Stewart Lee On The Challenge Of Stand-Up

I'm excited about this one, I'm in a hurry because I just finished watching both of their specials. The times say he is the best living comedian in the world, let's do it. Stuart Lee Stuart, there you are. Hello how are you? Now, Rob. Have you seen any of these things I'm doing? Oh, I've seen them both. Are you seeing both? Well, great, okay, then great, and uh, you'll just die under a blanket of praise and be ready with your modest answers, I literally just finished watching tornado, I saw snowflake about two days ago, uh, and they're super Well, I'm so glad to hear that from you because we're all great, like Morris, because of your work in our house.

Look, there's so much, there's so much to talk about, so this is two, uh, one hour special, snowflake and tornado, oh, they're so good, I mean, they're dense, they're dense, there's so much stuff in there that I felt How to read. a book in all you wanted, it was boring, no, and as much as you wanted to enjoy it, oh, it's a beautiful thing, Stuart, let's start with what you mentioned in the second one, when you talked about the Dave Chappelle stuff that you run. shows at the leicester square theater with a lot of preparation, tell people how you build these shows.

I remember telling you about it, you actually told me it would be about three days and I got it and um. and then they were gone, guys, I remember hanging from my own rope because it's a different thing. Mine are almost finished and then become something else in the process of falling apart in front of an audience, so ideally I get to the point. where I know it's so good after a couple of months in the Leicester Square theater that I can tear it apart and then rebuild it if I have to and you know I can find different ways out of this and I know what stresses me out. and the tensions that you can put on it is a different thing when they come to you who don't want to feel tense and embarrassed and nervous and have it go wrong they just want to go out at night, but the people want to have a little fun what about where we are now? a joke has to have a victim knocking down, knocking up disgust well, I don't think it has to have a victim, isn't there always one? although even if it's oneself, I guess how this discussion about punching up and punching down has happened, it was actually Chris Rock who coined that phrase, I think punching and punching down was yeah, although again, when you look at those guys 20 or 30 years ago, well, they It will be really like an awakening, as we would call it now, in some areas they often have things about women or gay people that you say, oh, you wouldn't say that now it has become an issue since people have thought about it more in the At this point I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing and that's partly what both shows are about, particularly a snowflake.

I thought I would dive into it head on and see what happened. I tend to think because I came out of the '80s alternative comedy scene, the idea was that you pushed up against the power and obviously that's what satirists would say, but there's also something funny about unnecessary cruelty, you know, I mean, there's a line from Simon Munnery when he used to play his fascist dictator character in the Tedium League, you know, one day I was torturing a kitten or something and a woman came up to me and said, don't you know that all Are God's creatures capable of suffering? and I said yes and, therefore, to provide me with fun, so it's like there was something.

That is, in essence, that we also like to see things twist, so it is difficult to make a definitive ideological argument for . I just think there are a lot of real things being said right now about people who are quite vulnerable in stadiums. billionaires that you said before uh, Stuart Lee's character, this I mean, a lot of people are interested in this element of yours, a lot of my fellow comedians, noel fielding, greg davis, john cleese, uh, tim vine, I mean, different, they get, ricky, your vase. I sometimes mention in an unflattering way the extent to which this is how you feel about them or is it absolutely like that.

I love knowledge. I think it's brilliant and I don't think it's good. I think in the show what I say about him is. Me, my character, thinks what he says and what he does is stupid and then he tries to do it and he can't so he has to write it off yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I think Tim Vine is brilliant and he doesn't I know when to do it. I sit down and I, well, I think what I say on the show is that I'm like Tim Vine on amphetamines or something like yeah, it's not a Tim Vine Christmas, obviously, John Cleese, you know, without John Cleese, none of we have a career, you know he's part of it. from a generation that changed everything and you will never be able to remove the defective towers or um or monty python, eh, but I think he is becoming more and more one of those old reactionaries who complain about the young people and that's what I'm talking about. on the show i think the office is brilliant i think ricky's comedy drama work has diminishing returns to the point where it's now abysmal i think it must be very sad if you're teaching drama or creative writing how can you defend this? the things that make drama and creative writing good when afterlife is a success, you know, because your kids might just walk away, but none of those things happen in this, and yet millions of people watch it I think it's one of the worst things ever done. a human but I read that you were a big influence I know yeah it's horrible he said it's uh uh he said well I don't think Robert Oppenheimer felt good about creating the atomic and that's the most obvious comparison I want to cite . some of this stuff I wrote because I've never scribbled so furiously and I want to say again that's not an example, but seriously, Stuart, it's so good, so good, and when you quote, you quote a critic, Ben Thompson, who He says in his this that this really happened, that it's very well done, he says that it's the apogee of everything you've accomplished in the last 30 years now, here's a line, it's thin, it's cut to the bone, you say no Of course, that's why it's funny, but of course it is, it's as thin as it's possible to be and that's the pleasure, but will there be a percentage of your audience that accepts what you say it's not and thinks you're rambling to what extent there is I thought of a question and you mentioned that you touched on this before, you said something when I go out in front of a crowd, I always think or there are a good number here that don't want to be here, they are here because their girlfriend or wife or mother is often the case, he likes me, right, um, but I feel like with you or everyone is pretty bloody in the message and they want to be that often.

I can really tell that there is often a couple, usually a woman is fair and has been. brought by the husband or boyfriend and they actually resist me and actually bring this up a little bit on the news show, that's another one of our things about men condescendingly explaining to women why They think that I am a good comedian and women have it and leave. Haven't heard of Stuart Lee? He's really good, they actually like him. So women have to live with this guy and also with many of the guys who like me. You're like me anyway, so why don't women want to go see more things that irritate their partner anyway, but then what happens every night, yeah, every night in line when I sell things after?

There will be three or four women who will come to me and leave. I didn't want to come because he lays on the bed with the laptop laughing at you and I'm like, "You're never going to look at that boring guy again, are you?" I don't expect you to like it, but he's been really great and I can't wait to go back. You know they have to do it, they're basically irritated by how interesting their partner is and then when they finally go, they like it, but yeah, there's an i. I can see who has been brought in and I like to talk to those people directly and funny stories often come up about it.

You need some people in the room that you have to win over well, for example, in the part where you said where is he? this really happened, that's cool, the way you go around and around and as a comedian, I'm watching, will he do it again? Well, thank you very much because it took me a long time to get it right and I can. Imagine, yeah, and that's what I was thinking, yeah, yeah, I would die, you know, and I had to go, a lot of audiences had to suffer so you could enjoy that, but you would go through that death, you see, that's where we are. . different you said when we met I think the only time we met was backstage at leicester square and you said something and I was ready to be one of those people you didn't like very much and you said I said I had some transferable skills which was the word you used that's what I said I've always remembered it but what I meant I think I said you didn't have to do it hundreds of times because you had transferable skills what I meant was could you make a man sound like he was in a box or could you do it I can't I can't do anything I can't do anything that's why every show I try to do something that's hard for me you know and that in uh, snowflake, it was this kind of free jazz vocalist miserable that is really beyond my abilities.

Yes, he describes York's audience of him as famously tacit. Did I write? Does your audience vary or are they the liberal elite wherever you are? They vary, they vary less. than they used to do 30 years ago, I think that's because regional differences are eroding a bit. Me too and everyone has uh and also more people coming. You know I'm where they are. I think it's still true that in Glasgow, Liverpool and Belfast. You usually have to take something out of the bag in the first 20 minutes to show them that they are not going to send you away.

I think there's also a thing where you know you go to economically depressed places where not necessarily much. of things happen like peterborough and there's an excitement about going there, which is different to the cities where they take you for granted and that really starts to feel a bit messianic, like it's your duty to go to Kettering, you know, and uh and corby . and more or less because the people who want to see things there, are there, they're not really catered for, I think those audiences are more excitable, I think the guardian readers of that city, but it's mixed, I mean, if you go to Aberdeen I know There is everything because not many people go there, so yes, everyone goes out.

I like those kinds of crowds where you have to fight. You played at Eden Court in Inverness. Yeah, no, I didn't do it on the last tour. but usually I do, yeah I've played there, that's my weirdest boo and it was a non-verbal boo, it was a woman I noticed sitting alone in the audience reading a book during my show and me and I she just sat there reading and I couldn't ignore it, so I talked to her and to make matters worse, the book was the story of the genocide, you know? I was not bothered at um Eden Court, but afterwards I received a letter.

From Eden Court there was someone who just complained about why I was doing

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-up if I didn't like doing it and why, um, why didn't I know that the jokes worked properly and that it wasn't really fair to go. and I thought, and then the next two I didn't go to an eater project food court in inverness and it wasn't for that reason, but I thought, well, it really stuck with me, I like it, couldn't they do that show too? had a pretty elaborate set that had a joke related to I think it was a lot of I can't, was that there was some desire to climb the DVD mountain and look like um it looked like a German expression, so the idea that you hadn't thought of what you were doing, you accidentally had all this stuff there, I mean, you know, I was upset, but of course, I took that gift for that reason throughout the whole process. two specials, your publicist or whoever is organizing it, said to my people, can you see it?

It would be great if I could see them both. Well, I wanted to see you both. It was a privilege to see them before they left. So I watched the first one and then I had to go and do one thing, so like I think I told you when we started, I finished the second ones early and throughout the whole process I was wondering if they had asked me to watch this because at some point it mentioned me in an unflattering way, so my emotion was slightly tinged with oh christ, is he about to destroy me?

I'm sure I've done it at some point, I mean I'm sure there's been a little bit where I've done it, it would be inevitable that I've done something about not being able to do impressions or you just know that this is inevitable, but those things don't they are. I don't know why people make such a fuss about it because most of them Obviously, the rubble career is very different, but most of them actually show awareness that the person's job is fine, unless there is a part of you to be okay with it, in which case then, look, I have to end this because because because it could go on forever I wanted to tell you rolling around in a tsunami of your own urine I meant trapped in the real light of a Ford Fiesta um voices late nights under lockdown that are going well by British

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ards why are you late?

I won't ruin it because you would have to see it they would have to see it without local knowledge like the Taliban I was just me shouting out loud, it's, these are those jobs, Stewart, that you should be soproud, that's very nice of you, I'm so glad you saw them and when you say hello to your brother, who I met in the garden of a pub in uh, hey, in one, yeah, about five, yeah, I did you, he said, I think you're friends with my brother, I mean, well, I met him once, I think, and he, but that was, he still had an air of that, you know it was. a nice float that just tells you I probably say I'm a friend of yours, well, my dad told his family that he made it to the Philippines, that I had written Blackadder and then he was a little worried about me visiting him and praising them. he had to be the father of the Black Edda writer would evaporate.

I also pointed out to him that he was at school when the blackout hit, so I don't know what he was thinking, yeah, well, you were, you were a child progeny. You were very good somewhere in the Philippines. There are a lot of people who think I wrote Blackhead. There are worse things. Stuart. It has been wonderful to spend time with you full of admiration. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. see you later I encourage you