In 1997 I looked into the pre-atomic age eyes of Harriet, the then 166-year-old Galápagos tortoise, in an Australian zoo, and saw myself reflected back, a traveller in time. And earlier this year, I looked into the pre-digital-age eyes of David Attenborough, on the platform of Oxford station, and saw myself reflected back, a traveller on the 11.59 to Paddington.

Suddenly, with his archaic belief in both the value of public broadcasting and the inherent worth of the un-monetisable natural world, the venerable polymath himself is as rare a creature as the Galápagos tortoise, whose environment he strove to save, and one equally doomed to extinction.

I thought about tortoises. Do these hard-shelled heroes, some of whom may have been gazed upon by Darwin himself, now gaze in turn upon Attenborough with sympathy, knowing that the landscape the ancient BBC apologist once thrived in is soon to be entirely stripped away by the doctrine of the free market?

David Attenborough is 90 today. But, sadly, it would be better that he die soon, without having seen what the culture secretary John Whittingdale will do to his legacy, and how those charged with defending it will let it slip away, unmourned. If Whittingdale had any honour, any mercy, and any basic human decency, he would murder David Attenborough himself today, in his bed, to spare him any further suffering.

But do it pat, John Whittingdale, quickly and cleanly, with one swift slash of the butcher’s knife across that old, wise throat, not slowly and painfully, hung up on a hook and whipped, like all those women, in those films you like.

As I climbed down from the train, Attenborough, alone, caught my eye. “You,” he said, “I know you from the Baftas. You represent exactly the kind of distinctive voice public broadcasting ought to be encouraging. Meet me at the new Woodberry Wetlands centre on the first weekend of May. I have something for you.” I accepted my mission. Who wouldn’t? It was David Attenborough.

In a related development, a recent edition of the Daily Telegraph, Britain’s most unpleasant broadsheet newspaper, was a veritable four-poster bed full of carefully placed severed horses’ heads, laid out to intimidate all who might dare to defy the post-Leveson press John Whittingdale is charged with regulating. Cryptic references; articles with no proper nouns; covert ideological justifications for dustbin dirt-harvesting buried in distant sections.

On balance, I think that the Daily Telegraph is a sewer. Although perhaps to say the Daily Telegraph is a sewer is to dignify it. The Daily Telegraph is, instead, an aqueduct full of the discarded contents of Charles Moore’s chemical toilet, constructed conveniently at head height, so that its readers can lap the fruits of his micturition directly from it until they are sated, as it flows gradually downhill from his home in Tunbridge Wells.

How odd that while the evil Jedi Knights controlling the press rattle their lightsabers about not being able to dish the dirt on actors and TV presenters, they said nothing for years of John Whittingdale’s unknowing indiscretions. And yet we are supposed to continue to believe that this had nothing to do with his role in future press regulation. Yeah? Monkeys might fly out of Lord Downton’s butt!

Audaciously, they even invite us to imagine that Whittingdale’s private life’s absence from the headlines was in fact evidence that regulation was working. A man who went out, without knowing, with a lady who whipped people, and who went on business to a place where some other ladies will dance their bum on your winky if it is under some trousers, is helping the papers to be able to carry on making money by saying that someone else had a thing put up their bum or another person kissed two people at once. In the words of the Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn: “You couldn’t make it up! Kill prostitutes!! Kill them now!!!’

But Whittingdale, a thought-hating Teflon armadillo, appears to be armour-plated. Consider. Over the five years I have filled in here, during the increasingly suspicious absences of your regular columnist, David Mitchell, I have noticed repetitive patterns emerging in my work, not all of them intentional.

Ludicrous and dubious figures, given to reliably ludicrous and dubious pronouncements, emerge periodically from the political mist – Grant Shapps, Iain Duncan Smith, Sajid Javid – and columns featuring them begin to write themselves. Typically, these larger-than-life loons become funny characters in their own right, before inconveniently disappearing from public life, or making sideways moves to less high-profile positions, just as I was really hitting my stride at ventriloquising versions of them.

People so easy to ridicule, so inherently ridiculous, are inevitably heading for a fall, or at least a change of job. But Whittingdale has been unashamedly ridiculous since at least last summer, and yet, like that old condom stuck to the roof of the bus shelter by the mosque and visible only from the top deck of the 141, he shows no signs of being removed by higher powers any time soon, perhaps because they are scared of his knowledge of torture techniques.

In choosing Whittingdale to destroy the BBC the secret chiefs chose well. He does not believe anything has any value other than its fiscal one, so he cannot be convinced that culture, documentaries, drama, comedy and music are of any worth in and of themselves.

He sees the back catalogue of Attenborough, for example, which no other broadcaster could or would have created, as an unacceptable “market intervention”. And he has no shame, so he cannot be shamed. John Whittingdale could stand before a select committee naked, covered in photos of himself naked, and he would maintain the same shark-eyed steeliness.

I met Attenborough last weekend, as arranged, in a secluded patch of earth behind some reeds at the new wetlands centre he himself had ceremonially opened. “Take this,” he said, reaching into a pouch in his belly, marsupial style, to pluck out a tiny egg, crisscrossed with magical markings, “and keep it safe and warm, but not too warm, during these troubled times. One day, maybe,” said Attenborough, holding my hand, “the world will be well once more and it will be time to let it hatch.”

PEA GREEN BOAT by Stewart Lee Illustrated by David Waywell

Published on 3 September 2026 (Ebury Spotlight)

In Pea Green Boat, Stewart Lee and David Waywell create a darkly hilarious retelling of The Owl and the Pussy-cat 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 and it becomes clear that these two creatures should never have been put in a boat together.

David's gothic-comic illustrations are the perfect accompaniment to Stewart’s bleakly funny text, bringing a psychoactive subtext to the nonsensical world of Edward Lear’s poem.

The book is inspired by Stewart’s cult 2001 stage piece of the same name, which he is reviving in special Pea Green Boat performances across the country, each featuring a different musical guest. 

Stewart Lee, plus musicians, perform PEA GREEN BOAT by Stewart Lee

2026 Book Launch Live Shows Here

Purchase Links For The Book

‘Everyone will have the food they need,” declared Michael Gove to Andrew Marr last Sunday, denying both the lies of Project Fear and the hysterical, biased, ill-informed and suppressed research of his own department.

On Tuesday, as the Commons camera drifted past Ken Clarke, I saw the Brexit cheerleader Iain Duncan Smith picking his nose and eating his own bogeys. Iain Duncan Smith, it appears, will not only have the food he needs, he will also have the food he deserves.

Dominic Cumming held back most of his Leave campaign budget to direct-market lies to 7 million unwitting Facebook users immediately prior to the referendum he helped rig. Leave agitators know all about surveillance. Presumably then, Iain Duncan Smith allowed his sickening mid-debate snack to be caught on camera deliberately. But why?

Gobbling nostril refuse can have hidden health benefits. If he ate enough schnoz manure, Iain Duncan Smith could theoretically make his body immune to bacteria, like a Marvel superhero given powers by the accidental ingestion of gallons of mucus. That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

Though superficially sickening, Iain Duncan Smith eating his own conk filth is as life-enhancing as if he were to drink his own urine, though it would doubtless be disrespectful for Iain Duncan Smith to do either of these while Ken Clarke was speaking, especially directly from the source.

Tellingly, Iain Duncan Smith did not even lean forward to offer any of his hand-mined nosegays to Theresa May, who was sitting just in front of him, and would doubtless have loved to lick dry mucus balls from the debonair Brexiter’s fingers.

On Wednesday lunchtime, I watched prime minister’s questions live on TV, wondering if I might catch another glimpse of Iain Duncan Smith feasting on different by-products of his own body, while lying Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Vampires Haircut Wall-Spaffer Spunk-Burster Fuck-Business Fuck-The-Families Get-Off-My-Fucking-Laptop Turds Johnson avoided all Corbyn’s direct questions.

Perhaps Iain Duncan Smith would be caught scraping wax out of his own ears and spreading it on a Jacob’s Cracker; or licking his own belly-button fluff off a stick as if it were fairground candyfloss; or sprinkling dried smegma flakes from beneath his foreskin on to a strawberry ice cream and saying: “Yum! Yum! I love eating smegma!” Everyone will have the food they need.

Commentators who view Turds’ adviser Cumming as an omnipotent Rasputin assume nothing happens in his Brexit gazebo by accident. Even Cumming’s reported red wine rampage around Portcullis House on Tuesday night may have been calculated to suggest he was unhinged enough to accelerate Britain off the cliff.

But which part of the Game Theory strategy book was it that encouraged Cumming to make a former Scots Guard eat his own dried nasal mucus off his own fingertip in full view of millions of viewers, like some horrific snot-gobbling circus freak in a downbeat midwestern carnival sideshow?

Did Cumming plan Iain Duncan Smith’s visible consumption of his face filth as a distraction from the new government’s ongoing Brexit bungle, just as the ostentatious arrival of a compliant, and thus criminally complicit, Welsh dog at 10 Downing Street was clearly timed to hit the front pages and eclipse Turds’ continued humiliations? If this was the case, it worked for me.

Last week, Cumming made Turds attempt to gull the opposition into backing an election, in order to have the numbers to force through a no-deal Brexit. Turds performed each of Cumming’s pronouncements against a backdrop of increasingly hostile yowling, eventually disintegrating into the sadomasochistic Friars’ Roast of Turds’ Wednesday night evisceration.

On Tuesday, Cumming suddenly lost his majority and then dramatically removed the whip from the grandson of the Jamaican reggae singer Winston Reedy, a totemic figure to the Tory party generally, and Turds specifically, who once ate jerk chicken with David Cameron at Oxford’s Haile Selassie Eating House in the mid-80s.

If no deal is successfully legislated against, and Cumming is unable to force an election by some backdoor method, then Turds may be trapped in ineffectual office, a Netto Prometheus, chained to the dispatch box, his liver pecked out anew every day by the crows of truth. In the bright lights of parliament, Turds is as strange and tragic as the Fonz with his laugh track removed. And yet here am I, still fixated instead upon Iain Duncan Smith, lapping his bacteria-ridden slime off his hands. Cumming is an evil genius. He played me like a pipe.

In his book Gastronaut, the TV chef Stefan Gates, who is one of the naked children running away on the sleeve of Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy, says 44% of people surveyed admit to having eaten their own dried nasal mucous in adulthood and maintains that “our body has been built to consume snot”, though not exclusively.

But that means that 56% of people, in the largest and most conclusive referendum of dried nasal mucous consumption ever, did not want to eat their own dried nasal mucous. Iain Duncan Smith must respect their feelings too if he is to heal this broken land, even though he himself is an enthusiastic consumer of mucus.

The big red bus, with “Let’s Suck Our Own Mucus Off Our Own Fingers and Eat It and Fund the NHS Instead” written on its side, is discredited. Iain Duncan Smith must advance toward the electorate in a spirit of compromise, a dried clod of his own snot on one index finger, the other index finger scrupulously clean, showing that he is at the heart of the party that can unite both extremes of broken Brexit Britain.

Everyone will have the food they need. You are living in a failed state.

‘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...

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?

Max Reinhardt is joined by comedian, columnist and musophile Stewart Lee with the debut edition of the Late Junction Mixtape.

A tribute to the age-old tradition of making a mixtape for a friend, guests are invited to explore the full diversity of their record collections, to dig out those obscure gems and much-loved rarities which they seldom get to share. The aim is to reveal a lesser known side to their musical identity and above all to take the listeners on a journey through a variety of moods, feelings and eras, exploring and celebrating the disjunctions within a record collection. Stewart Lee talks about his lifelong love of the avant garde in music ahead of his ATP festival this weekend.

We also play a track from Bonnie Prince Billy's new album with the Bitchin' Bajas, early Celtic music sung by the Choir of Gonville and Caius College Cambridge and a piece by Palestinian Oud player Adnan Joubran.

Giving Birth to a Stone is the debut album of UK metal band Peach, released in 1994.

It was rereleased in 2000, with different artwork, designed by Adam Jones of Tool. It was re-released again globally on April 2, 2007 through Sony BMG - and is also being made available in downloadable formats.

Stew improvises an inaudibly mixed spoken word section on the track You Lied by Peach, subsequently covered by Tool.

Why must things change, I wonder? Why can’t they just be the same for ever? It is a common grievance, and one of the main factors that drove the pro-Brexit vote. Thankfully, soon “things” will be able to go back to being “like they were”. A Clarks Commando shoe, with white dog muck in the treads, will moon-stomp on a Remoaner’s face – for ever.

Words, however, have a habit of changing their meanings, and the fact that I am submitting this week’s column from a medical isolation tent at an undisclosed emergency location proves their fluid nature. Bear with me. Imagine, for example, that I were to come into work and say: “Hello. I am gay today!” Once, not long ago, everyone would have assumed I meant I was happy. But the word “gay” officially transitioned to meaning “homosexual” on 5 July 1960, its new coinage minted by Benny Hill in the Tommy Steele vehicle Light Up the Sky!, a Brechtian comedy about a man trying to get his wedding cake iced by a recidivist Northern Irish baker.

The last people to use the word “gay” to mean “happy” were the Flintstones, who were still promising viewers a “gay old time” as recently as 1966. To be fair, The Flintstones was set between 9000 and 2000 BCE, so it is possible they intended to hold up a mirror to the prehistoric attitudes of the era, while not necessarily endorsing them, like how “the ironic standup comedy of ‘The Wokefinder General’” (© Sarah Vine, The Daily Mail, 2020) Ricky Gervais does.

By the 80s, however, the word “gay” was an insult in some circles. Indeed, when asked, by Metal Mania magazine in 1986, if he would ever use keyboards in a song, Anthrax’s drummer, Charlie Benante, said: “No. That is gay.” In 1990, I found myself in a music shop watching an instruction video in which Benante explained how some drums were in fact gay. Then, in 1992, I accidentally saw Anthrax live. They had a massive clock on stage, but its speeding hands, intended to illustrate humanity’s race to oblivion, got stuck at 4pm, leaving Anthrax thrashing furiously and for ever in an eternal tea-time time-loop. Which was gay.

Today, liberal values have been inculcated into society so thoroughly, only the drummer from Anthrax would still use the word “gay” as an insult, and even then only to a musical instrument. The best way to insult homosexuals today is to call them “bumboys”, as we have learned from the sterling work of our prime minister, 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 Johnson.

Like the word “gay”, the word “Corona” has changed its meaning too. When I thought of “Corona” as a child, I did not think of a planet-ravaging virus. I thought of a colourful range of Welsh carbonated soft drinks, sold in bottles with 10p returnable deposits, and delivered direct to our door by the be-aproned Corona Man himself, And he was a jolly ruddy-faced tradesman, not an embodiment of global viral doom.

The Corona Man would park his yellow flatbed truck in the communal car park, and scamper along our row of terraced houses with his basket of joy-inducing psychedelic fizz-milk. But the Corona factory in south Wales closed in 1987, after a eulogy from Tom Jones, who drank an entire bottle of dandelion and burdock and then retched The Last Post in burps into the microphone. It was the Corona Man, incredibly, who taught me how to ride a bike, taking pity on me as I fumbled and fell on the shared grass out front, and perhaps eyeing my obviously single mother, like a tartrazine Robin Askwith. Within a few months of The Corona Man’s brief weekly instruction, I stopped crying and I was stable in the saddle. I was 28 years old. I’m joking, of course.

As the 70s shifted into the 80s, Corona’s fortunes wavered, and the humiliating outfits the Corona Man was forced to wear on his Corona round reflected the company’s desperation. In 1979, he delivered dressed as a giant bottle of Corona, his eyes peeping mournfully through tiny slits. By the end, he waddled round in a rubber fat-suit, his face painted bright orange like the anthropomorphised bubbles in the company’s “Let’s Get Fizzical” adverts, and The Corona Man was too ashamed to meet my gaze, despite our former intimacy. I got my fizz fix from cider now, and left for university, never to return. Deliveries ceased.

Last week, a man came up to me after a standup show in Sheffield. He said he had lived, as a child, in the room I once lived in, in the house where I grew up, after my mum moved to Worcestershire. I suddenly felt humbled. After two-and-a-half hours of pretending to be someone, and something, else, I knew that this stranger would be able to locate me, socially and historically, and that he knew exactly who I really was.

“Did the man still deliver Corona when you were there?” I asked. “The virus?” the stranger said, “someone delivered a deadly virus to your home? What do you mean?” A mild panic ensued at the merchandise table and people reached for their hand sanitisers before hurrying away. “No. Corona!”, I shouted, “Corona. A man gave it me every week and I drank loads of it. He’ll be dead by now I expect.”

This, to be fair, only added to the confusion, and suddenly I found myself spirited away by insistent health officials in protective clothing. Perhaps when boffins christen the next virus, they could spare a thought for the fond childhood memories they may be trampling under their sock-and-sandalled feet.

http://www.arfringe.com/show/1927/stewart_lee_a_room_with_a_stew

I am on in the big room at Assembly Rooms where Carpet Remnant World sold out for the run in 2012. £12.50
Dates: 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30

New material in preparation for the next series of BBC Two’s Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle.
‘What is exhilarating is how many surprises he still throws in and how deft his jumps are from one tone to another .... invigorating' **** - The Times.
‘More skilful and playful than ever' ***** - The Guardian.
‘Stewart Lee is not funny and has nothing to say' - The Daily Telegraph.
Stewart performs 60 minutes of his current 180 minute material bank daily.
Different days may feature the same material. Or not.

More T Shirts

Dear Interested Parties

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.

CLICK HERE TO BUY - LINK GOES LIVE AT 12pm TODAY

The new shirts are available in two colourways - black t-shirt with liquid silver ink and navy t-shirt with golden yellow (mustard) ink.
There is a front print and a back print on each shirt.

The most extraordinary revelation that Stewart Lee makes in his latest show — probably the flat-out funniest in a 28-year career that has made him one of the most lauded comedians of his generation — is when he tells us what he gets up to at home after the spotlights have faded.

With most comics, you suspect, post-gig regimes involve drink or drugs or groupies or videogames or an ungodly combination of the above. Lee, though, the co-creator of Jerry Springer: the Opera, the more caustic half of the Nineties double act Lee and Herring, more recently the star of Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, has never been most comedians.

So when he returns to the house in Stoke Newington, north London — where he lives with his wife, the comic Bridget Christie, and their children, Luke, nine, and Daisy, six — he goes online to do something that sounds perverse yet is legal and profitable. Late at night, as Lee explains on stage amid some typically twisty routines about Brexit and Trump and the atomisation of society in the digital age, he logs on to Amazon and looks for cheap copies of his own DVDs. He can often get them cheaper from online warehouses than he can from his wholesaler. So he buys as many as he can, then sells them on from the merchandise table at his shows.

Is this a comedian’s tall story? Not at all, he says with a chuckle, as we meet a few weeks into his London run. Now 48, he’s chummier in person than the playful, but provocative persona he plies on stage. And his sideline as a small businessman is genuine, he insists — just as he genuinely goes into agencies that sell marked-up tickets to his shows to ask where they got them from. “It amuses me to be pedantic,” he says, “to hunt these people down. It’s great fun messing around with them.”

What’s more, he says, he has made more money over the past ten years selling DVDs of the satirical opera than he and his co-writer, Richard Thomas, made during a six-year history in which it had great success (National Theatre, West End, a UK tour), but was also dogged by expensive legal problems with a protest organisation, Christian Voice. He describes visiting pound shops on tour to buy dozens of copies before selling them for a fiver (“the least I can do them for”) at his shows.

Lee recognises the absurdity of all of this. Yet he also recognises that he needs to think like a small businessman to stay in charge of his career just as he stays in charge on stage. His most distinctive trait as a stand-up is the way he steps outside his act to comment on it; why it is or isn’t working that night, whether or not we the audience are worthy of him.

Off stage he examines his position in the marketplace with the same mix of detailed analysis and warped imagination. On stage “Stewart Lee” — he often refers to his stand-up self in the third person — is bitter about being discarded by the BBC after four series of a Bafta award-winning stand-up show. Off stage Stewart Lee is phlegmatic. Even, in some ways, glad.

When the cancellation of Comedy Vehicle came last spring, he was already planning to take three years away from television to tour this latest show, Content Provider. He had also decided that, if the fifth series happened, he wanted to perform it in a big, grand theatre rather than the working men’s club in Stoke Newington that had hosted the first four. It no longer made sense for “Stewart Lee” to moan about his status as marginal and misunderstood, when, in the real world, he will play to 80,000 people in the first set of London dates at the Leicester Square Theatre alone.

“I’ll be 50 by the time this tour ends,” he says. “I don’t have a pension, we have two kids and a mortgage, and in a way you can’t afford to do television at the moment. Two hours of material kept on the road for two years is worth three times what the BBC will pay for it.

“So my plan was, I’ll do a two-year tour every three years, so that’s me at 51, 54, 57, 60 . . . Five more to retirement age. Ten hours of material. If the audience depreciates by 75 per cent over that time, there will still be enough to shift the mortgage and save a bit for a pension, so that will be all right.”

Last summer, though, the EU referendum result came. He was horrified. “I thought we had beaten the system because we’ve got a house, and the children have their own bedrooms, and then I thought that this house is in a country I don’t really recognise any more.”

Christie rewrote her Edinburgh Fringe show; Lee stayed up for “about a week” thinking through the implications, reworking his routines. The result was “a health scare . . . a high blood pressure thing” that made him question whether he could keep this regime going indefinitely. “The thing I didn’t factor in was being really old and knackered and not being able to do it. So then I thought last summer I really should be able to do something else.”

So it’s just possible that we will be seeing him on television again, or at least something he has written. In September he spent three days staying awake again, this time writing a 90-page comedy script inspired by Brexit. He hopes it will be made, and soon — he’s working on it with Two Brothers, the production company that made The Missing for the BBC — but he’s not counting on it. It is, he says cheerfully, far too full of left-wing bias — even if this tale of a country that has an immigration referendum and then tries to use reality television and social media to control public opinion is rendered with so much left-wing bias that it’s part of the joke. “It’s like a sort of Comic Strip Presents . . . thing.”

In the meantime, career plan A remains in place. Thankfully, he has never been funnier. Occasionally Lee’s yen to stretch the form has been more ingenious than hilarious. Here there’s sociopolitics, but it’s wrapped in a lot of jokes. “I thought I should just do a show that’s really good fun and not worry about reinventing the wheel or have some hugely meaningful comment to make. I felt like being obtuse is a sort of luxury of simpler times, and at the moment everything is complicated enough.

“Writing about things that matter to you politically is a by-product of doing the comedy, it’s not the other way round. Which is why sometimes [the politics] is at the front and sometimes it isn’t. I don’t really care whether people agree with it; I can’t work imaginary markets by trying to have opinions I don’t have.”

Ah, the markets again. Lee, his agent and his promoter part-funded the third and fourth series of Comedy Vehicle, “otherwise they wouldn’t have got made”, and arranged for them to be sold to Netflix. I wonder if he relishes the business side of showbiz. “I think it’s just being old enough that when I got into comedy it was a branch of punk rock, really not a branch of showbiz.”

So I say “entrepreneur”, you say “the do-it-yourself spirit of punk”? “Yes. Which obviously is ridiculous,” says Lee. “But people don’t realise that I’m successful; everybody thinks nobody’s heard of me because I’m not on billboards, but actually the numbers are really good.”

Still, all this DIY can put a strain on a comedian. Christie’s career has taken off since she won the Edinburgh Comedy award in 2013. This year they will both be touring. Yet, apart from babysitters, they do all their own childcare. Should they not get some home help? “Well maybe, but I just feel really awkward about it.” He points out that one of the advantages of stand-up is that he can be free during the day — even if it’s not ideal getting up for the school run at 6.30am every other day if you’re too adrenalised after a show to get to bed until 1am.

“Tonight, for example, Bridget has got a charity gig in Brighton, my babysitter can’t come until 6.10, I am due on stage at 7. So at 6.10 I will get on the bus to the Tube station, I will make it by about 6.55, I will pretty much walk straight on stage and the last thing I did before I got on the bus was finish off helping the children with their homework. So, weirdly, rather than being scary, the two hours on stage is now something like private time, where I can say what I want. I might even have a glass of wine at half-time.” He gurgles with laughter. “It’s actually the best part of the day. I can get away from everyone.”

Whatever else happens with his career, though, something has to give. Until last year he would spend his summer working up his act on four or five mixed-bill evenings a week. For the next tour in 2019 he will probably only do his own small warm-up shows. “Circuit gigs, sadly, have got difficult to be around. I did one last summer, all the other comics were twentysomething, they were very nice, but I was backstage and it feels like the teacher has come into the common room and is making everyone uncomfortable.”

Christie has banned him from seeing her show too. “She says that if your spouse is in the room everyone looks round to see how they are reacting.”

There is, however, at least another year of touring to go. So never mind the admin, how about the comedy — is it still fun? He answers without a pause. “Yeah, I absolutely love it. I read an interview with a famous comedian saying it’s much better to do the O2 Arena than the Hammersmith Apollo because you can do a week’s work in a night. I thought, ‘Why would you want to do that?’ ”

Stewart Lee is at the Leicester Square Theatre, London W1 (020 7734 2222), to January 28, then touring to 2018;

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."

Round 1: The Five Things

1 What weighs as much as 21bn suns, is 10 times the size of our solar system, breaks down the physical laws of space and time, and can swallow itself and everything around it?

a) Eamonn Holmes's stomach
b) The newly discovered largest ever black hole, in the NGC 4889 galaxy
c) Louise Mensch's nose
d) Greece's sovereign debt
e) ITV's Daybreak

2 The third series of BBC1's The Impressions Show, starring Jon Culshaw and Debra Stephenson, began broadcasting in October this year, but this time around the show was forbidden from making jokes about which significant natural phenomenon?

a) Eamonn Holmes's stomach
b) The newly discovered largest ever black hole, in the NGC 4889 galaxy
c) Louise Mensch's nose
d) Greece's sovereign debt
e) ITV's Daybreak

3 What tried to stem the departure of hundreds of thousands of loyal followers by setting the costly toby-jug-faced man Adrian Chiles free this month?

a) Eamonn Holmes's stomach
b) The newly discovered largest ever black hole, in the NGC 4889 galaxy
c) Louise Mensch's nose
d) Greece's sovereign debt
e) ITV's Daybreak

4 What has, highly probably, had some of the drugs Nigel Kennedy was contemplating near it, been nuzzled by Metallica's manager, and sniffed out corruption at the News of the World?

a) Eamonn Holmes's stomach
b) The newly discovered largest ever black hole, in the NGC 4889 galaxy
c) Louise Mensch's nose
d) Greece's sovereign debt
e) ITV's Daybreak

5 What was downgraded to category CCC, the world's lowest, following an EU/IMF audit in June this year?

a) Eamonn Holmes's stomach
b) The newly discovered largest ever black hole, in the NGC 4889 galaxy
c) Louise Mensch's nose
d) Greece's sovereign debt
e) ITV's Daybreak

Round 2: Comedians and comedy

1 Which football-loving comedian told the Archbishop of Canterbury he thought atheists were as big a threat to humanity as climate-change deniers? Frank Skinner

2 Who wrote on their website that Jeremy Clarkson's Top Gear was "one of the funniest shows on TV … one of the very few programs at the Burka Broadcasting Corporation still worth seeing"? Norwegian neo-Nazi mass murderer Anders Breivik

3 Which wealthy Hollywood-based comedian spent much of the year bravely trying to reclaim the word "mong" from its apparent misuse? Ricky Gervais

4 Which beloved male American comedian was mistakenly referred to as "she" on live TV in a piece on his untimely death by the abysmal expat journo Piers Morgan? Patrice O'Neal

5 Which insolent comedian spent most of September vomiting and retching, having guzzled a cocktail of E coli, salmonella and hepatitis, while arrogantly defying nature by attempting to swim the length of the Thames out of sheer vanity? David Walliams

Round 3: The Tories

1 Which of the following has never been a nickname for chancellor George Osborne?

a) Cabin Boy George
b) Oik
c) Pencils

2 All the following politicians were members of the exclusive, room-trashing, window-smashing, student dining society the Bullingdon club. But who dismissed these escapades, while applauding zero tolerance for summer rioters, by saying: "We all do stupid things when we're young"?

a) David Cameron
b) George Osborne
c) Boris Johnson

3 Which of the following current or former Conservative MPs has not been the victim of opportunistic late-night burglars?

a) Oliver Letwin
b) Louise Mensch
c) Liam Fox

4 Which confusing Tory MP reveals their surprising sensitivity to black American jazz and the personal struggles of its economically and socially disenfranchised proponents in a series of thoughtful documentaries on BBC Radio 4?

a) Ann Widdecombe
b) Oliver Letwin
c) Ken Clarke

5 Which Tory MP looks the most like a cross between a blinky lemur and an ambitious eel?

a) Michael Gove
b) Louise Mensch
c) George Osborne

Round 4: Rock - true or false

1 The British Museum currently displays a glazed pot depicting Mark E Smith, of Manchester rock survivors the Fall. True

2 Soon after the breakup of REM, Michael Stipe appeared on a US TV chatshow competing in a quiz alongside Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy. True

3 The actor-comedian Russell Brand secretly blows into an ocarina belonging to the Amorphous Androgynous collective on Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds album. False

4 In his autobiography, Rob Brydon claims, amusingly, that he lost his virginity while listening to side two of the 1975 album Maximum Darkness by the Welsh progressive rock band Man, specifically during John Cipollina's guitar solo on the band's version of the folk-blues standard Codeine. False

5 Glenn Gregory, of Human League and Heaven 17, has invented a device that enables him to hack into supermarket PA systems and broadcast facetious announcements to confused shoppers. True

Round 5: Punk postmen

1 Which punk proto-goths backed postman Frank Bell on the 1979 single I'm a Cult Hero? The Cure

2 Name one of the three bands fronted by Birmingham punk legend and sometime postman Robert Lloyd. The Prefects, the Nightingales or the New Four Seasons

3 Which comedian played Manchester punk scenester John the Postman in the film 24 Hour Party People? Dave Gorman

4 Which punk postman recorded with Subway Sect? Vic Goddard

5 Which British blues guitarist, whose drunken 1976 on-stage anti-immigration rant inspired punk's Rock Against Racism movement, once worked as a postman, delivering letters through a letterbox, rather than, as a drunk man, delivering race hatred through his mouth. Eric Clapton

PERISH THE THOUGHT LIVESTREAM

The Nightingales with support from Stewart Lee premieres Thursday 11th March + New ‘Ten Bob Each Way’ / ‘Use Your Loaf’ 7” out 15th May

Nostalgic for a time when people gathered in crowded rooms to listen to music and comedy?


You can relive those heady pre-pandemic nights with an 80-minute rare concert from Birmingham’s post-punk legends, The Nightingales at Hackney’s Moth Club in 2018.

Directed by Michael Cumming (Brass Eye, King Rocker, Toast Of London), this special concert includes comedian Stewart Lee performing his 20 minute ‘80s club set.


This special live recording premieres on NoonChorus, as part of our ‘Baptism Of Fire’ series, on March 11th 2021 (8pm GMT / 12pm PT /3pm EST).





‘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 15^th May on Fire Records/King Rocker Records.

Fire Films and NoonChorus present:

The Nightingales with support from Stewart Lee

Thursday, March 11th, 2021

(8pm GMT / 12pm PT / 3pm EST)

To clarify - I do 20 mins stand-up at the start of the livestream.

It is the 1989 Jesus At The Door routine fucked about with, and then the JAZZ FOLK SEX routine from the Content Provider tour that was cut from the finished film of that show.


Michael Cumming filmed the bit in a very live fashion in a very live atmosphere at Hackney’s very live Moth Club. It is a nice bit of film, but if you are a comedy fan and you pay for that stay for The Nightingales 60 mins straight through no-breaks-between-the-songs steamroller of a set, and a lively reminder of what live entertainment and cool venues look like.

---

Check out new film trailer: https://youtu.be/eDQwajBSsA0

Ticket link: https://noonchorus.com/the-nightingales/

Pre-order 7”: https://fire-records.lnk.to/TenBobUseYourLoaf

“In Russia, nostalgia is regarded as an illness,” declared the mighty comedian Simon Munnery once, “or at least it used to be, in the good old days.” Zing! Oasis, who 30 years ago represented a kind of condensed nostalgia for the previous quarter-century of British rock, are re-forming. The cocaine dealers of Britain are already putting in advance orders so thousands of middle-aged men can stand in stadiums next summer bellowing trivial conversations about fuck all at each other all through the gigs they’ve paid hundreds of pounds to touts to attend. The trail of dead South American drug war casualties will stretch all the way from Heaton Park to Pablo Escobar’s ruined hippo enclosure. All the same, I wish I was going.

It used to be embarrassing when bands re-formed, didn’t it, like your dad dancing at a wedding? But when 70s New York televisionaries Television regrouped in 1992, I was delighted, as I knew all the solos on Marquee Moon off by heart and hadn’t seen them in 77 owing to being eight and preferring the Geoff Love & His Orchestra Bond themes album that I bought in Woolworths. Bands didn’t get back together in those days, unless it was to cash in on the Saga holidays circuit, where my mum was disappointed to see PJ Proby fail to split his trousers on demand sometime around the turn of the century. Nostalgia, she noted, wasn’t what it used to be.

Proby’s pre-weakened strides once seemed to me the epitome of sad showbiz shtick, but I spent most of 2017 doing a routine where I deliberately made my trousers fall down, 254 times. Live long enough and you will eventually become the person you most pitied as a child. But me and PJ Proby, we’re professionals. Can the same be said of Liam Gallagher, who once got so drunk he declared war on the entire country of Switzerland during the fade of D’ You Know What I Mean?.

When the studious Television, not an especially lively band in their heyday, took the stage of the Town and Country Club in London in November 1992, the 24-year-old me was amazed at how brilliant they were, despite what I considered their impossibly advanced ages. Guitarist Richard Lloyd was 41, after all! It was amazing he could even speak or move around. But Television kept being sporadically brilliant for the next 30 years until Tom Verlaine’s death finally put paid to that long-delayed fourth album, although a similar fatality did not stop Tupac Shakur producing much of his best work. What can we expect next summer from the Gallagher brothers, who, at a staggering combined age of 108, are older than all five Beatles put together when they went to Hamburg in 1960?

In the past 30 years I’ve stood and watched dozens of re-emerged artists I never expected to see. Some – Love, Nic Jones, Heavenly, the Sex Pistols, Green on Red, Ut, and the Crome Syrcus – played the hits; some – the Stooges and the Soft Boys – knocked out an accompanying album for added authenticity; others – Patti Smith, Mission of Burma, the Dream Syndicate, the Nightingales, Shirley Collins, Slowdive, the Long Ryders, Faust and Träd, Gräs och Stenar – started significant second careers. And five years ago I walked to my local, the Shacklewell Arms, where a band called the Zeros were advertised in the back room. Surely, I thought, it can’t be the 70s Los Angeles Latino punks of Beat Your Heart Out fame? But it was, with all original members, and they played Beat Your Heart Out. Did I dream it, like the time I had a horrible nightmare I was on stage at the Carlisle Sands Centre, and then woke up and realised I was?

Oasis are a guilty pleasure for a pseudo-intellectual like me, and I think they split just as that track Falling Down suggested a populist, stadium-sized psychedelia was imminent. Much is made of the eye for talent of Alan McGee, boss of Creation, Oasis’s first label, but he also signed Technique, the Legend!, and Keith “Smelly” O’Connell’s Five Go Down to the Sea?, the managerial equivalent of a massive hose spraying shit against a wall. Some of it was bound to stick. And Oasis were that sticky shit.

Until Creation nabbed Oasis, the label’s trajectory followed indie rock’s general post-punk upward creative arc. Moonshake meshed Can and PiL. The Boo Radleys spawned shoegazey psychedelia. And My Bloody Valentine made music no one had ever anticipated, a tree filled with angels, bright wings bespangling every bough like stars. But Oasis represented a massive, if mighty, full stop, consolidating the past to date and boldly nailing all the best bits together, the Trigger’s broom of pop. Was that momentum ever regained?

Suddenly, parents and kids all liked the same Beatles-Pistols hybrid. Oasis were the last ever national pop moment before the internet ended consensus, the weekly music papers folded, and Top of the Pops went off air. And in May 2017, when Manchester grieved for the victims of the arena bombing, it was Don’t Look Back In Anger they sang in the street spontaneously. Oasis enabled that moment. And to be fair to My Bloody Valentine, no one there was about to lead a mass outdoor singalong of the sonic inferno midsection of You Made Me Realise. Horses for courses.

But the Oasis reunion already has one unintended consequence. In Edinburgh, a Holiday Inn Express room next August for the first two nights of their Murrayfield shows will now cost you £1,300 due to anticipated demand. Edinburgh fringe performers’ and audiences’ whole month’s accommodation budget would go in a night, so by my reckoning the first two weeks of the festival just got totally fucked, Oasis singlehandedly murdering what 14 years of the Tories’ war on the arts couldn’t quite kill off. Sorted!

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 he delivered the standard “champagne socialist” slapdown, the James Bond assassin-playboy of his own wet dreams, the corridors of power still spaffed with wine-time spatterings. Wasn’t there a dogfight somewhere that Rayner should be betting on? Or a cockroach race in a Victorian pub backroom? Shouldn’t her sort be roaming the streets gathering excrement with her bare hands to tan leather? At least this time the Tories weren’t speculating about the colour of her pubic hair. Progress.

Tories don’t get the arts. In 2015, when Sajid Javid was culture secretary, he resisted attempts to prevent touts from reselling publicly subsidised tickets, designed to ease access to productions, privately at higher rates. Javid said the only people bothered by criminally inflated ticket costs were “the chattering middle classes and champagne socialists, who have no interest in helping the common working man earn a decent living by acting as a middleman”.

Again, the arts weren’t for ordinary folk. Didn’t Javid understand that his job as culture secretary was not just to transform public subsidies into private profits, but to make the arts part of people’s lives, because culture has a value beyond its financial worth? No, he didn’t understand that. Javid should have a notice plastered to his bald head saying: “No tools are kept in this vehicle overnight.”

By Wednesday afternoon, Boris Johnson’s spokesperson had realised Raab’s snobbery had backfired; the Conservatives suddenly believed: “Everybody should be able to enjoy arts and culture and other such things across the UK.” This is a lie. The Conservatives’ contempt for culture, and ordinary folk’s access to culture, is well documented and continuing, though reports of Johnson’s office hours oral examinations prove they do believe people should at least be free to enjoy “other such things”.

Sheffield Hallam University is suspending its English literature degree, probably the first of many outside the members’ club of the Russell Group to do so. The universities minister, Michelle Donelan, wants to chop courses where “fewer than 60% of graduates are in professional employment or further study within 15 months of graduating”. She misunderstands the point of studying the arts. Any arts course where as many as 60% of students are in “professional” employment only 15 months after graduating has failed. Spectacularly.

The point of an English degree is to inspire those who take it with such a love of literature that they spend the next decade serving in bars while trying to complete their Great Work. And if that doesn’t fly, they must become English teachers, handing on the same curse of loving literature to future generations, their collective misery deepening like a coastal shelf, just as our collective understanding of the works grows because of their efforts.

I do lots of talks about writing comedy, at various educational institutions, usually for free as I am a virtue-signalling do-gooder. If there’s a fee, I donate it to Arts Emergency, a charity that mentors young people from less advantaged backgrounds who want to work in arts, culture and activism. Eton school’s Literary Society asked me to speak, so I thought I’d give the fee to Arts Emergency. They said: “Student-run societies don’t have budgets for fees.” I didn’t go. But I doubt the post-talk Q&A session at Eton would have gone the way they usually do.

Because what the cool kids usually ask is how to get by financially in the perineum between starting out and either making it, or deciding to quit, without having to waste all their writing time in the world of “professional” employment. Donelan has just told young creatives there won’t even be an English course for them if they so much as think about trying to achieve their dreams. Slapped down by the Tories! Just like Rayner, dipping her dirty toe in the Glyndebourne lake.

Maybe one of these students will become a success whose tax repays their debt to the state many times over. (Hello?) Maybe they will just become that friend of yours who knows intuitively which books to recommend, God bless them. Or maybe, by studying English literature, they just help to keep the understanding of real writing alive in a world where Dumbo Dorries’s beloved Netflix generates paint-by-numbers content by market-driven algorithm. All of these outcomes represent value for money, but they’re resistant to rigorous calculation.

Great Britain falls apart under the Brexit government. We break international law and lie and cheat and trash our overseas reputation; the rivers, whose post-EU protections Michael Gove promised would be strengthened, are suddenly more polluted than ever, pulsating with polio; workers’ rights, which Mick Lynch’s RMT said would be stronger after Brexit, are diluted; musicians can’t tour; small businesses can’t export; a man with a megaphone is broken on a wheel; and our cultural capital, the world of film and music and television and literature, that gave us global soft power, is strangled by a government that seems to want to destroy the arts in an act of… what? Vandalism? Spite? Protection from the kind of questions that people who understand how words work ask?

A museum curator I met on the east coast of Scotland last week said we face a second dark age. But it isn’t Vikings and puritans that are coming to burn our books and tapestries. It is our own government. Donelan crests the horizon in a dragon ship; false beard; historically inaccurate horned helmet; and all. Light the beacons across the land and bury the books in bogs. Maybe, when this criminal gang is finally routed, we will have been able to save something, at least.

John Cage's Indeterminacy performed by Steve Beresford, Tania Chen and Stewart Lee.

Two different passes on Cage's chance composition, recorded in 2011.

You can read about this release in greater detail at the Knitted Records website, here.

Stewart Lee . . . offering a peep behind the curtains. Photograph: Jo Hale/Getty Images

No one under 30 will believe this, but stand-up comedy was once exciting and unpredictable. You could actually enjoy it sober. Like the punks before them, the alternative comedians who sprang up in the 1980s saw it as their duty and their pleasure to challenge the old farts who dominated both showbiz and the country. They were going to smash the system. Yes, even Ben Elton! True story!

Stewart Lee started on the circuit in 1989, just as the movement was losing its way. Five years before, as a Solihull schoolboy, he'd had his head turned by Ted Chippington, an obscure West Midlander with a scowl and a monotone delivery. Watching Chippington, Lee says, he realised that "Stand-up could be anything you wanted it to be. You didn't even have to look as if you were enjoying it."

Lee rarely did: he's one of those few people who can look both smug and miserable at the same time. But for most of the 90s it seemed to outsiders that he was doing very nicely. His double act with Richard Herring spawned 10 radio and television series for the BBC. Alone, he played thousands of live dates. Yet, he says now, he was barely scraping by. He kept finding himself in front of audiences who wanted undemanding gags about soccer or Space Hoppers, not a man whose idea of a good time was to alienate his public and then, with luck, win it back. He stopped enjoying himself. In 2001, during a particularly painful gig in Liverpool, he realised he was "a mumbling relic from another age . . . Alternative comedy was dead. I was spent . . . So, quietly and without any fuss, I decided, then and there, to stop." And, just like that, he did.

Nine years on, however, Lee is once more standing up and loving it. His latest BBC TV show, Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, has been commissioned for a second series, and next month sees him performing in 18 cities. How I Escaped My Certain Fate is the story of how he regained his taste for performance, and a paying audience. It's a reminder that sometimes you need to work out what you do best and chuck out everything that gets in the way. In Lee's case that included his former management company, Avalon.

The book is also a masterclass in how to appreciate comedy – at least Lee's intellectual, sometimes wilfully inaccessible kind of comedy. "Within a few years," he threatens, "'jokes', as we comedians call them, will have been entirely purged from my work in favour, exclusively, of grinding repetition, embarrassing silences and passive-agressive monotony."

Although there are bits of introduction and conventional exposition – notably covering Lee's involvement with the allegedly blasphemous Jerry Springer – The Opera, which he directed during his break from stand-up, the heart of the book is three live shows: Stand-Up Comedian, which began his comeback in 2004; the following year's 90s Comedian, "a single hour-long shaggy-dog story about anal investigation, religious persecution and a blasphemous physical encounter with Jesus"; and 2007's 41st Best Stand-up Ever, about the disparity between Lee's supposed high status and his inability to earn a decent crust.

For each of these, Lee provides not only a full transcript but a parallel narrative in the form of exhaustive footnotes, the longest of which stretches to three and a half pages. Here he explains the workings of the jokes he hasn't yet managed to eradicate, or revels in their failure. His basic philosophy is that the customer is always wrong. "It is a constant source of frustration to comics," he writes, "that you, the public, are often inordinately thrilled by things that we do which are quite easy, and baffled or bored by the stuff we are proud of, or else assume that our finest moments are errors or accidents." It's no surprise to learn that he's a fan of free jazz, with its "sheer bloody-mindedness" and its "take-it-or-leave-it attitude to critical and public approval".

You don't often see the inner workings of a comedian's act, and in most cases that's no loss. This time, however, it feels like a privilege to peep behind the curtains.

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.

''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, 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.

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 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.

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!

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.

Tue OCT 2 BIRMINGHAM, HARE & HOUNDS - TICKETS
Wed OCT 3 LONDON, MOTH CLUB - TICKETS
Thu OCT 4 CAMBRIDGE, PORTLAND ARMS - TICKETS
Sat OCT 6 BRIGHTON, GREEN DOOR STORE - TICKETS

I'm a Joke and So Are You - Robin Ince & Stewart Lee, London King's Place, Thursday Nov 1st

Join us for a very special live event to celebrate the launch of Robin Ince's new book I'm a Joke and So Are You: A Comedian's Take on What Makes Us Human.
Robin's book is about why we become the humans we are and how best to cope with that, using himself and other comedians, including Tim Minchin, Noel Fielding, Sarah Kendall, Nina Conti, and many others, as the test subjects. It deals with birth, death, social anxiety and creativity among much more.

Also through further conversations with therapists, neuroscientists, geneticists and anyone who really came within reach, he picks apart our existence. In this very special one-off show, Robin will be performing stand-up based around these ideas and will be joined by some very special guests. Robin will be in conversation with both acclaimed comedian Stewart Lee and psychotherapist and author Philippa Perry live on stage, and there will also be performances from both his Book Shambles co-host, comedian Josie Long, and singer-songwriter Grace Petrie.

'A funny, honest and heartwarming look at the anxious phenomenon known as human existence. Robin's curiosity and fascination with his own and other humans' foibles make this book a very funny education.' - Matt Haig

Ticket includes a &pound3 discount off the cover price of the book if purchased at the event.
Robin will also be signing copies after the show which runs until 9pm.

TICKETS

Bridget Christie

My wife continues to be the most critically acclaimed British stand-up of the 21st century, while I am in painful and obvious decline.

OCTOBER

Friday 5th - WHAT NOW? - Theatre Royal, WINCHESTER - 8pm - 01962 840 440 - TICKETS
Saturday 6th - WHAT NOW? - Corn Exchange, EXETER - 7.30pm - 01392 665938 - TICKETS
Monday 8th - Loving Linda Benefit Gig - Cambridge Theatre, London WC2H 9HU - 7pm - 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

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
Tuesday 27th - WHAT NOW? - The Junction, CAMBRIDGE - 8pm - 01223 511 511 - TICKETS

December 2018

Monday 3rd - WHAT NOW? - Playhouse, NORWICH - 8pm - 01603 598598 - TICKETS
Tuesday 4th - WHAT NOW? - Playhouse, NORWICH - 8pm - 01603 598598 - TICKETS
Saturday 8th - WHAT NOW? - Minerva (Festival) Theatre, Chichester - 8pm - 01243 781312 - TICKETS

Meanwhile, I Arrogantly Recommend

1) Wil Adamsdale - The Lost Disc. Mon 8th - Sat 29th October, Soho Theatre, London.

Reclusive performance art/comedy genius returns.
LIVE BAND. CULT COMEDY. EPIC ADVENTURE. The Lost Disc is a riotous quest for the holy grail of recorded music. Part gig, part play, part comedy show... and an alternative history of popular music.
Join discredited NME journalist Stu Morecambe as he searches for a legendary lost recording of three of the 20th century's finest forgotten musicians. But does it even exist? Chock full of original songs, conspiracy theories and pop legend, The Lost Disc is what happens when Raiders of The Lost Ark meets 6Music.

Written and performed by Perrier Award Winner Will Adamsdale (Jackson's Way) and Ed Gaughan (Peter Sellers Comedy Award nominee for Skeletons).
Starring Victoria Elliott (Vic & Bob's Big Night Out) and John Lightbody (Ghost Stories) and with original music by Chris Branch, Will Adamsdale and Ed Gaughan performed by members of cult favourites The London Snorkelling Team.
Directed and co-written by triple Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee Tom Parry (Pappy's).
Commissioned by Shoreditch Town Hall and Beaford Arts. Based on an original idea by Will Adamsdale and Luke Ponte. TICKETS

2)Ex Easter Island Head. Minimalist table top guitar chime trio. Superb. 4th Oct Sheffield Foundry, 12th Oct London King's Place.

3) The Posies. Stage-shy Seattle power-pop legends in 30th anniversary tour. 19th Oct, London Garage, 20th Leeds Brudenel, 21st Glasgow King Tut's, 23rd Manchester Deaf Institute.

4) Alternative TV/Richard Youngs - Punk pioneers/drone folk maven. 19th Oct cafe Oto, London

5) Lower Slaughter. Barked Glaswegian garage rock beat poetry. 19th Oct Lexington, London, 20th Oct Green Door Brighton. 17th - 18th Nov Newcastle Cluny. 12th Dec Old England, Bristol.

6) Handsome Family. Husband and wife country noir. Oct 22nd, Nell's Jazz & Blues, London.

7) The Necks. Mighty Australian jazz drone minimalists. Oct 22nd, cafe Oto, London.

8) Thurston Moore. Legendary noise-nik's creative journey continues into his sixth decade. 14th Oct John Peel Centre, Stowmarket, 28th Café Oto London.

9) Peter Brotzmann/Full Blast. German Free Jazz pioneer saxophonist will blow your house down. 5th Oct London café Oto, 13th Oct Brighton St Luke's.

10) Jilted John. A now elderly man recreates a '70s act based on adolescent naivety. How can it work?
Oct 3rd Harpenden Public Halls,
5th Liverpool Academy 2,
7th Brighton Haunt,
8th London 229,
13th Glasgow King Tut's,
14th Middlesburgh Town Hall,
18th Lincoln Engine Shed,
19th Sheffield Academy 2,
20th Mcr Dancehouse.

11) The Sonics. 60s Pacific Northwest garage punks, familiar from a 1000 advert s/tracks, return. 4th Oct London Garage, 5th Mcr Rifles Academy, 6th Nottingham MFM club.

12) Nish Kumar. Soho Theatre, London 2nd - 4th Oct. Arse-bearing TV stand-up's new material.

13) White Teeth. Kiln Theatre, London. Oct 26th - Dec 22nd.

Stephen Sharkey's new adaptation of the Z Smith novel. You're in Kilburn. Melting pot where nothing's actually melted.
It's all just kinda stuck together at the bottom in a gooey mess.
Rosie Jones, the Iqbal twins, their parents, their grandparents, Mad Mary and an avalanche of other characters who make up the everyday chaos of Kilburn High Road come together in an extraordinary revelry of NW6. An epic comedy with music and dance, this theatrical rollercoaster takes us on a fast-paced journey through history, different cultures and chance encounters.
Zadie Smith's breakthrough novel is adapted for stage by acclaimed playwright Stephen Sharkey and directed by Artistic Director Indhu Rubasingham in a major world premiere. TICKETS

14) Radio Birdman. The Australian Stooges, basically. 16th Oct London Dome.

15) John Carpenter. Horror auteur performs own s/tracks. 16th Oct London, venue in flux.

16) Robyn Hitchcock. Low key tour from lysergic troubadour.
16th, 17th Oct London Betsy Trotwood,
27th Freshwater Memorial Hall,
29th Brighton Rialto,
30th Portland Arms Cambridge.

17) Idles. Snowflake Oi pioneers and spirit-lifting avatars. Doubtless all sold out.
Tuesday 16 October SWX, Bristol,
17 October 2018 Roundhouse, London,
Thursday 18 October Forum, London
Friday 19 October Ritz Mcr
Saturday 20 October QMU Glasgow
Monday 22 October Button Factory Dublin
Tuesday 23 October Riverside N'castle
Wednesday 24 October Leeds Uni
Thursday 25 October Rock City, Nottingham
Friday 26 October Institute Birmingham
Saturday 27 Concorde 2 Brighton
Monday 29 October Academy 2 Oxford

I have provided the spoken word section for new recordings by Brighton’s PHYSICS HOUSE BAND

I appeared on Radio 4's CHAIN REACTION twice in January 2005.

20th Jan, interviewed by Johnny Vegas & 27th Jan, interviewing Alan Moore.

Pasting together doctored drawings of the Daily Mail’s long-running cartoon dog, Fred Basset, I’m creating the mother of all monetisable Christmas cash-in books.

In the first of a typical three-frame strip, Fred defecates insolently on a pavement. Then Fred’s owner scoops up the excrement before – and this is the twist – popping it through the letterbox of an immigrant family, and saying “Merry Winterval, my coloured friends! You’re in England now!!” It’s hilarious, no?

Was it possible to work the lucrative adult Ladybird book market, using a similar level of ironic self-awareness of the Daily Mail brand, across a range of self-parodying Daily Mail products, without necessarily undermining the integrity of the loathing-ridden opinion sluice itself?

After all, Lego’s funny children’s Batman, Adam West’s liberal gay Batman, and Christian Bale’s fascist asthma Batman all coexist commercially. And Paperchase were already interested in an exclusive stockist deal.

But now the whole thing is ruined! And all thanks to that political-correctness-gone-mad brigade that they have now!!

As a proud member of the “metropolitan liberal elite”™, I would normally have been delighted that a tiny minority of “leftwing bullies”© had forced the high-street card shop Paperchase to dump an advertising deal with the Daily Mail, fearing the negative association of Paperchase’s wholesome family card retail values with the Mail’s conduit of poisonous hate, sudoku and Sarah Vine.

Usually, I am the sort of person who thinks that anyone who has ever worked for the Daily Mail is worse than Adolf Hitler, even the temps and the tea lady. And I’m not alone. So disgusted are youth voters by the repellent newspaper, it’s now clear that the Daily Mail’s increasingly hysterical attacks on Jeremy Corbyn, the coddled egg of British politics, may even have helped secure his triumphant loss in the last general election.

I find that a damning Daily Mail review can attract hundreds of thousands of paying punters, precisely because they assume that anything hated by the hated Daily Mail must be worth seeing, while anything it likes must be awful.

My current tour poster proudly boasts the following Daily Mail quote from the 2001 Bad Sex award-winning novelist and Daily Mail columnist Christopher Hart; “Clever-clever, oh-so-fashionable and deeply unfunny ‘anti-populist’ comedian Stewart Lee is an exceptionally well-trained lapdog of the Brexit-hating establishment.”

Ker-ching!!!! Thanks, Christopher! The ticket-buying public’s hands are, as you might once have written, “moving away from my knee and heading north. Heading unnervingly and with a steely will towards the pole. And, like Sir Ranulph Fiennes… will not easily be discouraged.” (Rescue Me, Christopher Hart, 2001)

I understand, from a purely business point of view, Paperchase’s need to disassociate itself from the elderly and expiring racists that read the Daily Mail, to court instead the affections of the growing market of tomorrow’s mixed-race polyamorous avocado-coveters. But on this occasion, I was on the verge of sealing a three-way creative partnership with both Paperchase and the Daily Mail that would have made me millions.

Sitting across the desk from the editor, Paul Dacre, last week, I gave him my pitch: “The Daily Mail is already adept at working contradictory markets simultaneously,” I flattered the hate magnate, as he sucked hard on his fourth Calippo of the morning. “The print edition pretends to despise the very ephebophiliac swimwear sleaze that the Daily Mail website thrives on, for example.

“But imagine if, Paul baby, as well as profiteering from the hateful scaremongering that is your vile newspaper’s raison d’etre, you could also empty the pockets of those who claim to despise your organ, by selling them irresistible satires of your own sickening values.” I emptied my sample sack. Dacre’s two eyes exploded in hot greed. Greetings cards. Christmas cash-in books. Sex novelties. And all with an ironically arch Daily Mail flavour.

“These greetings cards are sure to be top-sellers.”, I told Dacre. A photo of columnist Quentin Letts disgorges the opinion, “Middle-class parents are middle-class because they have learned what it takes to succeed. Happy Birthday.” Sarah Vine opines: “Jacob Rees-Mogg is worth far more than the flaccid consensus of the commissars of political correctness. Merry Christmas.”

And a sepia-toned card of the first Viscount Rothermere, the paper’s 1930s proprietor, declares, in Daily Mail font, “I urge all British young men and women to study the Nazi regime in Germany. There is a clamorous campaign of denunciation against ‘Nazi atrocities’ which consist merely of a few isolated acts of violence, but which have been generalised, multiplied and exaggerated to give the impression that Nazi rule is a bloodthirsty tyranny. Congratulations on passing your driving test.”

In order to annoy politically correct prudes and killjoys, I had arranged for the darkest recesses of Paperchase to showcase a range of naughty, but saucy and harmless, adult Daily Mail-themed items. The paper’s star columnist and author of 50 People Who Buggered Up Britain, Quentin Letts, had agreed to lend his image to a fun range of used female sanitary products, Quentin Lil-Letts.

Meanwhile, the vibrating head of the Daily Mail royal columnist Robert Hardman crowns the novelty “Hardman” Sphincter Stimulator; and a special brass hammer, designed for nailing your own penis to a table, was to be called The Paul Dacre Nail Your Own Penis to a Table Hammer.

Dacre actually laughed himself silly at the final few strips in my Fred Basset book. In the end, the beagle just looks on bemused while his squatting owner simply scrapes his own human foulness directly from his own bottom himself, to deposit through the offending immigrants’ door; until the climactic strip where, perching atop a brass bust of Jan Moir, Fred Basset’s owner defecates directly into the immigrants’ letterbox, with a triumphant cry of “Brexit Means Brexit! Now get back to Bongo Bongo-land!”

“We’re looking at a massive hit,” said Dacre, his Calippo melting in his excited hand. And then the phone rang. The Paperchase partnership was off. “Sorry son. You get yourself a coffee and I’ll tidy your samples away,” said Dacre kindly. When I came back, my novelties were bagged up, but I could hear Dacre in his private bathroom, squealing and using an electric toothbrush, so I left.

When I got home I unpacked my futile creations. All present and correct, except the Robert Hardman probe. Never mind. It’s not like this deal is going anywhere fast.

Stewart Lee’s Content Provider is in London until 3 February and continues to tour in 2018

1. SAVE THE MOTH CLUB, HACKNEY, LONDON

What with this and The Observer, why can’t we ever have nice things? Predictably this superb grass roots music and comedy venue, with real atmosphere and fantastic sound and sightlines where we shot much of King Rocker, is at risk of closure due to a dodgy housing development. Two housing proposals have been deliberately split into two applications to avoid the obligation to include social housing. Save The Moth Club here

https://www.change.org/p/moth-club-faces-second-building-planning-application

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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

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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.

See The Primevals live JUNE 27^th London Hope & Anchor, 28^th Preston Ferret.

There’s now a cool arty video for the song too

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yazuiF0OiAI

https://primevals.bandcamp.com

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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

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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

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 and 2026.

I AM VERY PLEASED WITH HOW THIS SHOW IS SHAPING UP - PRESS IS COLLECTING HERE.

April 2025

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

June 2025

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

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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.

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7. 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)

24^th 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

18^TH – 20^TH 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

14^th – 17^th 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

22^nd – 24^th 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

28^th – 31^st 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.

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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”

https://www.idler.co.uk/festival/

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9. CODE : DAMP AT THE BFI, LONDON, WEDS 25^TH JUNE

CODE: DAMP Experimental 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.

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10. I ARROGANTLY RECOMMEND

TIRZAH GARWOOD: Beyond Ravilious, Dulwich Picture Gallery London, until 26 May 2025.

https://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/about/press-media/press-releases/first-major-exhibition-of-modern-british-artist-tirzah-garwood-among-2024-highlights-at-dulwich-picture-gallery/

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.

WATERBOYS The Waterboys ebb and flow like the tides of time, under the ongoing stewardship of mad Mike Scott. He saw the crescent. MAY 1^st Basingstoke Anvil, 2^nd Bath Forum, 3^rd Bexhill-On-Sea De-La-Warr, 5^th Brighton, 7^th Nottingham Rock City, 8^th Liverpool Philharmonic, 9^th Sheffield City Hall, 10^th Gateshead Glasshouse, 12^th Blackpool Opera House, 13^th M’cr Bridgewater Hall, 15^th York Barbican, 16^th Birmingham Symphony Hall, 18^th Bournemouth Pavillion, 19^th Cardiff New, 20^th Cambridge Corn Exch, 22^nd Bristol Beacon, 23^rd Oxford New, 24^th Stockton Globe, 25^th Llandudno Venue Cymru, 27^th Guildford G Love, 28^th Leicester De Montfort, 31^st London Roundhouse. JUNE 1^st London Roundhouse, 7^th Dublin 3 Arena.

THE FALLEN LEAVES Mod-punk veteran assassins. MAY 3^rd Stockton-On-Tees Volume, 4^th N’Castle Billy Bootleggers, 31^st London Dublin Castle, June 8^th Southsea Edge of The Wedge, SEPT 27^th London Dublin Castle

FRED FRITH The mighty free-improvisor Fred Frith, exposure to whose guitar playing in London in the late ‘80s was a big influence on my stand-up in the early days, makes rare UK appearances in MAY. 6^th Café Oto London w Sally Potter, 7^th Café Oto London solo, 9^th Old Hairdressers’ Glasgow w Glasgow Improvisors’ Orchestra, afternoon of the 10^th Leeds Wharf Chambers, 11^th Bristol Beacon w Adrian Utley.

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.

MAY 9th Brighton Hope and Ruin
JUNE 5th Birmingham Rock’n’roll Brewhouse, 6^th Sheffield Bishop’s House
AUGUST 3^rd Chilterns Awamu Together Festival

HAWKWIND 2025. Another implausible trip for the psychedelic survivors, Dave Brock still imperious, even from his octogenarian stool. MAY 9^th – Aylesbury Waterside, 10^th – Liverpool Auditorium, 11^th – M’cr Bridgewater Hall, 23^rd – Sheffield City Hall, 25^th – Cambridge Corn Exchange, 26^th – London Barbican

RICHARD DAWSON Unmitigated art-folk genius, and funny with it

MAY 1^st Cardiff Gate, 2^nd Notts Metronome, 17^th Gateshead Glasshouse, 20^th Edinbro Pleasance, 21^st Glasgow St Lukes, 22^nd L’pool Philharmonic, 23^rd Brighton St Georhe’s , 24^th Folkestone Quarterhouse.

MACHYNLLETH COMEDY FESTIVAL MAY 2^ND-4^TH. https://machcomedyfest.co.uk 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 A Three Thing Day. May 2^nd - 4^th. Once visited, never forgotten. DON’T TELL ANYONE ABOUT IT OR YOU WILL RUIN IT!!!

My Machemendations - These top turns still available!!

FRIDAY

7.00 Peter Fleming is a tiny gemstone of comedy https://machcomedyfest.co.uk/show/2025/peter-fleming/

9.00 Paddy Young made my then 9 year old laugh at the Edinburgh fringe a few years ago with a routine about masturbating in hospital https://machcomedyfest.co.uk/show/2025/paddy-young-if-i-told-you-id-have-to-kill-you/

SATURDAY

6.00 Jen Brister – smart, hilarious, humane and also a slick pro! https://machcomedyfest.co.uk/show/2025/jen-brister-reactive-work-in-progress/

SUNDAY

12 MIDDAY Ben Moor’s Three Thing Day, mythopoetic work in progress https://machcomedyfest.co.uk/line-up/

12 MIDDAY I met Clare Ferguson-Walker, a multidisciplinarian poet-comedian-artist, in the extended Robin Ince multiverse, and she promises a midday surprise. Is her stand-up as good as her sculpture?

https://machcomedyfest.co.uk/show/2025/clare-ferguson-walker-hot-mess-work-in-progress/

2.00 Josie Long is one of the all-time greats, and her work-in-progress shows reveal her fascinating process https://machcomedyfest.co.uk/show/2025/josie-long-now-is-the-time-of-monsters-work-in-progress/

4.00 John Shuttleworth – I’ve seen this and it is mind-manglingly hilarious. I totally lost my shit for about 20 minutes. https://machcomedyfest.co.uk/show/2025/john-shuttleworth-raise-the-oof/

4.30 Rob Auton is a deadpan genius poet-comedian https://machcomedyfest.co.uk/show/2025/rob-auton-the-eyes-open-and-shut-show/

DEAD PIONEERS Native American hardcore punk. Superb. MAY 13^th Norwich Voodoo Daddy’s, 14^th London Dome.

CHRIS PACKHAM PORTRAIT BY RICHARD ANSETT on display at The Fitzrovia Chapel, London May 14^th-21^st . The building alone is worth seeing. https://www.fitzroviachapel.org/series/chris-packham-endangered-species/

BEVIS FROND Psychedelic survivors reaching a late career phase of imperial majesty MAY 16^th Lewes Con Club, 17^th & 18th London Lexington, AUG 8^TH Built Wells Kozfest.

DINOSAUR JR The Crazy Horse of the hardcore era in another turn of the wheel MAY 18^th M’cr Albert Hall, 20^th Glasgow Barrowlands, 22^nd London Troxy

SAMANTHA CRAIN Heart-rending Choctaw country-folk. MAY 19^th Brighton Green Door, 20^th London Neon 194, 21^st M’cr Gullivers

BOOTHBY GRAFFOE & ANTONIO FORCIONE May 28^th, 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. Now they're back, performing songs from Wot Italian? and some other songs too. Boothby is funny & Antonio is one of the best guitar players in the whole wide world. Seriously.” https://oldwoollen.seetickets.com/tour/antonio-forcione-boothby-graffoe-wot-italian-

SONGHOY BLUES The Mali Clash. JUNE 1^st Sheffield Crookes, 2^nd Leeds Brudenell, 4^th B’ham Castle & Falcon, 6^th London Islington Assembly Hall, 7^th Bristol Thekla

BO NINGEN Japanese art psyche-punks JUNE 5^th Liverpool Arts, 7^th London Dome.

EXETER COMEDY FESTIVAL 5^th-8^th JUNE EXETER COMEDY FESTIVAL 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

0SEES 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 9^th Edinburgh Liquid, 15^th Bristol Marble Factory, 16^th M’cr Ritz, 18^th Glasgow Galvanisers, 20^th Leeds Irish Cent, 21^st B’ham Digbeth Crossing, 23^rd London Electric Ballroom, 24^th London Earth, 25^th Brighton Chalk.

LEN PRICE 3 Durable punk-mods. JUNE 18^th – 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 19^th Water Rats, London

SKEP WAX WEEKENDER July 17^th – 20^th, 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 21^st Croydon Ruskin House. SEPT 6^th Howden Shire Hall

MILLIONS OF DEAD COPS / MDC American hardcore heroes of NO KKK NO FASCIST USA chant fame. AUG 4^th – New Cross Inn, London

THE NEW CHRISTS!!!!!

EDWYN COLLINS Orange Juice’s indiepop originator SEPT 27^th Glasgow Theatre Royal, 29^th Buxton Opera House, 30^th Bath Komedia. OCT 2^nd S’hampton Central Hall, 3^rd Brighton St Georges, 4^th London RFH, 6^th Norwich Epic, 7^th Manchester Albert Hall, 8^th Newcastle Boiler Shop

BOB MOULD Hardcore punk pioneer of Husker Du/Sugar lineage. NOV 18^th Glasgow Oran Mor, 19^th Leeds Brudenell, 20^th 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 21^ST Bristol Trinity, 22nd Leeds Project, 23^rd Glasgow Garage, 24^th M’cr Academy 2, 26^th London Camden Electric Ballroom

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11. 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)

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

Dear Stewart Lee Mailing List

Excuse this imposition

These dates have just been announced of the new show PRONOUN TROUBLE by the performance artist BEN MOOR, who is funny, graceful and clever.
You will know him best as the uncredited and unpaid body model for the eponymous hero of the blockbusting Disney film Arthur Christmas.

I urge you to attend this event, especially at Jane Bom-Bayne's in Brighton, the perfect venue for Ben, where it is a dbl bill with a show by the nutty Joanna Neary.

Stewart Lee

MESSAGE FROM BEN MOOR

Hello!
This year has seen two main blizzards up to now.
Firstly that correctly-named snow one, where we all went, "Ooh, snow!"
Then came the more metaphorical blossom one, which somehow always surprises us, but it shouldn't because trees.
But, what, hey, look out, there's another blizzard comin' atcha.
An even more metaphorical blizzard that doesn't involve white stuff throwing around in the air, but rather a set of places and dates and facts.
And they're all to do with my show Pronoun Trouble (and then there's some extra things tacked on the end there).
So please dress blizzard-appropriate (actually, dress how you like) and enjoy the following information-weather.

Pronoun Trouble is my current piece of live comedy.
It is mainly a lecture about Chuck Jones's Hunting Trilogy: the wonderful Merrie Melodies cartoons from the early 1950s, in which Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck befuddle Elmer Fudd as to whether it's Duck Season or Rabbit Season.
But I sometimes go off-subject, and dip into reflections on watching lectures, on pareidolia, on friendship, and on the spelling of certain shop signs on the high street.
It's been described by discerning folk on the Twitter Channel as "Funny, clever and beautifully crafted," "A very special thing," and "Brilliant."
I performed it in February at Chapter Arts in Cardiff, at Trouble at Mill in Farsley, and at The Hen and Chickens in London, but I wanted to let you know about a slew of upcoming dates - OK, if not exactly a blizzard, then let's call it a squall - in the Spring and Summer and how to come and see it.
Yeah, because there's badges too.
Everyone loves badges.

17th & 31st May 2018
8.00pm (Arrive early if eating!)
Brighton Fringe Festival
Bom-Bane's Cafe
24 George St,
Brighton BN2 1RH
As part of a great value double bill with the fantastic Joanna Neary and her show "Celia's Guide to Being a Wife."
When you email Jane Bom-Bane to book your tickets, you should definitely order a delicious meal to go with the delicious entertainment.
TICKETS

23rd May, 24th May, 30th May, 1st June 2018
7.30pm
Hen and Chickens Theatre Bar
109 St Paul's Road,
London N1 2NA
A lovely pub theatre on Highbury Corner in Islington, conveniently close to the smartly named Highbury and Islington tube station.
Previous performances here have been quick to sell out, so please don't delay and buy your tickets today.
TICKETS

29th May 2018
7.30pm
An Evening of Unnecessary Detail
Backyard Comedy Club,
231 Cambridge Heath Road
London E2 0EL
Just a 10 minute excerpt of Pronoun Trouble at this wonderfully programmed night of comedy and learning things, presented by the folks behind Festival of the Spoken Nerd.
TICKETS

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

5th July 2018
7.30pm
Greater Manchester Fringe Festival
Anthony Burgess Foundation
3 Cambridge Street
Manchester M1 5BY
The most academic place I have so far found to give the talk, and maybe the coolest.
There are lots of other great things going on during the Greater Manchester Fringe Festival too - why not check out the full programme?
TICKETS

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

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 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.

“Each shit series is like a suicide note,” Stewart Lee tells Chris Morris in the first episode of Comedy Vehicle series four; “or like someone that’s carried out a crime and written in blood on the wall, ‘Stop me before I do this again.’” The BBC clearly isn’t getting the message – notwithstanding Lee’s frequent claims to be falling out of their favour. Ah, but maybe those claims are made by the “character” Stewart Lee and not the “real” Stewart Lee. Don’t expect onstage and offstage to mark a clear distinction between the two. There are no clear distinctions in Lee’s public world. Everything’s a wind-up. Everything’s a hall of mirrors.

That was never more the case than in last night’s trailblazer for the new series of Comedy Vehicle. Billed as addressing wealth, it was more specific than that: it was about Lee’s wealth, or lack of it. Of course we expect from Lee a nitpicking analysis of the jokes he’s telling and the reaction they’re getting. But here he’s absorbed not only in the dynamics of his own standup, but in those of his career more widely. The centrepiece is a long routine about Lee’s peevish reaction to being pipped to a Bafta award by Graham Norton’s chat show. A Bafta, he says, would have helped with his money problems – the very problems that compel him to crack jokes that are beneath him, to flatter an audience he despises.

Or so he says. It’s up to us to puzzle out how much of this is heartfelt, and how much an act. (Is he pretending to care about Norton beating him to a Bafta? Or pretending to just be pretending to care? Or is that what he wants us to think?) On the one hand, that’s a fun game to play: Lee’s genius is in having plunged deeper than any other comic into the grey area between truth and fiction, the endless recursiveness of self-revelation and self-deception. That’s enjoyable for performance geeks, but it also illuminates something about human nature; our negative capability to be both miffed (in this instance) and not miffed at the same time.

I enjoy the ambiguity in these routines, without remotely understanding why anyone (the Telegraph critic who walked out; the Dublin journalist who thought he was having a breakdown) would take them seriously. If Lee came onstage dressed as a winky face emoji, he couldn’t signal more clearly that his tongue is in his cheek. The playfulness is much in evidence here – and in the best of his comedy, it’s a precipitous pleasure to be toyed with, to try and track the joke, the target and the significance between the layers of irony.

This first episode is not the best of his comedy. It made me wonder, is “the character Stewart Lee” (as Lee calls his onstage persona) in danger of elbowing the actual Stewart Lee off the stage? I’ve most enjoyed Lee when, alongside the mind-bending performative sleights of hand (all that “Brechtian alienation”, as he calls it here) there are opinions about the world too, and things he cares about – even if they’re implied, and you have to hunt them down. Here: not so much. I know the self-absorption is part of the joke, but it’s still self-absorption, and I can’t bring myself to care about (or indeed believe in) Lee’s struggle to keep hack material out of his shows. That self-pitying shtick works as a counterpoint to weightier, more outward-looking stuff. It feels just a bit thin when obliged to sustain a whole show.

I wouldn’t want to stop him before he does this again, mind you. I’m judging this first episode only by the high standards Lee has set. And even by those standards, there’s great stuff here. The viral progress of his anti-Norton rant – from blaming Bafta, to blaming Norton, to blaming James Corden – is beautifully traced. His high-handed abuse of Corden is joltingly funny – both in its shoring up of Lee’s lofty self-esteem, and as a reminder of how seldom you hear those in the gilded back-slappy celebrity club being bluntly nasty about one another. Yes, I’ve sometimes regretted that Lee’s live work these days is always cast as a rehearsal for his TV show. But we’re lucky to have the TV show, which is seldom less than brilliant, tricksy, brain-nourishing, mickey-taking good fun. Roll on the next five episodes.

“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

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"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

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"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

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"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

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"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

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1) SNOWFLAKE/TORNAD0 - LIVE (London & Touring)

I THINK ALL 50 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, SEE BELOW.

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!

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 - 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.

In the case of sold out shows, there are often returns added, & Leicester Square maintain a waiting list, so check with the venue.

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NOVEMBER 2019

Wednesday 20th SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
Thursday 21st SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
Friday 22nd SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - SOLD OUT
Saturday 23rd SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - SOLD OUT

Tuesday 26th SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
Wednesday 27th SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
Thursday 28th SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
Friday 29th SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS

DECEMBER 2019

Tuesday 3rd SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
Wednesday 4th SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
Thursday 5th SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
Friday 6th SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - SOLD OUT
Saturday 7th SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS

Tuesday 10th SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
Wednesday 11th SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
Thursday 12th SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
Friday 13th SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
Saturday 14th SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS

JANUARY 2020

 

Thursday 2nd SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
Friday 3rd SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
Saturday 4th SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS

Tuesday 7th SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
Wednesday 8th SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
Friday 10th SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
Saturday 11th SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS

Tuesday 14th SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
Wednesday 15th SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
Thursday 16th SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
Friday 17th SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
Saturday 18th SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS

Tuesday 21st SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
Wednesday 22nd SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
Thursday 23rd SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
Friday 24th SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS
Saturday 25th SNOWFLAKE / TORNADO - Leicester Square Theatre, London - 8.45pm - TICKETS

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Currently confirmed / onsale national dates are as follows.

NOTE: This is not the complete list. More national dates are currently being added & confirmed & will be announced soon.

Not all dates are currently on sale.
As further dates are announced / go on sale, they will be listed on the Live Dates page of the website & via this newsletter as they come in.

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January 2020

Tuesday 28th January 2020 - 7.30pm - Colosseum, Watford - TICKETS
Wednesday 29th January 2020 - 7.30pm - Playhouse, Nottingham TICKETS
Thursday 30th January 2020 - 7.30pm - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Thursday 31st January 2019 - 7.30pm - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS

February 2020

Saturday 1st February 2020 - 7.30pm - Playhouse, Nottingham - TICKETS
Tuesday 4th February 2020 - 7.30pm - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Wednesday 5th February 2020 - 7.30pm - Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool - TICKETS
Thursday 6th February 2020 - City Hall, Sheffield - TICKETS
Friday 7th February 2020 - City Hall, Sheffield - TICKETS
Wednesday 12th February 2020 - 8pm DeMontfort Hall, Leicester - TICKETS
Thursday 13th February 2020 - 7.30pm - New Theatre Royal, Lincoln - TICKETS
Friday 14th February 2020 - 7.30pm - New Theatre, Peterborough - TICKETS
Saturday 15th February 2020 - 7.30pm - Opera House, Buxton - TICKETS
Tuesday 18th February 2020 - 7.30pm - The Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Wednesday 19th February 2020 - 7.30pm - The Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Thursday 20th February 2020 - 7.30pm - The Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Friday 21st February 2020 - 7.30pm - The Dome, Brighton - TICKETS
Monday 24th February 2020 - 7.30pm - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Tuesday 25th February 2020 - 7.30pm - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Wednesday 26th February 2020 - 7.30pm - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Thursday 27th February 2020 - 7.30pm - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Friday 28th February 2020 - 7.30pm - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS
Saturday 29th February 2020 - 7.30pm - Playhouse, Oxford - TICKETS

March 2020

Tuesday 3rd March 2020 - 7.45pm - Festival Theatre, Malvern - TICKETS
Wednesday 4th March 2020 - 7.30pm - St. David's Hall, Cardiff - TICKETS
Thursday 5th March 2020 - 8pm - Wycombe Swan, High Wycombe - TICKETS
Friday 6th March 2020 - 7.30pm - Royal & Derngate, Northampton TICKETS
Monday 9th March 2020 - 8pm - Cliffs Pavillion, Southend-On-Sea - TICKETS
Tuesday 10th March 2020 - 8pm - The Hexagon, Reading - TICKETS
Wednesday 11th March 2020 - 8pm - The Hexagon, Reading - TICKETS
Thursday 12th March 2020 - 7.30pm - Symphony Hall, Birmingham - TICKETS
Friday 13th March 2020 - 7.30pm - Symphony Hall, Birmingham - TICKETS
Tuesday 17th March 2020 - 7.30pm - Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury - TICKETS
Wednesday 18th March 2020 - 8pm - De La Warr Pavillion , Bexhill On Sea - TICKETS
Thursday 19th March 2020 - 8pm - Corn Exchange, Cambridge - TICKETS
Friday 20th March 2020 - 8pm - Corn Exchange, Cambridge - TICKETS
Monday 23rd March 2020 - 7.30pm - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Tuesday 24th March 2020 - 7.30pm - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Wednesday 25th March 2020 - 7.30pm - Playhouse, Leeds - TICKETS
Thursday 26th March 2020 - 7.30pm - King's Theatre, Glasgow - TICKETS
Friday 27th March 2020 - 7.30pm - Theatre Royal, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS
Saturday 28th March 2020 - 7.30pm - Theatre Royal, Newcastle Upon Tyne - TICKETS

April 2020

Friday 24th April 2020 - ON SALE SOON - Theatre Royal, York
Saturday 25th April 2020 - ON SALE SOON - Theatre Royal, York
Wednesday 29th April 2020 - 7.30pm - Lyric Theatre @ The Lowry, Salford Quays - TICKETS
Thursday 30th April 2020 - 7.30pm - Lyric Theatre @ The Lowry, Salford Quays - TICKETS

May 2020

Friday 1st May 2020 - 7.30pm - Lyric Theatre @ The Lowry, Salford Quays - TICKETS
Saturday 2nd May 2020 - 7.30pm - Lyric Theatre @ The Lowry, Salford Quays - TICKETS
Sunday 3rd May 2020 - ON SALE SOON - Machynlleth (Comedy Festival)
Sunday 10th May 2020 - 7.30pm - Rose Theatre, Kingston - TICKETS
Thursday 14th May 2020 - 7.30pm - Westlands, Yeovil - TICKETS
Friday 15th May 2020 - 7.30pm - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - TICKETS
Saturday 16th May 2020 - 7.30pm - Theatre Royal, Plymouth - TICKETS
Sunday 17th May 2020 - 7.30pm - Theatre Royal, Plymouth - TICKETS
Monday 18th May 2020 - 8pm - Town Hall, Cheltenham - TICKETS
Sunday 31st May 2020 - 7.30pm - Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton - TICKETS

June 2020

Saturday 20th June 2020 - 7.30pm - St. George's Hall , Bradford - TICKETS
Sunday 21st June 2020 - ON SALE SOON - Storyhouse , Chester
Monday 22nd June 2020 - 8pm - Hippodrome , Bristol - TICKETS
Saturday 27th 2020 - 8pm - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Sunday 28th 2020 - 8pm - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS

July 2020

Wednesday 1st 2020 - 8pm - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Thursday 2nd 2020 - 8pm - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS
Friday 3rd 2020 - 8pm - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - TICKETS

NB VIAGOGO ETC.

Tickets have started appearing at up to 4 times face value on the ticket-bastard website Viagogo, specifically for the Sheffield shows, with doubtless more to follow.

I know which seats these are and I will come down from the stage and find anyone who has bought from Viagogo, or Stubhub, and I will throw them out personally and I will not refund them at a later date.
If you want to buy illegal tickets and have the money refunded go and see soft-hearted Rhod Gilbert, who will do this out of his own money. I will not. There is no need to cooperate with these criminals.
Tickets will be available at normal rates from the venue and I will endeavour to add on extra dates to meet any demand.

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2) CONTENT PROVIDER DVD

Content Provider is out on modern d/l, available now, and as a dvd with an extra disc of an early work-in-prog show,

Here is the Amazon d/l link. DOWNLOAD LINK

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.

That said all 4 series of COMEDY VEHICLE are still free on the BBC i-player, and all my stand-up shows except STAND-UP COMEDIAN can now be bought to view or download for ever on AMAZON.
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.

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3) King Rocker Doc

Michael Cumming (Brass Eye), James Nicholls (Fire films) and I are now 2/3rds 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.  We have one last bit of filming - an interview with ROBIN ASKWITH - and the the edit and costly sound and vision clearances. 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.)

https://www.kingrockerfilm.com/

There is now a podcast radio thing you can listen to of me and Michael talking about The Nightingales here. It is ace.

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4) NEW BOOK - March Of The Lemmings

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.”

 

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5) HOW NEWSPAPERS WORK

i) A typically dishonest Daily Telegraph article, from April 2017, by Rozina Sabur, who is a wazzock, has resurfaced on-line as if it were from now, via the feeds of various media pro's who probably need to start checking their facts.
It claims that comedians doing jokes about Brexit are suffering.
This bullshit article is the subject of a column by me here.
It was immediately discredited upon publication.

On Monday 18th of Nov THE TIMES ran an article saying I had been mugged.
I was mugged, just over a year ago. I am ok. I mentioned this on a podcast last month to Sue Perkins and THE TIMES made a story about it without checking dates or facts.
This is what papers do.

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6) I ARROGANTLY RECOMMEND

ENTHRONING OF BOY BISHOP - Berden, Hertfordshire; Boston, Lincolnshire; Bristol; Hereford Cathedral; Par, Cornwall; Edwinstowe, Nottinghamshire - Dec 6^th. A boy is given the powers and privileges of a Bishop.

CHRIS CACAVAS -  Mournful Paisley underground songwriter and Green On Red, Dream Syndicate, Giant Sand associate - Oxted Ginstry Dec 8^th, London Slaughtered Lamb Dec 9^th

THE CHAMELEONS (AKA CHAMELEONS VOX) Humble ‘80s Big Music innovators on the trail again. Dec 14^th M’cr Ritz, Dec 15^th London 229

MADNESS Dec 15^th - 17^th London Roundhouse. Madness. Camden. Christmas.

STEELEYE SPAN - All around my hat at the Brighton Dome Dec 12^th and Barbican London Dec 17^th. GAUDETE CHRISTUS EST NATUS!

THE UTOPIA STRONG - Snooker’s Steve Davis’ krauty-prog band, Dec 20^th Café Oto London, Dec 21^st Ramsgate Music Hall

TOLLING THE DEVIL’S KNELL - Dewsbury, Yorkshire 24^th Dec. A bell is tolled at midnight to remember the murder by Thomas de Soothill, a 13^th local baron, of a servant boy.

BILBURY DUCK RACE, Bilbury, Gloucs, 26^th Dec 11 AM. Toy ducks float about in a picturesque village.

OLD GLORY & THE CUTTY WREN - Middleton, Suffolk, Dec 26^th. Flaming torches and full folk horror processional business.

GREATHAM SWORD DANCE  Greatham, Cleveland  Dec 26

ALLENDALE TAR BARRELL CEREMONY  Allendale, Northumberland  December 31 st. Dangerous barrel carrying.

THE MORRIS RING website details MORRIS DANCING events around the UK over  Christmas.

Gloucestershire MM : Tuesday 11th December 7:45pm  -   Carpenters Arms, GL6 7JA(link is external)

East Suffolk MM : Saturday 22nd December. Dancing in Ipswich, starting at the Salutation at 11am. Their annual "Border" tour - as it's been held for over 35 years it qualifies as traditional!

Kennet MM : Last Monday before Christmas. Kennet Karols from 8.30pm 'til late, The Bell and Bottle, Shinfield Green RG2 9EE - 50 traditional carols led by The Kennettes - festive hats optional.

Adlington Morris Men and Mummers : Friday 21st December – Alderley Mummers Play, Stockport tour.- 7:30 pm    The Railway, 1 Avenue Street,

Portwood, SK1 2BZ; 8:30 pm    The Hope Inn, 118 Wellington Road North,

Stockport, SK4 2LL; 9:30 pm    The Magnet, 51 Wellington Road North, Stockport SK4 1HJ; 10:30 pm  The Crown Inn, 154 Heaton Lane, Stockport, SK4 1AR

Lord Conyers MM : Last Saturday before Christmas. Christmas Wassail from 2:00 pm, performing dances from their Border and Pershore repertoire, their own Yorkshire Longsword and Rapper dances before singing local Sheffield carols inside at Wales Jubilee Sports and Social Club, S26 5QG,and then moving to the site of Robin Hood's Trysting Tree in Todwick to perform the Abbotts Bromley Horn Dance at dusk (4:00pm approx)..

Original Welsh Border Morris(link is external) Last Saturday before Christmas. Coach Tour of Worcestershire -
Fox Inn, Wichenford, WR2 6NX arrive 0800 depart 0900
White Ladies Aston arrive 0930 depart 1015
Pershore arrive 1030 depart 1145
Evesham depart arrive 1215 1400
Upton-upon-Severn arrive 1430 depart 1515
Worcester arrive 1545 depart 1645
Fox Inn, Wichenford arrive 1715

All timings very approximate!

Taunton Deane MM : Saturday 15th December - Border Day - Walking Tour of Taunton Town Centre 11:00am onwards.

 Boxing Day - St Stephen's Day - Wednesday 26th December

Ashdown Forest MM : 1:00pm, The Hatch Inn(link is external), Colemans Hatch, TN7 4EJ

Bedford MM : 10.45am Bedford Embankment - dancing; 11:30 am, Bedford Swan Hotel - dancing followed by the Boar’s Head Ceremony 12:00 noon - to be confirmed. THIS IS SIMON MUNNERY’S MORRIS SIDE!!!

Blackheath MM : 12:30pm, Princess of Wales on Blackheath; 1:30pm, The Crown, Blackheath Village; 3:00pm, The Hare & Billet, Blackheath.

Brackley MM : Boxing Day Tour. 11:00am Blackbird Croughton; 12.00 noon Brackley Market Place 1.00pm Stratton Arms Turweston

Bristol MM : Keynsham Mummers Play(link is external) - 11.00 am, St John's church Keynsham; 11.30 am Keynsham Library Riverside,Temple Street (Opposite Keynsham Leisure CentreThe New Inn, 12:00 noon.  [The picture on the right shows Keynsham's St George].

Chanctonbury Ring MM : 11:00am, We've only just heard that The Marquis (formerly ‘of Granby’) in Sompting will  be closed for refurbishment over Christmas and so we will be relocating to it’s sister pub, THE FARMERS at 17 South St, Lancing BN15 8AE. dancing Cotswold followed by the Steyning Tipteerers mummers play. 12:30pm A RETURN TO THE ORIGINAL HOME OF THE PLAY The White Horse, 23 High Street, Steyning BN44 3YE , followed by carols in the pub bar. (The Frankland Arms is currently CLOSED with no information available as to when it might re-open, if at all.)

Colchester MM : 12:30pm The Chequers, Great Tey(link is external) for mulled wine, mince pies ... and morris

Coventry MM : 12:00 noon, Boxing Day Tour Kenilworth Castle

Dartington MM : 12:00 noon 'til 1:00pm, Totnes (the Plains  opposite Royal Seven Stars)

Datchet Border Morris : 10:40am, Datchet Green, SL3 9EH, including The Mummers Play and Sword dance (longsword or rapper and after in The Red Stag)

East Suffolk MM : 12:30 noon, The Sailing Club, Pin Mill, Ipswich IP9 1JP

East Surrey MM - 12:00 pm - 12:30 pm The Fox, Coulsdon Common CR3 5QS; 2:00 pm - 2:30 pm The Hare and Hounds, Godstone RH9 8LN

Ewell St. Mary's MM : 12:00 noon, The Famous Green Man; 12:30pm, opposite The Star; 1:00 pm, The Watch House, Church Street; 1:30pm, The Spring Tavern; 2:00pm, The Wheatsheaf, followed by the traditional mid-winter mummers’ play in the yard of the Upper Mill.

Faithful City MM - 12:30pm - The Talbot, Knightwick

Flamborough Sword Dancers(link is external) : Flamborough, Yorkshire (or is it Humberside?) starting at the Rose & Crown in the High Street and ending at the Royal Dog & Duck. The Dancers are also supporting the relatively new charity fundraiser, the Flamborough Boxing Day Dip so you can catch them before their regular tour, at South Landing from 10.45am with the Dip at 11:00am.

Foresters MM - 11:00am Bottesford duck race(link is external)

Gloucester MM - 9:30am The Queens Hotel, Cheltenham : 10:30 am Imperial Gardens, Cheltenham : 12:00 noon Gloucester Cathedral .The Gloucester Mummers Play will be performed at the Cathedral in between the Traditional Morris Dancing. We'll be dancing alongside Englands Glory Morris, Lassington Oak Morris Men and Miserden Morris.

Greensleeves MM : Opposite the Rose and Crown, Wimbledon Village SW19 5BA,12.15pm; The Hand in Hand and The Crooked Billet, Wimbledon Common SW19 4RQ, 1.15pm.

Grimsby MM : 12:00 noon The Wellow, King's Road, Cleethorpes; 12:40 pm The Punchbowl, North Promenade, Cleethorpes; 1:15 pm The No. 2 Refreshment Room (Under the Clock), Cleethorpes Railway Station; 1:55pm 2:30pm The Nottingham House Hotel , Seaview Street, Cleethorpes The final dance spot will be followed by a singing and music session in the Sports Bar of the Notts.

Handsworth Traditional Sword Dancers : 11:15am at Market Square, Woodhouse, S13 7JX. (Next to Cross Street); 12:00pm at Handsworth in front of St. Mary's Church, S13 9BZ.

Harthill MM : 11;00am, The Bluebell, 4 Woodall Ln, Harthill, S26 7YQ; 12.30pm, The Beehive, Harthill, 16 Union St, Harthill, S26 7YH. With Three Shires Ladies Clog and Garland Dancers

Hartley MM :12.00 noon,The Black Horse, Stansted TN15 7PR; 1.15pm The Rose and Crown, Wrotham TN15 7AE - We will be dancing and performing the Firle Mummers Play.

Headington Quarry Morris Dancers : Their traditional Mummers Play with Rapper Sword Dancing and Hand Bell Ringing at the following public houses within the Quarry Parish: 11:15am Crown & Thistle, 12:15pm Six Bells,1:00pm Chequers and 1:45pm Masons Arms

The Traditional Ilmington MM : The side perform the traditional village Mummers play on tour starting in  Shipston-on-Stour, traditionally visiting the sheltered homes for the elderly, then continuing to  The Howard Arms,Ilmington at 1:00pm and The Red Lion, Ilmington, at 2:00pm (timings may vary).

Kemp's Men of Norwich : 12:00 noon,The Banningham Crown(link is external), Banningham NR1 7DY - dancing and Mummers' Play

King John's MM : from 12:00 noon, The Vine Inn, High Street, Old Bursledon SO31 8DJ - Border Morris and Mummers’ Play

Lassington Oak MM : 12.00 pm - Gloucester Cathedral, 1.00 pm The Fountain Inn, Gloucester (see Gloucester MM above)

Leicester MM : 12.00 noon – 2.00pm as Red Leicester Border - Swithland Boxing Day at The Griffin Inn(link is external), Main Street, Swithland LE12 8TJ  (Including a performance of the Sproxton Wooing Play)

Letchworth MM : 12:30 pm The Fox, Willian; 1:30 pm Three Horseshoes, Willian. There's also a music session at The Three Horseshoes afterwards to allow the dancers to re-hydrate with a couple of beers.

Leominster Morris : circa 12:00 noon - Mummers Play & dancing at The Chequers, 63 Etnam St, Leominster HR6 8AE

Long Man MM : 10:00am - 11:00am The Bandstand, Eastbourne Seafront. Collecting for Eastbourne RNLI

Manchester MM : from 12.00 noon dancing outside The Fox public house, Brookbottom, near New Mills SK22 3AY, followed by carols inside.

Martlet Sword & MM : 11:30am - 12:30pm East St, Chichester PO19 1HH

Mendip MM : 12:00 noon, The Plough Inn, Wrington; 1.00pm.The Plough Inn, Congresbury

Mersey MM : from 11:00am, Boxing Day Revels, Willaston Village Green

Moulton MM :  Boxing Day Bonanza(link is external) - 11:00am to Noon Cardigan Arms on Stocks Hill, Moulton, Northamptonshire NN3 7TB. Local Mummers Play and Morris Dancing.

North Wood MM : 12.45pm, The Harrow Inn(link is external) 309 Farleigh Road, Warlingham,CR6 9EL

Plymouth MM : 12:00 noon at the Brook Inn, Plympton PL7 1ND with Guests The Plymouth Maids 

Ravensbourne MM : 12:30pm - 1:30 The Greyhound(link is external), Commonside Keston BR2 6BP - 55 years and counting!

Redcar Sword Dancers : 12.00 noon at Greatham, Hospital Gates, near Hartlepool, Co Durham,  Sword Dance and Play. A unique event, this could be the only example of a longsword dance and its play still being performed together.  But there will be one important change this year. The Hope and Anchor, their ‘watering hole’ and venue of the popular post dance singaround, has closed but fortunately the landlord of the Bull and Dog next door has agreed to act as host this year.

Ripley M : 11:00am, Ripley Market Place;12.00 noon The Moulders Arms (Thack) at Riddings at and at The Kings Arms, Crich at 1.00pm.

Rutland MM : 10:30am, (to dance at 11:00am) Horse & Jockey, Manton;12:00 noon, Uppingham Market Square; 1:00pm, Crown, Uppingham

Silurian MM : Annual Tour starting at Ledbury Market House at 11:00, followed by dance spots at British Camp at 12:00, The Morgan Pub in Malvern at 13:00 (tbc) and The Three Kings pub at Hanley Castle at 14:00 usually followed by a music session

Southport Swords : 12:00pm Hesketh Arms, Churchtown; 1:30pm Bold Hotel, Churchtown; 2:30pm The Guest House, Union St Southport - the final event of their 50th year  celebrations 

Spen Valley Longsword Dancers : traditional tour of some of the pubs in Spen Valley to perform the dances and to sing a few songs; 1:00pm, Wickham Arms, Cleckheaton; 2:00pm, Spen Victoria Cricket Club, Spen Lane, Gomersal

Thameside Mummers :1:00 pm on the waterfront outside The Crooked Billet, Leigh on Sea, Essex SS9 2EP. The performance of their annual Christmas Play has been a much watched event for more than 40 years. Followed by a singaround in the pub.

Thames Valley MM : 11.30 am Platform 3 (in The Parade, KT10 0PB); 12.15 pm The Foley (Hare Lane, KT10 0LZ);1.00 pm, The Hare & Hounds (The Green, KT10 0JL); 1.45 pm The Winning Horse (Coverts Road, KT10 0JY) The Griffin (Common Road, KT10 0HW) - from 2.15 p.m.

Thaxted MM : 11:00am, Church Hall, including country dancing for all;12:00 noon, dancing in the Churchyard followed by songs and music in The Swan; 3pm Dancing at the Maypole.

Towersey Morris : Dancing at 12:00 noon, Three Horseshoes, Towersey; Mummers play at 1.00pm

Wantage Mummers: 10:00am - 10:30 Faringdon Market Place, Faringdon

Oxfordshire SN7 7HP; 12:00 noon - 12:30 The Bear Hotel, Wantage Oxfordshire; 1:15pm Childrey Village Hall, High Street, Childrey OX12 9UE . There is always a session in Childrey after the last performance, Although the pub in Childrey has now closed the villagers are determined to do all they can to keep up the tradition, albeit in the village hall.

Wantsum MM : 11:00am, Powell Arms Birchington; 12:00 noon The Bell Inn St Nicholas at Wade; 1:00 The Gate Inn Marshside; 2:00 The Crown Inn (The Old Cherry Brandy House) Sarre

Wath-on-Dearne MM : 10.15am Wath Town Centre; 11:00am Post Office Wentworth; 11:30am Rockingham Arms, W/worth then Procession along High Street; 1.30pm George & Dragon W/worth; 2:45 pm Edmunds Arms, Worsborough Village (Dancing, Mumming and Carols)

Wessex MM : 12:00 noon, Mumming and Morris in Cerne Abbas Village Square DT2 7JG

West Somerset MM : 11:00am Dunster Yarn Market TA24 6SF

Winchester MM : CANCELLED 11:00am, The Buttercross, High Street, Winchester SO23 9BL (and other venues to be confirmed)

Woodchurch MM : The annual Boxing Day Wassail in Woodchurch, Kent. This involves visiting various houses who welcome us with festive hot drinks and mince pies. Later the side will finish the day off at ‘The Six bells’ or Bonnie Cravat public houses in the village.  to be confirmed

Woodside MM : 12:30pm, The Cricketers(link is external), Sarratt Green,WD3 6AS

Yateley MM : 12:00 noon, T(link is external)he Queens Oak, Church Lane, Finchampstead, Wokingham RG40 4LS; 1:00pm Dog & Partridge(link is external) in Yateley GU46 7LR

Friday - December 28th

Adlington Morris Men and Mummers  : Alderley Mummers Play, Bollington tour - 7:30 pm The Cock & Pheasant, 15 Bollington Road, SK10 5EJ (T.B.C.); 8:30 pm The Poachers Inn, 95 Ingersley Road, Bollington, SK10 5RE; 9:30 pm The Vale Inn, 29-31 Adlington Road, Bollington, SK10 5JT

Saturday - December 29th

Saddleworth MM :  The Annual Lordsmere Longsword finale - 1:00 pm: The Wellington Inn, Chew Valley Road, Greenfield; 2:00 pm: The Railway, Shaw Hall Bank Road, Greenfield; 3:00 pm: The Swan, The Square, Dobcross; 4:00 pm: The Diggle Hotel, Station Houses, Diggle; 5:00 pm: The Commercial, High Street, Uppermill; 7:00 pm: The Cross Keys Inn, Running Hill Gate, Uppermill; 8:00 pm: The Church Inn, Running Hill Gate, Uppermill ('til late)

For twenty years, Faunus, the biannual journal of the Friends of Arthur Machen, has been publishing an astonishing range of scholarship, debate, archival material, and esoterica relating to the writer H. P. Lovecraft described as a “modern master of the weird tale.”

Arthur Machen (1863–1947) was not only an author of weird and decadent horror fiction lauded by Stephen King and Guillermo del Toro (among many others); he was also a journalist and essayist who, over decades, produced a vast body of nonfiction on subjects ranging from High Church theology to “the truth about curry”. This anthology gathers some of the highlights of Faunus, from its very first issue to its most recent. Subjects include the Great War, the Celtic Church, the “real” little people, Machen and Modernism, Machen and the occult, and myriad other investigations into Machen’s life and legacy.

With a new introduction by long-term Friend of Arthur Machen member Stewart Lee, the book makes newly available reprints of rare pieces by Machen himself as well as items from the Faunus archive by writers including Tessa Farmer, Rosalie Parker, Ray Russell, Mark Samuels, and Mark Valentine.

“Stewart Lee has absolutely no capacity to see the world through anyone's eyes other than his own. He is a stupid person's idea of what a 'clever' comedian is like.”

- Paul Embery, UnHerd columnist, Trade unionist (FBU and NUJ), Blue Labour, Made in Dagenham, Author: ‘Despised: Why the Modern Left Loathes the Working Class’.

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Please look after yourselves in the ongoing unknown world and don’t take any unnecessary risks.

Keep fit and keep your brains ticking over with books and films and music and don’t get sad and mad, and look out for each other.

When all this is over, I promise you, live comedy and music will feel better than they ever have, so let’s make sure we are all there to join in again on the other side.

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1) LIVE DATES NEWS

What can I say?
You live in the same reality as me. You know as much as I do.
All my little club dates for Jan and Feb will be in the process of being pulled. At the moment The Scottish and Geordie Stand shows in Feb are still on, as the virus is more scared of N Sturgeon than it is of B Johnson. We will see.

I assure you, ALL THESE DATES WILL BE RESCHEDULED. The venues have your money, not me, and although I am sure loads of you could do with it, if you can let these clubs hang on to it for now it could mean the difference between surviving and going under, and we all want a world of live art to go back to.

If major tour dates are moved all the same applies.
Thank-you for your patience.
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.

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2) PETITION FOR MUSIC, COMEDY TOURING

If you like music then bear in mind that its already covid-fucked practitioners are further fucked by the Brexit agreement, which ends the one size fits all arrangement for touring all EU member states cost-effectively, and renders it financially near impossible for most of the UK’s best acts to tour the continent to the smaller places they have got used to playing over the last near five decades, whatever shit Roger Daltrey comes out with, the stupid UKIP-supporting twat.

This is a petition to ask parliament to try and hammer out some arrangement to stem the further decimation of live art, including all the nice English language stand-up gigs all your favorite acts got to play of late, so please sign it.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/563294

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3) COMIN’ OVER HERE TOPS THE CHARTS

Thanks to everyone who bought, and told their friends to buy, the Asian Dub Foundation track, Comin’ Over Here, which featured me shouting.

It reached the top of all the actual charts reflecting actual sales and actual downloads, but in the valueless streaming chart it was beaten by the likes of Wham’s Last Christmas, a worthy victor, which was doubtless streamed endlessly over the season by people weeping into their bread sauce.

Our disc will make loads for Kent Refugee Action Network and is still available here https://smarturl.it/cominoverhere

As Mark Steel, the thrust of whose brilliant In Town Radio 4 series has recently been culturally appropriated on behalf of Channel 4 in Tom Allen Goes To Town, pointed out, ADF have enabled me to join the pantheon of pop chart topping British comics alongside Ken Dodd and Benny Hill.

Thanks also to my favourite obscene electropop act Kunt & The Gang, who graciously co-ordinated their seasonal chart assault with ours, and to Jon Morter, Sally Homer, James Hingley, Duncan Ballantyne and whoever runs a facebook page about me who knew how to target the social media.

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4) KING ROCKER - MOJO

Our documentary KING ROCKER was 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, on Jan 30th 2021 (as far as I know). 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.

https://www.firerecords.com/films/king-rocker/
https://www.firerecords.com/films/

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5) 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!

MEDIA GARAGE | MORE INFO ON THE MERCH PAGE

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6) SAVE BEER

In a world where so much is in freefall it seems crazy to single out any one deserving cause, but if you like beer as much as me why not go to;

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/can-you-do-it-forthe-goodness

and chuck in to save The Goodness, a Wood Green microbrewery run by my old neighbours’ son, which was just coming together from start-up when the Covid struck, and Tier 5 restrictions have just removed even the takeaway option.

We will need music, art, and comedy on the other side of the virus.
But above all we will need beer. And loads of it.

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7) I Arrogantly Recommend

NEW TV

Ghosts - Xmas Special 2020 (BBC, 2020)

NEW MUSIC

Lady Leshurr - Quaranqueen
The Primevals - New Trip

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8) FINALLY, DAVID JOHNSON

Few real fans of comedy, theatre and music will have been untouched by the work of my old promoter of these last fifteen years, David Johnson, who died in December, and received nothing but massive love from all that encountered.

Here are two lovely obituaries from The Herald Scotland and The Guardian, the latter by his great friend the playwright Mark Ravenhill.
At some stage there will be the tribute show to end all tribute shows. But not yet.

Herald Scotland

The Guardian

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9) IN OUR COVID ERA LAMENTATIONS

Bunny Lee (dubmaster, 1940)
David Johnson (Duke of Soho, 1960)
Leslie West (Mountain man, 1945)

READ IT AT THE NERVE, HERE

Self-billed ‘90s comedian’ and ‘41^st 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

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 be peopled exclusively by nostalgic fortysomethings. Last week, I enjoyed Roscoe Mitchell, saxophonist of the 60s free-jazzers the Art Ensemble of Chicago, at another Dalston hangout, alongside 17-year-olds and septuagenarians. From where I am standing, the traditional demographics of music consumption seem to be dissolving. Although, admittedly, where I am standing is just by the gents' toilets in a succession of the hippest venues in western Europe.

CD reissues of unknown gems, and the internet-driven mass availability of everything instantly, mean pop culture's past is growing more rapidly than its present. Our sassiest sons and daughters are beyond our command, foraging far from whatever is drip-fed to them by broadcast media, and digging all manner of cross-generational guff. Your 12-year-old niece thinks that Searching for Sugar Man bloke, who had been working as a builder since 1971 until some hipster doofus put him in an arthouse documentary, is exactly the same as Bob Dylan because she discovered them both, for better or worse, on the same illegal download site, free of any illuminating cultural context or critical commentary.

I've spent this week listening to a new, commercially available, download of a previously unreleased 1975 album by a lost Chicago metal band called Medusa, rescued from mouldy master-tapes of the group's only session, found abandoned in the drummer's basement, where perhaps they should have stayed. I don't know if I really like First Step Beyond, but it's fascinating to my saturated palate because it shouldn't be here. First Step Beyond's decontextualised Neanderthal heaviness confuses itself and everyone who comes into contact with it, like a caveman in a Disney film who gets transported to 60s suburbia, takes a dump in Mom's Tupperware and wears her diaphragm as a hat. The fact remains, the instant availability of everything ever means I am consuming something that was never aimed at me, from a time and a place I have no connection with, and yet I am nearly enjoying it.

Not everyone is buying into the theory of the kaleidoscoping of culture. Last year I curated a selection of the 20 best standups working today for a show called The Alternative Comedy Experience. It aims to be an alternative to the more straightforward fare of shows such as Live at the Apollo, and is. I went for a meeting with the channel's marketing people, who had not watched any of the 12 episodes, but were principally, and understandably, concerned about how to sell this strange product to their target audience of 18- to 32-year-olds, whose loyalty to the channel encourages advertisers to fund it.

Identifying the youngest performers in the programme, marketing wondered if they could be profiled in info-outlets popular with 18- to 32-year-olds, their faces stamped on to hallucinogenic plant food tablets, or perhaps grafted on to the bodies of the stars of the pornographic films that all young people stream continuously to their mobile phones. When I was in a double act during the early 90s, when comedy was first the new rock'n'roll, our live audience was composed exclusively of children, which was a godsend, as the fact that their parents had to accompany them sometimes pushed our live crowds up into triple figures. Nonetheless I floated to marketing the idea that, in my more recent experience of comedy, the availability of clips of our show's quality turns on YouTube meant their audiences needn't, and didn't, follow delineated demographic lines. And I suggested that younger people might not necessarily be looking to consume product manufactured by content providers of solely their own age group. But talk soon moved on to the show's coruscating liberal satirist Paul Sinha's appearance on the daytime quiz show The Chase, and whether this could be a way of getting our programme profiled in Puzzler magazine.

Meanwhile, check me out! I've had my headphones on while writing this and I am coming round to First Step Beyond. Now I'm grooving my near 45-year-old ass around in my office chair to Medusa's nine-minute Transient Amplitude, which sounds like a thin no-budget Hawkwind with two bicycle lights replacing the psychedelic light show, and a dead frog on a string instead of a massive naked dancing woman. (Hawkwind, by the way, are a once-despised 70s group loved only by hippy grandads whom young people are now encouraged to admire as space-rock pioneers.)

Indeed, this Transient Amplitude growler makes me think these Medusa cats might be quite good after all. I don't know if I'm allowed to like them, but there doesn't seem to be anyone in any position of authority telling me I shouldn't, so I am going to anyway. The guitar is all over the place though, wandering randomly between the speaker channels, like marketing people searching for demographic certainties in an age where everything that ever was is suddenly available to everyone.

The Alternative Comedy Experience begins on Comedy Central on 5 February at 11pm

Last week, on ITV’s This Morning, the cheerily rodentine Phillip Schofield and his margarine-moulded familiar, Holly Willoughby, offered a desperate member of the public the chance to have their energy bills paid at the whim of a gaudy spinning wheel of chance. Schofield is a cruel god, for whom we are mere flies, our sufferings simply sport. The former gopher handler fired up his roulette wheel of misery, taunting his victim with possibilities, as the viewer’s financial security in the punishing winter ahead hung in the balance. This tasteless fiasco was in fact the perfect prologue to the Liz Truss era. Pray, poor peasants, and spin the wheel! Life is a lottery! And you lost it the moment you were born! But why don’t we meet some of life’s winners?

Despite the fact that the new government is comprised largely of people who were born to win, the fates conspired to usher Truss into power in the most ridiculous way possible, the loser. On Tuesday, a coiled serpent cavalcade of Conservative Range Rovers slowly ushered Truss towards Downing Street as the heavens suddenly decided to open, like an old incontinent seer soaking his leggings as he scried what lay ahead for the nation. Outside No 10, trying to second-guess the weather, a pair of technicians ran backwards and forwards with the Ricky Gervais-style lectern from which Truss was to make her opening speech, as if the Chuckle Brothers had been booked as her warm-up act. “To me! To you! That’s it. A little more to the right. No. More to the right. To the right. Further. Further to the right. To the right! The right!”

Truss’s soggy rostrum was finally positioned in front of the door of No 10, with a bin bag placed on top of it to shield its upper surface from the rain. I sat with the kids and laughed at the bizarre sequence on the BBC that followed, doubtless shot deliberately by Marxists, where the caption “Liz Truss appointed prime minister” appeared for some time beneath an image of a crumpled black rubbish bag on top of a lectern. Damn the BBC! Whatever next? Jokes about politicians on comedy shows? A wet Nadhim Zahawi made a face. He once had a nice taxpayer-warmed stable out in the countryside. Truss could have made her speech there, all warm and dry, like his publicly heated horses.

Truss’s speech was the usual potpourri of lies, distraction, fantasy and disinformation we had come to expect from Tory politicians in the Brexit era, making her the perfect Boris Johnson continuity candidate. According to Truss’s nonsensical speech, Johnson delivered Brexit – except not in any form anyone would have wanted or recognised, and in doing so has crippled the economy and our reputation abroad; the energy crisis that predated the Urkaine conflict is “caused by Putin’s war” apparently, the 4% of energy we take from Russia providing the same useful fig leaf cover that Covid did for the Brexit damage; somehow, Truss will both cut taxes and increase public spending, to reward the hard work of the British workers she has previously described as “among the worst idlers in the world”. There was only one statement that rang true: “History will see [Boris Johnson] as a hugely consequential prime minister.” Yes, in the same way as my Premier Inn toilet bore witness to a “hugely consequential” lamb phaal I had last month in Birmingham.

Because no Tories with any integrity could back the disgusting Johnson or the unworkable Brexit, the party is purged of talent and Truss’s cabinet is composed of the indistinct particles of grey-green matter that get caught in the plughole when you wash up after an especially stodgy Sunday roast. Michelle Donelan, who wants to stop the study of the arts at university, is culture secretary; Brandon Lewis, formerly the Minister for Having His Sorry Ass Handed to Him on a Plate by Old Women Shouting at Him in the Street, is justice secretary; and a little bit of boiled potato with some gravy on it and a sprig of rosemary sticking out of the top is the minister without portfolio. Oh no, sorry, that’s Jake Berry.

The top table seems stuffed with ministers whom I think history will come to judge as genuinely evil; Suella Braverman, who said there would be no Brexit bill to pay for exiting the EU and no increased Brexit delays or Brexit disadvantages to business; Kwasi Kwarteng, formerly Johnson’s Golem-enforcer, who tried to bully the independent regulator Kathryn Stone into retiring last November for investigating Owen Paterson, unaware that CCHQ had already decided to throw the bent lobbyist under the bus; Jacob Rees-Mogg, who decries “climate alarmism” as a third of Pakistan drowns, with 1.4m hectares (3.5m acres) of crops and 800,000 livestock lost; and James Cleverly, who recently tweeted that he “liked Stewart Lee a lot better when he was funny”. To be honest, I am glad he has gone off me, as the 25 years where he would hang around all my shows asking me to sign his cock with a Sharpie were becoming tedious in the extreme.

Thérèse Coffey is the new deputy prime minister and health secretary. Anyone shocked by America’s sudden rolling back of abortion rights must be worried. We assume “It couldn’t happen here”, but Coffey has voted against the availability of abortion pills and against extending abortion rights to the women of Northern Ireland. However, Coffey has declared that she would “prefer that people didn’t have abortions but I am not going to condemn people that do”. And critics’ fears should be allayed by the announcement of the NHS Christmas abortion lottery. With reduced funds affecting basic services, Coffey has declared that on Christmas Eve Phillip Schofield will take to a makeshift stage in Trafalgar Square to spin another wheel of chance, making one woman’s dream of instantly available expert care a reality.

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)

Without the foreign genes of foreign husbands and foreign wives to strengthen the British gene pool, the tragic mental deficiencies that caused 52% of the country to vote for the idiocy of Brexit will only become more pronounced, consolidating the irreversible death spiral of our already internationally pitied realm.

The perma-patsy home secretary, James Cleverly, “liked Stewart Lee a lot better when he was funny” and continues to feign conviction while defending the indefensible. But on Monday, Cleverly revealed that British citizens will now need to earn £38,700 a year before the foreign person they have married can live in the UK. This figure represents a 20 grand rise from the current threshold of £18,600 imposed on anyone unlucky enough to fall in love with a foreigner. The policy is the latest manifestation of the anti-immigration culture wars that are the death throes of this gasping dry wank of a government, malignantly salting the earth for its cursed successors.

But maybe Cleverly has crossed a line here. For example, Tiny Tim Stanley, a whey-faced Brexiter from Britain’s worst newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, and a journalist invited to enjoy the hospitality of Rocco Forte at his Brexit Battalion Media Corps celebratory dinner in 2020, realised on Monday that 75% of us earn less than the required foreign spouse fee. A suddenly sad Stanley asked on X: “Is it fair to limit family formation to the rich?” No. It isn’t. And it is morally wrong to deny the exotic pleasure of foreign romance to three-quarters of the population, unless they are just romancing foreign waiters on a package holiday. But of course, this tax on love won’t affect many of those backing or implementing it, namely, wealthy Tories and Brexiters festooned with foreign-born spouses.

Chief anti-immigration Brexiter Nigel Farage has had two foreign wives, German Kirsten and Irish Gráinne (though Irish spouses can still be taken irrespective of their suitor’s income), but recently earned £1.5m from being allowed to push his far-right agenda largely unchallenged on ITV’s I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, while Ant and Dec cackled like twats. Farage’s ITV blood money alone, in isolation from his other hate-derived wealth, would have allowed him to import 38 foreign wives this year.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is married to a Chinese lady, and his annual salary of £154,089 would enable him to get four foreign wives into Britain a year, as would the similar salary of his colleague the Welsh secretary, David TC Davies, who currently enjoys the comforts of a lone Hungarian wife. Meanwhile, the outgoing immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, has an Israeli wife and a personal wealth of more than £10m. This would allow him to buy in at least 258 foreign wives who, when not engaged in coitus, study, employment or homemaking, could paint over refugee children’s murals.

The security minister, Tom Tugendhat, has a French wife and reportedly holds a stake in two firms awarded £17.8m of government contracts during the pandemic. If those companies’ Covid crisis payouts were parlayed into foreign wives, and the foreign wives transferred to Tugendhat in the form of dividends, the member for Tonbridge and Malling would have found himself sitting on a grand total of almost 460 foreign wives during the pandemic period alone, enough to satiate even the most jaded palate.

But Tugendhat’s spousal dividend would be peanuts compared with that of prime minister Rishi Sunak. His personal family wealth was recently put at £529m, while a company owned by the family of his Indian wife has reportedly received £172m of public sector contracts. The total of those two figures, £701m, would allow Sunak to ship in 18,113 wives; so many wives in fact that, if he had any basic human empathy, he could redistribute them to people denied foreign wives by the cruel policies of his own government.

Like, for example, the loyal “red wall” worker, whose hopes and fears Sunak’s party exploited, dreaming of the mail order bride that is his by rights, who now finds his romantic dreams thwarted by his Brexit saviours. And before you accuse me of stereotyping, I once paid out an expensive ransom to a misled expat relative’s partner for a stepbrother I never met, who was apparently kidnapped by Filipino pirates.

In Chaucer’s 14th-century verse epic The Knight’s Tale, the captive warrior Arcite declares his philosophy of love. “Who shall give a lover any law?” he opines, idealistically. “Love is a greater law, aye by my pan,/ Than was ever given to earthly man./ And therefore statute law and such decrees/ Are broken daily and in all degrees./ A man needs love, despite thoughts in his head./ He cannot flee it though he should be dead.” Aaaah! Bless!!

You’d think that Chaucer’s universal romantic truth would stand the test of time, wouldn’t you? But even Chaucer, who could imagine a man’s bare arse coming out of a window and farting in another man’s face, and who could also imagine loads of friars living in the devil’s anus, and who even imagined Robin Askwith doing a massive hot wee over the people of Saffron Walden’s upturned faces, could not have imagined anything as vile as James Cleverley.

The paperwork to get my children the Irish passports they are entitled to continues apace. It is a great comfort to me. Should they have the misfortune to find their hearts stolen by foreigners, and should they have the strength of character to choose their careers for worth, not money, then perhaps they will be able to find somewhere in the world that welcomes them whatever, even if it has to be far away from this miserable, loveless Tory Brexit shit-hole. Yes, James Cleverly, I said “shit-hole”. You and your ilk have made this country a shit-hole. Shit-hole. Shit-hole. Shit-hole.

I believe it was John Lennon and Yoko Ono who sang: “A very merry Christmas. And a happy new year. Let’s hope it’s a good one, without Andrew Pierce.” (In the current climate of “cancel culture” and “wokeness”, can I make clear this is a joke? I may have rather put my foot in it, but I mean no ill will to the Daily Mail consultant editor and respected GB News presenter Andrew Pierce. I am certainly not hoping that Pierce is silenced in 2023. People say Pierce’s contributions to the national discourse are of no value, but I once saw a pigeon eating some sick off the floor as if it were a nourishing meal. Everything has its function. Anyway, my comments on Pierce are an allusion to that scene in Game of Thrones where Persiminnos Snake-Tongue is struck dumb by Count Cellidor’s Flamingo of Time. Will this do?)

Because of festive print deadlines, the column you are reading today was actually filed on 21 December, when the dog shit of Jeremy Clarkson’s latest grimly hand-milked hate emission was still hot on the Converse ™ ® shoe of social media. That December day was the shortest of the year, though it must have felt longer if you were lying on an icy pavement in Tiverton with a broken leg waiting for an ambulance. And that wait must have seemed even longer if you voted Tory or Brexit and finally had the clarity to realise your suffering represented a form of cosmic justice of which you were entirely deserving. The wheel turns. The wheelwright is crushed under it, still dreaming of £350m a week for the NHS, no foreigners and lovely straight bananas.

Perhaps the ambulance dispute has been resolved by the time you read this, though the problems that placed the ambulance service under such stress, such as the ongoing collapse of social care under the Tories and the general physical and mental sickness of a population broken by Brexit and an underfunded NHS, are unlikely to have been solved without an ideological volte-face. But how can any Tory MP do a volte-face? How can you turn your face to face a new direction when both your faces are already facing different ways as it is? Especially now our lack of access to the single market means Tory MPs’ faces, which are made in the industrialised Lorraine region of France from inedible horse meat, are in short supply and limited to two per politician.

Anything could happen, couldn’t it? There’s the rub! My Groucho Club buddies laughed at me when, last New Year’s Eve, I placed a drunken bet on Matt Handcock, then the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa’s special representative for financial innovation and climate change, appearing on television by the year’s end eating camels’ penises, sheep’s vaginas and cows’ anuses. But, in the end, I won enough money to turn my heating on all day when it snowed. Next week, I will place a bet on Matt Handcock’s penis being eaten by a camel, live on TV, by the end of 2023, but don’t go telling Harry Redknapp or it will negatively impact on my odds.

Everything is so volatile that filing this hate-filled screed 12 days in advance seems not so much an attempt at comedy as an attempt at clairvoyance. The narrative turbulence of the past few months makes pre-emptive political satire impossible. It is as if the Conservative party has decided that if it keeps sacking people, reversing policies and reconfiguring itself in new shapes, we will not recognise it for what it is. The current political arena is the desolate Arctic research station from John Carpenter’s The Thing. And Rishi Sunak is an eviscerated dog carcass with all writhing tentacles coming out of its guts. And that’s putting it kindly!

Who should be the target of my satirical barbs this New Year’s Day? I have said it before, but since I started writing my current touring standup show in August there have been three different Tory governments, necessitating an ongoing rolling rewrite for the top of the show’s topical monologue. The elderly bow-tied snare drum player waiting in the wings has to relearn his punchline rimshot cues nearly every night. The Truss government at least had the good grace to go down during the week I took off for the kids’ half-term, like a sick dog that takes itself under the shed to die, visible only by the cloud of maggot-hatched bluebottles that gathers as it decomposes, or the 1922 Committee as they are more commonly known.

The Sunak government, meanwhile, is like a cat that’s been hit by a car but is still writhing in the road, upsetting people waiting at the bus stop. The conflicted driver approaching at speed knows the most moral course of action is to end its misery, but instead it is left thrashing about, booking pointless flights to Rwanda, misrepresenting Mick Lynch and going on and on about Jeremy Corbyn. God! The Conservative government!! Can’t someone in a Range Rover just show it some mercy and drive over its head!!!

In an attempt to work out what I ought to pontificate about in nearly two weeks’ time, I shuffle the trusty tarot. But the cards all come up the same and they depict the image of small bald man shovelling his own mucous from his nose into his mouth, in a snot-based version of Handcock’s bushtucker trial. The cards have never lied. Will 2023 be the year that the Conservative party is led once more by Iain Duncan Smith? Perhaps. Worse things have already happened. At least we avoided Chaos With Ed Miliband.

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.

ITHELL COLQUHOUN (1906–1988) was a painter and writer who, along with Eileen Agar and Leonora Carrington, one of the best-known English women surrealists.
A friend of André Breton, she was also associated with Aleister Crowley.

Her writing has been compared to that of William Blake and Walter de la Mare – the latter being a fan of her work.

Re-publication of Ithell Colquhoun’s two travelogues, for which I have written a new introduction.

BUY HERE

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.

Stewart Lee's Carpet Remnant World is at the Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, until 26 August

The Conservatives are a defeated army in vindictive retreat, robbing the museums and cathedrals as they head for the hills; setting fire to, and laying waste to, every institution in their wake; poisoning the rivers and destroying the food supplies; leaving only a barren mess for the incoming Labour government to shoulder the blame for. Jonathan Gullis has found a lacy French bra in the rubble of a fine mansion and is wearing it as a hat, laughing and touching his genitals; in an abandoned dentist’s waiting room, Bill Cash has eaten an entire tank of tropical fish; Suella Braverman has made oven gloves out of the corpse of a dead cat; and, having ruined a hospital, Mark Francois is now asleep, naked, in an incubator.

At least the scorched earth policy of the second world war armies only scorched the earth. The Conservatives, and their divisive Brexit, burned the soul out of Britain. We recognise the nation we used to know, but only as Charlton Heston, in Planet of the Apes, recognises the stuffed corpse of his former crewmate Dodge, eviscerated and mounted by apes in a museum, a glass-eyed taxidermy cadaver of its old self.

Every April, I used to go camping on the Wye for the first wild river swim of the year, but this month I have saved money by just shitting and pissing into my own bath and then splashing around in it naked, while wearing a paper mask of the environment secretary, Thérèse Coffey. After I get out, and before towelling down, I issue a misleading statement about how our rivers have never been cleaner to my own bathroom mirror, even though I can still see my own filth tangled in my hair, to the delight of shareholders, and the disappointment of former Undertones singer Feargal Sharkey, unexpectedly emerging from punk cult status as The Most Decent Man In Modern Britain ™ ®. There’s no threat of a fine from Brussels any more and Defra is without teeth. Pollute away, polluters!

And so no spring river wild swims for me. Instead, I spent Easter taking my mind off the state of the nation by walking through the ruins of cultures and societies that once thought they would last for ever. In Oxfordshire, I drank a flask of black tea on the green flanks of Wayland’s Smithy, a Neolithic long barrow where once, they say, the Germanic blacksmith god Wayland shod the horses of other deities. Wayland would even shoe a mere mortal’s horse for a sixpenny bit, making the mythical tradesperson slightly better paid, allowing for inflation, than a modern junior doctor, though not as well remunerated as a Pret a Manger sandwich pusher.

Today, the Gods’ Horse Feet Maintenance sector is as distant as the possibility of being a touring British musician. Indeed, if you are a drummer trying to clear your paperwork and operate within the 90-day limit, you may choose to consider an equally viable sideways move into being a Footwear Specialist for Mythical Equine Beings. But do bear in mind, the Germanic gods that once patronised Wayland’s Smithy will not come here post-Brexit, as only 37% of Germans have passports.

From hillfort to hillfort – Uffington Castle, Liddington Castle, Barbury Castle, Cleeve Hill, Crickley Hill and Uley Bury – I traversed ancient trackways, representing nearly a 1,000-year period of trade between communities, and only the occasional genocidal massacre. Today, it’s not even worth me ordering a secondhand vinyl seven-inch that costs 50p from a dealer in Belgium because of post-Brexit postage, school trips can’t get out of Calais on their coaches thanks to us removing our own freedom of movement, and European schools are sending their kids to practise English in Ireland and Malta, rather than in England, where English was invented. Another Brexit bonus. French children will be saying “feck” instead of proper English swearing. Are you happy now Dan Hanananananan?

On a not entirely unrelated note, it was as I shouldered my pack and headed up to the Uffington White Horse that I heard about the BBC 6 Music evening show reshuffle. Marc Riley and Gideon Coe’s shows are to be conjoined, a land grab on the sound and attitude that have given the station credibility and purpose, reducing the hours of new alternative music on the BBC weekly from 20 to eight. Here’s the BBC’s press release, verbatim, errors intact: “Two of our finest curators, Mark Riley and Gideon Coe will come together to play they music loves from every era and genre.” It doesn’t even make grammatical sense. Decades of service and they give you an illiterate sendoff.

That derided word, “curators”. Those evening session shows shaped a generation of tastes, broke the new bands that justify a publicly sustained broadcaster, encouraged a community of devoted listeners to sustain local small venues and, in the pandemic, saw those late-night broadcasters become friends, the Wogans of post-punk, lifelines in the dark times.

The British music industry was once, like James Bond and football, vital to our soft global diplomacy. And the British music industry, beleaguered by Brexit, will tell you those BBC 6 Music evening shows sustained it. Streaming platforms mean no one gets paid for music; energy costs close venues; Brexit ends touring; and the withdrawal of cheap housing and squats, and cheats like Thatcher’s Enterprise Allowance Scheme, mean social mobility is reversed in the arts. For years 6 Music helped stem that, with the evening shows’ open door.

But I’m sick of trying to understand all this. I’m 55 now. The stormy weather of decision makers’ decisions rages around me. I stand still and hope I am still standing when it subsides. The rivers are dead, customs is clogged and now there’s less I want to listen to on the radio. Why, I find myself saying, why can’t we have nice things?

Earlier this month, Rishi Sunak went to the economically depressed, wealthy second-home owners’ paradise of Cornwall, which is now £230m down as the Conservative government’s promises to replace funding lost from the EU because of Brexit remain predictably unmet. Take back control! Enjoy your fish!! What did the EU ever do for us? The Eden Project. The Hall for Cornwall. The South West Coast Path. Newlyn fish market. Penzance’s Jubilee Pool. The Camborne to Pool link road. Superfast broadband. The Penzance heliport. Oh.

While in Cornwall, Sunak went for a photo op at a dentist that, it transpired, wasn’t accepting new adult NHS patients, a real problem for the Cornish populace, who having gnashed their teeth down to the gums in a nonspecific fury with the EU, now have no teeth left to gnash at the London newspaper columnists buying up their family cottages for half-term holidays twice a year with insolent middle-class teenage sons who steal locals’ lobsters out of pots in the harbour and eat them round campfires on the beach while smoking weed and having sex with their friends’ sisters.

Then, as the sweet scent of deregulation wafted through a country now liberated from Brussels’ ability to punish polluters, Sunak deftly avoided the stench of the sewage-lapped beaches of Wastewater Sands, Stinkin Bay, Mawgan Filth, Filth, Faecal North, Faecal South, Craptock, Trevaunfilth Cove, Pisstreath, Gwithian Turdans, Godrevy Turdans, Perranuthpoo, Porthoushit, Colstridia Haven, Pentestank, Readecoli Cove, East Poo, Millenpiss, Shaton, Downsmelly, Portwinkle, Kingshatton and Porthkidney Discharge.

Instead, Sunak went to the Philps pasty shop in Hayle, where he rat-nibbled a Cornish pasty in such an obtuse way to suggest that every other meal the prime minister had eaten up until that point in his life had been cut up into tiny pieces with a silver cake fork and fed to him by Jacob Rees-Mogg’s nanny on loan, parcelling it into his stupid lying face while pinching his nose and praising him. “Who’s a clever boy? Who’s going to be prime minister? Rishi is.”

A clearly confused Sunak held the unfamiliar pasty at both ends and munched a big half-moon-shaped bite into the middle of it, like Scooby-Doo attacking an especially large cartoon sandwich. Had Sunak continued in this fashion, he would have been left holding a pasty end in each hand while making a confused face, as if baffled by the disappearance of the main body of the pasty proper.

Sunak’s pasty technique inspired local debate. Was Sunak in fact eating the pasty in the authentic way a 19th-century Cornish tin miner with dirty fingers would, as opposed to the modern way, crust first, like a Greggs steak bake shielded in a paper bag? Or should Sunak have probed the pasty in the way that DH Lawrence, who sought sanctuary in Zennor during the first world war, would have done, namely in the “Greek” fashion, till suddenly, in the spasm of coition, tupping like a jerking leap, and oh!

Was it possible that Sunak’s policy wonks had advised him to eat the pasty in the Scooby-tinner style to court the support of Cornish traditionalists, even more alienated now that the Brexit they voted for had left them even more ruined? All that was certain is that the pasty shop Sunak visited received such a massive backlash that within hours it had thoroughly cleansed its social media feeds of any mention of Sunak’s visit, in a process now known as pasty-washing.

When will politicians learn to avoid food? It normally works out about as well as when they encounter actual members of the public. Gordon Brown’s 2010 campaign suffered when he was famously caught on a still-live microphone describing his confrontation with a Rochdale Labour voter Gillian Duffy thus: “That was a disaster – they should never have put me with that woman. Whose idea was that? Ridiculous… she was just a bigoted woman.” Luckily, Sunak’s aides swiftly stepped in to suppress a rogue recording of his own post-Pastygate tantrum: “That was a disaster – they should never have put me with that pasty. Whose idea was that? Ridiculous. It was too big for my face.”

But the papers soon had their fun and just days later even I, a massive fan of pasties, who also hates Tories, can barely remember the chance meeting at a pasty shop of Sunak and a pasty. But to this day we all remember the alfresco dining disaster of Ed Miliband, the butterfly broken on a bacon sandwich.

On 21 May 2014, the Labour leader was photographed, a thorough 13 times by the Evening Standard’s Jeremy Selwyn, eating a bacon sandwich in an ungainly fashion in a cafe in London’s New Covent Garden market, which he visited on the campaign trail. The newspaper, which by that time was mainly owned by the future Tory prime minister Boris Johnson’s friends the former KGB spy Alexander Lebedev and his son, the future Lord of Siberia Baron Evgeny Lebedev, then ran a sequence of Eadweard Muybridge-style photos showing Miliband’s face, caught between mouthfuls, looking as ridiculous as possible. Rightwing media ran with it. A year later, David Cameron’s campaign released a picture of him eating a hotdog with a knife and fork. Although he looked hopelessly posh, he at least wasn’t making a funny face.

Within days, the Conservative pre-campaign media machine had moved on, leaving Cornwall to its sewage and its suddenly unsubsidised unviability, Philps’s pasty business fighting to recover its reputation. In Plymouth, the Right Honourable Johnny Mercer MP “took the PM for a quick jog around a blustery City, and showed him the names of some of my mates on the Commando memorial we built to them. Rishi Sunak is resilient, tough, determined, like we were back in the day. Tough times make tough folks.”

Stewart Lee likes to paint himself as an outcast. So how does he cope when, even with his BBC2 series long gone, he has already sold out three months in this 400-seater with a long tour and five nights at the Royal Festival Hall to follow? When Alan Bennett is among his fans? When this newspaper (specifically me, sorry) labelled him the best comedian in the world after his stunning previous show, Content Provider?

Well, there’s always his looks and health issues to contrast with his career. “I’m deaf, I’m blind, I’m grey, I’m fat,” suggests the bulkier-than-before, 51-year-old Lee. And then there is the indignity of having Netflix put completely the wrong description on his work, while Ricky Gervais, Jimmy Carr et al plough on from smash hit to smash hit.

A Merry Winterval To All My Fans!

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)

https://leicestersquaretheatre.ticketsolve.com/shows/873569397/events

Other extra dates by other comedians are available.

CONTENT PROVIDER FINAL 2018 TOUR DATES - NO MORE TO FOLLOW

November 2017

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

February 2018

Thursday February 1st - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS
Friday February 2nd - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS
Saturday February 3rd - Content Provider, Leicester Square Theatre, London - 7pm TICKETS
Friday 9th - Content Provider, Grand Theatre, Swansea - 01792 475715 - 8pm - TICKETS
Sunday 18th - Content Provider, Festival Theatre, Chichester - 01243 781312 - 7.30pm - TICKETS
Tuesday 20th - Content Provider, Arts House, Stratford Upon Avon - 01789 207100 - 8pm - TICKETS
Wednesday 21st - Content Provider, Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury - 01743 281281 - 8pm - TICKETS
Thursday 22nd - Content Provider, The Courtyard, Hereford - 01432 340555 - 8pm - TICKETS
Sunday 25th - Content Provider, The Orchard Theatre, Dartford - 01322 220000 - 7.30pm - TICKETS
Wednesday 28th - Content Provider, Dorking Halls, Dorking - 01306 881717 - 8pm - TICKETS

March 2018

Thursday 1st - Content Provider, Colston Hall, Bristol - 0117 203 4040 - 8pm - TICKETS
Sunday 4th - Content Provider, Theatre Royal, Plymouth - 01752 267222 - 7.30pm - TICKETS
Monday 5th - Content Provider, Northcott Theatre, Exeter - 01392 726363 - 7.30pm - TICKETS
Tuesday 6th - Content Provider, Northcott Theatre, Exeter - 01392 726363 - 7.30pm - TICKETS
Wednesday 7th - Content Provider, Theatr Brycheiniog, Brecon - 01874 611622 - 7.30pm - TICKETS
Saturday 10th - Content Provider, Lyceum Theatre, Crewe - 01270 368 242 - 8pm - TICKETS
Monday 12th - Content Provider, Tivoli Theatre, Aberdeen - 01224 641122 - 7.30pm - TICKETS
Tuesday 13th - Content Provider, Rep Theatre, Dundee - 01382 223530 - 8pm - TICKETS
Wednesday 14th - Content Provider, Concert Hall, Perth - 01738 621031 - 7.30pm - TICKETS
Monday 19th - Content Provider, Charter Theatre, Preston - 01772 80 44 44 - 7.30pm - ON SALE SOON
Tuesday 20th - Content Provider, Hippodrome, Darlington - 01325 405405 - 7.30pm - TICKETS
Wednesday 21st - Content Provider, City Hall, Hull - 01482 300306 - 7.30pm - TICKETS
Thursday 22nd - Content Provider, Regent, Ipswich - 01473 433100 - 8pm - TICKETS
Friday 23rd - Content Provider, Theatre Royal, Norwich - 01603 630000 - 7.30pm - TICKETS

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
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

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ROSE WYLIE

I did a radio 4 show w top artist Rose Wylie, which goes out Weds 29th Nov at 9am and 9.30 pm http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09gh9cy.

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A BELTER FOR THE SHELTER

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,
Nish Kumar,
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!

TICKETS HERE

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TOP TIPS - I ARROGANTLY RECOMMEND

Laura Cannell

Dec 2nd - Laura Cannell, medievalist minimalist drone fiddler and piper supreme, is at the lunchtime series Daylight Music at the Union Chapel, Islington, London today.

Patty Waters

Dec 6th and 7th - '60s New York avant-jazz vocalist Patty Waters is at Cafe Oto, Dalston, London tonight. She appears to have no other UK dates.

Richard Dawson

Avant-folk songwriter, storyteller and performance artists the mighty Richard Dawson is on the road this month;

Monday 18 - Norwich Arts
Tuesday 19th - Band On The Wall M'cr
Weds 20th - Assembly Hall Islington.

The Pretty Things

60s survivors The Pretty Things play their annual xmas bash at the Borderline, London on Dec 15th

Eliza Carthy

Eliza Carthy, vessel of English folk, tours this month;

03 - Anvil Basingstoke
04 - Gloucs Guildhall
06 - Cardiff Tramshed
08 - St George's Brighton
09 - St Mary's Ashford
10 - Wedgewood Rooms Southsea
11th Rescue Rooms Notts
13 - Cheese & Grain Frome
16th Union Chapel London
18 - B'ham Town Hall
19 - St Luke's Glasgow.

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BILL CASHMORE RIP

I was sorry to hear last month of the death, at 56, of the actor and writer Bill Cashmore, a mainstay of the mid-90's Fist of Fun repertory company.
Here he is working his weird wonder in The Ant And The Man, from 1994. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPg-v0I1KzU

This month's in-depth investigation into the state of British music journalism concerns opposite attitudes towards the oft-derided debating forum that is the online comment community

The idea of giving music journalists prizes is obviously ridiculous. Is going to gigs for free with an outside chance of standing next to Everett True not reward enough for these people? The one context in which some measure of formal acclaim might be constructive, however, would be in the category of "best sentence". From Lester Bangs and Paul Morley to Chuck Eddy and Kodwo Eshun (before he took the silver shillings of academe and the international art world), the true giants of rock writing have traditionally distinguished themselves by their ability to compress an extraordinary amount of cultural elucidation into the interval between a capital letter and a full stop.

Stewart Lee's recent declaration of occult war on his rival 90s polymath Damon Albarn contained at least two worthy candidates for July 2011's inaugural Ian Penman Memorial Sentence of the Month award (sponsored by Tipp-Ex. "But imagine Bowie instead as a cunning lichen, an adaptive tuber or a semi-sentient mould, endlessly reshaping himself in search of the moisture of acclaim, and it is easy to understand him" is my favourite. Although the alarming if possibly fallacious suggestion that "Louise Weeners of the Sleeper [sic] is planning a lighthearted chick-lit novel about Ithell Colquhoun and her magic goose" runs it close.

As those Comment is Free respondents who scathingly noted Lee's in fact humorously intended misidentification of the Witchfinder General as "Mary Hopkin" may finally be realising, the late-night BBC2 comedian's mis-spelling of the name of the second-rank-Britpop-siren-turned-persistent-literary-wannabe Louise Wener is probably not an accident. Professional music journalists are not generally encouraged to make deliberate mistakes (although there is the odd one who tries to get away with it every now and again out of sheer perversity) but Lee's unique position – suspended between celebrity super-fan, benevolent critical authority and satirical observer of the absurdities of pop discourse – allows him latitude in this area.

Of course, Stewart Lee would be unlikely to get people's names wrong for comic effect in one of the scrupulously scholarly Sunday Times record reviews that have established him as News International's leading authority on extemporised instrumentals. And his recent almost overnight transition from self-styled surly sixth-form common-room existentialist to mini Meltdown-curating pillar of the contemporary cultural establishment does pose an intriguing threat to the strict separation of powers between serious-minded advocate of Dutch free improvisation and wilfully divisive poker of sticks into the hive mind that has served him so well thus far. But why shouldn't Lee continue to combine the unabashed idealism of the Corinthian enthusiast with the cold-eyed ruthlessness of the professional comedic assassin? Surely it was just such a variety of potentialities that the poet Walt Whitman had in mind when he pioneered the notion of an individual containing multitudes?

The Word message-board is not necessarily the first place you'd look to see Whitman's dreams of diverse human possibility fulfilled. But the revelation in the magazine's 174th podcast that the "only active thing" one-time NME sentence-overlord Danny Baker (and a joke Baker once made about the Raincoats in a live review is still regularly cited as one of the finest achievements in all English literature) managed to do in the course of his recent serious illness was make mischievous contributions to that oft-derided debating forum has certainly done wonders for the status of the pseudonymous online contributor.

One participant in the ensuing quest to unmask Baker's alter ego (which proved mercifully inconclusive, as a positive ID would have spoiled the fun) posited an intriguing idea. Perhaps the prevailing harshness of message-board debate might be mitigated if prior to pressing "submit" on another scourging denunciation of a rival thinker's ancestral lineage or all-round mental fitness, online contributors could "consider that the person posting might be in complicated circs". My suggestion is that we symbolically set aside any lingering unease prompted by the use of the abbreviation "circs", name this commendably humane initiative "Baker's Law", and see if it helps us impose some discipline on what Jaron Lanier has resonantly termed our "inner troll".

Stewart Lee's alternative to the former Six O'Clock Show presenter's "If you're not well enough to beat them, join them" strategy – gathering together all the most savage personal attacks on him in one place in the hope of prompting a collective recalibration of Gordon Brown's moral compass – certainly seems to have had the opposite effect to the one intended. So rather than dropping a carcass into the shark-tank, why not fit all the sharks with Danny Baker masks and see if that stops them biting each others' (and, indeed, our) faces?

After all, it can only be a matter of time before the process of anguished self-examination set in train by the News of the World phone-hacking scandal spreads out from the antedeluvian print media into the broader interactive hinterland. And as the decorous new era of content mutualisation dawns, perhaps a day will one day come when 21st-century opinion-formers no longer need to view a violently hostile reception from the online comment community as a badge of honour. In the meantime, Lee's determination to continue biting the hand that feeds him – whether that hand is his own or Michael McIntyre's – will continue to be an inspiration to those who believe rigorous self-regulation can still transcend the discipline of the virtual lynch-mob.

READ IT AT THE NERVE, HERE

A female black rod has declared the wokest parliament ever open! Allow yourselves the luxury of hope. But while you must remember the poor, and the polluted rivers and those marooned on massive hospital waiting lists, you must also, at this time, think of the satirists. For we are the real victims here. The gift horse just shut its mouth, shut the stable door and bolted. Maybe Nadhim Zahawi forgot to turn the understable heating on.

This is the first supposedly funny broadsheet column I have written under a Labour government. And it is already not very funny at all. Reading it must feel like watching air escape slowly from a punctured balloon. Pffffft! Come back, Jonathan Gullis. The church of hell is missing its chief gargoyle. Come back, Gillian Keegan, for you did a fucking good job, actually. Come back, Andrew Selous, former MP for South West Bedfordshire, whoever you were. And come back, Grant Shapps. Come back, Michael Green. Come back, Sebastian Fox. Come back, Corinne Stockheath. Come back, all the different online identities of Grant “Lawnmower” Shapps that made him four times as funny as a normal Tory. We need you! Especially Corinne Stockheath.

Before Brexit, I never really wrote that much political comedy. I talked about dogs playing the piano and small towns with swearwords in their names. For two years in the 1990s, I pretended to be a pedantic crow. Once, I dressed as Godzilla and attacked a giant lobster with a shopping bag. The defeated bad news patsy James Cleverly, for example, remembered those times fondly, having written on Twitter that he “liked Stewart Lee a lot better when he was funny”. I, in turn, remember Cleverly when he used to be in government, but those days are now just a Rohypnol haze.

As a fully paid-up member of the tofu-munching metropolitan liberal elite wokerati, last weekend I attended two literary events; one in a stately home near Totnes, where I was given malbec wine by the singer from the doom metal band 40 Watt Sun; and the other at a stately home in Hampstead, where I enjoyed a fish sandwich made by the man who played Andolini in Lasse Hallström’s Casanova. It was just another day in my fantastic life! A fantastic life!!

At both events were delegates like me, who have made our livings this last decade or so mocking the increasingly absurd and relentlessly rotten Conservative government. The Conservatives and the ridiculous campaign to leave Europe had radicalised me as a comedian, as much as any centrist dad can be radicalised. I became ruddy furious and various people started to get a right telling off. But suddenly our gravy train has hit the buffers, the wrong kind of gravy is all over the tracks, the buffet car has run out of cheap laughs and I am sitting next to a table of sensible people with reasonable ideas. Bollocks!

I hope I was always funnier than I was angry these last 14 years. Sometimes, despair got the better of me. I apologise. But as I survey the gaping laptop this Tuesday morning, I could benefit from some of the fury that formerly fuelled me. Could someone in power say something unambiguously racist again, please, or blatantly lie, or filter millions of pounds of public money to fathers-in-law, pub landlords and pole dancers. My head welcomes dull conscientious competence. My heart longs for the ludicrous, like the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg clearly longed for Boris Johnson. (Are we allowed to say that yet?) We satirists never had it so good! What next?

On 28 April, I filmed one of the final performances of my last standup show, Basic Lee, in Salford, for subsequent broadcast on Sky and Now. Then I began work on the new standup show, Stewart Lee vs the Man-Wulf, which opens in December. But less than a month later, Rishi Sunak called a snap general election and the 10 minutes or so I had on the Tories in Basic Lee became the last political jokes I wrote under a Conservative administration, hopefully ever.

When the show goes out on Sky for the first time on Saturday 20 July, it will seem unbelievable, for example, that the former environment secretary Steve Barclay was married to an executive from super-polluter Anglian Water. To me! To you! Surely it was a conflict of interests of some magnitude.

And was Barclay’s already forgotten predecessor Thérèse Coffey once entrusted with the futures of millions of British mammals and invertebrates, surely her natural prey? And had there really been a tiny man called Rishi Sunak who flew everywhere in a jet, eating Haribo ™ ® from his pocket, and who had once tried to insert his credit card directly into a baffled garage cashier’s mouth?

Tuesday’s first session of parliament saw all party leaders make uncharacteristically good-natured opening remarks, leaving me little to work with. While Cat Smith spoke, the Labour MP Barry Gardiner’s phone went off live on TV. I wondered if it was another alleged Chinese secret agent trying to get work experience for her son in his constituency office and thought there may be a funny paragraph in the idea. But though Gardiner is somewhat buffoonish, he isn’t inherently evil, like most of the last crop of Tories, and it seemed cruel to make a fool of a man who is quite capable of making a fool of himself unassisted.

There was a brief burst of ill-timed point-scoring from a predictably tin-eared Nigel Farage, who came off like a British tourist taking a piss in the corner of a cathedral, but all his comments showed was how quickly his one-trick street-corner cup-and-ball act is going to wither under the bright lights of parliamentary scrutiny. So where do the next four years of the funny come from? The page is blank. The luxury of not knowing is exhilarating. Thank God.

BRIDGET CHRISTIE

My "wife" Bridget Christie absolutely loves being described in every listing about her as my wife, even though she herself never mentions it, and she is performing her hit 2011 Edinburgh Fringe show Housewife Surrealist at...

14th March - Housewife Surrealist. Black Box Theatre, Belfast - Tickets
24th April - Housewife Surrealist. Soho Theatre - Tickets
25th April - Housewife Surrealist. Soho Theatre - Tickets
26th April - Housewife Surrealist. Soho Theatre - Tickets
27th April - Housewife Surrealist. Soho Theatre - Tickets
28th April - Housewife Surrealist. Soho Theatre - Tickets

Press about the show is here, and join Bridget's mailing list here for more news.

CARPET REMNANT WORLD

Carpet Remnant World is the title of the new full length show from the acclaimed star of the BAFTA nominated BBC2 series: Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle (“The funniest thing on television" The Guardian).

Thanks to all who came so far.

March

Thursday 1st - St. George's Hall, Bradford - 8.00pm. Box Office: 01274 432000 Book Online.
Friday 2nd - Waterfront Hall, Belfast - Box Office: 028 9033 4455 Book Online.
Saturday 3rd - Philarmonic Hall, Liverpool - 8.00pm. Box Office: 0151 709 3789 Book Online.
Tuesday 6th - Opera House, Buxton - 7.30pm. Box Office: 0845 1272190 Book Online.
Wednesday 7th - Corn Exchange, Cambridge - 8.00pm. Box Office: 01223 357851 Book Online.
Friday 9th - The Anvil, Basingstoke - Box Office: 01256 844244 Book Online.
Saturday 10th - Royal & Derngate, Northampton - Box Office: 01604 624811 Book Online.
Sunday 11th - Theatre Royal, Norwich - 7.30pm. Box Office: 01603 630000 Book Online.
Thursday 15th - DeMontfort Hall, Leicester - 7.30pm. Box Office: 0116 233 3111 Book Online.
Friday 16th - Derby Theatre, Derby - Box Office: 01332 255800 Book Online.
Saturday 17th - Performing Arts Centre, Lincoln - Box Office: 0844 888 4414 Book Online.
Wednesday 21st - The Dukes Theatre, Lancaster - 8.00pm. Box Office: 01524 598500 Book Online
Thursday 22nd - Journal Tyne Theatre, Newcastle - 8.00pm. Box Office:0844 493 9999 Book Online.
Friday 23rd - King's Theatre, Glasgow (Glasgow Comedy Festival) - 8.00pm. Box Office: 0844 3954005 Book Online.
Saturday 24th - Theatre Royal, York - 7.30pm. Box Office: 01904 623568 Book Online.
Monday 26th - Playhouse, Oxford - 8.00pm Box Office: 01865 305305 Book Online.
Wednesday 28th - St David’s Hall, Cardiff - 8.00pm Box Office: 029 2087 8444 Book Online.
Thursday 29th - The Hexagon, Reading - 8.00pm Box Office: 0118 960 6060 Book Online.
Friday 30th - Symphony Hall, Birmingham - 8.00pm Box Office: 0121 7803333 Book Online.

April

Tuesday 17th - Theatre Royal, Winchester - 8.00pm Box Office: 01962 840440 Book Online.
Wednesday 18th - Hall For Cornwall, Truro - 8.00pm Box Office: 01872 262466 Book Online.
Friday 20th - Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield - 7.45pm Box Office: 0114 249 6000 Book Online.
Saturday 21st - Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield - 7.45pm Box Office: 0114 249 6000 Book Online.
Thursday 26th - Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury - 8.00pm Box Office: 01743 281281 Book Online.
Sunday 29th - The Lowry, Salford - MATINEE - 3.00pm Box Office: 0843 208 6010 Book Online.
Sunday 29th - The Lowry, Salford - EVENING - 7.30pm Box Office: 0843 208 6010 Book Online.

May

Thursday 1st - Corn Exchange, King's Lynn - Box Office: 01553 764864 Book Online.
Wednesday 2nd - The Dome, Brighton - Box Office: 01273 709709 Book Online
Saturday 5th - Machynlleth Comedy Festival, Wales - Book Online.
Sunday 6th - Hippodrome, Bristol - 7.30pm Box Office: 0844 871 3012 Book Online.
Monday 7th - Theatre Royal, Plymouth - Box Office: 01752 230440 Book Online.
Tuesday 8th - Octagon Theatre, Yeovil - Box Office: 01935 422884 Book Online.
Friday 11th - Gala Theatre, Durham - 8.00pm Box Office 0191 332 4041 Book Online.
Saturday 12th - Music Hall, Aberdeen - Box Office: 01224 641122 Book Online.
Sunday 13th - Eden Court, Inverness - Box Office: 01463 234234 Book Online.
Thursday 17th - Vicar Street, Dublin - Box Office: 00353 (0)1 77 55 800 Book Online.
Friday 18th - Vicar Street, Dublin - Box Office: 00353 (0)1 77 55 800 Book Online.
Saturday 19th - Seapoint Ballroom, Salthill, Galway - 8.00pm - 0818 719300 Book Online.
Sunday 20th - Savoy Theatre, Cork - 8.00pm - 0818 719300 Book Online.
Thursday 24th - Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry - 8.00pm Box Office: 024 7652 4524 Book Online.
Friday 25th - Civic Theatre, Wolverhampton - 7.30pm Box Office 0870 320 7000 Book Online.
Saturday 26th - Festival Theatre, Malvern - Box Office: 01684 892277 Book Online.

June

Friday 1st - Assembly Hall, Tunbridge Wells - 8.00pm Box Office 01892 530613 / 532072 Book Online
Friday 8th - West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds - Box Office: 0113 213 7700 Book Online.
Saturday 9th - The Alban Arena, St Albans - 01727 844488 - Book Online.
Wednesday 13th - Corn Exchange, Bedford - Box Office: 01234 269519 ON SALE SOON.
Thursday 14th - Grand Theatre, Swansea - Box Office: 01792 475715 VENUE WEBSITE.
Friday 15th - Lighthouse, Poole - Box Office: 0844 406 8666 Book Online
Friday 22nd - Civic Theatre, Chelmsford - Box Office: 01245 606 505 Book Online.
Saturday 23rd - City Hall, Salisbury - 8.00pm - Box Office: 01722 434434 Book Online.
Sunday 24th - Northcott Theatre, Exeter - Box Office: 01392 493493 Book Online.
Tuesday 26th - City Hall, Hull - 8.00pm - Box Office: 01482 300 300 Book Online.
Wednesday 27th - Huntingdon Hall, Worcester - Box Office: 01905 611427 Book Online.
Thursday 28th - Huntingdon Hall, Worcester - Box Office: 01905 611427 Book Online.

July

The show will then be slimmed down from its current 2hrs running time to 75 minutes for the final dates, including a reprise of the show for the 2012 Edinburgh Fringe, as part of The Stand’s Assembly Rooms program, having been originally run it at The Stand in the Summer of 2011. If you want to interpret this as “he couldn’t be arsed to write a new show this year”, despite the fact that I have obviously been touring this most nights of the year to meet the demand and to stop other people complaining that I never play in their town when in fact I have probably already been there dozens of times, that is up to you. If you feel I am not working hard enough don’t feel obliged to come. There are other comedians available, remember.


Wednesday 4th - Picture House, Hebden Bridge - 8.00pm Box Office 01422 842684 Book Online

Friday 13th - The Shed, North Yorkshire - 8.00pm Box Office 01653 668494 Book Online

Saturday 14th - The Shed, North Yorkshire - 8.00pm Box Office 01653 668494 Book Online

Sunday 15th - Richmond Theatre, Richmond - 8.00pm Box Office 0844 871 7651 Book Online

Wednesday 18th - Royal Festival Hall, Southbank, London - 8.00pm Box Office: 0844 847 9910 Book Online.

August

Thursday 2nd - The Stand @ The Assembly Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh - 6.05pm - Book Online.
Friday 3rd - The Stand @ The Assembly Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh - 6.05pm - Book Online.
Saturday 4th - The Stand @ The Assembly Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh - 6.05pm - Book Online.
Sunday 5th - The Stand @ The Assembly Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh - 6.05pm - Book Online.
Monday 6th - The Stand @ The Assembly Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh - 6.05pm - Book Online.
Tuesday 7th - The Stand @ The Assembly Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh - 6.05pm - Book Online.
Wednesday 8th - The Stand @ The Assembly Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh - 6.05pm - Book Online.
Thursday 9th - The Stand @ The Assembly Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh - 6.05pm - Book Online.
Friday 10th - The Stand @ The Assembly Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh - 6.05pm - Book Online.
Saturday 11th - The Stand @ The Assembly Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh - 6.05pm - Book Online.
Sunday 12th - The Stand @ The Assembly Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh - 6.05pm - Book Online.
Tuesday 14th - The Stand @ The Assembly Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh - 6.05pm - Book Online.
Wednesday 15th - The Stand @ The Assembly Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh - 6.05pm - Book Online.
Thursday 16th - The Stand @ The Assembly Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh - 6.05pm - Book Online.
Friday 17th - The Stand @ The Assembly Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh - 6.05pm - Book Online.
Saturday 18th - The Stand @ The Assembly Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh - 6.05pm - Book Online.
Sunday 19th - The Stand @ The Assembly Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh - 6.05pm - Book Online.
Tuesday 21st - The Stand @ The Assembly Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh - 6.05pm - Book Online.
Wednesday 22nd - The Stand @ The Assembly Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh - 6.05pm - Book Online.
Thursday 23rd - The Stand @ The Assembly Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh - 6.05pm - Book Online.
Friday 24th - The Stand @ The Assembly Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh - 6.05pm - Book Online.
Saturday 25th - The Stand @ The Assembly Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh - 6.05pm - Book Online.
Sunday 26th - The Stand @ The Assembly Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh - 6.05pm - Book Online.

A DISCUSSION ABOUT THE ARTS

With me, Josie Long & Alan Moore, March 26th in Oxford, 2pm

http://oxfordliteraryfestival.org/events/detail/whats-the-point-of-the-arts-and-humanities

I will always remember where I was when I heard Boris Johnson had resigned. It was 9.05am on Thursday 7 July, I was driving through Stamford Hill. This column had a final deadline of 10am and now I had 55 minutes to rewrite it. The bendy BBC Tory-trumpet Chris Mason broke the news via the government-amplifier of Nick Robinson’s mouth and, winding down my window, I was desperate to share my joy with someone. But the only human beings in the area were a group of Orthodox Jewish schoolboys by the library, who seemed bewildered by an old fat goy shouting something about a bastard having gone at them out of a passing Ford Fiesta.

But, even as a Metropolitan Liberal Elitist Remoaner, I am grateful to Johnson on many levels. When the country voted for Brexit, and then for Johnson, I knew years of chaos and a far right lurch lay ahead. I also realised Brexit and Johnson would be exactly the kind of wedge issues to guarantee me a lucrative stand-up career playing to grateful audiences of crying Remainers for the foreseeable future. Like the hedge fund manager Crispin Odey and the international businessman Arron Banks, I too benefited financially from Johnson’s Brexit.

My last tour, Piglet’s Inferno, which ended an interrupted three-year run with a sold-out week at the Royal Festival Hall last Sunday, contained nothing but me swearing, red-faced, about Johnson for two-and-a-half hours and culminated in a beef effigy of the prime minister being shredded into slices and dropped from the rigging into the mouth of a giant puppet shark. And I achieved my dream of abandoning the traditional demands of so-called “comedy”, finally writing an entirely laugh-free show, each attack on the prime minister greeted simply by approving applause and angry jeers from the grim-faced Remoaners who exclusively comprise my audience. But for the tour’s closing weeks I worried daily that Johnson was about to be forced to resign and the show would fall apart before I had finished. I will be eternally grateful to Johnson for hanging on for four days after the show’s final date.

Johnson’s premiership, a mindless rotting meat zombie held together with the Sellotape™® of lies and the sticky excretions of his own spaff-faucet, began a sudden and dramatic slide into the ocean on Wednesday, like an arctic ice shelf made entirely of frozen shit. The Tories gasped for air in the filthy brine. Michael Fabricant got all brown stuff in his stupid hair and Carrie Johnson went down. Again. Hemingway’s line about a disaster happening “gradually, then suddenly” grew flesh. Gardy-loo! Gardy-loo! Gardy-loo!

I started to write this at 8.30am on Wednesday in a Pret A Manger, the day before Johnson finally folded. Two MPs resigned in less time than it took me to eat a Bacon & Egg Breakfast Mini Baguette™®. Whatever I filed on Thursday morning would surely be irrelevant by the time it was published on Sunday. I considered emailing the illustrator David Foldvari, suggesting he drew a blank space in a frame, inviting readers to scribble in their own etching of whatever has happened in the previous five minutes. Who would be in charge by the weekend? Mike “Concrete” Graham? A jar of Bovril with some mould in it? Morbius the Living Vampire? Or would Johnson cling on, like a mad king in an ancient British folk tale, roaming the mushroomed woods with his langer a-dangle, knighting stoats and beatifying otters.

Nadhim Zahawi, whose horses were never knowingly under-warmed, with £5,822.27 of public money heating their stables, became chancellor, surely a safe pair of hands for public finances. Michelle Donelan was education secretary for 36 hours before resigning and still managed to be rubbish at it. Even Ashfield MP Lee 30p Anderson quit, a man of such integrity he used supportive stooges on filmed walkabouts, and who until recently believed the PM was a victim of “a witch hunt by the BBC”, a news outlet so enfeebled it would run scared if someone showed it a child’s drawing of a Frankingstein. All these sudden discoveries of standards speak only of self-preservation.

I tried to follow the resignations on my laptop in Pret. A woman sitting at the next table, who has been throwing boiled eggs into her mouth and shouting about how magnetism is gay, got up and left. Perhaps she was the new parliamentary private secretary in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. I turned off my phone, worried that if I could be contacted I might be offered a cabinet position.

By the time I turned in on Wednesday night, 42 MPs had resigned from the government and Johnson had sacked Michael Gove. Portents of doom abounded; a lioness hath whelped in the street; Sky News had a drone camera flying over parliament, beaming back the kind of shots you’d see in a disaster movie where London is attacked by dragons from space; graves yawned, and yielded up their Kremlin connections. You couldn’t write this. How could I write about it? And then the morning news brought a sort of conclusion, but the corruption that allowed Johnson is still with us.

Because despite the drama, we are still where we always have been. Rightwing media and the Conservative party enabled the promotion of a man they knew was a dangerous lying corrupt cheat, in order to further their own interests. And so far they have wasted six years of our country’s life now, briefly wavering only when the figurehead’s corruption could no longer be concealed and threatened to blow the political reactor core sky high, a Chernobyl explosion of backhanders, bullying, Brexit bullshit and ridiculously expensive wallpaper. You fucking idiots. Your self-serving resignations ring hollow. Your backpedalling editorials stink. You should all be in prison.

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.

A Rock Snobbery Special plus 50 years of the Old Grey Whistle Test

...where we consider the brave new world in which Rick Astley plays the Smiths, a documentary explores the reasons people detest Kenny G and Rolling Stone rather self-consciously revise their list of the Best 500 Songs Of All Time (should they declare 2001 the new Year Zero and just reset the clock?). And featuring ... worst supergroups, acts who've never put out any cover versions, bands who arrived at the venue but never played and Morrissey answering the phones on Rock Around the Clock.

Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon and receive every future Word Podcast before the rest of the world - and with full visuals!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

Following his hugely acclaimed TV come-back, Comedy Vehicle, Lee finds himself spent and in search of ideas for a new Edinburgh show. On a long walk across London, he endures a coffee shop humiliation involving a loyalty card, which suggests itself as a comedy routine about everyday life that anyone could enjoy.

Later that month, thanks to Jeremy Clarkson's jokes about Gordon Brown's blindness and the appearance of a well-meaning young comedian in a pear cider advert, a show is born.

Featuring a transcript of the show fully annotated with footnotes, the If You Prefer A Milder Comedian EP confirms Stewart Lee as the most original, daring and brilliant comedian of his generation.

'Stewart Lee is a true original.' Observer

'I've always though of Stewart Lee's comedy as doing the opposite of what really good comedy should do.' Toby Young, BBC Radio 4

STEWART LEE VS THE MAN-WULF – LONDON SOUTH BANK ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL DATES, 5TH-13TH JULY 2025, ON SALE
https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/stewart-lee-vs-the-man-wulf/

Dear fans!

I hope you are all well. I have been as unwell as I have been for about a decade and spent much of October in bed hallucinating and hot. I lost weeks of try-outs for the new show, but a terrible odd thing happened to me involving a form of identity fraud that will be great material.

Has anyone seen Charlie Cooper’s Myth Country on BBC3? It is a terrible wasted opportunity to make a great show about a wonderful subject, as if someone has given Paul Whitehouse’s “That’s brilliant!” character from the Fast Show a copy of the Readers’ Digest Book of Folklore and then had the results edited by and for gnats on cocaine with ADHD.

Why not order the Weird Walk book, newly nominated for a Kathrine Briggs Book Award (!), and with an intro by me, or the WW ‘zines which cover many of the same subjects (I wrote for issues 4 and 5), or visit the WW website see this concept approached with taste, intelligence, dry humour, love and dignity. https://www.weirdwalk.co.uk

Weird Walk has also flung together this female-fronted acid-folk event, hosted by me, at Earth in Hackney on Oct 29th, called Samhain Ritual, and featuring prog-folk-garage weirdoes The New Eves, dancing dames Boss Morris, Daisy Rickman and Wicker Man modernists The Goblin Band, but it’s sold out now muthafuckas!
https://earthackney.co.uk/events/weird-walk-presents-samhain-ritual-29th-oct-earth-london-tickets-pyyo3l/

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1) VOTE IN THE NATIONAL TRUST A G M 2ND NOVEMBER

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 Trust 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 affilliated 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 these people did to the BBC.

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/who-we-are/annual-general-meeting/how-to-vote-in-your-agm

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2) I E A / GOOD LAW PROJECT

If you follow the news you will know that Tufton St shadow-funded lobbyists The Institute of Economic Affairs have their evil tentacles into everything, and yet are inexplicably still deemed a charity by the Charity Commission. One of their leadership team, Neil Record, who funded and housed Kemi Badenoch’s Tory leadership bid, even helped set up Restore Trust, the group attempting to destabilise the National Trust (above). Wheels within wheels. Help Good Law Project shine a light on this. https://goodlawproject.org/update/regulator-reopens-complaint-against-institute-of-economic-affairs/

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3) GO FUND MATTHEW SWEET WHO HAS HAD A STROKE IN AMERICA

https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-matthew-sweets-stroke-recovery
Matthew Sweet’s 1991 album Girlfriend is an all-time ***** power-pop classic, and the Brian-Wilson-in-a-sandpit style genius has spent the last three and a half decades refining its template until being hit by a stroke last month. This being America the itinerant self-employed artist is of course utterly fucked fincancially, and in 2009 the mighty Vic Chesnutt, for example, took his own life at 45 after being deemed "uninsurable due to his quadriplegia, and $50,000 in debt for his medical bills.” This is why we can’t let The Institute of Economic Affairs (above) lobby to privatise our NHS to profit their paymasters, and why, if you’ve ever loved Girlfriend or any of Sweet’s output, or if you’re just hearing about it now, you should bung him some dosh. Here he is on bass (as Sid Belvedere) with his collaborator Susanna Hoffs on guitar in the closing credits of Austin Powers parodying, perfectly, an American idea of British 60s psyche-pop. Oddly I have just discovered I am related to Liz Hurley, so it’s a good job I turned her down when she was stalking me in the ‘90s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HF3x67VK9o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek2-rQpOAv8
Here’s Ming Tea’s second outing, in which you can see Queen impersonator Jeanette Charles, who was really rude to me when I was on a gig with her in the early 00’s in a pub in London
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN6MxLYB8hM
And here’s a highpoint from Sweet’s past proper, the Girlfriend video w Japanese sci-fi animation and Television’s Richard Lloyd on lead guitar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n12OBlcHx9E
Here’s a lovely live one, with Lloyd again on the right
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipMWruDIscY

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4) TALES OF THE WEIRD BRITISH LIBRARY NOV 2ND

https://thebritishlibraryculturalevents.seetickets.com/event/tales-of-the-weird-an-autumnal-festival/british-library/3154227
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
There’s loads of great people on – look. Returns may be available.

“Our remarkable line up of speakers includes some of the most exciting names in UK writing. Folk horror worlds are unearthed by Andrew Michael Hurley, introducing his new novel Barrowbeck, and Daisy Johnson, whose latest, Hotel, set on a possessed plot of land, is the successor to the uncanny classics Fen and Sisters. They are in conversation with weird fiction aficionado, comedian and writer Stewart Lee. Weird bodies and more are explored by Eliza Clark (Boy Parts, Penance and new collection She’s Always Hungry) and Lottie Mills (Monstrum), hosted by Julia Armfield(Our Wives Under the Sea, Private Rites). Our closing panel sees special guests including Reece Shearsmith (League of Gentlemen, Inside No.9), film director and screenwriter Peter Strickland (Berberian Sound Studio, The Duke of Burgundy) and writer AK Benedict (The Beauty of Murder, Jonathan Dark or The Evidence of Ghosts) join Johnny Mains on a journey into their weird fiction favourites. Plus unveilings of the latest British Library Tales of the Weird editions Deadly Dolls and Halloweird introduced by Elizabeth Dearnley and Johnny Mains respectively, and many strange goings on throughout the day featuring unsettling dance, clowning, puppetry, drag, and immersive theatre! The day begins with an insight into the British Library Tales of the Weird series, as cultural historian and writer Travis Elborough talks to Elizabeth Dearnley and Johnny Mains, the editors of latest releases Deadly Dolls and Halloweird, and series editor Jonny Davidson.”

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5) BEVIS FROND FILM, LONDON DALSTON RIO NOV 3rd

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 3^rd 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

https://www.docnrollfestival.com/films/little-eden-the-bevis-frond/.

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6) 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).

https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2024/event/jazz-on-screen-so-watt-jazz-and-improvisation-on-british

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7) OXIDE GHOSTS AT FINSBURY PARK NOV 21^ST

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 21^st Nov event in Finsbury Park, London. Other dates, and other guests, are available

OCTOBER

28 LONDON - CROUCH END PICTUREHOUSE
29 LONDON - EALING PICTUREHOUSE
30 LONDON - CLAPHAM PICTUREHOUSE+HOST: RICH FULCHER
31 LONDON - THE GATE, NOTTING HILL

NOVEMBER

1 EPSOM - PICTUREHOUSE
2 BRIGHTON - DUKE’S AT KOMEDIA
3 WORTHING - CONNAUGHT
6 LONDON - EAST DULWICH PICTUREHOUSE
7 OXFORD - PHOENIX+HOST: RONNIE ANCONA
8 BIRMINGHAM - MAC
9 CHESTER - PICTUREHOUSE
9 LIVERPOOL - FACT
10 MANCHESTER - CULTPLEX
12 LANCASTER - DUKES
13 KENDAL - BREWERY ARTS+HOST: LOU GEORGE
16 YORK - CITY SCREEN
17 NEWCASTLE - THE STAND+HOST: ANDY DAWSON
18 GLASGOW - THE STAND+HOST: STEVEN DICK
19 EDINBURGH - CAMEO
21 LONDON - FINSBURY PK PICTUREHOUSE+HOST: STEWART LEE
22 LONDON - GREENWICH  PICTUREHOUSE
23 CAMBRIDGE - ARTS CINEMA
25 LONDON - CHISWICK CINEMA+HOST: JONATHAN MAITLAND
26 LONDON - BRIXTON RITZY
27 LONDON - HACKNEY PICTUREHOUSE

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8) 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.

This review of the TV version, by the cartoonist David Waywell, is what I hoped people would say about it. https://eandtbooks.com/authors/david-waywell/

"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."

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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

3^rd December 2024 – 17^th 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 3^rd Dec 2024 – 17^th Jan 2025 7pm, except for 6pm and 8.30 pm Sat 4^th 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
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 - 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 - TICKETS
Thursday 25th September 2025 - Gala, Durham - ON SALE SOON
Friday 26th September 2025 - Theatre Royal, Glasgow - TICKETS
Saturday 27th September 2025 - Playhouse, Edinburgh - TICKETS
Sunday 28th September 2025 - His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen - ON SALE SOON

October 2025

Tuesday 7th October 2025 - Milton Keynes Theatre, Milton Keynes - TICKETS
Wednesday 8th October 2025 - Milton Keynes Theatre, Milton Keynes - TICKETS
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 - TICKETS
Wednesday 22nd October 2025 - Storyhouse, Chester - TICKETS
Thursday 23rd October 2025 - Opera House, Buxton - TICKETS
Friday 24th October 2025 - Opera House, Buxton - TICKETS
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 - 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
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

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10) 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.

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11) 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

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12) I ARROGANTLY RECOMMEND SOME HAPPENINGS

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.”

There are special Evelyn events at the gallery all day on 30th Nov

ALFIE BROWN
The very good stand-up comedian Alfie Brown tours his OPEN HEARTED HUMAN ENQUIRYshow. alfiebrowncomedian.com

SEPTEMBER

WED 18, 8PM, NORWICH, Arts Centre, 01603 660352, norwichartscentre.co.uk
FRI 20, 7.30PM, CHESTER, Storyhouse, Garret Theatre, 01244 409 113, storyhouse.com
SAT 21, 7.30PM, CAMBRIDGE, Cambridge Junction, 01223 511 511, junction.co.uk
WED 25, 7.30PM, CHELMSFORD, Chelmsford Theatre Studio, 01245 606 505, chelmsfordtheatre.co.uk
THU 26, 7.30PM, WORCESTER, Huntingdon Hall, 01905 611 427, worcestertheatres.co.uk
FRI 27, 7.30PM, TAUNTON, Brewhouse, 01823 283 244, tauntonbrewhouse.co.uk
SAT 28, 8PM, FALMOUTH, The Poly Theatre, 01326 319461, thepoly.org

OCTOBER

TUE 29, 7PM, READING, Just the Tonic, 020 3740 3700, justthetonic.com/reading-comedy/
WED 30, 8PM, BRISTOL, Hen and Chicken, 01275 375 056, henandchicken.com

NOVEMBER

FRI 1, 7.30PM, HARPENDEN, The Eric Morecambe Centre, 01582 767525, the-emc.co.uk
WED 6, 7.30PM, SHREWSBURY, Theatre Severn, Walker Theatre, 01743 281281, theatresevern.co.uk
THU 7, 8.30PM, NOTTINGHAM, Canalhouse, ncfcomedy.co.uk
FRI 22, 7PM, ABERDEEN, Lemon Tree, 01224 641122, aberdeenperformingarts.com
SAT 23, 4PM, GLASGOW, The Stand, 0141 212 3389, thestand.co.uk
SUN 24, 8.30PM, EDINBURGH, Monkey Barrel Comedy, monkeybarrelcomedy.com
MON 25, 8.30PM, NEWCASTLE, The Stand, 0191 232 0707, thestand.co.uk

DECEMBER

FRI 6 & SAT 7, 9.30PM, LONDON, Leicester Square Theatre, 020 7734 2222, leicestersquaretheatre.com
SUN 8, 8PM, NORTHAMPTON, Filmhouse, 01604 624811, royalandderngate.co.uk
SAT 14, 9.30PM, LONDON, Leicester Square Theatre, 020 7734 2222, leicestersquaretheatre.com

MARK RADCLIFFE AND MARC RILEY LIVE Slack muthafuckas shoot the breeze in November
3rd Shrewsbury Severn
5th Crewe Lyceum
10th Warrington Parr Hall.

THE BOHMAN BROTHERS/SECLUDED BRONTE – The mumbling clattering clanging giants of tabletop surrealist improve are in Manchester and Switzerland in November, in different iterations!
12th  - Peer Hat, M’cr; https://curiousear.net/upcoming/
24th - Cave12, Geneva; https://www.cave12.org/secluded-bronte-enxin-onyx-passage-de-disques/
26th - Institut, Zürich; https://theinstitute.ch/programm/

SWANSEA SOUND A Winter warmer from the indie-rock supergroup.
NOVEMBER

16^TH - Cambridge,  Blue Moon (Sold out​)
23^RD - Bristol, Thunderbolt (TICKETS)
24^TH - Oxford, Jericho Tavern (TICKETS
25^TH - Brighton, The Albert (TICKETS)
29^TH - Leicester, Firebug (TICKETS)
30^th - Sheffield, The Shakespeare (TICKETS)

DECEMBER

1^st - Coventry, Just Dropped In (TICKETS)
14^th - Rainham, The Oast (TICKETS)
15^th - Folkestone, Twentieth Century Speedway (TICKETS)
21^st - Cardiff, Moon Club  (TICKETS)
22^nd - London, Lexington (TICKETS)

TIRZAH GARWOOD: Beyond Ravilious, Dulwich Picture Gallery London, 19 November 2024–26 May 2025.

https://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/about/press-media/press-releases/first-major-exhibition-of-modern-british-artist-tirzah-garwood-among-2024-highlights-at-dulwich-picture-gallery/

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.
DECEMBER
4th - Newcastle NX,
5th - Glasgow Barrowlands,
6th - M’c Academy,
8th - Leeds Academy,
9th - Nottingham Rock City, 1
10th - W’hampton Halls,
12th - Bristol Beacon,
13th - S’hampton Guuildhall,
14th - Eastbourne Winter Gardens,
16th - Cambs Corn X,
18th - London Roundhouse

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 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. Songs will be up for grabs on October 1st at midday. In order to bag a song, email thefallenwomen at gmail dot com with your first, second and third choices from the list below. PLEASE NOTE EMAILS RECEIVED BEFORE MIDDAY ON 1ST OCTOBER WILL NOT COUNT!
No Xmas For John Quays
Mr Pharmacist
Free Range
Victoria
Glam Racket
Last Orders
Blindness
Lost In Music
Deadbeat Descendant
Industrial Estate
Fantastic Life
Edinburgh Man
Rebellious Jukebox
Cruiser's Creek
Senior Twilight Stock Replacer
I’m A Mummy
Rowche Rumble
Eat Y'Self Fitter
Repetition
Touch Sensitive
Jawbone & Air Rifle
There's A Ghost In My House
Kicker Conspiracy
How I Wrote Elastic Man
Big New Prinz
My New House
What About Us

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

NAPALM DEATH Grindcore godparents
MARCH
4th - Dublin Academy
5th – Glasgow Galvanisers’ Yard
6th – Newcastle Uni Union
7th – London Electric Ballroon
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

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13) 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)
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)

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14) BUILD A STATUE OF MONTY PYTHON’S TERRY JONES

https://www.gofundme.com/f/terryjonesstatue

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15) DANNY ROBBINS’ UNCANNY PODCAST

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0024f6q

I’m on the Halloween edition of this