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

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

Is the V&A a temple of culture or a brothel? - June 2022 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - June 26th, 2022

On Monday night, with confident impunity, the Conservative party staged a grand ritual reenactment of its “cash for access” ethos, hosting a £20,000-a-table fundraiser at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Lubov Chernukhin, the wife of Vladimir Putin’s former deputy finance minister, and one-time Neighbours star Holly Valance, were among wealth-smeared guests invited to bid for…

Refugees, welcome to Schrödinger’s Rwanda - June 2022 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - June 19th, 2022

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…

Dorries slips the leash to clear up the Big Dog’s mess - June 2022 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - June 12th, 2022

Roland the Farter was the jester star of the court of Henry II, shattering the dignity of society once a year when, during the king’s raucous Christmas celebrations, he would deliver his explosive volleys on demand. The Farter would have served Boris Johnson’s swiftly decomposing Brexit government well, characterised as it is by a daily…

If anyone needs to feed the Queen’s corgis it’s me - June 2022 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - June 5th, 2022

I loved my gran. And my gran loved the Queen; because of the second world war; because of the corgis; and because of getting a television to watch the coronation in 1953. When I lived with her in the early 70s she had just upgraded to a colour TV and would not allow me to…

Sue Gray’s report is like a surrealist’s bad dream - May 2022 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - May 29th, 2022

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…