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

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

2012 End Of Year Round Ups - December 2012 The Sunday Times / Wire Magazine / Faber - December 31st, 2012

BOOKS: David Rees’ How To Sharpen Pencils, Penguin’s new edition of Arthur Machen’s White People, Savage Continent by Keith Lowe, a deliberately unreliable history of obscure ’90s comedy called You Are Nothing by Robert Wringham, Julian Cope’s Copendium, Sean Howe’s Marvel Comics The Untold Story. TV: Endeavor (Young Morse) on ITV. BBC’s Sherlock Holmes, Call…

Happy Birthday Conan The Existentialist - December 2012 TheQuietUs - By Stewart Lee - December 13th, 2012

“Know, O prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars…. Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword…

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

I have been commissioned to write a libretto about Tarzan by an American minimalist composer who wishes to remain anonymous, and who, I suspect, will have little difficulty in doing so. My new patron initially thought the apeman story a worthy operatic subject, having noticed the inherent musicality of Tarzan’s famous cry: “Ooh-ee-oh-ee-oh-ee-oh-ee-oh-ee-ooh”. Our Tarzan…

Lowlights of 2012 - December 2012 Rejected Piece - By Stewart Lee - December 1st, 2012

Sorry I wasn’t clear, we were actually hoping for two replacement entries as a couple of the subjects Stewart has tackled will be problematic for us to get into the mag. We’ve got commercial business planned with both Paddy Power and Dyson so these are the two we’d be looking to replace with a few…

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

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