I’d rather write about art, music, or film than comedy for the most part. That’s because when I’m writing about art nobody expects me to draw illustrations to go with it that look as if they could have come from the brush of Van Gogh or Picasso, when I write about music nobody expects me to fill it with as much drama or as many memorable tunes as David Bowie (or to sing the blog out loud), and when I write about film nobody expects as much character development as a Luca Guadagnino, the narrative of a Jacques Audiard, or the dynamism of a Denis Villeneuve.

But when I write about comedy, perhaps because it is, essentially, another form of writing I have an overriding sense that I’m supposed to be funny, that people want to me to share some of the jokes so that they can laugh at them too. But that’s not the way it works. I’m not a comedian and I’m certainly not Stewart Lee. If you want to hear the jokes of Stewart Lee you should buy a £29.50 ticket like I did and go and see him.

£29.50! It’s quite a lot, isn’t it? Some friends baulked at the price, others don’t like him anyway but still commented on the cost, and even I wondered if I’d made the right decision (chuck in a few beers and a train to Reading and back and it wasn’t a cheap Tuesday night out). That was, until about five minutes in when, as ever with Lee, I realised I definitely had. Sometimes you genuinely do get what you pay for.

Lee’s latest show (or two shows if you must) Snowflake/Tornado spreads out over the best part of two and a half hours and there’s very little slack whatsoever in that time. Or at least there’s very little slack that wasn’t intended, and intentionally written in to it, by Lee. Bounding on with his trademark self-deprecating observation that he looks like a selection of (in)famous people who have all, to various degrees, let themselves go (Julian Assange, Ratko Mladic, Orson Welles, I even thought he looked like Rolf Harris in a certain light), it’s not long before Lee’s warmed to all his favourite themes.

Criticising the audience for not getting it, bringing along friends who aren’t really interested, and being unable to exercise adequate control of their bladders, pointing out empty seats (they can’t all have coronavirus), witheringly rude criticisms of other, always lesser, comedians (Ricky Gervais takes a battering not because he’s local to Reading but because he’s Ricky Gervais), and a deconstruction of comedy so thorough that he often chooses to break off from the deconstruction to inform the audience that this is what he’s doing.

Which, is, of course, more of the deconstruction. After a witty aside, Lee likes to confirm that it wasn’t made up on the spot and that he’d written it in advance, and it’s this archness and cleverness that so irks his critics. That and the fact that many of them really don’t seem to get the central joke. A common put down of Stewart Lee and his audience, and one he’s more than happy to play up to, is that nobody actual laughs, they just go along to nod in self-satisfied agreement.

As if there was something wrong with that! It’s been a couple of years since he last toured so when he asks where we’ve all been going for our mass agreement fix in the interim and suggests Jonathan Pie’s attempts to keep us company in his absence as both opportunistic and a poor substitute for the real deal we hoot with laughter rather than nod in polite accord with a well turned observation.

The show riffs on two themes. One, that Lee’s Netflix write up has accidentally been replaced by one for the film Sharknado and, two, a remark from boring old ‘straight speaker’ Tony Parsons (brilliantly lampooned by Viz as Tony Parsehole) that Lee is “the rancid tip of the cesspit”. Lee takes the mangled words of Parsons and hollows them out, “I’m not an expert in cess, or the collection thereof”, to show the idiocy of Parsons’ opinions and writings.

But, of course, he doesn’t stop there. Parsons, as well as bedfellows as unlikely as Josh Widdicombe, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Jimmy Carr (with his jokes about rape and gypsies), and the US comic Dave Chappelle all have their words, actions, even the way they look at their audience twisted and contorted into fantastical scenarios all of which end up reflecting as much on the ‘Stewart Lee’ character on stage as they do their intended victims. Far less on the Stewart Lee who writes this stuff and us, the audience, who consume it.

When he ribs us, we’re in on the joke and, despite the mock-aggressive persona, Lee can often barely contain a grin and, at one point, even laughs at one of his own jokes. All stuff that would be a no-no with a lesser comedian but, with Lee, always done with a level of self-awarement so advanced that it comes with a hilarious running commentary.

You’d think playing a guitar, affecting a reasonably decent yet still utterly ludicrous Alan Bennett impersonation, and breaking off to chat about monotremes (there’s only two – the duck billed platypus and the echidna) would cause the show to lose some of its momentum but there are probably more laughs during these parts than when Lee deconstructs his best Brexit joke (“it wasn’t just racists who voted to leave Europe. Cunts did as well”) or reminds us that joking about Boris Johnson being Mayor of London (“a real mayor, of a real city”) and then Foreign Secretary hasn’t held the lying bastard back much.

The political bits are still good though, as are his throwbacks not just to earlier parts of the routine but to earlier routines (a neat visual one sees Lee briefly running on the spot, bafflingly (perhaps) to those who arrived late to his oeuvre) and, of course, there’s a random, and very rude, put down of people from neighbouring rival towns (this time Slough gets it) that never fails. Lee also likes to chuck some obscure musical cultural references in and, last night, Montana hardcore punks Steel Pole Bath Tub probably enjoyed as much recognition as they ever will in the Reading Hexagon.

The references to musical artists of our shared youth, the throwbacks to jokes from previous tours, and, yes, the chance to get together with like minded friends and chuckle at often puerile comments about people who do so much to make what should be a wonderful life an absolute fucking chore are all part of the Stewart Lee experience. Music’s not as tribal as it used to be but Stewart Lee’s the same age as me, he grew up in an era when it was, and it seems, sometimes, as if he’s weaponised what’s left of that tribal mentality to create enough of a following wherever he goes that he can now play these huge tours to decent sized venues and charge decent prices too.

He’s done it long enough, playing pubs and small clubs, that he’s earned it but, more than that, he’s got the underlying confidence to match an unmistakable ability to both write and perform long form comedy at a level way higher than anyone else operating at the moment. A Stewart Lee gig in your town these days is almost like the medicine show pitching up. You go because you know your friends will be there, you go because you know you’ll laugh like a drain, and you’ll go, and Lee knows this only too well, because you’ll find yourself agreeing with what he says far more than any other comic around.

Thanks to Adam for sorting the tickets and arranging and thanks to him, Shep, Tom, Rob, Damon, Ben, David, Tina, Pete, Darren and Cheryl for making it such a good night out. A quick look at that cast list (and an even quicker look at the queue for the gents in the Hexagon) brings attention to perhaps the one thing, except his weight – ho ho, that Lee might want to address. Why does he play to such a middle aged male demographic? I can’t help thinking Lee’s much happier with the age range than the gender divide but, then, like he says, it’s not for everyone.