Stewart Lee: what the National Theatre means to me - October 2013 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - October 20th, 2013

Jerry Springer: The Opera. ‘The staff at the National are like the civil servants in Yes, Minister’ says its director Stewart Lee. ‘They save you from making terrible mistakes.’ Photograph: Dave Benett/Getty Comedian Stewart Lee co-wrote and co-directed the National’s first new opera, Jerry Springer: The Opera, which started life at BAC before running at…

The end of the world is nigh … anyone out there interested? - October 2013 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - October 6th, 2013

Last Monday the International Panel on Planet-Threatening Demi-Gods presented the most peer-reviewed scientific paper in all human history, giving unarguable evidence that Earth will be destroyed by a malevolent super-being called Malignos at teatime (GMT) next Tuesday. I was on tour, sitting in Belfast airport departure lounge, when I read about it in the Guardian.…

The rich get richer, the poor get poorer and the coalition plays silly burgers - June 2013 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - June 30th, 2013

George Osborne chewed his pencil nervously. It tasted funny. He worried where it had been. But his fellow Bullingdon boy Nat Rothschild had assured him he had burned all those pencils. Maybe this one had escaped the inferno. It was Wednesday evening. Our conscience-stricken chancellor required sustenance. Lashed by the twin madames of ethics and…

Gobbling pate allowed a nation to scoff at the legacy of Thatcherism - April 2013 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - April 20th, 2013

During Margaret Thatcher’s funeral on Wednesday, the Right Reverend Richard Chartres, the bishop of London, boasted to all and sundry of how the late prime minister had once physically restrained him when he lunged at some pulverised ducks’ breasts. He had intended to cram into his mouth. Fatty duck pâté, it transpired, was a forbidden…

Margaret Thatcher is dead. But someone has reinvented her life - April 2013 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - April 14th, 2013

Baroness Margaret Thatcher died on Monday. Or so they say. Whenever an important figure passes away, the usual marijuana-muddled conspiracy quacks are quick to suggest they faked their own death. But the demise of Baroness Margaret Thatcher has been accepted without question, even by friends of mine who love Nordic jazz fusion, live on houseboats,…

I’ve seen Jesus and thanks to Iain Duncan Smith She’s in a bad way - April 2013 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - April 7th, 2013

Over the Easter weekend, I myself was deservedly one of a party of important contemporary artists invited by Danny Boyle to a research project buried beneath the Chipping Norton triangle. Our task was to use our visionary gifts to respond creatively to a government-initiated search not for the “God particle”, but for God himself. Donning…