Never mind endangered animals – it’s the thinkers that we need to save - March 2013 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - March 10th, 2013

The reintroduction of the otter into British waterways is one of the conservation success stories of recent years. Indeed, the Otter Trust has now closed its Bungay captive breeding centre to the public, its once apparently impossible aim of repopulating the rivers with capering otters brilliantly realised. There is a slight blip in the story…

Pop culture’s past is growing faster than its present - February 2013 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - February 3rd, 2013

Saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell: appreciated by 17-year-olds and septuagenarians. Photograph: Massimo Valicchia/Demotix/Corbis Just before Christmas, I saw the early-80s Boston hardcore band Mission of Burma in a Shoreditch cellar, playing to a crowd of young people barely born this century, typically too inarticulate to explain exactly what had led them to a room I expected to…

As HMP goes under, we can wave goodbye to underpant passion - January 2013 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - January 20th, 2013

Mine is a generation of men that was defined by its underpants. We prized them for their garish styles and loud colours; and because they annoyed our baffled parents, still shell-shocked from the second world war; and because they told people – teachers, the police, girls – who we were. It is painful for men…

New year raises the eternal question: is it possible to live a life without crisps? - January 2013 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - January 13th, 2013

Crisps. Those perfect golden wonders transform even the loneliest moments into treasured memories. Consumed with caution, crisps provide salty rewards for the dreary daily tasks of my paternal and professional duties. As a child, every school holiday I would be left in the hot car outside a succession of Devon pubs with only a pint…

What’s so bad about Ukip members being foster parents? - December 2012 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - December 2nd, 2012

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…

What does the insect community make of ITV’s celebrity freak show? - November 2012 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - November 25th, 2012

Periodically, I am changed into a monstrous verminous bug. My wife recognises the signs, locks me in the cellar and slides saucers of milk and slivers of lard under the door to sustain me. We do not know why this transformation occurs. We suspect it may relate to some form of deep-seated shame or self-loathing,…