Stewart Lee

Background

Lee was born in Wellington, Shropshire. He was adopted as a child and grew up in Solihull in the West Midlands. He attended the public school Solihull School on a part scholarship. As a teenager he suffered from ulcerative colitis.

He is married to fellow comic Bridget Christie, with whom he has two children. He is a patron of the British Humanist Association, an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society and a member of The Arts Emergency Service. His influences include Ted Chippington, Simon Munnery, Kevin McAleer and Johnny Vegas.

1989–1993: Stand-up and radio

While studying English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, in the 1980s, he wrote and performed comedy in a revue group called "The Seven Raymonds" with Richard Herring, Emma Kennedy and Tim Richardson, but did not perform in the well-known Oxford Revue, though he did write for and direct the 1989 Revue. Having moved to London and begun performing stand up comedy after university, he rose to greater prominence in 1990, winning the prestigious Hackney Empire New Act of the Year competition.

With Herring, Lee wrote material for BBC Radio 4's On the Hour (1991), which was anchored by Chris Morris and was notable for the first appearance of Steve Coogan's celebrated character, Alan Partridge, for which Lee and Herring wrote much early material. After a disagreement with the rest of the cast, Lee and Herring did not remain with the group when On The Hour moved to television as The Day Today, and their material was excised from an official release of the radio show in the mid-1990s, although it was included in a CD released in 2008.

In 1992 and 1993, he and Herring wrote and performed Lionel Nimrod's Inexplicable World for BBC Radio 4, before moving to BBC Radio 1, for one series of Fist of Fun (1993), followed by three series of Lee and Herring. Throughout the late nineties he continued performing solo stand-up (something that has always been a mainstay of his career – even whilst in the double act with Herring) and has collaborated with, amongst others, Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding of The Mighty Boosh. Indeed, though Barratt and Fielding had worked together in the past, the first seeds of the Boosh were sown while working as part of Lee's Edinburgh show King Dong vs Moby Dick in which Barratt and Fielding played a giant penis and a whale, respectively. Lee returned the favour by going on to direct their 1999 Edinburgh show, Arctic Boosh, which remains the template for their live work.

2000–04: Quitting stand-up

In 2001, Lee published his first novel, The Perfect Fool; it was republished in 2008. In the same year he performed Pea Green Boat, a stand-up show which revolved around the deconstruction of the Edward Lear poem The Owl and the Pussycat and a tale of his own broken toilet. This would later be condensed to focus mainly on the poem itself, and a 15-minute version aired on Radio 4. In 2007, Go Faster Stripe released a 25-minute edit on CD & 10" Vinyl.

During late 2000 and early 2001, Lee "gradually, incrementally and without any fanfare – or even much thought – gave up being a stand-up comedian", and 2001 became the first year since 1987 that he did not perform at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. While Lee found himself gradually performing less and less standup and moving away from the stage, he continued his directorial duties on television. Two pilots were made for Channel 4, Cluub Zarathustra and Head Farm, but neither was developed into a series. The former featured all the ingredients that would later appear in Attention Scum, a BBC2 series fronted by Simon Munnery's League Against Tedium character, which also featured the likes of Kevin Eldon, Johnny Vegas and Roger Mann, as well as Richard Thomas and opera singer Lore Lixenberg, in their guise as "Kombat Opera".

At the 2003 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Lee directed Johnny Vegas' first DVD, Who's Ready For Ice Cream?. In 2004, he returned to stand-up comedy with the show Standup Comedian, which earned him a Tap Water Award in Edinburgh and was released on DVD in October 2005.

Lee was also writing music reviews and when asked in 2003 what his favourites were, he said "Most of my favourites are still going like The Fall, Giant Sand and Calexico. I listen to a lot of jazz, 60s and folk music but I really like Ms. Dynamite, and The Streets".

2005: Jerry Springer: The Opera

In January 2005, Jerry Springer: The Opera, a satirical musical/opera based upon The Jerry Springer Show, was broadcast on BBC Two, following a highly successful West End run for several years, and as a prelude to the show's UK Tour. Christian Voice led a number of protest groups who claimed that the show was blasphemous and highly offensive. In particular, they were angered by the portrayal of Jesus Christ.

Disputes arose, with supporters claiming that most of the protesters had neither seen the show nor knew of its actual content. Others supported the right to freedom of speech. Several Christian groups protested at some of the venues used during the UK Tour. The show was broadcast with a record number of complaints prior to its transmission. In total, the BBC received 55,000 complaints. A private court case brought by Christian Voice against Lee and others involved with the production for blasphemy was rejected by a Magistrates' Court.

2009: Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle and If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask for One

Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, a new six-part comedy series featuring standup and sketches, began a six-episode run on 16 March 2009. The executive producer was Armando Iannucci and the script editor was Chris Morris. The first episode received positive reviews from The Independent and The Daily Mirror. Lee himself wrote a negative review of the show in Time Out in which he described himself as "fat" and his performance as "positively Neanderthal, suggesting a jungle-dwelling pygmy, struggling to coax notes out of a clarinet that has fallen from a passing aircraft".

The Guardian named Comedy Vehicle as one of its top ten television highlights of 2009, commenting that it "was the kind of TV that makes you feel like you're not the only one wondering how we came to be surrounded by so much unquestioned mediocrity". One of the show's few negative reviews came in the Sunday Mercury, which stated: "His whole tone is one of complete, smug condescension". Lee subsequently used this line to advertise his next stand-up tour. Lee frequently uses negative reviews on his posters in order to put off potential audience members who are unlikely to be fans of his comedy style.

The first episode was watched by approximately one million viewers, though the figure rose by 25% when BBC iPlayer viewings were factored in and, uncharacteristically, viewing figures rose over the series. The series was the BBC's second most downloaded broadcast during its run. In May 2010, the series was nominated for a BAFTA TV Award for best comedy programme. The series would win a BAFTA TV Award for best comedy programme in 2012. After four seasons on BBC2 the show was cancelled.

Lee also had a show at the 2009 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, named Stewart Lee: If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask for One in which he performed his own version of the song "Galway Girl". In December 2009 Lee was nominated for Best Live Stand-up at the British Comedy Awards.

Style and material

Lee's stand up sets comprise topical and sometimes observational comedy, touching on religion, feminism and life in multicultural London. However, he also employs metahumour, and sometimes describes the structure of the set using technical terminology such as "callback".

In an ironic manner he often criticises the audience for not being intelligent enough to understand the joke, preferring the more simplistic material, or enjoying the work of more mainstream "arena" comedians such as Michael McIntyre or Lee Mack. Lee will often contrast his critical success with other comics' more commercial success.

Lee has a reputation for being "politically correct" and of the "liberal elite", and will often exploit the claims and the related trope of "political correctness gone mad" for comic effect.

Lee caused controversy on his If You Prefer a Milder Comedian tour with a routine about Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond. Referring to Hammond's accident while filming in 2006, in which he was almost killed, Lee joked, "I wish he had been decapitated". The Daily Mail termed this an "extraordinary attack" and, having been doorstepped by a Mail journalist, Lee quoted the routine by replying "It's a joke, just like on Top Gear when they do their jokes". Lee subsequently explained the joke:

The idea of what's acceptable and what's shocking, that's where I investigate. I mean, you can't be on Top Gear, where your only argument is that it's all just a joke and anyone who takes offence is an example of political correctness gone mad, and then not accept the counterbalance to that. Put simply, if Clarkson can say the prime minister is a one-eyed Scottish idiot, then I can say that I hope his children go blind.

In an Observer interview, Sean O'Hagan says of the Hammond joke that Lee "operates out in that dangerous hinterland between moral provocation and outright offence, often adopting, as in this instance, the tactics of those he targets in order to highlight their hypocrisy".

Books

Audio releases

Solo Edinburgh Fringe / touring / stand-up shows