Tory death-priests have our lives in their hands - July 2022 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - July 24th, 2022

“Dear Jim’ll. Please can you fix it for me to a) Go all upside down in a Typhoon plane like in Top Gun; b) Go in parliament drunk with my best friend Nadine and shout “boring” at the square politicians; c) Have a massive party with all food in a massive stately home for free;…

Boris Johnson and a robot from Abba? Someone put out an SOS… - July 2022 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - July 17th, 2022

A dead ant has more dignity than Boris Johnson. In north London, the day that Johnson inconclusively resigned was also Flying Ant Day, when thousands of frenzied male ants, and a few new queens, fly the nest to mate. The males are largely useless and, after spaffing, expire on the pavements and die. But unlike…

I’m not answering my phone, in case it’s No 10 offering me a job - July 2022 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - July 10th, 2022

I will always remember where I was when I heard Boris Johnson had resigned. It was 9.05am on Thursday 7 July, I was driving through Stamford Hill. This column had a final deadline of 10am and now I had 55 minutes to rewrite it. The bendy BBC Tory-trumpet Chris Mason broke the news via the…

Tory contempt for the arts means we face a second dark age - July 2022 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - July 3rd, 2022

On Wednesday, Dominic Raab, the Minister for Paddleboarding While Kabul Burns, mocked the Labour deputy leader for attending Glyndebourne while railway workers picketed. Who did Angela Rayner think she was? Pick up your stepladder, get back in your slum and eat your fried offal, peasant. “No opera for you!” Raab even winked at Rayner before…

Is the V&A a temple of culture or a brothel? - June 2022 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - June 26th, 2022

On Monday night, with confident impunity, the Conservative party staged a grand ritual reenactment of its “cash for access” ethos, hosting a £20,000-a-table fundraiser at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Lubov Chernukhin, the wife of Vladimir Putin’s former deputy finance minister, and one-time Neighbours star Holly Valance, were among wealth-smeared guests invited to bid for…

Refugees, welcome to Schrödinger’s Rwanda - June 2022 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - June 19th, 2022

Philosophers delight in the concept of Schrödinger’s cat, a cat that is both inside a box and outside a box at the same time. (Ironically, the somewhat scatty Erwin Schrödinger himself had forgotten that he owned two identical cats, one of which liked boxes while the other hated them, explaining his confusion.) One day, philosophers…