Brent Burkhart joins the queue of post-Seasick Steve floorboard-stomping bluesmen, and trails the usual mis-spent childhood story, losing his eye tormenting snakes on stage with his Pentecostal revivalist family. Hymns to Jesus, Satan, booze, blues and drugs are barked one-man-band style over kick drum and rusted electric guitar, but despite the authentic Flannery O’Connor flourishes…
How I Escaped My Certain Fate By Stewart Lee Published by Faber Stewart Lee is one of the country’s most respected comedians, a tireless generator of new material and the inspiration for ‘national treasure’ Ricky Gervais, which is the cue for the start of this part-memoir/part-show transcript. During a lull in performing stand-up, in which…
His perfectionism is much-loved, but there’s only so much antipathy or disdain an audience can stomach. Watching Stewart Lee in action these days is like standing on the edge of a frozen lake and seeing a man half-submerged in the perishing ice. You throw him a rope – but he hurls it back. You didn’t…
I will, without exception, take the opportunity to use an ampersand wherever possible. Except on those points where it seems ugly. I am an aesthetic writer, would be the point. I’m also a big fan of Stewart Lee , to the point where I buy those weird anachronisms that DVDs are fast becoming. But lest…
Stewart Lee . . . offering a peep behind the curtains. Photograph: Jo Hale/Getty Images No one under 30 will believe this, but stand-up comedy was once exciting and unpredictable. You could actually enjoy it sober. Like the punks before them, the alternative comedians who sprang up in the 1980s saw it as their duty…
Comedian Stewart Lee has been on the radio pushing the familiar line that Birmingham City Council was accused of “banning” Christmas. As he correctly says in his interview, which you can hear for yourself here, “they called the celebrations as a whole Winterval and you were allowed to use the word Christmas, and you were…