“Ghastly, puritanical, po-faced, sanctimonious, finger-wagging, Woke-Witchfinder-in-Chief” Toby Young, Twitter

“Sphincter-poppingly angry, totally unamusing and uninsightful, and painfully, excruciatingly right-on. A bitter, politically correct member of the Remain-voting liberal elite. The type of comedy which is not designed to provoke laughter so much as solemn head-nodding and applause at the politically correct sentiment.” James Delingpole, Steve Bannon’s Breitbart News

““I seem to have been radicalised into a one man crusade against Stewart Lee and his fans. This will probably occupy the rest of my life but mark my words the man will die and I will try to be the one that ends his life.” Corbyngrad Mayor @SyedforLondon, Twitter

““Stewart Lee is an archaic left wing relic. The old ‘alternative comedian’ crowd is now the Establishment – Milo Yiannopoulos is more on the zeitgeist. The ‘alt’ comics are that comfortable establishment, with their ‘edgy’ Apollo nights out on the BBC. Don’t agree with all of his views, but at least people like Paul Joseph Watson can be funny about subjects that Lefties like Stewart Lee are shit-scared to go anywhere near.” Brendan McCarthy, writer/artist of Judge Dredd and Mad Max : Fury Road, Twitter

Dear Covidians of Infectoland

Merry Winterval to ye alle!

Thanks for your patience with rescheduling of dates.
I hope you are all well and have not suffered any loss.
Here I wait patiently to reassume my privileged duties, which I promise to perform henceforth with a greater sense of responsibility, having learned & listened under lockdown.

One day we will all be laughing again in some rooms.
I cannot embrace you all.

Your pal

Stew Art Lee

And to all my American fans I say…

‘I work real hard for my living
But I don’t celebrate bullshit Thanksgiving
Sit up like some fool and eat turkey
That’s the day your forefathers jerked me’

Ice-T

1) COMING OVER HERE

I am on the new record by Asian Dub Foundation –
http://asiandubfoundation.com/site/?p=1043

Agit-pop stars Asian Dub Foundation sampled an old routine of mine on their new album, Access Denied. https://smarturl.it/ADFAcessDenied.
In the period between the two lockdowns, that historians are already calling Johnson’s Perineum, they got me in to record a video with them, and it is out yesterday, 1st December, our Winterval gift to pre-Brexit Britain.
Let’s make it the Christmas No 1!
https://youtu.be/_kkOHtniTts

2) MEDIA GARAGE SALE

My trusted sales partner Media Garage has compacted all my available stand-up dvds into one convenient on-line marketplace, with most available to d/load too.

The company operates out of an industrial unit in Southend, run by a man called Colin, who for the whole festive season will be alone and dressed as a Santa while he ships your orders of Xmas laffs worldwide, at top speed!

We have already mailed parcels of fun to Japan, Finland, Switzerland, Germany, France, USA, Canada, New Zealand, and even Latvia! Remember, if you buy here we will pay tax on these purchases, and help with British schools and hospitals, whereas many major physical media suppliers and streaming services have found ways to avoid declaring their profits.

AMERICANS – stop moaning about not being able to see me and visit MEDIA GARAGE!
Please send the link below to your grans when they ask what you want for Xmas.

MEDIA GARAGE | MORE INFO ON THE MERCH PAGE

3) KING ROCKER – MOJO

Our documentary KING ROCKER has been selected for the Sheffield Documentary Festival but didn’t get screened due to Covid.

It has, however, been named by rock-mag MOJO as the second best rockumentary of 2020, and I am now allowed to announce that it will be on newly free-to-air SKY ARTS, which has also recently covered PUNCHDRUNK THEATRE, COLD WAR STEVE and IVOR CUTLER, in the 1st ¼ of next year.

Who would have thought that the weird arts brief of BBC4 would one day be fulfilled by SKY ARTS?

Comedian Stewart Lee and director Michael Cumming (Brass Eye) investigate a missing piece of punk history. Robert Lloyd, best known for fronting cult bands The Prefects and The Nightingales, has survived under the radar for over four decades. Anti-rockumentary King Rocker weaves the story of Birmingham’s undervalued underdog autodidact into that of the city’s forgotten public sculpture of King Kong, eschewing the celebrity interview and archive-raid approach for a free-associating bricolage of Indian food, bewildered chefs, vegetable gardening, prescription medicines, pop stardom and pop art.

I cannot tell you how happy I am to have been involved with this positive and uplifting project, and it has been a mental lifeline this year.

https://www.firerecords.com/films/king-rocker/
https://www.firerecords.com/films/

4) LIVE SHOWS UPDATE

I’m not even bothering with trying to list dates here this month, as so many are in flux. I will send a big list out on Jan 1st. BUT…

1) All outstanding shows of the Snowflake/Tornado tour will be rescheduled/are being rescheduled for whenever they are allowed to happen.
The venues have your ticket money and this is helping them not collapse and keep an arts exoskeleton in place for whatever future cultural lives we are able to have.
I will do these shows. Don’t worry.

2) All little socially-distanced club gigs (that I had down for working out new stuff in November, in London, N’castle, E’bro & Glasgow), have been pulled, and will be rescheduled. Again, the venues have your ticket money which is good for them, so take a chill pill daddi-o. As for any December 3rd onwards club shows, these are currently still on.

For the record, unlike clay’s Grayson Perry, I do not believe that venues or artists that are struggling under covid are ‘dead wood’ which will be cut out by the covid.
Some of the best artists currently working in the world in comedy and music are stacking shelves and driving vans right now, and always will be, having not been lucky enough to enjoy the patronage of various massive publicly funded arts institutions, or the randomised breaks that befall their lessers.
In my experience, the best people have often found commercial viability elusive, and the pestilence only exacerbates this. SHIT FLOATS. As a rule, most profitable art is rubbish, and my own success only makes me doubt my worth.
The Nov club dates were also an effort to make money for small venues to ensure that the infrastructure that supports our artform survives.
All changes as they occur will be listed on the LIVE PAGE OF THE WEBSITE

5) LTD EDTN PRINTS

All supposed merch you see of me on-line, like the YOU SAY YOU’RE ENGLISH football scarf or 100% PEARS t-shirts, is unofficial and I see nothing for it.

But these legit artists have made prints of my ANTI-TORY quips as lovely art to tie in with an exhibition by NEW NORTH PRESS that opens on Nov 20th – somehow.

Prints will be on sale at the show and on their website (www.new-north-press.co.uk).

There will – hopefully – also be a dedicated website with all the posters on it (www.revertingtotype.com), that will showcase the 150 prints from presses around the world, plus our 25 collaborative prints.

This is classier merch than a LITTLE BRITAIN action figure of a bloke pretending to be disabled.

6) THESE FERAL LANDS

Mediaeval minimalist Laura Cannell, whom my wife and I have been huge fans of since the Welsh free-jazz harpist Rhodri Davis recommended her work to me in the bar of the ex-Hungarian embassy in East Berlin over a decade ago, is “beyond excited” to announce her new release THESE FERAL LANDS, for which she asked me to write and mumble words for 4 of the 10 tracks.

Laura says…

“I am beyond excited to announce: THESE FERAL LANDS Volume I – Out Friday 13th November 2020. Feat. LAURA CANNELL + STEWART LEE + KATE ELLIS + POLLY WRIGHT + JENNIFER LUCY ALLAN. This is our Personal and Collective Folklore. PRE-ORDER Ltd Ed CD/DL NOW

https://brawlrecords.bandcamp.com/album/these-feral-lands-volume-1

Twitter Tags: @kateelliscello @JenniferLAllan @laurarecorder @BrawlRecords
Instagram: @ghostsofsongs @lauracannellmusic @jenniferlucyallan @kateelliscello
#theseferallands

There are also wristbands / Bookmarks for sale – HERE

TUSK interview – HERE

7) BENNY’S BABBIES

Stewart Lee completists, and art fans, can order this fabulous print, by agit-artist Cold War Steve, of Birmingham, called Benny’s Babbies from Birmingham Art Gallery.

The montage includes me, and many other far more significant Midlands figures i.e Steel Pulse, Kevin Rowlands, Mr Egg, Black Sabbath, and Robert LLoyd, and obviously any sales will help Birmingham’s superb art gallery, with its astonishing pre-Raphaelite selection and cool stuff by Laura Knight and Emmy Bridgwater, through the plague times.
A bostin Winterval gift for the Brummie, or ex-Brummie, in your life. £15.
We are all Benny’s Babbies. Ich bin ein Benny’s Babby.

https://shop.birminghammuseums.org.uk/products/bennys-babbies-poster

8) SLEAFORD MODS NIGHT

Clapham Grand, 21st Jan, £17.50. For one night only, to celebrate the release of their new album Spare Ribs, Stewart Lee will be in conversation with Sleaford Mods. Expect ridiculous questions and lengthy monologues.

TICKETS

9) TREES BOX SET

Anyone that knows me will be sick of me banging on about this brilliant forgotten turn of the ‘70s folk rock band, Trees, for the last 30+ years.
Their lone two albums, and subsidiary materials, are all collected by FIRE in this fantastic package and I got to write the massive insert booklet.

https://www.firerecords.com/earth-reissue-trees-50th-anniversary-edition-boxset-out-13th-november/

8) I arrogantly recommend…

TIM WELLS
https://unbound.com/books/shine-on-me/

Tim Wells’ first skinhead werewolf novel, MOONSTOMP, perfectly fused disparate strands of 70s New English Library pulp fiction, into story that was both viscerally entertaining and subversively thought-provoking.
He needs our help to publish its sequel and you would be doing me and him a favour of you bunged in as I want to read it ASAP.

ELECTRIC MUSIC by WOLFHOUNDS with sleeve notes by me –

https://thewolfhounds.bandcamp.com/album/electric-music

FOR SAKE OF JOY by THE SEEN. Stew is the guest reader of prose by the percussionist John Stevens

THE SEEN – FOR SAKE OF JOY | confront-recordings

Isolation, an experimental music album assembled by Mark Jenkins during lockdown to raise money for Age UK, which includes actual people from Tangerine Dream and Neuronium and me, in STOKE NEWINGTON ISOLATION UNIT. https://www.cd-services.com/product_info.aspx?id=17272&qry=&key=&genre=148&pi=0

BOOKS.

100 STORIES TO SAY THANK-YOU, NHS benefit book edited by Adam Kay, featuring a story by me Dear NHS by Various | Waterstones

BEN MOOR’S NEW BOOK. Performance Artist and writer Ben Moor says,

“In lieu of the theatrical performances of Who Here’s Lost? I have printed the text of the piece for to be read at leisure.
This would have been on sale after the show to people who missed half the jokes (I tend to go fast) and so they can try and work out just what it was they’d been watching. The book version also includes a selection of pieces I wrote in each of the last four decades” CLICK THIS LINK

PODCASTS DADDI-0!

(Podcasts are like radio shows but are on the internet and you can hear them at any time.
I have just found out about them.)

These Weird Isles – LISTEN HERE

Pope Longergan Plimpin’ & Lompin’ – LISTEN HERE

Ian McPherson’s Hardly A Fit Subject For Levity – LISTEN HERE

The Internet

Comedy Without Errors – Some bloke has done a half hour study of me. https://youtu.be/0w-K0NWtysA

Erwin Saunders – This is one of those internet finds that one worries about sharing, and hesitates to recommend, a precious bloom that might wither on exposure to light.

There are 17 episodes which, oddly, have been numbered 1 – 17 in reverse order, so you need to start with 17 and work backwards.
Watch the 1st two without distraction, looking for the tiny points if light, ideally on a TV screen where you can see the backgrounds properly, and you will be hooked.
There is only one mis-step in the whole 2 hrs +, where “Erwin” obviously couldn’t resist using some footage he had shot some years ago, which is tonally slightly out of kilter with the rest of this brilliant labour of love.
I know that subscribers to this newsletter will treat Erwin Saunders’ work with the care and respect it deserves.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIptHpq0tre-Mnu2V1VOoww

Mark Silcox does Aesop’s Fables – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lWYVUxfEpY

Quentin Smirhes – musicologist – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwHw0B9zAL4Z08sVRRjfx5g

NEW FILMS

Honeyland (Tamara Kotevska, Ljubo Stefanov)
Days of The Bagnold Summer (Simon Bird)
The Laundromat (Stephen Soderbergh)
The Day Shall Come (Chris Morris)
Southern Journey Revisited (Tim Plester, Rob Curry)
The Social Dilemma (Jeff Orlowski)
The Peanut Butter Falcon (Tyler Nilson)

NEW MUSIC

The Nightingales – Four Against Fate
Rich Hopkins & Luminarios – Live At El Lokal
The Dream Syndicate – Universe Inside
Wild Billy Childish – Kings Of The Medway Delta
Garcia Peoples – Nublu NYC 2019
Windy & Carl – Allegiance & Conviction
The Frees – Live From The End Of The Earth
Alan Wilkinson & Douglas Benford – Appointed Views
The Heartwood Institute – Tomorrow’s People
John Edwards – Just Another Day At Home
Adam Bohman & Douglas Benford – Ad Hoc & Words
Laura Cannell – The Earth With Her Crowns
Jack Sharp – Good Times Older
The Frees – Live To Air
The Frees – Lips That Bite
Fixed Horizon – Jungle
Jon Free – Spiralling
Richard Skelton – Border Ballads
Howe Gelb – Cocoon
The Primevals – Second Nature
Richard Youngs – Vistas
Darren Hayman – Home Time
Richard Youngs – Four Verses
V/A – Seito In The Beginning Woman Was The Sun
Lucinda Williams – Good Souls & Better Angels
Bob Dylan – Rough & Rowdy Ways
Billy Sedlmayr – Mean What You Say
Shirley Collins – Heart’s Ease
Alasdair Roberts – The Songs of My Boyhood
Boris – No
Slum of Legs – Slum Of Legs
Tobin Sprout – Empty Horses
Thurston Moore – By The Fire
Rhodri Davies – Telyn Rawn
Idles – Ultra Mono
Guided by Voices – Mirrored Aztec
The Cravats – Hoorahland
Alison Cotton – Only Darkness Now
Rachel Aggs – Visitations 0202
Richard Dawson – Republic of Geordieland
Shopping – All Or Nothing
Tamikrest – Tamotait
Hen Ogled – Free Humans
Asian Dub Foundation – Access Denied
Chuck Prophet – The Land That Time Forgot
Cash Rivers & Sinners – Frankenstein’s New Nut Huggers
Guided by Voices – Styles We Paid For
Dope – Semi Legal On The Edge Of Culture
Carlton Melton – Where This Leads
David Grubbs – October 19 2017
Napalm Death – Throes of Joy In The Jaws of Defeatism
The William Loveday Intention – People Think They Know Me
The William Loveday Intention – 1-8

REISSUED OLD MUSIC

Tim Buckley – Live At The Electric (1968)
John Lee Hooker – Black Night Is Falling (1977)
The Heads – Reverberations Vol 1 (2005)
Barnabus – Beginning To Unwind (1971)
Miracle Legion – 4.20 Live At The Boot (2017)
V/A – Brown Acid The Tenth Trip (1969-74)
Creedence Clearwater Revival – Live At Woodstock (1969)
John Lee Hooker – Documenting The Sensation (1948-52)
Albert Ayler – New Grass (1969)
Guided by Voices – Doses of Nonchalance (1995)
The Fall – Tech College, St Helens Merseyside (1981)
Linda Hoyle – Pieces of Me (1971)
Day Of Phoenix – Mind Funeral (1971)
L7 – Smell The Magic – SubPop (1991)
The Fall – Imperial Wax Solvent special edition (2008)
Guided By Voices – Rara Avis (recent live)
Gorgeous Space Virus – Shall We Go Skinny Dipping? (1992)
Sume – The Sound of a Revolution (1973-6)
Gorgeous Space Virus – Shall We Go Skinny Dipping? (1992)
Sume – The Sound of a Revolution (1973-6)
V/A – Living On A Hill, Danish Underground (1967-74)
Culpeper’s Orchard – Mountain Music (1971-3)
Guided By Voices – Freak Anthems (2006)
Guided By Voices – Freak Anthems Revisited (2006)
Trees – Trees Box Set (1970)*****

IN OUR COVID ERA LAMENTATIONS…

Adam Schlesinger (Fountain of Wayne) (1967)
John Prine (outlaw country singer) (1946)
Henry Grimes (jazz bassist) (1935)
Hal Wilner (arranger) (1957)
Tim Brooke-Taylor (Goodie) (1940)
Lee Konitz (jazz saxophonist) (1927)
Matthew Seligman (Soft Boy) (1955)
Millie Small (ska singer) (1946)
Florian Schneider (Kraftwerk robot) (1947)
Bill Rieflin (drummer for hire) (1960)
Hugh McKenna (Tear Gas pianist) (1949)
Steve Weber (Holy Modal Rounder) (1942)
Astrid Kirchherr (photographer) (1938)
Danny Ray Thompson (Sun Ra saxophonist) (1947)
Aubrey Burl (archaeologist) (1926)
Phil May (Pretty Thing) (1944)
The Clacton Fin Whale (circa 2000)
Christo Vladimirov Javacheff (artist) (1930)
Doll Tor stone circle (3300 BC)
Kay Carroll (The Fall) (1948)
Bob the Cat (73 bus) (2006)
Alex Taylor (Shop Assistant, in 2005, and no-one knew)
Simon H Fell (jazz bassist) (1959)
Carl Reiner (director) (1922)
Ennio Morricone (architect of sonic dreams) (1928)
Keith Tippett (jazz pianist) (1947)
Jimmy Cobb (jazz drummer) (1929)
Barbara Smoker (Humanist) (1923)
The Nuffield Theatre, Southampton
Tony Elliot (Time Out) (1942)
Judy Dyble (folk singer) (1949)
Peter Green (blues guitarist) (1946)
Emitt Rhodes (power pop auteur) (1950)
Annie Ross (jazz bohemian) (1930)
Joe Ruby (Scooby-Doo) (1933)
Craig Weatherhill (folklorist) (1950)
Don Weller (jazz saxophonist) (1940)
Simeon Coxe (Silver Apple) (1938)
Diana Rigg (Avenger) (1938)
Toots Hibbert (reggae got soul) (1942)
Dele Fadele (carry bag man) (1962)
George Jeffrie (man’s-laughter maker) (1964)
Dave Kusworth (Brum punk Stone) (1960)
Gary Peacock (jazz bassist) (1935)
Doorkins (Southwark Cathedral Cat) (2005?)
Spencer Davis (Brumbeat pioneer) (1939)
The Cubbington Pear Tree (1770)
Fungie The Dingle Dolphin (1979)
Jill Paton Walsh (novelist) (1937)
Val Warner (poet) (1946)