American Cornish pasties? Did King Arthur die for this? - March 2018 The Observer - March 11th, 2018

Say “Cornwall” to an uncontacted pygmy brave deep in a New Zealand forest and his bamboo flute will swiftly carve the shape of the Cornish pasty into the Shotover riverbank sands. “Oggy, oggy, oggy,” he will cry, as he mimes pushing a too-hot Cornish pasty into his unambiguously delighted face. “Oggy, oggy, oggy!” But last…

The Brexit culture wars are driving me bananas - March 2018 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - March 4th, 2018

On 10 May 2016, in the closing days of the Brexit campaign, at an impromptu speech in Cornwall, lying Boris Johnson again invoked the Brexiters’ foundation myth that the EU sought to ban bendy bananas. But voters who backed leaving the EU in order to get back the bendy bananas, which had not been taken…

The Fall – The Case For The Last Two Decades - March 2018 Record Collector Issue 477 March '18 - By Stewart Lee - March 1st, 2018

After a messy on-stage altercation at New York’s Brownies club on April 7th 1998, Smith parted company with his then band, including bass-player Steve Hanley, a cornerstone of The Fall’s initial two decade run who, between 1987 to 1993, had helped wrestle The Fall into the Top Fifty. Obituary wisdom has it that the twenty…

Is a sci-fi-style dystopia such a bad Brexit outcome? - February 2018 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - February 25th, 2018

For nearly 18 months now, the increasingly frustrated European liberal fat-cat elite has been asking for some clues as to what we brave British Brexiters imagine Brexit will be, the pastry edifice of Theresa May’s monumental “Brexit means Brexit” statement having already crumbled last year, when a moth’s tear fell near it. Unable to say…

I was a pawn in one of the great comedy crimes - February 2018 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - February 18th, 2018

The weekend before last, my curator friend worried there had been a burglary at his Bloomsbury Museum of Comedy, but nothing was taken. Perhaps some obsessed comedy fan had wanted to caress the stuffed bear from Steptoe and Son with Matthew Corbett’s Sooty puppet while dressed in Freddie Starr’s yellow teddy boy jacket? Aware of…

Satire only makes Jacob Rees-Mogg stronger - February 2018 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - February 11th, 2018

Take heed, the metropolitan liberal elite! Cower, all you Conservative moderates!! Weep, environmentalists, and prepare your online petitions!!! Jacob Rees-Mogg is upon you, a black darkness over the shire, a shade upon your allotments, a frozen shadow upon all your back garden gazebos. And your ancient weapons will not work upon his impervious hide, their…