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Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle Series 1Comedy Vehicle Episode 1

By Keith Emmerson in Heckler Spray Posted on Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

Stewart Lee is to the world of comedy what pans are to a chef; pretty vital unless you want cold beans, and nobody wants cold beans.

This man possesses razor sharp comic timing; somehow he can make any innocuous word comical. One small inflection or miniscule tweak of his expression conveys more than any amount of high pitched puerile drivel from the crosseyed one from Mock the Week or pretty much anyone from BBC Three.

Lee has worked on or been the star of some of the best subversive and irreverent comedy programmes to appear on our screens. Originally the slimmer half of Lee & Herring he produced Fist of Fun and This Morning with Richard Not Judy. The latter shamelessly provided more material and wit in its short run than the equivalent of 16 million series of Two Pints of Lager. We’re being conservative in our estimate, too. After the controversial Jerry Springer: The Opera, Stewart has only briefly kept us afloat by appearing as a panellist or contributor. But now he is back to save television with his Comedy Vehicle.

The opening titles depict Lee looking blissfully moronic in his car, a look he has had years to perfect and uses to great effect. Each week he presents a different topic which is performed via the medium of stand up and sketches. The latter are performed by some of his old stable mates, Kevin Eldon, Simon Munnery, and Paul Putner who are themselves comedians and writers of great esteem.

This week’s edition pits Stewart against the intellectual might of celebrity writers such as Chris Moyles and Russell Brand. He speaks polemically about said writers and the sad state of literature where one of our most well published authors (Dan Brown) can also be terrible. He also provides a useful time saving device by suggesting that we dismiss Brand’s Booky Wook as rubbish without reading it. This also applies to Chris Moyle’s second autobiography, Asher D’s literary vomit, and the entire Harry Potter series. He has (excluding Potter) read these piles of bound paper so that you don’t have to, much in the same way that we watch After You’ve Gone and The Green Green Grass so you don’t have to.

Watch this brilliantly pedantic, mesmerizingly-voiced comedian as often as you can, he offers the rare gift of being both very funny and occasionally incredibly incisive in a similar vein to the late Bill Hicks.

Written by Keith Emmerson in Heckler Spray on 17th March 2009. Filed Under: Reviews, Series 1, Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle
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