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Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle Series 3‘not the cheeky chappy next door’

The Metro Posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2014

Stewart Lee declared he’s ‘not the cheeky chappy next door’ in response to criticism from the likes of fellow comic Lee Mack who accused him of being part of the ‘Oxbridge mafia’.

I’m not the cheeky chappy next door,’ declared Stewart Lee helpfully at the top of Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle (BBC2), just in case we were in any doubt. And what a relief that was from the faux mateyness of clichéd panel game banter, the safe zone of popular comedy. Lee’s sour chops are the perfect antidote to a world that’s pathologically pleased with itself.

Lee’s shtick hovers on the grumpy git line but rarely crosses it: he communicates a restless disillusion with the state of things without coming off as a terminal pessimist. His rebuttal of fellow comedian

Lee Mack’s claim that he ‘couldn’t cut the mustard’ on a panel show – ‘you don’t cut mustard, you spread it’ – was a priceless piece of tongue-in-cheek, prompted by Mack’s reference to Lee as a ‘cultural bully from the Oxbridge mafia’.

Lee’s riposte was an exercise in neatly judged apathy: ‘What have I ever done to him? Nothing.’ It undercut the idea that panel shows are comedy’s Holy Grail rather than scripted easy paycheques.
The second episode is even better, Lee building an entire 15-minute rant around a taxi driver’s (alleged) off-the-cuff remark to him that ‘these days you get arrested and thrown into jail if you say you’re English, don’t you?’

Alleged? Not content to undermine the absurdity of that casual racism, Lee gleefully undermined his own reputation, floating the idea that he fictionalises the folk bigotry of taxi drivers to suit his own nefarious punchlines. It’s comedy that makes you stop and think, and there’s not enough of it about.

The Metro on 3rd March 2014. Filed Under: Reviews, Series 3, Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle
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