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…

Public art can’t be used for adverts. But my subconscious is up for sale - May 2014 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - May 11th, 2014

Last weekend, the world woke to find Morrisons had projected an image of a cut-price baguette on to the outstretched wings of Antony Gormley’s iconic public artwork The Angel of the North. The stick of bread was the perfect shape to occupy the Angel‘s wingspan, and one wonders what other products Morrisons might have filled…