Fifa, Eurovision, the Baftas… the poison is all around us - June 2015 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - June 7th, 2015

As a tiny child, I fell in love with the pageantry and camaraderie of the Eurovision song contest. But my infant innocence was shattered as early as 1969 when, barely 18 months old, I watched Norway’s Kirsti Sparboe crawl criminally into last place with her swinging slice of Carnaby Street pop Oj, Oj, Oj, Så…

From pagan rituals to the Queen’s speech: the more things change … - May 2015 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - May 31st, 2015

Sometime between quitting drinking two months ago and the evening of the general election, I developed the ability to travel through time. Or rather, it appears that time has developed the ability to travel through me. That said, if you remember when 70s donkey-jacket socialism dissolved in the acid of 80s Thatcherism, then the instinctive…

On the A1, at the border of England and Scotland, a miracle unfolded… - May 2015 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - May 24th, 2015

Are we naturally selfish? Or do we have an innate sense of empathy for our fellow living things? The radio journalist Herbert Morrison watched the Hindenberg come down and announced, “Oh! The humanity!” And once I stood outside a pub on the canal in Camden and watched a crowd of drunken men laughing and cheering…

It’s a titanic struggle between two tortoises – and not a hare in sight - May 2015 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - May 3rd, 2015

The Thracian slave Aesop is historically lauded as the master of the fabular form, pitting simplistically symbolic creatures – the wily fox, the lascivious bat and the slothful sloth – against each other in tales that have delighted fans of prescriptive anthropomorphic narrative for generations. But the current race towards No 10 has an audacious…

I feel your pain, David Cameron – and I’ll be out of my job soon, too - April 2015 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - April 26th, 2015

My irregular “David Mitchell is on holiday” columns on page seven of the Observer New Review frequently generate massive web traffic, with thousands of below-the-line reader comments, though, admittedly, most of them call for me to be sexually punished. But these opportunistic weekly election diaries have provoked minimal comment-is-free contributions from the Observer’s hopefully future-proof…

Somerset’s medieval lepers meet the Tory visionary dream team - April 2015 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - April 19th, 2015

This week, on a break between standup tour dates, I am on holiday with the children in Nether Stowey, Somerset, from where I file the next of my election columns. As a north London Old Speckled Hen socialist I assumed there would be little political for my satirical pen to set about in Somerset, where…