After Garygate, I’ve shown my BBC licence fee the red card - March 2023 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - March 19th, 2023

On Monday, like some Tunbridge Wells Daily Telegraph Tory who puts his foot through the television in a fury and sends Lenny Henry and Clare Balding the bill, I went online and cancelled my television licence. Why should I subsidise the rotting corpse of the BBC? It was once an idealistic public institution, but the…

Brexit has reversed the brains of Sunak and Starmer - March 2023 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - March 5th, 2023

The contradictions of the Brexit era confound comedy. Having publicly extolled the virtues of Northern Ireland’s access to the single market on Tuesday, Rishi Sunak was momentarily so engorged by exciting economics he forgot the ideological implications of what he was saying, while Tory advisers chewed off their feet backstage. The Tory Brexiter Sunak is…

The ghosts of rotten Tories haunt my routine - February 2023 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - February 19th, 2023

It’s half term and I am rewriting the opening topical 20 minutes of my touring standup show. Again. Damn Rishi’s rollercoaster ride. The current Conservative cabinet has had more lineup changes than the Fall, but will not leave as significant a cultural legacy, bar a similarly large succession of weighty books trying to make subsequent…

Thanks to Nadhim Zahawi, the Tories’ bar of shame has reached new depths - January 2023 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - January 22nd, 2023

I was extremely surprised last week to learn that the Tory chair, Nadhim Zahawi, who famously used public money to warm the stables of his chilly horses, had finally tasted the fist of justice. Last year, Zahawi said: “I’ve always declared my financial interests and paid my taxes in the UK.” In fact, it seems,…

Prince Harry’s frostbite has taken the heat off the Tories - January 2023 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - January 15th, 2023

I have tried to avoid knowing anything about the revelations in Prince Harry’s book, so that I could use the privilege of these column-inch opportunities to ridicule something more significant. But the Harry headlines snigger from the newsagent shelves, elegant sirens shouting about sex and drugs but in the gruff tones of high-street newspaper vendors.…

The trusty tarot has revealed the Tories’ future to me - January 2023 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - January 1st, 2023

I believe it was John Lennon and Yoko Ono who sang: “A very merry Christmas. And a happy new year. Let’s hope it’s a good one, without Andrew Pierce.” (In the current climate of “cancel culture” and “wokeness”, can I make clear this is a joke? I may have rather put my foot in it,…