Stewart Lee in Conversation with Alan Moore

They mean women are slow, you know, I hear things that don't do much of a favor, oh well, that made me feel. The right thing to want your magazine about um, the super mobile about still and there was a you know a"Legion of Superman" from the '60s, where there's a giant whale in space, the sewer from Moby Dick, with his face turned away. I always read that somewhere when I was a kid or saw it and forgot about it and it was gone. I'm not sure I imagined it. Super Moby Dick is based. He was telling you about me 10 or 15 years ago.

I just mentioned it and you knew everything. I know and I've explained it for a long time, but you know. It had existed, let's look at his mother's fit and I thought well, basically, for York, for his magazine. I wrote a kind of fake space super Moby Dick story, but I put enough detail into it that people thought it must have had its own series and whatever, and I actually think you suggested that maybe it was originally inspired by some notes, let the tinker Mel, yes, that's right, yes, look, he suggested a sequel, yes, to his novel Moby Dick, which would actually participate in inspires, you know, again, which was a help to get to this kind of thing trying to write something again like... you know, I didn't really think about it that recently, but when I was a precocious teenager, my friend Stuart Rea encouraged me to read Borg.

Do you know many of those? Stories are not really stories, they are a description of facts that sound imaginary but plausible about a piece that he could have written if he had the time to do it and many of them have that flavor as if they were you. I know with this one about his great friends, an alien, the one on the right, the old flower pot, and I just discovered lots and lots of true facts about great friends and the more I discover, the more unlikely. I seem to become one of the real ones. The information about him was that he had a traffic accident in the United States and ended up in a hospital run by McDonald's.

Try it and he was there and he says he wrote that he did a serious interview with a newspaper in Bedford telling him every time he saw her at McDonald's. Clam, he felt very happy because it meant that he had done and remembered how lucky he was to survive this traffic accident and that the accident he had was in some kind of UFO abduction hot spot, which again I thought it was so he basically wanted have a cast nearby for long enough. Crazy things are true and then I try to triangulate this other story from it and with people I say the story is the truth.

Things about email are often so crazy that I mean, I've been writing for years about how I was one of the hack writers on this terrible comedy show that used to be about who would stab in the dark and you know, another night of eating it just came out as a story now in the wake of brexit. I used to mention my link pill for it. was made up and also, although it's a strange coincidence, I was published in a teenage poetry anthology that he was also in around 1982, we wrote this really strange poem about um resenting all sorts of posh rugby boys for having power and wealth and girls and that Every day people saw that he was right and I made that kind of whole narrative that Bono and I wrote about this and then you get those two facts and then you create a third one, you know, but I think the true things I discovered too In other strange things, that's how you know.

I would like to have brought this out a month later and taken it to the point of the vote for Europe because obviously the entire pantheon of personalities has changed and this already feels like something ultra. Short-term lost seaweed, oh I remember Michael Gove. I want to ask you about that. I mean emergencies. You're the number of references to George on the phone. Yes. I almost remember who he was. Yes. I mean he was the Chancellor. It wasn't yeah, yeah, um, but right now everything is so solid overall, yeah, but I mean things don't stop long enough to satirize, well, it's been hard, it's August now, obviously, in July , June, it's usually when you knew Edinburgh as Stand up starts to take shape and I'm not alone, a lot of people felt like they were in free fall because someone gets a job, you think, well I'll use it as part of the story and then tell you about it two days later.

I'm not in that job anymore, I mean with you, and this is accidentally, it seems more coherent than it is as a collection of columns because it is a collection of columns about people, many of whom have now disappeared from public life or from the forms of thought. that the ways of thinking and values ​​that power changes (correctly, you are wrong) in the exit from Europe will relegate you, you know, to the back of the queue, I mean our arguments about what is the point of cultural welfare cups , all this kind of stuff. just crush the Roma and the most important thing now is how we are going to pay to get out of Europe and how we are going to organize it in whatever all those things are just going into the mill, seems to be looking to write 1,100 words about the goal of public broadcasting seem like this, this horrible period from 2011 to 2016 seems like a golden age before we dove into something like yeah, well, they've been kind of a case that I was going to see in the future, Lord. yes, you deliberately planned this verb loop, yes, to capture the decline of this sorry sin or, as I mean, hey, yes, it's not so much about what the story is about, but the very fact of the story's existence which actually makes you think about the world, but you're living it, yeah, about whether or not that might apply, yeah, so you talk about the dead cat in the roadside elves or who else in Acme and now and she does it right When I was, I don't want to say that, it was at the end. of the Olympics there was all this talk about the legacy of the Olympics, you know, the tragedy will happen five years later, I mean all that celebration of Britishness as a sense of community that was the opening ceremony that is now just shooting pieces and it had no effect on encouraging people to play sport it didn't create greater access for people to play sport, but I write this where I basically have all the reports on the stages of the Olympics and it was brilliant and changed.

It was to spark a discussion about a breakdown in my path and all the people standing around looking at it and I thought it's pretty obvious at this point that I would end your birthday, that cheerful tone, yeah, this is what I have for the public, you see when supposedly respected famous open quote comedian always do that like we're inverted corrugations suggest that you're yes, yes, like you resort to writing about a dead animal on the sidewalk pretending it's a fun and fascinated community. I can only feel sorry for you clearly. he should have taken off his cap and not left it on the pavement if you find all this funny you are a poor specimen of a human being you are not big you are not intelligent you are just pathetic you should decide at some point to grow up and I wish you luck it's unfair but They are funny, windy.

I felt really bad because Connor wrote that column and I couldn't really realize it. He worried me that he wasn't in a position to do this because no. I'm not really aware that I don't really understand the mood of the public and the Olympics for me. I always thought, okay, how long is it going to last, what's going on, why have we made deals, all these dodgy companies that Watson Boris is trying to get out of. You know, and after I wrote that column making fun of it, you know, my point of contact with the world school playground at pick up and drop off time, I got to see some of the moms who had worked as guides voluntary or sometimes a lot. from people who did it in east London.

I could see they were mad at me because they did relief work, that's where they really believed and they didn't want to see it compared to a decomposing cat and you know, I did. I felt. It's bad and you know it becomes a bigger problem I think, but I don't think there's a real narrative in society for people to really understand what reality is really yet and I think some people get angry and upset. If you're playing on that, I'm sure Boyer probably had people who were really irritated, boy, yeah, but of course they didn't have comets under Lon, no, I wouldn't imagine that if you look at the glamorous will a little bit. ago, but he would have written them himself, I would like that and he just wrote different personalities we know commenting on himself.

I have you, have you done what to do? I haven't, but I feel like I don't have to because I feel like no, you know I can create, there was, I can, I can give the response that I want to have, I can write, I can write something well and I know, I know what kind of comedy underneath of the line will provoke and I know how funny others are. people will find that, so in a way it's like what you're doing in stand-up where you can say one thing and it's like misdirection and you know that an audience would believe a certain thing that you might come from.

Step back and look around, so somehow you were expecting that accusation to be animal cruelty or yeah or cruelty, it's not really that, for sure, certain words in verse that you know you can trigger, but if you mention any. religion or put French almost anything now, but you could write an article making fun of ice cream and how ice cream is very good now the song below will put well done for making fun of ice cream. I await your attack. about Islam with better, with more points, something like that and then that ad will be like you need Jack or something when they are called true a tree or something like that, yeah, yeah, it's kind of like you know you can have fun with it . and if you, you, you can, okay, I wrote, I wrote something in one of the columns that I talked about, we're trying to understand me and the other radical artists, we're trying to figure out what we think about Jerry underneath something and so on. that I assisted radical artists.

I attended a meeting with my fellow radical artists at a squat tire rock in east London, where we ate lentils and whatever, and someone said: "Put that in the comment and we had long winter nights. It must fly by." like Actually, that's information, but you know when you write it down it's going to happen well and for me, the funny part of it is that yeah I'm asking people what I find funny is just existing and just putting it out there and seeing it. thinking about how we help to be received and also how what I wrote is not understood.

I wrote one where I got a lot of information about the search. It took me a long time to understand it. The subtext is that, um, when she talks about opening the door. rear for negotiation. I remember she sees a lot of things, it's basically code for a sexual act that she knew about, but Dennis would be allowed to perform with her as a reward for her birthday or something and I have all the dates to work out um and I didn't have to do much research into where he had said this and what days he had said it and um and uh, but I also got some things wrong, you know, so I almost made it.

I managed to write 1,100 words in a national newspaper and when you really realize it, it says that while they are not high, it talks about opening the back door to the ocean, Lorraine was actually code for a sexual act that was a pleasure for the other thing and all, but I did it in such detail, so what happens if you don't? If you don't click on that it should be a boring boring article about dates and facts and at the end someone put yes, director Phylidia Lloyd Muscles in the Iron Lady. I would surely learn more than her usual two or three star reviews if only she and again Glenn Close had shown the courage to bring Thatcher's clandestine negotiations to the big screen in detail, perhaps in 3D, so the common thing is that when writing an article, get the smallest of facts straight, that's not allowing the toilets to betray Margaret Thatcher with a wonderful Meryl Streep, as if someone read all that and understood it and then found that resemblance, yes I think maybe it came from the stand-up, which is where there is something.

It happens in standard, which is not the same as prose, the same way it happens in comics, which is the relationship between the text and the image, you can stand up, you have this noise that happens in the room, which verifies that. It changes the meaning of what you said, so I guess maybe I was searching and didn't think about this, so I'm talking to you now. May was looking for that with newspaper columns. Could you create this space that is not really the newspaper column? itself and I thought it existed in this environment where it's consumed like a newspaper column and then what happens while you're reading it or when it's next to the rest of the newspaper, you know, kind of a disruptive influence on itself, I mean, it I mean it, although I mean it.

I think what he was saying before about the fact that reality seems to be broken and he makes it very difficult to subvert it, yes, it is already subversive beyond recognition, yes, but I think this becomes a problem for everyone. , it is not. just comedians, that's what happens when you have a potential audience, well, I mean, we know thethat it is difficult to try. It's a lot harder now and it was five years ago to write something like that in general terms, because in the space of the time window that you allowed. to make them, you know, what wasn't my last art most recent like 90, yeah, Thursday night there was a guy who hadn't been around for a couple of weeks because he was on vacation and we were saying, oh, sure that's incredible, our prime minister.

Boris Johnson is another Foreign Secretary and he thought we were joking, yes, a big oil port, he said that Ray Bradbury story where the blood goes back in time and steps on a butterfly and it comes with activism, we all have three, always a little straighter and the coalition is like that. I know it's like that, yeah, I mean it's fun, but the discipline of doing it is fun, like Wednesday, you know what you're going to do. I'll try this and then I'll have 48 hours to do it and at first I used to do it. worrying about it and being awake for 48 was and then I got into this habit where I almost wrote a bad character.

I would go but I would leave the kids at school. Okay, God, I'm going to do this in seven hours and six. hours whatever because that's what a hat writer would do, you know they would have to hit their deadline and they can't spend the whole week doing it if they have to do other jobs so I tried to think like that and in the end you have to quit and do what you have an eye for, um that again. It also felt a little bit like going backwards when I started writing where he didn't have his laptop and he couldn't make corrections in the email and he had to fax it and you know, that's a damn Apple about you know about knit when he started writing comics in the '80s, about having to fax artwork from the United States and it's taking forever to arrive and now it seems unbelievable.

I guess they probably go to some online dump where they write. from collaborating throughout the year, yeah, I mean, like weed, I think by quickly losing touch with how it all works, but I think there are relatively few Molokai artists who put on the nails and actually still produce artwork physical, yeah, so everything is completely judged, it's um, but The thing is that the right to change itself is changing and accelerating and the thing is I think this is a problem because of everything it does, that increasing complexity and We couldn't even handle our previous levels of complexity, yes. but more or less yes, and it is also much faster, which is not.

The other thing is interesting how contexts change everything, like all these bits are online somewhere attached to posts and they sound, they allow you to put them together in a book and that asks you. that you consider it in a way that you wouldn't as individual pieces, and as the changing economy changes, your perception probably feels like the writer's character gets angrier over the five years, as does the level of madness of the public comments on things and in isolation they do not see that and that is what digital media atrophies us: we see a succession of things in isolation instead of in an assembled whole, so in a way it is good to put them all back together. its place. a book because it accidentally creates good art accidentally created follows five years of what's happening and it becomes some kind of graph or the decline of culture, didn't I buy it, yeah, well, I hope, but I mean, ha been an inch. an opportunity to do it and I hope it continues because creatively it's an interesting time, it's interesting to solve the problem of how to write about now, but at the moment I have no idea and I will do it. finish it and this, the new standing citizen, is in free fall for the same reason that I don't have to give it, it doesn't have to be reviewed to live it and hopefully by then things will be a little clearer, but the closest thing to look at them in the fog, but I think I think the exercise is trying to make sense of it.

Especially what you said about having my sense of something, yes, on a deadline, yes, in a hotel which is probably the only way we can, yes, make sense of things only to corner, grab things from the air, well, the deadline is approaching, yeah, something down, okay, you just wrote the longest work of fiction ever published about you, I don't know. about that, right, certainly, I mean, I think the Bible is a work of fiction, okay, so that's what it will be, I think I fall to the ground, well, that's it, well, you know, I was about to say that Bibles work for many. hands and your Jerusalem novel ISM, but we also assume that the Bible is, on some level, the work of war, keep in mind what you are dictating, so that's what you are not, yes, okay with that, so Did you give yourself a deadline to finish it because I don't think I can do something like that without deadlines and no, the deadlines for these have been really good and I accidentally created something out of a succession of deadlines.

I didn't impose a dead one, fortunately you know, because I won't. I have no idea how I was going to take this that I have found since the referendum and what that is. I mean, if you can think about the world as it existed before June 23 or whatever, then none of us expected. this happened here um and we were all doing our satirical fictional places and then this happened and strangely a lot of things that I know were in the works a long time before, yeah, this happened suddenly, it seems to be almost prophetic, yeah, oh, and the whole rise weightless. true or things like that, yeah, it doesn't seem as strange and dystopian, yeah, as it might have been a few months ago, maybe because, if you're writing, you have to make sure on some level what's going on. you make sure that the public mood and the public mood have spoken, you know, so, it's interesting, these are interesting times.

I mean, I don't know what voice that character who writes comics would have, those, I don't know because, you know, I don't. I don't know what the relationship is in opposition, you know the majority public opinion and you always know where it's going now when she wins the Jerusalem in Jerusalem um, that will be outside, I think, the NACA belt in the September guise, 25 pounds and se it's about 1300 own pages 24 hours a day because customers take a look but it's priceless but more knowledge is better value here's nine five I'm definitely on a page oh that's just in terms of the amount of content as long as you have than to provide contact, yes, with us, you know, okay, little Isis, the mass they can remove and I can remove the delivery mechanism and they can, but at the end of the day, there are some people who will always want content.

Recently in France there is a place we go with the kids high in the mountains where a small shop makes rose petal ice cream rose petal ice cream it is worth driving through the Pyrenees once a year to buy rose petal ice cream rose and we queue This year, as usual, the man recognized my wife and said: "Brexit, no rose petal ice cream for you, at the end of the day, whatever happens politically, you have things that people want , they always need content, as long as provocative contact is always made to them." It's probably good if it was a proper radio or television, the people in the gallery would sum it up wonderfully.