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…

When in Europe, dress like a walking apology for Brexit - July 2017 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - July 9th, 2017

In the 1980s, the pornographic bookshop (bad) where we bought amyl nitrate was opposite the feminist bookshop (good), where we hung around skim-reading Spare Rib and Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (1970), to try to get dates with the clever feminists, who saw through us immediately. The feminist bookshop…

‘Oh, Jeremy Clarkson’. Is that any better as a Glastonbury chant? - July 2017 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - July 2nd, 2017

Jeremy Corbyn appeared at the Glastonbury CND festival, as part of an ongoing comeback more surprising than Dylan’s 1997 Time Out of Mind turnaround. Like Dylan, a contrary Corbyn refused to give his enthusiastic new fans what they wanted. A last-minute set amendment pledging to block Brexit would have displaced even the Wombles from all-time…

Only that woman from the DUP can save us from Brexit now - June 2017 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - June 25th, 2017

Brexit promises evaporate. The hot, wet lie-farts of the liar Boris Johnson, trapped in the glamping yurt of his trousers since last year’s referendum, are now contained no more. Europa leans forward decisively, pulls down the foreign secretary’s pants, and sets his foul gases free. And guess what? They stink. I write on Wednesday backstage…