How Toby Young got where he isn’t today - January 2018 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - January 14th, 2018

The grindingly algorithmic controversialist Toby Young was always painfully and obviously in the oedipal shadow of his socialist intellectual father, Michael Young. Each of his desperately politically incorrect tweets was an attempt to cuckold and castrate his progenitor. Toby Young has wasted his life spitting cold mucus at a ghost and throwing clumps of his…

Christmas sounds a clanging chime of doom - December 2017 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - December 12th, 2017

There is much we can learn from the ancient traditions of Winterval, each culture’s festive myths and rituals being equally valid, and equally instructive, irrespective of their veracity or worth. Upon the solstice night in Latveria, for example, Pappy Puffklap leaves a dried clump of donkey excrement on the breakfast table of each home. Is…

Can Harry and Meghan make Britain whole again? - December 2017 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - December 3rd, 2017

In 2005, the then 20-year-old Prince Harry appeared as a Nazi at a fancy dress party. Perhaps the uniform had been inherited from his great-great-uncle, Edward VIII, who was not averse to a spot of recreational sieg heiling. But next year Prince Harry is to marry the mixed-race descendant of a black American slave, his wedding garments scrupulously stripped of…

My futile attempt to sell satire to the Daily Mail - November 2017 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - November 26th, 2017

Pasting together doctored drawings of the Daily Mail’s long-running cartoon dog, Fred Basset, I’m creating the mother of all monetisable Christmas cash-in books. In the first of a typical three-frame strip, Fred defecates insolently on a pavement. Then Fred’s owner scoops up the excrement before – and this is the twist – popping it through…

Kim Jong-un’s happiness is just a great mini-break away - September 2017 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - September 10th, 2017

At the beginning of the current decade I was often mistaken for the then North Korean dictator-in-waiting Kim Jong-un, which led to an embarrassing incident in a pet shop on Dalston High Road in February 2009. Needless to say, I was unable to convince the Polish lady behind the counter that I was merely looking…

Political turmoil has left humorists with nothing to aim at - July 2017 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - July 16th, 2017

Last summer I wrote a comedy drama script, currently “in development with a major broadcaster”, concerning a charming, confident, clever and machiavellian politician. Named Horace Thompson, he manipulates popular culture to consolidate support for a controversial referendum he narrowly won, intending to further his own self-interest. And he was in the Bullingdon Club. And he…