I was getting on so well with Gillian Welch. Then David Cameron butts in - February 2012 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - February 12th, 2012

Last week, I was reading Word, the culture primer for time-poor ageing hipsters, a midlife crisis in magazine form. Apparently, in December, the Tory feminist MP Louise Mensch, (whose ill-judged jokes about Occupy protesters on a recent Have I Got News for You sank slowly and silently like quern stones dropping down a deep Cotswold…

Shame on you, Alex Salmond, for selling us out to the Bullingdon Club - February 2012 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - February 5th, 2012

Britons from Scotland are the butt of many jokes. They are, apparently, financially cautious, fond of liquor and mistrustful of fruit. They delight in sexualised invertebrate torment and underestimate in their provision for female public toilets. And they over-indulge in recreational drug abuse. In fact, one of the few insults witty enough to be forgivable…

Will Cameron’s recipe for ‘successful’ films result in a glut of silent comedies? - January 2012 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - January 22nd, 2012

When I was starting out as a standup, I worked nights in an orange juice factory. I got £3.50 an hour and as much orange juice as I could lick off my two hands. The amount of orange concentrate we added to the raw drink at the initial stages determined whether it was bound for…

What a tragic wasted opportunity to present a true portrait of the Iron Lady - January 2012 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - January 15th, 2012

I have been too busy to see The Iron Lady (which I assumed was a distaff spin-off from Marvel’s Iron Man), but none the less, I am now about to use it as a lead-in to discussing the critical rehabilitation of Margaret Thatcher. I did, however, find time to watch Troll Hunter last week, an…

You scumbags, you maggots… leave that sacred Pogues song alone - January 2012 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - January 8th, 2012

The Pogues with Kirsty MacColl. Photograph: Brian Rasic/Rex Features When Colombian drugs lords invented Father Christmas as a marketing tool for cocaine, back in the 1980s, they could never have imagined that this red-faced, overweight man, whipping his staff while shooting through flurries of “snow”, would one day become beloved by infants worldwide. And when,…

Does comic ‘bravery’ go hand in hand with being offensive and stupid? - November 2011 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - November 13th, 2011

Ricky Gervais is an actor, writer, and director. He is brave. I am a standup. I am not brave. I only ever did one brave thing. In 2005, I agreed, while drunk, to jump off the tallest structure in New Zealand. New Zealanders’ high living standards mean they are driven to create artificial jeopardy, usually…