. That’s exactly the point at which they become worse.
"To be honest, if I hadn’t got in with The Stand [Lee performs at related venue the Assembly Rooms], I don’t think I would go anymore. I like the fact that if you perform for The Stand you’re relatively uncontaminated by the nasty things about the Fringe. In a way that puts me in a false bubble... and I’m not held ransom by a management company. Also, it’s easier for my generation to do things for the love of it because we have a degree of education and financial security that people 20/30 years younger than us will never have. It’s going to be interesting seeing what kind of art is made by people in their teens and 20s now when they’re labouring under the shadow of massive financial debt – with things costing so much more to do all the time, that inevitably makes them more conservative."
You’re certainly relevant enough to sell out a big Fringe venue run in advance…
"There’s a weird thing at the moment where I seem to be perceived as two things simultaneously: one being someone who always sells out and is huge, and then the other is some unknown loser that no one likes – which rather depends on who writes about me. It’s quite good to be honest – it’s not pleasant to be recognised, talked to by strangers, or photographed... Last night a Guardian journalist took a photo of me eating an apple in the street and put it on his website. Things like that are really disconcerting."
Do you ever rest on your laurels when you’ve got a sold out crowd that will likely laugh at anything you say?
"There’s definitely a degree of comfort in the fact that people have decided to come and see you and know who you are, but rather than taking that for granted I think you have to use it as a mandate to do worse and more strange things. You have to make them active participants in the live experience rather than them just sitting back, and one of the ways you do that is to make them feel like you don’t want them to be there, they’re at fault in some way, and that rather than you being their servant they are there for your benefit. I want them to tap in to what they’re being told, and have the fun of making all the connections themselves. It becomes an act in which the audience are half of it."
What do you now want to tackle in stand-up? What so-far-unfulfilled ambitions do you have?
"Most of the ideas that I have about theatre, films, or books, I can do more economically, more directly, and more interestingly in stand-up.
"It’s quite interesting to think, 'Wait, what if I just carried on?' Not many people have done that – lots of people used stand-up as a means to an end but what if I did it for another 26 years? It would also be interesting to become, just for a short period, so big that I could do 8,000 seaters every night and see if there was some way I could ruin the idea of stadium comedy – blow it apart from the inside out and still give people an exciting stadium comedy experience.
"I might make a folk record next year. That’s not me having a midlife crisis."
Stewart Lee
2015-08-04T11:05:55+01:00
Do you still enjoy coming to Edinburgh? Do you feel obliged to come every year? "I do. You need to be at the heart of the comedy community, you need to see the new things that are coming through. I also think it’s good to get a clear run at something, working something out for three weeks every day in the same room." Does it keep you relevant within the comedy community? "In terms of needing to think yourself part of an emergent scene then I think it keeps me relevant on some level. Other comics will tell you, 'I don’t need to do Edinburgh any more' as if they’re better than it. That’s exactly the point at which they become worse. "To be honest, if I hadn’t got in with The Stand [Lee performs at related venue the Assembly Rooms], I don’t think I would go anymore. I like the fact that if you perform for The Stand you’re relatively uncontaminated by the nasty things about the Fringe. In a way that puts me in a false bubble... and I’m not held ransom by a management company. Also, it’s easier for my generation to do things for the love of it because we have a degree of education and financial security that people 20/30 years younger than us will never have. It’s going to be interesting seeing what kind of art is made by people in their teens and 20s now when they’re labouring under the shadow of massive financial debt – with things costing so much more to do all the time, that inevitably makes them more conservative." You’re certainly relevant enough to sell out a big Fringe venue run in advance… "There’s a weird thing at the moment where I seem to be perceived as two things...
Stew wrote sleevenotes for the reissues of these two albums by the 80s band Razorcuts Buy The World Keeps Turning from here and buy Storyteller from here.
There are few things I like better when the autumn nights are drawing in than a trip out to see one of my favourite comedians perform live.
Stewart Lee is one of the best live stand-ups I’ve ever watched. The word I’d always use first when describing his work is clever, but that’s not to say he’s not also painfully funny.
In fact, he’s one of the few stand-ups capable of making me actually cry, so my hopes for Thursday’s opening night of his Much A-Stew About Nothing tour were high.
The set this time round is bare - none of the backlit carpet remnants that formed the backdrop for his last tour - and there’s little opening preamble beyond an explanation of the format this new show will take.
The show is divided into four half-hour sets which will form the basis for the third series of his popular Comedy Vehicle TV show, which will record in December and air next spring.
Theme-wise, we had celebrity Tories, dog excrement, UKIP and marriage to look forward to, again explained at the outset.
When he set this out, I wasn’t sure the format would work - having four distinct 30-minute pieces which weren’t interconnected felt like it might spoil the flow, but the interval helped.
The moment when he swapped from one to the next felt a little stilted the first time it happened, but by the second half switch Lee had the audience in the palm of his hand, having just reduced us to tears with the culmination of his UKIP rant.
This segment was a highlight of the show - a brilliant reversal of the process of evolution seen through the eyes of UKIP's deputy leader Paul Nuttall and inspired by his warning about the influx of skilled Bulgarian workers to the UK.
Lee took this theme and ran with it, doing what he so often does and pushing an audience mercilessly with something that’s working by layering pace on top of increasing absurdity. Through Nuttall he backtracked through the arrival of immigrants from Poland and Asia to medieval France, the Anglo-Saxons and the Neolithic period.
By the time he was directing Nuttall’s intolerance at the first fish ever to make it on to land I was hoping he’d stop soon because it hurt.
The rest of the show felt incredibly sharp, combining biting observation with a slick pace. Despite Lee being self-critical of the dog excrement bit, which he said was new and not quite finished, I thought it worked well.
I loved the marriage segment - the weary tedium of a long-term relationship is standard fodder for a comedian, but not many would admit to being jealous of a family cat with a parasitic worm in its rear end because they “crave that level of physical intimacy”.
The encore was slightly dampened by the intervention of two infuriating hecklers - I will never understand why people pay money to watch a professional and then interrupt him - but Lee eviscerated them.
If I had any criticisms at all, it would be that there were occasional moments of material I’d heard before. But to an extent that's to be expected if you consume everything an artist does, and it was nice to hear some call-backs to previous shows for the die-hard fans among us.
Stewart Lee
2013-10-11T18:24:14+01:00
There are few things I like better when the autumn nights are drawing in than a trip out to see one of my favourite comedians perform live. Stewart Lee is one of the best live stand-ups I’ve ever watched. The word I’d always use first when describing his work is clever, but that’s not to say he’s not also painfully funny. In fact, he’s one of the few stand-ups capable of making me actually cry, so my hopes for Thursday’s opening night of his Much A-Stew About Nothing tour were high. The set this time round is bare - none of the backlit carpet remnants that formed the backdrop for his last tour - and there’s little opening preamble beyond an explanation of the format this new show will take. The show is divided into four half-hour sets which will form the basis for the third series of his popular Comedy Vehicle TV show, which will record in December and air next spring. Theme-wise, we had celebrity Tories, dog excrement, UKIP and marriage to look forward to, again explained at the outset. When he set this out, I wasn’t sure the format would work - having four distinct 30-minute pieces which weren’t interconnected felt like it might spoil the flow, but the interval helped. The moment when he swapped from one to the next felt a little stilted the first time it happened, but by the second half switch Lee had the audience in the palm of his hand, having just reduced us to tears with the culmination of his UKIP rant. This segment was a highlight of the show - a brilliant reversal of the process of evolution seen through the eyes of UKIP's deputy leader Paul Nuttall and inspired by his warning about the influx of skilled Bulgarian...
The Lee And Herring's Fist Of Fun cash-in book is a classic of the genre, now fetching vastly inflated prices.
A flip book version has been scanned and uploaded here (there's also a PDF version available on the same site, or you can try to buy it here.
Stewart Lee
2018-10-30T23:31:01+00:00
The Lee And Herring's Fist Of Fun cash-in book is a classic of the genre, now fetching vastly inflated prices. A flip book version has been scanned and uploaded here (there's also a PDF version available on the same site, or you can try to buy it here.
Brexit promises evaporate. The hot, wet lie-farts of the liar Boris Johnson, trapped in the glamping yurt of his trousers since last year’s referendum, are now contained no more. Europa leans forward decisively, pulls down the foreign secretary’s pants, and sets his foul gases free. And guess what? They stink.
I write on Wednesday backstage in Wolverhampton. On the internet, a blue hat with yellow stars worn by the bullied Queen has infuriated Daily Mail racists. “Western men,” the millinery seems to murmur, “this is the European Union member country of your wives. Your daughters. Your sons. Stand up. Rise up. Demand action. Do not carry on as normal. Cowed.”
David Davis, the Mayonnaise Ewok, who once so bravely lunged at Diane Abbott in the House of Commons bar and heroically pushed his squashed face into Leanne Wood’s personal space on Question Time, melts before the Eurocrats like the frozen Alaskan pipeline that he is, wilting at the negotiators’ pesky figures and facts.
Twelve years ago, the Mayonnaise Ewok paraded his Tory leadership ambition with the support of a brace of young women, wearing tight T-shirts with the words “It’s DD for me” emblazoned across their breasts. I am no expert in brassiere sizing, despite many years of patient study, but I have scrutinised the pictures of Davis’s T-shirted females at length on the internet, and some of them appear to have been exaggerating their qualifications. Is there no end to the Mayonnaise Ewok’s lies?
The fairytale pageantry of the Queen’s speech to parliament, and its supporting cast of colourful fantasy characters – Black Rod, Black Betty, Black Uhuru and Rom Space Knight – suddenly seems like a desperate ritual of hope, meaningless in itself, but designed to appease a capricious demon with dark designs upon our island race.
In London, there is no government. Nationwide, the tarmac melts. At Ascot, men’s dress code is relaxed, a sure sign of disaster. And, unless my hearing is playing up, someone in the queue behind me at Hilton Park services said that our next Tory prime minister will be a tree frog named Jacob. The centre cannot hold.
Are we in the end times? And if so, when Christ Eternal returns, in judgment and great majesty, will we recognise Him?
In the last week, the leftwing commentariat has written a lot of hysterical rubbish about the Conservatives going into partnership with the apparently antediluvian Democratic Unionists. Caroline Lucas, of the Green party, even called them “dinosaurs”, which shows her own ignorance. The DUP don’t actually believe in dinosaurs, so I imagine her clever metropolitan liberal elite insult was just primordial soup off a hadrosaur’s spine fin.
Besides which, the Democratic Unionists’ supposedly backward views on climate change, homosexuality and how old the planet is are in fact no more conservative than those of Comrade Corbyn’s Islamic “friends” in Hamas.
Indeed, I myself was disparaging about the DUP in this very column on this page in this newspaper only last week, comparing their parade-loving membership to a line of plastic religious fundamentalist Warhammer tabletop gaming figurines called the Plague Rats ™.
But like many other liberally minded content providers, currently back-pedalling on comments they may have made about Jeremy Corbyn, I am now happy to admit I was wrong about the DUP; and that I was wrong about that woman from the DUP too; and that it was wrong of me, and, what is more, perhaps a mite sexist, to mention her and the Gruffalo in the same sentence.
It’s hardly surprising I misread the DUP so badly. Like most people outside Northern Ireland, it hadn’t been necessary for me to know or care who the DUP, or any Northern Irish parties, were before last week. So, naturally, I blundered through the 1,100 words of copy I was obliged to submit last Sunday without taking the time and trouble to understand.
Whatever you may think of the DUP they are, first and foremost, like all of us, patriots loyal to this sceptred isle. I suspect their truculence at the Tory negotiating table means they have realised it is up to them to rescue this beloved British island from the incompetent Conservative government incumbent.
The DUP are as English as Arthur and his knights, long silent in loyal subterranean slumber, now stirring to save sweet Albion from the wound it would wreak upon itself.
Many people in Northern Ireland, it is rumoured, do not want to be British. But they are British, whether they like it or not. And as such, they cannot help but embody the most basic British values of this island. Fairness, justice, tolerance, fairness, reading, riting and rithmetic.
Even Sean Fein, the leader of IRA, would agree that if that woman from the DUP chooses to prop up the invalid Tory government, she would be doing a terrible disservice to the island of England that all Irish people see as their mother country.
Jeremy Corbyn realised, in what might otherwise have been the twilight of his leadership, that he needed to step up to the touchline and bat for Britain, instead of nurturing his brown allotment parsnip.
Similarly, that woman from the DUP has realised, as she alone holds the future of this great island of Britain in her twin hands, that she needs to exercise her great power, like The Transformers, with great responsibility.
Heroes come in unlikely forms. And so do messiahs. In refusing to countenance supporting the Conservatives, for whatever her own private and doubtless honourable reasons, could that woman from the DUP herself be an unlikely and unintended hero, an unlikely and unintended messiah?
Cynics would say that that woman from the DUP delays the Conservative majority in order to maintain the soft flow of goods and services across the sea from Belfast to Dublin, or to ensure that Northern Irish homosexuals cannot be as happy as, for example, the Welsh ones. Perhaps that is the case.
But sometimes all of us can become the instruments of Christ without being aware of it. I am not a religious person, but it is my belief that God does not want us to leave the EU, and so He has forced the sword arm of His most loyal and loyalist handmaiden, that woman from the DUP.
When the noble history of the rejection of Brexit is written, that woman from the DUP will be its Joan of Arc, its Maid of Orleans, its John Thomas Scopes and its Harvey Milk, all rolled in to one tenacious little bundle of heroic resistance! Ulster says No!! Girl power!!!
Stewart Lee
2017-06-25T23:34:37+01:00
Brexit promises evaporate. The hot, wet lie-farts of the liar Boris Johnson, trapped in the glamping yurt of his trousers since last year’s referendum, are now contained no more. Europa leans forward decisively, pulls down the foreign secretary’s pants, and sets his foul gases free. And guess what? They stink. I write on Wednesday backstage in Wolverhampton. On the internet, a blue hat with yellow stars worn by the bullied Queen has infuriated Daily Mail racists. “Western men,” the millinery seems to murmur, “this is the European Union member country of your wives. Your daughters. Your sons. Stand up. Rise up. Demand action. Do not carry on as normal. Cowed.” David Davis, the Mayonnaise Ewok, who once so bravely lunged at Diane Abbott in the House of Commons bar and heroically pushed his squashed face into Leanne Wood’s personal space on Question Time, melts before the Eurocrats like the frozen Alaskan pipeline that he is, wilting at the negotiators’ pesky figures and facts. Twelve years ago, the Mayonnaise Ewok paraded his Tory leadership ambition with the support of a brace of young women, wearing tight T-shirts with the words “It’s DD for me” emblazoned across their breasts. I am no expert in brassiere sizing, despite many years of patient study, but I have scrutinised the pictures of Davis’s T-shirted females at length on the internet, and some of them appear to have been exaggerating their qualifications. Is there no end to the Mayonnaise Ewok’s lies? The fairytale pageantry of the Queen’s speech to parliament, and its supporting cast of colourful fantasy characters – Black Rod, Black Betty, Black Uhuru and Rom Space Knight – suddenly seems like a desperate ritual of hope, meaningless in itself, but designed to appease a capricious demon with dark designs upon our island race. In...
The saxophonist and strategist John Zorn sits in with other New York art loft eggheads on a Christmas album that avoids the obvious jazz noise trashing of the classics to find new flavours of festive fun inside some rather stale seasonal chestnuts. Winter Wonderland's breezy solos float on a distinctly downtown guitar chug from Marc Ribot, who also spars nicely with the notionally non-ironic sleigh-bells on Let It Snow! Sickening stuff, in its own way, from the man whose Naked City group once gave us tunes like Mantra Of Resurrected Shit and Igneous Ejaculation. Include free Santa sticker pack.
Stewart Lee
2011-12-17T01:32:27+00:00
The saxophonist and strategist John Zorn sits in with other New York art loft eggheads on a Christmas album that avoids the obvious jazz noise trashing of the classics to find new flavours of festive fun inside some rather stale seasonal chestnuts. Winter Wonderland's breezy solos float on a distinctly downtown guitar chug from Marc Ribot, who also spars nicely with the notionally non-ironic sleigh-bells on Let It Snow! Sickening stuff, in its own way, from the man whose Naked City group once gave us tunes like Mantra Of Resurrected Shit and Igneous Ejaculation. Include free Santa sticker pack.
Pastor Isiah Ali Farka Toure Isiahsons is the General Secretary Major of The Allied Evangelicals, registered charity number 21232999axc56, who last week organised a Walk Against Bad Guns And Shootings in South London.
“As we have seen all over London this month, guns are a menace to our society, and the Church should do something about this. That is why I organised the Walk Against Bad Guns And Shootings, from Peckham to Brixton, last week. Protesting against Bad Guns And Shootings has been high up on our ‘to do’ list for a while now, but this year we have also had to march against the Sexual Orientation Regulations act also. If an Allied Evangelicals member, perhaps running a seaside bed and breakfast, wants to refuse admission to two homosexuals, in case they do sodomy in the box room, I believe it is up to them, and so this Bad Guns And Shootings thing took us by surprise.
Sometime I wake up in the morning and I can’t decide what I think is most dangerous to our society. Is it equal rights for homosexuals? Or is it guns and shootings? It is a tough call I am sure you will agree. But just because a man finds himself living in a cesspit, that is no reason not to try and make a rope ladder from his own hair. Unless the man is a homosexual and perhaps likes living in the cesspit. Then we would have to love him for that, at the same time as praying together every day that he would climb out of the cesspit of his own volition, having perhaps already tried to lure him out with fairy cakes, pansies and the threat of eternal damnation.
When I am confused like this about the rights and wrongs of issues, I get down on my two knees in my office, and I pray to the Lord God Almighty for help. ‘What is worse?,’ I asked him, last Sunday, ‘That a young man be shot dead, or that two homosexuals do sodomy in a seaside bed and breakfast, against the wishes of the Allied Evangelical letting out the room, who then has to sit downstairs imaging what they are doing in their quagmire, and being sick, probably?’ The Lord was silent, which I think indicates the complexity of the issue, but I needed to know. I felt like I was in quicksand. What needed to be marched against most? Bullets shooting out of a gun? Or seed shooting out of a homosexual in a place where it was not wanted, such as a seaside bed and breakfast owned by a member of the Allied Evangelicals?
Then there was a knock at my door. I knew it would be an answer to my prayer, the lord showing me a way out of the swampy quicksandy quagmirey cesspit into which I had been led by the homosexuals and the bad guns. I leaped up off my two knees and ran to the door. Outside in the street was a strange sight – an enormous pink gun, six feet tall in its high heels, with two long stocking clad legs, was dancing to a Scissor Sisters record and waving a copy of the Sexual Orientation Regulations act in my face with its alluring, manicured fingers. I realised, that against all my better judgement, I was in love. I couldn’t fight the feeling. So I closed the door, and went inside. Then I ate an entire packet of biscuits, and renounced my faith. That’s the thing about life! You never know what might be just around the corner.
Pastor Isiah Ali Farka Toure Isiahsons was talking to Stewart Lee
Stewart Lee
2007-02-27T16:54:26+00:00
Pastor Isiah Ali Farka Toure Isiahsons is the General Secretary Major of The Allied Evangelicals, registered charity number 21232999axc56, who last week organised a Walk Against Bad Guns And Shootings in South London. “As we have seen all over London this month, guns are a menace to our society, and the Church should do something about this. That is why I organised the Walk Against Bad Guns And Shootings, from Peckham to Brixton, last week. Protesting against Bad Guns And Shootings has been high up on our ‘to do’ list for a while now, but this year we have also had to march against the Sexual Orientation Regulations act also. If an Allied Evangelicals member, perhaps running a seaside bed and breakfast, wants to refuse admission to two homosexuals, in case they do sodomy in the box room, I believe it is up to them, and so this Bad Guns And Shootings thing took us by surprise. Sometime I wake up in the morning and I can’t decide what I think is most dangerous to our society. Is it equal rights for homosexuals? Or is it guns and shootings? It is a tough call I am sure you will agree. But just because a man finds himself living in a cesspit, that is no reason not to try and make a rope ladder from his own hair. Unless the man is a homosexual and perhaps likes living in the cesspit. Then we would have to love him for that, at the same time as praying together every day that he would climb out of the cesspit of his own volition, having perhaps already tried to lure him out with fairy cakes, pansies and the threat of eternal damnation. When I am confused like this about the rights and wrongs of...
Once described as the 'comedian's comedian' Stewart Lee has been performing stand up since 1988. https://bit.ly/C4_News_Subscribe
He is known for pushing boundaries with his intelligent, self-referential and often provocative style of comedy but in his new show 'Stewart Lee vs the Man Wulf' he questions his place on the comedy circuit in an era of increasing populism rhetoric and the popularity of, in his words “$60m Netflix comedians of hate.”
In this episode of Ways to Change the World with Krishnan Guru-Murthy he discusses the state of comedy today and what he thinks of the comedy style of comics like Ricky Gervais and Dave Chappelle as well as why he wouldn't tour America right now.
As The Observer, the world's oldest Sunday newspaper begins a new era under Tortoise media he also reflects on his column for the paper which he's stopped after 15 years.
Produced by Holly Snelling and Sachin Croker
Stewart Lee
2025-05-09T15:29:48+01:00
Once described as the 'comedian's comedian' Stewart Lee has been performing stand up since 1988. https://bit.ly/C4_News_Subscribe He is known for pushing boundaries with his intelligent, self-referential and often provocative style of comedy but in his new show 'Stewart Lee vs the Man Wulf' he questions his place on the comedy circuit in an era of increasing populism rhetoric and the popularity of, in his words “$60m Netflix comedians of hate.” In this episode of Ways to Change the World with Krishnan Guru-Murthy he discusses the state of comedy today and what he thinks of the comedy style of comics like Ricky Gervais and Dave Chappelle as well as why he wouldn't tour America right now. As The Observer, the world's oldest Sunday newspaper begins a new era under Tortoise media he also reflects on his column for the paper which he's stopped after 15 years. Produced by Holly Snelling and Sachin Croker
Like The Jigsaw Seen and The Fleshtones before them, The Grip Weeds are a longstanding American retro-rock band inexplicably driven to release a Christmas album.
The Weeds can pastiche late sixties/early seventies psychedelic pop perfectly, and alongside four acid-flavoured baubles they nail the nasal buzz of Jethro Tull's modal hymnal A Christmas Song, slop out an accurately overblown rendition of the sprout flavoured flatulence that is Greg Lake's I Believe In Father Christmas, and jangle folk-rock style through a rather lovely reading of The Pretenders' 2000 Miles. Your Mojo reading uncle's perfect present, sorted.
Stewart Lee
2011-12-17T19:54:07+00:00
Like The Jigsaw Seen and The Fleshtones before them, The Grip Weeds are a longstanding American retro-rock band inexplicably driven to release a Christmas album. The Weeds can pastiche late sixties/early seventies psychedelic pop perfectly, and alongside four acid-flavoured baubles they nail the nasal buzz of Jethro Tull's modal hymnal A Christmas Song, slop out an accurately overblown rendition of the sprout flavoured flatulence that is Greg Lake's I Believe In Father Christmas, and jangle folk-rock style through a rather lovely reading of The Pretenders' 2000 Miles. Your Mojo reading uncle's perfect present, sorted.
Stewart Lee is, ironically, one of the biggest comedians working in the UK today. Despite years of stand-up based around the fact he felt he wasn’t as popular as he should be, his wry persona, deadbeat delivery and general disdain for the audience has seen him offer a refreshing kind of stand up; one that progresses the medium, rather than striving for imitation.
Lee brings his new show Content Provider to De Montfort Hall this February as part of the comedy festival, headlining for two nights at one of the city’s largest venues. It seems that the audience he berates for not understanding his comedy may be finally getting the joke. “I am very lucky that an open-minded, clever, tolerant, inquisitive and loyal audience have stayed with me, and self-seeded themselves, for decades now,” Lee explains. “But, on the other hand, I always come back with new shows that develop on what they have come to expect, and I never short change them.”
Content Provider is also a book by the same name, a collection of the best of Lee’s newspaper columns over the past five years. In much the same way as his stand-up, Lee pushed the barriers of what a column is supposed to be. “Having accepted the jobs, I tried to discharge them to the best of my abilities, whilst at the same time trying to bend the rules and push the fringes of the ‘funny column’ genre where possible.”
For those who have read his Observer pieces, his articles have covered wildly varying topics, from advising Corbyn to take advice from Putin, to a piece purporting to be about the Olympic legacy, only to be mainly about a decomposing cat. The absurdity of his comedy has become increasingly popular, as is much of what was previously deemed ‘alternative comedy’, meaning it has begun to move into the mainstream. Yet much of his work has been met with intense hatred, with big Lee-bashers including the Daily Mail and The Telegraph, something he revels in by posting their reviews on his website and even using them to advertise his books.
Lee’s strength lies here; his seeming disregard for anything that might offend him. When the audience doesn’t laugh, he explains why they should. When there is a bad review, he uses it as marketing material. “I may pretend to hate doing stand-up,” he says, “But I really do my best.” His persona’s cynicism and superiority is the result of meticulous craft, and those who don’t respond to his work are often missing the point entirely.
Content Provider is in very much the same vein as most of Lee’s work to date, examining what we know about being a column writer and dismantling it. “A decade or so ago I got a bewildering text asking me if, in the light of attending the Kilkenny Comedy Festival, I had any ‘content’ which I would be willing to ‘provide’ to local ‘content providers’. This was my first encounter with the phrase, and I came to understand that they were asking me if I had any text or film or audio, which I could give to mobile phones or websites,” Lee explains. “We like to imagine we are artists, us writers, but it is funny to see what you do described as if it is just filler to put onto gizmos, which I suppose, increasingly, it is.”
Described as an attempt to “understand modern Britain”, Content Provider in its live form will inevitably have to incorporate Brexit. Little more than a month after the vote that divided the country, the Edinburgh Festival began and comedians had to adapt to the new, untrodden landscape of a post-Brexit Britain.
“People that I had routines about had been instantly forgotten,” Lee explains. “As it is, it’s evolved into something that sort of addresses that issue – what kind of content do I provide to an unstable divided society?”
The society comedians were reflecting before had changed drastically, and so in turn did their shows. Lee was clearly in the Remain camp, something reflected in his columns leading up to the vote, but how does he – rather than his persona – feel about the reality of Brexit now it’s happening?
“Anecdotally, racism is on the rise. Austerity is, it’s official, going to be prolonged and worsened. There will be no cross-continental plan, that includes us, for the Syrian refugee crisis or climate change and environmental pollution. It may be that people will get what they wanted out of Brexit in the end, and feel like the sacrifices have been worth it. But for now there are a tense few years ahead. That said, my comedy is like a horrible vulture feeding off the carcass of human misery, so I’m laughing.”
Fortunately, so is everyone else. Lee sold out both his stand-up show and book festival talk this year in Edinburgh, and has become an increasingly iconic figure in comedy. And so naturally, his return to Leicester’s Comedy Festival is hotly anticipated. “My first ever paid out-of-London gig was Leicester Poly with Jerry Sadowitz in 1990. I remember the hotel room had little soaps and shampoos that you could take away with you. I had never seen anything like it.” Who said Leicester wasn’t a luxury destination, eh? We also have the pleasure of being credited as the place in which he met his wife, fellow comedian Bridget Christie, in 2005. Yet, there’s one thing missing this year.
“Leicester has changed in 26 years. I miss the German progressive rock shop, Ultima Thule, by the station, which is online now, and was run by two identical twin brothers who really knew their stuff.”
Europe’s longest comedy festival this year will see Lee share the stage with other big names including Jimmy Carr, Susan Calman, Dane Baptiste and his former comedy partner Richard Herring. Sadly, it doesn’t look like a Lee and Herring reunion is on the cards.
“We would need to rehearse properly for ages, and there is no time or financial incentive to do that, and also the basic relationship of the double act doesn’t make sense for two men of nearly 50, predicated as it is on an essentially adolescent relationship. That said, I think it might be funny to do it in our 80s.”
Well, at least we can keep it in our diaries for the 2040s. And, if he is right, Stewart Lee will no doubt prove to be as popular then as he is now. “I’m lucky that my stage persona makes more sense, rather than less, as I get older.” If this is a hint at a move towards grumpy old man territory, then it is a humble remark. Lee is in a league of his own, brilliantly breaking down audience expectations of comedy and outwitting us at every turn. But of course, what we think isn’t the point anyway. “People can come if they want but it is what it is and it’s not my fault if they don’t like it.”
Stewart Lee: Content Provider will be on 8th & 9th February at De Montfort Hall.
Stewart Lee
2016-12-08T17:35:21+00:00
Stewart Lee is, ironically, one of the biggest comedians working in the UK today. Despite years of stand-up based around the fact he felt he wasn’t as popular as he should be, his wry persona, deadbeat delivery and general disdain for the audience has seen him offer a refreshing kind of stand up; one that progresses the medium, rather than striving for imitation. Lee brings his new show Content Provider to De Montfort Hall this February as part of the comedy festival, headlining for two nights at one of the city’s largest venues. It seems that the audience he berates for not understanding his comedy may be finally getting the joke. “I am very lucky that an open-minded, clever, tolerant, inquisitive and loyal audience have stayed with me, and self-seeded themselves, for decades now,” Lee explains. “But, on the other hand, I always come back with new shows that develop on what they have come to expect, and I never short change them.” Content Provider is also a book by the same name, a collection of the best of Lee’s newspaper columns over the past five years. In much the same way as his stand-up, Lee pushed the barriers of what a column is supposed to be. “Having accepted the jobs, I tried to discharge them to the best of my abilities, whilst at the same time trying to bend the rules and push the fringes of the ‘funny column’ genre where possible.” For those who have read his Observer pieces, his articles have covered wildly varying topics, from advising Corbyn to take advice from Putin, to a piece purporting to be about the Olympic legacy, only to be mainly about a decomposing cat. The absurdity of his comedy has become increasingly popular, as is much of what was previously...
Stewart Lee hasn’t been on telly for a long time, but I have fond memories of when he used to be a regular on our screens. I was probably too young for Fist of Fun on the radio, but I was just old enough for This Morning with Richard (Herring, of course) Not Judy – a comedy show which inexplicably found itself broadcast on Sunday mornings. We should bring that back, Sunday morning comedy. Anyway, Mr Lee – having penned a musical and spent years on the stand-up circuit – returned to TV last night. And he’s got a few things to get off his chest.
TV has struggled with the best way to showcase quality stand-ups for years now – should comics simply adapt to the medium and star in a sit-com, should they speak straight to the camera, should they have a live audience? Many formats have been tried with varying success, but to be honest I’m coming round to the belief that just pointing a camera at comedians while they do their thing is probably the best idea.
That’s what happens here, for the most part, with Stewart Lee performing a straight stand-up gig with just a few little sketches interspersed between the rants and ramblings. And that’s a great thing, and we need much more of it on our tellyboxes – comedians at the top of their game showing a much wider audience than would ever normally be achievable just how wonderful, uplifting, clever and intricate really great comedy can be.
I have a problem though… a lot of what Stewart Lee said irked me a little. In last night’s episode, Lee turned his admittedly sharp mind to books, and in particular toilet books and celebrity hardbacks. Perhaps it is just me, but isn’t it a little obvious to suggest that these genres are inherently crappy? Taking potshots at the likes of Jeremy Clarkson and Chris Moyles felt pedestrian, and to suggest that he shouldn’t read Harry Potter because it’s intended for kids seems close-minded.
But – surprisingly for a comic not known for set-up-and-punchline jokes – he had some great one-liners: to say of Asher D’s book “it doesn’t do to over-perfect things” is a delightful backhanded compliment, and when Dan Brown writes the line “The famous man looked at the red cup” all the work’s been done for you.
Mixed feelings then: on one hand I love seeing stand-up on TV, especially when supported by veterans of the comedy circuit we don’t often see on the telly such as Tony Law and Simon Munnery, but the comedy itself didn’t suit me personally. But I can be heartened by the very fact that this show – along with the likes of We Need Answers and Cowards – has been commissioned at all.
Stewart Lee
2009-03-17T10:51:01+00:00
Stewart Lee hasn’t been on telly for a long time, but I have fond memories of when he used to be a regular on our screens. I was probably too young for Fist of Fun on the radio, but I was just old enough for This Morning with Richard (Herring, of course) Not Judy – a comedy show which inexplicably found itself broadcast on Sunday mornings. We should bring that back, Sunday morning comedy. Anyway, Mr Lee – having penned a musical and spent years on the stand-up circuit – returned to TV last night. And he’s got a few things to get off his chest. TV has struggled with the best way to showcase quality stand-ups for years now – should comics simply adapt to the medium and star in a sit-com, should they speak straight to the camera, should they have a live audience? Many formats have been tried with varying success, but to be honest I’m coming round to the belief that just pointing a camera at comedians while they do their thing is probably the best idea. That’s what happens here, for the most part, with Stewart Lee performing a straight stand-up gig with just a few little sketches interspersed between the rants and ramblings. And that’s a great thing, and we need much more of it on our tellyboxes – comedians at the top of their game showing a much wider audience than would ever normally be achievable just how wonderful, uplifting, clever and intricate really great comedy can be. I have a problem though… a lot of what Stewart Lee said irked me a little. In last night’s episode, Lee turned his admittedly sharp mind to books, and in particular toilet books and celebrity hardbacks. Perhaps it is just me, but isn’t it a...
On the day it was announced that Fist of Fun would finally be released on DVD it was a curious coincidence that Stewart Lee gave us perhaps his silliest work since that much loved, but mostly ignored then axed BBC comedy series. Against the odds, Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle has returned for another series. And he's dressed as a big lizard.
Stewart (now aging with dignity into Morrissey's approachable brother) began with a joke about his granddad being a Chelsea pensioner living in a nest woven from charity poppies. It was a really good opening joke.
“It's not a good opening joke!" shouted Lee, before we cut to one of the mock interview scenes with Armando Iannucci, now graduated from the Red Button content, where the comic was quizzed about his intentions to please the Internet naysayers by including more actual gags in his material this time.
If you thought they were exaggerating some viewer's failure to understand where the talking about stuff stops and the bit where you're supposed to laugh starts, here's a Twitter comment plucked from last night:
“Stewart Lee really should get to grips with the basics. Comedians are meant to be, you know, er, funny."
Some people, maybe even a lot of people, don't get it.
We get it. Personally, we've long thought Stewart was the best standup comedian working today - even when he was really lazy and mostly just did the same stuff year in year out. And now he puts the work in, with ever more uncompromising and deceptively smart routines, there's really no one to touch him. Because despite the meta-self-deprecation, after 20 years in the business, Lee's comedy is that of a master. He really does know what he's doing. And it's very funny. It just doesn't necessarily have punchlines. But that's life.
We can't scoff at those waiting for a pithy observation on modern life or a politically incorrect jibe at a sacred cow, because that's what they like and it's what they want. And a man getting a laugh simply by pausing after the phrase: “All the different flavours of crisps" is going to make as much sense as Miles Davis to a Mumford & Sons fan.
We chose Miles deliberately because his music never used to make any sense to us. Why doesn't he just get on with it and play a tune, we used to think. Now we like even the stuff people on the Internet tell us is rubbish. The stuff where he was covering Michael Jackson & Cyndi Lauper, in a nice fluffy way. Because it's there you can hear Davis' mind working; hear it searching for patterns, and spaces, and new places. And when he finds them... aw man, there's nothing like it.
Lee isn't much like Miles Davis because he's never been a heroin addict and he doesn't perform improvised jazz. But he works in similar spaces - the gaps where our anticipation lives, where our logic and expectation tries to join the dots between some old men eating all the flavours of crisps and what will inevitably end up with a 43-year-old comedian in a Godzilla suit, hitting a big moth with a bag. But somehow not really be about any of that.
With this new series of Comedy Vehicle, Stewart Lee seems to have gone beyond his trademark withering pedantry, protracted fantasies and over-analyzed petty annoyances to now be making comedy about comedy itself. And if you still don't find it funny don't worry, he probably won't get another series.
Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle is on BBC2 on Wednesdays really late at night. But there's always iPlayer.
Stewart Lee
2011-05-05T22:20:11+01:00
On the day it was announced that Fist of Fun would finally be released on DVD it was a curious coincidence that Stewart Lee gave us perhaps his silliest work since that much loved, but mostly ignored then axed BBC comedy series. Against the odds, Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle has returned for another series. And he's dressed as a big lizard. Stewart (now aging with dignity into Morrissey's approachable brother) began with a joke about his granddad being a Chelsea pensioner living in a nest woven from charity poppies. It was a really good opening joke. “It's not a good opening joke!" shouted Lee, before we cut to one of the mock interview scenes with Armando Iannucci, now graduated from the Red Button content, where the comic was quizzed about his intentions to please the Internet naysayers by including more actual gags in his material this time. If you thought they were exaggerating some viewer's failure to understand where the talking about stuff stops and the bit where you're supposed to laugh starts, here's a Twitter comment plucked from last night: “Stewart Lee really should get to grips with the basics. Comedians are meant to be, you know, er, funny." Some people, maybe even a lot of people, don't get it. We get it. Personally, we've long thought Stewart was the best standup comedian working today - even when he was really lazy and mostly just did the same stuff year in year out. And now he puts the work in, with ever more uncompromising and deceptively smart routines, there's really no one to touch him. Because despite the meta-self-deprecation, after 20 years in the business, Lee's comedy is that of a master. He really does know what he's doing. And it's very funny. It just doesn't necessarily have punchlines....
Author note: Stewart Lee is a stand up comedian who has worked in both British radio and television. He is best known for the BBC series 'Lee and Herring', 'Fist of Fun' and 'This Morning, with Richard not Judy' which he co-wrote and performed with Richard Herring. Can good performance comedians become talented novelists? Against the ominous backdrop of Robert Newman's dire 'Dependence Day', Stewart Lee has now picked up the torch. This is his first novel.
The story is alternately told in South London and the desert wastelands of Arizona, displaying a cast of cross-cultural and world-weary characters. Some are desperate and running, but most initially seem resigned to what fate has given them. Sometimes this is the symptom of suburban drug culture, sometimes a result of psychiatric illness, but the general effect is to make them too acceptant to realise they still have options. Common to all the major characters is the inability to move on with their lives until completing a personal quest of one form or another. This factor is the writer's device to make the central players stand out from their surroundings.
Meet Sid & Danny - friends from a dismal tribute band who missed their ticket to stardom by leaving a group that went on, rather annoyingly, to make it big. They're not bitter of course, or at least they won't be until they run out of spliffs. There's the Golumn-like Peter Rugg, who lost a cigarette butt down the back of a sofa years before and, a true searcher, is devoting his existence to finding it. Rugg's devotion marks this small aspect of the story as a modern age grailquest that has echoes in every other central character's life. Another strong thread is the looming iconic figure of Luther Peyote, the long forgotten musical hero that draws Sid & Danny across the world. A man who managed to live hard, burn out and still got to fade away. Luther has a life like a waking dream and does not comprehend how others may idolise him. He starts the story more as an object than a person, as Sid & Danny feel driven to make their peace with him before their creative lives can restart. Luther himself is happy to be left alone in his backwater, ignorant of fate's need for him to show what he can do in the eventual cathartic healing process required to provide a satisfying close to the story.
Lee's fully formed characters don't stop there as more lifestories are gradually added to the mix and explored: Bob Nequatewa ('The Perfect Fool' of the title) is the last of the traditional Hopi Indian clowns, and as such belongs to a past being swept aside by the forces of cultural change. One poor man, about to be sectioned for vaguely suspecting he's an astronaut, cracks away at a keyboard in the café Cyberama until Sid & Danny sadistically confuse him with their re-cycled conspiracy theories. Tracey is a suspected felon, always moving on and somehow locked into an eternal savage road-movie. She is aware of her unrelenting fate and stoical when losing every man she meets to self destruction. She reflects the Hopi Indian legend the reader is given; of Kohkang Wuhti the spider woman who makes pairs of people out of clay, but occasionally misses a beat to leave someone fatalistically alone. Tracey is a trailer-trash femme fatale who gives the spider woman's choice, calmly announcing what is going to happen to a prospective boyfriend in advance, thus abdicating personal responsibility for their demise.
I think I can give you a warning of my own. In the first hundred pages you'll hate this novel. You will put it down on several occasions and go back to it after a few days to give it another chance. The threads of the tale will seem both unconnected and meaningless. The continuous Hopi references will strike you as strange and unnecessary. The book will read like a very relaxed detective story where you don't get the plot or any clues. After those initial pages the stories will drift towards each other and… bang! You're hooked. The novel has a certain lazy, dreamlike quality. Not quite 'Lost Horizon' , but more as if a young Jack Kerouac had just bust out of Balham. Moments of prejudicial persecution and undefined fear are introduced through Sheriff Hopkins - a catalyst in a crumpled hat, designed to keep the reader nervous. This American policeman is one of the best psychologically constructed characters I've read in a while. He is clearly more disturbed than those he chases, yet blind to the damage as he wears away at those around him until something has to give. Ultimately this is a book for thirtysomethings who are sure they had the talent, know they missed out on doing what they were born to do and suspect that if they chanced their arm, perhaps they may still have time. This theme may well leave you reviewing your own life plan.
The author has clearly studied the anthropology of the proud Hopi in depth (prouder than the tourist conscious Sioux anyway) and the glimpses the reader is given resolve into a broad-stroke impression of their practicality and thinking. It is then easy to see that the Hopi can never merge with developed 'Western' society without irreparable tarnishing. The gulf in humour and morality is then explored dramatically when the Hopi clown is invited onto a TV chatshow.
The final theme used in this book is more universal and obvious. Everyone seems to be writing about the Holy Grail nowadays as so many in modern society feel strangely incomplete. It's the ultimate metaphor for what you think you need to make yourself content. You will never attain it, and even if you did, a) you would realise you don't really need it after all (it was just what drove you), and b) your new problem would be how to hide it now the whole world wants it more than you. Hot potato.
I expected pulp, but this is [eventually] a graceful and meaningful book which deserves to be more widely known. Possibly it's just been written out of time and should have been another 1957 classic. Many new authors write about their own life and consequently have only one book in them. This is not one of those. Although initially jerky and disparate, the subject matter is imaginative and intriguing. I hope Stewart Lee writes another, I really do.
Stewart Lee
2001-01-01T13:32:20+00:00
Author note: Stewart Lee is a stand up comedian who has worked in both British radio and television. He is best known for the BBC series 'Lee and Herring', 'Fist of Fun' and 'This Morning, with Richard not Judy' which he co-wrote and performed with Richard Herring. Can good performance comedians become talented novelists? Against the ominous backdrop of Robert Newman's dire 'Dependence Day', Stewart Lee has now picked up the torch. This is his first novel. The story is alternately told in South London and the desert wastelands of Arizona, displaying a cast of cross-cultural and world-weary characters. Some are desperate and running, but most initially seem resigned to what fate has given them. Sometimes this is the symptom of suburban drug culture, sometimes a result of psychiatric illness, but the general effect is to make them too acceptant to realise they still have options. Common to all the major characters is the inability to move on with their lives until completing a personal quest of one form or another. This factor is the writer's device to make the central players stand out from their surroundings. Meet Sid & Danny - friends from a dismal tribute band who missed their ticket to stardom by leaving a group that went on, rather annoyingly, to make it big. They're not bitter of course, or at least they won't be until they run out of spliffs. There's the Golumn-like Peter Rugg, who lost a cigarette butt down the back of a sofa years before and, a true searcher, is devoting his existence to finding it. Rugg's devotion marks this small aspect of the story as a modern age grailquest that has echoes in every other central character's life. Another strong thread is the looming iconic figure of Luther Peyote, the long forgotten...
The DVD of the fourth and final series of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle was released yesterday (Buy here). Here, the comedian exclusively reveals the genesis of the first three episodes – with notes on the remaining episodes to follow tomorrow:
You can also download a PDF of these to print out & add to your DVD case FRONT | BACK.
Episode 1: Wealth
This episode came together pretty quickly, and I had a lot of fun doing the Baftas bit on tour. There was a ten-minute plank about owning a home and S&M which went missing for time and narrative issues and will be the basis of a big block in the new tour show, Content Provider.
I saw seagulls peck a duckling to death at Camden Lock while men laughed; I assume the unnamed hated Oxbridge comedian in Lee Mack's autobiography is me; Dominic Cavendish at The Daily Telegraph left one of my shows at half time, openly lied about it, and gave it a no star review; I actually won a Bafta once but had to ignore that to make my faux-resentment of the awards work; James Corden comes to my gigs in little pubs and sits secretly in the dark, which I don't mind, but the stage version of me is consumed by resentment of his noble patronage; the council have promised CCTV to tackle the prostitute punters on the street where I live. I wonder where the girls will go then?
I was a school with the original line-up of Napalm Death, though I wasn't friendly with all of them, and I did go mountain walking with Rat, Simon, Daryl and Robbo.
My initial idea for the film item was a Michael Bentine's Potty Time style thing of tiny metalers moving around a landscape. Then I asked Tim Kirby, director, what he would do if asked to direct an orienteering-themed extreme metal promo video. He came up with a superb storyboard. We shot the extract in real time, with patient lookalikes, as if for a three-minute clip, then sped it up to match the Napalm Death track.
Episode 2: Islamophobia
Right-wing columnists moan that we liberals don't do enough anti-Islamic jokes, and so does James Naughtie on Radio 4. This episode was an attempt to do just that, on my own terms, whilst also making fun of the idea that I was obliged to do so by The Daily Mail.
In the summer of 2014, having visited a site in East London as part of the Chelsea Garden Festival Fringe, I was on the 149 bus with the kids and a saw a veiled Muslim woman sit on a copy of the Jehovah's Witnesses magazine Watchtower.
I used an old bit from the Carpet Remnant World tour as a frame to hang new ideas about religion on, from which only the running around bit, and the basic idea of the Roy Chubby Brown riff, actually survived into the programme.
Ridiculous right-wing reactions to a Muslim winning Bake Off in 2015 bled into the material.
In reality a Sikh man got on the 149 bus and made the Muslim woman move up, and then he or she sat on the Watchtower, I forget which, but when I told this story it never seemed quite funny enough. One night I changed it to a Quaker and the whole closing bit started to come together, I think because no-one in the world could realistically have any kind of grudge against Quakers.
The film item was inspired by John Carpenter's The Fog. Our old friend the Irish comedian, writer and activist Tara Flynn is woefully underused.
Episode 3: Patriiotism
This show started to take shape in January 2015 as a long routine about UKIP and patriotic symbols. The previous November the Labour MP Emily Thornberry had ignited a row about flying the England flag, and loads of spineless creeps who knew better were forced to pretend it is never used as a fascist symbol. Indeed, right now Theresa May is again using the idea that the 'liberal elite' are 'unpatriotic' as a shit-stirring device.
But, after Cameron absorbed UKIP supporter's anxieties in the spring 2015 election, the party suddenly seemed irrelevant and uninteresting, and it seemed weird to even be talking about them. Key elements of the bit were salvaged and made into a show about Jeremy Corbyn, which didn't work quite as well. Sadly, for me and the world, within months of the show being recorded, UKIP again played a major part in British politics in the run up to the Brexit crisis, as if they had never been away.
I did win a hamster in a drawing competition in She magazine in 1979. I drew it as if it were an astronaut in a space-suit. The magazine sent me a voucher. I called the hamster Ray Bradbury, after the science fiction writer I was reading at the time. This never got a laugh until I changed it to Karlheinz Stockhausen. I don't know why. Comedy is alchemy. And our dachshund did break its back, jumping up at the hamster.
I did not have a dog named after Matthew Broderick, but I did see Matthew Broderick through a doorway at the Four Seasons Hotel in LA in 1999, sitting alone, looking sad, waiting to be interviewed about Inspector Gadget. I was trying to fund a film I wrote that never got made.
Live, the cat defecation routine had a musicality to it, and an unpredictability, that regularly created waves of hysteria in rooms of 500, 1,000, or 2,000 people. In the smaller space where the series was recorded it seemed far more provocative.
I knew I wanted the film item to be a montage of news but couldn't get my head round it. Tim Kirkby suggested Zak Snyder's 2004 remake of Dawn Of The Dead as a reference, Jon Culshaw did some brilliant voices, our researcher pulled out some fantastic clearable footage, and the whole thing came together.
Episode 4: Death
I had been chasing down a routine about the death of my pet hamster, the aforementioned Ray Bradbury [see yesterday's guide to episodes 1-3] since I began writing series 3 in 2012, but could never make my memories on stage as funny as they seemed in conversation with friends.
I saw Dara O Briain and Brian Cox talking about the eclipse on TV in a Glasgow hotel room on March 20, 2015, and had the idea for the opening gag immediately. I walked down to a bridge over the Clyde to watch the sky. Oddly, Wilco Johnson was there, and he recognised me and talked to me. I changed to location of the joke from Glasgow to Dundee. Loads of tragic things kept happening in Glasgow during that period and the name of the town made people nervous. Dundee is an inherently funny name anyway. I learned that from Jerry Sadowitz.
The details of my father's weekend routine are largely unchanged. He was a very funny man to be around and I miss him. The idea of mocking young comedians for doing shows about their dead father is hijacked, and then reworked, from the Carpet Remnant World live show. It is supposed to reflect my own perceived anxieties about my own impending obsolescence. I don't have any genuine opinion about people doing shows about their dead fathers one way or the other.
When I changed the hamster in the story to a mouse, it somehow started to seem funnier. The story happened exactly as written, except I never saw my pet rodent morph into a member of Slade.
For the Slade/mice/diary thread, Thorin in the art department asked me what my childhood diary was like, and recreated it, even down to the now out-of-print 1970s Marvel Comics bubblegum stickers that he attached to its cover.
Kevin Eldon and Paul Putner clearly studied their characters' moves far beyond the call of duty; the exteriors and interiors of the home are exactly like the little terraced house I grew up in; the little me was a perfect little me; the mum, somehow, even looks like my late Mum, though no-one was given a photo reference. The whole thing was a bit overwhelming.
The music is Hilary by The Durutti Column.
Episode 5: Migrants
This and the dead mouse episode were the hardest to assemble. This show went wrong for months, during the live shows, because I became hung up on basing it on an Observer column I had written about the migrant crisis happening in my garden which, though enjoyed by executives overseeing the show as a piece of writing, always sounded, to me, too written as a piece of stand-up. I recorded this bit anyway and it's on the DVD as an extra.
I did take some clothes to a migrants' charity in Dalston where the hip gear on offer did make me laugh.
I started to become fixated on the inane way newspaper columnists dealt with the crisis. The Rod Liddle poppadom bit again caused hysteria in large rooms, and seemed to me to be an appropriately meaningless response to the ongoing banality of newspaper comment. We had a couple of goes at it in the Mildmay Club. Neither worked anywhere near as well as it did live. In the two months of touring after the show was recorded I introduced little comedy tricks that meant it always landed in a more conventional way.
There was a lot of mess surrounding all this material as it was recorded – glasses breaking in the room, random introductions, cameramen being where I wasn't expecting them. In the end we decided to include all these, at the expense of the film item (another DVD extra), and the garden routine, and try to assemble the impression of a gig in out-of-control freefall, to capture the real stand-up experience of a room on the edge.
It would have been equally easy to edit it to look like an unqualified success, as Nick Helm revealed they do with acts that go to silence on Live AT The Apollo, but choosing the scrappiest bits and amplifying them seemed more interesting on this occasion.
My initial, and turned down, proposal for Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, in May 2005, had been to record the sets at Pontin's holiday camps, and cross channel ferry bars, and Speakers' Corner, in places where I would struggle. In the end, we managed to make an episode of Comedy Vehicle that felt like that, even in front of my own audience.
Episode 6: Childhood memories
My kid was having trouble at school. But I don't like writing about my immediate family. I started thinking about my own schooldays and remembered that, as a very small boy, I had been kicked into a urinal and urinated on at Streetsbrook Infant School in Shirley. I remembered the ringleader's name, googled him, and changed it for legal reasons.
I did urinate in my grandad's face when I was in hospital in Exeter with a fractured elbow, after I had fallen blowing bubbles on the caravan step in Beer; he and I did urinate together on Maltese flies, and he had been an RAF engineer on Lancaster bombers. He did say he liked to pretend the flies were Germans.
Robin Williams had committed suicide, depressed. There were lots of newspaper articles about comedians being mentally unstable products of circumstance. I thought about my childhood. The two ideas came together. In a sudden late-night burst of inspiration, when some shows took years to crystallize, this half hour was written in about as long as it takes to perform.
What wasn't there on the page was the tension, and the space for intense improvisations around my supposed grief in rooms which often bought into it entirely. In Dublin, a Sunday Times journalist on the front row took camera phone footage and fled to file an exclusive on how Stewart Lee was having a nervous breakdown live on stage, only dissuaded later by Twitter users telling her it was all part of the act. In London, a supposedly psychic woman intervened, offering to help me deal with ghosts that only I could see.
I'm not an actor, and I don't believe in ghosts or the afterlife, but each night I got through the bit and made it real by remembering a vivid ghost of a loved one that had once appeared to me in Wolverhampton. I was glad when I didn't have to do the bit any more, and I think it represents the end point of a certain strand of stand-up I had been pursuing.
My wife has a photograph of herself with a very handsome ex-boyfriend on a tropical beach, on which she looks happier than I have ever seen her since. I want it blown up and framed.
I've been going deaf since my teens. It's an inherited condition, I learned, when I met a blood relative for the first time some years ago. I wonder if I genuinely have developed a stand-up style that seemed indifferent to approval as a result of perhaps not being able to hear any, when it may have been there all along? Since I had my hearing aids on stage, I sometimes feel like I am performing on LSD, absorbing all stimuli. It was nice to be able to take them out, and get a laugh.
I decided I wanted to perform an MGM swimming musical style routine in a massive tank of urine fairly early on in the writing process and spent a year trying to get fit enough to be able to dive underwater through rotating hoops of synchronized swimmers.
In the end the underwater cameraman who came with the place in Essex where the tank was had his focus wrong, and, after a day in the water, only one actual underwater shot, of me swimming through the swirling bodies of the 2012 British Women's Olympic Synchronised swimming team, survives.
Luckily, the rest of the crew had pretty much everything else covered, and the art direction, camera work and editing of this piece were all superb. This episode, which turned out to be the final one, was my favourite edition of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle.
Stewart Lee
2016-10-11T00:33:27+01:00
The DVD of the fourth and final series of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle was released yesterday (Buy here). Here, the comedian exclusively reveals the genesis of the first three episodes – with notes on the remaining episodes to follow tomorrow: You can also download a PDF of these to print out & add to your DVD case FRONT | BACK. Episode 1: Wealth This episode came together pretty quickly, and I had a lot of fun doing the Baftas bit on tour. There was a ten-minute plank about owning a home and S&M which went missing for time and narrative issues and will be the basis of a big block in the new tour show, Content Provider. I saw seagulls peck a duckling to death at Camden Lock while men laughed; I assume the unnamed hated Oxbridge comedian in Lee Mack's autobiography is me; Dominic Cavendish at The Daily Telegraph left one of my shows at half time, openly lied about it, and gave it a no star review; I actually won a Bafta once but had to ignore that to make my faux-resentment of the awards work; James Corden comes to my gigs in little pubs and sits secretly in the dark, which I don't mind, but the stage version of me is consumed by resentment of his noble patronage; the council have promised CCTV to tackle the prostitute punters on the street where I live. I wonder where the girls will go then? I was a school with the original line-up of Napalm Death, though I wasn't friendly with all of them, and I did go mountain walking with Rat, Simon, Daryl and Robbo. My initial idea for the film item was a Michael Bentine's Potty Time style thing of tiny metalers moving around a landscape. Then I...
AS he reminded us during his latest beautifully structured show - the depressingly titled Carpet Remnant World - Stewart Lee has been a stand-up for a quarter of a century.
During that time his popularity has waxed and waned, although thanks to recent award winning BBC series Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, the 43 year old is once again filling theatres across the UK.
Lee's appeal becomes the focus for much of the first half of this set. The comic clearly enjoys playing to loyal fans who 'get' his style of humour, and his constant disappointment with sections of the Playhouse crowd who weren't 'his fans' was a theme throughout.
It would be fair to say that people new to Lee's unique brand of stand-up might not know what to make of it. He's clearly not a populist comic and from his lack of restraint when criticising the current brand of stand ups (or 'the young Russells' as he calls them) has no desire to be.
Mostly carefully scripted – a segment about Nottingham's new identity as the 'City of Caves' notwithstanding – Lee's shows are always carefully choreographed with a clever use of deconstruction and call backs.
Indeed, he even sometimes links the two techniques, such as when he feels he had to explain a particularly clever call back made in a foreign language.
And, no subject is off limits in a Lee show. His material this time touched on Islam, odd shop names, Scooby Doo, Margaret Thatcher and Twitter, with much of his ire reserved for the social networking site – or 'the Stasi for the Angry Birds generation' as he calls it.
A Stewart Lee show is the standard to which all stand-up comics should aspire. Long may he return to the City Riddled with Caves
Stewart Lee
2012-02-24T13:49:47+00:00
AS he reminded us during his latest beautifully structured show - the depressingly titled Carpet Remnant World - Stewart Lee has been a stand-up for a quarter of a century. During that time his popularity has waxed and waned, although thanks to recent award winning BBC series Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, the 43 year old is once again filling theatres across the UK. Lee's appeal becomes the focus for much of the first half of this set. The comic clearly enjoys playing to loyal fans who 'get' his style of humour, and his constant disappointment with sections of the Playhouse crowd who weren't 'his fans' was a theme throughout. It would be fair to say that people new to Lee's unique brand of stand-up might not know what to make of it. He's clearly not a populist comic and from his lack of restraint when criticising the current brand of stand ups (or 'the young Russells' as he calls them) has no desire to be. Mostly carefully scripted – a segment about Nottingham's new identity as the 'City of Caves' notwithstanding – Lee's shows are always carefully choreographed with a clever use of deconstruction and call backs. Indeed, he even sometimes links the two techniques, such as when he feels he had to explain a particularly clever call back made in a foreign language. And, no subject is off limits in a Lee show. His material this time touched on Islam, odd shop names, Scooby Doo, Margaret Thatcher and Twitter, with much of his ire reserved for the social networking site – or 'the Stasi for the Angry Birds generation' as he calls it. A Stewart Lee show is the standard to which all stand-up comics should aspire. Long may he return to the City Riddled with Caves
Lee and Herring are about to take over Sunday Iunchtimes on BBC2 Ben Dowell probes the comic duo on the content of their new show
Comedy duo Lee and Herring are of that rare breed of Edinburgh performer who have managed to wow the boards up North by making it on telly, setting a generous and important precedent for their peers.
Showbiz is, of course, a funny old world, a point amply illustrated by rumours that Al Murray King of Beers will soon be getting a television show and an anecdote the boys reeled off when we met to chat about their new BBC daytime TV spoof show, This Morning with Richard Not Judy which starts this Sunday. The duo were guests with the real Richard and Judy about a year ago, and after the show, went into the dressing room occupied by another group of performers who were also being interviewed. A little known act called the Spice Girls, one of whom (Mel B) was so excited to meet the two from Fist of Fun that she phoned her boyfriend to say how thrilled she was.
This Morning with Richard Not Judy started out in 1994 as a live solo Edinburgh effort by Richard Herring - the fat one who was nearly awarded The Stage's occasional 'worst beard in showbiz award' at Edinburgh last year. He is Cheddar's answer to Orson Welles and round as he may be, Herring has always been a fine straight man and not what Stewart Lee described as the duo's equivalent of Denise van Outen "in that he is largely superfluous". Herring (who will "probably" go up to Edinburgh this year) is good at acting the amicable buffoon (as in his play Punk's Not Dead or Excavating Rita which Canton are interested in) and is best when setting up situations for Lee's witty one-liners. He is the grafting midflelder, with Lee as solid, reliable, Shearer-esque centre-forward, the Batty to Lee's Le Tissier, a roly poly prop to Lee's Jeremy Guscott. The straight man/funny man side to the real Richard and Judy was what appealed to the duo in the first place, as the (kind of) funny man of the two and The Sunday Times rock critic Lee explains:
'They are like a good comedy double act. Richard is increasingly wayward and uncontrollable and says unpredictable things, and Judy has to constantly come in as the straight man (or straight woman in her case) and keep him in line. "It's like they have a double act chemistry but theirs is completely accidental which makes it all the more joyous to watch." (And in spite of the pair's jokes to the contrary, Granada has assured The Stage that the real couple are not in the least bit bothered). The show also contains the curious orange; celebrity guests, two bigoted crows, cartoons and a gang of inanimate objects from the human body which call each other things like Henry Heart and Lily Liver. "It is being voiced by Brian Cant who is still alive," says Lee.
Promising not to swear is one of the duo's many aims, but one emphatically peripheral to their five main manifesto objectives. Cue Herring: "Our first aim is to marry Britain's oldest mother with Britain's youngest father, force them to copulate whether they like it or not creating the ultimate tabloid pregnancy story. "'We also want to cause the financial collapse of the BBC by overspending hugely on our budget. "Thirdly, we want to prove that Bill Clinton never had sex with Monica Lewinsky or anyone else, including Hillary Clinton. He is a virgin and has no genitalia.
He reproduces by sending spores out on to the wind. "And then we want to counteract the problem of global warming by getting everybody in the world to blow on the world as if it were soup." Lee elucidates the fifth: "We want to organise a fight between ourselves and the team from the Friday Night Armistice for the title of most unpopular topical satire show that no one really watches," (at this point the BBC press girl started squirming). "In a fist fight we have got more to lose than them because they are really quite ugly.
"To conclude, our main aim is to provide 45 minutes of reasonable entertainment at 12.15 on a Sunday afternoon for hungover people who have just woken up. It will also be shown again at 11.45 on Friday nights, and they assure us that "if Channel 4 does not work then this is the best thing that is on".
Herring could not resist mischievously chipping in that if any viewer has a new friend around, that they "met on Saturday night" who had "gone strangely quiet", their show will give them "something to look at and laugh at, and hopefully start a nice relationship. Our show may stop the one-night stand for good".
Well, if a show which may achieve nothing more in the end than simple amusement (and, possibly, a cult following for its two silent characters Trevor and Natalie) it will still be worth it.
Stewart Lee
1998-02-12T21:53:29+00:00
Lee and Herring are about to take over Sunday Iunchtimes on BBC2 Ben Dowell probes the comic duo on the content of their new show Comedy duo Lee and Herring are of that rare breed of Edinburgh performer who have managed to wow the boards up North by making it on telly, setting a generous and important precedent for their peers. Showbiz is, of course, a funny old world, a point amply illustrated by rumours that Al Murray King of Beers will soon be getting a television show and an anecdote the boys reeled off when we met to chat about their new BBC daytime TV spoof show, This Morning with Richard Not Judy which starts this Sunday. The duo were guests with the real Richard and Judy about a year ago, and after the show, went into the dressing room occupied by another group of performers who were also being interviewed. A little known act called the Spice Girls, one of whom (Mel B) was so excited to meet the two from Fist of Fun that she phoned her boyfriend to say how thrilled she was. This Morning with Richard Not Judy started out in 1994 as a live solo Edinburgh effort by Richard Herring - the fat one who was nearly awarded The Stage's occasional 'worst beard in showbiz award' at Edinburgh last year. He is Cheddar's answer to Orson Welles and round as he may be, Herring has always been a fine straight man and not what Stewart Lee described as the duo's equivalent of Denise van Outen "in that he is largely superfluous". Herring (who will "probably" go up to Edinburgh this year) is good at acting the amicable buffoon (as in his play Punk's Not Dead or Excavating Rita which Canton are interested in) and...
"The bloke who was half of Lee and Herring and This Morning With Richard Not Judy takes us on a passably amusing journey from South London to Arizona in the company of misfits that include an ex-porn queen and a bloke in a Dire Straits covers band called the Sultans of Streatham. It's an original take on your standard road-trip voyage of self-discovery (see Jack Kerouac or Robert M Pirsig) only in as much as some of the characters are British.
Random quote: "Fffft". 7/10 – Read it in a hire car."
Stew says - Ah well. Could have been worse. The first review to hit the stands. Could lift out the word ‘original’ and miss out the qualifying phrase. I got a higher score than a Spike Milligan book but was beaten by a biography of Dennis Wilson, which sounded really good, and a book about porn in 1970’s Britain.
Stewart Lee
2001-07-01T14:20:02+01:00
"The bloke who was half of Lee and Herring and This Morning With Richard Not Judy takes us on a passably amusing journey from South London to Arizona in the company of misfits that include an ex-porn queen and a bloke in a Dire Straits covers band called the Sultans of Streatham. It's an original take on your standard road-trip voyage of self-discovery (see Jack Kerouac or Robert M Pirsig) only in as much as some of the characters are British. Random quote: "Fffft". 7/10 – Read it in a hire car." Stew says - Ah well. Could have been worse. The first review to hit the stands. Could lift out the word ‘original’ and miss out the qualifying phrase. I got a higher score than a Spike Milligan book but was beaten by a biography of Dennis Wilson, which sounded really good, and a book about porn in 1970’s Britain.
Not everyone who voted to leave the EU wanted to see Britain immediately descend into being an unaccountable single-party state, exploiting people’s worst prejudices to maintain power indefinitely. Some people just wanted to have bendy bananas.
As a member of the metropolitan liberal elite in the pre-Brexit wasteland, I wake up every day, my little liberal heart fit to burst with grief. Momentarily, I took bitter comfort in the fact that it could be worse. I could be American. In which case, not only would I be broken-hearted, I would also be even fatter.
But in the daily Doomsday Clock countdown of Donald Trump’s presidency we at least see the foot-soldiers of the American government machine hurling themselves bodily into its gears, unconcerned for their own careers. Our opposition simply folded in front of Brexit like shit-smeared toilet tissue and posted itself politely into the municipal recreation ground bin full of dog muck that is the future of the parliamentary Labour party.
My constituency voted 78% remain. On Wednesday, my MP was too ill to vote. I’m joining the Liberal Democrats, itself on some level a hopeless admission of defeat.
On the Sun’s 29 June front page, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove promised ongoing single-market access, a promise now dematerialised unchallenged. The weekly £350m for the NHS has disappeared, and the buses the figure was written on have been wrapped up in Boris Johnson’s old gym pants and buried in Sarah Vine’s fennel patch.
Who gave these liars a free pass? Johnson compares François Hollande to Nazi guards and they say it’s “theatrical”. MPs compare Trump’s rise to 1930s Germany and Johnson says it’s “trivialising the Holocaust”. But the historian Deborah Lipstadt says Trump’s Holocaust Memorial Day speech was “classic softcore denial. The Holocaust was de-Judaised.” It’s so hard to tell what trivialising the Holocaust looks like these days. Arguably, Johnson was trivialising trivialising the Holocaust. Meanwhile, Putin threatens Europe. Trump threatens Europe. And Trump threatens the whole planet with climate change denial, although admittedly it is a very overrated planet, one of the most overrated planets in the cosmos. Would Britain still have pursued Brexit last June if it had foreseen this horrible future, less than a year away?
And what must the world think of us? On the many occasions I have been dumped by disappointed women, I was always heartened when they had the kindness to leave me for partners demonstrably superior to me – the clever and athletic Scottish doctor; the rakishly handsome Irish theatre promoter; the talented Canadian interior designer; the charming Australian pianist; the enigmatic and nameless Interrailing Dutchman; I took some comfort in this. At least my exes traded up.
But we have dumped a stable relationship with sophisticated and elegant Europe, fragrant with roquefort and Ricola, and flawed though her thickening beauty may have been, for the promise of having our pussies grabbed behind the bike sheds by Donald Trump and Recep Erdoğan, who look like an-out-of-shape golf instructor and a bloke who sells zombie knives to kids in the market, respectively. How humiliating for us. Looks like we were punching way above our weight when we were lucky enough to get laid in Brussels.
If our Brexit trade plan relies on wooing despised tyrants, what kind of morally bankrupt corner have we backed ourselves into? Public objections to Trump’s state visit are understandable, but are denounced as hypocrisy by shrill Brexit bullies pointing out that no one complained when the Queen hosted the entire entourage of Doctor Victor Von Doom, iron-faced autocratic dictator of Latveria, a totalitarian state policed by Doom’s flying sentinels, the Doombots.
But we do not expect exemplary behaviour from Dr Doom and his fellow dictators. As Doom explained, in horticultural terms, to Prince Charles at a Buckingham Palace state banquet, “My methods are a means to an end, no different than pruning weeds in order to let an orchid flourish.” The president of the United States, however, should be better than a hideously disfigured two-dimensional fictional comic book dictator, and ideally at least as eloquent.
When she was home secretary, in 2014, Theresa May denied a visa to the pick-up artist Julien Blanc on the grounds that his attitudes to women legitimised sexual assault, a charge you could equally well level at Donald Trump. It’s a shame Blanc doesn’t have a load of old smelly chicken going cheap. He might find that, instead of a ban, he received an invitation to the Queen’s high table. By comparison with Trump, Blanc is a gentleman. At least he never boasted on air that he could have “nailed” the Queen’s grandchildren’s “crazy” mum “without hesitation”.
But, with Trump’s trade deal help, at least our bananas will be bendy again. And on 1 February 2019, a man dressed as a sensible pirate will stand at the foot of an obelisk in Ripon, North Yorkshire, and blow an enchanted bendy horn, a horn only to be blown in Britain’s hour of need. And when that bendy horn is blown, as if by magic, all the straight bananas in Brexit Britain will suddenly bend once more, never to be straight again.
Ken Clarke, the treacherous jazz doom-monger, has warned that we cats are messing with forces we do not understand, daddio. There is a risk that all sorts of previously straight things, not just bananas, may, if they are too near the blast of the magic horn, turn bent too. TV idiot Richard Hammond has been advised to avoid Yorkshire altogether during the horn blast, to protect the investment made in his monetisable straightness by Amazon Fire Stick.
Ripon constituency’s referendum split reflected pretty much the national percentages, at 52% to 48% in favour of the reinstatement of perpetually bendy bananas, hence its horn duty. I have already booked a room at the Weatherspoon’s in Ripon square for 2019, in order to be at the epicentre of the people’s populist banana-bending revolution.
Weatherspoon’s owner Tim Martin, a vocal opponent of straight bananas, funded a boisterous chapbook ridiculing the insolent yellow fruits, First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Straight Bananas. And Tim has promised to be at his Ripon outlet personally on bendy banana day, handing out free bendy bananas to his regular clientele of terminally nostalgic drinkers and plucky all-day breakfasteers, toasting their own imminent obsolescence.
Me? I will be drunk in the gutter, looking up at the stars, the 12 gold stars of the EU flag. Enjoy your bananas. You twats.
Stewart Lee
2017-02-05T16:07:34+00:00
Not everyone who voted to leave the EU wanted to see Britain immediately descend into being an unaccountable single-party state, exploiting people’s worst prejudices to maintain power indefinitely. Some people just wanted to have bendy bananas. As a member of the metropolitan liberal elite in the pre-Brexit wasteland, I wake up every day, my little liberal heart fit to burst with grief. Momentarily, I took bitter comfort in the fact that it could be worse. I could be American. In which case, not only would I be broken-hearted, I would also be even fatter. But in the daily Doomsday Clock countdown of Donald Trump’s presidency we at least see the foot-soldiers of the American government machine hurling themselves bodily into its gears, unconcerned for their own careers. Our opposition simply folded in front of Brexit like shit-smeared toilet tissue and posted itself politely into the municipal recreation ground bin full of dog muck that is the future of the parliamentary Labour party. My constituency voted 78% remain. On Wednesday, my MP was too ill to vote. I’m joining the Liberal Democrats, itself on some level a hopeless admission of defeat. On the Sun’s 29 June front page, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove promised ongoing single-market access, a promise now dematerialised unchallenged. The weekly £350m for the NHS has disappeared, and the buses the figure was written on have been wrapped up in Boris Johnson’s old gym pants and buried in Sarah Vine’s fennel patch. Who gave these liars a free pass? Johnson compares François Hollande to Nazi guards and they say it’s “theatrical”. MPs compare Trump’s rise to 1930s Germany and Johnson says it’s “trivialising the Holocaust”. But the historian Deborah Lipstadt says Trump’s Holocaust Memorial Day speech was “classic softcore denial. The Holocaust was de-Judaised.” It’s so hard to...
Lead guitarist Martin Weaver later fronted Dark, whose 1972 album is one of rock's most valuable rarities, but initially he flecked Sabbath style proto-metal with the fading strains of psychedelia in Wicked Lady.
Weaver's Northampton pub rockers never entered a studio, and their reputation might appear inflated by cultish obscurity. But the rough and ready rehearsal room recordings finally released here, and on the companion Axeman Cometh CD, see sixties sunshine fade into seventies darkness on claustrophobically extended workouts, and Wicked Lady stand revealed as a great lost group.
Stewart Lee
2012-10-21T12:40:16+01:00
Lead guitarist Martin Weaver later fronted Dark, whose 1972 album is one of rock's most valuable rarities, but initially he flecked Sabbath style proto-metal with the fading strains of psychedelia in Wicked Lady. Weaver's Northampton pub rockers never entered a studio, and their reputation might appear inflated by cultish obscurity. But the rough and ready rehearsal room recordings finally released here, and on the companion Axeman Cometh CD, see sixties sunshine fade into seventies darkness on claustrophobically extended workouts, and Wicked Lady stand revealed as a great lost group.
Politics, 80s music and the history of bondage all featured in the Wellington-born comic's Content Provider show at Theatre Severn last night.
After nearly three decades in comedy, Lee has built a strong regular following and almost all of the Shrewsbury crowd were laughing throughout.
Despite being sold out the theatre was not quite full - 'big enough for touts to snap up the tickets, but not big enough for anyone to buy them', Lee quipped. But then if he had it his own way he'd be playing to an empty room and not one where spare seats are filled by punters who don't 'get' his hypocrisy-hating style of humour.
Brexit and Trump are the bread and butter of stand-up routines at the moment, but as ever Lee tackled the topics with his unique blend of well-crafted anecdotes, four-letter expletives and slap-stick visual comedy.
Labelling people who voted Brexit as selfish ****s is always a risk, but Lee's Brexit barrage brought the first applause of the night from at least 48 per cent of the audience.
And, guided by the tattoo-like notes scrawled on his hand, he still found time for his staple mick-taking of the 'liberal metropolitan elite' and anti-PC brigade.
Never one to miss out on mocking observational comedians, Russell Howard and Peter Kay bore the brunt as the 49-year-old revelled in prancing across the stage imitating his younger peers' formulaic routines.
The irony, of course, is that Lee's routines also follow a formula - but one packed with rants, tangents, and step-by-step explanations of when and why you should laugh.
Although he's been on the road for more than 15 months, the jokes still seemed fresh and Lee looked like he was loving it - crunching over the stand-up DVDs that decorated the stage next to Caspar David Friedrich’s painting Wanderer above the Sea of Fog.
Lee is a master of making a well-honed set seem like improv and, despite the show coming late in the UK tour, the audience were constantly unsure of which jokes were scripted and which were ad-libbed.
Oswestry, the Wrekin and Church Stretton all featured and each local line was well received - even by the couple at the front who were regularly used as an illustration of why Lee hates the under-40s.
At times the momentum waned and no joke had the entire audience laughing as one - 'that's right Shrewsbury, clap when you agree' - but no more than a few seconds went by without at least one section of the eclectic crowd guffawing with glee (or horror).
What were perhaps the two stand-out moments book-ended the gig. The opening warning about the risks of being caught with a phone hilariously made clear the performance wasn't one for the kids, while the arty finale poetically wrapped up the performance.
His BBC2 Comedy Vehicle show may have been cancelled, but here Lee showed why his ability to critique modern society in a powerful and hilarious way continues to sell out theatres across the country.
Stewart Lee
2018-02-22T16:59:04+00:00
Politics, 80s music and the history of bondage all featured in the Wellington-born comic's Content Provider show at Theatre Severn last night. After nearly three decades in comedy, Lee has built a strong regular following and almost all of the Shrewsbury crowd were laughing throughout. Despite being sold out the theatre was not quite full - 'big enough for touts to snap up the tickets, but not big enough for anyone to buy them', Lee quipped. But then if he had it his own way he'd be playing to an empty room and not one where spare seats are filled by punters who don't 'get' his hypocrisy-hating style of humour. Brexit and Trump are the bread and butter of stand-up routines at the moment, but as ever Lee tackled the topics with his unique blend of well-crafted anecdotes, four-letter expletives and slap-stick visual comedy. Labelling people who voted Brexit as selfish ****s is always a risk, but Lee's Brexit barrage brought the first applause of the night from at least 48 per cent of the audience. And, guided by the tattoo-like notes scrawled on his hand, he still found time for his staple mick-taking of the 'liberal metropolitan elite' and anti-PC brigade. Never one to miss out on mocking observational comedians, Russell Howard and Peter Kay bore the brunt as the 49-year-old revelled in prancing across the stage imitating his younger peers' formulaic routines. The irony, of course, is that Lee's routines also follow a formula - but one packed with rants, tangents, and step-by-step explanations of when and why you should laugh. Although he's been on the road for more than 15 months, the jokes still seemed fresh and Lee looked like he was loving it - crunching over the stand-up DVDs that decorated the stage next to Caspar...
Today’s episode of BBC Radio 4’s Great Lives is my third attempt to use my limited comedy fame to foist the non-idiomatic music-making of the Sheffield-born guitarist Derek Bailey on an unsuspecting public. In 2009, I chose Derek as my specialist subject on Celebrity Mastermind, beating the comedian John Thomson, who chose James Bond villains. To be fair, I would also have won if I had done his round. I was getting questions like, “Which Japanese duo collaborated with Derek Bailey on the 1995 album Saisoro?” and John was getting, “What colour was Blofeld’s cat?”
Musical minds immeasurably superior to mine have grappled more succinctly with the enigma of Derek, who died in 2005 at the age of 75. Writing in the Quietus four years ago, Jennifer Lucy Allan explained: “Derek Bailey is one antidote for anyone who thinks they’ll never understand improvised music. His guitar playing is that which requires a surrendering to your own ears. It is what it is, and that’s exactly what he intended it to be.” I, in turn, listen to Derek and think: “This, whatever it is, is resolutely and implacably this.” And that is what I, as a comedian, have tried to steal from it.
I think I first saw Derek play at the ICA in the early 90s, as I started scouring pub attic evenings and Labour club Sunday afternoons for free improvised music, after I came to London to try standup in the winter of 1989. Voraciously curious about the capital’s concealed subcultures, I nonetheless rarely understood who or what it was I was watching. Seeing the band Morphogenesis burst a balloon and amplify pot plants as a lone cat crept audibly around them, upstairs in a squatted Hackney pub named after a Captain Beefheart song, I’m not sure I was aware that these musicians even made records. And there was no Google to tell me.
But I do remember the first time I met Derek. In 1996, I visited his humble Hackney home to interview him for a Sunday newspaper about his new album Guitar, Drums ’n’ Bass, which Derek, then in his late 60s, had created by jamming along to pirate radio broadcasts of the brutal new dance music phenomenon, which had forced their way into his frequencies from concealed aerials on nearby tower blocks.
I remember the room he practised in being sparse and white, empty and monastic, and that he affected a comical bemusement at the idea that anyone would buy his records: “Do you just sit still and listen to them, or do you potter about and make cups of tea while they’re on?” For Derek, music lived in the moment, perhaps as a reaction to the decades he spent as a successful session musician for hire – did he really play on Petula Clark’s Downtown? – before his Damascene conversion to the absolute abandonment of tyrannical composition.
Derek sent me away with his seminal book, Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice in Music, and a cassette of the Scottish music hall comedian Chic Murray, both of which influenced me enormously. Fresh from the encounter, I wrote: “Bailey comes over like a cross between Clegg from Last of the Summer Wine and a harsh-but-fair science teacher, who illuminates the Genesis myths of improvised music without being remotely patronising.”
For the next decade, Derek supplied me with CDs of outtakes and postcards he inscribed with inspiring mantras, my favourite reading simply: “The struggle continues.” Derek died on Christmas Day 2005, Jesus Christ in reverse. At his funeral, I performed a Chic Murray routine, while the wake afterwards, upstairs in a Hackney pub, saw the veteran American jazz hoofer Will Gaines, then 78, sit in a chair and tap out a fond and furious farewell. I wish this had been preserved for posterity, but its undocumented passing is quintessentially Derek.
I visited Derek’s Hackney Downs house for the fifth and final time earlier this year, ostensibly to hold a ladder for the archivist Tim Fletcher, as he scoured the dark attic for illuminating items before the property was sold. Shafts of sunlight shone through the lean-to extension Derek had improvised freely long ago, in simpler times, when marginal artists could still afford to live and create magic in the city’s neglected nether regions.
The presenter of Great Lives, the former Tory MP Matthew Parris, had clearly arrived for the programme having prepared little, relying on notes supplied to him, and was taken by surprise by Derek’s music, which he described as sounding “like a chimpanzee”. A fractious exchange followed of which I am not entirely proud, mediated by the improv expert Ian Greaves. I’m surprised the producer left it in. But I suspect Derek would have enjoyed it. The struggle continues.
Derek ‘The Chimpanzee’ Bailey v Matthew Parris: a primer by Stewart Lee
The definitive streamable Derek Bailey playlist doesn’t exist, as so much of his music is off limits, though Honest Jon’s records offer luxurious vinyl reissues. Nonetheless here’s half an hour of an exploded jazz standard, some graffitied drum’n’bass, the dubby space-funk of Arcana and a final recording routing Derek’s debilitating motor neurone disease into plangent and emotive improvisation.
Stewart Lee
2025-09-15T13:40:20+01:00
Today’s episode of BBC Radio 4’s Great Lives is my third attempt to use my limited comedy fame to foist the non-idiomatic music-making of the Sheffield-born guitarist Derek Bailey on an unsuspecting public. In 2009, I chose Derek as my specialist subject on Celebrity Mastermind, beating the comedian John Thomson, who chose James Bond villains. To be fair, I would also have won if I had done his round. I was getting questions like, “Which Japanese duo collaborated with Derek Bailey on the 1995 album Saisoro?” and John was getting, “What colour was Blofeld’s cat?” Musical minds immeasurably superior to mine have grappled more succinctly with the enigma of Derek, who died in 2005 at the age of 75. Writing in the Quietus four years ago, Jennifer Lucy Allan explained: “Derek Bailey is one antidote for anyone who thinks they’ll never understand improvised music. His guitar playing is that which requires a surrendering to your own ears. It is what it is, and that’s exactly what he intended it to be.” I, in turn, listen to Derek and think: “This, whatever it is, is resolutely and implacably this.” And that is what I, as a comedian, have tried to steal from it. I think I first saw Derek play at the ICA in the early 90s, as I started scouring pub attic evenings and Labour club Sunday afternoons for free improvised music, after I came to London to try standup in the winter of 1989. Voraciously curious about the capital’s concealed subcultures, I nonetheless rarely understood who or what it was I was watching. Seeing the band Morphogenesis burst a balloon and amplify pot plants as a lone cat crept audibly around them, upstairs in a squatted Hackney pub named after a Captain Beefheart song, I’m not sure I was...
WHAT WOULD JUDAS DO? Was first performed in the autumn of 2006 at Battersea Arts Centre as one of their enormously important, work-in-progress Scratch Nights.
The idea was to know the story of the last week of Judas' life as well as possible and then kind of throw it away, and tell it anecdotally, like someone remembering a series of events.
These three, not terribly hi-fi, recordings are all that remains of What Would Judas Do? They are about 20% different from each other.
You can download a work-in-progress version of the script here.
WHAT WOULD JUDAS DO? Was first performed in the autumn of 2006 at Battersea Arts Centre as one of their enormously important, work-in-progress Scratch Nights. The idea was to know the story of the last week of Judas' life as well as possible and then kind of throw it away, and tell it anecdotally, like someone remembering a series of events. These three, not terribly hi-fi, recordings are all that remains of What Would Judas Do? They are about 20% different from each other. You can download a work-in-progress version of the script here. You can buy the CD set here
Last week Jeremy Corbyn welcomed the endorsement of the 80s Birmingham band UB40, in front of a room of baffled journalists. But then a rival version of UB40 declined to endorse the Labour leader. The Corbyn narrative became collateral damage in the titanic battle of two warring factions of the once mighty pop-reggae pioneers, supposedly made funnier because UB40 are considered inherently ludicrous by metrosexual tastemakers.
But for me, the first two UB40 albums, Signing Off (1980), and Present Arms (1981) remain great slices of post-punk cross-cultural pop-polemic, and served as gateway drugs to the Jamaican source for a grateful and curious teenager. Then, rather like New Labour, UB40 abandoned their more extreme moments to pursue a populist course, perhaps at the expense of their core values.
But it was UB40’s crazed decision to invade Iraq in 2003, in defiance of public opinion, and as a desperate attempt to promote their poorly received Homegrown album, that finally sealed their legacy. The section of the Chilcot report detailing the eight-piece group’s bombardment of the city of Basra, with a barrage of covers of 70s Trojan label chart-topping pop reggae hits, was especially harrowing. And the leaked photos, of keyboardist Mickey Virtue forcing prisoners to balance on piles of unsold copies of the 2002 single Cover Up, remain burned into the collective consciousness.
As with last month’s film of Corbyn sitting on the floor in a train, which offered full-time professional satirists any number of seat-based jokes on a silver platter, anyone who had ever seen or read anything ever could have predicted how badly a photo-op with a version of UB40 was going to pan out for Corbyn.
Within hours Michael Deacon at the Daily Telegraph and John Crace at the Guardian had both used the same algorithm to spin satirical columns making parallels between UB40’s internal divisions and those of the Labour party.
And who can blame them? You can almost hear the clunk as the fully formed satires fall ready-made out of the satire engine and thunk down on to the content conveyor belt.
The next step for the Labour party should be to ape the production company Endemol, who made both the soul-destroying Big Brother and Charlie Booker’s zombie-based parody of it, Dead Set. Labour media strategists should create not only their own easily satirisable news stories, but also the satires of them that are inevitably to follow, thus monetising both, diametrically opposed, markets.
Meanwhile, instead of getting the backing of UB40, a prime minister who has never formally secured the backing of any of the electorate, not even Musical Youth or Aswad, steamrolls forward largely unsatirised.
Nonetheless, Corbyn has my sympathy. It is easy to engage mistakenly the support of a band you didn’t realise was divided.
In 2006 I participated in Pestival, a three-day event at Barnes Wetland Centre, which used art and music to celebrate insects. I performed an insect-based standup routine in an insect-themed cabaret.
Also appearing were the psychedelic magus Robyn Hitchcock, who sang a song about an aphid accompanied by a musical saw, and the saxophonist Ned Rotherberg, who used an amplified tank of crickets as unwitting collaborators in a freeform sonic extrapolation. The audience of entomologists lapped up the entertainment, having first vomited onto it to reduce it to an easily digestible protein soup.
Eight years later, as a result of an ongoing battle against the unlicensed use of an empty but newt-rich neighbourhood garden as a chemical processing plant, I became sympathetic to the ongoing struggles of all amphibians, and decided to set up my own amphibian-based arts festival, Frogstock.
As regular readers will know, I organise and perform in more charity benefit shows than any other British standup comedian, and have never received any public recognition for this. So this time around, as well as raising funds to fight on behalf of the frogs and newts, I decided, selfishly, to just book artists that I myself would like to see.
In the mid-90s the comedian Richard Herring and I hosted a daily mid-morning chatshow on the Edinburgh fringe, and our guests were usually light-entertainment figures like Nicholas Parsons, Annabel Giles or Frank Skinner. But in 1997, the unexpectedly re-formed early-70s German art-rock pioneers Faust were bringing their teargas and jackhammer noise party to town.
So instead of hearing Nicholas Parsons’s humorous quiz-show anecdotes, for one morning only the early-rising tea-drinking punters were entertained by an actionably unsafe duet for piano and angle-grinding machine, performed by clearly inebriated men, whose early-70s producer had once been a known associate of the Baader-Meinhof terrorist organisation.
The visually fearsome Faust were of course delightful in person, and after their performance drummer Werner “Zappi” Diermaier, who only moments before had been aiming splinters of hot metal into the eyes of scared old-age pensioners, told me he was hoping to find time to head into the sphagnum bogs of the Highlands to seek out natterjack toads and great crested newts. The two amphibians were beloved by the frightening percussionist and, though rare in Germany, were still clinging to life in Scotland. “If I can leave Scotland having held a natterjack toad in my fist then re-forming Faust will have been worth it,” Diermaier confided.
Remembering Zappi’s frog and newt fandom, earlier this year I contacted him and engaged Faust for my Frogstock event, and in November they will perform inside a giant floating piece of frogspawn mounted in a giant lake of pond water at the Roundhouse in Camden, to raise money for my ongoing battle with the amphibian-hating petro-chemists. Or at least that was the plan.
Sid Griffin, of the legendary country rockers the Long Ryders, once told me that in the mid-90s he had witnessed two different versions of 70s glam popsters the Sweet engaged in a violent fist fight at a Little Chef in East Anglia.
And of course, the existence of two rival UB40s is now well documented. But who knew, or even cared, that there are now two Fausts, in an experimental music market barely built to sustain one?
And who could have guessed that the second Faust, led by keyboard player Hans Joachim Irmler, would have publicly declared their loathing of all amphibians, after one of Irmler’s irreplaceable vintage transistor organs was ruined by over‑wintering salamander newts four years ago?
Needless to say, the tensions surrounding Frogstock have now thrown the event into jeopardy. Like all the other paid content providers, I wanted to laugh at Corbyn and UB40, but this time the story felt just too close to home.
Stewart Lee
2016-09-11T14:56:23+01:00
Last week Jeremy Corbyn welcomed the endorsement of the 80s Birmingham band UB40, in front of a room of baffled journalists. But then a rival version of UB40 declined to endorse the Labour leader. The Corbyn narrative became collateral damage in the titanic battle of two warring factions of the once mighty pop-reggae pioneers, supposedly made funnier because UB40 are considered inherently ludicrous by metrosexual tastemakers. But for me, the first two UB40 albums, Signing Off (1980), and Present Arms (1981) remain great slices of post-punk cross-cultural pop-polemic, and served as gateway drugs to the Jamaican source for a grateful and curious teenager. Then, rather like New Labour, UB40 abandoned their more extreme moments to pursue a populist course, perhaps at the expense of their core values. But it was UB40’s crazed decision to invade Iraq in 2003, in defiance of public opinion, and as a desperate attempt to promote their poorly received Homegrown album, that finally sealed their legacy. The section of the Chilcot report detailing the eight-piece group’s bombardment of the city of Basra, with a barrage of covers of 70s Trojan label chart-topping pop reggae hits, was especially harrowing. And the leaked photos, of keyboardist Mickey Virtue forcing prisoners to balance on piles of unsold copies of the 2002 single Cover Up, remain burned into the collective consciousness. As with last month’s film of Corbyn sitting on the floor in a train, which offered full-time professional satirists any number of seat-based jokes on a silver platter, anyone who had ever seen or read anything ever could have predicted how badly a photo-op with a version of UB40 was going to pan out for Corbyn. Within hours Michael Deacon at the Daily Telegraph and John Crace at the Guardian had both used the same algorithm to spin satirical...
Donald Trump’s attitude to the Paris agreement makes him, without doubt, the most dangerous human, and the biggest threat to the future of all life on Earth, that has ever existed.
And what Trump said about Sadiq Khan on Sunday was dishonest and disruptive in the extreme.
Jeremy Corbyn is on TV now, 4.40pm in the afternoon of Monday 5th of June, saying he would tell Donald Trump that we have only one planet.
Theresa May and her cronies, in contrast, avoid criticising Trump.
We need to hold Trump in check, in conjunction with other world powers, and Theresa May instead held his tiny hand in the rose garden and is too compromised to condemn him.
The future of all life on Earth hangs in the balance of Chester, Ealing, Berwickshire, Brentford, Halifax, Wirral, Barrow and Furness, and Britain.
Stewart Lee
2017-06-05T20:20:59+01:00
Donald Trump’s attitude to the Paris agreement makes him, without doubt, the most dangerous human, and the biggest threat to the future of all life on Earth, that has ever existed. And what Trump said about Sadiq Khan on Sunday was dishonest and disruptive in the extreme. Jeremy Corbyn is on TV now, 4.40pm in the afternoon of Monday 5th of June, saying he would tell Donald Trump that we have only one planet. Theresa May and her cronies, in contrast, avoid criticising Trump. We need to hold Trump in check, in conjunction with other world powers, and Theresa May instead held his tiny hand in the rose garden and is too compromised to condemn him. The future of all life on Earth hangs in the balance of Chester, Ealing, Berwickshire, Brentford, Halifax, Wirral, Barrow and Furness, and Britain.
The tour of the current stand-up show, BASIC LEE, is still at the Leicester Square Theatre then tours nationwide from January 20th 2024.
Then it will be finished in April.
Dates here;
January 2024
Thursday 4th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Friday 5th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Sunday 7th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Sunday 7th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Monday 8th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Wednesday 10th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Thursday 11th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Sunday 14th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Monday 15th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Tuesday 16th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Wednesday 17th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Thursday 18th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Friday 19th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Saturday 20th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Saturday 20th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Monday 22nd January 2024 - Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham - TICKETS
Tuesday 23rd January 2024 - Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham - TICKETS
Wednesday 24th January 2024 - Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham - TICKETS
Friday 26th January 2024 - Westlands, Yeovil - TICKETS
Saturday 27th January 2024 - The Forum, Bath - TICKETS
Sunday 28th January 2024 - Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton - TICKETS
Monday 29th January 2024 - The Marlowe, Canterbury - TICKETS
February 2024
Friday 2nd February 2024 - The Hawth, Crawley - TICKETS
Saturday 3rd February 2024 - Symphony Hall, Birmingham - TICKETS
Sunday 4th February 2024 - William Aston Hall, Wrexham - TICKETS
Tuesday 6th February 2024 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Wednesday 7th February 2024 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Thursday 8th February 2024 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Friday 9th February 2024 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Saturday 10th February 2024 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Sunday 11th February 2024 - Theatre Royal, Newcastle - TICKETS
Sunday 18th February 2024 - DeMontfort Hall, Leicester - TICKETS
Tuesday 20th February 2024 - Harrogate Theatre, Harrogate - TICKETS
Wednesday 21st February 2024 - Harrogate Theatre, Harrogate - TICKETS
Thursday 22nd February 2024 - The Baths Hall, Scunthorpe - TICKETS
Friday 23rd February 2024 - Opera House, Buxton - TICKETS
Saturday 24th February 2024 - Belgrade Theatre, Coventry - TICKETS
Sunday 25th February 2024 - Belgrade Theatre, Coventry - TICKETS
Monday 26th February 2024 - Wycombe Swan, High Wycombe - TICKETS
Thursday 29th February 2024 - The Hexagon, Reading - TICKETS
March 2024
Friday 1st March 2024 - Royal & Derngate, Northampton - TICKETS
Saturday 2nd March 2024 - The Beacon, Bristol - TICKETS
Sunday 3rd March 2024 - Theatre Royal, Plymouth - TICKETS
Monday 4th March 2024 - Hall For Cornwall, Truro - TICKETS
Wednesday 6th March 2024 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Thursday 7th March 2024 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Friday 8th March 2024 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Saturday 9th March 2024 - Storyhouse, Chester - TICKETS
Tuesday 12th March 2024 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Wednesday 13th March 2024 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Thursday 14th March 2024 - Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield - TICKETS
Friday 15th March 2024 - Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield - TICKETS
Saturday 16th March 2024 - Hippodrome, Darlington - TICKETS
Sunday 17th March 2024 - King's Theatre, Glasgow - TICKETS
Thursday 21st March 2024 - King's Theatre, Portsmouth - TICKETS
Friday 22nd March 2024 - Chelmsford Theatre, Chelmsford - TICKETS
Saturday 23rd March 2024 - Chelmsford Theatre, Chelmsford - TICKETS
Sunday 24th March 2024 - Theatre Royal, Norwich - TICKETS
Wednesday 27th March 2024 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS
Thursday 28th March 2024 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS
April 2024
Thursday 18th April 2024 - St. George's Hall, Bradford - TICKETS
Monday 22nd April 2024 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Tuesday 23rd April 2024 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Thursday 25th April 2024 - The Alban Arena, St. Albans - TICKETS
2) BENEFITS
FEB 1ST - HACKNEY HOMELESS SHELTER, HACKNEY EMPIRE Celya AB, Fern Brady, Rob Brydon, Rob Delaney, Kevin Eldon, Rosie Holt, Athena Kugblenu, Nish Kumar, Stewart Lee.
I do my Pea Green Boat spoken word piece with backing from ‘90s Leamington Spa noise art band Jackdaw With Crowbar, for charity, in Coventry, one time only. Sad themes! Loud music!!
An owl wakes up at sea in a pea green boat. It is accompanied by a cat, its natural predator. There is some honey. What chain of events led to this dangerous situation? Stewart Lee reprises his darkly comic tale based on Edward Lear’s The Owl & the Pussycat with improvised musical accompaniment.
“This delve into Edward Lear’s most famous poem is sweet and very funny” ★★★★ Guardian
PLUS a set from band Jackdaw with Crowbar “The best thing to come out of Leamington since the Grand Union Canal’ (Stewart Lee) where bass culture meets EDM and Co in a dark alley full of sequins. This scratch event is a fundraiser for LAMP, an award-winning a specialist education provision established in 2013, dedicated to supporting young people with autism.
ICEMAN FILM
The mighty comedy historian Robert Wringham wants to make a film about Anthony Irvine, aka The Iceman, who you may have heard me mention repeatedly.
“Robert and Anthony became fast friends in 2022. They worked together on a book called Melt It! The Book of the Iceman. Stuffed with stories and colour artwork, it was published by comedy production company Go Faster Stripe. It had a foreword by Simon Munnery and an afterword by Stewart Lee. But the stories keep on coming. Circus! Showbiz! Rock and Roll! So Robert and Anthony have teamed up with respected YouTuber Mark Cartwright (aka GingerBeardMark) to have yet another crack at a legacy for the Iceman. Since mid-2023, we've been working together to make Melt It! The Film of the Iceman. How much permanence and success can we assure for this man whose entire act was about impermanence and failure? Back the film and be among the first to find out. Our aim (aim!) is to complete the film by late-2024, then we hope to secure a limited run of UK art cinemas and possible streaming distribution by our friends at Go Faster Stripe.”
In other cash news, the lovely Kirkdale Bookshop in Sydenham, SE London, where the former free jazz trombonist, flaneur and churchwarden Row-land Bates can be found behind the counter, had all its pre-Christmas takings’ cash burglarised in December, so if you’re buying books with Nan’s Xmas money you could do worse than spend it here https://kirkdalebookshop.com or bung in to a modest gofundme https://www.gofundme.com/f/funding-to-cover-burglary-costs
5) SINGALONGAJUSTSTOPOIL
It’s not too late to weep along to Louise Harris’ Just Stop Oil fundraising hit. Download it here, support the wrongfully detained, and help save the world.
6) THE GIANT SYNDICATE 27TH APRIL EARTH HACKNEY LONDON
From 1pm – 10pm In the month of my 56th birthday, and Fire records’ 40th, I introduce various combinations of Dream Syndicate, Giant Sand and Kristen Hirsch at my local live music emporium.
Teenage me can’t believe it.
FALLEN LEAVES Punk-mod showmen. Jan 27th Brighton Hope & Ruin
MICHAEL ROTHER Neu! noise man still motoring FEB 3rd 2024 London Barbican
CRYPT W PROFESSOR ALICE ROBERTS The Alice Bag of archaeology LIVE FEB 22nd Inverness Eden Court, 26th B’ham Town Hall, 29th Bury St Edmunds Apex, MARCH 3rd London Blackheath Halls, 4th Guildford G Live, 5th C’nam Town Hall, 6th Portsmouth Guildhall, 7th N’hampton Derngate, 9th Oundle Stahl, 10th Wycombe Swan
BO NINGEN Japanoiseniks MARCH 1st Earth Hackney
ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN The psychedelic scallies play the greatest hits of their first incarnation March 2nd – 26th. March 2nd Norwich Nick Rayns LCR UEA, 3rd Brighton Dome, 5th Bournemouth Academy, 6th Bristol Beacon, 8th London Roundhouse, 10th Cardiff University, 13th Nottingham Rock City, 16th/17th M’cr Albert Hall, 19th Sheffield City Hall, 20th Glasgow Barrowlands, 22nd Leeds Academy, 23rd Newcastle City Hall, 25th/26th Liverpool Empire
STIFF LITTLE FINGERS Raucous NI punk survivors, w Glen Matlock support. March 11th Nottingham Rock City, 12th B’ham Academy, 13th Bristol Academy, 15th Newcastle City Hall, 16th/17th Glasgot Barrowlands, 21st Leeds Academy, 22nd M’cr Academy, 23rd Camden Roundhouse
JOHN ROBB Spoken word tour by the ageless en-quiffed punk dandy intellectual flaneur and man of letters MARCH 22 SELBY Town Hall, 23 CHORLEY Theatre, 27 KENDAL Brewery Arts, 28 SALE Waterside, 29 HALIFAX Square Chapel APRIL 10 SHEFFIELD Leadmill, 11 POCKLINGTON Arts Centre, 12 BUXTON Pavilion Arts, 18 WORCESTER Huntingdon Hall, 19 BRISTOL Folk House, 20 SOUTHAMPTON The Attic, 21 CAMBRIDGE Junction, 22 SUDBURY Quay Theatre, 23 COLCHESTER Arts Centre, 24 NORWICH Arts Centre, 26 CHESTER Storyhouse Garret, 27 LIVERPOOL Philharmonic Music Room, 28 LEEDS The Old Woollen, MAY 01 BRIGHTON Komedia, 03 WOOLWICH Works, 04 LONDON 21 Soho, 09 EDINBURGH Voodoo Rooms
JOLIE HOLLAND Alt-country chanteuse returns MARCH 31st London Bush Hall, APRIL 1st Cambridge Portland Arms, 2nd Birmingham Kitchen Garden, 3rdf Belfast Black Box, 4th Edinburgh Summerhall, 6th M’cr St Michael’s, 7th Brighton Komedia
HAWKWIND This current Hawkwind iteration channels their classic ‘70s space rock sound unashamedly, with keyboardist Thighpaulsandra of Coil, Cope and Spiritualised clearly living out a childhood dream. April 4th M’cr Academy, 5th Newcastle City Hall, 6th Edinburgh Academy, 7th Glasgow Academy
HOUSE OF ALL M’cr Fall-related supergroup tour APRIL 2nd Sheffield Leadmill, 3rd Glasgow Stereo, 8th London Dome, 9th Brighton Hope & Ruin, 20th M’cr Gorilla, 25th Portsmouth Wedgewood, 16th Bedford Esquires
NIGHTINGALES Off the beaten track small town dates for Birmingham post-punk heroes of King Rocker fame May 2nd Kendal Glisky, 3rd Telford Firefly, 4th Halifax Square Chapel, 5th Milton Keynes Crawford Arms, 6th Ramsgate Music Hall, 8th W’chester Railway, 9th Newport Le Pub, 10th Warrington Irish, 11th Dunoon Burgh Hall
THE HANDSOME FAMILY Literary Lynchian Alt-Country duo MAY 3rd Dublin Liberty Hall, 7th Glasgow St Luke’s, 10th M’cr Stoller Hall, 12th Leeds Irish, 14th Norwich Arts, 16th Cardiff Gate, 18th Salisbury Winchester Gate, 21st London Union Chapel, 23rd Folkestone Quarterhouse
THE BEVIS FROND Psych legends Lexington, London May 18th
THE LOVELY EGGS Art-punk duo MAY 23rd Glasgow St Luke’s, 24th Edimnburgh Belle Angele, 25th N’castle Grove, 26th Leeds Brudenell, 27th Birmingham Xoyo, 28th Bristol Thekla, 29th Brighton Chalk, 30th London Earth, 31st Nottingham Rescue Rooms JUNE 1st M’cr New Century
THE DAMNED Black Album/Strawberries line-up, with hard-wristed Holy Grail headhunter Rat Scabies back on drums. DEC 4th Newcastle NX, 5th Glasgow Barrowlands, 6th M’c Academy, 8th Leeds Academy, 9th Nottingham Rock City, 10th W’hampton Halls, 12th Bristol Beacon, 13th S’hampton Guuildhall, 14th Eastbourne Winter Gardens, 16th Cambs Corn X, 18th London Roundhouse
8) MY CULTURAL YEAR 2023 (from DEC 29th 2022 – DEC 29th 2023)
“I haven’t seen any of Stewart Lee’s nasty little lists… but this is dark stuff ….. a form of bullying, intimidation and shaming that Joseph McCarthy or The Stasi would recognize.” John Robinson, Radio X
Here is everything I consumed this year.
When I really loved something I put ***** and when I really didn’t I put *.
It’s not a critical list. I might have liked something because it pushed my buttons because of how I personally felt then/now, or because of some historical association, not necessarily because it was objectively the best thing ever.
And I might have hated something out of petty spite, or because i was too dumb to understand it.
This list is not intended to annoy anyone or be a definitive statement of anything. I’ve done it anyway, for me. You may as well see it.
21 NEW FILMS (2022/23)
I saw loads of great new films this year, and two terrible ones. Triangle of Sadness was 1/3rd flawed, and its polemic too pronounced perhaps, but still brilliant, especially the retching.
If I had to choose a top three it would be the ghostly meditation on time and memory Enys Men (Mark Jenkin), the painful portrait of disfunctional dadhood After Sun (Charlotte Wells), the inspiring doc on small town heroism Never Be A Punching Bag For Nobody (Naomi Yang).
The Old Way squandered Cage, which was a shame, but Old Dads was just nasty and cynical and yet also cloyingly sentimental, and clearly a waste of obvious talent - a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, and signifying. nothing. Very honorable mentions to Prey, a Predator film set in 1719 in pre-colonial America, with lots to say politically and the option to watch it in the Comanche language; and to You Hurt My Feelings, an old school American comedy of middle class manners with great performances and a kind heart.
And to Neil Marshall’s return to form, The Lair, a clockwork genre film with geopolitical resonance; and to Nope, where Jordan Peele uses sci-fi tropes to stake a black American claim to wild west mythology.
The Finnish spaghetti war film Sisu breathed new life into the aging warrior’s reluctant return to combat trope. Here’s my new film year in order.
In The Court Of The Crimson King (Toby Amies) *****
Enys Men (Mark Jenkin) *****
After Sun (Charlotte Wells) *****
Never Be A Punching Bag For Nobody (Naomi Yang)*****
The Old Way (Brett Donowho)*
The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh)
Dead For A Dollar (Walter Hill)
Triangle of Sadness (Ruben Östlund)*****
Barbie (Greta Gerwig, 2023)
The Lair (Neil Marshall) *****
Nope (Jordan Peele)*****
Knock At The Cabin (M Knight Shyamalan)
Cocaine Bear (Elizabeth Banks)
Men (Alex Garland)
You Hurt My Feelings (Nicole Holofcener)*****
The Last Caveman (Harry Hill) *****
Old Dads (Bill Burr) *
John Wick Chapter 4 (Chad Stahelski)
Prey (Daniel Trachtenberg) *****
The Boy & The Heron (Hayao Miyazaki)
Sisu (Jalmari Helander)*****
2. 88 OLD FILMS IN ORDER
I watched a lot of great Italian westerns in box sets put out by Arrow films, as you can see. And a lot of inappropriate horror films with my kids.
Peter Watkins’ 1967 rise-of-fascism future fable Privilege, in which my Uncle Roger appears as a policeman for 3 seconds, gets more relevant every year.
Danny Kruger should watch it through tears of shame. We all should.
Profondo Rosso (Dario Argento, 1975)*****
Breathless (Jean Luc Godard, 1960) *****
Vivre Sa Vie (Jean Luc Godard, 1962)*****
The Village (M Knight Shyamalan, 2004)
Trading Places (John Landis) *****
John Wick (Chad Stahelski, 2014) *****
John Wick II (Chad Stahelski, 2017)
Eagles Over London (Enzo Castellari, 1969)
The Long Riders (Walter Hill, 1980)
John Wick III Parabellum (Chad Stahelski, 2019)
The Howling (Joe Dante, 1981)
The Canterbury Tales (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1972)*****
The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson, 2021)
The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
Dog Soldiers (Neil Marshall, 2002)*****
The Dirty Outlaws (Franco Rosetti, 1966)
Crawl (Alexandra Aja, 2019)
Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner, 1984) *****
Night of The Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1954) *****
The Hunt (Thomas Vinterberg, 2013)
The Car (Elliot Silverstein, 1977)
Eight Legged Freaks (Ellory Elkayem, 2002)
In A Valley of Violence (Ti West, 2016)
Appaloosa (Ed Harris, 2008) *
The Hollow Point (Gonzalo López-Gallego, 2016)
The Assassination of Jesse James (Andrew Dominik, 2007)
Forsaken (Jon Cassar, 2015)
Damsel (David & Nathan Zellner, 2018)*****
Sicario (Dennis Villeneuve, 2015)
Demons (Lamberto Bava, 1985)
Alligator (Lewis Teague, 1980)
King Of Comedy (Martin Scorsese, 1982)*****
Evil Dead II (Sam Raimi, 1987)*****
Play Misty For Me (Clint Eastwood, 1971)*****
Theatre of Blood (Douglas Hickox, 1973)*****
The Perfect Host (Nick Tomnay, 2011)*
Casanova (Lasse Hallstrom, 2005)
A Reason To Live, A Reason To Die (Tonio Valerii, 1972)
Tentacles (Ovidio G Assonitis, 1977)
Rasputin The Mad Monk (Don Shields, 1966)
The Deep (Peter Yates, 1977)
Deliverance (John Boorman, 1972)*****
The Beast Must Die (Paul Annet, 1974)*
The Burning (Tony Maylam, 1981) *
Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)
Contamination (Luigi Cozzi, 1980)
Old (M Knight Shyamalan, 2021)
Sweeney! (David Wickes, 1977)*****
Lone Star (John Sayles, 1997) *****
Texas Red (Travis Mills, 2021)
Silver City (John Sayles, 2004)
Dracula AD1972 (Alan Gibson, 1972)*****
Zombi 2/Zombie Flesh Eaters (Lucio Fulci, 1979)
Rise of The Footsoldier (Julien Gilbey, 2007)
Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944)*****
The Church (Michelle Soavi, 1989)
Ready Or Not (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett, 2019)
Society (Brian Yuzna, 1989)
From Beyond (Stuart Gordon, 1986)
Mom & Dad (Brian Taylor, 2017)
Dead Men Don’t Count (Rafael Romero Marchent, 1968)
The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)*****
Imagine The Sound (Ron Mann, 1981)
Duel (Stephen Spielberg, 1971)*****
Race With The Devil (Jack Starrett, 1975)*****
The Guest (Adam Wingard, 2014)*****
Privilege (Peter Watkins, 1967)*****
The Big Gundown (Sergio Sollima, 1966)*****
Brotherhood of The Wolf (Christophe Gans, 2001)
$10000 Blood Money/$10000 For A Massacre (Romolo Guerierri, 1967)
Alive or Preferably Dead (Duccio Tessari, 1969)
Vengeance Is Mine (Giovanni Fago, 1967)
Find A Place To Die (Giuliano Carnimeo, 1968)
Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)*****
I Walked With A Zombie (Jaques Tourner, 1943)*****
Dr Terror’s House of Horrors (Freddie Francis, 1965)
The Fly (David Cronenberg, 1986)
Willard (Daniel Mann, 1968)
Land Raiders (Nathan Juran, 1970)*
Revolver (Sergio Sollima, 1973)
Stage Fright (Michael Soavi, 1987)
Punk Rock (Carter Stevens, 1977)
Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944)*****
El Puro (Eduardo Mulargia, 1969)
Wrath Of The Wind (Mario Camus, 1970)
Fury of Johnny Kidd (Gianni Puccini, 1967)
The Big Racket (Enzo G Castellari, 1976)
Let The Right One In (Thomas Alfredson, 2008)*****
The Salvation (Kristian Levring, 2014)
3. 10 NEW BOOKS
Alan Garner - Treacle Walker
Lauren Jane Barnett – Death Lines, Walking London Through Horror Cinema *****
RB Russell - Fifty Forgotten Books *****
Iain Sinclair - House of Flies *****
Weird Walk – Weird Walk *****
James O’Brien - How They Broke Britain *****
Cold War Steve - Annual 2024 *****
Toby Driver – The Hillforts of Iron Age Wales *****
Thurston Moore – Sonic Life *****
and
Found And Ground – Caroline Ross - on how to mix paints from natural sources!
4. 4 OLD BOOKS – not a good effort by me
Miles Franklin - My Brilliant Career (1901) *****
William Shakespeare - Macbeth(1623)
Debby Holt - Love Affairs for Grown-Ups (2009)
Kieron Winn - The Mortal Man (2015)
Happy Valley S3 (BBC1)
Endeavour S9 (ITV)
Eurovision Song Contest (BBC)
Ghosts S5 (BBC)
The Change (C4)
The Reckoning (BBC)
Patrick Kielty’s Late Show Gaza speech (RTE)
Victoria Derbyshire (BBC)
Ghosts Xmas Special (BBC)
The worst thing I saw, in any category, all year was Ricky Gervais’ new TV special Armageddon (Netflix), though to be fair I watched it curious to see if it could be as bad as everyone was saying, whereas I had high hopes for everything else I sought out on this list.
MAGAZINES AND PAPERS
Shindig, Record Collector, Viz, Mojo, Guardian, Machenallia, Faunus, Observer, Guardian, London Review of Books, Weird Walk, Wire, Idler.
Adrian Childs’ Guardian columns
Jay Rayner’s Observer restaurant reviews
Marina Hyde’s Guardian columns
Nesrine Malik’s Guardian columns
John Crace’s Guardian columns
A Kirstie Allsop interview in Good Housekeeping
RADIO NEW AND OLD
James O’Brien (LBC) *****
Gideon Coe (BBC 6Music) *****
Marc Riley (BBC 6Music)*****
Andrew Marr (LBC)*****
Nick Ferrari (LBC) *
Shelagh Fogerty (LBC)*****
All BBC News *
9. 17 THEATRE/DANCE/RITUAL
The best theatre I saw was Pina Bausch in Edinburgh, and also grand-dad Kitson’s Christmas show.
I thought Wils Wilson’s Macbeth, that I admittedly wrote a scene for, was brilliant too and it was a great privilege to be a part of it.
And the Boxing Day mummery of the Marshfield Paper Boys was mysterious and moving.
I am deeply ashamed that I completely didn’t understand Vanya, that everyone else loved, and I am very depressed about this personally and worried about my brains.
Titus Andronicus (The Globe, London)
Macbeth (a school production)
Spitting Image - Idiots Assemble (Phoenix, London)
The Burryman, Queensferry
Dark Noon - Tue Biering & Nhlanhla Mahlangu (EICC)
The Rites Of Spring/Common Ground(s) - Pina Bausch/Stravinsky - Edinburgh Playhouse *****
2 Guys, 3 Drams (The Space, Edinburgh)
Not On Eileen - Pete Saunders (Finger’s Piano Bar, Edinburgh)
Minotaur/Phaedra - B Britten/Deborah Warner (Ed’bro Lyceum)
Macbeth - Shakespeare/Wils Wilson (RSC) *****
Black Sabbath Ballet - Birmingham Royal Ballet (B’ham Hippodrome)
Vanya - Simon Stephens (Duke of York’s)
Treasure Island (a school production)
Remembrance Day Service (Abney Park)
Our House – Madness/that bloke (a school production)
A Story For Christmas – Daniel Kitson (Alexandra Palace)*****
Aladdin (Hackney Empire)
Marshfield Paper Boys (Marshfield, Gloucestershire)*****
10. 11 COMEDY SHOWS
I am ashamed, that as a comedian, I only saw eleven comedy shows this year, and four of those I was in - pathetic.
Alfie Brown was the best, and NonCensored as a live show at Museum of Comedy was great.
Adam Buxton, Maisie Adam, Nick Helm, Amy Gledhill, Eshaan Akbar - Leicester Square Theatre, London
Daniel Kitson, Shazia Mirza - Bloomsbury Theatre
Paul Currie - outdoors at Glastonbury workin’ him ass off
Rosie Holt - Pleasance, Ed’bro
Alfie Brown’s Work In Progress - Just The Tonic, Ed’bro *****
Simon Munnery - The Stand, Ed’bro
Aideen McQueen/Andrew White - Whistlebinkies, Ed’bro
NonCensored Live (Museum of Comedy)*****
Nick Puppo’s Heroin Equivocation Hour - Mash House, Ed’bro
Andrew O’Neil, The Abyss, Kate Cheka (W’mstow Trades)
Sunil Patel (Always Be Comedy)
11. 40 GIGS
I managed to see 40 music gigs this year, which was brilliant, and most of them were superb – I think because they people I have liked for decades that have kept going just get better and better and also I have had the pleasure of seeing new (and old) things with my kids at their suggestion.
The most fun I had at a gig was dancing about on my own for hours to a ska band called The Downsetters at Glastonbury.
The one that made me the happiest was Chuck Prophet, who is a consummate carnival huckster these days. Slowdive moved me, immensely. Black Country New Road gave me hope for the future.
The Bevis Frond and The Nightingales proved I was right all along, in different ways. Dave Callahan and House of All made me want to persist in my folly. The Bunnymen at the Albert Hall was still sublime. I watched Rick Astley sing The Smiths with my daughter and it was better than the actual Smiths 40 years ago.
I sang with Heavenly. I saw Stereolab, David Murray and The Hives with the kids, which were all great experiences, squaring the circles.
I sat next to Martin Simpson while he tuned up backstage when I hosted the Bert Jansch night. Crime & The City Solution have grown into themselves utterly.
The Sleaford Mods is an 80 minute Beckett show with a beat now. The Wave Pictures have become brilliant standard bearers for a certain kind of timeless sound. Lana Del Rey at Glastonbury was awful, like an endless advert for perfume or cars performed by robots.
My top ten, at this moment in time, in a great year, were...
Bevis Frond (Oslo, Hackney)
The Damned (Glastonbury)
The Downsetters (Rocket Lounge, Glastonbury)
Black Country New Road (Glastonbury)
Echo & The Bunnymen (Royal Albert Hall)
Slowdive (Troxy)
Bert Jansch Tribute night (Royal Festival Hall)
David Murray Quartet (Pizza Express, Soho, London)
Crime & The City Solution (Moth Club, Hackney)
Wave Pictures (Lexington)
But here’s everyone I saw in order
Bevis Frond (Oslo, Hackney)
Mariam Razaei & Angharad Davis (Live Theare, N’castle)
The Nightingales (Alexandra Palace)
Dave Callahan & Daren Garret/House Of All (Garage)
Heavenly/Panic Pocket (Bush Hall)
Chuck Prophet & The Mission Express (Garage)
Master Musicians of Joujouka (Glastonbury)
The Hives (Glastonbury)
The Comet Is Coming (Glastonbury)
Steve Earle (Glastonbury)
Billy Bragg (Glastonbury)
The Damned (Glastonbury)
The Unthanks (Glastonbury)
Billy Bragg & Jamie Webster & Rianne Downey (Glastonbury)
Big Joannie (Glastonbury)
Rick Astley & Blossoms do The Smiths (Glastonbury)
The Pretenders (Glastonbury)
The Murder Capital (Strummerville Glastonbury)
Lana Del Rey (Glastonbury)*
The Downsetters (Rocket Lounge, Glastonbury)
Beth Orton (Glastonbury)
Black Country New Road (Glastonbury)
Sairie/Barbara Manning (Betsey Trotwood, London)
Joe McPhee & Decoy (Café Oto, London)
Sarah Gail Brand & Alex MaGuire/Julian Woods, George Garford & John Bisset/Paul Jolly, Simon McCorry & Jakub Rokita (Vortex)
Pulp (Hammersmith Odeon)
Martin Newell/Feathered Thorns/Willpower (Bungay, St Mary’s)
Thistle Street Bar Folk Session, Thursday
Captain’s Bar Folk session, Thursday
Captain’s Bar Folk session, Friday
Colin Steel Quintet Play Miles Davis (Jazz Bar Edinburgh)
Blueswater duo (The Space, Edinburgh)
Orange Claw Hammer (Bannermans, Ed’bro)
Richard Youngs/Damon & Naomi (Café Oto, London)
Siouxsie (Troxy, London)
Dan Stuart (Walthamstow Trades Hall)
Echo & The Bunnymen (Royal Albert Hall)
The Shadracks (Three Crowns, Stoke Newington)
Matthew Caws/Chris Stamey (Betsey Trotwood, London)
Brian Lopez/Calexico (Electric Ballroom)
Slowdive (Troxy)
BERT JANSCH CELEBRATION - Bernard Butler, Brigid Mae Power & Steve Gunn, Jacqui McShee & Mike Piggot & Kevin Dempsey, James Yorkston & Ranjana Ghatak & Jon Thorne, Kathryn Williams, Martin Simpson, Robert Plant’s Saving Grace, Sam Lee, Sarathy Korwar (Royal Festival Hall)
David Murray Quartet (Pizza Express, Soho, London)
Stereolab (Electric Brixton)
Crime & The City Solution (Moth Club, Hackney)
Lean Left/Steve Beresford (Café Oto)
Sleaford Mods (Alexandra Palace)
Thurston Moore Group (100 Club)
Wave Pictures (Lexington) *****
RECORDS I LISTENED TO OLD SCHOOL IN ONE SITTING AT A LISTENING DEVICE
13. 107 NEW RECORDS – 2022/2023
I include some 2022 releases I came to late. I listened to 105 new albums this year.
I think the one I loved the most was The Lilac Time’s elegiac Dance Till All The Stars Come Down, which I found very emotional and exactly right for where I am now, but it was a brilliant year.
Robert Lloyd and Janet Beveridge Bean’s Black Cat Dark Horse paired two of my favorite singers of my teens/twenties on a reflective set of c&w classics that hit this 55 year old square in the heart. I’ve known Eliza Skelton for years and her belated Kate Bush goes acid folk debut is brilliant – it’s always a relief when your friends do something you are happy to praise to the sky.
The Chuck Prophet album is visceral and superb and isn’t on Spotify so you’ll have to give the bloke some money. If I have a top ten, in no order, it’s ....
Lloyd/Bean - Black Cat, Dark Horse *****
House Of All - s/t ***** Richard Dawson - The Ruby Cord *****
Eliza Skelton - The Lookerer *****
Chuck Prophet et Le Mission Express - Live A Paris *****
Black Country New Road – Live At Bush Hall *****
Slowdive - Everything Is Alive *****
The Lilac Time - Dance Till All The Stars Come Down *****
The Nightingales - Live In Balsall Heath *****
Shirley Collins – Archangel Hill *****
This is all the new records I listened to this year in order ..
Dave Graney & Clare Moore - In A Mistly
Blue Aeroplanes - Culture Gun
Robert Forster - The Candle & The Flame
Lloyd/Bean - Black Cat, Dark Horse *****
House Of All - s/t *****
Maggie Nicols - Are You Ready?
The Soundcarriers - Wilds
Rich Hopkins & The Luminarios - Exiled On Mabel St
GA-20 - Crackdown
Guided By Voices - La La Land
Maggie Nicols & Mark Wastell - And John
Bevis Frond - Clocks Caroline Kraabel and Khabat Abas - 5 Communiques
The Mudvaynes - Love It
Kosmischer Läufer - The Secret Cosmic Music of The East German Olympic Program 1972-83 Volume V
Carlton Melton - Resemble Ensemble
Yo La Tengo - This Stupid World
Neil Young w Crazy Horse - World Record
Brian Jonestown Massacre - Fire Doesn’t Grow On Trees
The Long Ryders - September November
Hawkwind - The Future Never Waits
Sleaford Mods - UK Grim
Deathcrash - Return
Lightning In A Twilight Hour - Overwintering
Richard Dawson - The Ruby Cord *****
Guided By Voices - Tremblers and Goggles By Rank
Wild Billy Childish & CTMF - Failure Not Success
Steve Earle & The Dukes - Jerry Jeff
Pugwash - The Rest Is History
Eliza Skelton - The Lookerer *****
Modern Cosmology - What Will You Grow Now?
Lankum - False Lankum
The Damned - Darkadelic
Headland – Watanda
Shirley Collins - Archangel Hill *****
Naomi Yang - Never Be A Punching Bag For Nobody
Kid Congo Powers - Live In St Kilda
The Necks - Travel
Deathcrash - Less
James Brandon Lewis Trio - Eye of I
Art Ensemble of Chicago - The Sixth Decade
Pat Todd & The Rank Outsiders - Blues, Soul & Rock’n’Roll
The Primevals - Dividing Line
Neverland Ranch Davidians - s/t
Mammatus - Expanding Majesty
Teenage Fanclub - Nothing Lasts Forever
Huntress - Destruction Horizon
Larry Gilbert - Heard Her Call My Name
Molina, Talbot, Lofgren, Young - All Roads Lead Home *
Bob Dylan - Shadow Kingdom
Stick In The Wheel - Endurance Soundly Caged
Lauren Helene Green - Outer Highway Realms
Mali Obomsawin - Sweet Tooth
Skull Practitioners - Negative Stars
Rain Parade - Last Days of a Dying Sun
Chuck Prophet et Le Mission Express - Live A Paris *****
The Feathered Thorns - Witch
Brown Spirits - Solitary Transmissions
Thomas Walsh - The Rest Is History
Gina Birch - I Play My Bass Loud
The Swansea Sound - Twentieth Century
Hugo Race Fatalists - Once Upon A Time In Italy
Cowboy Junkies - Such Ferocious Beauty
Candidate - Point Clear
Lucinda Williams - Stories From A Rock ‘n’ Roll Heart
Laura Cantrell - Just Like A Rose
Black Country New Road – Live At Bush Hall *****
Alex G - God Save The Animals
Son Volt - Day Of The Dog
Son Volt - 26 Live
Brian Lopez - Tidal
Dean Owens - El Tiradito, The Curse of The Sinner’s Shrine
Treeboy & Arc - Natural Habitat
Panic Pocket - Mad Half Hour
Candidate - Point Clear
Slowdive - Everything Is Alive *****
Cult Figures - Between Us And Heaven
The Lilac Time - Dance Till All The Stars Come Down *****
Graham Day & The Gaolers - Reflections In The Glass
Cyanide Pills - Soundtrack To The New Cold War
Guided By Voices - Welshpool Frillies
Snarskicircuslindyband - Someone Said That Someone Said
Gwenno - Tresor
Julian Cope - Robin Hood
The Nightingales - Live In Balsall Heath *****
David Murray, Brad Jones, Hamid Drake - Seriana Promethea
Birds In The Brickwork - A Strange Peace
Vic Mars - The Beacons
Claire M Singer - Saor
Goat - The Gallows Pole
Rooney - Surface Industries II
Guided By Voices - Nowhere To Go But Up
Tobin Sprout - Demos and Outtakes 2
Crime & The City Solution – The Killer
Barbara Manning – Charm of Yesterday... Convenience of Tomorrow
The Handsome Family – Hollow
Martin Simpson & Thomm Jutz – Nothing But Green Willow
Large Plants – The Thorn
Catatonic Suns - Catatonic Suns
The Bevis Frond – Focus On Nature
Silver Apples & Kawabata Mokoto - Mirage
Pat Todd & The Rank Outsiders - Sons Of The City Ditch
Black Bombers – Vive La Revolution
Laura Cannell – Midwinter Processionals
Carlton Melton – Turn To Earth
Divine Horsemen – Bitter End Of A Sweet Night
House of All – Bay City Pistols
14. 36 NEW OLD RECORDS - reissues, archive & comp’s
I listened to 36 new old records this year in this order.
The Beatles - Revolver 5 disc version (1966)*****
V/A - Oz Days Live (1972-3) *****
Jimi Hendrix Experience - Los Angeles Forum (1969)
Bob Dylan - Fragments (1996-97)*****
Various Artists - Ost-Kraut! Progressive DDR Archiven (1970-75) Teil 1
The Barracudas - Drop Out With (1977-1982)
The Beach Boys - Sail On Sailor (1972)
V/A - Piombo (1973-1991)
Verlaines - Live @ The Windsor Castle, Auckland (1986)*****
Saffron - Red Amber (1971)
The Chameleons - Dali’s Picture/Auffurung (1981-3)*****
The Fall - Live Out Ferroviarios (2013)
V/A - Studio One Space Age Dub Special (1974-6)
Datblygu - Terfysgiaith (1982-2022) *****
V/A - Deviation Street (1967-1975)
Sonny Stitt - Boppin’ In Baltimore (1972)*****
The Lemonheads - Come On Feel (1993)*****
The Bevis Frond - The Long Stuff (1995-2019) *****
Ayako Shinozaki - Music For The Harp (1974)
Meiko Kaji - Hajiku Uta (1973)
Gadsby & Skol - s/t (1970/1995)
Elvin Jones’ Revival - Live At Pookie’s Pub (1967)
Josef K - It’s Kinda Funny (1980-2)*****
West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band - A Door Inside Your Mind (1966-68) *****
Roxy Gordon - Crazy Horse Never Died (1988)
John Coltrane W Eric Dolphy - Evenings At The Village Gate (1961)*****
Drive-By Truckers - The Complete Dirty South (2004) *****
Calexico - Feast of Wire (2003) *****
Various Artists - Bullshit Detector 1 (1980)
Various Artists - Bullshit Detector 2 (1982)
Various Artists - Bullshit Detector 3 (1984)
The Galileo 7 - Tear Your Mind Wide Open (2017)
Kyra - Here I Am, I Always Am (1998)
Epic 45 - Drakelow (2005)
Shiva Burlesque - Mercury Blues/Skullduggery(1990)*****
David Westlake – D87 (1987)*****
15. 347 OLD OLD RECORDS
I listened to 347 old old records this year in this order.
Eleventh Dream Day - Prairie School Freakout (1988) *****
Jimi Hendrix Experience - Electric Ladyland (1968) *****
The Bevis Frond - We Are Your Friends Man (2018) *****
Uriah Heep - Salisbury (1971)
Swans - Love Of Life (1992)
Sigur Ros - Valtari (2012)
Sigur Ros - Kveikur (2013)
My Bloody Valentine - MBV (2013) *****
Alex G - Beach Music (2015)
Bill Fay - Time Of The Last Persecution (1971)*****
FJ McMahon - Spirit of the Golden Juice (1969)
Jayhawks - Hollywood Town Hall (1992) *****
Modern English - Peel Session (1980)
The Chameleons - Peel Session (1983) *****
Blood And Roses - Peel Session (1983)
Again Again - Peel Session (1978) *****
Stereolab - Switched On (1992) *****
Stereolab - Peng! (1992) *****
The Soundcarriers - Entropicalia (2014)
Malouma - Nour (2007)
Sidewinders - Witchdoctor (1989) *****
Stereolab - Transient Random-Noise Bursts (1993)*****
Sidewinders - Auntie Ramos’ Pool Hall (1990)
The Associates - Sulk (1982)
The Pastels - Last Great Wilderness (2002)
The Pastels - Illumination (1997)
Grant-Lee Phillips - Widdershins (2018)
Peter Lang - The Thing At The Nursery Window (1972)
Julius Lester - Dressed Like Freedom (1965-7)
Quicksilver Messenger Service - s/t (1967) *****
Stereolab - Mars Audiac Quartet (1994) *****
Doji Morita - A Boy (1977)
Minami Deutsch - s/t (2015)
Stereolab - Emperor Tomato Ketchup (1996)*****
Stereolab - The Group Played Space Age Bachelor Pad Music (1993)
Stereolab - Refried Ectoplasm (1995)*****
Stereolab - Dots & Loops (1997)
Stereolab - ABC Music (1991-2001) *****
Screaming Trees - Buzz Factory (1989) *****
David Crosby - If I Could Only Remember My Name (1971)*****
Jefferson Airplane - Takes Off (1966)
Jefferson Airplane - Surrealistic Pillow (1967)
Jefferson Airplane - After Bathing At Baxter’s (1967)
Jefferson Airplane - Crown of Creation (1968)
28th Day - s/t (1986) *****
Jefferson Airplane - Volunteers (1969)
Dexter Gordon - At The Subway Club (1973)
John Coltrane - Ballads (1963) *****
Tom Verlaine - Dreamtime (1981)
Stiv Bators - Disconnected (1980)
Black Sabbath - Montreux 1970 (1970) *****
Black Sabbath - s/t (1970)*****
Manfred Mann’s Earth Band - The Good Earth (1974)
The Beach Boys - Feel Flows (1969-1971)
The Beach Boys - Sunshine Tomorrow (1967)
The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds (1966)
Sly & The Family Stone - A Whole New Thing (1967)
Black Sabbath - Paranoid (1970)
Black Sabbath - Master of Reality (1971)
Black Sabbath - 4 (1972) *****
Black Sabbath - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973)
Lyres - Lyres (1985)
Gene Clark - Collected (1965-91) *****
Coleman Hawkins - Hawk Eyes (1959) *****
Pharoah Sanders - Live (1981) *****
McCoy Tyner - Inception (1962)*****
McCoy Tyner - Reaching Forth (1962)
The Cars - The Cars (1978)
McCoy Tyner - Nights of Ballads and Blues (1963)
McCoy Tyner - Today & Tomorrow (1964)
McCoy Tyner - Live At Newport (1962)
McCoy Tyner - Plays Ellington (1964)
Coltrane, Dolphy, Jones, Lewis, Tyner, Workman - Munich Jam (1961)
Albert Ayler - Something Different (1962) *****
Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited (1965) *****
Bob Dylan - Blonde on Blonde (1966) *****
Guided by Voices - Bee Thousand (1994)*****
Rain Parade - Emergency Third Rail Power Trip (1983)*****
Rain Parade - Explosions In The Glass Palace (1984)****
Rain Parade - Beyond The Sunset (1985)*****
Cat Stevens - Tea For The Tillerman (1970)
Bob Dylan - Time Out Of Mind (1997) *****
The Waterboys - s/t (1983) *****
The Waterboys - A Pagan Place (1984)
The Waterboys - This Is The Sea (1985) *****
The Waterboys - Fisherman’s Blues (1998) *****
The Fall - Extricate (1990) *****
Robert Belfour - What’s Wrong With You? (2000)
Yung Wu - Shore Leave (1987)
Tiny Grimes & Coleman Hawkins - Blues Groove (1958)
Game Theory - The Big Shot Chronicles (1986) *****
Game Theory - Lolita Nation (1987) *****
Sonny Criss - Jazz USA (1956)
Sonny Criss - Go Man (1956)
The Fall - Are You Are Missing Winner (2001)*****
Dexter Gordon - Both Sides of Midnight (1967)*****
John Coltrane - Crescent (1964)*****
Dharma Bums - Haywire (1988)*****
King Tubby - Dub Gone Grazy (1975-79)*****
The Oblivians - 17 Cum Shots (1997)
The Playn Jayn - Five Good Evils (1985)
The Wreckery - Yeh My People (1987)
The Wreckery - Laying Down The Law (1989)
The Saints - Eternally Yours (1978)
Always August - Geography (1988)
Savage Resurrection - s/t (1968)
Salvation - s/t (1968)
The Thanes - Thanes of Cawdor (1987)
Grimble Grumble - s/t (1997) *****
Nico - Chelsea Girl (1967)*****
Steve Earle - I Feel Alright (1996) *****
Black Sabbath - Sabotage (1975)*****
Watchhouse - Such Jubilee (2015)
Man - 2 Oz’s Plastic With A Hole In The Middle (1969)*****
Centrum - For Meditation (2019)*****
Furry Lewis - s/t (1960)
Glen Campbell - Galveston (1969)
Jeff Wayne - War Of The Worlds (1978) *****
Rita Coolidge - The Lady’s Not For Sale (1972)
Heavenly - Le Jardin Du Heavenly (1992)
Johnny Rivers - Totally Live At The Whisky A Go Go (1964)
Johnny Rivers - Slim Slow Slider (1970)
Johnny Rivers - Whisky A Go Go Revisited (1967)
Johnny Rivers - Changes (1967)
Johnny Rivers - Meanwhile Back At The Whisky A Go Go (1965)
Johnny Rivers - Rocks The Folk (1965)
A A Bondy - When The Devil’s Loose (2009)
Johnny Rivers - A Touch Of Gold (1968)
Jerry Jeff Walker - !Viva Terlingua! (1973)
Kris Kristofferson - Jesus Was A Capricorn (1972)
V/A - C85 (1985)
Tim Hardin - Tim Hardin 2 (1967) *****
Black Country New Road – Ants From Up There (2022)*****
Slowdive - Souvlaki (1993)*****
Bobbie Gentry - The Delta Suite (1968) *****
Bobbie Gentry - Ode To Billie Joe (1967)*****
Eels - Electro-shock Blues (1998)
Thin White Rope - Exploring The Axis (1985)
Thin White Rope - Moonhead (1987)*****
Thin White Rope - Bottom Feeders (1987)
Thin White Rope - In The Spanish Cave (1988)
Thin White Rope - Red Sun (1988)*****
Thin White Rope - Sack Full of Silver (1990)*****
Thin White Rope - The Ruby Sea (1991) *****
Thin White Rope - Squatters’ Rights (1991)
Thin White Rope - The One That Got Away (1993)*****
Thin White Rope - Spoor (1995)
Elliot Smith - XO (1998)
Eels - Beautiful Freak (1996)
Vic Chesnutt - Is The Actor Happy? (1995)*****
Cactus World News - Urban Beaches (1986)
Plasticland - Salon (1987)*****
Plasticland - s/t (1984)
Banchee - s/t (1969)
Mahikari - s/t (2008)
Psycho Daisies - Pushin’ Up Daisies (1985)
Psycho Daisies - 30 mg Of Your Love (1990) *****
David Soul - s/t (1976)
The Groundhogs - Split (1971)*****
The Groundhogs - Thank Christ For The Bomb (1970)*****
The Groundhogs - Blues Obituary (1969) *****
The Groundhogs - Who Will Save The World? (1972)*****
Sonny Simmons - Now! (1963)
Sonny Simmons and Paul Gonsalves - Salt and Pepper (1964)
Felt - The Pictorial Jackson Review (1988)
Gene Clark & Friends - Live At The Three T’s (1985)
V/A - Chicago Blues From Federal Records (1957-64)
Loudon Wainwright III - Fame And Wealth (1983)*****
Hugo Race - Dishee (2021)
Lonesome Strangers - Lonesome Pine (1986)
Lucinda Williams - Lucinda Williams (1988) *****
Mazzy Star - She Hangs Brightly (1990)*****
Mazzy Star - So Tonight That I Might See (1993) *****
Mazzy Star - Among My Swan (1996) *****
Chesterfield Kings - Psychedelic Sunrise (2007)
Onionhead - Live Camden Falcon (1989) *****
The Thanes - Evolver (1987-2001)
The Cynics - Rock’n’Roll (1989)*****
The Cynics - Living Is The Best Revenge (1998)*****
The Cynics - Get Our Way (1990)
Sun Kil Moon - Benji (2014)*****
Big Star - Third/Sister Lovers (1974)*****
Nick Drake - Bryter Later (1971) *****
Swans - The Seer (2012)
Serge Gainsbourg - Histoire de Melody Nelson (1971)
Entourage Music & Theatre Ensemble - Neptune Collection (1976)
Entourage Music & Theatre Ensemble - Ceremony of Dreams (1972-6)
Cocteau Twins - Treasure (1984)*****
The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967)*****
Gregory Isaacs - Slum In Dub (1978)
The Fall - Shift-Work (1991)
The Fall - Middle Class Revolt (1994)
The Fall - Cerebral Caustic (1995)
The Fall - The Light User Syndrome (1996) *****
The Fall - Are You Are Missing Winner (2001)
Died Pretty - Free Dirt (1986)*****
Miles Davis - Kind of Blue (1959)*****
Gaz Coombes - World’s Strongest Man (2018)
Peter Holsapple & Chris Stamey - Mavericks (1991)*****
Chris Stamey - It’s Alright (1987)
Catatonic Suns - Aphelion (2019)
Chris Stamey - Euphoria (2015)
The Fall - Agora Columbus Live (1985)*****
Charles Gayle - Touchin’ On Trane (1991)*****
Rainer - Nocturnes (1995)*****
Rainer - Worried Spirits (1992)*****
Tex, Don & Charlie - All Is Forgiven (2005)*****
Dan Stuart - The Deliverance of Marlowe Billings (2005)*****
Dan Stuart w Twin Tones - Marlowe’s Revenge (2006)*****
Dan Stuart - Unfortunate Demise of Marlowe Billings (2016)*****
Echo & The Bunnymen - Ocean Rain (1984)*****
Peter Case - Let Us Now Praise Sleepy John (2007) *****
Dave Graney & The Coral Snakes - Night Of The Wolverine (1993)****
Cocteau Twins - Head Over Heels (1983) *****
Robyn Hitchcock - Robyn Sings (2002)
Bob Dylan - Modern Times (2006)*****
Bob Dylan - Tell Tale Signs (1989-2006)*****
The Waterboys - Live Adventures Of (1981-85)*****
Onionhead - 3 x 12”s (1990)*****
Orange Humble Band - Humblin’ (Across America) (2000)
The Tragically Hip - Up To Here (1989) *****
Stooges - I Wanna Be Your Dog (1972/3?)
Stooges - Stooges (1969) *****
Peter Case - Peter Case (1986)*****
Peter Case - The Man With The Post-Modern etc (1989)*****
Blue Mountain - Roots (2001)*****
Peter Case - The Midnight Broadcast (2021)
Radiohead - OK Computer (1997)*****
The Doors – s/t (1967)*****
The Blue Aeroplanes - Tolerance (1985)*****
Dan Stuart - Can O’ Worms (1995)*****
Dan Stuart - 4 Songs (2011)
Robyn Hitchcock - Eye (1990)*****
Robyn Hitchcock - Robyn Sings (2002)*****
Grant Lee Buffalo - Fuzzy (1993)*****
The Shadracks - s/t (2019)
The Shadracks - From Human Like Forms (2021)
The DB’s - I Thought You Wanted To Know (1978-81)
The DB’s - Stands for Decibels (1981)
The DB’s - Repercussion (1981)
The DB’s - Amplifier (1981)
The DB’s - Like This (1984)
Chris Stamey - Fireworks (1991)
Chris Stamey - Travels In The South (1994)*****
Nada Surf - Never Not Together (2020)*****
Bert Jansch - Jack Orion
Pentangle – s/t (1968)*****
Bert Jansch & John Renbourn - Bert & John (1966)
Bert Jansch - It Don’t Bother Me (1965)
Bert Jansch - s/t (1965)
John Renborn & Jacqui McShee - An Evening With (2019)
The Silos - The Bird Album Live on KCRW (1990)
Slowdive - Souvlaki (1993)*****
The Gourds - Dem’s Good Beeble (1996) *****
The Gourds - Stadium Blitzer (1998) *****
Shinyribs - Well After A While (2010)
Martin Simpson – The Bramble Briar (2001)
PF Sloan – Raised On Records (1972)*****
The Fall – Slates (1981)*****
Joe Crow – Compulsion (1982)*****
Josef K – The Only Fun In Town (1981)*****
The Magpie Arc – 1st Three EP’s (2021)*****
Crime & The City Solution – Just South of Heaven (1985)*****
These Immortal Souls – Get Lost Don’t Lie (1987)*****
Crime & The City Solution – Shine (1988)*****
Crime & The City Solution – Paradise Discotheque (1990) *****
Crime & The City Solution – The Bride Ship (1989) *****
Simon Bonney – Forever (1992) *****
Simon Bonney – Everyman (1995)
Rowland S Howard – Teenage Snuff Film (1999)*****
Rowland S Howard – Pop Crimes (2009) *****
PF Sloan – Anthology (1965-68)*****
Junior Byles – Beat Down Babylon (1972)
David Lance Callahan – English Primitive I (2021)*****
David Lance Callahan – English Primitive II (2022)*****
The Records – Smashes, Crashes & Near Misses (1978-82)
Uncle Tupelo – No Depression (1990)*****
Cowboy Junkies – The Caution Horses (1990)*****
Cowboy Junkies – Black Eyed Man (1992)*****
Cowboy Junkies - Pale Sun Crescent Moon (1993)*****
Dennis Wilson – Pacific Ocean Blue (1977)
Mason Profitt – Two Hangmen (1969)
Mason Profitt – Movin’ Towards Happiness (1971)
V/A – Banks Of The Ship Canal, The Songs of Cyril Barrett (2018)
The Pogues – Rum, Sodomy & The Lash (1995)*****
The Bevis Frond – North Circular (1997)*****
The Bevis Frond – Valedictory Songs (2000)*****
PF Sloan – Precious Times (1965-66)*****
The Wailing Souls – Inchpinchers (1982)*****
The Wave Pictures – Instant Coffee Baby (2008)*****
The Harbour Kings – The Big Kahuna (1992)*****
Billie Joe Beccoat – Reflections in a Cracked Mirror (1969)
Shack – Here’s Tom With The Weather (2002)
Tindersticks – s/t (1993)
June Tabor – Airs & Graces (1976)*****
June Tabor & Maddy Prior – Silly Sisters (1976)
June Tabor – Ashes & Diamonds (1977)*****
Talk Talk – The Colour of Spring (1986)*****
Talk Talk – Spirit of Eden (1988)
Lucinda Williams – Have Yourself A Rockin’ Little Xmas (2020)
Sybille Baier – Colour Green (1970-73)
The Waterboys – Fisherman’s Box (1986-88)
Steve Earle – Copperhead Road (1988)*****
Steve Earle – El Corazon (1997)*****
Graham Bond – Love Is The Law (1969)
Andromeda – s/t (1969)
Atomic Rooster – s/t (1970)
Hard Stuff – Bulletproof (1972)
Gene Parsons – Kindling (1973)*****
Townes Van Zandt – For The Sake Of The Song (1968)*****
16. 57 HISTORIC SITES/WALKS
Holy Trinity Church, Hardwicke, Herefordshire
Arthur’s Stone, Golden Valley, Herefordshire
Holy Trinity Church, Sloane St, London
Home of Emmy Bridgwater, B’ham
Site of home of Conroy Maddox, B’ham
Trocadero Pub, B’ham
Kardomah Café, B’ham
Guild Hall, Leicester
Liverpool Anglican Cathedral
Exeter Cathedral
St Peter’s church & prehistoric mound, Ugborough, Devon
Brisworthy Stone Circle, Dartmoor
John Rylands Library, M’cr
The Ridgeway, Uffington - Ogden St George
Wayland’s Smithy, Ridgeway
Avebury Stone Circle, Wiltshire
Owlpen Manor, Gloucestershire
Cotswold Way Uley/Nympsfield
Nympsfield Long Barrow
Uley Long Barrow/Hetty Pegler’s Tump
Uley Bury Hill Fort
Minchinhampton Common
Purton ships’ graveyard
Little Malvern Priory
Malvern Priory
St Anne’s Well, Malvern
Malvern Hills
Brighton Beach Flint Grotto - Rory McCormack
Grave of Lew Lake, Abney Park, London (“Stick it, Jerry!”)
Ham House, London
Bath Roman Baths
The Waveney Valley, Norfolk/Suffolk
The Locks Inn, Suffolk
St Mary’s Church, Bungay
Mettingham Castle, Suffolk
Dunino Den, Fife
St Andrews Cathedral
St Andrews Castle
Earlset Standing Stone, Fife
The Rollright Stones, Oxfordshire
The Guild Church, Stratford Upon Avon
Shakespeare grave & bench ends, Holy Trinity, Stratford Upon Avon
St Bartholemew’s The Great, City of London
Shakespeare’s City of London Walk w guide
Holy Innocents’ Church, Great Barton
Twyn Y Gaer hillfort, Brecon Beacons
Mynydd Illtud stone/s, Brecon Beacons
Pen y Crug hillfort, Brecon Beacons
Maen Llia stone, Brecon Beacons
Maen Madoc stone, Brecon Beacons
Sarn Helen Roman Road, Brecon Beacons
Waterfalls walk, Brecon Beacons
Broadstones stone circle site, Wiltshire
West Kennet Long Barrow, Wiltshire
White Horse Hill, Wiltshire
St Mary’s Churchyard, Bath
Abney Park Cemetery post-Xmas expedition
17. 5 MUSEUMS
The Jazz Centre UK, Southend.
Southend Museum esp Prittlewell Princely Burial *****
Exeter Royal Albert Memorial Museum
Imperial War Museum North, Salford
Honeystreet Crop Circle Museum, Wiltshire
Spillers - Welsh culture warhorse, Cardiff
Swordfish - B’ham’s living punk era museum
Truck - Oxford’s coffee-perfumed perennial
Badlands - Cheltenham boutique Byrds-suffused nook
Probe - Liverpudlian petri-dish of perennial Walking Seeds
South, Southend’s indie vinyl vault
Monorail Music - Glasgow, Pastel’s pungent outlet *****
Piccadilly Records, M’cr - Knowledgeable counterfolk
Carnival Records, Malvern - Hillside hipster outpost *****
Resident, Brighton - Clean and tidy music sluice
20. 37 ART
I saw 37 stand-alone artworks/art galleries/art exhibitions this year. Marina Abrimovich at the RA was far and away the best thing I saw. Grayson Perry’s Smash Hits made me reconsider him as a much more serious artist that I realized – maybe I just got old? The miaaowing cat grotto at Raveningham Hall was great and it was fun going to Saffon Waldren to find Michael Ayrton.
Edward Burne-Jones stained glass window - Holy Trinity, Sloane Sq
National Museum of Wales; Eileen Agar - Exceptional Occurrence; Francis Bacon - Study for Self Portrait; Merlyn Evans - Beechwood By Moonlight; Harold Gilman - The Kitchen; Augustus John - loadsastuff incl Dylan Thomas; Gwen Johns - loadsa stuff; David Jones - Portrait of a Maker, Crucifixion, St Francis, Jeus Mocked, Landscape in kent, Elephant, Siphon & Salver; RB Kitaj - TeDeum; LS Lowry - Six Bells; Monet - Waterlillies, Rouen; John Nash - Plage; John Piper; Ceri Richards; Stanley Spencer - Switzerland; Kyffin Williams; Christopher Wood - Rug Seller.
Horatio Nelson - Richard Westmacott (1775-1856), B’ham Bull Ring
A Real Birmingham Family - Rachel Wearing, B’ham
Tony Hancock - Bruce Williams, B’ham
Boulton, Watt & Murdoch - William Bloye, B’ham
Queen Victoria - William Bloye, B’ham
Iron Man - Anthony Gormley, B’ham
The Morris Window - Edward Burne-Jones (St Edmund Hall, Oxford)
Oxford Museum Of Modern Art. Marina Abramovic - Gates & Portals
The Wilson, Cheltenham. Arts & crafts, Morris, Burne-Jones, De Morgan.
Liverpool Anglican Cathedral - Elizabeth Frink, Tracey Emin
Horror Show, Ian & Jane Pollard - Somerset House, London. Noel Fielding; Mark E Smith; Jamie Reed; Helen Chadwick; Pam Hogg; Leigh Bowery; Chapman Bros; Dennis Morris; Matt Holness; Stewart Home; Derek Jarman; Michael Landy; Steve Pemberton; Nic Roeg; Scanner (Robin Rimbaud); Adam Scovell; Reece Shearsmith; David Shrigley; Iain Sinclair; Gavin Turk; Rachel Whiteread;Leonora Carrington; Linder; Alice Lowe. *****
Coventry Cathedral. Ecce Homo, St Michael - Jacob Epstein.
Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry - Interior Coventry Cathedral 1940 - John Piper; Figure 1964 - Barbara Hepworth; Lectern Eagle – Elizabeth Frink; Lady Godiva’s Prayer - Edwin Landseer; Yehudi Menuhin - David Wynne; Woman Taken In Adultery - William Holman Hunt; The Fount - Frank Dobson.
Beecroft Art Gallery - Southend. David Hockney, but little else on view.
The Box, Portsmouth - Lots of Barbara Hepworth, a Rose Hilton, a Stanley Spencer and Stanhope Forbes’ mighty A Fish Sale On A Cornish Beach.
M’cr Art Gallery - Ben Nicholson - 1932 Au Chat Botee; Gwen John - The Student; John Waterhouse - Hylas and The Nymphs; George Watts - A Greek Idyll; Frederick Shields - The Annunciation; Annie Louisa Swynnerton - Montagna Mia *****; Edward Burne Jones - Sibylla Delphia; William Holman Hunt - Light of The World, Hireling Shepherd*****; Lady Elizabeth Butler - Balaclava*****; Frederick Sandys - Vivien; William Blake - Poet’s heads ****
Brighton Beach Flint Grotto - Rory McCormack
The Holbourne Museum Bath - Painted Love Renaissance Marriage Portraits; Thomas Barker; Has Beham - The Judgement Of Paris; Brueghel the Younger - Wedding Dance In The Open Air, Visit To A Farmhouse; John Constable - Flatford Lodge; Arthur Devis - Alicia and Jane Clarke; Thomas Gainsborough; Francis Hayman - David Garrick as Richard III; Holbein - Erasmus; Joshua Reynolds; Samuel de Wilde - Thomas Collins as Slender; Willelm Wissing - John Hyde Earl of Rochester; Johann Zoffany - Garrick as Jaffier; & William Beckford’s gold filigree spoon collection.
Victoria Art Gallery Bath - John Armstrong - Psyche Crossing The Styx; Thomas Cooper - To Market In A Snow Drift; Alan Davie - For A Happy Moonday 4; Emmeline Deane - Anna Belinska; Hester Quinton Eversley - Interior Victoria Art Gallery; Charles Ginner- Old Houses Bath; Howard Hodgkin - Silence; Holbein the Younger - Henry VIII; David Inshaw - The River Bank; William Margetson - Mary At The Loom; Robert McGregor - Les Moulieres; John Nash - Canal Bridge Sydney Gardens; William Roberts - The Dressmakers; Henery Herbert La Thangue - The Splash; Edwin Whitney-Smith - The Scarab.
Raveningham Hall, Norfolk - 2023 Sculpture Trail *****
Edinburgh City Art - 250 Years Of Scottish Landscapes
Stuart Pearson Wright’s studio - Mettingham Castle
Grayson Perry - Smash Hits - Scottish National Gallery *****
Phoebe Traquair Murals, Edinburgh *****
Spencer, Lowry, Hockney, Ceri Richards - St Edmund Hall SCR, Oxford
Damien Hirst - Exquisite Pain - St Bartholomew The Great, London
Elizabeth Frink’s Canterbury Tales prints *****
A World of Private Mystery - Fry Gallery, Saffron Walden: Michael Ayrton, Robert Colquhoun, Robert MacBryde, Keith Vaughan, Graham Sutherland, John Craxton and John Minton.*****
Philip Guston – Tate Modern
Edward Burne-Jones’ Faith, Hope & Charity - Great Barton church
Yayoi Kusama – Infinity Mirror Rooms – Tate Modern *
Stuart Pearson Wright – Miscellanalects – Flowers
Marina Abrimovich – Royal Academy *****
El Anatsui – Behind The Red Moon – Tate Modern
Michael Ayrton – Icarus III
21. ARTWORKS I DIDN’T SEE THIS YEAR AS THEY HAD BEEN WITHDRAWN FROM DISPLAY IN THE GALLERIES I VISITED, OR BECAUSE THEY WERE CLOSED, PERMANENTLY OR TEMPORARILLY.
Birmingham Art Gallery - All the art has been locked away until 2024, including Francis Bacon - Figures In Landscape; Lamorna Birch - A Cornish Stream; David Bomberg - Bab-es-siq, Carnival, Hezekiah’s Pool, Self Portrait; Frank Brangwyn - Enrico Canziani, The Bridge; Georges Braque - Pichet; John Bratby - Courtyard w Washing; Emmy Bridgwater - Night Work Is About To Commence; Ford Maddox Brown - Wycliffe Trial, Work, Boy, Pretty Baa-Lanbs, Tristram, Last Of England; Kate Elizabeth Bunce - Musica; Edward Burne-Jones - King & Other Mourners, Peleas, Pygmailion x 4, Psyche x7, Wheel of Fortune, Zephyrus, Annunciation, The Wizard, Study of Oblivion, Troy Triptych; Edward Calvert - Pan, Ulysses, Artemis; Patrick Caulfied - Red & White; Degas - Beggar Woman; Jacob Epstein - Rock Drill, Euphemia Lamb, Tagore, Einstein; Fuseli - Hotspur etc; Spencer Gore; Duncan Grant - Boats @ Twickenham, Dancers, On The Table; Terry Frost - Black & Lemon, Black & Dust Pink; Gluck - Village Church; Barbara Hepworth - Sun & Moon, Cosdon Head, Prelude 1; Maggie Hambling - Max & Me; Richard Hamilton - Whitley Bay, Patrick Heron - Portheor, Standing Figure; Howard Hodgkin - Venice Sunset, Gardening, Room W Chair; William Holman-Hunt - Lantern Maker, Finding Of Saviour, Valentine; Arthur Hughes - Amy, Young Poet, Annunciation, Nativity, Lost Child; Augustus John - Canadian Soldier; RB Kitaj - Desk Murder; Harold Knight - Barry Jackson; Laura Knight - Autumn Sunlight, Les Sylphides; Peter Lanyon - Offshore; John Frederick Lewis; John Linnell - Sheep Drive; LS Lowry - An Industrial Town; Bruce McLean - Spoon 2; John Millais - 3 Sword Hilts, Widow’s Mite, Waiting, Second Sermon, Enemy, Mrs Joseph Chamberlain; Henry Moore - Warrior W Shield; Desmond Morris - Jumping; Alfred Munnings - Barry Jackson, In Cornwall, Epsom Downs; Ben Nicholson - 1950, 1944/5 Scarf; William Nicholson - Pink Still Life; Victor Passmore - Straw Hat, Spiral Motif; John Piper - Ruined Cottage; Renoir - Mdm Renoir; George Richmond; Bridget Riley - Cherry Autumn; William Blake Richmond; Dante Rosetti - Beata Beatrix, Proserpine; Emma Sandys - Lady Holding Rose; Frederick Sandys - Autumn, Medea, Morgan Le Fay; Walter Sickert - Rue Notre Dame, Dieppe Races; Simeon Solomon - Babylon, Bacchus; Joseph Edward Southall; Stanley Spencer - Resurrection, Old Tannery Mills, The Psychiatrist; Graham Sutherland - Edward Sackville West; JAMES SMETHAM (of Queen Elizabeth Walk, Stoke Newington)- THE MANY WINTERED CROW; Henry Tonks - The Orchard, Hat Shop, China Cabinet, Crystal Gazers; Henry Wallis - Chatterton; GF Watts - Little Red Riding Hood; JB Yeats - Dublin Night, An Old Car Driver; and many more!
Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry. The following were among the works not available to view; Christ Seated - Graham Sutherland; Princess Elizabeth Opening The New Broadgate - Laura Knight;, The Bridge - John Tunnard; Miss Ashwandan In Cookham - Stanley Spencer; Dame Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth - Reginald Eves; Hill Farm In Merioneth - Kyffin Williams; Summer - Henry Baynton; Stackyard - Paul Nash; Hippies - Neville Watts.
Beecroft Art Gallery, Southend. The city withheld the following works, amongst many more, from the public; Frank Brangwynn - Old Hammersmith; John Constable - River Stour; Henry Moore - Off Leigh-on-Sea; John Piper - Morten Corbet Castle; Dante Gabriel Rosetti - Fanny Cornforth; JMW Turner - Temple of Jupiter; John Varley - Landscape; Kyfinn Williams - Deserted Farm LLanrhudladd, Sea At Treardurr.
22. 28 MY FOOD JOURNEY
(highlights - this isn’t everything I ate in 2023)
Lambeth scallops, a scallop-free chorizo dish made by me
Cabbage stuffed with meat, Daquise, South Kensington
Wok To Walk vegetable mix, all over the place on tour
Fake bacon and chicken salad, The Cheeky Vegan, Exeter
Baked potato with tuna, Saltram National Trust cafe, Plymouth
Punjabi vegan breakfast, Chakra, Buxton *****
Vegetable phaal, Shapla, Inverness
Vegetable phaal, Rishi’s, Aberdeen
Mixed vegetable karahi vindaloo, Bombay Blue, Glasgow *****
Jones & Sons, Dalston, generally *****
A prawn curry with roast broccoli and cucumber peanut salad *****
Some poached sea bass with fried potatoes and creamed spinach *****
A stuffed pepper with fried okra *****
Chorizo lardons in coddled eggs made by me *****
Turkish breakfast, Nev Kitchen, Dalston
Kurdish kebab, Rojava, Edinburgh
Octopus balls, Koyama, Edinburgh
Lamb balti, Hussain’s, Stratford Upon Avon
Fish and Chips, Alandas, Longniddry *****
Snails & rabbit & a Corbieres Red, No 1 Ship Street, Oxford *****
Salt and pepper tofu & beef curry, Pho Viet 101, Dalston *****
A monkfish curry
Chilli eggs, Brunswick East, Dalston *****
Severely reduced mushrooms with Bovril ™ & garlic
Papo’s bagels, Shacklewell, London *****
My sage eggs *****
Jethro’s katsu aubergines
Lucy’s artichoke soup
25. ON THE PEDESTAL
Carol Vordemonkey
Gary Linnecrisps
Feral Sharkey
Byline Times
James O’Brien
Harringey Tree Protectors
Just Stop Oil
Extinction Rebellion
George Monbiot
Nesrine Malik
The National Trust
Paul Powesland
Channel 4
Good Law Project
All hunt saboteurs
26. IN THE PEDAL BIN
Terrorists
Trumpists
Genocidal maniacs
All Tories and their supporters/apologists
All British newspapers except Guardian
The BBC and its board
ITV
GBNews
Tim Weatherspoon
Gervais, Chapelle etc
All Tufton St outfits and their stooges/mouth-holes
I’m A Celebrity
Wank McPissflaps & Dickhead Dunnawee
Piss Moron
27. NOTE TO SELF - PLACES I HOPE TO VISIT IN 2024
St John The Baptist, Barnack, Stamford - Statue of Christ
All Saints Church, Thorney Hill, New Forest - murals
St Martin on the Hill, Scarborough
St Martin’s Church, Brampton, Cumbria
St Mary’s, Nun Monkton, Yorkshire
Christ Church, Southgate, London
St Michael & All Angels, Brighton
Waterford Church, Hertfordshire
All Saints Church, Youlgreave, Peak District, D’shire
Holy Trinity Church Leamington Spa
St Agatha’s Church, Easby
Torre Abbey, Torbay
The Tabard pub, Chiswick, De morgan, Crane
Ewelme church, Oxfordshire.
The church of St Botolph's at Skidbrooke
Tew Magna
Aldbury, Hertfordshire, a Woodwose
St Cadoc’s church, Llancarfan
Church of St Mary, Longworth, Oxfordshire - Bunce art
St Mary's church in Llanfair Kilgedden
St James church nr Bix Chilterns
All Saints, Margaret St, London – Butterfield
Taos Pueblo, one more time
Hopi lands
Tucson, Az
Papa Westray
9) IN OUR LAMENTATIONS 2023
Vivienne Westwood (Punk trousers,1941)
Ruggero Deodato (Junk genius, 1939)
Kelly Monteith (Lucky pants stand-up, 1942)
Alan Rankine (Associate musician, 1958)
Michael Snow (Jazz filmmaker, 1928)
Darryl Hunt (Pogue bass, 1950)
Jeff Beck (He happened ten years time ago, 1944)
Jane Suck (punk chronicler, 195?)
Yukihiro Takahashi (Sadistic Mika Man, 1952)
Ronald Blythe (Akenfieldsman, 1922)
Piers Haggard (hack genius of Claw and Quatermass, 1932)
Van Connor (sturdy psychedelic tree, 1967)
David Sutherland (Bash Street basher, 1933)
David Crosby (Byrdmaniac, 1941)
Tom Verlaine (Sui generis genius Televisionary, 1949)
Burt Bacarach (Musical cheesnius, 1928)
Eugene Cheese (chucklin’ cheesenius moocher, 1944)
Betty Boothroyd (croaky speaker, 1939)
Wayne Shorter (Shorter no longer, 1933)
David Lindley (Kaleidoscopic guitarist, 1944)
Keith Johnstone (Improvisational Canadian, 1933)
Rolly Crump (West Coast Pop Artist, 1930)
Paul O’Grady (Proudly woke drag act, 1955)
Peter Usborne (Mysterious publisher, 1937)
Tony Coe (Jazz panther, 1934)
Milan Kundera (He czech’d out, 1929)
Barry Humphries (Machenalian, 1934)
Mark Stewart (Bristol pre-post-punk pioneer, 1960)
Johnny Fean (Horslips guitar bandit, 1951)
Ian Ross (Jokin’ juggler, 1958)
Frank Kozik (the Giotto of grunge, 1962)
Andy Smart (Bull-running comedian, 1959)
Alan Frank (Gateway ‘70s film scribe, 1942)
Algy Ward (Damned bass Saint, 1959)
Andy Rourke (Sainted bass Smith, 1964)
Pete Brown (Battered ornament, 1940)
George Logan (The Black Cap’s breakout Hinge, 1944)
Jah Shaka (Sound system shaker, 1948)
Spot (SST soundman, 1951)
Ahmad Jamal (cool jazz piano 1931)
Harry Belafonte (anti-apartheid boat singer, 1927)
Gordon Lightfoot (Fitzgerald wrecker, 1938)
Stu James (Mojo not working, 1945)
Jon Povey (Pretty bass Thing, 1942)
Broderick Smith (Singing Dingoe, 1948)
Wee Willie Harris (2 I’s wild man, 1933)
Cliff Fish (Paper Bass, 1949)
Simon Emerson (Afro-Celt Weekender and a very nice man, 1956)
Bruce Barthol (Fish bass, 1947)
Top Topham (Yardbird, 1947)
Renee Geyer (Voice of Sun, 1947)
Tony McPhee (Groundhog hookerman, 1944)
Martin Duffy (He Felt the keys, 1967)
Jack Lee (He nervously hung on the telephone, 1952)
Cormac McCarthy (The real writing deal, 1933)
Peter Brotzmann (Machine-gunner, 1941)
Henrietta Soames (Novelist, theatregoer, gardener, guerrilla rose grower, 1958)
Bill Allerton (Outstanding Stand Out Gentleman disc dealer)
Lord Creator (Rocksteady artistocrat, 1935)
Blackie Onassis (Urge Overkiller, 1966)
Tony Butler (Alan Partridge of Birmingham, 1935)
Jane Birkin (Je t’aime, 1946)
Adrian Street (glam wrestler, 1940)
Ron S Peno (He died pretty, 1955)
Sixto Rodriuguez (rediscovered man, 1941)
Robbie Robertson (Bandleader, 1943)
Erkin Koray (Turkish delight, 1941)
David LaFlamme (It’s a beautiful violin, 1941)
George Tickner (Fruminous snatchman, 1946)
Louis Tillet (Dark lord of the keyboard, 1959)
Brian McBride (Star of The Lid, 1970)
Charles Gayle (Jazz sax titan, 1939)
Richard Davis (Jazz bass sidesman, 1930)
Malcolm Hay (Comedy listings magnate without whom...1941)
Geoff Davies (He probed the Liverpool punks)
Jon Privett (Wordseller on the Water)
John George (TJ Electrician of The Art Of Repair)
David McCallum (Uncle platformed the WCPAEB, 1933)
The Sycamore Gap Tree
Michael Gambon (He was kind to Paul Putner, 1940)
Carla Bley (Jazznik,1936)
Tony Husband (Political cartoonist & a very nice man, 1950)
Angelo Bruschini (Original Blue Aeroplane, 1960)
Dwight Twilley (Power popster, 1951)
Roger Whittaker (He has left old Durham town as promised, 1936)
Gary Wright (His teeth were haunted, 1943)
Gary Young (He drummed on the Pavement, 1953)
AS Byatt (Ragnarocking writer, 1936)
Annabelle Giles (a funny, clever, kind lady, 1959)
Shane MacGowan (Refused to knuckle under & become a professional, 1957)
Tony Allen (His career started as Lenny Bruce’s ended, 1945)
Denny Laine (Winged Brummie diplomat, 1944)
Mars Williams (Punk jazz sax, 1955)
Benjamin Zephaniah (Handsworth revolutionary, 1958)
Sticky Vicky (Vaginal magician, 1943)
John Hyatt (1/3rd Three Johns)
Shirley Anne Field (Damned decoy, 1938)
Raquel Welch (Hannie get your gun, 1940)
Bobby Sutliff (His power pop broke the wind, 1956)
Wilf Lunn (prop genius, 1942)
100 Colaton Raleigh beech trees (1823)
Scott Kempner (Dictator of the Del-Lords, 1954)
Brian Godding (His toes blossomed, 1945)
10) AND HERE’S AN XMAS GHOST STORY I WROTE FOR THE OBSERVER, FOLLOWED BY A LINK TO C VORDEMAN’S TACTICAL VOTING CAMPAIGN.
THANKS FOR TURNING OUT TO SEE ME IN 2023. NEW LIVE SHOW BACK END OF ‘24. MUCH APPRECIATED. YOU SHOULDA KILLED ME LAST YEAR! PEACE!! I’M OUTTA HERE!!!
Stewart Lee
2024-01-01T00:00:06+00:00
1. BASIC LEE The tour of the current stand-up show, BASIC LEE, is still at the Leicester Square Theatre then tours nationwide from January 20th 2024. Then it will be finished in April. Dates here; January 2024 Thursday 4th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS Friday 5th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS Sunday 7th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS Sunday 7th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS Monday 8th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS Wednesday 10th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS Thursday 11th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS Sunday 14th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS Monday 15th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS Tuesday 16th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS Wednesday 17th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS Thursday 18th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS Friday 19th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS Saturday 20th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS Saturday 20th January 2024 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS Monday 22nd January 2024 - Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham - TICKETS Tuesday 23rd January 2024 - Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham - TICKETS Wednesday 24th January 2024 - Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham - TICKETS Friday 26th January 2024 - Westlands, Yeovil - TICKETS Saturday 27th January 2024 - The Forum, Bath - TICKETS Sunday 28th January 2024 - Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton - TICKETS Monday 29th January 2024 - The Marlowe, Canterbury - TICKETS February 2024 Friday 2nd February 2024 - The Hawth, Crawley - TICKETS Saturday 3rd February 2024 - Symphony Hall, Birmingham - TICKETS Sunday 4th February 2024 - William Aston...
The last time Stewart Lee performed in Liverpool was for John Cage’sIndeterminacy. This time out he is back in a more familiar guise with two nights of incendiary new stand up at the Liverpool Philharmonic, testing the waters ahead of a new season of his self-titled (and award winning) Comedy Vehicle.
As one of the country’s longest-serving comedians, Lee’s material follows his own personal arc at times. From a comedian angry at his lack of success, to being disappointed he started drawing people from the TV to his shows, to not being relevant because he has no kids, to now – a comedian toasting his own talents and blaming the audience if they don’t get it.
Of course Lee continues to, and always will, divide audiences into people who think they know what he is doing, people who do know what he is doing and people that hate what he is doing. He somehow manages to juggle them all and we can’t wait to see where the arc has taken him come June.
With that in mind and with Lee chipping in on a number of topical issues this year – including a superb retort on the ‘immorality’ of ticket touting – it seemed like the perfect time to pick the brain of a man who has never had a trouble speaking his mind.
Getintothis: Last time you were here in a more musical role, now back in stand-up mode do you consider doing anything different when performing to a Liverpool crowd?
Lee: I really like Liverpool crowds. They are funny. I don’t consider anything especially when performing anywhere. I try to bend them to my will. A few years ago in Liverpool I did some crap joke off the top of my head about something to do with the city and the review from one of the Liverpool papers, who hated the show, said this was the only good bit, when in fact it was obviously the cheapest and easily the worst thing in the evening.
The problem with doing local stuff is it appeases people who don’t understand what it is you are really trying to do, so no, there will be nothing especially aimed at Liverpool. It’s my show after all. Not yours.
Getintothis: We recently tackled the risks facingcultural diversity in the UK, especially under a conservative or potential UKIP government. How big is the risk?
Lee: It is massive. The Culture SecretarySajid Javid is a philistine who thinks culture is all about making money and that’s all. The Prime Minister toured film studios telling the British Film Industry it should try to be more popular like a fucking dick who had never given the creative process any thought would. Public broadcasting is in its death throes thanks to the dogma of the free-market which means all the culture that will be on TV will be just what THE MAN thinks he can make money on. Amazon and iTunes are putting the squeeze on writers’ and musicians’ ability to make a living by controlling prices in a joint monopoly. We’re fucked. Good luck young people.
Getintothis: There was a big hoo-haa that this year’s Reading and Leeds festival line up was largely male dominated; BBC Comedy are combating a similar problem by ensuring a female presence on their panel shows, what do you think about that?
Lee: Leave shitty panel shows to rot in their own bile. Who cares? The men on them are just like pub bores – and put more of the brilliant women that are out there in their own things.
Getintothis: You’ve recently spoken out on both ticket prices and the actions of ticket touts. What makes people part with such large sums of money for a couple hours of entertainment, most recently £135 to see Sir Paul McCartney?
Lee: Ignorance. The fact that they don’t realise there are amazing things they could be seeking out if they just look for them. It’s not their fault. That said, it is Paul McCartney. I wonder why he charged so much though?
Getintothis: Do you think thatthere is a fundamental lack of social responsibility from artists and management when setting such high fees?
Lee: Yes. It is hard to control though. There are tickets on sale for my shows at a four times the face value via Stub Hub who collude with criminals. The onus is at present on the venues to stop selling to touts, even though my tickets say not transferable on them. Some promoters actively like it though, thinking it drives up their acts’ market values. The Culture Secretary supports touting too.
Getintothis: Events of all disciplines have moved from the rooms of working men’s clubs into arenas and stadiums. Is this having a detrimental effect of the quality on show?
Lee: Yes. Nothing in the arts is improved by scale.
Getintothis: Why is comedy still not considered as one of the arts?
Lee: Because people are snobs.
Getintothis: Can we expect to see you popping up at any gigs or festivals in the future? Personally we think you’re well overdue for a new VOX-style Glastonbury blog.
Lee: I can’t do music festival comedy sets any more. That time of year is when I am doing new stuff, that I want for the telly or will put on a DVD later, and these days everyone has a camera phone and they film 30 minutes and put it online ahead of time. It’s too porous. As for going as a punter, it’s hard. I’m away 200 nights a year as it is and I have little kids and a working wife. I miss All Tomorrow’s Parties, Terrastock, ’90s CND Glastonburys, noughties Latitude, 80’s Elephant Fayre and even Phoenix in the mid 90’s. I’d go to that Liverpool Psych Fest if I could. I like that Ex-Easter Island Head band of yours.
Stewart Lee
2015-04-15T22:15:22+01:00
The last time Stewart Lee performed in Liverpool was for John Cage’s Indeterminacy. This time out he is back in a more familiar guise with two nights of incendiary new stand up at the Liverpool Philharmonic, testing the waters ahead of a new season of his self-titled (and award winning) Comedy Vehicle. As one of the country’s longest-serving comedians, Lee’s material follows his own personal arc at times. From a comedian angry at his lack of success, to being disappointed he started drawing people from the TV to his shows, to not being relevant because he has no kids, to now – a comedian toasting his own talents and blaming the audience if they don’t get it. Of course Lee continues to, and always will, divide audiences into people who think they know what he is doing, people who do know what he is doing and people that hate what he is doing. He somehow manages to juggle them all and we can’t wait to see where the arc has taken him come June. With that in mind and with Lee chipping in on a number of topical issues this year – including a superb retort on the ‘immorality’ of ticket touting – it seemed like the perfect time to pick the brain of a man who has never had a trouble speaking his mind. Getintothis: Last time you were here in a more musical role, now back in stand-up mode do you consider doing anything different when performing to a Liverpool crowd? Lee: I really like Liverpool crowds. They are funny. I don’t consider anything especially when performing anywhere. I try to bend them to my will. A few years ago in Liverpool I did some crap joke off the top of my head about something to do with the city and the review from one of the Liverpool papers, who...
In August, a television producer asked me to contribute to a forthcoming documentary about the 18th-century satirist Jonathan Swift. Swift is best known for writing the children’s story Gulliver’s Travels, which is about a man who keeps going all different sizes and riding around on mice. Swift failed to use the then fashionable travelogue format to address the moral and philosophical concerns of the day in favour of a series of childish Grandpa in My Pocket-style adventures that David Walliam could have written, the idiot.
I am not an expert on Swift, but the producer said some of my standup routines are like his essays, though she conceded that she didn’t think these columns were as good as my live stuff. I explained that I saw the columns as being written by an alternative version of myself, one who doubted that he had the talent, intelligence or social standing to write for a posh newspaper, and was compensating for his nest-cuckoo paranoia by overstating his political and intellectual qualifications. “Which version of you is writing this paragraph that we are both in now then?”, she asked over her clipboard at a socially distanced meeting on Tuesday. Realising I didn’t have a satisfactory answer, I pretended to be choking on a Frazzle and lay down on the floor.
Normally I resist appearing on anything that anyone will see, as it only encourages rightwing commentators to cynically traduce you online for things you obviously haven’t done, raising your blood pressure and compromising your children’s relationships with their friends. But there was a fee for agreeing that I was the new Jonathan Swift, an offer hardly as reputationally damaging to a champagne Corbynista as appearing on Have I Got News for You. As I haven’t really worked since March, and as the boy needs a new bike and the cat needs an endoscopy, I succumbed, already regretting the loss of the Strictly Come Dancing slot I had recklessly ceded to Bill Bailey earlier in the year, under medical advice admittedly.
In preparation, I reimmersed myself in the works of Jonathan Swift, reading from the same copy of Martin Price’s The Restoration and the 18th Century that the lady my gran did cleaning for in the 80s had bought for me when I went to university 34 years ago, subsidising the punishingly expensive required book list. But we still got grants! Back then, politicians regarded knowledge as valuable in itself, rather than as a commodity that could only be judged in terms of its financial impact. Swift’s eugenics satire A Modest Proposal, I suddenly realised, applied the same now fashionable rationale to human flesh itself, proposing eating poor Irish infants as an economic solution to their burden on society. Nothing had changed.
Under the spell of Swift, on 12 October, I tried to write the coming Sunday’s column by transposing his satirical argument for eating the Irish poor on to the argument by Priti Patel’s Home Office in favour of netting channel migrants. I tried to use the same mixture of fake sympathy and brutal logic that Swift deploys to convince his readers of the expediency of infant cannibalism, as you may see:
“God provided the Channel to divide us from our fair neighbour France, the sadly suppurating wound from whose festering Northernmost ports oozes the tragic pus of this vile but intrepid tide of human filth, optimism and vigour. I do therefore further humbly offer it to public consideration, given that any netted migrants must be either imprisoned upon Southern Atlantic islands, or in rotting prison hulks off Portsmouth, might not a gentleman be tempted to view the already agreed upon act of entrapping or deterring these persevering pests as a noble sport? For a small fee, payable to a Beefeater, a gentleman might man the nets himself, keeping tally against his fellow of migrants caught or driven away. The deterred migrant would have a higher value than the migrant entangled, for the latter will need to be dealt with at further damage to the national purse.
“But what if, come the agreed time, two sportsmen have alighted upon the same score? How may the deadlock be broken? Were the migrant to expire and slip back lifeless into the cold waves, that expiration having perhaps been abetted by a swift seal-blow upon the head from a shillelagh, should not the netsman who eased the heavenward migration of such a brave but misguided soul be rewarded with an extra point against the tally of his fellow?
“And might not the expiry of a child migrant be worth twice the points of a parent, the infant threatening to further drain the coffers should it survive and breed? As the hunting of the fox for sport is easily justified by Reynard’s taste for the flesh of Chauntecleer, so the watery rest-taking of the child mariner, though doubtless an amusing process in which to participate, is made acceptable by way of its benefits to the national balance.”
But it seemed contrived, the concepts of state-approved cannibalism and state-approved migrant-murder not quite grinding together, and I deemed it unworthy of publication in so august a journal as the Observer. Instead, I wrote a simple parody of that week’s Conservative attempts to pass off the incoming no-deal Brexit as an Australian-style trade bonanza, and returned to my monetised study of Swift.
But last week, the Conservative scum voted down the footballer Marcus Rashford’s plea that the increasing number of economically untenable families in Covid Britain should be assisted in feeding their children during half-term. And the arguments offered up in defence of this decision were couched in terms the writer of A Modest Proposal would have recognised. I looked from one to the other and it was impossible to tell which was which. And it made me wonder, would it be such a bad idea, really, to take those children our society cannot feed, and to make some practical use of them?
Stewart Lee
2020-11-01T11:59:25+00:00
In August, a television producer asked me to contribute to a forthcoming documentary about the 18th-century satirist Jonathan Swift. Swift is best known for writing the children’s story Gulliver’s Travels, which is about a man who keeps going all different sizes and riding around on mice. Swift failed to use the then fashionable travelogue format to address the moral and philosophical concerns of the day in favour of a series of childish Grandpa in My Pocket-style adventures that David Walliam could have written, the idiot. I am not an expert on Swift, but the producer said some of my standup routines are like his essays, though she conceded that she didn’t think these columns were as good as my live stuff. I explained that I saw the columns as being written by an alternative version of myself, one who doubted that he had the talent, intelligence or social standing to write for a posh newspaper, and was compensating for his nest-cuckoo paranoia by overstating his political and intellectual qualifications. “Which version of you is writing this paragraph that we are both in now then?”, she asked over her clipboard at a socially distanced meeting on Tuesday. Realising I didn’t have a satisfactory answer, I pretended to be choking on a Frazzle and lay down on the floor. Normally I resist appearing on anything that anyone will see, as it only encourages rightwing commentators to cynically traduce you online for things you obviously haven’t done, raising your blood pressure and compromising your children’s relationships with their friends. But there was a fee for agreeing that I was the new Jonathan Swift, an offer hardly as reputationally damaging to a champagne Corbynista as appearing on Have I Got News for You. As I haven’t really worked since March, and as the boy...
So, Stewart Lee is to be the guest editor of Radio 4's Today programme on New Year's Eve. This announcement will doubtless put an angry spring in the step of those who enjoy running around declaring that the BBC is in the deathly grip of the liberal left.
Lee, reviled for his part in bringing Jerry Springer The Opera to the stage, and leading exponent of a rigorously deadpan and self-aware form of stand-up, continues to attract high levels of cultish devotion and splenetic hatred. For some he's no better than the anti-Christ - even though all he's really doing is pursuing a narrow track of sharply intelligent, acerbically amusing "anti-comedy", a groove into which he is now almost happily - and possibly too comfortably - settled.
Presented against a backdrop of rolled-up carpets - with Lee stylishly sporting his time-warp post-punk look - Carpet Remnant World has much double-edged fun at his own expense by rehearsing his online detractors' cruellest cuts. Handing them ammo, the bigger running joke here is that Lee hasn't got a set to speak of. He tells us he has been too busy parenting his four-year-old son to have come up with decent material. "I don't know anything anymore" he mock-laments, riffling through the news for topical relevance and explaining that his specialist subject nowadays is Scooby-Doo.
On one level, we're immediately in the realm of his now-familiar contempt for comedy as commodity: in proffering some ostentatiously lame riffs on Islam and Travellers, he's simultaneously advancing a knowingly inadequate show, and flaunting a superiority towards an audience that might find him wanting. But the way he does this - with enough gags to show you he's funny, and enough charm to stave off bumptiousness - is masterful. And over the course of 90 minutes, he weaves a theme of sorts from thin air - proceeding from deliberately childish swipes at the Tories, past potshots at Red Ed too ("You have to have imagination on the Left - you have to look at Ed Miliband and imagine a future for democracy") towards an artful summation of where we're at right now: emptied out, spent, seeking something we can't find.
Bleak but tongue-in-cheek, an oddly cheering antidote to our nameless malaise, it's unlikely to appeal to those in search of easy festive laughs, but it should amply satisfy the converts and the wavering doubters too. That Today programme should be all right, actually.
Stewart Lee
2011-11-28T13:16:31+00:00
So, Stewart Lee is to be the guest editor of Radio 4's Today programme on New Year's Eve. This announcement will doubtless put an angry spring in the step of those who enjoy running around declaring that the BBC is in the deathly grip of the liberal left. Lee, reviled for his part in bringing Jerry Springer The Opera to the stage, and leading exponent of a rigorously deadpan and self-aware form of stand-up, continues to attract high levels of cultish devotion and splenetic hatred. For some he's no better than the anti-Christ - even though all he's really doing is pursuing a narrow track of sharply intelligent, acerbically amusing "anti-comedy", a groove into which he is now almost happily - and possibly too comfortably - settled. Presented against a backdrop of rolled-up carpets - with Lee stylishly sporting his time-warp post-punk look - Carpet Remnant World has much double-edged fun at his own expense by rehearsing his online detractors' cruellest cuts. Handing them ammo, the bigger running joke here is that Lee hasn't got a set to speak of. He tells us he has been too busy parenting his four-year-old son to have come up with decent material. "I don't know anything anymore" he mock-laments, riffling through the news for topical relevance and explaining that his specialist subject nowadays is Scooby-Doo. On one level, we're immediately in the realm of his now-familiar contempt for comedy as commodity: in proffering some ostentatiously lame riffs on Islam and Travellers, he's simultaneously advancing a knowingly inadequate show, and flaunting a superiority towards an audience that might find him wanting. But the way he does this - with enough gags to show you he's funny, and enough charm to stave off bumptiousness - is masterful. And over the course of 90 minutes, he...
The film is also screening this month in the Sheffield Documentary Festival, Sat 12 June 14:00, in Showroom Cinema 4, with an intro and q&a with me and Brass Eye dir Michael Cumming.
An actual physical 12” EP of Asian Dub Foundation(feat. Stewart Lee)‘s Brexit day number 1 Comin’ Over Here came out on March 26th and can be ordered here...
The remixes are of other bits of the Paul Nuttalls routine and work great.
You can d/l them too I think. I can’t believe how well the ADF’s made this work. I was their mere tool.
3) TEN BOB / USE YOUR LOAF 7”
‘Ten Bob Each Way’ / ‘Use Your Loaf’ is a limited 7” single, featuring a brand-new Nightingales recording, their first since recording their ‘Four Against Fate’ album.
B-sided with Stewart Lee and Nick Pynn covering the band’s second single, ‘Use Your Loaf’, a track that was for a mooted Nightingales tribute album, which didn’t happen after something got spilt on the laptop that had all the tracks on it. Fire Records/King Rocker Records.
It looks like all the SNOWFLAKE/TORNADO tour dates outstanding from 2020 will be shifted into 2022, starting in Jan, and below are the ones we know about so far. Thanks for bearing through all this with patience.
Local venues will contact you if they haven’t already. All the warm-up club dates you may have bought tickets for have been slotted in to Nov and Dec, covid willing, and venues will contact ticket holders. Please do not hassle venues about all this. They will contact you. We will get there!
I am planning on re-writing the SNOWFLAKE half of SNOWFLAKE/TORNADO to reflect our drastically altered world and will make as good a recording as possible of the abandoned original SNOWFLAKE available at some point. It's all bacon!
Currently, the following dates have been re-arranged;
January 2022
Saturday 15th January 2022 - Theatre Royal, Norwich - TICKETS
Tuesday 25th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Wednesday 26th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Thursday 27th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Friday 28th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Saturday 29th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Sunday 30th January 2022 - Theatre Royal, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
February 2022
Wednesday 2nd February 2022 - St. David's Hall, Cardiff - TICKETS
Thursday 3rd February 2022 - Rose Theatre, Kingston - TICKETS
Friday 4th February 2022 - Westlands, Yeovil - TICKETS
Saturday 5th February 2022 - Westlands, Yeovil - TICKETS
Tuesday 8th February 2022 - Town Hall, Cheltenham - TICKETS
Wednesday 9th February 2022 - Town Hall, Cheltenham - TICKETS
Thursday 10th February 2022 - De Montfort Hall, Leicester - TICKETS
Friday 11th February 2022 - Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry - TICKETS
Saturday 12th February 2022 - Festival Theatre, Malvern - TICKETS
Sunday 13th February 2022 - Hippodrome, Birmingham - TICKETS
Friday 25th February 2022 - The Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Saturday 26th February 2022 - The Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Sunday 27th February 2022 - The Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Monday 28th February 2022 - The Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury - TICKETS
March 2022
Wednesday 2nd March 2022 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS
Thursday 3rd March 2022 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS
Friday 4th March 2022 - Lighthouse, Poole - TICKETS
Sunday 6th March 2022 - De La Warr Pavillion, Bexhill On Sea - TICKETS
Wednesday 9th March 2022 - Theatre Royal, Wakefield - TICKETS
Thursday 10th March 2022 - Opera House, Buxton - TICKETS
Friday 11th March 2022 - The Courtyard, Hereford
Saturday 12th March 2022 - Grand Theatre, Swansea
Monday 14th March 2022 - King's Theatre, Glasgow - TICKETS
Tuesday 15th March 2022 - King's Theatre, Glasgow - TICKETS
Wednesday 16th March 2022 - The Sands Centre, Carlisle - TICKETS
Tuesday 22nd March 2022 - Churchill Theatre, Bromley - TICKETS
Wednesday 23rd March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Thursday 24th March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Friday 25th March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Saturday 26th March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Sunday 27th March 2022 - Royal & Derngate, Northampton - TICKETS
Tuesday 29th March 2022 - City Hall, Sheffield - TICKETS
Wednesday 30th March 2022 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Thursday 31st March 2022 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
April 2022
Friday 1st April 2022 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Saturday 2nd April 2022 - Storyhouse, Chester - TICKETS
Tuesday 19th April 2022 - Wyvern Theatre, Swindon
Friday 22nd April 2022 - The Hexagon, Reading - TICKETS
Sunday 24th April 2022 - Mayflower Theatre, Southampton - TICKETS
Thursday 28th April 2022 - Derby Theatre, Derby - TICKETS
Friday 29th April 2022 - Lyceum Theatre, Crewe - TICKETS
Saturday 30th April 2022 - Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield
May 2022
Tuesday 3rd May 2022 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
Wednesday 4th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
Thursday 5th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
Friday 6th May 2022 - St. George's Hall, Bradford - TICKETS
Saturday 7th May 2022 - Gala Theatre, Durham - TICKETS
Sunday 8th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Friday 13th May 2022 - The Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS
Saturday 14th May 2022 - The Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS
Tuesday 17th May 2022 - Corn Exchange, Cambridge - TICKETS
Wednesday 18th May 2022 - Corn Exchange, Cambridge - TICKETS
Thursday 19th May 2022 - The Baths Hall, Scunthorpe - TICKETS
Sunday 22nd May 2022 - The Grand, Wolverhampton - TICKETS
Monday 23rd May 2022 - Hippodrome, Bristol - TICKETS
Tuesday 24th May 2022 - Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury - TICKETS
Wednesday 25th May 2022 - The Forum, Bath - TICKETS
June 2022
Sunday 19th June 2022 - Festival Theatre, Edinburgh
Wednesday 29th June 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Thursday 30th June 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
July 2022
Friday 1st July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Saturday 2nd July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 3rd July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 3rd July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Daniel Kitson, the best comedian, warns that his bandcamp has been hacked, so he is advising no-one to use it until further notice as of 26/5/21.
6) TO VAC OR NOT TO VAC
The gvt may not impose vaccine passporting, as their will be questions about who is responsible if you can’t get into your local pub/club/theatre/brothel.
I would be delighted if, if you are coming to see me, you could do your best to get vaccinated, irrespective of what the gvt or the venue insist upon.
I doubt that my snowflake audience will contain many people who deny the existence of Covid or believe the vaccine is George Soros or Bill Gates trying to put tiny Transformer robots into your blood.
But I and my team will be interacting with over 150 000 people on the next leg of the tour, and I would like to minimise our risk, and the risk to my audience, so meet me half way. I will be selling and signing stuff as usual, I hope, but I won’t be shaking hands to thank you all this time around, and will probably be positioned behind some kind of screen like William Shatner in Airplane 2. Sad.
7) MEDIA GARAGE SALE
My trusted sales partner Media Garage has compacted all my available stand-up dvds into one convenient on-line marketplace, with most available to d/load too.
Remember, if you buy here we will pay tax on these purchases, and help with British schools and hospitals, whereas many major physical media suppliers and streaming services have found ways to avoid declaring their profits, as have NETFLIX, the utter bastards.
AMERICANS - stop moaning about not being able to see me and visit MEDIA GARAGE!
To try and promote King Rocker I have been pimping myself about like Priss Fotheringham on every Podcast going, alone or with dir M Cumming (Brass Eye, Toast), saying the same things in the same room in the same clothes to all different people, all of whom were very kind.
I don’t know what a podcast is really but I think you go on the internet and click on something.
As my grandfather once said, in 1983, “Do you know, in America, there are shops that only sell Kentucky Fried Chicken?” I enjoyed being on the internet with all these people enormously, but will put some blue water between me and the next wedge.
David Baddiel told me it was good to be on the internet, though. These are available..
OLD TUNES FRESH TAKES
A lovely podcast about folk music that I do a bit on.
A rambling chat in which I fail to promote King Rocker at the expense of a Marxist analysis of culture and history from the inventor of Alternative Comedy ™ ®
Dir Michael Cumming and I discuss King Rocker with Britain’s top film guru and skiffle enthusiast, who has been very supportive of the no-budget project.
Andy Miller and John Michinson’s long running and much loved books podcast. I discuss the waspish poet and novelist Rosemary Tonks with them, Nicky Birch and Jennifer Hodgson.
This is a marvellous ongoing Podcast which is unashamedly civilised in an unenlightened era, and this episode is full of great writing, batshit radiophonic music and clever women.
North London echo chamber fun sure to irk people of all political persuasions with the forensically-minded folk devil for the far right and snowflake do-gooder Owen Jones, and me, talking about King Rocker and more general stuff. His current run of ‘casts has some great guests.
Informed Wolverhampton-based comedy and music enthusiast of uncommon warmth and knowledge talks to me about KING ROCKER and what the Gray Pays ‘n’ Bacon are like at the Great Western pub.
I asked Adam if I could go on this massively popular podcast and he said yes which was very kind of him. It was fun hearing his Mark E Smith story from the horse’s mouth and he asked me hard questions of the type I usually avoid.
In this episode of The Last Line, James talks to comedian Stewart Lee about his new film King Rocker, a documentary about Robert Lloyd, lead singer of 70’s post-punk band The Nightingales. During their conversation they discuss the new film, its central protagonist Robert Lloyd, stand up comedy, Stewart’s propensity to defend stand up comedians against the views of the general public and his reluctance to participate in podcast interviews.
There’s an interview with Michael Cumming on this podcast too, link below.
Sometime in March you will be able to hear me eat a really lovely Sri Lankan mutton curry from the Kolama restaurant, Soho, with bon viveur jazz pianist Jay Rayner. (I see how this works now!)
This is the most showbiz thing I have ever done, and I am glad it was with jazzy Jay Rayner. Listen Here.
HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD
with post-mod post-man, old school Labour face, and former near pop-soul star, Alan Johnson.
Ben Moor/Jo Neary - The Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra of multi-layered serio-comic theatre-art are back! 27th/28th July at the Hen and Chickens, Islington, w national dates to follow TICKETS
Faust 9th June, Union Chapel, London. Surely the last hurrah for the Krautrock pioneers and former Lee and Herring ‘90s chat show guests.
Ruts DC 10th June New Cross Inn, London Punky reggae pioneers back in action.
Gigbuddy Benefit 20th June Bristol Exchange. Ltd edition live event and on-line livestream benefit to provide access and assistance to gigs to punters w difficulties, w me, Sean Walsh, Josh Weller and some indie types. TICKETS
L7 26th June London Electric Ballroom, 27th June M’cr Academy 2. Distaff grunge pioneers still appear to be appearing.
Shirley Collins/Stewart Lee 7th July I am in conversation w the folk singer and writer Shirley Collins at the East Sussex bohemian hangout Charleston. The venue also features the first ever painting retrospective of the brilliantly bonkers Fitzrovian character, writer and micro-genius Nina Hamnett. TICKETS
Blue Orchids 23rd July Hebden Bridge Trades, 6th Aug Bristol Thunderbolt, 7th Aug Dublin Castle London, 8th Aug Brighton Prince Albert. Post-punk dishwater psychedelia.
MDC 14th Aug Edinburgh Sneaky Pete’s. Veteran angry American hardcore innovators
NEW FILMS
Ronnie’s, Ronnie Scott & His World Famous Jazz Club (Oliver Murray)
The Dig (Simon Stone) ★★★★★
Little Joe (Jessica Hausner) ★★★★
The News Of The World (Paul Greengrass) ★★★★
Nomadland (Chloe Zhao) ★★★★
OLD FILMS
Box Of Moonlight (Tom DeCillo, 1996) ★★★★★
Local Hero (Bill Forsyth, 1983) ★★★★★
Where Eagles Dare (Brian G Hutton, 1968) ★★★★★
The Big Gundown (Sergio Sollima, 1967) ★★★★★
The Sting (George Roy Hill, 1973) ★★★★★
Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977) ★★★★★
The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)★★★★★
Good Vibrations (Lisa Barros D’sa/Glen Leyburn, 2013)★★★★★
Caliber 9 (Fernado di Leon, 1972) ★★★★★
‘71 (Yann Demange, 2014) ★★★★★
Big Night (Campbell Scott/Stanley Tucci, 1996) ★★★★★
Jason & The Argonauts (Don Chaffey, 1963) ★★★★★
Goldstone (Ivan Sen, 2016) ★★★★★
Witness (Peter Weir, 1985) ★★★★★
Avengers Infinity War (Russo Brothers, 2018) ★★★★
Avengers Endgame (Russo Brothers, 2019) ★★★★
In Order of Disappearance (Hans Peter Molland, 2014)★★★★★
It’s evident that the corrupt kleptocracy of Boris Johnson isn’t going to dislodged by Kier Starmer’s PMQ’s however forensic, or by the biased media, or by legal investigations in which the gvt essentially investigate themselves.
However, despite the threats to judiciary in the Queen’s speech, at present the gvt are required to obey the law.
Champagne socialist fox-whacking lawyer Jolyon Maugham’s donation funded Good Law Project seems to be better than the opposition currently at holding the gvt to account, and proving where they have broken the law, so if you can spare a pound crowd fund them, as they do seem to be making an impact.
Did you know that the gvt are about to sell all your medical records off to the highest bidder? Thought not. We weren’t consulted.
I don’t care about the privacy aspect, but I do object to my life being monetised to give leverage to some horrible massive info-tech company.
You can withdraw the gvt’s right to farm your medical history as if you were some kind of data-pig at the link above.
STONEHENGE - WHERE THE DEMONS DWELL, WHERE THE BANSHEES LIVE AND THEY DO LIVE WELL!
We are fast approaching our last chance to stop the massive and irreparable damage to the Stonehenge World Heritage Site have sent out a couple of quick updates. Remember - this is the gvt of pride in Britain etc trashing our most emotive national monument.
The first update is a video explaining what the scheme is about and where we currently are with it. WATCH it here (3.5min)
The second update is about a webinar on Thursday 3 June at 7pm to learn more about saving Britain's most iconic World Heritage Site with distinguished opponents of the road scheme: Mike Parker Pearson, Professor of British Later Prehistory at the Institute of Archaeology, UCL, and Phil Goodwin, Emeritus Professor and Senior Fellow of Transport Policy at UCL and the University of the West of England.
The event will be chaired by Tom Holland, Stonehenge Alliance President and award-winning historian, author and broadcaster. So, save the date. Details will follow shortly.
Thank you for helping us raise the profile of our campaign.
Best wishes,
The Stonehenge Alliance
PS Save Stonehenge World Heritage Site Ltd, the group that is bringing the legal challenge, is appealing for funds to go to court on 23rd to 25th June.
Alex Taylor (Shop Assistant, in 2005, and no-one knew)
Simon H Fell (jazz bassist) (1959)
Carl Reiner (director) (1922)
Ennio Morricone (architect of sonic dreams) (1928)
Keith Tippett (jazz pianist) (1947)
Jimmy Cobb (jazz drummer) (1929)
Barbara Smoker (Humanist) (1923)
The Nuffield Theatre, Southampton
Tony Elliot (Time Out) (1942)
Judy Dyble (folk singer) (1949)
Peter Green (blues guitarist) (1946)
Emitt Rhodes (power pop auteur) (1950)
Annie Ross (jazz bohemian) (1930)
Joe Ruby (Scooby-Doo) (1933)
Craig Weatherhill (folklorist) (1950)
Don Weller (jazz saxophonist) (1940)
Simeon Coxe (Silver Apple) (1938)
Diana Rigg (Avenger) (1938)
Toots Hibbert (reggae got soul) (1942)
Dele Fadele (carry bag man) (1962)
George Jeffrie (man’s-laughter maker) (1964)
Dave Kusworth (Brum punk Stone) (1960)
Gary Peacock (jazz bassist) (1935)
Doorkins (Southwark Cathedral Cat) (2005?)
Spencer Davis (Brumbeat pioneer) (1939)
Bunny Lee (dubmaster) (1940)
The Cubbington Pear Tree (1770)
Fungie The Dingle Dolphin (1979)
Jill Paton Walsh (humanist novelist) (1937)
Val Warner (poet) (1946)
Guy N Smith (Lord of The Crabs) (1939)
Richard Corben (decadent cartoonist) (1940)
David Johnson (Duke of Soho) (1960)
Leslie West (Mountain man) (1945)
- 2021 -
Katharine Whitehorn (bedsitter cook) (1928)
Katharine Whitehorn (bedsitter cook) (1928)
Celia Drummond Ford (voice of Trees) (1950)
The Happy Man Tree (Stoke Newington Tree) (1870)
John Russell (guitar guru) (1954)
Marcel Uderzo (Asterisk artist) (1933)
Tom Stevens (Long Ryder and Magus) (1956)
Dougie Anderson (Coda’s Edinburgh record dealer (1952)
Captain Tom (Covid Walkman) (1920)
Rynagh O’Grady (Ted’s Mary) (1954)
Mary Wilson (Supreme) (1944)
Chick Corea (Miles’ tinkler) (1941)
Iain Pattinson (You wanted to see me Prime Minister?) (1951)
U-Roy (Toastmaster) (1942)
Lawrence Ferlinghetti (bookstore beat) (1921)
Wink O’Bannon (Eleventh Dream Day) (1956)
Bunny Wailer (Wailer) (1947)
Doug Parkinson (Oz vocal celeb) (1946)
Milford Graves (temporal explorer) (1941)
Johnny Rogan (Byrds’ Boswell) (1953)
Jessica Walter (Play Misty For Me) (1941)
Bertrand Tavernier (Round Midnight) (1941)
Anita Lane (Oz punk chanteuse) (1958)
Barbara Ess (Theoretical Girl) (1944)
Michael Collins (Apollo 11) (1930)
Mohammed Ag Itale (Tinariwen) (1960)
Monte Hellman (Two Lane Blacktop) (1929)
Sonny Simmons (jazz hobo) (1933)
Charles Grodin (The American Tim Key) (1935)
Franco Battiato (Italian Fetus) (1945)
Yoshi Wada (bagpipe minimalist) (1943)
Stewart Lee
2021-05-26T16:03:17+01:00
1) KING ROCKER NOW TV, SKY TV 28TH MAY, & SHEFFIELD SCREENING SAT 12th JUNE 2pm If you don’t have NOW TV, Sky Arts, free to air to anyone w a set top box, are suddenly rescreening KING ROCKER this week, on Friday 28th May at 9pm. Please tell your friends. FREE ON TV THIS WEEK. Our labour of love really landed. I arrogantly think it knocks most rockumentaries into a cocked hat and will cheer you up no end in the awful times. “I loved every minute” - Ben Dowell, The Times ★★★★ Financial Times ★★★★ Chortle “One of the best music documentaries of all time” - The Quietus “The new gold standard for rockumentaries” - The Scotsman All Press is collecting here. You can also watch it, ad-free, on NOW TV if you have that; NOW TV LINK The film is also screening this month in the Sheffield Documentary Festival, Sat 12 June 14:00, in Showroom Cinema 4, with an intro and q&a with me and Brass Eye dir Michael Cumming. SHEFFIELD DOC FEST LINK 2) ASIAN DUB FOUNDATION - COMIN’ OVER HERE 12” An actual physical 12” EP of Asian Dub Foundation(feat. Stewart Lee)‘s Brexit day number 1 Comin’ Over Here came out on March 26th and can be ordered here... Bandcamp | X Ray Production The remixes are of other bits of the Paul Nuttalls routine and work great. You can d/l them too I think. I can’t believe how well the ADF’s made this work. I was their mere tool. 3) TEN BOB / USE YOUR LOAF 7” ‘Ten Bob Each Way’ / ‘Use Your Loaf’ is a limited 7” single, featuring a brand-new Nightingales recording, their first since recording their ‘Four Against Fate’ album. B-sided with Stewart Lee and Nick Pynn covering the band’s...
BOOKS:
David Rees' How To Sharpen Pencils,
Penguin's new edition of Arthur Machen's White People,
Savage Continent by Keith Lowe,
a deliberately unreliable history of obscure '90s comedy called You Are Nothing by Robert Wringham,
Julian Cope's Copendium,
Sean Howe's Marvel Comics The Untold Story.
TV:
Endeavor (Young Morse) on ITV.
BBC's Sherlock Holmes,
Call The Midwife,
Hollow Crown,
She Wolves,
Vikings,
Limmy's Show,
and Upstairs Downstairs.
E4's Cardinal Burns,
C4's Grayson Perry's All In The Best Possible Taste,
Sky's Touch of Cloth.
LIVE MUSIC:
The Fall at Islington Town Hall,
The Ex at Café Oto,
Howe Gelb and KT Tunstall together and unannounced in a Stoke Newington cafe,
Han Bennink solo at Bishopsgate Festival,
Jane Bom Bane's harmonium and bespoke hats mash up on the Edinburgh Free Fringe,
Fushitsusha at St John's Church Hackney.
RECORDS :
Matthew Bourne - Montauk Variations,
Earth - Angels of Darkness Demons of Light II,
Bill Fay - Life Is People,
Giant Giant Sand - Tucson,
Belbury Poly - The Belbury Tales,
The Bohman Brothers - Back On The Streets,
The Woodbine & Ivy Band - s/t,
Rich Hopkins & Luminarios - Buried Treasures,
Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Psychedelic Pill.
THEATRE :
Dublin Gate's Watt in the Edinburgh International Festival,
Teatr Biuro Podró?y's satirical stiltwalking sci-fi space rock opera Planet Lem,
Jeff Achtem's Beefheartian kids' puppet show Swamp Juice.
Sunday Times End Of Year Round-up 2012
1) Matthew Bourne - Montauk Variations (Leaf)
Alone at the piano, Bourne's uncharacteristically meditative improvisations used cautiously melodic figures to trace penumbral shadows of memory and regret. Cecil Taylor slips Erik Satie something heavy on the way back from the gents.
2) Earth - Angels Of Darkness, Demons of Light II (Southern Lord) Earth's rustically tinged folk metal, scratched out of iron at impossible volumes and immobile tempos by the infernal method, attained a new level of dumbstruck, devotional awe.
3) Bill Fay - Life Is People (Dead Oceans) The sainted singer-songwriter descended from the top of his North London pole to deliver his first album proper for forty years, a gravitationally weighty set of holy-minimalist bar room ballads.
4) Giant Giant Sand - Tucson (Fire) The durable Arizona outfit Giant Sand expanded in size to assimilate everything they've dabbled with, from cocktail crooning to ambient tex-mex grunge, re-imagining Tucson as a Lynch-Lurman musical.
5) Belbury Poly - The Belbury Tales (Ghost Box) Belbury Poly sound like dispirited psychedelic era survivors, attempting to subvert the soundtrack demands of the seventies television executives now employing them, whilst eating ploughman's lunches.
6) The Bohman Brothers - Back On The Streets (Peripheral Conserve) This year the kranky spoken word artists enjoyed a silent cameo as pointing men in the art house hit Berberian Sound Studio. But these apparently random recitations of everyday verbal detritus threatened to reorder our very reality.
7) The Woodbine & Ivy Band - s/t (Folk Police) Manchester indie types played British folk standards, and a Wicker Man song, late '60s Californian style, creating a historically implausible but highly satisfying hybrid.
8) Rich Hopkins & Luminarios - Buried Treasure (Blue Rose) A textbook liberal who rocks like a redneck, Hopkins 28th album feeds small town heartaches, border country crises, and personal anxieties through the filters of Detroit proto-punk, blue collar country, and Crazy Horse-style feedback jams.
9) Witch - We Intend To Cause Havoc! (Now Again) Who even knew '70s Zambia had its own indigenous hard rock, hairy funk, garage punk band, let alone that they'd left a legacy of four cd's worth of invigoratingly unvarnished stash.
10)The Azusa Plane - Where The Sands Turn To Gold (Rocket Girl) This vast document compiled the complete works of the late Jason Demilio, who imagined My Bloody Valentine or The Velvet Underground without the pop scaffolding, and all that abstract sonic dressing dragged center-stage, where it could carry whatever emotional weight you cared to place upon it.
Wire magazine 2012 End Of Year Round Up
TV
Morse Year Zero in ITV's Endeavor.
BBC's Sherlock Holmes, Call The Midwife, Hollow Crown, She Wolves, Vikings, and Upstairs Downstairs.
E4's Cardinal Burns,
C4's Grayson Perry's All In The Best Possible Taste,
Sky's Touch of Cloth;
Books
David Rees' How To Sharpen Pencils is the book of the century so far,
Penguin's new edition of Arthur Machen's White People,
Savage Continent by Keith Lowe,
You Are Nothing which was a deliberately unreliable history of obscure '90s comedy by Robert Wringham,
Julian Cope's Copendium,
Sean Howe's Marvel Comics The Untold Story;
Film
Troll Hunter,
The Artist,
Avengers Assemble,
Looper,
and Andrew Kotting's comically and calmly meditative Swandown, which I was in for 5 minutes;
Gigs
Giant Sand's Howe Gelb & pop's K T Tunstall together and unannounced in a Stoke Newington cafe,
Han Bennink solo at Bishopsgate Festival,
Jane Bom Bane's harmonium and bespoke hats mash up on the Edinburgh Free Fringe,
Kunt & The Gang's scatological Depeche Mode grooves on the Free Fringe,
The Caesareans acoustic at a birthday party, Fushitsusha transcending time and space at St John's Church Hackney,
Patti Smith shaming everyone in Bethnal Green;
Theatre/comedy
Dublin Gate's Watt in the Edinburgh International Festival,
Teatr Biuro Podró?y's satirical stiltwalking sci-fi space rock opera Planet Lem,
Jeff Achtem's Beefheartian kids' puppet show Swamp Juice.
Bad thing - Paddy Power desecrating the Uffington White Horse.
Good thing - Obama, relatively speaking.
Stewart Lee
2012-12-31T21:04:49+00:00
BOOKS: David Rees' How To Sharpen Pencils, Penguin's new edition of Arthur Machen's White People, Savage Continent by Keith Lowe, a deliberately unreliable history of obscure '90s comedy called You Are Nothing by Robert Wringham, Julian Cope's Copendium, Sean Howe's Marvel Comics The Untold Story. TV: Endeavor (Young Morse) on ITV. BBC's Sherlock Holmes, Call The Midwife, Hollow Crown, She Wolves, Vikings, Limmy's Show, and Upstairs Downstairs. E4's Cardinal Burns, C4's Grayson Perry's All In The Best Possible Taste, Sky's Touch of Cloth. LIVE MUSIC: The Fall at Islington Town Hall, The Ex at Café Oto, Howe Gelb and KT Tunstall together and unannounced in a Stoke Newington cafe, Han Bennink solo at Bishopsgate Festival, Jane Bom Bane's harmonium and bespoke hats mash up on the Edinburgh Free Fringe, Fushitsusha at St John's Church Hackney. RECORDS : Matthew Bourne - Montauk Variations, Earth - Angels of Darkness Demons of Light II, Bill Fay - Life Is People, Giant Giant Sand - Tucson, Belbury Poly - The Belbury Tales, The Bohman Brothers - Back On The Streets, The Woodbine & Ivy Band - s/t, Rich Hopkins & Luminarios - Buried Treasures, Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Psychedelic Pill. THEATRE : Dublin Gate's Watt in the Edinburgh International Festival, Teatr Biuro Podró?y's satirical stiltwalking sci-fi space rock opera Planet Lem, Jeff Achtem's Beefheartian kids' puppet show Swamp Juice. Sunday Times End Of Year Round-up 2012 1) Matthew Bourne - Montauk Variations (Leaf) Alone at the piano, Bourne's uncharacteristically meditative improvisations used cautiously melodic figures to trace penumbral shadows of memory and regret. Cecil Taylor slips Erik Satie something heavy on the way back from the gents. 2) Earth - Angels Of Darkness, Demons of Light II (Southern Lord) Earth's rustically tinged folk metal, scratched out of iron at impossible volumes...
The role of a stand-up comedian can take many forms. On the one hand, they provide simple light relief and act as a release from life's pressure cooker of trials and tribulations. On the other, they can be important social commentators who shine a light on the absurdities and inequalities of our daily existence.
The very best stand-ups can combine both roles seamlessly. Stewart Lee does just that. For years, Lee was considered the ultimate "comedians' comedian" but had been off our TV screens for the best part of a decade. Before his recent return to the BBC with his Comedy Vehicle show, his last brush with mainstream success - actually, make that notoriety - was his role as co-writer of Jerry Springer: The Opera.
And we're never too far away from a little controversy when daring comedy is concerned. We've seen Russell Brand being hung out to dry over the "Sachsgate" palaver and, just recently, Jimmy Carr was forced to apologise for a badly-timed Remembrance Day gag about the Special Olympics.
Pertinently, all of these elements feed into Lee's latest show, If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One. Spinning off a comment from the current enfant terrible of stand-up, Frankie Boyle, that all comedians should pack it in when they reach 40, Lee - who is now aged 41 - weaves in all manner of serious subtext behind some hilariously silly surrealism to blow that argument out of the water.
First, a riff on taking a pirate friend to a children's play park to break the ice before he really lets his anger off the leash to plough into the Top Gear team.
Although Lee argues that at his age he finds life merely provokes a feeling of disappointment rather than anger, he goes on to prove just the opposite. Jeremy Clarkson's supposed carefree political correctness is exposed as calculated cultural button-pressing designed to create the maximum amount of column inches in publicity. And Richmond Hammond fares even worse as a simpering coward who "hangs around with the playground bully".
Lee expands the point by telling us that he had once attended the same school in Birmingham as Hammond and saved the diminutive presenter from school bullies, thus creating his present on-screen persona. It's a totally credible story until Lee tells us he has concocted it all just to make a point. And when the stand-up says that he'd wished Hammond had died in a recent car crash on the show you can sense the audience en masse seem to shift uneasily in their seats as they're not sure whether to laugh or not. When Lee tells them "it's just a joke" and refers them back to Clarkson's oft-used get-out clause you can see his point.
But there's no tiresome finger-wagging here. Lee's a self-proclaimed "middle class liberal", but his argument holds water.
Lee's technical skill is awesome. His use of "callbacks" - a trick of the stand-up trade where key phrases or lines are returned to at key sections of the set is second to none. He takes his time, makes fine use of pregnant pauses, and can shift the emphasis in a routine through all manner of emotions in an instant.
By the end, this man who is supposedly too middle-aged to conjure up more than a dejected shrug about life has thrown his microphone to the ground and stomped off into the Royal Circle to deliver a frantic routine about, would you believe it, the tagline to a Magners pear cider advert. If this is what Lee calls mild, you can only imagine what he would have been like when he was young enough to get really worked up.
Stewart Lee
2009-11-16T16:04:27+00:00
The role of a stand-up comedian can take many forms. On the one hand, they provide simple light relief and act as a release from life's pressure cooker of trials and tribulations. On the other, they can be important social commentators who shine a light on the absurdities and inequalities of our daily existence. The very best stand-ups can combine both roles seamlessly. Stewart Lee does just that. For years, Lee was considered the ultimate "comedians' comedian" but had been off our TV screens for the best part of a decade. Before his recent return to the BBC with his Comedy Vehicle show, his last brush with mainstream success - actually, make that notoriety - was his role as co-writer of Jerry Springer: The Opera. And we're never too far away from a little controversy when daring comedy is concerned. We've seen Russell Brand being hung out to dry over the "Sachsgate" palaver and, just recently, Jimmy Carr was forced to apologise for a badly-timed Remembrance Day gag about the Special Olympics. Pertinently, all of these elements feed into Lee's latest show, If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One. Spinning off a comment from the current enfant terrible of stand-up, Frankie Boyle, that all comedians should pack it in when they reach 40, Lee - who is now aged 41 - weaves in all manner of serious subtext behind some hilariously silly surrealism to blow that argument out of the water. First, a riff on taking a pirate friend to a children's play park to break the ice before he really lets his anger off the leash to plough into the Top Gear team. Although Lee argues that at his age he finds life merely provokes a feeling of disappointment rather than anger, he goes on to...
The Messthetics series assembles extremely raw punk era ephemera, culled from demos and cassette releases, into documents of distinct regional undergrounds, this time making the case for a South Coast sensibility. The airy, post-pop of Chichester's Indifferent Dance Centre should have blossomed; Portsmouth's Parasites sound utterly inept, but O.D. Baby's has a haunted grandeur; from Brighton, Joe Dash ape The Fall and future anarcho-punk legends Poison Girls gnash nastily. Southampton's Catholic Girls formed after four schoolgirls skipped St Anne's Convent for a pro-choice rally, and saw The Gang Of Four on a wagon. Their actual track, Child's Vision, is not great, but, as ever with Messthetics, extensive sleeve-notes contextaulise the recordings with poignant, piquant details.
Stewart Lee
2011-06-05T22:07:28+01:00
The Messthetics series assembles extremely raw punk era ephemera, culled from demos and cassette releases, into documents of distinct regional undergrounds, this time making the case for a South Coast sensibility. The airy, post-pop of Chichester's Indifferent Dance Centre should have blossomed; Portsmouth's Parasites sound utterly inept, but O.D. Baby's has a haunted grandeur; from Brighton, Joe Dash ape The Fall and future anarcho-punk legends Poison Girls gnash nastily. Southampton's Catholic Girls formed after four schoolgirls skipped St Anne's Convent for a pro-choice rally, and saw The Gang Of Four on a wagon. Their actual track, Child's Vision, is not great, but, as ever with Messthetics, extensive sleeve-notes contextaulise the recordings with poignant, piquant details.
Called the "world's greatest living standup" by The Times, listen to Stewart chat with Clare about the mechanics of comedy, his favorite music and whether or not he's ever seen a ghost, also features Orkney oatcakes.
Stewart Lee
2025-08-26T11:29:00+01:00
Called the "world's greatest living standup" by The Times, listen to Stewart chat with Clare about the mechanics of comedy, his favorite music and whether or not he's ever seen a ghost, also features Orkney oatcakes.
And just when you thought the modern wise guy had evolved from revelling in scatological humour, Stewart Lee proved otherwise. Lee began with September 11 and five minutes later there was a sustained flatulence joke.
Trying to yoke the momentous with the ridiculous was not a promising start and it got worse. Lee's obsession with over-analysing his own (dated) material, his fondness for repetition and stretching out a simple gag to 10 minutes was a constant irritant.
Stewart Lee
2005-04-05T22:34:01+01:00
And just when you thought the modern wise guy had evolved from revelling in scatological humour, Stewart Lee proved otherwise. Lee began with September 11 and five minutes later there was a sustained flatulence joke. Trying to yoke the momentous with the ridiculous was not a promising start and it got worse. Lee's obsession with over-analysing his own (dated) material, his fondness for repetition and stretching out a simple gag to 10 minutes was a constant irritant.
Picture the scene: it’s a gentle Sunday lunchtime in the late 1990s. Some dreary politics show has just finished on BBC One. The smell of roast potatoes wafts through the house. Grandma’s dozing in the armchair, a neighbour’s out washing their car, and the wholesome warbling of Radio 4 hangs in the air. Ahhh, Sunday.
Then you turn over to BBC Two, where a grown man wearing fake breasts is squirting milk into the face of a Prince William effigy. There’s also a quizzical human head-sized citrus fruit called the “Curious Orange”; a children’s cartoon about a gang of talking human organs; a Robbie Williams tattoo – actually a crude drawing of a face on a man’s gut – serenading an alien puppet with its belly button mouth; and more bestiality jokes than Grandma is generally used to hearing at Sunday lunchtime.
The programme was This Morning With Richard Not Judy, Stewart Lee and Richard Herring’s strange – but also strangely forgotten – live daytime TV-cum-sketch show, which debuted on 15 February 1998. The kind of material they slipped past the BBC at that time of day was unbelievable – and in these overly cautious, super-sensitive times, absolutely unthinkable – but they got away with it for the same reason that the show’s been largely forgotten. No one at the BBC was paying enough attention to care.
“We wanted everything to be a little bit warped,” Richard Herring tells me, “so if you were coming down from a hangover, or whatever you’d done the night before, it would freak you out. But I also thought no one would be looking out for bad language or subversive ideas at that time. We could sneak under the radar a bit. But I think it snuck under the radar so far that no one really knew about it.”
Lee and Herring had written for Chris Morris’ seminal radio show, On The Hour (which has led to a contentious point/running gag in the years since about their part in creating Alan Partridge), plus a number of their own radio shows. Their first TV break came with Radio 1-turned-BBC 2 show Fist of Fun, which ran for two series between 1995 to 1996.
It was originally Herring’s idea to do a skewed version of daytime TV; he’d even tried to schmooze light entertainment luminary Nick Owen into doing a show together. “I had to take him to the Ritz!” says Herring. “I’d always fancied that Sunday afternoon slot. I thought it was a great time to do comedy because people were hungover.
"I grew up on Tiswas and Banana Splits, these quite anarchic TV shows where you felt like anything could happen. I wanted to do an adult version of that – crazy stuff going on the studio, crazy characters, and then going to a cartoon. It was really my project, but we realised it was a good vehicle for Lee and Herring because Fist of Fun hadn’t been recommissioned. Stew kind of snuck in.”
This Morning With Richard Not Judy – or “TMWRNJ” as Herring called it – was performed at the 1994 Edinburgh festival, before it arrived on BBC Two in 1998, with a supporting cast that included musician and comedian Richard Thomas, comic performers Paul Putner, Trevor Lock, and Jo Unwin, and the actor Kevin Eldon. Emma Kennedy joined for Series 2, which aired in 1999.
As with Fist of Fun, it hung on the duo’s bantering, largely around Herring’s many sexual perversions – his “Corr Shrine” to Andrea Corr and proclivity for drinking the milk of unusual animals – and their sharp takedowns of whatever had been irritating them that week. Channel 5, panel show They Think It’s Over, Golden Grahams cereal, Chris Evans (“He’s a monster, Stew!”), Hale and Pace, Gail Porter, the National Lottery, and the BBC itself were all regular targets.
But the best bits were the show’s many regular features, most of which had their own (ludicrous) narrative arcs. They included “When Things Get Knocked Over, Spill, Or Fall Out Of Cupboards”, a twist on the low-rent US disaster shows that clogged up satellite channels, but also a tragic running gag about a divorced dad in the midst of a drunken, beetroot-flinging breakdown; a kids’ puppet show called Histor’s Eye, about a time-travelling crow and his egg pun-obsessed sidekick Plinny (“I loved Stewart as Plinny,” says Herring. “I think it’s the funniest thing he’s ever done.”); the “Unusual Priest”, whose eccentric sermons mocked stuffy religious programming; a recurring sketch about Jesus and his disciples; the “Organ Gang” cartoon; weekly appearances from Nostradamus, reimagined as a Welsh woman infatuated with Herring; and the Curious Orange, who became a flesh-eating, Tennent’s-swigging psycho-fruit.
Daytime TV had been ripe for lampooning, but while contemporaries such as The Friday Night Armistice and Brass Eye went for the jugular by sending up serious TV formats for a more aggressive style of satire, the perceived coziness of daytime TV allowed Lee and Herring to push boundaries unchecked.
“We were hiding behind the veneer of being silly,” says Herring. “But actually we were doing stuff that was quite subversive and satirical. Loads of people couldn’t believe what we were getting away with. We were saying things like ‘t___’, and making allusions to having sex with animals. There was all sorts of rude stuff in there. As long as you didn’t actually swear, then no one can really complain about it. But if you’re putting in subversive ideas, that’s a different thing.”
There is, of course, more to pushing comedic boundaries than slipping crafty swearwords and sexual innuendo onto daytime television; the show’s most progressive idea was to deconstruct the form of comedy itself, now the crux of Stewart Lee’s self-referential meta routines.
They broke character, toyed with and reversed the dynamic of their straight man/funny man partnership, and drew attention to their mistakes and rubbish props; they also attacked the comedy establishment with a series of skits parodying the 1980s alternative comedy circuit, and a recurring segment called “Lazy Comedy Slags”, ridiculing the tired pull back-and-reveal gags of weak stand-up comics.
“I remember going to shops with mum and needing a wee, but there were no toilets so I did it in the gutter,” said Lee, giving an example of the predictable set up. “28-years-old I was!”, only for them to dupe the viewer with the ultimate call-back, setting up the exact same joke themselves later in the show. And it worked, every time. (It’s also a line you’ll occasionally hear them both still use.)
“We were very rigorous in the way that Stew is acclaimed for being now,” says Herring. “We were obsessed with comedy and the format of comedy, and trying to turn things around to make them more interesting. It was with proviso that we’d also be funny. You can do comedy that takes the piss out of comedy, but you also have to be funny yourself.”
The writing process was down to the wire, but the schedule allowed them to quickly identify what the audience was responding to, and the gags – even ones that haven’t stood the test of time – have a fresh, straight-of-the-page sting.
“We’d finish recording at 1pm on a Sunday,” says Herring, “then go out and drink vodka and Red Bull for the rest of the day and get blottoed, start writing again on Tuesday, and rehearse Thursday and Friday… it was a treadmill that was hard to get off.”
The BBC gave them the creative freedom to get on with it – “We were sort of allowed to do whatever we wanted to do,” laughs Herring – but there was little support for the show. Promises about properly trailing the show never came through; the series was continually interrupted by sport (though there was better coverage on Sky Sports, as Stewart Lee would remind the viewers live on air); and the show’s Friday evening repeat, a more natural home for Lee and Herring’s comedy, was shifted around in the schedules.
“We’re not on again next week,” said Herring at the end of one episode, “because the BBC don’t want to upset Channel 4 by providing effective competition to Dawson’s Creek and TFI Friday.”
“Partly why we got away with it was because no one was remotely interested in it,” said Lee, speaking on Herring’s Leicester Square Podcast in 2015. “No even watched it to check what was going out. And when it stopped, no one noticed.”
Jane Root became controller of BBC Two, she didn’t rate TMWRNJ, even though it was starting to catch on, which, watching it now, is obvious from the audience reaction. There’s a sense of bewilderment about the first few episodes; by the end, the audience are fully on board.
The final episode aired in June 1999 – a raucous 45 minutes that ties up every running gag from the series, knowing full well this was TMWRNJ’s last hurrah – marking an end for both the show and Lee and Herring’s partnership.
“I feel like with a third series some of the characters could have had that Little Britain style resonance,” says Herring. “But if we’d had that success it would have destroyed both of us in different ways. I think Stew wouldn’t have coped with the spotlight, and I’d have gone nuts in a different way.”
Like Fist of Fun, TMWRNJ was never released by the BBC on VHS or DVD. The duo later released Fist of Fun on DVD themselves, after paying for the rights, but similar plans for TMWRNJ collapsed.
“It’ll have to live on through YouTube and in people’s minds,” says Herring (and he’s right, its survived in crackly, taped-off-TV videos posted on YouTube). “It’s a little secret thing, and that’s what’s good about it. You wouldn’t like it if it had become successful and no one would feel as fondly about it.”
In hindsight, it’s almost Young Ones-esque: an anarchic style of comedy that spoke directly to a young audience, but in the guise of a dusty, older generation’s TV format, influencing a generation of comedians-in-the-making.
My memory of watching is that as an impressionable, dirty joke-obsessed youngster, I loved it, while some – unsurprisingly older – family members hated it. I was even sent to my room once just for having it on, because one of Richard Herring’s “they’re all long-eared rabbits by the time I’ve finished with them” jokes had upset Grandma’s Sunday lunch. Twenty-eight years old, I was.
Stewart Lee
2018-02-14T03:44:32+00:00
Picture the scene: it’s a gentle Sunday lunchtime in the late 1990s. Some dreary politics show has just finished on BBC One. The smell of roast potatoes wafts through the house. Grandma’s dozing in the armchair, a neighbour’s out washing their car, and the wholesome warbling of Radio 4 hangs in the air. Ahhh, Sunday. Then you turn over to BBC Two, where a grown man wearing fake breasts is squirting milk into the face of a Prince William effigy. There’s also a quizzical human head-sized citrus fruit called the “Curious Orange”; a children’s cartoon about a gang of talking human organs; a Robbie Williams tattoo – actually a crude drawing of a face on a man’s gut – serenading an alien puppet with its belly button mouth; and more bestiality jokes than Grandma is generally used to hearing at Sunday lunchtime. The programme was This Morning With Richard Not Judy, Stewart Lee and Richard Herring’s strange – but also strangely forgotten – live daytime TV-cum-sketch show, which debuted on 15 February 1998. The kind of material they slipped past the BBC at that time of day was unbelievable – and in these overly cautious, super-sensitive times, absolutely unthinkable – but they got away with it for the same reason that the show’s been largely forgotten. No one at the BBC was paying enough attention to care. “We wanted everything to be a little bit warped,” Richard Herring tells me, “so if you were coming down from a hangover, or whatever you’d done the night before, it would freak you out. But I also thought no one would be looking out for bad language or subversive ideas at that time. We could sneak under the radar a bit. But I think it snuck under the radar so far that no...
Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, written and performed by Stewart Lee himself, takes place in a small venue in London, and it’s basically a half hour stand-up set, cut back and forth between short sketches in the first season, and a hostile mock interview segment from the second onwards, with the interviewer played by Armando Iannucci in season two, and then Chris Morris in season three and four. Each episode has its own theme, with Lee exploring a particular topic in depth, questioning its meaning and often exposing the absurdity of it, from political matters, social issues, religious dogma, philosophical ideas, and the artistic integrity and different forms of stand-up comedy itself. Stewart Lee is a comedian who explains comedy to his audience, and through a combination of satire, role play and self-awareness, he tackles controversial subjects from an intellectual standpoint. Masterfully written, perfectly directed and excellently performed, Lee’s approach to stand-up is like a magician, not only letting the audience know that he is indeed performing a trick, but also giving them insight into how it’s done. Stewart Lee is my favourite comedian and I absolutely love the series, it’s edgy, interesting, sometimes surreal, often cringe worthy and most importantly, extremely funny, Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle is a masterpiece!
I'm currently half-way through the fourth instalment in the series, the next episode is titled, ‘Death’, and I'm very excited to watch it! I loved the first series, but the decision to take out the sketches and replace them with the mock interview was a good one! They detracted too far away from the stand-up parts, which is why we’re here, and I always felt like I was just waiting for them to end to get back into the good stuff, but since the second season, it’s been the mock interviews instead, and they’re much better, they keep in line with the tone, and they don’t feel intrusive, it’s a perfect balance now. I was a big fan of Armando Iannucci, and I was sad to see him replaced in the third season, I didn't think Chris Morris was a good, but having watched the first half of the fourth season, I think he’s doing just as good a job as Iannucci, maybe he’s got better since the third season, maybe it’s because I haven’t watched the series in a while, or maybe I'm just remembering it wrong, either way, he’s great in season four, and both Iannucci and Morris share a wonderful chemistry with Lee, their interactions are hilarious and these segments are essential to the pacing of the show.
Stewart Lee’s style of stand-up comedy is unlike any I've ever seen, it’s a completely new approach to the art form, and he’s able to take it to a new level in the 'Comedy Vehicle', he’s the comedian other comedians are scared of. Something he consistently does throughout the series is turn away from the audience, and address the camera directly, speaking to his wider audience, the people who aren't there in the room with him, and I haven’t seen this technique used by anyone else. No one works a room like Stewart Lee, it’s so great to watch, he’s very interactive with the audience and he plays off their reactions, he doesn't always want you to laugh, ‘’some of the jokes are traps’’ as he puts it. Most of the time he’s playing a character as well, a fictionalized version of himself, it is him though, but a lot of what he says on the surface level shouldn't be taken too literally, he’s exaggerating his personality for comedic affect. There’s always a deeper message to Lee’s routines, and as he points out himself, you really have to be listening to understand it. As a fan, and as I'm sure with all his fans, there’s a sense that we’re in on the joke, what’s often funny is the fact that it isn't funny, Stewart Lee’s not, ‘’a cultural bully from the Oxbridge Mafia’’, but he plays one, and he transitions in and out of character throughout all of his routines.
Stewart Lee certainly isn't for everybody, his material is definitely an acquired taste and it’s very possible you won’t appreciate his style, you mind find that it tests your patience, and if that is the case this series could be a gruelling experience for you. As a fan, and I've been a fan ever since I saw The 41st Best Stand-Up Ever! On Comedy Central back when I used to watch cable TV, like I said, there’s a sense that we’re in on the joke with Lee, and the fact that what he’s doing is often pissing off thousands of people makes his material even more funny, he had thousands of Christians protesting against his musical, ‘’Jerry Springer : The Opera’’ in 2006 for fuck sake! You either get it, or you don’t, and that’s fine, but if you’re offended, you’re an idiot. Lee’s style can come across as very aggressive, he plays with the audience and they’re often made to feel very uncomfortable, the subject matter he’s using comes with a certain level of controversy, and if you aren't accustomed to his style, there are moments that will probably make you feel awkward, just know it’s on purpose! Lee never loses the moral high ground, his material is meticulously written, and he approaches every issue with care, despite its evidently brutal nature, Stewart Lee is clearly a man with a strong ethical code, and he makes a lot of interesting, important and profound points throughout the series.
Stewart Lee has kept his integrity throughout his entire career, it’s evident he’s a perfectionist, or at least that’s how it comes across to me, this series is a true work of art! The way he writes is often like poetry, he isn't just trying to make you laugh, he’s trying to make you think as well, but if your sense of humour is anything like mine, you will definitely fucking laugh, this is British comedy at its finest! There aren't any cheap jokes here, these aren't easy laughs, as Lee puts it, ‘’I can do jokes, it’s just not something that’s of interest to me’’, and as a 47 year old politically correct liberal, as he often defines himself, he’s pissing off all the right people! Lee’s material speaks to a niche audience, and although since the series aired on the BBC in 2009 he’s pushed into the mainstream, he’s still very much kept his core fans happy, often joking that after his fame has fizzled out and his mainstream audience has left, they’ll still be with him, ‘’That’s my dream, Wembley Stadium, 16,000 seats, just them, the Liberal Intelligentsia, no laughs all night’’, he jokes to a divided audience in the second episode of the fourth season, titled ‘’Islamophobia’’.
If it’s not obvious by now, I love this series, and I find Stewart Lee immensely entertaining, if you’re a fan of the usual routines we’re used to in the British comedy circuit, stuff like Jimmy Carr, Michael McIntyre, the young ‘Russell’ comics, James Corden, Mock the Week and shit like Top Gear, Stewart Lee is the opposite of all that, so you might want to avoid him, if not, you might discover a new favourite comedian, his style speaks to a niche, and you’ll either love it or hate it, I absolutely love it, and if you understand the use of satire and irony in his material, and the fact that his ‘contempt’ for the audience is fictional, you will too! At a time in society when tension is high, Stewart Lee is breathing life into an over saturated industry and opposing its often questionable ideals, he’s also proving that stand-up comedy is indeed an art form to be respected, his routines are beautifully constructed, socially poignant and extremely original, you’re watching a master at work. I love the series, and although Stewart Lee might not be the comedian Britain perhaps wanted, he’s definitely the comedian it needs! Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle is a modern masterpiece and I recommend it to anyone who’s a fan of alternative comedy.
Stewart Lee
2016-11-24T16:38:39+00:00
''No one is equipped to review me'' - Stewart Lee Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, written and performed by Stewart Lee himself, takes place in a small venue in London, and it’s basically a half hour stand-up set, cut back and forth between short sketches in the first season, and a hostile mock interview segment from the second onwards, with the interviewer played by Armando Iannucci in season two, and then Chris Morris in season three and four. Each episode has its own theme, with Lee exploring a particular topic in depth, questioning its meaning and often exposing the absurdity of it, from political matters, social issues, religious dogma, philosophical ideas, and the artistic integrity and different forms of stand-up comedy itself. Stewart Lee is a comedian who explains comedy to his audience, and through a combination of satire, role play and self-awareness, he tackles controversial subjects from an intellectual standpoint. Masterfully written, perfectly directed and excellently performed, Lee’s approach to stand-up is like a magician, not only letting the audience know that he is indeed performing a trick, but also giving them insight into how it’s done. Stewart Lee is my favourite comedian and I absolutely love the series, it’s edgy, interesting, sometimes surreal, often cringe worthy and most importantly, extremely funny, Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle is a masterpiece! I'm currently half-way through the fourth instalment in the series, the next episode is titled, ‘Death’, and I'm very excited to watch it! I loved the first series, but the decision to take out the sketches and replace them with the mock interview was a good one! They detracted too far away from the stand-up parts, which is why we’re here, and I always felt like I was just waiting for them to end to get back into the good stuff,...
The comedian who looks like a lot of other famous people took to the Ulster Hall last night — and for a self-styled frustrated middle-aged liberal, there's still plenty of bite in Stewart Lee.
The opening gag of If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One gets off to a (pretend?) wobbly start when a member of the audience, asked if she drinks coffee, tells him she doesn't.
He harangues his capacity Ulster Hall audience for letting him down before he picks up the story again. That segues into kids' adventure centres, and the inappropriateness of a pirate activity centre as a first date for a pirate — then he's off into country life and the angriest but most inventive segment of his show.
There’s a sustained attack on all three Top Gear presenters but it’s Richard Hammond who gets the hardest time.
It’s not for the sensitive but it’s funny, imaginative and refreshing to see a seemingly unassailable aspect of our culture held up to ridicule.
Stewart Lee
2009-10-28T15:52:54+00:00
The comedian who looks like a lot of other famous people took to the Ulster Hall last night — and for a self-styled frustrated middle-aged liberal, there's still plenty of bite in Stewart Lee. The opening gag of If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One gets off to a (pretend?) wobbly start when a member of the audience, asked if she drinks coffee, tells him she doesn't. He harangues his capacity Ulster Hall audience for letting him down before he picks up the story again. That segues into kids' adventure centres, and the inappropriateness of a pirate activity centre as a first date for a pirate — then he's off into country life and the angriest but most inventive segment of his show. There’s a sustained attack on all three Top Gear presenters but it’s Richard Hammond who gets the hardest time. It’s not for the sensitive but it’s funny, imaginative and refreshing to see a seemingly unassailable aspect of our culture held up to ridicule.
Matthew Bourne is found in typically excitable mode on the newly released Everybody Else But Me, alongside the saxophonist Tony Bevan.
But, with Bourne alone at the piano, Montauk Variations' meditative improvisations instead use cautiously melodic figures to trace penumbral shadows of memory and regret. Bourne's obstreperous other self surfaces on Within and Abrade, stroking the keyboard and the instrument's innards simultaneously, but Smile, written by Charlie Chaplin for Modern Times, closes a deceptively devastating collection, stripped of its cinematic sentiment into a haunting skeletal solo.
Stewart Lee
2012-02-01T01:52:06+00:00
Matthew Bourne is found in typically excitable mode on the newly released Everybody Else But Me, alongside the saxophonist Tony Bevan. But, with Bourne alone at the piano, Montauk Variations' meditative improvisations instead use cautiously melodic figures to trace penumbral shadows of memory and regret. Bourne's obstreperous other self surfaces on Within and Abrade, stroking the keyboard and the instrument's innards simultaneously, but Smile, written by Charlie Chaplin for Modern Times, closes a deceptively devastating collection, stripped of its cinematic sentiment into a haunting skeletal solo.
I am a pan-disciplinary recipient of the country’s two highest cultural accolades, the Bafta for film and television and the Olivier for theatre; I have been described by the Times as the “world’s greatest living standup comedian”; I have rapped in 10th-century Old English on a No 1 single; I won Celebrity Mastermind answering questions on the guitarist and improviser Derek Bailey; and a film I authored was recently declared by a government body to have passed the “cultural test of being British” with full marks! So you must listen to me when I ask if Oliver Dowden is suitable for the role he has been decanted into, safeguarding the nation’s cultural heart at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. A chittering monkey could pour some orange sick into a jelly mould, but that does not make it a jelly. It makes it some orange sick that a chittering monkey has poured into a jelly mould.
Speaking before a select committee on 14 May, Dowden called for the privatisation of publicly subsidised Channel 4 and considered its position in a “broadcasting marketplace”, to help its “ability to access capital markets”. But Channel 4 was not set up to compete with Netflix and Disney+, whose only imperatives are commercial. Its remit was to provide cultural, artistic and minority programming absent elsewhere. Early Channel 4 highlights such as Stephen Frears’s unprecedented Walter, a drama about a man with learning disabilities later clumsily parodied by Ricky Gervais, and Derek Bailey’s On the Edge, a history of improvisation, were brilliant and invaluable, but were not built to beat The Crown and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Patient MPs tried to explain this, but Dowden seemed intellectually or ideologically unable to engage, like Spock struggling with an abstract concept. “You believe that culture is inherently valuable in of itself, Captain? That is illogical. I like it when the chandelier falls down in The Phantom of the Opera, though.”
There is one area where I find myself in agreement with Dowden. The statues of the slavers must remain! As Dowden says, “they play an important role in teaching us about our past, with all its faults”. Likewise, the statue of Jimmy Savile, torn down from Scotstoun Leisure Centre, must be re-erected and re-unveiled by Dowden himself with full ceremony, to further teach us about our past, with all its faults. And alongside the statues of the slavers, let us raise high new statues depicting the atrocities their business facilitated, to teach us about our past, with all its faults. At Jamaica’s Breadnut plantation, slaves were forced to defecate into the mouths of their disobedient fellows. A new statue/chocolate fountain combination in Parliament Square could splurt on the hour, to teach us about our past, with all its faults.
Although Dowden has, like all his colleagues, made a cognitively dissonant moral accommodation of Boris Johnson, there is yet some faint glimmer of light in his eyes, unlike the dead, killer-shark stare of the catastrophically cold-hearted education secretary, Gavin Williamson, the Freddy Krueger of teenage ballet dancers’ nightmares. Can the great myths that underpin our national story provide any archetypes to suggest how Dowden may be steered towards salvation and salve our collective souls?
Last week, I helped to make a radio documentary on unreliable narrators and I hope it proves a valuable addition to Dowden’s broadcasting marketplace. In the vaults of the British Library, I perused an original manuscript of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s 12th-century History of the Kings of Britain, an incredible and unearned privilege that somehow landed in my unworthy lap as a result of more than three decades of making sarcastic jokes about politicians, road signs and rap singers. Monmouth appears to have edited and rewritten history so it supported the values and imperial ambitions of the Henry I administration. Michael Gove’s 2010 suggestion that the self-described “neo-imperialist” academic Niall Ferguson should overhaul the history curriculum wasn’t as original as it looked!
Monmouth is largely responsible for, for example, the presence of the stories of King Arthur and Merlin in the myth marketplace. These implausible tales nonetheless provide a poetic “ecstatic truth” rather than a literal “accountant’s truth”, a distinction Dowden will understand if he is as familiar, as a culture secretary should be, with Werner Herzog as he is with Andrew Lloyd Webber. At present, Dowden is the young Arthur, haplessly having pulled the sword from the stone and now looked to for leadership in a role he is not yet equipped to understand. He needs a Merlin to guide him. Where is the wizard to lead the boy king Dowden through the thicket of artistic understanding? Dowden’s old Conservative colleague Ken Clarke, on the evidence of his Radio 4 series Jazz Greats, could show Dowden how great art derives from an artistic impulse and not a commercial one. For all his political and personal failings, the suede-lined arteries of Merlin Clarke’s HushPuppy heart pump with an understanding that eludes Arthur Dowden, who will not make the case for culture’s cultural value, only for its financial one.
If Dowden is not prepared to make this argument, to leave the citadel of the marketplace and set himself upon this inherently worthwhile grail quest, then Dowden, like the unworthy Uther Pendragon in Monmouth’s foundation myth, must surrender his unearned position to a new champion, a seeker who is prepared to protect the holy chalice of our arts and culture and heal our pestilential kingdom or submit himself to be schooled. Until theatres reopen at pre-Covid capacity, I remain eminently available.
Stewart Lee
2021-05-30T18:57:26+01:00
I am a pan-disciplinary recipient of the country’s two highest cultural accolades, the Bafta for film and television and the Olivier for theatre; I have been described by the Times as the “world’s greatest living standup comedian”; I have rapped in 10th-century Old English on a No 1 single; I won Celebrity Mastermind answering questions on the guitarist and improviser Derek Bailey; and a film I authored was recently declared by a government body to have passed the “cultural test of being British” with full marks! So you must listen to me when I ask if Oliver Dowden is suitable for the role he has been decanted into, safeguarding the nation’s cultural heart at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. A chittering monkey could pour some orange sick into a jelly mould, but that does not make it a jelly. It makes it some orange sick that a chittering monkey has poured into a jelly mould. Speaking before a select committee on 14 May, Dowden called for the privatisation of publicly subsidised Channel 4 and considered its position in a “broadcasting marketplace”, to help its “ability to access capital markets”. But Channel 4 was not set up to compete with Netflix and Disney+, whose only imperatives are commercial. Its remit was to provide cultural, artistic and minority programming absent elsewhere. Early Channel 4 highlights such as Stephen Frears’s unprecedented Walter, a drama about a man with learning disabilities later clumsily parodied by Ricky Gervais, and Derek Bailey’s On the Edge, a history of improvisation, were brilliant and invaluable, but were not built to beat The Crown and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Patient MPs tried to explain this, but Dowden seemed intellectually or ideologically unable to engage, like Spock struggling with an abstract concept. “You believe that...
A clever idea, to bring the great lexicographer and his toadying sidekick back to the 21st century to revisit their famous journey to the Hebrides, in the Traverse's late-night comedy slot. Late, you see, as in dead. But alive again.
Iain Gillie, the promoter whose idea it was, made his best move in recruiting Stewart Lee to write the script. The challenge of trying to write some Johnsonian aphorisms for the modern era must have been irresistible.
Lee appeared himself to introduce the show on the first night, promising not to do so again “unless this turns out to be the best bit". Well, the rest of it wasn't as bad as all that, but Lee is such a charmer when he wants to be that he might have to be careful.
He has tried to give what follows a little dramatic shape, but don't expect much more than a gently entertaining way to wind down the festival day. Casting Miles Jupp as Boswell was, however, another good move. Jupp is about the only comedian I can think of who relishes being posh, and he is also a Scot. Boswell being such a pompous popinjay it suits him to a T.
Simon Munnery as Johnson is less comfortable, caught in two minds between acting the part and playing the comedy.
Still, much as Samuel Johnson was scathing about the Scotland in which he first arrived, Munnery and Lee fairly lay into contemporary Scotland, from the cuisine to the Parliament building. Just because a worm crawls across the page of a book it does not make it a reader, any more than having a parliament building guarantees the highest standard of debate and intellectual inquiry. Oddly enough that got a huge laugh from an auditorium mostly full of Scots; can't think why.
But, despite a couple of more elaborate set-pieces, including a very silly (in a good way) storm sequence on the way to Skye, which makes fun of the relationship between the two men rather than anything to do with Scotland, it does not really get much farther. There are some good lines and there are tantalising glimpses of another, more thoughtful but no less entertaining, show. For example, it is James Boswell, the Scot, who is quickest to disparage his native heath, something the Scots still do well.
Munnery's mouth-organ duet with the on-stage piper looked like the beginning of something quite surreal. The final denouement involving a haggis is unworthy of all concerned.
Until Aug 26. Box office 0131-228 1404
Stewart Lee
2007-08-15T19:53:41+01:00
A clever idea, to bring the great lexicographer and his toadying sidekick back to the 21st century to revisit their famous journey to the Hebrides, in the Traverse's late-night comedy slot. Late, you see, as in dead. But alive again. Iain Gillie, the promoter whose idea it was, made his best move in recruiting Stewart Lee to write the script. The challenge of trying to write some Johnsonian aphorisms for the modern era must have been irresistible. Lee appeared himself to introduce the show on the first night, promising not to do so again “unless this turns out to be the best bit". Well, the rest of it wasn't as bad as all that, but Lee is such a charmer when he wants to be that he might have to be careful. He has tried to give what follows a little dramatic shape, but don't expect much more than a gently entertaining way to wind down the festival day. Casting Miles Jupp as Boswell was, however, another good move. Jupp is about the only comedian I can think of who relishes being posh, and he is also a Scot. Boswell being such a pompous popinjay it suits him to a T. Simon Munnery as Johnson is less comfortable, caught in two minds between acting the part and playing the comedy. Still, much as Samuel Johnson was scathing about the Scotland in which he first arrived, Munnery and Lee fairly lay into contemporary Scotland, from the cuisine to the Parliament building. Just because a worm crawls across the page of a book it does not make it a reader, any more than having a parliament building guarantees the highest standard of debate and intellectual inquiry. Oddly enough that got a huge laugh from an auditorium mostly full of Scots; can't think...
Since I started touring my latest live stand-up show, Content Provider, now laid to rest, in the summer of 2016, I’ve been describing the post-referendum landscape as a “chaotic inferno of hate” in the punchline to a bit about the EU’s bendy banana legislation. In February, the phrase “chaotic inferno of hate” appeared in a political report in The Independent, and last week it began to appear on Sky News to describe the Brexit House of Commons. Luckily, a film of the show is to be screened on BBC2 this Saturday, just as journalists leak its language into the zeitgeist and give its most choice phrases a second-hand feel. My TV show, Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, was cancelled by the BBC comedy department in the spring of 2016. Its four six-episode series of live stand-up are newly installed on the BBC iPlayer. The first series, from 2009, sees me stuffed against my will into a restricting and inappropriate TV show suit, as I chop existing routines around unnecessary film items. I was lucky it was recommissioned.
The second and third series remain a comfortable meeting point of accessibility and experimentalism, road-worn bespoke half-hour routines creating room for genuine improvisations and appropriately obtuse film items, the latter series winning two British Comedy Awards and a Bafta (though I was cut from the Bafta TV coverage for being modest to a point of apparent indifference, while actors whooped either side of me). Experimental routines that rocked packed theatres on tour often floundered before the small club-size audience at the series four recordings, at the end of 2015, and the room seemed to contain a disproportionate number of bored spouses, phone-fondling young people, and merely curious TV executives. Material that had generated playful hysteria live read as wilfully obscure on camera, and the axe soon fell.
I’d had a good run and couldn’t have asked for a more supportive team. Far greater talents than me never get a shot at their own TV show. I’d been disproportionately lucky. Envying my own freedom, I instead wrote a live show, Content Provider, flexible enough to keep on the road for a couple of years, intending to monetise the cash cow of a level of profile I was unlikely to ever enjoy again, after a decade of TV exposure. Then I could slow my work rate in my fifties in an attempt to re-establish friendly relations with my children, my sofa and the version of myself that didn’t live in a perpetual state of stage-induced sleepless psychosis.
The original pitch for Content Provider was that it would tackle our over-exposure to an ocean of digital content, but three weeks into the writing process Brexit hit, and then Trump, neither of which could be ignored, but neither of which I assumed would still top the news agenda when the tour wound down in nearly two years’ time. I tried to block out two clear but flexible sections in the two-hour show that would enable me to talk about Brexit and Trump, from my perspective as a member of the now discredited metropolitan liberal elite™, but which would also enable me to hang on to the main thrust of the show without derailing it.
Little did I know that two years later the sense of political paralysis attached to both topics meant that the initial material concerning them, which I assumed I’d have to change weekly, only became more relevant, to the point where it finally had the flavour of prophesy. The main change in the two years I toured Content Provider was in how the Brexit result emboldened right-wingers and libertarians to attack snowflakes like me. In specific terms, Breitbart, the Daily Express, the Daily Mail, Spiked and The Daily Telegraph all ran groundless news stories suggesting I was haemorrhaging audience members nightly for doing anti-Brexit jokes, while individual commentators were at pains to point out that I was the voice of a now culturally obsolete viewpoint.
The TV archivist Ewal Street wrote for the Chortle comedy industry website this week that “the same ongoing worldwide Culture War that gave us Brexit and Trump has seen the liberal comedy cabal Lee once called home under siege from the bedroom demagogues of the Alt Right”. And the writer Brendan McCarthy observed on Twitter: “Stewart Lee is an archaic left-wing relic. Milo Yiannopoulos is more on the zeitgeist. I don’t agree with all of his views, but at least people like Paul Joseph Watson can be funny about subjects that Lefties like Stewart Lee are s★★t-scared to go anywhere near.”
Obviously, as Brexit continued to polarise society, the ever-shifting show had to take my apparent obsolescence on board. As the tour gathered steam, there was an unexpected development. The new head of BBC2, Patrick Holland, asked if it would be possible to film the show. I was grateful to him, as documenting the shows before disowning them has become a part of my process.
I had my doubts. Content Provider covered Brexit, featured the C-word at least six times and could not be edited down from its unwieldy two-hour running time. Nonetheless Holland remained enthusiastic, and so I contracted the same team that had covered the Comedy Vehicle series to film the show at the end of its 214-date run before a volatile crowd in a lovely Victorian theatre in Brexit-voting Southend-on-Sea, Essex, for which the BBC paid me 0.16 per cent of the fee Ricky Gervais received for his poor-quality Netflix special.
I’m very happy with the team’s work. I watched some mid-period Comedy Vehicle as a point of comparison. A presentable comedian performs precision-engineered material in a controlled environment. At the Southend show I am road-worn and shapeless, a 50-year old man shouting and running around in an undignified fashion, a relic revelling in his own irrelevance.
Between now and the age of 65, I propose five tours, one every three years, with fewer dates but in larger rooms. That’s 10 hours of material, and for me that is only 20 jokes. The end is in sight and Content Provider represents the beginning of the end.
Stewart Lee
2018-07-25T22:24:38+01:00
Since I started touring my latest live stand-up show, Content Provider, now laid to rest, in the summer of 2016, I’ve been describing the post-referendum landscape as a “chaotic inferno of hate” in the punchline to a bit about the EU’s bendy banana legislation. In February, the phrase “chaotic inferno of hate” appeared in a political report in The Independent, and last week it began to appear on Sky News to describe the Brexit House of Commons. Luckily, a film of the show is to be screened on BBC2 this Saturday, just as journalists leak its language into the zeitgeist and give its most choice phrases a second-hand feel. My TV show, Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, was cancelled by the BBC comedy department in the spring of 2016. Its four six-episode series of live stand-up are newly installed on the BBC iPlayer. The first series, from 2009, sees me stuffed against my will into a restricting and inappropriate TV show suit, as I chop existing routines around unnecessary film items. I was lucky it was recommissioned. The second and third series remain a comfortable meeting point of accessibility and experimentalism, road-worn bespoke half-hour routines creating room for genuine improvisations and appropriately obtuse film items, the latter series winning two British Comedy Awards and a Bafta (though I was cut from the Bafta TV coverage for being modest to a point of apparent indifference, while actors whooped either side of me). Experimental routines that rocked packed theatres on tour often floundered before the small club-size audience at the series four recordings, at the end of 2015, and the room seemed to contain a disproportionate number of bored spouses, phone-fondling young people, and merely curious TV executives. Material that had generated playful hysteria live read as wilfully obscure on camera, and the...
The musician and artist Jem Finer arrives in the car park of Kings Wood, near the village of Challock in Kent, on a wet Sunday afternoon in late May. Deep inside the forest, on the side of a hill, is a seven metre deep concrete shaft, constructed at Finer’s behest, after he won a commission from the Performing Rights Society for a piece called Score For A Hole In The Ground. It is raining heavily. Finer locks the boot of his estate car and puts on a Kagoul. “Have you got waterproofs?”, he asks, “It’s about an hour’s walk.”
I was lucky enough to be asked to take a seat on the judging panel for last year’s inaugural PRS Foundation New Music Award. Finer, a former member of The Pogues, was already familiar from his Longplayer project, a thousand year piece of music that endlessly rearranges itself via specially developed software in Trinity Buoy Wharf Lighthouse in London’s docklands. Finer’s new proposal included a crudely sketched drawing of water dripping down a shaft, striking pivoted, resonating bowls, and sending notes up into the ether through a giant brass horn. One suggested site was a remote, disused Staffordshire mine-shaft, and there was something attractive about the idea of an abandoned industrial space being adapted in this way. Despite providing little scientific supporting evidence, Finer had thoughtfully sketched little notes emerging from the horn, so we knew the design would work.
We set off through the woods, already soaked. But why were we in Kent? “Well, I liked the idea of the mineshaft, with a big brass horn coming out of it, like a sort of colliery band, and I found some amazing holes.,” agrees Finer. “I looked down an 80 foot deep well in Staffordshire, and the feeling of negative space was incredible, but I leant over and shouted into it and the sound was sucked into the old bricks like acoustic sponges. I panicked at that point and thought it wasn’t going to work.” Finer, who now has the air of a geography teacher who has lost his way on a school trip, gets his bearings before heading deeper into the wood. “Next I looked down a 250 ft lead mine. At the bottom you could see water rippling but again it was the same non-acoustic phenomenon. In the end the decision was made for me. I would have to construct the sound-hole myself.”
For Finer, this sudden change of direction wasn’t an insurmountable disaster. “One of the things I love is when you make plans for something, however sketchy or detailed, and in the process of carrying them out unexpected things occur and the whole thing starts to develop a life of its own.” Finer’s team began construction of a shaft in Kings Wood, Kent, which already houses some site-specific sculptures commissioned by the Stour Valley Arts Organisation, though it has none of the formality of The North Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Finding your way through the forest to the sound-hole is half the fun, the journey creating a mounting sense of excitement. Cresting a hill, the rain subsides momentarily, and we see a steel plate lying amidst the bluebells in a little clearing overlooking a valley. “Warning. Deep Excavations” reads a sign. Deer shadow us in the woods.
We bend down to drag the metal cover off the shaft. “It’s very heavy. Pull it from one corner. If we lift it you can have a look.” As the sheet scrapes the hole's rim, the silo resonates reassuringly. “Hello hello”, shouts one of our little party, as echoes of her own voice bounce back. Stones are and pebbles are dropped experimentally into the exposed corner of the hole, and thunder voluminously as they land. As Finer watched the last of the concrete collars lowered into the shaft, a tremor made him loose his balance and he remembers swaying uneasily at the edge of the seven meter drop, time standing still. Though shaken by the experience, Finer’s also self-aware enough to find the idea of the conceptual artist falling fatally into his own hole darkly comic. “The first new thing,” he explains, “was having to make sure the hole didn’t get to full of water so you get into real stone age plumbing stuff. But what’s changed most is ideas about what the instrumentation would be. In the original proposal it was going to be Tibetan Singing Bowls with water dripping into them, and any movement would modulate the notes, but I just got hold of a book called La Musique De L’eau, by an experimental musical instrument maker called Jaques Dudon, and there’s some brilliant new things in that.”
Beautiful though the site of the sculpture is, even without the horn yet in place, I miss the connotations implicit in the original proposal. I liked the idea of re-appropriating an industrial space, suggesting a curse lifted. I liked the devotional aspects of the water striking the Buddhist bowls, reminded of Larkin’s line, “If I were called in to construct a religion I should make use of water.” But, following Finer’s law of unexpected consequence, the site seems to be constructing its own new and unique narrative, with its own unseen implications.
We walk up the hill a little. “It’s very slippery round here, be careful,” says Finer. “Let’s see how much water is in the pond. Good. That’s a relief. It’s nearly up to the top of the pipe.” We’re looking at a low, clay lined depression, from which a feeder pipe supplies the hole. In Finer’s original proposal, rain was the source of the sound-hole’s water. But, as the record temperatures of the last month have shown, we can no longer rely on rain. Longplayer is eternal. But one of Score For A Hole In The Ground’s key components is no longer a guaranteed commodity. So the team have constructed a dew pond, an artificial reservoir traditionally favoured by farmers of chalky landscapes like those in which the wood is situated. On the way out of King’s Wood, we seen a genuine ancient dew pond, and also to the remains of prehistoric flint mines. Score For A Hole In The Ground suddenly begins to seem at home, as if part of an ongoing process.
Nonetheless, it’s a long journey from The Pogues to Score For A Hole In The Ground, isn’t it? “Not really,” explains Finer. “In the Pogues we took a timeless tradition, Irish folk music, and hopefully reinvigorated it and redefined it but it didn’t sound dated. After four years of programming Longplayer, I found myself consumed by digital technology and my whole life became mediated between one finger on a mouse and a two dimensional screen, and I wanted to get back to a more physical involvement with playing music, to be involved with physical materials and the earth. I’m continually curious about music and sound and modes of composition, and this leads me into ever more expanded ideas of what music is, of what sound is.”
Last month the giant steel horn was brought from a Nottingham foundry and installed in the hole. On the 24th of September, Score For A Hole In The Ground will open to the public. Now it’s time to trek back through the wet woods. “I feel very excited indeed,” says Finer. “This is actually happening. And it’s actually working. It’s such a simple idea. The hole has an innate resonance to it and the plumbing system is working. The whole idea is not just leaking away into the ground.
Stewart Lee
2006-04-09T19:23:09+01:00
The musician and artist Jem Finer arrives in the car park of Kings Wood, near the village of Challock in Kent, on a wet Sunday afternoon in late May. Deep inside the forest, on the side of a hill, is a seven metre deep concrete shaft, constructed at Finer’s behest, after he won a commission from the Performing Rights Society for a piece called Score For A Hole In The Ground. It is raining heavily. Finer locks the boot of his estate car and puts on a Kagoul. “Have you got waterproofs?”, he asks, “It’s about an hour’s walk.” I was lucky enough to be asked to take a seat on the judging panel for last year’s inaugural PRS Foundation New Music Award. Finer, a former member of The Pogues, was already familiar from his Longplayer project, a thousand year piece of music that endlessly rearranges itself via specially developed software in Trinity Buoy Wharf Lighthouse in London’s docklands. Finer’s new proposal included a crudely sketched drawing of water dripping down a shaft, striking pivoted, resonating bowls, and sending notes up into the ether through a giant brass horn. One suggested site was a remote, disused Staffordshire mine-shaft, and there was something attractive about the idea of an abandoned industrial space being adapted in this way. Despite providing little scientific supporting evidence, Finer had thoughtfully sketched little notes emerging from the horn, so we knew the design would work. We set off through the woods, already soaked. But why were we in Kent? “Well, I liked the idea of the mineshaft, with a big brass horn coming out of it, like a sort of colliery band, and I found some amazing holes.,” agrees Finer. “I looked down an 80 foot deep well in Staffordshire, and the feeling of negative space...
It has been just over a week now since the dead cat on the pavement outside the house was finally taken away, with no little ceremony, by Hackney Council Environmental Health and already talk in the coffee shops on Stoke Newington Church Street has turned from the emotional highs and lows of its daily decomposition to the likely benefits of its legacy. Though some maggots are still visible, crawling in the gutter near where the dead cat lay, it is too early to say if they will hatch out into flies and what kind of flies these flies, if indeed they be flies at all, will grow up to be. The brown, dead-cat-shaped stain on the pavement, however, is expected to remain partially visible for decades, providing inspiration for generations to come and transforming the economic fortunes of the entire district.
When the dead cat first appeared on the pavement outside the house just over three weeks ago, I admit I was one of those who was sceptical about its long-term value to the borough. After all, there had been dead rats, a dead pigeon, and even an inexplicable dead fish, in the street before and they had had very little positive impact on the area. "A dead cat on the pavement in Hackney?" I scoffed. "It will be a disaster. The lady who teaches t'ai chi will probably steal it to make a hat. The infrastructure will not be able to cope. And Hackney is not even on the underground so the transport links will be horrendous. And the nature of the dead cat's sponsors is so clearly in opposition to the ideals of putrefaction the dead cat itself embodies that the whole idea has already been undermined, surely."
How wrong I was. After some teething troubles, the 393 bus soon rose to the challenge, delivering crowds of morbid gawpers from all over north London to view the rotting pet via specially marked out Dead Cat lanes; and no one could have predicted what a great sponsor the taxidermist on Essex Road turned out to be, despite the fact that the shop is dedicated to the unnatural preservation of dead animals, while the dead cat itself visibly and robustly espoused the natural laws of decomposition ever more profoundly with each passing day.
Like many locals initially unconvinced by the idea of a dead cat, I soon became obsessed with it despite myself, running out into the road every few minutes to check the progress of its slow physical erosion. Everyone in the family had their own favourite aspect of the process. I became fascinated with the gradual recedence of its beautiful green eyes into its collapsing brown face, the children enjoyed the slow stiffening of the furry limbs, while my husband and his mates from the pub, typically, loved the bit when "its arse fell into the drain", an event disproportionately well attended by the sponsors and their clients!
There was something for everyone in the gradual decomposition of the dead cat and one could sense the sometimes divided community of east London – black, white, Muslim, Jew, Turk, Kurd, young, old, men, women, children, pensioners, lesbian, gay and transgender – being brought together by their shared bleak fascination with the inescapable fecundity of death, from whose icy clutches no mortal can ever wriggle free.
The variety of life forms contained within the rotting cat, in competition for the resources its bloated corpse offered, yet co-operating together as one, was a wonder to behold. Flies from many lands crawled over it laying their eggs in fertile patches of damp flesh and soon the carcass was alive with wriggling larvae. These tiny parasites' sportsmanlike efforts to eradicate the host body caused, apparently, questions to be asked at the Football Association as to why Premier League footballers could not behave more like these maggots, which had so inspired lawless young people watching the putrefaction of the cat carcass.
In our house, the cheese fly maggot, Piophila casei, has become something of a hero, despite being cruelly mocked by TV comedian Frankie Boyle on his Twitter account, for looking "like that midget c*** Hervé Villechaize from Fantasy f***ing Island with two tea strainers sellotaped over his f***ing face". Though only 8mm long Piophila regularly hopped 15cm around the cat's body, a feat that made Boyle's cruel and ill-judged jibes look to everyone sitting on our garden wall like a definite case of sour grapes.
The decomposing cat's spectacular opening ceremony turned out to be a vital strategy in winning over the doubters and the tolerance of the schoolkids who usually sit on the wall by where it was, selling small parcels of crack for pocket money prices. Unrehearsed gaggles of infants dressed as Swedish detective Wallander sang a Blakean eulogy to the now abandoned Bookstart scheme, while veteran ska band Bad Manners, who had met at Woodberry Down school, performed their 1980 pro-hard liquor hit Special Brew. Then Lady P, the Hackney grandmother who swore at rioters last August, jumped from a nearby window using a Happy Shopper bag as a parachute, the climax of an ill-disciplined but exuberant event that avoided all the usual opening ceremony cliches in favour of opaque nostalgia and endearing have-a-go theatrics.
The closing ceremony was no less impressive, featuring, as it did, TV comedian Russell Brand, who used to buy drugs in the area. "I got all me smack round here," he chirped, "and now look. A dead cat. This place has gone up in the world and no bleedin' mistake, your lordships. Citius, altius, fortius and such like!"
Who can forget the hilarious song that Brand then improvised himself on the spot? "Dead catty-watty. Catty-watty woo. Catty-wat, Wittgenstein, big stinky poo!" After Brand's wilderness years in America, and the whole Sachsgate scandal, we all realised finally, that he was a national treasure, and forgave him as one. Indeed, the very public rehabilitation of Russell Brand may yet prove to be the most enduring and valuable legacy of the whole decomposing cat.
But now the cat is gone and the spontaneous street party that has been raging in the road this month has abated. One of the students five doors down stumbled out the morning after the final night of celebration, in a dirty nightie emblazoned with an image of the decomposing cat. "Jesus!" she shouted, to no one in particular, "the decomposing cat is gone. But everything's still broken, all the butterflies are dead, I'll never own my own home and they just closed the library. Bastards."
Stewart Lee
2012-08-19T14:26:26+01:00
It has been just over a week now since the dead cat on the pavement outside the house was finally taken away, with no little ceremony, by Hackney Council Environmental Health and already talk in the coffee shops on Stoke Newington Church Street has turned from the emotional highs and lows of its daily decomposition to the likely benefits of its legacy. Though some maggots are still visible, crawling in the gutter near where the dead cat lay, it is too early to say if they will hatch out into flies and what kind of flies these flies, if indeed they be flies at all, will grow up to be. The brown, dead-cat-shaped stain on the pavement, however, is expected to remain partially visible for decades, providing inspiration for generations to come and transforming the economic fortunes of the entire district. When the dead cat first appeared on the pavement outside the house just over three weeks ago, I admit I was one of those who was sceptical about its long-term value to the borough. After all, there had been dead rats, a dead pigeon, and even an inexplicable dead fish, in the street before and they had had very little positive impact on the area. "A dead cat on the pavement in Hackney?" I scoffed. "It will be a disaster. The lady who teaches t'ai chi will probably steal it to make a hat. The infrastructure will not be able to cope. And Hackney is not even on the underground so the transport links will be horrendous. And the nature of the dead cat's sponsors is so clearly in opposition to the ideals of putrefaction the dead cat itself embodies that the whole idea has already been undermined, surely." How wrong I was. After some teething troubles, the 393...
"And there are some brilliant people around, Stewart Lee, and people like that.
Yet the way television and radio are run now, executives and number crunchers are far more in control than they used to be because there are so many more channels and they're all fighting each other.
This wonderful world of competition restricts originality of output. Everyone's playing it safe because they want to make money."
Michael Palin, Chortle - 8/4/14
Stewart Lee
2014-04-08T19:49:54+01:00
Interview with Michael Palin - 8th April 2014 "And there are some brilliant people around, Stewart Lee, and people like that. Yet the way television and radio are run now, executives and number crunchers are far more in control than they used to be because there are so many more channels and they're all fighting each other. This wonderful world of competition restricts originality of output. Everyone's playing it safe because they want to make money." Michael Palin, Chortle - 8/4/14
Another year, another Edinburgh Fringe. I am on my 21st, and for me the Fringe used to be a fun place, where my own brand of pretentious, experimental stand-up enjoyed no end of effusive reviews, if little or no financial reward. But this year I really need Edinburgh to work out for me in a big way.
Christian protests against the theatre piece I co-wrote, Jerry Springer The Opera, meant I never saw any money from the nine years I spent co-developing it, and was personally responsible for defending myself when I was threatened with imprisonment, defenestration and deportation for blasphemy, running up costly legal bills. A severe illness brought on by stress, resulting in the implementation of a permanent catheter and the amputation of a toe, meant I had to cancel a run at London’s Soho theatre and was left with hefty debt to the promoters. The bank are threatening to take my flat, and because my car was driven over by a tractor full of Evangelicals in Aberdeen, I couldn’t travel to those stand-up gigs that will still take me, despite the threat of prosecution for doing so. It’s nice being thought of as a great artist, but this year I need to hit paydirt!
To this end I’ve booked myself into the biggest, and classiest, venue I’ve ever played – that massive, 300-seater, purple tent in the shape of an upside down cow in Bristo Sqaure – and tried to write the kind of set that will get me on prime time television. My last Edinburgh show was praised for using a deliberately contrived collision of charged sexual, scatological and religious imagery, offset against a self-counsciously mythic narrative, to explore notions of taste, and the way meaning is qualified by context. This year I’ve written a load of stuff about spacehoppers, found a lovely glove puppet of an orange giraffe, and will be ending with a song. Hopefully, I’ll be able to pick up all Peter Kay’s crowd without losing too many of my own. I just hope it works out! Come on Edinburgh. I NEED THIS!
Stewart Lee
2007-08-01T21:25:08+01:00
Another year, another Edinburgh Fringe. I am on my 21st, and for me the Fringe used to be a fun place, where my own brand of pretentious, experimental stand-up enjoyed no end of effusive reviews, if little or no financial reward. But this year I really need Edinburgh to work out for me in a big way. Christian protests against the theatre piece I co-wrote, Jerry Springer The Opera, meant I never saw any money from the nine years I spent co-developing it, and was personally responsible for defending myself when I was threatened with imprisonment, defenestration and deportation for blasphemy, running up costly legal bills. A severe illness brought on by stress, resulting in the implementation of a permanent catheter and the amputation of a toe, meant I had to cancel a run at London’s Soho theatre and was left with hefty debt to the promoters. The bank are threatening to take my flat, and because my car was driven over by a tractor full of Evangelicals in Aberdeen, I couldn’t travel to those stand-up gigs that will still take me, despite the threat of prosecution for doing so. It’s nice being thought of as a great artist, but this year I need to hit paydirt! To this end I’ve booked myself into the biggest, and classiest, venue I’ve ever played – that massive, 300-seater, purple tent in the shape of an upside down cow in Bristo Sqaure – and tried to write the kind of set that will get me on prime time television. My last Edinburgh show was praised for using a deliberately contrived collision of charged sexual, scatological and religious imagery, offset against a self-counsciously mythic narrative, to explore notions of taste, and the way meaning is qualified by context. This year I’ve written a load...
Last week, the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, opportunistically pretended to have bailed out a picturesque Cornish theatre that had, like most arts practitioners, received nothing from him. Also last week, Dowden was outlining his plans for privatising Channel 4 in a piece penned for the Times, hidden behind the paywall. Dowden’s favourite kind of policy announcement is the kind of policy announcement you have to pay for. So I snatched up the Times from my newsagent’s counter, the first hard copy I had read since it declared me “the world’s greatest living standup comedian” in 2018. Dowden’s words were reassuringly expensive, like luxury Stella Artois. My newsagent, Ranking Newsman the News Selector, remembered the old days when the younger me would buy every non-Guardian newspaper in his shop and methodically burn them in the council dog mess bin outside. He wryly remarked that a man gets more right wing as he gets older.
Dowden’s first two paragraphs were blandly plausible. Then he patronisingly cited I May Destroy You and It’s a Sin as examples of shows by public broadcasters that “hold their own”. But the subject material of these acclaimed dramas – race, gender, sexuality and rape – is exactly the kind of woke content commercially driven producers would historically not commission, content that Channel 4 was explicitly established to create. Indeed, 20 years ago, the anti-woke Daily Mail wrote that woke It’s a Sin creator Russell T Davies’s 1999 drama, Queer as Woke, proved woke television needed to be actively censored. Beck’s beer even withdrew its sponsorship of the woke series, as it has every right so to do.
The government’s most loyal anti-woke culture war warrior, Dowden spoke fondly to the Evening Standard last year of his school minibus trips “to see West End shows – fairly accessible ones, like We Will Rock You, Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens and Flashdance the Musical”. I noted that an all-singing, all-dancing sex-tacular dealing with the abstract notion of consent in contemporary urban relationships was conspicuously absent from the reopening West End and wondered if Andrew Lloyd Webber had a show in the pipeline about the millennial sexual anxieties of the black community, featuring James Corden and Dame Judi Dench as singing cats. I laughed to myself in the newsagent’s queue.
Ranking looked up from his credit card reader and asked me what I was sneering at. I told him my idea and that I would probably put it in my Observer column that weekend. Ranking shook his head and told me that woke humour was never funny and I would never be a successful comedian. “See The Falcon and the Winter Soldier?” he continued, unexpectedly. “That is massive and it is pro-Black Lives Matter and addresses racial injustice. And there’s a robot eagle in it. And Batroc the Leaper, a fellow from France who can leap madly about, my man. These things don’t have to be all suffering and gloom and ladies crying.” I stormed outside to read my Times while sitting on the dog mess bin, bringing the paper closer to its ultimate resting place in the faecal crematorium of content.
Now Dowden was saying that although Channel 4 was set up “to provide greater choice”, the multi-platform market means choice is no longer an issue. But we never get the choice to see his cabinet colleagues on Channel 4 News, in case someone asks them a hard question about some facts. And far from providing real choice, the multi-platform market just means that clusterfucks of algorithms drive consumers into narrow trenches of similar content. Few privatised companies are going to commission a necessary, but not necessarily popular, documentary-drama about FGM, for example, although perhaps Dowden could persuade Andrew Lloyd Webber to write a musical about it featuring James Corden and Dame Judi Dench as singing vaginas.
Meanwhile, David Attenborough, our living national saint, emerges in my Guardian to warn Dowden against deforesting an ecosystem of “editorially independent television channels that currently promote quality, diversity, innovation, respectful debate and trust”. Previously, Saint David has tried to save our physical world. Now he is trying to save the abstract world of ideas. He will go to his grave having failed on both fronts, politicians mouthing perfunctory platitudes while pissing into it. Through the newsagent’s doorway I could see Ranking laughing at me with another customer, the security guard who often moves me on from sitting on the steps by the Electric Ballroom. I slipped on my mask and stormed back into the shop to begin a muffled rant.
“The thing is, Ranking, Dowden’s thinking is so muddled it’s possible he really believes his proposals will safeguard Channel 4. It’s more likely that he’s trying to hasten the death of one of the few news outlets that can be relied upon to question his colleagues. Look! Dowden signs off this piece with a sentence dripping in deliberate, or maybe entirely unaware, irony. Dowden is the representative of a government whose online election communiques were proved to be 88% false and he has warned advertisers not to withdraw their support from the counterfactual, Ofcom-evading GB News channel. But here he writes that we are in ‘the era of fake news’ and need ‘trusted and respected media providers more than ever’. It’s a deliberate provocation, surely? I’m glad you think this crisis is funny, Ranking.”
“It’s not that,” said my aggrieved newsagent. “Maybe BBC and Channel 4 give you news for free. But not me. You went off without paying.”
Stewart Lee
2021-06-27T15:37:04+01:00
Last week, the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, opportunistically pretended to have bailed out a picturesque Cornish theatre that had, like most arts practitioners, received nothing from him. Also last week, Dowden was outlining his plans for privatising Channel 4 in a piece penned for the Times, hidden behind the paywall. Dowden’s favourite kind of policy announcement is the kind of policy announcement you have to pay for. So I snatched up the Times from my newsagent’s counter, the first hard copy I had read since it declared me “the world’s greatest living standup comedian” in 2018. Dowden’s words were reassuringly expensive, like luxury Stella Artois. My newsagent, Ranking Newsman the News Selector, remembered the old days when the younger me would buy every non-Guardian newspaper in his shop and methodically burn them in the council dog mess bin outside. He wryly remarked that a man gets more right wing as he gets older. Dowden’s first two paragraphs were blandly plausible. Then he patronisingly cited I May Destroy You and It’s a Sin as examples of shows by public broadcasters that “hold their own”. But the subject material of these acclaimed dramas – race, gender, sexuality and rape – is exactly the kind of woke content commercially driven producers would historically not commission, content that Channel 4 was explicitly established to create. Indeed, 20 years ago, the anti-woke Daily Mail wrote that woke It’s a Sin creator Russell T Davies’s 1999 drama, Queer as Woke, proved woke television needed to be actively censored. Beck’s beer even withdrew its sponsorship of the woke series, as it has every right so to do. The government’s most loyal anti-woke culture war warrior, Dowden spoke fondly to the Evening Standard last year of his school minibus trips “to see West End shows – fairly accessible...
What can a sexless middle aged married man, whose life now consists mainly of watching Scooby Doo cartoons with a four year old boy, possibly find to write comedy about?
Formerly stand-up's youthful iconoclast, Lee now gawps blankly at News 24 as Britain burns down around him, and blinks weirdly at the vast wayside retail outlets during endless journeys to and from increasingly indistinct provincial theatres.
Once he lived on the pleasure planet.
Now he is trapped in Carpet Remnant World.
And so are you.
The iTunes download includes an exclusive extra where I talk about the music used in the show.
Stewart Lee
2017-01-21T20:29:37+00:00
What can a sexless middle aged married man, whose life now consists mainly of watching Scooby Doo cartoons with a four year old boy, possibly find to write comedy about? Formerly stand-up's youthful iconoclast, Lee now gawps blankly at News 24 as Britain burns down around him, and blinks weirdly at the vast wayside retail outlets during endless journeys to and from increasingly indistinct provincial theatres. Once he lived on the pleasure planet. Now he is trapped in Carpet Remnant World. And so are you. The iTunes download includes an exclusive extra where I talk about the music used in the show.
Last week, in a much-needed and well-timed satire of snowflake hand-wringing over the Australian bush fires, the Sun’s politically incorrect columnist Jeremy Clarkson declared the continent unfit for human habitation and welcomed scorched whiteys back to the motherland, unaccompanied minors and all.
The inevitable complaints will have already been offset by Sun accountants against the traffic Clarkson drives through the paper’s website. In the short term, mass extinction can be monetised, in a carbon trading of manufactured offence versus advertising revenue. Those short-beaked echidnas did not die in vain and Rod Liddle will still receive his Sun Christmas hamper of suet and saveloy sausage.
Clarkson’s suggestion that Australians needed to “come home”, while unconsciously prefiguring the mass migrations the climate crisis will cause in this decade, could read as a slap in the face to indigenous Australians, for whom the continent has always been “home”, even before it was officially discovered for them by a helpful Dutch bloke in 1606.
Indeed, indigenous Australians had been mapping the stars, creating complex mythological cycles and learning to view massive grubs as treats quite happily for 120,000 years at least, before our ancestors brought them alcohol, forced abduction and a manmade climate crisis. But clangers like Clarkson’s are no longer a bar to popularity, acclaim or office.
Does Clarkson gaze at Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Vampires Haircut Wall-Spaffer Spunk-Burster Fuck-Business Fuck-The-Families Get-Off-My-Fucking-Laptop Girly-Swot Big-Girl’s-Blouse Chicken-Frit Hulk-Smash Noseringed-Crusties Death-Humbug Technology-Lessons Surrender-Bullshit French-Turds Dog-Whistle Get-Stuffed FactcheckUK@CCHQ 88%-lies Get-Brexit-Done Johnson and wonder why he isn’t prime minister?
Instead, Clarkson, a car man in idiot’s trousers, doggedly pursues relevance, as the harder alt-right opinion-hits available in the unregulated online shitosphere consistently outperform his quaint grandad-motorist fist-waving.
A Bugatti Chiron Super Sport, covered in actual swastikas and driven by an armed incel blogger who has a deal with Steve Bannon, has run Clarkson’s Lexus LFA, the one with a “Honk if you hate snowflakes” sticker in the back window, off the rightwing road. Clarkson struggles out of the crumpled passenger door, stamps his brogues in the ditch water and throws his driving cap down in a rage. Bah!
Both Clarkson’s and Turd’s careers have flourished by exploiting the notion that they are lone voices of sanity against a politically correct snowflake cabal intent on silencing normal blokes like them. Their comedy counterpart Ricky Gervais has managed to monetise this notion spectacularly, saying the things that he is apparently not allowed to say, on a variety of global media platforms, for millions of dollars, with the full co-operation and approval of the legal representatives of the institutions on which, and about which, he says the things he is not allowed to say, his functionally adequate standup act having been overpromoted worldwide off the back of his pitch-perfect contribution to the ground-breaking Office sitcom two decades ago.
Last week, a slew of right-leaning sources cited Gervais’s “just jokes” liberal-bating Golden Globes set as vindication of a populist backlash against political correctness, investing its harmless waspish jibes with a political dimension they didn’t really have. Meanwhile an obviously hoaxed article by the clearly fabricated “Jo Murch” in the perpetually gullible Independent created a humourless liberal straw man to vindicate the right’s adoption of Gervais, probably placed by one of Gervais’ libertarian collaborators.
In the Daily Mail, Sarah Vine ripped the lid off the rotting kitchen food waste bin of her mind to retch forth some choice owl pellets of praise for Gervais’s performative outrage. For Vine, Gervais was “a knight in shining armour, saviour of humanity, saviour of comedy, restorer of sanity and… undisputed Wokefinder General”, the latter comment surely the title of his next tour if he wants to attract only furious moronic c**ts. The Wokefinder General could be photographed in a puritan hat smoking a cigar and winking. I can see this working. Let’s do this!
Vine then went on to commend the “sharp edge of viciousness” the Wokefinder General directed to “limousine liberals and sulky schoolgirls”, the latter presumably the climate-crisis activist and eco-mystic Greta Thunberg, who I don’t remember being specifically targeted, but whom veteran opinion-column vultures of Vine’s vintage seem to have a special problem with, like the mean girls in American high-school movies who shit in the clever one’s shampoo bottle.
Of course, when I did a joke about Vine, in my critically acclaimed Content Provider show, she condemned its “vicious prejudice”. They don’t like it up ’em. It appears whether viciousness is justified or not depends on its direction of travel, ideally away from you and towards people you personally dislike. In the Wokefinder General’s case, it’s often downwards, towards transgender people, for example, and the disabled, or “mongs” as the Wokefinder General once said.
In the Wokefinder General’s mawkish sitcom After Life, the Wokefinder General’s character considers suicide because his wife dies of a terminal illness. But in real life, the Wokefinder General has been praised by Sarah Vine, which is worse than losing a loved one prematurely, and so the Wokefinder General should do the decent thing, not prevaricate like his cowardly sitcom character, and kill himself immediately.
The fact that someone like Vine praises his work should at least make the Wokefinder General wonder if he has any responsibility for the cultural ripples caused by those who appropriate his “just jokes”. Clarkson, Turds and the Wokefinder General are narcissistic populists, all clever enough to know better, who continue to court the attention of angry impotent people and take no personal responsibilty for the consequences of their words, other mortals merely collateral damage, rabbits churned up in the combine harvester blades of their ongoing ambitions.
I am aware that I am supposed to be a “so-called comedian” and that this column reads like a blunt polemic. So here is its central thrust represented in the form of a traditional working men’s club joke which, remember, is just a joke.
A Ricky Gervais Netflix standup special walks into a pub with a massive pile of stinking dogshit on its shoulder. The barman says: “Where did you get that massive pile of dogshit?” And the dogshit says: “Netflix. They’ve got bloody loads of them!”
Stewart Lee
2020-01-12T17:52:35+00:00
Last week, in a much-needed and well-timed satire of snowflake hand-wringing over the Australian bush fires, the Sun’s politically incorrect columnist Jeremy Clarkson declared the continent unfit for human habitation and welcomed scorched whiteys back to the motherland, unaccompanied minors and all. The inevitable complaints will have already been offset by Sun accountants against the traffic Clarkson drives through the paper’s website. In the short term, mass extinction can be monetised, in a carbon trading of manufactured offence versus advertising revenue. Those short-beaked echidnas did not die in vain and Rod Liddle will still receive his Sun Christmas hamper of suet and saveloy sausage. Clarkson’s suggestion that Australians needed to “come home”, while unconsciously prefiguring the mass migrations the climate crisis will cause in this decade, could read as a slap in the face to indigenous Australians, for whom the continent has always been “home”, even before it was officially discovered for them by a helpful Dutch bloke in 1606. Indeed, indigenous Australians had been mapping the stars, creating complex mythological cycles and learning to view massive grubs as treats quite happily for 120,000 years at least, before our ancestors brought them alcohol, forced abduction and a manmade climate crisis. But clangers like Clarkson’s are no longer a bar to popularity, acclaim or office. Does Clarkson gaze at Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Vampires Haircut Wall-Spaffer Spunk-Burster Fuck-Business Fuck-The-Families Get-Off-My-Fucking-Laptop Girly-Swot Big-Girl’s-Blouse Chicken-Frit Hulk-Smash Noseringed-Crusties Death-Humbug Technology-Lessons Surrender-Bullshit French-Turds Dog-Whistle Get-Stuffed FactcheckUK@CCHQ 88%-lies Get-Brexit-Done Johnson and wonder why he isn’t prime minister? Instead, Clarkson, a car man in idiot’s trousers, doggedly pursues relevance, as the harder alt-right opinion-hits available in the unregulated online shitosphere consistently outperform his quaint grandad-motorist fist-waving. A Bugatti Chiron Super Sport, covered in actual swastikas and driven by an armed incel blogger who has a...
In January 2014, when a critically endangered water lily was stolen from Kew Gardens, the former Conservative MP Louise Mensch tweeted on her Twitter, “Got to say what’s the point? Ordinary plant hardly worth saving.” The Conservatives can’t even see the point of flowers. It’s asking a lot to expect them to see the point of the BBC. It doesn’t even attract bees.
As a student in the late summer of 1988, I was backpacking in the far south-east of Turkey, blissfully unaware in those distant, pre-internet days that an undeclared civil war against the Kurds was now covertly under way. Not knowing I had anything to fear, I floated with vacant impunity through military manoeuvres and migrating masses, danced at an illegal Kurdish wedding, and happily ate a bag of nuts riddled with green worms. There is much to be said for stupidity. Ignorance was strength.
But on a minibus on a dark dirt road out of the frontier town of Diyarbakir, a Turkish man from Istanbul, with artificially curly dyed blond hair and a Samantha Fox T-shirt, loudly declared the Kurds dirty dogs, and deep-veined regional rivalries suddenly exploded into violence. I, wearing salmon pink Aladdin pants, intervened clumsily, as knives flashed in the aisle. “Let’s just cool it, OK guys? Peace, yeah?”
Then someone noted my accent. “British!”, said the men, putting away their weapons and laughing. “BBC! Del Boy fall through bar! Funniest scene ever. Licence fee very good value at twice price.”
It was a remarkable moment, and one made even more remarkable by the fact that the classic episode of Only Fools and Horses in which Del Boy falls through the bar was not even broadcast until four months later, yet the BBC pratfall was already accepted globally as a benchmark of quality entertainment in places miles from anything the Conservatives would recognise as civilised.
But the Conservatives’ assault on the BBC continues apace, doubtless to the delight of the shady media moguls with whom they regularly share clandestine Cotswold kitchen suppers, yachts, and borrowed police horses. And like all the Conservatives’ carefully chosen targets – foxes, lilies, and abstract ideas like beauty, truth, fairness and empathy wherever they are to be found – the BBC is either unable or unwilling to speak out in its own defence.
That incoherent howling in your garden at night? That’s foxes forcing their primitive vocal cords to articulate the argument against David Cameron’s sherry-swilling friends dismembering them for fun. Incoherent as it is, this nocturnal yowling remains more convincing than anything anyone at the battered BBC has felt able to say to justify the internationally respected, world-class broadcasting organisation’s own ongoing existence, at a cost to the individual annually equivalent to around 200 iTunes downloads.
The BBC’s five-year funding was supposed to be in place. But on Monday, in the sort of shady behind-closed-doors negotiations we were assured wouldn’t happen again after they did exactly the same thing last time, the government suddenly had the BBC 20% down on the deal, due to the apparently non-negotiable withdrawal of OAPs’ licence fee subsidy. Like Marie Antoinette, unaware of the difference between nourishment and subsistence, Cameron leans from the Versailles palace window and declares, “Let them watch Eamonn Holmes.”
On Tuesday, I stopped in at the BBC comedy offices, only recently a vast wing of White City’s iconic doughnut building, but today a small room above a 7-11 on Marylebone Road, from where all the unit’s globally lauded content is produced. A blabber-mouthed producer, high on petrol fumes and Pret a Manger breadless prawn sandwiches, explained the circumstances behind the killer budget decrease. Apparently, BBC director general Tony Hall had been forced at cattle-prod point into a sheep-shearing shed by the Conservative culture secretary, John Whittingdale, and quite simply bullied.
But Lord Hall’s willpower had proved strong, perhaps due to him being the only girl on the high school camping trip to the forest who wasn’t a downright filthy, pot-smoking slut; so Whittingdale had menaced him with some little gnashing mechanical dentures that jumped up and down by themselves on plastic webbed feet, biting at Hall’s penis, and then with clockwork, fez-wearing musical monkeys in waistcoats that smashed their cymbals hard on the baron’s testicles.
The consensus view in the corridors was that Hall’s emergence from Whittingdale’s corrugated-iron lair with a loss of 20% further BBC funding may look lamentable, but it was only the lord’s legendary negotiating skills – deployed calmly and collectedly, even as the culture secretary’s phlegm and mucus crystallised on his noble, opera-loving face, while mechanical monkeys pulverised his scrotum – that meant he had his genitals merely mutilated, rather than chopped off entirely and eaten by leading Conservatives.
Hall’s eleventh-hour rescuers, the eel-wrestling he-man Steve Backshall from Deadly 60 and the scuba-diving BBC Trust chair Rona Fairhead, have since let slip that the culture secretary already had fava beans pan-frying on the hob when they bashed his shed door in, and that had they arrived even seconds later things might have been much worse.
David Cameron’s embossed dinner invite, meanwhile, had clearly been dispatched hours earlier. Look closely at live parliamentary coverage from later last Monday and you’ll see an aide hand him an envelope, and upon opening it the prime minister licks his tiny lips and mouths to himself the simple word “Delicious!”
In an attempt to stop the story escalating, Lord Hall issued an official statement. Even though his penis had been mutilated by the culture secretary John Whittingdale’s arsenal of sickeningly modified clockwork toys, his testicles remained largely unscathed by the ferocious musical apes and dancing teeth, and he conceded that “far from being a cut, this is the right deal for my genitals in difficult economic circumstances”.
Last week I found myself watching a repeat of the May meeting of President Obama and the naturalist and former BBC programme director David Attenborough. Slowly and patiently, Attenborough made the case for nature. Its value was beyond the monetary. It was where our imaginations lived. And once it was gone it was gone. He could have been making the case for the BBC.
Stewart Lee’s A Room With A Stew is playing at the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh in August, and London from 12 September
Stewart Lee
2015-07-12T23:47:59+01:00
In January 2014, when a critically endangered water lily was stolen from Kew Gardens, the former Conservative MP Louise Mensch tweeted on her Twitter, “Got to say what’s the point? Ordinary plant hardly worth saving.” The Conservatives can’t even see the point of flowers. It’s asking a lot to expect them to see the point of the BBC. It doesn’t even attract bees. As a student in the late summer of 1988, I was backpacking in the far south-east of Turkey, blissfully unaware in those distant, pre-internet days that an undeclared civil war against the Kurds was now covertly under way. Not knowing I had anything to fear, I floated with vacant impunity through military manoeuvres and migrating masses, danced at an illegal Kurdish wedding, and happily ate a bag of nuts riddled with green worms. There is much to be said for stupidity. Ignorance was strength. But on a minibus on a dark dirt road out of the frontier town of Diyarbakir, a Turkish man from Istanbul, with artificially curly dyed blond hair and a Samantha Fox T-shirt, loudly declared the Kurds dirty dogs, and deep-veined regional rivalries suddenly exploded into violence. I, wearing salmon pink Aladdin pants, intervened clumsily, as knives flashed in the aisle. “Let’s just cool it, OK guys? Peace, yeah?” Then someone noted my accent. “British!”, said the men, putting away their weapons and laughing. “BBC! Del Boy fall through bar! Funniest scene ever. Licence fee very good value at twice price.” It was a remarkable moment, and one made even more remarkable by the fact that the classic episode of Only Fools and Horses in which Del Boy falls through the bar was not even broadcast until four months later, yet the BBC pratfall was already accepted globally as a benchmark of quality entertainment...
Like a bald man masturbating alone into an open pedal bin, Boris Johnson’s Brexit Britain disgusts itself. And yet, despite being observed on the gents’ toilet’s security camera that is the modern world stage, it continues its abasement unabashed. After the second world war, the German volk were described as experiencing kollektivschuld, a national shame. But the capacity for shame has been surgically removed from our leaders. And it pulses only weakly, like some underactive perineal muscle, in the electorate that endorses them. Could it be possible instead for the physical mass of a nation, rather than the citizens it comprises, to display the attributes of shame?
Brexiter culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, who didn’t know what the customs union was, has called publicly for the removal of public funding for a TV channel that isn’t publicly funded; Brexiter Dominic Raab, who had not appreciated the importance of Calais, went paddleboarding in Crete while Kabul rescue cats fought to get on British planes; and Brexiter Rishi Sunak, who has all his different breads in all his different houses, took lucrative advantage of tax loopholes that the EU he sought to exit had hoped to close.
(A judge told a couple fined £2,000 for having a baby shower, days before lockdown ended, they could pay in instalments if they didn’t spend the deferred money on “Sky Sports or anything”. Sunak, who is worth £200m or more, has been issued with a £50 fine for the lockdown breach he seemed to mislead parliament about. He, too, presumably, can pay in instalments as long as he doesn’t spend the deferred money on any $7.2m Santa Monica beachfront homes. Or anything.)
(Johnson has assigned Lord Geidt, the wallpaper investigator, to chair an inquiry into Sunak. This is the same as doing nothing. If I worked in a government office, I would have a bin with a picture of Geidt on it and I would use the phrase “Ask Lord Geidt to chair an inquiry into that” as a euphemism for “Just put that in the bin.” After a few weeks, a new member of staff would say: “You’re quite funny. Have you ever thought of trying to do comedy?” I would try to ask them out and it would go wrong.)
But consider Boris in-All-Frankness Pays-Fixed-Penalty Unreserved-Apology Anger-and-Frustration Birthday-Exemption Poledancing-Cyberlover Wallpaper-Freeloader Lebedev’s-Party Watermelon-Picaninny Tank-Topped-Bum-Boys Deprogramme-a-Transperson Fifty-Pound-Offender Dead-in-the-Water Vaccine-Rollout All-Purpose-Get-Out Johnson. Having bent human language to associate Kier Starmer with Jimmy Savile, it appears an actual living child molester, in the shape of the Brexiter Imran Ahmad Khan MP, was still a member of his own party. Meanwhile, Johnson has been belatedly fined for the first of the lockdown breaches he lied to parliament and the British public about. He should, of course, resign, but clings on, like a sheet of shatted toilet roll stuck to the sole of the national shoe.
Some say now is not the time for Johnson to go, because of the situation in Ukraine. But on Tuesday, parliament couldn’t meet to discuss chemical weapons in case someone asked the prime minister an awkward question about “gatherings”. People shouldn’t die in cellars as human shields for Johnson’s birthday cake. Disposing of Johnson as soon as possible might at least show Putin that the self-serving engine driving the Brexit that Russia so obviously hoped to secure is now no longer a key component of our corrupt political system. And having allowed so many oligarchs and their families to settle in west London and launder their stolen wealth with impunity means there’s still loads more to get rid of! Then Jacob Rees-Mogg can boast to the EU that we are leading the world in dealing with them!!
To summarise, at the start of last week the Conservative party included a child molester, a serial adulterer and compulsive liar, a handsome but morally bankrupt financial whiz-kid and a bully who sends immigrants to Rwanda. That’s less like a government and more like a special team of convicted criminals given their freedom in exchange for accepting an impossible mission behind enemy lines in a 1970s Italian-funded war film. Telly Savalas! Klaus Kinski!! Lewis Collins!!! Helga Liné!!!! Operation Dynamite Bastards!!!!!
Perhaps it is still too soon after the Brexit referendum for Brexit Britain to shudder fully at its folly. Brexit’s social, economic and political consequences are still conveniently blamed on Covid, Ukraine, Eddie Izzard and the wrong kind of langoustines. But last week I climbed the 832-metre (2,730ft) Cadair Berwyn, south of LLangollen, and as I looked east, it seemed that vast patches of rural England had somehow turned purple. Either that or some jam from a scone I ate in Bala had somehow got mashed into my blepharitis flakes.
The staining phenomenon was first observed, I learned from a civil servant friend, in Staffordshire, where a putrefying mountain of 500 tonnes of British beetroot lay rotting, the betanin leaching into the soil to turn the entire landscape the same shade as a Tory MP’s frothing racist face. Brexit has backlogged our beetroot. Publicly, delays are blamed on P&O, bad weather and Covid. You’ll have to scour lorry drivers’ blogs online to learn about the burden of new Brexit customs checks and the fact that the government’s Brexit IT system has been down for more than two weeks. Last week, the BBC literally edited the word “Brexit” out of the Scottish farmers’ union’s president’s explanation of the industry’s current woes.
No one wants to mention the B-word. But my contact warned that if the Brexit beetroot backlog isn’t dealt with soon, it appears the topsoil of the entire country may turn an embarrassing shade of beetroot puce, visible from space. It would be as if the whole of Brexit Britain had changed colour with shame.
Stewart Lee
2022-04-17T20:00:14+01:00
Like a bald man masturbating alone into an open pedal bin, Boris Johnson’s Brexit Britain disgusts itself. And yet, despite being observed on the gents’ toilet’s security camera that is the modern world stage, it continues its abasement unabashed. After the second world war, the German volk were described as experiencing kollektivschuld, a national shame. But the capacity for shame has been surgically removed from our leaders. And it pulses only weakly, like some underactive perineal muscle, in the electorate that endorses them. Could it be possible instead for the physical mass of a nation, rather than the citizens it comprises, to display the attributes of shame? Brexiter culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, who didn’t know what the customs union was, has called publicly for the removal of public funding for a TV channel that isn’t publicly funded; Brexiter Dominic Raab, who had not appreciated the importance of Calais, went paddleboarding in Crete while Kabul rescue cats fought to get on British planes; and Brexiter Rishi Sunak, who has all his different breads in all his different houses, took lucrative advantage of tax loopholes that the EU he sought to exit had hoped to close. (A judge told a couple fined £2,000 for having a baby shower, days before lockdown ended, they could pay in instalments if they didn’t spend the deferred money on “Sky Sports or anything”. Sunak, who is worth £200m or more, has been issued with a £50 fine for the lockdown breach he seemed to mislead parliament about. He, too, presumably, can pay in instalments as long as he doesn’t spend the deferred money on any $7.2m Santa Monica beachfront homes. Or anything.) (Johnson has assigned Lord Geidt, the wallpaper investigator, to chair an inquiry into Sunak. This is the same as doing nothing. If I worked...
You can recognise a Rowland S Howard guitar lick in seconds. A quavering, tremulous thing, half anaemic Duane Eddy, half spaghetti-western soundtrack, permanently hovering on the brink of collapse. But for the past decade, Howard has been missing in action, while his one time bandmate Nick Cave is recognised as one of the world's finest songwriters.
Back in mid-1970s Melbourne it was Howard who co-piloted Cave's early journeys from thrash punk into more epic territory. But more than 20 years after he first helped Cave discover his, Howard too has finally found his own voice.
"I went into the studio on the understanding that it was my record and I had power of veto," he says of his first solo album, Teenage Snuff Film (out now on Cooking Vinyl records). "There was none of the acrimony you get with a band, of people refusing to surrender what they had deemed to be their 'magnificent contributions', of different personalities that inevitably run afoul of each other. This time it was no problem."
Nowadays, Howard is eloquent and witty, grown old on just the wrong side of (ex-) junkie chic, impossibly long of finger and looking like the St Kilda sun might melt him. But Howard was an elfin-faced 17-year-old when, in 1977, he joined Cave in the Boys Next Door, bringing with him a cache of more sophisticated songs that clearly raised the singer's game. In 1981, reincarnated as the Birthday Party, they settled in London, where their incendiary live shows became as talked about as their feral, drug-wracked lifestyle. But Howard's most unpleasant memory of London is of Kilburn High Road. "I remember for months every traffic light was sitting in a hole in the road with wires trailing out. It was like the Third World." Nevertheless, after the band collapsed, Howard stayed, collaborating with obscure cult figures on albums only distinguished by glimpses of his distinctive guitar sound.
He eventually joined the hardy Australian perennials Crime and the City Solution, but disagreements with the gravel-voiced vocalist Simon Bonney forced his departure. "I had these absurd arguments with Simon. He said my guitar and his voice both occupied the same 'sonic frequency' and therefore I had to be turned down," recalls Howard with an almost comic disbelief. When he finally got to front his own band, These Immortal Souls, things fell apart as usual. "There was a string of extremely unfortunate incidents," he says, darkly. "We went into a studio for weeks and came out with nothing. The record company was reluctant to let us back in. It kind of killed the momentum."
In 1994 Howard took a holiday back home: "Something clicked and I thought, 'What am I doing in London?' I was utterly miserable there, and there was nothing to write about because nothing had happened to me for so long. Also, the musical scene in Melbourne appeared to be very healthy, where previously there had just been an enormous proliferation of drugs." In a series of acoustic sets in local clubs, Teenage Snuff Film began to take shape.
Unlike Cave's more recent songs, which extend the usual alternative-rock concerns into metaphors about man's relationship with God or the creative imagination, Howard is starting from scratch once more at the simple sex, drugs and death level, but gloriously so on tracks such as the chillingly sparse Breakdown, or the shimmering, meditative Autoluminescent. When we start discussing the album's take on the 1960s standard She Cried, something is revealed of the songwriter Howard hopes he is.
"I heard it on a Shangri-Las compilation," he recalls. "They had some amazing writers. Shadow Morton wrote Leader of the Pack while smoking a cigarette in the shower, on a piece of clear plastic using three coloured pens to mark out the vocal lines. I like those old songs that are corny but have an emotional core. I admire people like Shadow Morton or Lee Hazelwood , who subvert the genre from within. I fondly like to imagine that Lee Hazelwood can't tell the difference between a work of genius like Some Velvet Morning and something appalling."
The Howard as would-be Shadow Morton/Lee Hazelwood theory would go some way to explaining the air of class that surrounds Teenage Snuff Film. And it shows Howard has grown up. Eighteen years ago, he and the American performance artist Lydia Lunch released the second worst recording of Some Velvet Morning ever, but in his approach to a cover version on his current album, the new, reformed Howard shows an astonishing maturity. His reading of Billy Idol's White Wedding reveals a hidden dignity beneath the song's trashy veneer.
If Howard is ready to take a Billy Idol song seriously, then he must be ready to respect his own talent. "It's interesting to find something great in a song that everyone despises," he says. "I mean, do we really need another version of Knockin' on Heaven's Door apart from Bob Dylan's? But to do a song by Billy Idol, a man regarded as being without any redeeming features, a kind of cartoon character, but not a cartoon character that anyone likes... Excuse me, can you ring me back later? My bathroom has just flooded."
A faulty washing machine denies us a glib conclusion. Still, here goes. The Birthday Party's first posthumous live album is called It's Still Living, a phrase that could equally be applied to the tenacious Howard himself. Even if he's having trouble with his domestic appliances.
Stewart Lee
2000-07-09T17:40:47+01:00
You can recognise a Rowland S Howard guitar lick in seconds. A quavering, tremulous thing, half anaemic Duane Eddy, half spaghetti-western soundtrack, permanently hovering on the brink of collapse. But for the past decade, Howard has been missing in action, while his one time bandmate Nick Cave is recognised as one of the world's finest songwriters. Back in mid-1970s Melbourne it was Howard who co-piloted Cave's early journeys from thrash punk into more epic territory. But more than 20 years after he first helped Cave discover his, Howard too has finally found his own voice. "I went into the studio on the understanding that it was my record and I had power of veto," he says of his first solo album, Teenage Snuff Film (out now on Cooking Vinyl records). "There was none of the acrimony you get with a band, of people refusing to surrender what they had deemed to be their 'magnificent contributions', of different personalities that inevitably run afoul of each other. This time it was no problem." Nowadays, Howard is eloquent and witty, grown old on just the wrong side of (ex-) junkie chic, impossibly long of finger and looking like the St Kilda sun might melt him. But Howard was an elfin-faced 17-year-old when, in 1977, he joined Cave in the Boys Next Door, bringing with him a cache of more sophisticated songs that clearly raised the singer's game. In 1981, reincarnated as the Birthday Party, they settled in London, where their incendiary live shows became as talked about as their feral, drug-wracked lifestyle. But Howard's most unpleasant memory of London is of Kilburn High Road. "I remember for months every traffic light was sitting in a hole in the road with wires trailing out. It was like the Third World." Nevertheless, after the band...
It's almost impossible to review the Fist Of Fun DVD properly - after all, to watch all the shows, the extras and the commentaries would take 14 and a half hours. That might seem fine for a series of The Wire, but could be considered overkill for a six-part mid-Nineties BBC Two comedy show.
Clearly distributors Go Faster Stripe believe that the audience for this long-awaited title is largely comedy obsessives who absolutely must have every scrap of footage from Stewart Lee and Richard Herring's influential series. Because that's exactly what you get in this four-DVD set - all the surviving studio rushes, so you too, can relive the stop-start tedium of being a real TV recording in the comfort of your own home. Although it does mean a few never-before-seen sketches, too.
Such completism - which also extends to a 60-minute live show previously released on VHS - also allows this set to come with a £25 price tag, far more than could likely be justified from the episodes alone. But then there's an investment to be made back, since this release has only been possible as Lee, Herring and the independent distributors forked out a reported £15,000 to buy the rights from the BBC, which never believed a DVD release would be commercially viable.
They might have underestimated the esteem in which the show is remembered by comedy fans of a certain age, who will certainly clamour for the show. The fear. of course, is that it could never live up to such fond memories.
Yet it does bear up remarkably well. The studio segments might be a bit rough around the edges, but that only adds to its studenty charm, and some of the sketches are a little slow to modern eyes, but the humour holds out.
The dynamic between the two is particularly effective: Herring impish and enthusiastic, Lee cynical and dry. One of the many running jokes revolves around Herring's backwards Somerset upbringing, but even when you've heard countless gags about inbred rural folk, there's an inventive spark to the teasing.
Recurring characters include Peter Baynham - now a big-shot Hollywood writer - as a disgusting, slovenly and pitifully lonely man living in Balham squalor, and Kevin Eldon as the weak lemon drink-quaffing king of hobbies, Simon Quinlank. While these are still remembered, it's surprising quite how many comedy stars pop up in the series: Rebecca Front, Alistair McGowan, Ronni Ancona, Ricky Grover, Al Murray and John Thompson can all be spotted.
In some of their commentary, Lee and Herring consider the fact that The Fast Show started about the same time as them, redefining sketch shows as efficient vehicles for catchphrases, causing them to ponder if they got the balance right. It seems so - they cultivate enough familiarity to establish the show's ferocious cult status, but also mix in one-off sketches and ideas so as not to be confined to formula. And in its first release on DVD, viewers can actually read some of the written gags which pop up far too quickly to be read properly at 25 frames a second.
In the past 17 years, both comics have evolved as performers, though the personas are already starting to set. One striking example is where Lee does a gag about Christian protesters who complain 'you wouldn't say that about the Muslims...' - a cry that has only becoming increasingly loud over the years. In Fist Of Fun he makes what now seems quite a cheap joke about being scared of Islamic fundamentalists - whereas in his current live show the same starting point leads to a much more thoughtful, and circuitous, discussion of the subject.
Fist Of Fun is certainly historically significant - if you can say such a thing about a comedy show which only ever captured the imagination of a small but dedicated part of the population. While the amount of material included of this release bears that out, the six episodes are more than an exercise in nostalgia, but a genuinely funny three hours of telly.
Stewart Lee
2011-12-15T01:11:31+00:00
It's almost impossible to review the Fist Of Fun DVD properly - after all, to watch all the shows, the extras and the commentaries would take 14 and a half hours. That might seem fine for a series of The Wire, but could be considered overkill for a six-part mid-Nineties BBC Two comedy show. Clearly distributors Go Faster Stripe believe that the audience for this long-awaited title is largely comedy obsessives who absolutely must have every scrap of footage from Stewart Lee and Richard Herring's influential series. Because that's exactly what you get in this four-DVD set - all the surviving studio rushes, so you too, can relive the stop-start tedium of being a real TV recording in the comfort of your own home. Although it does mean a few never-before-seen sketches, too. Such completism - which also extends to a 60-minute live show previously released on VHS - also allows this set to come with a £25 price tag, far more than could likely be justified from the episodes alone. But then there's an investment to be made back, since this release has only been possible as Lee, Herring and the independent distributors forked out a reported £15,000 to buy the rights from the BBC, which never believed a DVD release would be commercially viable. They might have underestimated the esteem in which the show is remembered by comedy fans of a certain age, who will certainly clamour for the show. The fear. of course, is that it could never live up to such fond memories. Yet it does bear up remarkably well. The studio segments might be a bit rough around the edges, but that only adds to its studenty charm, and some of the sketches are a little slow to modern eyes, but the humour holds out....
Sleeve notes for Belbury Poly's 5th album suggest the soundtrack to a travelling salesman's adventures with an acid-spiked ploughman's lunch, somewhere in early seventies rural England.
Belbury Poly play like dispirited sixties psychedelic survivors, reluctantly meeting the demands of television or advertising commissions in the subsequent decade, redeeming their banal compositions with snatches of haunting folk melodies, crunchy hairy funk basslines and experimental electronics.
The overall effect is disorientating and brilliant, the past recreated in a nostalgic fug, stabs of sincerity slashing through superficial veils of irony. The Belbury Tales are both satirical social critiques, and lost world laments.
(11/3/12)
Stewart Lee
2012-03-12T01:17:07+00:00
Sleeve notes for Belbury Poly's 5th album suggest the soundtrack to a travelling salesman's adventures with an acid-spiked ploughman's lunch, somewhere in early seventies rural England. Belbury Poly play like dispirited sixties psychedelic survivors, reluctantly meeting the demands of television or advertising commissions in the subsequent decade, redeeming their banal compositions with snatches of haunting folk melodies, crunchy hairy funk basslines and experimental electronics. The overall effect is disorientating and brilliant, the past recreated in a nostalgic fug, stabs of sincerity slashing through superficial veils of irony. The Belbury Tales are both satirical social critiques, and lost world laments. (11/3/12)
Stewart Lee was at the Curve to present Vegetable Stew; material intended for his forthcoming Comedy Vehicle TV show.
In his book, How I Escaped My Certain Fate, Lee admitted he enjoys losing an audience and attempting to win it back, which made it difficult to tell if Sunday's performance was deliberately evasive.
Lee's understanding of the art of stand-up was evident all through, with numerous asides for meta-observations about the nature of the routine.
On occasion, he would stop the flow to comment on some seemingly unplanned thing he'd said or done.
It then became apparent how carefully planned Lee's comedy was.
He relied on the audience being sufficiently familiar with stand-up to understand when its conventions were being subverted, and for the most part, they were with him.
The middle of the show elicited less audience approval, concerning satirical observations about Adrian Chiles and Gary Lineker.
By the time he was making accusations that comedian Russell Howard was responsible for deaths in the developing world, the crowd weren't so sure the targets deserved it.
He pulled everyone back for a confessional tale about his involvement with the elitist Bullingdon Club at Oxford University, before defiantly derailing it at the close.
Lee deserved his plaudits for daring to challenge his audience and they in turn recognised a masterclass when they got it.
Stewart Lee
2010-10-19T14:32:58+01:00
Stewart Lee was at the Curve to present Vegetable Stew; material intended for his forthcoming Comedy Vehicle TV show. In his book, How I Escaped My Certain Fate, Lee admitted he enjoys losing an audience and attempting to win it back, which made it difficult to tell if Sunday's performance was deliberately evasive. Lee's understanding of the art of stand-up was evident all through, with numerous asides for meta-observations about the nature of the routine. On occasion, he would stop the flow to comment on some seemingly unplanned thing he'd said or done. It then became apparent how carefully planned Lee's comedy was. He relied on the audience being sufficiently familiar with stand-up to understand when its conventions were being subverted, and for the most part, they were with him. The middle of the show elicited less audience approval, concerning satirical observations about Adrian Chiles and Gary Lineker. By the time he was making accusations that comedian Russell Howard was responsible for deaths in the developing world, the crowd weren't so sure the targets deserved it. He pulled everyone back for a confessional tale about his involvement with the elitist Bullingdon Club at Oxford University, before defiantly derailing it at the close. Lee deserved his plaudits for daring to challenge his audience and they in turn recognised a masterclass when they got it.
BEFORE the gig starts, a man in the row behind muses on the fact that you have to produce a whole new stand-up set when such a large amount of your material has gone into six half-hour episodes of the BBC show Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle.
Though it was Lee's first foray into TV for a number of years, it seems he's never had much trouble coming up with new material. Not just new material, but quality stuff - full of incisive comment and beautifully realised every time.
Stepping out to introduce his support act, Lee takes the opportunity to make some self-deprecating comments about his first performance of the night (an extra show slotted in at 5pm when the 8pm one sold out), typically playing down just how good the second of the night was to be.
Then there were twenty minutes or so of the marvellously offbeat Canadian Tony Law, with such musings as why wolves and not squirrels tend to nurture feral human young in the wild.
After the kind of rock 'n' roll entrance of the type that "belongs to a much younger comedian", Lee's latest show begins with the delightfully ridiculous tale of a spat he had in his favourite high street coffee chain.
Relating the incident leads to a pathos-imbued breakdown, when a funny noise gets a bigger laugh than a carefully constructed pirate joke (complete with a call back).
The 38-year-old comedian Frankie Boyle has added to Lee's ennui with his devil-may-care comments about over-40 comics having lost their anger. The 41-year-old Lee finds himself mildly disappointed by this.
As ever with Lee, there's plenty of intelligent self-reflexive humour on the nature of stand-up. There's a lovely deconstruction of the young angry comics on Mock The Week and a deliberately prolonged observational piece of the type oft used by comedians ('I know I look like…').
Already having attracted some misguided attention from aspects of the press with his Richard Hammond rant, it transpires that his thoughts on 'the Hamster' play around both with 'ironic', un-PC humour; and notions of 'truth' in what people say in stand-up.
Lee's performance is wonderfully nuanced too, largely deadpanning his way through; and occasionally letting a playful smirk slip then tripping off into the crowd in an (staged of course) unhinged moment.
He rounds off with a magnificent rant about plagiarism (a persistent problem that is notoriously difficult to prove in the stand-up community and something that Lee famously speaks out against) - this time suggesting that a ludicrously unlikely saying his granny used to spout had been poached by a TV advertising campaign.
Sheer, inspired brilliance.
Stewart Lee
2009-11-30T16:21:24+00:00
BEFORE the gig starts, a man in the row behind muses on the fact that you have to produce a whole new stand-up set when such a large amount of your material has gone into six half-hour episodes of the BBC show Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle. Though it was Lee's first foray into TV for a number of years, it seems he's never had much trouble coming up with new material. Not just new material, but quality stuff - full of incisive comment and beautifully realised every time. Stepping out to introduce his support act, Lee takes the opportunity to make some self-deprecating comments about his first performance of the night (an extra show slotted in at 5pm when the 8pm one sold out), typically playing down just how good the second of the night was to be. Then there were twenty minutes or so of the marvellously offbeat Canadian Tony Law, with such musings as why wolves and not squirrels tend to nurture feral human young in the wild. After the kind of rock 'n' roll entrance of the type that "belongs to a much younger comedian", Lee's latest show begins with the delightfully ridiculous tale of a spat he had in his favourite high street coffee chain. Relating the incident leads to a pathos-imbued breakdown, when a funny noise gets a bigger laugh than a carefully constructed pirate joke (complete with a call back). The 38-year-old comedian Frankie Boyle has added to Lee's ennui with his devil-may-care comments about over-40 comics having lost their anger. The 41-year-old Lee finds himself mildly disappointed by this. As ever with Lee, there's plenty of intelligent self-reflexive humour on the nature of stand-up. There's a lovely deconstruction of the young angry comics on Mock The Week and a deliberately prolonged observational piece...
A quarter of a century ago, Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang sold the world that pervasive slowcore guitar sound with Galaxie 500, then split to work as a duo with subtler methods.
Determinedly pedalling a diaphanous acid-folk-pop for two decades now, bowing their heads patiently as it billows in and out of fashion, the pair's ninth album is amongst their best.
The quicksilver guitar of Michio Kurihara, of the Japanese psychedelic collective Ghost, drips magic dust over lightly jazzy drums, arrestingly inexact harmonies, and cautious, languid melodies, that uncoil like cats in the sun.
Stewart Lee
2011-01-05T11:30:08+00:00
A quarter of a century ago, Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang sold the world that pervasive slowcore guitar sound with Galaxie 500, then split to work as a duo with subtler methods. Determinedly pedalling a diaphanous acid-folk-pop for two decades now, bowing their heads patiently as it billows in and out of fashion, the pair's ninth album is amongst their best. The quicksilver guitar of Michio Kurihara, of the Japanese psychedelic collective Ghost, drips magic dust over lightly jazzy drums, arrestingly inexact harmonies, and cautious, languid melodies, that uncoil like cats in the sun.
Gnod, sometime collaborators with White Hills (above), underpin echoing guitar and bad dream vocal snippets with metronomic Krautrock rhythms. Ingnodwetrust's two offensively single-minded epics are available on vinyl or as downloads only, the band looking from their Salford lair towards the future and the past, oblivious to the decaying present.
The twenty minute, monochromatic splurge of Tony's First Communion is belatedly brightened by the sunlit shafts of a two chord keyboard part. Vatican's compellingly turgid fourteen minutes sound like a clinically depressed Can. Halfway through someone screams, and a wonky Italian progressive rock cathedral organ clouds the closing section oppressively.
Impressively unapologetic.
Stewart Lee
2011-06-05T19:51:43+01:00
Gnod, sometime collaborators with White Hills (above), underpin echoing guitar and bad dream vocal snippets with metronomic Krautrock rhythms. Ingnodwetrust's two offensively single-minded epics are available on vinyl or as downloads only, the band looking from their Salford lair towards the future and the past, oblivious to the decaying present. The twenty minute, monochromatic splurge of Tony's First Communion is belatedly brightened by the sunlit shafts of a two chord keyboard part. Vatican's compellingly turgid fourteen minutes sound like a clinically depressed Can. Halfway through someone screams, and a wonky Italian progressive rock cathedral organ clouds the closing section oppressively. Impressively unapologetic.
A tiny teenage girl Hackney Hipster version of Stewart Lee stands outside the Dalston Rio cinema to declare...
“Our labour of love Nightingales rockumentary King Rocker knocks most rockumentaries into a cocked hat.
“I loved every minute” - Ben Dowell, The Times
**** Financial Times
**** Chortle
“One of the best music documentaries of all time” - The Quietus
“The new gold standard for rockumentaries” - The Scotsman
If you live in London come to the KING ROCKER XMAS FUN NIGHT, a screening at Dalston Rio Cinema on Dec 16th at 8.45, followed by q&a w me and dir Michael Cumming (Brass Eye, Toast)
Following King Rocker‘s huge success earlier this year, spotlighting The Nightingales as one of the best band’s in Britain, comes the soundtrack to one of 2021’s break-out films. ‘King Rocker (Soundtrack)’ limited edition red vinyl includes sleeve notes from Stewart Lee, A3 theatrical poster and a lovingly replicated curry menu from Abdul's in Birmingham.
THE STAND
I am doing some warm up dates for the rebooted SNOWFLAKE/TORNADO tour at THE STAND venues in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Newcastle from 12th-14th December.
Seating re-jigs, covid rule shifts, and standing room carve-ups mean there are a few new tickets suddenly available which will go on sale DEC 1ST at 12 noon.
Edinburgh | Sun 12 Dec | Doors 9.30pm show 10.30pm| 60 mins | Tickets here
Glasgow | Mon 13 Dec | Doors 9pm show 10pm| 60 mins | Tickets here
Newcastle | Tues 14 Dec | Doors 6pm show 7pm| 60 mins | Tickets here
Newcastle | Tues 14 Dec | Doors 9pm show 10pm| 60 mins | Tickets here
THE SEEN
An extremely crisp recording, from 2018 at Café Oto, of THE SEEN’s tribute to the free jazz drummer John Stevens, with me reading the text, is newly available here as a digi-download. I like to burn them onto discs and make toy cd’s.
Stew says; "The gifting season is soon upon us. But what to buy for the socially challenged, prematurely middle-aged, pseudo-intellectual man, or woman, in your life?
An enchanting Stewart Lee 'Snowflake Tornado' Beanie, fashioned from the highest quality material by non-slaves, makes for the perfect woke Winterval gift!"
The hit All The Cheeses and Content Provider t-shirts are also all printed and ready to ship. Tees are all unisex and are made by Bella-Canvas. High quality and 100% eco friendly production and no Sweatshops. Shirts come in all sizes and ship worldwide. Get yours before they sell out.
Producer Michael Umney just won a BEST ARTS PRODUCER radio award for STEWART LEE - UNRELIABLE NARRATOR. Listen again here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000wynk
All five of the Post-Nearly Press Conversation Series of books compiled together for the first time and made available in colour paperback format, with original artwork and a brand new cover design by Craig Turnbull.
The avant-folk dronemädchens Laura Cannell and Kate Ellis also bring the much delayed live incarnation of their These Feral Lands recording project to London’s King’s Place on Feb 18th 2022. I wrote words for four of the tracks and will attempt to do something with them on the night. I thought about where I was conceived, and where I was born, plugged the details I know into the folklore of both regions, and tried not to get in the way of Laura and Kate’s mediaeval trance music steamroller.
All the SNOWFLAKE TORNADO tour dates outstanding from 2020 will be shifted into 2022, starting in Jan, and below are the ones we know about so far. Local venues will contact you if they haven’t already. All the warm-up club dates you may have bought tickets for have been slotted in to Nov and Dec, covid willing, and venues will contact ticket holders. Please do not hassle venues about all this. They will contact you. We will get there! It’s all bacon!
January 2022
Tuesday 4th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Wednesday 5th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Thursday 6th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Friday 7th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Saturday 8th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Monday 10th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Tuesday 11th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Wednesday 12th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Thursday 13th January 2022 - Leicester Square Theatre, London - TICKETS
Saturday 15th January 2022 - Theatre Royal, Norwich - TICKETS
Monday 17th January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Tuesday 18th January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Wednesday 19th January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Thursday 20th January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Friday 21st January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Saturday 22nd January 2022 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Tuesday 25th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Wednesday 26th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Thursday 27th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Friday 28th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Saturday 29th January 2022 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Sunday 30th January 2022 - Theatre Royal, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
February 2022
Wednesday 2nd February 2022 - St. David's Hall, Cardiff - TICKETS
Thursday 3rd February 2022 - Rose Theatre, Kingston - TICKETS
Friday 4th February 2022 - Westlands Entertainment Venue, Yeovil - TICKETS
Saturday 5th February 2022 - Westlands Entertainment Venue, Yeovil - TICKETS
Tuesday 8th February 2022 - Town Hall, Cheltenham - TICKETS
Wednesday 9th February 2022 - Town Hall, Cheltenham - TICKETS
Thursday 10th February 2022 - De Montfort Hall, Leicester - TICKETS
Friday 11th February 2022 - Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry - TICKETS
Saturday 12th February 2022 - Festival Theatre, Malvern - TICKETS
Sunday 13th February 2022 - Hippodrome, Birmingham - TICKETS
Friday 25th February 2022 - The Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Saturday 26th February 2022 - The Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Sunday 27th February 2022 - The Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Monday 28th February 2022 - The Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury - TICKETS
March 2022
Wednesday 2nd March 2022 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS
Thursday 3rd March 2022 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS
Friday 4th March 2022 - Lighthouse, Poole - TICKETS
Saturday 5th March 2022 - Playhouse, Salisbury - TICKETS
Sunday 6th March 2022 - De La Warr Pavillion, Bexhill On Sea - TICKETS
Wednesday 9th March 2022 - Theatre Royal, Wakefield - TICKETS
Thursday 10th March 2022 - Opera House, Buxton - TICKETS
Friday 11th March 2022 - The Courtyard, Hereford - TICKETS
Saturday 12th March 2022 - Grand Theatre, Swansea - TICKETS
Monday 14th March 2022 - King's Theatre, Glasgow - TICKETS
Tuesday 15th March 2022 - King's Theatre, Glasgow - TICKETS
Wednesday 16th March 2022 - The Sands Centre, Carlisle - TICKETS
Thursday 17th March 2022 - Royal Hall, Harrogate - TICKETS
Tuesday 22nd March 2022 - Churchill Theatre, Bromley - TICKETS
Wednesday 23rd March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Thursday 24th March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Friday 25th March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Saturday 26th March 2022 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Sunday 27th March 2022 - Royal & Derngate, Northampton - TICKETS
Tuesday 29th March 2022 - City Hall, Sheffield - TICKETS
Wednesday 30th March 2022 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Thursday 31st March 2022 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
April 2022
Friday 1st April 2022 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Saturday 2nd April 2022 - Storyhouse, Chester - TICKETS
Tuesday 19th April 2022 - Wyvern Theatre, Swindon - TICKETS
Thursday 21st April 2022 - The Hawth, Crawley - TICKETS
Friday 22nd April 2022 - The Hexagon, Reading - TICKETS
Sunday 24th April 2022 - Mayflower Theatre, Southampton - TICKETS
Tuesday 26th April 2022 - Cliffs Pavilion, Southend On Sea - TICKETS
Wednesday 27th April 2022 - The Central Theatre, Chatham - TICKETS
Thursday 28th April 2022 - Derby Theatre, Derby - TICKETS
Friday 29th April 2022 - Lyceum Theatre, Crewe - TICKETS
Saturday 30th April 2022 - Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield - TICKETS
May 2022
Tuesday 3rd May 2022 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
Wednesday 4th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
Thursday 5th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
Friday 6th May 2022 - St. George's Hall, Bradford - TICKETS
Saturday 7th May 2022 - Gala Theatre, Durham - TICKETS
Sunday 8th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Tuesday 10th May 2022 - Palace Theatre, Watford - TICKETS
Wednesday 11th May 2022 - Palace Theatre, Watford - TICKETS
Thursday 12th May 2022 - Assembly Hall Theatre, Tunbridge Wells
Friday 13th May 2022 - The Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS
Saturday 14th May 2022 - The Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS
Sunday 15th May 2022 - Theatre Royal, Plymouth - TICKETS
Tuesday 17th May 2022 - Corn Exchange, Cambridge - TICKETS
Wednesday 18th May 2022 - Corn Exchange, Cambridge - TICKETS
Thursday 19th May 2022 - The Baths Hall, Scunthorpe - TICKETS
Saturday 21st May 2022 - New Theatre, Peterborough - TICKETS
Sunday 22nd May 2022 - The Grand, Wolverhampton - TICKETS
Monday 23rd May 2022 - Hippodrome, Bristol - TICKETS
Tuesday 24th May 2022 - Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury - TICKETS
Wednesday 25th May 2022 - The Forum, Bath - TICKETS
Friday 27th May 2022 - Wycombe Swan, High Wycombe - TICKETS
Saturday 28th May 2022 - Winding Wheel, Chesterfield - TICKETS
June 2022
Tuesday 7th June 2022 - Mercury Theatre, Colchester
Wednesday 8th June 2022 - Mercury Theatre, Colchester
Sunday 12th June 2022 - Queen's Theatre, Barnstaple
Friday 17th June 2022 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Saturday 18th June 2022 - Hippodrome, Darlington - TICKETS
Sunday 19th June 2022 - Festival Theatre, Edinburgh - TICKETS
Monday 20th June 2022 - Perth Theatre, Perth - TICKETS
Tuesday 21st June 2022 - Perth Theatre, Perth - TICKETS
Wednesday 22nd June 2022 - Tivoli Theatre, Aberdeen - TICKETS
Thursday 23rd June 2022 - Tivoli Theatre, Aberdeen - TICKETS
Sunday 26th June 2022 - Theatre Royal, Plymouth - TICKETS
Wednesday 29th June 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Thursday 30th June 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
July 2022
Friday 1st July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Saturday 2nd July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 3rd July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 3rd July 2022 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
THE VIRUS
I would be delighted if, if you are coming to see me, you could do your best to get vaccinated, irrespective of what the gvt or the venue insist upon. I doubt that my snowflake audience will contain many people who deny the existence of Covid or believe the vaccine is George Soros or Bill Gates trying to put tiny Transformer robots into your blood. But I and my team will be interacting with over 150 000 people on the next leg of the tour, and I would like to minimise our risk, and the risk to my audience, so meet me half way. I will be selling and signing stuff as usual, I hope, but I won’t be shaking hands to thank you all this time around, and will probably be positioned behind some kind of screen like William Shatner in Airplane 2. Sad.
THE MEDIA GARAGE
My trusted sales partner Media Garage has compacted all my available stand-up dvds into one convenient on-line marketplace, with most available to d/load too. Remember, if you buy here we will pay tax on these purchases, and help with British schools and hospitals, whereas many major physical media suppliers and streaming services have found ways to avoid declaring their profits, as have NETFLIX, the transphobic bastards. AMERICANS - stop moaning about not being able to see me and visit MEDIA GARAGE! https://www.mediagarageproductions.com/store/
THE PODCASTS
To try and promote King Rocker I have been pimping myself about like Priss Fotheringham on every Podcast going, alone or with dir M Cumming (Brass Eye, Toast), saying the same things in the same room in the same clothes to all different people, all of whom were very kind. I don’t know what a podcast is really but I think you go on the internet and click on something. As my grandfather once said, in 1983, “Do you know, in America, there are shops that only sell Kentucky Fried Chicken?” I enjoyed being on the internet with all these people enormously, but will put some blue water between me and the next wedge. David Baddiel told me it was good to be on the internet, though. These are available...
NEW! WHAT’S UPSET YOU NOW? W SEAN WALSH AND PAUL MCCAFFREY.
Dogs, cats, and comediennes of the ‘40s.
NEW! MARK ELLEN & DAVID HEPWORTH’s WORD PODCAST
This was really good fun but I am becoming same-anecdote man
PAUL CHOWDHRY’S PUDCAST
I chow down with the Chowdster!
8) I Arrogantly Recommend
LIVE EVENTS WINTERVAL SPECIAL
Welney Swan Feeds
If you’ve ever wondered what 9000 Russian and Icelandic migrating swans would look like all hanging out at a Norfolk wetland, get yourself booked in at WELNEY any day at 3.30 until the end of Feb for this mind-melting awe-inspiring vista of nature https://www.wwt.org.uk/wetland-centres/welney/whats-on/swan-feeds-2/
Martin Carthy
Ageless folk veteran DECEMBER 1st & APRIL 16TH 2022, Café Oto London
DEC 2ND Canterbury Free Range. This night combines two valuable British voices of unbowed individuality. Parker changed the sound of the saxophone in Jazz. Electronic music obsessive Dagg is a cross between eccentric inventor Wilf Lunn and Stockhausen. I wish I could get to this. “Dagg will be using a range of vintage electronic sound sources and modifiers to improvise a dialogue with Evan parker's saxophone performances, while using techniques such as variable tape delays and speeds, ring modulation and frequency shifting effects to expand the soundscape of the instrument.” WHAT’S NOT TO LOVE?
Phil Kay
The legendary Scottish comedian with the gift for surreal self-sabotage simply must be seen. Rare full length shows. London Museum of Comedy, Bloomsbury 2 Dec 2021 — 4 Dec 2021 Running Time 90m inc. Interval https://museumofcomedy.ticketsolve.com/shows/873621494
Swell Maps
Surviving members and associated acts DECEMBER 3rd + 4th, Café Oto, London
The Fallen Women
Female Fall tribute band w guest vocalists incl me. DECEMBER 5th London Lexington.
Alcester St Nicholas Night
Dec 6th, Alcester, Worcs. 5.45pm. 7pm Parade, Fireworks 8.30, Church service 9pm. “The church at Alcester is dedicated to St Nicholas and his feast day is celebrated a parade featuring a boy Bishop, a Confused Graham, musicians, Morris dancers, vintage vehicles, maggot racing, a firework display and Gregorian chant. (Calendarcustoms.com)
The custom of choosing a Boy Bishop from the members of a terrified cathedral choir is thought to date from the 13th century. Following his election he is fitted out in full Bishop cosplay including robes, mitre, whip, chequebook, ball gag, and crozier. During the ceremony the chosen chorister and his Confused Graham enter the church, or cathedral, and the new Boy Bishop takes his place on the Bishop’s throne and receives a small egg. He then holds this egg in his hand from the Feast of St Nicholas on 6th December until Holy Innocents Day on the 28th December. During this period he enjoys many of the powers and privileges of a real Bishop, including a complimentary seat in the House of Lords, the power to influence national law and policy, and protection from child abuse investigations. (Historic-uk.com)
The Bohman Brothers
Dada-ish improvisors. DECEMBER 8th Brighton Rose Hill
John Butcher, Mark Sanders, John Edwards
Top free-improvisation trio DEC 8th London Iklecktik
M’cr post punk visionaries on another victory lap. DECEMBER 14TH Huddersfield Parish, 16th Blackpool Waterloo, 17th/18th M’cr Ritz. JANUARY 14TH Leicester Academy, 15th Birmingham Institute. FEBRUARY 1ST Nottingham Rescue Rooms, 5th London Islington Assembly Hall
Packed pre-xmas free-improv spectacular feat ex-members of Flying Lizards, Henry Cow, Fall, Morphogenesis, Alterations etc etc DEC 16th London Iklecktic
Eliza Carthy
Folk superstar fiddler currently on top form, seen at Laugharne last month DEC 21st London Union Chapel
21st DEC - Penzance Montol FestivalPenzance 12 midday onwards. A procession with traditional Guise Dancers, a Lord of Misrule, mummers, Penglaz the Hobby Horse, lanterns, a river of fire, musicians, dancers, guising, pear-knobbing, dancing, carol singing, a suet swig, a Confused Graham, a Mummers Play, Cornish Carols, and then the burning of the sun - A 10pm torchlit procession leading to a lit Beacon for the Chalking of the Mock and the bonfire. The Mock is a yule log marked in chalk with a stickman before it’s burned. York Sherrif’s Riding From 6pm. The Sheriff, on foot, is accompanied by the York Waits in their livery; they process around the city in a large clay beaker, music playing all the while.
The event begins with a proclamation at Micklegate Bar and further proclamations, horn blowing and chobby-boffing take place at several points on the tour, which ends after about three-quarters of an hour or so with the Sheriff’s speech at the Mansion House, and the bawdy lamentation of a Confused Graham. The proclamations welcome to the city “whores, thieves, diceplayers and other unthrifty folk” for the period of twelve days of Yule. Afterwards the participants celebrate with venison pasties, ramekin dewpie, and sherry. (Calendarcustoms.com)
Tom Bawcock’s Eve 23rd Dec Mousehole Cornwall. Tom was a local fisherman who braved the midwinter weather to land a fine catch on this date, after a period of storms had prevented the men from sailing and the villagers faced famine. His act of heroism is commemorated annually and the story is re-enacted in the harbour by a Confused Graham. There is a lantern parade and a special local delicacy called star-gazy pie is served, a fish pie with a pastry crust, the heads of the fish stick out through the crust to gaze accusatorily at the diners, who then weep. The Ship Inn is the place to eat the pie – you’ll also hear a special song about Tom’s brave act during the parade. Carol singing follows on the beach. (Calendarcustoms.com)
24th DEC Tolling The Devil’s Knell, Dewsbury In the parish church, a team of bell ringers toll the tenor bell, ‘Black Tom of Soothill’, once for every year since Christ was born. The final stroke is timed for midnight. Legend has it the practice began in the 13th century when Thomas de Soothill, a local baron, killed a servant boy. As penance he gave a bell to All Saint’s Church and ordered it rung every Christmas to remind him of his crime, although he didn’t go to prison or anything. After midnight Black Tom is rung once more by a Confused Graham to remind the Devil of his defeat by the birth of Christ, in case he has forgotten, and to protect the town from evil for the coming year, such as a rain of sharks. (Historic-uk.com) Dunster & Axmouth Ashen Faggot, Dunster, Luttrel Arms, 8pm/Axmouth 8.30 pm. The Ashen Faggot is a large log with withies bound around it to make a bundle which is burned indoors in the hearth. A sip of moorjuice is consumed as each withy breaks in the flames. At Dunster their faggot consists of twelve thick sticks bound in a bundle using ash withies and the Dunster Carol is sung while it burns in the vast fireplace. At Axmouth a six-foot-long faggot is constructed in a bundle of hazel twigs, filling the fireplace; as the faggot burns carol singing and recitations take place and the bad events of year are collectively regretted while a Confused Graham delights in the faggot’s embers. Richmond Poor Old ‘Oss Richmond Market Place, Yorkshire 12 midday. The Poor Old Hoss of Richmond is a twisted parody of a horse in the form of a real horse-skull attached to a pole. He is accompanied by a group of mummers in huntsman costumes who sing his special song and bring him back to life with a blast on a hunting horn when he “dies”, accompanied by much merriment and mayhem, and a bawdy gesture from a Confused Graham. Most of the action takes place around the Market Place area, in and out of the pubs, and the bank. (Calendarcustoms.com)
25th DEC Kirkwall Ba, Kirkwall Orkney A fiercely contested mass-handball game between teams of Uppies and Doonies, tightly packed into the narrow covid-ridden streets. The main game on each day is preceded by a procession of all participants to the Mercat Cross, a shortbread eating competition, and a Boys’ game in the morning at 10.30. Expect 100 players, plenty more spectators and a Confused Graham; play can go on well into the New Year. Rippon Apples, Rippon Cathedral 10.30 am Choristers distribute rosy red apples to the assembled parishioners, who shine them on their cuffs before stamping them into the dirt, whilst being taunted by a Confused Graham.
26th DEC Old Glory & The Cutty Wren Middleton, Suffolk. Once darkness falls, flaming torches approach to the sound of a slow drum beat as the East Anglian form of Morris is re-created by local Molly Dancers & Musicians, intimidating the weak to the amusement of a Confused Graham (Historic-uk.com) Greatham Sword Dance, Greatham County Durham Redcar Sword Dancers perform outside the gates to Greatham Hospital, with red jackets and carry steel swords, performing intricate longsword dances and a traditional mummers play with a death followed by a resurrection by the doctor, who is lured out from behind a laptop with a simnel cake. During the last dance, the performers are showered with coins, which some Confused Grahams attempt to pocket, so don’t forget to take some! Flamborough Sword Dance 12.30 pm Flamborough Sword Dancers’ moves are derived from threading actions used when making and reparing their fishing nets. They perform with wooden swords outside each of the local pubs including the Rose & Crown and ending at the Royal Dog & Duck, where recriminations for any of the day’s dance mistakes are handed out like toffees by a Confused Graham. Geddington Boxing Day Squirt 11.30 am A huge water fight between the local Geddington Volunteer Fire Brigade and their rivals from Kettering Fire Station. A beer barrel suspended over the ford must be squirted towards their opponents using the force of their fire hoses. A Confused Graham tries to squirt from his own miniature hose, in a bawdy burlesque of the main event. Grenoside Sword Dance 11 am Grenoside Sword Dancers perform with six dancers, accompanied by musicians and a captain in a unique dance featuring a ritual “beheading” movement of the captain with interlinked swords. Clogs are worn by the team, while nine Confused Grahams dance barefoot. Woodhouse/Handsworth Sword Dance (Yorkshire) 11.15am/12pm The Handsworth Traditional Sword Dancers, wearing unique military style uniforms and carrying metre-long swords, perform an intricate dance featuring a “lock” of intertwined swords, while a Confused Graham shields his inbetweenicles. Knaresborough Tug Of War 12 midday Opponents pull their sturdy rope over the River Nidd, while a Confused Graham ridicules water. Ludlow Tug Of War 12 midday The tuggers from the timbered Feathers and its rival the Bull bring the street to a standstill as they struggle to win the best of three pulls, while a Confused Graham performs his own bawdy tug. Marshfield (Gloucestershire) Paper Boys 12 midday The Marshfield Paper Boys perform a traditional mummers play involving a sword-fight and the revival of the defeated protagonist by the Doctor, who is lured out from behind a laptop with a toffee apple; other characters include Saucy Jack, a Confused Graham, and Father Beelzebub. The players wear costumes covered in strips of paper (hence their name) and perform in a serious manner handed down over the generations. The Town Crier leads the procession of players to the set performance points around the village, beginning in the Market Place at 11am. Carols are sung before the first performance and the last play takes place around noon. Silsoe (Bedfordshire) Hunting of The Wren 12 midday The Hunting of the Wren at Silsoe is a modern day interpretation of the old Irish custom with the added advantage that no birds are harmed during the ceremony! Hunting the Wren was a widespread Celtic winter custom in which groups paraded their locality, particularly on Boxing Day, bearing a decorated garland or box containing a dead wren, mumming and singing in return for rewards of food and money. Local Morris side Hemlock Morris perform at the event and they process to the High Street with their artificial wren on a stick, before dancing, readings, acting and music outside the pub for around an hour, while a Confused Graham arranges feathers on a dish, appreciatively. Hemlock are a mixed side, wearing the gothic apparel of Border Morris but performing mainly Cotswold style dances. While Boxing Day dancing and mumming has taken place at Silsoe for a number of years, the Wren Ceremony was introduced more recently by current Squire of Hemlock Andrew Miller, making it a much more unusual event. (Calendarcustoms.com) Gloucester Cathedral Mummers’ Play 12 mid-day Morris Dancing followed by an incomprehensible and historically inaccurate play, performed by increasingky bewildered men, that appears to have some long forgotten meaning but remains thoroughly entertaining. Absolutely superb, every year!
31st December Fun - Allendale Fire Ceremony Allendale, Northumberland. A procession of ’guisers’ carry tubs of flaming tar above their heads, in contravention of many health and safety regulations, eventually arriving at the town square where the flaming tubs are thrown onto a bonfire, which a Confused Graham attempts to extinguish with his own bawdy hose. At the stroke of midnight the church bells ring out to symbolise the supplanting of cool paganism by square Christianity, and the death of the feminine in ancient British belief systems. Burning The Old Year Out, Biggar Strathclyde & Wick Highland, A torchlight procession through the town is followed by a bonfire symbolizing the burning out of the old year. During WWII a candle was lit in a tin can to ensure the tradition survived, and a Confused Graham commemorates this by extracting his own bawdy candle from its unusual hiding place. Flambeaux Procession Comrie Tayside, A torchlight procession drives out evil spirits as credulous and bewildered villagers march round the fearful settlement and then back into the main square where the torches are thrown onto a bonfire and wasted, as a Confused Graham leaks treacle from its teats. Swinging The Fireballs Stonehaven Grampian, At midnight the High Street is lit up as sixty local fireball-swingers swing their fireballs above their heads, proceeding down to the harbour where their balls are thrown into the sea. A Confused Graham announces that some time in the dark-ages a shooting star appeared above Stonehaven. In the year that followed the sighting, the local farmers recorded a bumper harvest. Attributing their prosperity to the shooting star, the villagers introduced the fireball ceremony to trick gullible nature into rewarding them with surplus foods again. (Historic-uk.com) Llangynwyd Mari Lwyd 7.30 pm The Mari Lwyd takes the form of a decorated horse-skull on a pole operated by a Confused Graham in a white sheet, paraded around the district in return for refreshment. The action takes place at the Corner House pub and the singing is still a feature of this event. (Calanedarcustoms.com)
Mammoth Penguins
Sublime indie pop storytelling JANUARY 12th Lexington London
JAN 12th London Café Oto Great night of vocalese and free improv. Minton is a genius.
Darren Hayman & Emma Krupa
The Sonny and Cher of Indie JANUARY 13th Lexington London
The Fallen Leaves
Gentlemen mod punks. JANUARY 15TH Acton George & Dragon, 20th 100 Club, London + Downliners’ Sect & Masonics. FEBRUARY 12th 229 London. JUNE 11TH 100 Club, London.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Canadian ritual post-rockers. JANUARY 16th/17th London Electric Ballroom, 19th Bristol SWX, 21st Glasgow Barrowland, 22nd M’cr Academy
Idles/Big Joanie
West country positive vibes rabble rousers and support from sturdily scrappy black feminist punks JANUARY 17TH Brixton Academy, 21st Cardiff Motorpoint, 22nd Birmingham Academy, 24th - 26th Dublin Vicar St, 28th - 20th M’cr Victoria Warehouse, FEBRUARY 1st Sheffield Academy, 2nd Newcastle City Hall, 3rd - 5th Glasgow Barrowlands
Shopping
Distaff post-punkers JANUARY 19th Brixton Academy (w Idles), 20th Birmingham Hare & Hounds, 22nd Glasgow Audio
Bob Mould
Hardcore progenitor and WWWF scriptwriter in solo songsmith mode
JANUARY 19th Dublin Wheelans, 21st Liverpool Arts, 23rd Cardiff Globe, 24th Chester Live Rooms, 25th Digbeth B’ham , 27th Stoke on Trent Sugarmill, 28th Bristol Thekla, 29th Nottingham Rescue, 31st Glasgow Oran Moor, FEBRUARY 1st Newcastle Riverside, Southampton Engine Rooms, 4th Brighton Concorde 2, 5th Oxford Academy 2, 7th Leeds Brudenell, 8th London Islington Assembly
Richard Dawson
Unique Geordie troubadour 20th JANUARY London Roundhouse, 22nd Sunderland Fire Station
Scally pscyh-survivors FEBRUARY 1st Sheffield City Hall, 2nd Leeds Academy, 4th Bournemouth Academy, 5th Cardiff St David’s Hall, 7th London Roundhouse, 9th Dublin Olympia, 11th Norwich UEA, 12th Gateshead Sage, 14th Liverpool Philharmonic, 16th M’cr Albert Hall, 17th Nottingham Rock City, 18th Cambridge Corn Exch, 20th Bristol Academy, 22nd London Shepherds Bush Empire, 23rd Northampton Derngate, 25th M’cr Albert Hall, 26th Birmingham Academy, 28th Glasgow Barrowlands MARCH 1st Glasgow Barrowlands, APRIL 6TH Bexhill De La Ware
Napalm Death
Grindcore pioneers FEBRUARY 9TH M’cr Academy, 10th Glasgow Classic Grand, 11th Buckley Tivoli, 12th Birmingham Hammerfest, 13th London Electric Ballroom
Monumental master-masons of prog FEBRUARY 21st Birmingham Town Hall, 22nd M’cr Bridgewater, 24th London Palladium, 26th Edinburgh Queen’s MARCH 1st Bath Forum
Stiff Little Fingers
Still impossibly inspiring NI punk survivors MARCH 10th Bristol Academy, 11th Cardiff SU, 12th B’ham Academy, 14th Nottingham Rock City, 16th Troon Hall, 17th Glasgow Barrowlands, 18th Newcastle City Hall, 19th Leeds Academy, 21st Northampton Roadmender, 24th Bournemouth Academy, 25th M’cr Academy, 26th Camden Roundhouse AUGUST 4th Blackpool Rebellion, OCTOBER 1st- 2nd Sheffield Academy
Robyn Hitchock
Psychedelic surrealist MARCH 17th Cambridge Storey’s Field, 19th London QEH, 20th Leeds Brudenell, 22nd M’cr Night & Day
Doug Stanhope
As all serious fans of stand-up know, the American iteration of the artform is currently lagging somewhat compared to the manifestations produced in other English speaking territories, but the mighty Doug Stanhope - the desert compound king of crudely eloquent despair - is an exception. A reformed Libertarian with a compelling stage presence, Stanhope is one of those rare comedians with the skills and talent to make you laugh, against your will, on his terms, whether you agree with his worldview or not. MARCH 24th Glasgow Academy, 25th Newcastle City Hall, 26th Sheffield Academy, 27th Leeds Academy, 30th Birmingham Academy, APRIL 1st M’cr Apollo, 3rd London T&C.
Melt Banana
Endlessly inspiring Japanese pop-art-noiseniks MARCH 31st Margate Elsewhere, APRIL 1st Reading South Street, 6th Cambridge Portland Arms, 9th Huddersfield Parish, 12th Edinburgh Caves, 13th Glasgow Stereo, 14th York Crescent, 17th Bristol Exchange, 18th Cardiff Ifor Bach, 22nd Brighton Patterns
Wet Leg
Sure to be briefly massive, these waspish Amish-styled Boston-indie-circa-1989-sounding barnstormers hit the road APRIL 17th Edinburgh Mash, 19th Leeds Brudenell, 20th M’cr Gorilla, 21st Bristol Trinity, 23rd B’ham Institute 3, 24th Norwich Arts, 26th London Scala, 27th Southsea Wedgewood, MAY 28th Warrington Weekender
Maria Bamford
As all serious fans of stand-up know, the American iteration of the artform is currently lagging somewhat compared to the manifestations produced in other English speaking territories, but the mighty Maria Bamford - the Empress of Embarrassment - can hold her own against the best British, Irish and Antipodean acts, and she has an utterly unique comic persona, a kind of crippling bafflement. She is making some rare - and typically modest - British and Irish appearances. APRIL 21st Dublin Liberty Hall, 25th Glasgow Glee, 27th Birmingham Glee, 28th M'cr Academy, 30th London Hackney Earth
Low
Mormon minimalists APRIL 25th Edinburgh Queen’s Hall, 26th Dublin Vicar St, 27th M’cr Cathedral, 28th Brighton St George’s, 29th London St John At Hackney, 30th Bristol Trinity
NEW FILMS
Little Joe (Jessica Hausner) ****
County Lines (Henry Blake) *****
Animal Antics (Patrick Goddard) *****
OLD FILMS
Box Of Moonlight (Tom DeCillo, 1996) *****
Local Hero (Bill Forsyth, 1983) *****
Where Eagles Dare (Brian G Hutton, 1968) *****
The Big Gundown (Sergio Sollima, 1967) *****
The Sting (George Roy Hill, 1973) *****
Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977) *****
The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)*****
Good Vibrations (Lisa Barros D'sa/Glen Leyburn, 2013)*****
Caliber 9 (Fernado di Leon, 1972) *****
'71 (Yann Demange, 2014) *****
Big Night (Campbell Scott/Stanley Tucci, 1996) *****
Jason & The Argonauts (Don Chaffey, 1963) *****
Goldstone (Ivan Sen, 2016) *****
Witness (Peter Weir, 1985) *****
Avengers Infinity War (Russo Brothers, 2018) ****
Avengers Endgame (Russo Brothers, 2019) ****
In Order of Disappearance (Hans Peter Molland, 2014)*****
Summer In February (Christopher Menaul, 2013) ****
Guardians of The Galaxy (James Gunn, 2014) *****
All Tomorrow's Parties (Jonathan Caouette, 2009) ****
Medea (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1969) *****
Force Majeure (Ruben Ostlund, 2015) ****
Lift To The Scaffold (Louise Malle, 1958)*****
Macbeth (Roman Polanski, 1971)*****
Tomb of Ligeia (Roger Corman, 1964) ****
Massacre Time (Lucio Fulci, 1966) ****
Bandidos (Massimo Dallamano, 1967) ****
And God Said To Cain (Antonio Margheriti, 1970) *****
Dead Man's Shoes (Shane Meadows, 2004) *****
Romeo + Juliet (Baz Luhrmann, 1996) *****
Gallivant (Andrew Kotting, 1996) *****
Cleo From 5 to 7 (Agnes Varda, 1961)*****
London (Patrick Keiller, 1992) *****
Effie Grey (Emma Thompson, Richard Laxton 2014) ****
OLD BOOKS
Rosemary Tonks - Emir (1963)*****
Rosemary Tonks - The Bloater (1968) *****
John Berger/Jean Mohr - A Fortunate Man (1967) *****
Ann Quin - Berg (1964) ****
Sir John Mandeville - The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (1357)****
Sean Bythell - Diary of a Bookseller (2018)
Robert Aickman - The Inner Room (1988)
Virginia Nicholson - Amongst The Bohemians (2003)
Joanna Moorhead - The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington (2017)
Betty May - Tiger Woman (1929)
Val Doonican - My Story, My Life (2009)
Dave Graney - Workshy (2017)
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde - R L Stevenson (1985)
Hide & Seek - Dennis Potter (1973)
M R James - Complete Ghost Stories (1904 - 35) *****
Gavin Lambert - The Slide Area (1959)****
NEW BOOKS
Tessa Norton/Bob Stanley - Excavate!
Alan Stafford - Wilson, Keppel & Betty, Too Naked For The Nazis
Peter Oborne - The Assault On Truth
Nesrine Malik - We Need New Stories *****
Sean Bythell - Diary of a Bookseller (2018) *****
Robert Aickman - The Inner Room (1988) ***** Alicia Foster - Nina Hamnett
Charlie Hill - I Don't Want To Go To The Taj Mahjal
Hill's economic autobiography is a simplistic list of addresses, dead end jobs, cultural ephemera, and brief assignations, garnished with two or three short paragraphs of barely formed reflection. And yet, in reducing his life to these most basic elements, it manages to be a more profound comment on existence then many more self-consciously analytical efforts. As if to confound Wittgenstein, it appears the unexamined life was worth living after all.
Tracey Thorn - My Rock 'n' Roll Friend *****
Will Sergeant - Bunnyman ****
Hotel Art Head - Rhodri Davies & Nikos Veliotos I have written the intro for this new project exploring the interior design aesthetics travelling musicians' hotel acommodation
Julie Doiron - I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day (2009) ****
Tragically Hip - Man Machine Poem (2016) ****
Tragically Hip - We Are The Same (2009) ****
Tortoise - Millions Now Living Will Never Die (1996) *****
Grant Lee Buffalo - Storm Hymnal (1993-98) ****
Shiva Burlesque - Mercury Blues (1990) ****
Yo La Tengo - President (1989) *****
Yo La Tengo - Fakebook (1990) *****
Yo La Tengo - That Is You La Tengo (1991) ****
Yo La Tengo - May I Sing With Me? (1992) ****
Yo La Tengo - Painful (3 cds) (1993) ****
Tim Buckley - Dream Letter (1968) *****
Those Bastard Souls - Debt & Departure (1999) *****
Wanderlust - Prize (1995) ****
Chain - Towards The Blues (1971) ****
The Schramms - Omnidirectional (2019) ****
Cannonball Adderley - Soul Zodiac (1972)
Fred Anderson - Quintessential Birthday Trio Vol II (2015)
Greg Bendian's Interzone - Requiem For Jack Kirby (2001)
Nels Cline & Greg Bendian - Interstellar Space Revisited (1999)
The Beat - Bounce (2016)
Nina Simone - To Be Free (1959-1993)
Swervedriver - 99th Dream (1998)
Road - s/t (1972)
Mudhoney - Morning In America (2019)
Necromandus - Orexis of Death (1973)
Julian Cope - Peggy Suicide (1991)
Ultravox - Rage In Eden (1981)
Siouxsie & The Banshees - Tinderbox (1986)
Blues Pills - Live In Paris (2017)
Gram Parsons - Alternate Takes (1973-4)
Mike Westbrook - Mama Chicago (1976)
The Fall - Grotesque (1980)
Truly - Fast Stories From Kid Coma (1995)
Echo & the Bunnymen - Evergreen (1997)
Echo & The Bunnymen - What Are You Going To Do With Your Life? (1999)
Blues Pills - Lady In Gold (2016)
Leo Bud Welch - The Angels In Heaven Done Signed My Name (2019)
The Black Keys - Chulahoma (2006)
Nanci Griffith - One Fair Summer Evening (1988)
The Soft Boys - Invisible Hits (1983)
Robyn Hitchcock - Robyn Sings (2003)
Raw Material - s/t (1970)
Don Carlos & Gold - Them Never Know Natty Dread Have Him Credentials (1982)
Henry Junjo Lawes - Volcano Erruption (70s-80s)
Don Carlos - Day To Day Living (1982)
Bunny 'Striker' Lee - Full Up (1968-72)
Bunny Lee & Friends - Tape Rolling (1971-4) ****
v/a - Trojan Roots Dancehall Box ('70s, '80s)
Charlie Chaplin & Papa San - Respect Due (1986?)
Robert Forster - The Evangelist (2008) *****
John Stewart - California Bloodlines (1969) ****
v/a - Trojan Dancehall Box ('70s, '80s)
Don Carlos - In Dub (1980)
Yabby You - Deeper Roots ('70s, '80s)
Yabby You - Deeper Roots Part 2 ('70s, '80s)
Norma Winstone - Edge Of Time (1972) ****
Atlas - Just Playin' Rhythm & Blues (1967-71)
V/A - Alan Lomax Songbook (1939-76) ****
Shirley Collins - Lodestar (2016) *****
The Go-betweens - Loving Shocks (1989) ****
Red House Painters - Songs For A Blue Guitar (1996) ****
Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats - Mind Control (2013)
The Damned - Music For Pleasure (1977) ****
Skids - Days In Europa (1977)
Big Country - The Crossing (1983) ****
Big Country - Steel Town (1984)
Jon Dee Graham - Escape From Monster Island (1997) ****
The Fall - Live At The Witch Trials (1979) *****
Echo & The Bunnymen - The Stars, The Oceans & The Moon (2018)
Echo & The Buynnymen - Ballyhoo (1980-87) *****
Orange Juice - Rip It Up (1982)
Orange Juice - Texas Fever (1984)
The Stone Roses - s/t (1989) ****
The Screaming Trees - Buzz Factory (1989) ****
Mark Lanegan - The Winding Street (1990) *****
Killdozer - For Ladies Only (1989) ****
Magazine - Real Life (1978) ****
The Stranglers - Peaches (1977-82) *****
Screaming Trees - Uncle Anaesthesia (1991)
Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan - Sunday At Devil Dirt (2008)
The Osiris Club - Blazing World (2014)
UB40 - Signing Off (1980)*****
UB40 - Present Arms (1981) *****
UB40 - Present Arms In Dub (1981) ****
Radiohead - In Rainbows (2007) *****
The Brave Little Abacus - Last Show @ Vic Geary Center (2012) *****
Sarofeen and Smoke - s/t (1970) ****
Blue Cheer - Outsideinside (1968) ****
Conqueroo - From The Vulcan Gas Company (1968) ****
Frank Morgan - City Nights (2004) ****
Peter Brotzmann - Machine Gun (1968) *****
Phil Minton - A Doughnut In One Hand (1998) *****
Chris Von Sneidern - The Wild Horse (2003)
Alexei Sayle - Cak! (1982) ****
Steve Wynn - Here Come The Miracles (2001) ****
Steve Wynn - Static Transmission (2003) ****
Andy Irvine - Old Dog Long Road Vol 1 (1961-2012) ****
Patti Smith - Land (1975-2002) *****
Derek Bailey, Bill Laswell etc - Transformations (1997) *****
Dick Gaughan - Handful of Earth (1981) *****
Robert Wyatt - Nothing Can Stop Us (1982) *****
Sandy Denny - Sandy (1972) ****
Dick Gaughan - Gaughan (1978)****
Hako Yamasaki - ? (1975/6) *****
IN OUR LAMENTATIONS
- 2021 -
Katharine Whitehorn (bedsitter cook) (1928)
Katharine Whitehorn (bedsitter cook) (1928)
Celia Drummond Ford (voice of Trees) (1950)
The Happy Man Tree (Stoke Newington Tree) (1870)
John Russell (guitar guru) (1954)
Marcel Uderzo (Asterisk artist) (1933)
Tom Stevens (Long Ryder and Magus) (1956)
Dougie Anderson (Coda's Edinburgh record dealer (1952)
Captain Tom (Covid Walkman) (1920)
Rynagh O'Grady (Ted's Mary) (1954)
Mary Wilson (Supreme) (1944)
Chick Corea (Miles' tinkler) (1941)
Iain Pattinson (You wanted to see me Prime Minister?) (1951)
U-Roy (Toastmaster) (1942)
Lawrence Ferlinghetti (bookstore beat) (1921)
Wink O'Bannon (Eleventh Dream Day) (1956)
Bunny Wailer (Wailer) (1947)
Doug Parkinson (Oz vocal celeb) (1946)
Milford Graves (temporal explorer) (1941)
Johnny Rogan (Byrds' Boswell) (1953)
Jessica Walter (Play Misty For Me) (1941)
Bertrand Tavernier (Round Midnight) (1941)
Anita Lane (Oz punk chanteuse) (1958)
Barbara Ess (Theoretical Girl) (1944)
Michael Collins (Apollo 11) (1930)
Mohammed Ag Itale (Tinariwen) (1960)
Monte Hellman (Two Lane Blacktop) (1929)
Sonny Simmons (jazz hobo) (1933)
Charles Grodin (The American Tim Key) (1935)
Franco Battiato (Italian Fetus) (1945)
Yoshi Wada (bagpipe minimalist) (1943)
Ned Beatty (squealing piggy) (1937)
Davey Datblygu (Davey Datblygu) (1964)
S Clay Wilson (Captain Pissgums) (1941)
Peter Zinovieff (sonic pioneer) (1933)
Richard Donner (kebab pioneer) (1930)
Alix Dobkin (feminist folksinger) (1940)
Patrick Sky (native American folksinger) (1940)
Tom O'Connor (raconteur) (1939)
Dusty Hill (ZZ Top) (1949)
Bob Sergeant (digital Beat producer) (194?)
Byron Berline (Byrds fiddler) (1944)
John Lawton (friend of Lucifer) (1947)
Una Stubbs (wooden woman) (1937)
Nanci Griffith (C&W poet) (1953)
Sean Lock (excrement genitals) (1963)
Brian Travers (UB40 blowhard) (1959)
Lee Scratch Perry (The Super Ape) (1936)
Michael Chapman (English primitive) (1941)
Norm Macdonald (acceptable face of US stand-up) (1959)
Tony Selby (Get Some In!) (1938)
Tom T Hall (Harper Valley songsmith) (1936)
Powell St John (Psychedelic Texan) (1940)
The White Stag of Bootle (2010?)
John Rossall (The Last Glam In Town) ()
Pat Fish (A Southern Mark Smith) (1957)
Jim Pembroke (psychedelic Anglo-Fin) (1946)
Rick Jones (Fingerbob Meal Ticket) (1937)
Alan Hawkshaw (Sausage on fork composer) (1937)
Takashi Mizutani (Les Rallizes dude) (1948)
Dee Pop (Bush Tetra) (1956)
Lionel Blair (dancing tragedian) (1921)
Astro (UB40 toastmaster) (1957)
Dr Clive Lee (The Ling-Lee Hipster) (1939)
Dean Stockwell (alienated art-houser) (1936)
Everett Morton (Beatmaster of The Beat) (1950)
Darrell Bath (Keith for hire) (1967)
Delbert Ngoni McKay (Misty man) (1954)
A brief heads up for my adoptive father’s brother, and my uncle, CLIVE LEE, who died in November, and was the co-inventor to THE EXETER HIP.
If you or anyone you know has an artificial hip, there’s a 40% chance it’s one of his, and his work has eased the suffering and enhanced the lives of literally millions of people worldwide.
At the funeral, people’s recollections of the early days of the hip project, and the team’s first efforts to fit them, were as exciting and compelling as a science adventure film like Apollo 13 and it was an honour to hear people’s memories of this thoughtful modest man.
I attended a very different memorial a week later at the Soho Theatre, in the form of kind of belated funeral/tribute concert to the promoter who helped turn my collapsed career around in the mid-00’s, the late David Johnson.
An unfailingly honest and conscientious, yet nevertheless hilarious and hedonistic character, David, who died at Christmas, was celebrated by an amazing bill of his clients and collaborators including JACKIE CLUNE, FASCINATING AIDA, SUE PERKINS, CHRISTEEN, MARK RAVENHILL, A PAJAMA MAN, and RICHARD THOMAS & LORE LIXENBERG.
DAVID’s own plan for the event was read out by his co-producer JOHN MACKAY at the end, revealing how David had played us all like a massive cathedral organ made of meat.
It was a privilege to be part of David’s gang of kooks and freaks.
Stewart Lee
2021-12-01T19:59:37+00:00
THE KING ROCKER LONDON SCREENING 16th DEC A tiny teenage girl Hackney Hipster version of Stewart Lee stands outside the Dalston Rio cinema to declare... “Our labour of love Nightingales rockumentary King Rocker knocks most rockumentaries into a cocked hat. “I loved every minute” - Ben Dowell, The Times **** Financial Times **** Chortle “One of the best music documentaries of all time” - The Quietus “The new gold standard for rockumentaries” - The Scotsman If you live in London come to the KING ROCKER XMAS FUN NIGHT, a screening at Dalston Rio Cinema on Dec 16th at 8.45, followed by q&a w me and dir Michael Cumming (Brass Eye, Toast) https://riocinema.org.uk/RioCinema.dll/WhatsOn?Film=13951901 You can also now watch it, ad-free, on NOW TV if you have that https://www.nowtv.com/watch/king-rocker-2020/A5EK4mHuoHzRk73pZuoRf THE SOUNDTRACK KING ROCKER s/t album, w sleeve notes by me, avail Dec 3rd here https://www.firerecords.com/product/king-rocker-ost/ (also t-shirts etc) Following King Rocker‘s huge success earlier this year, spotlighting The Nightingales as one of the best band’s in Britain, comes the soundtrack to one of 2021’s break-out films. ‘King Rocker (Soundtrack)’ limited edition red vinyl includes sleeve notes from Stewart Lee, A3 theatrical poster and a lovingly replicated curry menu from Abdul's in Birmingham. THE STAND I am doing some warm up dates for the rebooted SNOWFLAKE/TORNADO tour at THE STAND venues in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Newcastle from 12th-14th December. Seating re-jigs, covid rule shifts, and standing room carve-ups mean there are a few new tickets suddenly available which will go on sale DEC 1ST at 12 noon. Edinburgh | Sun 12 Dec | Doors 9.30pm show 10.30pm| 60 mins | Tickets here Glasgow | Mon 13 Dec | Doors 9pm show 10pm| 60 mins | Tickets here Newcastle | Tues 14 Dec | Doors 6pm show 7pm| 60 mins | Tickets here Newcastle...
September 1995, past midnight in an unlicensed downtown Los Angeles coffeehouse. The door is sealed with heavy wrought-iron work, and its front steps have recently played host to a drive-by shooting. The staff can't recommend anywhere in the area safe enough to find a real drink, and the crowd affects a studied, West Coast indifference as the Dirty Three take the stage, puffy, crumpled and ragged. They've played more than 200 shows since March, leaving their native Australia on a proposed three-week jaunt that has somehow stretched to 10 months, as they drive coast to coast in a 1960s Dodge Polara.
There's no vocalist and no bass player, just a guitarist of sorts, a drummer playing as though he's just stepped out of some loose jazz combo, and a gypsy-curled, hunched figure scraping and plucking a violin, lurching from folksy reels to squalls of ear-splitting feedback. Baseball-capped Californians are turning from the video games, jerking thumbs stageward, saying: "Hey, these guys have got something." It's like a scene from a bad teen rock movie, the traditional fresh-faced aspirants supplanted by a desperate, road-worn threesome who haven't seen fresh shirts since early spring. "Now that was a great show," recalls the group's violinist and spokesman, Warren Ellis.
In 1989, Ellis returned to Melbourne from four years of busking round Europe and found himself at a loose end. "Australia seemed so cold after Europe that I didn't want to do anything," he explains. "I just went and lived out in the country and didn't pick up the violin for three years." Then in 1992, a friend opened a hotel and asked Ellis to play in the bar. Mick Turner, late of the 1980s band the Moodists, was recruited on guitar; drummer Jim White joined from the unlikely-named People With Chairs Up Their Noses, where he had played percussion on an ironing board covered with letter boxes and other domestic detritus. The Dirty Three was formed.
Last year, the casually tossed together trio provided a live accompaniment for Carl Dreyer's silent classic, The Passion of Joan of Arc, at the National Film Theatre; in February, Ellis is to travel to Vienna to score a new play with countryman Nick Cave; and the band's third album, Horse Stories, was released by Big Cat last week.
Turner is a generous and modest foil for Ellis's amplified flights of distorted fiddle fancy, and there's still a residue of White's disrespect for drumming conventions in his approach. He doesn't treat the kit so much as a rhythm source as a vehicle for sympathetic embellishment of the ebb and flow of Ellis's and Turner's unpredictable leads, as close to free improvisation as they are to any received notion of folk or blues. "Jim has a remarkable style," says Ellis. "He plays very melodically. In the Dirty Three, everyone is important."
The band's egalitarian principles reach beyond a simple division of the limelight. Their first two albums were self-financed, and they own the rights to Horse Stories, a nine-track collection of insidious, elliptical and utterly distinctive instrumentals, and the first they've recorded with any certainty of a release. Ellis takes satisfaction in distancing himself from a host of smiling music execs suddenly "coming out of the woodwork". "I was opposed to going with anyone who hadn't been with us since the early days," he says. "It was good to be able to put the finger up at them. It's a pipe dream that's come true."
Industry manipulators could no doubt see the potential in the Dirty Three. You could plaster their album sleeves with sepia tints of cracked Death Valley sandscapes, like hints for a directed reading of their parched electric-organic explorations, and perhaps see them nudge the mainstream, but Ellis won't have any of it. "People say our music sounds like the desert," he says, "but I've never even been there. Australia is far enough away from everything for us to be influenced by the rest of the world but still have our own character."
The closest the band come to putting a helpful gloss on their monastic purity is Ellis's on-stage patter, which illuminates the exacerbating circumstances behind each piece in vivid purple-prose descriptions of wasted days, lost loves and drunken despair, veering from comic monologue to impassioned beat poetic. But no matter how near to high art he and his cohorts might soar, Ellis in person will always remain firmly and gloriously earthbound. It's impossible to be pretentious in an Australian accent.
The Dirty Three are currently in America collaborating on a new record with Palace's Will Oldham. "Where are you calling from?" I asked Ellis. "F***ed if I know..." was his reply
Stewart Lee
1996-09-29T16:52:04+01:00
September 1995, past midnight in an unlicensed downtown Los Angeles coffeehouse. The door is sealed with heavy wrought-iron work, and its front steps have recently played host to a drive-by shooting. The staff can't recommend anywhere in the area safe enough to find a real drink, and the crowd affects a studied, West Coast indifference as the Dirty Three take the stage, puffy, crumpled and ragged. They've played more than 200 shows since March, leaving their native Australia on a proposed three-week jaunt that has somehow stretched to 10 months, as they drive coast to coast in a 1960s Dodge Polara. There's no vocalist and no bass player, just a guitarist of sorts, a drummer playing as though he's just stepped out of some loose jazz combo, and a gypsy-curled, hunched figure scraping and plucking a violin, lurching from folksy reels to squalls of ear-splitting feedback. Baseball-capped Californians are turning from the video games, jerking thumbs stageward, saying: "Hey, these guys have got something." It's like a scene from a bad teen rock movie, the traditional fresh-faced aspirants supplanted by a desperate, road-worn threesome who haven't seen fresh shirts since early spring. "Now that was a great show," recalls the group's violinist and spokesman, Warren Ellis. In 1989, Ellis returned to Melbourne from four years of busking round Europe and found himself at a loose end. "Australia seemed so cold after Europe that I didn't want to do anything," he explains. "I just went and lived out in the country and didn't pick up the violin for three years." Then in 1992, a friend opened a hotel and asked Ellis to play in the bar. Mick Turner, late of the 1980s band the Moodists, was recruited on guitar; drummer Jim White joined from the unlikely-named People With Chairs Up Their...
In Komedia's laidback underground North Laine lair, tables on the stage were covered in toys. A child's Speak & Spell, modified stylophones, a Barbie strapped to a sitar and a biscuit tin, just a few of the curios on display, were a colourful aesthetic introduction to the Conspirators of Pleasure.
Promising to introduce us to the pioneering, avante-garde ideas surrounding John Cage's musicology, particularly the concept of Indeterminacy – random interpretations of a performance piece according to the performer's mood, or indeed an audience's, or an instrument's – Poulomi Desai, Seth Aayaz and Simon Underwood set about confusing the living s*** out of some people, who had come expressly to see famous comedian Stewart Lee.
The handful of audience members who, by the second half, hadn't worked out that Lee wasn't here in comedic but in experimental music boffin form, with their (ironic) determination to laugh doggedly at any pause in Lee's poetic phrasing, mistaking it for comic timing, meant that unfortunately, Cage's original ideas were largely lost in translation – but for one thing; it happened, however excruciating.
It was still a philosophical event of some description, even if that description involved the words "car" and "crash". Erudite performance, deeply uncomfortable listening.
Stewart Lee
2014-03-26T21:49:48+00:00
In Komedia's laidback underground North Laine lair, tables on the stage were covered in toys. A child's Speak & Spell, modified stylophones, a Barbie strapped to a sitar and a biscuit tin, just a few of the curios on display, were a colourful aesthetic introduction to the Conspirators of Pleasure. Promising to introduce us to the pioneering, avante-garde ideas surrounding John Cage's musicology, particularly the concept of Indeterminacy – random interpretations of a performance piece according to the performer's mood, or indeed an audience's, or an instrument's – Poulomi Desai, Seth Aayaz and Simon Underwood set about confusing the living s*** out of some people, who had come expressly to see famous comedian Stewart Lee. The handful of audience members who, by the second half, hadn't worked out that Lee wasn't here in comedic but in experimental music boffin form, with their (ironic) determination to laugh doggedly at any pause in Lee's poetic phrasing, mistaking it for comic timing, meant that unfortunately, Cage's original ideas were largely lost in translation – but for one thing; it happened, however excruciating. It was still a philosophical event of some description, even if that description involved the words "car" and "crash". Erudite performance, deeply uncomfortable listening.
IT'S Saturday afternoon and The Music Hall in The Assembly Rooms is steadily filling up. The occasion - which is becoming more and more like an 'event' as the room becomes more packed - is the second preview of Jerry Springer - The Opera.
As more and more people file in, the man beside me becomes more and more agitated and begins mumbling as much to himself as to me. "I only earned 80 quid when I came up here with the Comedy Zone in 1991," he mutters as he surveys the large two-tiered stage that will soon hold 21 singers and a five-piece band. The nervous man next to me is Stewart Lee, director and librettist of Jerry Springer. And even if the show sells out every performance of its Edinburgh run - and it just might - he'll still be leaving the Fringe with even less than 80 quid.
Precisely nothing in fact.
For this Lee is grateful. "People kept telling me we should bring this show to Edinburgh and I was utterly terrified," he says, with the air of a man who admits to having had "about 20 hours sleep in the last week".
As befitting such an ambitious scale venture, the opera is costing a smaIl fortune to stage, so that its box office receipts cannot possibly recoup the outlay. Fortunately Lee and composer Richard Thomas, who originated the idea, are covered by a group of financial backers - all of whom are, no doubt, soon to be very happy. Because this is a preview (ie no critics), reviewing the show is strictly verboten, but presumably Lee and Thomas won't mind me passing on the advice that you should definitely book NOW if you want to catch what just might be the most original and entertaining show on the Fringe this year. The West End and probably Broadway beckons. Seriously.
After the performance the two men are visibly buzzing. It's only the second time, they say, that they've heard the full score performed and they're obviously delighted, as well they might be.
The public's response is phenomenal. People are grabbing badges that read Slut Junky and Chick With A Dick, while the plaintive refrain: "Cover me with chocolate and throw me to the lesbians" proves eminently hummable.
"It's good doing it here because the Assembly is quite like the West End in a way;" says Lee afterwards. "You have ABBA tribute shows and Gyles Brandreth so it does give you a feel for how the show works in a mainstream environment. I think a lot of people who come just want to be entertained and don't care what it says about opera or the human condition."
And Jerry Springer -The Opera does say quite a bit about the human condition. Infidelity, jealousy; murder, suicide and a cavalcade of sexual fetishism, all human life is here. Which is why, of course, every hack comedian on the Fringe was doing Jerry Springer jokes TWO years ago. It's odd to find Lee - probably the most iconoclastic comedian of the past decade - reverting to well-ploughed ground.
"True, but it was Richard's idea originally and he asked me to get involved," Lee says with a sly srnile: 'The originality of the material was never a consideration for me. What was is how well it would work as an opera. When I first started writing with [former partner] Richard Herring 15 years ago we had this list of things that we would never write about, but as I get older I think how you approach subjects and manage to treat them originally is more important than what you're dealing with."
Richard Thomas began writing the opera 14 months ago after logging over a hundred hours watching the Springer show on TV.
" I really like Jerry Springer," he cheerfully admits, "and if you watch that many shows you can't watch Oprah Winfrey or whatever because they're just whorish and vile. I like the fact that the show is a cultural phenomenon and the fact that he's a real working class hero," says Thomas of the former mayor of Cincinnati turned king of trash TV.
"He's sort of like St Mephistopheles because he's never judgmental. I mean, Jerry won't have anyone on unless the other person is there to defend themselves - or have a fight," laughs Thomas. "OK, it is deeply exploitative." Lee, admits to being more ambivalent about Springer but came onboard after Thomas started doing workshops at the Battersea Arts Centre where the composer offered helpful punters "beer for an idea". The best ideas got a can of Grolsch while duds were awarded a can of generic supermarket lager.
"The subject matter is a bit of a red herring," Lee smiles. "The good thing is because it's what feels like a familiar idea people come along thinking they know what they're going to get. But there are lots of emotionally touching parts in it and the way it develops in the second half seems to surprise people.
"It's written and sung to an incredibly professional level and that really throws people because they think they're going to get some sketch show burlesque of American talk shows. So in may ways the familiarity of the title is really great because if it was called Chat Show - The Opera With Depressing Bits And A Meditation on Good And Evil then many people who are going to the ABBA singalongs wouldn't be coming.
"But as it is they get exposed to something that is probably more morally complex than they would normally be exposed to."
This isn't mere hyperbole on Lee's part, the second half of the opera sees Jerry Springer in Hell mediating on the age-old argument between God and Satan ("I don't do conflict resolution," he protests).
"The first half is really what people would expect and the second half is a reward for me to go deeper musically into things," explains Thomas who has undergone months of coaxing classically trained opera singers more used to Il Trovatore to trailer-trash.
"The main problem was the diction," recalls Thomas. "A lot of opera singing is far too stylised. In rehearsals a lot of people who had amazing opera voices sounded too straight and I used to say to them use the laziest diction you've ever sung - just imagine that you were speaking. A lot of singers seem to think that their diction has to be perfection and that's just elitist."
The result is a real rarity - an opera that you can actually follow with lyrics that you can actually understand.
"Richard originally wanted the second half to be a lot of people hanging upside down singing a requiem for the American Dream," explains Lee. "I've only seen one opera, Wagner's Ring Cycle, and there's a bit in that where someone goes down into a netherworld, so I suggested that."
Apart from giving Lee the chance to wrongfoot his audience, the switch in scenario gives him the chance to air his ambivalence to his subject when "Springer" is confronted with past guests who have been humiliated on his show and committed suicide as a result. "A person with less broadcasting experience would feel responsible for that," comes the glib reply.
Unsurprisingly, the show has already weathered the threat of legal action from the producers of Springer's American TV show, but Lee and Thomas believe they have managed to smooth the waters.
"We actually met him a month ago because he was over and trying to find out what the show was about," says Lee. "We quite confidently told him that we didn't think that there would be a problem because I think firstly it's not really a parody of him and also I think he, even if he does find the opera slightly critical, would be flattered by inspiring all this beautiful music."
With Springer himself coming to speak at the TV Festival later this month the show's co-creator's are eager to get the man himself along to the Assembly Rooms.
"We'll probably have to sneak him in at the back because I can't imagine anyone in the show not being affected by him sitting in the front row," says Lee.
It's also hard to imagine Springer not being affected by the performance. Fringe Director Paul Gudgin who was also at the preview opined that the chat show host would "probably be sitting there rigid with a huge smile while he thought: 'I want this f*****g thing stopped'."
Still, perhaps he could get a good show out of it - "These Men Made An Opera About Me And I'm Mad As Hell".
Stewart Lee
2002-08-08T17:24:51+01:00
IT'S Saturday afternoon and The Music Hall in The Assembly Rooms is steadily filling up. The occasion - which is becoming more and more like an 'event' as the room becomes more packed - is the second preview of Jerry Springer - The Opera. As more and more people file in, the man beside me becomes more and more agitated and begins mumbling as much to himself as to me. "I only earned 80 quid when I came up here with the Comedy Zone in 1991," he mutters as he surveys the large two-tiered stage that will soon hold 21 singers and a five-piece band. The nervous man next to me is Stewart Lee, director and librettist of Jerry Springer. And even if the show sells out every performance of its Edinburgh run - and it just might - he'll still be leaving the Fringe with even less than 80 quid. Precisely nothing in fact. For this Lee is grateful. "People kept telling me we should bring this show to Edinburgh and I was utterly terrified," he says, with the air of a man who admits to having had "about 20 hours sleep in the last week". As befitting such an ambitious scale venture, the opera is costing a smaIl fortune to stage, so that its box office receipts cannot possibly recoup the outlay. Fortunately Lee and composer Richard Thomas, who originated the idea, are covered by a group of financial backers - all of whom are, no doubt, soon to be very happy. Because this is a preview (ie no critics), reviewing the show is strictly verboten, but presumably Lee and Thomas won't mind me passing on the advice that you should definitely book NOW if you want to catch what just might be the most original and entertaining...
Brent Burkhart joins the queue of post-Seasick Steve floorboard-stomping bluesmen, and trails the usual mis-spent childhood story, losing his eye tormenting snakes on stage with his Pentecostal revivalist family.
Hymns to Jesus, Satan, booze, blues and drugs are barked one-man-band style over kick drum and rusted electric guitar, but despite the authentic Flannery O'Connor flourishes of the Reverend's press biog the album reeks a little of artifice, even as it corrodes your eardrums and sets your toes a-tappin'.
That said, the endearing huckster's reading of the standard Jesus On The Mainline swings more than convincingly.
Stewart Lee
2011-01-01T21:25:10+00:00
Brent Burkhart joins the queue of post-Seasick Steve floorboard-stomping bluesmen, and trails the usual mis-spent childhood story, losing his eye tormenting snakes on stage with his Pentecostal revivalist family. Hymns to Jesus, Satan, booze, blues and drugs are barked one-man-band style over kick drum and rusted electric guitar, but despite the authentic Flannery O'Connor flourishes of the Reverend's press biog the album reeks a little of artifice, even as it corrodes your eardrums and sets your toes a-tappin'. That said, the endearing huckster's reading of the standard Jesus On The Mainline swings more than convincingly.
It's three decades since Gerard Langley first spieled professorial poetry over various combos of match-fit musicians, crafting kinetic explosions of mid-‘70s New York art-punk in the Avon delta. The Blue Aeroplanes are heavier on their feet these days, but more muscular than before, and feature Rita Lynch as Langley's newfound vocal foil.
Where once they sounded like Television fronted by Philip Larkin, the Aeros' thoroughly baked tenth album posits the all-American grooves of Drive-By Truckers helmed by Prisoner era Patrick McGoohan. How many bands could pen a genuine autobiographical lyric about a failed collaboration with Angela Carter? Few hardy perennials flower so fruitfully.
Stewart Lee
2011-06-26T01:28:33+01:00
It's three decades since Gerard Langley first spieled professorial poetry over various combos of match-fit musicians, crafting kinetic explosions of mid-‘70s New York art-punk in the Avon delta. The Blue Aeroplanes are heavier on their feet these days, but more muscular than before, and feature Rita Lynch as Langley's newfound vocal foil. Where once they sounded like Television fronted by Philip Larkin, the Aeros' thoroughly baked tenth album posits the all-American grooves of Drive-By Truckers helmed by Prisoner era Patrick McGoohan. How many bands could pen a genuine autobiographical lyric about a failed collaboration with Angela Carter? Few hardy perennials flower so fruitfully.
I am a standup comedian. Last Tuesday, I attended the British comedy awards, my first since 1991. Today an edited Channel 4 highlights package from a Wembley warehouse, back in ’91, in their second year, the awards were a primetime ITV Saturday-night live spectacular in a big South Bank studio. I wrote for Radio 4’s On the Hour, which was up for best radio comedy, a category which, like best live comedian, has now been dropped to make space for TV faces. Broadcasters are no longer required to honour their general arts coverage remit, so there’s more time for revenue-generating film of newsreaders eating insects. Slaves, rattle your chains. Are you all enjoying your new freedoms? What a difference 23 years makes.
I was working the next two times I was up for British comedy awards, nearly two decades later, and absconded. But people had raised money for the rights to release the third series of Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle commercially, which was nominated this year, so I thought I should go, as it’s hard to make the stake back in a world where the public expect to steal all content for nothing.
Besides which, I have become the sort of person who declines to attend events on principle, but where my absence is not noticed anyway. When I won two British comedy awards in 2011, it wasn’t mentioned in any newspapers. And my 2012 Bafta acceptance speech was cut from TV, perhaps because I told the presenter, Kate Thornton, that acclaim was a random phenomenon, like cloud patterns, into which you read significance at your peril.
Nonetheless, the thought of going to the British comedy awards was terrifying. In a possibly psychosomatic state, the flesh on my lower left leg had taken on a play-dough texture, and I could move it around in clumps beneath my skin. Could the thought of having to sit alongside celebs I’d done routines about have brought this on? Or was I a new kind of human, like Sir Ian McKellen or Janelle Monáe? Then I thought, what if I don’t go? What if I sent a different version of myself instead, more confident, better dressed?
Hiding in plain sight, barely in regulation black tie, I arrived at Wembley in a tassled Native American jacket, rodeo shirt, braided bola necktie, and snakeskin boots. I was a half-breed tracker, a bounty hunter, behind the lines in enemy territory. I ploughed straight through the mandatory photo-ops corridor un-photographed, the Ghost Who Walks, and into the hospitality room, where I shook hands with people I’d ridiculed and sipped red wine, his drink, not mine. And when Jonathan Ross slagged me off from the stage the outlaw me was still reading the awards programme unaware of what was said. The camera caught this, and I transcended the whole charade. “Are you laughing at my mule?”
They got to my categories, best male TV comic and best comedy entertainment programme. Lee Mack got the first, and Graham Norton the second. And I realised I’d been lying to myself. Through a mixture of indefensible arrogance and mathematical logic, I had assumed, without acknowledging it, I’d win both. I’d won both for the second series, three years back, and the third series was demonstrably better than the second, so what had changed?
Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t think for a moment I am the best standup in Britain, and if this was an award for live standup, and I was up against any of the hundreds of inspirational acts I see on the live circuit, then I would never have been arrogant enough to assume that I deserved anything. But this was TV standup, live standup’s idiotic attic-bound relation, and a world through which I soar like a mighty eagle through a cloud of diseased gnats.
Lee and Graham accepted their awards on video. My acceptance speeches, which I realised with a sudden regretful surge, I had composed unconsciously in my head that week, had things positive and not untrue to say about the other nominees, but Lee said nothing and Graham said he didn’t even know who he was up against. I was shocked. I realised I had convinced myself I was here to help the DVD investors, but I had been entangled by vanity and ambition. I had chosen to attend the British comedy awards which, once attended, could not be unattended, like the worm-ridden dog egg in the infant school playground which, once seen, cannot be unseen.
There were six people on our table. The bottle of red had disappeared, and with it my cowboy-Indian creation. I had turned to pear cider in search of answers and soon I was me again, fearful and drowning. The button popped on my rodeo shirt. It wasn’t mine to wear. Jack Whitehall won king of comedy for the third year running, and I found myself shouting out “shame!” and, inexplicably, “class war!” When the filming ended people started asking me to do interviews, but I growled them away because he’d gone and I was just me. I couldn’t find my wife and descended into a kind of prima donna panic attack, like the husband in The Vanishing, and then we grabbed a cab, the last helicopter out of Saigon, and got home and watched a 70s George Carlin DVD, and in the morning my zombie leg was human again.
On Wednesday, I went to do a benefit show at the Bloomsbury. None of the standups there were even aware the awards had happened, and when I saw the TV coverage later that night, my shouting had been surgically erased and vast swaths of the night seemed unfamiliar. Was Danny Dyer, who suggested slashing your errant girlfriend’s face with a knife in a lads’ mag agony column, really invited to hand out best comedy entertainment programme? My mind was blank, as if I had shut down, like the mice in our hallway that go catatonic as they wait for the cat to kill them.
It seems unlikely there will be another British comedy awards. In the end, they chased the capricious populist audience with their phone-ins, even as the former award-winners’ votes drove them towards neglected gems such as Toast of London, and ended up in a curious no-man’s land between Nuts and the Independent on Sunday. Even Jonathan Ross couldn’t save them. It was interesting to attend twice, a quarter of a century apart. But I know now that I will never, ever go to anything like that again. Maybe the bounty hunter will come out of the wardrobe. I’ll need to lose some weight to get into his trousers. Good. I could do with looking after myself a bit. I’m in this for the long haul. There are no short cuts.
Stewart Lee
2014-12-21T21:29:50+00:00
I am a standup comedian. Last Tuesday, I attended the British comedy awards, my first since 1991. Today an edited Channel 4 highlights package from a Wembley warehouse, back in ’91, in their second year, the awards were a primetime ITV Saturday-night live spectacular in a big South Bank studio. I wrote for Radio 4’s On the Hour, which was up for best radio comedy, a category which, like best live comedian, has now been dropped to make space for TV faces. Broadcasters are no longer required to honour their general arts coverage remit, so there’s more time for revenue-generating film of newsreaders eating insects. Slaves, rattle your chains. Are you all enjoying your new freedoms? What a difference 23 years makes. I was working the next two times I was up for British comedy awards, nearly two decades later, and absconded. But people had raised money for the rights to release the third series of Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle commercially, which was nominated this year, so I thought I should go, as it’s hard to make the stake back in a world where the public expect to steal all content for nothing. Besides which, I have become the sort of person who declines to attend events on principle, but where my absence is not noticed anyway. When I won two British comedy awards in 2011, it wasn’t mentioned in any newspapers. And my 2012 Bafta acceptance speech was cut from TV, perhaps because I told the presenter, Kate Thornton, that acclaim was a random phenomenon, like cloud patterns, into which you read significance at your peril. Nonetheless, the thought of going to the British comedy awards was terrifying. In a possibly psychosomatic state, the flesh on my lower left leg had taken on a play-dough texture, and I could...
“A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS
AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!
LET’S HOPE IT’S THE FIRST ONE
WITHOUT ANDREW NEIL!”
Some notes on this tour – I’m seeing various things speculating on-line about why I am doing particular venues, with various imagined personal motivations. I have seen this called a stadium tour; that I have ‘sold out’ etc. I am not playing any stadiums. If anything, for the most part, I am doing longer runs in smaller rooms. I may do some stadiums in 2028, with a special stadium-satirising set, but not yet. As usual tour dates choices come down to the same rather mundane things;
1) Will the venue have excess charges to punters and back door secondary ticketing markets? Are their merchandise %s so punitive it is not possible to run the shop without making a loss? If so I aim to avoid them wherever possible.
2) Will it work for my bad deaf hearing aid ears? Sadly some spaces just aren’t working for me anymore, despite how hard the lovely staff tried, so I am now doing longer runs at smaller more acoustically secure spaces in some towns. B’ham Symphony Hall is bouncy and I do struggle there – one of the shows on the last tour was particularly tough to hear - but the second city has pretty much no-where else to play that is ever available and/or large enough. Royal Festival Hall can be hard for me to hear from the stage but works well for the punters themselves and is extremely safe in terms of ticketing in a way most big London spaces aren’t, where rip offs are rife. And it’s a classy joint!
3) What is actually available in the tour timeframe? The Scottish leg of the tour is increasingly difficult in terms of finding available, appropriate and acoustically secure spaces that are well run with no ticket tout infiltration or secondary market shit. This time around there’s a lot of unknowns. We have to land in Glasgow during the comedy festival as the big venues are sublet to the festival at that time, which makes them easier to deal with. Edinburgh in August is not really viable now, especially in Oasis year, so I am doing one big night at the Playhouse in Sept.
4) I’ll be 58 when I finish this tour, and I am deaf with coronary artery disease. I won’t be able to carry on spreading the 250,000 people that want to see me over all these smaller shows in nice little theatres for ever and in my ‘60s may just squat at big but eminently playable spaces, like the lovely Lowry in Salford or the delightful Dome in Brighton, for as long as they will have me, and you will have to travel! It’s been a blast but I am worn out! You spend your life trying to do the right thing in the essentially criminal world of Showbiz. Nobody thanks you for it. Make me a sandwich!
5) I haven’t been to Northern Ireland lately, not because I think it’s ‘too dangerous’, but because in Belfast the Opera House is the only venue that works for me acoustically, and ideally I will tie a trip in with Derry/Londonderry, and the Republic, and the latter has become difficult for various reasons - none of which are to do with being 'afraid' of Ireland. Quite the opposte. I much prefer it to most of England, for example. For Snowflake/Tornado bringing across the shark mechanism would have been a challenge in terms of time and money and manpower. We had a whole Irish secondary set built to tour Carpet Remnant World on the island. Sorry. I miss you and your lovely lands.
1. NEW MERCH
Along with WAXFACE’s usual line of Stewart Lee merch there are new for 2025 t-shirts and hoodies on the Man-Wulf theme, all of the highest quality.
I’d wear them myself but I’d look arrogant.
John Mackay & Sally Homer, in association with Debi Allen/Curtis Brown present
STEWART LEE vs THE MAN-WULF BRAND NEW SHOW
LEICESTER SQUARE THEATRE, LONDON
3rd December 2024 – 17th January 2025 AND UK TOURING THROUGHOUT 2025
NB: TICKETS FOR THESE SHOWS WILL REMAIN AT THE ADVERTISED PRICE. SURGE PRICING IS IMMORAL AND TICKETMASTER AND OASIS ARE WANKERS, ENCOURAGED BY SUCCESSIVE TORY CULTURE SECRETARIES IN THEIR CRIMINAL ENDEAVOURS.
In this brand-new show, Lee shares his stage with a tough-talking werewolf comedian who hates humanity. The Man-Wulf lays down a ferocious comedy challenge to the culturally irrelevant and physically enfeebled Lee. Can the beast inside us all be silenced with the silver bullet of Lee's unprecedentedly critically acclaimed style of stand-up.
Opening at Leicester Square Theatre in December 2024 the new show will tour to UK cities throughout 2025.
Leicester Sq Theatre, London 3rd Dec 2024 – 17th Jan 2025 7pm, except for 6pm and 8.30 pm Sat 4th Jan.
0207 734 2222 www.leicestersquaretheatre.com
STEWART LEE vs THE MAN-WULF 2025 TOUR SCHEDULE
January 2025
Sunday 19th January 2025 - Mayflower Theatre, Southampton - TICKETS
Monday 20th January 2025 - Dorking Halls, Dorking - TICKETS
Tuesday 21st January 2025 - Dorking Halls, Dorking - TICKETS
Wednesday 22nd January 2025 - The Alban Arena, St. Albans - TICKETS
Thursday 23rd January 2025 - The Alban Arena, St. Albans - TICKETS
Friday 24th January 2025 - Symphony Hall, Birmingham - TICKETS
Saturday 25th January 2025 - Symphony Hall, Birmingham - TICKETS
Sunday 26th January 2025 - Symphony Hall, Birmingham - TICKETS
Tuesday 28th January 2025 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
Wednesday 29th January 2025 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
Thursday 30th January 2025 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
Friday 31st January 2025 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
February 2025
Saturday 1st February 2025 - Theatre Royal, York - TICKETS
Monday 3rd February 2025 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Tuesday 4th February 2025 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Wednesday 5th February 2025 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Thursday 6th February 2025 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Friday 7th February 2025 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Saturday 8th February 2025 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Monday 10th February 2025 - The Marlowe, Canterbury - TICKETS
Wednesday 12th February 2025 - Chelmsford Theatre, Chelmsford - TICKETS
Thursday 13th February 2025 - De Montfort Hall, Leicester - TICKETS
Friday 14th February 2025 - De Montfort Hall, Leicester - TICKETS
Saturday 15th February 2025 - Wycombe Swan, High Wycombe - TICKETS
Sunday 16th February 2025 - Wycombe Swan, High Wycombe - TICKETS
Tuesday 18th February 2025 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Wednesday 19th February 2025 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Thursday 20th February 2025 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Friday 21st February 2025 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Saturday 22nd February 2025 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
April 2025
Tuesday 1st April 2025 - Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield - TICKETS
Wednesday 2nd April 2025 - Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield - TICKETS
Thursday 3rd April 2025 - New Theatre, Peterborough - TICKETS
Friday 4th April 2025 - Palace Theatre, Southend - TICKETS
Saturday 5th April 2025 - Palace Theatre, Southend - TICKETS
Sunday 6th April 2025 - Palace Theatre, Southend - TICKETS
Tuesday 22nd April 2025 - Royal & Derngate, Northampton - TICKETS
Wednesday 23rd April 2025 - Royal & Derngate, Northampton - TICKETS
Monday 28th April 2025 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Tuesday 29th April 2025 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Wednesday 30th April 2025 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
May 2025
Thursday 1st May 2025 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Friday 2nd May 2025 - The Mach Arena, Machynlleth Comedy Festival - TICKETS
Saturday 3rd May 2025 - The Mach Arena, Machynlleth Comedy Festival - TICKETS
Sunday 4th May 2025 - The Mach Arena, Machynlleth Comedy Festival - TICKETS
Tuesday 6th May 2025 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Wednesday 7th May 2025 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Thursday 8th May 2025 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Friday 9th May 2025 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Saturday 10th May 2025 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Monday 12th May 2025 - Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton - TICKETS
Thursday 15th May 2025 - King's Theatre, Portsmouth - TICKETS
Friday 16th May 2025 - The Forum, Bath - TICKETS
July 2025
Saturday 5th July 2025 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 6th July 2025 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 6th July 2025 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Saturday 12th July 2025 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 13th July 2025 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 13th July 2025 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
September 2025
Monday 8th September 2025 - Lighthouse, Poole - TICKETS
Tuesday 9th September 2025 - Lighthouse, Poole - TICKETS
Wednesday 10th September 2025 - Hall For Cornwall, Truro - TICKETS
Thursday 11th September 2025 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS
Friday 12th September 2025 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS
Saturday 13th September 2025 - Westlands Entertainment Venue, Yeovil - TICKETS
Sunday 14th September 2025 - Westlands Entertainment Venue, Yeovil - TICKETS
Tuesday 16th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
Wednesday 17th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
Thursday 18th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
Friday 19th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
Saturday 20th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
Wednesday 24th September 2025 - Hippodrome, Darlington - TICKETS
Thursday 25th September 2025 - Gala, Durham - TICKETS
Friday 26th September 2025 - Theatre Royal, Glasgow - TICKETS
Saturday 27th September 2025 - Playhouse, Edinburgh - TICKETS
Sunday 28th September 2025 - His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen - TICKETS
October 2025
Friday 3rd October 2025 - Aberystwyth Arts Centre – Great Hall, Aberystwyth - TICKETS
Tuesday 7th October 2025 - Milton Keynes Theatre, Milton Keynes - TICKETS
Wednesday 8th October 2025 - Milton Keynes Theatre, Milton Keynes - TICKETS
Thursday 9th October 2025 - Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS
Friday 10th October 2025 - Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS
Saturday 11th October 2025 - Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS
Wednesday 15th October 2025 - Grand Theatre, Swansea - TICKETS
Thursday 16th October 2025 - Grand Theatre, Swansea - TICKETS
Friday 17th October 2025 - Bristol Beacon, Bristol - TICKETS
Saturday 18th October 2025 - Bristol Beacon, Bristol - TICKETS
Tuesday 21st October 2025 - Storyhouse, Chester - TICKETS
Wednesday 22nd October 2025 - Storyhouse, Chester - TICKETS
Thursday 23rd October 2025 - Opera House, Buxton - TICKETS
Friday 24th October 2025 - Opera House, Buxton - TICKETS
Saturday 25th October 2025 - The Baths Hall, Scunthorpe - ON SALE SOON
Wednesday 29th October 2025 - Cast, Doncaster - TICKETS
Thursday 30th October 2025 - Cast, Doncaster - TICKETS
Friday 31st October 2025 - Harrogate Theatre, Harrogate - TICKETS
November 2025
Saturday 1st November 2025 - Harrogate Theatre, Harrogate - TICKETS
Sunday 2nd November 2025 - Harrogate Theatre, Harrogate - TICKETS
Monday 3rd November 2025 - Tyne Theatre & Opera House, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Tuesday 4th November 2025 - Tyne Theatre & Opera House, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Friday 7th November 2025 - The Anvil, Basingstoke - TICKETS
Saturday 8th November 2025 - Rose Theatre, KIngston - TICKETS
Sunday 9th November 2025 - Rose Theatre, KIngston - TICKETS
Tuesday 11th November 2025 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Wednesday 12th November 2025 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Thursday 13th November 2025 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Friday 14th November 2025 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Saturday 15th November 2025 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Monday 17th November 2025 - Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham - TICKETS
Tuesday 18th November 2025 - Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham - TICKETS
Wednesday 19th November 2025 - Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham - TICKETS
3. SNOWFLAKE/TORNADO
Stewart’s 2019 touring show Snowflake/Tornado, which was originally broadcast as a BBC Special in Autumn 2022 is now available to buy or rent “on demand” from www.mediagarageproductions.com
Both shows also appear to be free as part of the current Amazon Prime rosta.
We are currently preparing a physical release of these shows but it’s got delayed as I have been bogged down in picking through a wealth of possible, and very exciting, audio extras, where the material worked much better than in the broadcast show itself.
5. FESTIVAL SETS 2025
24th May 2025 Bearded Theory, Derbyshire Iggy Pop, The Manics, Thee Sisters O’ Mercy, Yard Act, Left Field, Throwing Muses, The Selecter, The Lovely Lovely Eggs, my pals Asian Dub Foundation, Cool distaff Japanese Ramones Shonen Knife, Beans on Toast, dub legends Zion Train, Angeline Morrison, Miki Berenyi from The Lushes and more TBA. www.beardedtheory.co.uk.
6. Robber Nince
The comedian Robin Ince is so much more than that now. He is becoming a proper poet, not just some comedian who gets their poetry published because they are a micro-celeb, and increasingly good writer of impassioned polemics that never tip over into haranguing the reader. Here’s another one. https://thecosmicshamblesnetwork.substack.com/p/true-british-horror-stories.
7. TWO DANIEL KITSON BENEFITS
Daniel Kitson’s newsletter announces two benefits the world’s greatest living stand-up is hosting, thus.
Monday 9th of December - Union Chapel, London, for the PDA society w Ian Smith, Ania Magliano, Amy Gledhill and Rob Auton - Tickets are available HERE
Wednesday 18th of December - Exeter Phoenix for Tom Parry’s kids Pre School or something like that. Mike Wozniak, Amy Mason, Mike Bubbins, Will Adamsdale, Mel Owen and my sweet, sweet, collaborator and one time neighbour and all time king of midfield ball retention, Gavin Osborn. - You can get tickets HERE.
VICTORIAN RADICALS – BIRMINGHAM MUSEUMS & ART GALLERY, UNTIL DEC 23RD 2024 AT LEAST https://www.birminghammuseums.org.uk/exhibitions/victorian-radicals
Three generations of British artists, designers and makers revolutionised the visual arts in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Pre-Raphaelites, William Morris and his circle and the men and women of the Arts and Crafts movement transformed art and design.
VANESSA BELL – MILTON KEYNES GALLERY - 23rd Feb 2025
A World Of Form And Colour. Thorough retrospective on the hot Bloomsbury freak. Vanessa Bell (1879–1961) was a pioneering modernist painter and founding member of the Bloomsbury Group, a circle of influential English artists, writers and intellectuals in the first half of the twentieth century. This exhibition – her largest-ever solo show – provides an in-depth overview that includes drawings, paintings, ceramics and furniture.
Bell’s pioneering work was at the forefront of British abstraction. At the same time, she helped to create conditions in which artists, including women, could flourish. This involved organising the ‘Friday Club’ for artists to meet and co-founding the experimental design collective, Omega Workshops. Collaboration formed an essential part of Bell’s approach to art, including with her sister, the writer Virginia Woolf, and the artist Duncan Grant. https://mkgallery.org/event/vanessa-bell/
SCENT AND THE ART OF THE PRE-RAPHAELITES – BIRMINGHAM BARBER INSTITUTE UNTIL JANUARY 26TH https://barber.org.uk/scent-and-pre-raphaelites/
Scent is a key motif in paintings by the artists of the Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic movements. Fragrance is visually suggested in images of daydreaming figures smelling flowers or burning incense, enhancing the sensory aura of ‘art for art’s sake’. Scent was also implied in Victorian painting to evoke hedonism – pleasure in exquisite sensations – and a preoccupation with beauty; or to reflect the Victorian vogue for synaesthesia (evoking one sense through another) and the penchant for art, like scent, to evoke moods and emotions.
EVELYN DE MORGAN – W’HAMPTON ART GALLERY – 9th MARCH 2005 https://www.wolverhamptonart.org.uk/whats-on/edm/
Stew says, “This late Victorian visionary’s work can come across a bit Advanced Dungeons and Dragons ™ ®, but that probably tell us more about how she anticipated, or even influenced, the populist art of the future. I have a real soft spot for her. Her partner William De Morgan, initially of Stoke Newington, was also a proto-science fiction author, and ceramicist, whose decorative tiles pop up in the oddest places – there may be some in a once swanky pub near you. Anyway, the last time EDM had her own exhibition was 1907 so get on down, and get some lovely Gray Pays & Bacon from the Great Western Pub by W’hampton Station while you are at it”
They says, “Featuring thirty artworks, Painted Dreams reveals De Morgan’s progression as an artist and her technical mastery as one of the most impressive artists of the late Victorian era. Discover De Morgan’s exploration of challenging subjects and painterly responses to enduring social and political issues of the day, such as feminism, inequality, war and pacifism. Painted Dreams revisits the historic 1907 show, reuniting several of De Morgan’s most significant works in Wolverhampton.
The original exhibition was a remarkable achievement, challenging Victorian prejudices and the notion that being a professional artist was a male occupation and unsuitable for a woman of De Morgan’s class. Her ability to layer contemporary issues into mythological tales was well received, with one reviewer for the Wolverhampton Express and Star describing the pictures as ‘painted dreams’. Painted Dreams presents De Morgan as a pioneering artist who explored new, challenging subjects that delved into the fundamentals of human existence.
The artworks are displayed in chronological order to show the progression of De Morgan’s talent as an artist and demonstrate her painterly responses to enduring social and political issues of the day, such as feminism and inequality, mental health and the impact of war.
By recreating De Morgan’s 1907 solo show as faithfully as possible, Painted Dreams highlights a career that has been historically overshadowed by her male contemporaries. The exhibition is curated by Sarah Hardy, Director of the De Morgan Museum, and Wolverhampton Art Gallery. The exhibition is a partnership between the De Morgan Foundation and Wolverhampton Art Gallery. The Gallery is funded by Arts Council England as a National Portfolio Organisation, and City of Wolverhampton Council.”
ALFIE BROWN
The very good stand-up comedian Alfie Brown tours his OPEN HEARTED HUMAN ENQUIRY show. alfiebrowncomedian.com
The first major exhibition devoted to the artist and designer Tirzah Garwood (1908–1951) since 1952. Best known until now as the wife of Eric Ravilious and as the author of the autobiographyLong Live Great Bardfield, Garwood excelled as a fine artist and printmaker. Her diverse and enchanting works are gems of the mid-20th century.
THE DAMNED Black Album/Strawberries line-up, with hard-wristed Holy Grail headhunter Rat Scabies back on drums.
JACKIE OATES AND JOHN SPIERS Super-folk team up’s festive fun
DECEMBER
6th - Reith Hall, Swaledale, N York
7th - Wychwood Folk Club, Chipping Norton
8th - Folk at the Froze, Woodridge, Suffolk
9th - Colchester Arts, Colchester
10th - Riverhouse Barn, Walton Upon Thames
11th - Chapel Arts, Bath
13th - Ropewalk, Barton Upon Humber
14th - Flowergate Hall, Whitby, N Yorks
20th - Nailsea Folk Club, Bristol
21st - The Globe, Hay-On-Wye
22nd - Halsway Manor, Taunton
DISCHARGE D-beat deadbeats
DECEMBER
7th – Newcastle Byker Grave
13th- Stoke On Trent somewhere
14th – B’ham Castle & Falcom
JAN 4th – London 100 Club
FEB 2nd – Bristol Fleece
THE BLUE AEROPLANES Annual Xmas wig-out from British art-rock institution
DECEMBER 8th Bristol Fleece
THE FALLEN WOMEN – LEXINGTON LONDON DEC 28TH –
The Female Fall Tribute super-group and live karaoke outfit are back in the biffin bridge between Xmas and New year to blast away your festive blues. https://www.thelexington.co.uk/event.php?id=2897
20-odd songs performed by you THE PUBBERLICK and some special celebrity guests.
THE GENTLE SPRING Former Field Mouse Michael Hiscock returns from his French fastness as The Gentle Spring, semi-acoustic indie-pop in hand.
THE MAGPIE ARC Fabulous young British country-folk-rock act on the road, augmented by the mighty guitar legend Martin Simpson
FEBRUARY
Friday 7th – International Arts Centre, Leicester Buy Tickets
Saturday 8th – Indoor Festival of Folk, Cecil Sharp House, London The Magpie Arc, Edgelarks, The Bookshop Band, Sam Carter, Frankie Archer and “The Guv’nor” of folk rock Ashley Hutchings in conversation with Matthew BannisterBuy Tickets
Sunday 9th – Ropetackle Arts Centre, Shoreham-by-Sea Buy Tickets
Monday 10th – Colchester Arts Centre, Colchester Buy Tickets
APRIL
Thursday 17th – The Glasshouse, Gateshead Buy Tickets
Tuesday 22nd – The Phoenix, Exeter Buy Tickets
Thursday 24th – Chapel Arts, Bath Buy Tickets
CHUCK PROPHET Chuck’s last live tour was one of the greatest rock and roll shows I ever saw – real huckster guitar slinger stuff that they don’t make anymore. The Mount Rushmore of sandblasted country noir is on the road here again in 2025. Don’t miss. Honestly.
FEBRUARY
19th - Oxford - The Bullingdon
20th - Leeds - Brudenell Social Club
21st - Manchester - Yes Pink Room
22nd - Newcastle - The Cluny
23rd - Glasgow - St Lukes
24th - Sheffield - Greystones
25th - Leicester - The International
26th - Nottingham - Metronome
27th - Cambridge - Portland Arms
28th - Norwich - Arts Centre
MARCH
1st - Hassocks - Mid Sussex Music Hall
2nd - Bristol - Lantern
3rd - Birmingham - Hare & Hounds
4th - Southampton - 1865
5th - London - The Garage
NAPALM DEATH Birmingham’s grindcore godparents
MARCH
4th - Dublin Academy
5th – Glasgow Galvanisers’ Yard
6th – Newcastle Uni Union
7th – London Electric Ballroom
8th – Liverpool Academy
9th – Birmingham Institute
THE LOFT
I never saw Pete Astor’s pioneering indie-folk-rock janglers The Loft, like an English middle class mid-60s Dylan with a post-punk rush, first time around, though I saw the Weather Prophets loads, and regular doses of Astor solo over the decades have been pleasurably unavoidable.
But I am thrilled at the possibility of this, and new recordings show the band on great form. Age suits them it seems.
MARCH
13th – M’cr Gullivers
14th – B’ham Castle & Falcom
15th – Nottingham JT Soar
20th – Ramsgate Music Hall
21st – Bristol Thunderbolt
22nd – London Lexington
23rd – Brighton Prince Albert
27th – Leeds Lending Room
28th – N’castle Cluny 2
29th – Glasgow Mono
HAWKWIND 2025. Another implausible trip for the psychedelic survivors, Dave Brock still imperious, even from his stool.
APRIL
17th – Gateshead Glasshouse
18th – Guildford G Live
19th – Bournemouth Pavillion
20th – B’ham Symphony Hall
MAY
9th – Aylesbury Waterside
10th – Liverpool Auditorium
11th – M’cr Bridgewater Hall
23rd – Sheffield City Hall
25th – Cambridge Corn Exchange
26th – London Barbican
THE NIGHTINGALES Birmingham post-punk leg-ends hit the road again. When will it end?
MAY
21ST Leeds Brudenell
22nd Newcastle Think Tank
23rd Glasgow Stereo
24th M’cr Deaf Institute
25th B’ham Castle & Falcon
27th Bristol Exchange
28th Brighton Chalk
29th Cambridge Junction
30th London Oslo
31st Swansea Bunkhouse
10. IN OUR LAMENTATIONS 2024
Tony Oxley (Sheffield’s Sunny Murray, 1938)
John M Burns (His modesty blazed, 1939)
John Pilger (News terrier, 1939)
David Soul (The covered man, an inspiration 1943)
Annie Nightingale (Gateway drug, 1940)
Pitchfork (Signal to noise, 1996) Mary Weiss (She led the pack, 1948)
Chris Karrer (Archangel’s Thunderbirdman, 1947)
Iasos (Greek space muso, 1947)
Phil Niblock (NY art noise, 1933)
Pluto Shervington (Ram Goat Liver Eater, 1950) Tisa Farrow (Zombies ripped her flesh, 1951)
Norman Jewison (Rollerball Superstar, 1926)
Neil Kulkarni (Era-enhancing music critic, 1972)
Wayne Kramer (He kicked out the jams motherfucker, 1945)
Steve Brown (He left Avalon and taught the world to sing, 1954)
Christopher Priest (Dorset future-ist, 1943)
Aston "Family Man" Barrett (dub bass headcase, 1946)
Ian Lavender (Don’t tell him, Pike, 1946)
Damon Suzuki (Krautrock witness cuddled me & Noel Fielding, 1950)
John Rotheroe (Shire Book Seer, 1935)
Steve Wright (massive old-skool pro made it look easy, 1954)
Alan Tomlinson (Jazz trombonist, dry northern wit, beatnik, 1947)
Ewen Mackintosh (Office secondary superstar, 1973) Jenni Nuttall (Chaucerian)
Richard Lewis (Worthwhile American comedian, 1947)
Nick Dimbleby (Sculptor of note, scholar, gentleman, comedy fan, 1946)
Edward Bond (Whitehouse-infuriator, 1934)
Karl Wallinger (Waterboys’ prime period pianist, 1957)
Eric Carmen (Raspberry sensation, 1949)
Wally Shoup (Hard-blowin’ hero, 1944)
The Wye Salmon (pollution-fucked fish)
Paul Brett (Crazy World guitarist, 1947)
Shane Baldwin (Vice Squad drummer and punk scribe, 1963)
John Sinclair (Beatnik, 1941)
Carl Andre (None more brick, 1935)
Graeme Naysmith (Pale Saint) Marian Zazeela (Eternal Musician, 1940)
Shelley Ganz (Unclaimed but claimed, at last, 1959)
Steve Albini (Big blackhead, 1962)
Dennis Thompson (He also kicked out the jams motherfucker, 1948)
Gary Floyd (Double happy dick punk, 1953)
Roger Corman (King of the Bees, 1926)
Doug Ingle (The Iron Butterfly, 1945)
Gerry Conway (Folk drummer for hire and tool of anti-CND propaganda, 1947)
Nicholas Ball (His house bled to death, 1946)
Larry Page (Wild thingy, 1936) Francois Hardy (Chanteuse genieuse, 1944)
Arthur Gaps Hendrickson (Selectaman under pressure, 1951)
James Chance (He contorted himself, 1953)
Donald Sutherland (Kilroy was here, 1935)
Dexter Romwebber (Guitar jet, 1966)
Clarence Frogman Henry (Anthropomorphic blues amphibian, 1937)
Randy Fuller (He fought the law also, 1944) Lucy Rimmer (She fell briefly on a birthday)
Callum The Highland Red Deer (Killed by twat tourists)
Mark Found (Sound recordist and model railway specialist) Shelly Duvall (She shone, 1949) Wendy Ritson (Centipede violinist, 1934) Jean Williams (Complex Feminine bassist, 1951)
Bob Newhart (I ripped him off, 1929)
Toumani Diabate (Mali kora master, 1965)
Jerry Miller (He was purple and lived under the sea, 1943)
John Mayall (Bluesbreaker broken at last, 1933) Irene Schweizer (German jazznius, 1941)
Jack Karlson (Succulent Chinese meal, 1942) Catherine Ribeiro (Oh! My heart is broken! An angel! A true star!1941)
Anthony O’Neill (Brú naBóinnearchitect)
Pete Bailey (Josefus/Stone Axe vox)
Brian Trueman (Dangermouseman, 1932) Rebecca Horn (Concerto anarchist, 1944)
James Earl Jones (He made shit sparkle, 1931)
Dean Roberts (Thela-maturgist, 1975)
Brother Marquis (He had 99 problems and a bitch weren’t one, 1966)
Zoot Money (Ran madly towards Tim Kirkby’s dad’s beach hut, 1942)
Herbie Flowers (He walked on the wild side, 1938)
Pat Collier (He vibrated,1952)
Steve Kille (Dead Dead Meadow Man)
Gavin Webb (Master’s Apprentice,1947)
Alan Delon (Man In A Girl On A Motorcycle, 1935) Maggie Smith (The grande dame!, 1934)
Kris Kristofferson (The Border Lord, 1936)
Tim Darvill (Cotswold archaeologist, 1958)
Irwin the Malmesbury Emu (He loved cold showers and cuddles)
Glen Hutchinson (Cambridge performance poet)
75% of all animal life on earth since 1974 (1974)
Phil Lesh (Bassful Dead, 1940)
Ron Ely (Ooo-e-o-e-o-e-o-e-oooo!, 1938)
Nick Gravenites (Buttered quicksilver, 1938) Janey Godley (Street level satirist, 1961)
Lou Donaldson (Hornblower, 1926)
American democracy!!! (1965)
Frank Auerbach (Auerbout a painting of Camden please Frank, 1931)
Tim West (He ate royal jelly and turned into a human-bee, 1934)
Roy Haynes (Snap Crackle Bop! 1925)
Pete Sinfield (Crimson King Courtier, 1943)
Johnny Duhan (Granny’s Intention, 1950)
Richard Andrew (Black Cab Underground Lover)
John Prescott (Mr Punch, 1938)
Jim Abrahams (Rapid fire comedy genius, 1944)
11. Janey Godley
I was very sad to learn of the death of the Scottish comedian Janey Godley, and had communicated with her privately in the weeks prior to her passing.
She was a unique voice and, sharing a venue with her at Underbelly throughout much of the ‘00s, I was privileged to watch her learn how to replace standard but effective stand-up material with the bittersweet and brutal stories of her real life that went on to make her such a beloved act. In those days, Janey was one of the acts I took friends and family unfamiliar with the world of stand-up to see, to show them what a vital and varied art form it could be.
She was a compelling figure, by turns exhilarating and exhausting, who I wish I had seen more of in the last few years.
My thoughts are with Sean and Ashley, of whom it was clear Janey was enormously proud.
12.PRIMEVALS MAN-WULF SINGLE
Glasgow’s garage punk veterans The Primevals announce a new single as featured in the new Stewart Lee vs The Man-Wulf upcoming U.K. tour.
There are 3 versions
Side a I'm The Man-Wulf
Side b I'm The Man-Wulf (long nail edit)
Plus a 9 minute I'm The Man-Wulf (long nail version)
These tracks will be released on Friday 6th Dec, a BC no fees day all proceeds to to the band.
Vinyl sides a&b released on a 45 in January.
“A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR! LET’S HOPE IT’S THE FIRST ONE WITHOUT ANDREW NEIL!” Some notes on this tour – I’m seeing various things speculating on-line about why I am doing particular venues, with various imagined personal motivations. I have seen this called a stadium tour; that I have ‘sold out’ etc. I am not playing any stadiums. If anything, for the most part, I am doing longer runs in smaller rooms. I may do some stadiums in 2028, with a special stadium-satirising set, but not yet. As usual tour dates choices come down to the same rather mundane things; 1) Will the venue have excess charges to punters and back door secondary ticketing markets? Are their merchandise %s so punitive it is not possible to run the shop without making a loss? If so I aim to avoid them wherever possible. 2) Will it work for my bad deaf hearing aid ears? Sadly some spaces just aren’t working for me anymore, despite how hard the lovely staff tried, so I am now doing longer runs at smaller more acoustically secure spaces in some towns. B’ham Symphony Hall is bouncy and I do struggle there – one of the shows on the last tour was particularly tough to hear - but the second city has pretty much no-where else to play that is ever available and/or large enough. Royal Festival Hall can be hard for me to hear from the stage but works well for the punters themselves and is extremely safe in terms of ticketing in a way most big London spaces aren’t, where rip offs are rife. And it’s a classy joint! 3) What is actually available in the tour timeframe? The Scottish leg of the tour is increasingly difficult in terms of finding...
We went up 75 mins late in Hull last night.
I apologise. The venue's software wasn't talking to itself. A man came in from holiday to try to get it all online. Thanks for your patience.
It was a great, if long, night, in the end.
CONTENT PROVIDER FINAL 2018 TOUR DATES - NO MORE TO FOLLOW - FINITO - LAST 5 DATES OF A TOTAL OF 214
19th - 23rd April 2018.
Content Provider has been touring to sold out theatres throughout divided Brexit Britain for nearly two years and is Stewart Lee's most successful full-length show ever.
Join him on these special evenings as he finally abandons two hours of monetisable material and performs the show for the very last time. When it's gone it's gone.
Stewart is 50 years old in 2018 and, after performing these shows, he intends to take the longest break from stand-up he's had since his four year disappearance at the start of the century.
April 2018
Thursday 19th - Content Provider, Festival Hall, Southbank, London - 020 3879 9555 - 7.30pm - TICKETS Friday 20th - Content Provider, Festival Hall, Southbank, London - 020 3879 9555 - 7.30pm - TICKETS Monday 23rd - Content Provider, Festival Hall, Southbank, London - 020 3879 9555 - 7.30pm - TICKETS
BENEFIT SHOWS
18th May - Action on Hearing Loss, London, details TBC
13th June - Hilarity for Charity, Leicester Sq Theatre, London. Stewart Lee returns to the Leicester Square Theatre for a third year running to head up a comedy night in aid of community charities North London Cares and South London Cares.
He'll be joined by Carl Donnelly, Athena Kugblenu, Arnold Brown and Bridget Christie, with further acts to be announced, including a really famous bloke who has been in films.
8th July - The Secret Spy Cops' Ball - Rob Newman, Evelyn Mok, Mark Steel, Stewart Lee, Jackson's Lane, London.
For women tricked into relationships w undercover police.
Most of the performers on the bill are adopted orphans, oddly.
I am interviewing the folk singer, author and song collector Shirley Collins again at the Hay festival on Friday June 1st at 5.30.
I wonder what I will ask her this time?
She has a brilliant new book out, All In The Downs.
Monday 10th - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Tuesday 11th - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Wednesday 12th - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Thursday 13th - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Thursday 20th - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Friday 21st - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Saturday 22nd - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
October 2018
Tuesday 2nd - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Wednesday 3rd - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Thursday 4th - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Tuesday 9th - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Wednesday 10th - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Thursday 11th - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Friday 12th - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Tuesday 30th - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Wednesday 31st - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
November 2018
Thursday 1st - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Friday 2nd - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Saturday 3rd - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Tuesday 6th - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Wednesday 7th - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Thursday 8th - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Friday 9th - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Saturday 10th - WHAT NOW? - Leicester Square Theatre, LONDON - 7pm - 020 7734 2222 - TICKETS
Stewart Lee
2018-03-22T10:30:01+00:00
HULLAPLOG We went up 75 mins late in Hull last night. I apologise. The venue's software wasn't talking to itself. A man came in from holiday to try to get it all online. Thanks for your patience. It was a great, if long, night, in the end. CONTENT PROVIDER FINAL 2018 TOUR DATES - NO MORE TO FOLLOW - FINITO - LAST 5 DATES OF A TOTAL OF 214 April 2018 Thursday 12th - Content Provider, Palace Theatre, Southend - 01702 351135 - 7.30pm - TICKETS Friday 13th - Content Provider, Palace Theatre, Southend - 01702 351135 - 7.30pm - TICKETS THESE ARE FILMING DATES FOR A DVD/DL/BBC B'CAST CONTENT PROVIDER RFH LONDON 19th - 23rd April 2018. Content Provider has been touring to sold out theatres throughout divided Brexit Britain for nearly two years and is Stewart Lee's most successful full-length show ever. Join him on these special evenings as he finally abandons two hours of monetisable material and performs the show for the very last time. When it's gone it's gone. Stewart is 50 years old in 2018 and, after performing these shows, he intends to take the longest break from stand-up he's had since his four year disappearance at the start of the century. April 2018 Thursday 19th - Content Provider, Festival Hall, Southbank, London - 020 3879 9555 - 7.30pm - TICKETS Friday 20th - Content Provider, Festival Hall, Southbank, London - 020 3879 9555 - 7.30pm - TICKETS Monday 23rd - Content Provider, Festival Hall, Southbank, London - 020 3879 9555 - 7.30pm - TICKETS BENEFIT SHOWS 18th May - Action on Hearing Loss, London, details TBC 13th June - Hilarity for Charity, Leicester Sq Theatre, London. Stewart Lee returns to the Leicester Square Theatre for a third year running to head up a comedy...
I don't accept that aspiring to mainstream success is natural," says Steve Albini. "By the time I was 10, I realised it didn't matter what people thought of me. I have to look at myself in the mirror when I shave in the morning. I'd rather not look at a coward or someone who was exploiting people."
As the provocative frontman of the controversial noise band Big Black, Steve Albini was the conscience of the 1980s American underground scene, famous for not even taking calls from major record labels. From the late 1980s, his day job as the cut-price producer of important albums, including the Pixies' Surfer Rosa, Nirvana's In Utero, PJ Harvey's Rid of Me and Low's Secret Name, brought him a different kind of renown.
Next month, Albini's current band, Shellac, will host the fourth All Tomorrow's Parties festival, for which they have drawn up the programme. It's an inspired pairing. All Tomorrow's Parties, held at a Pontin's holiday camp in Camber Sands, East Sussex, has defied received wisdom, proving that rock festivals need not be appalling. The three-day event offers indoor stages, working toilets, an absence of corporate sponsorship, chalet accommodation, and a nearby miniature-golf course (recommended by the British miniature-golf international Andy Miller). Albini's lifelong commitment to defying the music industry makes him the festival's perfect public face, and his stewardship promises a fascinating line-up.
Albini was a weak and miserable child, saved by 1970s punk. Michael Azerrad's history of the American hardcore-punk scene, Our Band Could Be Your Life, includes a scene from Albini's university days in Chicago that it's hard to resist investing with significance. For his fine-art course, the campus's most unpopular geek stood behind a Plexi-glas wall and insulted passers-by, who were invited to throwthings at him. A bowling pin prematurely shattered the screen and perhaps saved Albini and his onlookers from performance-art martyrdom.
Twenty years on, Albini's status as a professional artist is still threatened by his status as a professional irritant. The 1980s probably wasn't the ideal time for him to launch Big Black. In a world where the singer-as-seer notion blossomed, Albini's attempts to write and perform in the personas of American archetypes gone sour perhaps seemed confusing. Over a relentless, pounding backing, Big Black gave voice to the bored arsonists of Kerosene, the redneck driver of The Power of Independent Trucking and the child-abusers of Jordan, Minnesota. Albini seemed genuinely surprised by the protests that greeted his next project, named after a genuine Japanese superhero, Rapeman.
"There's no way it can be okay for Quentin Tarantino to make violent gangster movies, but not all right for someone to write songs with similar content," Albini says with a tinge of world-weariness. "At least if people are arguing about my subject material, it means there's some subject material there. I think I'm normal. I'm a regular guy. I can listen to a song that says Please Worship Satan, and to one that tells the fable of the devil going down to Georgia to play a fiddle. I think the average listener gets it. People who criticise the average listener, and put themselves on an intellectual plane above them, eventually betray themselves as the fools they are."
Like all great satirists, Albini is motivated by righteous disgust, though to admit it would be too close to self-aggrandisement. Instead, he concludes: "You can sing about something revolting to reinforce the fact that you don't like it. That seems to me to be a good and moral thing to do."
Today, the outlet for Albini's frustrations is Shellac, a trio playing a superevolved version of hardcore punk, with unparalleledsensitivity to the power of silence, space and structure. The band opened its last London show with an exquisitely interminable reading of the song Didn't We Deserve a Look at You the Way You Really Are, defiant in its refusal to develop into any recognisable rock shape.
"You're talking about the Long Slow Boring Song, yes?" he asks when I mention the gig. "People coming to see us probably know we're likely to drag it out. We're not trying to put people off. The experience of playing it is hypnotising. Improvisation is a facet of the band. We like indulging ourselves. The audience are invited to be part of the experiment."
Moral anxieties inform even Albini's day job as a producer. It's a a title he's uncomfortable with. His curious mixture of humility and dogmatism means that he prefers the term "recording engineer" and refuses to take any credit for the distinctive sonic aesthetic he has defined. "We're not selective about who we work with," says the man who was even persuaded to record Page and Plant, whom older readers will remember from Led Zeppelin. "There's isn't a signature sound to the records we've worked on. We see ourselves essentially as employees of the bands we record. If they're happy with the project, it's probably down to them."
He is, however, happy to endorse the acts he's booked for the Camber Sands art-rock jamboree, describing the bill as "a menu vouched for by people the public have a reason to trust". Unlike most aspects of the current music scene, All Tomorrow's Parties matches Albini's high expectations. "We played ATP in 2000, and we were charmed by the concept. They asked us about curating it, and we've booked people we admire and respect."
Shellac's guests for the festival, this year running twice on two successive weekends, are a certain kind of music fan's wish list, with sets from Blonde Redhead, the re-formed Breeders, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Low, Rachel's, Shipping News, Smog, Zeni Geva and dozens more left-field innovators. The US art-rock pioneers Mission of Burma will be present, as will their British counterparts Wire and the Fall.
All Tomorrow's Parties, and Shellac themselves, prove that it is possible to operate outside the normal channels and still be a success. When Nirvana finally pushed alter-native rock onto MTV in the early 1990s, they opened a sluicegate for sounds derived from the 1980s underground, but Albini maintained a polite distance. He's not opposed to mass acceptance, it's just that the compromises involved are not ones he's prepared to make.
While Albini's work has been championed by rock music's equivalent of an intellectual elite, he is keen not to appear elitist. "I have an innate suspicion of the notion that regular people won't get what we're doing. I'm regular people, and I know there's nothing about me or my aesthetic that makes me special," he insists. "But pandering to a certain kind of mass sensibility shortens your options, which is not something you can do while remaining an artist."
When rock musicians start describing themselves as "artists", it's usually time to consign them to idiot island. But after two decades of consistent nonconformity, Steve Albini has earnt the right to the epithet.
Stewart Lee
2002-03-10T17:45:55+00:00
I don't accept that aspiring to mainstream success is natural," says Steve Albini. "By the time I was 10, I realised it didn't matter what people thought of me. I have to look at myself in the mirror when I shave in the morning. I'd rather not look at a coward or someone who was exploiting people." As the provocative frontman of the controversial noise band Big Black, Steve Albini was the conscience of the 1980s American underground scene, famous for not even taking calls from major record labels. From the late 1980s, his day job as the cut-price producer of important albums, including the Pixies' Surfer Rosa, Nirvana's In Utero, PJ Harvey's Rid of Me and Low's Secret Name, brought him a different kind of renown. Next month, Albini's current band, Shellac, will host the fourth All Tomorrow's Parties festival, for which they have drawn up the programme. It's an inspired pairing. All Tomorrow's Parties, held at a Pontin's holiday camp in Camber Sands, East Sussex, has defied received wisdom, proving that rock festivals need not be appalling. The three-day event offers indoor stages, working toilets, an absence of corporate sponsorship, chalet accommodation, and a nearby miniature-golf course (recommended by the British miniature-golf international Andy Miller). Albini's lifelong commitment to defying the music industry makes him the festival's perfect public face, and his stewardship promises a fascinating line-up. Albini was a weak and miserable child, saved by 1970s punk. Michael Azerrad's history of the American hardcore-punk scene, Our Band Could Be Your Life, includes a scene from Albini's university days in Chicago that it's hard to resist investing with significance. For his fine-art course, the campus's most unpopular geek stood behind a Plexi-glas wall and insulted passers-by, who were invited to throwthings at him. A bowling pin prematurely shattered...
Here's 18 discs of Martyn's slurred genius, from late '60s folk whimsy, to the artful songwriting and edifying Echoplex experimentation of the '70s, to a pointless final four discs of plasticised '80s guff.
All the canonical albums, including a coherent representation of 1975's often bastardised free-jazz ambient-blues masterpiece Live At Leeds, are supplemented with superb finds. 1977's One World, vastly expanded, terraforms trip-hop.
A '72 live set sees the lone guitarist, augmented by effects pedals, transform from pothead troubadour to swamp delta Stockhausen, belching stardust gumbo, audibly tormented by untrammelled talent.
Stewart Lee
2013-10-06T20:50:34+01:00
Here's 18 discs of Martyn's slurred genius, from late '60s folk whimsy, to the artful songwriting and edifying Echoplex experimentation of the '70s, to a pointless final four discs of plasticised '80s guff. All the canonical albums, including a coherent representation of 1975's often bastardised free-jazz ambient-blues masterpiece Live At Leeds, are supplemented with superb finds. 1977's One World, vastly expanded, terraforms trip-hop. A '72 live set sees the lone guitarist, augmented by effects pedals, transform from pothead troubadour to swamp delta Stockhausen, belching stardust gumbo, audibly tormented by untrammelled talent.
John Martyn’s 70’s, folk-fusion experiments with the echoplex guitar pedal have led to the lazy byline, ‘godfather of trip-hop’, but this is to damn him with ludicrously feint praise. The Don’t Look Back series of concerts, in which artists perform an album from beginning to end, encouraged Martyn to revisit his finest hour, 1973’s Solid Air, last September. The original record saw the dashing young guitarist, members of Fairport Convention and Pentangle, and guests such as the jazz saxophonist Tony Coe, achieve a still unsurpassed blend of songwriterly moves and expansive dynamics.
But on the first night of the Solid Air tour, the kind of band you’d see jamming in a coctail bar in a 1980’s Tom Cruise vehicle subjected Martyn's masterpiece to the full Level 42 treatment, with swathes of cluttering keyboard effects, trite sax solos, and session musician style fretless bass plonking. Martyn, now wheelchair bound, has survived battles with the bottle, the amputation of a leg, and collaborations with Phil Collins. But could he survive being made to sound like the Miami Vice soundtrack?
Whatever idignities Martyn’s band heaped on his music, his great wounded bear of a voice was still there at the centre, and when he picked up the acoustic guitar for Over The Hill, something of the charm of the original emerged. May You Never, Martyn’s signature song, originally a perfectly formed solo acoustic performance, started well, before the band joined in, the saxophonist getting so excited he was forced to push his glasses back up his nose in between blasts. Ironically, Martyn’s roadie was wearing a Johnny Cash t-shirt, reminding us that, with the right producer, it’s never too late for great artists to reconnect with their essential selves. Even Dylan had to begin again. John Martyn could still surprise us. The goodwill is there. It would be wrong to fail to mention that the evening ended with a rapturous standing ovation.
Martyn’s support act, the anonymously named young singer-songwriter John Smith, was an object lesson in how taste and imagination always outweigh mere musical virtuosity, coaxing all manner of unexpected sounds from his acoustic guitar, and taking daring chances with timing and song-structure. The two verses he sang entirely unaccompanied, to catch the audience’s attention as they wandered into the room at the start of his set, were the highlight the night. You could say it peaked early.
Stewart Lee
2007-01-21T19:44:35+00:00
John Martyn’s 70’s, folk-fusion experiments with the echoplex guitar pedal have led to the lazy byline, ‘godfather of trip-hop’, but this is to damn him with ludicrously feint praise. The Don’t Look Back series of concerts, in which artists perform an album from beginning to end, encouraged Martyn to revisit his finest hour, 1973’s Solid Air, last September. The original record saw the dashing young guitarist, members of Fairport Convention and Pentangle, and guests such as the jazz saxophonist Tony Coe, achieve a still unsurpassed blend of songwriterly moves and expansive dynamics. But on the first night of the Solid Air tour, the kind of band you’d see jamming in a coctail bar in a 1980’s Tom Cruise vehicle subjected Martyn's masterpiece to the full Level 42 treatment, with swathes of cluttering keyboard effects, trite sax solos, and session musician style fretless bass plonking. Martyn, now wheelchair bound, has survived battles with the bottle, the amputation of a leg, and collaborations with Phil Collins. But could he survive being made to sound like the Miami Vice soundtrack? Whatever idignities Martyn’s band heaped on his music, his great wounded bear of a voice was still there at the centre, and when he picked up the acoustic guitar for Over The Hill, something of the charm of the original emerged. May You Never, Martyn’s signature song, originally a perfectly formed solo acoustic performance, started well, before the band joined in, the saxophonist getting so excited he was forced to push his glasses back up his nose in between blasts. Ironically, Martyn’s roadie was wearing a Johnny Cash t-shirt, reminding us that, with the right producer, it’s never too late for great artists to reconnect with their essential selves. Even Dylan had to begin again. John Martyn could still surprise us. The goodwill...
A WAKE FOR BLAKE - THIS MONDAY 25th.
20 LAST MINUTE EXTRA TICKETS AVAIL
A very special evening to raise money for a memorial for the poet and artist William Blake. Monday 25th September 2017 at 7.30pm. Leicester Square Theatre, London
Featuring
JOHN DOWIE
KEVIN ELDON
SHIRLEY COLLINS, DAVE ARTHUR AND PETE COOPER
TESTAMENT
ROBIN INCE
STEWART LEE
ALAN MOORE
SIMON MUNNERY
William Blake - a visionary poet, artist and prophet - lies in an unmarked grave in the City of London.
Overlooked, ridiculed and ignored in his lifetime, Blake has since become on of the greatest figures in British culture.
The exact location of Blake's resting place was only re-discovered in recent years after detailed research by two trustees of the Blake Society.
This event featuring some of the UK's most thrilling maverick performers is to raise funds towards a fitting marker to identify Blake's grave in Bunhill Fields Burial ground.
Booking: HERE Tel: 0207 734 222
SHIRLEY COLLINS + STEW 18TH OCT, CURZON CINEMA, LONDON
We are honoured to welcome the great Shirley Collins for a post-screening talk, to be hosted by comedian and critic Stewart Lee.
Widely regarded as the 20th century's most important singer of English traditional song, Shirley Collins stood at the epicenter of the folk music revival during the 1960s and 70s. But in 1980 she developed a disorder of the vocal chords known as dysphonia, which robbed her of her unique singing voice and forced her into early retirement.
Rob Curry and Tim Plester's documentary sets out to explore the story behind the icon, and chronicles Shirley's battle, at the grand old age of 80, to rediscover that voice she lost so many years previously.
The film counterpoints this contemporary journey with a more literal one taken from the other end of her life; making fertile use of authentic 1959 audio-archive to recount the tale of Shirley's seminal road-trip around America's Deep South alongside her then-lover (and pre-eminent ethnomusicologist) Alan Lomax.
Featuring contributions from the comedian Stewart Lee and David Tibet of Current 93, the film eschews a straightforward biopic approach and sidesteps any rockumentary talking-heads; the filmmakers instead offering up a meditative and richly textured piece of portraiture.
Here then is a film about loss and redemption.
A film about sacrifice, healing and rebirth.
A film which suggests that, during these turbulent and increasingly untethered times, we might just need Shirley Collins now more than ever. Tickets are available here.
23rd OCT JARRET KOBEK + STEW EVENT
It is likely I will be grilling Jarett Kobek, author of the 2016 novel I Hate The Internet, on this date in London somewhere TBC
SHIRLEY COLLINS + STEW AGAIN, RIO CINEMA LONDON 29TH OCT 4.30pm
Widely regarded as the 20th century's most important singer of English traditional song, Shirley Collins was at the epicentre of the folk music scene during the 1960s and '70's. However, in 1980 she lost her voice in mysterious circumstances, and was forced to retire from musical life.
In 2016, after being rediscovered by a new generation of music fans, Collins made a comeback, releasing her first album in nearly four decades, 'Lodestar,' again with huge critical acclaim. Rob Curry and Tim Plester's documentary sets out to explore the story behind the icon, and chronicles Shirley's battle, at the grand old age of 80, to rediscover that voice she lost.
Alongside the archive video and audio footage there are contributions from such longtime admirers as comedian Stewart Lee. It all adds up to a meditative and richly textured portrait that explores loss and redemption, sacrifice, healing and rebirth.
+ Post screening Q&A with co-director Rob Curry and Stewart Lee, comedian and Shirley Collins fan. Tickets are available here.
IAIN SINCLAIR + STEW 30TH OCT, LRB BOOKSHOP, LONDON
Iain Sinclair has been writing about London for most of his adult life, and if any of us can even begin to understand this peculiar sort of city that we sort of call a sort of home, then it's with Sinclair that we begin.
The Last London (Oneworld) is the culmination of Iain's London project, although 'project' is far too determined a word to describe a body of work so many-layered, so prodigiously polyvalent.
He'll be talking about the book and the city with comedian, writer and film director Stewart Lee, another Londoner from elsewhere. Tickets are available here.
NEW LONDON CONTENT PROVIDER DATES
Because all the London Leicester Sq Content Provider dates sold out here is another three month block of the SAME SHOW at the SAME VENUE, Leicester Sq Theatre, with the SAME JOKES at the SAME TIME, 7pm, from November this year until Jan 2018.
Leave voters planning to walk out in disgust will need to book early.
Weds 1st Nov - Sat 9th Dec 2017
Tuesday to Saturday - except there is a performance on Monday 4th December
Tues 2nd Jan to Wed 31st Jan 2018 - Monday to Saturday
Not Fri 24, Sat 25, Thur 30 Nov 2017 (DAYS OFF)
Not Tue 9, Sat 13 Jan 2018 (DAYS OFF)
MORE NATIONAL DATES FOR 2018 TO FOLLOW, until April
TOP TIPS - A NEW SECTION WHERE I ARROGANTLY RECOMMEND THINGS EACH MONTH
DAVE GRANEY & CLARE MOORE
Short UK tour by the Serge Gainsbourg/Lee Hazelwood/Jim Morrison/Scott Walker/Skip Spence/Ern Malley/Lenny Bruce of Australian music.
A genius songwriter with effortless presence and command, and yet also an invisible chameleon, a reflecting surface, an anonymous conduit.
Anyone who saw his and Clare Moore's ATP sets last year will not want to miss these.
Dave is one of the all time greats. I learned much of what I know from him. Rock and Roll is where he hides.
Friday 6th Oct Fred's Ale House, Mcr
Sunday 8th Oct, O'Riley's, Hull
Weds 11th, Thurs 12th Oct - Betsey Trotwood, London
Sat 14th Oct, Leith Links Cricket Club, Edinburgh
Ben Moor - Pronoun Trouble.
Ben Moor, for my money, is the Ken Campbell/Spalding Gray of my generation, a natural storyteller who blurs the boundaries between comedy, theatre and performance art.
He's not an obvious fit for a world increasingly in search of a quick cultural fix, but those who discover his work become lifelong fans and evangelists, and followers of the live artworks of Daniel Kitson's theatre pieces, Will Adamsdale, James Rowland's Team Viking, Kim Noble, Robert LePage and Bryony Kimmings will find much to admire in Ben's oeuvre.
There is an early stab at his new show Pronoun Trouble, previews of which delighted audiences at that Port Elliot Lit Fest last Summer, at the Hen & Chickens in London on Oct 4th.
4th October 7.30pm £7.50
PRONOUN TROUBLE:
Miscellaneous subjects that crossed my mind while listening to a lecture about Chuck Jones's Hunting Trilogy (1950-52) (which was nevertheless really good)
Ben is sitting in a lecture about a series of Chuck Jones cartoons, but his thoughts drift off in various directions.
There's his friendship with the person he came with, the T-shirts he has at home, his favourite words, his favourite books, and the schism on London's high streets between the conflicting denominations of launderettes and laundrettes.
And all the while, the lecturer is following her own sweet way, exploring new meanings in the films, quoting obscure academics and offering a different way of looking at the world. Are any of us following the script? Aren't we all in some kind of pronoun trouble?
Using Powerpoint and stand-up, Pronoun Trouble combines a fact-adjacent lecture about three extraordinary cartoons and a whole ton of other topics that sometimes come to mind.
Ben Moor has been producing solo comedy pieces since 1993. His most recent show 'Each of Us' has toured the UK and Italy, and was described by The Guardian as "A moving satire on the arbitrariness of the everyday, rivaling the best of Douglas Adams in its witty conjugation of cultural norms and ephemera."
A WAKE FOR BLAKE - THIS MONDAY 25th. 20 LAST MINUTE EXTRA TICKETS AVAIL A very special evening to raise money for a memorial for the poet and artist William Blake. Monday 25th September 2017 at 7.30pm. Leicester Square Theatre, London Featuring JOHN DOWIE KEVIN ELDON SHIRLEY COLLINS, DAVE ARTHUR AND PETE COOPER TESTAMENT ROBIN INCE STEWART LEE ALAN MOORE SIMON MUNNERY William Blake - a visionary poet, artist and prophet - lies in an unmarked grave in the City of London. Overlooked, ridiculed and ignored in his lifetime, Blake has since become on of the greatest figures in British culture. The exact location of Blake's resting place was only re-discovered in recent years after detailed research by two trustees of the Blake Society. This event featuring some of the UK's most thrilling maverick performers is to raise funds towards a fitting marker to identify Blake's grave in Bunhill Fields Burial ground. Booking: HERE Tel: 0207 734 222 SHIRLEY COLLINS + STEW 18TH OCT, CURZON CINEMA, LONDON We are honoured to welcome the great Shirley Collins for a post-screening talk, to be hosted by comedian and critic Stewart Lee. Widely regarded as the 20th century's most important singer of English traditional song, Shirley Collins stood at the epicenter of the folk music revival during the 1960s and 70s. But in 1980 she developed a disorder of the vocal chords known as dysphonia, which robbed her of her unique singing voice and forced her into early retirement. Rob Curry and Tim Plester's documentary sets out to explore the story behind the icon, and chronicles Shirley's battle, at the grand old age of 80, to rediscover that voice she lost so many years previously. The film counterpoints this contemporary journey with a more literal one taken from the other end of her...
An album of Shirley Collins covers featuring contributions from Graham Coxon, Lee Ranaldo, Bitchin Bonnie Billy Bajas (Bonnie Prince Billy), Stewart Lee, Eric Chenaux, Josephine Foster, Johnny Flynn, Stuart Estell, Trembling Bells and many more...
Limited Edition 3xLP available on Record Store Day
Earth Recordings are extremely proud to announce the release of 'Shirley Inspired'.
July 2015 will see Shirley Collins celebrate her 80th year - an age that would seem frankly ridiculous for a woman as spritely as her, had it not been for all she's achieved.
From her seminal field-recording trip to America to her lauded musical career; from her role as historian and protector of the folk tradition, to the very fact that this record can exist - more than half a century after her career began - all of these things are testament to the breadth of her influence.
'Even though I am a folk fan, I like lots of different music and Shirley's in the top ten of all artists for me, irrespective of what they're supposed to be classified as.' - Stewart Lee
Stewart Lee
2018-10-30T22:15:33+00:00
An album of Shirley Collins covers featuring contributions from Graham Coxon, Lee Ranaldo, Bitchin Bonnie Billy Bajas (Bonnie Prince Billy), Stewart Lee, Eric Chenaux, Josephine Foster, Johnny Flynn, Stuart Estell, Trembling Bells and many more... Limited Edition 3xLP available on Record Store Day Earth Recordings are extremely proud to announce the release of 'Shirley Inspired'. July 2015 will see Shirley Collins celebrate her 80th year - an age that would seem frankly ridiculous for a woman as spritely as her, had it not been for all she's achieved. From her seminal field-recording trip to America to her lauded musical career; from her role as historian and protector of the folk tradition, to the very fact that this record can exist - more than half a century after her career began - all of these things are testament to the breadth of her influence. 'Even though I am a folk fan, I like lots of different music and Shirley's in the top ten of all artists for me, irrespective of what they're supposed to be classified as.' - Stewart Lee
The comedy of Stewart Lee, who I went to see last night, works for me on several levels. One is that the comedy comes with a running commentary from the comedian. Each joke is assessed, explained, and dissected, which appeals to the little Derrida in all of us. Another level is that Lee is the same age as me, and much of his act reflects the concerns and collective memory of men in their early 40s: death, children's television, failure, Thatcher and getting fat. Most of all I like Lee because he revels in the delicious irony of attempting political 'alternative' comedy with a contemporary post-modern audience. Like me, he remembers the 1980s like it was yesterday, and looks bemused when his 20-something audience fails to split their sides at the jokes about Tory cuts, privatisation, and Lord McAlpine.
In his act, he bemoans the fact that in the 1980s you could slag off the Tories, and get a round of applause. An alternative comedy audience in 1989 at the Comedy Store, upstairs at De Hems, or the Balham Banana, when Lee arrived in London, comprised almost exclusively of Labour voters. People like me, in fact. Last night, most of the audience would have voted Tory, Green or Lib Dem, or nothing. One of the biggest laughs was a joke about Ed Miliband, which I won't repeat. Back in the 1980s, it was simple. If you liked alternative comedy, you hated Thatcher and liked the Labour Party.
The lesson my generation of Labour supporters learned was that sitting in a room with 80 like-minded comedy fans, laughing at jokes about Norman Tebbit or Cecil Parkinson, wasn't the same as winning elections. Red Wedge, which I loved of course, made the same tactical error. It appealed to lefties who were going to support Labour anyway, but did nothing to reach the people listening to Dire Straits and Madonna. This latter point was made by a young Tony Blair to a young Billy Bragg, a conversation I wish I'd heard.
Politics, we learned from bitter defeats, wasn't simple at all. Thatcher closed down factories, stigmatised single parents, alienated young people and put their parents on the dole, and still got elected. More trade unionists voted Tory than Labour. Then they got rid of her, and put in a grey, unassuming man whose idea of reform was a phone-line to report rogue traffic cones, and they still won.
Instead of trying to understand why people were voting Tory despite three million people unemployed, record house repossessions, urban riots and collapsing public services, many on the left started to blame the electorate. Working class Tories, buying their own homes, were denounced as racists or idiots or suffering from 'false consciousness'. Middle class Tories, profiting from utility shares and building society demutualisations, were called selfish, or acquisitive or greedy. For some in the Labour Party the reason for four defeats over 13 years was purely the ignorance and stupidity of the voters. Bastards.
My fear is that I'm starting to hear the same nonsense come round again. The communist playwright Bertold Brecht is said to have written something along the lines of 'if we can't get a new government, we must get a new electorate'. This has echoes in what some people on the left are starting to say today about Labour's strategy. Of course, a progressive political party has a duty to lead public opinion on social issues. New Labour's championing of gay rights is a good example. But a party which sets a course distinct from public sentiment, sets out a policy programme which jars with majority opinion, and which fails to reflect public values, is doomed. That's what happened to the Liberal Party. It's what Labour tried in 1983, and was slaughtered at the polls. No party has an automatic right to exist, never mind govern. It has to be earned.
Labour in opposition cannot hope to shape a new electorate from whose eyes the scales will fall, on the way to forming an orderly queue at the polling stations. Our task is not to change the voters, but to change ourselves.
That starts by understanding why people who had voted Labour stopped voting Labour, and what might make them vote Labour again. The problem is that so many different groups and chunks of social classes ceased voting Labour, that anyone can project on to them their own desires. Some point to working class voters who deserted Labour, and so demand a traditional collectivist message, like Labour in the 1940s. No, says others, it was the aspirational C2s who broke away, so we need reheated New Labour as in the 1990s. On Radio 4 last weekend I debated Lord Hennessy who longed for Labour to come up with a 1945-style manifesto, promising a new welfare state. Ultimately, politics is a question of numbers. To win a majority, Labour needs to win seats currently held with small majorities by Conservative MPs. Those seats are not working class industrial areas or inner cities. They are towns and suburbs, with ABC1 and C2 voters, mainly in the south and Midlands. They live in places such as Norwich, Swindon, Reading, Thurrock, Brighton and Hastings. So we need a platform which chimes with these people. It's a question of maths as much as politics.
Anyone who thought a flat-lining economy, growing unemployment, public sector strikes and isolation in Europe would benefit the Labour Party has failed to learn anything at all from our history. This week's polls suggest a narrow Tory lead. In times of such uncertainty, people tend to cling to nurse for fear of something worse. With dwindling public resources and a harsh economic climate, people become harder, more self-interested, and less inclined to altruism. They become, in short, less inclined to vote for a Labour Party offering to put their taxes up and expand state services.
The real threat to Labour is not just not winning the next election; it is doing worse than in 2010. The Lib Dem collapse will benefit the Tories. Tory MPs with small majorities may use their incumbency to boost their majority next time. On this scenario, similar to the period 1951-64, or 1979-97, Labour may not return to office until the mid 2020s. This is the reality that should wake us up like a bucket of cold water. Some, such as those around the In the Black pamphlet, or Alex Smith et al and their policies for business, sound like they realise this. Others, with talk of a return to red-blooded socialism, plainly don't.
I paid my £20 to Stewart Lee to make me laugh last night. Instead, he reminded me of the 1980s, and I don't want to go back.
Stewart Lee
2011-12-15T13:37:40+00:00
The comedy of Stewart Lee, who I went to see last night, works for me on several levels. One is that the comedy comes with a running commentary from the comedian. Each joke is assessed, explained, and dissected, which appeals to the little Derrida in all of us. Another level is that Lee is the same age as me, and much of his act reflects the concerns and collective memory of men in their early 40s: death, children's television, failure, Thatcher and getting fat. Most of all I like Lee because he revels in the delicious irony of attempting political 'alternative' comedy with a contemporary post-modern audience. Like me, he remembers the 1980s like it was yesterday, and looks bemused when his 20-something audience fails to split their sides at the jokes about Tory cuts, privatisation, and Lord McAlpine. In his act, he bemoans the fact that in the 1980s you could slag off the Tories, and get a round of applause. An alternative comedy audience in 1989 at the Comedy Store, upstairs at De Hems, or the Balham Banana, when Lee arrived in London, comprised almost exclusively of Labour voters. People like me, in fact. Last night, most of the audience would have voted Tory, Green or Lib Dem, or nothing. One of the biggest laughs was a joke about Ed Miliband, which I won't repeat. Back in the 1980s, it was simple. If you liked alternative comedy, you hated Thatcher and liked the Labour Party. The lesson my generation of Labour supporters learned was that sitting in a room with 80 like-minded comedy fans, laughing at jokes about Norman Tebbit or Cecil Parkinson, wasn't the same as winning elections. Red Wedge, which I loved of course, made the same tactical error. It appealed to lefties who were going...
Stewart Lee comes on stage, gazes around in mild amusement and shakes his head. He has barely uttered a word, nor heard our reaction, and yet he has already formed an opinion of his audience – and he is not impressed. Or at least, he is pretending not to be impressed – which is, of course, the joke.
There’s a lot of that with Lee. While lesser comics play for straight laughs or stride around the stage with their headset microphones (both earning the ire of this unforgiving master of what used to be called alternative comedy), Lee leads us part way up his torturous garden path and allows us to reach our own conclusions. Kind of. He also delights in playing us off against each other, toying with the boundaries of what it means to be a comedian, and with the traditional form of the comedy gig.
“I’m coming to despise the character Stewart Lee in the way Rod Hull hated emu,” he grimaces.
There are laughs. Loads. It’s painfully funny – if you get it. We do, though he would beg to differ, insisting Oxford is a ‘strange place. “It’s not London is it?” he says. “It’s basically a farming community.”
At his best he is the funniest stand-up on the scene. And this is vintage Lee – which means we are in for some chiding, especially if we don’t laugh loud enough for the clever bits. “You’re not putting enough effort into being an audience, by being too mainstream,” he complains.
He also suggests that by playing the venue for a week, too many of the ‘wrong’ people are coming. Maybe one night would have worked better, he smirks.
He tells us early on he won’t be doing jokes about Brexit or Donald Trump, because he’ll be touring the material for months to come, and he doesn’t want it to go stale. However, he proceeds to do exactly that – his profoundly profane digs at the political ‘right’ in the UK and US getting some of the biggest laughs of the night – the first before the interval and the latter in the second half, in an identical set-up, which he tells us off for not realising is deliberate.
Boris Johnson comes in for a thorough roughing-up as does the toilet humour-obsessed ‘comedian’ Russell Howard (could you imagine two performers more diametrically-opposed?). The Howard-mocking extends way beyond the limits of what is comfortable. “I’ll still be doing this when you get back,” he tells a young woman who leaves her seat for a comfort break. And he was.
A section about why bondage was better in our grandparent’s generation is beyond funny. To the delight of this audience he also has a dig at the phone and selfie-obsessed under-40s. It goes on and on, and just gets funnier.
“Don’t imagine your indifference will make me bail out sooner,” he warns us. “This is for my benefit... I’m not enjoying it... but I’ll look back on it with excitement – like being in a car crash.”
Quite brilliant.
Tim Hughes 5/5
* Stewart Lee, Content Provider, is at the Oxford Playhouse until Saturday. All shows have sold out
Stewart Lee
2017-02-03T17:24:27+00:00
Stewart Lee comes on stage, gazes around in mild amusement and shakes his head. He has barely uttered a word, nor heard our reaction, and yet he has already formed an opinion of his audience – and he is not impressed. Or at least, he is pretending not to be impressed – which is, of course, the joke. There’s a lot of that with Lee. While lesser comics play for straight laughs or stride around the stage with their headset microphones (both earning the ire of this unforgiving master of what used to be called alternative comedy), Lee leads us part way up his torturous garden path and allows us to reach our own conclusions. Kind of. He also delights in playing us off against each other, toying with the boundaries of what it means to be a comedian, and with the traditional form of the comedy gig. “I’m coming to despise the character Stewart Lee in the way Rod Hull hated emu,” he grimaces. There are laughs. Loads. It’s painfully funny – if you get it. We do, though he would beg to differ, insisting Oxford is a ‘strange place. “It’s not London is it?” he says. “It’s basically a farming community.” At his best he is the funniest stand-up on the scene. And this is vintage Lee – which means we are in for some chiding, especially if we don’t laugh loud enough for the clever bits. “You’re not putting enough effort into being an audience, by being too mainstream,” he complains. He also suggests that by playing the venue for a week, too many of the ‘wrong’ people are coming. Maybe one night would have worked better, he smirks. He tells us early on he won’t be doing jokes about Brexit or Donald Trump, because he’ll be...
Shin Joong Hyun was South Korea's answer to Brian Wilson, Jimi Hendrix and Simon Cowell, an acid rock auteur and guitar virtuoso with a sassy svengali sideline. Thus, this superb compilation slips sugary dream-pop bubblegum nuggets, Shin at the controls coaxing emotional peaks from would-be divas and sharp-shirted singers, in-between psychedelic epics, like the slow-burning fifteen minute freak-out ‘J' Blues 72.
The anti-government sentiment of the baroque ten minute title track saw Shin arrested and tortured which, sadly, is where his similarity with Cowell ends.
Stewart Lee
2011-10-02T20:21:27+01:00
Shin Joong Hyun was South Korea's answer to Brian Wilson, Jimi Hendrix and Simon Cowell, an acid rock auteur and guitar virtuoso with a sassy svengali sideline. Thus, this superb compilation slips sugary dream-pop bubblegum nuggets, Shin at the controls coaxing emotional peaks from would-be divas and sharp-shirted singers, in-between psychedelic epics, like the slow-burning fifteen minute freak-out ‘J' Blues 72. The anti-government sentiment of the baroque ten minute title track saw Shin arrested and tortured which, sadly, is where his similarity with Cowell ends.
In his twenty five year career Stewart Lee has held that most feted title of being a 'comedian's comedian'. He has purposefully avoided the exposure that the majority of his profession crave, for fear of attracting what he describes as "Jimmy Carr fans." His arrogance and intellectual snobbery are unabashed. As expected, the crowd that packed the Leicester Square Theatre couldn't have been more middle class if it were a celeriac sale at Waitrose.
His opening monologue centred on world affairs, detailing David Cameron's shortcomings as a leader in comparison to Colonel Gaddafi: "Liyba…now that's real Big Society", although he did concede Muammar "hasn't had the best of years."
Russell Howard, John Bishop and any every other member of the panel show circuit were dismissed for their banality, or in Frankie Boyle's case, offensiveness without humour.
Throughout, Lee demonstrated his usual high wire act of deconstructing jokes immediately after, or even before, their delivery, using repetition and pregnant pauses to heighten the sense of "passive aggressive monotony."
While the show was deliberately fragmented, a loose narrative weaved through on how his life now consists of just "driving on motorways to gigs" and "watching Scooby Do with my four year old son." This culminated in a memorable scenario whereby Thatcher was seemingly at fault for Scooby and the gang's constant misfortune.
The second half was markedly more aggressive in tone. Twitter was denounced as simply surveillance, used by those whose "lives are empty…just like mine." This led to a reading of vitriolic online comments critiquing not only his political ideology and comedic ability but his likeness to "a 90's Eskimo."
The performance ended on a musical note. An inappropriately soothing jazz soundtrack played over a gloriously expletive filled rant that raged at everything from Bin Laden to the stores of Office World.
Stewart Lee may complain that TV has diluted his audience, that middle aged parenthood has rendered his material meaningless and that our social media orientated, coalition governed society has left him jaded. Don't believe him. This is razor-sharp subversive comedy at its best.
Stewart Lee
2011-12-07T13:34:26+00:00
In his twenty five year career Stewart Lee has held that most feted title of being a 'comedian's comedian'. He has purposefully avoided the exposure that the majority of his profession crave, for fear of attracting what he describes as "Jimmy Carr fans." His arrogance and intellectual snobbery are unabashed. As expected, the crowd that packed the Leicester Square Theatre couldn't have been more middle class if it were a celeriac sale at Waitrose. His opening monologue centred on world affairs, detailing David Cameron's shortcomings as a leader in comparison to Colonel Gaddafi: "Liyba…now that's real Big Society", although he did concede Muammar "hasn't had the best of years." Russell Howard, John Bishop and any every other member of the panel show circuit were dismissed for their banality, or in Frankie Boyle's case, offensiveness without humour. Throughout, Lee demonstrated his usual high wire act of deconstructing jokes immediately after, or even before, their delivery, using repetition and pregnant pauses to heighten the sense of "passive aggressive monotony." While the show was deliberately fragmented, a loose narrative weaved through on how his life now consists of just "driving on motorways to gigs" and "watching Scooby Do with my four year old son." This culminated in a memorable scenario whereby Thatcher was seemingly at fault for Scooby and the gang's constant misfortune. The second half was markedly more aggressive in tone. Twitter was denounced as simply surveillance, used by those whose "lives are empty…just like mine." This led to a reading of vitriolic online comments critiquing not only his political ideology and comedic ability but his likeness to "a 90's Eskimo." The performance ended on a musical note. An inappropriately soothing jazz soundtrack played over a gloriously expletive filled rant that raged at everything from Bin Laden to the stores of Office...
Philosophers delight in the concept of Schrödinger’s cat, a cat that is both inside a box and outside a box at the same time. (Ironically, the somewhat scatty Erwin Schrödinger himself had forgotten that he owned two identical cats, one of which liked boxes while the other hated them, explaining his confusion.) One day, philosophers will also discuss the idea of Schrödinger’s Rwanda: a place at once so awful that the very thought of being deported there will deter asylum seekers from crossing the Channel and yet simultaneously so brilliant that asylum seekers should be delighted to be sent there with no possibility of ever coming back to the UK. The human traffickers who send people across the Channel are despicable. And so their victims, many of them already having enjoyed torture and abuse at home, must be further punished by being deported to Rwanda. It’s an illogicality that Alice in Wonderland would have seen through in an instant. And so did the European court of human rights. Off with their heads!
It’s very early on a Thursday morning and I am still tapping away, alone with black coffee and toast. Reality is kaleidoscoping. I could have filed this week’s so-called “funny column” ™ ® at midday yesterday, 18 hours ago, as I have every right so to do. But I fell asleep listening to Priti Patel dissembling on Rwanda, following prime minister’s questions at lunchtime, after she was trapped in a net made of hard facts and human decency by her opposite number, Yvette Cooper. Nyaaagh! It burns! It burns!! I’m melting!!!
The home secretary was as boring and repetitive, and yet oddly relaxing, as the short cycle of diaphanous library music they pipe in to soundtrack the jellyfish display at the Sea Life Aquarium. But Priti’s Theme was written entirely in Black Sabbath Tony Iommi tritones and played by ghouls on xylophones made from the ribcages of the Kabul embassy dead. I woke up halfway through and thought I had died and gone to hell. No brimstone. No fire. Just listening to tape recordings of Patel while standing waist deep in a lake of coffee. For ever. Could be worse. And then a bell rings and the devil shouts: “All right lads, coffee break’s over. Back on your heads!” I’m here all week! Try the chicken igisafuria!! Don’t forget to tip your Private Security Contractor!!! Their focus is on treating the people in their care with dignity and respect and they are confident that their officers have acted professionally!!!!
It was lucky I didn’t submit today’s “comedy” early, as a lot has happened since lunchtime: the EU has begun legal action against the UK over our criminal abandonment of the Northern Ireland protocol; our prime minister has confirmed that he is considering withdrawing Britain, like our economic and kleptocratic soulmate Russia, from the European court of human rights; and the prime minister’s ethics adviser, the pork belly windsock known as Lord Geidt, realised his time was up and quit his post, having at last grown a vestigial tail (to call it a spine would be generous).
Geidt finally agreed that Johnson’s, and his cronies’, wine and Abba antics may have broken the ministerial code or at the very least a child’s garden swing. Suddenly, an afternoon is a long time in politics. Hopefully, Johnson will manage to soldier on bravely without someone to advise him on ethics. It would be awful if, without a moral mentor, Johnson were to suddenly find himself lying, cheating and repeatedly breaking international law.
Under normal circumstances, any one of these bombshells would have blown up the news cycle and made my columnist job easy. Roll out the barrel and hand me the blunderbuss! These fish are toast!! But this kind of chaos seems calculated. Numerous event-shits are tossed by hand into the news-fans from different angles and critical onlookers are too busy dodging the foul splatterings to remember Partygate and the missing billions the Brexit government has funnelled through the pandemic into the pockets of friends and donors. Look! Over there!! Our old enemy Europe!!! With its snails and its sauerkraut and its “human rights”.
On Monday, future city square statue subject and stained-glass windowed national saint-in-waiting Carole Cadwalladr survived legal persecution by Leave.EU’s Arron Banks. More links between Russia and the desirously destabilising goal of Brexit were highlighted. But even this didn’t really register in the wider news-scape. What’s a soupçon of Russian influence between friends? It’s not like Banks was flying back drunk from private parties at the villa of the subsequently Johnson-ennobled son of a KGB agent. Is distracting from this sort of thing just what the Rwandan deportation programme is for? Fly, my pretties, fly!
The deportation flight to Rwanda was always a win-win situation for the Brexit government, whether it left the tarmac or not. Schrödinger’s cat gives us Schrödinger’s Rwanda, which in turn gives us Schrödinger’s Dead Cat, a policy that succeeds even if it fails. If the asylum seekers were shipped out illegally, that plays well to the worst aspects of the Brexit government’s base. And if they weren’t, that gives the Brexit government, the comforts of the EU suddenly looking dangerously desirable, another range of Orwellian enemies – do-gooding lawyers, lefty charity activists, European “late-night” judges and the very idea of “human rights” itself.
The pockets of protesters currently engaged in street battles against police officers forced to carry out snatch raids on immigrants are a last line of defence against a Home Office that cannot be trusted to act ethically. Your children study the rise of Hitler in history and are asked how the people of 30s Germany allowed their country to slide into fascism. Well, now we can tell them. Kids, look out of the classroom window. It was like this...
Stewart Lee
2022-06-19T19:54:45+01:00
Philosophers delight in the concept of Schrödinger’s cat, a cat that is both inside a box and outside a box at the same time. (Ironically, the somewhat scatty Erwin Schrödinger himself had forgotten that he owned two identical cats, one of which liked boxes while the other hated them, explaining his confusion.) One day, philosophers will also discuss the idea of Schrödinger’s Rwanda: a place at once so awful that the very thought of being deported there will deter asylum seekers from crossing the Channel and yet simultaneously so brilliant that asylum seekers should be delighted to be sent there with no possibility of ever coming back to the UK. The human traffickers who send people across the Channel are despicable. And so their victims, many of them already having enjoyed torture and abuse at home, must be further punished by being deported to Rwanda. It’s an illogicality that Alice in Wonderland would have seen through in an instant. And so did the European court of human rights. Off with their heads! It’s very early on a Thursday morning and I am still tapping away, alone with black coffee and toast. Reality is kaleidoscoping. I could have filed this week’s so-called “funny column” ™ ® at midday yesterday, 18 hours ago, as I have every right so to do. But I fell asleep listening to Priti Patel dissembling on Rwanda, following prime minister’s questions at lunchtime, after she was trapped in a net made of hard facts and human decency by her opposite number, Yvette Cooper. Nyaaagh! It burns! It burns!! I’m melting!!! The home secretary was as boring and repetitive, and yet oddly relaxing, as the short cycle of diaphanous library music they pipe in to soundtrack the jellyfish display at the Sea Life Aquarium. But Priti’s Theme was...
Stewart Lee’s marathon run of work-in-progress stand up shows opened last night (29/06/2015) in the Soho Theatre. Lee will carry on these shows almost continuously until January 2016, preparing material for his BBC comedy vehicle.
A favourite comedian of mine, I had seen him perform towards the end of this process last year in the Leicester Square Theatre. Yet this didn’t really compare to the experience of watching him in the very first stages of his comedy show, in the intimate space of the Soho Theatre. This is how comedy should be done. Not the distant relationship offered by 02 arena stand-up format, entirely focused on making money.
The cosy and compact basement of the Soho Theatre allowed Lee to insult the audience more directly. He was quick to emphasise that we were guardian readers (true), we were under 40 (mostly true), we weren’t clever enough to understand his jokes (sometimes true). Although insulting his audience has become a central part of Lee’s routine, he had found new and creative ways to make us all feel bad about ourselves. This experience, part of what he referenced as Brechtian Alienation, served to make the audience think about who attends comedy and why.
The set was in three parts, each in varying stages of completion. The night started with tried and tested material about Islam, and more specifically its treatment in the comedy world. Delightfully North-London centric, Lee then went into material about Quakers in Stamford Hill and shopping on Green Lanes. Like most of his comedy, one of the key themes of his performance was to reference those on the periphery celebrities who we forgot we hated, before going on to rip them apart. On the opening night this included Rod Liddle and Jim Davidson, as well as material about more well known individuals like Katie Hopkins and Richard ‘the Hamster’ Hammond. At a number of times in the night the stand-up risked falling back into old material that had been seen many times before, this however was not often enough to effect the show,
The telegraph journalist Dominic Cavendish argued that he walked out of a Stewart Lee gig because of his contempt for the audience, and the vitriol around which he constructs his routine. However in reflection, this is the exact reason I stayed.
Stewart Lee
2015-06-30T22:44:33+01:00
Stewart Lee’s marathon run of work-in-progress stand up shows opened last night (29/06/2015) in the Soho Theatre. Lee will carry on these shows almost continuously until January 2016, preparing material for his BBC comedy vehicle. A favourite comedian of mine, I had seen him perform towards the end of this process last year in the Leicester Square Theatre. Yet this didn’t really compare to the experience of watching him in the very first stages of his comedy show, in the intimate space of the Soho Theatre. This is how comedy should be done. Not the distant relationship offered by 02 arena stand-up format, entirely focused on making money. The cosy and compact basement of the Soho Theatre allowed Lee to insult the audience more directly. He was quick to emphasise that we were guardian readers (true), we were under 40 (mostly true), we weren’t clever enough to understand his jokes (sometimes true). Although insulting his audience has become a central part of Lee’s routine, he had found new and creative ways to make us all feel bad about ourselves. This experience, part of what he referenced as Brechtian Alienation, served to make the audience think about who attends comedy and why. The set was in three parts, each in varying stages of completion. The night started with tried and tested material about Islam, and more specifically its treatment in the comedy world. Delightfully North-London centric, Lee then went into material about Quakers in Stamford Hill and shopping on Green Lanes. Like most of his comedy, one of the key themes of his performance was to reference those on the periphery celebrities who we forgot we hated, before going on to rip them apart. On the opening night this included Rod Liddle and Jim Davidson, as well as material about more well known individuals like Katie Hopkins and Richard...
A couple of years ago, the Daily Telegraph's longstanding comedy correspondent reviewed Stewart Lee's then touring show, Much A-Stew About Nothing. Or rather, he reviewed the first half because, boasting rather too gleefully, he walked out at the interval due to Lee's perceived bad attitude towards his audience. If they were handing out prizes for The Person Who Should Probably Know Better Yet Totally Missed The Point in 2013, we'd have a very clear winner.
Were he attending A Room With A Stew, chances are he would have bolted after five minutes. Somehow an experienced comedy critic failed to note that his anti-audience running gag is a fairly natural by-product of the detached snooty intellectual persona that creeps in and out of Lee's stage act. Happily for the crowd, his new show (more try-outs for the next series of his BAFTA-winning Comedy Vehicle) is absolutely packed with laughs as that persona rails and jibes and mocks everything from English nationalism to urine and the ‘polo-necked' Dapper Laughs to, yes, the inadequacies inherent in his crowd as we all work towards making the night a success.
One of his central points in the show is that the news agenda has never been so impossible to pin down, so that any actual intention he may have had to display ironic Islamophobia on stage had been shot to pieces by the ever-changing events of the last year. Instead, he pillories those who think that observational humour and perceptive analyses of fundamentalism go easily hand-in-hand.
Those who love Stewart Lee's deconstruction of both his act and the very nature of stand-up will revel in another prime example of this, while his critics (and friends of fans who came along, only to be bored to death) will have left feeling at best perplexed, and at worst, irritated beyond words.
Reviewed at Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Sun 15 Mar. A Room With A Stew is on tour until 8 Jan, 2016
Stewart Lee
2015-03-16T20:21:58+00:00
A couple of years ago, the Daily Telegraph's longstanding comedy correspondent reviewed Stewart Lee's then touring show, Much A-Stew About Nothing. Or rather, he reviewed the first half because, boasting rather too gleefully, he walked out at the interval due to Lee's perceived bad attitude towards his audience. If they were handing out prizes for The Person Who Should Probably Know Better Yet Totally Missed The Point in 2013, we'd have a very clear winner. Were he attending A Room With A Stew, chances are he would have bolted after five minutes. Somehow an experienced comedy critic failed to note that his anti-audience running gag is a fairly natural by-product of the detached snooty intellectual persona that creeps in and out of Lee's stage act. Happily for the crowd, his new show (more try-outs for the next series of his BAFTA-winning Comedy Vehicle) is absolutely packed with laughs as that persona rails and jibes and mocks everything from English nationalism to urine and the ‘polo-necked' Dapper Laughs to, yes, the inadequacies inherent in his crowd as we all work towards making the night a success. One of his central points in the show is that the news agenda has never been so impossible to pin down, so that any actual intention he may have had to display ironic Islamophobia on stage had been shot to pieces by the ever-changing events of the last year. Instead, he pillories those who think that observational humour and perceptive analyses of fundamentalism go easily hand-in-hand. Those who love Stewart Lee's deconstruction of both his act and the very nature of stand-up will revel in another prime example of this, while his critics (and friends of fans who came along, only to be bored to death) will have left feeling at best perplexed, and at...
Stew has a story in this book of stories to say thankyou to the NHS.
Compiled and edited by Adam Kay, the author of the bestselling This Is Going to Hurt, this powerful, heartfelt anthology features one hundred stories from a remarkable group of contributors – including Stephen Fry, Dame Mary Beard, Sir Paul McCartney, Kate Atkinson, Kit de Waal, Bill Bryson and many more – sharing their gratitude to the 1.4 million heroes of our NHS.
All author and publisher profits from this book will go to NHS Charities Together to fund vital research and projects, and The Lullaby Trust which supports parents bereaved of babies and young children.
Great writers, artists, entertainers and thinkers talk about their experiences of the NHS and explore what it means to them in this unique collection curated and edited by Adam Kay, author of the multi-million-copy bestseller This Is Going to Hurt. With pieces by Emilia Clarke, Peter Kay, Sir Paul McCartney, Stephen Fry, Dawn French, Sir Trevor McDonald, Graham Norton, Sir Michael Palin, Naomie Harris, Ricky Gervais, Sir David Jason, Dame Emma Thompson, Joanna Lumley and many many more, Dear NHS is a thank you and a celebration of our health service and all who work within it.
The NHS is our single greatest achievement as a country. No matter who you are, no matter what your health needs are, and no matter how much money you have, the NHS is there for you. In Dear NHS, 100 inspirational people come together to share their stories of how the national health service has been there for them, and changed their lives in the process. By turns deeply moving, hilarious, hopeful and impassioned, these stories together become a love letter to the NHS and the 1.4 million people who go above and beyond the call of duty every single day - selflessly, generously, putting others before themselves, never more so than now.
They are all heroes, and this book is our way of saying thank you.
Stewart Lee
2020-08-10T19:38:03+01:00
Stew has a story in this book of stories to say thankyou to the NHS. Compiled and edited by Adam Kay, the author of the bestselling This Is Going to Hurt, this powerful, heartfelt anthology features one hundred stories from a remarkable group of contributors – including Stephen Fry, Dame Mary Beard, Sir Paul McCartney, Kate Atkinson, Kit de Waal, Bill Bryson and many more – sharing their gratitude to the 1.4 million heroes of our NHS. All author and publisher profits from this book will go to NHS Charities Together to fund vital research and projects, and The Lullaby Trust which supports parents bereaved of babies and young children. Great writers, artists, entertainers and thinkers talk about their experiences of the NHS and explore what it means to them in this unique collection curated and edited by Adam Kay, author of the multi-million-copy bestseller This Is Going to Hurt. With pieces by Emilia Clarke, Peter Kay, Sir Paul McCartney, Stephen Fry, Dawn French, Sir Trevor McDonald, Graham Norton, Sir Michael Palin, Naomie Harris, Ricky Gervais, Sir David Jason, Dame Emma Thompson, Joanna Lumley and many many more, Dear NHS is a thank you and a celebration of our health service and all who work within it. The NHS is our single greatest achievement as a country. No matter who you are, no matter what your health needs are, and no matter how much money you have, the NHS is there for you. In Dear NHS, 100 inspirational people come together to share their stories of how the national health service has been there for them, and changed their lives in the process. By turns deeply moving, hilarious, hopeful and impassioned, these stories together become a love letter to the NHS and the 1.4 million people who go above...
The older the listener gets the more sense the gnomic beatnik platitudes of Dave Graney, the Lee Hazelwood of suburban Melbourne, make; functional philosophy, crooned over coiled leads and funk-footed rhythms.
Transcending his punk past, and his subsequent immersions in the various genre fictions of country, lounge and songwriter styles, Graney sculpts the slick Seventies rock of his youth, unsentimentally anatomized in the pin-sharp recitation Mt Gambier Nights, into a series of sparkling as-live sides.
Ventriloquising various delusional deadbeats, or hidden in deep cover self-mythologising, Graney quietly releases another late career classic into the wild.
Stewart Lee
2012-07-22T19:52:56+01:00
The older the listener gets the more sense the gnomic beatnik platitudes of Dave Graney, the Lee Hazelwood of suburban Melbourne, make; functional philosophy, crooned over coiled leads and funk-footed rhythms. Transcending his punk past, and his subsequent immersions in the various genre fictions of country, lounge and songwriter styles, Graney sculpts the slick Seventies rock of his youth, unsentimentally anatomized in the pin-sharp recitation Mt Gambier Nights, into a series of sparkling as-live sides. Ventriloquising various delusional deadbeats, or hidden in deep cover self-mythologising, Graney quietly releases another late career classic into the wild.
Sixty this month, Hitchcock has abandoned the toy town imagery of his ever maturing acid-pop for personal tones, though pterodactyls still stalk the dark skies of Harry's Song.
He remains possessed of an effortlessly psychedelic voice, somewhere between John Lennon, a Cambridge don and a woodland shaman, proceeding directly from his septum to your cerebellum.
The apparently immortal cult figure's reliably gem-sprinkled 24th album thankfully fails to address his significant birthday, other than the closing End Of Time, a lazily uncoiling ballad bolstered by big beats and a mantric coda.
Stewart Lee
2013-03-10T20:26:27+00:00
Sixty this month, Hitchcock has abandoned the toy town imagery of his ever maturing acid-pop for personal tones, though pterodactyls still stalk the dark skies of Harry's Song. He remains possessed of an effortlessly psychedelic voice, somewhere between John Lennon, a Cambridge don and a woodland shaman, proceeding directly from his septum to your cerebellum. The apparently immortal cult figure's reliably gem-sprinkled 24th album thankfully fails to address his significant birthday, other than the closing End Of Time, a lazily uncoiling ballad bolstered by big beats and a mantric coda.
Le Document (LD) Will you be following in the footsteps of Stephen Fry, Rob Newman etc and start writing novels or are you happy just being on the telly and making people laugh?
Stewart Lee [1996] (SL-96) I’ve started on the novel already, but of course it will just be slagged to shit by the lit establishment even if it’s any good just because they don’t like people coming into their patch uninvited. My novel is about the Dresden Fire Bombing, The Homeless and anal sex. I hope I can resist the temptation to write a play as the theatre is run by and for wankers. I think making people laugh is a worthy occupation, but I think you’re under appreciated so you tend to get itchy feet.
A German journalist once said to me, straight up, “You must be embarrassed to be a comedian”, as if it was something I’d get asked everyday. A girl in Wales said “A unique brand of cerebral juvenalia” – that’s not much of an epitaph is it? And told me a Greek myth: it's the Satyr's job to clown around, but he wants to be a poet and make his audience weep. He asks Pan to make him a poet. Pan says no and tells him to carry on acting the fool. The Satyr steals Pan’s pipes to play sad music and move his listeners. Pan strikes him dead. The other animals cry in the river of his blood. In his death, he achieves his ambition.
Stewart Lee [2021] (SL-21) I did write a novel in the end. It was published in 2001 I think. I don’t think it stands up. Lots of the factual content was not accurate and it is too cartoony. I have been cured of that desire, luckily for the world. I don’t imagine ever being on the TV again. My ambition from 2005 onwards was just to do live stuff for ever, and that seemed totally do-able as you weren’t reliant on capricious commissioners commissioning you or publishing you. But now that certainty seems very uncertain.
After reading his answer from 1996: I don’t remember anything about that novel as described. It sounds like a Vonnegut rip-off and I sound really arrogant. It turns out the German journalist was Dave Callahan from Wolfhounds’ then girlfriend. I have always remembered that put down. She probably thought I was arrogant and wanted to put me in my place. The other woman sounds fantastic. I can't remember her, or much of the 90s.
LD Are you jealous of comics like Ken Dodd who can make people laugh just by pulling a face, and do you ever wish you were really over weight or born with bucked teeth, large ears etc?
SL-96 I’m not really envious of many other comics – probably only Harry Hill and Simon Munnery (aka Alan Parker), because they’re the only people that I think are really better than me in the kind of things I like to do. I’m not envious of other comics really – Angus Deayton maybe rich etc. but I wouldn’t want to have to wake up and be him every morning. I am actually very fat – 14 stone – but I somehow seem to be able to carry it off unless naked when the horrible truth is revealed.
SL-21 I am overweight now and I need to address it because it gives me too much character and I need to be sort of nothing-y for my act to work. If I don’t lose weight before live work starts again I will have to reinvent myself as a jolly fat man.
After reading his answer from 1996: I am still envious of the talent of both of them, but add Kitson to the list now. Despite what people say I am not envious of more financially successful comics as I wouldn’t want to have the oppressive lives they do, but I do get irked when people strike it rich having assembled stuff for my old bits. Simon Bird’s new stand-up special is like a baby standing up its cot and doing my act to an empty nursery, and I like him.
LD Since the Beyond The Fringe and Monty Python people in the 60s, there’s been a steady flow of top comics coming from Oxford and Cambridge. Was the place jam packed with Stephen Fry and John Cleese types when you were there?
SL-96 At Oxford we met loads of people who were Python/Fry wannabees which even in 1986 was a bit embarrassing, and pushed us even further away from the posh comedy model. Armando Inanucci from 'The Day Today' was a post-grad. About 6 years older than us when we were little. Arm was always polite and charming. Kevin Cecil & Andy Riley who wrote for 'The Day Today', 'Spitting Image' and 'Def 2' were two years below us. They are nice lads. Ben Moor, who writes great one man fringe shows and does crap adverts, and Al Murray, who does a stand up act called 'The Landlord' and works with Harry Hill, were both in the year below me. Al and Ben are among my best friends now. People still go on about Oxbridge Comedy mafia but I fund the resistance to it when I started a real hindrance. 70's ex-public school fake communists would hate you on principle before they found out that you were actually ok."
SL-21 The only people from my year who are still doing comedy are me, Rich Herring and Al Murray. Rich is a sort of 'personality' now I suppose, like Rusty Lee or Richard Osman, and Al does periodic circuits as the landlord but is really working in drumming now which is his first love, and doing very well. I suppose I am the last one standing, for better or worse. Arm Ianucci was a few years above us and obviously has changed the world. There were more people from Cambridge who were our contemporaries, of which Mel and Sue's dbl act was the best by far, but they were never really given the chance to do it anywhere despite being from Oxbridge and therefore controlling the world.”
After reading his answer from 1996: Ben Moor was probably one of the most talented people. These days he still does adverts and bit parts, and increasingly great one man shows, but in his 50s, so he has won the game of life. I too am an ex-public school fake communist but I got a charity grant for ‘waifs and strays’ and was a cuckoo in their nest really.”
LD Unlike Richard Herring, your material is far more laugh at this, laugh at that – but don’t laugh at me. Do you agree?
SL-96 I hope when I’m picking on people or things to laugh at, there’s always an element of me being the twat for bothering to express the wrong/mad/obsessional opinion I am – I hope it works both ways, with me as a kind of ignorant victim of myself, maybe not.
SL-21 Not any more. I have worked out how to make my own deficiencies and paranoias the butt of the jokes, at the same time as they target various other people, institutions, ideas etc. But in 1996 this was a very accurate description yes.
After reading his answer from 1996: Wow – same answer.
LD Why do you think you and Richard work so well together?
SL-96 We dislike the same things rather than like the same things. We have different things to put into the cauldron. We used to be great friends – we still are but we don’t really socialise together now as we’re together so much. We’ve probably had the worse arguments we’re ever gonna have now – Rich threw a New Castle Brown bottle at my head once in Cambridge and a chair at me about 18 months ago – and I don’t think we’ll ever actually officially stop working together, although hopefully the breaks will get longer, so I can go off and do self indulgent failed stuff. I want to make a country rock album under a false name.
SL-21 It seems hard to imagine that we did work together now, given that I haven’t really spoken to Richard, aside from during his podcasts when he would ask me to remember things he had done, this century. I understand from his appearances on podcasts that he thinks I didn’t really contribute anything to the double act anyway so I don’t know how or why it worked. I know I wrote some of the material as it was based on my personal experience, opinions, interests, and sad memories of my own family, but he may be right. Certainly my individual popularity and success as a stand-up initially lead to us both being signed by Avalon, but I am not sure that was a very good result for either of us in the end anyway.
I think there was an adolescent dynamic at work, probably based on how we saw ourselves as teenagers, that limped on into our 20s, but I don’t think there was much more you could have done with it as adults. Certainly there was no financial incentive for me to continue with the double act as on balance the double act lost money because the tours ate up anything else we made in debts to Avalon promotions and everything I made from the 90s was from the stand-up circuit or writing for other people. (After that, Avalon produced Jerry Springer The Opera and lost millions in much the same way) I think I was good at hanging back live and providing Richard with the opportunity to be excessive – he sort of plays chicken with notions of taste – that I would then reign in at the last possible point, like a police dog handler, but I don’t think I was able to transfer over many of the skills I developed in the stand-up.
I was doing stand-up 5 nights a week for most of the 90s, which was where my heart lay and was always where I saw my future, ever since seeing Ted Chippington at the age of 16. But I tour around the country there is always someone in the merch queue that wants a Fist of Fun book signed so it does seem to be fondly remembered by some older people. I can’t really remember much about it to be honest. I hated the production style of the second series of Fist of Fun and just remember being very stressed by the two live series.
The other performers in all of our TV stuff were very good – especially Kevin and Paul and Pete Baynham. I am ashamed that I strip-mined my family’s lives for a lot of material in This Morning With Richard Not Judy without thinking what that might feel like. As a parent I understand them better now but they are all dead. The Lee and Herring live dvd was badly produced by Avalon which was a shame as we did sometimes get quite a hysteria going live and that isn’t documented anywhere, although the bit of my stand-up act on that is quite interesting.
Rich worked very hard and was very conscientious but I don’t think he had much of an ear for tonality or musicality and wasn’t interested in learning from other practitioners or in finding out about areas of culture outside his immediate sphere, although I think that very insularity might have helped him to consolidate his podcaster character, which has proved an effective and lucrative way for him to maintain both his profile and his independence. I am the opposite. Maybe that was what was good about it. I am glad I had a second chance in life to do things I was happier with. I have been very lucky.
After reading his answer from 1996: Well, that’s pretty much the same. I still haven’t made the country rock album, but I have done other musical things. The self-indulgent failed stuff became my successful career in the end, so well done to me. I have lived a charmed life. But I am glad it is not 1996 and I am not that bloke.
Stewart Lee
2021-06-15T19:07:49+01:00
Le Document (LD) Will you be following in the footsteps of Stephen Fry, Rob Newman etc and start writing novels or are you happy just being on the telly and making people laugh? Stewart Lee [1996] (SL-96) I’ve started on the novel already, but of course it will just be slagged to shit by the lit establishment even if it’s any good just because they don’t like people coming into their patch uninvited. My novel is about the Dresden Fire Bombing, The Homeless and anal sex. I hope I can resist the temptation to write a play as the theatre is run by and for wankers. I think making people laugh is a worthy occupation, but I think you’re under appreciated so you tend to get itchy feet. A German journalist once said to me, straight up, “You must be embarrassed to be a comedian”, as if it was something I’d get asked everyday. A girl in Wales said “A unique brand of cerebral juvenalia” – that’s not much of an epitaph is it? And told me a Greek myth: it's the Satyr's job to clown around, but he wants to be a poet and make his audience weep. He asks Pan to make him a poet. Pan says no and tells him to carry on acting the fool. The Satyr steals Pan’s pipes to play sad music and move his listeners. Pan strikes him dead. The other animals cry in the river of his blood. In his death, he achieves his ambition. Stewart Lee [2021] (SL-21) I did write a novel in the end. It was published in 2001 I think. I don’t think it stands up. Lots of the factual content was not accurate and it is too cartoony. I have been cured of that desire, luckily for...
https://www.stewartlee.co.uk/other/1996-vs-2021/
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 in shows as a guest of people he was clearly better than; I had a strange half memory of him doing punky sneery stuff on one of those late night Seventies rock shows, So It Goes or Revolver. I knew he was a significant figure.
But I never saw him perform stand-up.
I could have seen John Dowie do stand-up, of a sort, at my fourth Edinburgh Fringe, in 1990, when he performed a one man show called 'Why I Gave Up Stand-Up Comedy', but I didn't go. I don't know why. The title was strange. It made me think of Captain Oates, leaving Captain Scott's arctic tent to die with the words "I'm just going outside. I may be some time.", and perhaps hoping someone would stop him. But no-one stopped John Dowie. He had performed Alternative Comedy before it even had a name, was tired of it by the time the tropes he's established became commonplace, and then he just sort of slipped away.
Ten years later, I was drinking late one night in the courtyard of the Pleasance Theatre in the year 1999, my thirteenth Edinburgh Fringe, when the comedian Simon Munnery arrived, looking pleased with himself, like a gun dog bringing back a pheasant, or a family cat that comes in a drops a dead rat on the carpet. He had found John Dowie, the pheasant/dead rat of Alternative Comedy, and he was nearby, right now, drinking, and ready to receive our tributes.
We got to know Dowie that Summer. It was interesting to talk to him about how it all began, and what it was all for. The great sage would have been all of 49 then, five years older than I am now, but he dealt with us graciously. He came to see my show and offered no advice other than that I should wear proper shiny shoes in future, and not trainers.
In the last few years I have come to see that he was right, but it seemed strange advice to receive from the punk era stand-up who has also once opened for Black Sabbath.
Having kids seemed to have shifted Dowie's priorities. He was writing children's shows now, and poems, and plays, and seemed to want to say things that were unambiguously positive. He was sucked into the unpaid charity benefit circuit that all out gang seemed to be on all the time, but would never be drawn to perform his old stuff, offering instead neat, philosophical haikus that made everything else on the bill look rather bitter and bleak. I saw him do a one-off performance, in a Fitzrovian cellar, of his theatre piece about Jospeh, made famous by Tom Conti, Jesus My Boy. It was brilliant, funny, moving, and told you more about the real John Dowie than any amount of drinking sessions. In the guise of the cuckolded carpenter, he really opened up.
We had Dowie round for New Year's Eve once. He seemed angry about something and, I think, absented himself before he turned nasty. I went to his flat a few times, and he greeted me with a wave from a fifth story window. It made me think of the Philip Dick story, "The Man In The High Castle." Each time I went there Dowie had less stuff. In the end he had reduced his possessions to five basic food groups; records by Bob Dylan and Moondog; books by William Blake and the aforementioned Dick; and some Batman comics. It was as if he was preparing to depart. And pretty soon he did. No-one in our gang knew where he'd gone, but we knew he could now carry everything he ever wanted in a backpack, and he'd bought a bike.
Years passed. In 2011 I tracked Dowie down to ask him to appear in At Last! The 1981 Show, a celebration of Alternative Comedy's first wave that I was curating for the Royal Festival Hall. Needless to say, he would have nothing of it, and would not give anything away, either, about his then current whereabouts.
I am glad this document exists. The punk era music tracks are perfect period pieces, sort of Dada Cabaret/pub rock fusion, Tristan Tzara fronting Doctor Feelgood; Mime Sketch, reminds me of similarly atmospheric field recordings by Ted Chippington and Lenny Bruce; it seems even funnier to a comedy-literate listener because you feel the material is way too good for the response it's getting, and it's great to hear such nakedly honest archive. And knowing Dowie, a little, hearing the hilarious but awkwardly confrontational I'm Here To Entertain You, or No More Fucking's visceral fear of the physical world, with hindsight, it seems obvious why Dowie was eventually to chose a brighter path. No more would Dowie spit out the bleak rhyming couplet that began, "If I had any sense I'd nail my penis to the floor."
Instead he wrote Dogman, for children, the story of an alien Dog who ends up running a lighthouse that appears, the more I read it to my own children, to be a kind of autobiography.
There's a political dimension to this collection too.
Dowie came from a time very different to our own; where there was a degree of social mobility that is now greatly reduced; where places like Birmingham's Arts Lab funded and developed art they felt was worthwhile in of itself, rather than as a route to the loot; where punk and the hippy era's DIY ethics propelled singular talents like Dowie's forward; and where a viable Fringe circuit encouraged risk taking.
If someone were thinking of doing something in comedy as radical as Dowie did in the '70s, would they be able to, and if they did, would we even know about it?
Stewart Lee
2012-01-01T18:26:08+00:00
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 in shows as a guest of people he was clearly better than; I had a strange half memory of him doing punky sneery stuff on one of those late night Seventies rock shows, So It Goes or Revolver. I knew he was a significant figure. But I never saw him perform stand-up. I could have seen John Dowie do stand-up, of a sort, at my fourth Edinburgh Fringe, in 1990, when he performed a one man show called 'Why I Gave Up Stand-Up Comedy', but I didn't go. I don't know why. The title was strange. It made me think of Captain Oates, leaving Captain Scott's arctic tent to die with the words "I'm just going outside. I may be some time.", and perhaps hoping someone would stop him. But no-one stopped John Dowie. He had performed Alternative Comedy before it even had a name, was tired of it by the time the tropes he's established became commonplace, and then he just sort of slipped away. Ten years later, I was drinking late one night in the courtyard of the Pleasance Theatre in the year 1999, my thirteenth Edinburgh Fringe, when the comedian Simon Munnery arrived, looking pleased with himself, like a gun dog bringing back a pheasant, or a family cat that comes in a drops a dead rat on the carpet. He had found John Dowie, the pheasant/dead rat of Alternative Comedy, and he was nearby, right now, drinking, and ready to receive...
For a few minutes the other night, I became part of comedian Stewart Lee's act.
Though we've never met, he felt obliged to inform the audience of just under 1,000 that there was a 'Daily Mirror reporter' in the audience to review his show.
It also gave him the opportunity to explain that his material would be coming from six half-hour sets he was preparing for a new TV show, which he's going to be recording in December.
And he said, because there was a 'Daily Mirror reporter' in the audience, he had improved his material for this review, so he would appreciate me giving the show one star less than it merited - as the rest of the tour wouldn't be as good. It got the required laugh.
According to Stewart, I should be telling readers that the best part of his show was when he - supposedly in the character of Animal Magic presenter Johnny Morris - acts out smashing a snake's egg on stage....'definitely worth two stars of anyone's money'.
The Johnny Morris piece - part of a longer wildlife one, including mentions for Ben Fogle and Michaela Strachan - worked well and, as Lee rightly pointed out, elicited a round of applause...'micromanaged', as he put it, 'but got still a round of applause'.
But, sorry, Stew, the funniest moment that had me in stitches was when you ripped UKIP to shreds.
Lee, 45, took the conceit of UKIP's deputy leader Paul Nuttall warning about the influx of skilled Bulgarian workers later in the year, then ran and ran with it, imagining Nuttall telling previous immigrants, such as the Poles of the last 10 years and the West Indians and Pakistanis of the 1950s not to bother coming here.
Then, in characteristic form, he took it to surreal lengths, extending Nuttall's remarks to the Huguenots of medieval France, the Anglo-Saxons, the Neolithics, the first fish to ever make it on to land and then nothingness itself. All addressed with the same degree of intolerant UKIP remarks.
By the time Lee reached the end of that piece, many of the audience had tears of laughter running down their cheeks.
His eviscerating comment on Nuttall and co came in a fast-moving second half, with a rapid-fire range of observational comedy.
His latest material is, without doubt, some of the sharpest he's ever produced and an improvement even on his popular Carpet Remnant World tour of a year or so ago.
Fellow stand-ups came into his line of fire - Alan Davies, Michael McIntyre, Jimmy Carr, Roy 'Chubby Brown', Jim Davidson - and were witheringly and amusingly put down.
And there were unsurprising pops at Tories David Cameron and Margaret Thatcher, but Labour leader Ed Miliband didn't escape either - 'For Miliband to make a mess of Labour, after Blair, is like catching a baby that's been dropped out of an aeroplane, then to trip over and drop it in the gutter'.
The wonderful thing about Lee - undoubtedly the best comedian in Britain - is that he doesn't give a damn, yet eschews the kind of scatological humour so many older 'funnymen' employ or to the excessive foul language that many younger ones rely on.
Sure, there are a few swear words in his intelligent act, but they are used for maximum comedic effect, not for shock value nor as an obscene lingua franca.
Sorry again, Stew, but you do get the full five stars... just take one off if it makes you feel better!
Stewart Lee
2013-10-02T18:17:46+01:00
For a few minutes the other night, I became part of comedian Stewart Lee's act. Though we've never met, he felt obliged to inform the audience of just under 1,000 that there was a 'Daily Mirror reporter' in the audience to review his show. It also gave him the opportunity to explain that his material would be coming from six half-hour sets he was preparing for a new TV show, which he's going to be recording in December. And he said, because there was a 'Daily Mirror reporter' in the audience, he had improved his material for this review, so he would appreciate me giving the show one star less than it merited - as the rest of the tour wouldn't be as good. It got the required laugh. According to Stewart, I should be telling readers that the best part of his show was when he - supposedly in the character of Animal Magic presenter Johnny Morris - acts out smashing a snake's egg on stage....'definitely worth two stars of anyone's money'. The Johnny Morris piece - part of a longer wildlife one, including mentions for Ben Fogle and Michaela Strachan - worked well and, as Lee rightly pointed out, elicited a round of applause...'micromanaged', as he put it, 'but got still a round of applause'. But, sorry, Stew, the funniest moment that had me in stitches was when you ripped UKIP to shreds. Lee, 45, took the conceit of UKIP's deputy leader Paul Nuttall warning about the influx of skilled Bulgarian workers later in the year, then ran and ran with it, imagining Nuttall telling previous immigrants, such as the Poles of the last 10 years and the West Indians and Pakistanis of the 1950s not to bother coming here. Then, in characteristic form, he took it to...
Two recent compilations of Iranian psychedelia, Pomegranates and Raks Raks Raks, suggested hidden deposits, but this double set is the motherlode.
Raised on Allied radio rock, Kourosh Yaghmaei slipped Western acid-pop into Persian scales, creating headily perfumed hybrids from reclaimed microtones. One in five Iranians bought his 1973 debut 7", Gole Yakh, but Yaghmaei was soon testing censors with wild dervish grooves like Ghazal, the echo-laden fuzz blues of Baroona, and the eerily hallucinogenic Khaar.
The 1979 Islamic Revolution brought a seventeen year ban, recently reinforced, but Back From The Brink is a powerful testament.
Stewart Lee
2011-08-21T01:35:18+01:00
Two recent compilations of Iranian psychedelia, Pomegranates and Raks Raks Raks, suggested hidden deposits, but this double set is the motherlode. Raised on Allied radio rock, Kourosh Yaghmaei slipped Western acid-pop into Persian scales, creating headily perfumed hybrids from reclaimed microtones. One in five Iranians bought his 1973 debut 7", Gole Yakh, but Yaghmaei was soon testing censors with wild dervish grooves like Ghazal, the echo-laden fuzz blues of Baroona, and the eerily hallucinogenic Khaar. The 1979 Islamic Revolution brought a seventeen year ban, recently reinforced, but Back From The Brink is a powerful testament.
Stewart Lee is in Eeyorish mood. The BBC have not yet got round to recommissioning his acclaimed television show. They have been more bountiful, he grumbles, with Russell Howard, and you can hear the older man's withering scorn for the younger, blonder cherub contractually obliged never to step away from the cameras. On the plus side, he is in residence at this cosy but capacious theatre until February, a booking that only the promise of television audiences can gift. New recruits have therefore been persuaded in, but they do not receive a friendly greeting: the understanding is that they will be a fickle lot who won't understand Lee at 33rpm, the long-playing version.
This is comedy in inverted commas, stand-up about itself. The metatextual riffing is mostly focused on the sheer badness of the show, the lack of a signature style. Lee compares and contrasts himself with observational comedians, foul-mouthed American comedians, with Jimmy Carr ("for Jimmy Carr viewers, that's irony", he advises quietly). It's lacerating stuff, mostly understated. Even his old partner Richard Herring, who fashioned an entire show out of a moustache, is seen ducking for cover in the hail of bullets.
Lee's material is in the lack of it. Where other comedians with small children turn to their newly born housemates for inspiration, Lee acknowledges the reality that parenthood shrinks horizons and, in a comic's case, narrows available options. Lee knows rather more about Scooby-Doo these days and riffs on it at bravura length. By the second half he has launched himself on a fruitless quest for material along the North Circular.
The jokes, of course, are all in the spaces where the punchlines should be. Lee steps away from the material to be his own exegetical commentator and professorial summariser. Much of the first half is a struggle to find something meaningful to say about Islam - impossible, he suggests, when he and we know so little about it. "Let's have a look at what's wrong with that joke," he says after an aside about his dentist whom he assumes to be a lesbian. Another joke fails because it refers to a front-bencher whose cross-dressing habit will not become generally known for another six months. He tells us in advance that the following won't get a laugh. It should be called the See What I Did There tour.
Of course, in all this protesting too much there are many of the usual signposts. Where else do you get comedy that namedrops Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls and Henry James's The Wings of a Dove? If there is anything to regret, it's that he doesn't quite trust his audience to go all the way with some of this stuff. If they really share his bourgeois tastes, they would certainly have enjoyed an adroit routine about Archipelago, the gruellingly novelistic arthouse movie mentioned in dispatches as the only other film he has seen this year apart from Scooby-Doo.
As the evening progresses the tone grows more sullen and self-pitying as Lee gripes about comedians who have successfully crafted shows out of bereavement or illness or buying items. He does it so artlessly you can almost feel his pain. He is eventually reduced to reading from a cue card a long litany of epithets, mostly beginning with C, hurled in his specific direction in comment streams and on Twitter (which doubles as online surveillance, even if people do confuse him with someone from UB40 or a Serbian warlord). These assaults are no less bilious than grenades directed by Americans at the memory of Osama bin Laden (which he cites in the first half). The strange thing is that these vile insults get the biggest laughs of all. It's the way he tells them. The BBC should think again.
Stewart Lee
2011-11-24T13:02:56+00:00
Stewart Lee is in Eeyorish mood. The BBC have not yet got round to recommissioning his acclaimed television show. They have been more bountiful, he grumbles, with Russell Howard, and you can hear the older man's withering scorn for the younger, blonder cherub contractually obliged never to step away from the cameras. On the plus side, he is in residence at this cosy but capacious theatre until February, a booking that only the promise of television audiences can gift. New recruits have therefore been persuaded in, but they do not receive a friendly greeting: the understanding is that they will be a fickle lot who won't understand Lee at 33rpm, the long-playing version. This is comedy in inverted commas, stand-up about itself. The metatextual riffing is mostly focused on the sheer badness of the show, the lack of a signature style. Lee compares and contrasts himself with observational comedians, foul-mouthed American comedians, with Jimmy Carr ("for Jimmy Carr viewers, that's irony", he advises quietly). It's lacerating stuff, mostly understated. Even his old partner Richard Herring, who fashioned an entire show out of a moustache, is seen ducking for cover in the hail of bullets. Lee's material is in the lack of it. Where other comedians with small children turn to their newly born housemates for inspiration, Lee acknowledges the reality that parenthood shrinks horizons and, in a comic's case, narrows available options. Lee knows rather more about Scooby-Doo these days and riffs on it at bravura length. By the second half he has launched himself on a fruitless quest for material along the North Circular. The jokes, of course, are all in the spaces where the punchlines should be. Lee steps away from the material to be his own exegetical commentator and professorial summariser. Much of the first half is...
In my shabby north London arts/media ghetto, one is never more than 6ft from a rat or six degrees of separation from a New Labour politician. Only last month, I saw shadow chancellor Ed Balls fingering a homity pie at the farmers' market. Some friends are even acquaintances of opposition bigwigs. And some of them can't keep secrets.
Because my wife is a feminist, (though typically unable to return my CDs to the correct genre, chronological and alphabetical position on the shelves when she brings them in from the car), I do some of the childcare. Being the only dad at Messy Play, a spy in the cab of gender, I realise men's conversations are status-securing exchanges of valuable facts, whereas women's are a two-way ebb and flow of non-assertive opinion, emotional support and bitchy gossip.
"June's friend's friend, the New Labour guy, is having terrible trouble with his plumbing?" "Erectile dysfunction?" "No," said Pauline, "a problem with his actual plumbing. They had to get a man last month because for about five days there was a number two that just wouldn't flush away. It wasn't especially big but what was weird was it looked like Tony Blair." The mums shrieked with laughter. "What do you mean, it looked like Tony Blair?" I asked, smelling a story. "Did it look like the whole of him, with arms and legs, or just his face?" "Just his face, I think," said Pauline. "I don't really know. I'm not supposed to say anything. Apparently the spin guys are really worried about the story getting out."
The next day, I myself had to call a plumber. I had accidentally put cat litter crystals into the dishwasher salt compartment and they needed to be sucked out by a professional. I don't know anything about sport so I volunteered: "Hey. Apparently there's a New Labour politician round here and last month he had to call a plumber because there was a turd with the face of Tony Blair that he couldn't flush away." "Walls have ears," the plumber laughed, adjusting his turban. "That was one of my call-outs. It was really like Tony Blair too." "In what way?" I asked. "That's the funny thing," the plumber said. "It didn't really look like him, but it just was really like him. It was obviously him. It seemed evil. And it was smiling. And no one in the family could remember having done it."
For a few minutes, the plumber sat in silence, staring, fondling his tools, puzzled by the memory, at £80 an hour plus call-out. "Whoever told you got one thing wrong though," he said, snapping out if it. "It wasn't last month. It was yesterday. And it wasn't a he. It was a woman politician. And she told me not to tell anyone about it. So if you wouldn't mind… that'll be £400 please."
Either Pauline was mistaken, and had mixed up the gender of the politicians, or there were two different north London New Labour politicians plagued by persistent voting floaters. And how could Pauline have told me a story last week that the plumber said only happened yesterday? Maybe there were two "Tonys"? Or maybe only one, but it was using the sewer system as a kind of personal transport network between the toilets of former minions. Or the whole thing was nonsense.
After lunch, I saw Diane Abbott, our local New Labour MP, with whom I am on nodding terms having been on Andrew Neil's BBC2 politics show with her three times, in the post office. Intrigued by the toilet tale, I decided to chance my arm. "Have you heard about this poo that looks like Blair?" I laughed. She gripped me tightly by the wrist and dragged me away.
Sitting out of sight, spy style, on a bench in the park, which has recently been beautifully refurbished, Abbott was fearful and nervous, but masked it with a bristling anger. "Who told you about this? The damn thing only appeared this morning. My cleaner is at home spraying it with Febreze and hitting it with the toilet brush but it keeps resurfacing. You'd better not tell anyone. This is a bloody PR disaster waiting to happen. I suppose you bloody know about all the others too? You know about Ed's problem?"
"Ed Balls?" I offered, having assumed the Blair poo Pauline had mentioned at Messy Play was plaguing the toilet of the shadow chancellor, who lives locally. "No. Balls's problem is small time. Ed Miliband." I could see Diane Abbott was torn. On the one hand, she knew she shouldn't be telling me, a standup comedian with an occasional Observer column, about Ed Miliband's plumbing problems, but she was clearly desperate to unburden herself.
"Ed Miliband's personal House of Commons toilet has been home to a persistent floater with the face of Tony Blair for six weeks now." "Can't they just flush it away?" I asked. "That's the problem. Ed flushes it away, dozens of times a day, and it just keeps coming back. In the end, he got John Prescott to go in and do a big massive fast wee on it, smashing it all to bits, and they flushed the fragments away, but then they just seemed to re-form and it came back, looking even more like Tony Blair than before."
"Don't worry, Diane. It will be all right," I said. "No. It won't be all right," she shouted. "The toilets of dozens of senior New Labour MPs all over the country are being regularly infested by a poo with the face of Tony Blair that just won't flush away. What's going on? And if this gets out… it's a gift to the Tories. It's like a joke, a bad joke, some heavy-handed routine about Blair coming back, smiling and… don't you dare write this up in one of your columns."
"You don't have to worry, Diane," I assured her. "I hardly think the Observer would stoop so low as to run a full-page column on some poo with the face of Tony Blair. People would assume the story wasn't true and just think it was the most pathetic, puerile, pointless piece of so-called satire ever run in a British broadsheet newspaper." Then her phone rang. "Pavlika. No, Pavlika. Hit it. Hit the bloody thing with a broom. Smash it to fucking pieces."
Stewart Lee
2012-08-12T14:29:07+01:00
In my shabby north London arts/media ghetto, one is never more than 6ft from a rat or six degrees of separation from a New Labour politician. Only last month, I saw shadow chancellor Ed Balls fingering a homity pie at the farmers' market. Some friends are even acquaintances of opposition bigwigs. And some of them can't keep secrets. Because my wife is a feminist, (though typically unable to return my CDs to the correct genre, chronological and alphabetical position on the shelves when she brings them in from the car), I do some of the childcare. Being the only dad at Messy Play, a spy in the cab of gender, I realise men's conversations are status-securing exchanges of valuable facts, whereas women's are a two-way ebb and flow of non-assertive opinion, emotional support and bitchy gossip. "June's friend's friend, the New Labour guy, is having terrible trouble with his plumbing?" "Erectile dysfunction?" "No," said Pauline, "a problem with his actual plumbing. They had to get a man last month because for about five days there was a number two that just wouldn't flush away. It wasn't especially big but what was weird was it looked like Tony Blair." The mums shrieked with laughter. "What do you mean, it looked like Tony Blair?" I asked, smelling a story. "Did it look like the whole of him, with arms and legs, or just his face?" "Just his face, I think," said Pauline. "I don't really know. I'm not supposed to say anything. Apparently the spin guys are really worried about the story getting out." The next day, I myself had to call a plumber. I had accidentally put cat litter crystals into the dishwasher salt compartment and they needed to be sucked out by a professional. I don't know anything about sport...
The American motivational speaker has rapidly become a staple of character comedy, which returns to the fringe in cycles of approximately three years. On paper then, Will Adamsdale’s Chris John Jackson, author of Maximum Jackson and inventor of the philosophy of Jackson’s Way, is not an appetising proposition. But Adamsdale merely uses this familiar trope as a framing device for a rigorously funny, and often poignant, exploration of the human imagination. Jackson’s theory is this. Around every action that has a point, such as walking along, waving at someone, or looking at an interesting event, exists a vast unexplored area of pointless actions, an untapped reservoir for human non-achievement. Jackson demonstrates some of his favorites. He attempts to put his hand in two places at once. He tries to make the words People and Church rhyme. He fails to drag the stage into a small glass. None of these things are possible.
This, he explains, is the zone Jacksonites must strive to inhabit, and he encourages his audience to pepper their lives with similarly futile activities. It is not made clear how Jackson arrived at this zen-like state of grace, though there are vague allusions to an embarrassing incident in a business park, and memories of his older brother seem to weigh heavily upon him. Jackson occupies the thin sliver of space that exists between the socially acceptable delusions of faith and religion, and the socially unacceptable delusions of mental illness. It is a wonderful region to visit. And it stays with you. On leaving the venue I took a wrong turn alongside a parked car, ended up trapped between the vehicle and a brick wall, and had to turn back upon myself, but instead of being irritated I was momentarily elated. I had completed my first Jacksonian action.
Stewart Lee
2004-08-01T18:09:12+01:00
The American motivational speaker has rapidly become a staple of character comedy, which returns to the fringe in cycles of approximately three years. On paper then, Will Adamsdale’s Chris John Jackson, author of Maximum Jackson and inventor of the philosophy of Jackson’s Way, is not an appetising proposition. But Adamsdale merely uses this familiar trope as a framing device for a rigorously funny, and often poignant, exploration of the human imagination. Jackson’s theory is this. Around every action that has a point, such as walking along, waving at someone, or looking at an interesting event, exists a vast unexplored area of pointless actions, an untapped reservoir for human non-achievement. Jackson demonstrates some of his favorites. He attempts to put his hand in two places at once. He tries to make the words People and Church rhyme. He fails to drag the stage into a small glass. None of these things are possible. This, he explains, is the zone Jacksonites must strive to inhabit, and he encourages his audience to pepper their lives with similarly futile activities. It is not made clear how Jackson arrived at this zen-like state of grace, though there are vague allusions to an embarrassing incident in a business park, and memories of his older brother seem to weigh heavily upon him. Jackson occupies the thin sliver of space that exists between the socially acceptable delusions of faith and religion, and the socially unacceptable delusions of mental illness. It is a wonderful region to visit. And it stays with you. On leaving the venue I took a wrong turn alongside a parked car, ended up trapped between the vehicle and a brick wall, and had to turn back upon myself, but instead of being irritated I was momentarily elated. I had completed my first Jacksonian action.
Thanks for your patience with rescheduling of dates.
I hope you are all well and have not suffered any loss.
Here I wait patiently to reassume my privileged duties, which I promise to perform henceforth with a greater sense of responsibility, having learned & listened under lockdown.
One day we will all be laughing again in some rooms.
I cannot embrace you all.
Your pal
Stew Art Lee
1) COMING OVER HERE
Merry Winterval!
Agit-pop stars Asian Dub Foundation sampled an old routine of mine to make a song called Comin’ Over Here.
If you download it, and their many inventive remixes, between Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve you can help make it the Brexit day No 1 the nation deserves!
All proceeds to Kent Refugee Action Network
My live promoter for most of this century, David Johnson, died on the 14th of December, aged 60.
David rescued me from total disillusion with the business side of live comedy, and re-illusioned me, making me believe it was possible to operate in a way that was both fair and fun.
If you ever met him - he was a cross between George Melly, Paddington Bear and Uncle Monty - you will never forget his amazing sense of humour and incredible storehouse of old Soho anecdotes.
He will be enormously missed.
The following news story, from the website Chortle’s August 2014 Edinburgh Fringe coverage, gives a great flavour of this fantastic man.
“Theatre and comedy producer David Johnson, whose company promotes the likes of Stewart Lee and the Rubberbandits, received an email request for free tickets for one of his Edinburgh Fringe shows from Peter Evans of Ambassadors Theatre Group, the company that has been widely criticised by the likes of Sarah Millican and Jason Manford for its high booking costs. This was his response...
Dear Peter,
I’ve just been asked whether, in your capacity as ‘Ambassadors Theatre Group - Head Of Operations - Northern Venues’, I would approve your written application for a pair of ‘Arts Industry’ complimentary tickets to Fascinating Aida’s show Charm Offensive at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Why - the hell - should I?
No-one gets a free ride at an ATG theatre – from the audience member charged a booking fee of up to £7 for the privilege of simply buying a ticket - to the performer expected to pay £15 to use Wi-Fi in their dressing room.
ATG recently charged Sandi Toksvig £1.80 for the glass of water she sipped on stage.
Nowadays, no aspect of the ATG experience as audience member/performer/producer is not monetised, priced-up and charged for. Why should you expect your Edinburgh experience to be any different?
If I had my way you would be invoiced for just breathing Edinburgh air and wandering around this fabulous city and its astonishing festival. A festival that is the absolute antithesis of ATG’s current Easyjet/Ryanair mentality.
Once upon a time, not so very long ago, ATG theatres were the first venues written into any decent tour schedule. Sales were high, marketing was efficient and charges were reasonable. Most importantly, theatre manager and producer collaborated.
These things are no longer true. We now book your theatres last – to fill gaps in our calendar. I actively seek out and encourage alternative venues.
To expand your income - instead of broadening your audience - you have decided to exploit the constituency you already possess – the shows, the artists and your regular theatregoers - with ramped-up booking fees, ludicrous bar prices and, for Heaven’s sake, a £15 per day dressing room Wi-Fi charge.
It’s an awful shame. We have a long and happy and collaborative history. ATG has some terrific theatres. But it doesn’t make much sense to tour to them anymore – especially when one has the nasty feeling that everyone’s pocket is being expertly picked.
My company Password Productions and Fascinating Aida are big and busty enough to tell you to pay your way in Edinburgh - or get bent.
But what about the other shows up here at the Festival? The vanguard of new artists and producers who will keep your theatres stocked with talent for years to come? Don’t you think that Ambassadors Theatre Group and its current Private Equity owners might spring the cost of your Edinburgh tickets?
Giving a bit of a leg-up to the shows and artists that have made the huge financial and artistic commitment to be here - instead of shoving out the begging bowl and pestering people for freebies?
Or is that too much to hope?
Do you still want your comps?
Sincerely,
David Johnson - Producer
Published: 8 Aug 2014”
3) MEDIA GARAGE SALE
My trusted sales partner Media Garage has compacted all my available stand-up dvds into one convenient on-line marketplace, with most available to d/load too.
The company operates out of an industrial unit in Southend, run by a man called Colin, who for the whole festive season will be alone and dressed as a Santa while he ships your orders of Xmas laffs worldwide, at top speed!
We have already mailed parcels of fun to Japan, Finland, Switzerland, Germany, France, USA, Canada, New Zealand, and even Latvia! Remember, if you buy here we will pay tax on these purchases, and help with British schools and hospitals, whereas many major physical media suppliers and streaming services have found ways to avoid declaring their profits.
AMERICANS - stop moaning about not being able to see me and visit MEDIA GARAGE!
Please send the link below to your grans when they ask what you want for Xmas.
Our documentary KING ROCKER has been selected for the Sheffield Documentary Festival but didn’t get screened due to Covid.
It has, however, been named by rock-mag MOJO as the second best rockumentary of 2020, and I am now allowed to announce that it will be on newly free-to-air SKY ARTS, which has also recently covered PUNCHDRUNK THEATRE, COLD WAR STEVE and IVOR CUTLER, in the 1st ¼ of next year.
Who would have thought that the weird arts brief of BBC4 would one day be fulfilled by SKY ARTS?
Comedian Stewart Lee and director Michael Cumming (Brass Eye) investigate a missing piece of punk history. Robert Lloyd, best known for fronting cult bands The Prefects and The Nightingales, has survived under the radar for over four decades. Anti-rockumentary King Rocker weaves the story of Birmingham’s undervalued underdog autodidact into that of the city’s forgotten public sculpture of King Kong, eschewing the celebrity interview and archive-raid approach for a free-associating bricolage of Indian food, bewildered chefs, vegetable gardening, prescription medicines, pop stardom and pop art.
I cannot tell you how happy I am to have been involved with this positive and uplifting project, and it has been a mental lifeline this year.
I’m not even bothering with trying to list dates here this month, as so many are in flux. I am sure local venues will contract you BUT...
1) All outstanding shows of the Snowflake/Tornado tour will be rescheduled/are being rescheduled for whenever they are allowed to happen.
The venues have your ticket money and this is helping them not collapse and keep an arts exoskeleton in place for whatever future cultural lives we are able to have.
I will do these shows. Don’t worry.
2) All little socially-distanced club gigs (that I had down for working out new stuff in November, in London, N’castle, E’bro & Glasgow), have been pulled, and will be rescheduled. Again, the venues have your ticket money which is good for them, so take a chill pill daddi-o.
Here is all the culture I consumed from 23/12/19 to 22/12/20. I am sorry if any of it irks you.
MY CULTURE VIRUS YEAR 2020
(from Dec 23rd 2019 - Dec 22nd 2020 )
My 5 best cultural things this year were...
FILM Mangrove (Steve McQueen)
BOOK Johnny Rogan - Byrds Requiem For The Timeless Vol 1
TV Ghosts (S2, BBC)
MUSIC Bob Dylan - Rough And Rowdy Ways
RADIO - James O’Brien (LBC)
NEW FILMS (2019/20)
My favourite 10 new films this year were;
The Two Popes (Fernando Meirelles)
Honeyland (Tamara Kotevska, Ljubo Stefanov)
The Color Out Of Space (Richard Stanley)
Bait (Mark Jenkin)
Parasite (Bong Joon-ho)
Days of The Bagnold Summer (Simon Bird)
The Peanut Butter Falcon (Tyler Nilson)
Mangrove (Steve McQueen)
Lovers’ Rock (Steve McQueen)
The Whalebone Box (Andrew Kotting)
Angus & Hetty MacLise - Dreamweapon II (1965) ★★★★
Angus MacLise & Tony Conrad - Dreamweapon III (1965) ★★★★
Nico - The Marble Index (1968) ★★★★★
Nico, Lou Reed & John Cale - Bataclan (1972) ★★★★
The Velvet Underground - And Nico (1967) ★★★★★
Nico - Chelsea Girl (1967) ★★★★
Nico - The End (1974) ★★★★★
Lou Reed - Coney Island Baby (1975)
Lou Reed - Transformer (1972)
The Fall - New Facts Emerge (2017) ★★★★★
The Church - After Everything Now This (2002)
The Fall - Light User Syndrome (1996) ★★★★
The Fall - Live In Vienna (1988) ★★★★
The Fall - JBs, Dudley (1979) ★★★★
The Fall - Victoria University, NZ (1982) ★★★★★
The Fall - Out Of The Frost (2012) ★★★★★
The Church - Bastard Universe (1998)
John Lee Hooker - House of The Blues (1960) ★★★★
John Lee Hooker - The Big Soul Of (1963)
John Lee Hooker - It Serve You Right To Suffer (1966) ★★★★
John Lee Hooker - Urban Blues (1968) ★★★★
John Lee Hooker - Live At Soledad Prison (1972) ★★★★
John Lee Hooker - Kabuki Wuki (1973)
John Lee Hooker w Canned Heat - Carnegie Hall (1971)
John Lee Hooker - Boom Boom (1992)
Hammock - Eps, Singles & Remixes (2013)
Bob Dylan - Live At The Gaslight (1962)
Bob Dylan - Live At Carnegie Hall (1963)
Bob Dylan - Bringing It All Back Home (1965) ★★★★★
Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited (1965) ★★★★★
Bob Dylan - Live Paris 1966 ★★★★★
Bob Dylan - The Cutting Edge Collectors’ Edition (1965-6) ★★★★★
Bob Dylan - Self Portrait (1970) ★★★★★
Bob Dylan - Blood On The Tracks (1975) ★★★★★
Bob Dylan - Good As I Been To You (1992)
Bob Dylan - World Gone Wrong (1993)
Bob Dylan - Infidels (1983)
Bob Dylan - Oh Mercy (1989)
Bob Dylan - Time Out Of Mind (1997) ★★★★
The Byrds - Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968) ★★★★
The Eagles - s/t (1972)
The Dillards - Live!!!! Almost!!!! (1964)
Gene Clark - Firebyrd (1984)
Gene Clark & Carla Olson - So Rebellious A Lover (1987)
★★★★
McGuinn, Clark, Hillman - s/t (1979) ★
McGuinn, Clark, Hillman - City (1980) ★
Manassas - Manassas (1972)
Green On Red - Two Bibles (1981) ★★★★
Green On Red - Green On Red (1982) ★★★★
Green On Red - Gravity Talks (1983)
Green On Red - Gas Food Lodging (1985) ★★★★★
Green On Red - No Free Lunch (1985)
Green On Red - Here Come The Snakes (1988) ★★★★★
Green On Red - This Time Around (1989)
Green On Red - Scapegoats (1991)
Green On Red - Too Much Fun (1992) ★★★★
True West - Drifters (1984) ★★★★★
True West - Hand Of Fate (1986)
True West - Best Western (1986)
Viva Saturn - s/t (1989) ★★★★★
Rain Parade - Demolition (1991)
Absolute Grey - A Journey Through The Past (1984-9)
Barbara Manning - Lately I Keep Scissors (1988) ★★★★★
Steve Wynn - Solo Electric Vol 1 (2015)
The Dream Syndicate - Live At Raji’s (1989) ★★★★★
The Dream Syndicate - Out Of The Grey (1986)
Skip Battin - Navigator (1981)
Skip Battin - Don’t Go Crazy (1984)
Family Tree - Live In Italy (1988)
Woodcocks - s/t (1990) ★★★★
Woodcocks - The Carp Pond (1992) ★★★★
Woodcocks - Microdot (2002)
Caitlin Von Schmidt - Fish (1992)
Giant Sand - Valley of Rain (1985) ★★★★★
River Roses - Each & All (1988)
River Roses - When We Fall (1991)
Luminarios - Personality Crisis (1992) ★★★★
Sidewinders - Cuacha< (1987) ★★★★
Sidewinders - Auntie Ramos’ Pool Hall (1990)
Black Sun Ensemble - Elemental Forces (1992)
Black Sun Ensemble - Sky Pilot (1994)
Rainer And Das Combo - Barefoot Rock (1986)
Naim Amor - Soundtracks (2001)
Underbelly - Mumbly Peg (1992)
Billy Sedlmayr - Charmed Life (2014) ★★★★
Billy Sedlmayr - Harlem River Drive (2018) ★★★★
Billy Sedlmayr - Four From The Family Room (2014)
Chuck Prophet - Homemade Blood (1997) ★★★★
Chuck Prophet - Homemade Boot (1997)
35 Summers - Biblioteca (1995) ★★★★
35 Summers - Bleed Out Loud (1997)★★★★
Friends of Dean Martinez - Shadow Of Your Smile (1995) ★★★★★
The Byrds - Turn Turn Turn (1965) ★★★★★
The Byrds - 5D (1966)★★★★★
Crime & The City Solution - Just South Of Heaven (1985) ★★★★★
The Birthday Party - Junkyard (1982) ★★★★
The Moodists - Engine Shudder (1982)
Lawson Square Infirmary - s/t (1984)
The Moodists - Thirsty’s Calling (1984) ★★★★★
The Beasts Of Bourbon - The Axeman’s Jazz (1984)
Crime & The City Solution - The Dangling Man (1985) ★★★★
Hugo Race - Rue Morgue (1987)
Porcelain Bus - Steel Bros (1987)
Dave Graney - My Life On The Plains (1989) ★★★★★
Simon Bonney - Forever (1992)
Dave Graney - Lure Of The Tropics (1992) ★★★★★
Dave Graney - Night Of The Wolverine (1993) ★★★★★
David McComb - Love Of Will (1994) ★★★★
Spencer P Jones - Rumour of Death (1994) ★★★★★
Dave Graney - You Wanna Be There (1994) ★★★★★
Simon Bonney - Everyman (1995) ★★★★
V/A - Where Joy Meets Sorrow (1997) ★★★★★
Hungry Ghosts - Alone, Alone (1999)
Simon Bonney - Past, Present, Future (1999) ★★★★★
Maurice Frawley - Triple-Skin (2000) ★★★★★
Penny Ikinger - Electra (2003)
V/A - The Songs of Maurice Frawley (2010)★★★★★
Hugo Race - John Lee Hooker’s World (2017) ★★★★
The Birthday Party - Mutiny (1983) ★★★★★
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - From Her To Eternity (1984) ★★★★
The Triffids - Raining Pleasure (1984) ★★★★★
These Immortal Souls - Get Lost! Don’t Lie! (1987)
Porcelain Bus - Talking To God (1988) ★★★★★
Robert Forster - Danger In The Past (1990) ★★★★
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Murder Ballads (1996) ★★★★★
Robert Forster - Warm Nights (1996) ★★★★
Beasts of Bourbon - Gone (1997) ★★★★★
Dan Stuart & Al Perry - Retronuevo (1993) ★★★★
Banco del Mutuo Soccorso - s/t (1972)
Reale Academia di Musica - s/t (1972)
V/A - Mobilisation Generale (1970-76) ★★★★
Ali Farka Toure - s/t (1976) ★★★★★
Sunny Ade - Synchro Chapter 1 (1977) ★★★★
Karlheinz Stockhausen - Stimmung (1968) ★★★★★
Chuck Prophet - Brother Aldo (1990)
Chuck Prophet - Balinese Dancer (1992)
Chuck Prophet - Feast of Hearts (1995) ★★★★
Mazzy Star - She Hangs Brightly (1990)★★★★★
Mazzy Star - So Tonight That I Might See (1993) ★★★★★
Metamorfosi - Inferno (1973)
Circus 2000 - Escape From A Box (1972) ★★★★
Wigwam - Hard ‘n’ Heavy (1969) ★★★★
Alphataurus - s/t (1973)
Crime & The City Solution - Paradise Discotheque (1990)★★★★
Sun Kil Moon - Among The Leaves (2012) ★★★★
Mark Kozelek - Live At The Phoenix Melbourne(2013) ★★★★
Idles - Brutalism (2017) ★★★★
Idles - Joy As An Act Of Resistance (2018) ★★★★
Sun Kil Moon - Ghosts Of The Great Highway (2003) ★★★★★
Maki Asakawa - 1st album (1970)
The Grapes - s/t (1999)
Haka Yamasaki - 2nd album (1976)
Maki Asakawa - Maki Asakawa (1970-76) ★★★★
SCHOOLS OPEN
Machina - En Directo (1972)
The Deviants - Dr Crow (2002)
Dorothy Carter - Troubador (1976) ★★★★
The Maytals - Monkey Man (1970)
Maki Asakawa - VI (1974)
Ellen McIlwane - Honky Tonk Angel (1972)
Slowdive - Just For A Day (1992)
XTC - Fossil Fuels (1977 - 1993)★★★★★
XTC - Black Sea (1980) ★★★★★
XTC - Black Sea Demos (1980) ★★★★★
XTC - English Settlement (1982)★★★★
Head Machine - Orgasm (1970)
Ellen McIlwane - We The People (1973)
Budgie - Budgie (1971)
Budgie - Squawk (1972)
Doji Morita - Goodbye (1975)
Shiloh - Shiloh (1970)
Farm - Farm (1971) ★★★★
(Dennis Dragon’s) Farm - Innermost Limits of Pure Fun (1968)
Dave Kusworth - The World Of (1982 - 2017)
The Beloved - Peel Sessions (84/5) ★★★★
Hawklords - Censored (2014)
Genesis (US) - In The Beginning (1968) ★★★★
Made In Germany - s/t (1971-4)
Gravy Train - s/t (1970)
Peep Show - The Secret World Of (1967)
Arktis - s/t (1973)
Hawkwind - In Search Of Space (1971) ★★★★★
TIER 2 LONDON LOCKDOWN OCT
John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers - Bare Wires (1968) ★★★★
Blue Mountain Eagle - s/t (1970) ★★★★
Rain - Norsk Suite (1969) ★★★★
Richard Dawson - The Magic Bridge (2011) ★★★★
Richard Dawson - The Glass Trunk (2013) ★★★★★
Richard Dawson - Nothing Important (2014) ★★★★★
Richard Dawson - Peasant (2017) ★★★★★
Richard Dawson - 2020 (2019) ★★★★★
Aztecs - Live (1971)
Young Flowers - Blomsterpistolen (1968) ★★★★
Cycle - s/t (1971)
The Creation - We Are Paintermen (1967)
Supersister - Present From Nancy (1970)
Master’s Apprentices - A Toast To Panama Red (1971)
Tin House - s/t (1971)★★★★
V/A - Electrified Neptune Staircase (1971-75)
Uriah Heep - Very ‘Eavy, Very ‘Umble (1970)
Uriah Heep - Salisbury (1971)
Aztecs - Live At Sunbury (1972)
The Sound - Heads & Hearts (1985) ★★★★★
The Sound - Shock Of The Daylight (1984)
The Sound - From The Lion’s Mouth (1981)
Nick Cave - Push The Sky Away (2012)
Ultravox - Lament (1984)
Loop - A Gilded Eternity (1990) ★★★★
Cuby + Blizzards - Desolation (1966)
Ray Davies - Our Country (2018)
The Posies - Frosting On The Beater (1993) ★★★★★
The Beat Poets - Totally Radio (1990)
Chain - Towards The Blues (1971)
Chain - Two of A Kind (1973)
Matt Taylor - Straight As A Die (1973)
Matt Taylor - Music (1974)
Cuby + Blizzards & Eddy Boyd - Praise The Blues (1967)
Cuby + Blizzards - Groeten Uit Grollo (1967)
Cuby + Blizzards - Trippin’ Through A Midnight Blues (1968)
Cuby + Blizzards - Live (1968)
Midnight Sun - Walking Circles (1972)
Iron Butterfly - Heavy (1968)
Hawkwind - Live ’79 (1979) ★★★★
Iron Butterfly - Metamorphosis (1970)
Richard Hell & Voidoids - Destiny St (1982) ★★★★★
Napalm Death - Words From The Exit Wound (1998)
Odin - SWF Session (1973)
Leo De Castro - & Friends (1970-73)
Napalm Death - Inside Torn Apart (1997)
Steve Wynn - Melting In The Dark (1995) ★★★★
Steve Wynn - Sweetness & Light (1997) ★★★★
SECOND LOCKDOWN OVER
Fanny - s/t (1970)
Fanny - Fanny Hill (1972)
Joy Division - Closer (1980) ★★★★★
Spencer Davis Group - Here We Go Round Mulberry Bush s/t (1968)
Spencer Davis Group - With Their New Face On (1968)
TIER 3 LONDON
Winter Hours - Wait Till The Morning (1986)★★★★★
Yoninbayashi - Hatahi No Genten (1973) ★★★★★
TIER 4 LONDON
The Cure - Disintegration (1989)
HISTORIC SITES
Kimbury Hill Fort, Gloucestershire
Kenwood House, Hampstead
Lincoln Imp and Little Hugh’s tomb, Lincoln Cathedral,
Tomb of Catherine of Aragorn, Peterborough Cathedral
St Anne’s Well, Buxton
St Augustine’s Tower, Hackney
The Rollright Stones, Oxfordshire
Spillers Records, Cardiff
St Phillips Cathedral, B’ham, Edward Burne-Jones windows ★★★★
Trent Park, N London
20/2/20 THEATRE/PUB SHUTDOWN
Hatfield Forest
Hackney Marshes
Walthamstow Marshes
Cannop Ponds, Forest of Dean
Uffington White Horse, Wiltshire
Waltham Abbey
Churchill Statue, Parliament Sq
Wayland’s Smithy, Wiltshire
Avebury Stone Circle, Wiltshire
East Wood Stone Circle, Forest of Dean
Symond’s Yat Hill Fort, Forest of Dean
Uley Long Barrow, Gloucestershire
Nympsfield Long Barrow, Gloucestershire
The Devil’s Pulpit, Forest of Dean
Blaize Bayley lookout, Forest of Dean
Cyril Hart Arboretum, Forest of Dean
Rough Tor huts and stone circles, Bodmin Moor
Brown Willy, Rough Tor
The Hurlers, Cornwall
Eden Project, Cornwall
Cherhill White Horse & Adam’s Grave, Wiltshire
Overton Hill, Avebury, Wiltshire
Hackpen White Horse, Avebury, Wiltshire
Dad’s Army locations, Thetford, Norfolk
Thetford Iron Age Hill Fort, Norfolk
Thetford Priory, Norfolk
The Druids’ Temple, Swinton, Yorkshire
Fountains Abbey/Studley Royal, Yorkshire
The Devil’s Arrows, Rippon, Yorkshire
Knaresborough Castle, Yorkshire
Mother Shipton’s Well, Yorkshire
Jervaulx Abbey, Yorkshire
Middleham Castle, Yorkshire
SCHOOLS OPEN
Godstow Priory, Oxford
Port Meadow, Oxford
Chequers estate, Buckinghamshire
Pulpit Hill Hillfort, Buckinghamshire
TIER 2 LONDON LOCKDOWN OCT
John Milton’s cottage, Chalfont St Giles
The Thomas Hardy Tree, St Pancras, London
Homes of Joe Orton, Nina Bawden, Angel
Site of 1st Doodlebug, Tower Hamlets
Graves of King Cole, Roger Crab, Tower Hamlets
Site of Peasants’ Revolt, Stepney Green
Site of Sidney Street siege, Stepney
Blind Beggar Pub, Whitechapel
Hampstead homes of Marx, Nick Drake, Arthur Racham, Henry Moore, Sickert, Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, Mondrian, Ithell Colquhoun, Isokon Flats, Agatha Christie, Arnold Deutsch, Julian Huxley, Orwell, William Empsom, Bomberg, David Devant, Paul Nash, Macneice, Keats, Sitwell, Rosemary Tonks, Muir, Ronald Penrose/Lee Miller, Jim Henson, Golfinger, Flora Robson, Roger Fry, Jaqueline du Pre/William Cory, Priestly, Lawrence, Constable, Crapper + Feldman + George
Finsbury Park/Hornsey homes of Gerald Holton, Bertrand Russel, Empire Theatre, Frederick Seddon, death of Graham Bond, Rainbow Theatre, Campbell Bunk, Don McCullin, John Russell, Heath Robinson, Bob Hoskins, EA Maskelyne & Cassie Bruce, Ho Chi Minh, Konk Kinks, Hornsey Poltergeist,
The Ivy Clad Church, Hornsey
Hornsey Sean Of The Dead locations
Prospect Park, Hornsey
Site of Crouch End Hippodrome
Hornsey Town Hall
Parkland Spriggan
Crouch End Homes of Lillian Harvey, Frank Matcham, Frank Doel, Hornsey College of Art, The Highgate Vampire, Arthur Lloyd
Highbury Homes of Leslie Hanson, Alexander McQueen, Wessex Studios, Joseph Chamberlian, Walter Sickert, John Thaw/Tom Courtenay,
Islington homes of Michael X, Elton John, St Clements Church exorcism, Florence Desmond
Camden homes of Amy Winehouse, Ray Santili, Emily Dimmock, Chalk Farm Studios, Sylvia Plath, WB Yeats
Spiritualist Chapel, Camden Square
St John’s Wood Homes of Theosophical Society, Ronnie Corbett, Katherine Mansfield, Patrick Wymark, Arthur Machen, Laura Knight, Edward Elgar/Beatles, Clarissa Dickson Wright, Billy Fury, Paul McCartney, Barbara Hepworth, Marc Wilkinson, Benjamin Britten, Adam Ant, Nick Saloman, Mickey Most’s RAK, Joanna Southcott
St John’s Wood Burial Ground
Old St Pancras Burial Ground
Stoke Newington Homes of Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Edward De Vere, Edgar Allen Poe, Thomas Day, Barbara Windsor, Daniel Defoe, William de Morgan’s dad, Tofu Love Frogs, Swell Maps, Laura Logic, Young Marble Giants, Crass, Spenser Grove Poltergeist, Mary Wollstonecraft, Pathway Studios, The Honeycombs, George Leybourne, Samuel Liddel Macgregor Mathurs, Moleman, Anna Sewell, Elton Dean, Krays/Roy Shirley, Angry Brigade, Jack The Hat death site, Freddy Demuth, Marc Bolan, Candida Doyle/Bill Steer/Anna Chapman/Pauline Quirke, Abney Park cemetery dead, Sice Boo Radleys, Tin Tone Guitars
Stoke Newington Quaker Cemetery
Holloway homes of John Russell, Don McCullin, Joseph Holbroke, Sex Pistols, GH Chirgwin, Red Rose, Charles Williams, Joe Meek, Edward Lear, Violet Essex, Lottie Collins, Douglas Adams, Kate Greenaway, John Collinson
Stoke Newington Homes of James Smetham, Frederick Evans, Wynne Edwin Baxter, Phillip Twells, Lottie Collins, Herbert Campbell
Gibson Gardens, Hackney
Turnpike Lane Homes of Arnold Bennet, Joseph Holbrooke, Peter Straub, Carswell Prentice, Ron Moody
Site of Wood Green Empire theatre
The Harringay Passage
Site of Northumberland House Asylum
Gloucester Avenue haunted road
Bloomsbury Homes of Paul Nash, Roland Hill, Percy Byshe Shelley & Mary Shelley and Clare Clairmont, Black Books, WB Yeats, Dorothy Richardson, Charles Dickens, Lenin, Jerome K Jerome, Mary Anne Clarke, Mark Ashton, William Empsom, Emlyn Williams, Kenneth Williams’ barber shop, William Henry Hunt, Charles Forte, TS Elliot, Bob Marley
Tavistock Sq Avebury Sarcen stone
Site of The Field of Forty Footsteps
The Eisenhower Centre
SECOND LOCKDOWN OVER
Bloomsbury Homes of Walter Crane, Kenneth Williams x 4, Laurie Lee, George Jacob Holyoake, Julian Maclaren Ross x 3 , Elizabeth Irving, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Amy Brandon-Thomas, Clive Bell, Lytton Strachey, Andre Gide, Thomas de Quincey, Anthony Powell, Penn Club John Wyndham, Virginia Woolf x I, Wilfred Owen, Mary Anne Clark, Roger Fry x 2, William Cowper, Ralph Waldo Emmerson, EM Forster, Barry Miles, Gertrude Stein, TS Elliot no 2, Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, Sewell & Leslie Stokes, Arthur Machen x 3, Mary Adshead, WH Davies, Little Titch x 2, Anthony Hope Hawkins, Lady Ottoline Morrell x 3, Cyril Connoly, Adelphi Magazine, Seymour Hicks, George Weedon Grossmith, Frederick Warne, Arthur Conan Doyle, Christina Rossetti, John Everett Milais, Violet Paget/Vernon Lee, Charles Darwin, Elizabeth Maud Edwards, Hylda Baker, Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright/George Egerton, Dr Crippen, Houdini, Joe Orton, Sarah Siddons, Robert Aickman, Charles Dickens, Millicent Fawcett, John Forbes Robertson
Former Imperial Hotel, Bloomsbury, statuary
St George’s Church Bloomsbury & Gin Lane site
Former Matrix Studios
Frank Dutton & Laura Jackson’s Temple of Horos
Fitzrovia Homes of UFO Club, Duncan Grant x4, Akropolis Restaurant, George Orwell, Coventry Patmore, Charles Laughton, Elysee Restaurant, Alois Hitler, White Tower Restaurant, Ivor Marants, John Constable, David Jason/ANC, John Linnell x2, Wheatsheaf Pub, John Flaxman, William Hazlitt, Black Horse Pub, Torinos, Arthur Machen, Hendrix’s Toucan, Private Eye, site of Beat City, site of Dryden Chambers, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Dante Rossetti x, Thomas Stothard, Fitzroy Tavern, Edmund Burke, Edward Fitzgerald/Bertorelli’s, Adrian Heath x 2, Dante & Christian Rossetti x 2, Annie Elizabeth Cook, Walter Sickert x 5, Charles Dickens, William Holman-Hunt, Dante Rossetti x2, Ford Maddox, Verlaine/Rimbaud, William Powell Frith, Simeon Solomon, Barbara Evans, Guy Richie, Imelda Staunton, James McNeil Whistler, WH Auden, Ian McEwan, Louise Michel, Monty Python office, Virginia Woolf/George Bernard Shaw, Ford Maddox Brown
Soho Sq air raid shelter entrance
Site of Cleveland St Brothel
King & Queen, Dylan’s 1st UK show
Site of London Free School
Balls Pond Jewish Cemetery Amy Levy
Cedra Court, Krays’ flats
Church of the Ark of The Covenant, Clapton
Canonbury homes of Stella Rimmington, Harry Randall, Thomas Cabbage Cooke, Charles Lamb
Collins Music Hall
Clerkenwell homes of Fenner Brockway, George Cruickshank, Polly Newbury, Merlin’s Cave, Aubrey Beardsley, Joseph Grimaldi, Robert Mudie, Thomas Britton, Triffids’ Born Sandy Devotional, Hatton Garden Heist, Arthur Machen, Charles Sabini, Lenin x 2
Clerkenwell Prison
Priory of St John
Islington home of Mike & Bernie Winters
Fitzrovia Homes of Harry Champion, John Buchan, Wilfred Owen x 2, Arthur Conan Doyle, Dante Rosetti x 2m, Ruth Ellis, Christina Rosetti, Theresa Berkley, Prince Tallyrad, Edgar Fitzgerald, Kenneth Clarke, Alastair Crowley, Michael Ayrton, Harry Dacre, Thomas Campbell, Doris Lessing, Gordon Cumming, Ezra Pound, Doris Lessing, Thomas De Quincey, Edwin Landseer, Henry Fuseli, Harold Gilman, Tom Paine, Thomas Barry, Saki, Edward Lear
West End sites of Apple Offices, EMI, IBS Studios, Tyburn Tree, Langham Hotel ★Wykde , Doyle, ghosts)
West London homes of Frank Brangwyn, Hammersmith Socialists, George MacDonald, Eric Ravillious, Ithell Colquhoun & Toni del Renzio, Lucien Pissarro, Goldhawk Social Club, The Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn, Frederick Leighton, John Betjeman/Richard Harris/Jimmy Page, Robbie Williams/Michael Winner, James Joyce, Spike Milligan/Eric Sykes, Dion Fortune’s Bayswater Temple, Nina Hamnett’s last address, Tommy Handley, Leonard Plugge/Performance, Dion Fortune’s Temple of Isis, Great Train Robbers’ Star pub, Belgravia Fatberg, William Wilberforce, Harold MacMillan, Jane Austen, Austin Osman Spare’s WWI war art studio, Frank Dobson, Agatha Christie, Mervyn Peak, Syd Barrett & Iggy The Eskimo, Hattie Jacques
MUSEUMS
Imperial War Museum, London
International Bomber Command, Lincoln
Reading Museum
20/2/20 THEATRE/PUB SHUTDOWN
ART
National Portrait Gallery, London
Bridget Riley, Hayward Gallery ★★★★
Laura Knight- Spring In St John’s Wood (1933), various pre-Raphaelites - Walker Gallery, Liverpool ★★★★
Edward Burne-Jones - The Hours (1882), Richard Long - Delabole Sprial (1981) - The Graves Gallery, Sheffield
Monica Petzel - Dissent and Displacement, Leicester Art Gallery
Elizabeth Frink - Wild Boar (1967)/Nick Sharrock - Peterborough Art Gallery
Duncan Grant - Farm Buildings (1951), Kiffyn Williams - Pony on LLanddwyn Island, Charles Keeping lithograph - Buxton Art Gallery
Ithell Colquhoun - Judgement of Paris, (1828), Eileen Agar - Landscape of a Dream (1984) - Brighton & Hove Gallery
Ithell Colquhoun, Tessa Farmer, Austin Osman Spare - Viktor Wynd’s Museum, London
Young Rembrandt/pre-Raphaelites - Ashmoleon Oxford ★★★★
Laura Knight - The Cornish Coast, various impressionists etc Cardiff National Museum Of Wales
Emmy Bridgwater - Night Work Is About To Commence, Laura Knight - Sennen Cove, Edward Burne-Jones, Pre-Raphaelites, Staffordshire Horde - Birmingham Art Gallery
20/2/20 THEATRE/PUB SHUTDOWN
SCHOOLS OPEN
TIER 2 LONDON LOCKDOWN OCT
Hackney Sharks - Jamie Shorten ★★★★
Elizabeth Frink’s Blind Beggar & Child, Tower Hamlets ★★★★
Mary Wollstonecraft - Maggi Hambling, Stoke Newington
Emily Young - Onyx, Euston
SECOND LOCKDOWN OVER
LONDON TIER 3
Virgin & Child - Jacob Epstein, Cavendish Sq ★★★★
Winged Figure - Barbara Hepworth Holles St ★★★★★
Visitor - David Breuer-Weil Cavendish Sq ★★★★
ARTWORKS I DIDN’T SEE THIS YEAR AS THEY HAD BEEN WITHDRAWN FROM DISPLAY IN THE GALLERIES I VISITED SPECIFICALLY TO TRY AND SEE THEM
Laura Knight - Scene In A Dressing Room (1939) - Graves Gallery Sheffield
Laura Knight - Three Clowns (1930), Benjamin Marshall - Daniel Lambert (1806) - Walker Art Gallery, Leicester
Patrick Heron - Abstract (1955), Elizabeth Frink - Bird (1962), Patrick Heron - Vertical Bands (1957), Roger Fry - Viaduct (1924), Alan Davie - His Last Solo Was In Red (1957) - Peterborough Art Gallery
Ithell Colquhoun - Interior (1939), Duncan Grant - The Sofa(1944), Landscape Near Firle (1947), Gluck - The Devil’s Altar (1933), Laura Knight - The Ballet Shoe (1932), William Blake - Adoration of The Kings (1799), Rosetti - Beata Beatrix (1828), Axel Petterson - A Burial (1911) - Brighton & Hove
John Bratby - Girl With Coiled Hair (1967), Duncan Grant - Nude (1925) Iris Tree (1915), Michael Ayrton - Dry Landscape (1965) - Reading Museum
FOOD
Street kebab vans, Oxford
Haddock Bap, The Fish Grill, Mevagissey ★★★★★
ON THE PEDESTAL
Samira Ahmed
Greta Thunberg
Mary Beard
NHS Workers
Beth Rigby
Kay Burley
Yvette Cooper
CNN Reporters Minneapolis riots
Dwayne Johnson
Bob Dylan
John Boyega
Ronnie O’Sullivan
Robert Lloyd and his Nightingales
Nesrine Malik
Marcus Rashford
SCHOOLS OPEN
Magwa, the Cambodian landmine detection rat
Richard Dawson
Andy Burnham
Joe Biden
Kamala Harris
2nd LONDON LOCKDOWN
Dalia Gebrial
Blue whales
Shane MacGowan
IN THE PEDAL BIN
Donald Trump
Dominic Cumming
Mary Wakefield
Grant Shapps
Dominic Raab
Boris Johnson
Matt Handcock
Michael Gove
Richard Branson
Krist Novoselik
Vandals of Doll Tor stone circle
Boris Johnson
Toby Young
Gavin Williamson
Ian Brown
Van Morrison
Stanley Johnson
Priti Patel
Ben Bradley
SCHOOLS OPEN
Charles Moore
TIER 2 LONDON LOCKDOWN OCT
HS2 woodcutters
Lord Kilcooney
Baroness Michelle Mone
Lawrence Fox
SECOND LOCKDOWN OVER
Russell Howard and Matthew McConaughey and Jordan Peterson
Tobias Ellwood
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Beth Rigby
Kay Burley
THE GLORIOUS DEAD
Roy Loney (Flamin’ Groovie) (1946)
Alasdair Gray (author/artist) (1934)
Neil Innes (Bonzo) (1944)
Ivan Kral (Patti Smith bassist) (1948)
Terry Jones (Python) (1942)
Andy Gill (Gang of Four) (1956)
Andrew Brough (Straitjacket Fits) (1963)
McCoy Tyner (jazz pianist) (1938)
David Roback (Rain Parade) (1958)
Albert Uderzo (Asterix) (1953)
Peter Stapleton (Terminals) (1954)
CORONAVIRUS ERA 2020 CE
NHS Workers
Adam Schlesinger (Fountain of Wayne) (1967)
John Prine (outlaw country singer) (1946)
Henry Grimes (jazz bassist) (1935)
Hal Wilner (arranger) (1957)
Tim Brooke-Taylor (Goodie) (1940)
Lee Konitz (jazz saxophonist) (1927)
Matthew Seligman (Soft Boy) (1955)
Millie Small (ska singer) (1946)
Florian Schneider (Kraftwerk robot) (1947)
Bill Rieflin (drummer for hire) (1960)
Hugh McKenna (Tear Gas pianist) (1949)
Steve Weber (Holy Modal Rounder) (1942)
Astrid Kirchherr (photographer) (1938)
Danny Ray Thompson (Sun Ra saxophonist) (1947)
Aubrey Burl (archaeologist) (1926)
Phil May (Pretty Thing) (1944)
The Clacton Fin Whale (circa 2000)
Christo Vladimirov Javacheff (artist) (1930)
Doll Tor stone circle (3300 BC)
Kay Carroll (The Fall) (1948)
Bob the Cat (73 bus) (2006)
Alex Taylor (Shop Assistant - 2005 - no-one knew)
Simon H Fell (jazz bassist) (1959)
Carl Reiner (director) (1922)
Ennio Morricone (architect of sonic dreams) (1928)
Keith Tippett (jazz pianist) (1947)
Jimmy Cobb (jazz drummer) (1929)
Barbara Smoker (Humanist) (1923)
The Nuffield Theatre, Southampton
Tony Elliot (Time Out) (1942)
Judy Dyble (folk singer) (1949)
Peter Green (bluesman) (1946)
Emitt Rhodes (power pop auteur) (1950)
Annie Ross (jazz bohemian) (1930)
Gina Ryan (stand-up poet of old) (1966)
SCHOOLS OPEN
Joe Ruby (Scooby-Doo) (1933)
Craig Weatherhill (folklorist) (1950)
Don Weller (jazz saxophonist) (1940)
Simeon Coxe (Silver Apple) (1938)
Diana Rigg (Avenger) (1938)
Toots Hibbert (reggae soul man) (1942)
Dele Fadele (carry bag man) (1962)
George Jeffrie (man’s-laughter maker) (1964
Dave Kusworth (Brum punk Stone) (1960)
Gary Peacock (jazz bassist) (1935)
Doorkins (Southwark Cathedral Cat) (2005?)
TIER 2 LONDON LOCKDOWN OCT
Spencer Davis (Brumbeat pioneer) (1939)
The Cubbington Pear Tree (1770)
Fungie The Dingle Dolphin (1979)
Jill Paton Walsh (novelist) (1937)
Val Warner (poet) (1946)
SECOND LOCKDOWN OVER
David Johnson (Duke of Soho) (1960)
Stewart Lee
2020-12-26T12:41:53+00:00
Dear Covidians of Infectoland Merry Winterval to ye alle! Thanks for your patience with rescheduling of dates. I hope you are all well and have not suffered any loss. Here I wait patiently to reassume my privileged duties, which I promise to perform henceforth with a greater sense of responsibility, having learned & listened under lockdown. One day we will all be laughing again in some rooms. I cannot embrace you all. Your pal Stew Art Lee 1) COMING OVER HERE Merry Winterval! Agit-pop stars Asian Dub Foundation sampled an old routine of mine to make a song called Comin’ Over Here. If you download it, and their many inventive remixes, between Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve you can help make it the Brexit day No 1 the nation deserves! All proceeds to Kent Refugee Action Network https://smarturl.it/cominoverhere 2) DAVID JOHNSON My live promoter for most of this century, David Johnson, died on the 14th of December, aged 60. David rescued me from total disillusion with the business side of live comedy, and re-illusioned me, making me believe it was possible to operate in a way that was both fair and fun. If you ever met him - he was a cross between George Melly, Paddington Bear and Uncle Monty - you will never forget his amazing sense of humour and incredible storehouse of old Soho anecdotes. He will be enormously missed. The following news story, from the website Chortle’s August 2014 Edinburgh Fringe coverage, gives a great flavour of this fantastic man. “Theatre and comedy producer David Johnson, whose company promotes the likes of Stewart Lee and the Rubberbandits, received an email request for free tickets for one of his Edinburgh Fringe shows from Peter Evans of Ambassadors Theatre Group, the company that has been widely criticised by the likes...
Dear List
Here is a benefit on Tuesday May 5th in London that I have programmed. It is a great bill including Paul Putner's rarely seen Earl Stevens.
Bloomsbury Theatre
Tuesday, 5 May 2015
Tickets:
£20
(booking fee £2.50 per transaction)
Performance times:
Tue, 5th May at 7:30pm
With Michael Legge (compere), Stewart Lee, Jo Brand, Shappi Khorsandi, Earl Okin and Earl Stevens - direct from the USA. Plus more acts to be announced!
Funny Brains is a charity set up to fund research in Glioblastoma brain tumours, a cancerous tumour that at present has no cure and a very bad prognosis.
Brain cancer research receives less than 1% of the national spend on cancer research. A report by Brain Tumour Research shows that treatments for brain tumours lag seriously behind other cancers.
The consequence is the average tumour is responsible for over 20 years of life lost, making it the most lethal cancer by this measure. Funny Brains works directly with UCLH to fund pioneering trials to help cure cancer sooner.
Suitable for 14+
Lineup subject to change. https://www.thebloomsbury.com/event/run/14340
Stewart Lee
2015-05-01T20:43:17+01:00
Dear List Here is a benefit on Tuesday May 5th in London that I have programmed. It is a great bill including Paul Putner's rarely seen Earl Stevens. Bloomsbury Theatre Tuesday, 5 May 2015 Tickets: £20 (booking fee £2.50 per transaction) Performance times: Tue, 5th May at 7:30pm With Michael Legge (compere), Stewart Lee, Jo Brand, Shappi Khorsandi, Earl Okin and Earl Stevens - direct from the USA. Plus more acts to be announced! Funny Brains is a charity set up to fund research in Glioblastoma brain tumours, a cancerous tumour that at present has no cure and a very bad prognosis. Brain cancer research receives less than 1% of the national spend on cancer research. A report by Brain Tumour Research shows that treatments for brain tumours lag seriously behind other cancers. The consequence is the average tumour is responsible for over 20 years of life lost, making it the most lethal cancer by this measure. Funny Brains works directly with UCLH to fund pioneering trials to help cure cancer sooner. Suitable for 14+ Lineup subject to change. https://www.thebloomsbury.com/event/run/14340
Stewart Lee has long been held in high regard and has been branded as “probably the cleverest comedian working in Britain” (Guardian). Given this reputation, the anticipation at the sold out Colston Hall was almost tangible as the lights went down.
Lee emerged to rapturous applause before explaining that the material for this ‘Much a-Stew About Nothing’ tour would come in the form of four half-hour slots he was preparing for a new TV show, to be recorded in December.
He went on to explain that there would definitely be an encore, but likened this free extra to “finding a miniature statue of Hitler in your cereal” instead of a toy.
The first half of the show was the strongest, with a particular highlight being an analysis of the phrase chalk and cheese as an analogy for difference. Lee explained that these are actually very similar as they are both solid, similar in colour and are mostly composed of Calcium, before offering an alternative: chalk and regret.
Lee has always been regarded as standing outside the comedy mainstream and this soon became clear after fellow stand-ups Michael McIntyre, Jimmy Carr and Jim Davidson came into the firing line, followed by a topical dig at the idiocy of Russell Brand “using words without knowing their actual meaning” which drew widespread applause from the audience.
The second half of the show took the form of more observational comedy and was backboned by a long critique of UKIP’s deputy leader Paul Nuttall’s views on the immigration of skilled Bulgarian workers.
Lee imagined Nuttall telling previous immigrants, such as the Poles and West Indians not to bother coming here. This was taken to a surreal level, extending Nuttall’s remarks back in time to the Anglo Saxons, the Neolithics and the first fish to ever make it on to land to begin the process of evolution.
Despite some lacklustre moments in the latter stages, much of Lee’s material is among his sharpest, most intelligent and well thought out of his career.
If this is merely a dress rehearsal for his new TV show, the final product coming out next year must be looked forward to with great excitement.
Stewart Lee
2013-10-26T18:29:01+01:00
Stewart Lee has long been held in high regard and has been branded as “probably the cleverest comedian working in Britain” (Guardian). Given this reputation, the anticipation at the sold out Colston Hall was almost tangible as the lights went down. Lee emerged to rapturous applause before explaining that the material for this ‘Much a-Stew About Nothing’ tour would come in the form of four half-hour slots he was preparing for a new TV show, to be recorded in December. He went on to explain that there would definitely be an encore, but likened this free extra to “finding a miniature statue of Hitler in your cereal” instead of a toy. The first half of the show was the strongest, with a particular highlight being an analysis of the phrase chalk and cheese as an analogy for difference. Lee explained that these are actually very similar as they are both solid, similar in colour and are mostly composed of Calcium, before offering an alternative: chalk and regret. Lee has always been regarded as standing outside the comedy mainstream and this soon became clear after fellow stand-ups Michael McIntyre, Jimmy Carr and Jim Davidson came into the firing line, followed by a topical dig at the idiocy of Russell Brand “using words without knowing their actual meaning” which drew widespread applause from the audience. The second half of the show took the form of more observational comedy and was backboned by a long critique of UKIP’s deputy leader Paul Nuttall’s views on the immigration of skilled Bulgarian workers. Lee imagined Nuttall telling previous immigrants, such as the Poles and West Indians not to bother coming here. This was taken to a surreal level, extending Nuttall’s remarks back in time to the Anglo Saxons, the Neolithics and the first fish to ever...
Four days before this trio recorded The Bleeding Edge at St Peter's Whitstable last May, they played in The Cheltenham Jazz festival's now abandoned improvisation strand, playfully accommodating the rhythm of a resonant roof leak, as it rang into a downstage bucket. St Peter's is a favorite venue for free improvisers. Perhaps it's dry. The cello of the Korean Lee, the English veteran Parker's sax, and the gung-ho American Evans' trumpet become deliciously indistinct. Low end noises gather in glorious swells. Butterfly high notes flutter free. St Peter's, a familiar personality in its own right from a succession of recordings, provides her usual dramatic clarity.
Stewart Lee
2012-02-26T21:14:39+00:00
Four days before this trio recorded The Bleeding Edge at St Peter's Whitstable last May, they played in The Cheltenham Jazz festival's now abandoned improvisation strand, playfully accommodating the rhythm of a resonant roof leak, as it rang into a downstage bucket. St Peter's is a favorite venue for free improvisers. Perhaps it's dry. The cello of the Korean Lee, the English veteran Parker's sax, and the gung-ho American Evans' trumpet become deliciously indistinct. Low end noises gather in glorious swells. Butterfly high notes flutter free. St Peter's, a familiar personality in its own right from a succession of recordings, provides her usual dramatic clarity.
This mini-newsletter is intended to cover weekly extras in the current slew of stuff related to me. The absence of anything should not be seen as an indication of its cancellation.
Everything will be covered in the next big monthly or weekly newsletter, including final line-ups for ATP at Prestatyn 15-17 April, which isn’t cancelled, and Edinburgh and Autumn dates. In the meantime...
Tonight 9th of March at 11pm on Resonance 104.4 fm and on the station website, the barely present cult Canadian stand-up comedian Baconface continues to play lengthy and mainly uninterrupted selections from his late brother's extensive record collection of '60s and '70s psychedelia, progressive rock, free jazz, folk, acid folk, folk rock, acid rock, electronic music, and ethnoforgeries. In association with the Chilliwack Office of Leisure. [Repeated Saturday 4am.]
This week’s show covers the music of Sweden and is uncharacteristically enjoyable.
Last week’s show can be heard here.. http://www.baconfacecanada.com/listen/
Resonance is a groundbreaking 24/7 radio station which broadcasts on 104.4 FM to central London, DAB to Greater London, nationally on Radioplayer and live streamed to the rest of the world.
My wife Bridget Christie begins her A Book For Her tour tonight in Salford.
March 2016
9th - The Lowry, Salford Quays, SALFORD - 8pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0843 208 6010 TICKETS
10th - Lakeside Arts, NOTTINGHAM - 7.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0115 846 7777 TICKETS
14th - Citizen's Theatre, GLASGOW (COMEDY FESTIVAL) - 8pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0844 873 7353 TICKETS
15th - The Stand, NEWCASTLE - 8.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0844 693 3336 TICKETS
16th - The MAC, BELFAST - 7.45pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 028 9023 5053 TICKETS
17th - Warwick Arts Centre, COVENTRY - 7.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 02476 524524 TICKETS
21st - Everyman Theatre, LIVERPOOL - 7.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0151 709 4776 TICKETS
22nd - The MAC, BIRMINGHAM - 8pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0121 4463232 TICKETS
April 2016
13th - Memorial Hall, SHEFFIELD - 8pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0114 2789 789 TICKETS
14th - WYP Courtyard, LEEDS - 7.45pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0113 213 7700 TICKETS
18th - Gulbenkian Theatre, CANTERBURY - 7.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 01227 769075 TICKETS
19th - Corn Exchange, EXETER - 8pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 01392 665938 TICKETS
20th - Ropetackle Arts Centre, SHOREHAM BY SEA - 7.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 01273 464440 TICKETS
21st - The Dukes, LANCASTER - 8pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 01524 598500 TICKETS
25th - The Junction, CAMBRIDGE - 8pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 01223 511511 TICKETS
26th - The Stables, WAVENDON, MILTON KEYNES - 8pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 01908 280800 TICKETS
27th - North Wall Arts, OXFORD - 7.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 01865 319450 TICKETS
28th - Theatre Severn, SHREWSBURY - 7.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 01743 281281 TICKETS
May 2016
3rd - The Mercury, COLCHESTER - 7.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 01206 573948 TICKETS
4th - Playhouse, NORWICH - 8pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 01603 598598 TICKETS
5th - Tobacco Factory, BRISTOL - 8pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0117 9020344 TICKETS
9th - Sugar Club, DUBLIN - 8.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0818 903001 TICKETS
10th - Sugar Club, DUBLIN - 8.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0818 903001 TICKETS
11th - Glee Club, CARDIFF - 7.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0871 472 0400 TICKETS
12th - Corn Exchange, BRIGHTON - 7.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 01273 709 709 TICKETS
Stewart Lee
2016-03-09T16:40:23+00:00
This mini-newsletter is intended to cover weekly extras in the current slew of stuff related to me. The absence of anything should not be seen as an indication of its cancellation. Everything will be covered in the next big monthly or weekly newsletter, including final line-ups for ATP at Prestatyn 15-17 April, which isn’t cancelled, and Edinburgh and Autumn dates. In the meantime... SLCV Series 4 This continues on BBC2 tomorrow March 10th at 10pm BBC page for the series with clips & links to iPlayer episodes (after broadcast) is here. Global Globules with Baconface Tonight 9th of March at 11pm on Resonance 104.4 fm and on the station website, the barely present cult Canadian stand-up comedian Baconface continues to play lengthy and mainly uninterrupted selections from his late brother's extensive record collection of '60s and '70s psychedelia, progressive rock, free jazz, folk, acid folk, folk rock, acid rock, electronic music, and ethnoforgeries. In association with the Chilliwack Office of Leisure. [Repeated Saturday 4am.] This week’s show covers the music of Sweden and is uncharacteristically enjoyable. Last week’s show can be heard here.. http://www.baconfacecanada.com/listen/ Resonance is a groundbreaking 24/7 radio station which broadcasts on 104.4 FM to central London, DAB to Greater London, nationally on Radioplayer and live streamed to the rest of the world. http://www.baconfacecanada.com | https://www.resonancefm.com BRIDGET CHRISTIE TOUR My wife Bridget Christie begins her A Book For Her tour tonight in Salford. March 2016 9th - The Lowry, Salford Quays, SALFORD - 8pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0843 208 6010 TICKETS 10th - Lakeside Arts, NOTTINGHAM - 7.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0115 846 7777 TICKETS 14th - Citizen's Theatre, GLASGOW (COMEDY FESTIVAL) - 8pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0844 873 7353 TICKETS 15th - The Stand, NEWCASTLE - 8.30pm -...
Richard Youngs is a forty year old librarian, transplanted from a childhood in Lincolnshire and Hertfordshire to Glasgow, from where he maintains musical connections with an international network of similarly independent, but musically disparate, cult figures. The first Richard Youngs album I ever heard was Making Paper. It was released in February 2001 on the reliable American label Jagjaguwar, sixteen years into Youngs’ recording career. Improvised directly to mini-disc in Edinburgh the previous year, with lyrics that occurred to Youngs as he played, Making Paper featured two twenty minute pieces and one three minute one, all built solely on nothing more than a keening, high-lonesome vocal and some simple, stately, repetitive, resolutely minimal piano figures, with occasional jarring bum notes and lengthy silences. But it was May, Youngs’ next solo release, featuring just acoustic guitar and vocals, that hit that wonderful mid-space where great art somehow becomes accessible without losing any of the edge that makes it great.
May was released in 2002, but Youngs had recorded another album on acoustic guitar five years previously. 1997’s Sapphie, named for a friend’s dead Alsatian dog, pasted the same kind of minimalist aesthetic found on Making Paper over folksy textures, but when Youngs returned to the acoustic for May it was for six shorter pieces. The tracks were all laid down live, and the words were all drawn from a single thirty verse lyric Young wrote in an evening. The sleeve tells us May was “recorded Christmas 2000, Easter 2001 and last day of May 2001 in Harpenden, England”, but these significant sounding dates, with connotations of spiritual death and rebirth, merely represent times when Youngs went home to visit his father. “I recorded May at my Dad's house on an old reel-to-reel over about half a year, doing a little each time I visited.”
On May, Youngs left the distorted Casio keyboards and sheet-metal guitar of many of his previous thirty or so releases in Glasgow and disguised himself as a troubadour, with years of avant-garde experimentation at his back to inform his every, apparently straightforward gesture. Nowadays there’d be an easier route to reviewing or marketing May. You’d call it acid-folk, or avant-folk, and drop the appropriate names, but unlike much of the contemporary music that gets scooped up under those unwieldy banner headings, May is genuinely psychedelic, avant-garde and traditional, and does not require the performer involved to dress as a mediaeval clown. But it’s difficult to know if Youngs arrived at May’s distinctive sound accidentally, or by design.
Youngs’ first release under his own name, the extremely limited 1988 solo album Advent, for example, seemed derived from the kind of droning, 1960’s minimalism defined by Tony Conrad and The Dream Syndicate group. But recording at home between terms of his Nottingham University Maths course, Youngs had arrived at the sound in isolation, unaware of its precedents. “I knew about minimalism, but I'd only heard rather slick versions of it. I wasn't up on the more rough and ready stuff.”, he confesses. Youngs describes his work as if it’s automatic, almost unconsidered, and the title of his most recent solo album, 2005’s The Naïve Shaman, could almost be a self-conscious in-joke, but the traditional textures of May represented a more knowing appropriation of existing styles. “In the 80s I used to play at folk clubs simply because you didn't have to submit demo tapes or pass auditions,” Youngs recalls, “The open floor policy suited me. I wasn't playing folk music. But I do have a soft spot for those recordings of (traditional unaccompanied singers) like Walter Pardon and Harry Cox, and an endless amazement at the guitar style of Martin Carthy.”
Youngs’ admiration for Carthy is cautiously evident throughout May. The grand old duke of English folk holds steadfastly to the central figures of old folk tunes, relying on variations in tone and texture, rather than through on demonstrations of musicianly dexterity. Likewise, throughout May, Youngs’ guitar playing boldly resists elaboration, so that when there is a brief moment of extemporisation around the central tune of Wynd Time Wynd, it has an incredible impact. But Youngs denies there’s a process at work. “Playing like that feels pretty natural to me. I think I'm just not a very elaborate guitarist.” The uncompromising avoidance of any vocal inflection during Bloom Of All, which reflects the great folk singer Shirley Collins’ technique of allowing songs to speak for themselves unembellished, was “nothing deliberate - I just had a tune and I stuck with it.” And when the treble strings on Gilding resonate for unnaturally long periods, as if they've been extended somehow beyond their natural lifespan, Youngs says, “I probably mis-set the compression on the pre-amp.” Even the brilliant sequencing of the album, from Neon Winter’s almost impassable opening salvo of one string guitar part and baleful vocal, to the closing ballad Wynd Time Wynd, which sounds like something off Nick Drake’s Five Leaves Left stripped of any orchestration, seems all but accidental. “A few people have told me that they skip Neon Winter when they listen to May,” Youngs muses, unconcerned. “I think the album gets easier to listen to with each track.”
May stands at the apex of a superb sequence of solo albums from 1997’s Sapphie onwards, via Making Paper and May, to the recent trio of Airs Of The Ear, River Through Howling Sky, and The Naïve Shaman. These two final releases throb with the experimental electronics and fuzzy feedback familiar from Youngs’ more uncompromising work, but never lose sight of the beating, human heart he finally found the confidence to foreground on May. No-one else comes close to achieving this fusion of folk music’s sensibilities and avant-garde music’s strategies. Richard Youngs is the British underground’s last great unknown.
Credits
Tracks: Neon Winter
Bloom Of All
Trees That Fall
Wynding Hills Of Maine
Gilding
Wynd Time Wynd
Producer: n/a
Recorded: Richard Youngs’ Dad’s house, Harpenden, Hertfordshire
Released : May 2002
Chart peak: n/a
Personnel : Richard Youngs (guitar, vocal)
Available : Jagjaguwar 56605 20432
Stewart Lee
2007-02-01T19:47:10+00:00
Richard Youngs is a forty year old librarian, transplanted from a childhood in Lincolnshire and Hertfordshire to Glasgow, from where he maintains musical connections with an international network of similarly independent, but musically disparate, cult figures. The first Richard Youngs album I ever heard was Making Paper. It was released in February 2001 on the reliable American label Jagjaguwar, sixteen years into Youngs’ recording career. Improvised directly to mini-disc in Edinburgh the previous year, with lyrics that occurred to Youngs as he played, Making Paper featured two twenty minute pieces and one three minute one, all built solely on nothing more than a keening, high-lonesome vocal and some simple, stately, repetitive, resolutely minimal piano figures, with occasional jarring bum notes and lengthy silences. But it was May, Youngs’ next solo release, featuring just acoustic guitar and vocals, that hit that wonderful mid-space where great art somehow becomes accessible without losing any of the edge that makes it great. May was released in 2002, but Youngs had recorded another album on acoustic guitar five years previously. 1997’s Sapphie, named for a friend’s dead Alsatian dog, pasted the same kind of minimalist aesthetic found on Making Paper over folksy textures, but when Youngs returned to the acoustic for May it was for six shorter pieces. The tracks were all laid down live, and the words were all drawn from a single thirty verse lyric Young wrote in an evening. The sleeve tells us May was “recorded Christmas 2000, Easter 2001 and last day of May 2001 in Harpenden, England”, but these significant sounding dates, with connotations of spiritual death and rebirth, merely represent times when Youngs went home to visit his father. “I recorded May at my Dad's house on an old reel-to-reel over about half a year, doing a little each...
I was extremely surprised last week to learn that the Tory chair, Nadhim Zahawi, who famously used public money to warm the stables of his chilly horses, had finally tasted the fist of justice. Last year, Zahawi said: “I’ve always declared my financial interests and paid my taxes in the UK.” In fact, it seems, Zahawi has had to cough up millions of pounds he owed in tax after a dispute with HMRC over an offshore family trust. Last week, his spokesperson said of his boss: “He is proud to have built a British business that has become successful around the world.” The spokesperson said this when asked whether Zahawi was paying millions to HM Revenue and Customs. The answer is the answer to a different question, a British question admittedly, but one that was not asked.
When asked a question, politicians, you can’t just say any words as a reply. There has to be some relationship. Is it any wonder examination standards declined so sharply when Zahawi was education secretary. “Explain how Adolf Hitler justified the annexation of the Sudetenland.” “Sartana is coming so trade your pistols for a coffin.” Will that do?
As well as being chair of the Conservative party, Zahawi is also currently the minister without portfolio. But maybe he is confused about that too. Maybe he’s got shitloads of portfolios, with portfolios coming out of his arse, but maybe they’re all hidden in the Zahawi family trust in Gibraltar. From now on, Zahawi must be referred to as the minister who claims to have no portfolios.
Like the tax coffers that suffered so terribly at the hands of cruel Zahawi, I personally have been the victim of many indignities: three muggings, the theft of four bikes, one phone, numerous car radios and the T-shirt from Nirvana’s first British tour, massive identity fraud and losing the 2014 British comedy award for best entertainment programme to Graham Norton. And, as is so often the case, none of the perpetrators has ever been brought to justice. Indeed, Norton’s career has continued to flourish, as he shamelessly parades the injustice in public. Most wrongdoers are left unpunished.
For example, on Tuesday I saw some men fighting in the street by a Victorian beam engine north of Finsbury Park, so I of course got out of the car and tried to get involved. As a “so-called” standup “comedian” and “funny” columnist, I need a constant stream of extreme experiences to fuel the furnaces of my material, so I always throw myself into difficult scenes under the pretence of trying to help, often making the situations worse quite deliberately. Indeed, the recent damage to the central section of Exmoor’s bronze age clapper bridge Tarr Steps was as a result of a suggestion I made to some men arguing in a Premier Inn upstream about whether the lifesize model of Lenny Henry in reception would float.
And last year I exacerbated a physical altercation in a square north of Oxford Street by pretending I thought the two men involved were doing some kind of folk dance and then trying to join in. I realised, to my shame, that I was being observed by the bewildered standup comedian Jamali Maddix, who was sitting outside a cafe nearby. I went over to him and said: “We all do that, don’t we, Jamali Maddix? Get involved in stuff to see if you get some material out of it?” He said he didn’t and looked confused and worried.
By the beam engine some men in cheap red tracksuits were restraining a small man, and one of them had punched him in the face. When I approached, one of the tracksuit men stopped his friend punching the small man, explained that they were delivery drivers, that they thought the small man had been trying to remove stuff from their van, and that the police had been called. In the excitement the small man wriggled free and ran away through six lanes of traffic, chased by the tracksuit men, whom he swiftly evaded. Later on I saw him lying on a bench in Finsbury Park. I asked him why he had fled the scene and he said he “was proud to have built a British business that has become successful around the Tottenham area” and that he considered the matter closed.
Of course, the light that has been shone on Zahawi’s doings will make no difference. Not long ago, it would have been a resignation matter, but the bar of shame has been lowered so significantly by this current incarnation of the Conservative party that it is now obstructing the Mariana Trench. Partying through lockdown? Giving public money to your American mistress? Talking about migrants in terms a Holocaust survivor recognises? Nothing sticks it seems. That’s why it’s so odd that Amazon is finally severing its business relationship with the bants-bearing bulldozer that is Jeremy Clarkson.
Amazon had some kind of ethical standards all along it seemed, it’s just that they didn’t extend to workers’ rights, tax payment, packaging policies and competition. At least that rude old man is gone, sacked for creating, albeit at the Sun in this instance, exactly the kind of Clarkson-style content the content-platform signed Clarkson up to create.
But it’s odd, isn’t it? Clarkson is banished from a business that has no moral standards whatsoever and rationalises everything in terms of disrupting the market. But Zahawi continues as chair of the Conservatives, brandishing as few portfolios as he cares to admit to, while working in the heart of government, a place where morality ought to matter more than at Amazon. Yes, we have no portfolios!
Stewart Lee
2023-01-22T19:43:07+00:00
I was extremely surprised last week to learn that the Tory chair, Nadhim Zahawi, who famously used public money to warm the stables of his chilly horses, had finally tasted the fist of justice. Last year, Zahawi said: “I’ve always declared my financial interests and paid my taxes in the UK.” In fact, it seems, Zahawi has had to cough up millions of pounds he owed in tax after a dispute with HMRC over an offshore family trust. Last week, his spokesperson said of his boss: “He is proud to have built a British business that has become successful around the world.” The spokesperson said this when asked whether Zahawi was paying millions to HM Revenue and Customs. The answer is the answer to a different question, a British question admittedly, but one that was not asked. When asked a question, politicians, you can’t just say any words as a reply. There has to be some relationship. Is it any wonder examination standards declined so sharply when Zahawi was education secretary. “Explain how Adolf Hitler justified the annexation of the Sudetenland.” “Sartana is coming so trade your pistols for a coffin.” Will that do? As well as being chair of the Conservative party, Zahawi is also currently the minister without portfolio. But maybe he is confused about that too. Maybe he’s got shitloads of portfolios, with portfolios coming out of his arse, but maybe they’re all hidden in the Zahawi family trust in Gibraltar. From now on, Zahawi must be referred to as the minister who claims to have no portfolios. Like the tax coffers that suffered so terribly at the hands of cruel Zahawi, I personally have been the victim of many indignities: three muggings, the theft of four bikes, one phone, numerous car radios and the T-shirt from...
NonCensored is a weekly round up of Harriet Langley-Swindon's very popular, very real daily radio show, completely non-Censored (but with all of the rubbish edited out).
This week Harriet and Producer Martin are joined by the Telegraph's Siobhan Connery to explain the genius thinking behind Trussonomics; the current Diversity Correspondent Eshaan Akbar takes a leaf out of Stormzy's book; and The New Statesman's Tim Dalton gives us the inside scoop on the current state of the Labour congregation.
There's also an extended interview with comedian Stewart Lee, who talks to Harriet about being part of the woke elite, whether dogs will ever learn to fly, and why Ant & Dec are cowards. Stewart's stand-up specials Snowflake and Tornado are currently available on BBC iPlayer, and his new show Basic Lee is at the Leicester Square Theatre until mid-December, and then tours nationwide until April 2024.
Thanks to Rosie Holt (@RosieIsAHolt), Brendan Murphy (@NotMurphy), Eshaan Akbar (@EshaanAkbar), Sooz Kempnner (@soozUK), Bethany Black (@beffernieblack), Gareth Gwynn (@garethgwynn), Stewart Lee and Ed Morrish.
Stewart Lee
2022-09-30T12:45:58+01:00
NonCensored is a weekly round up of Harriet Langley-Swindon's very popular, very real daily radio show, completely non-Censored (but with all of the rubbish edited out). This week Harriet and Producer Martin are joined by the Telegraph's Siobhan Connery to explain the genius thinking behind Trussonomics; the current Diversity Correspondent Eshaan Akbar takes a leaf out of Stormzy's book; and The New Statesman's Tim Dalton gives us the inside scoop on the current state of the Labour congregation. There's also an extended interview with comedian Stewart Lee, who talks to Harriet about being part of the woke elite, whether dogs will ever learn to fly, and why Ant & Dec are cowards. Stewart's stand-up specials Snowflake and Tornado are currently available on BBC iPlayer, and his new show Basic Lee is at the Leicester Square Theatre until mid-December, and then tours nationwide until April 2024. Thanks to Rosie Holt (@RosieIsAHolt), Brendan Murphy (@NotMurphy), Eshaan Akbar (@EshaanAkbar), Sooz Kempnner (@soozUK), Bethany Black (@beffernieblack), Gareth Gwynn (@garethgwynn), Stewart Lee and Ed Morrish.
Roberts' six solo albums seamlessly incorporated traditional elements into timeless songs. But today he's a full-blown folklorist, compiling the rare Scottish field recordings collection Whaur The Pig Gaed On The Spree, and issuing these Gaelic tunes with the Hebridean singer Mairir Morrison.
An initially serious tone suggests diaphanously gowned highland visionaries in dimly lit Seventies regional television studios, late at night, when viewers had ‘their own programs', but virtuoso guests lighten the anthropological air.
Opening up the spectral lament Ailein Duinn to the rumbling drums of Trembling Bells' Alex Neilson and surges of ensemble playing suggests the project's path forward.
Stewart Lee
2012-03-25T21:25:41+01:00
Roberts' six solo albums seamlessly incorporated traditional elements into timeless songs. But today he's a full-blown folklorist, compiling the rare Scottish field recordings collection Whaur The Pig Gaed On The Spree, and issuing these Gaelic tunes with the Hebridean singer Mairir Morrison. An initially serious tone suggests diaphanously gowned highland visionaries in dimly lit Seventies regional television studios, late at night, when viewers had ‘their own programs', but virtuoso guests lighten the anthropological air. Opening up the spectral lament Ailein Duinn to the rumbling drums of Trembling Bells' Alex Neilson and surges of ensemble playing suggests the project's path forward.
Don't consign 'folktronica' to the dustbin or dead genres yet. My Autumn Empire, the solo project of Benjamin Thomas of the Staffordshire outfit Epic45, is more song-writerly than its atmospherically Arcadian parent group, but on Block Colours And Straight Lines, for example, the tuneful vocals and deferential melodies are set back in a dense thicket of pastoral tones, stifled breakbeats, and childhood surface noise.
BBC Telford is a set of unresolved acoustic guitar suggestions and eardrum-buzzing drones, made quietly magnificent by the obdurately banal title that crowns them. The six minute Hatchlings, copper strings clanging on cold electronics, unfurls like a tasteful springtime TV ident.
Stewart Lee
2011-01-16T21:05:35+00:00
Don't consign 'folktronica' to the dustbin or dead genres yet. My Autumn Empire, the solo project of Benjamin Thomas of the Staffordshire outfit Epic45, is more song-writerly than its atmospherically Arcadian parent group, but on Block Colours And Straight Lines, for example, the tuneful vocals and deferential melodies are set back in a dense thicket of pastoral tones, stifled breakbeats, and childhood surface noise. BBC Telford is a set of unresolved acoustic guitar suggestions and eardrum-buzzing drones, made quietly magnificent by the obdurately banal title that crowns them. The six minute Hatchlings, copper strings clanging on cold electronics, unfurls like a tasteful springtime TV ident.
"I'll See Myself Out, Thank-you" edited by Michael Irwin.
Stew contributes a short story to this right-to-die anthology
"A series of recent landmark cases have highlighted the issues surrounding assisted suicide and may be shifting public opinion in the direction of greater freedom. These essays cover every aspect of the topic from the legal and religious issues to the deeply personal experiences of patients and carers. They present a reasoned libertarian argument for people with terminal conditions, or poor quality of life due to illness or treatment, to be allowed to be helped to kill themselves. The authors include Will Self, Stewart Lee, Lord Avebury, Peter Tatchell, Mary Warnock, and Anthony Grayling."
Stewart Lee
2018-10-30T21:30:52+00:00
"I'll See Myself Out, Thank-you" edited by Michael Irwin. Stew contributes a short story to this right-to-die anthology "A series of recent landmark cases have highlighted the issues surrounding assisted suicide and may be shifting public opinion in the direction of greater freedom. These essays cover every aspect of the topic from the legal and religious issues to the deeply personal experiences of patients and carers. They present a reasoned libertarian argument for people with terminal conditions, or poor quality of life due to illness or treatment, to be allowed to be helped to kill themselves. The authors include Will Self, Stewart Lee, Lord Avebury, Peter Tatchell, Mary Warnock, and Anthony Grayling."
So, Stewart Lee is back for the second year in a row. This pleases me, especially as even though he is sometimes seen as the nineties comedian the title of his show suggests, he's lost nothing of his skill, talent, or even hilarity.
Although, watching this years show you do start to wonder if he may have started to lose the plot. he has had a hard year, what with the hate campaign and death threats over his alleged plasphemous ways and everything, and instead of calming his act down, he's gone the other way so that he now goes so far, you really start to worry that you shouldnt' be watching at all, that you've accidentally stumbled in on his mid-life crisis or a nevous breakdown, albeit an expertly written and performed one.
His show this year is in the White Belly, one of the Underbelly's larger, and therfore darker caves and this all adds to the feeling that maybe you shouldn't be there, and at one point, Lee retreats into the darkness which only adds to the feeling of tresspass.
Yes, it's funny, but the material and the dankness of the room makes you feel like you need to have a bath and watch something really, really silly afterwards.
Stewart Lee
2005-08-08T22:46:18+01:00
So, Stewart Lee is back for the second year in a row. This pleases me, especially as even though he is sometimes seen as the nineties comedian the title of his show suggests, he's lost nothing of his skill, talent, or even hilarity. Although, watching this years show you do start to wonder if he may have started to lose the plot. he has had a hard year, what with the hate campaign and death threats over his alleged plasphemous ways and everything, and instead of calming his act down, he's gone the other way so that he now goes so far, you really start to worry that you shouldnt' be watching at all, that you've accidentally stumbled in on his mid-life crisis or a nevous breakdown, albeit an expertly written and performed one. His show this year is in the White Belly, one of the Underbelly's larger, and therfore darker caves and this all adds to the feeling that maybe you shouldn't be there, and at one point, Lee retreats into the darkness which only adds to the feeling of tresspass. Yes, it's funny, but the material and the dankness of the room makes you feel like you need to have a bath and watch something really, really silly afterwards.
I did interviews and voiceovers for the Taking The Dog For A Walk film...
Taking the Dog for a Walk maps the scene of British Improvised Music, past and present. Alternating with extended music sequences, the conversations led by stand up comedian Stewart Lee gravitate around the idiosyncrasies of improvisation, from playing in front of the proverbial 'four men and a dog' to pursuing a career in a milieu where success is not measured by mainstream criteria.
You can read more & buy it here.
Contribuitions from Steve Beresford, Adam Bohman, Eileen Boyes, Karen Brookman-Bailey, Sarah Gail Brand, John Butcher, Lol Coxhill, Rhodri Davies, Max Eastley, John Edwards, Alexander Hawkins, Caroline Kraabel, Dominic Lash, Phil Minton, Thurston Moore, Maggie Nicols, Steve Noble, Eddie Prévost, John Russell, Mark Sanders, Victor Schonfield, Alan Tomlinson, Roger Turner, Alex Ward, Trevor Watts, Veryan Weston, Alan Wilkinson, Richard Williams, and many others.
Stewart Lee
2017-01-21T19:31:13+00:00
I did interviews and voiceovers for the Taking The Dog For A Walk film... Taking the Dog for a Walk maps the scene of British Improvised Music, past and present. Alternating with extended music sequences, the conversations led by stand up comedian Stewart Lee gravitate around the idiosyncrasies of improvisation, from playing in front of the proverbial 'four men and a dog' to pursuing a career in a milieu where success is not measured by mainstream criteria. You can read more & buy it here. Contribuitions from Steve Beresford, Adam Bohman, Eileen Boyes, Karen Brookman-Bailey, Sarah Gail Brand, John Butcher, Lol Coxhill, Rhodri Davies, Max Eastley, John Edwards, Alexander Hawkins, Caroline Kraabel, Dominic Lash, Phil Minton, Thurston Moore, Maggie Nicols, Steve Noble, Eddie Prévost, John Russell, Mark Sanders, Victor Schonfield, Alan Tomlinson, Roger Turner, Alex Ward, Trevor Watts, Veryan Weston, Alan Wilkinson, Richard Williams, and many others.
Composer John Pierce O'Reilly sets Stew's dead mouse routine (Comedy Vehicle Series 4, Death) to a piece of choral music entitled Mus Mea. YOU CAN DOWNLOAD A PERFORMANCE OF IT HERE. YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE MUSICAL SCORE HERE.
https://www.stewartlee.co.uk/your_art/mus-mea/
IF You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One is the provocative title for Stewart Lee's tour which brings the comedian to Worthing's Pavilion Theatre on Wednesday, October 7, at 8pm.
It's an adults-only show from the co-writer of Jerry Springer the Opera and comes inspired by an altercation in a high street coffee chain.
"In this show, an account of something that happened to me in a coffee shop will be used as a convenient framing device for disparate material possibly concerning English Heritage, Top Gear, The Olympics, emigration, prawns, Bella Pasta, The National Trust, farmers, D.H. Lawrence, piglets, cathedrals, bees, Iggy Pop, cider adverts, riots etc ., etc."
Yes, he will be getting a few things off his chest, refreshed from a quick pre-tour break in north Devon, grabbed in between his Edinburgh dates and hitting the road.
Improvisation
He will be gigging pretty much six nights a week now right through to March.
"It's the longest one that I have ever done," he says.
And to keep it fresh there will be the green lung of improvisation – though the things that work will find permanent homes in the show. As Stewart says, it's Eddie Izzard who is the absolute master in that respect. He gives the impression of delivering it off the top of his head. In reality, it's deliberate. The skill is in putting across that air of constant invention…
Performance
"The last four shows I have done have had beginning, middle and end, but in this one I will be leaving myself a lot more room to manoeuvre."
Just as well, given the vast array of venues he will be playing, everything from the big 800-seaters to theatres and halls considerably smaller.
It's live – and the size of the crowd is bound to shape the performance.
"With fewer people you can actually tone it down and it is like you are talking to friends."
It does work the other way.
Acclaim
His previous tour, entitled the 41st Best Stand-up Ever, was a jokey look at what he terms his relative professional failure compared to his critical acclaim.
When he was bemoaning his fate, it didn't sit quite so well when he was performing in a full-house 800-seater, he laughs.
As for the content this time, he will be looking at the things we can and can't say, for instance the anti-women, anti-homosexual things that the Top Gear presenters for some reason are allowed to get away with.
"I don't feel constrained personally", says Stewart.
But he makes the point that there has to be a point to what you are saying: "It's easier to justify it then."
Stewart Lee
2009-10-06T15:33:02+01:00
IF You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One is the provocative title for Stewart Lee's tour which brings the comedian to Worthing's Pavilion Theatre on Wednesday, October 7, at 8pm. It's an adults-only show from the co-writer of Jerry Springer the Opera and comes inspired by an altercation in a high street coffee chain. "In this show, an account of something that happened to me in a coffee shop will be used as a convenient framing device for disparate material possibly concerning English Heritage, Top Gear, The Olympics, emigration, prawns, Bella Pasta, The National Trust, farmers, D.H. Lawrence, piglets, cathedrals, bees, Iggy Pop, cider adverts, riots etc ., etc." Yes, he will be getting a few things off his chest, refreshed from a quick pre-tour break in north Devon, grabbed in between his Edinburgh dates and hitting the road. Improvisation He will be gigging pretty much six nights a week now right through to March. "It's the longest one that I have ever done," he says. And to keep it fresh there will be the green lung of improvisation – though the things that work will find permanent homes in the show. As Stewart says, it's Eddie Izzard who is the absolute master in that respect. He gives the impression of delivering it off the top of his head. In reality, it's deliberate. The skill is in putting across that air of constant invention… Performance "The last four shows I have done have had beginning, middle and end, but in this one I will be leaving myself a lot more room to manoeuvre." Just as well, given the vast array of venues he will be playing, everything from the big 800-seaters to theatres and halls considerably smaller. It's live – and the size of the crowd is bound...
Twenty-five years ago an adept I traded tapes with proffered a C90 of Scott Walker, then still misfiled in the forgotten kitsch crooner bucket, which proved revelatory.
The collective subconscious was slowly rehabilitating Walker’s most significant four sixties solo albums, reissued here, wherein the former pop star suddenly steered his soul-searing vocals toward the phantasmagorically psychedelic, the unashamedly chic, and the sophisticatedly sublime, an act of artistic recalibration that remains unsurpassed.
1970’s fascinatingly flawed ‘Till The Band Comes In, included, begins the defeated visionary’s fourteen fallow years.
Stewart Lee
2013-06-02T12:37:11+01:00
Twenty-five years ago an adept I traded tapes with proffered a C90 of Scott Walker, then still misfiled in the forgotten kitsch crooner bucket, which proved revelatory. The collective subconscious was slowly rehabilitating Walker’s most significant four sixties solo albums, reissued here, wherein the former pop star suddenly steered his soul-searing vocals toward the phantasmagorically psychedelic, the unashamedly chic, and the sophisticatedly sublime, an act of artistic recalibration that remains unsurpassed. 1970’s fascinatingly flawed ‘Till The Band Comes In, included, begins the defeated visionary’s fourteen fallow years.
By a strange quirk of fate, in September 1995, I found myself waiting to meet a friend in the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel, Hollywood, California, as the cast and creative team of Paul Verhoeven’s subsequently much-derided Showgirls arrived from the film’s first screening. Advance word on the softcore Las Vegas fable had reached the hotel, a nexus of Hollywood gossip, ahead of the limousines. And advance word was not good. The film’s young lead Elizabeth Berkley, who would within hours receive spectacularly appalling notices, walked in through the doors and nobody met her eyes. Even the hotel staff, who are normally ready to assist anyone with anything for the appropriate tip, sensitively looked at the floor. Minutes later, in the bar, where legally required notices warn of the dangers of the alcohol that is on sale, the film’s writer Joe Esterhaz turned to me in a panic as I waited alone for my acquaintance, and shook me vigorously by the hand. “I’m Joe Esterhaz,” he said, visibly disturbed, “thank-you for coming.” Showgirls, it seems, was a very Bad Movie. This, as it turned out, had ensured its immortality.
Some bad movies are so bad, they are able to enjoy a radioactive half-life because of their sheer badness. Critics at the time predicted that Showgirls would go on to be enjoyed enthusiastically, but ironically, as if it had been written, shot, and edited within enormous inverted commas. For generations of students, twenty-something pseuds and homosexuals, it is now a staple of late night, alcohol fuelled screenings. Bad Film Club, the brain-child of the South Wales comedy double act Nicko and Joe, is currently staging special evenings of similarly poor cinema at various venues nationwide. But what makes a bad film? Most of the movies screened so far under the auspices of Bad Film Club seem to fulfil generally understood criteria of badness. At first glance it would appear they are fish, in a barrel, waiting to be shot, unceremoniously, in the head.
But 1971’s Godzilla Vs The Smog Monster, far from being a truly bad film, is an admittedly cumbersome metaphor for environmental catastrophe, and one that the world has ignored at its peril. And its man in a rubber suit Godzilla is more charming and convincing than the CGI lizard avenger that battled Matthew Broderick in Roland Emmerich’s far more expensive 1998 Hollywood version. Ed Wood’s 1959 Plan 9 From Outer Space regularly features in Bad Movie polls, but it displays degrees of imagination and energy absent from most Richard Curtis films. Viva Knieval, which was chosen for Cardiff’s Bad Film Club at the Chapter Arts Centre last month by Canadian comic Glenn Wool, at least has genuine motorcycle stunts and Breakdance The Movie, at the same venue this Sunday, features exciting old skool hip hop moves. All these films have something to commend them, and it is possible to imagine that somewhere along the line those responsible believed in what they were doing, otherwise we would not be able to contemplate sitting down to view them. Thus, when Bad Film Club asked me to host an evening, I tried to broaden the brief, away from films that were just aesthetically bad, but also morally wrong.
Who Dares Wins, my most hated film, was released in 1982. Former TV hardman Lewis Collins plays Peter Skellen, who is an SAS man rather than a chart-topping1970’s MOR singer, attempting to inflitrate a thinly disguised offshoot of the Campaign For Nuclear Disarmament and prevent a terrorist outrage. It has bad acting, bad dialogue, terrible music and a crass title sequence. But it also sets out to demonise the 80’s soft-left using impossible stereotypes and barely concealed right-wing polemic. It is like a Daily Mail version of an action movie. Not only is Who Dares Wins rubbish, it is also evil, and an example of that cinematic rarity, the commercially released facist film. Nearly a quarter of a century after its completion, it now serves as an elegy for the death of the soft British left of the 70’s and 80’s, that will move anyone who came of age politically in the Red Wedge era to tears of regret. Like Tony Blair, Lewis Collins’ SAS man pretends to be one of the revolutionaries, and even manages to convince one of them to sleep with him, but eventually leads them to their doom, having been a puppet of American-British military interests all along. Oddly the only sympathetic character in the film is the leader of the anti-nuclear terrorists, played by a young Judy Davis, whose closing speech sounds impossibly idealistic when delivered to the generals soon to delight in her death. As Blake wrote of Milton’s Paradise Lost, it would appear that the screenwriters were of the devil’s party without knowing it.
The fact is that truly bad films, like undercover SAS men, hide in plain sight. In the 50’s and 60’s we knew them by their bad plotting, bad dialogue, bad acting and low production values. But now those same faults are concealed by big budgets, professional production values, star names and skillfully managed marketing campaigns. Peter Biskind, in his book Easy Riders Raging Bulls, cites Jaws as the moment where B-movie aesthetics went overground on major motion picture budgets. Now it’s harder to identify the genuinely bad film. Does Peter Jackson’s King Kong, which acheived less with its ham-fisted direction, clanking script, emotionally maniuplative score and multi-million dollar effects than the 1933 original did with string and clay, qualify? What about Baz Luhrmann’s cloyingly insincere Oscar-winner Moulin Rougue? Is the acclaimed Brit-com Festival a bad film by virtue of its loveless, embittered cynicism? And what about the wasted franchises of Daredevil, Fantastic Four, The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Batman and Robin? I’ll take Godzilla Vs The Smog Monster over Pretty Woman any day. The Bad Films are out there, but often they’re right under our noses.
Godzilla versus the Smog Monster (1971)
Hedorah (the smog monster) rises from the gutters of Japan, a mixture of air, sea and earth pollution but is challenged by dinosaur Godzilla. Inappropriate trombone music and a final psychedelic disco scene propelled it to number one.
Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)
Legendary inept movie from eccentric cross dressing director Edward D Wood about aliens resurrecting dead humans as zombies and vampires to stop human kind from creating the Solaranite (a sort of sun-driven bomb).
The Barbaric Beast of Boggy Creek, Part II (1985)
Professor and students camp out to find Bigfoot-type creature. Full of bad acting, unnecessary toplessness.
They Saved Hitler's Brain (1966)
World War II is over, and Nazi officials remove Adolf Hitler's living head and hide it in the South American country of Mandoras, so that they can resurrect the Third Reich for the future.
Shark Attack 3 Megalodon (2002)
In a once serene African fishing village, a marine biologist goes in search of some answers when his friend becomes a victim in one of a series of brutal shark attacks.
Frankenhooker (1990)
When his pretty fiancee goes to pieces under the blades of a runaway lawnmower, aspiring mad scientist Jeffrey Franken hatches an unorthodox scheme to bring his beloved back to life.
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978)
Music, comedy and spoof horror are all combined in this uniquely low-budget attack on conventional horror movies.
Octopus (2000)
While on a secret mission to deliver a shadowy international terrorist to America the crew of a nuclear sub including a young female octopus expert, face terror in the Bermuda Triangle-like portal known as the Devil's Eye.
Attack of the 50ft Woman (1958)
One of the worst 50s sci-fi flicks a woman has an alien encounter which leads to a growth spurt.
Robot Monster (1953)
An Ed Wood-style science fiction film featuring an actor dressed in a gorilla suit with a diving helmet. The director attempted suicide shortly after its release.
Stewart Lee
2006-04-02T18:46:12+01:00
By a strange quirk of fate, in September 1995, I found myself waiting to meet a friend in the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel, Hollywood, California, as the cast and creative team of Paul Verhoeven’s subsequently much-derided Showgirls arrived from the film’s first screening. Advance word on the softcore Las Vegas fable had reached the hotel, a nexus of Hollywood gossip, ahead of the limousines. And advance word was not good. The film’s young lead Elizabeth Berkley, who would within hours receive spectacularly appalling notices, walked in through the doors and nobody met her eyes. Even the hotel staff, who are normally ready to assist anyone with anything for the appropriate tip, sensitively looked at the floor. Minutes later, in the bar, where legally required notices warn of the dangers of the alcohol that is on sale, the film’s writer Joe Esterhaz turned to me in a panic as I waited alone for my acquaintance, and shook me vigorously by the hand. “I’m Joe Esterhaz,” he said, visibly disturbed, “thank-you for coming.” Showgirls, it seems, was a very Bad Movie. This, as it turned out, had ensured its immortality. Some bad movies are so bad, they are able to enjoy a radioactive half-life because of their sheer badness. Critics at the time predicted that Showgirls would go on to be enjoyed enthusiastically, but ironically, as if it had been written, shot, and edited within enormous inverted commas. For generations of students, twenty-something pseuds and homosexuals, it is now a staple of late night, alcohol fuelled screenings. Bad Film Club, the brain-child of the South Wales comedy double act Nicko and Joe, is currently staging special evenings of similarly poor cinema at various venues nationwide. But what makes a bad film? Most of the movies screened so far under the...
DOWNLOAD ‘PRINCE ANDREW IS A SWEATY NONCE’ BY THE KUNTS BY MINDNIGHT THURSDAY JUNE 2ND FOR JUBILEE CHART NO 2 SLOT VICTORY. https://princeandrew.info
‘The only time I wanna see ‘big break’ and ‘Stewart Lee’ in the same sentence, will also involve his spinal column’ - Centerist Thug, Twitter
WOKE SO-CALLED ‘COMEDIAN’ T-SHIRT
There has never been a wokier time to own a wokely fabricated Stewart Lee ‘Woke so-called ‘comedian’’ leisure garment.
Woke so-called' 'comedian' 'Stewart Lee' says - "As all alt right journalists know, the best way to invalidate a word is to put it in inverted commas.
But if I was Vladimir Putin I'd want my money back! Celebrate the paucity of traditional alt right arguments against woke comedy with this irksome 'so-called' comedian shirt, manufactured in the wokest way possible with the wokest materials available."
Made on Anthem Organic Tee Shirts who are a UK based ethical tee shirt manufacturer. They cost £20,00 each and will start shipping from 2022. Content Provider facemasks cost £15 each and are in stock and shipping now! Hoodies of Content Provider and All The Cheeses are also in stock and shipping now. They cost £35 each.
WOKE T-SHIRT OFFER CLOSES END OF MAY SO ORDER BEFORE THEN OR FACE A DELAY AS THE BLOKE MAKING THEM GOES OFF ON TOUR WITH A PSYCHEDELIC BAND
I will be launching a new Stand-up tour, BASIC LEE, in the Summer/Autumn of 2022.
Edinburgh previews (Aug), London (Sept – Dec) and 2023 dates on sale – more touring dates to be added.
LEICESTER SQUARE THEATRE
Tues - Sat from Sept 20th to Dec 17th 2022
(EXCEPT Oct 18th - 29th and Nov 11th)
7pm (4pm performance Saturday 12th November
After a decade of ground-breaking high concept shows involving overarched interlinked narratives, massive sets and enormous comedy props, Lee enters the post-pandemic era in streamlined solo stand-up mode. One man, one microphone, and one microphone in the wings in case the one on stage breaks. Pure. Simple. Classic. Basic Lee. "The world's greatest living stand-up comedian." The Times
Two shows, on sale March 3rd. A w-i-p at 10 am and a final go on the Snowflake half of Snowflake Tornado at 1.50pm
Basic Lee (Work In Progress)
Stand 1, 10am (10.00hrs) - 3rd – 27th August (days off 15th & 16th Aug)
Early morning work-in-progress towards the 2022/3 stripped-down, mobile, reactive new stand-up show. One man. One mic. And another mic in the wings in case the stage mic goes down.
The Stand’s New Town Theatre (Grand Hall), 1.50pm (13.50hrs) - 3rd – 28 August (days off 15th & 16th Aug)
Snowflake. Last chance ever to see the culture-war themed second act of the Snowflake Tornado double bill that toured 2019-2022. The other half, Tornado, played the same venue in pre-pandemic 2019. Satire! Swearing!! Retching!!! And a song!!!!
After the abrupt end of the covid-cancelled sell-out tour of Snowflake/Tornado in March 2020, Stewart Lee, “the world’s greatest living stand-up” (Times), returns to more than 60 towns and cities in the UK.
The tour, a double bill of two 60-minute sets, back-to-back nightly, will include new material for 2022.
The Snowflake half has been heavily rewritten in the light of the two years the show has been laid off, looking at how the Covid-Brexit era has impacted on the culture war declared on lovely woke snowflakes by horrible people.
The Tornado half questions Stew’s position in the comedy marketplace after Netflix mistakenly listed his show as “reports of sharks falling from the skies are on the rise again. Nobody on the Eastern Seaboard is safe.”
All shows are 14+ apparently. If you are under 14 you are too immature to enjoy my swearing and farts.
Following the huge recent success of ‘King Rocker’, spotlighting The Nightingales as one of the best bands in Britain, comes the soundtrack and DVD to one of 2021’s break-out films. This special ‘King Rocker’ bookback DVD/CD deluxe package includes the full length feature film with over 90 minutes of extras and unseen footage alongside the soundtrack.
This collector’s edition is beautifully encased with 20 pages of unreleased behind the scenes photos and liner notes from Michael Cumming and Stewart Lee.“Lee tells Lloyd’s story with skill, passion and verve” The Times. Comedian Stewart Lee and director Michael Cumming (Brass Eye, Toast Of London) investigate a missing piece of punk history. Robert Lloyd, best known for fronting cult Birmingham bands The Prefects and The Nightingales, has survived under the radar for over four decades. But how, if at all, does Robert want to be remembered?
The anti-rockumentary ‘King Rocker’ weaves the story of Birmingham’s undervalued underdog autodidact into that of the city’s forgotten public sculpture of King Kong, eschewing the celebrity interview and archive-raid approach for a free-associating bricolage of Indian food, bewildered chefs, vegetable gardening, prescription medicines, pop stardom and pop art.
All of the highlights from the film are here, along with rarities which won’t appear on any of the deluxe reissues of the Nightingales’ catalogue, among them 7″ versions of “Use Your Loaf”, the Bob Luman hit “Let’s Think About Living” and “Black Country”, a glam remix of crowd favourite “Thick And Thin” and a version of Christy & Emily’s “Ghost” which rivals the Nightingales’ take on TLC’s “Unpretty” for sheer beauty.
The only act with roots in the punk era that have gone on to make records more captivating, cutting and entertaining today than at any point in their past; 2022 will be a busy year for the Nightingales, with months of live dates planned, a limited edition remix 12″, deluxe reissues of both ‘Hysterics’ and ‘In The Good Old Country Way’, and a hardcover book collecting Robert’s lyrics.“An inspiring comeback story that feels profoundly necessary” The Quietus
I will be hosting a number of screenings of the film this Summer, including at some festivals:
Bluedot (21st-24th July https://www.discoverthebluedot.com) w Bjork Sugarbabe, The Mogwais, Spiralized 3, Bionic Radio Workshop, Adam Bufftone, Andrew O’Neil’s History of Metal, Kiri Te Pritchard-Mclanna, Robbie Nince and a Delia Derbyshire Day.
It has been a comms failure by me not to tell you I wrote the intro for this republication of the lost ‘60s classic The Bloater by literature’s new favourite witch-queen of the radiophonic workshop, Rosemary Tonks, and it’s a doozy. Get It Here
'Should The Bloater be republished?
Oh God, absolutely, it's fantastic' - Stewart Lee. Min works at the BBC as an audio engineer, where she is struggling to replicate the sound of a heartbeat. At home, other matters of the heart are making a mockery of life as Min knows it. Min has found herself the object of her lodger's affection. An internationally renowned opera singer she's nicknamed 'The Bloater', Min is disgusted and attracted to him in equal measure. But with a husband so invisible that she accidentally turns the lights off on him even when he's still in the room, Min can't quite bring herself to silence The Bloater's overtures. Vain, materialistic, yet surprisingly tender, The Bloater is a sparklingly ironic comedy of manners for all flirtatious gossips who love to hate and hate to love.
'A wonderfully unromantic romantic comedy' - Daily Telegraph
'Uncommonly good' - Guardian
'It is the perfect aperitif, makes you feel warm and careless and much, much happier' - The Times
8. KUNT & THE GANG - PRINCE ANDREW IS A SWEATY NONCE
The forces of neo-fascism conspire to eliminate the channels available to our cheeky Essex electro-punk satirists Kunt & The Gang, now known as The Kunts, as they seek to promote their jubilee single Prince Andrew Is A Sweaty Nonce.
The group have realised there is no way this would be allowed to be the Jubilee no 1 and are wisely aiming for the no 2 slot.
You need to d/l by the end of play Thursday June 2nd.
FOR JUBILEE No.2!
What sort of person would support this?
A certain sort of person. The sort of person who believes that people in positions of power should be held to account for their seedy crimes and shouldn’t be able to use their wealth, status and connections to pay for things to go away.
FAQs for a certain sort of person
Why Jubilee Number 2?
Because let’s face it, even if we did sell enough records they’d never let it be Number 1 anyway!
How can I be most effective come 27 May?
DOWNLOAD - STREAM - SHARE
The most effective way to make yourself count is to:
1. Download all the versions on as many platforms as you are able to. Links at https://princeandrew.info
2. Stream our carefully curated playlists on a premium streaming account. links above.
3. Keep sharing, commenting and spreading the word before and throughout the week of release [try and include www.princeandrew.info #PrinceAndrew and #Jubilee every time you post]. Share screenshots when you have downloaded. Go on Jubilee groups and message boards and share the video.
We realise times are hard and not everyone will be able to afford to do everything so anything you can manage is greatly appreciated and will make a difference.
4. Join the mailing list above - we don’t pester you with a barrage of emails, it just means that you will find out key info that gets lost on social media due to algorithms.
5. Change your social media Avatar to show your support - it really helps spread awareness. The more people do it, the more people see it.
I’m completely skint. what can I do to support the cause?
1. Stream our carefully curated playlists on a free-trial premium streaming account. Set a reminder to cancel when the week has finished.
2.. Tell your friends. If you can’t share on your socials, share with WhatsApp groups and contacts. Every single time you mention it to someone else, it makes a difference.
When do sales open?
0.01 on Friday May 27. They close on 23.59 Thursday June 2.
What’s your strategy?
There are 10 different versions of Prince Andrew Is A Sweaty Nonce available for download at 59p each (the cheapest retail price for a single track). If you download all 10 versions, they are added together to count as 10 sales for the main chart, making your vote 10x more powerful, all for the price of a City Centre pint (or 2 pints in Spoons). If you get them on 2 platforms, that counts as 20 sales.
The 24/7 streaming playlists you can leave running all week. On a premium streaming account 100 streams = 1 sale (600 streams on a free account).
There are limits on how many streams count towards the main chart but streaming 24/7 adds millions of streams to the main platforms and makes the song more visible to casual browsers.
DON’T LET THE ESTABLISHMENT SWEEP IT UNDER THE CARPET!
10 VERSIONS COUNT AS 10 SALES IN THE CHART. AT ONLY 59p EACH, PLEASE DOWNLOAD ALL 10!
24/7 STREAMING PLAYLIST LINKS:
Links to our carefully curated Streaming playlists:
Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube Music and Apple Music are all doing a month’s free Premium trial for new members.
+++STREAMING TIPS to maximise your impact+++
1. Please stream 24/7 from now until Friday 3 June. 100 Premium account streams = 1 sale (600 non premium)
2. Don’t Mute your Playlist, have it on low or headphones.
3. If there is a crossfade (there is on Spotify) turn it up to maximum
4. Check your playlist every few hours / half day to check it is still going.
9. THE LADY MACBETH GUIDE TO AMBITION - STEFAN STERN
If you are a woke snowflake you have more than likely read a few articles by my friend the political journalist Stefan Stern and thought, “Oooh. I agree the fuck out of that.”
So why not help crowdfund his sure-to-be-ace new book.
“Steve Baker was elected as the MP for Wycombe in 2010. We’re a group of local citizens who are worried that our MP isn’t doing the best for us.
We’re particularly alarmed about Steve Baker’s views on climate change but also wonder if he really cares about the people he’s supposed to represent.
We certainly think Wycombe deserves better.
Our aim is to make it easy for local people to scrutinise how our MP spends his time and what he says to enable them to ask the question: “Is he really working for you?”
11. I ARROGANTLY RECOMMEND SOME 2022 HAPPENINGS/THINGS
OM Holy mountain of drone metal JUNE 1st M’cr Gorilla, 3rd London Earth
BO NINGEN Indestructible Japanese noise survivors tour UK and Ireland JUNE 2nd London Railway Tavern Tulse Hill, 7th Newcastle Cluny, 8th Glasgow Broadcast, 8th Dublin Sound House, 10th Limerick Casbah, 13th Birkenhead Future Yard, 14th Manchester Yes, 15th Huddersfield Venn, 18th St Albans Horn.
WILKINSON EDWARDS NOBLE is the greatest current British free jazz trio, and will make instant converts of sceptics. They are at Finch’s Café, 12 Sidworth St in London Fields on June 3rd at 8pm for £8
Until June 5th. Last chance to see Laura Knight & Caroline Walker - A Female Gaze at Nottingham Castle Art Gallery, most notable for displaying loads of Laura Knight pictures from private collections, and displaying them with real sensitivity in a biographical/thematic timeline, alongside other loans from galleries and from the Castle’s own collection, in a way that makes the genius of this pioneering woman utterly undeniable. https://www.nottinghamcastle.org.uk/whats-on/laura-knight-caroline-walker-a-female-gaze/
DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS Liberal redneck rockers JUNE 7th Brighton Chalk, 8th London Forum, 9th Leeds Stylus, 11th Dublin Vicar Street
DRY CLEANING Sing-speak post-punkers JUNE 7th London 02, 9th & 12th Edinburgh Hidden Door, 13th London QEH., AUGUST 27TH M’cr Mayfield Depot
Daniel Kitson. The elusive comedy wunderkind has dates a-plenty.
JUNE 7th, 8th, 9th - The Old Mill – Stillington, North Yorkshire;
17th – Midlands Arts Centre Outdoor Theatre – Birmingham;
18th – (Afternoon) - Melbourne Hall, Walled Garden – Derby;
19th - Regents Park Open Air Theatre - LondON;
22nd, 23rd –Lawrence Batley Theatre Courtyard – Huddersfield;
JULY 6th – Compering Mixed Bill – Brighton Comedy Gardens;
17th - Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre – Chester;
18th - Midland Arts Centre Outdoor Theatre – Birmingham;
20th, 21st, 22nd, 23rd – Windmill Hill City Farm - Bristol;
24th - Regents Park Open Air Theatre – London;
AUGUST 21st –Regents Park Open Air Theatre - London
Excuse me, can you help me please? I’m terribly worried brings together their work collaborating in one capacity or another for over 34 years. Questions of authorship can be raised: Who made what? Who instigated what? How did this magical world arrive and from who’s universe? While this uncertainty can be questioned, here it is celebrated and laid open, as ownership and authorship are replaced by a creative partnership, with startling results. Working across a wide variety of media, the artists employ it to stand as a portal that cuts through different cognitive worlds and uses it to break down barriers and lazy definitions between traditional visual and neurological pathways. The exhibition includes drawings, collages, paintings and sculptures that were made before during and after the production of their award-winning film Diseased and Disorderly, which will also be shown. Tell-Tale Heads from the film are let loose through the galleries en route to the Tell-Tale Rooms Virtual Reality Experience which will also inhabit the gallery further breaking down the barriers between the artists and the worlds they have created. This exhibition aims to firmly confront the idea that this kind of collaboration is unequal and instead looks to celebrate diversity within collaboration and to let every voice rise up equally. Here the freedom to create is an open door through which many people can enter in their own way. The exhibition not only gives a platform to the different voices that come to us in singular and complex ways it gives you access to the diverse world people around you inhabit, which are so often overlooked.
“They make art as they breathe, hard and fast and memorable; paintings, postcards, installations, rants, poems and freewheeling film ‘songs’…. Eden ventriloquizes her father to provide the written text for her drawings and paintings that are already replete with meaning…. she provides a commentary and series of foot-notes for the Grand Projects that her father is undertaking…. An agenda or appendix in a different form and much truer or closer to the original sign makings and drawings on the walls of caves….” - Iain Sinclair.
“Andrew Kötting has been making films for a long time. But are his films even films at all? Or are they by-products, documenting other processes, their purpose known only to the artist himself? To me the film Gallivant seemed immediately one of the greatest things any human being had ever made. We spend a lot of time peering over our shoulders at the artists we’ve lost, forgetting that, if we look for them, some of the greatest are amongst us now.” - Stewart Lee.
Andrew and Eden Kötting are part of The Project Art Works collective, who were nominated for the Turner Prize in 2021. As part of their Turner exhibition they showed a constructed space that held a physical and digital archive from over 4,000 works by neurodivergent artists and makers over two decades. The archive embodies a visible trace of people who are often hidden in the world. Andrew and Eden Kötting were the focus of two episodes of Radio 4’s Film Programme in 2021 when they moved from their studio in the Old Town Hastings to their new one on The Ponswood Industrial Estate in St Leonards-on-Sea. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000v9c7
Diseased and Disorderly is a film released in 2021 directed by Andrew Kötting in which Neurodivergent artist Eden Kötting, who was born with Joubert Syndrome, takes the viewer on a journey into her reality through her collages, self-portraits, and still-life drawings. It was funded by the BFI and the National Lottery.
BOB MOULD Husker-dooby-dooby-doo JUNE 9th Brighton Komedia, 10th Ramsgate Music Hall, 12th B’ham Digbeth Mill, 13th S’hampton Engine Rooms, 14th Oxford Academy, 16th London Islington Assembly, 17th Nottingham Rescue, 18th Stoke On Trent Sugar Mill, 20th Bristol Thekla, 22nd Glasgow Oran Moor
THE FALLEN LEAVES Top punk-mod gentlemen entertainers. JUNE 11th London 100 Club, AUGUST 21st London Putney Half Moon, SEPT 10TH London Camden Dublin Castle, 17th Lewes Con Club
MORPHOGENESIS - ORIGINAL LINE-UP OF ART NOISE LEGENDS June 12th Café Oto London
Ben Moor. The storytelling surrealist is out and about in many different iterations.
Tuesday 12th & Weds 13th July 2022 19.30PRONOUN TROUBLE
An Edinburgh slot for my "lecture" about cartoons, friendship and lectures has yet to be confirmed at time of writing, but if you haven't seen it, these dates offer you a chance to embrace the offbeat.
Another Edinburgh preview, this time in a Double Bill with the wonderful Joanna Neary and her fantastic show full of characters, song and dance and delight.
Described by Stewart Lee as "a book talk that swallows itself in a hall of mirrors full of Russian dolls," this is also hopefully on its way to the Edinburgh Fringe - more details to follow.
LONG RYDERS Country-punks JUNE 17TH & 18th London Under The Bridge
MAMMOTH PENGUINS Queens of indue JUNE 23RD London Lexington
THE GOON SAXAustralian indie rockers JUNE 23rd M’cr Ritz, 24th Glasgow QMU, 28th Bristol Motion & Marble, 29th London Forum, 30th Brighton Chalk. JULY 4th London Lexington
ALASDAIR ROBERTS Scottish troubadour JUNE 25TH London West Hampstead Arts. JULY 7th Falmouth Cornish Bank. SEPT 3rd Cardiff Chapter.
DARREN HAYMAN Breton-capped indie troubadour JUNE 24th London Lexington, 28th Newcastle Cumberland Arms, 29th - 30th M’cr Gullivers
ELIZA CARTHY English folk godhead back in active service JUNE 28th Leicester Musician. JULY 16th London Union Chapel. NOV 28TH Birmningham Glee, 30th Cardiff Glee. DEC 5th Cambridge Junction
EARL OKIN The mouth trumpeter runs amok. JULY 1st - The Terrace, 2, Church Plain, Loddon, Norfolk, NR14 6EX. www.shaftofwit.com/music
2nd - The Secret Garden, Mile Tree Lane, Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, PE 13 4TR.
RICHARD DAWSON & CIRCLE Geordie art-folkster jams with Finnish acid-rockers JULY 6th London Scala, 7th Leeds Belgrave, 8th M’cr Gorilla, 8th Digbeth Supersonic, 12th Newcastle Boiler Shop, 14th Stirling Rabbithole. AUGUST 26TH Barrow-in-Furness Krankenhaus.
M WARD Giant Sand graduated songwriter and guitarist JULY 1st M’cr Night & Day, 9th Nottingham Bodega, 10th London Jazz Café, 12th Bristol Thekla, 13th Leeds Brudenell, 15th Glasgow Oran Moor
BEVIS FROND One of local show by psyche-rock superstars. JULY 10th Hastings Crypt
MDC Hardcore punk originators JULY 27TH Southampton 1865, AUGUST 1st London New Cross Inn
ACID MOTHERS’ TEMPLE Japanese acid all-fathers OCTOBER 9th Birmingham Norton’s, 10th York Crescent, 11th Glasgow Hug & Pint, 12th Newcastle Star and Shadow, 13th Salford White Hotel, 16th Preston Continental, 19th Bristol Lanes, 20th Brighton Komedia, 21st London Studio 9294
DREAM SYNDICATE Blue collar paisley underground psychedelic explorers in imperial career phase. OCTOBER 18TH London Lafayette
RECC’D INTERNETS, YOUTUBES AND PODCASTS
Rosie Holt’s Youtube characters *****
Ogmios School of Zen Motoring *****
Limmy’s review of After Life *****
The Exploding Heads Alasdair Beckett-King’s various things *****
VonViddy (TikTok) Eleanor Morton - Jack The Ripper (but shot in portrait!?)
Paddy Young - Posh actor in Northern Film
Dan March - British Tourism films
Tom Little Sooz Kempner as Nadine Dorries on Twitter
12. IN OUR COVID ERA LAMENTATIONS 2022
Sydney Poitier - woke actor (1927)
Magwa - woke Cambodian landmine hunting rat (2013)
Burke Shelley - bass Budgie (1950) Ronnie Spector - woke Ronette (1943)
Rachel Nagy - Detroit Cobra (1975)
Robin Le Mesurier - Womble (1954)
Andy Ross - Disco Zombie/nice man of Britpop (1956)
Barry Cryer - King Of Comedy (1935) Norma Waterson - Mighty Folk Matriarch (1939)
John Nolan - man Behind The Magnolia Curtain (1966) Betty Davis - She Might Get Picked Up! (1944)
Ivan Reitman - He was not afraid of no ghost! (1946)
Mark Lanegan - Screaming Tree rehabilitee (1964)
Bruce Anderson - MX-80 man (1950) Anna Karen - ‘70s public transport icon (1936)
Sam Lay - Howlin’ Wolf/Butterfield/Dylan drums (1935)
Mikey Chung - Reggae session regular (1950)
Fred Van Hove - Belgian free-jazz stringbender (1937)
Ian McDonald - Crimson saxophonist King (1949)
Gary Brooker - Synesthesiac Hackney musician (1945)
Nicky Tesco - Suburban soundman/comedy fan (1956)
Dallas Good - Sadies guitar slinger (1974)
Philip Jeck - Art Noiseman (1952) Margaret Curtis - Callanish visionary (1942) Jordan - punk fashionista (1955)
David McKee - Then the shopkeeper appeared (1935)
Chris Bailey - Lordly protopunk, wit, raconteur (1957)
Gilbert Gottfried - That ‘Too Soon’ guy (1955) Audrey Henshall - Scottish Neolithic expert (1927)
Eric Chappell - Rising Damp (1933)
Klaus Schultze - Tangerine Joker (1947)
Neal Adams - Woke progressive comics creator (1941) Judy Henske - Greenwich psych-folkstress (1936)
George Perez - Best Avengers artist ever (1954)
Don Craine - deerstalking Downliner (1945)
Richard Polodor - acid rock engineer (1936)
Gavin Martin - music rag wit (1962)
Fred Ward - Worm Warrior (1942)
Vangelis - Apocalypso-Maestro (1943)
Bob Neuwirth - Gelb/Dylan adjacent beatnik (1939)
Cathal Coughlan - Microdisney Man (1960)
Rick Price - Move bassist (1944)
Ric Parnell - Tap/Rooster drummer & gardener
Alan White - Ono drums (1949)
Ray Liotta - has let himself go (1954)
Ronnie Hawkins - Canadian rock wellspring (1935)
Harrison Birtwistle - When Things Fall Over (1934)
Stewart Lee
2022-05-30T19:31:07+01:00
DOWNLOAD ‘PRINCE ANDREW IS A SWEATY NONCE’ BY THE KUNTS BY MINDNIGHT THURSDAY JUNE 2ND FOR JUBILEE CHART NO 2 SLOT VICTORY. https://princeandrew.info ‘The only time I wanna see ‘big break’ and ‘Stewart Lee’ in the same sentence, will also involve his spinal column’ - Centerist Thug, Twitter WOKE SO-CALLED ‘COMEDIAN’ T-SHIRT There has never been a wokier time to own a wokely fabricated Stewart Lee ‘Woke so-called ‘comedian’’ leisure garment. Woke so-called' 'comedian' 'Stewart Lee' says - "As all alt right journalists know, the best way to invalidate a word is to put it in inverted commas. But if I was Vladimir Putin I'd want my money back! Celebrate the paucity of traditional alt right arguments against woke comedy with this irksome 'so-called' comedian shirt, manufactured in the wokest way possible with the wokest materials available." Available from this link from May 1st... https://wax-face.com/stewart-lee Made on Anthem Organic Tee Shirts who are a UK based ethical tee shirt manufacturer. They cost £20,00 each and will start shipping from 2022. Content Provider facemasks cost £15 each and are in stock and shipping now! Hoodies of Content Provider and All The Cheeses are also in stock and shipping now. They cost £35 each. WOKE T-SHIRT OFFER CLOSES END OF MAY SO ORDER BEFORE THEN OR FACE A DELAY AS THE BLOKE MAKING THEM GOES OFF ON TOUR WITH A PSYCHEDELIC BAND 'Woke' Burgundy Front 'Woke' Charcoal Front 'Woke' Navy / Mustard Front 'Woke' Burgundy Back 'Woke' Charcoal Back 'Woke' Navy / Mustard Back 2. BASIC LEE I will be launching a new Stand-up tour, BASIC LEE, in the Summer/Autumn of 2022. Edinburgh previews (Aug), London (Sept – Dec) and 2023 dates on sale – more touring dates to be added. LEICESTER SQUARE THEATRE Tues - Sat from Sept 20th to Dec...
Like his controversial brother Chris, Tom Morris pushes against tradition. Rachel Halliburton met Battersea Arts Centre's artistic director.
Mention the name Jerry Springer, and you will experience a variety of reactions, whether it is the contemptuous smile, the brick hurled TV-wards, some predictable comment about everyone wanting their Warholian slice of fame, or an animated discussion about that girl who left her boyfriend because she was only attracted to men eating spaghetti in orange underwear. A response you might not expect is: "Why not use the show as a basis for an opera?"
A season coming up at London's eternally inventive Battersea Arts Centre aims to subvert the prejudices and snobberies surrounding the setting of emotions to music, proving that Oprah-style can be opera as well.
Tom Morris, artistic director of the BAC, has been programming an entertainingly experimental opera season for the past six years now, and declares that Kombat Opera's choice of Jerry Springer is "perfect subject matter for opera. It's like Tosca - one emotional climax after another".
Stewart Lee
2001-08-17T15:55:11+01:00
Like his controversial brother Chris, Tom Morris pushes against tradition. Rachel Halliburton met Battersea Arts Centre's artistic director. Mention the name Jerry Springer, and you will experience a variety of reactions, whether it is the contemptuous smile, the brick hurled TV-wards, some predictable comment about everyone wanting their Warholian slice of fame, or an animated discussion about that girl who left her boyfriend because she was only attracted to men eating spaghetti in orange underwear. A response you might not expect is: "Why not use the show as a basis for an opera?" A season coming up at London's eternally inventive Battersea Arts Centre aims to subvert the prejudices and snobberies surrounding the setting of emotions to music, proving that Oprah-style can be opera as well. Tom Morris, artistic director of the BAC, has been programming an entertainingly experimental opera season for the past six years now, and declares that Kombat Opera's choice of Jerry Springer is "perfect subject matter for opera. It's like Tosca - one emotional climax after another".
The barely present cult Canadian stand-up comedian Baconface plays lengthy and mainly uninterrupted selections from his late brother's extensive record collection of '60s and '70s psychedelia, progressive rock, free jazz, folk, acid folk, folk rock, acid rock, electronic music, and ethnoforgeries. In association with the Chilliwack Office of Leisure. [Repeated Saturday 4am.] On Resonance 104.4 FM.
Resonance is a groundbreaking 24/7 radio station which broadcasts on 104.4 FM to central London, DAB to Greater London, nationally on Radioplayer and live streamed to the rest of the world.
March 3rd – South London Cares, Lecis Sq Theatre, London. I host (2 x 30 mins sets) John Kearns, Eleanor Tiernan, Earl Okin, all doing substantial sets.
Please come and sell it out. TICKETS
BRIDGET CHRISTIE TOUR
My wife Bridget Christie begins her A Book For Her tour next week.
March 2016
8th - Rambert Studio, Southbank Centre, LONDON - 7.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0207 960 4200 TICKETS
9th - The Lowry, Salford Quays, SALFORD - 8pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0843 208 6010 TICKETS
10th - Lakeside Arts, NOTTINGHAM - 7.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0115 846 7777 TICKETS
14th - Citizen's Theatre, GLASGOW (COMEDY FESTIVAL) - 8pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0844 873 7353 TICKETS
15th - The Stand, NEWCASTLE - 8.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0844 693 3336 TICKETS
16th - The MAC, BELFAST - 7.45pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 028 9023 5053 TICKETS
17th - Warwick Arts Centre, COVENTRY - 7.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 02476 524524 TICKETS
21st - Everyman Theatre, LIVERPOOL - 7.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0151 709 4776 TICKETS
22nd - The MAC, BIRMINGHAM - 8pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0121 4463232 TICKETS
April 2016
13th - Memorial Hall, SHEFFIELD - 8pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0114 2789 789 TICKETS
14th - WYP Courtyard, LEEDS - 7.45pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0113 213 7700 TICKETS
18th - Gulbenkian Theatre, CANTERBURY - 7.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 01227 769075 TICKETS
19th - Corn Exchange, EXETER - 8pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 01392 665938 TICKETS
20th - Ropetackle Arts Centre, SHOREHAM BY SEA - 7.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 01273 464440 TICKETS
21st - The Dukes, LANCASTER - 8pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 01524 598500 TICKETS
25th - The Junction, CAMBRIDGE - 8pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 01223 511511 TICKETS
26th - The Stables, WAVENDON, MILTON KEYNES - 8pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 01908 280800 TICKETS
27th - North Wall Arts, OXFORD - 7.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 01865 319450 TICKETS
28th - Theatre Severn, SHREWSBURY - 7.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 01743 281281 TICKETS
May 2016
3rd - The Mercury, COLCHESTER - 7.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 01206 573948 TICKETS
4th - Playhouse, NORWICH - 8pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 01603 598598 TICKETS
5th - Tobacco Factory, BRISTOL - 8pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0117 9020344 TICKETS
9th - Sugar Club, DUBLIN - 8.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0818 903001 TICKETS
10th - Sugar Club, DUBLIN - 8.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0818 903001 TICKETS
11th - Glee Club, CARDIFF - 7.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0871 472 0400 TICKETS
12th - Corn Exchange, BRIGHTON - 7.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 01273 709 709 TICKETS ON SALE SOON
Stewart Lee
2016-02-29T20:35:09+00:00
SLCV Series 4 This starts on BBC2 on March 3rd at 10pm for 6 weeks. It is like the 3rd series but more so. BBC page for the series with clips & links to iPlayer episodes (after broadcast) is here. Global Globules with Baconface FROM THIS WEDNESDAY 2ND MARCH. The barely present cult Canadian stand-up comedian Baconface plays lengthy and mainly uninterrupted selections from his late brother's extensive record collection of '60s and '70s psychedelia, progressive rock, free jazz, folk, acid folk, folk rock, acid rock, electronic music, and ethnoforgeries. In association with the Chilliwack Office of Leisure. [Repeated Saturday 4am.] On Resonance 104.4 FM. Resonance is a groundbreaking 24/7 radio station which broadcasts on 104.4 FM to central London, DAB to Greater London, nationally on Radioplayer and live streamed to the rest of the world. Listen to a trailer HERE http://www.baconfacecanada.com | https://www.resonancefm.com This Benefit Needs You 3rd March March 3rd – South London Cares, Lecis Sq Theatre, London. I host (2 x 30 mins sets) John Kearns, Eleanor Tiernan, Earl Okin, all doing substantial sets. Please come and sell it out. TICKETS BRIDGET CHRISTIE TOUR My wife Bridget Christie begins her A Book For Her tour next week. March 2016 8th - Rambert Studio, Southbank Centre, LONDON - 7.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0207 960 4200 TICKETS 9th - The Lowry, Salford Quays, SALFORD - 8pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0843 208 6010 TICKETS 10th - Lakeside Arts, NOTTINGHAM - 7.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0115 846 7777 TICKETS 14th - Citizen's Theatre, GLASGOW (COMEDY FESTIVAL) - 8pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0844 873 7353 TICKETS 15th - The Stand, NEWCASTLE - 8.30pm - A BOOK FOR HER - 0844 693 3336 TICKETS 16th - The MAC, BELFAST - 7.45pm -...
Ever since the time of the court jesters, it's been the comedian's social function to get paid for saying things that normal people can't get away with. So it's easy to understand the bewildered response of the professional iconoclast when some media vested interest or other decides - generally for reasons unconnected to the alleged offence - to make an example of them for having trespassed outside the boundaries of public taste and decency.
After all, they were only doing their job.
Both Glaswegian shaggy-dog storyteller Billy Connolly and gonzo ironist Stewart have felt the hot breath of the tabloid lynch-mob on the back of their necks in the past few years. The last time Connolly forsook his customary Californian exile for a marathon residency at the Hammersmith Apollo, he was pilloried for a gratuitously flippant remark about the death of Iraq war hostage Ken Bigley.
While Stewart Lee - who might still have been basking in the profitable artistic backwater of musical theatre had the evangelical pressure group Christian Voice not misunderstood the profoundly religious sensibility at work in his Jerry Springer: The Opera - has recently been in hot water for disputing the messianic credentials of Top Gear's Richard Hammond.
Connolly's natural insouciance has expressed itself in the decision to embark on a month-long season of sold out shows without making the slightest attempt to prepare an actual act. Happily, this eternally Rabelaisian 67 year-old does a lot of his best work staggering delightedly around the hinterland of an anecdote like one of the Caledonian street-drunks to whose sacred memory so much of his comedy is still dedicated.
So by the time he finally hits his stride after a ragged first hour - with an exquisitely eloquent description of a condemned tenement surrounded by a fence made of internal doors - this particular full-house is miraculously still with him.
Stewart Lee's scrupulously well-planned yet satisfyingly spontaneous performance at the Leicester Square Theatre is a master-class in subversive pedantry. No-one - not his audience, not his fellow comedians, not his favourite high-street coffee chain, and certainly not Lee himself - escapes this ruthlessly self-aware 41 year-old's kestrel's eye for linguistic bad faith. In the belief that “the last taboo in stand-up is a man trying to do something sincerely and well", he ends the show by singing a favourite folk song to the best of his ability. By a strange quirk of evolutionary fate, that's how Billy Connolly's career started.
Stewart Lee plays Leicester Square Theatre (0844 8472475) at 4pm today.
Billy Connolly is at the Hammersmith Apollo till Jan 31st (0844 8444748).
Stewart Lee
2010-01-10T17:09:52+00:00
Ever since the time of the court jesters, it's been the comedian's social function to get paid for saying things that normal people can't get away with. So it's easy to understand the bewildered response of the professional iconoclast when some media vested interest or other decides - generally for reasons unconnected to the alleged offence - to make an example of them for having trespassed outside the boundaries of public taste and decency. After all, they were only doing their job. Both Glaswegian shaggy-dog storyteller Billy Connolly and gonzo ironist Stewart have felt the hot breath of the tabloid lynch-mob on the back of their necks in the past few years. The last time Connolly forsook his customary Californian exile for a marathon residency at the Hammersmith Apollo, he was pilloried for a gratuitously flippant remark about the death of Iraq war hostage Ken Bigley. While Stewart Lee - who might still have been basking in the profitable artistic backwater of musical theatre had the evangelical pressure group Christian Voice not misunderstood the profoundly religious sensibility at work in his Jerry Springer: The Opera - has recently been in hot water for disputing the messianic credentials of Top Gear's Richard Hammond. Connolly's natural insouciance has expressed itself in the decision to embark on a month-long season of sold out shows without making the slightest attempt to prepare an actual act. Happily, this eternally Rabelaisian 67 year-old does a lot of his best work staggering delightedly around the hinterland of an anecdote like one of the Caledonian street-drunks to whose sacred memory so much of his comedy is still dedicated. So by the time he finally hits his stride after a ragged first hour - with an exquisitely eloquent description of a condemned tenement surrounded by a fence made of...
The selection of Kate Middleton, a lowly commoner drawn from the very dregs of society, as Prince William's bride has been the subject of great speculation, much of it thinly veiled snobbery. But Britain is broken. Social mobility is at a historic low, state education and public healthcare are in crisis, and our own prime minister has blamed the truculent immigrant and his concealed wife for our lack of national cohesion. Once upon a time, royal marriages were political acts that forged links between different nations. Instead, William and Kate's wedding will bind this nation to itself, and in marrying so very far beneath himself, I believe the young prince has made a heroic and deliberate sacrifice to achieve this end.
Pause for a moment. Imagine being Prince William. Imagine knowing that the best justification most rational people could come up with for your heavily subsidised existence was that you were a symbolic figure. And symbolic of what, the boy must wonder. History? The land? The nation itself? A notion of refined nobility? Grace under pressure? Or perhaps some abstract idea of temporal continuity? Unable to escape being a symbolic figure, the prince's recent activities suggest he has chosen instead to embrace the role in the most profound way imaginable. And, I believe, this is why the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton itself seems symbolic on an admirable and unprecedented level.
Jessie L Weston's 1920 study of Holy Grail mythology, From Ritual to Romance, pictures Britain as a wasteland, an image appropriated by TS Eliot to describe the aftermath of the first world war. The Fisher King must search the devastated terrain for the Holy Grail, and drink from it to heal the land. Broken Britain is that wasted land. William is that Fisher King. Kate Middleton is that lovely grail, full not of the blood of the crucified Christ, but of the blood of the Middletons, who run a children's partyware business in Berkshire. And Kate's wedding to wise William is a ritual that may help to fix what David Cameron's vision of the Big Society so far has not. For in choosing Kate, a simple girl from a school near Swindon, as his bride, William is in fact taking each and every British subject – man, woman, old, young, black, white, Christian and Muslim – into his royal bed, and binding us all to each other in the white heat of his princely passion.
Kate was educated at Marlborough College in Wiltshire. It is a private school, yes, but it is no Eton, and its most famous alumni are little more than flannelled fools: the comedian Jack Whitehall, the children's author Lauren Child, and the pop musician Chris de Burgh, whose 1976 Christmas hit A Spaceman Came Travelling describes an alien being's disappointment in the shortcomings of human society – disappointments it appears William shares, and is trying to address in his own esoteric way. But his motives for plucking a bride from such an inauspicious establishment are, I believe, twofold, and we must admire and accept the occult reasoning behind his selfless choice.
First of all, Marlborough College, where Kate Middleton flushed into womanhood, is set in a magical landscape that has been declared a world heritage site, being only five miles from the exact centre of the Avebury stone circle. Perhaps Kate's growing body absorbed the magical energies of the region. Perhaps it did not. It does not matter. She is from, and she is of, the ancient wetland. The arrangement of the 6,000-year-old circle, and the stone rows, burial chambers and mounds that surround it, is explicitly symbolic, explicitly sexual and explicitly ritualistic, and as such it shares the same transformative agenda as Friday's royal wedding.
In Avebury, the West Kennet Avenue, a long row of erotically paired stones, uncoils snake-like from the circle, as if to penetrate nearby Silbury Hill, a fecund 37-metre-high female belly, which rises from the marsh to meet it. The prince has taken his lowly bride from within this charged landscape, where our ancestors celebrated the union of man and woman in stone and earth, and began the communal processes that forged a nation from their descendents, the broken nation that William the Fisher King must now heal. Our shaman-prince could not have chosen a better receptacle for his magical purposes than Kate Middleton, a peasant-spawned serf-girl, sodden with the primordial mire of the Swindon-shadowed swamplands.
Secondly, in choosing a commoner for his bride, William gives hope to millions of socially disenfranchised Britons. Only two Tory generations ago, the prime minister Margaret Thatcher was proud to proclaim herself "a grocer's daughter". A mere 20 years since she passed power on to John Major, a garden gnome salesman with six O-levels, it is impossible to imagine either in government today, composed, as it is, principally of former members of the elite Oxford vomiting society the Bullingdon Club. The state-schools system is stretched to the limit; the withdrawal of further education grants deters poorer students; and government contributions to the Bookstart scheme, which gives books to children who might otherwise have none, have been halved. It is not possible to imagine a Thatcher ever getting out of Lincolnshire today, let alone becoming prime minister.
But in snatching Kate from the gutter, William stooped even lower than he would have done had he chosen Margaret Thatcher for his bride. Kate's parents aren't even grocers. They sell novelty hats and paper plates. It's no coincidence that as genuine social mobility in broken Britain is eroded, so commoners turn to the National Lottery, The X Factor and Britain's Got Talent. Winning them represents the only chance real people have to change their circumstances significantly. It could be you. And, like some giant illuminated penis flying over the rooftops of suburban homes and frothing at random passing women, William has pointed himself at Kate Middleton, the Susan Boyle of social mobility. In declaring her his princess, he brings hope of real change to millions of people denied a decent education and the means to better themselves, to millions of tiny babies denied even books, that one day they too could be randomly rewarded with untold wealth and privilege.
The wedding of my wife and I was a small affair, with 40 or so guests. We were not required to arrange our day along magical or symbolic lines, though admittedly some aspects of the Catholic wedding ceremony confused me, and my wife is yet to explain the tradition whereby I have been obliged ever since to sleep alone each night on the toilet. But as a symbolic figure, poor Prince William's wedding is hostage to political expediency. Consider the faces he will see as he and Kate make their solemn vows.
From the world of government, the prime minister and Mrs David Cameron, and the deputy prime minister and Ms Miriam González Durántez, holding whichever suit the prime minister has chosen not to wear; from the faith communities, the Reverend Gregorius, Anil Bhanot, Malcolm Deeboo of the Zoroastrians, The Venerable Bogoda Seelawimala Nayaka Thera, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Optimus Prime, Yog-Sothoth, Captain Marvel and Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor; and from the twin spheres of entertainment and sport, Mr Ben Fogle, Mr David Beckham and Mrs David Beckham, Mr Madonna Louise Ciccone, and Sir Elton Hercules John and Mr Sir Elton Hercules John. Candles in the wind all.
But as he gazes at this golden shower of dignitaries, it is William who will have the last guffaw. He knows that this was not so much a wedding as a psychic rescue operation, a healing ritual for broken Britain, a pantomime of hope for the terminally hopeless. In taking Kate Middleton as his bride, Prince William, more than anyone in any position of power in Britain today, has tried at least to do something to help. I hope sincerely that both of them are very happy.
• Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle starts on BBC2 on Wednesday, 11.20pm. A series of events called Stewart Lee's Austerity Binge starts at the Southbank Centre on 27 May. He is among artists performing John Cage's Indeterminacy in a short season he's programmed for the Cheltenham Jazz festival.
Stewart Lee
2011-04-27T15:16:17+01:00
The selection of Kate Middleton, a lowly commoner drawn from the very dregs of society, as Prince William's bride has been the subject of great speculation, much of it thinly veiled snobbery. But Britain is broken. Social mobility is at a historic low, state education and public healthcare are in crisis, and our own prime minister has blamed the truculent immigrant and his concealed wife for our lack of national cohesion. Once upon a time, royal marriages were political acts that forged links between different nations. Instead, William and Kate's wedding will bind this nation to itself, and in marrying so very far beneath himself, I believe the young prince has made a heroic and deliberate sacrifice to achieve this end. Pause for a moment. Imagine being Prince William. Imagine knowing that the best justification most rational people could come up with for your heavily subsidised existence was that you were a symbolic figure. And symbolic of what, the boy must wonder. History? The land? The nation itself? A notion of refined nobility? Grace under pressure? Or perhaps some abstract idea of temporal continuity? Unable to escape being a symbolic figure, the prince's recent activities suggest he has chosen instead to embrace the role in the most profound way imaginable. And, I believe, this is why the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton itself seems symbolic on an admirable and unprecedented level. Jessie L Weston's 1920 study of Holy Grail mythology, From Ritual to Romance, pictures Britain as a wasteland, an image appropriated by TS Eliot to describe the aftermath of the first world war. The Fisher King must search the devastated terrain for the Holy Grail, and drink from it to heal the land. Broken Britain is that wasted land. William is that Fisher King. Kate Middleton is...
Way-out, laddish humour' - Richard Herring and Stewart Lee brought their This Morning with Richard Not Judy show to the Woodville Halls, Gravesend Award-winning duo Lee and Herring have the confidence of market traders, the gift of the gab, an outstanding ability to exchange lines and ideas and are clearly the most natural and well-matched of partners.
On their current tour, which carries the title of their television series, This Morning with Richard Not Judy, their throwaway show bills warned: "Will sell out."
But there were plenty of empty seats at the Woodville Halls, a fact they were quick to inject into their opening routine. The constant, if jokey, put-downs of Gravesend and the locals became yawningly repetitive.
It seems fair game for a touch of the topicals but harping on about Gravesend being Kent's outdoor toilet, a former swamp, and the black heart of Britain suggests limited material.
Stewart Lee and Richard Herring are dressed with shirt tails hanging out and perform throughout wearing head mikes. Behind the smiling personalities and stage presence, theirs is a way-out, laddish humour and they are intending to shock. George Michael gets the full treatment, a man from the stalls claiming to be Hew G Erection is crowned king for the night, another is asked how often he has sex and when national average sex figures are the topic, laughing girls are dismissed as "cackling witches".
There is also a long and taste-less routine about the grief which followed the death of Diana, Princess of Wales (which they could not do on TV) which is presented with mock respect. Also involved is keyboard player Richard Thomas who, with his song lyrics, pushes the boundaries even further out.
Stewart Lee
1998-05-14T21:57:21+01:00
Way-out, laddish humour' - Richard Herring and Stewart Lee brought their This Morning with Richard Not Judy show to the Woodville Halls, Gravesend Award-winning duo Lee and Herring have the confidence of market traders, the gift of the gab, an outstanding ability to exchange lines and ideas and are clearly the most natural and well-matched of partners. On their current tour, which carries the title of their television series, This Morning with Richard Not Judy, their throwaway show bills warned: "Will sell out." But there were plenty of empty seats at the Woodville Halls, a fact they were quick to inject into their opening routine. The constant, if jokey, put-downs of Gravesend and the locals became yawningly repetitive. It seems fair game for a touch of the topicals but harping on about Gravesend being Kent's outdoor toilet, a former swamp, and the black heart of Britain suggests limited material. Stewart Lee and Richard Herring are dressed with shirt tails hanging out and perform throughout wearing head mikes. Behind the smiling personalities and stage presence, theirs is a way-out, laddish humour and they are intending to shock. George Michael gets the full treatment, a man from the stalls claiming to be Hew G Erection is crowned king for the night, another is asked how often he has sex and when national average sex figures are the topic, laughing girls are dismissed as "cackling witches". There is also a long and taste-less routine about the grief which followed the death of Diana, Princess of Wales (which they could not do on TV) which is presented with mock respect. Also involved is keyboard player Richard Thomas who, with his song lyrics, pushes the boundaries even further out.
Collected positive tweets for Comin' Over Here by Asian Dub Foundation feat Stewart Lee (all profits to Kent Refugee Action Network).
It was the UK's most downloaded/purchased song on Brexit day, though Wham's Last Christmas beat it in the streaming charts which are for losers. Thanks for buying it if you did.
Stewart Lee
2021-01-04T00:28:04+00:00
Collected positive tweets for Comin' Over Here by Asian Dub Foundation feat Stewart Lee (all profits to Kent Refugee Action Network). It was the UK's most downloaded/purchased song on Brexit day, though Wham's Last Christmas beat it in the streaming charts which are for losers. Thanks for buying it if you did.
Such is Stewart Lee’s influence on comedy, not only can he fill a 2,000-seat venue amid all the rest of the Fringe hoopla, but he can also persuade thousands of people to vote that an obscure Japanese avant-garde troupe they’ve never seen is the best comedy show ever – and yet do it in the name of integrity.
Well, at his Silver Stewbilee to mark his 25 years on the Fringe – or, more truthfully, to launch his new book How I Escaped My Certain Fate – comedy aficionados finally got to see what they were backing, with Frank Chickens’ first Fringe appearance since they were nominated for the Perrier that same year Lee first attended the festival.
He picked their name semi-randomly to illustrate how the Foster’s-backed poll to find the ‘comedy god’ of the past 30 years was biased towards modern favourites, unaware that the group was even still performing, albeit in a revised form. Seventeen of them, all in costumes, filled the stage at the close of this anniversary gig, and Michael McIntyre, they most certainly are not.
Thankfully, though, they are not pretentious tripe either – which must have been a real fear. With silly lyrics seemingly chosen for their sound rather than their meaning, they execute tightly choreographed dance routines that are as beautiful as they are bizarre. Nonetheless three songs, including their ‘greatest hit’ We Are Ninja (Not Geisha) and the preposterous My Husband Is A Spaceman, was probably enough to allow the audience to witness the spectacle without being left too baffled.
It was an unusual ending to a showcase that, despite all the hype about exciting mystery guests, was a largely predictable line-up of his friends who are already at the Fringe, all pretending to be someone else: Simon Munnery, Paul Putner, the actor Kevin Eldon, and his wife Bridget Christie. However, there were two surprises, one planned, one apparently not.
Eldon kicked off the show with smug Guardianista Paul Hamilton, the man who put the ‘wet’ in ‘po-wet’, delivering his verses about the real injustices in the world – such as inconsiderate campers at Glastonbury.
Putner adopted his long-forgotten guise of Earl Stevens, the slick American comic who never bothered to check his references before he came on stage, leaving him with a line in observational comedy about things no one could have observed. Belting out catchphrases from sitcoms that never made it across the Atlantic while mocking congressmen and Mets players somehow didn’t play with the Edinburgh crowd, even though he insists ‘this stuff killed at the Arkansas Chuckle Hut last week’. This massive in-joke is probably best enjoyed by serious comedy anoraks… so Lee’s audience lapped it up.
Munnery revived Alan Parker: Urban Warrior, still kicking against the system with pithy, often contradictory, slogans – ‘Ignorance is a weapon! Use it’ – and revolutionary placards, illegible to those of us at the back. Despite being a middle-aged man, or perhaps because of it, Parker’s naïve petulance plays as strongly as ever, thanks to whip-smart writing that’s stood the test of time.
Christie opened the second half as A Ant, another one for the cognoscenti, making a point about the tedious stereotypes that still burden female comedians – but combined with lots of deliberately puns around the word ‘ant’.
As for Lee’s own stand-up, the first half comprised the best of his more recent material, and the second a chance to do something newer, which he (inaccurately) predicted wouldn’t go down too well. Like his book, his live comedy now seems to come with sizeable footnotes such as ‘that’s poor choice of material for the start of the show’ or ‘I’m going to try to sell that joke to Channel 4’s Stand Up For The Week as it shows the requisite contempt for the poor’.
The comedy around which this meta-comedy formed firstly involved middle-class middle-aged city people like himself moving to the country only to find themselves desperate for company and entertainment, and secondly and his hilariously provocative routine about Scottish hero William ‘Braveheart’ Wallace, the well-known gay paedophile, which Lee can entirely justify after discovering that he himself is genetically Scottish, in a fine take on the ridiculous arbitrary nature of national pride.
One extended routine dominated the second half, a typically esoteric, elaborate and largely made-up take on charity, his war veteran grandfather and why Russell Howard is responsible for dying children. It may be new material, but aside from a few uncertain moments when he was setting out his stall, it’s already gelling well, culminating in a tidy punchline – albeit one taken from one of his much older jokes – and even managing a joke at the expense of Amnesty International, the bastards.
This is all delivered with the mastery of repetition and pregnant pauses we expect of Lee, yet still with enough of a twist to defy those very expectations.
Talking of surprises, the first came at the end of the first half, when a vocal heckler started yelling from the stalls ‘Tell us a joke.’ He quickly revealed himself to be Richard Herring, who stormed the stage to Lee’s genuine astonishment: ‘You brought a ticket?’ he gasped
Herring proceeded to berate his former double-act partner for the lies in his memoirs (of sorts) and ripped the volume up in front of his bemused face. It was strange and funny, but over far too quickly, just a tantalising reminder of a great partnership.
The second surprise came towards the end as Eldon reappeared as Tony Rudd, the Seventies character he played in Look Around You who predicted the future of music in 2000 would be the futuristic track Machadaynu. And blow me if he wasn’t backed by Franz bloody Ferdinand – who also performed Do You Want To? and Take Me Out to the audience’s delight.
The band reappeared after the Frank Chickens to help Lee live out a rock star fantasy – performing the lead vocals for a sprightly cover version of a song from Boston punk outfit Mission of Burma. The title? That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate. A good title for a book, that...
Stewart Lee
2010-08-19T12:39:56+01:00
Such is Stewart Lee’s influence on comedy, not only can he fill a 2,000-seat venue amid all the rest of the Fringe hoopla, but he can also persuade thousands of people to vote that an obscure Japanese avant-garde troupe they’ve never seen is the best comedy show ever – and yet do it in the name of integrity. Well, at his Silver Stewbilee to mark his 25 years on the Fringe – or, more truthfully, to launch his new book How I Escaped My Certain Fate – comedy aficionados finally got to see what they were backing, with Frank Chickens’ first Fringe appearance since they were nominated for the Perrier that same year Lee first attended the festival. He picked their name semi-randomly to illustrate how the Foster’s-backed poll to find the ‘comedy god’ of the past 30 years was biased towards modern favourites, unaware that the group was even still performing, albeit in a revised form. Seventeen of them, all in costumes, filled the stage at the close of this anniversary gig, and Michael McIntyre, they most certainly are not. Thankfully, though, they are not pretentious tripe either – which must have been a real fear. With silly lyrics seemingly chosen for their sound rather than their meaning, they execute tightly choreographed dance routines that are as beautiful as they are bizarre. Nonetheless three songs, including their ‘greatest hit’ We Are Ninja (Not Geisha) and the preposterous My Husband Is A Spaceman, was probably enough to allow the audience to witness the spectacle without being left too baffled. It was an unusual ending to a showcase that, despite all the hype about exciting mystery guests, was a largely predictable line-up of his friends who are already at the Fringe, all pretending to be someone else: Simon Munnery, Paul Putner,...
Netflix's arrival has reinforced the notion of a stand-up hierarchy, while complicating the perennially wretched subjects of taste and offence. Watching any comic on a subscription service implies consent to hear certain material. Yet the streaming juggernaut's power and reach means any targets of alleged 'punching down' (as in Jimmy Carr's recent gypsy Holocaust gag) can't escape the joke.
Still, to hear Stewart Lee tell it, notwithstanding his status as the UK's best comedian, as declared by a national newspaper, he is one of Netflix's biggest victims (already physically deteriorating in his fifties after a long pandemic). Not because, as he's previously suggested, the streamer dismissed his stand-up as 'too parochial' to feature. But because for two years, their online description for his belatedly acquired BBC Comedy Vehicle series was actually that of shlock horror film Sharknado.
The apoplexy this provokes is the basis for Tornado, the first hour of his performance, followed by a second, Snowflake, in which he defends both being 'woke' and his own reputation against a character assassination by journalist Tony Parsons; it's the sort of cultural war nonsense Lee delights in turning on itself with pedantry and some superb setpieces that gently push his own capacities as a performer, while typically subverting the relationship between comic and audience. Netflix heavyweights Carr, Ricky Gervais and Dave Chappelle are among those drenched in irresistible sardonic bile as Lee extends the notion of (commercially) 'saying the unsayable' to ludicrous degrees, making his moral points with caustic venom.
By focusing on the comedian pantheon and his place in it once again, Lee veers close to self-parody. Yet his peerless execution, the multi-faceted richness of his persecution complex and his sheer bloody-minded commitment to a persona and standards ensure that the laughs build an unstoppable momentum.
Stewart Lee: Snowflake/Tornado tours until Sunday 3 July; reviewed at King's Theatre, Glasgow.
Stewart Lee
2022-03-22T16:11:17+00:00
Netflix's arrival has reinforced the notion of a stand-up hierarchy, while complicating the perennially wretched subjects of taste and offence. Watching any comic on a subscription service implies consent to hear certain material. Yet the streaming juggernaut's power and reach means any targets of alleged 'punching down' (as in Jimmy Carr's recent gypsy Holocaust gag) can't escape the joke. Still, to hear Stewart Lee tell it, notwithstanding his status as the UK's best comedian, as declared by a national newspaper, he is one of Netflix's biggest victims (already physically deteriorating in his fifties after a long pandemic). Not because, as he's previously suggested, the streamer dismissed his stand-up as 'too parochial' to feature. But because for two years, their online description for his belatedly acquired BBC Comedy Vehicle series was actually that of shlock horror film Sharknado. The apoplexy this provokes is the basis for Tornado, the first hour of his performance, followed by a second, Snowflake, in which he defends both being 'woke' and his own reputation against a character assassination by journalist Tony Parsons; it's the sort of cultural war nonsense Lee delights in turning on itself with pedantry and some superb setpieces that gently push his own capacities as a performer, while typically subverting the relationship between comic and audience. Netflix heavyweights Carr, Ricky Gervais and Dave Chappelle are among those drenched in irresistible sardonic bile as Lee extends the notion of (commercially) 'saying the unsayable' to ludicrous degrees, making his moral points with caustic venom. By focusing on the comedian pantheon and his place in it once again, Lee veers close to self-parody. Yet his peerless execution, the multi-faceted richness of his persecution complex and his sheer bloody-minded commitment to a persona and standards ensure that the laughs build an unstoppable momentum. Stewart Lee: Snowflake/Tornado tours...
It’s 8.29am on Friday now and I have to file this column in two hours 31 minutes. I awoke at 6am, to watch the bloody election results coagulate, in a hotel room in Tunbridge Wells, a town so solidly middling it has been twinned with a branch of Carluccio’s.
But last Sunday, I had seen Chris Martin from Coldplay cavort before a global TV audience of more than 90 nations with a visible urine stain to the right of his fly. Evidently, a poorly self-milked penis, presumably his own, had made damp contact with the inner side of his trouser.
In the runup to the election, commentators used polls to predict the future. But I felt I had divined something of the unexpected flavour of our forthcoming fate from my own little set of signs and wonders. On Friday of last week, I found a mummified newt beneath a Frisbee in the nook where I store rakes, betokening woe. The following day, I saw Tom Stoppard staring hungrily at soup in Norfolk, prefiguring a light lunch. And on Sunday, I saw Chris Martin from Coldplay, with a urine stain on his trousers.
Mark E Smith of the Fall appeared at Glastonbury in 2015 in apparently urine-soaked slacks, but I believe this was a deliberate piece of stagecraft, designed to provide fans with a comical anecdote, and detractors with confirmation of their prejudices. Such is Smith’s commitment to his shaman-clown persona.
Chris Martin from Coldplay’s urine stain, however, was all too real, and indeed it was hard to imagine how a liquid so base as urine could mark the garments of a man who seems almost angelic, as if woven from lamb’s wool and light.
The stain was an omen, certainly, but what did it mean? Was the urine stain of the Tories going to remain on the Chris Martin from Coldplay’s trouser of British politics for some time yet? Or did Chris Martin from Coldplay’s spreading urine stain portend a spread of hope and sunshine? Either way, it was all yellow.
Tunbridge Wells. What a strange place to be on this strange morning. The BBC Today programme’s editor, Sarah Sands, former editor of the lying Sunday Telegraph and the horrible London Evening Standard, former deputy editor of the lying Daily Telegraph (Britain’s worst newspaper), and consultant editor of the often actionably appalling Daily Mail, was born here, and carries its stain with her, the mark of Cain, invalidating her eternally.
Sands’s childhood home is visible from my hotel room window, identified by the vast pulsating eye that sits atop its bat-encircled gothic tower, radiating waves of psychic evil out across Middle England. And yet, at 8.29am, it suddenly seems Britain may yet have deflected these very rays. How did Corbyn achieve his miraculous traction in the face of the concentrated bias of British news media?
Yesterday morning, Thursday, I took a massive diversion from a Wednesday night standup show in Colchester (Leave) via my North London Metropolitan Liberal Elite home to vote in my Labour safe seat, a typically British odyssey involving multiple cancelled trains and a bomb scare in Trafalgar Square, where I understand there are now plans to fill the fourth plinth with an uplifting effigy of Chris Martin from Coldplay in urine-stained trousers.
I arrived at my Tunbridge Wells (Remain) hotel at 5pm. The young woman on reception said she wasn’t voting at all as “they” were “all as bad as each other”. But they aren’t. Boris Johnson, for example, himself a lying columnist for the lying Daily Telegraph, is the worst one of “them” all by some distance.
At 6pm on Thursday night, a world away now, I ate soggy salad and found myself thinking about The Medusa Touch (1978), arguably Richard Burton’s finest movie, in which he plays a tortured writer of fiction whose ability to imagine terrible disasters convinces him he may actually be willing them into being. Lee Remick plays his psychiatrist. And the newsreader Gordon Honeycombe is, cruelly, cast as an actual piece of honeycomb named Gordon.
For the last nine months, like Burton’s paranoid novelist, I have been selling the same standup routine nightly to audiences, advancing the idea that the secret Tory steering committee always intended Boris Johnson to be leader of the party, and that Theresa May had only been put in place as a kind of palate cleanser, a nasty-tasting mouthwash that you swill around your gums before being forced to eat actual human shit.
While he himself is doubtless clean as a whistle, Johnson’s renewed public appearances these last few weeks have displayed the violently belligerent and incoherent sweatiness that people with cocaine problems take as a sign that it’s time to stop partying and seek help.
And at 7pm on Thursday, remembering Boris rampant and evidently ambitious once more, a frothing jackal circling the expiring wildebeest that is Theresa May, I found myself fearing my own Medusa Touch. Do my jokes make these awful things happen? Who am I? Should I take this minibar corkscrew and trepan my own brain to stop my worst fears becoming reality?
Alone in my Tunbridge Wells hotel room at midnight, snorting a snow drift of uncut Dimbleby in my post-show adrenaline high, a storm raging over the multistorey car park, I wondered what kind of fudge of an Observer column I could concoct to file on Friday morning, when everything was uncertain and it now looked like a hung parliament was in the offing. Luckily I had seen a urine stain on Chris Martin from Coldplay’s trousers the previous Sunday and imagined writing about that might fill a few hundred words near the start.
Long after midnight, I ate my Marks & Spencer Harissa Spiced Roasted Almonds and weighed up a half-bottle of champagne in the minibar, that I eventually chose to ignore. I was, literally, if not a Champagne Socialist, then at least a Harissa Spiced Almond Anarchist, alone and on the loose in a hotel room in Royal Tunbridge Wells as the arrogant presumptions of the Conservatives turned to tatters. And it felt good.
I have a show tonight in Basingstoke (Leave) and I’m mentally ticking off lines that are invalidated or changed by the shock result, but I expect the audience will be in a state of hysteria. And look at this joyful chaos! Laura Kuenssberg looks like her cat just died. It’s 11am on Friday and there’s apples all over the road. Emily Maitlis is scrabbling around to pick them up. And in a red dress, of all things.
Stewart Lee is touring his new show, Content Provider, throughout 2017
Stewart Lee
2017-06-11T16:00:15+01:00
It’s 8.29am on Friday now and I have to file this column in two hours 31 minutes. I awoke at 6am, to watch the bloody election results coagulate, in a hotel room in Tunbridge Wells, a town so solidly middling it has been twinned with a branch of Carluccio’s. But last Sunday, I had seen Chris Martin from Coldplay cavort before a global TV audience of more than 90 nations with a visible urine stain to the right of his fly. Evidently, a poorly self-milked penis, presumably his own, had made damp contact with the inner side of his trouser. In the runup to the election, commentators used polls to predict the future. But I felt I had divined something of the unexpected flavour of our forthcoming fate from my own little set of signs and wonders. On Friday of last week, I found a mummified newt beneath a Frisbee in the nook where I store rakes, betokening woe. The following day, I saw Tom Stoppard staring hungrily at soup in Norfolk, prefiguring a light lunch. And on Sunday, I saw Chris Martin from Coldplay, with a urine stain on his trousers. Mark E Smith of the Fall appeared at Glastonbury in 2015 in apparently urine-soaked slacks, but I believe this was a deliberate piece of stagecraft, designed to provide fans with a comical anecdote, and detractors with confirmation of their prejudices. Such is Smith’s commitment to his shaman-clown persona. Chris Martin from Coldplay’s urine stain, however, was all too real, and indeed it was hard to imagine how a liquid so base as urine could mark the garments of a man who seems almost angelic, as if woven from lamb’s wool and light. The stain was an omen, certainly, but what did it mean? Was the urine stain of...
Hard on the heels of Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson's latest gaff comes The 'If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One' EP, a short book that works in a similar fashion to How I Escaped My Certain Fate, Stewart Lee's last book (Lee tells us to
View that book as a 122 vinyl album, such as The Specials' 1979 debut, and this is a complementary EP, such as The Special AKA Live!, with live tracks and otherwise unavailable tunes, and issued after the album's release to exploit consumer interest in the first product while a more substantial follow-up is prepared.)
We get the full script of a set together with footnotes and bookended by an introduction, an afterword and an appendix. I mention Jeremy Clarkson because a significant portion of The 'If You Prefer a Milder Comedian...' set revolves around Top Gear and an imagined friendship that developed between Lee and Richard 'The Hamster' ('He's Not Really a Hamster') Hammond.
This set came at a peculiar time for the professional underdog in that he'd just had a critically acclaimed TV series on BBC2 which meant he had to try different things in order to maintain that sense of distance and detachment he'd worked so hard to refine. In reality, Stewart Lee is becoming more and more popular and more and more (whisper it) understood. On stage, as Lee attempts to go further and further, challenging himself and his audience, the sense of him as a curmudgeonly outsider continues (arguably reaching its apotheosis in the moments when he drew attention to audience members leaving in series two of the Stewart Lee Comedy Vehicle).
So, we have a set that opens with a comedy routine Lee has styled in the vein of Michael McIntyre, involving the purchase of a coffee. This then segues into a riff on McIntyre and Frankie Boyle who, for Lee, represent the twin pillars of modern comedy (a riff that, again arguably, was revived during the aforementioned series 2 of SLCV in an inspired take on Russell Howard - Lee is sometimes like Samuel Beckett's dog, chained to its own vomit).
From here we lead into an occasionally savage filleting of Top Gear and Richard 'The Hamster' ('He's Not Really a Hamster') Hammond that somehow manages to anticipate and respond to the controversy it will inevitably generate. Finally, the set concludes with Lee manufacturing a family history in which his agricultural ancestors said a line that was later 'stolen' by Magners in an advertising campaign. This leads into Lee breaking the final comedy barrier (sincerity), covering an old Steve Earle classic called 'Galway Girl', which was itself ruined by an advert.
Of course, reading the set within the pages of a book is not the ideal way to experience it - you should pick it up (by buying it, from a shop) and then get this book - because this book is an ideal companion piece, filling you in on the thinking behind what he was doing in a most chucklesome manner.
Just remember: it is an EP so you might find yourself devouring it too quickly and needing another Stewart Lee fix soon. Thankfully he's on tour throughout the UK in the first half of the year (I have my tickets) and then we have another book to look forward to after that (entitled TV Comedian, coming in the second half of 2012, we can but hope it's a similar treatment for all the episodes of the TV show).
Any Cop?: Very much so. More please!
Stewart Lee
2012-01-23T17:37:13+00:00
Hard on the heels of Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson's latest gaff comes The 'If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One' EP, a short book that works in a similar fashion to How I Escaped My Certain Fate, Stewart Lee's last book (Lee tells us to View that book as a 122 vinyl album, such as The Specials' 1979 debut, and this is a complementary EP, such as The Special AKA Live!, with live tracks and otherwise unavailable tunes, and issued after the album's release to exploit consumer interest in the first product while a more substantial follow-up is prepared.) We get the full script of a set together with footnotes and bookended by an introduction, an afterword and an appendix. I mention Jeremy Clarkson because a significant portion of The 'If You Prefer a Milder Comedian...' set revolves around Top Gear and an imagined friendship that developed between Lee and Richard 'The Hamster' ('He's Not Really a Hamster') Hammond. This set came at a peculiar time for the professional underdog in that he'd just had a critically acclaimed TV series on BBC2 which meant he had to try different things in order to maintain that sense of distance and detachment he'd worked so hard to refine. In reality, Stewart Lee is becoming more and more popular and more and more (whisper it) understood. On stage, as Lee attempts to go further and further, challenging himself and his audience, the sense of him as a curmudgeonly outsider continues (arguably reaching its apotheosis in the moments when he drew attention to audience members leaving in series two of the Stewart Lee Comedy Vehicle). So, we have a set that opens with a comedy routine Lee has styled in the vein of Michael McIntyre, involving the purchase of a...
On Tuesday, the unflappable Conservative party leadership hopeful Theresa May opined that high levels of immigration make it “impossible to build a cohesive society”. To be fair, so do massive social inequality, a lack of affordable housing and systematic corporate tax avoidance on an industrial scale by the government’s friends and backers. Ka-pow! Take that Tory scum! Oh look. There’s egg on your Savile Row suit. Never mind. Maybe a poor child would like to lick it off for their breakfast.
Social cohesion isn’t helped either, of course, by the culture secretary’s anti-BBC plans to kill off Doctor Who, David Attenborough and the stay-at-home mums’ ecstasy-generation CBeebies heartthrob Mr Bloom, who provides private spring onion-based fantasies that glue many a failing marriage together when the lights go out.
In fact, the best thing the right has done for social cohesion lately was to spread rumours about its own ceremonial figurehead romancing a dead pig’s disembodied face, which at least brought the country together for 24 hours, before the goldfish-memoried populace promptly forgot about it, like fracking and that boy on the beach.
On the same day as the unflappable May’s pronouncement on immigration, the all too flappable public liability and professional whey-face Jeremy Hunt struggled out of his scold’s bridle and made his annual emergence from behind his tree of shame to declare that his wife was Chinese.
Then Jeremy went on to suggest we should all work harder, like those Chinamen in the blue pyjamas and curly slippers they have in cowboy films. But we don’t want any of them coming here of course, however hard they work, unless it’s as wives. That stupid Hunt (trad arr).
Unpack Theresa May’s anti-immigration statement and it dissolves into qualifiable anxieties about how schools and housing and hospitals will accommodate rapid population growth. But it is clearly phrased to compress down neatly into more alarming headlines, like the Telegraph’s brutal “Migration ‘harming society’’’, designed to play well with hateful people historically ill-attuned to nuance, such as Conservative voters and newspaper editors.
On the Today programme the same morning the increasingly flappable prime minister, David William Donald Cameron, pigheadedly refused to distance himself from the comment. In fact he had clearly been briefed to endorse it, despite the fact it can obviously be simplified to support a racist agenda. Dave is either a cynic or an idiot. Either way, he’s off soon to a brace of directorships, a glacial Scandinavian box set, and a heaving cheeseboard of the bassist from Blur’s Peripatetic Wigwam. Some other mug can muck out the stable now.
While it’s not racist to oppose immigration, is it still racist, in 2015, to be racist? And is it acceptable to make clanking cultural generalisations? It was on 3 October that the Daily Mail content provider Amanda Platell introduced the notion of a chocolate mosque into the collective subconscious. But still, more than a week later, Platell’s enormous chocolate mosque continues to loom over my imagination like an enormous chocolate mosque, an image so absurd that it becomes a viable metaphor for its own self.
In case the news-blip passed you by, Platell made minor chocolate ripples by suggesting in print that a middle-class woman called Flora Shedden, and her chocolate carousel, were booted off the BBC’s Bake Off cake contest in favour of Muslim mum Nadiya Hussain, gay doctor Tamal Ray and “new man” Ian Cumming, because she wasn’t “politically correct” enough. Perhaps, wrote Platell, “if she’d made a chocolate mosque she’d have stood a better chance”.
Let’s subject Platell’s statement to the same scrutiny May’s will doubtless undergo this week. The idea that a chocolate mosque would have scored better than a chocolate carousel suggests a baking competition in which, as well as for the technical quality of the cake, points are also awarded for the meaning and cultural significance of the thing that the cake is made to look like.
The idea that Shedden lost because she didn’t make a chocolate mosque would only hold water had she been in competition with other cakes that had also been baked into the shape of culturally, socially or politically significant icons, saturated with meanings designed to appeal to the liberally biased judges of Platell’s fecund imagination; ie a sponge Unitarian chapel, a meringue women’s refuge, a fudge abortion clinic, or an icing sugar Tom Daley. As this was not the case, and her fellow competitors’ cakes were not baked in shapes smothered with inference, it is spurious to suggest that the outcome of the cake contest was decided on these terms.
An obvious subtext to Platell’s story is that the other contestants were favoured, irrespective of the quality of their cake work, because they fulfilled some kind of politically correct quota, such as “Muslim mum” and “gay doctor”. But the idea that this could be a deciding factor is undermined by the presence of the third victor, Ian Cumming, for whom the best denigrating epithet that the increasingly desperate Platell can find is “new man”, a phrase last used pejoratively by a woman wearing legwarmers in the early 1980s.
Indeed, we are all “new men” now. While Richard Hammond may, in a public and professional capacity, have failed to prevent his boss punching his employee in the face, he almost certainly changes babies’ nappies and loads the dishwasher at home. Times have changed.
I am a professional humorist, and objectively the third most critically acclaimed British standup comedian of the 21st century. If I write a stupid thing, on some level I invite you to assume it was deliberate, and that I have, to some extent, created a secondary “columnist” persona, in which I take on the role of the sort of person who would write the absurd things that I am writing, such as this sentence for example.
Amanda Platell, on the other hand, is an actual Daily Mail journalist and a former press secretary to the genuine William Hague, a man who really exists, albeit indeterminately. There is no reason to assume we are supposed to take the things she says as if they were meant as satirical mirror-images of received idiotic thought, unless of course Platell has been in extremely deep cover, consolidating the credibility of her chosen clown identity, for decades now.
If that isn’t the case, then it seems the contrived and demonstrably invalid “chocolate mosque” idea was designed to inflame a particular sort of monetisable sentiment, also evident in the provocative headlines composted down from Theresa May’s Conservative conference speech. “Here they are, coming over here, destabilising society and winning Bake Off. With their chocolate mosques.”
Stewart Lee’s A Room With a Stew is at Leicester Square theatre, London WC2 until 8 Jan. Details at stewartlee.co.uk
Stewart Lee
2015-10-11T19:37:03+01:00
On Tuesday, the unflappable Conservative party leadership hopeful Theresa May opined that high levels of immigration make it “impossible to build a cohesive society”. To be fair, so do massive social inequality, a lack of affordable housing and systematic corporate tax avoidance on an industrial scale by the government’s friends and backers. Ka-pow! Take that Tory scum! Oh look. There’s egg on your Savile Row suit. Never mind. Maybe a poor child would like to lick it off for their breakfast. Social cohesion isn’t helped either, of course, by the culture secretary’s anti-BBC plans to kill off Doctor Who, David Attenborough and the stay-at-home mums’ ecstasy-generation CBeebies heartthrob Mr Bloom, who provides private spring onion-based fantasies that glue many a failing marriage together when the lights go out. In fact, the best thing the right has done for social cohesion lately was to spread rumours about its own ceremonial figurehead romancing a dead pig’s disembodied face, which at least brought the country together for 24 hours, before the goldfish-memoried populace promptly forgot about it, like fracking and that boy on the beach. On the same day as the unflappable May’s pronouncement on immigration, the all too flappable public liability and professional whey-face Jeremy Hunt struggled out of his scold’s bridle and made his annual emergence from behind his tree of shame to declare that his wife was Chinese. Then Jeremy went on to suggest we should all work harder, like those Chinamen in the blue pyjamas and curly slippers they have in cowboy films. But we don’t want any of them coming here of course, however hard they work, unless it’s as wives. That stupid Hunt (trad arr). Unpack Theresa May’s anti-immigration statement and it dissolves into qualifiable anxieties about how schools and housing and hospitals will accommodate rapid population...
On the tabla-propelled Travel, The Sails play sitar-flanged psychedelia in the style of The Beatles' post-enlightenment incarnation. Yesterday And Today draws a line from Honeybus' 1968 single I Can't Let Maggie Go to The La's' wondrous eighties one hit There She Goes.
Dogs plunders the twelve-string folk-rock of The Hollies, in the interlude between ditching their matching suits and swallowing their sugar cubes.
If all late sixties British acid-pop were destroyed, and recreated from DNA particles lodged in Oasis' Dig Out Your Soul album, it might sound like A Headful Of Stars, an extremely satisfying exercise in reconstructive surgery.
Stewart Lee
2011-01-09T21:35:11+00:00
On the tabla-propelled Travel, The Sails play sitar-flanged psychedelia in the style of The Beatles' post-enlightenment incarnation. Yesterday And Today draws a line from Honeybus' 1968 single I Can't Let Maggie Go to The La's' wondrous eighties one hit There She Goes. Dogs plunders the twelve-string folk-rock of The Hollies, in the interlude between ditching their matching suits and swallowing their sugar cubes. If all late sixties British acid-pop were destroyed, and recreated from DNA particles lodged in Oasis' Dig Out Your Soul album, it might sound like A Headful Of Stars, an extremely satisfying exercise in reconstructive surgery.
Life on tour for a successful comedian can be a bit of a slog, but for Stewart Lee, Shrewsbury left its mark when he performed in the county town last year.
"We walked past a pub where an acoustic guitarist was playing covers of John Martyn songs, and they were selling a nice local bitter—and that is about as good as it gets on the road," the 45-year-old recalled.
With the county town a regular date on his tours over the past 25 years, Lee's association with Shropshire goes back even further than that, having been born in Wellington before moving to Solihull, where he developed an early taste for comedy.
"My grandparents, who brought me up as a little kid, were very much of the area. They were both on the shop floor at Cadbury's before the war, spoke with the accents of the area and had a distinct sense of humour. My grandfather was a big influence on me in that way," he said.
A London resident for many years, Lee admits that his Midlands accent has become somewhat diluted, yet he still sees his native tongue as a potent weapon in his comedic arsenal.
"If I'm saying something really pretentious, dogmatic or contentious, if I let a little bit of the lilt trickle back into my voice, it seems to neutralise it. I think people trust the Birmingham accent, they don't seem to think it's capable of deceit or guile, or pretentiousness. There's something really great about it," he said.
Lee doesn't confine references to his West Midlands roots to the accent. When asked about a type of curry that could sum him up, Lee stays very much close to home.
"A balti, probably. Something that began with a localised popularity, but appears to be becoming a national dish," he joked.
Lee first rose to prominence as the writing and performing partner of Richard Herring, with Lee and Herring's Fist of Fun comedy show a hit on BBC radio and television in the early to mid-1990s. A Sunday lunchtime show, This Morning With Richard Not Judy, took the pair to the end of the decade and, along with it, the end of their professional partnership.
The past 14 years have seen Lee perform a number of themed stand-up shows, with titles such as 90s Comedian, 41st Best Stand-Up Ever, If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One and last year's Carpet Remnant World. Hot on the heels of a run at this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Lee's new show, Much A-Stew About Nothing, kicked off its national tour on Tuesday. So what can the audience expect when it rolls into Shrewsbury on Monday?
"The idea of this tour is that normally when I do a tour I write a show that's a two-hour through line, it's got some kind of beginning, middle and end, and some kind of story to it. Every couple of years, I do a tour where I try and work out three hours of stuff for the telly show, so any stories or ideas have to be self-contained within a 30-minute loop,” he explained.
The "telly show" Lee referred to is Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, the BBC production that won the Bafta award for best comedy programme last year. With a third series scheduled for March next year, Lee finds that his inspiration comes from a middle-aged point of view these days.
"I tried to fix a light in the kitchen about six months ago in the middle of the night, fell and ended up in A & E. I think they thought I had been drinking or was on drugs, and I worked that into half an hour about what it's like to be a middle-aged dad and to be weak and vulnerable,” he said, adding that he still hadn't lost his eye for a dig at politicians.
"I've got half an hour on UKIP policy. I'd dropped the kids off at school and I had the car radio on and the bloke from UKIP came on. He did a really incoherent, mad interview, which was quite funny, and then I found it online and you suddenly had half an hour.”
With Much A-Stew About Nothing stopping off at some large venues, such as Birmingham's 2,200-seat capacity Symphony Hall, Lee's popularity is clearly broadening much to the comedian's consternation.
"The perception of me is that [my audience] is just a load of Guardian readers, but it's hilarious now, it's so diverse. You get a whole spread, old people," he said.
Stewart Lee
2013-09-13T18:07:38+01:00
Life on tour for a successful comedian can be a bit of a slog, but for Stewart Lee, Shrewsbury left its mark when he performed in the county town last year. "We walked past a pub where an acoustic guitarist was playing covers of John Martyn songs, and they were selling a nice local bitter—and that is about as good as it gets on the road," the 45-year-old recalled. With the county town a regular date on his tours over the past 25 years, Lee's association with Shropshire goes back even further than that, having been born in Wellington before moving to Solihull, where he developed an early taste for comedy. "My grandparents, who brought me up as a little kid, were very much of the area. They were both on the shop floor at Cadbury's before the war, spoke with the accents of the area and had a distinct sense of humour. My grandfather was a big influence on me in that way," he said. A London resident for many years, Lee admits that his Midlands accent has become somewhat diluted, yet he still sees his native tongue as a potent weapon in his comedic arsenal. "If I'm saying something really pretentious, dogmatic or contentious, if I let a little bit of the lilt trickle back into my voice, it seems to neutralise it. I think people trust the Birmingham accent, they don't seem to think it's capable of deceit or guile, or pretentiousness. There's something really great about it," he said. Lee doesn't confine references to his West Midlands roots to the accent. When asked about a type of curry that could sum him up, Lee stays very much close to home. "A balti, probably. Something that began with a localised popularity, but appears to be becoming a...
Ben Clover finds Stewart Lee's Vegetable Stew a little more silly and a little less ranty than usual, but no less precise.
Stewart Lee isn’t going to let something like gravity interfere with his act. Near the start of Vegetable Stew he says it isn’t a show with an arc like previous 60-minuters, but it’s still done with such precision that midway, after taking a gulp of water, he puts the bottle back on the stool, then carefully lies it flat, just in case it falls over.
It’s as if he’d decided very quickly he had no bottle-of-water-falls-over material and that it would be an event that would have to be acknowledged. After all, there’s no point having finely-crafted material questioning the audience’s own relationship to other material immediately preceding it, if they just want something funny about a bottle of water falling over. Best to just lie it flat, just in case, he probably thought.
Maybe his recent book on stand-up was so analytical that it makes you now pay more attention to tiny details than you should. But he seems more annoyed than amused later when, after much affected tuning of a guitar, the low E-string isn’t actually in tune when he needs it for a song.
The song is about the young Bullingdon Club boys now running the country as they rampaged around Oxford as students. It’s the centre-piece to one of the three subjects Lee introduces tonight, that will presumably form half of the second series of his Comedy Vehicle on the BBC next year.
Alongside politics, there are 30 minutes each on charity and Adrian Chiles. It’s not clear if his story about the BBC’s lawyers banning him from making a whole show about the former One Show presenter, because it constituted a “sustained, personal attack” is true, or whether it is untrue but nonetheless conveys the truth about corporation oversensitivity.
It’s all very clever but at the same time there’s fun to be had with words like “slayings” in sillier bits about Lee’s grandad, “a comic character”. Overall this seems like a slightly more hinged set than those from the first Comedy Vehicle series. Less ranty, a little bit less “inexplicably bitter“, but only a little bit.
He says he is trying to slim his audience down into people who share the same tastes and references as him, but also carps about having to play in a cellar while Tim Minchin tickets at the Millennium Dome go for £100+. But if he did narrow his crowd down to people just like him, wouldn’t they be quite a tough crowd; pedantic, prickly, inexplicably bitter?
So however chagrined he may appear, he should’ve been pleased with the press night crowd he does get, they laugh loud and often on their own, as the silliness take holds of them individually. There’s the same winning combination of repetition, sustained personal attacks and simultaneous director’s commentary as always, and always topped with a brilliant line.
But there is less of the walking into the crowd, sitting next to someone and doing the show from there. He might have decided that kind of thing is best left to Ahir Shah now.
At the start of the second half his pint of Guinness seems to sit fairly stably on the stool.
Stewart Lee
2010-11-01T15:04:09+00:00
Ben Clover finds Stewart Lee's Vegetable Stew a little more silly and a little less ranty than usual, but no less precise. Stewart Lee isn’t going to let something like gravity interfere with his act. Near the start of Vegetable Stew he says it isn’t a show with an arc like previous 60-minuters, but it’s still done with such precision that midway, after taking a gulp of water, he puts the bottle back on the stool, then carefully lies it flat, just in case it falls over. It’s as if he’d decided very quickly he had no bottle-of-water-falls-over material and that it would be an event that would have to be acknowledged. After all, there’s no point having finely-crafted material questioning the audience’s own relationship to other material immediately preceding it, if they just want something funny about a bottle of water falling over. Best to just lie it flat, just in case, he probably thought. Maybe his recent book on stand-up was so analytical that it makes you now pay more attention to tiny details than you should. But he seems more annoyed than amused later when, after much affected tuning of a guitar, the low E-string isn’t actually in tune when he needs it for a song. The song is about the young Bullingdon Club boys now running the country as they rampaged around Oxford as students. It’s the centre-piece to one of the three subjects Lee introduces tonight, that will presumably form half of the second series of his Comedy Vehicle on the BBC next year. Alongside politics, there are 30 minutes each on charity and Adrian Chiles. It’s not clear if his story about the BBC’s lawyers banning him from making a whole show about the former One Show presenter, because it constituted a “sustained, personal...
IN EARLY 2015 I had a long routine about a cat named after UKIP politicians, but I had to drop it over the Summer of 2015, and re-write it to be about Jeremy Corbyn.
So utterly had UKIP dropped from public consciousness that no-one was even interested enough in them to laugh at them.
Of course, now they are a major force again, so here are 2 versions live of the routine from the spring of 2015.
Recorded live at the Oxford Playhouse as part of the 'A Room With A Stew' tour on the 29th & 30th March 2015.
Recorded & Mixed by James Hingley.
Stewart Lee
2016-07-08T17:10:32+01:00
IN EARLY 2015 I had a long routine about a cat named after UKIP politicians, but I had to drop it over the Summer of 2015, and re-write it to be about Jeremy Corbyn. So utterly had UKIP dropped from public consciousness that no-one was even interested enough in them to laugh at them. Of course, now they are a major force again, so here are 2 versions live of the routine from the spring of 2015. Recorded live at the Oxford Playhouse as part of the 'A Room With A Stew' tour on the 29th & 30th March 2015. Recorded & Mixed by James Hingley.
https://www.stewartlee.co.uk/mp3/flags/
A few days before the end of the England trip, we managed to watch A Room with a Stew by Stewart Lee, a comedian my wife’s family, who the UK Border Agency hadn’t wanted me to see, gave me the gift of knowing about. Truth is, the hour and a half I spent watching Stew was the only time while I was in England that I felt there’s something to envy the English for.
In a TV interview, Stewart Lee explains that when you see his dark jokes and see other people’s dark jokes, you’ll know exactly why the others never take the extra step — take it to the end — and why he does. Stewart Lee is not famous in Egypt because his videos don’t show up in the related list when you’re watching Louis CK on YouTube.
In A Room with a Stew, Stew jokes about how he’s always named his pets after celebrities. He tells the story of his dog that had the name of a B-list British actor, and how his dog died after a failed jump to a high shelf. He seals the joke with a simile between the dog and the actor and how both met their end while still thinking they could reach something much higher than their true capabilities. A section of the audience releases a sympathetic wince. Stew looks at them and nods unapologetically as if to say: “Yes, it’s not a joke.”
The thing I find most interesting about Stew’s comedy — other than it being extremely English — is how it analyzes the very phenomenon of making people laugh. He doesn’t just superficially bring up his own miseries or other people’s miseries to make you accept sadness and have more hope in tomorrow and love life. When he says something sad he means it. He makes you laugh at how sad it is, not despite how sad it is. There’s no denial in it, and it’s not delivered in a “funny” way. He also judges you in your laughter and tells you why you’re laughing at one thing more than something else.
The first thing I remember watching by Stewart Lee was a show called 41st Best Comedian Ever, where he talks about being ranked as the 41st best comedian in the UK. Of course this is sad, and it’s definitely funny. What does such a ranking mean? What does ranking itself mean after number 3? Or 10? In the show he talks about how his mum attended the show of a famous traditional comedian who was ranked higher than him while she was on a cruise. He imitates his old mother trying — with great admiration — to tell him the joke, he said, that she really loved. It takes him 30 minutes almost, during which he repeats a sentence expressing how clever this other comedian is nearly 30 times. He finally tells the joke his mum loved, in the silliest possible way, and the audience laugh really hard at how silly it is.
Many comedians repeat a joke to milk out the last drop of laughter, yet repeating a joke is a haunting nightmare for a comedian who’s slowly and steadily mauling his self-confidence and his ability to create. Stew breaks into this nightmare, tames it and makes it do exactly what he wants. Despite how dangerous repetition is, repetition is always the most unpredictable joke.
When Stewart Lee makes fun of young people, he first makes fun of himself for being old, then makes fun of the kind of jokes he made when he was younger, then makes fun of what young people are into compared to what old people are into, then he pushes the old person’s game to the end and says today’s kids think they’re into violent sex but our old timers’ violent sex used to end up in death or in hospitals. You find yourself thinking about how ridiculous it is to brag about things you have no hand in, like when you’re born, even though Stew doesn’t say that.
Stew says: Young people aren’t into my comedy? Of course, because they like other stuff. Young people like smartphones. Then he pretends the microphone is a phone and keeps hitting it with his finger with a manic expression on his face, and he does it for 40 seconds until you hate yourself.
Stew is aware of people’s love for the rudeness of jokes, and their longing to hear what should never be said. He appears to have more fun the ruder and more decadent his jokes get. Also what Stew does feels a lot more complicated than a direct response to this primitive urge for impropriety.
Stew plays multiple characters in his show. He says many things he would never say in normal life. He responds to your expectations, ambitions and suppressed dreams and lets you hear what your subconscious wants you to hear, but he does it with conscience. He gets you involved in the moment and explains to you what’s going on. It feels like a psychological experiment.
In A Room with a Stew there’s a 30-minute segment about Islamophobia where he talks about the West’s relationship with Islam and Muslims at the moment. He acts out an imagined argument with an angry right-wing Islamophobic English person who’s mad at Stew and his blind Muslim-aligned prejudice because of Stew’s feeble liberal political correctness. Stew tries to please this angry white person and promises him that within the next half hour he will tear Muslims apart. He starts thinking out loud, and tries to formulate the joke the way the bigot will like it, then he starts saying it. You see very clearly how he comes out of his own skin and down to the level of the argument to please, and you think of every similar public act of rhetoric that lowers itself the same way, and you laugh at Stew swinging back and forth on the stage chewing nothing in his mouth.
In his show Stew calls himself a politically correct liberal comedian. He quietly explains between jokes what he thinks is wrong with his country. He talks about minorities and social harmony, he talks about nationalism and makes fun of the British national anthem. At the same time he presents an extremely funny and extremely complex show. He talks about how he writes, how he designs his script and adjusts his timing. He says what he thinks of himself and other people doing the same job. He also makes fun of religions and religious people, his audience and everything.
To put it simply: He says everything he wants without offending anyone.
>Watching Stewart Lee was a comfortable experience in the middle of the chaos of the England visit, all the emotional expectations around it and actually being surrounded by England. It was comfortable because — unlike central London where the theater was located and unlike Louis CK — it was realistic and honest, and its anaesthetic repetitiveness synchronized smoothly with the world's normal repetitiveness, just like the guitar in The Fall’s Blindness, which played on loop from the theater’s speakers until Stew emerged at the beginning of the show. We just noticed now how similar it is to Roots Manuva’s Witness the Fitness, which I sung with my wife’s family — who the UK Border Agency doesn’t want me to hang out with — throughout the holiday.
Stewart Lee
2016-01-19T20:05:27+00:00
A few days before the end of the England trip, we managed to watch A Room with a Stew by Stewart Lee, a comedian my wife’s family, who the UK Border Agency hadn’t wanted me to see, gave me the gift of knowing about. Truth is, the hour and a half I spent watching Stew was the only time while I was in England that I felt there’s something to envy the English for. In a TV interview, Stewart Lee explains that when you see his dark jokes and see other people’s dark jokes, you’ll know exactly why the others never take the extra step — take it to the end — and why he does. Stewart Lee is not famous in Egypt because his videos don’t show up in the related list when you’re watching Louis CK on YouTube. In A Room with a Stew, Stew jokes about how he’s always named his pets after celebrities. He tells the story of his dog that had the name of a B-list British actor, and how his dog died after a failed jump to a high shelf. He seals the joke with a simile between the dog and the actor and how both met their end while still thinking they could reach something much higher than their true capabilities. A section of the audience releases a sympathetic wince. Stew looks at them and nods unapologetically as if to say: “Yes, it’s not a joke.” The thing I find most interesting about Stew’s comedy — other than it being extremely English — is how it analyzes the very phenomenon of making people laugh. He doesn’t just superficially bring up his own miseries or other people’s miseries to make you accept sadness and have more hope in tomorrow and love life. When he says something...
One thing in particular intrigues me about Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle. It felt as if he was doing warm-ups and works-in-progress for this series for at least a year in advance around the UK. I assumed that this was to get every phrase, every comma, every pause in the right place. And then along comes episode 5 and, unless he is pulling the wool over the liberal intelligentsia’s eyes and engages plants and stooges like a hack magician, he frequently seems to be winging it here.
The subject in this penultimate episode is Migrants, but actually this is just a peg for Lee to take potshots at rent-a-gob newspaper columnists (not like his Observer column at all...). This does feel a bit like fish-in-a-barrel time, particularly when he comes inevitably to Katie Hopkins, but when Lee is on the case you know are you are going to get an original, forensic drill-down. And also an image that will be unseeable. This time it involves a dog’s genitalia.
In a compelling instalment it even looks as if he is developing a catchphrase. Albeit a mouthful of a catchphrase: “I can do jokes. It’s just not something that interests me.” Lee compares writing gags to working in a factory on a production line, whereas he prefers a more improvisational jazzy stance: “Miles Davis has arrived.”
But as I wrote earlier, what fascinates me here are the spontaneous moments. At one point someone in the audience gets up and Lee seems to be about to do some business about them leaving, but then misses the moment. But Lee being Lee, he talks about not doing the material for longer than the material would have lasted. Then later on he makes a reference to someone looking at their watch, which prompts him to extend a routine.
I can see how the latter clock-watching moment might have been developed during warm-ups, but the former walkout incident was surely unrehearsed. Although Lee obviously has material to cover people getting up and going to the toilet it is interesting that he keeps it in the final edit. But then again, it works. If it didn't I guess it would have been cut out.
All of this is a roundabout way of underlining that this episode is essential viewing. And not just because Lee's looseness is strangely engaging. I remember Daniel Kitson years ago talking about appearing on a radio programme with Rod Liddle and being so offended by the columnist that he coined the insult “Rod off!”. Lee’s Liddle-bile is not quite as succinct as this, but, as you’ll see, he certainly gets the point across. And then across again. And again.
Stewart Lee
2016-03-01T14:28:36+00:00
One thing in particular intrigues me about Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle. It felt as if he was doing warm-ups and works-in-progress for this series for at least a year in advance around the UK. I assumed that this was to get every phrase, every comma, every pause in the right place. And then along comes episode 5 and, unless he is pulling the wool over the liberal intelligentsia’s eyes and engages plants and stooges like a hack magician, he frequently seems to be winging it here. The subject in this penultimate episode is Migrants, but actually this is just a peg for Lee to take potshots at rent-a-gob newspaper columnists (not like his Observer column at all...). This does feel a bit like fish-in-a-barrel time, particularly when he comes inevitably to Katie Hopkins, but when Lee is on the case you know are you are going to get an original, forensic drill-down. And also an image that will be unseeable. This time it involves a dog’s genitalia. In a compelling instalment it even looks as if he is developing a catchphrase. Albeit a mouthful of a catchphrase: “I can do jokes. It’s just not something that interests me.” Lee compares writing gags to working in a factory on a production line, whereas he prefers a more improvisational jazzy stance: “Miles Davis has arrived.” But as I wrote earlier, what fascinates me here are the spontaneous moments. At one point someone in the audience gets up and Lee seems to be about to do some business about them leaving, but then misses the moment. But Lee being Lee, he talks about not doing the material for longer than the material would have lasted. Then later on he makes a reference to someone looking at their watch, which prompts him to extend...
What is the point of the arts? Last week, it appeared it is to create accessible mainstream drama that highlights and threatens to actually resolve an injustice that the government ignored, while at the same time increasing advertising revenue for a commercial broadcaster because of massive viewing figures – a double win for both big business and bleeding-heart liberals who don’t want to see the lives of hundreds of innocent people destroyed for ever!
It seems all it took was bold commissioning and beloved TV faces to start to stem the scandal, which must irk all the journalists in sidelined liberal outlets who’ve been writing about it for years. But what next for woke ITV? For example, Eton school is unable to open because undermaintained sewers have flooded it with human excrement. One could argue the school itself has, in the shape of David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Kwasi Kwarteng and the Daily Telegraph’s Charles Moore, done much the same to Britain itself. But should the sewage scandal be woke ITV drama’s next target?
In Filthy Vengeance, Danny Dyer plays a sentient piece of woke excrement with a cockney accent, discharged into a chalk stream by a corrupt privatised utility company, who learns at first-hand of the damage being done and vows to take woke revenge on the network of international financiers and free-market politicians who facilitate it, by any means necessary. Rob Brydon cameos as a lecherous water bailiff.
The woke punk-fisher Feargal Sharkey can play himself in a scene where he meets the woke Dyer faeces in a sewer and agrees to team up to smash capitalism. Hopefully, it will be more convincing than the disgraced horse-warming tax-avoider Nadhim Zahawi MP’s performance in Mr Bates, who mouthed things he had actually said previously in such a hammy way it appeared he had been replaced by his own Spitting Image puppet.
Zahawi’s bum note aside, Mr Bates was a win for acting, writing, filming, recorded sound, design, costume and the arts generally, showing how the arts can excite the collective imagination and the national conscience, give voice to the voiceless and bring the whole country together by the power of storytelling. Has there ever been a worse time then for the backward fenland swamp of Suffolk to announce that it is cutting its entire arts budget? No art for fen folk. Shut up and eat your turnips.
Conventional wisdom says arts funding doubles its return by drawing in visitors and increasing spending in businesses that benefit from their patronage (I say with some pride that the age and gender demographic of my audience means it regularly breaks bar-takings records in provincial theatres, hard-drinking fans of the low art of standup thus subsidising more worthwhile forms such as dance, theatre and Fleetwood Mac tribute bands). The fact is, Suffolk’s £500,000 arts cut could actually mean a million pounds Suffolk can ill-afford to lose will now not be spent in the darkening region as cultural consumers stay in their wattle and daub huts to stream Mr Bates on TV instead.
Sadly, Suffolk’s value as a cultural destination has barely begun to be exploited. Metalheads the world over would flock to Ipswich, if only it had the wisdom to open a shrine to its most famous sons, the Luciferian innovators Cradle of Filth, while fans of early 70s commune jam rock would surely pay homage at the Sotherton farmhouse that housed the Global Village Trucking Company, especially if there were an animatronic diorama showing men playing 20-minute guitar solos while wives and girlfriends washed up and changed nappies.
Joking apart, the ghostly tales of MR James draw millions of Christmas viewers and at Livermere rectory, where he spent his childhood, you can marvel at the gravestones that supplied him with character names, and the churchyard just as he described it in his final story, A Vignette; Aldeburgh is obviously the “Seaburgh” seaside town of the timelessly chilling A Warning to the Curious. Elsewhere, Great Barton church has beautiful Edward Burne-Jones glass; the Halesworth Gallery’s outdoor sculpture trail last summer was the most fun I’ve had with ceramics; and the suddenly decimated Eastern Angles theatre company has spent decades embodying rural working-class experiences in flexible mobile productions that can fill village halls, or transfer to London venues when metropolitan elitists deign to notice them. Even Lowestoft’s the Darkness are quite good, really.
A cultural exodus from costly London means Suffolk is benefiting from an influx of displaced artists, but if Suffolk rejects them, they will take their talents elsewhere. Suffolk’s historic enemy Norfolk will instead become a cultural powerhouse akin to Paris’s Rive Gauche in the 50s and 60s, with Cromer, Ormesby St Margaret and Eccles-on-Sea emerging as centres of new ways of seeing, new ways of feeling, new ways of loving and new ways of being, new Sartres, new Camus and new De Beauvoirs rising from the culverts and ha-has.
But is it any wonder that the party that profits by turning people against one another, and that busted Brexit through only because people were too ill-informed to see through it, has no incentive to fund anything that fosters understanding and compassion. Suffolk’s overwhelming support for leave in the Brexit referendum shows how vulnerable its inhabitants are to manipulation and misinformation. Suffolk needs the illuminating beam of the arts to save it from itself.
Stewart Lee
2024-01-14T18:44:23+00:00
What is the point of the arts? Last week, it appeared it is to create accessible mainstream drama that highlights and threatens to actually resolve an injustice that the government ignored, while at the same time increasing advertising revenue for a commercial broadcaster because of massive viewing figures – a double win for both big business and bleeding-heart liberals who don’t want to see the lives of hundreds of innocent people destroyed for ever! There are concerns that the pressure generated by Mr Bates Vs the Post Office to overturn legal processes and deliver swift justice may set a dangerous precedent, but Rishi Sunak must resolve to act as decisively and fearlessly as he did when he used parliament to overrule the supreme court’s findings and declare Rwanda a safe country. Sunak must simply dare to dream. It seems all it took was bold commissioning and beloved TV faces to start to stem the scandal, which must irk all the journalists in sidelined liberal outlets who’ve been writing about it for years. But what next for woke ITV? For example, Eton school is unable to open because undermaintained sewers have flooded it with human excrement. One could argue the school itself has, in the shape of David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Kwasi Kwarteng and the Daily Telegraph’s Charles Moore, done much the same to Britain itself. But should the sewage scandal be woke ITV drama’s next target? In Filthy Vengeance, Danny Dyer plays a sentient piece of woke excrement with a cockney accent, discharged into a chalk stream by a corrupt privatised utility company, who learns at first-hand of the damage being done and vows to take woke revenge on the network of international financiers and free-market politicians who facilitate it, by any means necessary. Rob Brydon cameos as a lecherous...
With their two colour sleeves and occasional vinyl only releases, Wymeswold's The Wave Pictures are iconic figures to indie rock puritans. But Beer In The Breakers transcends such perceptions.
Taped live and loose, with no overdubs, in a Walthamstow flat by fellow traveller Darren Hayman of Hefner, the rattling kit rushes to catch up with unadorned Velvety guitar, loping bass and immaculate matter-of-fact lyrics; “Aberystwyth lay twisted as if thrown on the coast." A dozen songs surge into life in the same vibrant state of near emotional and musical collapse as those exquisite, genre-defining early Go-Betweens recordings.
Stewart Lee
2011-04-17T12:39:01+01:00
With their two colour sleeves and occasional vinyl only releases, Wymeswold's The Wave Pictures are iconic figures to indie rock puritans. But Beer In The Breakers transcends such perceptions. Taped live and loose, with no overdubs, in a Walthamstow flat by fellow traveller Darren Hayman of Hefner, the rattling kit rushes to catch up with unadorned Velvety guitar, loping bass and immaculate matter-of-fact lyrics; “Aberystwyth lay twisted as if thrown on the coast." A dozen songs surge into life in the same vibrant state of near emotional and musical collapse as those exquisite, genre-defining early Go-Betweens recordings.
You'll know Hazlewood from the hits he penned for Nancy Sinatra, including These Boots Were Made For Walking.
But this collection of lost singles reveals a great pop auteur, who constructed for himself a versatile degenerate cowboy poet character, equal parts Johnny Cash and Paul Verlaine.
As usual, Hazlewood plays opposite a string of angelically voiced female foils, over songs that embrace the swirling psychedelic colour schemes of the period, suddenly blooming from mock heroic parody into genuine profundity, whist remaining recognisably within a timeless tin-pan alley tradition.
Stewart Lee
2012-04-15T20:15:27+01:00
You'll know Hazlewood from the hits he penned for Nancy Sinatra, including These Boots Were Made For Walking. But this collection of lost singles reveals a great pop auteur, who constructed for himself a versatile degenerate cowboy poet character, equal parts Johnny Cash and Paul Verlaine. As usual, Hazlewood plays opposite a string of angelically voiced female foils, over songs that embrace the swirling psychedelic colour schemes of the period, suddenly blooming from mock heroic parody into genuine profundity, whist remaining recognisably within a timeless tin-pan alley tradition.
COMPARISONS can be a real problem. We all do it, reviewers particularly.
There’s something in our make-up that makes us compelled to relate one thing to another from the past.
Take Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle on BBC2 last night.
Every preview, every interview has banged on about it being the “new Dave Allen show”. Even Mr Lee has brought up the subject.
And let’s face it, it would never live up to that billing. Dave Allen was a comic genius, an exceptional talent.
But that doesn’t make the new series a failure. Far from it – it’s one of the most welcome new comedy shows for quite some time.
As he proved as half of Lee and Herring, Stewart Lee is a fine, eloquent observer of the banality of modern life.
True, some of the sketches thrown in to break up monologues are a bit hit and miss, but you can forgive the odd duff attempt when there is genuine quality around.
It’s just a shame the hype has been so overblown. It was never going to fulfill such great expectations.
Stewart Lee
2009-03-17T10:58:08+00:00
COMPARISONS can be a real problem. We all do it, reviewers particularly. There’s something in our make-up that makes us compelled to relate one thing to another from the past. Take Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle on BBC2 last night. Every preview, every interview has banged on about it being the “new Dave Allen show”. Even Mr Lee has brought up the subject. And let’s face it, it would never live up to that billing. Dave Allen was a comic genius, an exceptional talent. But that doesn’t make the new series a failure. Far from it – it’s one of the most welcome new comedy shows for quite some time. As he proved as half of Lee and Herring, Stewart Lee is a fine, eloquent observer of the banality of modern life. True, some of the sketches thrown in to break up monologues are a bit hit and miss, but you can forgive the odd duff attempt when there is genuine quality around. It’s just a shame the hype has been so overblown. It was never going to fulfill such great expectations.
This, Stewart Lee warns his audience in general and the two critics in the room in particular, is not like his usual shows. Not one long, continuous train of thought with a perfectly neat conclusion, but three half-hour works in progress, ideas which will eventually become his next BBC Two stand-up series when he records it next month.
Each performance of his residency at London's Leicester Square Theatre will not only be different, he says, but the quality will deteriorate as once routines have proved to work, they will be rested in favour of others that need more TLC.
But in its current state, at least, nobody need feel short-changed: for Lee in development is better than most comics who think they're done. That's why he's been able to tour these ideas since the Edinburgh Fringe, with the occasional rough edge no obstacle to a quality night of comedy.
He plays with styles in the three sets we witness tonight, frequently using his trademark rhythms of constant repetition, but not exclusively. He even channels Max Miller at one point, conspiratorially glancing into the wings to check on the presence of any censorious authority.
Lee always plays the long game, however, seeding and cultivating ideas for a stronger pay-off at the end - to the extent that he'll give away spoilers to his own material, simply to increase the anticipation of their arrival. He has always delivered the sort of intellect-on-its-sleeve comedy that makes people feel smart for getting it (and punishes those who don't) even if he has to provide all the information himself.
Of course, he exposes all the trick of the trade – if ever there was a comedy equivalent of the Magic Circle, he'd be drummed out of it – but rather than simply drawing attention to the manipulative devices, he subverts them to his advantage. And he doesn't just burst clichés of comedy, there's a standard turn of phrase that gets expertly dismembered here. Lee's skill is to use both rapier and bludgeon to eviscerate his targets, whether big and deserving or utterly trivial.
The first section tonight is about politics in its broadest sense, how the distinct ideological clashes of his youth have been replaced by two near-identical centralist management teams, each with manifold faults. But it's not satire, at least not by the definition of the genre he's picked up from the likes of Animal Farm.
His technique then is to painstakingly explain the logic of his idea, or rather a false assumption he fears idiots might make. The fact this is done repetitively here pays only limited dividends, but to complain about Lee being needlessly cyclical is like complaining about grass for begin green.
The repetitive approach is stronger at the start of the second section, when he regales an argument he had with a stereotypically racist cab driver who blithely asserted: 'If you say you're English these days, you get arrested and thrown in jail.' 'I wore him down eventually,' the comic states, after doing the same to us.
That conversation leads Lee into a discourse about immigration, including a stupidly surreal take on supposed Latvian archetypes, heavy on ironic subtext, and a beautifully surgical evisceration of Paul Nuttall 'of the UKIPs, from Liverpool', subjecting one of his isolationist pronouncements to the relentless ridicule it deserves – while also taking Peter Kay-style nostalgia comedy to its preposterous extremes.
The third part was a bleak-edged routine about his life as an impotent, out-of-touch 45-year-old functioning alcoholic, married with two young narrative devices... aka children. He imagines other lives, and other wives, he might have - portraying his real spouse (comedian Bridget Christie, whom he doesn't name) as an alcoholic, rabidly Catholic Irishwoman who no longer views him as a sexual being.
Despite tongue-in-cheek elements such as this, it's a darkly heartfelt section that goes much deeper than the stock thoughts about ageing that many a middle-aged male comic might share... the delicate mood only ruined by the audience member who felt the need to correct a cultural reference Lee was wilfully getting wrong, apparently unaware that this might actually be the joke. Then again, Lee genuinely forgot the name of Ben Fogle earlier in the show, despite having a bit on him, so maybe she thought she was genuinely helping out.
If Lee is name perfect on the Sugarbabes when his Comedy Vehicle returns to scenes sometime in the autumn, we'll have that anonymous contributor to thank.
Stewart Lee
2013-11-07T18:31:04+00:00
This, Stewart Lee warns his audience in general and the two critics in the room in particular, is not like his usual shows. Not one long, continuous train of thought with a perfectly neat conclusion, but three half-hour works in progress, ideas which will eventually become his next BBC Two stand-up series when he records it next month. Each performance of his residency at London's Leicester Square Theatre will not only be different, he says, but the quality will deteriorate as once routines have proved to work, they will be rested in favour of others that need more TLC. But in its current state, at least, nobody need feel short-changed: for Lee in development is better than most comics who think they're done. That's why he's been able to tour these ideas since the Edinburgh Fringe, with the occasional rough edge no obstacle to a quality night of comedy. He plays with styles in the three sets we witness tonight, frequently using his trademark rhythms of constant repetition, but not exclusively. He even channels Max Miller at one point, conspiratorially glancing into the wings to check on the presence of any censorious authority. Lee always plays the long game, however, seeding and cultivating ideas for a stronger pay-off at the end - to the extent that he'll give away spoilers to his own material, simply to increase the anticipation of their arrival. He has always delivered the sort of intellect-on-its-sleeve comedy that makes people feel smart for getting it (and punishes those who don't) even if he has to provide all the information himself. Of course, he exposes all the trick of the trade – if ever there was a comedy equivalent of the Magic Circle, he'd be drummed out of it – but rather than simply drawing attention to...
1) King Rocker Merch Dear List Here is some limited soon to be valuable merchandise regarding the KING ROCKER documentary that I and Michael Cumming (Toast, Brass Eye) are making. The merch pays for camera crews and travel. Everyone else is working for free. BUY KING ROCKER T-SHIRTS / TOTE BAGS / MUGS HERE 3) SNOWFLAKE/TORNADO WOK IN PROGRESSES I am doing several more work in progress shows at the Bill Murray pub in Islington. They are not on sale yet, but will go on sale some time on Wednesday 12th June. The dates are; Tuesday 9th July (9.30pm - 10.45pm) Wednesday 10th July (8pm - 9.15pm) Thursday 11th July (8pm - 9.15pm) Tuesday 17th September (9.30pm - 10.30pm) Wednesday 18th September (9.30pm - 10.30pm) Thursday 19th September (8pm - 9.30pm) Sunday 22nd September (7.00 - 10pm w/interval) You will be able to get tickets by clicking here when they are released or by signing up to Angel Comedy's mailing list.
Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle marks the return of arguably one of Britain's finest stand up comedians and shows him at his masterful and hilarious best.
Each of the six episodes sees Stewart explore a different theme, in a stand-up routine illustrated with sketches featuring an ensemble cast of well known comic talent.
In each episode Stewart sets out to answer a question that addresses a specific aspect of modern life; "Why", for example, "is there a tide of banal books in bookshops threatening to engulf us? Does the world really need celebrity hardbacks?" Stewart's on a journey to find out - and meets some interesting authors along the way. "Has political correctness really gone mad, or is it just that a lot of people confuse political correctness with health and safety legislation?" Stewart tries to pick his way through the PC minefield, and reveals how it only made him put on weight. Stewart sets out to discover the truth about popular television duo Ant and Dec, and visits a quaint English village where The Funniest Thing That's Ever Been On Television Ever has given rise to a unique rural tradition. Sort of.
Whatever the topic, Stewart addresses it with razor sharp wit, using every argument at his disposal to convey his point. And you'l have learned something along the way (which may or may not be true)
Stewart Lee
2017-01-21T20:05:02+00:00
Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle marks the return of arguably one of Britain's finest stand up comedians and shows him at his masterful and hilarious best. Each of the six episodes sees Stewart explore a different theme, in a stand-up routine illustrated with sketches featuring an ensemble cast of well known comic talent. In each episode Stewart sets out to answer a question that addresses a specific aspect of modern life; "Why", for example, "is there a tide of banal books in bookshops threatening to engulf us? Does the world really need celebrity hardbacks?" Stewart's on a journey to find out - and meets some interesting authors along the way. "Has political correctness really gone mad, or is it just that a lot of people confuse political correctness with health and safety legislation?" Stewart tries to pick his way through the PC minefield, and reveals how it only made him put on weight. Stewart sets out to discover the truth about popular television duo Ant and Dec, and visits a quaint English village where The Funniest Thing That's Ever Been On Television Ever has given rise to a unique rural tradition. Sort of. Whatever the topic, Stewart addresses it with razor sharp wit, using every argument at his disposal to convey his point. And you'l have learned something along the way (which may or may not be true)
I want to talk to Stewart Lee about his ultra dry delivery and the layered ironic nature of this stand-up, and tell him that a friend of mine didn’t find his new show very funny. “Why not?” he asks. “That’s not a very nice thing to say. In fact it’s strange that you’re even bringing it up”. He warms up when I ask him if he thinks there’s a limit to the awkward straight faced non-comedy that he increasingly uses. “No. I’m not required to deliver a punch-line every thirty seconds so there’re other things I can do. For example if you were trying to write a piece of music and you decided not to use rhythms or tunes or anything with a harmonic relationship with anything else, as well as being limiting it actually opens it up; you can do absolutely anything.
You could argue that people like Jimmy Carr who do an hour of one-liners are much more limited than me. I’m allowed to do anything, so I don’t see there being an end point to it.” And what about alienating the audience? “Ideally I would get to the point where no one liked it. You want to shake people off as much as possible. There might be a commercial end point to it, but not a creative one. For most of the musicians or poets that I like, there probably aren’t more than 5000 people who like them worldwide, but if you take ten pounds a year off all those people then that’s a living.”
I’m surprised that Stewart Lee is taking such care to answer my questions; he normally interviews himself. Scathingly. Preceding the arrival of his recent TV show Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, he decided to do the complete opposite of favourable promotion. “Time Out and The Guardian wanted me to write about myself”, he explains, “so I asked if I could just slag myself off in the guise of a journalist. I thought it’d be funny to create a wave of negative advance publicity crit. I just didn’t want to sell myself, it’s a bit embarrassing”. The resulting pieces are hilarious in their own right. Lee, writing as critic Tim Out for Time Out, calls himself “shambling and pie-eyed” while as Leeanne Stewart in The Guardian he writes that he is “a limpet-like figure, a kind of laughing gastropod, attached undetected to the barnacled hull of a whole host of more successful comedians' careers”.
This attitude is consistent to Lee’s style; he has never had mainstream commercial success and he doesn’t appear to want it very much. “In the modern world you’re supposed to be a personality and let people know all about you so they will watch your work but I’d rather no-one was interested in that”. As such he is not exactly great material on talk shows. He was encouraged to go on 8 Out of 10 Cats and got approached afterwards by a man at a gig in Ireland, who said “you were so bad on that program I tried to sell the tickets I’d bought to see you, but no-one would buy them. I tried to give them away but no-one would have them, so I came anyway.” Lee claims he doesn’t have the speed or shared common direction that’s needed to be a success one of those shows. He admits this is a skill that he’s impressed by, but does not have much love for the young mainstream comics of today. “There’s a complacency you seem to get from a lot at the moment. When I got into comedy 25 years ago it was an alternative to the mainstream, whereas now that has become the mainstream. Rock music and alternative comedy ought to be things that your parents or people my age don’t like, and the reason I don’t like comedy or music by most young people isn’t that it offends my sensibilities, it’s because it’s normally really conservative and predictable, and shit.” After this he cackles uncontrollably, his only laugh of the interview.
He seems to have a lot of contempt for TV, probably because of that fact that his latest series was offered to him, then rejected outright a year later, then offered back to him shortly after that for no reason.” It tells you that there’s an insane randomness to being on TV or not. It’s like weather systems or water flowing over stones; it doesn’t mean anything.” It helps explain why he’s been so keen to try so many other art forms. In 2001 he both finished a novel, the critically acclaimed The Perfect Fool, and performed Pea Green Boat, a show about Edward Lear’s The Owl and The Pussycat and his own broken toilet. Then in 2005 came Jerry Springer: The Opera, the critically acclaimed West End show which he wrote with Richard Thomas. The show was on the receiving end of a damning campaign from Christian Voice, a far-right set of extremists who managed to get 60,000 people to complain. “They’re a group who used Jerry Springer to get into the mainstream media and I don’t think many of people they got to complain would have if they’d known what they stood for. They’re against Islam across the board, homosexuality, giving a survival cancer vaccine to teenagers, the legal stature of rape within marriage, weird things. You had to cross picket lines to go to work, and when you finally get to the dressing room and there’re letters from people saying “go to hell”, it’s a bit exhausting. “
Lee‘s first gig was as a student at the Oxford Union in 1988, and he’s returning to Oxford with a new show on the 26th November. What can we expect? “There are three routines. One’s about coffee shops, one’s about Top Gear, and the other one’s about the advertising of cider. It’s just three jokes really.” If that’s not enticing enough, he’s keen to say that it’s being put on independently at the Regal and that it will be cheaper than all his other gigs.
Stewart Lee
2009-10-01T15:29:49+01:00
The interview gets off to a bad start. I want to talk to Stewart Lee about his ultra dry delivery and the layered ironic nature of this stand-up, and tell him that a friend of mine didn’t find his new show very funny. “Why not?” he asks. “That’s not a very nice thing to say. In fact it’s strange that you’re even bringing it up”. He warms up when I ask him if he thinks there’s a limit to the awkward straight faced non-comedy that he increasingly uses. “No. I’m not required to deliver a punch-line every thirty seconds so there’re other things I can do. For example if you were trying to write a piece of music and you decided not to use rhythms or tunes or anything with a harmonic relationship with anything else, as well as being limiting it actually opens it up; you can do absolutely anything. You could argue that people like Jimmy Carr who do an hour of one-liners are much more limited than me. I’m allowed to do anything, so I don’t see there being an end point to it.” And what about alienating the audience? “Ideally I would get to the point where no one liked it. You want to shake people off as much as possible. There might be a commercial end point to it, but not a creative one. For most of the musicians or poets that I like, there probably aren’t more than 5000 people who like them worldwide, but if you take ten pounds a year off all those people then that’s a living.” I’m surprised that Stewart Lee is taking such care to answer my questions; he normally interviews himself. Scathingly. Preceding the arrival of his recent TV show Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, he decided to do...
Every year at around this time journalist are asked for their tips for the best shows to see at the Edinburgh Fringe in August. Professional critics can’t just pick all the things they have chosen before and know are the best because, like the low rent entertainers they essentially are, they too need to vary their repertoire to stay on top. I have done the fringe 23 times and have no axe to grind, so the only top tips list you need is this one. But remember, seeing something a bit rubbish that hasn’t really worked is a vital part of the fringe experience, so at least two of these may well be deliberate duds.
1) It’s Always Right Now, Until It’s Later (Theatre, Assembly) The world’s best stand-up comedian, the hair-shirted Yorkshireman Daniel Kitson, presents another of his usually superb theatrical monologues at the typically truculent time of 10 a.m daily. Have a bowl of bittersweet romanticism for breakfast.
2) Hans Teeuwen (Comedy, Pleasance) The Dutch comedian’s no-prisoners approach to the art from takes in stand-up, music, vaudeville, confrontational embarrassment, and dada-ist performance art, and is sure to disappoint and confuse as many as it delights. My wife and I were on the floor laughing during his bongo-powered song about the life of Nostradamus but, to be fair, half the room was just irritated. In the future, when Teeuwen’s genius has been recognised by The British, you will boast that you saw him way back when.
3) Dick Gaughan (Music, Acoustic music centre) One night only, August 25th, from the impossibly intense Scottish folk veteran who makes English people feel thoroughly told off, and leaves Scottish collaborators ashamed. But seriously, the force and focus with which Gaughan, alone at the guitar, delivers his annual Edinburgh set of modern protest songs and ancient folk ballads is a wonder to behold, a force of nature that leaves you shaken up and exhilarated.
4) Harlekin (Dance and physical theatre, Pleasance) The St Petersburg troupe Derevo, whose impossibly imaginative and stunningly precise devised shows have barely visible roots in European clowning traditions, were responsible for the single greatest piece of theatre I ever saw, 2002’s La Divina Comedia, and I am so delighted they are back at The Fringe. In ’97 I shared a venue with them. My warm-up process was drinking a half of lager. Theirs appeared to be discovering entirely new purposes for their limbs. Nightly.
5) Nick Pynn (Music, Inalingua Edinburgh). For the best part of the last decade, Nick Pynn’s intimate one man shows, in the candle lit twenty seater room of a Hanover St language school, have been the festival highlight I save up as a treat. Pynn plays a succession of home-made contraptions and exotic stringed instruments, often simultaneously, using loops and pedals, with naggingly unforgettable tunes that seem to reference half-familiar folk tunes through a prism of borderline avant-garde practise. I liked him so much I toured with him last year and now I am no longer really allowed to recommend him without being nepotistic.
Stewart Lee
2010-07-11T20:27:11+01:00
Every year at around this time journalist are asked for their tips for the best shows to see at the Edinburgh Fringe in August. Professional critics can’t just pick all the things they have chosen before and know are the best because, like the low rent entertainers they essentially are, they too need to vary their repertoire to stay on top. I have done the fringe 23 times and have no axe to grind, so the only top tips list you need is this one. But remember, seeing something a bit rubbish that hasn’t really worked is a vital part of the fringe experience, so at least two of these may well be deliberate duds. 1) It’s Always Right Now, Until It’s Later (Theatre, Assembly) The world’s best stand-up comedian, the hair-shirted Yorkshireman Daniel Kitson, presents another of his usually superb theatrical monologues at the typically truculent time of 10 a.m daily. Have a bowl of bittersweet romanticism for breakfast. 2) Hans Teeuwen (Comedy, Pleasance) The Dutch comedian’s no-prisoners approach to the art from takes in stand-up, music, vaudeville, confrontational embarrassment, and dada-ist performance art, and is sure to disappoint and confuse as many as it delights. My wife and I were on the floor laughing during his bongo-powered song about the life of Nostradamus but, to be fair, half the room was just irritated. In the future, when Teeuwen’s genius has been recognised by The British, you will boast that you saw him way back when. 3) Dick Gaughan (Music, Acoustic music centre) One night only, August 25th, from the impossibly intense Scottish folk veteran who makes English people feel thoroughly told off, and leaves Scottish collaborators ashamed. But seriously, the force and focus with which Gaughan, alone at the guitar, delivers his annual Edinburgh set of modern protest...
It has taken a long time, from its origins at Battersea Arts Centre via the Edinburgh Fringe, but composer/lyricist Richard Thomas and his collaborator Stewart Lee finally witness the official world premiere of their much touted show at the National Theatre.
Lee himself directs a zingy staging that uses operatic devices to parody, satirise and celebrate the genre of confessional trash television and its high priest, whom Michael Brandon impersonates with a blend of semi-fake charm and good natured non-judgementalism.
The high-octane production never lets up in the first half, in which Springer's studio audience howls and bays at a succession of lowlifes whose sexual and emotional obsessions are splurged out for all to revel in and despise. As one schlocky narrative succeeds another, a climax of brilliance is reached with the arrival of a troupe of all-singing, all-dancing Ku Klux Klansmen, who bring the first half to a riotous close.
It is clearly predestined for cult status but if one is being picky it is hard not to feel that the score is thin, although the parodies of Bach and Handel are cleverly positioned.
Or that the plot, in which Springer's fired warm-up man (David Bedella) shoots him in revenge and then turns out to be the Devil, precipitating an Act II confrontation involving Satan, Jesus, God plus Adam and Eve, is laboured.
The show has grown beyond its natural limits. But it is great fun along the way and presented with relentless chutzpah
Stewart Lee
2003-05-08T18:57:07+01:00
It has taken a long time, from its origins at Battersea Arts Centre via the Edinburgh Fringe, but composer/lyricist Richard Thomas and his collaborator Stewart Lee finally witness the official world premiere of their much touted show at the National Theatre. Lee himself directs a zingy staging that uses operatic devices to parody, satirise and celebrate the genre of confessional trash television and its high priest, whom Michael Brandon impersonates with a blend of semi-fake charm and good natured non-judgementalism. The high-octane production never lets up in the first half, in which Springer's studio audience howls and bays at a succession of lowlifes whose sexual and emotional obsessions are splurged out for all to revel in and despise. As one schlocky narrative succeeds another, a climax of brilliance is reached with the arrival of a troupe of all-singing, all-dancing Ku Klux Klansmen, who bring the first half to a riotous close. It is clearly predestined for cult status but if one is being picky it is hard not to feel that the score is thin, although the parodies of Bach and Handel are cleverly positioned. Or that the plot, in which Springer's fired warm-up man (David Bedella) shoots him in revenge and then turns out to be the Devil, precipitating an Act II confrontation involving Satan, Jesus, God plus Adam and Eve, is laboured. The show has grown beyond its natural limits. But it is great fun along the way and presented with relentless chutzpah
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 won’t wear a poppy this year.
Don’t get me wrong. I still put a few quid in the poppy collection box at my local Sainsbury’s, just now when I was buying some cat excrement bags. But on Monday on LBC, the increasingly befuddled wasps’ nest whacker Nick Ferrari spent an hour extrapolating an imaginary scenario where Keir Starmer didn’t wear a poppy in order to avoid offending imaginary Muslims. (Ironically, the same cynical Starmer deliberately ate Indian food in public during lockdown to try to ingratiate himself with our ethnic minorities, only to lose all the support this gained him by shillyshallying about a ceasefire, his naans nibbled for nothing.)
People like the GB News character and doorstep swing-voter-faking liar MP Lee Anderson have changed the poppy’s meaning somehow, making it a badge of allegiance to a whole raft of values I don’t necessarily subscribe to, damning as beneath contempt anyone who, even inadvertently, neglects to wear the red flower. So this year I don’t know if I feel comfortable with the once straightforward symbol of sacrifice pinned to my cagoule. A mystically inclined musical acquaintance once sent me prospective album cover art with which he hoped to reclaim the ancient good luck symbol of the swastika from the Nazis. I suggested it wasn’t a hill worth dying on. Symbols change their meaning with usage. There’s not much you can do about it.
I’m a man of a certain age and size. An XL Fred Perry shirt fits me, physically and culturally. It’s as stylish as I can get without feeling stifled, it locates me temporally in the 2 Tone/post-punk era that shaped me as an impressionable teenager and it’s smart enough to sport on stage but casual enough for me to wear around the house in just my pants. My clothes rail has a dozen identical Fred Perrys and I especially used to favour the black ones with yellow trim. But apparently, according to a pink-haired hipster girl in the merch queue at one of my Leicester Square theatre shows five years back, this has now been adopted as a covert uniform by the far right in Europe and the US. So I quickly took six neo-Nazi black and yellow Fred Perry shirts to the local People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals charity shop, where hopefully they were snapped up by a delighted cat-loving north London racist.
Similarly, last week the usual culture war suspects were trying to imprint the phrase “hate march” on to something that most reasonable people agree probably isn’t such a thing, even though pockets of it will undoubtedly be motivated by hate and be marching. I have to file this on Wednesday night, so there’s time to legally query all my unsubstantiated statements, or jokes as they were once known before wokery went woke. But by the time you read this, you’ll know if Saturday’s peace march turned bad. I don’t know. I didn’t go.
As it happens, even though in my woke mind I would have viewed the march as neither pro-Palestine nor anti-Israel, but simply as pro-ceasefire, I couldn’t have attended even if I had decided to, because I had already been booked to introduce a documentary film about experimental American jazz of the 60s and 70s at the London jazz festival. Peace march or jazz film? Hobson’s choice for the woke north London pseudointellectual. Nonetheless, Shitty Sunak promised to hold Metropolitan police commissioner Mark Rowley to account for any trouble, but was happy to sit alongside home secretary Suella Braverman at during the debate on the king’s speech on Wednesday, as she refused to withdraw her “hate march” assertions.
A bonfire is smoldering. Braverman and columnists and commentators such as Sarah Vine at the Daily Mail and the fascism-downplayer Douglas Murray at the Spectator (“I don’t see why no one should be allowed to love their country because the Germans mucked up twice in a century”) have thrown petrol on to it, deliberately striving to make the desire to honour the war dead of the past incompatible with the desire to prevent further war death in the present. The British Transport Police, meanwhile, have dismissed the Daily Mail’s claims that a poppy seller, seen sporting at least two different regimental berets, was set upon by pro-Palestine demonstrators at Waverley Station, but the inflammatory story did its job. And yet the person Sunak is going to hold to account if the bonfire combusts is the Met’s Mark Rowley, the fireman charged with keeping it under control. It’s insane, and Sunak is weak, afraid of the unappeasable maw of the Tory far right that has gobbled up every PM since the impossible Brexit empowered it, the heated-swimming-pool, credit-card twat.
But I still want to remember the war dead somewhere on Sunday. The grandfather who raised me was an airfield engineer on Lancasters in the RAF, his Cadbury factory skills repurposed from Bournville to bombers. A working-class white man of a particular generation, he hated the Germans of the past and the migrants of the present in equal measure. But I never saw him so distressed as when describing flying over Dresden after the 1945 firebombing and saying that what we had done to those people was utterly wrong. I know he would have supported a ceasefire.
So, frozen by Remembrance Sunday’s calcification into yet another theatre of the culture war, where do I go to grieve? Last year, I attended a sensitive ceremony in my local cemetery where, alongside the Last Post, folk choirs performed a varied selection of musical responses to conflict, including a song by anarcho-punk chart-toppers Chumbawamba. It was a beautiful thing. Hopefully, I’m there again as you read this, and when I wear the poppy there, I know it won’t be repurposed. And, should a gust of wind momentarily displace it, I won’t be swallowed whole by Nick Ferrari.
This article was amended on 15 November 2023. An earlier version said that Rishi Sunak sat next to Suella Braverman at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday; in fact this was during the king’s speech debate.
Stewart Lee
2023-11-12T21:47:22+00:00
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 won’t wear a poppy this year. Don’t get me wrong. I still put a few quid in the poppy collection box at my local Sainsbury’s, just now when I was buying some cat excrement bags. But on Monday on LBC, the increasingly befuddled wasps’ nest whacker Nick Ferrari spent an hour extrapolating an imaginary scenario where Keir Starmer didn’t wear a poppy in order to avoid offending imaginary Muslims. (Ironically, the same cynical Starmer deliberately ate Indian food in public during lockdown to try to ingratiate himself with our ethnic minorities, only to lose all the support this gained him by shillyshallying about a ceasefire, his naans nibbled for nothing.) People like the GB News character and doorstep swing-voter-faking liar MP Lee Anderson have changed the poppy’s meaning somehow, making it a badge of allegiance to a whole raft of values I don’t necessarily subscribe to, damning as beneath contempt anyone who, even inadvertently, neglects to wear the red flower. So this year I don’t know if I feel comfortable with the once straightforward symbol of sacrifice pinned to my cagoule. A mystically inclined musical acquaintance once sent me prospective album cover art with which he hoped to reclaim the ancient good luck symbol of the swastika from the Nazis. I suggested it wasn’t a hill worth dying on. Symbols change their meaning with usage. There’s not much you can do about it. I’m a man of a certain age and size. An XL Fred...
Martin Carthy, English folk pioneer and national treasure, celebrates his 70th birthday at the Royal Festival Hall next weekend, and here's a two disc career overview.
The hypnotic, chunky, acoustic guitar style arrives fully-formed on the earliest tracks, from '65 and '66, pulsating round the purloined ur-folk licks on which Paul Simon and Bob Dylan built their breakthroughs.
Psychically sympathetic modal duets with the fiddler Dave Swarbrick remain timelessly intense. By a 2004 reading of Famous Flower Of Serving Men, ten minutes of head-drone render contemporary acid folk obsolete, and Carthy's once reedy vocal has a Methuselaic authority, his playing flowing like blood.
Stewart Lee
2011-05-08T11:23:07+01:00
Martin Carthy, English folk pioneer and national treasure, celebrates his 70th birthday at the Royal Festival Hall next weekend, and here's a two disc career overview. The hypnotic, chunky, acoustic guitar style arrives fully-formed on the earliest tracks, from '65 and '66, pulsating round the purloined ur-folk licks on which Paul Simon and Bob Dylan built their breakthroughs. Psychically sympathetic modal duets with the fiddler Dave Swarbrick remain timelessly intense. By a 2004 reading of Famous Flower Of Serving Men, ten minutes of head-drone render contemporary acid folk obsolete, and Carthy's once reedy vocal has a Methuselaic authority, his playing flowing like blood.
Peter Tasseledbat is the head of Endemetriol Productions, the London based production company responsible for a host of hit Channel 4 shows including Teen Street, Street Slag, Shit Street, Teen Shit, Street Teen, Slag Shit, Teen Slag, Slag Teen, Street Shit, Shit Teen, Slag Street, Shit Slag, The Friday Night Project, Big Brother and Celebrity Big Brother. He lives in Hertfordshire and works in Soho.
It’s half term at the moment so my driver picks my daughter and I up at home, and on the way to the Endemetriol offices I drop Sophie off at her clarinet lesson in Muswell Hill. She’s up to grade six now and is starting to get to grips with some of the simpler works of the major composers, which is wonderful, and so we’ve started taking her to concerts at The Barbican and The South Bank. I think it’s so important for young people to know about classical music, and luckily we’re secure enough to allow Sophie to pursue her dreams. At the moment her ambition is to play in one of the major European orchestras and I couldn’t be happier that she has set her sights on something genuinely worthwhile.
Next I arrive at the Big Brother offices and immediately begin work on approving edits of drunk female housemates masturbating with wine bottles, or, as is the case at the moment, of a young Indian film star being racially abused behind her back. One of the things I found amusing about the wine bottle incident was that when the idea of introducing alcohol into the house was first mooted, there were discussions as to whether we might get a leading wine manufacturer to sponsor the show and provide us with a few bottles of cheap plonk in to the bargain. Imagine if a wine company had sponsored it, and then one of their bottles had been put to the sort of use! It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘screw-top bottle’! I think sparks would have flown. I enjoy a good wine but try to drink in moderation. We let the children have wine once a week, on Sundays, but we try to set them a good example about alcohol consumption and the kind of adverse effects that result from over-indulgence.
There’s been a load of fuss about the supposed ‘racialist bullying’ in Big Brother, but our brief from Channel 4 is to provide television that pushes back the boundaries, and if those boundaries happen to be only at the bottom, then so be it! I’m not racialist. One of Sophie’s friends is Asian. Her father is a surgeon and he’s on the parents’ assosciation at one of the better schools in the area, so I would hardly do anything racialist would I? The thing about Big Brother is that it holds up a mirror to society, and it shows us what ordinary people, such as chavs, are really like, I should imagine. Sophie wanted to go and see the new English National Ballet show, and when we got there we had to cross a picket line because one of the dancers is in the BNP. Luckily the dancer’s racialism didn’t spoil our enjoyment of the piece.
If it is racialist to deliberately engineer ratings-driven conflict by putting an attractive, talented Indian woman into an enclosed environment with insecure, inarticulate people whom anyone could have realised would inevitably resort to racially-derived insults in order to assert themselves in the face of her perceived social superority then yes, I am a racialist. But I’m not because is isn’t. Is it? Hold on there’s someone on the other line. What? Oh come on, you cannot be serious...
Peter Tasseledbat was talking to Stewart Lee
Stewart Lee
2007-01-30T16:51:17+00:00
Peter Tasseledbat is the head of Endemetriol Productions, the London based production company responsible for a host of hit Channel 4 shows including Teen Street, Street Slag, Shit Street, Teen Shit, Street Teen, Slag Shit, Teen Slag, Slag Teen, Street Shit, Shit Teen, Slag Street, Shit Slag, The Friday Night Project, Big Brother and Celebrity Big Brother. He lives in Hertfordshire and works in Soho. It’s half term at the moment so my driver picks my daughter and I up at home, and on the way to the Endemetriol offices I drop Sophie off at her clarinet lesson in Muswell Hill. She’s up to grade six now and is starting to get to grips with some of the simpler works of the major composers, which is wonderful, and so we’ve started taking her to concerts at The Barbican and The South Bank. I think it’s so important for young people to know about classical music, and luckily we’re secure enough to allow Sophie to pursue her dreams. At the moment her ambition is to play in one of the major European orchestras and I couldn’t be happier that she has set her sights on something genuinely worthwhile. Next I arrive at the Big Brother offices and immediately begin work on approving edits of drunk female housemates masturbating with wine bottles, or, as is the case at the moment, of a young Indian film star being racially abused behind her back. One of the things I found amusing about the wine bottle incident was that when the idea of introducing alcohol into the house was first mooted, there were discussions as to whether we might get a leading wine manufacturer to sponsor the show and provide us with a few bottles of cheap plonk in to the bargain. Imagine if a...
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 diversified into providing wine and spirits. I have memories, though they may have become semi-fictionalised, of accompanying him to rural events, - hunts, fetes and festivals, - in forgotten places between Birmingham and Norwich, when he was invited by virtue of some commercial connection with the booze supply.
I remember a fuzzy photograph of a brown corduroy, pre-school me with him, watching men in white on a patch of grass, leaping and dancing. I've looked for it but I can't find it. Maybe it never happened. But for me that was where The Morris was filed, for most of my life, in the Seventies memories stash, in the past, something mysterious and beautiful and pastoral, and probably on the way out now, along with butterflies and wild flowers and birds that nest in hedgerows.
But, like some threatened species making a comeback, over the last decade I've noticed the morris, and various mutated species of traditional English dance, staging a comeback. At the folk-singer Martin Carthy's 60th birthday show in Oxford, ten years ago, a morris troupe took the stage before a crowd of thousands, and again, when I saw the Carthy clan gathered at the Royal Albert Hall five year back.
A live art promoter in the village of Hovingham, on the Yorkshire moors, unexpectedly got Damian Barber's traditional dancers The Black Swan Rappers to open before one of my stand-up comedy shows in the mid-noughties, stunning an initially skeptical crowd with their violent and virile performance.
This year I invited the folk rock band Trembling Bells to appear in a season of music and comedy I was curating at the South Bank center, and they brought with them The Belles Of London City, a new all-female morris trio.
But my fondness for The Morris was sealed six years ago.
My wife and I were married in the Forest of Dean, in her native Gloucestershire. Searching for something significant and local, she had booked the Forest Of Dean Morris Men for the reception, attended by fifty or so people, in a musky woodland cellar. We'd been married in a church that morning.
My wife's a Catholic, and I am an atheist, but nonetheless I'll happily admit that the priest gave a great service, and the ritual elements added a real significance to the ceremony. That said, the service did represent for me a compromise I suppose, of the sort one must make in a marriage. I hadn't expected it, but the appearance of the Morris men that evening somehow squared the circle, and left me feeling that the old gods, too, had been paid their due.
The Forest Of Dean Morris Men came out of the black November night, all in white. They were accompanied by a 'beast', in their particular case a man in the costume of a bright red stag, who excited all the young ladies, and intimidated the men.
I normally hate dancing, or being the centre of attention in any way, but I felt no shame as my new wife and I were made to skip in circles round the stone walled cellar, and between and beneath sudden arches made of the morris men's human hands, while the beast looked on approvingly and clacked its wooden hooves, draped in adoring women, scowled at by their temporarily cuckolded partners.
It's no exaggeration to say that The Morris made our day, and in the dark times of exhaustion and three a.m. feeds, when the romance of your first meeting seems so far away, we reach back to the symbols we laid in store to give us strength at later dates, and I see The Morris once more.
That's why, when Radio 2 asked me to narrate It's Got Bells On, I could not say no. I am for ever in the dance's debt.
Stewart Lee
2011-12-06T18:20:23+00:00
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 diversified into providing wine and spirits. I have memories, though they may have become semi-fictionalised, of accompanying him to rural events, - hunts, fetes and festivals, - in forgotten places between Birmingham and Norwich, when he was invited by virtue of some commercial connection with the booze supply. I remember a fuzzy photograph of a brown corduroy, pre-school me with him, watching men in white on a patch of grass, leaping and dancing. I've looked for it but I can't find it. Maybe it never happened. But for me that was where The Morris was filed, for most of my life, in the Seventies memories stash, in the past, something mysterious and beautiful and pastoral, and probably on the way out now, along with butterflies and wild flowers and birds that nest in hedgerows. But, like some threatened species making a comeback, over the last decade I've noticed the morris, and various mutated species of traditional English dance, staging a comeback. At the folk-singer Martin Carthy's 60th birthday show in Oxford, ten years ago, a morris troupe took the stage before a crowd of thousands, and again, when I saw the Carthy clan gathered at the Royal Albert Hall five year back. A live art promoter in the village of Hovingham, on the Yorkshire moors, unexpectedly got Damian Barber's traditional dancers The Black Swan Rappers to open before one of my stand-up comedy shows in the mid-noughties, stunning an initially skeptical crowd with their violent...
His performances unfurl like a stroll on a summer's day: scenery and good companionship take precedence over destination
When praising a comedian it is generally a good idea to quote one of his or her jokes. The trouble with Stewart Lee is that he doesn't really do gags - at least not in the traditional sense of set-up, fire, reload. His performances unfurl like a long stroll on a summer's day: scenery and good companionship take precedence over destination, and any laughter seems almost serendipitous. For all of his self-deprecation and apparent hesitancy, Lee is evidently a practised charmer.
So too with the apparent shambling of his act: it is just that, a put-on. In a recent episode of his latest BBC series, Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, Lee discusses the evolution of modern comedy (something he is an expert on, as revealed in last year's memoirs How I Escaped My Certain Fate): "What the comedy is now - it's not like the 80s - what it is now, it's a load of people and they all hate their electrical appliances." This jibe about modern comedy's turn from shouty politics to smug consumerism slowly turns into a riff about how Mr Morphy Richards strives to make toasters that work, then advice on how to return broken toasters.
Yet Lee can also do precise structure, as demonstrated by his sharply observed music journalism and his comedy musical Jerry Springer: The Opera. But let us return to the original question: what is a typical Lee gag? In desperation, this paper turned to the comedian's publicist.
She could think of only one conventional one-liner ever made by Lee - and he'd bought it from another comedian for a quid. Typical.
Stewart Lee
2011-06-02T21:31:48+01:00
His performances unfurl like a stroll on a summer's day: scenery and good companionship take precedence over destination When praising a comedian it is generally a good idea to quote one of his or her jokes. The trouble with Stewart Lee is that he doesn't really do gags - at least not in the traditional sense of set-up, fire, reload. His performances unfurl like a long stroll on a summer's day: scenery and good companionship take precedence over destination, and any laughter seems almost serendipitous. For all of his self-deprecation and apparent hesitancy, Lee is evidently a practised charmer. So too with the apparent shambling of his act: it is just that, a put-on. In a recent episode of his latest BBC series, Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, Lee discusses the evolution of modern comedy (something he is an expert on, as revealed in last year's memoirs How I Escaped My Certain Fate): "What the comedy is now - it's not like the 80s - what it is now, it's a load of people and they all hate their electrical appliances." This jibe about modern comedy's turn from shouty politics to smug consumerism slowly turns into a riff about how Mr Morphy Richards strives to make toasters that work, then advice on how to return broken toasters. Yet Lee can also do precise structure, as demonstrated by his sharply observed music journalism and his comedy musical Jerry Springer: The Opera. But let us return to the original question: what is a typical Lee gag? In desperation, this paper turned to the comedian's publicist. She could think of only one conventional one-liner ever made by Lee - and he'd bought it from another comedian for a quid. Typical.
This past week, people in Edinburgh paid £31 to see the television comedian Michael McIntyre's warm-up shows of work-in-progress for his forthcoming stadium tour. Personally I never do warm-up shows for my own standup. My grandfather was of the opinion that you couldn't polish a turd. He did, however, believe very strongly in lacquering them, and lost many friends after insisting they sat through a piece-by-piece display of his entire collection.
Critics complain that £31 is too much for Michael McIntyre's try-out show, competing, by virtue of its appearance in Edinburgh this month, with free fringe performances by unknown talents. But Michael McIntyre's £31 warm-ups were not part of the Edinburgh fringe and so he was not obliged to observe its ethics. The high prices do mean, however, that McIntyre could afford to pay significantly more than the £200 he recently offered a Yorkshire security guard if he'd beat up an inflatable sex doll wearing a mask of my face.
My tickets in Edinburgh are £15, but I do not think it is wrong for Michael McIntyre to charge twice that, or for his colleague the television comedian Frankie Boyle to charge £29 in the same venue. Television comedians guarantee a good night out to cash-rich fun-seekers, and so are priced accordingly. My tragedy is that, irrespective of any merits I may or may not have, I am valued only by people unlikely to pay higher ticket prices. This depressing fact was brought home to me by the television potter Grayson Perry, when I cornered him at a motorway service station coffee franchise at 3am earlier this year, a spur-of-the-moment decision I was to regret.
I am a long-term fan of Perry's charming clay efforts, having got into him years ago because he said he liked the Fall, who are the kind of thing I like. I congratulated him on the upsurge in his fortunes, such as his sideways move from squeezing, baking and daubing his filthy and infantile clay urns into broadcasting on the prestigious Channel 4 network. Perry declared himself, his female alter ego Claire, and his teddy bear Alan Measles, as followers of my own work, and said they had all attended my recent London standup run. "We only had one seat though, because they all live in my brain, but I did buy three tickets so it was fair," Perry explained. "I had beer, Claire had wine, and Alan had fizzy pop, but it all got mixed up in my tummy and I was sick on the bus home. Luckily I had one of my pots to catch it in."
Upon spotting Perry at the service station that night, I had merely wanted to praise him, get a hot chocolate, and go. But soon the cross-dressing potter had begun waving his arms about, television artist style, and volunteering all sorts of unsolicited opinions about my work. He said the way what I did was consumed was directly relevant to aspects of social class in Britain that he and his other personalities were exploring on their Channel 4 show. "Claire and Alan and I went to a new-build estate in Tunbridge Wells for our TV series," he explained, "and the middle classes there cemented their self-esteem by buying expensive cupcakes and designer cookware, and chucking balsamic vinegar at their Jamie Oliver dinners." "Ha, ha, yes. Wankers," I said, fingering my cup, wondering if that was what the clay wrangler wanted me to say. Who was talking to me anyway? Grayson Perry? Claire? The teddy bear, Alan Measles?
The mouth on Perry's face continued opening and closing: "But there's a different kind of middle class too. They reject conspicuous consumption. They're financially squeezed intellectuals and working-class refugees, perhaps given ideas above their station way back when they could afford further education. Their homes are littered with secondhand vintage Penguin paperbacks, faded prints by acclaimed artists on the edge of public consciousness, and ironic knick-knacks from the 1930s, 50s or 70s. They can't and won't spend the Jamie Oliver types' kind of money, so these inexpensive items are loaded with what Alan Measles calls cultural capital, and you can only really tell what they're worth after a complex process of social and intellectual triangulation. And that's you, see, Stewart Lee. Alan Measles says you are that paperback. You are that old print. Alan Measles says you are the same as a 1950s ceramic bloodhound-shaped spirits bottle that plays Roll Out the Barrel when you lift it off the shelf. Me, Claire and Alan Measles, we all despise your work. But we are fascinated by what you represent. Cultural capital."
And so if you're someone who comes to see me live, Alan Measles and I know who you are. You're the Guardian-reading parents of the clever friends I had as a teenager and I'm still trying to get your approval so you'll let the teenage me go out with your daughters or take me with you to the RSC studio to see Trevor Griffiths plays on £5 stand-bys. That's why my tickets are cheaper than McIntyre's. Because you know what you like and you consume culture frequently and often, but at necessarily lower prices, because you flatter yourselves that you have taste and the best stuff isn't usually the most expensive. That's why I can't charge you higher rates. You did me over as a kid and you're doing me over again.
Not for me crowds of estate agents, golf club managers, poodle parlour owners, Volkswagen dealership staff, wedding planners, cake decorators, GMTV presenters, and Strictly Come Dancing judges. Three-big-nights-out-a-year types. Status spenders. Yet still they come, my "fans", in sustainable numbers, but at reduced rates, so I'll never get my swimming pool. They keep coming, in spite of, or perhaps because of, the fact that my act's objective value is difficult to discern. Are they involved in some ironic feedback loop? Do they come precisely because they think I am terrible? After two days of thinking about what Alan Measles told Grayson Perry, I lay next to my wife in bed at night, awake. The room seemed foreign, the children unfamiliar. I stood in the bathroom naked and counted all the mini hotel toiletries that I have purloined when on tour. There are hundreds of them now, thousands even. I need never buy shampoo again as long as I live. They can't take that away from me.
This past week, people in Edinburgh paid £31 to see the television comedian Michael McIntyre's warm-up shows of work-in-progress for his forthcoming stadium tour. Personally I never do warm-up shows for my own standup. My grandfather was of the opinion that you couldn't polish a turd. He did, however, believe very strongly in lacquering them, and lost many friends after insisting they sat through a piece-by-piece display of his entire collection. Critics complain that £31 is too much for Michael McIntyre's try-out show, competing, by virtue of its appearance in Edinburgh this month, with free fringe performances by unknown talents. But Michael McIntyre's £31 warm-ups were not part of the Edinburgh fringe and so he was not obliged to observe its ethics. The high prices do mean, however, that McIntyre could afford to pay significantly more than the £200 he recently offered a Yorkshire security guard if he'd beat up an inflatable sex doll wearing a mask of my face. My tickets in Edinburgh are £15, but I do not think it is wrong for Michael McIntyre to charge twice that, or for his colleague the television comedian Frankie Boyle to charge £29 in the same venue. Television comedians guarantee a good night out to cash-rich fun-seekers, and so are priced accordingly. My tragedy is that, irrespective of any merits I may or may not have, I am valued only by people unlikely to pay higher ticket prices. This depressing fact was brought home to me by the television potter Grayson Perry, when I cornered him at a motorway service station coffee franchise at 3am earlier this year, a spur-of-the-moment decision I was to regret. I am a long-term fan of Perry's charming clay efforts, having got into him years ago because he said he liked the Fall, who are the kind of thing I...
It'd be hard, and perhaps unfair, to talk about Stewart Lee's follow-up to 2007's historical comedy Johnson & Boswell without mentioning 'the other' alternative Elizabethan comedy. But for all its defects, one thing is certain – though Simon Munnery's portrayal of Elizabeth I is quite different from Miranda Richardson's in Blackadder II, it's still as good, if not better.
Written by Lee, this two-hander between Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh (played by comedian Miles Jupp) involves Raleigh's attempts to persuade the Virgin Queen to marry him, who in turn reckons he's just a self-serving charlatan and intends to chop off his head. Munnery's regal entrance is marvellous to behold – walking straight down the middle of the auditorium, over chairs and audience members, in an enormous, bedraggled vaudevillian frightwig/greasepaint ensemble. 'The queen only walks in straight lines!' explains Sir Walter to the audience. 'You may laugh, but you do so with soiled underpants,' she informs them.
Munnery effectively ropes the monarch into his repertoire of twisted, angry loners. His Elizabeth is an embittered lush – the missing of cues and bumping into furniture somehow adding to the effect – out to punish the creepy, maid-shagging Sir Walter.
Jupp is less effective as Raleigh, although, it should be said, he has less to work with. The pace and tone is strangely flat throughout, except at the end, where we witness a mist-wreathed portrayal of Raleigh's naval adventures, both eerie and ridiculous (the pair wearing enormous ships on their heads), and during Munnery's final, doom-laden monologue – a bleak surveillance of the realm from the windows of a train up to Edinburgh – clearly taking the piss out of Derek Jarman's film Jubilee.
Munnery is a great, if limited, actor, but he can't carry the show by himself. The talent behind this is of the first pedigree, but it's not quite comedic enough to be great comedy, nor quite dramatic enough to be great drama. History buffs will love it, though.’
Stewart Lee
2008-08-13T20:19:07+01:00
It'd be hard, and perhaps unfair, to talk about Stewart Lee's follow-up to 2007's historical comedy Johnson & Boswell without mentioning 'the other' alternative Elizabethan comedy. But for all its defects, one thing is certain – though Simon Munnery's portrayal of Elizabeth I is quite different from Miranda Richardson's in Blackadder II, it's still as good, if not better. Written by Lee, this two-hander between Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh (played by comedian Miles Jupp) involves Raleigh's attempts to persuade the Virgin Queen to marry him, who in turn reckons he's just a self-serving charlatan and intends to chop off his head. Munnery's regal entrance is marvellous to behold – walking straight down the middle of the auditorium, over chairs and audience members, in an enormous, bedraggled vaudevillian frightwig/greasepaint ensemble. 'The queen only walks in straight lines!' explains Sir Walter to the audience. 'You may laugh, but you do so with soiled underpants,' she informs them. Munnery effectively ropes the monarch into his repertoire of twisted, angry loners. His Elizabeth is an embittered lush – the missing of cues and bumping into furniture somehow adding to the effect – out to punish the creepy, maid-shagging Sir Walter. Jupp is less effective as Raleigh, although, it should be said, he has less to work with. The pace and tone is strangely flat throughout, except at the end, where we witness a mist-wreathed portrayal of Raleigh's naval adventures, both eerie and ridiculous (the pair wearing enormous ships on their heads), and during Munnery's final, doom-laden monologue – a bleak surveillance of the realm from the windows of a train up to Edinburgh – clearly taking the piss out of Derek Jarman's film Jubilee. Munnery is a great, if limited, actor, but he can't carry the show by himself. The talent behind this...
For someone who contributed material toward the infamous Jerry Springer opera, and entitles his latest show “If you prefer a milder comedian, please ask for one", it is not unreasonable to expect Stewart Lee to be a little outrageous, outspoken and offensive.
However, his subjects include chain coffee shops, advertising, middle-aged (and middle- class) emigration and TV shows; it's hardly going to rival Jimmy Carr in the headline-grabbing stakes. Indeed, when he pours scorn on fellow stand-up Frankie Boyle's recent remark that comedians should retire from the mike at 40 (a school of thought that believes stand-ups lose their anger, and their subsequent raison d'etre in middle age), you kind of wonder if Boyle may have a point.
Yet the beauty of Lee's show is he is as funny, spirited and angry as any of the circuit's top (and/or most fashionable) comics, despite his prosaic choice of subjects. This was shown not least in the climax to his 75-minute set, when he dropped his microphone in disgust (to a loud clatter), and took to the audience, shouting and screaming the rest of his routine with a voice that echoed around the not inconsiderably sized Regal. The impact was doubled by the comedian's position, directly in front of me on the remaining few of the venue's empty seats. He managed to transcend any potential blandness and, by doing this, made his comedy even more special.
Indeed, it was a set full of deviation. Lee's delivery tends to be calm, slow, considered and deadpan. He builds well-timed repetition into his routines. Yet, for effect, he breaks out into vitriolic rants. Unexpectedly, he ended the show with a cover of a folk song. And he also delivered quite a shocking, and vengeful, routine concerning a certain popular television programme involving cars.
Stewart Lee knows he's getting older, and adjusts his subjects to reflect that. However, it's his intelligence, his creativity and his fire that enliven the material, providing an honest, heartfelt and hilarious evening.
Stewart Lee
2009-12-02T16:27:11+00:00
For someone who contributed material toward the infamous Jerry Springer opera, and entitles his latest show “If you prefer a milder comedian, please ask for one", it is not unreasonable to expect Stewart Lee to be a little outrageous, outspoken and offensive. However, his subjects include chain coffee shops, advertising, middle-aged (and middle- class) emigration and TV shows; it's hardly going to rival Jimmy Carr in the headline-grabbing stakes. Indeed, when he pours scorn on fellow stand-up Frankie Boyle's recent remark that comedians should retire from the mike at 40 (a school of thought that believes stand-ups lose their anger, and their subsequent raison d'etre in middle age), you kind of wonder if Boyle may have a point. Yet the beauty of Lee's show is he is as funny, spirited and angry as any of the circuit's top (and/or most fashionable) comics, despite his prosaic choice of subjects. This was shown not least in the climax to his 75-minute set, when he dropped his microphone in disgust (to a loud clatter), and took to the audience, shouting and screaming the rest of his routine with a voice that echoed around the not inconsiderably sized Regal. The impact was doubled by the comedian's position, directly in front of me on the remaining few of the venue's empty seats. He managed to transcend any potential blandness and, by doing this, made his comedy even more special. Indeed, it was a set full of deviation. Lee's delivery tends to be calm, slow, considered and deadpan. He builds well-timed repetition into his routines. Yet, for effect, he breaks out into vitriolic rants. Unexpectedly, he ended the show with a cover of a folk song. And he also delivered quite a shocking, and vengeful, routine concerning a certain popular television programme involving cars. Stewart Lee...
Mumford and Sons, and their singer-songwriter followers, aren't really folk musicians.
Folk fans, still looking to the likes of Topic records and the Waterson-Carthy dynasty for an uncut fix might wonder, wither the next generation?
But the Rif Mountain label, comprehensively showcased here, offers a cross-fertilised family of younger artists, quietly future-proofing the form.
The Owl Service grapple with Lal Waterson's ghostly lament Fine Horseman, and electrify the standard Katie Cruel in an early Seventies acid-folk style; The Straw Bear Band anglicise Creedence's Bad Moon Rising convincingly; and the Caledonian mediaevalist Alasdair Roberts' own False Astronomy is a spritely highland gavotte.
Stewart Lee
2011-08-14T00:52:37+01:00
Mumford and Sons, and their singer-songwriter followers, aren't really folk musicians. Folk fans, still looking to the likes of Topic records and the Waterson-Carthy dynasty for an uncut fix might wonder, wither the next generation? But the Rif Mountain label, comprehensively showcased here, offers a cross-fertilised family of younger artists, quietly future-proofing the form. The Owl Service grapple with Lal Waterson's ghostly lament Fine Horseman, and electrify the standard Katie Cruel in an early Seventies acid-folk style; The Straw Bear Band anglicise Creedence's Bad Moon Rising convincingly; and the Caledonian mediaevalist Alasdair Roberts' own False Astronomy is a spritely highland gavotte.
My metropolitan liberal elitist friends here in 78.5% Remain-voting Hackney do not hold BBC news in high regard, its election coverage considered biased in favour of the government and Laura Kuenssberg merely a horrid flesh trombone through which Dominic Cumming honks his reverberating falsehoods.
The news seemed skewed. During the election, the prime minister declined the grilling Andrew “Weetabix” Neil gave his opponents, had a selfie with an impartial Phillip Schofield on ITV and hid in a variety of white goods whenever regional reporters tried to ask basic questions, such as how many children he had or what he actually meant by any of the things he had said.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn was hung upside down in a pedal bin full of hornets by Andrew “Sphagnum” Neil and had cheese graters rubbed on his genital by an impartial Phillip Schofield on ITV. Nonetheless, despite the defeated left’s perception that a cowed BBC kowtows to government, the Tories’ policy continues to be to avoid scrutiny on news outlets favoured by “Westminster obsessives”, which is post-truth newspeak for “people who understand and care about politics”. Maybe the BBC is doing something right?
Even so, it was something of a shock to see Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Vampires Haircut Wall-Spaffer Spunk-Burster Fuck-Business Fuck-the-Families Get-Off-My-Fucking-Laptop Girly-Swot Big-Girl’s-Blouse Chicken-Frit Hulk-Smash Noseringed-Crusties Death-Humbug Technology-Lessons Surrender-Bullshit French-Turds Dog-Whistle Get-Stuffed FactcheckUK@CCHQ 88%-Lies Get-Brexit-Done Bung-a-Bob-for-Big-Ben’s-Bongs Johnson’s first post-election BBC interview on Tuesday morning.
I didn’t even know that Gus Honeybun, the mute puppet rabbit whose leaps announced children’s birthdays on Westward Television from 1961 to 1992, was still alive, let alone conducting political interviews for BBC Breakfast. Honeybun’s inability to speak or communicate in any meaningful way made the cloth rabbit the ideal inquisitor for Turds. Turds was able to wibble his platitudes, avoiding concrete detail on care for the elderly, and saying race wasn’t an issue regarding the treatment of the smiling piccaninny Meghan Markle, the latter a subject on which Turds is uniquely equipped to pronounce.
After Honeybun’s initial attempts to attract Turds’s attention, by leaping successive sequences of leaps, each equivalent in number to the respective ages of the prime minister’s putative children, the puppet reached deep into his repertoire of silent gestures. Turds’s admission that the Americans would be unlikely to extradite the suspected hit-and-run killer Anne Sacoolas, for example, was met with three of Honeybun’s ear waggles, once beloved by West Country viewers.
Turds’s announcement of the Bung a Bob for Big Ben’s Brexit Bongs policy, which the prime minister improvised live on air like a jazzy Sonny Rollins of shit, saw Honeybun perform four of his impressive headstands, a skill his 1970s co-host Fern Britton, in her 1999 kiss-and-tell Honeybun memoir Winter Treats and Summer Delights, described as the move that melted her heart. Honeybun had hoped to respond to Turds’s comments on the racial abuse of Meghan Markle by turning on his magic colour-distorting button, which was introduced to his gestural arsenal in the 1980s, but it was purloined by a lurking Dominic Cumming, who imagined its reality-altering properties might have practical applications for perception manipulation.
While the Honeybun-Turds head to head was bad news for future political accountability in a functioning democracy, it was good news for the cloth rabbit, whose scandal-wrecked career was resurrected, with multiple offers for him to revive his birthday-announcing vehicle on a variety of digital platforms.
All Honeybun needs is a new sidekick to replace his old co-hosts Fern Britton, Judi Spiers and Ruth Langsford, all of whom are now too respected in the serious fields of broadcasting and journalism to interpret the waggles of a fabric rodent. The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg would of course be the perfect Honeybun sidekick and would bring to the partnership her own experience of being an accommodating puppet operated by unseen hands.
In an unrelated issue, last week’s column jumped the tracks beyond its intended liberal bubble, out into the field latrine of social media, where it was eventually re-edited in a misrepresentative form by a twat. A number of Twitter users, who disliked the work, asked: “Who is Stewart Lee?”, wondered if I was “supposed to be a comedian” and, most hurtfully of all, spitefully put the word “comedian” in inverted commas, cleverly suggesting that I wasn’t a “comedian” at all. Despite many of these commentators being resourceful enough to have proudly traced their pure Viking ancestors, they seemed unable to Google my name to discover that I am indeed a comedian, irrespective of their own necessarily subjective responses to my comedy.
The Duchamp’s urinal of laughter, I have in fact been a comedian for 31 years. My last tour sold a quarter of a million tickets with no advertising to people who attended venues where I was billed as a comedian, on the shared assumption that that was indeed what I was.
In my comedian capacity I have won a Bafta, two British comedy awards and seven Chortle comedy industry awards, and was the co-recipient of an Olivier award, though I do not set any store by these accolades, do not feel that there is any genuine relationship between popularity and quality and mention sales figures and acclaim only to refute the warped aspirational value systems of those who respect them. My current show has received uniform five- and four-star reviews in every British broadsheet newspaper, from the neo-Nazi Telegraph to the Marxist Guardian, but not in the Times, though that paper did last year declare me “the world’s greatest living standup comedian”.
Indeed, the “Wokefinder General” himself, Ricky Gervais, called me “the cleverest, funniest, most cliche-free comedian on the circuit”, though this was perhaps an attempt to absolve himself of an imagined crime, a heart beating beneath the floorboards. I hope this information clarifies any ongoing confusion as unfortunately I do not have time to deal with all your queries individually.
Stewart Lee
2020-01-19T17:47:24+00:00
My metropolitan liberal elitist friends here in 78.5% Remain-voting Hackney do not hold BBC news in high regard, its election coverage considered biased in favour of the government and Laura Kuenssberg merely a horrid flesh trombone through which Dominic Cumming honks his reverberating falsehoods. The news seemed skewed. During the election, the prime minister declined the grilling Andrew “Weetabix” Neil gave his opponents, had a selfie with an impartial Phillip Schofield on ITV and hid in a variety of white goods whenever regional reporters tried to ask basic questions, such as how many children he had or what he actually meant by any of the things he had said. Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn was hung upside down in a pedal bin full of hornets by Andrew “Sphagnum” Neil and had cheese graters rubbed on his genital by an impartial Phillip Schofield on ITV. Nonetheless, despite the defeated left’s perception that a cowed BBC kowtows to government, the Tories’ policy continues to be to avoid scrutiny on news outlets favoured by “Westminster obsessives”, which is post-truth newspeak for “people who understand and care about politics”. Maybe the BBC is doing something right? Even so, it was something of a shock to see Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Vampires Haircut Wall-Spaffer Spunk-Burster Fuck-Business Fuck-the-Families Get-Off-My-Fucking-Laptop Girly-Swot Big-Girl’s-Blouse Chicken-Frit Hulk-Smash Noseringed-Crusties Death-Humbug Technology-Lessons Surrender-Bullshit French-Turds Dog-Whistle Get-Stuffed FactcheckUK@CCHQ 88%-Lies Get-Brexit-Done Bung-a-Bob-for-Big-Ben’s-Bongs Johnson’s first post-election BBC interview on Tuesday morning. I didn’t even know that Gus Honeybun, the mute puppet rabbit whose leaps announced children’s birthdays on Westward Television from 1961 to 1992, was still alive, let alone conducting political interviews for BBC Breakfast. Honeybun’s inability to speak or communicate in any meaningful way made the cloth rabbit the ideal inquisitor for Turds. Turds was able to wibble his platitudes, avoiding concrete detail on...
Stewart Lee has been walking a fine line for 35 years. One of the stalwarts of the alternative comedy scene, he cut his teeth writing early material for Steve Coogan’s world-class Alan Partridge, creating a long radio and TV run with Richard Herring (A Bit of Lee and Herring), deconstructing his own material to the nth degree (with Chris Morris) in Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, and co-writing Jerry Springer: The Opera. A career in stand up has run through all this, including classic shows such as Carpet Remnant World and 41st Best Stand Up Ever. Lee is also one of the longest-running consistent performers at the Edinburgh Festival.
Content Provider continues his run of very successful one-man national shows. The Dome looked sold out on the Thursday night of his four-night residency, and he started with a typical brief for a Lee gig: the exploration of ‘atomised man in the era of digital consumerism’ with reference to Caspar David Friedrich’s painting ‘Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog’. Here I refer to the ‘fine line’ above: how to extract the Michael out of his own intelligence, material and audience with a mixture of vitriol and irony. Luckily, it’s something he excels at.
He manages to derail very quickly into Brexit and the American presidential vote (and I’m not sure he didn’t have a plant in the audience for this), which certainly can be construed as vehicles for alternative comedy material, and fair game for the leftist multitudes who are Lee’s bread and butter punters. Classic Lee material follows, with forays into self-congratulation, his attitude toward post-Brexit fallout and a great routine on ‘the metropolitan liberal elite’.
What seemed to be missing from this show is the 20-odd minute set pieces that Lee seems to pull off so well: maybe he just wants a change, and maybe it’s just us, but we did miss the huge trademark forays into such subjects as the state of the jungle canyon rope bridges in Scooby-Doo, pear cider that’s made from hundred per cent pears, or scathing deconstructions of Top Gear. This was much more fragmented material, and for our tastes not quite as strong as the some of the previous shows.
Still, there was plenty to get your teeth into, including an ironic take on old school bondage (“if your nan and grandad wanted to use a bridle, they had to make one out of vines”), and selling his own DVDs in the lobby after the show, via his usual swipes at the Michael McIntyres and Lee Macks of this world. He definitely makes a semi-serious point about the inherent narcissism and commodification of beauty, art and lifestyle, and rounds it off with a cracking sight gag based on the Friedrich painting.
Although this might not have been one of his classic shows, Lee’s a trooper, and we hope he continues to tread the boards in his own inimitable way.
Stewart Lee, Brighton Dome, Thursday 23rd February 2017
Words by Sam Moffett
Photo by Idil Sukan
Stewart Lee
2017-03-07T20:45:24+00:00
Stewart Lee has been walking a fine line for 35 years. One of the stalwarts of the alternative comedy scene, he cut his teeth writing early material for Steve Coogan’s world-class Alan Partridge, creating a long radio and TV run with Richard Herring (A Bit of Lee and Herring), deconstructing his own material to the nth degree (with Chris Morris) in Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, and co-writing Jerry Springer: The Opera. A career in stand up has run through all this, including classic shows such as Carpet Remnant World and 41st Best Stand Up Ever. Lee is also one of the longest-running consistent performers at the Edinburgh Festival. Content Provider continues his run of very successful one-man national shows. The Dome looked sold out on the Thursday night of his four-night residency, and he started with a typical brief for a Lee gig: the exploration of ‘atomised man in the era of digital consumerism’ with reference to Caspar David Friedrich’s painting ‘Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog’. Here I refer to the ‘fine line’ above: how to extract the Michael out of his own intelligence, material and audience with a mixture of vitriol and irony. Luckily, it’s something he excels at. He manages to derail very quickly into Brexit and the American presidential vote (and I’m not sure he didn’t have a plant in the audience for this), which certainly can be construed as vehicles for alternative comedy material, and fair game for the leftist multitudes who are Lee’s bread and butter punters. Classic Lee material follows, with forays into self-congratulation, his attitude toward post-Brexit fallout and a great routine on ‘the metropolitan liberal elite’. What seemed to be missing from this show is the 20-odd minute set pieces that Lee seems to pull off so well: maybe he just...
What becomes clear with Stewart Lee in this latest stand-up set is his shtick. He has lasted far longer than most to ever grace the stage. The camera angles, the choice of wordplay. It is beautiful. Unravelling that still feels like being in on the bit, but once inside, the cold reach of the outdoors and unknowing is gone. It is irreplaceable and once that is broken the half-life of Lee’s work and demanding displays of broadly creative wordplay is crushed under its own hubris. But that is the beauty of Lee, who reinvents himself and reworks his craft throughout Tornado, the second, better stand-up special from the 41st best stand-up comedian.
As a critic of the culture, Lee works in some successful, furious tirades against Netflix and the content vacuum that comes from living in the streaming bubble. Essential criticisms of how the comedy titans of Netflix are taking up space with vaguely palatable pieces. Lee doesn’t do “ambulance chasing” material, instead waiting for “reality to align” with what he writes. Almost immediately launching into a criticism of others, for those inside and in the know, it will not be any major surprise. Lee still manages to muster up some great bits and pieces, the timid postman of comedy coming clear with some great moments that manage to entertain the problems of stand-up comedy and the streaming enterprise. That much is golden, and it is a frequent asset to Lee’s set here.
Decades on the comedy route, touring this venue and that, and Lee is sick of it. Or is he? Once again, he has formed a set that takes aim at the right targets but Lee never reveals whether the gun is loaded. Either way, it is the presentation of the weapon that is Lee’s wordplay that marks Tornado as a strong return to form. It is also a clear representation of Lee’s evolving status in the comedy field. His empty stage is greater than the crowded house of comedy counterparts of days yet to come. He does rehash a brief criticism or moment of clarity from earlier sets, but it is because they are still relevant in their changed forms almost a decade later.
All the usual suspects of a Lee stand-up set appear. Reading from cue cards written up in long-form quality, picking apart the uselessness of some minor problem that affected Lee some years ago, the reference to filming a live set, the stare down the barrel of the camera, the turn away from the audience. High shots that display the architecture of the venue come crashing down as Lee churns out the “sharks falling from the sky” description of Netflix. “Does he just repeat the same sentences over and over again? Like an angry Tedtalk?” Yes, he does. It used to be ground-breaking. Now? It still is. A different route is travelled. A different gun is loaded. Lee builds up a new setlist of scattershot thoughts, fears, and ideas, that rely just as much on audience interaction as they do on a lack of sharks falling from the skies.
Stewart Lee
2022-09-29T12:35:50+01:00
What becomes clear with Stewart Lee in this latest stand-up set is his shtick. He has lasted far longer than most to ever grace the stage. The camera angles, the choice of wordplay. It is beautiful. Unravelling that still feels like being in on the bit, but once inside, the cold reach of the outdoors and unknowing is gone. It is irreplaceable and once that is broken the half-life of Lee’s work and demanding displays of broadly creative wordplay is crushed under its own hubris. But that is the beauty of Lee, who reinvents himself and reworks his craft throughout Tornado, the second, better stand-up special from the 41st best stand-up comedian. As a critic of the culture, Lee works in some successful, furious tirades against Netflix and the content vacuum that comes from living in the streaming bubble. Essential criticisms of how the comedy titans of Netflix are taking up space with vaguely palatable pieces. Lee doesn’t do “ambulance chasing” material, instead waiting for “reality to align” with what he writes. Almost immediately launching into a criticism of others, for those inside and in the know, it will not be any major surprise. Lee still manages to muster up some great bits and pieces, the timid postman of comedy coming clear with some great moments that manage to entertain the problems of stand-up comedy and the streaming enterprise. That much is golden, and it is a frequent asset to Lee’s set here. Decades on the comedy route, touring this venue and that, and Lee is sick of it. Or is he? Once again, he has formed a set that takes aim at the right targets but Lee never reveals whether the gun is loaded. Either way, it is the presentation of the weapon that is Lee’s wordplay that marks...
Stewart Lee's in Edinburgh this year to see how much we can take. And we've made him do it. The creator of the controversial Jerry Springer: The Opera has, he informs us, had a rough year. But he's come out fighting; if we're going to condemn him as Britain's biggest blasphemer then he's going to run with it.
He does want to talk about other stuff (there's a thing or two about the London bombings he's keen to get off his chest as well as some stuff about his illness this year) but by the time he's done with you you'll realise that this was just his way of easing you in for the main event. Because it's definitely Jesus who ends up coming in for most stick.
And he's relentless in finding new and exciting ways to demonstrate exactly how un-Christian he can be. Sure it's sensationalist, but this is a smart comic genuinely bemused by the vehemence of criticism he's had slung at him. It is immediately obvious that Lee is on a completely different plane to most of his contemporaries; he's a class act, completely engaging and clearly relishing the chance to play with his audience.
The way he sees it, he's damned if he's not going to have a bit of fun with it all.
In fact, it seems he's just damned full-stop.
Stewart Lee
2005-08-07T22:47:33+01:00
Stewart Lee's in Edinburgh this year to see how much we can take. And we've made him do it. The creator of the controversial Jerry Springer: The Opera has, he informs us, had a rough year. But he's come out fighting; if we're going to condemn him as Britain's biggest blasphemer then he's going to run with it. He does want to talk about other stuff (there's a thing or two about the London bombings he's keen to get off his chest as well as some stuff about his illness this year) but by the time he's done with you you'll realise that this was just his way of easing you in for the main event. Because it's definitely Jesus who ends up coming in for most stick. And he's relentless in finding new and exciting ways to demonstrate exactly how un-Christian he can be. Sure it's sensationalist, but this is a smart comic genuinely bemused by the vehemence of criticism he's had slung at him. It is immediately obvious that Lee is on a completely different plane to most of his contemporaries; he's a class act, completely engaging and clearly relishing the chance to play with his audience. The way he sees it, he's damned if he's not going to have a bit of fun with it all. In fact, it seems he's just damned full-stop.
It’s a brave and foolish person who tries to take a photo at a Stewart Lee show. Brave, because you will be singled out and shouted at. Foolish, because what’s the point? Just watch it instead.
Early in tonight’s gig, Lee turns his ire on someone brandishing a phone up on the balcony and it immediately ruins the flow of his routine. Admittedly, it wouldn’t have ruined his flow nearly as much if he hadn’t stopped to point out how much it had ruined his flow. This incident, the first of several such interruptions, is a mirror of his comedy: self-aware to the point of distraction and repetitive to the point of distraction. And yes, that’s kind of the point. Despite a running gag about parents bringing their unsuspecting kids to the show, everyone here must know what they’re in for.
“Reports of sharks falling from the skies are on the rise again. Nobody on the Eastern Seaboard is safe.”
Stewart Lee is in Brighton for four dates on this tour. He’s performing two sets every night, each with a discrete theme and throughline. The first, Tornado, begins a long and winding journey with the amusing discovery that the TV show Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle was (mistakenly) described by Netflix as being about sharks falling from the sky. The quote above isn’t a spoiler, by the way, and if you’re planning to see the show on this run you’ll be very familiar with it by the end. You know what you’re in for, right?
One of the highlights of the first half hinges on a review written by Alan Bennett in which the playwright earnestly compares Stewart Lee to various obscure academics. It’s a neat section – the sort of thing that Erving Goffman would probably like. Anyway, Lee pulls out a great Yorkshire accent to mimic Bennett’s endearing turns of phrase, and later warps his style brilliantly. Although he rips into the review, it’s clear he’s got lots of respect for the guy. This in itself is refreshing, given how much time is given over to taking potshots at other (lesser) comedians.
We have no idea if the Netflix cock-up ever really happened, but it makes for an entertaining yarn. Lee sometimes seems to get tangled up in random asides, with plenty of self-demeaning anecdotes about ageing, but he knows what’s he doing (and lets you know about it). The first half concludes with him wrapping up these loose ends with a satisfying twist, like one of the better episodes of Columbo. It’s funny and impressive, and it doesn’t even matter that the midpoint finale fails due to a technical hitch.
Lee pads every step of his act with hints about where he’s going with it, and it’s this meticulous structuring that seems to make him so irate at being interrupted by the sight of a mobile phone. But sometimes the fun happens in the gaps. A non-gag in the second half escalates into contagious laughter, which Lee keeps afloat by adeptly berating the audience for laughing at nothing. Which leads to more laughter, and so on. It’s a strange moment, and Lee is loving the absurdity of it. Eventually he has to ask the audience to stop laughing – so he can carry on with his routine. (In the spirit of self-referentiality, we should mention the fact that he asked local press to mention this fact).
The second set is entitled Snowflake, which does a little of what you might expect, and a lot that you won’t. We get some hit-and-run references to Brexit, but the main focus is a defence of political correctness. He makes the very good point that people who think PC politics has “gone mad” have often simply confused it with health and safety legislation. He has fun with this idea, and soon spirals into hilariously extreme imagery. A more sober approach sees him recollecting facets of his younger days to remind us what 70s racism was really like. And it’s an effective message. However, rather than attempting to explore the bizarre civil war that’s erupting in our culture, the show sees him simply reasserting his liberal position. Stewart Lee is exactly what his critics think he is, and he’s fine with that.
Trying to explain the appeal of this comedian would be a fruitless task and the background info required to do so wouldn’t leave much space for anything else. So let’s not go there. Yet without the context of Lee’s thirty-year career, his show wouldn’t function. His material is often about his career, just as much as it is about the material itself. You see where this is going… Commenting on a stand-up show that habitually comments on itself is possibly fruitless as well. We’ve now realised it’s a brave and foolish person who tries to review a Stewart Lee show. Brave, because his shows take the piss out of his reviews. And foolish, because what’s the point? Just watch it instead.
Stewart Lee
2020-02-19T13:31:08+00:00
It’s a brave and foolish person who tries to take a photo at a Stewart Lee show. Brave, because you will be singled out and shouted at. Foolish, because what’s the point? Just watch it instead. Early in tonight’s gig, Lee turns his ire on someone brandishing a phone up on the balcony and it immediately ruins the flow of his routine. Admittedly, it wouldn’t have ruined his flow nearly as much if he hadn’t stopped to point out how much it had ruined his flow. This incident, the first of several such interruptions, is a mirror of his comedy: self-aware to the point of distraction and repetitive to the point of distraction. And yes, that’s kind of the point. Despite a running gag about parents bringing their unsuspecting kids to the show, everyone here must know what they’re in for. “Reports of sharks falling from the skies are on the rise again. Nobody on the Eastern Seaboard is safe.” Stewart Lee is in Brighton for four dates on this tour. He’s performing two sets every night, each with a discrete theme and throughline. The first, Tornado, begins a long and winding journey with the amusing discovery that the TV show Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle was (mistakenly) described by Netflix as being about sharks falling from the sky. The quote above isn’t a spoiler, by the way, and if you’re planning to see the show on this run you’ll be very familiar with it by the end. You know what you’re in for, right? One of the highlights of the first half hinges on a review written by Alan Bennett in which the playwright earnestly compares Stewart Lee to various obscure academics. It’s a neat section – the sort of thing that Erving Goffman would probably like. Anyway, Lee pulls...
Describe stand-up comedians. Easy isn't it? The clue is in the name, right? They're those people who stand up at a microphone and perform a comedy routine. People like Stewart Lee.
Would that it were that simple. Take this show, for example. Described as "ambient stand-up storytelling" - part comedy, part theatre and part biography. It may not quite know what it wants to be, but it's no worse off for its lack of a pigeonhole.
Comedy, it is said, differs from theatre in that it breaks down the invisible wall between the performer and the audience. There are few bettwe examples of this than Stewart Lee.
Even here in what is essentially a theatrical piece - he can't resist prefacing the show with a personal introduction to the audience in which he tells them how they can tell when he's acting, where he has placed his notes and which part of the show to look out for as "the boring bit".
Commissioned to write a treatment for a biopic on Edward Lear, Lee sets about conducting research - primarily centred around Lear's poem The Owl And The Pussycat.
Amongst his discoveries are a diary written by the owl, random scribblings by paranoid strangers and a tree in a cemetary infested with owls.
Somewhere along the line, this seems to be connected with a serious plumbing problem that stops Lee from either using the toilet or focusing on the project, much to the chagrin of the lead actor who has been lined up to play Lear. When that actor is Ray Winstone, it's time to start worrying.
There are some wonderful gags and ideas woven into this show, punctuated by Lee's talent to apply a comedian's logic to an illogical verse.
With Simon Munnery playing Ray Winstone as Edward Lear, and the atmospheric live cello backing, it's an eclectic evening of high entertainment, if not finally undone by the uncertainty of what it is trying to be.
Lacking the big pay-off punchline of a comedy routine or the dramatic closure of a theatrical piece, the disparate strands are never satisfactorily resolved. Still, this isn't comedy or theatre, but "ambient stand-up storytelling", remember? So who's the say that this isn't the intention?
Stewart Lee
2002-08-22T22:53:36+01:00
Describe stand-up comedians. Easy isn't it? The clue is in the name, right? They're those people who stand up at a microphone and perform a comedy routine. People like Stewart Lee. Would that it were that simple. Take this show, for example. Described as "ambient stand-up storytelling" - part comedy, part theatre and part biography. It may not quite know what it wants to be, but it's no worse off for its lack of a pigeonhole. Comedy, it is said, differs from theatre in that it breaks down the invisible wall between the performer and the audience. There are few bettwe examples of this than Stewart Lee. Even here in what is essentially a theatrical piece - he can't resist prefacing the show with a personal introduction to the audience in which he tells them how they can tell when he's acting, where he has placed his notes and which part of the show to look out for as "the boring bit". Commissioned to write a treatment for a biopic on Edward Lear, Lee sets about conducting research - primarily centred around Lear's poem The Owl And The Pussycat. Amongst his discoveries are a diary written by the owl, random scribblings by paranoid strangers and a tree in a cemetary infested with owls. Somewhere along the line, this seems to be connected with a serious plumbing problem that stops Lee from either using the toilet or focusing on the project, much to the chagrin of the lead actor who has been lined up to play Lear. When that actor is Ray Winstone, it's time to start worrying. There are some wonderful gags and ideas woven into this show, punctuated by Lee's talent to apply a comedian's logic to an illogical verse. With Simon Munnery playing Ray Winstone as Edward Lear,...
John and Tony kick off the new season of Three Little Words with comedian Stewart Lee, a man The Times called in 2018 "the best standup working today."
On Three Little Words, John Bishop and Tony Pitts invite guests to chat about three words that mean something to them and the one they would gladly never hear again.
NOTE: THIS PODCAST IS ON AMAZON MUSIC WHICH MEANS YOU NEED AN AMAZON MUSIC ACCOUNT TO LISTEN TO IT
Stewart Lee
2022-02-18T19:34:12+00:00
John and Tony kick off the new season of Three Little Words with comedian Stewart Lee, a man The Times called in 2018 "the best standup working today." On Three Little Words, John Bishop and Tony Pitts invite guests to chat about three words that mean something to them and the one they would gladly never hear again. NOTE: THIS PODCAST IS ON AMAZON MUSIC WHICH MEANS YOU NEED AN AMAZON MUSIC ACCOUNT TO LISTEN TO IT
Martin Archer has been throwing various combinations of sonic stuff at sticky Sheffield surfaces since the late Seventies.
Assembling the forty, largely untrained, singers of Juxtavoices in atmospheric locations, he channels their breathy extemporisations through texts by Samuel Becket, Gertrude Stein and the venerable sound poet Bob Cobbing, who would have loved Juxtavoices’ inchoate evisceration of Are Your Children Safe In The Sea? Here’s a mass exorcism, a whole tribe talking in tongues, forty full moon were-Ligetis, and Wicker Man workings wrangled by the Swingle Singers.
Stewart Lee
2013-09-01T20:32:19+01:00
Martin Archer has been throwing various combinations of sonic stuff at sticky Sheffield surfaces since the late Seventies. Assembling the forty, largely untrained, singers of Juxtavoices in atmospheric locations, he channels their breathy extemporisations through texts by Samuel Becket, Gertrude Stein and the venerable sound poet Bob Cobbing, who would have loved Juxtavoices’ inchoate evisceration of Are Your Children Safe In The Sea? Here’s a mass exorcism, a whole tribe talking in tongues, forty full moon were-Ligetis, and Wicker Man workings wrangled by the Swingle Singers.
He might need the time off to calm down. From the outset he was in typically intolerant mode, warning that if he saw any phones turned on they will be smashed “and you can take it up with the police”. He did not carry out his threat but he did briefly wade into the stalls to give someone a mean stare.
This is a show packed with magnificent jokes at the expense of Brexit, Trump, the sex in Game Of Thrones (“Peter Stringfellow’s Lord Of The Rings”) and much more. There is also some self-indulgent guff where he dissects his ongoing routines, though it is very entertaining self-indulgent guff.
He generated considerable mileage out of mocking his membership of the metropolitan liberal elite, N16 branch, too. But as the monologue moved into the second half a deeper theme developed as he yearned for a simpler, less narcissistic, pre-instant gratification age. In his grandparents’ day, he noted, people had to walk miles to find bondage outfits, now they can just click on Amazon.
There is nothing new about creating an exaggerated version of oneself for humorous effect, yet the road-hardened veteran has made this style his own. Every idea is pushed to the limit, from his impression of under-forties on their smartphones, bashing the screens like apes, to adopting an absurd bow-legged stance to satirise fellow stand-up Russell Howard. The result is both intellectually ambitious and clownishly jocular. The comedy world will be a less funny place without this performer at the top of his game.
Stewart Lee
2018-04-20T12:59:22+01:00
He might need the time off to calm down. From the outset he was in typically intolerant mode, warning that if he saw any phones turned on they will be smashed “and you can take it up with the police”. He did not carry out his threat but he did briefly wade into the stalls to give someone a mean stare. This is a show packed with magnificent jokes at the expense of Brexit, Trump, the sex in Game Of Thrones (“Peter Stringfellow’s Lord Of The Rings”) and much more. There is also some self-indulgent guff where he dissects his ongoing routines, though it is very entertaining self-indulgent guff. He generated considerable mileage out of mocking his membership of the metropolitan liberal elite, N16 branch, too. But as the monologue moved into the second half a deeper theme developed as he yearned for a simpler, less narcissistic, pre-instant gratification age. In his grandparents’ day, he noted, people had to walk miles to find bondage outfits, now they can just click on Amazon. There is nothing new about creating an exaggerated version of oneself for humorous effect, yet the road-hardened veteran has made this style his own. Every idea is pushed to the limit, from his impression of under-forties on their smartphones, bashing the screens like apes, to adopting an absurd bow-legged stance to satirise fellow stand-up Russell Howard. The result is both intellectually ambitious and clownishly jocular. The comedy world will be a less funny place without this performer at the top of his game.
The teenage Jesus Acedo gorged on Zeppelin and Shankar at Tucson library, and picked up a guitar to form Black Sun Ensemble in the early '80s, playing a mystical, mainly instrumental, acid folk blues, that instantly snapped synapses worldwide.
But Jesus's struggle with schizophrenia saw his compositions lose focus.
Behind Purple Clouds, completed by the ensemble after his death last March, suffers from a shiny world music veneer and jarring electronic intrusions, but Jesus's modal fretwork catches fire a final time.
Stewart Lee
2014-01-05T01:27:35+00:00
The teenage Jesus Acedo gorged on Zeppelin and Shankar at Tucson library, and picked up a guitar to form Black Sun Ensemble in the early '80s, playing a mystical, mainly instrumental, acid folk blues, that instantly snapped synapses worldwide. But Jesus's struggle with schizophrenia saw his compositions lose focus. Behind Purple Clouds, completed by the ensemble after his death last March, suffers from a shiny world music veneer and jarring electronic intrusions, but Jesus's modal fretwork catches fire a final time.
Over the May bank holiday weekend, the Cheltenham Jazz Festival bends its boundaries a little, making space for a music that’s entering its fifth decade of sustainable cult status, despite minimal airplay, minimal subsidy, and dismissal from mainstream critics. I’ve been pulled in to help promote three nights of so-called Free Improvisation, under the banner heading of Stewart Lee’s Freehouse, because I write about the music for this paper, and because it is imagined that a semi-known comedian like me might help to sell this supposedly problematic music to the people of Gloucestershire. The same weekend in London sees the tenth annual Freedom Of The City event at The Conway Hall, a vast programme featuring some of the same performers, appearing at their own expense in a gesture of solidarity with London’s thriving Free Improvisation scene.
In short, there’s never been a better time to explore non-idiomatic spontaneity.I began watching Free Improvisation without even knowing what it was, when I arrived in London in the late eighties. In those pre-Google days, I’d follow flyers to tiny clubs to see unknown musicians mentioned in interviews with experimentally inclined rock bands like Sonic Youth or Spacemen 3, and be exposed to whole evenings of serious looking folk, playing apparently incompatible instruments, with no obvious melody, or rhythm, or any discernable purpose. At first I found it ludicrous.
During a Morphogenesis show at The China Pig in 1993, attended by six people and a cat, a balloon that one of the performers was rubbing burst, but no-one minded, and I still went back. In 1997, I saw the guitarist Derek Bailey accidentally walk into a wall whilst playing, acknowledge the clang of his instrument, and then deliberately bash it into the wall again.
I realised there was a method at work, and how close the absurd was to the sublime. Then, after I moved to Hackney in the late nineties, where rooms above pubs host a disproportionate amount of this music, I realised that I was going to see this sort of thing all time, and finding in it a satisfaction few other sounds still offered. Apparently this stuff even had a name, and a history. It was Free Improvisation. And it looked like I was a fan.But what is Free Improvisation? And why should you allow it to jeopardise your Bank Holiday weekend? Various Free Improvisers kindly took time out from dismantling hollow musical gestures to explain. The saxophonist Tony Bevan offered a concise history; “European Free improvisation came about in the late sixties, partly as a not disrespectful reaction to the Black American Free Jazz.” (Of Albert Ayler, John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman).
Typically of the musicians I contacted, the guitarist Alex Ward’s answer avoided specifics; “I would define what I do as attempting to make original music using whichever of the means at my disposal is appropriate for a given circumstance and intention.” For me, as an observer, there’s also the simple fact that Free Improvisation’s early instigators, the working class jazz musicians Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley for example, were restless auto-didacts sick of the constraints of tea dances and session work. Wondering where to go next, and denied access to the Temples of Culture, they built a bricolage avant-garde music from the ground up, in empty theatres and pub back rooms, unvisited by the establishment.
But despite its roots in jazz, and the music’s formal inclusion in this year’s Cheltenham Jazz festival, can Free Improvisation even be called ‘jazz’? The drummer Steve Noble writes like he plays, with capital letters and exclamation marks; “I would call what I do FREE IMPROVISATION, but as I am not asked very often to name what I do, maybe I have not given this too much though. I just PLAY man!” American jazz’s experimental wing believe that a conservative pincer movement of the critic Stanley Crouch and the trumpeter Winston Marsallis ensures the innovations of the Black sixties ‘Free Jazz’ musicians, cutting lose from melody and rhythm under John Coltrane or Cecil Taylor, are viewed as dead ends, whilst a more palatable jazz heads for the conservatoire. So what does the word ‘jazz’ even mean now?
With characteristic bluntness, the pianist Steve Beresford says it means a great many things, “most of them being unbearable. Because the qualities I hear and love in say Theolonious Monk, Ornette Coleman, Bill Evans, and so on, are so often totally missing in so many jazz players, but those qualities are present in so many of the free improvisers I listen to and play with.”I think Beresford means there is a loss in mainstream jazz of the excitement that would have gripped audiences historically, when the music’s next moves were genuinely unknowable. And in an age where we expect and are given culture on demand, through a variety of media, watching a performance by Free Improvisers forces you, almost uniquely, to realise that something is happening that will only happen once. Improvised Music relieves me, at least, of the terrible duty of expectation. “That’s the essential thing about Free Improvisation,” agrees the saxophonist Evan Parker, who plays on Saturday in Cheltenham and on Sunday in London, both with the American trumpeter Peter Evans. “Listening to a performance of something you already know, you are listening to it in real time, but you are also comparing it to the recording that you know. With Free Improvisation you are forced to concentrate on the music in front of you.”
Over and above the actual sounds and shapes of Free Improvisation lies another key attraction. This music will not betray you. One of the purposes of rock and roll, for adolescent boys and resolutely adolescent men, was that it offered something to believe in. But now Iggy Pop is in a car insurance advert and the counter culture is corporately sponsored.
Free Improvisation, by its very nature, cannot be clipped, packaged and co-opted. Your emotional investment is not only safe, but it will swiftly double in value.Tony Bevan concludes, “I don't think Free Improvisation represents anything that's unique in the history of human kind. There's a moment in all kinds of music where it suddenly just .. well, takes-off, I suppose. Classical, Punk, folk, jazz - it seems to be just something that happens when people play together.
But the thing about Free Improvisation is it puts people in a position where those moments can happen quicker, or more often, and not because of any mysticism, but because the players have to play together, react, and create a single body of music. And when it happens, as Derek Bailey would say, everyone in the room knows it.
”“That said”, the saxophonist Alan Wilkinson confided, also quoting Derek Bailey, “it all sounds like crap to most people on the street.’” Bailey’s refreshingly unpretentious attitude to a supposedly pretentious art-form is typical of the Free Improvisers generally, who avoid the self-mythology even the lowliest indie rocker is prone to. “It's good to get a preview of these events in a mainstream paper,” says the saxophonist and composer John Butcher, “although a few years back I recall an Evening Standard piece, where after a week of going to Free Improvisation gigs the guy said he could only conclude that everybody was required to use bows. Except for the string players, for whom it was forbidden.”
Stewart Lee’s Freehouse – Friday 30th April – Christopher Cundy and guests
Saturday May 1st – Evan Parker and guests
Sunday May 2nd – Gail Brand, Mark Sanders and guests
8pm, The Playhouse Theatre, Cheltenham http://cheltenhamfestivals.com/jazz/
Over the May bank holiday weekend, the Cheltenham Jazz Festival bends its boundaries a little, making space for a music that’s entering its fifth decade of sustainable cult status, despite minimal airplay, minimal subsidy, and dismissal from mainstream critics. I’ve been pulled in to help promote three nights of so-called Free Improvisation, under the banner heading of Stewart Lee’s Freehouse, because I write about the music for this paper, and because it is imagined that a semi-known comedian like me might help to sell this supposedly problematic music to the people of Gloucestershire. The same weekend in London sees the tenth annual Freedom Of The City event at The Conway Hall, a vast programme featuring some of the same performers, appearing at their own expense in a gesture of solidarity with London’s thriving Free Improvisation scene. In short, there’s never been a better time to explore non-idiomatic spontaneity.I began watching Free Improvisation without even knowing what it was, when I arrived in London in the late eighties. In those pre-Google days, I’d follow flyers to tiny clubs to see unknown musicians mentioned in interviews with experimentally inclined rock bands like Sonic Youth or Spacemen 3, and be exposed to whole evenings of serious looking folk, playing apparently incompatible instruments, with no obvious melody, or rhythm, or any discernable purpose. At first I found it ludicrous. During a Morphogenesis show at The China Pig in 1993, attended by six people and a cat, a balloon that one of the performers was rubbing burst, but no-one minded, and I still went back. In 1997, I saw the guitarist Derek Bailey accidentally walk into a wall whilst playing, acknowledge the clang of his instrument, and then deliberately bash it into the wall again. I realised there was a method at work, and how...
"I think I hate Richard Hammond more than anyone who has ever lived," says Stewart Lee, in a new routine that has already become notorious (to Daily Mail readers, at least) about the Top Gear presenter and "professional apologist for ignorance and bullying". Despite his recent (modest) TV success, Lee burnishes his reputation here as the fierce scourge of our dimwit mainstream. Watching his work is like attending some insurrectionist cell, where truth may finally and fearlessly be spoken about the malevolent powers-that-be.
What makes it more bracing still – and funnier – is that Lee packages his rage as cool irony. Perhaps this is the only triumph he can have over the likes of Jeremy Clarkson and Chris Moyles, to kill them softly with sarcasm, timing and pregnant restraint. In Lee's hands, these are such deadly weapons that one longs to see them wielded against a wider range of targets. He tells of his disappoint ment with "media, government and culture", but confines his comedy to the first and last. It's hilarious, it's cathartic, but sometimes the Hammond-bashing gets a bit fish-in-a-barrel.
There are fine routines, too, about moving to the country for the so-called "quality of life", and about loyalty cards in coffee shops. But the showstopping skit takes aim at advertising's appropriation of art – and, by extension, of our souls. The item stems from Lee's favourite song cropping up on a cider ad, but he tilts the truth into something weird and traumatic about his family history being violated for commercial gain. Throughout, the tension between precision and disgust is tantalising. But beyond the disgust is a bruised idealism, tenderly articulated guitar in hands, at the close of the show. This is comedy with a brain and a heart, from a standup effortlessly maintaining top gear.
Stewart Lee
2009-10-15T15:42:27+01:00
"I think I hate Richard Hammond more than anyone who has ever lived," says Stewart Lee, in a new routine that has already become notorious (to Daily Mail readers, at least) about the Top Gear presenter and "professional apologist for ignorance and bullying". Despite his recent (modest) TV success, Lee burnishes his reputation here as the fierce scourge of our dimwit mainstream. Watching his work is like attending some insurrectionist cell, where truth may finally and fearlessly be spoken about the malevolent powers-that-be. What makes it more bracing still – and funnier – is that Lee packages his rage as cool irony. Perhaps this is the only triumph he can have over the likes of Jeremy Clarkson and Chris Moyles, to kill them softly with sarcasm, timing and pregnant restraint. In Lee's hands, these are such deadly weapons that one longs to see them wielded against a wider range of targets. He tells of his disappoint ment with "media, government and culture", but confines his comedy to the first and last. It's hilarious, it's cathartic, but sometimes the Hammond-bashing gets a bit fish-in-a-barrel. There are fine routines, too, about moving to the country for the so-called "quality of life", and about loyalty cards in coffee shops. But the showstopping skit takes aim at advertising's appropriation of art – and, by extension, of our souls. The item stems from Lee's favourite song cropping up on a cider ad, but he tilts the truth into something weird and traumatic about his family history being violated for commercial gain. Throughout, the tension between precision and disgust is tantalising. But beyond the disgust is a bruised idealism, tenderly articulated guitar in hands, at the close of the show. This is comedy with a brain and a heart, from a standup effortlessly maintaining top gear.
Italian electro-acoustic composer Andrea Belfi once recorded himself shaking the contents of a house.
His countryman Stefano Pilia played punk before discovering drones. Kentucky’s David Grubbs blasted underage Eighties hardcore with Squirrelbait and is now a professorial presence on the experimental scene. Dust & Mirrors combines tonal minimalist repetition with hanging cadences of back-porch guitar and Grubbs’ sung-spoken poetry.
The Headlock reshapes a riff that could fill stadiums.
The album is unashamedly beautiful but never banal, fiercely intelligent but never obscure.
(17/3/14)
Stewart Lee
2014-03-17T01:18:13+00:00
Italian electro-acoustic composer Andrea Belfi once recorded himself shaking the contents of a house. His countryman Stefano Pilia played punk before discovering drones. Kentucky’s David Grubbs blasted underage Eighties hardcore with Squirrelbait and is now a professorial presence on the experimental scene. Dust & Mirrors combines tonal minimalist repetition with hanging cadences of back-porch guitar and Grubbs’ sung-spoken poetry. The Headlock reshapes a riff that could fill stadiums. The album is unashamedly beautiful but never banal, fiercely intelligent but never obscure. (17/3/14)
You should pretty much know what to expect when you buy a ticket to see Stewart Lee. If you don’t you have most definitely gone to the wrong gig. In the final year of his forties, Lee is not one to suffer fools gladly – not that he ever has. And as ever – we, his loyal fee-paying audience, are the butt of his jokes. There are very few comedians who can make a whole room laugh so much at their own inadequacies.
Stewart Lee is still bitter from his BAFTA-winning BBC 2 show Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle not being recommissioned after its fourth series and he has no qualms in sharing. His stage persona is not just of arrogance but we would be mistaken in thinking he believes himself a demi-God of stand-up comedy. Boasting four and five-star reviews of his tour so far, he firmly asserts that if we don’t find him funny the problem will not be on his side of the stage.
Lee has often been described as a surreal satirist throughout his career and there is no avoiding the political landscape in Content Provider – no matter how much he states he didn’t want to write a show about Brexit or the rise of Trump. For years Lee has had the pleasure of referring to his leftist audience as the bourgeoisie and tonight we are lambasted many times for being a “metropolitan liberal elite”. He knows his audiences’ Achilles heel and he isn’t afraid to give it repeated swift kicks. When writing about Lee’s stagecraft it is impossible not to refer to his self-referential cleverness as he deconstructs everything about what he is and what he does: his role as a stand-up comedian and the actual jokes themselves. He loves to play with his audience and keep them guessing what is actually scripted and what he can improvise in the moment after thirty years of being one of Britain’s most respected comedians.
The first half of Lee’s show is a superb, polished hour of comedy. He doesn’t hold any prisoners and delivers everything we love about him with such delicious viciousness. His set, cruelly, is constructed of mounds of other comedian’s DVDs he claims to have bought from the internet for one pence or the odd fifty pence in a charity shop. The cheapest you can buy a second-hand copy of one of his DVDs, he gleefully informs us, is for about £3.60. And at one point takes delight in trampling on and kicking over piles of the worthless artifacts he describes as the cheapest building blocks available. The second half, however, lacks the drive and bite he so successfully establishes. With a similar running time to the first half, the attention in the room begins to wane a little as his topic strays to the imagined sex life of the increasingly elderly population. Without his trademark self-aggrandising, he occasionally slips into the realm of the stand-up comedians he tells us he so vehemently despises.
Despite seeing him several times over the years Stewart Lee never fails to impress. With such carefully constructed turns of phrase, it is no surprise that at one point of the show he even quotes himself from an interview in a broadsheet newspaper. After years of shunning television panel shows, it seems that TV has finally shunned Lee despite the critical acclaim he received. He has always been a live stand-up, first and foremost, and now entering his fifties one hopes he doesn’t want to slow down anytime soon.
Stewart Lee
2017-05-22T15:50:20+01:00
You should pretty much know what to expect when you buy a ticket to see Stewart Lee. If you don’t you have most definitely gone to the wrong gig. In the final year of his forties, Lee is not one to suffer fools gladly – not that he ever has. And as ever – we, his loyal fee-paying audience, are the butt of his jokes. There are very few comedians who can make a whole room laugh so much at their own inadequacies. Stewart Lee is still bitter from his BAFTA-winning BBC 2 show Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle not being recommissioned after its fourth series and he has no qualms in sharing. His stage persona is not just of arrogance but we would be mistaken in thinking he believes himself a demi-God of stand-up comedy. Boasting four and five-star reviews of his tour so far, he firmly asserts that if we don’t find him funny the problem will not be on his side of the stage. Lee has often been described as a surreal satirist throughout his career and there is no avoiding the political landscape in Content Provider – no matter how much he states he didn’t want to write a show about Brexit or the rise of Trump. For years Lee has had the pleasure of referring to his leftist audience as the bourgeoisie and tonight we are lambasted many times for being a “metropolitan liberal elite”. He knows his audiences’ Achilles heel and he isn’t afraid to give it repeated swift kicks. When writing about Lee’s stagecraft it is impossible not to refer to his self-referential cleverness as he deconstructs everything about what he is and what he does: his role as a stand-up comedian and the actual jokes themselves. He loves to play with his audience...
Like a great sloppy spaff, the flying shit of the Queen’s speech has hit the fan of functioning democracy full in the face. More than two million of the electorate least likely to support Boris Johnson are to be robbed of their right to vote, while millions of the sort of true Brits who moved to Spain when the local shopping centre installed a Muslamic prayer room are to have theirs reinstated; key environmental protections are to be scrapped or diluted; legitimate protests can be closed down if they’re “too noisy”; cub scout groups that fail to invite the anti-feminist meat-man Jordan Peterson to address the boys are to be fined; even Tuesday’s belated announcement of a conversion therapy ban was, in fact, conditional on “consultations with the public”. What’s the point of consulting them? The British public would vote to make conversion therapy compulsory if the Conservatives spent millions on an 88% false Facebook campaign saying lesbians killed the fishing industry. On TV, a typically acquiescent BBC journalist, Chris Mason, nodded encouragingly as two genuinely distressed Hartlepool men blamed the Labour party for 12 years of Conservative policies. Job done! Monkeys beware!!
But how have we slid so swiftly from unstable democracy to proto-totalitarian kleptocracy? And is Angela Rayner, the Wookiee-in-waiting to Starmer’s would-be Han Solo, the answer to the woes of we the woke? Even to centralists like me, Starmer’s abandonment of Angela Rayner seemed odd. There are many reasons for Labour’s current woes. Angela Rayner isn’t one of them. Sacking Angela Rayner was like cutting off your leg to fix a blocked toilet. Reinstating Angela Rayner was like finding the toilet still blocked and then trying to unblock it with your severed leg. This sort of leg-toilet-based political analysis is what Robert Peston lacks.
A transcript of my standup “comedy” show, from 13 April 2018 in Southend-on-Sea, includes the following “routine”. “People voted to leave the EU for all sorts of different reasons – they did, don’t snigger down there. Not everyone that voted to leave the EU wanted to see Britain immediately descend into being an unaccountable single party state exploiting people’s worst prejudices to maintain power indefinitely. Some people just wanted bendy bananas. ‘Oh no, I only wanted bendy bananas and now there’s this chaotic inferno of hate.’ ‘Oh well, never mind, at least the bananas are all bendy again, aren’t they?’ Like they always fucking were.”
Since I stopped performing the “routine” I have learned with embarrassment that in 1994 the EU did recommend some premium graded bananas be free from “abnormal curvature”, though this advice was later withdrawn and is nothing like the supposed across-the-board bendy banana ban maliciously propagated by the shameless liar Boris Johnson when he was the Daily Telegraph’s official European reality distortion agent. The existence, however brief, of Commission Regulation (EC) No 2257/94 does slightly dent the impregnable hull of my banana “joke”, but I don’t think the Times is about to withdraw its 2018 decision that I am “the world’s greatest living standup comedian” any time soon!
In contrast, the section of the “routine” where I declare that Brexit will deliver “an unaccountable single party state exploiting people’s worst prejudices to maintain power indefinitely” was “funny” three years ago, I believe, because a) it played into managed perceptions of the character of the standup “comedian” Stewart Lee as a depressive champagne socialist and b) because its clearly pre-written complexity deliberately critiques the unspoken understanding that standup affects to be spontaneous and conversational. The “joke” delivers the required “humorous” content at the same time as flattering the audience’s innate knowledge of its form. The “joke” is “funny” on two levels, then, and on a third as well, because it includes a rhythmically and musically satisfying plosive obscenity, in this case the word “fucking”, at or near the end and swearing is innately amusing if deployed correctly.
But suddenly the idea that Britain should “descend into an unaccountable single party state exploiting people’s worst prejudices to maintain power indefinitely” sounds less like a set-up for a “punchline” and more like a genuine Tory manifesto commitment. Only two weeks ago in this very slot, I believe I opined that lying Boris Johnson’s wallpaper-funding farrago might be the trivial thread that unravels the knitted bra of his falsehoods generally. The gangster Al “Scarface” Capone was eventually taken down not for the St Valentine’s Day Massacre, but for tax evasion. Boris “Spaff face” Johnson might be undone not by tax-free phone-a-friend contracts and development handouts to his sofa surfer, but for initially supplementing the unnecessary redecoration of an already redecorated flat with funds from undisclosed donors, surely likely to seek favours at a later date. Well, that misplaced optimism lasted me and the other Luc Belaire Leninists of the Commentariat about a week.
The media comply with Boris Johnson’s lies; he ignores the judgments of government bodies designed to curtail malpractice; his under-the-radar internet campaigns direct-market false claims to socially profiled susceptibles. At least the law itself remains beyond his control. Crowdfunded, do-gooding lawyers could surely whack Boris Johnson as soundly as Jolyon Maugham’s baseball bat thwacked that fox. But check the small print in the Queen’s speech! On page 145 “a Judicial Review Bill will protect the judiciary from being drawn into political questions”. I wonder what that means? The future? It’s Boris Johnson’s bare white buttocks going up and down on a human face – for ever. Terms and conditions apply. Boris Johnson’s buttocks may go up as well as down.
Stewart Lee
2021-05-16T12:50:07+01:00
Like a great sloppy spaff, the flying shit of the Queen’s speech has hit the fan of functioning democracy full in the face. More than two million of the electorate least likely to support Boris Johnson are to be robbed of their right to vote, while millions of the sort of true Brits who moved to Spain when the local shopping centre installed a Muslamic prayer room are to have theirs reinstated; key environmental protections are to be scrapped or diluted; legitimate protests can be closed down if they’re “too noisy”; cub scout groups that fail to invite the anti-feminist meat-man Jordan Peterson to address the boys are to be fined; even Tuesday’s belated announcement of a conversion therapy ban was, in fact, conditional on “consultations with the public”. What’s the point of consulting them? The British public would vote to make conversion therapy compulsory if the Conservatives spent millions on an 88% false Facebook campaign saying lesbians killed the fishing industry. On TV, a typically acquiescent BBC journalist, Chris Mason, nodded encouragingly as two genuinely distressed Hartlepool men blamed the Labour party for 12 years of Conservative policies. Job done! Monkeys beware!! But how have we slid so swiftly from unstable democracy to proto-totalitarian kleptocracy? And is Angela Rayner, the Wookiee-in-waiting to Starmer’s would-be Han Solo, the answer to the woes of we the woke? Even to centralists like me, Starmer’s abandonment of Angela Rayner seemed odd. There are many reasons for Labour’s current woes. Angela Rayner isn’t one of them. Sacking Angela Rayner was like cutting off your leg to fix a blocked toilet. Reinstating Angela Rayner was like finding the toilet still blocked and then trying to unblock it with your severed leg. This sort of leg-toilet-based political analysis is what Robert Peston lacks. A transcript of...
Artificially intelligent humanoid sexual partners are now commercially available. And indeed, I have often wondered if I myself am in fact one such “sex robot”. My lovers always disengage from me in silently satisfied wonder, and rarely request second encounters, having had their expectations soul-shatteringly exceeded, their sexual futures rendered endlessly disappointing. I’m joking of course! I have been married for 12 years. There is nothing to see here.
But once, as a young adventurer, I crossed America by bus, arriving in Seattle in September 1994, three years after Peak Grunge, just in time to see the genre winding down with a local band called Peach, at the Crocodile Cafe. The ATM ran dry that night and a scenester at the bar bailed me out with the offer of his sofa. He seemed normal enough by the standards of the day – beanie hat, goatee beard, and pierced nipples poking through a T-shirt bearing the legend Public Castration Is a Good Idea.
To say that Matt’s apartment was a surprise would be an understatement. The walls were lined not with Tad and Mudhoney posters, but with the suspended forms of life-sized naked female dolls, of troubling anatomical accuracy, that he had made himself. “Don’t worry,” Matt said, “I’m not crazy or weird. I hope one day to make these dolls into artificially intelligent sex robots. Imagine having your own erotic mechanical slaves! Nachos?”
Last month, I saw Matt for the first time in 23 years, this time in a Guardian feature about the ethical dilemmas created by a newly available luxury product he had developed: lifesize, artificially intelligent sex robots. Then suddenly, events here at home made me realise I needed to speak to Matt McMutton again, and not as a potential customer!
Last week Sarah Vine, who is married to Michael Gove, opened the scab-encrusted blowhole of her Daily Mail column once more, this time comparing Brigitte Macron, the wife of the new French president, who he met when he was her 15-year-old drama pupil, to the alleged child rapist Roman Polanski, and suggesting, not entirely unreasonably, that had the couple’s roles been reversed their marriage would seem “grotesque”.
But Sarah Vine is married to Michael Gove. And Michael Gove is, in turn, married to Sarah Vine. And the thought of either of them being married to anyone, let alone each other, is also grotesque, despite Vine being an acceptable four months her adopted husband’s senior.
And, uniquely, the notion of the Goves’ union remains equally grotesque, even when their ages are reversed to be more in line with those of a normal partnership. The image of a cluster of toads spawning in a dewpond is more pleasing to the mind’s eye, for unlike the dissembling Goves, the assembling toads are merely following their own natures, in accordance with the watchmaker’s perfect mechanism, amphibian messengers of Christ’s majesty eternal.
Of course I appreciate that the previous four sentences are unpleasant. They are deliberately so, as a mirror image of the Vine sensibility that inspired them. The cultural theorist James Naughtie explained to me on the Today programme, while screwing up his stupid red face like a baboon eating a thistle, that an earlier column of mine about the Goves and their ilk was “poisonous”. But to say a column about the Goves is poisonous is unnecessary, like saying that a slow-motion film of a cat vomiting is nauseating.
It is foolish of politicians and their guff-trumpets – and this is what Vine is here – to score points off their rivals’ choice of spouse, especially if you are Sarah Vine. And it is even more foolish to do so when Theresa May parades her husband Philip before the cameras of The One Show. The poor banker came across not as strong and stable, but like a tortured hostage forced at gunpoint to tell the people at home how kindly he is being treated.
Eighty-two kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls are free! But when will Philip May be free? And will he have any strong hope of readjusting to a stable life, where he is spared the endless repetition of the words “strong” and “stable”?
And why is Theresa May’s lower jaw permanently locked into the same sort of jutting/munching shape Eric Morecambe’s made when theatrically sucking a pipe? She has no pipe. How will Mrs May’s imaginary pipe face play with the Europeans? They will say, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.”
I am no international trade negotiator (who is?), but can it be prudent, as we enter into talks with a newly united EU, determined to reaffirm its enlightenment values, for Sarah Vine, one of our chief Brexiters, and the spouse of a former cabinet member, to compare the French president’s wife to an alleged child rapist? How will this affect barista visas, roaming mobile phone charges, and the future dimensions of Toblerones?
However offensive the French first couple’s relationship, it at least seemed genuine. But, to me, there was a strange haunted empty quality to both Michael Gove and Philip May, the latter having vouchsafed to The One Show that he “quite liked ties although I’m not wearing one this evening”. This indefinable absence of the flame of being makes the idea of a relationship involving either Mr Gove or Mr May oddly implausible.
Troubled by a mysterious worry, on Thursday I called Matt. “The project stalled soon after we met,” he recalled, “It was initially too difficult to replicate the unpredictable workings of the complex female brain. But men’s brains were easy. They just thought about sports and neckties, so I turned out a couple of male dolls as practice. I only make the female dolls now, but for a few months in the mid-90s I had a small client list of successful rich women who wanted compliant partners. They didn’t mind if their sex robots had no real personality to speak of, as long as they’d take out the trash and eat the occasional tuna taco way down south in Dixie, if you get my drift. Mumble in the moss, man, mumble in the moss!”
“You don’t still have that list, do you Matt?” I asked. “Sure.” The two names from the old customer base that shocked me most meant nothing to Matt McMutton. But then he wasn’t a follower of British politics. When and where and why, I wondered, had the sinister switches been made? “So,” Matt continued, 5,000 miles away in the Pacific north-west, as the realisation dawned and I sat down in stunned horror, “you in the market for a sex robot? Or are you still dating humans, old school? Faggot!”
Stewart Lee is touring his new show, Content Provider, throughout 2017; see stewartlee.co.uk for details
Stewart Lee
2017-05-14T17:45:49+01:00
Artificially intelligent humanoid sexual partners are now commercially available. And indeed, I have often wondered if I myself am in fact one such “sex robot”. My lovers always disengage from me in silently satisfied wonder, and rarely request second encounters, having had their expectations soul-shatteringly exceeded, their sexual futures rendered endlessly disappointing. I’m joking of course! I have been married for 12 years. There is nothing to see here. But once, as a young adventurer, I crossed America by bus, arriving in Seattle in September 1994, three years after Peak Grunge, just in time to see the genre winding down with a local band called Peach, at the Crocodile Cafe. The ATM ran dry that night and a scenester at the bar bailed me out with the offer of his sofa. He seemed normal enough by the standards of the day – beanie hat, goatee beard, and pierced nipples poking through a T-shirt bearing the legend Public Castration Is a Good Idea. To say that Matt’s apartment was a surprise would be an understatement. The walls were lined not with Tad and Mudhoney posters, but with the suspended forms of life-sized naked female dolls, of troubling anatomical accuracy, that he had made himself. “Don’t worry,” Matt said, “I’m not crazy or weird. I hope one day to make these dolls into artificially intelligent sex robots. Imagine having your own erotic mechanical slaves! Nachos?” Last month, I saw Matt for the first time in 23 years, this time in a Guardian feature about the ethical dilemmas created by a newly available luxury product he had developed: lifesize, artificially intelligent sex robots. Then suddenly, events here at home made me realise I needed to speak to Matt McMutton again, and not as a potential customer! Last week Sarah Vine, who is married...
ARTS EMERGENCY is a charity I have done stuff for in the past. Its work is more important than ever and the situation for the people it helps has worsened considerably since it was set up. Please help fund them.
Neil Art says, “Arts Emergency is a charity and national movement providing an emergency response to the entrenchment of privilege in UK arts and culture. Our free, year-long mentoring programme matches underrepresented teenagers with a volunteer mentor in their dream career (from journalism to gaming to comedy) - providing real, practical knowledge and connections. And then we support them for another nine years as they take their onward steps in the creative & cultural industries. Arts Emergency is people-powered and we rely heavily on monthly donations. Please consider donating £2 a month to help us grow our ‘alternative old boys network’ and change culture for the better.”
2. A GLITCH WITH THE SEARCH FUNCTIONALITY
“A glitch with the search functionality” meant that none of my six dates to the Royal Festival Hall have been showing up on the South Bank Centre website if you search for me.
We had 12000+ tickets to sell. 95% seem to have gone, though there might be some left for the matinees. If you were puzzled as to whether I am on there in July, I am, but you may have to just go to the calendar page and scroll to find me. I try to play there if they will have me as, unlike other big venues, they can keep prices down and don’t offer an obvious and deliberate back door to touts and secondary markets.
3. NEW MERCH
Along with WAXFACE’s usual line of Stewart Lee merch there are new for 2025 t-shirts and hoodies on the Man-Wulf theme, all of the highest quality. I’d wear them myself but I’d look arrogant. Waste the money your Nan gave you for Xmas here
Glasgow’s garage punk veterans The Primevals announce a new single as featured in the new Stewart Lee vs The Man-Wulf U.K. tour.
There are 3 versions
Side a I’m The Man-Wulf
Side b I’m The Man-Wulf (long nail edit)
Plus a 9 minute I’m The Man-Wulf (long nail version) (I LOOOOOVE THIS!!)
Vinyl sides a&b were released on a 7” 45 in January.
See The Primevals live JUNE 27th London Hope & Anchor, 28th Preston Ferret.
John Mackay & Sally Homer, in association with Debi Allen/Curtis Brown present
STEWART LEE vs THE MAN-WULF
BRAND NEW SHOW
NB: TICKETS FOR THESE SHOWS WILL REMAIN AT THE ADVERTISED PRICE. SURGE PRICING IS IMMORAL AND TICKETMASTER AND OASIS ARE WANKERS, ENCOURAGED BY SUCCESSIVE TORY CULTURE SECRETARIES IN THEIR CRIMINAL ENDEAVOURS.
In this brand-new show, Lee shares his stage with a tough-talking werewolf comedian who hates humanity. The Man-Wulf lays down a ferocious comedy challenge to the culturally irrelevant and physically enfeebled Lee. Can the beast inside us all be silenced with the silver bullet of Lee's unprecedentedly critically acclaimed style of stand-up.
The show will tour the UK throughout 2025 and 2026.
Saturday 5th July 2025 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 6th July 2025 (Matinee)- Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 6th July 2025 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Saturday 12th July 2025 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 13th July 2025 - (Matinee) Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 13th July 2025 - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
September 2025
Monday 8th September 2025 - Lighthouse, Poole - TICKETS
Tuesday 9th September 2025 - Lighthouse, Poole - TICKETS
Wednesday 10th September 2025 - Hall For Cornwall, Truro - TICKETS
Thursday 11th September 2025 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS
Friday 12th September 2025 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS
Saturday 13th September 2025 - Westlands Entertainment Venue, Yeovil - TICKETS
Sunday 14th September 2025 - Westlands Entertainment Venue, Yeovil - TICKETS
Tuesday 16th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
Wednesday 17th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
Thursday 18th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
Friday 19th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
Saturday 20th September 2025 - New Theatre, Cardiff - TICKETS
Wednesday 24th September 2025 - Hippodrome, Darlington - TICKETS
Thursday 25th September 2025 - Gala, Durham - TICKETS
Friday 26th September 2025 - Theatre Royal, Glasgow - TICKETS
Saturday 27th September 2025 - Playhouse, Edinburgh - TICKETS
Sunday 28th September 2025 - His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen - TICKETS
October 2025
Friday 3rd October 2025 - Aberystwyth Arts Centre – Great Hall, Aberystwyth - TICKETS
Tuesday 7th October 2025 - Milton Keynes Theatre, Milton Keynes - TICKETS
Wednesday 8th October 2025 - Milton Keynes Theatre, Milton Keynes - TICKETS
Thursday 9th October 2025 - Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS
Friday 10th October 2025 - Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS
Saturday 11th October 2025 - Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford - TICKETS
Wednesday 15th October 2025 - Grand Theatre, Swansea - TICKETS
Thursday 16th October 2025 - Grand Theatre, Swansea - TICKETS
Friday 17th October 2025 - Bristol Beacon, Bristol - TICKETS
Saturday 18th October 2025 - Bristol Beacon, Bristol - TICKETS
Tuesday 21st October 2025 - Storyhouse, Chester - TICKETS
Wednesday 22nd October 2025 - Storyhouse, Chester - TICKETS
Thursday 23rd October 2025 - Opera House, Buxton - TICKETS
Friday 24th October 2025 - Opera House, Buxton - TICKETS
Saturday 25th October 2025 - The Baths Hall, Scunthorpe - TICKETS
Wednesday 29th October 2025 - Cast, Doncaster - TICKETS
Thursday 30th October 2025 - Cast, Doncaster - TICKETS
Friday 31st October 2025 - Harrogate Theatre, Harrogate - TICKETS
November 2025
Saturday 1st November 2025 - Harrogate Theatre, Harrogate - TICKETS
Sunday 2nd November 2025 - Harrogate Theatre, Harrogate - TICKETS
Monday 3rd November 2025 - Tyne Theatre & Opera House, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Tuesday 4th November 2025 - Tyne Theatre & Opera House, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Friday 7th November 2025 - The Anvil, Basingstoke - TICKETS
Saturday 8th November 2025 - Rose Theatre, Kingston - TICKETS
Sunday 9th November 2025 - Rose Theatre, Kingston - TICKETS
Tuesday 11th November 2025 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Wednesday 12th November 2025 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Thursday 13th November 2025 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Friday 14th November 2025 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Saturday 15th November 2025 - Brighton Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Monday 17th November 2025 - Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham - TICKETS
Tuesday 18th November 2025 - Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham - TICKETS
Wednesday 19th November 2025 - Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham - TICKETS
7. Snowflake/Tornado
Stewart’s 2019-2022 touring show Snowflake/Tornado, which was originally broadcast as a BBC Special in Autumn 2022 is now available to buy or rent “on demand” from www.mediagarageproductions.com
Both shows also appear to be free as part of the current Amazon Prime rosta, but buy them from us to defeat American fascism.
We are currently preparing a physical release of these shows but it’s got delayed as I got pneumonia and have been bogged down in picking through a wealth of possible, and very exciting, audio extras, where the material worked much better than in the broadcast show itself.
8. BENEFITS / FESTIVAL STAND-UP SETS 2025
(the usual 30 mins greatest hits shit)
18TH – 20TH JULY Toldpuddle Martyrs’ Festival, Tolpuddle, Dorset. I will be doing 20 mins on a mixed bill here one night. Looks great. https://www.tolpuddlemartyrs.org.uk/festival
14th – 17th AUGUST Green Man, Bannau Brycheiniog. Alan Sparkhawk, Big Special, Boss Morris, Bridget Hayden, Broadside Hacks, Daisy Rickman,Gwenno, Asha Puthli, Kneecap, Richard Dawson, Wet Leg, Yard Act
22nd – 24th August Krankenhaus, Muncaster Castle, Lake District Sea Power, Arab Strap, the legendary Throwing Muses, Jane Weaver, The Lovely Lovely Lovely Eggs, the awesome Richard Dawson, the amazing Nightingales who are currently ON FIRE!, that King Rocker film, the quirky Personal Trainer, the mesmerising Ex-Easter Island Head, the hypnotic Alison Cotton. I will also be being interviewed with Michael Cumming and The Nightingales by Jude Rogers. www.krankenhausfestival.com
28th – 31st August End Of The Road, Larmer Tree Gardens, Dorset. Black Country New Road, Goat, Lisa O’Neill, Throwing Muses, Vieux Farka Toure, The Bug Club, Ex-Easter Island Head, Broadside Hacks celebrate The Incredible String Band, Jackie-O Motherfucker, Six Organs Of Admittance, The New Eves, Jim Ghedi, Bridget Hayden, Daisy Rickman, Tropical Fuck Storm, Adam Buxton, Celya AB, Gina Birch, I will also be interviewing Black Country New Road on stage.
9. IDLER FEST 11-13 JULY, HAMPSTEAD HEATH, LONDON
I will be amongst the knobheads being grilled at the Idler magazine’s annual 3 day garden party. It’s a lovely event. “FENTON HOUSE & GARDEN, HAMPSTEAD, LONDON. The Idler Festival is a weekend of philosophy and merriment, comedy, talks, music, workshops and salons in the bucolic surroundings of Fenton House and gardens near Hampstead Heath.
You’ll be entertained and enlightened by the Idler’s favourite thinkers, comedians, writers, and musicians. There’ll be walks, ukulele, bibliotherapy, agony aunts, beekeeping and plenty of time to loaf under the apple trees. There’ll be dancing lessons on the lawn, loafing to DJs in the orchard and salons in the house. Join us for our dream garden party.
Headlining a stellar line up will be comedians Michael Palin and Stewart Lee and former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. Plus Daisy Dunn, Miranda Sawyer, a mini pilgrimage with Guy Hayward, evensong on Sunday and much more to be announced. “Britain’s best arts and literary festival,” Spectator”
The *Untsiad at The Cockpit Theatre, London on 20th July. In the 1720s, Alexander Pope, one of Britain's greatest ever poets, commenced work on "THE DUNCIAD", his blisteringly satirical attack on all the contemporary hacks he hated, those hopeless literary dunces who prospered at his expense in the service of the Great Goddess Dulness.
300 years later, Andy Croft Esq., of SMOKESTACK BOOKS, North-East England's premier Marxist-Leninist Poetry Imprint, commissioned Master Martin Rowson, caricaturist, scribbler, collagist, ranter & SMOKESTACK POET, to reimagine Pope's MASTERPIECE, widening his remit to traduce the Legion Dunces of all kinds that infest the MODERN AGE.
This Master Rowson duly did in 2050 lines of furious heroic couplets, published in Dec. MMXXIV A.D. as "THE "UNTSIAD", perforce to sell the thing through the Rascal Bezos's foul AMAZON.
FOR YOUR DELIGHT. "THE *UNTSIAD" has been adapted by Mister Nicholas Revell & The Author into A PERFORMANCE PIECE FOR 12 VOICES, with Nicholas REVELL & Rosie HOLT, Mr Jack KLAFF, Miss Clare FERGUSON-WALKER, Mr Mark Steel, Mr Stewart LEE, Mr Arthur SMITH, Commissar Andy CROFT, Dame Eliza CARTHY MBE, Mr Tim MCINNERNY, Master Matt COPSON, Martin Rowson
Derek Bailey formed COMPANY in 1976. The premise was an effectively simple one; invite a group of musicians to improvise together, in various ad-hoc formations, with as little pre-planning as possible. COMPANY 2025 (for Derek Bailey) celebrates this endeavour, and also marks the twentieth anniversary of Derek’s passing.
Khabat Abas (cello)
Julia Brüssel (violin)
John Butcher (saxophones)
Teresa Hackel (recorders)
Charles Hayward (drums)
Petra Heller (tap dance)
Pat Thomas (piano, electronics)
Matt Wand (electronics)
Alex Ward (electric guitar, clarinet)
Mark Wastell (percussion)
Compered by Stewart Lee
COMPANY 2025 (for Derek Bailey) includes musicians that participated in original COMPANY events organised by Derek; John Butcher (1990/91/92/95), Pat Thomas (1990/91), Alex Ward (1988/90/94, 2002), Mark Wastell (1999, 2000/01) and Matt Wand (1992/93), alongside performers new to the form; Khabat Abas, Charle Hayward, Teresa Heckel, Petra Heller and Julia Brüssel. Over two evenings, these ten musicians will combine in various group formations, chosen by a particular individual just moments before going on stage. The whole event will be compered by Derek Bailey devotee, Stewart Lee. COMPANY 2025 (for Derek Bailey) curated by John Butcher, Tim Fletcher, Ian Greaves and Mark Wastell.
ITHELL COLQUHOUN/THE NIGHT SIDE OF NATURE. Two Colquhoun canvasses are the clever hook to see works by a number of new female mystic artists, on sale at Purdy Hicks Gallery, 25 Thurloe St, London SW72LQ, June 12th-August 9th.
ITHELL COLQUHOUN – BETWEEN TWO WORLDS. This vast, timely, majestic, bewitching and unmissable career retrospective moves from Cornwall to Tate Britain from June 13th – October 19th and you can hear me waffling on on the accompanying audio app too. https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/burra-and-colquhoun
BEN MOOR – THREE THING DAY. The wry wordsmith has another linguistically lush meta-fiction in progress at London’s Hen & Chickens theatre in Islington. July 8th & 14th (7.30) and 20th (3.00).
SKEP WAX WEEKENDER July 17th – 20th, Islington, London
Four nights of radical indiepop - Thursday and Friday evening at the Lexington, Saturday evening at Islington Town Hall, Sunday (4pm) back at The Lexington: see full line-up below. The 'Weekender' ticket will admit you to all four nights. Day tickets are available for each of the four shows. Thursday (The Lexington) Jeanines, Sassyhiya, Panic Pocket Friday (The Lexington) The Would-Be-Goods, The Orchids, Swansea Sound Saturday (Islington Assembly Room) Heavenly, Lightheaded, Crumbs Sunday (The Lexington), Marlody, The Gentle Spring, Special Friend
Venue addresses: The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Rd, London, N1 9JB.
Islington Assembly Hall, Upper St, London, N1 2UD. (The venues are less than a mile apart.)
Heavenly's new 7" single will go on sale at this event.
Ticket prices include £1.50 Venue Levy for Islington Town Hall.
The Lexington is 18+ admission, The Islington Assembly Hall is 16+
MARTIN SIMPSON Folk guitarist who mines the hidden connections between British and American traditional musics with taste and virtuosity. JULY 21st Croydon Ruskin House. SEPT 6th Howden Shire Hall
DAVID LANCE CALLAHAN The acoustic minimalist troubadour and chronicler of crumbling Albion continues his sacred trek. AUGUST: 1st EDINBURGH Leith Depot; 3rd THE CHILTERNS Awamu Together festival; 9th PRESTON POPFEST; 10th NEWCASTLE Cumberland Arms
SEPTEMBER: 19th NOTTINGHAM JT Soar; 20th SWANSEA Tangled Parrot; 21st BRISTOL Knowle Constitutional Club; 28th LONDON Lexington Resonance FM benefit with Jowe Head and Luke Haines etc.
MILLIONS OF DEAD COPS / MDC American hardcore heroes of NO KKK NO FASCIST USA chant fame. AUG 4th – New Cross Inn, London
THE NEW CHRISTS!!!!! The audaciously named Australian Detroit-style punk legends reform and tour the UK. AUG 13th M’cr Night & Day, 14th Glasgow Stereo, 15th London Oslo.
MISTY AT FIFTY! Misty in Roots, one of Britain’s greatest home-grown radical roots rockers hit their half century. If you don’t go YOU ARE LIKE A CABBAGE IN THIS SOCIETY! SEPT 13th Bristol Lantern, OCT 3rd Reading Sub89, 24TH London Electric Ballroom, 30th Brighton Concorde
EDWYN COLLINS Orange Juice’s indiepop originator SEPT 27th Glasgow Theatre Royal, 29th Buxton Opera House, 30th Bath Komedia. OCT 2nd S’hampton Central Hall, 3rd Brighton St Georges, 4th London RFH, 6th Norwich Epic, 7th Manchester Albert Hall, 8th Newcastle Boiler Shop
14 ICE BEARS Unexpected re-emergence of Rob Secula’s lysergic proto-shoegazers. OCT 2nd The Victoria, Hackney, London.
THE EX 3 DAY RESIDENCY. Holland’s amazing anarcho-jazzers The Ex have a 3 day residency at London’s Café Oto OCT 2ND -4TH. All nights have sold out, except the first one, which I am compering, so make of that what you will. https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/the-ex-three-day-residency-25/
THE MAGPIE ARC Country-folk-indie conglomerate. OCT 17th Cast Doncaster, 18th Indoor Festival of Folk (North), Victoria Hall, Settle (with Edgelarks, Frankie Archer, The Bookshop Band, The Magpie Arc and Ashley Hutchings in conversation with Matthew Bannister), 19th Cluny 2 Newcastle, 23rd South Street Reading, 24th Water Rats London, 25th Ragged Bear Festival, Nuneaton (with The Men They Couldn’t Hang, Greenman Rising, Gaz Brookfield), 26th Acapela Studio Cardiff, 30th Gloucester Guildhall, NOV 1st Met Bury, 2nd Robin 2 Bilston
THE LOVELY EGGS’ 20TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR Durable art-punk DIY duo continue to dazzle into their third decade. OCT 22nd Edinburgh Belle Angele, 23rd Glasgow Oran Moor, 24th Newcastle Uni, 25th Leeds Brudenell, 26th Brighton Concorde 2, 27th London Garage, 28th Cardiff Globe, 29th B’ham Castle & Falcon, 30th M’cr Academy 2, 31st Nottingham Metronome, NOV 1st Bristol Trinity. I will open for them at the Brighton show.
BOB MOULD Hardcore punk pioneer of Husker Du/Sugar lineage. NOV 18th Glasgow Oran Mor, 19th Leeds Brudenell, 20th London Dome
SAINTS 73-79 Superb! The original line-up of the Australian Punk progenitors, but with Mudhoney's Howlin’ Mark Arm deputising for the departed Chris Bailey (a gentleman and a scholar who once came to one of my shows and told me his tales afterwards!). His original co-writer and co-guitarist Ed Kuepper remains undimmed and the authentic ‘70s rhythm section will rattle your bones. NOVEMBER 21ST Bristol Trinity, 22nd Leeds Project, 23rd Glasgow Garage, 24th M’cr Academy 2, 26th London Camden Electric
DREAM SYNDICATE You must see this enduring American rock institution who impossibly combine free-jazz styled freakouts with classic solid literary songwriting. JAN 30TH London Garage, FEB 1st M’cr Band On The Wall.
KIKI AND HERB Superficially they may look like the kind of standard kitsch camp cabaret act designed for Hen Nights and weekend bohemians that is Soho Theatre's bread and butter, but Kiki and Herb have a dangerous damaged manic downtown punk edge that is more '70s New York No Wave than Las Vegas Lounge. They don't make them like this anymore. Maybe they never did. Soho Theatre Walthamstow JULY 3rd-5th. https://sohotheatre.com/events/kiki-and-herb-are-trying/
12. IN OUR LAMENTATIONS 2025
Barre Phillips (Jazz bassman, 1934)
Bob Grover (Brighton Piranha, 1956)
Riro (Japanese sea otter, 2007) Nora Orlandi (Spaghetti symphonist, 1933)
Ed Askew (Acid folkie, 1940)
Tony Slattery (The vile blows of the world made him reckless, 1959)
David Lynch (He erased our heads, 1946) Landy Randerson (Museum access pioneer, 1949)
Garth Hudson (Bandolier, 1937)
Brian Murphy (Instantly aged actor, 1932)
Rab MacWilliam (Hackney historian, 1951)
Barry Goldberg (His flag was electric, 1941)
Peter Yarrow (He left on a jetplane, 1938)
Snowy Fleet (Easybeater, 1939)
Jamie Muir (Absolute fucking rhythmical genius, 1942)
Mike Ratledge (Moon in June Soft Machine man, 1943)
Gabriel Yacoub (Malicorne muso of French folk, 1952)
Bill Fay (Christian mystic songwriter seer, 1943) Roberta Flack (Made Ewan MacColl sexy, 1937)
Gene Hackman (an actor who knew when not to,1930)
Jay Rayner’s Observer restaurant column (1999)
David Johansen (New York Doll, 1950)
Bill Dare (Even his socks were funny, 1959)
Johnny Green (A gentleman, a dandy, and always a pleasure,)
Ken Parker (The Blue Bender, 1943) Edweena Banger (Her nose bled, 1959)
John Cassady (Planetary penman, 1971)
Joey Molland (His finger was bad, 1947)
Peter Farrelly (Fruuppster, 1949)
Jesse Colin Young (He got it together, 1941)
Brian James (Lord of The Damned, 1955)
Roy Ayers (Good vibes, 1940)
Bob Rupe (Brilliant Gutterball and Silos bottom end) Nadia Cassini (Starcrash starlet, 1949) Nike Arrighi (The Devil Rides Out, 1944)
Bill Smith (Original Corrie, 1936)
DG Hessayon (Garden expert who answered my questions, 1928)
Elliot Ingber (Winged Eel Fingerling, 1941) Leanne Cowie (Scientific drummer, 1964?)
George Foreman (Meat griller, 1949)
Michael Hurley (He’s gone back to Capistrano, 1941)
Dave Allen (At Home He’s A Bassist, 1955)
Alastair MacKinven (Country teaser and artist, 1971)
Clem Burke (Magic Christian Plimsoul & Elvis Ramone, 1954)
Larry Tamblyn (He loved that dirty water, 1943)
Clive Revill (The Emperor strikes back, 1930)
Amadou Bagayoko (blind bluesman, 1955)
Max Romeo (Wet-dreaming devil chaser, 1944) Clodagh Rogers (Northern Irish Spider-Woman, 1947)
Pope Francis (Relatively inoffensive pope, 1936) Eleonora Giorgi (Young, violent and dangerous, 1953)
David Thomas (Ube Pere, 1953)
Mike Peters (He alarmed Wales, 1959)
James Baker (Hoodoo victim of beastly scientists, 1954)
Larry Lee (Ozark Mountain Devil, 1947)
Wizz Jones (The Lazy Farmer, 1939)
David Briggs (He signalled the test of our whistles, 1943)
Kimble Rendall (Hoodoo Guru from year zero, 1957)
Jack Katz (First Kingdom comics guy, 1927)
Ed Smylie (Saved Apollo 13 with sellotape, 1914)
George Wendt (Barfly Freak Fan, 1948)
Peter David (He turned Hulk grey for peanuts, 1956) Loretta Switt (Hilarious dish of MASH, 1937)
Louis Moholo (S African freedom-drummer, 1940)
Hunt Powers (Spaghetti star, 1929)
Stewart Lee
2025-06-26T09:00:48+01:00
1. ARTS EMERGENCY IN AN EMERGENCY ARTS EMERGENCY is a charity I have done stuff for in the past. Its work is more important than ever and the situation for the people it helps has worsened considerably since it was set up. Please help fund them. Neil Art says, “Arts Emergency is a charity and national movement providing an emergency response to the entrenchment of privilege in UK arts and culture. Our free, year-long mentoring programme matches underrepresented teenagers with a volunteer mentor in their dream career (from journalism to gaming to comedy) - providing real, practical knowledge and connections. And then we support them for another nine years as they take their onward steps in the creative & cultural industries. Arts Emergency is people-powered and we rely heavily on monthly donations. Please consider donating £2 a month to help us grow our ‘alternative old boys network’ and change culture for the better.” 2. A GLITCH WITH THE SEARCH FUNCTIONALITY “A glitch with the search functionality” meant that none of my six dates to the Royal Festival Hall have been showing up on the South Bank Centre website if you search for me. We had 12000+ tickets to sell. 95% seem to have gone, though there might be some left for the matinees. If you were puzzled as to whether I am on there in July, I am, but you may have to just go to the calendar page and scroll to find me. I try to play there if they will have me as, unlike other big venues, they can keep prices down and don’t offer an obvious and deliberate back door to touts and secondary markets. 3. NEW MERCH Along with WAXFACE’s usual line of Stewart Lee merch there are new for 2025 t-shirts and hoodies on the...
The Ohio trio Bitch Magnet, named with knowing naughtiness back in a lamentably lost PC world, recorded from 1988 to 1990, and in that two year period plied hardcore punk with a whole new palette of post-rock possibilities.
Here's everything you need on three discs, in advance of two belated British dates next week.
Escape velocity belters lie down alongside snail paced crawls of monumental hugeness; complex prog rock time changes play out like cro-magnon Stooges riffs; extended epics refuse, insolently, to resolve; and two decades later, Ducks and Drakes' spiky stegosaurus shell still hides a deceptively soft centre.
Stewart Lee
2011-12-04T01:25:48+00:00
The Ohio trio Bitch Magnet, named with knowing naughtiness back in a lamentably lost PC world, recorded from 1988 to 1990, and in that two year period plied hardcore punk with a whole new palette of post-rock possibilities. Here's everything you need on three discs, in advance of two belated British dates next week. Escape velocity belters lie down alongside snail paced crawls of monumental hugeness; complex prog rock time changes play out like cro-magnon Stooges riffs; extended epics refuse, insolently, to resolve; and two decades later, Ducks and Drakes' spiky stegosaurus shell still hides a deceptively soft centre.
Brand and Guberman's 2002 debut was a classic of free improvisation, Brand's too human trombone trauma and Guberman's possessed vocal extemporizations blending in a heady gumbo of exhaled breaths. Second time around, New Yorker Guberman uses more recognisable words, a bronchial and feacally fixated Beefheart, and the British Brand's baked responses are redolent of a New Orleans voodoo funeral. The pair are twin babies, finding their first sounds, provoking ever more affirming exultations of the absurd, and ending with Let Him Rest's transfigurative minimalism.
Stewart Lee
2013-04-07T01:55:38+01:00
Brand and Guberman's 2002 debut was a classic of free improvisation, Brand's too human trombone trauma and Guberman's possessed vocal extemporizations blending in a heady gumbo of exhaled breaths. Second time around, New Yorker Guberman uses more recognisable words, a bronchial and feacally fixated Beefheart, and the British Brand's baked responses are redolent of a New Orleans voodoo funeral. The pair are twin babies, finding their first sounds, provoking ever more affirming exultations of the absurd, and ending with Let Him Rest's transfigurative minimalism.
The first week of the fringe has passed and my goal of seeing 100 shows/exhibitions/happenings this month seems distant, as I have so far managed a mere 10.
My goal of not being a drunk argumentative twat at 1 am in the morning is going well though.
Here are my top 6 shows so far...
Alasdair Beckett-King - Nevermore - Pleasance Dome 7PM Great writerly material which has enough room to breathe to make it feel like it’s alive, and a well-judged and non-interventionist use of tech. Precise and very funny.
Paul Currie - The Chorus of Ghosts Living in My Skull Keep Telling Me to Take a Shit in the Fruit Salad - Just The Tonic @ Caves 9PM Best show I’ve seen so far. A surrealist revivalist church meeting in which anything can happen. Brilliant clowning and unexpected hints of the personal.
An Evening Without Kate Bush - Assembly George Sq Gardens 5.55PM A Bush-consumed lady channels Bush fandom with persuasive charm, genuine warmth, and accurate choreography
Fascinating Aida - Assembly George Square 6PM Sophisticated satirical songs, performed by jazz-age cabaret muso-dames, with unexpected angry edges and fantastic internal rhyme schemes
Jonny & The Baptists - Dance Like It Never Happened - Assembly George Square 4PM High energy satirical folk-pop sure to make you dance in your seat, hate the Tories, and question God.
Mavelus - All The Marvel Movies … Kind Of! - Just The Tonic Caves 6.10 PM Two deeply humane nerds impro-comedy their way through the MCU, making massive and imaginative use of limited props. Great if you know your Marvel movies, and probably weirdly enjoyable if you don’t.
MY SPIES TELL ME
The Tragedy of Macbeth - Roxy - 12 midday The full on classic fringe treatment w live music, puppets, physical theatre etc, apprently. It blew my kids’ minds!
Circus Abyssinia Tulu - Underbelly meadows 1.30 PM The kids said this was utterly brilliant and unaffectedly honest. They want to join the circus now.
Ten down, 90 to go.
That’s 30 shows a week, or just over 4 a day, for the next 3 weeks. Will I make it?
Stewart Lee
2022-08-08T11:33:08+01:00
The first week of the fringe has passed and my goal of seeing 100 shows/exhibitions/happenings this month seems distant, as I have so far managed a mere 10. My goal of not being a drunk argumentative twat at 1 am in the morning is going well though. Here are my top 6 shows so far... Alasdair Beckett-King - Nevermore - Pleasance Dome 7PM Great writerly material which has enough room to breathe to make it feel like it’s alive, and a well-judged and non-interventionist use of tech. Precise and very funny. Paul Currie - The Chorus of Ghosts Living in My Skull Keep Telling Me to Take a Shit in the Fruit Salad - Just The Tonic @ Caves 9PM Best show I’ve seen so far. A surrealist revivalist church meeting in which anything can happen. Brilliant clowning and unexpected hints of the personal. An Evening Without Kate Bush - Assembly George Sq Gardens 5.55PM A Bush-consumed lady channels Bush fandom with persuasive charm, genuine warmth, and accurate choreography Fascinating Aida - Assembly George Square 6PM Sophisticated satirical songs, performed by jazz-age cabaret muso-dames, with unexpected angry edges and fantastic internal rhyme schemes Jonny & The Baptists - Dance Like It Never Happened - Assembly George Square 4PM High energy satirical folk-pop sure to make you dance in your seat, hate the Tories, and question God. Mavelus - All The Marvel Movies … Kind Of! - Just The Tonic Caves 6.10 PM Two deeply humane nerds impro-comedy their way through the MCU, making massive and imaginative use of limited props. Great if you know your Marvel movies, and probably weirdly enjoyable if you don’t. MY SPIES TELL ME The Tragedy of Macbeth - Roxy - 12 midday The full on classic fringe treatment w live music, puppets, physical theatre etc,...
“You’ve worked me out… I’m just looking at an object and being sarcastic about it,” says Stewart Lee, breaking down his set to a finely tuned analytical degree, having just looked at and been sarcastic about both Franklyn Ajaye’s 1974 album I’m A Comedian, Seriously and Chris Moyles’ autobiography The Tough Second Book. “And I’ve made a decent twenty-year career out of doing that.”
Of course, Lee has done much more than take cheap shots at minor celebrities. Much more. This is the man who gave the world Jerry Springer: The Opera and incurred the wrath of the God-squad; the man whose set 90s Comedian is heralded as an all-time classic; and the man who can stretch a single joke out across an hour and keep a room full of people doubled over in laughter. In short, Stewart Lee is one of the finest comedians that Britain has ever produced.
This year’s set is another exemplary hour of wonderful stand-up-cum-social-commentary. Lee is an immaculate performer: self-aware, varied, intelligent and relevant. His material combines an analysis of the mundane while fitting it expertly into a wider social context. His apparently disparate set is finally tied together under the grander theme of railing against a society that is culturally and intellectually in rapid decline. And the reason that he is so important is that his target is a valid one – in our market-economy, where the consumer is king, Lee does not lazily blame politicians. He knows who is really at fault. Us.
Lee’s genius, though, is in never being preachy, condescending or even particularly overt. The stories he tells early on plant the seed of an idea and it’s not until the set’s climax that you understand the full picture that he is trying to show – that you see each set-piece in its relation to the whole. This is a stunningly affecting, memorable performance from one of the few comic greats in Edinburgh this year.
Stewart Lee
2008-08-09T13:52:32+01:00
“You’ve worked me out… I’m just looking at an object and being sarcastic about it,” says Stewart Lee, breaking down his set to a finely tuned analytical degree, having just looked at and been sarcastic about both Franklyn Ajaye’s 1974 album I’m A Comedian, Seriously and Chris Moyles’ autobiography The Tough Second Book. “And I’ve made a decent twenty-year career out of doing that.” Of course, Lee has done much more than take cheap shots at minor celebrities. Much more. This is the man who gave the world Jerry Springer: The Opera and incurred the wrath of the God-squad; the man whose set 90s Comedian is heralded as an all-time classic; and the man who can stretch a single joke out across an hour and keep a room full of people doubled over in laughter. In short, Stewart Lee is one of the finest comedians that Britain has ever produced. This year’s set is another exemplary hour of wonderful stand-up-cum-social-commentary. Lee is an immaculate performer: self-aware, varied, intelligent and relevant. His material combines an analysis of the mundane while fitting it expertly into a wider social context. His apparently disparate set is finally tied together under the grander theme of railing against a society that is culturally and intellectually in rapid decline. And the reason that he is so important is that his target is a valid one – in our market-economy, where the consumer is king, Lee does not lazily blame politicians. He knows who is really at fault. Us. Lee’s genius, though, is in never being preachy, condescending or even particularly overt. The stories he tells early on plant the seed of an idea and it’s not until the set’s climax that you understand the full picture that he is trying to show – that you see each...
"You can't be trusted for a minute. That noise is unacceptable to the neighbours. Just moderate it a bit, will you?" Barbed Wire, from Gorky's Zygotic Mynci's first album, Patio, closes with the sound of an irate mother breaking up one of the bedroom recordings that, together with sessions culled from radio stations in their native Wales, comprises the bulk of the LP. They were in their mid-teens when they made it, and cherubic singer and organist Euros Childs's voice hadn't even broken.
Next month, the five-strong band start work on their fourth album and will be able to claim 21 years apiece, apart from Euros's sister Megan, who is 25, plays violin, and is entrusted with Gorky's chequebook. The band's name, which even their champion John Peel describes as cumbersome, sounds like an effort to mimic the unwieldy polysyllabic progressive English bands of the past, such as Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera. "I'm afraid it makes less sense than them, though," says guitarist John Lawrence. 'Gork' was school slang for a dimwit, 'zygotic' has been hijacked from GCSE biology, and 'mynci' is a misspelling of monkey. Unfortunately, it's too late to change." Age has not robbed Euros of a stunning choirboy clarity, nor the band of genuine enthusiasm and self-effacing modesty traits absent from a host of other young British groups.
Where Britpop bands creep out from between Paul Weller's legs to create a cultural orthodoxy of second-hand Beatles albums and Small Faces CD reissues, Gorky's have chosen to plunder a different back catalogue the legacy of late British psychedelia. Their audience is a weird mixture of supportive peers, entranced by a music that seems to them to be without precedent, and a few delighted former hippies comforted by traces of Soft Machine and Kevin Ayers. Much of last year's Bwyd (Food) Time LP, notably bassist Richard James's Eating Salt is Easy, seems to take as a starting point the folk-mantras of the 1960s Celtic group The Incredible String Band, who walked the brilliant/rubbish tightrope with less caution than their bearded contemporaries. To a London-centred media, Wales seems more exotic and harder to decode than Seattle or South Central Los Angeles, and, to some extent, Gorky's have played this to their advantage, although there are problems. In deciding to raid a fancy-dress shop for Bwyd Time's cover shoot, and in dressing themselves in medieval garb, they created the oddest sleeve photo since, well...the Incredible String Band's The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, and confirmed press ideas of them as psilocybin-gobbling space yokels. "It was a joke," says Euros.
The fact remains, for comedians such as Lee Hurst and Hale and Pace, the Welsh are the Pakistanis of the 1990s: the race you can stereotype without losing your liberal credentials. Thus Gorky's decision to sing in Welsh, most of the time, might be construed as a political act. But the majority of the band speak Welsh as a first language, and it seems appropriate to a song such as Sdim Yr Adar Yn Cnau (Birds Don't Sing Anymore), their new Amber Gambler EP's beautiful and affecting lament for the oil-slicked Pembrokeshire coast. Melody Maker described the band's use of their native tongue here as "bloody-mindedness". "Where we grew up is bilingual anyway," argues James, "so not to sing in both languages wouldn't be a true representation of us."
But Gorky's won't be drawn on nationalist issues. Reviews in Welsh-language magazines ignore their English-language songs, and Megan describes a television programme about Welsh bands using shots of them crossing the Severn bridge "as if we were going over the border, betraying them". Lawrence sounds positively bitter: "When the Welsh Language Society put on shows, they make a fuss if we ask for Pounds 300 to cover costs, but they don't complain when they have to pay a middle-of-the-road Welsh band a grand." You'd imagine they'd be thrilled by Gorky's, a populist exportable vehicle for the Welsh language. "I don't think they want the language to go outside," says Euros.
On the train back to London, Megan talks about playing the pedal-steel -guitar-led Heart of Kentucky, from the new EP, to bewildered Epic Records executives, suddenly afraid that Gorky's might transmute into an unmarketable Welsh country & western band. But that is Gorky's prerogative. So they signed with Fontana.
There is a family precedent for breaking the mould. Euros and Megan's dad is a music teacher who plays medieval instruments. He reckons he could write Euros's songs himself in two minutes.
In September, they play America, where they will doubtless be swooned over. The band's very isolation makes them, ironically, a distinctive commercial international proposition: they are originals. Euros speaks of Japanese fans asking the band to autograph English/Welsh dictionaries. "Now that's something, isn't it?" he adds, with undisguised pride.
Stewart Lee
1996-06-09T16:45:17+01:00
"You can't be trusted for a minute. That noise is unacceptable to the neighbours. Just moderate it a bit, will you?" Barbed Wire, from Gorky's Zygotic Mynci's first album, Patio, closes with the sound of an irate mother breaking up one of the bedroom recordings that, together with sessions culled from radio stations in their native Wales, comprises the bulk of the LP. They were in their mid-teens when they made it, and cherubic singer and organist Euros Childs's voice hadn't even broken. Next month, the five-strong band start work on their fourth album and will be able to claim 21 years apiece, apart from Euros's sister Megan, who is 25, plays violin, and is entrusted with Gorky's chequebook. The band's name, which even their champion John Peel describes as cumbersome, sounds like an effort to mimic the unwieldy polysyllabic progressive English bands of the past, such as Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera. "I'm afraid it makes less sense than them, though," says guitarist John Lawrence. 'Gork' was school slang for a dimwit, 'zygotic' has been hijacked from GCSE biology, and 'mynci' is a misspelling of monkey. Unfortunately, it's too late to change." Age has not robbed Euros of a stunning choirboy clarity, nor the band of genuine enthusiasm and self-effacing modesty traits absent from a host of other young British groups. Where Britpop bands creep out from between Paul Weller's legs to create a cultural orthodoxy of second-hand Beatles albums and Small Faces CD reissues, Gorky's have chosen to plunder a different back catalogue the legacy of late British psychedelia. Their audience is a weird mixture of supportive peers, entranced by a music that seems to them to be without precedent, and a few delighted former hippies comforted by traces of Soft Machine and Kevin Ayers. Much of last year's...
I HAD heard tell of Stewart Lee’s apparent disdain for many of those who buy tickets for his shows these days, as opposed to the “comedy intelligentsia” who have followed him since the late 1980s and early 1990s.
There is something admirably fearless about the way he tried to divide his full house at the Assembly Rooms music hall based on the variable responses to his material.
Lee did, however, seem to unite the room with a host of material ripping into fellow comics Lee Mack, James Corden and Russell Brand.
He reserves particular contempt for Graham Norton, after losing out to his chat show for a Bafta honour, despite their formative period as “attic” boys when they appeared in the same venue at the Pleasance as unknowns.
Stewart Lee
2015-08-17T23:52:00+01:00
I HAD heard tell of Stewart Lee’s apparent disdain for many of those who buy tickets for his shows these days, as opposed to the “comedy intelligentsia” who have followed him since the late 1980s and early 1990s. There is something admirably fearless about the way he tried to divide his full house at the Assembly Rooms music hall based on the variable responses to his material. Lee did, however, seem to unite the room with a host of material ripping into fellow comics Lee Mack, James Corden and Russell Brand. He reserves particular contempt for Graham Norton, after losing out to his chat show for a Bafta honour, despite their formative period as “attic” boys when they appeared in the same venue at the Pleasance as unknowns.
Experiencing Endless Boogie live accidentally in the mid-noughties, I assumed the band was a muso in-joke, but like all the best jokes Endless Boogie’s turns out to be quietly profound.
“What do you get if you cross those glorious late sixties/early seventies extended electric John Lee Hooker/Canned Heat blues jams with the repetitious zen drone brinkmanship of krautrock?” Fifteen years into the band’s quest, its eight tracks averaging ten punishing minutes a piece each, Long Island provides the answer. Studied minimalism swings its mojo and the blues goes transcendental.
Stewart Lee
2013-05-05T12:32:26+01:00
Experiencing Endless Boogie live accidentally in the mid-noughties, I assumed the band was a muso in-joke, but like all the best jokes Endless Boogie’s turns out to be quietly profound. “What do you get if you cross those glorious late sixties/early seventies extended electric John Lee Hooker/Canned Heat blues jams with the repetitious zen drone brinkmanship of krautrock?” Fifteen years into the band’s quest, its eight tracks averaging ten punishing minutes a piece each, Long Island provides the answer.Studied minimalism swings its mojo and the blues goes transcendental.
In the coffee bar of the 1976 Comics Convention at the NEC in Birmingham, a bearded American introduced himself to my mother: "I'm Chris Claremont." Then he turned to me: "I write X-Men. Do you read that?" I was eight years old, but I suddenly realised, with some regret, that penning stories of spandex-clad mutants wasn't a suitable job for a grown man, and wasn't going to impress my mother either. I have been a comics apologist ever since and, as such, realise I and my brethren are about to be called upon once more. The hour is at hand. Avengers assemble!
Once each decade, the mysterious moon of the comic-book industry draws near the greater gravitational mass of popular culture. In the late 1980s, Tim Burton's Batman film, Art Spiegelman's Holocaust fable Maus, and Alan Moore's evisceration of superhero myths, Watchmen, suggested something stirring in sequential storytelling. But still sales fell and comics continued in the downward spiral that saw even Marvel, the owners of Spider-Man and Hulk, narrowly escape bankruptcy in the 1990s and reclassify as a "doll and stuffed-toy" company.
The forthcoming flurry of interest is easily explained. The movie adaptation of Daniel Clowes's Ghost World comic, a portrait of teenage neuroses, was an autumn sleeper hit; the Hughes Brothers' cinematic take on Alan Moore's From Hell, in which Johnny Depp battles a conspiracy to conceal the identity of Jack the Ripper, is released next month; Chris Ware's meditation on father-son relationships, Jimmy Corrigan, won a Guardian first book award; Spider-Man soon swings into multiplexes, and there's a Hulk movie in preproduction, with Ang Lee to direct the incredible green metaphor for the divided self. But will all this breach the hermetically sealed hull of comic-book culture and draw new readers into this overlooked art form?
"In a word, no," says From Hell's writer, Alan Moore, in his hypnotic Northampton burr. "Everyone in the industry thought the Batman film would tell people how great comics were. But what happened was some people went to a Forbidden Planet store and bought Batman toys. Maybe some of them bought a Batman comic. And then they found that the comic was nothing like as exciting as the film." But Marvel comics, which revolutionised the genre in the 1960s, is keen to capitalise on the forthcoming Spider-Man movie by winning actual readers as well as flogging "dolls and stuffed toys". Brian Michael Bendis's rewriting of the Spider-Man stories, Ultimate Spider-Man, erases 40 years of impenetrable continuity and returns the character to his teens, a useful starting point for new readers. Where once the orphan Peter Parker's Aunt May fed him cookies, now she offers advice on safe sex.
Moore’s pessimism is perhaps unwarranted. Comics are currently the best they've been for years. Marvel recruits left-field writers to address the atrophy that engulfed its most famous titles. DC, home to Batman, publishes books with an alternative slant through its Vertigo line. And the independent scene boasts the victories of Ghost World, From Hell and Jimmy Corrigan, each subtler and more diverse than the 1960s countercultural ethic of the "comix" underground would allow. But these high points are but the tip of a slag heap composed largely of unreadable books, available only from specialist shops stuffed with Tomb Raider soft toys and soft-porn comics. Are movie adaptations the manna that comics need? Can they prime potential long-term readers?
Typically, Moore hasn't yet seen the adaptation of From Hell, but he may rent it on video. "I saw a three-minute trailer, which was a weird experience. It looked beautifully photographed." He confesses to an annoyance with "the fallacious modern notion that making a movie of something somehow validates it. A Michael Crichton book, for example, is a template, with characters blank enough to be inhabited by any actor and a schematic sequence of events, so it makes a good film. But, as a rule, adapting from one medium to another is dodgy."
Moore need not worry. From Hell is a decent movie on its own terms and is daringly experimental by Hollywood standards. Those familiar with the comic will see some shots storyboarded directly from Eddie Campbell's illustrations, but the film loses the mystical subtext of the book, which includes 42 pages of footnotes and reduces Moore's Ripper to a cinema psychopath, rather than a man driven by religious beliefs and political expediency. "I don't know if people who like the film would necessarily like the book anyway," Moore concludes. "It's in black-and-white, for a start."
Moore remembers the moment in 1987 when comics, like comedy five years later, were the new rock'n'roll. Today he is content trying to produce work he is proud of and has many satisfying sidelines. His spoken-word William Blake biography, Angel Passage, is currently
available on the Re: label, and he describes his current line, America's Best Comics, as a "Trojan horse". Titles such as Top Ten and Tom Strong "look like superhero comics and are designed to sell in the superhero marketplace, but import ideas from the fringes". Promethea, in which a teenager is possessed by a Wonder Woman-style heroine, is, for Moore, "a magical drone disguised as a superhero comic", reflecting his fascination with occult esoterica. In contrast, he thinks "Jimmy Corrigan is a marvelous book, but it's unlike anything else, so it will have no effect on the mainstream and won't necessarily get people into comics".
It's Moore's enthusiasm for the comics medium's inherent virtues that has seen Marvel's new editor-in-chief, Joe Quesada, make a pilgrimage from his New York skyscraper to Moore's Northampton home to convince him to sign on with Spider-Man and company. Quesada is something of a radical in comics, aiming at actually producing better books, rather than hoping to ride the coat-tails of movie adaptations and cash in on the merchandising. Letting Moore loose on Marvel's classic characters might prove mainstream comics' cultural worth once and for all. Apologists need never apologise again. But would he do it? For a moment, I smell a scoop that would set fandom buzzing like Peter Parker's Spider sense. But "Joe Quesada? He seemed like a nice bloke," was all that Moore would say.
TEN GREAT GRAPHIC NOVELS
From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell
Safe Area Gorazde: The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992-1995 by Joe Sacco
Ghost World by Daniel Clowes
Box Office Poison by Alex Robinson
Preacher: Gone to Texas by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon
Berlin, City of Stones, Book One by Jason Lutes
Fortune and Glory by Brian Michael Bendis
Hey, Buddy! Hate Collection by Peter Bagge
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill
Ultimate Spider-Man Volume I: Power & Responsibility by Brian Michael Bendis
Stewart Lee
2002-01-06T17:43:28+00:00
In the coffee bar of the 1976 Comics Convention at the NEC in Birmingham, a bearded American introduced himself to my mother: "I'm Chris Claremont." Then he turned to me: "I write X-Men. Do you read that?" I was eight years old, but I suddenly realised, with some regret, that penning stories of spandex-clad mutants wasn't a suitable job for a grown man, and wasn't going to impress my mother either. I have been a comics apologist ever since and, as such, realise I and my brethren are about to be called upon once more. The hour is at hand. Avengers assemble! Once each decade, the mysterious moon of the comic-book industry draws near the greater gravitational mass of popular culture. In the late 1980s, Tim Burton's Batman film, Art Spiegelman's Holocaust fable Maus, and Alan Moore's evisceration of superhero myths, Watchmen, suggested something stirring in sequential storytelling. But still sales fell and comics continued in the downward spiral that saw even Marvel, the owners of Spider-Man and Hulk, narrowly escape bankruptcy in the 1990s and reclassify as a "doll and stuffed-toy" company. The forthcoming flurry of interest is easily explained. The movie adaptation of Daniel Clowes's Ghost World comic, a portrait of teenage neuroses, was an autumn sleeper hit; the Hughes Brothers' cinematic take on Alan Moore's From Hell, in which Johnny Depp battles a conspiracy to conceal the identity of Jack the Ripper, is released next month; Chris Ware's meditation on father-son relationships, Jimmy Corrigan, won a Guardian first book award; Spider-Man soon swings into multiplexes, and there's a Hulk movie in preproduction, with Ang Lee to direct the incredible green metaphor for the divided self. But will all this breach the hermetically sealed hull of comic-book culture and draw new readers into this overlooked art form? "In...
Chicago's Dead Rider remove the scaffolding from the '70s techno-rock stadium.
The big polyrhythmical beats and squeaky clean keyboards you'd hear on thriller soundtracks scored by members of Yes are pressed instead into service of a warped art-noise Captain Beefheart might have made if he'd lived in a chrome and smoked glass skyscraper instead of a desert.
With its minimalist disco, strip-lit Marie Celeste sound-scapes, and resolutely undanceable electronica, Chills On Glass offers high-spec post-rock party music for jaded oligarchs.
Stewart Lee
2014-03-31T11:32:09+01:00
Chicago's Dead Rider remove the scaffolding from the '70s techno-rock stadium. The big polyrhythmical beats and squeaky clean keyboards you'd hear on thriller soundtracks scored by members of Yes are pressed instead into service of a warped art-noise Captain Beefheart might have made if he'd lived in a chrome and smoked glass skyscraper instead of a desert. With its minimalist disco, strip-lit Marie Celeste sound-scapes, and resolutely undanceable electronica, Chills On Glass offers high-spec post-rock party music for jaded oligarchs.
Ever since Richard Eyre fulfilled Laurence Olivier's dream by staging Guys and Dolls at the National Theatre in 1982, the venue has been bolstering its finances with splashy revivals of musicals.
Vast casts, orchestras and design demands mean that they're terrifyingly expensive to produce, but success spells box office. Audiences in the past two years booked on the basis of the titles alone for South Pacific and My Fair Lady. But the gulf between remounting a well-loved classic and staging something new is a mile wide. Which is why incoming artistic director Nicholas Hytner's announcement that his reign will kick off in April with Jerry Springer: The Opera is bold and exciting.
Most "new" musicals these days are either back-catalogue shows or pointless retreads of old movies like the technologically impressive, but dramatically lifeless, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Although Jerry Springer - The Opera clearly derives from a TV source, it is far more than a carbon-copy with added songs.
It sprang to life at Battersea Arts Centre in February 2001. Gleeful word-of-mouth for this short, sharp shock of a show spread like wildfire and its creator/composer Richard Thomas began refashioning his seemingly mad, hour-long satirical extravaganza into a full-length production. It grabbed the headlines at this year's Edinburgh Fringe, commercial producers were panting for it and Springer himself flew in to see it.
By this time, Thomas had been joined by co-writer/director Stewart Lee (one half of comedy duo Lee and Herring). The imminent arrival of Springer induced more than a little panic. After all, their show sees Springer presiding over a blackly comic rewrite of a typically rabble-rousing, warts 'n' all episode, with a voracious chorus of keyed-up audience members, a hymn to pole-dancing, a desperate guest stripping down to nappies and a tap-dancing line of Ku Klux Klansmen and ends the first half by having Jerry killed live on air.
In the second half, things get even hotter as Jerry arrives at Judgment Day and faces a battle between heaven and hell.
The real-life Springer, despite his reputation as a sleaze-fest schlock-jock, must be smart: he saw the funny side and granted his permission. He probably welcomed the opportunity to be associated with so singular a show.
Critics were already raving. "Forget your furs, your picnic baskets and your corporate hospitality. This is opera in the raw." cried the Independent on Sunday. "Liberatingly irreverent," declared The Observer, "It would be hard to find a movie to match this for invention and imagination."
The first tip-off of its theatrical savvy is the smart title. Jerry Springer... an opera? The very incongruity is intriguing. However, within seconds of the musical starting, you realise that high-voltage singing is the best way to dramatise a Springer chat show, with its sordid - usually sexual - confessions by members of the public.
The problem for all musicals is to make it seem natural that characters burst into song, but here, from the opening chorus of "Jer-ry, Jer-ry, Jer-ry..." which sounds increasingly like a comic version of "Kyrie" from a sung Mass, that thought simply never occurs.
As on the TV show, Jerry remains the still centre amid the mayhem - he is the only character who doesn't sing. Everyone else lets rip with a wild pick 'n' mix: everything from Bach to Bacharach via rock and gospel, epitomised by the solo This is My Jerry Springer Moment (So dip me in chocolate and throw me to the lesbians/ I don't want this moment to die).
Most musicals placate their audience, offering variations on what it already knows, but this is all the more entertaining because you never know what's coming next. That might sound ramshackle, but Thomas holds all the diverse elements together because he has hit upon the perfect form for his idea. Couple that with his and Lee's experience as live comedy performers and it's no wonder the show has taken off.
The BAC performances were stages in a workshop development process and the Edinburgh run was really a souped-up concert staging. The show, particularly the fitful second half, still needs work. Thanks to the subsidised National Theatre resources and the arrival of Julian Crouch, the co-designer/director of the similarly genre-busting one-off Shockheaded Peter, that will now happen.
Casting has yet to be announced but, for once, the star of the show is the material. What better vindication of Hytner's new dawn than a nurturing of such a dangerous and delicious bad-taste bonanze?
Stewart Lee
2002-12-10T18:18:24+00:00
Ever since Richard Eyre fulfilled Laurence Olivier's dream by staging Guys and Dolls at the National Theatre in 1982, the venue has been bolstering its finances with splashy revivals of musicals. Vast casts, orchestras and design demands mean that they're terrifyingly expensive to produce, but success spells box office. Audiences in the past two years booked on the basis of the titles alone for South Pacific and My Fair Lady. But the gulf between remounting a well-loved classic and staging something new is a mile wide. Which is why incoming artistic director Nicholas Hytner's announcement that his reign will kick off in April with Jerry Springer: The Opera is bold and exciting. Most "new" musicals these days are either back-catalogue shows or pointless retreads of old movies like the technologically impressive, but dramatically lifeless, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Although Jerry Springer - The Opera clearly derives from a TV source, it is far more than a carbon-copy with added songs. It sprang to life at Battersea Arts Centre in February 2001. Gleeful word-of-mouth for this short, sharp shock of a show spread like wildfire and its creator/composer Richard Thomas began refashioning his seemingly mad, hour-long satirical extravaganza into a full-length production. It grabbed the headlines at this year's Edinburgh Fringe, commercial producers were panting for it and Springer himself flew in to see it. By this time, Thomas had been joined by co-writer/director Stewart Lee (one half of comedy duo Lee and Herring). The imminent arrival of Springer induced more than a little panic. After all, their show sees Springer presiding over a blackly comic rewrite of a typically rabble-rousing, warts 'n' all episode, with a voracious chorus of keyed-up audience members, a hymn to pole-dancing, a desperate guest stripping down to nappies and a tap-dancing line of Ku Klux...
Comedian, writer and director Stewart Lee is well known for his controversial show Jerry Springer - the Opera, as well as being and established comedy writer, stand-up and one half of the comedy partnership Lee and Herring.
He speaks to The Stage between performances at the Bush Theatre, to talk about his recent move towards theatre.
You’ve returned to the topic of Christianity for your new show What Would Judas Do? Were you secretly missing all the attention from the religious fundamentalists?
Well, they’re stories everyone knows so they’re a good way of looking at other ideas. I don’t miss the attention from fundamentalist groups and it’s quite put me off any kind of high-profile exposure. One of the nice things about the Bush Theatre is it’s not the kind of place that psychopaths find out about, although some of the responses to questions I ask in the show have, in the last few days, suggested there might be people coming to try and make some kind of point, who are then a bit confused that it isn’t what their prejudices would lead them to expect.
Has this show received any negative interest from religious groups or protesters?
No. The religious right in the UK is only interested in things that will get its hate agenda into the mainstream and hassling someone in an 80-seater room achieves little.
You’ve used Christian beliefs as material since your early days but it has matured from simple jokes through to an expression of ideas which happen to use comedy as a tool to help make a point. Is this your comedic abilities and tastes evolving or more the case that, in order to express yourself in the current social climate, the nature of expression has to change in order to be viewed as acceptable, or to be viewed at all?
It’s just getting older, and doing more complex things, I think. That said, in the current climate, you do need to be able to justify what you are doing more as it is likely to be subjected to aggressive scrutiny in a way things weren’t when I was growing up.
By staging this as a theatre piece, rather than stand-up or presenting it as outright comedy satire, is this a slightly less provocative way of reworking themes you’ve touched on in your previous work, such as the Sunday Heroes portion of This Morning With Richard Not Judy, to inspire a discussion? Were you deliberately setting out to diffuse any fundamentalist reactions to the work after your previous experiences in regards to Jerry Springer - the Opera?
I don’t understand what provokes people. Negative responses to Jerry Springer - the Opera were mainly based on things that weren’t even in it, or on wilfully or accidentally ignorant misreadings of things. I wasn’t setting out to diffuse fundamentalists with What Would Judas Do?, nor were we trying to provoke them with Jerry Springer - the Opera. I’ve got better things to think about. Who cares?
Are those back references simply a hidden extra for the long-term fans to enjoy?
They’re there because they fit the story and got me around a couple of holes.
Your show suggests that the motives behind Judas’ actions weren’t quite as clear cut as many of us may have been previously taught. Do you see your show almost a parable in itself - serving to both tell the audience a story and to educate or make a statement?
I’m not really interested in the truth or not-truth of the bible story. I just wanted to use it as a way to look at obsession, fan worship, loyalty and how reputations are made.
Are you slowly edging towards drama and straight theatre or will the temptation to make people laugh always define your work for the foreseeable future?
I’d like to do both and this has been a kind of experiment in working out if people will accept that when the lines start to blur.
Do you worry there is almost a danger that any serious comment you are making or might wish to make will be lost among the humour, or the expectations people have for you to be ‘funny’?
Yes. I am surprised at some of the bits that get laughs from the What Would Judas Do? audience when, to me, they are tragic.
Do you think comedy is still seen as the one thing that guarantees an audience to anything you wish to raise, where a seminar or debate may fail?
I don’t know. Live stand-up is the one thing that guarantees me an income.
Do you think alternative comedy itself is shifting away from stand-up and more towards comedic theatre with more comedians choosing to take themed shows on tour?
Well, the better people are but there are more Jongleurs/Comedy Store franchises than ever and more and more comics that want to play them, so there is no danger of ‘chicken in a basket’ stand-up being wiped out by themed shows just yet. Most people’s stand-up experiences will still be being drunk at a stag night at Jongleurs. We are still a minority.
How much of comedy do you find is performance in relation to the actual material?
Most of it. I think critics focus on material because it’s easier to understand and write about that the vague nuances of timing, rhythm, tone and trust, which are probably more important elements of stand-up.
You’ve mentioned before that the German Stand-Up Show changed your approach to comedy, did it hone your physical comedy or merely the structure of your comedy?
It meant I wanted to get away from puns and wordplay and structures that are funny - ie; the kind of ‘pull back and reveal, Joe Pasquale is on a bus all along’ type gag and do more stuff about inherently funny ideas.
Are there any plans to bring the German stand-Up Show to the UK?
Richard Thomas (the composer) wants to do it here in English, and so do I but we need funding and can’t work for free anymore.
You’ve also shown your abilities as a director, both in TV with Simon Munnery’s Attention Scum and also live work such as Jerry Springer - the Opera and Talk Radio. How did you start directing, did you have any training or experience in directing?
It was a kind of accident. I thought I was script-editing the Mighty Boosh’s 1999 show and it kind of became directing it. I was in the office when the director of Attention Scum dropped out at the last minute and I knew the material. I thought I was co-writing Jerry Springer - the Opera but there wasn’t any money for a director at BAC and so I kind of did it. I sought out Talk Radio to try and do a square normal theatre directing job, so that when I’m next offered one I can take it if I need to earn money. I had no proper directing experience prior to Talk Radio, just doing things that I’d already been kind of collaborating on. I’m not desperate to do more, unless it’s things I’m devising or writing or co-writing.
So, what’s next? Are you taking What Would Judas Do? to Edinburgh this year?
I’m doing a new stand-up show at the Underbelly, called March of the Mallards. People want me to do Judas but my wife has a show on in Edinburgh too, and at the moment we are planning to split the child-minding and that may not be possible if I end up doing two shows a day.
* Stewart Lee’s What Would Judas Do? is on at the Bush Theatre, London until February 3.
His DVD of Stewart Lee - 90’s Comedian is available exclusively online from www.gofasterstripe.com, priced £10.
Stewart Lee
2007-01-21T21:03:13+00:00
Comedian, writer and director Stewart Lee is well known for his controversial show Jerry Springer - the Opera, as well as being and established comedy writer, stand-up and one half of the comedy partnership Lee and Herring. He speaks to The Stage between performances at the Bush Theatre, to talk about his recent move towards theatre. You’ve returned to the topic of Christianity for your new show What Would Judas Do? Were you secretly missing all the attention from the religious fundamentalists? Well, they’re stories everyone knows so they’re a good way of looking at other ideas. I don’t miss the attention from fundamentalist groups and it’s quite put me off any kind of high-profile exposure. One of the nice things about the Bush Theatre is it’s not the kind of place that psychopaths find out about, although some of the responses to questions I ask in the show have, in the last few days, suggested there might be people coming to try and make some kind of point, who are then a bit confused that it isn’t what their prejudices would lead them to expect. Has this show received any negative interest from religious groups or protesters? No. The religious right in the UK is only interested in things that will get its hate agenda into the mainstream and hassling someone in an 80-seater room achieves little. You’ve used Christian beliefs as material since your early days but it has matured from simple jokes through to an expression of ideas which happen to use comedy as a tool to help make a point. Is this your comedic abilities and tastes evolving or more the case that, in order to express yourself in the current social climate, the nature of expression has to change in order to be viewed as...
The Britpop DJ and breakfast television innovator Chris Evans is a brave man. But perhaps he has a suicidal streak. Or maybe, more nobly, he has discovered a belated desire to do some good in the world, as if to atone for the crimes of his past, before walking willingly to his inevitable doom. Like Gene Hackman’s crazy priest in The Poseidon Adventure, Jesus Christ from the New Testament or the nuclear clean-up crews at Fukushima, Chris Evans’s odds of surviving the job he has taken on are not encouraging. But he is doing something that needs to be done, for all humanity.
Because, for years now, a vast, gaping inter-dimensional sphincter, the size of a gothic cathedral rose window, has throbbed and dilated silently at the heart of the BBC buildings on Upper Regent Street, belching fossil fumes and foul thoughts from a dark realm of negative space. I saw inside the pulsating meat oculus once, caught unawares as I stumbled across the Dave channel late at night, drunk. There, between Lee Mack’s laughing face and Robson Green’s leaping fish, compelling footage of the fetid portal’s sickening interior unfurled endlessly into the small hours. I saw it, so you don’t have to.
In a fiery lake, through a carbon cloud, precious saplings were torn from their roots, the many and varied peoples of all the Earth were denigrated with arcane curses now largely vanished from the lexicon, inverts were sodomised with presumptuous jibes, a half-blind statesman was branded a “one-eyed idiot”, and a poor slave, penitently proffering a tray of sandwiches, was punched in his tiny face, to the indifference of drunken onlookers.
To me, it was a vision of hell as vivid as Camposanto’s wall-daubed Triumph of Death. To others, it is merely banter, harmless banter. I clicked rapidly forward to the relative comfort of The Nazis – A Warning from History, but once seen, the space-sphincter’s contents could not be unseen.
No one at the BBC can quite remember when the evil muscle portal was first opened, or when it began to be a problem for the broadcaster. Elders of the organisation, bent double upon their sticks like the ancient Eric Gill patriarchs adorning their architecture, say the hole of hatred began life innocently enough as some kind of motoring consumer programme, once reputedly presented by the likes of Quentin Willson and Angela Rippon, though all evidence of this has been destroyed.
Matters came to a head last year when, after an especially violent rumble, the fractious sphincter suddenly ejected a massive torrent of bile from deep within itself, out of the cellar where it dwells, through the hot-desking communities of the BBC, and into Langham Place, carrying strange creatures alive and dead from inside its horrifying maw (a two-headed turtle, a flatfish with pendulous lactating breasts, and a mummified cat that looked like Steve Howe from Yes).
Illustration by David Foldvari
In the shadow of All Souls Church a giant transparent squid, that had been spat out from within the sphincter, suddenly blistered in the sun and burst its guts, spilling out a succession of rusted car registration plates, each carrying coded insults to the war dead of vanquished nations. Thankfully, an independent internal investigation decreed all this mere coincidence, and the exonerated hate-sphincter continued its malicious throbbing undisciplined. This was, perhaps, the moment at which all chance of controlling the entity was lost.
In the liberal press, the usual bleeding hearts called for the poisonous vacuum to be sealed with hot wax. But, removed from public opinion in their lofty Islington ivory towers, they could not comprehend the sphincter’s allure. The prime minister himself confessed a fondness for the foul opening’s charms. Chillaxing at night, wine goblet in hand, Dave tunes into Dave and gazes vacantly at the ever-dilating aperture’s flickering but seductive pantomime of hate. Temporarily tranquillised, like all the duct’s followers, he is purged of his own covert evils by witnessing overt cruelty made flesh.
To close the portal permanently would make an already wounded BBC, itself a fixture of the culture secretary’s kill list, vulnerable to the criticism that it does not reflect the public it is charged to serve. To leave the depraved sphincter open and rumbling risks the release of further terrible evils into the world, the chance of international diplomatic incident and the shame, as the Earth chokes itself to death, of being on the wrong side of history.
The toxic sphincter is like Hitler’s bunker. Left open but unattended it will become a focus point for the untrammelled rage of the very worst people on earth, numbering billions globally, who believe an imaginary liberal conspiracy prevents them sending their children into school on public feast days dressed up as golliwogs, Enoch Powell, or the knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
To placate them, the BBC’s vibrating cesspit of vile stupidity needs to be allowed to appear to continue to function, but within safer limits. Someone needs to wade into the stinkhole’s slimy opening, stand knee deep in the filth that pours from it, and regulate the flow. And that person, it appears, is Chris Evans.
Like Han Solo in Star Wars: A New Hope, Evans is, historically, a mercenary figure, selling his considerable skills to the highest bidder, spouting populist rhetoric, while wearing a loose-fitting, but ultimately transparent, waistcoat of apparent rebelliousness and puckish individuality. But maybe the crisis caused by the endless toxic discharge issuing from the BBC’s subterranean bile-valve has forced Evans’s hand.
Previous denizens of the hate-hole were a generation removed from Evans, in attitudes if not always in age. But Evans, despite his regrettable friendships with many of the earlier guardians of the pit, is a product of the post-punk Age of Enlightenment. While his mid-90s TV persona parroted the contemporary New Lad agenda, it at least appeared to do so with some degree of irony. But will Evans’s reflexive nuanced echoes still sound so strongly when his words have only the soft, filth-smeared flesh walls of the abominable sphincter to bounce off?
The chalice Evans has accepted is poisoned, and there is some old wee or something on the bit where you hold it at the bottom, and that wee will probably go on his hand. But I give Evans my blessing, despite the fact that I, as a multi-Bafta award winning BBC star myself, have been anxiously awaiting the call to accept the detoxification job that he has finally been offered.
Stewart Lee’s A Room With a Stew is at Leicester Square theatre from 21 Sept
Stewart Lee
2015-06-21T21:33:04+01:00
The Britpop DJ and breakfast television innovator Chris Evans is a brave man. But perhaps he has a suicidal streak. Or maybe, more nobly, he has discovered a belated desire to do some good in the world, as if to atone for the crimes of his past, before walking willingly to his inevitable doom. Like Gene Hackman’s crazy priest in The Poseidon Adventure, Jesus Christ from the New Testament or the nuclear clean-up crews at Fukushima, Chris Evans’s odds of surviving the job he has taken on are not encouraging. But he is doing something that needs to be done, for all humanity. Because, for years now, a vast, gaping inter-dimensional sphincter, the size of a gothic cathedral rose window, has throbbed and dilated silently at the heart of the BBC buildings on Upper Regent Street, belching fossil fumes and foul thoughts from a dark realm of negative space. I saw inside the pulsating meat oculus once, caught unawares as I stumbled across the Dave channel late at night, drunk. There, between Lee Mack’s laughing face and Robson Green’s leaping fish, compelling footage of the fetid portal’s sickening interior unfurled endlessly into the small hours. I saw it, so you don’t have to. In a fiery lake, through a carbon cloud, precious saplings were torn from their roots, the many and varied peoples of all the Earth were denigrated with arcane curses now largely vanished from the lexicon, inverts were sodomised with presumptuous jibes, a half-blind statesman was branded a “one-eyed idiot”, and a poor slave, penitently proffering a tray of sandwiches, was punched in his tiny face, to the indifference of drunken onlookers. To me, it was a vision of hell as vivid as Camposanto’s wall-daubed Triumph of Death. To others, it is merely banter, harmless banter. I clicked...
Last week’s newspaper attacks on Jeremy Corbyn have moved from the dishonest into the deranged. On page seven of Monday’s Telegraph, Sir Gerald Howarth MP, who once worried that the same sex marriage bill would be seen by “the aggressive homosexual community… as but a stepping stone to something even further”, analysed Corbyn’s Remembrance service bow.
Sir Gerald, who was dismayed when the ban on military homosexuals was lifted because many “ordinary soldiers in Her Majesty’s forces joined the services precisely because they wished to turn their backs on some of the values of modern society”, explained how Corbyn’s “slight tip forward” toward the Cenotaph “should have gone down to around 45 degrees from the waist” proving that he was “not cut from the cloth of a statesman”.
Perhaps, mindful of Sir Gerald’s anxieties, Corbyn had refrained from bending too far forward in order to avoid encouraging any members of the aggressive homosexual community present at the ceremony to see his action as a stepping stone to something even further.
Meanwhile, on page 23 of the same edition, the Telegraph’s former editor Charles Moore, whose decision to live in Tunbridge Wells indicates a man at peace with posterity, took a contrary position to Sir Gerald. He said that Corbyn behaved with decorum at the Cenotaph, but that this was actually worse than if he had behaved appallingly, as it was an attempt to foist far-left values on the public “by outward deference to common norms”.
Whatever Corbyn does is wrong, it seems. Punching blindly out of the paper bag of his own lunacy, Moore concluded, “It is sensible, from [the Labour party’s] point of view, to make well-arranged poppies part of their window dressing.”
While I don’t doubt that Corbyn is a Marxist sociopath hellbent on the destruction of British society, and indeed I applaud him for this, the best evidence of well-arranged window-dressing in British politics last week was the Conservatives’ hasty grafting of a digital poppy on to an all-purpose online David Cameron maquette, which can be speedily adapted to sport the appropriately sincere symbols of any passing festival of remembrance.
Father Dom Bernardo Vincelli’s tonic wine was sentimentally drunk by old soldiers years after they had consumed it under fire in Normandy. It is understood that, for next year’s remembrance ceremony, the prime minister’s tear ducts are to be surgically altered so that he can cry French Benedictine on demand, lick it off his own face, and then transubstantiate it in his bladder, to wee out the holy tears of the fallen.
Taking contrary arguments to arrive at the same conclusion, Sir Gerald and Charles Moore are like terrible hack comedians on some shit TV panel show, who’ve found the same funny punch line, and now just need to reverse-engineer opinions to justify it.
The Telegraph even included a helpful photo diagram, showing the exact angle of Corbyn’s bow, with protractor-style annotation to prove that it did, indeed, clock in at below Sir Gerald’s respectful angle of 45 degrees.
What constitutes offence is normally a difficult thing to delineate. The N-word, for example, while unacceptable racist filth in the mouth of your dad, may yet be a delight in the gutter poetry of African American rap singers, like Ice Cube, Ice-T or the Insane Clown Posse.
Defining offence is so complicated. That’s why it was thoughtful of the Telegraph to publish an actual graph of the angle of Corbyn’s bow. The existence of a literal calibration of offence relieves us of the obligation of understanding complicating factors like context, intent, or the agenda of the observer. Corbyn’s bow was undeniably offensive because it fell outside the mathematical parameters of inoffensive bowing.
Oddly, I have previous experience of a protractor being used to calculate offence. Twenty-one years ago I appeared in a TV sketch show, and in an item written by the comedian Richard Herring, Tom Binns featured naked as a showering footballer. When the rushes arrived, there were legal anxieties that Binns’s penis appeared to be erect, and that the footage could not be broadcast.
A BBC ombudsman analysed Binns’s penis with a protractor, using the Mull of Kintyre test, and found that Binns’s penis, while buoyant, was angled downwards at less than the 45 degree mark that would have made it unfit for transmission. Turning from the Telegraph to the Sun, this knowledge was to come back to haunt me.
The Sun’s front page, Leveson a mere memory, maintained Corbyn had not bowed at all, downgrading his movements to a futile nod, and ran a photo of the nodding “pacifist” next to a picture of an apparently topless woman standing heroically in some snow in just tiny pants and ski-boots. Her back was towards the camera, but the subconscious 3D modelling in my mind kicked in involuntarily, and I was very slightly excited, surely the paper’s intention in displaying the image.
Later that day, as I walked home past a decorated war memorial, the stirring began again, and I realised to my horror that accidentally viewing the image of the semi-naked woman on the Sun cover alongside their story on Corbyn and the Cenotaph had caused me to associate subconsciously Remembrance Day with mild sexual arousal.
Appalled at what had happened to me, through no fault of my own I might add, and terrified of incurring the wrath of Sir Gerald for my inappropriate response to the sacred symbols around me, I grabbed my protractor from my satchel and rushed into a toilet cubicle to calibrate the extent of my unintentional disrespect.
Luckily, I realised that, as usual, my penis fell below the required standard to constitute legal tumescence, and quickly mailed off mathematically annotated photographic evidence of this to Sir Gerald, for fear of becoming the subject of a Daily Telegraph exposé myself, while praying that he himself would not interpret this desperate gesture as an invitation to a stepping stone to something even further.
We all remember the dead in our own way, and contextualise their sacrifices as we see fit. I stood among a small crowd at the war memorial at the library where I was working at 11 o’clock on Wednesday. Someone’s phone went off, of course. Young mums walked past unaware of the significance of the moment. I thought about my grandfather, an RAF crewman, quietly and privately traumatised, I think, by flying over Dresden, days after the firebombing. Though he continued to profess hatred of all foreigners until his death, as was the way of his generation, I suspect that, from that day onwards, his heart wasn’t really in it.
A Room With a Stew is at Leicester Square theatre, London WC2 until 8 Jan; stewartlee.co.uk. Stewart Lee is the curator of next year’s All Tomorrow’s Parties festival, at Prestatyn Pontins, 15-17 April 2016
Stewart Lee
2015-11-15T13:06:23+00:00
Last week’s newspaper attacks on Jeremy Corbyn have moved from the dishonest into the deranged. On page seven of Monday’s Telegraph, Sir Gerald Howarth MP, who once worried that the same sex marriage bill would be seen by “the aggressive homosexual community… as but a stepping stone to something even further”, analysed Corbyn’s Remembrance service bow. Sir Gerald, who was dismayed when the ban on military homosexuals was lifted because many “ordinary soldiers in Her Majesty’s forces joined the services precisely because they wished to turn their backs on some of the values of modern society”, explained how Corbyn’s “slight tip forward” toward the Cenotaph “should have gone down to around 45 degrees from the waist” proving that he was “not cut from the cloth of a statesman”. Perhaps, mindful of Sir Gerald’s anxieties, Corbyn had refrained from bending too far forward in order to avoid encouraging any members of the aggressive homosexual community present at the ceremony to see his action as a stepping stone to something even further. Meanwhile, on page 23 of the same edition, the Telegraph’s former editor Charles Moore, whose decision to live in Tunbridge Wells indicates a man at peace with posterity, took a contrary position to Sir Gerald. He said that Corbyn behaved with decorum at the Cenotaph, but that this was actually worse than if he had behaved appallingly, as it was an attempt to foist far-left values on the public “by outward deference to common norms”. Whatever Corbyn does is wrong, it seems. Punching blindly out of the paper bag of his own lunacy, Moore concluded, “It is sensible, from [the Labour party’s] point of view, to make well-arranged poppies part of their window dressing.” While I don’t doubt that Corbyn is a Marxist sociopath hellbent on the destruction of British...
Rebekah Brooks: overcome by the Utopian dream? Photograph: Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images
There has been much inappropriate, salacious, and opportunistic speculation about the exact nature of the withheld communications between the former News International redhead Rebekah Brooks and the current Conservative party brownhead David Cameron, much of it in extremely dubious taste. I doubt, for example, whether the self-styled grand inquisitor Tom Watson MP would be pleased were someone to make public all his private business messages to the gravy girls at his local branch of The Gourmet Meat Pie Emporium! But unlike Watson, my main interest in the Brooks-Cameron messages is not political, or prurient, but linguistic and literary.
Admittedly, it is possible that, were the full texts of the pair's missives to be brought to light, public confidence in Cameron would be destroyed for ever and the government would collapse, leaving a gaping power vacuum into which Ed Miliband might find himself tumbling, with all the undeniable historical impact of a damp sock falling into a deep trench latrine. But for me, what posterity will choose to preserve from the dialogues is Brooks's response to Cameron's 2009 Conservative party conference pep talk: "Brilliant speech. I cried twice. Will love 'working together'." The pellucid message fascinates, dazzling in its mystery, possessed of a bluntly opaque poetry, and will continue to resonate long after the star-cross'd pair themselves have completed their fearful passage, and death lies upon them like an untimely frost. Consider.
Brooks's unusual use of apostrophes, rather than quotation marks, around the words "working together" appears to suggest that Brooks's idea of her and Cameron 'working together' has some entirely different and privately understood meaning from the normal idea of "working together". Would italics have helped? Could Brooks and Cameron have been planning to be 'working together'? Or were they going to be 'working together'? Or, worse still, 'working together'?
Perhaps the much-quoted phrase from the duo's original communique cache, "country supper", as in "I do understand the issue with the Times. Let's discuss over a country supper soon", should also have had apostrophes around it, or have been in italics? Would "Let's discuss over a 'country supper' soon" have done more, or less, to inflame the suspicions of Watson's puritanical leftwing cabal? Its presumably deliberate echoes of Hamlet's lecherous pursuit of "country matters" would certainly not be lost on the Eton-educated Cameron. Rhythmically and dramatically, the substitution is almost too perfect.
Hamlet : Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
Ophelia : No, my lord.
Hamlet : I mean my head upon your lap.
Ophelia : Aye, my lord.
Hamlet : Or did you think I meant country suppers?
(Hamlet, Act III, Sc ii)
Elsewhere in the message's nine words, Brooks brilliantly and economically evokes the idea of the uncontrolled emotion Cameron's egalitarian political vision inspires in her. "I cried twice."
Twice! Brooks cried twice. The weeping did not begin and then eventually subside, like the snotty bawling of a young foolish girl attending a Russell Brand gig, or officiating the back-garden shoebox funeral of a beloved hamster. No. The weeping began, was contained by sheer force of will, and then the undeniable power of Cameron's crazy utopian dream of Privilege For All overcame Brooks a second time, like an enormous yes.
Make no mistake, Brooks seems to say, this was not some easily won epiphany, like the gut animal reaction to cheap music or cheap perfume, but the unwanted outcome of a struggle for self-control that failed, against Brooks's will, and then failed again. It was a Fifty Shades of Grey-style tussle with unbidden idealistic desires, that nonetheless found their way to the heroine's unwilling and wounded heart. If I might be so bold, the sentiment could only have been more dramatic had Brooks expressed it thus: "I cried. Twice." But journalists are trained to write in sentences.
Cameron knows this. And so does Brooks. And for Brooks to break so boldly a fixed professional and grammatical law would perhaps have betrayed the pair far more convincingly that any amount of clanking innuendo about the riding of disobedient horses.
Time passes. We drive our carts and our plows over the bones of the dead. Leveson recedes into the memory fog. Now Savile looms aloft like Whitby Dracula newly transported in Transylvanian coffin dust, and other figures take shape in the mist, drawing the eye from country suppers. The air changes to soundless damage. Cameron will leave no legacy, and Brooks will be a stain upon the saddle of time's swift stallion, no more. But choice phrases often linger long after the names of those who uttered them are forgotten: "It's black over Bill's mother's"; "Oh! Oh! Mr Peevly! Mr Peevly!"; "That's you that is"; and the immortal "I cried twice." Brooks' words will ring down the ages, divorced from the speaker and her addressee, but emblazoned as the new gold standard of emotional veracity. The News of the World is gone and the coalition will collapse. What will survive of us is love.
Stewart Lee's DVD Carpet Remnant World is released on Monday
Stewart Lee
2012-11-11T14:18:35+00:00
Rebekah Brooks: overcome by the Utopian dream? Photograph: Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images There has been much inappropriate, salacious, and opportunistic speculation about the exact nature of the withheld communications between the former News International redhead Rebekah Brooks and the current Conservative party brownhead David Cameron, much of it in extremely dubious taste. I doubt, for example, whether the self-styled grand inquisitor Tom Watson MP would be pleased were someone to make public all his private business messages to the gravy girls at his local branch of The Gourmet Meat Pie Emporium! But unlike Watson, my main interest in the Brooks-Cameron messages is not political, or prurient, but linguistic and literary. Admittedly, it is possible that, were the full texts of the pair's missives to be brought to light, public confidence in Cameron would be destroyed for ever and the government would collapse, leaving a gaping power vacuum into which Ed Miliband might find himself tumbling, with all the undeniable historical impact of a damp sock falling into a deep trench latrine. But for me, what posterity will choose to preserve from the dialogues is Brooks's response to Cameron's 2009 Conservative party conference pep talk: "Brilliant speech. I cried twice. Will love 'working together'." The pellucid message fascinates, dazzling in its mystery, possessed of a bluntly opaque poetry, and will continue to resonate long after the star-cross'd pair themselves have completed their fearful passage, and death lies upon them like an untimely frost. Consider. Brooks's unusual use of apostrophes, rather than quotation marks, around the words "working together" appears to suggest that Brooks's idea of her and Cameron 'working together' has some entirely different and privately understood meaning from the normal idea of "working together". Would italics have helped? Could Brooks and Cameron have been planning to be 'working together'? Or were they going to...
'Whatever you decide, dock one off,' he says teasingly to the critics in the room, 'this is only going to get worse.'
Of course, you can ignore that: Lee remains one of the best stand-ups in the country and he knows it, which is why, even though he is technically branding this a 'work in progress' - you get three out of a potential six half-hour routines in preparation for his next stand-up series on BBC2 – he remains in polished, energising form.
Part of the thrill of seeing Lee – beyond his usual biting lines, fourth wall-breaking deconstruction of his own sets and shrewd micromanagement of his audience – is seeing how he switches between genuine sincerity and absurd parody in a heartbeat.
In that regard, there's much to relish in his unforgettable routine about Ukip deputy leader Paul Nuttall, as he applies Nuttall's logic on the subject of the possible influx of Bulgarians into Britain (to précis: ‘The most qualified ones would be better off staying and helping Bulgaria, rather than serving tea and coffee here') to the history of evolution.
Elsewhere, he describes the 1980s in two sentences, offers up a hilariously vivid gag involving Ben Fogle's attic as part of an explanation of satire, and has a boozy, emasculating, existential crisis, the only chunk that veers us away from politics.
So there we have it. Get tickets now if you want to get in before Christmas – then add on your own star accordingly.
Stewart Lee
2013-11-08T18:40:06+00:00
How many stars to give Stewart Lee? 'Whatever you decide, dock one off,' he says teasingly to the critics in the room, 'this is only going to get worse.' Of course, you can ignore that: Lee remains one of the best stand-ups in the country and he knows it, which is why, even though he is technically branding this a 'work in progress' - you get three out of a potential six half-hour routines in preparation for his next stand-up series on BBC2 – he remains in polished, energising form. Part of the thrill of seeing Lee – beyond his usual biting lines, fourth wall-breaking deconstruction of his own sets and shrewd micromanagement of his audience – is seeing how he switches between genuine sincerity and absurd parody in a heartbeat. In that regard, there's much to relish in his unforgettable routine about Ukip deputy leader Paul Nuttall, as he applies Nuttall's logic on the subject of the possible influx of Bulgarians into Britain (to précis: ‘The most qualified ones would be better off staying and helping Bulgaria, rather than serving tea and coffee here') to the history of evolution. Elsewhere, he describes the 1980s in two sentences, offers up a hilariously vivid gag involving Ben Fogle's attic as part of an explanation of satire, and has a boozy, emasculating, existential crisis, the only chunk that veers us away from politics. So there we have it. Get tickets now if you want to get in before Christmas – then add on your own star accordingly.
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, before calling my aunt to say: “You have to be a bit careful with these sort of things, Auntie. Neither the professor that wrote that article, nor the university it says he’s from, actually exist.” “That’s as may be,” she said, “but I still think he makes a lot of valid points.”
The fact that my aunt knew the anti-Islamic man was not real did not stop her using his work to reinforce her prejudices. If I had realised the extent to which her adoption of the research of a man she knew did not exist was a prophecy of the way the whole country was soon to think, I would have joined my friend Roger in emigrating to the Pyrenees before Brexit to set up a pinball machine renovation business.
It was during the Brexit era that feelings trumped facts, and now not being able to prove anything is no barrier to policy and public pronouncement. But Tuesday’s Sky News appearance by the Ipswich Tory MP Tom Hunt, when he doubled down on his belief that “it’s not xenophobic to not want to feel like you’re living in a foreign country”, marked a new fact-free high-water mark. Hunt’s translucent interview with Sophy Ridge pivoted on words such as “feel” and “think”, while details and statistics remained conspicuously absent. “Well, I think it’s, you know,” Hunt explained, “I think if you walk into your town centre, I think if you’re, you know, you’re hearing almost people speaking English is almost a rarity.” Perhaps Hunt is confused. What he is actually hearing is a Suffolk accent, where a man talking about a “waddledickie” is a describing a donkey and not simply suggesting another Tory MP has done something unspeakable to a duck. Allegedly.
The fact that 88% of people in Ipswich speak English as a first language did not deter Hunt from his opinion-based opinion. “Well, I think that lots of people do find that,” he continued, “lots of, lots of people, lots of people when they walk into their town centres and city centres across the country often feel that way.” Oh well. If we feel it, it must be true. Facts? So pre-Brexit!
Hunt went on to conflate failure to integrate with a rise in shop theft. “In the town that I represent we’ve got shop theft on the rise and there is one community that is disproportionately behind the shop theft.” Presumably the “community in question” was an ethic minority of the type that spoke their own language in a town centre, a city centre, otherwise there would be no link between shop theft and integration, but Hunt felt obliged to whistle his dog discreetly. Presumably, the “community in question” responsible for shop theft wasn’t, for example, simply the Shop Theft Community. But, Ridge asked, did Hunt have any data to back this opaque assertion up?
“I’ve been to 12…” Hunt began, “…only a few months ago I went to 12 different shops in the town centre.” It is good, at least, that the shops were different shops, and that Hunt didn’t just question the same shopkeeper over and over again, as that would have invalidated his research. “They all said exactly the same thing,” he asserted. “It’s something which nobody disputes that locally. Nobody disputes that locally. There is analysis done, and there’s lots of… and every single shop we went to said that… And I think that actually that view I have expressed is actually a mainstream view shared by the majority of people in the country.”
It may well be that “the community in question” are responsible for Ipswich shop theft. But if your geography GCSE coursework was based on talking to 12 shopkeepers and didn’t take into account a comparative study of how low income affects shop theft in other communities, it would be invalid. Statistics are tricky like that. But Hunt isn’t really that interested in the truth. He just wants a common enemy to consolidate his Conservative customer base. His own party has filtered millions of pounds of public money to donors and supporters via questionable Covid equipment provision schemes, but ignore the Industrial Scale Fraud Community, and let’s go after the bloke from the “community in question” stealing a Twix.
This is who Hunt, Conservative MP for Ipswich, is. Before entering politics he picked radishes. He picked leeks for a week, but his employer soon returned him to radish work, leeks presumably being too complex for him; he wants to make flying the union flag compulsory in all schools; he does not believe Boris Johnson should have been fined for his Covid parties; and, predictably, he believes the National Trust is “coloured by cultural Marxist dogma, colloquially known as the ‘woke agenda’”. (He is another reminder to National Trust members to make sure they vote online by 3 November in the AGM to prevent the board being stuffed with culture war candidates who share Hunt’s views, from the Tufton Street-linked pressure group Restore Trust.)
I love Ipswich – for its historic clock, for its innovative and resolutely regional Eastern Angles theatre company and because it was the home of Alan Davey of Hawkwind and Hawklords – but if the people of Ipswich return Hunt at the next election, then when their town centre, or city centre, is finally claimed by the rising seas, I shall not mourn its passing, nor the fen-drowning of its waddledickies. The functions of citizenship are the glory of the citizens.
Stewart Lee
2023-10-29T13:12:34+00:00
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, before calling my aunt to say: “You have to be a bit careful with these sort of things, Auntie. Neither the professor that wrote that article, nor the university it says he’s from, actually exist.” “That’s as may be,” she said, “but I still think he makes a lot of valid points.” The fact that my aunt knew the anti-Islamic man was not real did not stop her using his work to reinforce her prejudices. If I had realised the extent to which her adoption of the research of a man she knew did not exist was a prophecy of the way the whole country was soon to think, I would have joined my friend Roger in emigrating to the Pyrenees before Brexit to set up a pinball machine renovation business. It was during the Brexit era that feelings trumped facts, and now not being able to prove anything is no barrier to policy and public pronouncement. But Tuesday’s Sky News appearance by the Ipswich Tory MP Tom Hunt, when he doubled down on his belief that “it’s not xenophobic to not want to feel like you’re living in a foreign country”, marked a new fact-free high-water mark. Hunt’s translucent interview with Sophy Ridge pivoted on words such as “feel” and “think”, while details and statistics remained conspicuously absent. “Well, I think it’s, you know,” Hunt explained, “I think if you walk into your town centre, I think if you’re, you know, you’re hearing almost...
It is Wednesday night and I am camping near a West Country gastropub, to snaffle its wild boar wares. But though the unacknowledged pre-Raphaelite triptych in the local church still shimmers secretly in the shadows, the inn once so welcoming is closed, except for weekends, due to staff shortages, doubtless off the back of Brexit. And so I sit alone, writing this in a wet field without the pleasures of draft cider or the eavesdropped tinkle of merry woodland banter, the sausages unsampled. Will the misery never end? And who is to blame?
These sorts of privations mean top National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers entertainer Mick Lynch presents a conundrum to Remainer fundamentalists like me. For Lynch is undoubtedly a Brexit arse of the first water. And all Lynch’s Brexit-voting members are arses too. How’s that Lexit working out for you lads? How was voting against the EU because you “support basic socialist policies of workers’ rights, public ownership, and opposition to austerity and racism”? I hope Nigel Farage sent flowers and chocolates. Boris Johnson must have been laughing all the way to the next ex-KGB agent’s son’s private Italian hilltop party. Lynch and the RMT will be first up against the wall come my Crushed Velvet Remainers’ Revolution.
And yet, as well as being a Brexit arse, Lynch is also the greatest British spokesperson for workers’ rights, and leftwing values generally, this century. His measured calm makes asinine fools of the usual tools dutifully dispatched to belittle his ilk – the BBC’s Newscast team, Sky’s Kay Burley, Rupert Murdoch’s Piers Morgan, Mental Vacancy’s Richard Madeley, Wheezing Badly’s Nick Ferrari and Anti-woke Wank’s Jonathan Gullis MP – simply by allowing them to parrot their gossamer toss uninterrupted, before courteously correcting them and then saying something drily amusing, which then goes viral and makes future Marxist guerrillas of millions of impressionable schoolchildren.
Lynch is too effective a communicator – on the value of redistribution of wealth, public ownership, public housing and the fair wage – to be allowed on TV. So you won’t see Lynch popping up in the fist-puppet BBC’s fish-shooting barrel much any more. But is it possible for an arse who voted for Brexit to be redeemed? Lynch, it appears, has taught me the meaning of cognitive dissonance. He understands how the proto-fascist Brexit Tory government are planning to exploit the ongoing wave of industrial action, in a way that the Labour leadership don’t. Strikes? For the proto-fascist Brexit Tories they’re a win-win situation.
You don’t have to have read Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm for O-level in the early 1980s to know how imaginary enemies rally baffled and frightened citizens. The imaginary enemy of the EU is about to outlive its uselessness. On fluffy Good Morning Britain last week, the Skeletor-faced travel journalist Simon Calder explained patiently to Brexiter Daily Mail div Andrew Pierce how the new need to check passports on the way into Europe causes delays at Dover. This will happen irrespective of whether the French like us or not, because Brexiters voted to end freedom of movement and then drank Wetherspoons dry to celebrate. I can’t go anywhere! Mine’s a double!! Pierce simply smiled and went glassy-eyed as he was shamed and owned, like someone grinning through an especially invasive colonoscopy, doubtless ready to spew the same nonsense at his next media appointment, but to more compliant facilitators. It’s a shame Remain didn’t have a communicator as good as Calder. No one in the red wall was going to do what David Cameron told them, the lord of the manor popping into peasants’ filthy cottages to wish them a jolly merry Christmas.
Even that serviceable imaginary enemy, the Woke Mob, may eventually no longer fly for the proto-fascists. Even your racist nan knows one of these transgenders now, who works in the Lidl and “they”, she says with comic pointedness, “seem very nice indeed”. And so the Tories have turned their attention to the unions, whom Liz Truss intends to “clamp down” on, the very phrase “clamp down” itself being a pejorative term suggesting the clamp-downee must be bad. You clamp down on crime, drugs, fraud, bullying, cockroaches, paedophiles and rats. And on a movement designed to bargain collectively for better pay and conditions and improve the quality of public services, apparently. Though I wonder where the “skilled agency workers” planned to break the strikes will come from, given that post-Brexit Britain is too short-staffed to grill my wild boar sausages on a Wednesday.
By refusing to meet Lynch, the multi-identity fraud Grant Shapps may force a long strike, driving home the unions’ bad narrative. And if, like the 1980s miners’ strike, it ends in violent confrontations with the foot soldiers of the state, and some unwanted benefit gigs by Crass, it is all gravy for the proto-fascist Tories. Bereft of actual values, each contradictory policy announcement designed only to maintain power, pitched police battles will only strengthen the strategy of division.
Keir Starmer thinks if he keeps his politicians off the picket lines where they belong, he may be swept to power, and he may be, but only in the way some cat shit is swept into a dustpan. The Tory press will attack him anyway. They broke Butterfly Miliband on a bacon sandwich wheel. Starmer may as well strip naked, paint his body red and run into battle.
What a mess. I wished I was cider-drunk and burping boar gas. But as I lay in the long midnight grass sucking Red Stripe reluctantly from a hot can I swear I saw a shooting star. Whoosh! And it’s gone. But a shooting star nonetheless. Not a satellite, no. And not a plane. An actual shooting star, in the northern sky over the A4137. Perhaps it heralds the arrival of a new messiah. Could his name be Mick Lynch, the Brexit arse?
Stewart Lee
2022-07-31T01:09:56+01:00
It is Wednesday night and I am camping near a West Country gastropub, to snaffle its wild boar wares. But though the unacknowledged pre-Raphaelite triptych in the local church still shimmers secretly in the shadows, the inn once so welcoming is closed, except for weekends, due to staff shortages, doubtless off the back of Brexit. And so I sit alone, writing this in a wet field without the pleasures of draft cider or the eavesdropped tinkle of merry woodland banter, the sausages unsampled. Will the misery never end? And who is to blame? These sorts of privations mean top National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers entertainer Mick Lynch presents a conundrum to Remainer fundamentalists like me. For Lynch is undoubtedly a Brexit arse of the first water. And all Lynch’s Brexit-voting members are arses too. How’s that Lexit working out for you lads? How was voting against the EU because you “support basic socialist policies of workers’ rights, public ownership, and opposition to austerity and racism”? I hope Nigel Farage sent flowers and chocolates. Boris Johnson must have been laughing all the way to the next ex-KGB agent’s son’s private Italian hilltop party. Lynch and the RMT will be first up against the wall come my Crushed Velvet Remainers’ Revolution. And yet, as well as being a Brexit arse, Lynch is also the greatest British spokesperson for workers’ rights, and leftwing values generally, this century. His measured calm makes asinine fools of the usual tools dutifully dispatched to belittle his ilk – the BBC’s Newscast team, Sky’s Kay Burley, Rupert Murdoch’s Piers Morgan, Mental Vacancy’s Richard Madeley, Wheezing Badly’s Nick Ferrari and Anti-woke Wank’s Jonathan Gullis MP – simply by allowing them to parrot their gossamer toss uninterrupted, before courteously correcting them and then saying something drily amusing,...
Stew provided narration for this release by The Seen...
The origins of this piece date back to the 1st December 1991. I’d attended an all day concert at the Red Rose Theatre in Finsbury Park, London - a benefit gig for Terry Day - featuring dozens of musicians in various groupings throughout the afternoon and evening. One of those musicians was John Stevens. This was my first exposure to John and his music and the beginning of a fascination still very much part of my everyday. John performed three times that afternoon; with his Spontaneous Music Ensemble - comprising Nigel Coombes and Roger Smith later joined by Maggie Nicols and Phil Minton, in a trio with Larry Stabbins and Paul Rogers and in an unaccompanied role, reciting a text composed by himself. He gave no introduction or back story to the piece. It just existed as is. Gone in a few fleeting moments. A couple of years later I secured an audience recording of the concert made by Andy Isham. All of John’s activity that day was on the recording and through repeated listening over the following two decades, I became very attached to the spoken word piece. Earlier this year I finally got around to transcribing the text, hoping that one day I’d be able to include it in a project. This little dream was enabled by Trestle Records and their generous offer to organise and record a session. Finally John’s inspirational words can be heard again and influence others the way they did me, as a young man, twenty six years ago. (Mark Wastell, December 2017)
The One Day Band sessions are an ongoing series of improvisations hosted by Trestle Records. Musicians, sometimes meeting for the first time, are invited to collaborate on a record made in a single day. The idea is to create a supportive studio environment to facilitate the production of new spontaneous music.
Stew provided narration for this release by The Seen... The origins of this piece date back to the 1st December 1991. I’d attended an all day concert at the Red Rose Theatre in Finsbury Park, London - a benefit gig for Terry Day - featuring dozens of musicians in various groupings throughout the afternoon and evening. One of those musicians was John Stevens. This was my first exposure to John and his music and the beginning of a fascination still very much part of my everyday. John performed three times that afternoon; with his Spontaneous Music Ensemble - comprising Nigel Coombes and Roger Smith later joined by Maggie Nicols and Phil Minton, in a trio with Larry Stabbins and Paul Rogers and in an unaccompanied role, reciting a text composed by himself. He gave no introduction or back story to the piece. It just existed as is. Gone in a few fleeting moments. A couple of years later I secured an audience recording of the concert made by Andy Isham. All of John’s activity that day was on the recording and through repeated listening over the following two decades, I became very attached to the spoken word piece. Earlier this year I finally got around to transcribing the text, hoping that one day I’d be able to include it in a project. This little dream was enabled by Trestle Records and their generous offer to organise and record a session. Finally John’s inspirational words can be heard again and influence others the way they did me, as a young man, twenty six years ago. (Mark Wastell, December 2017) The One Day Band sessions are an ongoing series of improvisations hosted by Trestle Records. Musicians, sometimes meeting for the first time, are invited to collaborate on a record made in a...
Comedy provocateur Stewart Lee is preparing not one but two Fringe shows this August. He takes time out from all that to consider our intense Q&A which leaves him pondering about his days as an Army Cadet and wondering about otters, parrots and Snoop Dogg.
Who would you like to see playing you in the movie about your life? Who do you think the casting people would choose?
I would like to be played by a cute puppet operated by Nina Conti when I was a child; by Sydney Chandler (Chrissie Hynde from Pistol) when I am in my 20s; Tanita Tikaram in my 30s; and then Hattie Jacques when I am old, but she is dead. I expect the casting people would want Romesh Ranganathan, as he seems to be the main person in most things these days.
What’s the punchline to your favourite joke?
You can keep your fucking plough!
If you were to return in a future life as an animal, what would it be?
An otter, no question about it (preferably European not Asian Short Claw). I would live at Glenelg on the west coast, where Ring Of Bright Water is set, and from where my Scottish ancestors left for India in the 1800s. I love otters and go into a trance of joy when watching them. I love the way they make all the things they have to do look such fun, and how they play with little stones and swoop through the water. I like to see a big pile of them asleep on each other. They are brilliant. I wrote all the Comedy Vehicle series in the café at London Zoo and I would look at the otters every day. Pricks used to feed them crisps and I would tell them off. I wish I could see otters in the wild. I used to love visiting all the Otter Trust sites, especially in Bungay, but they have mainly closed now as otter numbers in our rivers have recovered, thankfully. It remains to see how Brexit deregulations on pollution will affect this. I expect they will be OK in Scotland.
If you were playing in an escape room, name two other people (well-known or otherwise) you’d recruit to help you get out?
Susie Boniface (Fleet Street Fox campaigner and journalist) and Alan Moore the writer. Between them I think they would have pretty much everything covered. She would notice forensic detail and he would mystically intuit the bigger picture, but he wouldn’t like being shut in.
When was the last time you were mistaken for someone else and what were the circumstances?
I was mistaken for Dave Callahan, of 80s post-punk survivors The Wolfhounds, by an ornithologist in May. We spoke at cross purposes for some time about the nesting habits of green parrots, which I knew a lot about because I’d just read a book about how they colonised the south east of England. The bloke was really confused when I wasn’t Dave Callahan. I am fatter than him now though.
What’s the best cover version ever?
Hillbilly band The Gourds brilliantly revivifying Snoop Dogg’s ‘Gin And Juice’; a genius exercise which sadly spawned a slew of point-missing low-brow comedy imitators.
Whose speaking voice soothes your ears?
John Peel: the sound of going to sleep in the 80s, brainwashed by post-punk, excited about all the wonderful things in the world that I would one day be able to see. Or be.
Tell us something you wish you had discovered sooner in life?
Croissants are not a low-calorie health food. Too late now.
Describe your perfect Saturday evening?
Very hot curry, very sharp, crisp white wine, remastered 60s/70s Italian western on Blu-ray watched either alone or with someone who likes it.
If you were a ghost, who would you haunt?
I would take the form of all the covid dead and haunt Boris Johnson, but only he would be able to see us, like in Macbeth, and I would make him look mad in public until he cried and wet his pants.
If you could relive any day of your life, which one would it be?
The day when I was about 14, in Army Cadets, and I did a speed-route march with just one mirthless commando bloke about a dozen miles over the Black Mountains and then camped alone eating my army rations that I cooked on a little stove, at the foot of the Pistyll Rhaeadr waterfall in mid Wales. That was a hinge in my life, the happiest I ever was. It burns my memory. It’s been all downhill since then. Although I did have a nice lamb phaal in an Indian restaurant in the Forest Of Dean last year with the kids that gave me thrillingly burning urine for about a week after. I felt so alive.
What’s your earliest recollection of winning something?
I won a junior general knowledge competition at Butlin’s Minehead in 1975. The prize was a game of Connect 4. Years later I won Celebrity Mastermind. The child is father to the man.
If you were to start a tribute act to a band or singer, what would it be called?
I have been lucky enough to sing the Mark E Smith part twice with all-female Fall tribute band The Fallen Women, which is a brilliant name for a brilliant idea. But I think my thing would be to hook up with a female vocalist and some grizzled rock-types and do Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra songs in the style of 80s Americana bands like Thin White Rope, The Dream Syndicate and Rain Parade. I would call it Lee Paisleywood & Nancy Thinatra.
What tune do you find it impossible not to get up and dance to?
The music from Ed Gamble’s Cazoo advert. When it comes on, I sing ‘Cazoo Cazoo Cazoo! Ed Gamble is here for you!’ and I dance round in a circle doing an impression of what Ed Gamble is like in the advert.
Which famous person would be your ideal holiday companion?
Professor Alice Roberts, on a dig in Orkney, with a trowel and not Neil Twat Oliver. I would discover something significant by chance (some kind of fertility goddess figurine) and Roberts would compliment me on it while a load of young archaeology volunteers would clap. We would then all go to the pub and have Highland Park. ‘Beginner’s luck!’ I would say, modestly, as everyone looked at me in admiration. That would do me, really.
As an adult, what has a child said to you that made a powerful impact?
After a talk I did to schoolkids, a five-year-old said, ‘do you think the Native American clown who kept throwing your notebook into the dust was actually the local activist you met on the reservation the next day?’ It changed the way I thought about comedy, and my life, for ever. She saw something I had totally missed.
Tell us one thing about yourself that would surprise people?
As a teenager I had a poem published in a book of poetry by precocious kids that also included one by the Scottish Tory Michael Gove.
When did you last cry?
Weirdly, in the closing five minutes of Pistol, when the Sex Pistols do the strikers’ kids’ Christmas party, which redeemed and transformed an otherwise erratic exercise. Those poor Sex Pistols boys. They were so young and no one was looking after them. But little kids got it! What a waste.
What’s a skill you’d love to learn but never got round to?
Free jazz saxophone and archaeology.
If you were selected as the next 007, where would you pick as your first luxury destination for espionage?
Orkney. And I would have Highland Park instead of Martini, neither shaken nor stirred. But who would I be spying on? Seals? The Papay Ranger? I would put on tiny yellow Speedos and walk into the freezing sea like Daniel Craig but it would make people sad.
Stewart Lee
2022-08-03T12:16:59+01:00
Comedy provocateur Stewart Lee is preparing not one but two Fringe shows this August. He takes time out from all that to consider our intense Q&A which leaves him pondering about his days as an Army Cadet and wondering about otters, parrots and Snoop Dogg. Who would you like to see playing you in the movie about your life? Who do you think the casting people would choose? I would like to be played by a cute puppet operated by Nina Conti when I was a child; by Sydney Chandler (Chrissie Hynde from Pistol) when I am in my 20s; Tanita Tikaram in my 30s; and then Hattie Jacques when I am old, but she is dead. I expect the casting people would want Romesh Ranganathan, as he seems to be the main person in most things these days. What’s the punchline to your favourite joke? You can keep your fucking plough! If you were to return in a future life as an animal, what would it be? An otter, no question about it (preferably European not Asian Short Claw). I would live at Glenelg on the west coast, where Ring Of Bright Water is set, and from where my Scottish ancestors left for India in the 1800s. I love otters and go into a trance of joy when watching them. I love the way they make all the things they have to do look such fun, and how they play with little stones and swoop through the water. I like to see a big pile of them asleep on each other. They are brilliant. I wrote all the Comedy Vehicle series in the café at London Zoo and I would look at the otters every day. Pricks used to feed them crisps and I would tell them off. I...
Stew writes the foreword for Through The Crack In The Wall: The Secret History Of Josef K.
Everything was just so intense. There was an alienation and awkwardness about Josef K, but that was actually very true to life for me. Listening today I find really difficult because it brings back so many memories, so many ghosts and characters from the past. -- Paul Haig.
A lot of what Josef K were about was as much to do with what not to play as what to play. Josef K could never have anything rootsy, no blues scale. We were always looking for the modern. -- Malcolm Ross.
Josef K are the great lost post-punk band. Taking their name from the haunted protagonist of Franz Kafka s existentialist novel The Trial, they posed for photographs before brutalist and gothic architecture and produced visionary, often incendiary music that felt like the product of perpetual anxiety. And it really was.
Through The Crack In The Wall is the first ever biography of the band, tracing their story from their origins in the leafy suburbs of Edinburgh through to their untimely implosion four years later. It s a tale of fun and frenzy, filled with highs and lows. From their thrilling live shows, which left onlookers spellbound, to more anxious occasions confronting a baying audience of rioting anarcho-punks in Brussels; from a brief spell as press darlings of the inkies to the fateful decision to pull their debut album just as pop stardom beckoned -- one that continues to haunt them today.
Drawing extensively on new interviews with the band members and those around them as well as contemporary press articles, the book explores the band s inner workings and analyses their relationships with Postcard Records supremo Alan Horne, labelmates Orange Juice, and manager Allan Campbell. It re-evaluates their position in the pantheon of post-punk greats and considers how their music helped shape the UK independent scene of the eighties. More than anything else, though, the book s primary purpose is to celebrate the incredible music Josef K made and consider what makes it more vital today than ever.
Stewart Lee
2024-06-11T17:01:04+01:00
Stew writes the foreword for Through The Crack In The Wall: The Secret History Of Josef K. Everything was just so intense. There was an alienation and awkwardness about Josef K, but that was actually very true to life for me. Listening today I find really difficult because it brings back so many memories, so many ghosts and characters from the past. -- Paul Haig. A lot of what Josef K were about was as much to do with what not to play as what to play. Josef K could never have anything rootsy, no blues scale. We were always looking for the modern. -- Malcolm Ross. Josef K are the great lost post-punk band. Taking their name from the haunted protagonist of Franz Kafka s existentialist novel The Trial, they posed for photographs before brutalist and gothic architecture and produced visionary, often incendiary music that felt like the product of perpetual anxiety. And it really was. Through The Crack In The Wall is the first ever biography of the band, tracing their story from their origins in the leafy suburbs of Edinburgh through to their untimely implosion four years later. It s a tale of fun and frenzy, filled with highs and lows. From their thrilling live shows, which left onlookers spellbound, to more anxious occasions confronting a baying audience of rioting anarcho-punks in Brussels; from a brief spell as press darlings of the inkies to the fateful decision to pull their debut album just as pop stardom beckoned -- one that continues to haunt them today. Drawing extensively on new interviews with the band members and those around them as well as contemporary press articles, the book explores the band s inner workings and analyses their relationships with Postcard Records supremo Alan Horne, labelmates Orange Juice, and manager...
The percussionist Clare Moore of blues punks The Moodists, and the pianist Kaye Louise Patterson of alt country pioneers Acuff’s Rose, are grand dames of Australia’s underground. Moore offers four arch negotiations with the downward gravitational pull of kitsch, Barry Adamson’s filmic mix reimagining cocktail lounge muzak as a psychedelic formica.
Patterson pounds baroque pop from the piano with shades of Billy Joel or Ben Folds.
A sinuous version of John and Beverley Martyn’s languidly sinister Auntie Aviator takes wing on the meshed guitar muscle of Dave Graney and Matt Walker.
Stewart Lee
2013-10-06T11:29:38+01:00
The percussionist Clare Moore of blues punks The Moodists, and the pianist Kaye Louise Patterson of alt country pioneers Acuff’s Rose, are grand dames of Australia’s underground. Moore offers four arch negotiations with the downward gravitational pull of kitsch, Barry Adamson’s filmic mix reimagining cocktail lounge muzak as a psychedelic formica. Patterson pounds baroque pop from the piano with shades of Billy Joel or Ben Folds. A sinuous version of John and Beverley Martyn’s languidly sinister Auntie Aviator takes wing on the meshed guitar muscle of Dave Graney and Matt Walker.
YOU may have paid your money, but Stewart Lee isn’t going to go easy on you.
The greying comedian, who made a recent return to television screens with BBC Two’s Comedy Vehicle, cast an unforgiving eye over everything from coffee shop loyalty cards to Top Gear as he took to the stage of Malvern’s Forum Theatre on Saturday (January 30).
Eschewing the current trend for snappy one-liners, Lee painfully, and often hilariously, deconstructed every joke, point by point, simultaneously warning the audience worse was to come.
There was no attempt to get the crowd ‘on-side’ as he fantasised about Top Gear’s Richard Hammond being killed in the car crash which left him with brain injuries in 2006.
The skit’s tabloid reception was tackled head-on by Lee who explained that although his comments were ‘only a joke’, they coincidentally represented his true feelings about ‘the Hamster’.
Lee’s characteristic repetition was used to great effect in the closing segment where a throw-away line from a cider advert was plucked from obscurity and subjected to 20-minutes of ridicule.
During this prolonged invective against the advert, in which Lee pretended the line had in fact been a passed-down tradition of his own family, he left the stage and circled the theatre, bellowing at the audience from behind their heads.
The former comic partner of Richard Herring and writer/director behind Jerry Springer the Opera proved that compromise and dumbing-down did not need to go hand-in-hand with comedy.
If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One took no easy routes and was all the better for it.
Stewart Lee
2010-02-01T17:15:13+00:00
YOU may have paid your money, but Stewart Lee isn’t going to go easy on you. The greying comedian, who made a recent return to television screens with BBC Two’s Comedy Vehicle, cast an unforgiving eye over everything from coffee shop loyalty cards to Top Gear as he took to the stage of Malvern’s Forum Theatre on Saturday (January 30). Eschewing the current trend for snappy one-liners, Lee painfully, and often hilariously, deconstructed every joke, point by point, simultaneously warning the audience worse was to come. There was no attempt to get the crowd ‘on-side’ as he fantasised about Top Gear’s Richard Hammond being killed in the car crash which left him with brain injuries in 2006. The skit’s tabloid reception was tackled head-on by Lee who explained that although his comments were ‘only a joke’, they coincidentally represented his true feelings about ‘the Hamster’. Lee’s characteristic repetition was used to great effect in the closing segment where a throw-away line from a cider advert was plucked from obscurity and subjected to 20-minutes of ridicule. During this prolonged invective against the advert, in which Lee pretended the line had in fact been a passed-down tradition of his own family, he left the stage and circled the theatre, bellowing at the audience from behind their heads. The former comic partner of Richard Herring and writer/director behind Jerry Springer the Opera proved that compromise and dumbing-down did not need to go hand-in-hand with comedy. If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One took no easy routes and was all the better for it.
In 2016, Deal or No Deal was axed by Channel 4, the British public voted to Leave the European Union, and Stewart Lee started touring his show Content Provider, whose opening gambit is that the shock of Brexit has rendered its script obsolete. Now it is 2018: Content Provider has been filmed for the BBC, and the latest news in Brexit purgatory is that a No-deal Brexit may or may not mean that patients miss out on essential medicines and or/we all starve to death within a year. If only Noel Edmonds and the Banker were here to explain what a Deal Brexit might be.
For both comedians and politicians, uncertainty can be a matchbox or a candle snuffer. Content Provider comes out torch juggling with an admission of its own failure; there is ambiguity surrounding whether Brexit really has forced Lee to improvise and account for its effect on the national zeitgeist, or if in fact Lee’s plan all along was to stage an improvisation around the conflict comedians face when attempting to satirise such political upheavals.
Doubt and self-referentiality have long been part of Lee’s strategy. Towards the end of Content Provider’s first half, he digresses from the arc of his set. Pontificating on why the joke he just made should have got a laugh but didn’t, he charts its reception on three different nights from late 2016 into 2017. The joke in question goes roughly thus:
The irony of remaking Are You Being Served? is that the British retail industry no longer exists. The new Are You Being Served? should be set in an Amazon delivery warehouse: Mrs Slocombe stands in a massive shed off the M6 and makes incomprehensible cat-based double entendres about her own vagina to poorly paid and soon-to-be-deported East European workers.
First, Lee explains, the joke worked because it was topical: it reflected a state of affairs, in that mass deportation felt imminent. Then, suddenly, it didn’t work – the government decided that EU citizens would be allowed to stay after Brexit, and the joke was out of date. Then, David Davis – no longer the Brexit secretary, keep up – explained how even that ostensible clarity was unstable because nothing had been agreed upon with Brussels. See? This is hardly a laugh a minute. As Lee points out, by the time an audience member has tried to sum up all that to her neighbour, the beat of his joke is long gone.
Like Stewart Lee, you have probably noticed that political jokes have a very short shelf life at the moment. How to make a gag about Boris Johnson, for instance, when one day he’s Foreign Secretary, the next resigned, the next posh-booming his religious bigotry, the next PM, oh my god, no? Current events are unfolding at breakneck speed. You’re also aware that ‘shelf life’ refers to the time a commodity can be stored without becoming unfit for sale, consumption, use. And you’re probably also awake on some level to the fact that I too am currently tasked with providing content about an increasingly murky and rapidly changing political swampland for this website, that I have judged the phrase ‘shelf life’ to have enough mileage, through its vague irony, not to be rendered obsolete in a week – we’ll still have shelves, and things to put on them, by next Friday, right? Anyway, there goes the fourth wall, sorry not sorry – I’m cutting the strings on your suspended disbelief, a bit like our Stew.
The way Content Provider consistently examines its own shelf life could not be more readily apparent if there was a ‘Best Before’ date stamped on every ticket. Lee concedes with irony-become-sincere, ‘As I don't know how Brexit's going to pan out, I can't write anything about it, in case it goes out of fashion or out of date and I can't use the bit for the full 18 months of the show and monetise the work I've done.’ A joke about writing a joke. Out of context, this might seem an annoying meta- posture to strike, but it’s one with backbone – because the commodification of comedy, and its inferred perishability, becomes a way to discuss the withering of other core values that we share(d) as a society.
In his book Denial: The Unspeakable Truth, Keith Kahn-Harris speaks about the evolution of good old-fashioned denial into the dogma of denialism, and then into something more chaotic still: “Whereas denialism is painstakingly thought-through, post-denialism is instinctive,” he writes. “Whereas denialism is disciplined, post-denialism is anarchic.” As contemporary culture and politics begin to eat their own collective tail – post-denialism, (post) post-truth – accuracy is the last on a list of priorities. Doubt can be very useful, politically as well as comedically speaking. Post-denialists, like comedians, don’t care about the truth of their words: rather, their effect. In the same way as Stewart Lee’s audience doesn’t care whether his purported anecdotes are drawn from real life or his imagination, Trump supporters don’t ask their president for graphs or dossiers when he claims, as he did in 2012 via twitter, that “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” In either case, it’s how the story makes you feel that matters; how a tidbit slots into a wider agenda that bites; instinct trumps discipline, and anything is possible.
Lee’s agenda – having you think, and laugh – might be less nefarious than Nigel Farage’s was when he promised, via the timeless medium of a double decker bus (?) that Brexit would see 350 million pounds a week going to the NHS rather than the EU; both involve statements that aren’t true, and they’re both more complicated than ‘lying’. Children tell lies. Your wife lies about how many Mai Tais she drank on Thursday. Your dad lies about how much he spent on the vintage lawnmower for his burgeoning ‘museum’. Farage’s bus and Trump’s tweet are stories unmoored from any moral sea bed, and miles from the shores of either truth or fiction. The pronouncements of politicians in 2018 have more in common with a shrewd comedian’s set than a principled manifesto – and, while spin and rhetoric have always been essential weapons in any politician’s arsenal, we’re shuffling into an uncharted firing range.
When comedians write satire in a cultural climate such as this, the (unintentional) effect can be to reify the kind of doubt that slick politicians are capitalising on to create it. Lee’s joke about the deportation of East European workers might fit that particular bill, but he’s long co-opted doubt as a comedic strategy (performing the alienation and division of his audience, for example, or appearing to bomb hard on-purpose-not-on-purpose for the sheer thrill of joking his way back out of a corner.) Now more than ever, Lee’s brand of self-aware satire looks like a detournement of the kind of political strategies used to gain power, hijacking a politician’s alchemy of doubt and truth as a means to comedic ends.
By bringing doubt into the fabric of his set itself, Lee seems to say: let’s sit with it. The persona he plays when explaining why his Are-you-being-served-deportation-of-Eastern-European-workers joke failed or hit home is that of a bemused observer; his audience’s, or perhaps a critic’s. Many have observed that satire has become impossible in a political climate stranger than fiction. When the material writes itself, there’s time and room to look at its substance; to take it apart; to dismantle, and reassemble slowly. Rather than being clever for clever’s sake, Lee’s interest in the construction of jokes gives us a way to look at the nuts and bolts of the political situations he’s skewering. When the Venn diagram of comedy and politics becomes a circle, Lee’s gift of a behind-the-scenes tour of one becomes a chillingly clear lens to apply to the other. Can’t you see?
Stewart Lee
2018-08-09T21:44:20+01:00
In 2016, Deal or No Deal was axed by Channel 4, the British public voted to Leave the European Union, and Stewart Lee started touring his show Content Provider, whose opening gambit is that the shock of Brexit has rendered its script obsolete. Now it is 2018: Content Provider has been filmed for the BBC, and the latest news in Brexit purgatory is that a No-deal Brexit may or may not mean that patients miss out on essential medicines and or/we all starve to death within a year. If only Noel Edmonds and the Banker were here to explain what a Deal Brexit might be. For both comedians and politicians, uncertainty can be a matchbox or a candle snuffer. Content Provider comes out torch juggling with an admission of its own failure; there is ambiguity surrounding whether Brexit really has forced Lee to improvise and account for its effect on the national zeitgeist, or if in fact Lee’s plan all along was to stage an improvisation around the conflict comedians face when attempting to satirise such political upheavals. Doubt and self-referentiality have long been part of Lee’s strategy. Towards the end of Content Provider’s first half, he digresses from the arc of his set. Pontificating on why the joke he just made should have got a laugh but didn’t, he charts its reception on three different nights from late 2016 into 2017. The joke in question goes roughly thus: The irony of remaking Are You Being Served? is that the British retail industry no longer exists. The new Are You Being Served? should be set in an Amazon delivery warehouse: Mrs Slocombe stands in a massive shed off the M6 and makes incomprehensible cat-based double entendres about her own vagina to poorly paid and soon-to-be-deported East European workers. First, Lee...
1. Stewart Lee: on Brexit, his new film, "woke" and being arrested just for being English
The comedy genius that is Stewart Lee discusses his must-see new film King Rocker - which premiers on Sky Arts on 6th February at 9pm; the state of comedy; the anti-"woke" backlash; culture wars; Brexit; how the pandemic is hitting the arts; and how these days, if you say you're English, you get arrested and thrown in jail.
Please like, subscribe and help us build this channel: https://patreon.com/owenjones84
1. Stewart Lee: on Brexit, his new film, "woke" and being arrested just for being English The comedy genius that is Stewart Lee discusses his must-see new film King Rocker - which premiers on Sky Arts on 6th February at 9pm; the state of comedy; the anti-"woke" backlash; culture wars; Brexit; how the pandemic is hitting the arts; and how these days, if you say you're English, you get arrested and thrown in jail. Please like, subscribe and help us build this channel: https://patreon.com/owenjones84 Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/the-owen-jones-podcast.
Historically, Scottish indie rock favours either the transcendental power of feedback, from the surly Jesus And Mary Chain to the spiritual Snow Patrol, or winningly winsome feyness, from The Pastels to Belle And Sebastian. Teenage Fanclub switched from the former for the latter. Edinburgh School For The Deaf do both simultaneously.
Like all today's youngsters, the group are liberated by the internet from the tyranny of imagining that musical evolution follows some restrictive linear progression. They take whatever they need. Their debut opens with the seven minute Of Scottish Blood And Sympathy, alternately softening or serrating the same repeated female vocal phrase with digitised Wall of Sound echo or flagellated guitar fuzz. Having established its operational procedures, the album then wears the fragments its cannibalised influences on its sleeve with devil-may-care insolence.
Thirteen Holy Crowns smothers Joy Division in sugary space dust. All Hands Lost and Eleven Kinds Of Loneliness brutalise Brill Building pop classicism. The Memories Of Wounds shares The Jesus And Mary Chain's dependence on snatches of trademark Phil Spector sounds amidst dirty guitar noise, the spoken word section echoing those desperate Ronettes dramatic interludes.
Lonely Hearts Beat As One is a narcoleptic Mazzy Star pastiche. And Run With The Hunted has an authentically lysergic, sixties Texas vibe, like something rare on the International Artists label.
This conveyorbelt of grade A source material represents a grounding in the greats, of whom ignorance is now inexcusable. But the question, for this and all today's well schooled indie bands, remains.
What next, with all your learning?
Stewart Lee
2011-09-11T12:31:01+01:00
Historically, Scottish indie rock favours either the transcendental power of feedback, from the surly Jesus And Mary Chain to the spiritual Snow Patrol, or winningly winsome feyness, from The Pastels to Belle And Sebastian. Teenage Fanclub switched from the former for the latter. Edinburgh School For The Deaf do both simultaneously. Like all today's youngsters, the group are liberated by the internet from the tyranny of imagining that musical evolution follows some restrictive linear progression. They take whatever they need. Their debut opens with the seven minute Of Scottish Blood And Sympathy, alternately softening or serrating the same repeated female vocal phrase with digitised Wall of Sound echo or flagellated guitar fuzz. Having established its operational procedures, the album then wears the fragments its cannibalised influences on its sleeve with devil-may-care insolence. Thirteen Holy Crowns smothers Joy Division in sugary space dust. All Hands Lost and Eleven Kinds Of Loneliness brutalise Brill Building pop classicism. The Memories Of Wounds shares The Jesus And Mary Chain's dependence on snatches of trademark Phil Spector sounds amidst dirty guitar noise, the spoken word section echoing those desperate Ronettes dramatic interludes. Lonely Hearts Beat As One is a narcoleptic Mazzy Star pastiche. And Run With The Hunted has an authentically lysergic, sixties Texas vibe, like something rare on the International Artists label. This conveyorbelt of grade A source material represents a grounding in the greats, of whom ignorance is now inexcusable. But the question, for this and all today's well schooled indie bands, remains. What next, with all your learning?
FOR the first time in his life, Stewart Lee has run out of things to say. This former provoker of rightwing Christians and frequent presider over 'corduroy Nurembergs' now spends his humdrum days either driving between gigs, on a relentless touring schedule spurred by his TV rebirth, or reluctantly watching vintage Scooby Doo episodes as part of his childcare duties.
It's a self-proclaimed listlessness, of course, and a clever conceit, allowing Lee to spend the first part of this set riffing off recent news stories with the air of someone appalled that he has to resort to doing so (Russell Howard and Jimmy Carr don't fare well here).
That flirtation with the headlines also gives him free rein to apply his deconstructionist shtick, as well as allowing some corking examples of skewed logic - his novel way of finding parallels between the Libyan uprising and Cameron's Big Society is the most ingenious topical gag we have heard this year.
Elsewhere, there are deadpan flights of fancy to savour: his imagining of Scooby's world under Thatcher and his literal take on the names of trading estate megastores are superlative routines with criss-crossing themes, surprises at every turn and, like his news-based material, plenty of rewards for those who can keep up with his biting intellectualism.
You have to wait until the end, though, for Lee's real passion to come through: in the midst of an identity crisis, he turns to the internet to find what people have blogged, commented and tweeted about him, to demonstrate how the web has become a platform for ignorance and hate. That's hardly a revelation but whenever Lee approaches a subject that's close to his heart, be it freedom of speech or industry homogeneity, it's brought into bleak, devastating focus.
Stewart Lee
2011-11-28T13:15:06+00:00
FOR the first time in his life, Stewart Lee has run out of things to say. This former provoker of rightwing Christians and frequent presider over 'corduroy Nurembergs' now spends his humdrum days either driving between gigs, on a relentless touring schedule spurred by his TV rebirth, or reluctantly watching vintage Scooby Doo episodes as part of his childcare duties. It's a self-proclaimed listlessness, of course, and a clever conceit, allowing Lee to spend the first part of this set riffing off recent news stories with the air of someone appalled that he has to resort to doing so (Russell Howard and Jimmy Carr don't fare well here). That flirtation with the headlines also gives him free rein to apply his deconstructionist shtick, as well as allowing some corking examples of skewed logic - his novel way of finding parallels between the Libyan uprising and Cameron's Big Society is the most ingenious topical gag we have heard this year. Elsewhere, there are deadpan flights of fancy to savour: his imagining of Scooby's world under Thatcher and his literal take on the names of trading estate megastores are superlative routines with criss-crossing themes, surprises at every turn and, like his news-based material, plenty of rewards for those who can keep up with his biting intellectualism. You have to wait until the end, though, for Lee's real passion to come through: in the midst of an identity crisis, he turns to the internet to find what people have blogged, commented and tweeted about him, to demonstrate how the web has become a platform for ignorance and hate. That's hardly a revelation but whenever Lee approaches a subject that's close to his heart, be it freedom of speech or industry homogeneity, it's brought into bleak, devastating focus.
This week, on a break between standup tour dates, I am on holiday with the children in Nether Stowey, Somerset, from where I file the next of my election columns. As a north London Old Speckled Hen socialist I assumed there would be little political for my satirical pen to set about in Somerset, where the inhabitants live like lotus eaters in a bucolic haze of smoked eels and whortleberry jam.
Would Old Mother Leakey of Minehead curdle the local Liberal Democrats’ drinking chocolate again, I wondered? Or perhaps a Gilbert’s potoroo, escaped from the Tropiquaria attraction, would be mistaken for an immigrant, and chased around Watchet by the retailer with the commemorative Battle of Waterloo display in his shop window? But, deep in an ancient Exmoor woodland, I stumbled upon a scandal as explosive as Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP’s 2005 expenses claim for an actual entire lake.
Readers of the antiquary and wartime spy Hazel Eardley-Wilmot will already be aware of the Culbone Stone, an inscribed menhir hidden deep in woodland, west along the coastal path from Porlock Weir. I set out to find it last Wednesday afternoon, thrashing through dense brambles, the unhappy children, three and six, in tow, having been convinced they were upon a Narnian quest, but one which soon turned sour as it took on a very modern political dimension.
Once lepers were left to wander these woods, kindly allowed to view the consecration of the host in St Bueno’s church through a bespoke “leper window”, or hagioscope, and nourished only by donations of food abandoned by the villagers. It was the “big society” in miniature. And for those who don’t remember David Cameron’s big “big society” idea of five years ago, it was essentially the hope that simple human empathy would compensate for an ideologically driven programme of cuts, but named as if it were some kind of grand political theory. In the middle ages things were more prosaic. They called the same idea simply leaving bread out for lepers in the woods, who otherwise would just die.
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The birds were singing in the thickets as we pushed through the wild rhododendron bushes towards the ruined Barnardo’s orphanage, formerly Ashley Combe house, and I put my new free NHS hearing aids in to appreciate their calls. It was then, in the overgrown former garden of the estate, that I zeroed in, Steve Austin-style, on unmistakable voices in confidential conversation, and beckoned the children to hide with me behind some twigs, silencing their prattling with two jelly babies.
Three of the most rapidly downwardly mobile players of the current election, politicians so gaffe-prone that watching them explain themselves, even to sympathetic BBC Tory sleeper agents like Nick Robinson and Andrew Neil, seems cruel beyond reason, were in animated conversation around an Ordnance Survey map; culture secretary Sajid Javid, Conservative party chairman Grant Shapps, and education, women and equalities minister Nicky Morgan.
“… and Culbone woods will be a pilot scheme for the initiative that will save us the £8bn we have promised to find, and then Andrew Neil can stick his ‘magic money tree’ up his BBC socialist sporran,” concluded Shapps, spreading out the map on a tree stump and pounding it with his face, his essence having manifested itself for the day in its contemporary “Grant Shapps” identity.
“Would there be some way of monetising the lepers, Grant?” asked Javid. “Perhaps we could sell people tickets to ridicule the lepers in the wood, howsoever they thought finest, and then those tickets could be sold on at an even greater profit by entrepreneurial secondary ticketing agencies? Or maybe the leper pimps could pimp out any sexy lepers to leper fetishists, and we could take a cut?”
Nicky Morgan was infuriated by the culture secretary’s ideas. “Grant’s not saying we should fill British woodlands with actual lepers, Sajid,” she interrupted. “He’s just using how it used to work with the lepers as an example of something we could do to find that eight-billion figure some idiot let slip.” Javid, crestfallen, retreated, repeating “let the market decide” beneath his breath, over and over again, like an article of faith, like a Hail Mary.
“Nicky is right, Sajid,” continued Shapps, absentmindedly eating the cover of the map. “Imagine, acres of British woodland, all over these isles, filled with society’s most costly free spirits, cut loose from the ties of the nanny state, and left to fend for themselves, like symbolic figures in a medieval illuminated manuscript.”
I wish I could remember more, but as I sit here writing, two days later, my chain of thought has been irreparably broken. A person from Porlock has arrived, asking me who I am, and what I was doing in the woods on Wednesday.
Stewart Lee
2015-04-19T09:46:25+01:00
This week, on a break between standup tour dates, I am on holiday with the children in Nether Stowey, Somerset, from where I file the next of my election columns. As a north London Old Speckled Hen socialist I assumed there would be little political for my satirical pen to set about in Somerset, where the inhabitants live like lotus eaters in a bucolic haze of smoked eels and whortleberry jam. Would Old Mother Leakey of Minehead curdle the local Liberal Democrats’ drinking chocolate again, I wondered? Or perhaps a Gilbert’s potoroo, escaped from the Tropiquaria attraction, would be mistaken for an immigrant, and chased around Watchet by the retailer with the commemorative Battle of Waterloo display in his shop window? But, deep in an ancient Exmoor woodland, I stumbled upon a scandal as explosive as Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP’s 2005 expenses claim for an actual entire lake. Readers of the antiquary and wartime spy Hazel Eardley-Wilmot will already be aware of the Culbone Stone, an inscribed menhir hidden deep in woodland, west along the coastal path from Porlock Weir. I set out to find it last Wednesday afternoon, thrashing through dense brambles, the unhappy children, three and six, in tow, having been convinced they were upon a Narnian quest, but one which soon turned sour as it took on a very modern political dimension. Once lepers were left to wander these woods, kindly allowed to view the consecration of the host in St Bueno’s church through a bespoke “leper window”, or hagioscope, and nourished only by donations of food abandoned by the villagers. It was the “big society” in miniature. And for those who don’t remember David Cameron’s big “big society” idea of five years ago, it was essentially the hope that simple human empathy would compensate for an ideologically...
Curse my last minute ticket purchase! - Resulting in 'worst seat in the house' at Brighton Dome Theatre; Row Z, half behind a pillar. Even with glasses, I can't quite get the nuances in Stew's facial expressions. It probably won't matter. I've had a crush on him since the Fist of Fun days and should be able to predict exactly where the eyebrow raises, denoting the commencement of each carefully monitored pregnant pause, will lie within his material. After all this time, his stand-up may be formulaic and predictable in flow, but Stew is the original creator of a winning recipe and surely, inimitable in the flare and precision with which he delivers it, every time...
...not that I can imagine any chump brave enough to try and rip a whole act structure from the deconstruction-master himself. We all know Stew's response to unworthy appropriators. Those fools are treated with the same contempt as his critics; publicly stripped bare and dissected with their own sharp words. Tonight, Stew is every bit as harsh on himself and his audience as he is on, say, Rod Liddell, who meets a sticky fate - metaphorically tarred and feathered with gravy and Angel Delight.
Luckily, the pillar complete with fire hydrant, the elongated Egon Schielesque head of the man in front and his wife's giant cloud of hair don't impair my view of an ancient gent who takes it upon himself to shout abuse at Stew from the dress circle: 'I'm dying of cancer and you're not funny'.
After pointing out the "carelessness" of buying a ticket to see a comedian without first checking YouTube for some idea of what to expect, Stew blows him down with gentle philosophy: "I am as much a prisoner of my expectations of myself as you are of yours and that's the common ground we have". It's a truism close to Stewart Lee's heart.
For all his self-congratulatory spiel, Stew never fully transcends that signature air of self-loathing and misanthropy. Nothing he does will ever be good enough for him, and it's the same for us, his over-privileged, middle-class audience. We're ashamed of ourselves for having let the world get into this awful fucking state whilst purporting to be smart enough to see through the media's reality sham...
And that's what we're here for, isn't it? - Group therapy for the collective guilty conscience, not an evening of cheap laughs. Someone should have told the heckler; you will often wait a good half hour for a punch line, with Stew providing no more than a few sniggers to keep you going. He'll test your endurance to the limit before you're allowed an emotional climax. Even then, it's often a dry orgasm; you find yourself at the end of a winding thread, having followed it for miles, thinking, 'fuck, that was seriously clever', not 'oh no, I think a little bit of wee came out.' But that is enough. It's more than enough because what we're really being offered is something much bigger than comedy - we're being given a space in which we can unite in social opinion and political stance:
Stewart Lee has become a badge you wear to show the world you're a liberal, a politically correct, Guardian reading, religion eschewing, comfortably dissatisfied fringe-culture enthusiast. Every few months, us badge-wearers congregate in auditoriums to offer ourselves up to his ridicule, because despite our right-on attitudes, our daily struggles see our privilege get the better of our feelings of social responsibility. We are the Union that takes no action and we deserve our punishment. Stew, both our leader and detractor, berates and reminds us; "Don't laugh. Don't clap. Let's just get through this".
He uses all the usual colourful tools with which to beat us; absurd visual imagery that sticks in your memory (a monkey with a Fez nailed to it's face), shock tactics (I know you all want me to do some jokes about Islam), pre-apologising as a way to absolve himself of the responsibility of trying to cause maximum offense (is it too soon to say 'Jim'll Fix It t-shirt' on a stage?) to drag us in and out of our comfort zones. It works exceptionally well using a subverted version of the Englishman, Irishman, Scotsman walk into a bar joke: a Muslim woman, a Jehovah's Witness and a Jewish man get on a bus... it's worth going to see Stew on this tour just for the pay-off on that one. Whatever you're thinking now, I can guarantee you're half a mile wide. Every phrase that sounds for a millisecond like unexpected racism is really a carefully crafted lesson in cultural relativism and the need to challenge our internal prejudices.
Stew suggests that one of his later skits (think an anthropomorphised cat plus some bargain basement England flags) is "a stupid, scatological, childish attempt to satirise the rise of the far right in contemporary politics". I agree. It's totally awful, puerile, relentlessly hollow and offensive - just like UKIP and their policies - the target. He labours the point and for a couple of minutes my attention is lost, as it was a few years ago when he did that sketch about vomiting into the gaping anus of Christ. You get over the initial shock of what you're hearing and then you just want it to end...
...And after Stew's diatribe tonight about comedians committing suicide and his fake nervous breakdown on stage, I'm starting to get the impression that he wants it all to end too. His smug, downtrodden, neurotic on-stage persona is by now at odds with the rather famous Stewart Lee who pens call-to-action newspaper articles and backs worthy causes.
Is Stewart getting sick of Stew? What if the two became one? What if the comedian and the activist melded and started shouting the odds on Newsnight? Oh, hang on, apparently someone's already gone down that route. So, I suppose Stew will have to keep finding new angles and abstract concepts in order to challenge our illusions, which he seems to be finding a task right now - my favourite quote of the night: "It's not possible to write anything at the moment because the world is more stupid than anything you can think of."
Stewart Lee
2015-03-02T20:06:30+00:00
Curse my last minute ticket purchase! - Resulting in 'worst seat in the house' at Brighton Dome Theatre; Row Z, half behind a pillar. Even with glasses, I can't quite get the nuances in Stew's facial expressions. It probably won't matter. I've had a crush on him since the Fist of Fun days and should be able to predict exactly where the eyebrow raises, denoting the commencement of each carefully monitored pregnant pause, will lie within his material. After all this time, his stand-up may be formulaic and predictable in flow, but Stew is the original creator of a winning recipe and surely, inimitable in the flare and precision with which he delivers it, every time... ...not that I can imagine any chump brave enough to try and rip a whole act structure from the deconstruction-master himself. We all know Stew's response to unworthy appropriators. Those fools are treated with the same contempt as his critics; publicly stripped bare and dissected with their own sharp words. Tonight, Stew is every bit as harsh on himself and his audience as he is on, say, Rod Liddell, who meets a sticky fate - metaphorically tarred and feathered with gravy and Angel Delight. Luckily, the pillar complete with fire hydrant, the elongated Egon Schielesque head of the man in front and his wife's giant cloud of hair don't impair my view of an ancient gent who takes it upon himself to shout abuse at Stew from the dress circle: 'I'm dying of cancer and you're not funny'. After pointing out the "carelessness" of buying a ticket to see a comedian without first checking YouTube for some idea of what to expect, Stew blows him down with gentle philosophy: "I am as much a prisoner of my expectations of myself as you are of...
Content Provider, the latest show by coruscating stand-up Stewart Lee, seems at first to be simply more of the same thrillingly intelligent, intricately constructed comedy he's been selling for more than 20 years.
But it's more than that, building towards a final destination few comics could imagine, ending in a dazzling visual flourish. Yet again, Lee has provided a masterclass which ranks among the greatest comedy shows I've seen.
Oh, we got about 20 opening minutes of blistering stuff about Brexit (prefaced by Lee's offhand "I've not really written anything about Brexit, but…"), and routines about his family, Deacon Blue, the under-40s he so despises, singer FKA Twigs, the differences between jazz and folk, ways of pushing up the online value of his own second-hand comedy DVDs, Doctor Who, the BBC's cancellation of Lee's "multiple award-winning, critically acclaimed…and cheap" TV series, the subsequent commissioning of a remake of Are You Being Served? and, of course, a sustained diatribe on Donald Trump (prefaced by "I've not really written anything about Donald Trump, but...") to open the second half, deliberately mirroring the beginning of the show.
His arrogant stage persona and some of the older hilarious invective endure, especially his withering attacks on other comedians and his prolonged explosions of contempt for his own audience ("What can I do? I can't really set an exam before I let you in"). Yet he always keeps the high-flown themes secondary to the laughs and sheer brainpower.
Even so, always allowing for the fact that you can never take anything he says at face value, there seemed to be some newly melancholic method to his madness this time.
He said more than once that his real theme was - ahem! - the atomisation of our individuality in a digital capitalist society. And, in the end, it was. He said he was tired of "the character Stewart Lee I've created". He was only joking - I think.
Even the manic, demented routine about his grandparents' allegedly fetishistic love life turned into a lament of the death of traditional courtship in the face of internet dating which reduced everyone to mere customers.
After jokingly saying all night that the show was inspired by Caspar David Friedrich's 1818 painting Wanderer Above The Sea Of Fog, Lee was in the midst of another sermon on our superficial, narcissistic age when he brilliantly and unexpectedly turned the image on the audience itself.
And an evening which had had a full house in the sweltering Playhouse laughing hysterically - especially in the turbocharged second half - ended in gasps.
Stewart Lee
2017-03-15T20:50:23+00:00
Content Provider, the latest show by coruscating stand-up Stewart Lee, seems at first to be simply more of the same thrillingly intelligent, intricately constructed comedy he's been selling for more than 20 years. But it's more than that, building towards a final destination few comics could imagine, ending in a dazzling visual flourish. Yet again, Lee has provided a masterclass which ranks among the greatest comedy shows I've seen. Oh, we got about 20 opening minutes of blistering stuff about Brexit (prefaced by Lee's offhand "I've not really written anything about Brexit, but…"), and routines about his family, Deacon Blue, the under-40s he so despises, singer FKA Twigs, the differences between jazz and folk, ways of pushing up the online value of his own second-hand comedy DVDs, Doctor Who, the BBC's cancellation of Lee's "multiple award-winning, critically acclaimed…and cheap" TV series, the subsequent commissioning of a remake of Are You Being Served? and, of course, a sustained diatribe on Donald Trump (prefaced by "I've not really written anything about Donald Trump, but...") to open the second half, deliberately mirroring the beginning of the show. His arrogant stage persona and some of the older hilarious invective endure, especially his withering attacks on other comedians and his prolonged explosions of contempt for his own audience ("What can I do? I can't really set an exam before I let you in"). Yet he always keeps the high-flown themes secondary to the laughs and sheer brainpower. Even so, always allowing for the fact that you can never take anything he says at face value, there seemed to be some newly melancholic method to his madness this time. He said more than once that his real theme was - ahem! - the atomisation of our individuality in a digital capitalist society. And, in the end,...
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1.THE BIG MIDWEEK
I am the reader of the audiobook of The Big Midweek, Steve Hanley from The Fall’s book about playing bass for two decades in the greatest British band, against twenty years of social change. You can hear it here….
I am now writing 1000 funny words a week for Carol Cadwalladr’s new on-line newspaper The Nerve, run by people who were sacked or quit when Tories took over The Observer. It is immediately ace.
Sign up here and it would also really be great if you could pay them £6.95 a month as the 5 women at the helm sunk all their redundancy money into it. Carol understands that the only story in town is how the tech-bros choose what news we see and how we understand the world, and The Nerve will address this head on. The only news that matters.
Please send the link below and this begging request to anyone you can.
3. ALEXANDRA PALACE LONDON MAN-WULF RUN FEB 3RD-15TH 2026
STEWART LEE VS THE MAN-WULF. The unstoppable Man-Wulf show has another London run, having already done 12000 seats at Royal Festival Hall and 12000 seats at Leicester Sq Theatre.
It’s sure to look great in the gothic confines of the Alexandra Palace theatre.
My favourite show to perform and as the world gets worse the basic premise of the show – that the bully boys are taking over in music, comedy and TV cooking shows – only gets funnier. ALEXANDRA PALACE, 3rd – 15th Feb 2026, Tuesday to Saturday at 7.30pm plus Sunday matinees at 3.30pm
Tickets on sale 30th July.
BOOK HERE: https://www.alexandrapalace.com/whats-on/stewart-lee-vs-the-man-wulf/
4. NEW MERCH
Along with WAXFACE’s usual line of Stewart Lee merch there are new for 2025 t-shirts and hoodies on the Man-Wulf theme, all of the highest quality. I’d wear them myself but I’d look arrogant. Waste the money your Nan gave you for Xmas here
Glasgow’s garage punk veterans The Primevals announce a new single as featured in the new Stewart Lee vs The Man-Wulf U.K. tour.
There are 3 versions
Side a I’m The Man-Wulf
Side b I’m The Man-Wulf (long nail edit)
Plus a 9 minute I’m The Man-Wulf (long nail version) (I LOOOOOVE THIS!!)
Vinyl sides a&b were released on a 7” 45 in January.
See The Primevals live JUNE 27th London Hope & Anchor, 28th Preston Ferret.
John Mackay & Sally Homer, in association with Debi Allen/Curtis Brown present
STEWART LEE vs THE MAN-WULF BRAND NEW SHOW
UK TOURING THROUGHOUT 2026
NB: TICKETS FOR THESE SHOWS WILL REMAIN AT THE ADVERTISED PRICE. SURGE PRICING IS IMMORAL AND TICKETMASTER AND OASIS ARE WANKERS, ENCOURAGED BY SUCCESSIVE TORY CULTURE SECRETARIES IN THEIR CRIMINAL ENDEAVOURS.
In this brand-new show, Lee shares his stage with a tough-talking werewolf comedian who hates humanity. The Man-Wulf lays down a ferocious comedy challenge to the culturally irrelevant and physically enfeebled Lee. Can the beast inside us all be silenced with the silver bullet of Lee's unprecedentedly critically acclaimed style of stand-up.
Tuesday 3rd February 2026 - Alexandra Palace Theatre, London - TICKETS
Wednesday 4th February 2026 - Alexandra Palace Theatre, London - TICKETS
Thursday 5th February 2026 - Alexandra Palace Theatre, London - TICKETS
Friday 6th February 2026 - Alexandra Palace Theatre, London - TICKETS
Saturday 7th February 2026 - Alexandra Palace Theatre, London - TICKETS
Sunday 8th February 2026 - Alexandra Palace Theatre, London - TICKETS
Tuesday 10th February 2026 - Alexandra Palace Theatre, London - TICKETS
Wednesday 11th February 2026 - Alexandra Palace Theatre, London - TICKETS
Thursday 12th February 2026 - Alexandra Palace Theatre, London - TICKETS
Friday 13th February 2026 - Alexandra Palace Theatre, London - TICKETS
Saturday 14th February 2026 - Alexandra Palace Theatre, London - TICKETS
Sunday 15th February 2026 - Alexandra Palace Theatre, London - TICKETS
Tuesday 17th February 2026 - The Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury - TICKETS
Wednesday 18th February 2026 - The Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury - TICKETS
May 2026
Wednesday 6th May 2026 - The Playhouse, Weston Super Mare - TICKETS
Thursday 7th May 2026 - The Playhouse, Weston Super Mare - TICKETS
Friday 8th May 2026 - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS
Saturday 9th May 2026 - Richmond Theatre, Richmond - TICKETS
Monday 11th May 2026 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Tuesday 12th May 2026 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Wednesday 13th May 2026 - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Thursday 14th May 2026 - Floral Pavilion Theatre, New Brighton - TICKETS
Friday 15th May 2026 - Opera House, Buxton - TICKETS
Saturday 16th May 2026 - Stockton Globe, Stockton On Tees - TICKETS
Tuesday 19th May 2026 - Palace Theatre, Southend On Sea - TICKETS
Wednesday 20th May 2026 - Palace Theatre, Southend On Sea - TICKETS
June 2026
Monday 1st June 2026 - 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin - TICKETS
Tuesday 2nd June 2026 - Bord Gais Energy Theatre, Dublin - TICKETS
Wednesday 3rd June 2026 - The Tommy Leddy Theatre, Drogheda - TICKETS
Thursday 4th June 2026 - Millennium Forum, Derry - TICKETS
Friday 5th June 2026 - National Opera House, Wexford - TICKETS
Sunday 7th June 2026 - Opera House, Cork - TICKETS
Wednesday 10th June 2026 - Theatre Royal, Waterford - TICKETS
Sunday 14th June 2026 - Cambridge Arts Theatre, Cambridge - TICKETS
Monday 15th June 2026 - Cambridge Arts Theatre, Cambridge - TICKETS
Tuesday 16th June 2026 - Cambridge Arts Theatre, Cambridge - TICKETS
Thursday 18th June 2026 - Alban Arena, St. Albans - TICKETS
Friday 19th June 2026 - Alban Arena, St. Albans - TICKETS
Sunday 21st June 2026 - New Victoria Theatre, Woking - TICKETS
Tuesday 23rd June 2026 - Venue Cymru, Llandudno - TICKETS
Wednesday 24th June 2026 - Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield - TICKETS
Thursday 25th June 2026 - Grand Opera House, York - TICKETS
Friday 26th June 2026 - Grand Opera House, York - TICKETS
Saturday 27th June 2026 - Grand Opera House, York - TICKETS
Tuesday 30th June 2026 - Mercury Theatre, Colchester - TICKETS
July 2026
Wednesday 1st July 2026 - Mercury Theatre, Colchester - TICKETS
Thursday 2nd July 2026 - Mercury Theatre, Colchester - TICKETS
Saturday 4th July 2026 - The Hawth, Crawley - TICKETS
Tuesday 7th July 2026 - Lyceum, Crewe - TICKETS
Wednesday 8th July 2026 - Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury - TICKETS
Thursday 9th July 2026 - Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury - TICKETS
Friday 10th July 2026 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Saturday 11th July 2026 - The Lowry, Salford - TICKETS
Monday 13th July 2026 - King's Theatre, Glasgow - TICKETS
Tuesday 14th July 2026 - King's Theatre, Glasgow - TICKETS
Wednesday 15th July 2026 - Playhouse, Edinburgh - TICKETS
Thursday 16th July 2026 - Perth Theatre, Perth - TICKETS
Friday 17th July 2026 - Eden Court, Inverness - TICKETS
September 2026
Thursday 3rd September 2026 - King's Theatre, Portsmouth - TICKETS
Friday 4th September 2026 - Pavillion, Weymouth - TICKETS
Saturday 5th September 2026 - Hall For Cornwall, Truro - TICKETS
Thursday 10th September 2026 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Friday 11th September 2026 - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Saturday 12th September 2026 - William Aston Hall, Wrexham - TICKETS
Sunday 13th September 2026 - Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton - TICKETS
Wednesday 16th September 2026 - Marina Theatre, Lowestoft - TICKETS
Thursday 17th September 2026 - Marina Theatre, Lowestoft - TICKETS
Friday 18th September 2026 - Castle Theatre, Wellingborough - TICKETS
Saturday 19th September 2026 - The Central Theatre, Chatham - TICKETS
Sunday 20th September 2026 - The Central Theatre, Chatham - TICKETS
Thursday 24th September 2026 - Bristol Beacon, Bristol - TICKETS
Friday 25th September 2026 - Bristol Beacon, Bristol - TICKETS
Saturday 26th September 2026 - Bristol Beacon, Bristol - TICKETS
Tuesday 29th September 2026 - Truck Theatre, Hull - TICKETS
Wednesday 30th September 2026 - Truck Theatre, Hull - TICKETS
October 2026
Thursday 1st October 2026 - The Spa Centre, Scarborough - TICKETS
Friday 2nd October 2026 - Alhambra Theatre, Bradford - TICKETS
Saturday 3rd October 2026 - Alhambra Theatre, Bradford - TICKETS
Tuesday 6th October 2026 - Festival Theatre, Malvern - TICKETS
Wednesday 7th October 2026 - Festival Theatre, Malvern - TICKETS
Thursday 8th October 2026 - Belgrade Theatre, Coventry - TICKETS
Friday 9th October 2026 - Belgrade Theatre, Coventry - TICKETS
Saturday 10th October 2026 - Belgrade Theatre, Coventry - TICKETS
Monday 12th October 2026 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Tuesday 13th October 2026 - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Saturday 17th October 2026 - Waterside Theatre, Aylesbury - TICKETS
Sunday 18th October 2026 - Hippodrome, Birmingham - TICKETS
Friday 23rd October 2026 - New Theatre, Peterborough - TICKETS
Saturday 24th October 2026 - Tyne Theatre & Opera House, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Sunday 25th October 2026 - Tyne Theatre & Opera House, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Friday 30th October 2026 - Pavilion Theatre, Worthing - TICKETS
November 2026
Sunday 1st November 2026 - Devonshire Park Theatre, Eastbourne - TICKETS
Thursday 5th November 2026 - City Hall, Salisbury - TICKETS
Friday 6th November 2026 - The Anvil, Basingstoke - TICKETS
Monday 9th November 2026 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Tuesday 10th November 2026 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Wednesday 11th November 2026 - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Thursday 12th November 2026 - Chelmsford Theatre, Chelmsford - TICKETS
Friday 13th November 2026 - Chelmsford Theatre, Chelmsford - TICKETS
8. SNOWFLAKE TORNADO / BASIC LEE
Stewart’s 2019-2022 touring show Snowflake/Tornado, which was originally broadcast as a BBC Special in Autumn 2022 is now available to buy or rent “on demand” from www.mediagarageproductions.com
Both shows also appear to be free as part of the current Amazon Prime rosta, but buy them from us to defeat American fascism.
We are currently preparing a physical release of these shows but it’s got delayed as I got pneumonia and have been bogged down in picking through a wealth of possible, and very exciting, audio extras, where the material worked much better than in the broadcast show itself.
9. TEENAGE CANCER TRUST COMEDY NIGHT – ROYAL ALBERT HALL, 24TH MARCH.
I am on in this with Bridget Christie, Athena Kugblenu, Miles Jupp and more. Robert Smith from The Cure is in charge this year. http://lnk.to/TCT26
10. KEVIN ELDON’S PODCAST
The actor Kevin Eldon has a new podcast called Speakers.
I am special stand-up guest of Scottish punk pioneers SKIDS at their weekender at Portmerion Prisoner village in N Wales. Come and see me get booed off by old punks. https://skidsofficial.com/news-1/f/the-absolute-weekend-2026-1 What an amazing life I am having in my late 50s
I will be doing short stand-up sets at the following festivals
BEARDED THEORY 20TH – 24TH MAY, CATTON PARK DERBYSHIRE https://beardedtheory.co.uk w Pixies, Damned, Maytals, Au Pairs, Nightingales & Ted Chippington. This is a great, friendly festival that totally feels like it is run for the benefit of the people, and it has a brilliant tent called Convoy Cabaret which is all proper hardcore anarcho-punk and traveller music.
DEER SHED 24TH – 26TH JULY, BLADERSBY PARK, N YORKS https://deershedfestival.com Sleaford Mods, Angeline Morrison, New Eves & The Adam Buxton Band. The village fete vibe of indie rock!
More to follow
15. FLIM FLAM 25TH ANNIVERSARY. Jan 28th, The Mildmay Club, Newington Green, Stoke Newington, LONDON N16
The mighty Michael Legge used to have a crie de couer every now and again during the Edinburgh fringe – “Let’s sell this gig out!”
Weds Jan 28th is the 25th anniversary of my local free jazz pub gig, Flim Flam, which means I’ve been going to see their shows for over half my adult life. I’ll be guest-hosting the show.
The night is run by Alan Wilkinson, whom heads will know as one the top three living saxophonists working in the European Free Improvisation milieu, and whom rock fans will know as that guy who sometimes opens for Spiritualized, and whom comedy fans will know as the saxophonist in the live film of Basic Lee.
Maybe you saw his devastating performance with Steve Noble and John Edwards at my 2016 All Tomorrow’s Parties festival? Alan has pushed the boat out for his quarter century and as usual the bill includes a mix of new talent, low key legends, and people you’d pay much more to see in your local state-sanctioned temple of culture; namely Free Vocalese godmother and queen of all she surveys Maggie Nicols, Birmingham beatmaster Mark Sanders, Welsh drone-witch Angharad Davies, the imperial viceroy of the kit Steve Noble, Alan himself and more, with live jazz art from Gina Southgate. No advance tickets are available so bring £10 cash to the door and the music starts at 8.30. And it’s where I recorded Comedy Vehicle. Let’s sell this gig out!!!!
16. GARY LE STRANGE.
I love Waen Shepherd’s Gary Le Strange character, and finally he has a new album.
GARY LE STRANGE: CHROMIUM DOCKYARD
HIS CLASSIC LOST ALBUM AVAILABLE NOW, EXCLUSIVELY ON BANDCAMP
Waen Shepherd says: “ Dear Le Strangers. It is my proud privilege to announce the release of Chromium Dockyard, the fourth full-length album by eccentric electro-rocker Gary Le Strange, a full 13 (or 19, or maybe even 22) years in the making [it’s complicated]. Work started on this troubled collection in 2012, before real life got in the way and Gary was forced to abandon it in 2016. Along the way, Gary released the singles Shut Up Mum and Norman (I’ve Dropped My Cup of Tea), both of which remained orphans for over a decade. But now, spurred on by the power of chronic unemployment and having way too much time on his hands, Gary has finally managed to finish his classic lost album, and both singles can take their rightful places in this insanely thrilling selection. A stunning set of eleven pop songs and one experimental documentary, planting itself firmly between the New Romanticism of his early days and the wild experimentation of his psychedelic period, Chromium Dockyard is an eclectic journey through the fractured psyche of an aging British pop star as he grapples with the multiple perils of persecution, hair loss and the end of the world, via the ancient disciplines of synth rock, new wave pop, doomy Gothic ballads and apocalyptic electronica.
The perfect festive gift for that friend of yours who’s really into Gary Numan, that friend of yours who’s a Goth, or that friend of yours who continually complains about how there are never any good comedy songs these days (or that enemy of yours who hates all these things), Chromium Dockyard is simultaneously more ambitious and more accessible than anything Gary has attempted before, and serves as the perfect entry point to the world of Gary Le Strange.
TRIGGER WARNING. This album features both direct and indirect references to bullying, suicide, drug use, depression, alcoholism, public intoxication, sexual deviancy, pornography, unwanted touching, prosopagnosia, ADHD, loss of identity, hair loss, tea loss, face loss and extreme unnecessary violence. It also features the words f**k, s**t, c**t, c**k, c**p, p**s, b**bs, a**e, w***y, s**g, p**ck, b*gger, b****cks, k******d, g*****d, f******d, l****r, b****y and m****t, and on at least one occasion tells you point blank that you are going to die. Listen at your own risk.
If you’ve enjoyed this email, you can read more about the album at garylestrange.co.uk
ABOUT WAEN SHEPHERD Gary Le Strange is the musical alter ego of actor, writer, comedian and composer Waen Shepherd, who won the Perrier Award for Best Newcomer in 2003 (for his show Polaroid Suitcase) and the Chortle Best Newcomer Award in 2004, then did two more Edinburgh shows (2004’s Face Academy and Beef Scarecrow in 2006) before violently somersaulting into obscurity. Each of Gary’s shows was accompanied by a full-length comedy album, all of which are now available to stream or buy on Bandcamp. As a comic actor, Waen might be vaguely recognisable from fleeting bit parts in various comedy shows from about a decade ago, like Hyperdrive (BBC2), Count Arthur Strong (BBC2), We Are Klang (BBC3), The Inbetweeners (C4, as John ‘Paedo’ Kennedy) and Steve Oram’s cult film AAAAAAAAH! You might also have heard his voice in a handful of BBC radio comedies, such as Out to Lunch (BBC Radio 2), The Day the Music Died (BBC Radio 2), The Lucy Montgomery Variety Pack (BBC Radio 4) and 2525 (BBC Radio 4). As a composer, Waen has provided theme tunes, scores and random bits of music for a number of television shows, including Crackanory (Dave), Action Team (ITV2), Mandy (BBC2), Intruder (C5), No Strings Attached (E4) and the BAFTA-winning Murder in Successville (BBC1), plus the highly-acclaimed score for Gareth Tunley’s BAFTA-nominated film The Ghoul. As a writer… well, he wrote this, didn’t he? Chromium Dockyard is Gary Le Strange’s first full-length album since Beef Scarecrow in 2006 and (not counting the previously unreleased tracks in his Complete Bandcamp Discography from 2024), his first new material since the single I Am a Video in 2015. It is Waen’s first album since his original soundtrack for The Ghoul, released in 2020.
17. FOR GOD’S SAKE LET’S GET FOX HUNTING PROPERLY BANNED LIKE IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE ANYWAY
Fox hunting is banned by countless loopholes need to be closed for this to mean anything, and I went to introduce a meeting at Poertcullis House last month to try and help out with this. See
EMMA TRICCA I’ve seen Emma Tricca loads in 2025 without even planning to. She became ubiquitous. On stage alone she is in the tradition of the ‘70s singer-songwriter, but on record it gets more trippy and heavier. Here’s some dates. JAN 8th The Holloway Norwich, 10th Sheffield House Norwich, 11th Betsey Trotwood London @ 2pm
ALAN WILKINSON & PETER ZUMMO, KOHRAN FUTACI & FERYIN KAYA JAN 18TH, Mascara Bar, Stamford Hill, Stoke Newington, LONDON. Peter Zummo has been a leading figure on the downtown New York Scene since the 70s most notably with Arthur Russell and the Lounge Lizards. Korhan Futaci is a brilliant Turkish musician who relocated to London recently and Feryin Kaya is a Turkish electric bass player luckily in town for this. The friendly Mascara Bar is located opposite Morrisons on Stamford Hill N16, near Stoke Newington station.
LISA KNAPP & GERRY DRIVER 6 Music folk faves back on the road JAN 29th Music For Midwinter, Hastings. FEB 7th Indoor Fest of Folk London, 14th Belper Meadows, 15th Trinity Arts Gainsborough; MAY 1st Turner Sims S’hampton, 2nd Bristol Folk Fest, 9th Whitchurch Folk Fest.
DREAM SYNDICATE You must see this enduring American rock institution who impossibly combine free-jazz styled freakouts with classic solid literary songwriting. JAN 30TH London Garage, FEB 1st M’cr Band On The Wall.
SLEAFORD MODS It’s easy to take Sleaford Mods for granted, but go and see them live and be reminded what an amazing act this is, as much Beckettian theatre as it is whatever else it is. £1 on every ticket goes to Warchild. FEB 6th Glasgow Barrowland Ballroom, 7th Manchester Academy, 12th Leeds O2 Academy, 13th Liverpool O2 Academy, 14th Cardiff Great Hall, 19th Dublin 3Olympia, 20th Belfast Limelight, 21st Cork Cyprus Avenue, 26th Oxford O2 Academy, 27th Nottingham Rock City, MARCH 5th Bristol Bristol Beacon, 6th Brighton Dome, 7th London 02 Academy Brixton.
THE NIGHTINGALES King Rocker cats’ annual club circuit FEB 19th Swansea Bunkhouse, 20th Southampton Joiners, 22nd Cambridge Portland Arms, 24th London Moth, 25th B’ham Castle & Falcon, 26th Sheffield Greystones, MARCH 1st Sunderland Pop Recs
PSYCHEDELIC PORN CRUMPETS Australian prog-psyche FEB 24th Newcastle Uni, 25th Glasgow Galvanizers, 28th Leeds Uni, MARCH 1st B’ham Digbeth Crossing, 3rd Southampton 1865, 4th London Forum
HEAVENLY Suddenly boosted by fleeting Tic Toc fame with Punk Rock Girl, here’s another victory lap for the mould-making indie veterans in 2026. FEB 25th Coventry Just Dropped In, 26th London Lexington, 28th Athens Temple, MARCH 5th Ramsgate Music Hall, 6th Paris Petit Bain, 8th London Lexington all ages matinee, 14th Oxford Nest, 18th M’cr Yes, 19th Glasgow Mono, 20th Sunderland Pop Recs, 21st Sheffield Sidney & Mathilda, 26th Brighton TBC, APRIL 4th Cardiff Wales Goes Pop
KID CONGO & THE PINK MONKEY BIRDS Cramps/Gun Club/Bad Seeds/Knoxville Girls gunslinger with current combo MARCH 5th B’ham Hare & Hounds, 6th Oslo London, 7th Nottingham Boat Club.
DELINES Cinematic symphonic country rock sophisticates. MARCH 21st Trowbridge 7 Hills Fest, 22nd Bury Met, 23rd L’pool Hangar, 24th Nottingham Metronome, 25th Norwich Epic, 26th London Union Chapel, 27th Brighton Old Market, 28th Cardiff Gate, OCTOBER 2nd Glasgow GUU, 3rd Gosforth Civic, 4th Leeds City Varieties
KEIJI HAINO Japanese brain-bending noise improvisor London ICA 17th March
COSMIC PSYCHOS Australian idiot-savants who have reduced rock and roll, and by association, life itself to its core essentials. Profound. But last time I had to leave ‘cos it was TOO LOUD. APRIL
7th Nottingham Bodega, 8th Glasgow Nice’n’Sleazy, 9th M’cr Pink Room, 10th London Dome, 11th Cardf Clwb Ifor Bach, 12th Brighton Green Door
SUGAR Apparently they’ve reformed MAY 23rd, 24th London Forum
TAMIKREST Malian blues-wranglers in snake-charming mode JUNE 8th Glasgow Rum Shack, 9th Leeds Belgrave, 11th Norwich Arts, 12th Bristol Strange Brew, 13th London Jazz Café, 15th M’cr Band On The Wall, 176th Bristol Hope & Ruin.
OH-SEES Mighty psyche-punk juggernaut. JULY 14th Leeds Irish Centre, 16th & 17th London Earth.
MILLIONS OF DEAD COPS Hardcore originators. New Cross Inn, London August 10th
19. MY CULTURAL YEAR 2025
MY CULTURAL YEAR 2025 (DEC 30TH 2024 – DEC 2025)
This year I didn’t read enough and watched hardly any TV. I moved my turntable into the kitchen where I write, accepted that I need my hearing aids even just for listening to music at home, and went into a very rewarding 12 months of three-dimensional sound, rediscovering old faves and finding depths in music I didn’t know I liked. I watched a lot of films, walked a lot of site-strewn moors, saw a lot of art and went to as many live music gigs as I used to when I was young.
It has been a great year for brain-feeding and soul-nourishment.
* means something struck me as bad, but this year I deliberately disconnected Netflix as I was hate-watching a lot of bad stand-up and dumb documentaries and algorhythmicaly awful dramas, which was bad for my brain.
***** means something struck me, in that moment, as extra special.
I’m not offering up an objective judgement. It was just that experience, at that time, in that state of mind. Discharge, for example, arrived at the100 Club in January after the usual New Year depression in the midst of a bout of pneumonia and put a rocket up the ass of my 2025; Loudon Wainwright III, in a little cinema in Paris days before Christmas, calmly and quietly and with great warmth and humour, anatomised and exploded many things that had been troubling me and puzzling me that I hadn’t been able to put names to, for which I will be forever grateful.
“I haven’t seen any of Stewart Lee’s nasty little lists… but this is dark stuff... a form of bullying, intimidation and shaming that Joseph McCarthy or The Stasi would recognise.” John Robinson, golf comedian, Radio X
NEW FILMS (2024/5)
Pauline Black : A 2-Tone Story (Jane Mingay) Blink Twice (Zoe Kravitz)***** A Complete Unknown (James Mangold)*****
Heretic (Scott Beck & Bryan Woods)
Becoming Led Zeppelin (Alison McGourty & Bernard McMahon)
One to One : John & Yoko (Kevin MacDonald & Sam Rice-Edwards)
Sinners (Ryan Coogler)
Nosferatu (Robert Eggers)
Deep Cover (Tom Kingsley)
Spinal Tap 2 : The End Continues (Rob Reiner)* Weapons (Zach Creggar)***** Derek Bailey: New Sights … Old Sounds (Ian Greaves)*****
Frankenstein (Guillermo Del Toro)*
The Naked Gun (Akiva Shaffer)
Nobody 2 (Ilya Naishuller) * The Ballad of Wallis Island (James Griffith)*****
OLD FILMS
Dream Scenario (Kristoffer Borgli, 2023) Paris Texas (Wim Wenders, 1984)***** Wonder Boys (Curtis Hanson, 2005)***** And God Said To Cain (Antonia Margheritti, 1970)*****
The Look Of Love (Michael Winterbottom, 2013)
Black Mama, White Mama (Eddie Romero, 1973)
The Good, The Bad And The Weird (Kim Jee-woon, 2008)
A Genius, Two Partners, And A Dupe (Damiano Damiani, 1975)*
The Wild Geese (Andrew V MacLaglen, 1978) Django The Bastard (Sergio Garonne, 1969)*****
Shango (Edoardo Mulargia, 1970)
A Coffin For The Sheriff (Mario Calano, 1965)
May God Forgive You … But I Won’t (Vincenzo Musolino, 1968)
The Iguana With The Tongue Of Fire (Ricardo Freda, 1971) The Fifth Chord (Luigi Bazzoni, 1971)*****
Cat O’ Nine Tails (Dario Argento, 1971) The Witch (Damio Damiani, 1966)*****
The Killer Reserved Nine Seats (Giuseppe Bennati, 1974)
The Bird With The Crystal Plumage (Dario Argento, 1970)
Forbidden Photos of A Lady Above Suspicion (Luciano Ercoli, 1970)
Death Walks On High Heels (Luciano Ercoli, 1971)*
Baba Yaga (Corrado Farina, 1973)
Knife Of Ice (Umberto Lenzi, 1972)
The House With Laughing Windows (Pupi Avati, 1976)
A Quiet Place In The Country (Elio Petri, 1968)
Burnt Offerings (Dan Curtis, 1976)* Lone Wolf & Cub : Sword of Vengeance (Kenji Misumi, 1972)***** Lone Wolf & Cub : Baby Cart At The River Styx (Kenji Misumi, 1972)***** Lone Wolf & Cub : Baby Cart To Hades (Kenji Misumi, 1972)***** Lone Wolf & Cub : Baby Cart In Peril (Buichi Saito, 1972)***** Lone Wolf & Cub : Baby Cart In The Land Of Demons (Buichi Saito, 1973)*****
Hitch-Hike (Pasquale Festa Campanile, 1977)
Silver Bullet (1985, Dan Atlas) * This film is absolute shite! Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (Q Tarantino, 2019)*****
Pat Garret & Billy The Kid (Sam Peckinpah, 1973)
City of The Dead (John Llewellyn Moxey, 1960)
Day Of The Cobra (Enzo Castellari, 1980) The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973)*****
Live Like A Man, Die Like A Cop (Ruggero Deodato, 1976)
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992)* Simple Men (Hal Hartley, 1992)***** Border (Ali Abbasi, 2018)***** Team America (Trey Parker, 2004)*****
Macbeth (Justin Kurzel, 2015) Macbeth (Roman Polanski, 1971)*****
Operation Solstice (Gareth Morris, 1991) Roma (Frederico Fellini, 1972)***** Penda’s Fen (Alan Clarke, 1973)***** Cold War (Pawel Pawilovski, 2018)***** A Fist Full Of Dollars (Sergio Leone)***** Lenny (Bob Fosse, 1974)*****
Ben & Charlie (Michelle Lupo, 1972)
Who Saw Her Die? (Aldo Lado, 1972)
Rare Exports (Jalmari Helendar, 1996) All The Colours Of The Dark (Sergio Martino, 1972)*****
Seven Blood-Stained Orchids (Umberto Lenzi, 1972)
Eyeball (Umberto Lenzi, 1975)* Slap The Monster On Page One (Marco Bellocchio, 1972)*****
Rulers Of The City (Fernando di Leo, 1978)
NEW BOOKS
Alan Moore – The Bumper Book Of Magic Alan Moore – The Great Wen *****
Kevin Rowland – Bless Me Father
Ben Wildsmith – Whose Song To Sing? Damon Krukowski – Why Sound Matters ***** Ben Moor – A Three Thing Day (And Other Things)***** As a live piece the words from this tumbled over me, here they make a micro-masterpiece www.spesh.com/ben
OLD BOOKS
Steve Hanley – The Big Midweek (2014)*****
COMICS
Viz How To Survive An Affair – Henry Widdicombe***** (https://widdicomics.co.uk)
OLD TV
Twin Peaks S1 (ABC, 1990)*****
NEW TV
The Change S2 (Channel 4)*****
Celebrity Traitors (BBC)
Trainwreck : Poop Cruise (James Ross/Netflix)*
The Room In The Tower (Mark Gatiss/BBC)
OLD TV
Floyd On France (BBC, 1987)*****
MAGAZINES AND PAPERS AND ONLINE
The Nerve *****
Shindig, Record Collector, Viz, Mojo, Guardian, Machenallia, Faunus, Guardian, London Review of Books, Weird Walk, Wire, Idler, Northern Earth.
Adrian Childs’ Guardian columns Marina Hyde’s Guardian columns Nesrine Malik’s Guardian columns *****
John Crace’s Guardian columns
RADIO NEW AND OLD
James O’Brien (LBC) *****
Nick Ferrari (LBC)*
Tom Swarbrick (LBC)* Lewis Goodall (LBC)***** Shelagh Fogerty (LBC) *
All BBC News especially C Mason & L Kuenssberg * Dehumidified (Polly Weston, BBC Sounds)***** Currently Out For Delivery (Polly Weston, BBC Sounds)*****
This Cultural Life – Jeremy Deller (BBC Radio 4, 2023) Strong Message Here (BBC Sounds)*****
INTERNETS, YOUTUBES, SUBSTACKS AND PODCASTS
Backlisted ***** Sid Griffin Calling All Coal Porters ***** Carole Cadwalladr’s Substack How To Survive The Broligarchy ***** Damon Krukowski’s Substack Dada Drummer Alamanac
Lost Otter’s Pilgrimage Of Food (Bluesky) The Nerve *****
THEATRE/DANCE/RITUAL
Three Thing Day (read-through) – Ben Moor (Hen & Chickens, London)
Robert Lloyd Parry – M R James’ The Mezzotint (Baskerville Hall Hotel)
Arthur Machen’s The Shining Pyramid (Baskerville Hall Hotel) A I A I OH! – Will Adamsdale (Barbican, London)*****
Infinity And Beyond – Scene & Heard (Teatro Technis, Camden, London)
The Cuntiad – Martin Rowson (Laugharne Festival)
Three Thing Day WIP – Ben Moor (Machynlleth F Festival) The Children – Lucy Kirkwood (Tower Theatre, Stoke Newington)***** An Inspector Calls – J B Priestly (Wimbledon New Theatre)***** Green Man River Goddess Ritual, Burning Of The Green Man (Green Man, Sunday)
Simon Armitage (Krankenhaus) The Party Girls – Amy Rosenthal (0xford Playhouse) Macbeth – dir Tom Morris (Haymarket, London)*****
EVENTS
Andy Votel, Don Leisure, Kev Tame – Sain Sympopsium/Geoff Towns & Will Hodgkinson on Bob Dylan & Dylan Thomas (Green Man) Samantha Harvey reads Orbital (End Of The Road)***** Penda’s Fen : Scene By Scene event w Ian Greaves (Barbican)***** Shouting Out Loud book event w The Raincoats & Audrey Golden (Rough Trade East, London) Alice Roberts, Natalie Haynes, Melinda Gebbie, Chelsea Birkby in 9 Lessons & Carols For Curious People (King’s Place, London)
COMEDY
Fascinating Aida (Royal Festival Hall, London)***** John Shuttleworth (Laugharne Festival)***** Josie Long (Laugharne Festival) Marcel LuCont – Whine List (Machynlleth Comedy Festival) ***** Frankie Thompson, Sam Williams, Emmy The Great, Kemah Bob - Sugar benefit (Pleasance, London)***** Michelle de Swarte (Always Be Comedy, London)
Jazz Emu, Barbara Nice, Josie Long ***** (Glastonbury) Eliza Frazer, James O’Donoghue & Jon Matthews (Tolpuddle)*****
Celya AB, Huge Davies (End Of The Road)
Ivo Graham, Two Hearts, Alison Spittle, Daniel Kitson (Union Chapel)
John Cooper Clark/Tim Wells (Cadogan Hall, London)
GIGS
Discharge (100 Club)*****
Anonymous country rock covers duo (Hole In The Wall, York)
Unnamed jazz quartet (Eagle and Child, York)
Chuck Prophet (Garage, London)
Rhodri Davies (Café Oto, London)
Steve Wynn (Moth Club, London)
Steve Wynn (Fountain Inn, Laugharne Festival) Amy Rigby (Fountain Inn, Laugharne Festival) Swansea Sound (Fountain Inn, Laugharne Festival)***** Angelina Morrison (Chapel, Laugharne Festival) Eliza Carthy & Martin Carthy (Chapel, Laugharne Festival)*****
Men of Gwent (Chapel, Laugharne Festival) Slowdive (Brixton Academy)
Mini-Mekons/Nightingales (Signature, Dalston)***** Martin Newell/Cleaners From Venus (Bush Hall, London)*****
Martin Simpson w Louis Campbell & Liz Hanks (King’s Place, London)
Sunshine Jazz Band (Machynlleth Comedy Festival)
Darren Hayman (Machynlleth Comedy Festival)
Louis Louis Louis (Domino, Leeds)
Fred Frith/Harvey Parkin-Christie & Hinrik Thorinson (Limpet, Leeds) Bevis Frond (Lexington, London, Saturday)***** Anton Barbeau/Bevis Frond (Lexington, London, Sunday)*****
Steven Wilson (London Palladium) Emma Tricca (A roof in Shoreditch, London)
Dinosaur Jr (Troxy, London) The Lovely Eggs/Iggy Pop/Culture Shock(Bearded Theory, Saturday)*****
The Selecter/Shonen Knife’s Osaka Ramones/Throwing Muses/Anthrax (UK)/Asian Dub Foundation/Manic Street Preachers/P.A.I.N (Bearded Theory, Sunday)
Hawkwind (Barbican, London)
Waterboys (Roundhouse, London)
Joe McPhee w Susanna Gartmayer, John Edwards & Maria Portugal (Café Oto, London) Joe McPhee & John Edwards (Café Oto, London)***** Lucy Gooch (Servant’s Jazz Quarters, London)
Jaap Blonk, Steve Noble, John Edwards, Alan Wilkinson (Ryan’s Bar, London) Barbican Estate/MSSV (Lexington, London) Emma Tricca/Chris Eckman (Water Rats, London)*****
Secluded Bronte/David Grubbs (St Pancras Church, London) Nadia Read, Tift Merritt, Burning Spear, Vieux Farka Toure *****, OhSees*****, Tolstoys, Marching Skaletons, Trojans (Glastonbury Friday)
Sid Griffin’s Bob Dylan show with Paul Carrack & Katya & Hothouse Flowers & Ralph McTell, Neil Young & The Chrome Hearts *****, (Glastonbury Saturday)
The Selecter, Geordie Greep*****, Black Uhuru, Goat *****, Brian Jonestown Massacre *****, Bootleg Beatles, Roy & Nick Harper (Glastonbury Sunday)
Robyn Hitchcock (Golden Hind, London) Messthetics w James Brandon Lewis (Café Oto, London)***** Neil Young & The Chrome Hearts (Hyde Park, London)***** Gina Birch (Rough Trade, London) Swansea Sound (Lexington, London) Alan Sparhawk (Green Man, Friday)***** Boss Morris *****, Broadside Hacks’ Bob Dylan Tribute*****, Rich Dawson ***** (Green Man, Saturday) Bridget Hayden *****, Beth Gibbons, Cymande ***** (Green Man, Sunday) Dean Wareham & Sea Power play Galaxie 500 (Krankenhaus Friday)***** Alison Cotton, Gnod, Rich Dawson, Jane Weaver, Sea Power (Krankenhaus Saturday)***** Sacred Paws, Dean & Britta, Nightingales , Sexual Objects (Krankenhaus Sunday)*****
Bevis Frond /Lemonheads (Electric Circus, London) Elephant Room/Laetitia Sadier *****(Tabernacle St, London) Bridget Hayden, Vieux Farka Toure, Daisy Rickman & Mike Heron & Broadside Hacks Play The Incredible String Band, Lisa O’Neill(End Of The Road Friday)***** Tropical Fuckstorm, Black Country New Road (End Of The Road Sunday)***** Iko Cherie (Folklore, Hackney, London)
Howe Gelb (Moth Club, London) Witney K/Howe Gelb (Rough Trade, Charing X Rd, London)*****
Black Lips (100 Club, London) The Ex, Hanne de Backer + Terrie Ex + Andy Moor, Kat Ex + Signe Emmeluth + Emma Fischer, Zea + Xavier Charles (Café Oto, London)***** Belles of London City/Lucy Gooch/Samara/Tree Carr/Daisy Rickman Band (Earth, Hackney, London)*****
Tortoise - Barbican, London Iko Cherie - Total Refreshment Centre, London
Men Of Gwent/Mini Mekons - Golden Hynde, London
The Saints ’73/’78 — Electric Ballroom, London
StereoLab/Mombojo – Royal Festival Hall, London
Drift – The Waiting Room, London Stereolab – Brixton Electric, London ***** Derek Bailey Company Tribute Show (Monday) Khabat Abas, Julia Brüssel, John Butcher, Teresa Hackel, Charles Hayward, Petra Haller, Pat Thomas, Matt Wand, Alex Ward, Mark Wastell – Café Oto, London ***** Derek Bailey Company Tribute Show (Tuesday) Khabat Abas, Julia Brüssel, John Butcher, Teresa Hackel, Charles Hayward, Petra Haller, Pat Thomas, Matt Wand, Alex Ward, Mark Wastell – Café Oto, London *****
Mark Wastell, Alan Wilkinson, Thurston Moore – Vortex, London
John Smith – Union Chapel, London
The Gentle Spring/Swansea Sound – Waiting Room, London Brixton Chamber Orchestra – Stockwell Park Community Centre, London ***** Loudon Wainwright III – L’archipel, Paris ***** Emma Tricca, Darren Hayman, Pete Astor – Waiting Room, London The Fallen Women – Lexington, London*****
RECORDS I LISTENED TO OLD SCHOOL IN ONE SITTING AT A LISTENING DEVICE
NEW RECORDS – 2025/2026 Wild Billy Childish & The Chatham Singers – Step Out!*****
Sean Khan Presents The Modern Jazz & Folk Ensemble – s/t
Chuck Prophet – Wake The Dead Stereolab – Instant Holograms On Metal Film ***** Richard Dawson – End Of The Middle ***** Rich Hopkins – The Gift ***** The Loft – Everything Changes, Everything Stays The Same ***** Pat Todd & The Rank Outsiders – Keeping Chaos At Bay *****
House of All – House of All Souls
Steve Wynn – Make It Right
Black Country New Road – Forever Howlong
Cameron Winter – Heavy Metal
Hawkwind – There Is No Space For Us Chris Eckman – The Land We Knew Best *****
Shane 0’Mara – (unreleased) Bert Jansch Project Iva Bittova – What My Father Sang To Me *****
The Waterboys – Life, Death & Dennis Hopper Quinie – Forefowk, Mind Me
Sam Grassie – Sandwood e.p
Sam Grassie – Jarabi, The Winter Has Gone e.p
MSSV – On And On
Dean Wareham – That’s The Price of Loving Me
Robert Forster – Strawberries
Howe Gelb – Weathering Some Piano We Contain Multitudes – Minako *****
The Bags – Swamp Oaf
Robyn Hitchcock – 1967, Vacations In The Past
Sly & The Family Drone – Moon Is Doom Backwards
The Messthetics & James Brandon Lewis – s/t The Sons of Southern Ulster – Through The Bridewell Gate *****
Neil Young & Chrome Hearts – Talkin’ To The Trees
Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso UFO – Holy Black Mountainside Poor Creature – All Smiles Tonight
Rún – Rún Sean Ono Lennon – Asterisms ***** The New Eves – The New Eve Is Rising
Neil Young – Coastal Soundtrack Bridget Hayden & The Apparitions – Cold Blows The Rain ***** Adrienne Lenker – Bright Future
Earthball – Outside Over There
Gary Louris – Dark Country
Hugo Race & Gianni Maroccollo – The Vigil
Martin Carthy – Transform Me Into A Fish Laetita Sadier – Rooting For Love ******
Harvestman – Triptych Part I Maria Somerville – Luster Rois – Mo Lean
David Grubs & Lauren Connors – Evening Air Katie Spencer – What Love Is SnarksiLindyCircusband – What’s Said & What’s Left Unsaid ***** Prolapse – I Wonder When They Are Going To Destroy Your Face Gwenifer Raymond – Last Night I Heard The Dog Star Bark
The Chameleons – Arctic Moon
Geckos – s/t
Bad Sam – Trauma
Smote – Songs From The Free House The Bevis Frond – Horrorful Heights *****
The Bevis Frond – Horrorful Offal
Slash – Orgy Of The Damned Samana – s/t Lavinia Blackwall – The Making Jeff Parker – The Way Out Of Easy***** Dead Otter – The Sentinel *****
The Milk & Honey Band - Songs From Truleigh Hill Major Stars - More Colours Of Sound ***** Cate Brooks - Prismatics
Guided By Voices - Thick, Rich & Delicious
Tortoise - Touch Thee Headcoatees - Man Trap
John Smith – Gatherings
The Beasts – Ultimo
EarthBall w Steve Beresford & Chris Corsano – Actual Earth Music Vol 1 & 2
The OhSees – Live At The Board
The Apartments – That’s What The Music Is For
The Gymkhana – Follyfoot 71-73
Marcel Wave – Something Coming Me Lost Me – This Material Moment The New Starts – More Breakup Songs *****
The Sexual Objects – Orangutang
Darren Hayman & His Electric Guitars – Amazing Things
NEW OLD RECORDS - reissues, archive & comp’s
Sonny Rollins – Freedom Weaver, Europe Tour (1959)*****
Gene Clark – No Other Sessions (1974) Pink Floyd – Live At Pompeii (1972)***** John Lee Hooker – Standard School Broadcast (1973)***** McCoy Tyner & Joe Henderson – Forces Of Nature (1966)*****
Sonny Rollins & Don Cherry – Home Sweet Home (1962) Hawkwind – Live Royal Albert Hall (2023) *****
Flying Burrito Brothers – Live (1976)
John Surman & Karin Krog – Electrical Element (2013) V/A – Spiritual Jazz Behind The Iron Curtain Vol 1 (1960’s- ‘90s) ***** V/A – Spiritual Jazz Behind The Iron Curtain Vol 2 (1960’s – ‘90s)*****
Trevor Beales – Fireside Stories (1971-4) Gram Parsons – The Last Roundup (1973)***** V/A – Pyramid Pieces 1, Modal & Eco-Jazz From Australia (1969-79)*****
The Lilac Time – Astronauts (expanded) (2011) Muddy Waters- The Montreux Years (1972-77)***** Mario Migliardi – Matalo! s/t (1970)***** Tezeta – Seventh Place (2015)*****
Pharoah Sanders – Love Is Here (1975) Derek Bailey &Shoji Hano – Fish (2000)***** V/A – Pyramid Pieces 2, Modern Jazz Australia (1969-80)*****
OLD RECORDS
Marion Brown – Sweet Earth Flying (1974)***** Loudon Wainwright III – Fame And Wealth (1983)*****
Loudon Wainwright III – Album II (1971) The Byrds – Mr Tambourine Man (1965)***** The Byrds – Turn! Turn! Turn! (1965)***** The Byrds – Fifth Dimension (1966)***** The Byrds – Younger Than Yesterday (1967)***** The Byrds – Notorious Byrd Brothers (1968)***** The Byrds – Sweetheart Of The Rodeo (1968)***** The Byrds – Dr Byrds & Mr Hyde (1969)***** Agitation Free – Last (1974)***** The Byrds – Ballad of Easy Rider (1969)***** The Byrds – Untitled (1970)*****
The Byrds – Byrdmaniax (1971)
The Byrds – Farther Along (1971) Terry Melcher – s/t (1974)***** Doris Duke – A Legend In Her Own Time (1971) Doris Duke – Woman (1975) Doris Duke – I’m A Loser (1970) Betty Swann – s/t (1968-70) Bobbie Gentry – Ode To Billie Joe (1967)*****
Johnny Rivers – Slim Slow Slider (1970)
Johnny Rivers – Home Grown (1972) Gene Clark w The Gosdin Brothers – s/t (1967)*****
Dillard & Clark – The Fantastic Expedition Of (1968) Rain Parade – Emergency 3rd Rail Power Trip plus (1983)***** Swervedriver – Raise (1991)*****
Discharge – Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing (1982) Buffy Sainte-Marie – Little Wheel Spin And Spin (1966) Buffy Sainte-Marie – Illuminations (1969)***** Buffy Sainte-Marie – She Used To Wanna Be A Ballerina (1971)
The Dillards – Copperfields (1970)
Andy Bell – The View From Halfway Down (2020)
Lindisfarne – Nicely Out Of Tune (1970)
Lindisfarne – Fog On The Tyne (1971)
Lindisfarne – Roll On Ruby (1973)
Bodkin – s/t (1972)
Eugene Kelly – Older Faster (2003)
Eugene Kelly – Man Alive (2003)
Ski Patrol – Versions Of A Life (1979-81)
Brian Auger Trinity & Julie Driscoll – Jools & Brian (1968)
Brian Auger Trinity & Julie Driscoll – Live On Air (1966-71)
Bros. Landreth – Undercover Brothers (2017)
Adam’s House Cat – Town Burned Down (1990)
Drive-By Truckers – Gangstabilly (1998)
Drive-By Truckers – Pizza Delivery (1999)
Stereolab – Chemical Chords (2008)
Lee Ranaldo & The Dust – Last Night On Earth (2013)
The Fall – Live Oslo Oyafestivalen (2006) Dinosaur – Dinosaur (1985) ***** Chene Noir – Orphee 2000 (1976)***** Brigitte Fontaine & Areski Belkacem – L’incendie (1973)
The Band – Music From Big Pink (1968)
Beasts Of Bourbon – Little Animals (2007)
Rob Snarski – Song Gifts (2020)
Tommy Keene – Based On Happy Times (1989) Dumptruck – For The Country (1987)*****
Dan Penn – Nobody’s Fool (1973)
Angry Samoans – Back From Samoa (1982)
The Band – s/t (1969) Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969)***** The Opposition – Intimacy (1983)*****
Brigg – s/t (1973)
John Lee Hooker – It Serves You Right To Suffer (1966)
John Lee Hooker – And Seven Nights (1966)
John Lee Hooker – The Real Folk Blues (1966)
John Lee Hooker – More Real Folk Blues (1966) John Lee Hooker – Live At The Café Au-Go-Go (1967)*****
John Lee Hooker – Urban Blues (1967) John Lee Hooker – Simply The Truth (1969)*****
Charlie Feathers – Gone Gone Gone (1956)
Pram – The Stars Are So Big (1993) Broadcast – Work And Non-Work (1997)*****
John Foxx & Belbury Poly – Empty Avenues (2013)
The Bothy Band – Out Of The Wind, Into The Sun (1977)
Michael Nesmith & 1st National Band – Magnetic South (1970)
Pretty Things – Get The Picture (1965)
True West – Hollywood Holiday (1983) True West – Drifters (1984)*****
Roger McGuinn – s/t (1973) The Nightingales – Hysterics (1993)***** Fred Neil – s/t (1966)*****
David Blue – David Blue (1965)
The Continental Drifters – Live New Orleans Jazz Festival (2023) The Continental Drifters – Listen Listen (2001)***** Steve Earle, Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark – Together At The Bluebird (1995)***** Steve Earle - Copperhead Road (1988)*****
Freddy Weller – Games People Play (1969)
Billy Joe Royal – Down In The Boondocks (1965) Bobbie Gentry – Ode To Billie Joe (1967)***** Dolly Parton – Blue Smoke (2014)
Dom – Edge Of Time (1972) Popealopes – Kerosene (1990)*****
The Waterboys – All Soul’s Hill (2022) Eleventh Dream Day – Beet (1989)*****
Eleventh Dream Day – Lived To Tell (1991) Shocking Blue – At Home (1969)*****
Burnin Red Ivanhoe – M144 (1969)
Joe McPhee Quartet – Underground Railroad (1969)
Byard Lancaster – It’s Not Up To Us (1968)
Saint Just – s/t (1973) The Saints – I’m Stranded (1977)***** The Saints – Eternally Yours (1978)***** Stereolab – Peng! (1992)*****
Stereolab – The Groop Played Space-Age Bachelor Pad Music (1993)
Stereolab – Transient Random-Noise Bursts W Announcements (1993) The Police – Outlandos d’Amour (1978)*****
The Police – Reggatta de Blanc (1979) Yeah Yeah Noh – Leicester Square (1983-86)***** The Weather Prophets – Mayflower (1987)***** Brilliant Corners – Growing Up Absurd (1985)***** Tom Robinson Band – Power In The Darkness (1978)*****
Biff Bang Pow – Pass The Paintbrush Honey (1985)
The Police – Zenyatta Mondatta (1979)*
The Police – Ghost In The Machine (1980)*
The Police – Synchronicity (1981)*
Mark Lindsay – Arizona (1970)
Wild Butter – s/t (1970)
Boatclub – s/t (2008) Popealopes -Slowest Eye (1994)***** Nanci Griffith – Lone Star State Of Mind (1987) Nanci Griffith – Little Love Affairs (1998) Nanci Griffith – One Fair Summer Evening (1998)***** Nancy Sinatra – Boots (1966) Nancy Sinatra – How Does That Grab You? (1966)
Matt Piucci – Helenes (2000)
Red Guitars – Good Technology (1982-4)
Ron Davies – Silent Song Through The Land (1970) New Riders Of The Purple Sage – s/t (1971)*****
Poco – Picking Up The Pieces (1969)
Poco – s/t (1970)
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band – Uncle Charlie & His Dog Teddy (1970)
Hoyt Axton – Saturday’s Child (1963)
Earl Scruggs – Performing With His Family & Friends (1972)
Johnny Rivers – Changes (1967)
Pure Prairie League – s/t (1972)
Bill Fay – s/t (1970) Bill Fay – Time Of The Last Persecution (1971)***** Eric Burdon & The Animals – Winds Of Change (1967)***** Eric Burdon & The Animals – The Twain Shall Meet (1967)***** Rich Hopkins & Luminarios – El Otro Lado (2010)***** Rich Hopkins & Luminarios – Buried Treasures (2012)
Xixa – Road Beyond The Valley (acoustic) – (2022) Morphine – Good (1992) ***** Magnapop – Hot Boxing (1994)
New York Dolls – Lipstick Killers (1972) Stars of Heaven – Sacred Heart Hotel (1986)*****
Stars of Heaven – Speak Slowly (1988)
The Sewing Room – And Nico (1995) Steve Wynn – Melting In The Dark (1996)***** Conflict – The Ungovernable Force (1986)***** Dan Stuart - Can O’ Worms (1995)*****
Yard Trauma – Face To Face (1988)
Serge Gainsbourg – Anna (1967) Catherine Ribeiro & Alpes – Paix (1972)*****
Wishing Stones – The Old Road Out Of Town (1988)
Wishing Stones – Wildwood (1991)
Yard Trauma – Music (1983-86)
Nick Gravenites & John Cipollina – Monkey Medicine (1982)
John Cipollina / Raven – s/t (1980)
Clear Light – s/t (1967) Pete Astor – Time On Earth (2022)***** The Bothy Band – After Hours (1978)***** Black Uhuru – Sinsemilla (1980)*****
Emmet Spiceland – The First (1969) The Bothy Band – Old Hag You Have Killed Me (1976)*****
The Bothy Band – s/t (1975) Paddy Keenan – s/t (1975)***** Johnny Cash – Bitter Tears (1964)***** Brain Donor – Love Peace & Fuck (2001)***** Brain Donor – Drain’d Boner (2006)***** Jessie Mae Hemphill – She-Wolf (1981)***** UK Subs – Another Kind Of Blues (1979)***** Charles Caldwell – Remember Me (2002)***** Psycho-Daisies – 30mg Of Your Love (1990)*****
Alex G – Rocket (2017)
The Beatnik Filmstars – Laid Back And English (1993)
The Groove Farm – Alvin Is King (1984) Tex, Don and Charlie – Sad But True (1993)***** June Tabor – Aquaba (1988)***** Martin Carthy – Out Of The Cut (1982)*****
Brass Monkey – Complete (1983-86) Martin Carthy – Rites Of Passage (1988)***** Kristin Hersch – Hips & Makers (1994)***** Dark – Dark Round The Edges (1972)*****
Vanilla Fudge – Near The Beginning (1969)
Mother Earth – Make A Joyful Noise (1969)
Renee Reed – s/t (2021) Bob Dylan – Time Out Of Mind (1997)*****
Bob Dylan – Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid (1973) Stereolab – Dots & Loops (1997)*****
Bob Dylan – Love & Theft (2001) Various Artists – Acid Jam (1988)*****
Outskirts of Infinity – Scenes From The Dreams Of Angels (1989) Bob Dylan – Bringing It All Back Home (1965)***** Various Artists – Doin’ It For The Kids (1988)*****
Rick Roberts – Windmills (1972) Mudhoney – Superfuzz Bigmuff (1988)*****
Tim Buckley – Goodbye & Hello (1967)
Tim Hardin – Tim Hardin 1 (1966)
Tim Hardin – Tim Hardin 2 (1967)
Tim Hardin – Tim Hardin 3 (1968)
Clint Eastwood & General Saint – Stop That Train (1983)
Ranking Trevor – In Fine Style (1978) Howe Gelb & Lonna Kelly – Further Standards (2017)*****
Dave Heumann – Here In The Deep (2015) Nitty Gritty Dirt Band – Gold From Dirt (1967-75)*****
Ohio Players – Honey (1975)
Tom Verlaine – Songs & Other Things (2006) Walkabouts – Scavenger (1991)***** The Darkside – All That Noise (1990)***** Isaac Hayes – Hot Buttered Soul (1969)***** King Sunny Ade & African Beats – Synchro System (1983)*****
Richard & Linda Thompson – Shoot Out The Lights (1982) Marion Brown – Duets Vol I (1975)***** John Coltrane – Live @ Village Vanguard Again (1966)*****
Jimmy Webb – Letters (1972)
Brian Jonestown Massacre – Methodrone (1995)
Brian Jonestown Massacre – Spacegirl & Other Favorites (1995)
Ozark Mountain Daredevils – Men From Earth (1976)
Matthews Southern Comfort – s/t (1969)
Anastasia Screamed – Laughing Down The Limehouse (1990) Grant Lee Buffalo – Fuzzy (1993)*****
David Blue – Comin’ Back For More (1975)*
Eric Andersen – Blue River (1972) John McLaughlin, John Surman, Dave Holland – Where Fortune Smiles (1971)***** Mahavishnu Orchestra – The Inner Mounting Flame (1971)***** Spontaneous Music Ensemble – Questions & Answers (1966)*****
Satan’s Host – Pre-dating God (2015) Gene Clark & Carla Olson – So Rebellious A Lover (1987)***** Don Cherry – s/t (1977)*****
Chris McGregor Septet – Up To Earth (1969)
Herman’s Hermits – Blaze (1967)
Thelma Houston – Sunshower (1969)
Casey Kelly – s/t (1972) The Fall – Hex Enduction Hour (1982)***** Keef Hartley Band – Halfbreed (1969)*****
The Alan Bown – Outward Bound (1969)
Alan Bown – Listen (1970)
Paladin – s/t (1971) T2 – It’ll All Work Out In Boomland (1970)***** Sonny Criss – Portrait Of (1967)*****
Doug Sahm & His Band – s/t (1973)
Echo & The Bunnymen – Reverberation (1990)
Toad – s/t (1971)
Poco – From The Inside (1971) The Tragically Hip – Up To Here (1989)*****
Blitz – Second Empire Justice (1983)
King Blank – The Real Dirt (1988) Lou Reed – New York (1989)*****
JSD Band – Country Of The Blind (1971)
Dick Gaughan – Coppers And Brass (1977)
Homesick James – Home Sweet Homesick James (1980)
JB Hutto – Slidin’ The Blues (1982)
Paul Horn – Inside The Taj Mahal (1968)
Arthur Jones – Scorpio (1971)
Mother Hen – s/t (1971)
Flying Burrito Brothers – Flying Again (1975)
Eddie Harris – Silver Cycles (1966)
Jacques Coursil – Black Suite (1971)
Martyn Wyndham-Read – s/t (1971)
Doug Sahm & Band – s/t (1973)
Sir Douglas Quintet – Together After Five (1970)
Man & Friends – Christmas At The Patti (1972)
Doll By Doll – Gypsy Blood (1979) Ornette Coleman – Free Jazz (1961)*****
Planxty – Words & Music (1993)
Eddie Harris – High Voltage (1969)
Brandy Clark – Your Life Is A Record (2020)
Planxty – s/t (1973) Dexter Gordon – Nights At The Keystone (1978)*****
Bob Davenport – Postcards Home (1976) Nic Jones – s/t (1971)***** Nic Jones – Ballads & Songs (1970)***** Dick Gaughan – Kist O’Gold (1977)***** Nic Jones – The Noah’s Ark Trap (1977)***** Dick Gaughan – Handful Of Earth (1981)*****
Poco – Rose of Cimarron (1976)
Poco – Deliverin’ (1970) Mad River – Paradise Bar & Grill (1969)***** Mick Wills – Fern Hill (1988)***** Bevis Frond – Focus On Nature (2024)***** Elle McIlwaine – Honky Tonk Angel (1972)***** Hawkwind – Warrior At The Edge Of Time (1975)*****
Ant Trip Ceremony – s/t (1968)
Porcupine Tree – On The Sunday Of Life (1992)
Gnidrolog – Lady Lake (1972) King Crimson – Red (1974)***** Nic Jones – From The Devil To A Stranger (1978)*****
Flying Burrito Brothers – Cabin Fever (1985)
V/A – Wheels, A Tribute To Gram Parsons & Clarence White (1988)
Earl Scruggs Revue – Vol II (1976)
Earl Scruggs Revue – I Saw The Light (1971)
Earl Scruggs Revue – s/t (1973)
Earl Scruggs Revue – Rockin’ Cross The Country (1974) Earl Scruggs Revue – Anniversary Special (1975)*****
Earl Scruggs Revue – Live From Austin City Limits (1977)
Ron Carter – Pastels (1977) John Surman & Karin Krog – Cloud Line Blue (1979)*****
Dusty Stray – Estranged (2018)
Isaac Hayes – Black Moses (1971) Flying Burrito Brothers – Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (1969-70)***** Miles Davis – Kind Of Blue (1959)*****
Jeannie C Riley – Jeannie (1971)
Rita Coolidge – s/t (1971)
Anthrax (UK) - Serf’s Out (2021)
Poison Girls – Hex (1979)
John Hartford – s/t (1969) Steve Wynn – Plays Dylan (2011)***** Harmonia – Deluxe (1975)***** Harmonia – Music Von Harmonia (1974)*****
Lou Donaldson – Sweet Lou (1974) Dream Syndicate – The Universe Inside (2020)***** Dream Syndicate – How We Found Ourselves… (2018)***** Danny & Dusty – The Lost Weekend (1985)*****
Kate Village & Wayne Rogers – Quits (2001) Pink Floyd – Meddle (1971)*****
John Lee Hooker – The Cream (1977)
The Servants – It’s My Time (1989)
Jaques Coursil Unit – Way Ahead (1969)
Rich Hopkins – My Lucky Stars (2001)
People’s Victory Orchestra – The School (1972)
Jeronimo – s/t (1971)
Jane – Together (1972)
Jane – Fire, Water, Earth & Air (1976)
Sonny Boy Williamson – Down & Out Blues (1966)
Bonnie Koloc – After All This Time (1971)
The Bevis Frond – It Just Is (1993)
The Bevis Frond – Sprawl (1994)
Yoshiaki Miyanque – Song For Wes (1969) King Tubby & Lee Perry – At The Grass Roots Of Dub (1974)***** Charles Tyler – Sixty Minute Man (1979)***** John Surman, Pierre Favre, Karin Krog – Such Winters Of Memory (1983)***** Derek Bailey – Solo Guitar (1971)*****
Archie Shepp & Karin Krog – Hi-Fly (1976)
Flying Burrito Brothers – s/t (1971)
Gene Clark – Firebyrd (1985)
Chief Dan George & Fireweed – In Circle (1973)
Cannonball Adderley – Big Man (1975) Upsetters – Blackboard Jungle Dub (1981)*****
Howe Gelb – The Coincidentalist (2013)
Howe Gelb – Dust Bowl (2013) Howe Gelb – Future Standards (2014)***** Big Dipper – Heavens (1987) ***** Clay Alison – Live At The Electric Banana (1985)*****
Brighde Chaimbeull – The Reeling (2019) John Lee Hooker & Canned Heat – Hooker ‘n’ Heat (1971)*****
John Lee Hooker – Sings And Plays The Blues (1961)
John Lee Hooker – if You Miss ‘Im, I Got ‘Im/Lonesome Mood (1970) Koichi Matsukaze Trio – At The Room 427 (1976)*****
Shintaro Quintet – Evolution (1984) Lee Hazlewood – Woke Up Sunday Morning… (1966/7)***** Butterfield Blues Band – East-West (1966)*****
Trinity – Three Piece Suit (1977)
Anonymous – Inside The Shadow (1976) Marion Brown – Porto Novo (1967)***** Robert Johnson – 20 Blues Greats (1937/38)*****
Tim Hardin – Suite For Susan Moore & Damion (1969) Ali Farka Toure – Voyageur (1991-2004)*****
The Doors – The Soft Parade (1969) Lankum – Live In Dublin (2024)*****
Steve Almaas – Beat Rodeo (1982) Steamhammer – s/t (1969)*****
J B Hutto & The New Hawks – Sideslinger (1982)
Lightnin’ Hopkins – Freeform Patterns (1968)
The Flesh Eaters – Dragstrip Riot (1991) The Pontiac Brothers – Big Black River (1985)*****
The Grapes of Wrath – Now And Again (1989)
Space Opera – s/t (1972)
Crabby Appleton – s/t (1970)
Life Stinks – You’ll Never Make It (2015) Bert Jansch – It Don’t Bother Me (1965)*****
The Method Actors – This Is Still It (1981-3)
Tangerine Zoo – s/t (1968)
The Zoo – Presents Chocolate Moose (1968) Angry Samoans – Back From Samoa (1982)*****
Reet Maff’l – Unofficial Histories Vol 1 (2021)
Badgewearer – John Peel Session (Jan 1995) Bert Jansch – Jack Orion (1966)*****
Garland Jeffreys – Ghost Wdrunkr (1977) The Heads – Undersided (2002)*****
Nova Express – One (2002)
Paisiel – Unconscious Death Wishes (2020)
Tremeloes – Master (1970)
Planxty – The Well Below The Valley (1973)
Harsh Reality – Heaven And Hell (1969) Sonny Rollins – The Solo Album (1985)*****
Sonny Stitt – I Cover The Waterfront (1976)
Sonny Stitt & Hank Jones Trio – Good Life (1976)
Rita Coolidge – The Lady’s Not For Sale (1972)
Mike Nesmith – Loose Salute (1970) Mississippi Fred McDowell – I Don’t Play Rock‘n’Roll (1969)*****
Mimi & Richard Farina – Celebrations For A Grey Day (1965)
B.O.R.B. – Trailer Full Of Smoke Jo-Ann Kelly – s/t (1969)*****
Jo-Ann Kelly w John Fahey, Woody Mann etc – s/t (1972)
Jessi Colter – A Country Star Is Born (1970)
Jessi Colter – I’m Jessi Colter (1975)
Jessi Colter – Jessi (1976) Rich Hopkins – Devolver/Bailey In The Sky (1999)***** Mississippi Fred McDowell w Jo-Ann Kelly – Standing At The Burying Ground (1969)***** John Coltrane – Crescent (1964)*****
McKowski – Notes From The Boneyard (2023)
Steve Wynn – Take Your Flunky & Dangle (1998)
Dream Syndicate – Ultraviolet Battle Hymns & True Confessions (2022)
Brass Monkey – See How It Was (1986)
Bob Dylan -Under A Red Sky (1990)
Ry Cooder – Boomer’s Story (1972)
Furry Lewis – Back On My Feet Again (1961) John Lee Hooker – Never Get Out Of These Blues Alive (1972)***** John Lee Hooker – In Person (1974)*****
Homesick James & Snooky Pryor – s/t (1971)
11.59 – This Our Sacrifice Of Praise (1974)
JB Hutto & The Hawks – Masters of Modern Blues Vol 2 (1966)
Al Kooper & Steve Katz – s/t (1970)
Dransfield – Fiddler’s Dream (1976)
Jack Frost – s/t (1990) The Lovely Eggs – Eggsistentialism (2024)***** Howe Gelb – Gathered (2019)*****
Sylvie Simmons – Sylvie (2014) Bob Dylan – Oh Mercy (1989)*****
Bob Dylan – Shot of Love (1981) Skip James – Greatest Of The Delta Blues Singers (1964)*****
John Martyn – Grace & Danger (1980)
Sonny Boy Williamson – Don’t Send Me No Flowers (1965) John Fahey – Blind Joe Death (1959)*****
John Lee Hooker – Born In Mississippi, Raised In Texas (1973) Johnny Griffin & Art Taylor – Live In Copenhagen (1964)*****
Peter Green - The End Of The Game (1970)
Rich Hopkins & Luminarios – My Lucky Stars (2001)
Eric Von Schmidt – 2nd Right 3rd Row (1972)
John & Beverley Martin – Stormbringer (1970)
Sylvie Simmons – Blue On Blue (2020)
Howe Gelb – Gathered (2019)
Colorist Orchestra w Howe Gelb & Pieta Brown – Not On The Map (2021)
Michael Rother – Fernwarme (1982)
Michael Rother – Flammende Herzen (1977)
Michael Rother – Sterntaler (1978) Harmonia – Musik Von Harmonia (1974)***** John Coltrane – Live At The Village Vanguard (1961)***** John Coltrane – Live At The Village Vanguard Again (1966)***** McCoy Tyner – Atlantis (1975)***** Herbie Hancock - Maiden Voyage (1965)*****
Nik Turner & The Space Falcons – Interstellar Energy (2020) Cotton Mather – Kontiki (1997)*****
McCoy Tyner Trio – Reaching Forth (1963)
Roy Haynes Quartet – Out Of The Afternoon (1962)
Hawkwind – Into the Woods (2017)
Hawkwind – All Aboard The Skylark (2019)
Michael Rother – Katzenmusik (1979)
Loop – Array 1 (2015)
Dream Syndicate – Out Of The Grey (1986)
Gene Clark – Two Sides To Every Story (1977)
Sly & The Family Drone – Walk It Dry (2020)
Sly & The Family Drone – Gentle Persuaders (2018)
Damo Suzuki – Arkaoda (2020)
John Coltrane w Eric Dolphy – Nights At The Village Gate (1961)
Pete La Roca – Basra (1965)
Paul Horn & Nexus (1975)
Hawkwind – Somnia (2021)
Smote – Genog (2023)
Telescopes – Taste (1989)
Hawkwind – Into The Woods (2017)
Oracles – Bedroom Eyes (2016) Husker Du – Warehouse Songs & Stories (1987)*****
Nik Turner – Space Gypsy (2013) Soft Machine – Drop (1971)*****
Hawkwind – We Are Looking In On You (2022) Richard Youngs – Sapphie (1997)***** Anne Briggs – The Time Has Come (1971)*****
Eddie Ray Porter – When The Morning Falls (1986)
The Great Outdoors – Making Allowances For The Jargon (1986)
Seam – Headsparks (1992)
Joe Ely -s/t (1977)
Joe Ely – From Lubbock To Laredo (2002) PF Sloan – Raised On Records (1972)*****
Michael Martin Murphey – Swans Against The Sun (1975)
Guy Clark – Old No. 1 (1975)
Oddsocks – Men Of The Moment (1975) John Coltrane – Live In Paris (1965)*****
Nanci Griffith – Lone Star State Of Mind (1987) Nanci Griffith – Last Of The True Believers (1986)***** Paul Brady – Welcome Here Kind Stranger (1978)***** The Bothy Band – Afterhours (1978)*****
Angel Bat Dawid & The Brotherhood – Live (2020)
The Fall – Live 1977 (1977)
Oliver Nelson Sextet – Screaming The Blues (1961)
Oliver Nelson w Eric Dolphy – Straight Ahead (1961) Dexy’s Midnight Runners – Searching For The Young Soul Rebels (1980)***** Dexy’s Midnight Runners – Too Rye Aye (1982)*****
Dexy’s Midnight Runners – Don’t Stand Me Down (1985)
Chris Cutler, Fred Frith, Thomas Dimuzio – Golden State (2010)
Miles Davis – On The Corner (1972)
The Deviants – Disposable (1968) Matthew Stevens – Pittsburgh (2021)*****
Kevin Rowland – The Wanderer (1988)
Kevin Rowland – My Beauty (1999)
Steve Earle – Jerry Jeff (2022)
Ian McCulloch – Slideling (2003) Cocteau Twins – Head Over Heels (1983)***** Gene Parsons – Kindling (1973)*****
Gene Parsons – Melodies (1979)
Hawkwind – Spacehawks (2013)
Vic Conrad & The 1st 3rd – s/t (2000)
Nik Turner – The Final Frontier (2019)
Nik Turner – Life In Space (2017)
Terry Callier – What Colour Is Love? (1973)
Skip Battin – Topanga Skyline (1973) Flying Burrito Brothers – Gilded Palace Of Sin (1969)*****
Flying Burrito Brothers – Close Up In Washington (1969)
Dean Wareham vs Cheval Sombre – s/t (2018)
Chris Hillman – Bidin’ My Time (2017) Neil Young – Hitchhiker (1976)*****
Britta Phillips – Luck Or Magic (2016) Gwenifer Raymond – You Never Were Much Of A Dancer (2018)****
Luna – A Sentimental Education (2017)
Epic Soundtracks – Wild Smile (2012)
Epic Soundtracks – Rise Above (1992)
Epic Soundtracks – Good Things (1996)
Godspeed You Black Emperor – Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! (2012)
Whitney K – Hard To Be A God (2022) The Smiths – s/t (1984)*****
The Hollowmen – Sinister Flower Gift (1986) Black Country New Road – For The First Time (2021)***** Black Country New Road – Ants From Up There (2022)***** Black Country New Road – Live At Bush Hall (2023) *****
Tom T Hall & Earl Scruggs – The Storyteller & The Banjo Man (1982)
The Gun Club – A Love Supreme (1982)
Nik Turner – Space Ritual Live (1994)
Sammy Johns – s/t (1973)
Circle – General (2004)
Divine Horsemen – Snake Handler (1987)
Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Toast (2002)
Nik Turner – Past Or Future (1996)
Trees Speak – Post-Human (2021)
Paul B Cutler -Les Fleurs (2023)
Epic Soundtracks – Debris (1995) Mazzy Star – Among My Swan (1996)*****
Warser Gate – All Of My Hates, All Of My Hang-Ups (1996) Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited (1965)***** Cymande – s/t (1972)*****
A Full Cosmic Sound – AFCS (2012-19) Nik Turner – I Do What I Like (2021)*****
Nik Turner – Space Fusion Odyssey (2015)
Geese – Projector (2021)
Geese – 3D Country (2023) Luna – Bewitched (1993) ***** Luna – Penthouse (1995) *****
Emmylou Harris - Angel Band (1987)
Nik Turner – The Final Frontier (2019) Acetone – 1992-2001 (1992-2001)***** Galactic Supermarket – s/t (1974)*****
Vern Gosdin – If You’re Gonna Do Me Wrong (Do It Right) (1982)
Michael Nesmith – Live At The Palais (1978) David Wertman & Sun Ensemble – Earthly Delights (1978)*****
Mystery Plane – Still Life (1981)
Big Thief – Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You (2022)
The Nasties – s/t (2006) Oliver – Standing Stone (1974)*****
Nik Turner – Prophets Of Time (2023)*
Caroline – s/t (2022) Incredible String Band – Relics (1966-71)*****
Incredible String Band – Changing Horses (1969)
Incredible String Band – Hard Rope & Silken Twine (1974)
The Dandelion Adventure – Puppy Shrine (1989)
Inca Babies – Plutonium (1983-87)
JB Hutto & The New Hawks – Keeper Of The Flame (1979)
Ambitious Lovers – Greed (1988)
Moonshake - Eva Luna (1992) Incredible String Band – The 5000 Spirits (1967)*****
The Fates – Furia (1985)
Acid Mothers’ Temple – Paralyzed Genius Brain (2023)
Jane Weaver – Flock (2021) Mammatus – Expanding Majesty (2023)***** Arcana – The Last Wave (1996)***** Sleep – Dopesmoker (2003)*****
Chris Cacavas – Love’s Been Re-discontinued (2013) Prolapse – Pointless Walks To Distant Places (1994)*****
John Martyn – The Church With One Bell (1998)
Brown Spirits – Solitary Transmissions (2023)
Wolves In The Throne Room – Crypt of Ancestral Knowledge (2023)
Tony Joe White – Rain Crow (2016)
King Curtis – Live At Filmore West (1971)
Joe Cocker – With A Little Help From My Friends (1969) Stereolab – Super 45 (1991)***** Stereolab – Switched On (1992)***** Stereolab – Peng (1992)*****
Sterling Roswell – The Psychedelic Ubik (2004)
Sterling Roswell – The Call Of The Cosmos (2014)
Brigid Mae Power – Dreams From The Deep Well (2023)
Brigid Mae Power – Burning Your Light (2021)
The OhSees – Live At Levitation 2012 (2023)
The Telescopes – Altered Perceptions (1989-92)
The Telescopes – Hungry Audio Tapes (2006)
Dave Kusworth – The Bounty Hunters (1986)
Jacobites – s/t (1984) Jacobites – Robspierre’s Velvet Basement (1985)*****
Jacobites – God Save Us Poor Sinners (1998)
Jacobites – Howling Good Times (1993)
Jacobites – Old Scarlett (1995) Frankie Armstrong – I Heard A Woman Singing (1984)*****
The OhSees – Carrion Crawler / The Dream (2011)
John Coltrane – The Last Trane (1958)
John Coltrane – Bahia (1958)
Tangerine Dream – Atem (1973)
The OhSees – The Hounds of Foggy Notion (2008)
Landless – Bleaching Bones (2018) Solar Temple – The Great Star Above Provides (2023)***** David Grubbs – Prismrose (2016)*****
Suns of The Tundra – Bones of Brave Ships (2014) McCoy Tyner – The Real McCoy (1967)***** Jasmine Minks – Revenge Of The (1984-2004)***** Carlton Melton – Out To Sea (2014)*****
Carlton Melton – Aground (2016)
Carlton Melton – Hidden Lights (2017)
Hawkwind – Space Bandits (1990)
Bobbie Gentry – Windows Of The World (1969)
The Baseball Project – Volume I (2008)
The Baseball Project – Volume II (2011)
Neil Young – Somewhere Under The Rainbow (1973) Van Morrison – Saint Dominic’s Preview (1972)***** Van Morrison – Astral Weeks (1968)***** PW Long’s Reelfoot – We Didn’t See You On Sunday (1997)*****
Sonic Youth – Anagrama (1997)
TC Lethbridge – Moon Equipped (1994) Rick Rizzo & Tara Key – Dark Edson Tiger (2000)*****
Essential Logic – Wake Up (1979) Au Pairs – Playing With A Different Sex (1981)*****
La Dusseldorf – s/t (1976)
The Badgeman – Ritual Landscape (1992)
Bhajan Bhoy – Shanti Shanti Shanti (2022) The Loft – Once Round The Fair (1982-5)*****
The Loft – Ghost Trains & Country Lanes (1984 – 2015)
The Weather Prophets – Diesel River (1986)
The Weather Prophets – Mayflower (1987)
The Weather Prophets – Judges, Juries, Horsemen (1988)
The Weather Prophets – Temperance Hotel (1989)
The Weather Prophets – Blue Skies & Free Rides (1986-9)
The Caretaker Race – Hangover Square (1990)
The Wishing Stones – Wildwood (1991)
Pete Astor – Injury Time (1989-93)
Hawklords – Six (2017)
Hawklords – Space (2023)
Au Pairs – Sense & Sensuality (1982)
Sonic Youth – Washing Machine (1995)
Hawkwind – Church Of Hawkwind (1982)
Aidan Connell – Griot (2018)
Ulthar – Cosmovore (2018)
The Flamin’ Groovies – ’70 (1970)
Mutilation Rites – Empyrean (2012)
PW Long – God Bless The Drunkard’s Dog (2006)
James Elkington & Nathan Salsburg – Ambsace (2015)
Steve Earle – JT (2021)
Steve Earle – Ghosts of West Virginia (2020)
The Byrds – Byrdmaniax (1971)
Thee OhSees – Help (2009)
Space Art – s/t (1977)
The Charlatans – Playing In The Hall (1997)
Hawkwind – Blood Of The Earth (2010) Miles Davis – At Filmore : Live At The Fillmore East (1970)*****
Hawkwind – Spacehawks (2013)
Hawkwind – The Machine Stopes (2016)
Milkshakes – They Came, They Saw, They Conquered (1983)
Lil’ Lost Lou – s/t (2016)
Sandy Denny – Gold Dust (1977)
Laetitia Sadier – The Trip (2010)
McKenna Mendelson Mainline – Stink (1969)
The Inn – Psychedelic Schedule (1987) Tobin Sprout – Carnival Boy (1996)*****
Tommy Keene – Based On Happy Times (1989)
The OhSees – Drop (2014) Howe Gelb – The Coincidentalist (2014)*****</strong
Monde UFO – s/t (2021)
Glen Campbell – Adios (2017)
Glen Campbell – Ghost On The Canvas (2011)
Gunslingers – Supreme Asphalt Dossier (2023)
1968 – Salvation If You Need It (2021) John Coltrane – Cosmic Music (1966)*****
Holy Family – Go Zero (2023)
The Cosmic Dead – Psyche Is Dead (2017)
Tarotplane – The Ektachrome Dream (2022)
Green Pajamas – Summer Of Lust (1984)
Neil Halstead – Palindrome Hunches (2012)
Sodomized Cadaver – Morbid Tales Of Mutilation (2020)
Endless Boogie – Vibe Killer (2017)
Byrds – s/t (1973)
McGuinn, Clark & Hillman – s/t (1979)*
McGuinn & Hillman – s/t (1980)*
Roger McGuinn & Chris Hillman – City (1980)* T2 – It’ll All Work Out In Boomland (1970)***** Gene Clark – Early LA Sessions (1967)*****
Gene Clark & Carla Olson – So Rebellious A Lover (1987)
Marshall Chapman – Me I’m Feeling Fine (1977) Bob Dylan – Self Portrait (1970)*****
Serpent Venom – Carnal Altar (2011) Martin Carthy – Right Of Passage (1988)*****
The Savage Rose – In The Plain (1968)
Shakin’ Street – s/t (1980)
Sonic Youth – Battery Park, NYC (2008)
Lee Ranaldo – Electric Trim (2007)
The Records – Shades In Bed (1979)
Swervedriver – Mezcal Head (1993)
Glitterburst – s/t (2022)
Echo & The Bunnymen – What Are You Going To Do With Your Life? (1999)
Larry Jon Wilson – New Beginnings (1975)
Galileo 7 – There Is Only Now (2019)
Jane Weaver – The Silver Globe (2014)
Redbone – s/t (1970)
Andrew Wasylyk – Hearing The Water Before Seeing The Falls (2022)
Meg Baird – Don’t Weigh Down The Light (2015)
Sham 69 – The Adventures Of The Hersham Boys (1979
Meg Baird – Seasons Of The Earth (2011)
John Lee Hooker – The Healer (1989) Vic Chesnutt – Is The Actor Happy? (1995)***** Here The Captain Speaking, The Captain Is Dead – Flux Capacitor (2021)***** Here The Captain Speaking, The Captain Is Dead – s/t (2018)
Comacozer – Binbeal (2021)
Cloudland Canyon – Lie In Light (2008)
Cobra Family Picnic – Magic Anomaly (2017) Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan – Interim Report, March 1979 (2021)***** Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan – Districts, Roads, Open Space (2021)*****
Dexter Gordon – Fried Bananas (1972) Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan – People And Industry (2022)*****
Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan – The Nation’s Most Central Location (2023)
Marianne Dissard – L’entredeux (2008)
Triona – When I Was A Fair Maid (1975)
Beasts of Bourbon – Little Animals (2007)
Tex Perkins & The Fat Rubber Band – Other World (2023)
Dark – Catalogue Raisonne XIII (1995)
Gene Clark – Under The Silvery Moon (1985) Kraftwerk – Autobahn (1974)*****
Calexico – Edge Of The Sun (2015)
Calexico – The Thread That Keeps Us (2018)
18 Wheeler – Twin Action (1994)
18 Wheeler – Formanka (1995) Wipers – The Circle (1988)*****
High Dependency Unit – Higher (2005)
Telstar Ponies – In The Space Of A Few Minutes (1995) John Lee Hooker – Live At Sugar Hill, Vol 2 (1965)*****
Breaking Circus – The Very Long Fuse (1985)
Nanci Griffith – Other Voices, Other Rooms (1993)
Wicked Lady – Psychotic Overkill (1972)
Tim Buckley - Greetings From LA (1973)
The Byrds - Sanctuary IV (1968)
Lee Perry - The Black Emperor Vol 1 Vocals (1973-79)
Red Chair Fadeaway - Curiouser And Curiouser (1990)
Mark Mulcahy - Smilesunset (2001)
Saint James Society - Babylon Rising (2013) Johnny Clarke - Dread A Dub (1975?)*****
V/A - Mandarinen Traume (1981-89) Hopital de la Conception - The Electric Rocking Chair (2016)***** Acid Mothers’ Temple & The Cosmic Inferno - Pink Lady Lemonade (2008)*****
Simple Minds - New Gold Dream (81 82 83 84) (1982) Simple Minds - Sparkle In The Rain (1984)*****
Charles Tolliver & His All Stars - s/t (1968)
Chris Cacavas & Edward Abbiati - Me & The Devil (2013) Canned Heat - s/t (1967)***** Eleventh Dream Day - Eighth (1997)****
Weeed - Feng Shui Capital Of The World (2014) John Lee Hooker - Simply The Truth (1969)*****
John Lee Hooker - Get Back In The USA (1969) Guided By Voices - Benefit For The Winos (1995)*****
Guiding Star Orchestra - Natural Heights (2023)
Baris Manco - 2023 (1975)
Niela Miller - Songs Of Learning (1962)
Om - s/t (1972) Arcadium - Breathe A While (1969)*****
Dave Kusworth Group - The Brink (2009)
The Lilac Time - Return To Us (2019)
Lee Perry & The Upsetters - Build The Ark (1973-79)
Brainiac 5 - Memory Or Dream (2023) Lee Perry - Disco Devil Volume 5 (1977-79) ***** Lee Perry - Disco Devil Volume 2 (1977-78) ***** Lee Perry - Disco Devil Volume 3 (1977-79) ***** Lee Perry - Disco Devil Volume 4 (1977-79) *****
Pisces - A Lovely Sight (1969)
John Lee Hooker - Black Night Is Falling (1977) Galaxie 500 - Today (1988)***** The Fall - Shift-Work (1991)***** The Fall - Code Selfish (1992)*****
Love Circus - s/t (1984)
Sun Dial - Messages From The Mothership (2023)
Sun Dial - Return Journey (1990)
Makushin - Move Into The Luminous (2023) Lee Perry - Disco Devil Volume 1 (1977-79) ***** Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & Trinity - Starpower (1970)*****
The Advisory Circle - From Out Here (2014)
The Fall - Peel Session 11/5/87 (1987) Tex Perkins – Dark Horses (2000)***** Spencer P Jones – Fait Accompli (2003)*****
Black Uhuru – Chill Out (1982)
Mol – Diorama (2016)
The Rose Garden – s/t (1968)
The Heptones – Night Food (1976)
Orpheo McCord – Recovery Inhale (2018)
Ronnie Scott & The Band – Live At Ronnie’s (1968)
Orpheo McCord – Deep Heaven (2023)
The Great Electric – Harkonen (2020)
Superette – Tiger (1996) Lucinda Williams – This Sweet Old World (2017)**** Townes Van Zandt – In The Beginning (1966)****
Tony Joe White – Smoke From The Chimney (2021)
Melodien – Theurgy (2015) Linval Thompson – Ride On Dreadlocks (1975-77)*****
Hawkwind – Sonic Attack (1981)
Hawkwind – Choose Your Masques (1982)
Hawkwind – Palace Springs (1979)
V/A – The Devil’s Music (1976)***** The Human Instinct – Burning Up Years (1970)***** Robert Pete Williams – With Big Joe Williams (1972)*****
Green On Red – This Time Around (1989)
Loudon Wainwright III – s/t (1970)
Loudon Wainwright III – Album II (1971)
Loudon Wainwright III – Album III (1972)
Loudon Wainwright III – Attempted Moustache (1973) Charles Gayle – Touchin’ On Trane (1991)*****
The OhSees – Quadraspazzed (2010)
Kim Salmon – Earnest (2002)
The Outsiders – Songbook (1967)
Irene Papas – Odes (1980)
Melodien – Monad (2021)
Neutrons – Black Hole Star (1974)
Country – s/t (1971)
Vieux Farka Toure & Khruangbin – Ali (2022)
Khruangbin – The Infamous Bill (2014)
Khruangbin – History Of Flight (2015)
Jesse Harper – Guitar Absolution In The Shade Of A Midnight Sun (1968)
Glen Campbell – Live From The Troubadour (2008)
Joe Ely – s/t (1977)
Joe Ely – Honky Tonk Masquerade (1978)
Joe Ely – Down On The Drag (1979)
Eleventh Dream Day – s/t (1987) John Coltrane – Live In Paris (1965)*****
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets – Night Gnomes (2022) Porcupine Tree – Voyage 34 (1992)*****
GR – Propel Tension On Polyester Base (2016)
Pau Riba & Om – Dioptria (1969)
Pau Riba – Dioptria 2 (1970)
Rotary Connection – Peace (1973)
Barnstormer 1649 – Restoration Tragedy (2018) The Fall – Reformation Post-TLC (2007)*****
Dick Farina & Eric Von Schmidt – s/t (1963) Bag-O-Wire – s/t (1975)*****
Ancient Infinity Orchestra – River Of Light (2023)
Modern Cosmology – Summer Long (2017)
V/A – 1968 Memphis Country Blues Festival (1968)
Glen Campbell – Royal Festival Hall (1977) Stephen Stills – s/t (1970) *****
Stephen Stills – Stephen Stills 2 (1971)
Stephen Stills/Manassas – Down The Road (1973) Jan Garbaerk & Hilliard Ensemble – Officium (1994)***** Can - Future Days (1973) ***** Karin Krog – Don’t Just Sing (1963-99)***** Fred Frith, GF Fitzgerald, Hans Reichel & Derek Bailey – Guitar Solos 2 (1976)*****
HISTORIC SITES/WALKS
Rollright Stones, Oxfordshire
Hoar Stone, Enstone, Oxfordshire
Watts Chapel, Compton Surrey
St Alban’s Cathedral
St Philip’s Cathedral, B’ham
St Martin-in-the-Bull-Ring, B’ham
Kardomah Café site, B’ham
Grave of Dick Turpin, York
Canterbury Cathedral
Chelmsford Cathedral
Symond’s Yat Hill Fort, Forest of Dean
Symond’s Yat Forest Of Dean Walk
Pen-y-Beacon Stone Circle, Hay-On-Wye
Hay Bluff Summit walk, Hay-On-Wye
Baskerville Hotel, Hay-On-Wye
The Brown Bear, Sheffield * (very poor pub)
Chastleton House, Oxfordshire *****
Shelagh Na Gig, St Stephen’s, Etton, N’hamptonshire
Merry Maidens Circle, Lamorna, Cornwall
Lower Boscawell Fogou, Cornwall
Lower Boscawell Well, Cornwall
Higher Boscawell Well, Cornwall
Pendeen Manor Farm, William Borlase’s birthplace
Land’s End, Cornwall
Drift Stones, Cornwall
St Michael’s Mount, Cornwall
Men-an-Tol, Cornwall
Men Scryfa, Cornwall
Boskednan Stone Circle, Cornwall
Ding Dong Mine, Cornwall
Lanyon Quoit, Cornwall
Zennor church w mermaid chair and Wm Borlase grave
Zennor quoit, Cornwall
Carn Euny village, Cornwall
Boscawen-Un Stone Circle, Cornwall
Treverven Standing Stone, Cornwall
Gun Rith Standing Stone, Cornwall
Tregiffian Barrow, Cornwall
Lamorna Cove, Cornwall
Lyveden New Bield, Northamptonshire
Magdalene College Tower, Oxford
Holborn Head Hill Fort, Scrabster
Stones of Stenness,
Ring of Brodgar, Orkney
Kitchener Monument, Orkney
Broch of Birsay, Orkney
Unstan tomb, Orkney
The Italian Chapel, Orkney
St Magnus’ Cathedral, Kirkwall, Orkney
Grain Earth House, Kirkwall, Orkney
Old Man Of Hoy, Hoy
Dwarfie Staine, Hoy
Skara Brae, Orkney
Cuween Chambered Cairn, Orkney
Broch of Gurness, Orkney
Yesnaby gun emplacements, Orkney
Wideford Cairn tomb, Orkney
Ness Battery, Orkney
Birsay Earl’s Palace, Orkney
St Magnus’ Church Birsay, Orkney
Orkney Brewery
Stone O’Quoybune, Orkney
Taversoe Tuick burial Chamber, Rousay
Blackhammer burial chamber, Rousay
The Long Stone, Rousay
Knowe of Yarso, Rousay
Knowe of Lairo, Rousay
Midhowe burial chamber, Rowsay
Midhowe Broch, Rowsay
HMS Tern, Orkney
Maes Howe, Orkney
The Fish Stone, Crickhowell, Wales
Abergavenny Castle, Wales
Waun Fach, Black Mountains
Munchaster Castle, The Lakes
Mardon Down Stone Circle & cairns, Dartmoor
The Norwegian Church, Cardiff
Cleve Hill Hillfort, Gloucestershire
Belas Knap Long Barrow, Gloucestershire
Eglise St Mary, Paris
Kelvedon Hatch Nuclear Bunker
Waltham Abbey, Epping Forest
Loughton Camp, Epping Forest
South, Southend On Sea Honest Jon’s, Portobello, London*****
Waggy’s, Machynlleth Rob’s, Nottingham*****
Resolution, Bath Flashback, Crouch End, Islington, Shoreditch, London***** Alan’s, Finchley, London *****
Merlin Records, Winchmore Hill, London Rise Above, Archway, London *****
Record & Tape Exchange, Notting Hill, London Reckless, Soho, London*****
Sister Ray, Soho, London
Kingsland Records, Dalston, London
Kingsland Ites Records, Dalston, London
Recycle Vinyl, Dalston, London Tome, Hackney, London***** Atlantis, Hackney, London***** World of Echo, Brick Lane, London*****
Groove, Kirkwall, Orkney
The Record Detective, Palmer’s Green, London
Record & Tape Exchange, Notting Hill, Greenwich, London
Casbah, Greenwich, London
Music One Vinyl, Abergavenny
Harbour, Emsworth
Dress Code, Southsea, Portsmouth
Boiler Room Records, Poole Red Rooster, Exeter ***** Hussar, Exeter *****
Kelly’s, Cardiff
The Record Shop, Cardiff Diggers’, Cardiff ***** Cardiff Record Exchange, Cardiff *****
Spillers, Cardiff
Mint & Sealed, Newport Kriminal, Newport ***** (lovely place to hang out)
Saxsoul, Darlington
Missing, Glasgow Avalanche Waverley, Edinburgh *****
Le Freak Records, Dundee
Ad-Astra Records, Leominster Urban Village Vintage, Henley-in-Arden ***** Expressions of Sound, Shipston-On-Stour ***** Truck, Witney *****
Truck, Oxford Pop Classics, Reading ***** (delightful couple) The Sound Machine, Reading ***** Strummer Room, Banbury *****
Spun Out, Northampton Vinyl Revelations, Luton ***** (free coffee!!)
Collectors’ Records, Guildford
Ben’s Collectors’ Records, Guildford Vinyl Matters, Petersfield *****
Planet of Sounds, Halsemere
Record Corner, Godalming
Catalyst, Godalming
Tangled Parrot, Swansea Oxfam, Swansea *****
Prime Cuts, Bristol Plastic Wax, Bristol ***** Grey ‘n’ Pink, Chester ***** Lizard Inc, Warrington ***** (enthusiastic owner) Daisy Chain, Elsecar Heritage Centre, Barnsley *****
St John’s Market Upstairs, Scunthorpe Vinyl Jewels, Scunthorpe (hidden jewels)***** Riverside Records, Rotherham ***** (two chilled dudes)
Revolution, Rotherham (fun creche for elderly skins)
Vinyl Underground, Barnsley ***** Vinyltap, Huddersfield *****
Evil Eye, Harrogate P&C Music, Harrogate *****
Pear, Knaresborough
Space, Harrogate Beatdown, Newcastle ***** RPM, Newcastle ***** 586 Records, Gateshead *****
Vinyl Guru, Newcastle
Kemptown Flea Market, Brighton
Vinyl Curtain, Brighton
Wax Factor, Brighton
Snooper’s Paradise, Brighton Across The Tracks, Brighton ***** (Fall fan man)
Resident, Brighton Pressing Matters, Hastings ***** (brainy staff)
Printed Matter, Hastings Wow & Flutter, Hastings ***** (lovely couple)
Bookbuster, Hastings Platform 2, Bexhill-on-Sea ***** Minus Zero, Bexhill-on-Sea *****
Uptight Records, Hove
Department, Hove
Mrs Canuticacq’s Emporium, Hove (warning - no receipts available!) Beat The Clock, Hove ***** (v friendly happy shop - a delight)
Upper Gardner St Flea Market stalls, Brighton Arcade, Monmouth ***** Sound, Stroud ***** Klang Tone, Stroud *****
Vinyl Vault, Cheltenham
Relevant records, Cambridge Juno mail order, Camden ***** Little Record Shop, Hornsey, London ***** Ballades Sonores, Paris ***** Souffle Continu, Paris *****
Music Avenue, Paris
Crazy Beat Records, Upminster (No stock really on display)
Honest Jon’s, King’s Cross, London
ART
Watts Chapel, Compton Surrey Mary Watts murals ***** Southampton Art Gallery – WOW! ***** Frank Auerbach – JMY1; Michael Ayrton – Minotaur Waking; Wilhemena Barnes-Graham – Glacier Vortex; Ford Maddoz Brown – Cordelia’s Portion; Edward Burne-Jones – The Call of Perseus; Leslie Cole – Naval Base; Degas – Woman Putting On Stockings; Peter Doig – Girl On Skis; Barry Flanaggan – 3 different hares; Lucien Freud -Bananas; Mark Gerter – Rabbi & grandchild; Harold Gilman – Sylvia Grosse; Anthony Gormley – The Diver; Ducan Grant – Mrs Hammersely, Angelica Playing The Violin; Jean Louis Forain – The Fisherman; Henri Gaudier-Brzeska – Alfred Wolmark; Maggie Hambling – Katherine Parkinson; Nina Hamnett – Horace Brodzky; Roger Hilton – Figure & Bird; Kurt Jackson - Jay Screech; John Lavery – The Countess of Rocksavage; Christopher Le Brun – Study For Gotterdamerung; LS Lowry – Canal Bridge; Lisa Milroy – Togetherness; John Minton – Rotherhithe From Wapping; Alfred Munnings – After The Race; Christopher Nevinson – Loading Timber; Allegretto Nuzi – Coronation of The Virgin; Chris Ofilli – Two Doo Voodoo; Victor Passmore – Rectangular Motif; Lucien Pissarro – Grey Weather, Louveciennes; Pierre Auguste Renoir – Wihelm Muhlfield; Rodin; Claude Rogers – Miss Lynn; John Singer Sergeant – Major E C Harrison; Cesare de Sesto – St Jerome; George Shaw – Scenes From The Passion; Nahem Shoa – Desmond Haughton; Walter Sickert – Juvenile Lead; Stanley Spencer – The Resurrection; Phillip Wilson Steer – Digging For Bait; Graham Sutherland – Red Landscape; James Tissot – The Captain’s Daughter; JMW Turner – Fishermen Upon A Lee Shore; John Keith Vaughan – The Singer; Alison Watt – Rosecutter; Gillian Wearing - Peckham; Alfred Wolmark – Self-Portrait; Joseph Wright – Landscape.
Museum Of The Moon, Luke Jerram, St Alban’s Cathedral
BIRMINGHAM PUBLIC SCULPTURE: Edward Burne-Jones windows, St Philip’s; Edward Burne-Jones window, St Martin In The Bull Ring; Lord Nelson - Richard Westmacott; Bolton, Watt & Murdoch - William Bloye; Iron Man - Anthony Gormley; The River - Dhruva Mistry; Art deco murals, fomer Kardomah Café site.
Barber Institute, Birmingham. Scent and The Art Of The Pre-Raphaelites. Anna Alma-Tadema; Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale – The Lover’s World; John Frederick Lewis – Lilium Auratum; John Everett Millais – The Blind Girl; Evelyn De Morgan – Medea, The Love Potion; Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Proserpine; Frederick Sandys – Medea; Simeon Soloman – A Saint Of The Eastern Church; Roddam Spencer Stanhope - Thoughts of the Past; John William Waterhouse – Psyche Opening the Golden Box, Pandora, The Magic Circle. *****
Barber Institute, B’ham Permanent Collection; Frank Auerbach – Primrose Hill; George Bellows – Nude Ms Bentham; Canaletto – The Logetta; Gustave Courbet – The Sea Arch At Etretat; Edgar Degas – Jockeys Before The Race *****;Maurice Denis – Monsieur Huc; Thomas Gainsbourgh – The Harvest Wagon; Paul Gaugin – Bathers in Tahiti; Master of the Griselda Legend – Alexander The Great; Gwen John – Mere Poussepin; Fernand Leger – Composition With Fruit; Antonio Mancini – The Peacock Feather; Edouard Manet – Carolus Duran; James Abbott McNeill – Symphony In White III; Camille Pissarro – The Pond At Montfoucaut; Mattia Pretti – The Martyrdom Of St Peter; Pierre Auguste Renoir – A Young Woman Seated; Joshua Reynolds – Maria Marow Gideon; Sebastiano Ricci – An Allegorical Tomb; Richard Robinson – Joshua Reynolds; Giovani De La Robbia – Virgin & Child; Dante Gabriel Rossetti – The Blue Bower; Mattias Storm – Isaac Blessing Jacob; Vincent Van Goch – A Peasant Woman Digging; Edouard Vuillard – Mdm Vuillard Arranging Her Hair.
Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery. William Bloye – Golden Eagle sign; Cold War Steve – Benny’s Babbies; Gluck - Village Church. A small selection of works was on display but the city’s world-class collection has now been shut away for half a decade or more. While Tufton St’s Taxpayers Alliance encourage the city to SELL OFF THE ART, it is a scandal, and a tragedy. Here’s just some of the art I couldn’t see, again, and neither can you. A generation of Brummie schoolkids has grown up without this resource as the city wastes its treasures.Here follows a small selection of Birmingham Art Gallery’s Unseeable artFrancis Bacon - Figures In Landscape; Lamorna Birch - A Cornish Stream; David Bomberg - Bab-es-siq, Carnival, Hezekiah’s Pool, Self Portrait; Frank Brangwyn - Enrico Canziani, The Bridge; Georges Braque - Pichet; John Bratby - Courtyard w Washing; Emmy Bridgwater - Night Work Is About To Commence; Ford Maddox Brown - Wycliffe Trial, Work, Boy, Pretty Baa-Lanbs, Tristram, Last Of England; Kate Elizabeth Bunce - Musica; Edward Burne-Jones - King & Other Mourners, Peleas, Pygmailion x 4, Psyche x7, Wheel of Fortune, Zephyrus, Annunciation, The Wizard, Study of Oblivion, Troy Triptych; Edward Calvert - Pan, Ulysses, Artemis; Patrick Caulfied - Red & White; Degas - Beggar Woman; Jacob Epstein - Rock Drill, Euphemia Lamb, Tagore, Einstein; Fuseli - Hotspur etc; Spencer Gore; Duncan Grant - Boats @ Twickenham, Dancers, On The Table; Terry Frost - Black & Lemon, Black & Dust Pink; Barbara Hepworth - Sun & Moon, Cosdon Head, Prelude 1; Maggie Hambling - Max & Me; Richard Hamilton - Whitley Bay, Patrick Heron - Portheor, Standing Figure; Howard Hodgkin - Venice Sunset, Gardening, Room W Chair; William Holman-Hunt - Lantern Maker, Finding Of Saviour, Valentine; Arthur Hughes - Amy, Young Poet, Annunciation, Nativity, Lost Child; Augustus John - Canadian Soldier; RB Kitaj - Desk Murder; Harold Knight - Barry Jackson; Laura Knight - Autumn Sunlight, Les Sylphides; Peter Lanyon - Offshore; John Frederick Lewis; John Linnell - Sheep Drive; LS Lowry - An Industrial Town; Bruce McLean - Spoon 2; John Millais - 3 Sword Hilts, Widow’s Mite, Waiting, Second Sermon, Enemy, Mrs Joseph Chamberlain; Henry Moore - Warrior W Shield; Desmond Morris - Jumping; Alfred Munnings - Barry Jackson, In Cornwall, Epsom Downs; Ben Nicholson - 1950, 1944/5 Scarf; William Nicholson - Pink Still Life; Victor Passmore - Straw Hat, Spiral Motif; John Piper - Ruined Cottage; Renoir - Mdm Renoir; George Richmond; Bridget Riley - Cherry Autumn; William Blake Richmond; Dante Rosetti - Beata Beatrix, Proserpine; Emma Sandys - Lady Holding Rose; Frederick Sandys - Autumn, Medea, Morgan Le Fay; Walter Sickert - Rue Notre Dame, Dieppe Races; Simeon Solomon - Babylon, Bacchus; Joseph Edward Southall; Stanley Spencer - Resurrection, Old Tannery Mills, The Psychiatrist; Graham Sutherland - Edward Sackville West; JAMES SMETHAM (of Queen Elizabeth Walk, Stoke Newington)- THE MANY WINTERED CROW; Henry Tonks - The Orchard, Hat Shop, China Cabinet, Crystal Gazers; Henry Wallis - Chatterton; GF Watts - Little Red Riding Hood; JB Yeats - Dublin Night, An Old Car Driver; and many more!
York Art Gallery – William Morris wallpaper exhibition.
York Art Gallery Permanent Collection; Davd Bomberg – The Bath; Henry Gaudier-Brzeska - Alfred Wolmark; William Etty – loads of male nudes; Harold Gilman - Interior With Nude; Spencer Gore - Balcony At Alhambra; JA Grimshaw – Liverpool Docs at Night; Barbara Hepworth - Surgeon Waiting; Gwen John - Young Woman In Red Shawl; Laura Knight – Early Morning In A Gypsy Camp; Margaret Mellis - Venice Landscape; Paul Nash - Winter Sea; Grayson Perry – Melanie; William Roberts - Young Girl; Henry Scott Tuke - The Misses Santley; Ethel Walker – Decoration Morning, Robin Hood’s Bay In Winter; Rose Wylie – Doodlebug.
Ashmolean Oxford; Robert Bevan – Showing At Tattersalls; 100s of other things. I didn’t write it down this time I am sorry.
Magdalene College Oxford; Edward Burne-Jones; David Wynne
Canterbury Catherdral; Anthony Gormley
Canterbury, The Beaney; Smallfilms collection; John Bratby – The Artist’s Son; Laura Knight – Hop Picking No 1, Granny Knowles.
Leicester Museum & Art Gallery; As for many years now it remains impossible to see any of the permanent collection that I remember from my childhood.
Worst Record Covers In The World – Steve Goldman; Big Difference, Leicester Comedy Festival
National Gallery Permanent Collection; George Bellows – Men Of The Docks; Paul Cezanne – The Grounds of the Chateau Noir; John Constable – Cenotaph In Memory of Joshua Reynolds, The Cornfield; Honore Daumier – Don Quixote & Sancho Panza; Edgar Degas – Combing The Hair, Ballet Dancers, Eleanor Carafa, Young Spartans; Paul Delaroche – The Execution of Lady Jane Grey; Thomas Gainsborough – The Market Cart, The Watering Place; Lake Keitella – Akseli Gallen-Kallela; Edouard Manet – The Execution of Maximillian, Music In The Tuilleries; Henri Matisse – Portrait of Greta Moll; Claude Monet – Water Lillies, Water Lillies Setting Sun, Beach At Trouvet, Thames Below Westminster; Pablo Picasso – Fruit dish, bottle & violin; Camille Pissarro – The Cotes des Boeufs; Pierre Auguste Renoir – The Skiff; Henri Rousseau – Surprised!; Georges Seurat – Bathers At Asnieres, Study for Bathers, The Rainbow, The Morning Walk; George Stubbs – Sir Peniston & Lady Lamb, Whistlejacket; JMW Turner – Rain Sea And Speed; Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus, The Evening Star, Dido Building Carthage, Sun Rising Through Vapour; Vincent Van Gogh – A Wheatfield With Cypresses, Van Gogh’s Chair, Sunflowers; Julius Schnorr Von Carolsfield – Ruth In Boaz’ Field; Joseph Wright of Derby – Experiment On A Bird;
Manchester City Art Gallery; Ben Nicholson - 1932 Au Chat Botee; LS Lowry - St Augustine’s Church, Waiting For The Shop To Open, An Island, St John’s Church; Barbara Hepworth - Theatre Group no 3*****; Gwen John - The Student; John Waterhouse - Hylas and The Nymphs; George Watts - A Greek Idyll; Frederick Shields - The Annunciation; Arthur Hacker - Syrinx; John Everett Millais - Death of Romeo & Juliet; Annie Louisa Swynnerton - Montagna Mia *****; Edward Burne Jones - Sibylla Delphia; William Holman Hunt - Light of The World, Hireling Shepherd*****; Lady Elizabeth Butler - Balaclava*****; John Linnell - Hampstead Heath; Frederick Sandys - Vivien; John Lewis - The Coffee Bearer; John Constable - View From Hampstead Heath; William Blake - Poet’s heads ****
Painted Dreams, Evelyn de Morgan, Wolverhampton Art Gallery
Christina Kimeze, Between Wood & Wheel – South London Gallery
Ithell Colquhoun – Between Worlds, Tate St Ives *****
Penlee House Gallery, Penzance, Cornwall. Lamorna Birch – Artists Painting In A Wood, Lamorna Stream; Frank Bramley – Eyes And No Eyes; Elizabeth Forbes – Autumn Breeze; Stanhope Forbes – A Street In Newlyn; Norman Garstin – A View Of Mount’s Bay; Francl Gascoigne – Heath – A Game Of Cut-Throat Euchre; Edwin Harris – A Pinch Of Snuff; Walter Langley- A Lass That Loves A Sailor, A Newlyn Fishwife, Absent Thoughts; A Reverie, Among The Missing; Eleanor Hughes – A Western Shore, Boleigh Farm x 2; Harold Night – A View of Mousehole; John Piper- Moorland Cottages; Dod Proctor – Aunt Lilla; Ralph Todd – Cornish Fisherwoman; Henry Scott Tuke – Dinner Time
The Shelia Hitchens Collection, St Michael’s Mount, Cornwall; Harold Harvey – Tulip Pickers; Albert Tayler – Courting Couple; Walter Langley; Stanhope Forbes; Laura Knight.
Leigh Bowery - Tate Modern
Nottingham Castle Art Gallery – David Bomberg - The Moorish Wall; Alan Davie - Bouquet for Croquet; Jacob Epstein - Girl from Baku, Bust of a Child, Self-portrait, Sun Goddess; Augustus John - Yvonne; Harold Knight - The Manicure; LS Lowry - The Arrest; Christopher Nevinson - Thameside; Ben Nichollson - Bistre 11; Victor Passmore - Green Landscape; John Piper - Brittany Coast; William Patrick Roberts - Return of Ulysses; Dante Rosetti - Marigolds; Stanley Spencer - Landscape Cookham; Laura Knight - Elsie on Hassan.
Liverpool Anglican Cathedral – Elizabeth Frink, Ceri Richards, John Piper, Giles Gilbert Scott, Sun
De Morgan Museum, Cannon Hall Barnsley – William De Morgan, Evelyn De Morgan
Ithell Colquhoun – Between Worlds, Tate Britain *****
Pier Arts Centre Stromness – Winifred Nicholson & Andrew Cranston
Pier Arts Centre Stromness; Sunlight – Roger Acklin
Stromness – Permanent collection Wilhemena Barnes-Graham – Wreck Warbeck; Stanley Cursiter – Geo At Yesnaby; Alan Davie – Magic Circles, Symbols In A Landscape, Energy Is Delight; Terry Frost – Red & Blue, Red Black & White, Collage; Nuam Gabo – Linear Construction; Barabra Hepworth – Assembly of Square Forms, Two Heads, December Forms, Opposing Forms; Patric Heron – Small red Square; Roger Hilton – Black & Brown, Brown Yellow & Black, 3 Boats, Red Sea; Peter Lanyon – Box Construction; Margaret Mellis – Anenomes Gone To Seed; Ben Nicholson – 3 Circles, Oct 52, Painting 1935, Still Life 1940; Eduardo Paolozzi – Miennes; Edmund de Waal – oir-thir; Alfred Wallis – Three Ships And A Lighthouse, St Ives Harbour, White Sailing Ship; Sylvia Wishart – A Ship. *****
Ness Battery, Orkney – A R Woods mural *****
Orkney Museum, Kirkwall – Jim Baikie retrospective *****
Skaill House, Orkney – Stanley Cursiter painting
Main St, Ravenglass – Rob St John, Emergent Landscapes
Ithell Colquhoun – Between Worlds, Tate Britain ***** (again)
Andy Goldsworthy – Scottish National Gallery, Ed’bro *****
Frank Brangwyn’s British Empire Mural, Brangwyn Hall, Swansea *****
MY FOOD JOURNEY (highlights - this isn’t everything I ate in 2025)
Camberwell Cod Roe a la chat
Hennighan’s Fish & Chips, Machynlleth
Lentils Cleopatra Wong, Hackney
Chicken Go-Between, Hackney
Scallops and black pudding in lab conditions, Buxa, Orkney
Scallops & black pudding from a van in Ferry Inn carpark, Stromness
Deep fried haggis, The Happy Haddock, Kirkwall, Orkney
Hand-dived scallops from Loki’s Seafood Shack, Stromness
Deep fried Orkney mince pie, The Harbour Fry, Kirkwall
Waun Fach Chicken, Wales
La Cuisine Francais du Londres Sud
Mushroom Wellington Pour Les Souers, London
Gray Pays Stoke Newington, London
20. IN OUR LAMENTATIONS 2025
Barre Phillips (Jazz bassman, 1934)
Bob Grover (Brighton Piranha, 1956)
Riro (Japanese sea otter, 2007) Nora Orlandi (Spaghetti symphonist, 1933)
Ed Askew (Acid folkie, 1940)
Tony Slattery (The vile blows of the world made him reckless, 1959)
David Lynch (He erased our heads, 1946) Landy Randerson (Museum access pioneer, 1949)
Garth Hudson (Bandolier, 1937)
Brian Murphy (Instantly aged actor, 1932)
Rab MacWilliam (Hackney historian, 1951)
Barry Goldberg (His flag was electric, 1941)
Peter Yarrow (He left on a jetplane, 1938)
Snowy Fleet (Easybeater, 1939)
Jamie Muir (Absolute fucking rhythmical genius, 1942)
Mike Ratledge (Moon in June Soft Machine man, 1943)
Gabriel Yacoub (Malicorne muso of French folk, 1952)
Bill Fay (Christian mystic songwriter seer, 1943) Roberta Flack (Made Ewan MacColl sexy, 1937)
Gene Hackman (an actor who knew when not to,1930)
Jay Rayner’s Observer restaurant column (1999)
David Johansen (New York Doll, 1950)
Bill Dare (Even his socks were funny, 1959)
Johnny Green (A gentleman, a dandy, and always a pleasure,)
Ken Parker (The Blue Bender, 1943) Edweena Banger (Her nose bled, 1959)
John Cassady (Planetary penman, 1971)
Joey Molland (His finger was bad, 1947)
Peter Farrelly (Fruuppster, 1949)
Jesse Colin Young (He got it together, 1941)
Brian James (Lord of The Damned, 1955)
Roy Ayers (Good vibes, 1940)
Bob Rupe (Brilliant Gutterball and Silos bottom end) Nadia Cassini (Starcrash starlet, 1949) Nike Arrighi (The Devil Rides Out, 1944)
Bill Smith (Original Corrie, 1936)
DG Hessayon (Garden expert who answered my questions, 1928)
Elliot Ingber (Winged Eel Fingerling, 1941) Leanne Cowie (Scientific drummer, 1964?)
George Foreman (Meat griller, 1949)
Michael Hurley (He’s gone back to Capistrano, 1941)
Dave Allen (At Home He’s A Bassist, 1955)
Alastair MacKinven (Country teaser and artist, 1971)
Clem Burke (Magic Christian Plimsoul & Elvis Ramone, 1954)
Larry Tamblyn (He loved that dirty water, 1943)
Clive Revill (The Emperor strikes back, 1930)
Amadou Bagayoko (blind bluesman, 1955)
Max Romeo (Wet-dreaming devil chaser, 1944) Clodagh Rogers (Northern Irish Spider-Woman, 1947)
Pope Francis (Relatively inoffensive pope, 1936) Eleonora Giorgi (Young, violent and dangerous, 1953)
David Thomas (Ube Pere, 1953)
Mike Peters (He alarmed Wales, 1959)
James Baker (Hoodoo victim of beastly scientists, 1954)
Larry Lee (Ozark Mountain Devil, 1947)
Wizz Jones (The Lazy Farmer, 1939)
David Briggs (He signalled the test of our whistles, 1943)
Kimble Rendall (Hoodoo Guru from year zero, 1957)
Jack Katz (First Kingdom comics guy, 1927)
Ed Smylie (Saved Apollo 13 with sellotape, 1914)
George Wendt (Barfly Freak Fan, 1948)
Peter David (He turned Hulk grey for peanuts, 1956) Loretta Switt (Hilarious dish of MASH, 1937)
Louis Moholo (S African freedom-drummer, 1940)
Hunt Powers (Spaghetti star, 1929)
Simon House (Hawkstrings, 1948)
Colin Conflict (He could not win a nuclear war, 1963)
David Kaff (He had a good time all the time, 1946)
Daniel Postgate (Together, we held Bagpuss in Totnes, 1963)
Lalo Schifrin (He entered the dragon, 1932)
Brian Wilson (He wished they all could be California girls, 1942)
Junior Byles (His locks be curly, 1948)
Terry Draper (He called occupants of interplanetary craft, 1951) Jill Sobule (She kissed a girl, 1959)
Terry Manning (Stax to the max, 1947)
Roy Ayers (Coffy percolator, 1943)
Edip Akbayram (Turkish funk soul brother, 1950)
Ozzy Osborne (He married a sociopath and pre-empted grunge, 1948)
Hulk Hogan (Worthless steroid-addled Trump-loving metafiction, 1953)
Tom Lehrer (He poisoned the pigeons, 1928)
Allan Ahlberg (Peepoo understands WWII implicitly, 1938)
Terry Reid (Funky folk bluesman, 1949)
Terry Reid (Funky folk bluesman, 1949)
Graham Green (Oneida and actor, 1952)
Mark Volman (Happy turtle, 1947) Claudia Cardinale (Human-divine fusion of earth and stars, 1938)
Danny Thompson (He refuted the jazz-folk impossibility, 1939)
David Ball (Soft cell gridsman who remixed Rainer and very nice chap, 1959)
Bob Franke (Coffeehouse Christian, 1947)
Jim Kimball (Blank Lizard drummer, 1965)
Owen Gray (Another Alpha Boys School ska-man, 1939)
Bruce Loose (Flipperman flipped off, 1959)
Renato Casaro (Italian cinema’s painterly poster artist,1935)
Peter Watkins (Genius of British film, prophet of Privilege, 1935)
Jack DeJohnette (Miles’ funky fusionist, 1942)
Joseph Byrd (The field hippie, 1937)
Archie Fisher (Wrote Witch of The Westmorland, 1937)
Mani (We watched Rico together, 1962)
Jimmy Cliff (He crossed a large number of rivers, 1944) Pam Hogg (She punched me in the face. I deserved it, 1958)
Andrew Lauder (Hippy punk headhunter, 1947)
Rob Reiner (Tap! Harry! Misery! 1947)
Mick Abrahams (Blodwyn Pigman, 1943)
Joe Ely (Taught The Clash country, 1947)
Tetsu Yamauchi (Japanese freeman, 1946)
Steve Cropper (Green onion soulman, 1941) Loni Anderson (WKRP bombshell, 1945)
Tom Stoppard (Son of Sam, 1937)
Terrance Stamp (Far from the mad man, 1938)
Robert Redford (Sundancer, 1936)
Max Eider (He butchered some jazz, 1959?)
Jon Antrobus (Hack genius of TWTWTW, 1933)
Perry Bamonte (He Cured The Cure and fished for fish, 1960)
Ken White (XTC muralist, 1943) Katina (Icelandic orca prisoner, 1975)
Stewart Lee
2026-01-03T14:35:55+00:00
IMPORTANT NOTE: WE ARE MOVING Hello, to continue receiving emails from Stewart Lee, please re-subscribe to this list. Stewart's low-fi monthly newsletters will continue as usual, and if you're willing to share your postcode, we’ll notify you of his upcoming gigs near you. Plus, you'll get early notice of media and merchandise releases. January’s newsletter & cultural roundup is below. However, this is the last email that will be sent from this list. To continue to receive these messages in 2026, RE-SUBSCRIBE NOW! I WANT TO KEEP RECEIVING THESE EMAILS IMPORTANT: If you would like to continue to receive Stewart's newsletters - you must re-subscribe. If you do not want to be re-subscribed to the new list, you can do nothing, and you will no longer receive these emails. However, you can re-subscribe at any time via Stewart's website - here. 1.THE BIG MIDWEEK I am the reader of the audiobook of The Big Midweek, Steve Hanley from The Fall’s book about playing bass for two decades in the greatest British band, against twenty years of social change. You can hear it here…. https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/The-Big-Midweek-Audiobook/B0FXBJJD4X?source_code=AUKFrDlWS02231890H6-BK-ACX0-479031 2.THE NERVE I am now writing 1000 funny words a week for Carol Cadwalladr’s new on-line newspaper The Nerve, run by people who were sacked or quit when Tories took over The Observer. It is immediately ace. Sign up here and it would also really be great if you could pay them £6.95 a month as the 5 women at the helm sunk all their redundancy money into it. Carol understands that the only story in town is how the tech-bros choose what news we see and how we understand the world, and The Nerve will address this head on. The only news that matters. Please send the link below and this begging request to anyone...
SHEFFIELD was privileged to have been one of only a handful of places for comic Stewart Lee to test out his new material when he arrived in the city as part of the Grin Up North festival.
And the taster of the Vegetable Stew served up to the crowd at City Hall certainly seemed to go down well.
Kicking off proceedings was his friend and fellow comedian Simon Munnery - aka Alan Parker, Urban Warrior - who also supported him on the If You Prefer A Milder Comedian...tour earlier this year.
The set met with a good reaction, from his conspiracy theories about the D(H)SS ("they dropped the H, how long before they lose the D?) and his observations on how society could change for the better ("one woman, two votes, because a lot of women have trouble making their minds up").
Lee's show followed a format that fans will be all the more familiar with now if they have read his new book 'How I Escaped My Certain Fate: The Life and Death of a Stand-up Comedian' which sets out to dissect a comedy performance in all its glory.
Some might argue the technique backfires- that jokes stripped down and explained lose their humour - but it works, not least because it's so unlike anything else out there.
And so right from the start you're told they'll be about 20 minutes of material about charity, 20 minutes about politics, and so on - with the acoustic guitar accompanying him on stage explained away as the grand finale to the show.
The repetition and references to little notes - whether they be scrawled on scraps of paper folded up in his pocket or on his hand using a felt tip bought from a sales assistant in WH Smith on Fargate who was somewhere in the crowd that night - which are a regular feature in his stand-up were both there, providing a helping hand as he drummed the characters and the themes into the audience with complete
tirelessness as the laughter built around him.
Topics veered from his granddad's crisp obsession to Adrian Chiles' "grand gesture" of a beard shave for Sport Relief (he was being ironic of course), and an elaborate tale about time spent with David Cameron while they were both students at Oxford University - which
obviously turned out to be entirely made-up.
It was the posh crowd from the university's Bullingdon Club - made up of the likes of Cameron and Boris Johnson in its day - that came in for a ribbing in Lee's finale song, belted out whilst perched on a stool playing his guitar in the spotlight, his moody singer-song writer presentation hilariously at odds with the content.
Leaving the stage and executing a little jog through the auditorium out of the door, he promised to be back soon - and it was clear the crowd can't wait.
Stewart Lee
2010-10-08T14:25:21+01:00
SHEFFIELD was privileged to have been one of only a handful of places for comic Stewart Lee to test out his new material when he arrived in the city as part of the Grin Up North festival. And the taster of the Vegetable Stew served up to the crowd at City Hall certainly seemed to go down well. Kicking off proceedings was his friend and fellow comedian Simon Munnery - aka Alan Parker, Urban Warrior - who also supported him on the If You Prefer A Milder Comedian...tour earlier this year. The set met with a good reaction, from his conspiracy theories about the D(H)SS ("they dropped the H, how long before they lose the D?) and his observations on how society could change for the better ("one woman, two votes, because a lot of women have trouble making their minds up"). Lee's show followed a format that fans will be all the more familiar with now if they have read his new book 'How I Escaped My Certain Fate: The Life and Death of a Stand-up Comedian' which sets out to dissect a comedy performance in all its glory. Some might argue the technique backfires- that jokes stripped down and explained lose their humour - but it works, not least because it's so unlike anything else out there. And so right from the start you're told they'll be about 20 minutes of material about charity, 20 minutes about politics, and so on - with the acoustic guitar accompanying him on stage explained away as the grand finale to the show. The repetition and references to little notes - whether they be scrawled on scraps of paper folded up in his pocket or on his hand using a felt tip bought from a sales assistant in WH Smith on Fargate...
Stew wrote the sleevenotes for this latest release from Wolfhounds.
The Wolfhounds are back and better than ever with their new 'Electric Music' LP – probably their greatest album yet. The band has become truly (hyper-)active again, performing at several popfests (including Berlin and New York) and stand-up comedian Stewart Lee’s All Tomorrow’s Parties, as well as regular club dates in the UK and Europe. Stewart Lee also wrote the extensive sleevenotes for the record.
The band continue to be more relevant and adventurous than ever and, despite their indie roots, have more in common with the likes of Richard Dawson and Sleaford Mods than their old jangly peers. Electric Music grabs their home country’s woes by the horns and gives them the kicking they deserve!
Stewart Lee
2020-08-10T19:40:30+01:00
Stew wrote the sleevenotes for this latest release from Wolfhounds. The Wolfhounds are back and better than ever with their new 'Electric Music' LP – probably their greatest album yet. The band has become truly (hyper-)active again, performing at several popfests (including Berlin and New York) and stand-up comedian Stewart Lee’s All Tomorrow’s Parties, as well as regular club dates in the UK and Europe. Stewart Lee also wrote the extensive sleevenotes for the record. The band continue to be more relevant and adventurous than ever and, despite their indie roots, have more in common with the likes of Richard Dawson and Sleaford Mods than their old jangly peers. Electric Music grabs their home country’s woes by the horns and gives them the kicking they deserve!
It might not turn up as often as we'd like - this is only the fourth series in seven years, and the last run was back in 2014 - but it's always good to see Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle back on the road.
It seems the cult stand-up hasn't been slacking off during his years away either, as this new run sees him airing new material on some very thought-provoking (and potentially controversial) themes, including patriotism, Islamophobia, the migrant crisis, death, and childhood memories.
However, he begins by sharing his thoughts on wealth in front of a live audience at the Mildmay Club in Stoke Newington.
Script editor Chris Morris, who as the creator of Brass Eye is no stranger to provocative comedy, reprises his role as the 'hostile interrogator', quizzing Lee on his attitude to stand-up.
Stewart Lee
2016-03-02T15:18:29+00:00
It might not turn up as often as we'd like - this is only the fourth series in seven years, and the last run was back in 2014 - but it's always good to see Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle back on the road. It seems the cult stand-up hasn't been slacking off during his years away either, as this new run sees him airing new material on some very thought-provoking (and potentially controversial) themes, including patriotism, Islamophobia, the migrant crisis, death, and childhood memories. However, he begins by sharing his thoughts on wealth in front of a live audience at the Mildmay Club in Stoke Newington. Script editor Chris Morris, who as the creator of Brass Eye is no stranger to provocative comedy, reprises his role as the 'hostile interrogator', quizzing Lee on his attitude to stand-up.
I am a stand-up comedian. Or at least I thought I was. A few years ago, I received an unsolicited e-mail asking me if I was interested in “submitting content". I was confused. The sender explained that I was a “content provider". Did I want to provide content? Eventually it transpired that the content-seeker wanted to know if I had any jokes that could be sold to be viewed on mobile phones...I think.
At the risk of sounding arrogant, my material is written to be performed as part of a whole in particular sorts of places, and I have given a great deal of thought to how the acceptability and impact of ideas is affected by pacing, context, and their position as part of a whole 70- to 90-minute set. I didn't want it being chopped up, miniaturised, de-contextualised and inflicted passively on old ladies on the top decks of buses by shouting teenagers, and so my content went un-provided.
When the BBC came to pull out clips from my 2009 TV series, Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, for trails, they found it impossible to snag anything compact enough to use.
All the trails for the show, and for the forthcoming second series next month, feature one of the only three lines in the series I didn't write, namely a joke by the comedian Simon Munnery, whom I had turned to for a top-of-the-show gag, in search of an economy and directness of which I am incapable.
Never has it been more true that brevity is the soul of wit. Today, the assumption is that a comedian's or a writer's highest ideal would be to reduce a funny idea to 140 characters, so it could be twittered out to their content-gobbling followers, and instantly digested in whatever circumstances the consumer finds themselves.
It appears I was a content provider all along, and, if you can't fragment your content into cross-platformed multi-media mini-particles, then what kind of content provider are you exactly?
Once, being an artist was, without coming over all arts and crafts, about managing the meeting of form and content, arranging the forced marriage of vision and design.
At the Tomb of the Eagles on Orkney, an archaeologist lets you hold Stone Age tools in the palm of your hand and the frisson of vision and design as inseparable is palpable. But today content is king and form is mutable. Can the comic become a film? Can the film become a game? Can the book become an e-book? Can the song become a ringtone? Imagine if the Japanese super-robots the Transformers were suddenly put in charge of all human culture.
Here's a Jacobean tragedy you can also use to mix trifle! Content is being dictated by its possible application to a variety of forms. We'll come back to the cross-platforming of liquefiable content, and its influence on my comedy, but first, here are some not unrelated anecdotes.
In the early part of the last decade I was asked by someone at BBC Online if I would contribute ideas to a virtual world where characters from the pulp and more serious literature of the Victorian period interacted in ongoing stories. Characters, he explained, must be “avatars" that could be “visioned" so that they could be scripted by writers, or have their fates left to the whims of public votes. They told me that the comics guru Alan Moore had also been approached, which showed a degree of commitment as he lives in Northampton. Moore advised caution where this new idea of “visioning" was concerned. “Never trust a proposal where they have to invent a new verb to get you to do what they want," he said. “Dickens would never have killed Little Nell if it had gone to a public vote. The only good thing about being a writer is you get to decide what happens to the people you have invented."
Not any more, it seemed. Your work was now a fluid commodity. I don't remember a point in my teenage years when, struck dumb by Shakespeare or stand-up or Sonic Youth, I thought, “Yes, that's what I want to do - develop visionable avatars."
Last year I finished writing a book for Faber & Faber about stand-up, How I Escaped My Certain Fate. I made use of copious footnotes, firstly to exaggerate the presumed absurdity of treating the subject of stand-up with the literary seriousness that publication by Faber implied, and secondly to emphasise the idea that the book was a book.
Such lengthy and unwieldy footnotes involved the reader in a physical relationship with the book as object, hopefully forcing them to turn it backwards and forwards, break the spine and bend the pages. Faber were pleased with How I Escaped My Certain Fate but transferring its content to the e-book format proved problematic.
That is because I wrote a book, not an App. I aim to make the next book I write impossible to read as an e-book. New laptops and iPads arrive with a deluge of literary content already installed into their hard-drives. But the special books of the future will be books that are resistant to digital recalibration.
I read features in weekend supplements about how the young people of today don't own anything. All the music and literature they need is crammed on to their hard drives in compressed form. This is why the young people of today will never do anything worthwhile.
The guitarist Derek Bailey was playfully and perhaps satirically opposed to recorded music in all its forms. Despite having more than 150 commercially available albums to his name at the time of his death in 2005, Bailey maintained that he could not see the point of recorded music, and contrived to find it amusing to imagine people sitting in their homes listening to it. “What do you do while the record is playing?" he asked me. “Look around? Drink a cup of tea? Are you allowed to read? It seems mad."
Bailey's commitment to total improvisation, to never repeating himself, and to trying to work outside all recognisable musical idioms means that in a world where music is piped in at every possible point, and often created for no apparent artistic purpose, his music still has the power to stop time. It cannot really be used to soundtrack anything, or sell anything. These spidery solo guitar lines cannot be filleted or fragmented or remixed.
The music was what it was at the moment it was made and that is all, and listening to a recording of it you hear only an echo of the moment, like the brightness that reaches your eye from an already exploded star, untold billions of light years away.
In 2006, as I explain in my book, which is available as a download on Amazon, I was lucky enough to visit Taos Pueblo in New Mexico on the feast day of San Geronimo, where ancient clowning rituals so vibrant and virile they were outlawed by early white settlers have been co-opted into Catholic festivities.
A dozen or so mainly naked men, painted in striped black and white body paint, interact with thousands of people in the village square in a mass spontaneous improvisation. Content, the explosion of pueblo social tensions, meets form, the natural gladiatorial circus space of the village square and the terraced homes surrounding it. Documenting the ritual clown events is expressly forbidden. At the gates of the pueblo we handed in cameras, mobile phones, anything vaguely electronic, and headed into an unforgettable spectacle which not a single person present was viewing through a lens.
I remember it still moment by moment by moment - the figures appearing shrieking and fearsome on the rooftops against the blue sky, the theft of our drinks, the overturning of tables, the humiliation of the cowboy, the forced baptism of the stolen babies, the casting down of the palm crosses, the scaling of the 300ft pole, the carcass of the slaughtered sheep, swinging electronic, and headed into an unforgettable spectacle which not a single person present was viewing through a lens. I remember it still moment by moment by moment - the figures appearing shrieking and fearsome on the rooftops against the blue sky, the theft of our drinks, the overturning of tables, the humiliation of the cowboy, the forced baptism of the stolen babies, the casting down of the palm crosses, the scaling of the 300ft pole, the carcass of the slaughtered sheep, swingingin the sun - perhaps because I had no means of recording any of it.
The Tewa clowns would not be cross-platformed. Their content was developed for the pueblo square format and it would stay that way.
Next month I am curating a weekend of comedy and music at the Southbank Centre, London. I am a curator. What a dead word. It sounds like someone stirring turds in a toilet bowl with a stick.
If something is being curated it already seems fixed and decayed - bands recreating their classic albums in their entirety, seasons of film screenings working towards a pre-ordained conclusion. To that end, I've tried to schedule events that are unrepeatable. At Last! The '1981' Show brings together a dozen stars of the early alternative comedy scene in an unprecedented bill; in another show the contemporary folk rock band Trembling Bells meets the 1960s legend Mike Heron; elsewhere, pianists Steve Beresford and Tania Chen are presenting John Cage's Indeterminacy, with me on the spoken word section. We had three goes at Indeterminacy last year.
Beresford and Chen improvise on piano and whatever else is to hand, while I read a random selection from 90 one-minute stories, penned by Cage. Like it or not, Indeterminacy reminds those watching that time is passing, moment by moment, now, and once the piece is over it will never be recreated in the same form ever again. Needless to say, form and content go hand in hand. There is no red button content.
And in life, there are no DVD extras.
There's a quote in one of Cage's Indeterminacy stories: “If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then 16. Then 32. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all." After the first series of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle I found myself, against my better judgment, looking online, not at the many favourable reviews, but at the fury of members of the public who hated me for my slow delivery, lengthy routines, and dull voice.
“A boring, droning-on 'comedian' who's (sic) set's (sic) just happen to be the most unlively (sic) sets in the comedy world", says Spursfan, on YouTube, whilst P Mishkin on Amazon offers: “He takes about five or so good concepts and plays them all out over far too long a time so by the end of each segment you don't really care whether there is a point to the piece. The delivery is too deadpan to make it interesting. Avoid at all costs, please don't encourage the man." Sadpunk, at Drownedinsound.com in Sound, shares his frustrations thus: “So I tried to watch this last night. After about five minutes I couldn't bear any more. Tell a joke, you twat." Tim J, at Liberalconspiracy.org is similarly bored: “Stewart Lee's jokes consist of taking a moderately funny idea and then spending 25 minutes slowly and repetitively beating it to death with a shovel."
Bearing in mind the public's reactions, the second series of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle will be slower, more dense, quieter and even more thorough in its treatment of an even more limited range of ideas than the first series. I feel perhaps the problem is that I didn't go far enough.
It is what it is. It isn't anything else and it isn't supposed to be. It's me doing my stand-up on television my way. You can't tweet it, or trail it, or chop it up into content.
There's three hours of it in total and if, at the end of three hours, it still seems boring, then it probably is.
The second series of 'Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle' starts on Wednesday May 4 at 11.20pm on BBC2 'Stewart Lee's Austerity Binge' is at the Southbank Centre, London, May 27-30, www.southbankcentre.co.uk
Stewart Lee
2011-04-10T20:46:28+01:00
I am a stand-up comedian. Or at least I thought I was. A few years ago, I received an unsolicited e-mail asking me if I was interested in “submitting content". I was confused. The sender explained that I was a “content provider". Did I want to provide content? Eventually it transpired that the content-seeker wanted to know if I had any jokes that could be sold to be viewed on mobile phones...I think. At the risk of sounding arrogant, my material is written to be performed as part of a whole in particular sorts of places, and I have given a great deal of thought to how the acceptability and impact of ideas is affected by pacing, context, and their position as part of a whole 70- to 90-minute set. I didn't want it being chopped up, miniaturised, de-contextualised and inflicted passively on old ladies on the top decks of buses by shouting teenagers, and so my content went un-provided. When the BBC came to pull out clips from my 2009 TV series, Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, for trails, they found it impossible to snag anything compact enough to use. All the trails for the show, and for the forthcoming second series next month, feature one of the only three lines in the series I didn't write, namely a joke by the comedian Simon Munnery, whom I had turned to for a top-of-the-show gag, in search of an economy and directness of which I am incapable. Never has it been more true that brevity is the soul of wit. Today, the assumption is that a comedian's or a writer's highest ideal would be to reduce a funny idea to 140 characters, so it could be twittered out to their content-gobbling followers, and instantly digested in whatever circumstances the consumer finds...
The explanation on the introductory page to this blog tells us (although I already knew) that the blog is largely about me watching football matches and maybe reviewing the occasional book. Good luck in finding the book reviews.
But it is summer now, the swifts and swallows are here, I have strawberries growing in my garden, I am regularly eating barbecued food and as I write this I am enjoying the sensation of having bare feet and exposed legs; life is sweet and there aren’t any football matches to go to. Happily, life goes on in wonderful football-free ways and a few weeks ago I went to the Mercury Theatre in Colchester with three friends to see the ‘comedian’ Stewart Lee. I put the word comedian in inverted commas because, as Stewart Lee takes time to explain, he is not like Michael McIntyre or Russell Howard; he is not a populist comedian, his humour is partly jokes about jokes (metahumour) and certainly in my experience some people don’t understand that, but he is critically acclaimed and is perhaps Britain’s ninth best comedian.
Stewart Lee de-constructs comedy, he is able to do this because he is a very clever bloke; he went to Oxford. Of course I went to Oxford too, but to the Manor Ground and Kassam Stadium, Stewart Lee had a place at the university. That last sentence was a sort of a joke; I said I’d been to Oxford like Stewart Lee, trying to make you think that I had been a student at the university; but I then qualified the statement by saying that I had actually only been to Oxford to visit the home ground of Oxford United Football Club. This is a football blog of course, hence the football reference.
But my explanation is in the style of Stewart Lee, although he would have first berated you as the audience for not having laughed enough, implying that you are not intelligent enough to understand the joke, hence the need to explain it. Anyway, that’s what Stewart Lee’s humour is like; it is self-referential, comedy about comedy and you might say it’s existential. Existential philosophy is about being and the ‘being of being’ what it means to be, to exist. If you’re not entirely following this now you should probably seek out a different sort of football blog, perhaps one by Gary Neville or Alan Brazil. Haha! That was another bit of Stewart Lee type humour there, did you spot it?
Former footballers who become pundits indulge unknowingly or unselfconsciously and without the necessary irony in a version of Stewart Lee’s style of humour. The likes of Robbie Savage will opine that no one can comment authentically and with real credibility on professional football unless they have played the game like he has, by which he doesn’t mean badly. Robbie Savage and those of his ilk say that you and I don’t understand the game. Of course he is completely wrong; in fact our views are the only ones that are valid because we haven’t been infantilised like he has by making a living and a career by merely playing a game. Playing Doctors and Nurses as a child is nothing like being a doctor or a nurse, but playing football really is just playing football, wherever and whenever.
Last season at Portman Road we could have witnessed some Stewart Lee humour too, as some supporters publicly, and others more privately, condemned manager Mick McCarthy for the poor standard of the football played by his team; “Your football is shit, your football is shit, Mick McCarthy, your football is shit” they sang, to the tune of Sloop John B, possibly the only tune Ipswich football supporters now know although for my money it is one of the more disappointing tracks on the Beach Boys Pet Sounds album. They didn’t seem to understand however that Mick is only out to get results and with the resources he has available, a bunch of not particularly talented players, playing “shit football” was probably going to bring in more points than trying to play attractive football. Mick McCarthy didn’t really say too much, but he was clearly a little exasperated by the ‘supporters’ at times and I like to think that when the team did win, and on one occasion late in the season they managed to win two consecutive games, he was tempted to deliver his post-match press conference as Stewart Lee and to sneer at the crowd for not having understood that his team had won. A regional newspaper review of one of Stewart Lee’s TV shows once stated “His whole tone is one of complete, smug condescension” and that I think is what Mick McCarthy should be aiming for in his post-match press conferences. Stewart Lee used the phrase to advertise his next tour and Mick’s CV would be all the better for his use of it too.
Football is just a game, a laugh, everyone needs to understand that.
Anyway, Stewart Lee at The Mercury Theatre, Colchester was great; I hadn’t laughed so much since ……I don’t know, I really should start to make notes on how much I laugh and when. Finally, if you liked this ‘review’ of Stewart Lee, such as it is, then you have possibly seen him already and if you didn’t you might not want to.
Stewart Lee
2017-07-10T19:24:17+01:00
The explanation on the introductory page to this blog tells us (although I already knew) that the blog is largely about me watching football matches and maybe reviewing the occasional book. Good luck in finding the book reviews. But it is summer now, the swifts and swallows are here, I have strawberries growing in my garden, I am regularly eating barbecued food and as I write this I am enjoying the sensation of having bare feet and exposed legs; life is sweet and there aren’t any football matches to go to. Happily, life goes on in wonderful football-free ways and a few weeks ago I went to the Mercury Theatre in Colchester with three friends to see the ‘comedian’ Stewart Lee. I put the word comedian in inverted commas because, as Stewart Lee takes time to explain, he is not like Michael McIntyre or Russell Howard; he is not a populist comedian, his humour is partly jokes about jokes (metahumour) and certainly in my experience some people don’t understand that, but he is critically acclaimed and is perhaps Britain’s ninth best comedian. Stewart Lee de-constructs comedy, he is able to do this because he is a very clever bloke; he went to Oxford. Of course I went to Oxford too, but to the Manor Ground and Kassam Stadium, Stewart Lee had a place at the university. That last sentence was a sort of a joke; I said I’d been to Oxford like Stewart Lee, trying to make you think that I had been a student at the university; but I then qualified the statement by saying that I had actually only been to Oxford to visit the home ground of Oxford United Football Club. This is a football blog of course, hence the football reference. But my explanation is in...
Well, what can I say? I bought this book a couple of months ago, for when I went on holiday. Being an immense fan of Lee, I found it incredibly hard to resist taking a look at it until then! But it was lucky that I did, because from the second I started reading I was unable to put it down. But this book is more than just an excellent way to pass an 8-hour plane journey.
Oh yes.
It's a collection of stories, all concerning the grim underbelly of our world, and the people who inhabit it. Eventually, all their tales beautifully interwind into one. This book takes in the freemasons, burned-out 60's rock stars, women who can't keep a living boyfriend, and a motely crew of other no-hopers.
I don't want to give away the plot, but I will say this: It's an amazing book, and you'd have to be bl***y stupid to pass it up. Bl***y, bl***y stupid indeed.
Stewart's Comments: "I am delighted Iain enjoyed the book so much, but there is no excuse for bad language."
Stewart Lee
2001-09-06T14:56:17+01:00
Well, what can I say? I bought this book a couple of months ago, for when I went on holiday. Being an immense fan of Lee, I found it incredibly hard to resist taking a look at it until then! But it was lucky that I did, because from the second I started reading I was unable to put it down. But this book is more than just an excellent way to pass an 8-hour plane journey. Oh yes. It's a collection of stories, all concerning the grim underbelly of our world, and the people who inhabit it. Eventually, all their tales beautifully interwind into one. This book takes in the freemasons, burned-out 60's rock stars, women who can't keep a living boyfriend, and a motely crew of other no-hopers. I don't want to give away the plot, but I will say this: It's an amazing book, and you'd have to be bl***y stupid to pass it up. Bl***y, bl***y stupid indeed. Stewart's Comments: "I am delighted Iain enjoyed the book so much, but there is no excuse for bad language."
It seems like an act of monumental and inexcusable self indulgence to do notes on your own book, but seeing as how you have found this place and made it this far, here's some attempts to explain where things came from and why they are as they are.
Click on the different chapters to read the footnotes
Stewart Lee
2001-06-01T14:57:58+01:00
It seems like an act of monumental and inexcusable self indulgence to do notes on your own book, but seeing as how you have found this place and made it this far, here's some attempts to explain where things came from and why they are as they are. Click on the different chapters to read the footnotes
A crowd who may, as Stewart surmised, be largely new to him and his different brand of material.
Stewart is a clever man. An angrier Charlie Brooker he deals less in tricky riddles and more in brutal honesty. So yes, while there is a lot of thinking to be done when listening, he isn’t afraid to drop it all and pull off a crass laugh with a profanity or sexual reference.
So the crowd at first seemed slow to warm to him - perhaps the stretched and less-than-comfy arena hampered our ability to unite as one and enjoy the collective humorous experience.
But as he went on his honest approach to what he saw around him, his keen eye for a decent visual punchline after decades in the business and his sheer warmer-than-you-would-think personality slowly won everyone around.
By the time the second half of his set drew to a close there was more laughter and more shaking of seats on their secure rails as shoulders involuntarily rocked to the vibrations of humour.
Stewart was looking at how technology has changed the way we get our enjoyment. How the internet has taken our wider view of existence and clipped it down to 20-second clips of cats falling over on endless loops.
He derided the under-40s, the computer generation. And perhaps what made me laugh so hard was, as a 29-year-old, I completely agreed with the majority of what he was saying. The downfalls of my own generation were hard to deny, and there was plenty I fell foul of myself.
The routine on fads and how stupid they make us was excellent, especially when delving into how our grandparents may have sought to spice up their sex life in the 1930s countryside.
He bemoaned Brexit, lambasted the decision for America to vote Trump in. And there was also time to take a swipe at the all-encompassing TV phenomenon that is Game of Thrones.
His stage was a collection of his rivals’ live DVDs all ‘picked up for 1p online’. As he stamped across their faces with mock venom and anger, the message of his set was really hammered home. Comedians come and go in fads, as has technology such as the DVD itself.
Yet the one thing that has endured is laughter. And we all left with it ringing in our ears (and a reminder to learn about the triangles of jokes).
Stewart Lee
2017-09-23T20:48:52+01:00
A crowd who may, as Stewart surmised, be largely new to him and his different brand of material. Stewart is a clever man. An angrier Charlie Brooker he deals less in tricky riddles and more in brutal honesty. So yes, while there is a lot of thinking to be done when listening, he isn’t afraid to drop it all and pull off a crass laugh with a profanity or sexual reference. So the crowd at first seemed slow to warm to him - perhaps the stretched and less-than-comfy arena hampered our ability to unite as one and enjoy the collective humorous experience. But as he went on his honest approach to what he saw around him, his keen eye for a decent visual punchline after decades in the business and his sheer warmer-than-you-would-think personality slowly won everyone around. By the time the second half of his set drew to a close there was more laughter and more shaking of seats on their secure rails as shoulders involuntarily rocked to the vibrations of humour. Stewart was looking at how technology has changed the way we get our enjoyment. How the internet has taken our wider view of existence and clipped it down to 20-second clips of cats falling over on endless loops. He derided the under-40s, the computer generation. And perhaps what made me laugh so hard was, as a 29-year-old, I completely agreed with the majority of what he was saying. The downfalls of my own generation were hard to deny, and there was plenty I fell foul of myself. The routine on fads and how stupid they make us was excellent, especially when delving into how our grandparents may have sought to spice up their sex life in the 1930s countryside. He bemoaned Brexit, lambasted the decision for America...
Binty Frogwitch lives in Chelsea and has been a Royal Dog Correspondent since the 1950’s, selling stories to The Daily Mail, ITN and Popbitch.
“I have always lived in London. I need to be at the centre of things. If an incident involving a Royal Dog occurs I have to check the facts. Hurry Binty! What is it? One of the Queen’s Corgis? Princess Anne’s Japanese Fighting Dog? Prince Harry’s Red Setter/Golden Labrador cross? (Don’t ask!) Then I deliver a more exciting version of these facts to camera outside Buckingham Palace, whilst making a face that suggests in many ways, that I pity the poor royal dogs, simply trying to go about their valuable duties, in the full glare of the press. I mean, think about it. Can it be much fun trying to cock your leg against a footman or bury your mess in the garden, knowing that over the walls of the palace, the lenses of the paparazzi are focussed on your every movement, literally?
Now, though many of us were thrilled when their romance began, and predicted great things, it was always clear to me that the very public relationship between the Queen’s two Corgis, Willy and Middy, was never going to last. It was reported earlier this month that Willy Winsor V and Middy Middy Middleton had parted. This is truly sad, as it is known the Queen had high hopes for the dogs, and was hoping to breed from them, having gone as far as rubbing Willy’s nose in Middy’s treasure-flower to try and move things along. But Willy was more interested in chasing sticks and running around the garden jumping up at butterflies!
Willy and Middy were the first of any royal Corgis to be allowed to live together publicly, and resided for the last two years at Clarence House, next door to Saint James’ Palace. Here Princess Diana’s former butler Paul Burrell drilled staff in appropriately elegant use of pooper scoopers, soda siphons and blotting paper, in order to clean up dog spillages up in corridors. Rumours that many of the servants were adpet at this already after years of waiting on HRH The Queen Mother are most certainly not true. (Is she still with us? It’s shocking, I know, but can’t remember.)
The media has been swift to blame the media in for the collapse of the relationship. But as a Royal Dog Watcher of some half a century standing, as far as I am concerned the trouble stems from the high class West End dog grooming centre Bijous. Willy and Middy were always happy here, until a naughty pug called Pelly came to have his ears ironed one day, and encouraged Willy to run off sniffing other dogs’ bottoms and rubbing himself against pillows. When a poor-quality tabloid responded to this story last week with the headline “ROYAL DOG IN SOFT FURNISHING SEX ACT. PHOTS PAGE 5”, I for one was delighted to see prime-minister Tony Blair issue an official statement on the subject.
Mr Blair’s tardiness in commenting on the execution of Saddam Hussein was widely criticised in the press, and it was marvellous to see that the PM can still make a statement swiftly when it really matters. “These two dogs should be left alone now without reams of stuff being written that I can assure you, from my experience of having fallen asleep once and dreamed that I was a dog, will be complete nonsense," he told the BBC’s Politics Show. And I agree. Must go now, I am off to do a vox pop at Battersea Dogs’ Home. “
Binty Frogwitch was talking to Stewart Lee
Stewart Lee
2007-04-24T17:00:31+01:00
Binty Frogwitch lives in Chelsea and has been a Royal Dog Correspondent since the 1950’s, selling stories to The Daily Mail, ITN and Popbitch. “I have always lived in London. I need to be at the centre of things. If an incident involving a Royal Dog occurs I have to check the facts. Hurry Binty! What is it? One of the Queen’s Corgis? Princess Anne’s Japanese Fighting Dog? Prince Harry’s Red Setter/Golden Labrador cross? (Don’t ask!) Then I deliver a more exciting version of these facts to camera outside Buckingham Palace, whilst making a face that suggests in many ways, that I pity the poor royal dogs, simply trying to go about their valuable duties, in the full glare of the press. I mean, think about it. Can it be much fun trying to cock your leg against a footman or bury your mess in the garden, knowing that over the walls of the palace, the lenses of the paparazzi are focussed on your every movement, literally? Now, though many of us were thrilled when their romance began, and predicted great things, it was always clear to me that the very public relationship between the Queen’s two Corgis, Willy and Middy, was never going to last. It was reported earlier this month that Willy Winsor V and Middy Middy Middleton had parted. This is truly sad, as it is known the Queen had high hopes for the dogs, and was hoping to breed from them, having gone as far as rubbing Willy’s nose in Middy’s treasure-flower to try and move things along. But Willy was more interested in chasing sticks and running around the garden jumping up at butterflies! Willy and Middy were the first of any royal Corgis to be allowed to live together publicly, and resided for the...
Two dozen young people, their hair unkempt, their face masks filthy, stood on the rolling route of the Ridgeway at Overton, holding aloft on wooden shafts an enormous pair of billowing ladies’ bloomers. White against the blue sky like nylon clouds, written upon their wind-filled cheeks were the words “sorry ass”. “Sorry ass!”, chanted the children, “Sorry ass! Sorry ass! Save your sorry ass!” In the long hot summer of 2021 (0001 AC) the coronavirus reshaped not only society and the economy, but also the fragile column of ether that is human faith.
It was on 2 August 2020, a year previously, that the Sunday Telegraph, Britain’s worst newspaper, had carried an opinion piece concluding: “The celebration of historical diversity shouldn’t be surrendered to the left as a permanent guilt trip or a weapon to use in the culture war. The Tories should embrace it as a celebration of the glorious patchwork of British life.” The Conservatives’ media masters were instructing them to reject racism, not because to do so was right in and of itself, but because feigning wokeness would be another way to discredit their political opponents, a job they had previously been happy to delegate to all mainstream media, clockwork Russian cyber-bots, and sexless young men on YouTube, foaming in their mum’s basements.
Similarly, one might cynically adopt any expedient moral position, whether one believed it or not, to win the public school debating competition, triumph in the Oxford PPE tutorial, or seduce leftwing totty at the May ball. Rejecting racism was all about winning. And it was virtue signalling of the first water. “Wait until these born-again rightwing social justice warriors find out some of the things their own prime minister has been saying,” a Marxist BAME media-friend of mine had laughed back then: “They are going to lose their shit!” “We are all letterboxes now,” our non-binary Muslim companion reminded us, tugging at their face mask.
The green shoots of the Conservatives’ new rightwing anti-racism strategy had been evident earlier in the year. On the 3 July, the Daily Mail had run a story entitled “Uber Eats cuts ties with BBC comedian Jethro who fronted their ads after his ‘disgusting’ jibe accusing environment secretary George Eustice of not liking Cornish pasties.” Jethro is a British comedian of Cornish descent, whose contract to advertise Uber Eats had elapsed in May. On 11 June he had tweeted a picture of the pasty-loving Mr Eustice, who was born in Penzance, captioned “Shall we have a Cornish pasty for dinner tonight, George?” Despite the assiduously curated Benetton rainbow of my social group, I honestly don’t know enough about the food and race-based triggers contained within this tweet to decode the magnitude of its offence, but I am happy to accept it was racist if honest brokers like the Daily Mail and the Conservatives say it was. Nonetheless, the paper’s reporting of the story was determinedly inaccurate.
Uber Eats declined to comment on Jethro, as they were probably too busy putting katsu curries on to mopeds, but a fictional senior Tory praised the newly woke app for “acting swiftly to drop this nasty character. One can only assume they were concerned that associating with this individual would damage their reputation.” “Wait until Uber Eats find out they’re an offshore-based tax and regulation dodging bunch of bastards,” that same imaginary Marxist BAME media-friend of mine had laughed. “They’re going to have to act swiftly to drop their nasty selves!” “And what is Uber Eats anyway?”, texted a Romani comedy writer friend from her Brighton wheelchair, “It sounds like tapas made by Hitler!” If only my real friends were as witty and diverse as my imaginary ones!
The 11 July Daily Mail piece concluded with the admission that Jethro’s Uber Eats contract had actually elapsed in May, thus proving its own headline on its own report was false, unless Uber had taken action to disassociate itself from Jethro a month before his tweet, in clairvoyant anticipation of the Conservatives’ undoubtedly sincere objections. It may be possible to foresee the future I suppose. After all, I am writing this week’s column now, but it is set in the summer of next year. But who was telling the truth? And did truth matter any more anyway? Was it just another casualty of the Brexit-Covid government?
Thankfully, a year after pasty-gate, a burgeoning cult of young people have decided truth does matter. Dominic Cumming’s trip to Durham showed that if you believe you are right then rules need not apply, and the Sorry Asses have broken Lockdown Four to wander the long distance trackways of Britain proclaiming their message from the moral high ground. I followed them discreetly, north-east along the white chalk Ridgeway, to the foothills of Tory weekend territory.
“We wanted to believe the best of our leaders,” said the head Sorry Ass, a displaced aristocrat called Leonora, sparking up on the bank of a dark ages hill fort. “We knew they had lied, and they knew they had lied, but we combed their communications for some hint of contrition, suggesting trust could be rebuilt. And we found it, here.” Leonora pointed to a scrap of paper, a tweet sent by Sarah Vine, the Daily Mail resentment filter bed, in August of 2020, the previous year. It read: “We all have to die sooner or later. If I get Covid and cop it, so be it. My time has come. I’ll have had a good life, better than most in this world at any rate. I certainly don’t expect the entire nation to bankrupt itself to save my sorry ass.”
“Where is the contrition?” I asked. “All I see is selfishness and advocacy of a death cult.” “There,” said Leonora, pointing: “It says ‘sorry ass’. Her ass was sorry. Her mind will follow.” And the Sorry Asses hauled their bloomer banner high, and chanted towards the Chilterns. “Sorry ass! Sorry ass! Save your sorry ass!”
Stewart Lee
2020-08-09T18:11:23+01:00
Two dozen young people, their hair unkempt, their face masks filthy, stood on the rolling route of the Ridgeway at Overton, holding aloft on wooden shafts an enormous pair of billowing ladies’ bloomers. White against the blue sky like nylon clouds, written upon their wind-filled cheeks were the words “sorry ass”. “Sorry ass!”, chanted the children, “Sorry ass! Sorry ass! Save your sorry ass!” In the long hot summer of 2021 (0001 AC) the coronavirus reshaped not only society and the economy, but also the fragile column of ether that is human faith. It was on 2 August 2020, a year previously, that the Sunday Telegraph, Britain’s worst newspaper, had carried an opinion piece concluding: “The celebration of historical diversity shouldn’t be surrendered to the left as a permanent guilt trip or a weapon to use in the culture war. The Tories should embrace it as a celebration of the glorious patchwork of British life.” The Conservatives’ media masters were instructing them to reject racism, not because to do so was right in and of itself, but because feigning wokeness would be another way to discredit their political opponents, a job they had previously been happy to delegate to all mainstream media, clockwork Russian cyber-bots, and sexless young men on YouTube, foaming in their mum’s basements. Similarly, one might cynically adopt any expedient moral position, whether one believed it or not, to win the public school debating competition, triumph in the Oxford PPE tutorial, or seduce leftwing totty at the May ball. Rejecting racism was all about winning. And it was virtue signalling of the first water. “Wait until these born-again rightwing social justice warriors find out some of the things their own prime minister has been saying,” a Marxist BAME media-friend of mine had laughed back then: “They are...
'Notebooks out, plagiarists!" ran the sleeve notes of the Fall's 1991 album Shiftwork. The veteran Manchester band's frontman, Mark E Smith, tends towards an inventive paranoia, but in the case of the American indie quintet Pavement, he couldn't have been more right. Their acclaimed 1991 debut, Slanted and Enchanted, was the sound of the Fall's back catalogue invigorated by a youthful American college band's lightness of touch and a stateside slacker's knowing sense of irony. Even so, Pavement's wholesale reappropriation of Smith's consonant-ridden jargon still seemed a little brazen. Wasn't Slanted and Enchanted's Our Singer just an exact rewrite of the Fall's Hip Priest? "Yeah it was," Stephen Malkmus, Pavement's wiry, bookish singer and guitarist admits, "but there were other songs too. Conduit for Sale was New Face in Hell. Jackals, False Grails; The Lonesome Era was The Classical. It didn't worry me at the time. I don't know what I was thinking," he muses idly, as if he'd never considered the subject before. "We don't sound like them any more."
This much is true. Since their scratchy lo-fi four-track singles of the late 1980s, Pavement have blossomed from inspired copyists to fully fledged artists who, on last year's Wowee Zowee, finally found their own voice. With their new album, Brighten the Corners, released on Domino records on February 10, Pavement have managed to retain their alluring, ramshackle charm and ally it to a set of distinctive songs - the wry humour of Stereo, the gorgeous folk rock of Shady Lane and the shuffling jazz inflections of Blue Hawaiian. Brighten the Corners is an album only Pavement could have made. But appropriately, Pavement themselves are about to find out what it feels like to be the subject of comparisons.
The eponymous fifth album from Britpop flag-bearers Blur allegedly indulges their suppressed love of American indie rock stylings, especially Pavement's. Malkmus doesn't hear that much of Pavement in it. "I think the overall tone could be equated to our last album, Wowee Zowee," he offers, "in that it covers loads of different genres, with mellow bits and aggressive bits going back and forth, but as far as individual notes go - no, it's not like us. I think it still has Blur's English Kinks/folky part to it. But what I like about Blur is Damon's singing. He has a voice that doesn't annoy me."
Pavement are probably one of the only American bands Blur could use as a new template, their stock of classic British rock being exhausted. Most American bands have a coast-to-coast road-tested lack of contrivance, but Pavement used to be too clever by half. While Oasis, blissfully untroubled by intellectual anxieties, are ideally equipped to speak to the child in all of us, Blur and Pavement are more likely to engage the head than the heart or the gut. Malkmus concurs, albeit defensively: "I think there's parts of our sound that you could react to emotionally. I try hard to have soul, but maybe there's some irony and necessary self-consciousness that you can't help having if you've got a brain. I want to listen to someone who is clever and smart, like Bob Dylan, not just some raw-emotion person with no brain."
Malkmus has admitted in the past that Pavement have a tendency to play "in inverted commas", but elaborates: "If anyone's guilty of inverted commas then it's British bands in general. The Britpoppers are much more referential to other music in that way than us." One would hope that in giving a song on the new album the appalling title I'm Just a Killer for Your Love, Blur were using a fairly bold set of inverted commas, but Malkmus won't be drawn into criticising his new-found fans. He's now a regular house guest of Albarn and his girlfriend, Justine Frischmann. Frischmann's band Elastica, successfully sued for plagiarism by both Wire and the Stranglers, were once described by Malkmus as "representing the 1990s disease of wholesale nihilism about creativity", but he now tries to put an apologetic gloss on the comment.
"Er...well...I mean it's just a different kind of thing. It's just more controlled, more anal, I guess. I think she has different goals to us." In a single bound Malkmus escapes. "Justine wants her album to be the perfect statement for now, and I'm envious of that in a lot of ways. And I think Damon decided this is what it is for this year and he carries it out to its end, and there's something honourable about that, too." Pavement, Malkmus suggests, don't operate to such a rigid agenda, and Brighten the Corners is the first album they've rehearsed before recording. "What we do in a lot of ways is, like, more of a dartboard," he says bewilderingly. "I don't really know about music being a pop cultural movement or representing middle-class youth culture or working-class consciousness in a song. I think of music as an art thing. I try to keep it sort of loose for that reason."
Malkmus is painting a picture of our champion Britpoppers actually aspiring to make disposable ephemera. But as Blur set about spinning a new web of idiomatic cross-references, so Pavement are consolidating the escape from the bonds of theirs. And in a show at the London Astoria 10 days ago, the Pavement/Fall comparisons ended, too. Where Mark E Smith stands aloof from the Fall, looking like a vicious soldier ant sternly surveying his labouring workers, Malkmus stands only a little to the side of Pavement, glowing with the benign pride of a parent at the school nativity play, as if he finds his band mates' attempts to push out new shapes from guitar, bass and drums inexplicably endearing.
Stewart Lee
1997-02-02T16:55:48+00:00
'Notebooks out, plagiarists!" ran the sleeve notes of the Fall's 1991 album Shiftwork. The veteran Manchester band's frontman, Mark E Smith, tends towards an inventive paranoia, but in the case of the American indie quintet Pavement, he couldn't have been more right. Their acclaimed 1991 debut, Slanted and Enchanted, was the sound of the Fall's back catalogue invigorated by a youthful American college band's lightness of touch and a stateside slacker's knowing sense of irony. Even so, Pavement's wholesale reappropriation of Smith's consonant-ridden jargon still seemed a little brazen. Wasn't Slanted and Enchanted's Our Singer just an exact rewrite of the Fall's Hip Priest? "Yeah it was," Stephen Malkmus, Pavement's wiry, bookish singer and guitarist admits, "but there were other songs too. Conduit for Sale was New Face in Hell. Jackals, False Grails; The Lonesome Era was The Classical. It didn't worry me at the time. I don't know what I was thinking," he muses idly, as if he'd never considered the subject before. "We don't sound like them any more." This much is true. Since their scratchy lo-fi four-track singles of the late 1980s, Pavement have blossomed from inspired copyists to fully fledged artists who, on last year's Wowee Zowee, finally found their own voice. With their new album, Brighten the Corners, released on Domino records on February 10, Pavement have managed to retain their alluring, ramshackle charm and ally it to a set of distinctive songs - the wry humour of Stereo, the gorgeous folk rock of Shady Lane and the shuffling jazz inflections of Blue Hawaiian. Brighten the Corners is an album only Pavement could have made. But appropriately, Pavement themselves are about to find out what it feels like to be the subject of comparisons. The eponymous fifth album from Britpop flag-bearers Blur allegedly indulges their...
West along the coast is the ancient market town of Rye; to the east, Derek Jarman's driftwood garden fossilises in the shadows of Dungeness power station; between the two, a short walk from the crazy-golf course, lie the utilitarian chalets of the Pontin's holiday camp in Camber Sands, East Sussex. Last weekend its family-fun facade was lowered as it experienced a visitation from the New York art-punk legends Television, who had re-formed to top the bill of the most culturally significant British pop and rock festival of the year.
Two glamorously faded ballrooms that usually host knobbly-knee competitions rang instead to free jazz and stooped experimental rock bands during the most exciting weekend it is legal to enjoy at an English seaside resort. "It's a very special experience to play here," said Ira Kaplan, of New Jersey's Yo La Tengo, archly to the audience. "When we were kids, my parents would fly us here from New York to holiday at Pontin's, sometimes two or three times each summer."
The third annual All Tomorrow's Parties (ATP) sold out its 3,000 places in record time. Confused visitors crossed the Atlantic or travelled from Scandinavia with £100 tickets for three days' chalet accommodation and a bill so daring it should change the sorry way music is promoted, programmed and consumed in this country for good. The absence of flooded chemical toilets, mud and Ocean Colour Scene made it seem as if there really is no reason why rock festivals must be rubbish.
This year, the booker Barry Hogan, whose ATP website mixes disciplinarianism with fan-boy wonder, asked Chicago's Tortoise to curate the event. The 22 acts selected - including the widescreen country-rockers Calexico, the spangle-suited Sun Ra Arkestra, noisy instrumentalists Rick Rizzo and Tara Key, and the Boards of Canada boffins - reflect the band's open-minded approach, as heard on Tortoise's latest album, Standards (Warp).
Plucking players from local groups in the early 1990s, Tortoise could only have emerged from Chicago, says the bassist, Douglas McCombs: "In the early 1980s, Chicago had an art-school punk-rock scene and an intense jazz community, which in the 1990s somehow coalesced. Now both exist together, in the same venues, on the same stages, even within the same group."
Tortoise's steady ascent has opened gateways for fans into areas more interesting than the indie-rock scene that originally harboured the band. Their family tree leads listeners back to the minimalist post-punks Slint, Bastro and Gastr Del Sol, and the psychedelic garage-rock of Eleventh Dream Day, while band members moonlight in numerous jazz outfits, including Isotope 217 and Chicago Underground Orchestra. Tortoise's choice of guests seemed determined to drag their fans kicking and screaming into a wider frame of reference. For the most part it worked, despite the fact that the festival's apparent demographic incomprehensibility had, according to the festival's PR company, scared away potential sponsors.
While US Maple's confrontational combination of 1970s rock sneer and unpredictable free-music ethics was a twin guitar solo too far for some, for the most part the audience rose to the occasion. To see a rapturous reception for the 71-year-old guitarist Derek Bailey's disorientating interaction with the Tortoise sound engineer Casey Rice's samples, to sense the crowd warm to the reinvigorated 1960s saxophonist Fred Anderson's fatherly glances towards the Tortoise guitarist Jeff Parker, shows that an audience given credit for its intelligence, and a bed in a nice chalet, will respond to quality.
ATP's success was due to the festival's emergence as a trustworthy brand and the pulling power of Tortoise themselves, who managed to keep 3,000 people almost silent for 90 minutes of demanding instrumental jazz-dub. But it is also indicative of something bigger.
In another ironic appropriation of standard stage patter, Ira Kaplan asked the audience to shout out if they read The Wire or Mojo. Both these publications, The Wire in particular, step outside the tramlines of what radio programmers and music-magazine publishers usually imagine the public want, and both flourished during the music-press cull that saw Select, Melody Maker and Vox humanely destroyed and buried in a Cumbrian sinkhole. Many tickets were booked through the festival's website, www.alltomorrowsparties. co.uk, while on message boards, younger fans appealed to their elders for information about which Television albums they should swot up on for the show. The success of the weekend is an example of a shift in the way supposedly unmarketable music can be consumed and packaged. It should set alarm bells ringing in rock land, but the festival's allies are in the oddest places.
Perhaps because of the lack of luxurious hospitality facilities, there were no Radio 1 DJs or television executives present at ATP, but the former South Bank Centre programmer David Sefton was studying the event for its autumn transfer to Los Angeles, where Sonic Youth will oversee a weekend at his new UCLA posting. The neglected international underground is bursting its banks and overflowing into places where experimental rock music has never set foot before. Like Los Angeles's most prestigious arts venue. And a Pontin's holiday camp in Camber Sands on a wet weekend in April.
Television played last on Sunday night, and though bar chatter finally overwhelmed a PA that couldn't cover the cavernous ballroom,their furtive grimaces couldn't disguise their enjoyment of their unexpected reunion. As recently as last month, Douglas McCombs didn't quite believe that the band would show. "Richard Lloyd is holding his cards close to his chest," he confessed. "He and Tom Verlaine don't exactly have the best relationship today." But as Television took to the stage, their craggy faces a Mount Rushmore monument of mid-1970s
New York art-rock, All Tomorrow's Parties proved itself capable of little miracles.
Stewart Lee
2001-04-15T17:42:14+01:00
West along the coast is the ancient market town of Rye; to the east, Derek Jarman's driftwood garden fossilises in the shadows of Dungeness power station; between the two, a short walk from the crazy-golf course, lie the utilitarian chalets of the Pontin's holiday camp in Camber Sands, East Sussex. Last weekend its family-fun facade was lowered as it experienced a visitation from the New York art-punk legends Television, who had re-formed to top the bill of the most culturally significant British pop and rock festival of the year. Two glamorously faded ballrooms that usually host knobbly-knee competitions rang instead to free jazz and stooped experimental rock bands during the most exciting weekend it is legal to enjoy at an English seaside resort. "It's a very special experience to play here," said Ira Kaplan, of New Jersey's Yo La Tengo, archly to the audience. "When we were kids, my parents would fly us here from New York to holiday at Pontin's, sometimes two or three times each summer." The third annual All Tomorrow's Parties (ATP) sold out its 3,000 places in record time. Confused visitors crossed the Atlantic or travelled from Scandinavia with £100 tickets for three days' chalet accommodation and a bill so daring it should change the sorry way music is promoted, programmed and consumed in this country for good. The absence of flooded chemical toilets, mud and Ocean Colour Scene made it seem as if there really is no reason why rock festivals must be rubbish. This year, the booker Barry Hogan, whose ATP website mixes disciplinarianism with fan-boy wonder, asked Chicago's Tortoise to curate the event. The 22 acts selected - including the widescreen country-rockers Calexico, the spangle-suited Sun Ra Arkestra, noisy instrumentalists Rick Rizzo and Tara Key, and the Boards of Canada boffins - reflect...
The DVD of the fourth and final series of Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle is out today (Buy here). Chortle will be running a raft of exclusive content to mark the release, including descriptions of each episode in his own words and a competition to win copies. We start with the DVD sleeve notes, written by Lee himself:
I began work on the six half hours of the fourth series of Comedy Vehicle in the Summer of 2014, with an August run in the cellar of Edinburgh’s iconic Stand comedy club.
Then I performed and reworked the material almost nightly, in different permutations, at various stages of evolution, in long London theatre runs, on tour nationally, and in the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe, for the following 18 months or so, until the series was recorded in December 2015.
Series 4 was the hardest series to write. Series 3 and 4 had been commissioned back-to-back. The BBC’s reluctance to re-commission the massively acclaimed, inexpensive, multiple-award winning show after Series 1, and then again after Series 2, made long-term personal and career planning difficult; but at least it meant I toured regular full-length story-shows in the interims while the channel made up its mind, developing new techniques and angles.
But Series 4 came hard off the back of Series 3 and, I’ll concede, represents the Comedy Vehicle, in its original format, being driven, perhaps deliberately, off a cliff. How much weight could I load on ‘the TV character of Stewart Lee’ before he finally broke?
Another problem was the sheer unpredictability of local and global news during the period I was assembling the material. Personalities that were big news in 2014 were utterly forgotten by 2015; whole political schools of thought rose and fell; random terrorist acts cast appalling shadows over material that would otherwise have been innocuous. And the acclaim loaded onto me meant that, like it or not, I was a kind of authority figure with a degree of status, who would have to work even harder to undermine himself, to engage in the struggle to retain dignity that rests at the core of all comedy.
On the road, I ran in some of the strangest material I had ever written in front of the largest audiences I had ever played to. It’s a numbers game. The point at which an audience of 2,500 tips over the edge into collective hysteria, at some absurd device, is much lower than the point at which a room of 120 does the same. I don’t know if, this time, the large theatres I was playing prepared me for the little room I was to record in.
Ludicrous, borderline surrealist exercises that rocked vast halls were harder to swing at the tiny Mildmay Club, and my own popularity meant the audiences for the tapings were now visibly compromised by noticeably unconvinced spouses, dragged along against their will, and pockets of bewildered TV executives on free passes, there because they thought they should be. The extended absurdism of episode 5, The Migrant Crisis, was rarely less than joyous live, but was an extremely tense experience in the recording process.
By the time the series was over, every single executive at the BBC involved in its development and commissioning a decade earlier had left or changed jobs, perhaps made anxious as the government speedily and deliberately asset-stripped the institution, or perhaps trying to get away from me. There was no-one left at the top of the tree who profited personally from Comedy Vehicle’s acclaim, and as remakes of classic 1970s sitcoms lurched into life all around me, the writing was on the wall.
Even those who loved the show seemed caught up in events beyond their control. One executive’s final set of advisory edit notes were sent from the back of a taxi, after watching the show in fragments on an iPhone, days before resigning, the BBC comedy department’s morale and confidence seeping away under the lash of the Culture Secretary John Whittingdale.
For a proposed Series 5, I went into a meeting with a man I had never met before and suggested shooting the series over four nights in the sort of larger theatre I now get to perform in, the character’s comic tragedy now the fact that he is forced to accept a level of popularity he thinks must mean he is rubbish, as anything with that level of appeal is usually shit.
In early 2016, there were rumbles about making a version of the programme with the BBC’s own in-house studios, and selling it on to the Netflix-style content carriers that already host my live shows, and the BBC series that I have bought back from the channel and sold on.
But then, in the dying days Whittingdale’s Culture Secretary tenure, there seemed to be some sort of governmental rethink about whether the BBC was even allowed to enter the competitive content provision market. And because I write all the material myself, the kind of long-term breathing space I require to generate it between series apparently became harder for the heads of comedy to justify.
Then that Brexit summer settled like a toxic cloud. Pretty swiftly the world moved on, and it’s already hard to believe that Comedy Vehicle ever existed at all, clearly informed, as it was, by a set of liberal values that now seem all but obsolete.
I’m proud of every one of the 24 episodes, the progress the team made between the first and last series (under producer Richard Webb and director Tim Kirkby) is visibly astounding, and the final episode of the fourth series is probably my favourite of the lot.
Peace! I’m outta here!! You shoulda killed me last year!!!
Stewart Lee, writer/clown, Edinburgh, 2016
Stewart Lee
2016-10-10T04:56:51+01:00
The DVD of the fourth and final series of Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle is out today (Buy here). Chortle will be running a raft of exclusive content to mark the release, including descriptions of each episode in his own words and a competition to win copies. We start with the DVD sleeve notes, written by Lee himself: I began work on the six half hours of the fourth series of Comedy Vehicle in the Summer of 2014, with an August run in the cellar of Edinburgh’s iconic Stand comedy club. Then I performed and reworked the material almost nightly, in different permutations, at various stages of evolution, in long London theatre runs, on tour nationally, and in the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe, for the following 18 months or so, until the series was recorded in December 2015. Series 4 was the hardest series to write. Series 3 and 4 had been commissioned back-to-back. The BBC’s reluctance to re-commission the massively acclaimed, inexpensive, multiple-award winning show after Series 1, and then again after Series 2, made long-term personal and career planning difficult; but at least it meant I toured regular full-length story-shows in the interims while the channel made up its mind, developing new techniques and angles. But Series 4 came hard off the back of Series 3 and, I’ll concede, represents the Comedy Vehicle, in its original format, being driven, perhaps deliberately, off a cliff. How much weight could I load on ‘the TV character of Stewart Lee’ before he finally broke? Another problem was the sheer unpredictability of local and global news durin
Until Nov the shows are work-in-progs and then I will tour it for about 18 months (everywhere in UK and EIRE, except Carlisle) into mid-2018, unless there is no demand for it or I get sick or bored. Here's some dates.
A new comedians' horror fiction anthology, in which I have a piece.
Illustration by David Foldvari
Illustration by David Foldvari
But then, Lee is the man who made the screaming matches and social misfits of Jerry Springer's television show into an Olivier award-winning West End musical, Jerry Springer: the Opera.
But then, Lee is the man who made the screaming matches and social misfits of Jerry Springer's television show into an Olivier award-winning West End musical, Jerry Springer: the Opera.
A tiny teenage girl Hackney Hipster version of Stewart Lee stands outside the Dalston Rio cinema to declare...
Stewart Lee isn’t going to let something like gravity interfere with his act. Near the start of Vegetable Stew he says it isn’t a show with an arc like previous 60-minuters, but it’s still done with such precision that midway, after taking a gulp of water, he puts the bottle back on the stool, then carefully lies it flat, just in case it falls over.
Stewart Lee isn’t going to let something like gravity interfere with his act. Near the start of Vegetable Stew he says it isn’t a show with an arc like previous 60-minuters, but it’s still done with such precision that midway, after taking a gulp of water, he puts the bottle back on the stool, then carefully lies it flat, just in case it falls over.
By this time, Thomas had been joined by co-writer/director Stewart Lee (one half of comedy duo Lee and Herring). The imminent arrival of Springer induced more than a little panic. After all, their show sees Springer presiding over a blackly comic rewrite of a typically rabble-rousing, warts 'n' all episode, with a voracious chorus of keyed-up audience members, a hymn to pole-dancing, a desperate guest stripping down to nappies and a tap-dancing line of Ku Klux Klansmen and ends the first half by having Jerry killed live on air.
By this time, Thomas had been joined by co-writer/director Stewart Lee (one half of comedy duo Lee and Herring). The imminent arrival of Springer induced more than a little panic. After all, their show sees Springer presiding over a blackly comic rewrite of a typically rabble-rousing, warts 'n' all episode, with a voracious chorus of keyed-up audience members, a hymn to pole-dancing, a desperate guest stripping down to nappies and a tap-dancing line of Ku Klux Klansmen and ends the first half by having Jerry killed live on air.
Then that Brexit summer settled like a toxic cloud. Pretty swiftly the world moved on, and it’s already hard to believe that Comedy Vehicle ever existed at all, clearly informed, as it was, by a set of liberal values that now seem all but obsolete.