Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! Let’s hear it for the Town Crier Super League - April 2021 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - April 25th, 2021

Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! There can be few British traditions more English than that of the town crier. In his scarlet frock, tricorn hat, winklepicker shoes, white silk stockings and ermine posing pouch, the town crier’s bleating horn, clanging dong and horrid rasping voice have brought good news to the filthy peasant and the fragrant lord…

How Prince Philip was turned into a pawn in the phoney culture wars - April 2021 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - April 18th, 2021

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…

Behold Boris Johnson’s world-beating oration - March 2021 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - March 28th, 2021

On 23 March 2020, 74 days after China declared coronavirus to the WHO, Britain went into lockdown. In the interim Boris “I Shook Hands With Everyone” Johnson had ignored emails about a Europe-wide PPE purchasing scheme; ignored experts’ recommendations to close pubs and restaurants; taken a holiday in Kent, back before it became clogged with…

My finely balanced solution to Britain’s ‘statue problem’ - March 2021 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - March 14th, 2021

As a Bafta- and Olivier-winning cultural innovator, described by the Times as “the world’s greatest living standup” and by the Scotsman as having helped set “the new gold standard for rockumentaries”, I was invited last week to address a parliamentary select committee meeting on “the statue problem”. The culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, dabbed his two…

There’s something fishy going on at Tory HQ… - February 2021 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - February 21st, 2021

Before Brexit, 44% of British musicians, including my showbusiness friend Fish from Marillion, earned up to half their income from now inaccessible European audiences. But, should Fish find some way around the government’s failure to preserve artists’ touring opportunities, his unfortunate choice of stage name could mean he was still subject to time-consuming delays at…

Oh see how the Tories now run from Donald Trump - January 2021 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - January 17th, 2021

In 2019, Jeremy Hunt, who once hid behind a tree to avoid the press on the way to a party, said politicians boycotting Donald Trump’s state visit were exhibiting “virtue signalling of the worst kind”. Was Hunt also virtue signalling last week, then, when he conceded that Trump “shames American democracy”? Or have the goalposts,…