Roll over Fleabag, Mrs Brown got the priest first - February 2020 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - February 2nd, 2020

Ant and Dec had barely hosed the protective goose fat off David Walliams’s semi-aquatic body at the National Television Awards on Tuesday, before the furious Twittersphere exploded as Mrs Brown’s Boys beat both The Flea Bag and Ricky Gervais’s Afterlife for Best Comedy. Furious alt right incels, whose loyalty Gervais cultivates indiscriminately online, were outraged.…

Laurence Fox is the hero we deserve – and I have just the role for him - January 2020 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - January 26th, 2020

The actor and pop singer Laurence Fox achieved peak Laurence Fox this month after explaining racism to a black female academic, photographing carrots sarcastically, doubting the existence of some Sikhs, fraternising with the Cumming-trumpets of the Today programme, and warning women under 35 of all races that he would withhold the bounty of his coveted…

Boris Johnson turns politics into a puppet show - January 2020 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - January 19th, 2020

My metropolitan liberal elitist friends here in 78.5% Remain-voting Hackney do not hold BBC news in high regard, its election coverage considered biased in favour of the government and Laura Kuenssberg merely a horrid flesh trombone through which Dominic Cumming honks his reverberating falsehoods. The news seemed skewed. During the election, the prime minister declined…

Ricky Gervais and Jeremy Clarkson are no laughing matter - January 2020 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - January 12th, 2020

Last week, in a much-needed and well-timed satire of snowflake hand-wringing over the Australian bush fires, the Sun’s politically incorrect columnist Jeremy Clarkson declared the continent unfit for human habitation and welcomed scorched whiteys back to the motherland, unaccompanied minors and all. The inevitable complaints will have already been offset by Sun accountants against the…

I’m seeing stars… but thanks to Elon Musk, not for much longer - January 2020 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - January 5th, 2020

My best New Year’s Eve was 15 years ago. A mis-calibrated dose of prescription painkillers in a bed and breakfast near Wootton Courtenay meant I slept through the whole thing. I slept through the fear. I slept through the dread. I slept through the recriminations and regrets. And I slept through Jools Holland insisting on…

Why Trump killed Santa and other stocking chillers - December 2019 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - December 29th, 2019

Few hearts can have been left unbroken on Friday night, when footage emerged of President Donald Trump triumphantly celebrating the killing of Father Christmas by American military forces on Boxing Day. My children were in floods of tears as we watched a clearly aroused Trump make the following televised statement, sitting beneath a sumptuously decorated…