Showing 498 results for: Written For Money
English Covid: a truly world-beating virus - December 2020 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - December 27th, 2020
If the United Kingdom can take one positive thing from the Covid-19 crisis, it is that the most powerful and virulent version of the virus is perceived globally as being British, faster and stronger than its puny foreign counterparts. And the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, has rightly declared this the sort of thing that makes…
Fear not! Santa has a plan to save Christmas from Covid and Brexit - December 2020 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - December 20th, 2020
Like many disappointed parents throughout the UK, on Wednesday morning I received the following letter from Father Christmas’s official address, Santa’s Grotto, Reindeerland, XM4 5HQ. “Ho! Ho! Ho! It is I, Father Christmas. I am writing to you to update you on the steps we are taking to maintain The Magic of Christmas ™ ®…
Look at the Tories – scotch egg all over their faces - December 2020 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - December 6th, 2020
On Wednesday morning, on Times Radio, the terminally bewildered health secretary, Matt Handcock, claimed unchallenged that our imminent departure from the EU meant the Covid vaccine had been approved more quickly. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency quickly clarified we had completed the process using existing provisions of EU law. If the Brexit-Covid government…
Migrants and my own modest proposal - November 2020 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - November 1st, 2020
In August, a television producer asked me to contribute to a forthcoming documentary about the 18th-century satirist Jonathan Swift. Swift is best known for writing the children’s story Gulliver’s Travels, which is about a man who keeps going all different sizes and riding around on mice. Swift failed to use the then fashionable travelogue format…
Since we’re talking fantasy Brexit deals… - October 2020 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - October 25th, 2020
In 1981, tarnished by a legacy of nuclear embarrassments, the leaky Cumbrian atomic power plant Windscale was rebranded as Sellafield and the problems of public perception simply melted away, like hot uranium seeping into a water table. Likewise, we are no longer about to embrace a similarly contaminated no-deal Brexit. We are instead welcoming a…
What’s the story with Britpop and Covid denial? - September 2020 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - September 20th, 2020
On Monday, the Oasis pop star Noel Gallagher announced his suspicion of masks: “If I get the virus it’s on me, it’s not on anyone else… it’s a piss-take,” declared the People’s Virologist. “There’s no need for it… They’re pointless.” The previous week, in a punctuation-resistant statement Auto-Tuned into near coherence, former Stone Roses singer…