The Tory MP protecting Ipswich, Twix by Twix - October 2023 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - October 29th, 2023

Stop me if I’ve told you this one before, but 20 years ago, a BNP-supporting aunt of mine forwarded me a document, purporting to be a scholarly explanation of why Muslims were inhuman, by a particular academic from a particular university. Even back in the pre-Cambridge Analytica days, I still did a quick fact check,…

In search of strange and sacred sites – the UK’s weirdest walks - October 2023 The Guardian - By Stewart Lee - October 28th, 2023

Two books bestrode my childhood, and made me the man I am: The Magic Bridle, a collection of British and Irish myths retold by the folklorist Forbes Stuart, which ignited my six-year-old imagination in 1974, and Mysterious Britain by Janet and Colin Bord, published two years earlier, and part of a then burgeoning bookseller phenomenon…

Labour’s meat tax is just another Tory lie that we’ve all been forced to swallow - October 2023 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - October 8th, 2023

When I was a younger man, if someone had come up to me in the old Wheatsheaf pub in Camden on a Friday night and said they wanted to tax my meat, I would have embraced the experience with humble gratitude. But how things have changed! Now the last thing anyone wants is to see…

Wake up, people! GB News is after our National Trust scones - October 2023 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - October 1st, 2023

On Wednesday, the professionally cross actor-songwriter Laurence Fox was taken off air by GB News, the newsertainment channel funded by the Brexiter philanthropist and banjo spaffer Sir Paul Marshall. Fox had performed a light comic monologue to a clearly delighted Dan Wootton in which he explained that only cuckolded incels would climb into bed with…

Vote no to the thinktank pod people trying to body-snatch the National Trust - September 2023 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - September 24th, 2023

I love British traditions. Whose heart soars not upon seeing some drunk men chasing a cheese down a fatally steep Gloucestershire hill, or some drunk men burning their faces off carrying flaming tar barrels on their heads in a Devonshire village, or some drunk men dropping an enormous effigy of David Jason into a giant…

The Tories watering down protections for polluted rivers? I smell a rat - September 2023 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - September 3rd, 2023

Last Monday, the Conservative government announced plans to scrap the water pollution rules that protect rivers from environmental damage caused by nearby housebuilding. Some people accuse Sunak’s government of being a zombie government, trapped by infighting and incompetence in legislative inertia, incapable of seeing any task through. This is unfair on zombies who, given enough…