Pity David Attenborough – the BBC’s Galápagos tortoise - May 2016 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - May 8th, 2016

In 1997 I looked into the pre-atomic age eyes of Harriet, the then 166-year-old Galápagos tortoise, in an Australian zoo, and saw myself reflected back, a traveller in time. And earlier this year, I looked into the pre-digital-age eyes of David Attenborough, on the platform of Oxford station, and saw myself reflected back, a traveller…

The EU debate is a cynical battle of big beasts, not beliefs - May 2016 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - May 1st, 2016

Last weekend I found myself trapped on an isolated, monster-infested Pacific atoll with a pair of twin psychic Japanese schoolgirls. A skyscraper-sized lizard, with three fire-breathing heads, the result of careless radioactive experiments in the 50s, and now a huge clumsy metaphor for both the dangers of human scientific meddling with Mother Nature and postwar Japanese identity…

Defy John Whittingdale and a dominatrix will whip you into line - April 2016 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - April 24th, 2016

Today, if I worked as a cartoonist for a tabloid newspaper, I could simply hand in a hurried scrawl of heaven, where Victoria Wood now plays the piano alongside Prince on guitar and John Whittingdale’s political credibility on slap bass. But instead, I must write. Does it matter that the torture-porn fan, free-market fundamentalist and…

Curating… you are the disease, I am the curator - March 2016 The Observer - March 27th, 2016

The television food personality and chef Angela Hartnett, formerly best remembered as the Rod Hull to Gordon Ramsay’s Emu, is curating something called Kitchen Tales at the Chipping Norton Set’s cheese and music festival, Wilderness. But I can’t work out from the blurb if it is an exhibition, an event, a shop, or just some…

Jeremy Hunt is an ethical columnist’s nightmare - February 2016 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - February 14th, 2016

Junior doctors demonstrate outside the department of health on 11 February. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images It is not always easy to do the right thing. In the 80s, for example, I remember when we all tried to avoid buying apartheid-era South African fruit. “Are these apples from South Africa?”, a photographer friend asked a cockney…

Who will write the front page this nation needs? - February 2016 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - February 7th, 2016

On Wednesday night the infinite number of monkeys that usually write the editorial for the Daily Mail had fallen victim en masse to the zika virus. And so, having made something of a name for myself in Fleet Street, having filled in for David Mitchell here these past few months, I was called in at…