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Vegetable StewComedy: Stewart Lee

By Fred Maynard in Varsity Magazine Posted on Friday, March 11th, 2011

Until recently, I was only aware of Stewart Lee as a comedian who is liked by other people, the kind who sneer at just about everything anyone’s ever heard of, condemning it as being too mainstream. I would secretly like to be one of these people, because I have a sneaking feeling that they actually are cooler, cleverer and more original than me. I also hate myself for thinking this, and want to protest that comedy should be about what makes you laugh loudest, be it a Death Star canteen or that thing that everyone does while they’re hoovering. It was gratifying to find that this kind of deconstructive self-loathing was in fact pretty much the theme of Lee’s show at the Corn Exchange on Sunday night.

Watching the show uncomfortably reminded me of reading annotated literary texts, with the commentary being forced upon you as you go. Opening with a crude joke about teenage pregnancy, Lee immediately cut off the laughter by classing it as a Frankie Boyle-type gag, since it “shows the requisite contempt for the vulnerable”. But Lee magnificently headed off any critics who, like me, were planning to class him as a bitter elitist. The centrepiece of the evening was a protracted riff on Mock the Week (or, as Lee prefers to put it, Mock the Weak) star Russell Howard’s charity cycle ride, and the vast sums of money which he raised. The joke doubled back on itself, progressing from lambasting Howard for not doing more charity cycling, to a despair that by choosing to be an alternative comedian, Lee himself can never equal his mainstream counterpart’s philanthropy. The latter segment was performed with no microphone, instead bellowed from the aisles, thus making the audience more uncomfortable about their previous easy laughter.

Lee seemed to mock the current trend for musical stand up by doing the last third of the show sitting with an unused guitar across his lap, on the basis that this makes an audience “more tolerant of poor material.” But again, he wrongfooted us—he actually sang two decent comedy songs at the end. One of them was derived from a routine about the Bullingdon Club circa 1986—the lefty Lee was there, and he recounted his meeting with David Cameron at length. As a lefty myself, I was again jerked out of my complacent laughter with Lee’s admission that the stories were all lies—”but the important thing is, they sound like they could be true”. By the end I was a little bit exhausted with examining my own lazy attitudes.

Stewart Lee is not for everyone-his low-register monotone and endless miserable metacomedy will grate on some. But he has ditched the excesses of self-indulgent absurdism and repetition which characterised his recent work, and despite protestations to the contrary, churned out a rapid succession of actual jokes. I laughed heartily, furtively hoping that this now made me cool enough to get Stewart Lee.

Written by Fred Maynard in Varsity Magazine on 11th March 2011. Filed Under: Reviews, Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, Vegetable Stew
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