Top Gear: can any mortal control this foul, pulsating orifice? - June 2015 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - June 21st, 2015

The Britpop DJ and breakfast television innovator Chris Evans is a brave man. But perhaps he has a suicidal streak. Or maybe, more nobly, he has discovered a belated desire to do some good in the world, as if to atone for the crimes of his past, before walking willingly to his inevitable doom. Like…

Britain’s got talent, but don’t trust these clowns to find it - June 2015 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - June 14th, 2015

Today I took my four-year-old to London zoo, where I am currently appearing as the pre-recorded voice of a spider, Morgan Freeman having proved unavailable. A handler had a snowy owl on his wrist. The bird appeared comfortable with its “as seen in Harry Potter” tag, and was yet to do anything as drastic as…

Fifa, Eurovision, the Baftas… the poison is all around us - June 2015 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - June 7th, 2015

As a tiny child, I fell in love with the pageantry and camaraderie of the Eurovision song contest. But my infant innocence was shattered as early as 1969 when, barely 18 months old, I watched Norway’s Kirsti Sparboe crawl criminally into last place with her swinging slice of Carnaby Street pop Oj, Oj, Oj, Så…

From pagan rituals to the Queen’s speech: the more things change … - May 2015 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - May 31st, 2015

Sometime between quitting drinking two months ago and the evening of the general election, I developed the ability to travel through time. Or rather, it appears that time has developed the ability to travel through me. That said, if you remember when 70s donkey-jacket socialism dissolved in the acid of 80s Thatcherism, then the instinctive…

On the A1, at the border of England and Scotland, a miracle unfolded… - May 2015 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - May 24th, 2015

Are we naturally selfish? Or do we have an innate sense of empathy for our fellow living things? The radio journalist Herbert Morrison watched the Hindenberg come down and announced, “Oh! The humanity!” And once I stood outside a pub on the canal in Camden and watched a crowd of drunken men laughing and cheering…

It’s a titanic struggle between two tortoises – and not a hare in sight - May 2015 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - May 3rd, 2015

The Thracian slave Aesop is historically lauded as the master of the fabular form, pitting simplistically symbolic creatures – the wily fox, the lascivious bat and the slothful sloth – against each other in tales that have delighted fans of prescriptive anthropomorphic narrative for generations. But the current race towards No 10 has an audacious…