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Content Provider (The Show)Stewart Lee, Lighthouse, Poole

By Cliff Moore in Bournemouth Echo Posted on Friday, March 3rd, 2017

I had wanted to start this review with the old Bob Monkhouse gag: ‘Everyone laughed when I said I wanted to be a comedian. They’re not laughing now’.

This was because Lee was the knowingly intelligent, metropolitan liberal whose deep analysis of the method of comedy allied to strongly-held political views would simply lead to two hours of sermonising.

It was also because he would be a man stridently complaining about things, a man creating friction between him and the Poole audience and a man railing at everyone else in the room for not being intelligent enough to understand him.

And it was because he would just rant at various other comedians, look aghast when supposedly humorous lines fell flat and be uncomfortable when the diverse nature of the audience didn’t fit his tribe.

He was all that, obviously, but sadly for the accurate use of the aforementioned Monkhouse line, he was also hilariously funny.

Lee’s shtick is this very grumpy persona he has created for himself, a stage character he uses for his stand-up routine and (in his own words) a deluded man who believes he’s a comic. Of course, it’s all an act.

In the current tour, Content Provider, he sets his sights on our throwaway digital age, our minute attention span and the very lack of substance in today’s instant world.

But he also finds time to chew up Brexit, Trump, Game of Thrones, the under-40s, Gary Lineker, Eamon Holmes, Russell Brand, Russell Howard, Dara O Briain and even his own brother-in-law.

The stage was littered with piles of other comedians’ DVDs ‘bought for a penny on e-Bay’ and the backdrop was a rather underused white screen– an elaborate set-up for his finale.

Not everything was hilarious, some flabby parts dragged a bit (although repetition is his big trademark), but even if he’d only done the ‘you’ve never had it so good’ bondage in the 1930s routine involving hessian sacks and dripping, it would still have been worth the ticket price.

Written by Cliff Moore in Bournemouth Echo on 3rd March 2017. Filed Under: Content Provider (Show), Reviews
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