Rishi Sunak is taking us for mugs. £180 smart mugs - March 2022 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - March 27th, 2022

My Covid-postponed standup tour continues. Another Thursday morning; another hotel room; another opportunity to purloin branded shower caps and shoe-mitts that I will never use, yet which signify an indefinable victory over normal life, from which I appear to have fatally exempted my nomadic self. My stolen mini shampoo bottle supply will outlast my hair.…

Putin tied Boris Johnson up in his own trousers - March 2022 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - March 13th, 2022

A nakedly corrupt and evidently narcissistic leader, surrounded by a phalanx of accommodating acolytes, enriched his supporters with liquidised public assets and spurious government schemes, flagrantly broke international treaties, trashed domestic political standards, systematically flooded social media with fake news, used his power over the press to spread disinformation over many decades, sought to destabilise…

I knew Abramovich was taking the piss - March 2022 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - March 6th, 2022

Superyachts seek safe havens. Property portfolios dissolve. Lawyers are engaged, accountants contracted. Politicians confect plausible denials over ostentatious donations. Tory party co-chairman Ben Elliot deletes online boasts of his company’s “15 years’ experience providing luxury lifestyle management services to Russia’s elite and corporate members”. It seems there were oligarchs everywhere, all along. We’ve been living…

The government’s Flickr photo-diary is a spoof unto itself - February 2022 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - February 20th, 2022

Did you know the UK government had a Flickr account? A fast-moving succession of unexplained photographs create an impression that things involving Tory politicians are happening, at a very high level, and at some speed, but offer no explanation of what they mean. It is perfect – the taxpayer-funded, vanity-engineered photo-diary of a group of…

In the name of God, let Sue Gray do her job - January 2022 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - January 23rd, 2022

I’m back on the road until August with my five-star standup show, Snowflake Tornado, mouthing confirmation-bias to packed rooms of masked elitists. Over six nights at the Oxford Playhouse, I saw the familiar and friendly staff and crowds return, though the historic Eagle and Child pub sadly appears to have closed. It was here in…

How committed is No 10 to toppling the topplers? - January 2022 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - January 9th, 2022

In the old days, vandals and hooligans simply knocked things over, be they flowerpots, bus stops, old ladies or standards of common English decency. But these days anything that is knocked over, as long as it is knocked over with a sense of clear moral purpose, isn’t merely knocked over, it seems, but “toppled”. Indeed,…