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If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One...Stewart Lee: Protests cost me millionaire status

Get Hampshire Posted on Thursday, October 8th, 2009

IF YOU’VE not heard anything from Stewart Lee since his 90’s television work, you might be surprised to learn his recent comedy is blasphemous.

That’s according to fundamentalist Christians at least, who did not enjoy his ‘Jerry Springer: The Opera’.

The show depicted American chatshow host Springer descending into hell and Jesus, Satan, the Virgin Mary and God appearing as his guests.

The group Christian Voice, which advocates “national repentance” through prayer, tried to get him, the BBC and the show’s producers prosecuted for blasphemy.

“The court threw out the charge on the grounds it’s not 1508,” is one of Lee’s jokes about it.

When the show toured the UK, Christian Voice members followed it to sing hymns in protest outside venues and distributed leaflets saying it was blasphemous.

The show is no longer being performed and Lee joked: “No one will touch it. It (the protests) is the reason I’m not a millionaire.”

He does not regret making the show or the anger caused but says he has started to take what he says more seriously, twenty years after first doing stand-up.

He started doing comedy while he was an undergraduate at Oxford University.
He is married with a son and now wants what he says to be more serious about what he jokes about.

His new show, which is coming to the Camberley Theatre on October 21, is called If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One.

The show’s title comes from coffee chains promise written on its cups: “If you would like a milder coffee, please ask for one”.

Lee told the News & Mail he started writing the show after Costa Coffee refused him a free drink because the ticks on his loyalty card were in the wrong place.

He said: “I was watching an interview with Frankie Boyle (a comedian best known for his Mock the Week appearances), who said people shouldn’t be comedians when they’re over 40 because they’re not angry about anything anymore.

“I just found it funny, here I was writing about how angry I was at Costa Coffee for not giving me a free coffee.”

But his new outlook will not mean a change to his deadpan style.

Every comedian sticks quotes from favourable reviews and Lee has no shortage of them from, among others, Ricky Gervais. But one he preferred to use is from the Birmingham Sunday Mercury, the paper of his hometown.

The quote is: “His whole tone is one of complete, smug condescension.”

Lee said this was help “curate the audience” and warn people that his humour may not be for everyone.

For all the controversy of the Jerry Springer show, Lee’s career is on the rise again.

He returned to television earlier this year with his own six-part series Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, where he told jokes on themes from political correctness to celebrities’ books.

He wrote a novel in 2001, the Perfect Fool, and is now writing a book about his last three shows and how the ideas came to him.

“It should be out by spring. I’m hoping it’ll be quite academic,” he said. “But still funny.”

‘If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One’ is at the Camberley Theatre on October 21 at 8pm.

Tickets are available from the box office on 01276 707600 or http://www.camberleytheatre.biz

Get Hampshire on 8th October 2009. Filed Under: If You Prefer A Milder Comedian Please Ask For One, Interview
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