‘Did he really play on Petula Clark’s Downtown?’ Stewart Lee on his guitar hero Derek Bailey - September 2025 The Guardian - By Stewart Lee - September 15th, 2025

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.…

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

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

In Conversation with Alan Moore about Illuminations. Oct ’22 - October 2022 October 5th, 2022

In Conversation with Alan Moore about Illuminations, his first short story collection

‘My life would be very different without the Fall’: Stewart Lee’s honest playlist - September 2022 The Guardian - By Rich Pelley - September 5th, 2022

The first song I remember hearing while on holiday with my mum in Mallorca. I remember sitting by some candles in the dark by lake, and this Spanish guitarist playing The Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquín Rodrigo. It was only in my 20s when I was listening to Sketches of Spain by Miles Davis, which…

In the name of God, let Sue Gray do her job - January 2022 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - January 23rd, 2022

I’m back on the road until August with my five-star standup show, Snowflake Tornado, mouthing confirmation-bias to packed rooms of masked elitists. Over six nights at the Oxford Playhouse, I saw the familiar and friendly staff and crowds return, though the historic Eagle and Child pub sadly appears to have closed. It was here in…

Touched by the hand of Ithell: my fascination with a forgotten surrealist - October 2021 The Guardian - By Stewart Lee - October 11th, 2021

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…