Stewart Lee

It came up for £1.19 on an Amazon deal, or something like that, so i gave it a go.

As a stand up comedian i think Stewart Lee is really good and very enjoyable to watch: if you're a person of lower intelligence then you will probably disagree with that statement, that's fine, really, we can't all be part of the liberal intelligentsia.

But as a newspaper columnist, he pretty much sucks donkey balls.   So why did i buy this book when, after all is said and done, it's just lots of his newspaper columns regurgitated with foot notes?   Because i don't read newspapers and had no idea that he sucked so badly at writing columns for them.   But i do now.

To be fair though, it's hard to ridicule and take the urine out of a bunch of narcissistic psychopaths and sociopaths -- the career politicos of our age -- when they themselves revel in being caricatures of their own urine, faecal and menstrual stains and happily parade their utter incompetence across all public realms for all to see: which bizarrely does actually encourage middle england to eagerly clamour and queue to vote for more.   Why even attempt this satire and/or parody or whatever it is?   Because the newspaper offered him money to make the attempt because David Mitchell wasn't up for it and he'd have been a fool to not take said money: he's got a mortgage to pay after all.

So i got 11% into this and mostly got utterly fed up going back and forth to the footnotes that explain the minutiae of every column that no one really cares about other than broadsheet newspaper readers just in case these things become part of a clue in the cryptic crossword the next day.

So if you are one of those broadsheet readers then this might amuse you, or not, i don't really care.   After 11% i'm done with it as i have many other more interesting looking books clamouring for my reading hours.   The problem with brexit now is that there's nothing more to say or read on the matter that hasn't already been said or read -- all we've so far achieved is the creeping erosion of our legal rights and a trade deal with Japan that's worse than the one we had when we were in the EU -- all the other trade deals we were promised have not emerged.   The NHS is a complete mess, the economy is in tatters, unemployment is sky rocketing, Boris is determined to spend 100 billion to create 20,000 jobs building a new toy train set for the rich and wealthy while the old, decrepit, poor-people's trainset's franchises are all handing their franchises back to the government and are merrily washing their hands of the whole affair: the post brexit future is exactly what every remainer said it would be -- but oh, thank heavens for corona virus, at least the leave camp have something else to blame for the mess we're all in.… (more)

Hilarious in parts but the format of the book which lists all his "Brexit" columns from the Observer over the past 3 years becomes a bit of a drudge - as, well, the last 3 years have been in general.

The transcript of his "Content Provider" performance is a welcome respite at the end, although it's humour is slightly stunted on page compared to on screen/in performance.

The footnotes are the best part, as ever in Lee's books, detailing the level of craft in his writing and performance.… (more)

Stewart Lee is a stand-up comedian that I was a big fan of when I was about... fourteen? But after that he wasn't really on tv at all until last year, and except for his involvement in Jerry Springer: The Opera I'd pretty much lost track of him. I heard this book recommended on Jackie Kashian's podcast The Dork Forest, and I'm glad to have read it. This book is partly a biography focusing on his career and on how he came to write some of his live shows, and partly heavily-annotated transcripts of the shows themselves, and I found it both interesting and hilarious. It also has several appendices about things which don't really fit the theme, one of which is about how he thinks Johnny Vegas is great (I disagree, but it was an interesting read).

As a result of reading this I've added both seasons of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle to my DVD rental list! I look forward to them.
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