STEWART LEE – BIG ISSUE FRINGE DIARY #1 - August 2007 Big Issue - By Stewart Lee - August 1st, 2007

Another year, another Edinburgh Fringe. I am on my 21st, and for me the Fringe used to be a fun place, where my own brand of pretentious, experimental stand-up enjoyed no end of effusive reviews, if little or no financial reward. But this year I really need Edinburgh to work out for me in a…

Scottish Humanists Podcast - January 2007 By Stewart Lee - January 1st, 2007

Last year, as I crossed a picket-line of religious protestors trying to ban a theatre piece I’d co-written, a phrase popped unbidden into my head. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Few would disagree that the stories and sayings of religions and myths are an unavoidable part of the imaginative fabric…

An Englishman In Kalgoorlie - November 2005 By Stewart Lee - November 2nd, 2005

Kalgoorlie is an hour long flight inland from Perth, the world’s most isolated city. Off the back of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival I’d been offered a slot on a package show of stand-up’s touring Western Australia. It was reading a description of Kalgoorlie, where we were to play two nights, that convinced me to…

Hotel Toiletries - July 2005 By Stewart Lee - July 1st, 2005

My bathroom contains a six foot square area of hotel toiletries, arranged over two large shelves, set in a westerly alcove. I have harvested the toiletries from hotels, bed and breakfast establishments, and motels over a fifteen year period of travelling the world as a stand-up comedian, during which I have spent approximately half of…

English Hecklers In New Zealand - May 2005 By Stewart Lee - May 5th, 2005

I have had a great run so far at the New Zealand comedy festival in Auckland. The Classic on Queen Street is one of my favourite five spaces to perform worldwide. It’s a converted porn cinema, there’s table service but it’s genuinely unobtrusive, and it has the kind of faded glamour you can’t manufacture. Pretty…

West From Walpi - January 2004 No Such Thing As A Free Ride - By Stewart Lee - January 1st, 2004

In the Autumn of 2000, my partner and I were driving around the deserts of the American Southwest. It was a holiday, really, but I was also trying to research the area, and the culture of native peoples specifically, for a novel I was writing. It was hard to find out much about the Hopi,…