I’m not sure I feel comfortable pinning a poppy to my cagoule this year - November 2023 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - November 12th, 2023

Well done, rightwing culture warriors! I’ve worn a poppy with pride every year since I was a choirboy, singing around Solihull war memorial on Remembrance Sunday in the suede denim 1970s, where the solemnity of the situation and the stark beauty of the Last Post momentarily softened even the talented young choirmaster’s yearnings. But I…

The Tory MP protecting Ipswich, Twix by Twix - October 2023 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - October 29th, 2023

Stop me if I’ve told you this one before, but 20 years ago, a BNP-supporting aunt of mine forwarded me a document, purporting to be a scholarly explanation of why Muslims were inhuman, by a particular academic from a particular university. Even back in the pre-Cambridge Analytica days, I still did a quick fact check,…

Labour’s meat tax is just another Tory lie that we’ve all been forced to swallow - October 2023 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - October 8th, 2023

When I was a younger man, if someone had come up to me in the old Wheatsheaf pub in Camden on a Friday night and said they wanted to tax my meat, I would have embraced the experience with humble gratitude. But how things have changed! Now the last thing anyone wants is to see…

Wake up, people! GB News is after our National Trust scones - October 2023 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - October 1st, 2023

On Wednesday, the professionally cross actor-songwriter Laurence Fox was taken off air by GB News, the newsertainment channel funded by the Brexiter philanthropist and banjo spaffer Sir Paul Marshall. Fox had performed a light comic monologue to a clearly delighted Dan Wootton in which he explained that only cuckolded incels would climb into bed with…

Vote no to the thinktank pod people trying to body-snatch the National Trust - September 2023 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - September 24th, 2023

I love British traditions. Whose heart soars not upon seeing some drunk men chasing a cheese down a fatally steep Gloucestershire hill, or some drunk men burning their faces off carrying flaming tar barrels on their heads in a Devonshire village, or some drunk men dropping an enormous effigy of David Jason into a giant…

As Britain drowns in filth, the Tories want more toilets - August 2023 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - August 20th, 2023

There are important questions to be asked about lavatories, and Kemi Badenoch is certainly the Tory best suited to answering them. A report in the government’s Daily Telegraph mouthpiece announced that a new government initiative would see the equalities minister, Kemi Badenoch, appoint a Tory lavatories tsar, a task that would doubtless make her flush…