A Piece On Child-Friendly Hotels - December 2011 Best Western Hotel Magazine - By Stewart Lee - December 1st, 2011

Half term comes round again, like the tolling of a graveyard bell. From the Midlands and the South, bowed and cowed, the hopeful parent horde crawls west in hatchbacks and people carriers, in search of a glimpse of the normality they enjoyed before they gave birth, in search a great gleaming myth. It flickers at…

Does comic ‘bravery’ go hand in hand with being offensive and stupid? - November 2011 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - November 13th, 2011

Ricky Gervais is an actor, writer, and director. He is brave. I am a standup. I am not brave. I only ever did one brave thing. In 2005, I agreed, while drunk, to jump off the tallest structure in New Zealand. New Zealanders’ high living standards mean they are driven to create artificial jeopardy, usually…

Mark Kermode Is Thor - October 2011 Rejected Piece - By Stewart Lee - October 1st, 2011

The comedian Simon Munnery suggests all autobiographies should be sub-titled “Failure Justified”. It’s funny because it’s true. All autobiographies are the acrid after-burps of dying mortals pleading for forgiveness. That said, in his new autobiography, See A Little Light, the American punk icon Bob Mould seems delighted with his downward spiral from front-man of the…

If Damon Albarn is serious about the occult, shouldn’t we call him Damien? - July 2011 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - July 10th, 2011

The 17th-century witchfinder general, Mary Hopkin, roamed Essex on top of a horse, burning witches and stuffing her bearded face with purloined olden-days tavern fayre – crusty bread rolls, steak and ale pies and banana splits. And yet, crawling from Colchester in a crackling cloud of dark energie, it appears the spawn of at least…

A comedy of comparison - June 2011 The Financial Times - By Stewart Lee - June 17th, 2011

Last Saturday’s Guardian had an interview with the young American comedy rapper Bo Burnham, who has accrued 650m hits for his homemade raps on YouTube and is making a funny rapping film with the director Judd Apatow. Last year the Fosters Comedy Awards praised the rapper for coming to the lowly Edinburgh Festival, rather than…

If five portions a day are so good, how come rabbits and slugs are so stupid? - June 2011 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - June 12th, 2011

The German E coli bean sprout scandal offers damning evidence that all fruits and vegetables are dirty beyond reason, toxic timebombs that have secreted themselves at the very heart of global cuisine in the form of trusted dietary staples. Yet government food eggheads continue to bray from their state-sterilised laboratories, demanding that we eat at…