Thinking person’s stand-up Stewart Lee has been in the wilderness for years in terms of his TV career and it seems he is as surprised as anyone at the BBC that he has suddenly been restored to the box in his own series.
After trying out material for a projected series last year while performing at the Edinburgh Fringe, then having the planned pilot inexplicably cancelled, Stewart turned his dry wit on the prospects of finally getting the stand-up and sketch series on after the pilot was recommissioned and filmed in front of a club audience in London in January.
He said: “Thanks to everyone who came to the recording. Everything went really well on the following two days’ filming too. Now the series will be officially turned down around mid-Feb, we expect.”
But he was wrong about that, which is good news for fans starved of Stewart’s wit on prime-time TV since his Fist of Fun series with comedy parter Lee Herring in the mid-90s.
While he’s been away, Lee has become one of the finest stand-ups on the circuit and created a major box office hit (which also came to TV) by co-writing and directing stage show Jerry Springer The Opera – which was as controversial as it was hilarious.
The new series kicks off with a great theme tune – African instrumental Tom Hark – and takes a different theme each week, starting with Books, or rather Toilet Books.
On bad boy Russell Brand’s autobiography, Stewart thinks you should flush it away rather than read it. He says: “You can read it and dismiss it as rubbish or dismiss it as rubbish without even reading it – well that would save you a bit of time…”
Chris Moyles, Dan Brown and JK Rowling also get the treatment.
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Neva2busy, dontstartmeoff.com
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BBC iPlayer edition of discussion of Stewart Lee on A Good Read
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Lee Mack, Mack The Life, 2012
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Richard Herring, Comedian
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DVDhth's grandparents, Twitter