There have been stories recently of how Stewart Lee has a low opinion of Ricky Gervais' TV comedy drama output. Lee has even gone as far as to say that After Life is "one of the worst things that's ever been made by a human."

But it is also worth mentioning that one of Lee's most memorable routines in his recent show Snowflake owes a huge debt to Gervais. In the routine about saying the unsayable Lee pulls faces, makes weird gutteral noises and comes out with no words at all for around nine minutes. It is what is known in showbusiness parlance as a comedic tour de force. While Lee doesn't namecheck Gervais during the routine he does walk over to the onstage lectern, pausing there and having a drink, echoing something that Gervais does in his stand-up shows.

Talking to Rob Brydon on Brydon's Spotify podcast series Lee has revealed that he was having difficulties with the routine until a moment of inspiration while developing the show at the Leicester Square Theatre. “There's this bit where I'm saying the unsayable because they say that about comedy. I thought, what would that sound like? And I tried to do as long as I could of this retching, then you know what the actual breakthrough moment was? When I was working it out at Leicester Square Theatre, Ricky Gervais had been doing some gigs there as well working stuff out. And he always uses a lectern. He looks at it and he has a drink, and then he goes back. And his fucking lectern was there right?

So I put it on the stage, his actual lectern that he left there, and then I realised that you can do as long as you like, if you go to the lectern every five minutes or so. Because that reminds majority of the audience. It ties in to the idea of its stand-up performance. And the fact that I was doing it with a lectern that he'd actually used really excited me. It's a bit like that Hitchcock quote. Someone said to Hitchcock, how long can you show a couple kissing on a bed? And he said, as long as you like if there's a bomb underneath it, and if you say me, how long can you go? You can do it as long as you like if you've got a lectern that belongs to Ricky Gervais. It just needed something to tie into the reality of what a stand-up performance is like.”

Listen to the full Rob Brydon/Stewart Lee interview for free here.

Stewart Lee picture: BBC/Anthony Robling