It would take some lateral thinking to place Dr Johnson on Jonathan Ross’s chat-show sofa, but that was the inspiration for Stewart Lee’s new play, Johnson and Boswell – Late but Live.
But then, Lee is the man who made the screaming matches and social misfits of Jerry Springer’s television show into an Olivier award-winning West End musical, Jerry Springer: the Opera.

Anything is possible with such a fertile mind.

The writer and comedian took Ross’s BBC TV show as his starting point when the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh offered him an opportunity to stage a new work.

“I thought it would be funny having Johnson say the things he said then in a modern setting,” he says

The play draws on the journals kept by Johnson – one of Britain’s greatest men of letters, and one of the world’s most famous curmudgeons – and his Scottish friend and future biographer James Boswell as they took a tour of the Highlands and Western Isles in 1773. Both published books about the journey.

Lee, who studied English at Oxford, was familiar with the journals and thinks that they expose a power struggle between Boswell the fan and Boswell the biographer.

“His book made me think of when people interview their heroes – do they let the fan in them take over, or do they try to do a proper interview? And Johnson’s book made me think of people like Peter Cook. When he appeared on television he was expected to perform a version of himself – he could either roll with it, or sabotage it by being scathing.”

Lee decided to set his play at a book launch, which goes horribly wrong. Boswell thinks he’s the main draw, but Johnson misbehaves.

“Boswell and Johnson went to Scotland at an interesting time, just after the Battle of Culloden and the Act of Union. Contrasting that with today, when there’s the Scottish Parliament and a new independent identity, seemed a useful device.”

“But that all became window-dressing as I got more and more interested in their relationship. In the journals, you see that Boswell tells one kind of story and Johnson tells another, and often they are mutually incompatible.”

“I wanted to show what two people are like when they have a different agenda and to question how much we can trust the record of a person’s life when it’s written by a fan. Did Boswell improve Johnson’s witticisms, for example?”

Johnson and Boswell is Lee’s second play for the respected Traverse.

“They have these late-night slots to fill, so they let them out to comics,” he says with a sardonic humour that hides real modesty.

“I’m 40 next year and have won an Olivier, but I think it’s important not to have a sense of entitlement.”
Two comedians – Simon Munnery and Miles Jupp – play Johnson and Boswell, but the director, Owen Lewis, has a theatre background. For Lewis, Lee’s fresh approach to theatre work has been profitable.

“Stewart looks at things differently to me,” he says.
“He’s experimental and wants things to be fun and is always going for more laughs, but not at the expense of the drama. And if we think something isn’t quite right, he’s got another funny line up his sleeve; you really don’t work like that with playwrights.”

Lee is also performing his new comedy 41st Best Stand-up Ever! nightly at the Udderbelly.
Unlike his 2005 Edinburgh show, which courted further controversy because of its anti-religious content, this is a gentler performance, about other people’s perceptions of him after he was voted 41st best stand-up ever on a TV show.
“It’s ridiculous, of course, but I wanted to explore how we are judged by others, and what is really of value in life,” he says. “I got married last year and we had a baby this year, and it does make you think of where you derive your satisfaction and what is valuable.”

When he started in the business nearly 20 years ago, Lee’s stage persona was famously grumpy (“Now I’m going grey and have put on two stone I’m allowed to be,” he says), but that is fading.

“When you wake up every day and find a little thing laughing at you, it’s very difficult to be too serious.”
But Lee’s unwillingness to create any more rumpuses may have a more mundane explanation.

“Controversy doesn’t necessarily sell tickets,” he says.

“I’d just like to make enough money to be able to afford the stamp duty on a two-bedroom flat. I love my son dearly, but I don’t want to sleep in the same room as him all my life.”
Johnson and Boswell – Late but Live is at the Traverse Theatre (0131 228 1404) from tomorrow until Aug 26 (except Aug 13 and 20)

Stewart Lee – 41st Best Stand-Up Ever! is at Udderbelly (0870 745 3083) until Aug 27 (except Aug 15)