Who will write the front page this nation needs? - February 2016 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - February 7th, 2016

On Wednesday night the infinite number of monkeys that usually write the editorial for the Daily Mail had fallen victim en masse to the zika virus. And so, having made something of a name for myself in Fleet Street, having filled in for David Mitchell here these past few months, I was called in at…

Osborne’s tax deals are the stuff of spaghetti westerns - January 2016 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - January 31st, 2016

My usual methods of decoding experience – art, literature and old punk rock records – have been rendered irrelevant by the sheer unscrupulousness of our public figures. We are in a post-Thick of It world, where the fictional PR attack dog Malcolm Tucker seems, compared with those schooled by Lynton Crosby OBE, dancing in Dionysiac…

In need of an affordable home? Turn left at Pluto - January 2016 The Observer - January 24th, 2016

A new Neptune-sized planet has been discovered, lurking beyond Pluto, after a prolonged study of unexplained orbital patterns. This method of detection has a precedent. As long ago as 1846, the French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier wrote to the physicist François Arago, saying “Sir! Surely you can see there must be a ninth planet, if…

Why I mourn for Eddie Redmayne’s old phone - January 2016 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - January 17th, 2016

I’m sure everyone will always remember where they were last Monday when they heard that Eddie Redmayne’s analogue handset had died. I was in a traffic jam in the Seven Sisters Road, with my two daughters, nine and five, as the quizzical tones of the Today programme’s Nicholas Robinson broke the news. At his wife’s…

I wouldn’t have an OBE unless they gave me one - January 2016 The Observer - January 10th, 2016

For the public good: Sir Lynton Crosby in Downing Street. Photograph: Steve Back/Rex The New Year knighting of David Cameron’s election strategist Lynton Crosby was the most obscene misuse of Conservative power since George Osborne, unable to locate his satchel, used a friend’s chained gimp as a human pencil sharpener. If the opposition were not…

Out of the mouths of babes, real religious truth - January 2016 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - January 3rd, 2016

Nicky Morgan believes that children should be taught that the UK is ‘in the main’ a Christian country. Photograph: John Stillwell/PA On 28 December I performed my annual progress around a Midlands motorway triangle, through sluggish bank holiday traffic, to venerate relatives’ graves. My eight-year-old daughter accompanied me, leavening my loneliness, and I made the…