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Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle Series 1Labour of lav

THE NORTHERN ECHO Posted on Monday, March 16th, 2009

GO into any bookshop and you’ll see the shelves are groaning under the weight of celebrity books. They’re big business in the publishing world, but Stewart Lee isn’t impressed.

The stand-up comedian turns the pages of “toilet books”, his opening topic in his new BBC2 series.

He explores a different theme each week, beginning with celebrity hardbacks – and gives them a right bashing.

Would-be writers struggling to get published must be niggled to see anyone and everyone who’s had 15 minutes of fame getting a lucrative book deal. They’ll welcome Lee’s bitchy intervention on their behalf as he has a go at the celebrity writers.

He lays into these tomes during his stand-up act, with some unnecessary sketches interrupting his solo performance from time to time.

The author of The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown, is dismissed as one of the most successful and as one of the worse writers.

That’s one of the kinder judgements made by Lee.

Russell Brand’s My Bookie Wook isn’t let off the hook. “You can read Russell Brand’s book and dismiss it as rubbish if you like. Or you can dismiss it as rubbish without reading it to save time,” he suggests.

Radio DJ and Kilimanjaro conqueror Chris Moyles is singled out for his tome The Difficulty Of The Second Book. It’s a book title, says Lee, “which suggests a degree of irony and self-awareness largely missing from the text itself”.

Moyles is quoted as seeing his publication as a “great toilet book”. Toilet paper more like, seems to be Lee’s idea. And he points out the inappropriateness of the quote from Davina McCall on the cover.

This toilet book, she says, is “butt-clenchingly honest”. A comment that surely defeats the purpose of a toilet book.

Some may balk that he doesn’t provide any constructive criticism, content to slag off the writers and their books heartily and heartlessly. But when he’s as amusing as this, I’m not going to object (or submit my novel for his approval).

He’s justified in asking why My Dangerous Life With So Solid Crew, by rapper Asher D contains so many pictures of the author in different hats.

His review gives the opportunity to take a swipe at the speech patterns of fellow comedians who participate in Radio 4 comedy programmes. He wonders if “pitch and rhythm are considered acceptable substitutes for content and wit”.

Pausing briefly to take a swipe at Harry Potter and Dan Brown (again), we arrive at a sketch about the top of the “tragic book” list – The Teats That Wept Tears, by Paddy McGinty’s Goat.

He concludes by worrying about the modern equivalent of the man in days of old who read all the books that were published every year. “A man who’d read everything today would be more stupid than a man who’d read nothing,” Lee concludes in his don’t-read-all-about-it session.

THE NORTHERN ECHO on 16th March 2009. Filed Under: Reviews, Series 1, Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle
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