stewart lee
You have to have a thick skin to be a columnist. I went off the idea of blogging regularly when I published a think-piece about an offhand remark Josie Long made onstage and Jason Manford responded by saying that I didn’t have to turn every thought into a column. Stewart Lee must have the hide of an elephant as he has managed to turn out enough Observer, Shortlist & New Statesman columns (plus a press release for the band Wolf People who I assume really exist) in five years to fill this book.
Starting at 6pm on Monday 8 August, and continuing 24/7 until they reach the end, a host of Edinburgh Fringe performers, writers, and politicians plus members of the public will stage a nonstop, out loud, live streamed reading of the recently published Chilcot Report, in its 2.6 million word entirety.
These are dark days indeed. David Bowie dead, Brexit and the BBC not recommissioning Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle. It is precisely at times like this that we need Lee on a major mainstream platform. I wouldn’t say he is a voice of reason or a voice of sanity, but he has a way of nailing a subject like nobody else. He is the anti-John Oliver, circling around a topic and firing multiple arrows at it rather than taking a blunderbus to it.
This review first appeared in the Evening Standard here.
Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle has not been recommissioned by the BBC.
I don't know how this upcoming unmissable gig passed me by until now.
The line-up for Stand Up For Street Child on May 9 at the Cambridge Theatre reads like a class register of some of my favourites acts. If you've got shred of comedy taste they should be some of your favourites too. Daniel Kitson, Stewart Lee, Josie Long, Elis James, Isy Suttie, Kevin Eldon and Nick Helm barely need an introduction, but here you go.
There was a point during Stewart Lee’s final Comedy Vehicle when I thought I could see the cogs moving. I thought I’d cracked it and knew what he was doing. And then he went and pulled the rug and dismantled the comedy process further, going out in excellent style. I’m not sure if we should be analysing this show though. As he persists in saying to speccy interrogator Chris Morris, De-Niro-in-Deer-Hunter style, “this is this”.
One thing in particular intrigues me about Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle. It felt as if he was doing warm-ups and works-in-progress for this series for at least a year in advance around the UK. I assumed that this was to get every phrase, every comma, every pause in the right place. And then along comes episode 5 and, unless he is pulling the wool over the liberal intelligentsia’s eyes and engages plants and stooges like a hack magician, he frequently seems to be winging it here.
Conspiracy theorists can have a field day with the fact that in some places episode four was billed as The Migrant Crisis. In fact our stand-up sage-cum-holy-fool is here to guide us through his thoughts on death this time. Did it change or did someone get it wrong? More pertinently, however, the show is a return to top form after a spot of water-treading last week.
The most interesting point Stewart Lee makes in the third episode of his current series, subtitled ‘Patriotism’, comes at the start when he talks about the biggest problem the modern satirist faces. The news is in such flux, says Lee, it is hard to get a handle on it for comedy. And if Lee is having that problem, spare a thought for lesser mortals out there trying to monetize their social commentary.
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