It seems Russell Brand has more in common with Jesus than you’d think - October 2014 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - October 19th, 2014

Last week, at the age of 46, I moved with my family into a home, with a garden and a garage, in the Shropshire countryside. I feel guilty about my privilege, but not as guilty as Russell Brand does about his, which makes me a worse person, I think. In one of the extracts from…

The Clangers are truly British - October 2014 The Big Issue - By Stewart Lee - October 13th, 2014

It’s difficult, if you are of a certain age and political bent, not to talk about Smallfilms without sounding reactionary. Smallfilms makes me naively nostalgic for a world before free-market doctrines and focus groups, when a publicly funded body gave two indefatigable eccentrics and, we now realise, avatars of a distinctly British folk art, licence…

Smash The Cistern - October 2014 The NME - By Stewart Lee - October 1st, 2014

In April this year, I rammed my forty-six year old self into the 150 capacity 12 Bar club in Denmark Street, Soho. On stage, a tall haunted man bobbed to the beats of his laptop like an aging rave survivor lurking in a municipal park, and another twitched and ranted like the cash-cadging last orders…

I am finding it very, very hard to be funny… - August 2014 The Big Issue - By Stewart Lee - August 5th, 2014

As a stand-up comedian I am often told that stand-up is the hardest job in the world. I am told this by firemen, soldiers, nurses, surgeons, pit ponies, chimney sweeps, bees and Colombian drug mules – all of whose jobs are demonstrably harder than mine. The worst thing that will happen to me at work…

The search for the nation’s identity: my part in Cameron’s odyssey - June 2014 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - June 15th, 2014

On Wednesday evening a high-level spook I had known vaguely at Oxford, a former Etonian and a Bullingdon Club chum of David Cameron’s, rang me up with interesting findings and a resistible offer. “You’ve been following this Birmingham schools thing, Lee?” “Yes,” I replied. “It’s outrageous. No child should have to go to school in…

Sex and drugs? Real rock rebels are into tax-efficient accountancy abuse - May 2014 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - May 18th, 2014

Last week it was confirmed that Gary Barlow, Mark Owen and Howard “the duck” Donald, the key talents of legendary rock’n’rollers Take That, hid £63m in the Icebreaker tax avoidance scheme. Barlow’s crime may cause short-lived shame, but it could guarantee the Take That frontispiece an eternal place in the rock’n’roll annals that his music…