A papal encounter with the bat-faced duck-lion - May 2017 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - May 28th, 2017

Beelzebub, the gluttonous emperor of hell, master of calumny, foremost in wickedness and crime, is a fallen angel who presides over the Order of the Fly. Some say he is as high as a tower. Others say he has the figure of a snake, but with the generative organs of a young woman, and the…

When Boris Johnson’s inner monster goes on the rampage - May 2017 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - May 21st, 2017

Last Wednesday our chief Brexiter Boris Johnson dressed up in a Sikh costume to visit a Bristol gurdwara. There he told the alcohol-abstaining supplicants to take bottles of Johnnie Walker to Indian relatives to speed post-Brexit booze exports, leading one to comment that had he made that suggestion in India the foreign secretary would have…

How a sex robot ended up on The One Show sofa - May 2017 The Observer - May 14th, 2017

Artificially intelligent humanoid sexual partners are now commercially available. And indeed, I have often wondered if I myself am in fact one such “sex robot”. My lovers always disengage from me in silently satisfied wonder, and rarely request second encounters, having had their expectations soul-shatteringly exceeded, their sexual futures rendered endlessly disappointing. I’m joking of…

Even standup has been weaponised by fake news - April 2017 The Observer - April 30th, 2017

Last Sunday, Le Pen was predicted a 92% landslide; Serge Gainsbourg’s zombie corpse, barely discernible from his living form, rose from the grave and endorsed the Front National; and, apparently, 10-hour queues meant it wasn’t worth busy French metropolitan liberals turning up to vote, as they would not then have time to drink absinthe in…

No space is safe when even our TVs are spies - March 2017 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - March 12th, 2017

I only got a “smart” television set 18 months ago, so I have already avoided years of covert surveillance by the CIA, the FBI, MI5, CI5 and NWA. No one is safe from Samsung’s all-seeing Eye of Sauron. Apparently, a deeply embedded program currently enables the intelligence agencies to note and monitor anyone who is…

My Paul Nuttalls routine has floated back up the U-bend - December 2016 The Observer - December 4th, 2016

I believe it was a frog who wrote, “Explaining a joke is like dissecting the American writer Elwyn Brooks White. You understand it better but Elwyn Brooks White dies in the process, ideally before completing Stuart Little.” I may have got this the wrong way round. I am a multiple British comedy and Bafta award-winning…