Running into the theatre with thirty seconds until the curtain went up, I thought I might have time to settle down, observe the deathly blank stage and pale green antique walls, take a sip of whisky and make some preliminary notes.

Not so. From the very first second Lee stops just short of grabbing audience members and shaking them whilst shouting, ‘You better understand these jokes or you’re not welcome!’ Lee immediately gets involved with putting a member of the audience in a ridicule making situation which quickly twists into a bizarre but overly familiar looking world. He appeared to be miffed at the fact he didn’t get a straight answer to the question, ‘What’s your favourite high-street coffee chain?’ In truth, this is exactly what he wanted; and he’s off: herding the audience to crowd round a cage to watch a spectacle which is really a mirror.Stewart Lee

If I had to put my finger on where Lee’s true master-stroke dwells, I’d say it lies in his fusion of slapstick suggestions and intelligent observations of the unspoken inner workings of the world packed to bursting with snivelling sub-text, full of meanderings and tangents which serve the purpose of making the show tempting for even the inexplicable observer.

This usually inhabits itself in the logical analysis and deconstruction of people attitudes, preconceptions, misconceptions and even his own jokes whilst in the process of telling them.

In this show particularly, he showed his skill and experience by excelling at a technique which is famous for its semblance of ease: references to tension and responses from the audience. He clearly gives the impression of a third-person observer hovering over his own act with a lucid understanding of the situation: at one point a heckler tried to interject from the front row; Lee just carried on with his routine, paying the heckler no attention whatsoever. A trick which is harder than it sounds.

Another characteristic which I have noted from this and other shows is the rhythm which Lee’s show takes. He spends long monotonous, but interesting, sections of the show setting jokes up only to be broken by spurious outbursts. I can only liken this to the techniques characteristic of the medieval church: long, terrifying sermons would be given in shouty voices by demi-god-statused priests, petrifying the congregation into a heightened state of suggestibility, which would abruptly fall into utopian descriptions of God’s love, power and how he can change everything. In the same way, he lulls the audience into believing they are watching a downtrodden man bear his heart on stage before he sends their pulses racing with insults directed at the audience such as: ‘Get back in! You c**t! Sit down! Don’t anyone else walk out!’ Before moving on to more refined suggestions as it is almost near the end of the show, it’s worth holding it in now mate.

I think it is exactly this technique which accounts for his very unique ability to send the audience on huge trundles of suspension of disbelief which he subsequently reveals to be false, much to the audiences delight. One example of this is an anecdote where Richard Hammond being at his school – which is the only fact which turns out to be true from the whole story – gets saved by him propping the door-handle closed with a James Joyce novel. Lee points out the irony in this fact in light of his earlier explanations of why Hammond is the national apologist for ignorance, and somehow makes the exposition of his anecdote as false something funny in itself.

From watching this and his previous two shows, though, it becomes clear that Lee has a structure which he is comfortable with and sees no reason to deviate from that. Why would you? It works. His style and intensity of jokes vary in exactly the same format, and as always there is a ten minute section performed in the crowd, as well as many other things it would be boring to point out in a review like this. But seriously, he had now reason to change: this is the third show that this structure has worked and his is still able to create new material to fit it. In particular, he plays the downtrodden tantrum thrower well. At one point he makes reference to the fact he can not complain about chief executives disliking him because of his television series; he now has to move onto complaining about his DVDs being ripped-off and downloaded on torrent sites and low viewing figures for his program from earlier this year: Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle.

Overall, there is only one fault to point out with Lee’s routine. He would appear to have fallen down the same pitfall Russell Brand did when he pointed out the ‘grammatical’ error on one of his fan’s signs which was being held up at a gig: Russell criticised his fan for not having an ‘s on the end of a pictorial representation of a heart; claiming that he could never be attracted to anyone with such loose grammatical standards. I’m sure I don’t need to point out that fact that in this circumstance an apostrophe is definitely not needed. And I must point out, this was not done for ironic effect.

In much the same way, during his show Lee criticised the cider makers Magners for making a mistake in the advert, saying: ‘Give it to me straight like 100% pear.’ instead of Pears (plural.) Whilst referring to this error, Lee ranted about the issue saying ‘Especially as they’ve quoted it wrong.’ as opposed to the conventional adverbial form ‘wrongly,’ or better still ‘incorrectly.’

Nitpicking aside, Stewart Lee is, in my opinion, the best working comedian around at this particular moment of time. If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask for One may not have exceeded the standard he set himself with 41st Best Stand Up Comedian, but he has definitely matched it. Lee is the comedians’ comedian, the intelligentsia’s comedian and most importantly a comedian from which anyone willing to look can find something which appeals from them – unless they are a fundamentalist Christian, of course. They don’t find Lee very funny for some strange reason.