Online Critiques
A selection of negative criticism of Stewart Lee drawn from on-line message boards, and also from print and broadcast media, from June 2004 – June 2011.
All the quotes herein have been culled principally from internet message boards and, in some cases, from local and national papers, and broadcast media, 2004-2011, but principally from the latter two years of that period, when I was on television sometimes. Though the starts of new sentences have been capitalised throughout, all spelling and grammatical errors are the contributors’ own and have been retained so as not to misrepresent them. Multiple posts from the same critic have sometimes been compounded.
Some posts from apparently different commentators on different message boards appear to use the same material, suggesting much of the content either derives from a central content bank, or is produced by the same commentator in a series of different identities.
Some punctuation has been inserted to attempt to render the comments comprehensible, whilst trying not to compromise the wild and unfettered spirit of gay abandon that so characterises the original missives.
“Stewart Lee is not funny and has nothing to say”, James Dellingpole, Daily Telegraph
“A cultural bully from the Oxbridge Mafia who wants to appear morally superior but couldn’t cut the mustard on a panel game.” Lee Mack, Mack The Life, 2012
“A sneering tosser.” Rowing Rob, Guardian.co.uk
“Smug elitist liberalism. Who is this cunt?” Tokyofist, Youtube
“I hate Stewart Lee with a passion. He’s like Ian Huntley to me.” Wharto15, Twitter
“Stuart Lee = Cock.” Brendon, Vauxhallownersnetwork.co.uk
“Stewart Lee is a massive asshole.” Secretdeveloper, Youtube
“I saw him at a gig once, and even offstage he was exuding an aura of creepy molesty smugness.” Yukio Mishima, dontstartmeoff.com
“I used to think stewart lee was quite good, then i spoke to him at edinburgh festival. Arse doesn’t cover it. Ah well.” Bobby Bhoy, Twitter
“Stewart Lee. Boring as hell and unfunny.” Peter Ould, Twitter
“Five minutes of Stewart Lee makes me want to kill myself . Completely unfunny, dated, painful SHIT.” Anon, westhamonline.com
“One man I would love to beat with a shit covered cricket bat.” Joycey, readytogo.net
“The most overrated smug twat ever.” Syhr, breakbeat.co.uk
“A small, sad man.” FBC, finalgear.com
“Stewart lee is a shit comedian doing a shit impression of a shit comedian. If he was burned alive it could raise serious cash.” Mrdavisn01, Twitter
“I hope stewart lee dies.” Idrie, Youtube
“Fuck this Stewart Lee twat, fuck anyone that agrees with him, and FUCK PC.” Mearecate, Youtube
“3rd rate comedian and politically correct maggot.” Anonymous, The Northfield Patriot
“All this man seems to be able to do is dance about going “ah ha ha ha ha ha!’ So incredibly unfunny.” Emilyistrendy, Youtube
“Is Stewart Lee supposed to be funny? Because he’s really not.” Keilloh, Twitter
“Lee was a good comic. Unfortunately now he comes across as a chaotic drunk.” Foxfoxton, Youtube
“See that stupid look on his face….you just know he would have that exact same facial expression if he was getting the kicking of his life. He’s a total dick cheesecake.” Neva2busy, dontstartmeoff.com
“Stewart Lee, I will shove my thick cock in your throat you gay lord.” Hiewy, Youtube
“Prime example of a well educated looooooser.” Rudeness, Youtube
“If this is supposed to be a “Comedy Vehicle,” maybe someone should call the RAC to get it started.” Gwaites, Digitalspy
“If this is supposed to be a “Comedy Vehicle,” someone had better call the RAC to get it started.” Gmanthedemon, bbc.co.uk
“If this is supposed to be a “Comedy Vehicle,” someone had better call the RAC to get it started. Or push it down hill. Stewart Lee should have ‘cunt’ stamped onto his forehead with a branding iron.”‘ Coxy, Dontstartmeoff.com
“Stewart Lee should jump in his ‘comedy vehicle’ and drive it off a very high cliff. Whoever this youth is, he sounds about as funny as three weeks of really bad weather!” Shane, Beverley, Dailymail.co.uk
“I want to run Stewart Lee over in his own comedy vehicle.” Robert Gavin, Twitter
“Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle seems to be driving itself up his backside.” Jamespearse, Twitter
“Only a Sun reader could mistake this dross for intelligent comedy. Probably laughs at farting noises too. Here’s to hoping this particular vehicle runs off the road. Under a train.” NevW47479, UKTV.co.uk
“Comedy vehicle? more of a comedy ‘right off!'” Guest, Dontstartmeoff.com
“The boringly infantile Stewart Lee.” Peter Ould, Youtube
“This guy sure knows how to run a joke into the ground.” Mpf1947, Youtube
“I tried to watch Stewart Lee but had to stop due to him being shit. He addressed an insular cadre of socially challenged, prematurely middle-aged, pseudo-intellectual men, I thought.” Z-factor, Twitter.
“Stewart Lee isn’t funny.” Slothy Matt, Twitter
“Liberals like this guy would just love to live in totalitarian state where only their views could be expressed and opposition views crushed. They are childish hypocrites. They should stop reading the guardian and get in the real world.” 12dgdgdgdgdgdg, Youtube
“I hate comedy that presumes to ‘defend’ minorities like me. Sod off, you don’t know what offends me, so you can’t protect me from it. But most of the things you think offend me don’t.” Sweeping Curves, Twitter
“All he did was talk about crisps and stand there.” DVDhth’s grandparents, Twitter
“Stewart Lee used to one of my favorite funnymen, but I think he’s lost it now. I just don’t find him funny anymore. He hasn’t made me laugh since 1999. I always preferred Richard Herring anyway.” Joskins, Leeds Music Forum
“I was really looking forward to Stewart Lee ep1 (on tv) but it’s the show me and Marianne Powell (live) last year, how disappointing.” Louise Brown, Twitter (Footnote 1 ).
“I was Stage Manager for Stewart Lee. It wasn’t performance art, stand up comedy or satire. It was a fucking train-wreck. That man could not read an audience 3 feet away. And yes, I got to know his act well during the rehearsals and Tech rehearsal. I also got to know the fact that the man is a functioning alcoholic, finishing nearly 12 cans to himself before going onstage, and that he is banned from the entire chain of theatres I used to work at for being rude, dismissive of staff and responding terribly to bad audience feedback. I don’t hate this man in the slightest, I pity him. Where he tries to wear the “never hitting mainstream” as a cloak (Even naming a tour after it) the cracks appear when you’re one on one with him. He is angry, and I don’t think he know who he’s angry at.” Funday’schild, youtube.
“Genuinely can’t stand him, he comes across as the sort that thinks that live comedy should just be kept to smoky art student union clubs and that any comedian that plays in arenas is destroying the so called “artistic integrity” of stand up when we all know stand-up comedy is not an art form it’s a form of live entertainment. P.S. Just because your TV show is terrible doesn’t mean you have to rip into Russell Howard and ‘that Roadshow”.” Someoneyoudon’tknow, Chortle.com
“He stank. I’ve never seen a moronic idiot trying to tell jokes in my life. What a fuck. The man could barely stand up never mind tell a decent story. Everyone was laughing at him, and I hated his guts.” Alex Quarmby, Edfringe.com
“A fraud and a total unfunny tit.” Bosco239, youtube
“Stewart Lee has lost his glasses somewhere in stoke newington. Have you seen them? Please ReTweet.” Stokeylitfest, Twitter
“Lee seems to think he’s more clever than he really is. His material is delivered in a “If you don’t find this funny, you can’t be very intelligent” manner, which is an attitude perpetuated by the pseudo-intellectual Guardian reading arsebiscuits who like him.” Johnny Kitkat, dontstartmeoff.com
“Quite possibly the most boring stand-up I’ve ever heard. I fail to see what on earth is funny about him rambling on….and on…and on…” Kozzy06, Youtube
“After careful deliberation, I can now say I have finally gone off Stewart Lee. Give it two years and so will you.” Tweeterkiryakou, Twitter
“Stewart Lee is boring.” Tin Frog, Twitter
“I think describing himself as a comedian is the only funny thing the man has ever said. Don’t bother telling me that I don’t get it; I don’t want it. It’s only possible to like right-on, lefty comedians like Stuart Lee if you’re a right-on lefty yourself. Like all right-on lefties he feigns contempt of intolerance and ridicules people for the predictably, allegedly right wing intolerances ascribed to stereotypically right wing people. To me, morally or comedically this is no better than Bernard Manning or Jim Davidson both of whom were genuinely funny even if you now think their jokes were racist but neither of them were genuinely bigoted, IMHO of course, like Stewart Lee and his fans. In attempting to send up intolerance by being blatantly intolerant and bigoted, Lee falls flat on his face making any genuinely tolerant, left-of-centre, liberals so horrified that they simply could not laugh. In short, if you’re a bigoted, socialist worker, civil servant, teacher, social worker or NHS employee then Stuart Lee is the comedian for you. If you actually care about tolerance for all, even those who have different political opinons from you, he’s about as funny as the credit crunch.” Genghis McKahn, Guardian.co.uk
“Is Stewart Lee deliberately trying to be unfunny?” Horatio Melvin, Twitter
“Sorry, Something has gone wrong (Error 500). Unfortunately this part of iPlayer has temporarily stopped working. This will be because there has been an unforeseen technical error.” BBC iPlayer edition of discussion of Stewart Lee on A Good Read
“This has to be the most unfunny stand up I’ve ever seen. I’ve not laughed, smirked or grinned once at Lee’s quips. What an absolute waste of time. 0/10.” Alwyn, Digiguide.tv
“I must protest most feverently at the prospect of further wanton waste of the licence fee on this pile of wank.” Aaron, comedy.co.uk
“I don’t get the point of this thing with Johnny vegas and lee, it’s neither funny nor informative. It’s like watching 2 heavily drunk people having a conversation at a bus stop.” Sidsings000, Youtube
“Self consciousness in comedy doesn’t make it better, or more intelligent. It makes it much worse. Give me Michael McIntyre any day.” Shit Crit, Twitter
“Stewart Lee is a pedantic, overrated, mundane little shit of a comedian. And yes, I do ‘get’ him, it’s just … wank.” Meanstreetelite, Peoplesrepublicofcork
“What a waste of a comedian. Eat my penis.” Lancethrustworthy, Youtube
“Just seen a very haggard looking Stewart Lee near Carnaby St. He was carrying laundry.” 98rosjon, Twitter
“Now that I’ve wasted an hour listening to the absolute garbage that is Stewart Lee, I’m moving on to a more pleasurable activity. Sleeping.” Ishamayura Byrd, Twitter
“The Krankies are funnier than this waste of air. So unfunny it’s laughable.” Visualiser1, Twitter
“Stewart Lee is a twat. That is all.” Fairy Pingu, Twitter
“Alleged comedian Stewart Lee is cheap and mean spirited.” Iain, eatenbymissionaries
“WHAT THE HELL! If i ever find you, lee, i promise i will, I WILL, kick the crap out of you.” Carcrazychica, Youtube
“Lee spastic cunt.” Anon, dontstartmeoff.com
“Stewart Lee is a cynical man, who has been able to build an entire carrer out of his own smugness. I hope the fucking chrones disease kills him.” Maninabananasuit, Guardian.co.uk
“The thinking woman’s potato farl.” Rubyshoes, Twitter
“I hate that Stewart Lee fella, totally unfunny and as much charisma as Pol Pot!!” Fowkes81, Twitter
“The ludicrously coiffered fat-of-face fuck” Mini-x2, readytogo.net
“Stewart Lee is a pompous, condescending bore, and he isn’t remotely funny. He claims to have read the entire works of William Blake – he obviously completely missed one of the great themes of Blake: a love and respect for all humanity. If smugness could be harnessed as a form of energy this man could help reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.” Danazawa, Youtube
“A mollycoddled uber-middleclass mummysboy without a funny bone in his body. Verbal diahorria for stuffed shirts without a sense of humour.” Pnethor, pne-online.com
“Why does anyone sully the name of comedians by so very incorrectly applying the term to Stewart Lee.” Microcuts 22, Twitter
“Great, the next big thing has materialised. Surprisingly for the Guardian, they are recommending a man who hates the Top Gear presenters and co wrote a hit show that offended Christians. This is like being 15 and reading the NME.” Nicetime, Guardian.co.uk
“I spent the entire time thinking of how much I want to punch Stewart Lee in the face instead of laughing. He does have an incredibly punchable face, doesn’t he? (I could just close my eyes, but fantasizing about punching Stewart Lee is still more fun than sitting in complete, stony silence.) Fucking smug-faced cunt.” Pudabaya, beexcellenttoeachother.com
“I’d never punch Stewart Lee in the face. His smugness would wrap itself round my fist and slowly consume it, infecting me in the process. Stewart Lee once told a joke that I found desperately unfunny. Then he done a poo on stage. Stewart Lee once used my cheesegrater to remove smegma from his Willy. Then he made me cheese-on-toast without cleaning it.” Pudabaya, Twitter
“The concept that Stewart Lee is funny is tenuous at best.” Meninblack, Twitter
“Not one joke delivered. Absolutely the worst comedian I have ever had the misfortune to encounter. Don’t waste your money or time. Only comedian that I have ever thought of walking out on.” Dave Wilson, Chortle.com
“Stewart Lee’s comedy is designed to be ‘appreciated’ but not actually ‘laughed’ at or ‘enjoyed’. Here’s a fun game you can play while watching Stewart Lee: With a pen and paper, jot down how often you actually laugh. You may be surpsied!” Dick Socrates, Twitter
“Stewart Lee is on. I forgot how funny & clever he thinks he is & how stupid everyone else is in his eyes. Wanker.” Zombie Hamster, Twitter
“Lee is not just unfunny but tiresome, his non-joke act isn’t even original! He just rips off Ted Chippington. Ooooh look at me! I’m Stewart Lee! I’m deconstructing the form!! Come back Richard Herring!! Please!” General Lurko 36, Guardian.co.uk
“Christ what a monotoned smug nobhead, don’t you people get tired of his student aimed so called humour, god he’s crap.” Anamatronix, Youtube
“Lee makes pretentious lefty dickheads feel good about themselves and superior to others. Why does any fan of this guy think they are also smart, high brow, cool non-conformists with sophisticated tastes that are above unprententious people like Macintyre? I couldn’t stand the guy for years just from the sound of his voice that I’d never even bothered to hear one routine from him. I thought him some soft, middle class idiot. But for me any one who can parody real life events has a better gift for comedy than when it seems contrived, as does Lee’s a lot of the time. To get Lee, you have to share that same conceited, immature arrogance common to all lefties. Really, anyone talking like they are somehow smart for getting Lee and you need a higher intellect to grasp him, whereas you have to be a moron to appreciate the likes of Macintyre is just a gullible idiot who has fallen for a deliberately crafted and honed comedy act. When someone can make humour of of real life we can all relate to, it’s not an act, like Lee’s is, but they’re just genuinely funny.” Underground906, Youtube
“Stewart Lee – is he not just another mouthpiece for Politically Correct liberal “fascism” ?” Len Firewood, Twitter
“I continue to watch out of amazement at how unfunny this man is… he has made me snigger but once when talking about getting your willy stuck in a zipper. Anyone could get a laugh with that! It amazes me how he likes to repeat the same thing several times, likes to repeat things several times, repeat things several times, several times, times.” Stuart, Chortle
“Stuart ‘man of the people’ Lee is nothing but a fringe alternative comedy act who wouldn’t stand a chance at a real comedy club like Jongleurs.” Karen Laidlaw, Edfringe. com.
“Saw Stewart Lee 1981 show last night. Loads of brilliant comedians in audience. Only 2 on stage in nearly 4 hours. Dire.” Esme Folley, Actress, cellist, Twitter
“Looking at my wardrobe I realise when I think I’ve got no clothes its a case of there being so many stuffed in there I can’t see a thing.” Esme Folley, Actress, cellist, Twitter
“Blowdried hair and no brolly. Good start to the day. At least I’m wearing my rubber Viv Westwood shoes.” Esme Folley, Actress, cellist, Twitter
“Air con broken in the car, back to old school window opening.” Esme Folley, Actress, cellist, Twitter
“Up to town for a casting, picked the dog up a bandana on the way home. Successful day all round methinks. She loves it.” Esme Folley, Actress, cellist, Twitter
“Stewart Lee is an embarrassment to comedy.” Jackmumf, Twitter
“Stewart Lee is like that uni lecturer who thinks he’s unbelievably cool but is really the tit the students all laugh at.” Lenny Darksphere, Twitter
“It is a bit like listening to a sixth form NUS president who was brought up an only child by his sycophantic grandparents.” Deepbass, Guardian.co.uk
“I really cannot *bear* the bumptious prick that is Stewart Lee. And anyone who sees Stewart Lee for the pompous self important tit that he is, is a friend of mine. The greatest trick Stewart Lee ever pulled was convincing the world he’s funny and not just a ridiculously supercilious prat who just repeats himself. Stewart Lee you are a prize cock. At least get your facts straight before you launch into your pious Guardian wank fodder.” Lucinda Locketts, Twitter
“Russell Brand plays stadiums, Stewart Lee has a tin pot show on BBC that no-one watches.” Borathigh5, Youtube
“Smug bastard.” Peter Fears, Twitter
“I fell asleep during Stewart Lee. I don’t get him really.” Tres Ryan, Twitter
“Amongst the least talented comedians ever invented.” Pirate Crocodile, Twitter
“Stewart Lee is a greasy cunt in a cheap suit. Look out, look out, gammon-headed bastard about. Pathetic and childish. This cunt can’t even rally a paying audience. Ham-headed, ham-fisted spastic.” Spanner, dontstartmeoff.com
“Without warning I was drawn from watching the ?excelllent Jeremy Paxman to a loathsome comedian gratuitously using the “c” word. I ?found this extremely unacceptable, as did my recently widowed mother.” Anon, BBC Complaints Log
“Stewart Lee isn’t funny. In fact he’s the opposite. And totally unfunny.” Henry Howard Fun, Twitter
“An abysmal ‘comedian’. He’s unable to pick up Brownie points for being funny and so instead flaunts his politically correct views to try to get audiences’ and critics’ sympathy. While this works to keep him a cult following of der brains who enjoy playing the game of ‘I’m holier than thou’, it’s the reason while he’ll never be mainstream (you have to be funny to do that) and why critics who like him always have to apologise for his contributions to high profile charity gigs in venues when the punters don’t laugh. Garbage.” Chez, Chortle.com
“I had to walk out of Stewart Lee’s gig tonight when my wife started projectile vomiting!” Cyberbloke, Twitter
“The dullness of his jokes is only matched by his bitterness towards other comedians and half the world around him. He seems to spend hours on stage pretending that he ‘gets something’ nobody else has. I just wish he’d get a sense of humour. Tripe.” Gabrielle, Chortle.com
“Stewart Lee : 20 years of ‘sneer = career’.” Clampdown59, Twitter.
“Jealous that your comedy career didn’t go anywhere Lee?” Anonymous, don’tstartmeoff.com
“Stupid. Unfunny. Hypocritical. Nonsensical. Fits in with his fanboys’ worldview, basically.” Guest1001, Youtube
“I am starting to detest Stewart Lee.” Tweeter Kyriakou, Twitter
“There’s only so much antipathy or disdain an audience can stomach.” Dominic Cavendish, Daily Telegraph
“Lee is supposed to be a ground-breaking comedian and writer, but I found little entertainment value in his material.? It was not funny. It was a sad and deliberate attempt to see how far he could go. This was ultimate sick humour, and if anyone thought it funny, they must be sick as well.” Brighton Argus
“No part of this routine was funny enough to even bother delivering it. I’m not offended, more bemused by his total lack of talent and why the audience are laughing at his dull and obvious “jokes”.” Whoiscuriousgeorge, Youtube
“Watching Stewart Lee in action these days is like standing on the edge of a frozen lake and seeing a man half-submerged in the perishing ice. You throw him a rope – but he hurls it back. You didn’t throw it correctly, he advises. And anyway, he was fine as he was, until you ruined it all. Didn’t you know that sub-zero was his natural habitat?” Dominic Cavendish, Daily Telegraph
“Fine to make jokes about Jeremy Clarkson but only if you’re funnier than he is. Lee’s humour is all about repetition and digression, but even brilliant comedians need material.” Herald Scotland.
“Is there anyone more condescending, self-satisfied and up their own arse than Stewart Lee?” Liam Travitt, Twitter
“I really must make a special effort to go to bed early tonight to avoid seeing any of that godawful Stewart lee thing.” Zoot Cadillac, Twitter
“A portly Albert Finney lookalike repeating some words.” Dan McCaid, Twitter
“Stewart Lee is shite.” Rachaelanne Man, Twitter
“Stewart Lee simply is not funny. In fact to anyone with an ounce of sense he’s highly fucking irritating and slapworthy. Sorry.” Simon Cowell, Youtube
“I don’t feel Stewart Lee is funny anymore, just a boring droning on ‘comedian’ who’s set’s just happen to be the most unlively sets in the comedy world.” Spursguy, Youtube
“He talks only about commonplace things, with a really slow pace. He made me smile. That’s it! A disappointment.” Etienne, Chortle.com
“Lee makes Kim Jong II look comparatively relaxed. Maybe it’s time to lighten up a little?” Dominic Cavendish, Telegraph
“Stewart Lee’s just as smug as Clarkson and co in my opinion. Has a very punchable tone of voice.” Aiden Hearn, Twitter
“Typical left wing wankstain. When someone happens to disagree with them, they just yell “Nazi” or “racist”. When challenged, the pathetic cunts can’t even justify why they’ve said it, they’ll just repeat it ad nauseam. I suspect that many of Lee’s fans think they’re superior to everyone else because he’s perceived as being a bit niche and edgy, when really he’s just a smug, fat, unfunny shitbasket.” Mrjohnnykitkat, Youtube
“Hands up if you think that Stewart Lee is the worst ‘comedian’ ever. My hand is firmly in the air!” Leach Juice, Twitter
“His whole tone is one of complete, smug condescension.” Birmingham Sunday Mercury
“So which do you find funnier? V.D. (contraction thereof) or ‘comedian’ (not) Stewart Lee? His TV shows are pathetic – even the invited audience are bored out of their minds. He is not unlike Brand and the slobbering, fawning Ross (OBE) – smug, overpaid, arrogant, apparently stupid and not remotely amusing or entertaining. I’d prefer a trip to the clap clinic.” Anonymous, DailyTelegraph.co.uk
“This guy just isnt funny ….. standing there telling mildly humerous stories does not make you funny … so overrated.” Boygeniuz, Youtube
“A poor man’s Jack Dee.” Audience member, Belgrade Theatre, Coventry
“A poor man’s Jerry Sadowitz.” Williams58, Youtube
“A poor mans Ricky Gervais! If Stewart Lee was in my garden I would tell him to fuck off.” Chrispugh, Youtube
“A poor man’s Bill Hicks… Sorry Stew, Bill was already doing the “Comedy of Hate” when you were fumbling around doing student-targetted humour.” Potace, Amazon.co.uK
“It’s just not funny. This guy is a wannabe Bill Hicks.” Mannygate10, Youtube
“I think I’ll go and watch my Bill Hicks back-catalogue. It’s better than watching Stewarts poor attempt at nicking BH’s comedy genius. Mind you, he’s not the 1st to try. Just ask Denis Leary.? Lying on the floor, repeating the joke over and over. C’mon Stewart! Maybe the sycophants in your audience kept laughing on cue, but I certainly wasn’t.? The shame is you had some relevant comments to make.” Potace, bbc.co.uk
“Watching English liberal atheists, like Mr Lee, ridiculing American Creationists is a bit like watching someone pick a fight with an asthmatic fat kid from the opposite side of a very busy road. One word, more pertinent to these shores; Islam! You fucking third-rate Bill Hicks wannabe coward!” Noonday100, Youtube
“His overwrought language, overthought logic and complete lack of comedic timing just leaves me scratching my head as to what those in the audience at his shows are laughing at. He reaches for the offhand insights bill hicks’ schtick used to stumble through but falls woefully short.” cocainemidget, Guardian.co.uk
“I think there is something there but he does need to be reined in and told to write a bit more funny stuff rather than the repitition which started to rankle after a while. I admire anyone who has obviousy spent as much time with Bill Hicks material as Lee has but he doesn’t have the (seeming) natural physicallity and economy that BH had.” Hoonaloochieb, Eastdulwichforum
“I see Stewart Lee is doing a Bill Hicks tribute act without the funny bits.” Eskimimi, Twitter
“Stewart Lee is so, so, irritating.” RossB, Twitter
“Emperor’s new clothes. This man is a cock.” Mdnw2007, Youtube
“Finally watched Stewart Lee from last week. Hated it. Shouting at TV “scots don’t lay eggs” etc.” A D Ward, Twitter
“Stewart Lee and the Mock the Week/unfunny radio 4 6.30 panel shows crowd are both excellent reasons why the middle classes should be banned from performing (or attempting to perform) comedy. There’s a strong undercurrent of snobbery (that was supressed during previous “right-on” decades) that has now poked its head up and gone for easy laughs. That’s not to say Lee isn’t of a smilar ilk. I feel sorry for him in a way. He reminds me of the nice public school chaps who had to join a (horror of horrors) comprehensive 6th Form College post-16. Accents were altered appropriately and a certain cult status was achieved in the common room thanks to the confidence and slightly sick humour so common in public schools. Bascially, Lee has been ploughing the same 6th Form/Student Union seam of predictable and not really edgey comedy since the early 90s. The only people who don’t realise this are the modern counterparts of those unfunny gits who used to laugh at Ben Elton and his “Mrs. Thatch” jokes on the old Saturday Live show (who then went on to become bankers in the Blair era).
And yes I do have a chip on my shoulder. Don’t get me wrong, I used to enjoy Lee etc when I was a student because it appealed to my student sense of humour then. But I have moved on and alas they and their ilk have not. What annoys me is the suggestion that any of this lot are “challenging” or “pushing the boundaries” of comedy. They’re all about as challenging as Aunt Ethel’s Victoria Sponge. I blame the following: middle class men and women searching for something to do with their lives, comedy clubs sprouting everywhere like a plague of infectious turnips, and middle class TV execs looking for cheap programme format (hey let’s have another panel show!). All in all it makes my blood boil. I think I’d better sit down. Here’s a confession…I used to like Stewart Lee but now I don’t.? Why?? Well, poor old Stewart is a classic example of a common comic situation. ?See the following comic equation below…
Private schooling + Oxbridge + Ediburgh fringe + early TV success = A limited source of material for comedy, and one that’s quickly exhausted too.
It also leads a comic into a blinkered professional standup/media-la-la-land landscape that is completely divorced from the real world. And for me this equation applies to various styles of comedy and that includes the quick fire gag merchant, the warm “have you ever noticed when..” observational comic, or the intelligent meandering and slightly edgy anti-comedian.? So if the comedy well is running dry following a privileged upbringing and too much early exposure, what do you do??
1) Make some slightly controversial gags perhaps? But not too controversial as this would alienate the restricted media circles you currently find yourself in. And/Or…
2) Deconstruct comedy and life, because well, you don’t really have exposure to modern reality. “What makes something funny” is always going to be a matter of individual opinion and preference.
But for me, the best comedy comes from experience, whether that’s Jerry Sadowitz, early Peter Kay, Spike Milligan, or Jackie Mason. An interesting life or growing up in an interesting community provides great material for comedy. A slightly privileged one, with too much time spent in middle class standup comedyland leads to a comic well that very quickly runs dry. Look at poor Richard Herring. He’s reduced to doing Hitler moustache routines (how controversial!) or glorified knob gags (how rude!). So what’s solution for Stewart and his comedy deadend Its easy.? He needs to get a proper job and do it for 12 months. Televise it as well and call it “Stewart Lee works in a call centre”. All Stewart Lee really needs is material and I guaranteed that 12 months in the real world will provide Mr. Lee with all and more of the comic material he needs so desperately. Here endeth the lesson.
Ps: Stewart, if you want to use this comment for your books or on your website, can you kindly use all of it and not cherry pick please. Many thanks.” Frank Frenz, Guardian.co.uk
“Stewart Lee – not funny. Just putting that out there.” Commodore Dan, Twitter
“Urrgh. I liked Stewart Lee briefly about seven years ago but I haven’t been able to stand him since.” Narrativiumgirl, Twitter
“Sigh. Worthless.” Theguywiththepenis, Youtube
“Stewart Lee makes his inability to tell quick fire gags the basis of a critique of contemporary culture.” Fenland Gent, Twitter
“Stewart Lee is so shit. Some sad failure of a comic taking the piss out of the more successful, funnier Russel Howard. Sad.” Adam Almy, Twitter
“Comedy for ‘up their own arse’ ponces.” markzilla6969, Youtube
“Stewart Lee is the worst comedian around (if you can class him as a comedian). He is a smug, arrogant man who thinks he is funny (he isn’t!) and is not one for the working-class people. Why do you do this rubbish?! ” Y McLaughlin, Amazon.co.uk
“Shut up Stewart Lee.” Jenny Greenwell, Twitter
“Too full of his own importance and guilty of believing the hype.” Gauntlet Girl, Twitter
“Jealousy and self pity, that is the main message conveyed through this performance. Lee suffers from delusional grandeur, and this song is the result of Stewart Lee observing the meteoric rise in popularity of russell brand, whilst he sits on the sidelines wondering “why him and not me.”” Opiumforthemasses, Youtube
“Stewart lee’s comedy vehicle – questionable, false advertising?” Mark Boyt, Twitter
“Top Gear attack things that really ought to be attacked, like the bloody bus lane on the M4. Stewart Lee just attacks anything that doesn’t fit in with his stupidly socialist world view.” Scourge of God, Youtube
“Poor show with poor timing from a alledged comedian, just watch, when he has finished his punch line, he stares at the camera waiting for the small audience to laugh.” Flying Hugo, bbc.co.uk
“Big surprise, guardianistas love comic who went to a posh school and oxbridge. Dave Chappelle’s could show him how it’s done.” Neolab, Guardian.co.uk
“I think I’ve got it. Stewart Lee doesn’t actually exist, does he? He’s a creation designed to satirise that kooky metropolitan “I hate the mainstream, me” superiority complex.” Blue Porcupine, Guardian.co.uk
“The team behind Stewart Lee are actually a group of sixth formers who have to show the world just how funny and terribly clever they really are. It’s clever comedy for thick people.” Chronos, Guardian.co.uk
“Stewart lee just says something. Explains why you should laugh. Then accuses you of not having a sense of humour. The cunt.” World Without End, Twitter
“He’s another of those smug incompetents who are said by the ‘in-crowd’ to be cool. He appears to have serious life issues and he seems to think that foisting his emotional turmoil onto audiences is somehow ‘art’. Bollocks.” Dahoum, Guardian.co.uk
“Has anybody noticed that this Stewart Lee guy is poo’ing a massive halo out of his backside? How the ‘left’ take the moral ground hey! Peace.” Pittounikos, Youtube
“Well, at the close of the first two shows, I thought “oh, is that it already?” but at the close of last night’s show it was more like “Thank God that’s it.” Political Correctness gone mad? Recycling BEN ELTON sketches from the late 80s!! What next? A routine about the repeal of the Corn Laws? The Phlogiston theory of combustion? The Copernican Theory??” Chronowinstanley, bbc.co.uk
“Style over content. Just because he’s heard of William Tyndall doesn’t make him funny. The stuff about Adrian Chiles was illuminating. AC is popular because HE is funny and droll. And effortlessly, unlike SL who puts all sort of effort to disguise lack of a basic wit. Enough!” Reckage, bbc.co.uk
“”…observational schtick…”? If you are a comedian in the UK, please use English and not Yiddish! It is not funny, it is not clever, you are not plying your trade in the ‘Borscht Belt’! Do you think it makes you seem ‘cool’, or ‘clever’ or ‘in the know'” Declan Ahern, Independent.co.uk
“Stewart Lee spends so much effort wittering about comedy, why doesn’t he ever do any of it?” Joe, Independent.co.uk
“Stewart Lee is not funny. He comes from the smug – if you don’t laugh at my material then you aren’t smart enough – school of comedy. No Stewart, if we don’t laugh at your material then it’s just not good enough.” Patrick Kavanagh, Guardian.co.uk
“Lee’s face is like a slightly wonky pie or the crumpled Cornish pasty that you’re drawn to in a bakers because you suspect its irregular crust promises crispy bits where the fat has bubbled through the pastry and an unctuous oozing of nourishing gravy.” Hazel Humphreys, Chortle
“I was at least expecting a few jokes. Sorry to say they don’t exist. He takes about 5 or so good concepts and plays them all out over far too long a time so by the end of each segment you don’t really care whether there is a point to the piece. The delivery is too dead pan to make it interesting. Avoid at all costs, please don’t encourage the man.” P Mishkin, Amazon.co.uk
“Stewart Lee is crap I’m afraid.” Balboa, Guardian.co.uk
“I find this guy hard to warm to. He’s a bit slimy.” Graemeoliver, Youtube
“Stewart Lee has just got on the train to Brighton with his grouchy wife.” Paulaorla, Twitter
“Oh, that Lee! He’s suuuch a kidder! *tch* And by that I mean a scum sucking, attention whore who should just die horribly from brain cancer while his family laugh because he’s a contemptuous little prick with no redeeming social qualities whatsoever. HAHAHA!!” Squidge, finalgear.com
“That’s 15 minutes of my life wasted. How on earth Stewart Lee can equate Clarkson remarking about Gordon Brown having one eye to Clarkson mocking a blind child is ludicrous and lazy. It wasn’t meant in that way and he knows it. If the portly prick is so offended by cheap comments even if they’re in bad taste without turning them around to form his stand-up routine then stay in the fucking house or don’t watch it. Dreadful comedian and I’m certain people only say he’s funny to be ‘right on’. Fat rockabilly headed bell-end.” Grifter, redandwhitekop.com
“Your subconscious must be torturing you, stewart. every time you hate someone richer and posher than you, there are another hundred people hating you for the same reason.” Janerick, Guardian.co.uk
“I think the crucial element is that he’s not funny, but there are periphery factors like smugness that aren’t helping.” Charlie, 40percent.tv
“Just like to say I watched Stewart Lee the other night and found it awfully smug and tedious. I like comedy that plays with the audience’s expectations and attempts to subvert comedic conventions, as long as it’s actually funny. I think the appeal of Stewart Lee lies in his perceived cosmopolitan exclusivity, that he’s meant to be the thinking persons comedian. If you don’t like him it’s because you don’t ‘get’ him, or your not quite clever enough to keep up. Which is bollocks. The last series of Limmy’s show was far funnier and a damn sight more clever and original than this over-rated muffet of poo, why the BBC opted not to air it nationwide is beyond me.” The Gruen Transfer, Guardian.co.uk
“An evil, evil man and not in the slightest bit funny” Ronnie, Nottingham, Dailymail.co.uk
“Am I allowed to say he wasn’t very funny ? I know nothing of Stewart Lee except… he weren’t that funny.” A La Bowie, Fall Forum
“So I tried to watch this last night. After about 5 minutes I couldn’t bear any more. ? Tell a joke, you twat.” Sadpunk, drownedinsound.com
“Its like richard herrings comedy. People like it because they think by understanding it, they are smart. But really its shit.” Jonphonics, Twitter
“Stewart Lee is about as funny as piles.” Ealoraont, Youtube
“Stewart Lee is about as funny as a fire in an orphanage.” Zideanwalker, Twitter
“This prick is about as funny as having a shit! What a loser! It’s like he’s bitching in the playground with the other ugly girls.” Chizmulu, Youtube
“I think Stewart Lee’s about as funny as free falling into a wood chipper.” Cavwebmaster, Vauxhallownersnetwork
“Unfortunately, in my humble opinion, he is about as funny as a cold sore.” Itsamadworld, Guardian.co.uk
“As funny as a fire in an orphanage.” Marcomelandri33, Youtube
“This guy’s as amusing as toothache!” Keith, Switzerland, Dailymail.co.uk
“About as funny as toothache.” Fiveoclockhero1, Pistonheads.com
“Stewart Lee is as funny as HIV.” Dollis Hillbilly, Guardian.co.uk
“This guy is as funny as a kick in the nuts.” Ckay, Chrismoyles.net
“Stewart Lee is about as funny as an abortion.” Mr Biff Olive, Youtube
“Stewart Lee is about as funny as ass-rape.” Pishiest, Youtube
“The worst comedian in Britain, about as funny as bubonic plague.” Fergus Shanahan, The Sun
“I saw Stewart Lee live. He was as funny as cancer. Thinks he’s clever, he’s dreadful. A comedian from the 80’s who has remained there.” Lynn, Carlisle, Dailymail.co.uk
“It seems I’m the only one who finds Stewart Lee about as funny as a stubbed toe.” Matt B, Twitter
“About as much fun as a weekend in Kidderminster.” Klastimer, Twitter
“Lee is about as startling as an accountant reading the Financial Times.” Liverpool Daily Post
“Stewart “I’ve been in comedy for over twenty years selling out very large venues consistently and repeatedly and getting my own comedy TV shows more often than internet commentating weirdos get IBS” Lee… You are as funny as cancer LOL! No wonder The Guardian loves him… coz poo loves poo ZOMG!” Bananacanon, Guardian.co.uk
“I’m white n I hate Muslims. But this chap wasn’t funny at all. He sucked.” Am I Really Bad, Youtube
“Still time to vote for @Herring1967 in the Chortle Awards! Don’t vote for Stewart Lee, though.” Piccadillo, Twitter
“Slow, boring delivery from the smuggest cunt on them all.” johnwinfield367676, Youtube
“I used to quite like Stewart Lee but he’s kind of reached a critical smug/density.” Lightninganthony, Twitter
“Stewart Lee: speaks slowly, acts smarmy and looks confused.” Speakslowly, drownedinsound.com
“Stewart Lee’s jokes consist of taking a moderately funny idea and then spending 25 minutes slowly and repetitively beating it to death with a shovel.” Tim J, liberalconspiracy.org
“Anyone who fawns over Stewart Lee is pretentious. He’s not all that.” Flagpolin, Twitter
“Stewart Lee looks like he’s been animated by Zemeckis.” Jay M Cooper, Twitter
“Why doesn’t Richard Herring do a Stewart Lee and just write one joke then deconstruct it for 30 minutes whilst hating the audience.” Scotfish75, Twitter
“Slow, boring and not at all funny. People who like this dick are retarded.” Dharmashooter, Youtube
“Continuity announcer: “And there will be another ten minutes of comedy from Stewart Lee crammed into half an hour of television at the same time next week.” Poorbutnotachav, Guardian.co.uk
“I think the difference is that Clarkson, Brand and Ross are actually funny, or at the very least entertaining. Lee just bitches about these people in a smug, juvenile and bitter way. All he does is bitch about people that are more successful than him, but wrap it up into some self-righteous, self-serving, smug diatribe. At least 75% of his “comedy” is picking on individuals from this pedestal he has placed himself upon.” Gonzo Muse, Youtube
“Stewart Lee is just Frankie Boyle lite.” Mike Pacer, Twitter
“People keep praising Stewart Lee. I find him smug, slow and tedious.” JVC Amput, Twitter
“Stewart is a self deluded person, who looks into a mirror and sees great sadness . What a loser he is then. He should grow up and shut up. Hes got many problems I feel and should seek help! If he cant grow up maybe he should go a way. Because hes a posh boy he cant get a way with anything, but hes just spolit brat by the look at it.” Mr Cool, Wales, Dailymail.co.uk
“George Carlin was an intelligent comedian and his delivery was great at a normal speed. This is just slow-motion man. It goes beyond any form of comedic timing. This is like watching a sloth read an essay. I think the most impressive thing is his ability to find enough middle-aged angry champagne socialists to buy tickets for a horrendously unfunny act.
I’m sure if I watched for long enough he’d have rolled out a few tired Daily Mail comments. Comedy is about making you laugh… not about allowing you to join in a public snide-athon where one can exude moral exclusivity with our peers. It’s smug, self-righteous bs.” CorXXXSmile, Youtube
“He needs to either stop getting drunk during the show or stop being self-pityingly depressed in a mid-life crisis. Watching the old, past-it, fat, grey comedian vocally wishing for death isn’t that funny.” Melotronic, forum.watmm.com
“Is this comedy?….You need to buy a frankie boyle dvd fella, here’s a tip……….retire!” Totes32, Youtube
“The only true fool is a man who considers himself more intelligent than everyone else. Stewart Lee is afflicted with this condition, and sadly he probably will not recover anytime soon.” P12z13, Youtube
“I don’t know how stewart lee can call himself a comedian. Went to his show and it was the worst performance I’ve ever seen. It was so bad i was stunned.” Prodeoetpatria1691, comedians.iniv8.com
“Some people look for somthing more in a stand up then using big words and slagging off the more successful. This is intellectual snobbery at it’s worst – but its not even that clever, lee’s trick is to take a simple concept and phrase it in a way that makes it sound intelligent. One word mate: cancelled.” Mrseppo2010, Youtube
“Possibly the most unfunny stand up I’ve heard. Thought I’d see what the fuss was and pffft, just awful. His act is totally devoid of any wit or content.” MS Pyke, Foreverdelayed.com
“Shit, look at him. He’s so unfunny he has to bitch about how there are funny people that are popular, and I’m positive the audience is paid to laugh, and when they do it’s clear it’s uncomfortable laughter. Cunt.” Gemini4, Youtube
“Lee is just a fat Rob Newman without the melancholy surrealism.” Shatterface, liberalconspiracy.org
“I thought he was going to try to be less smug? He seemed even more ennoyingly up himself in this first episode.” Partyweirdo, Digital Spy
“Stewart Lee seems to have vanished up his own arse.” Discordian 1, Twitter
“The Yawnmaker. He’s been in comedy for 20 years? And this is the best he can come up with? Basically snide comments about people who he obviously considers leagues below his great self?” Lord Fauntleroy Mahonk, dontstartmeoff.com
“I imagine this it what it would be like if Morrissey did stand-up. Really very dull.” Noriarty, Youtube
“I always thought he looked like morrisey with down syndrome.” Drvol1, Youtube
“A cross between Morrissey and a Furbee.” Vornstyle, Twitter
“The worst stand-up I have ever seen. A man who seems to aim his set at angry, atheist comic book, nerd Morrissey fans and if you don’t find him funny you’re obviously an idiot. As smug and contemptible as Richard Herring.” Graham Simmons, Chortle.com
“I hate him. He looks like Morrissey.” Opel, Fall Forum
“Stewart Lee: He’s a bit of a Chinese Morrissey, isn’t he.” Tamarfeast, Youtube
“I fucking hate stewart lee, so this is shit. All his comedy is taking the piss out of other people when in fact he should look in the mirror at his egotistical fat morrisey wannabe face and slam it into the glass.” Jabba897, reddit.com
“He looks like Morrissey’s lost himself in middle age.” Schumitastic, Youtube
“I watched the show last night and all I could think was, that’s a Morrissey impersonator. He looks like Morrissey, he has the exact same stage mannerisms as Morrissey, and if he had the same accent I’d be getting mindfucked right now.” Dancing Kirby, foreverdelayed.org.uk
“His style grates on me, I don’t think he’s as clever as he thinks he is. I see the jokes, but they’re usually so drawn out that I see the punchline a mile away. If he billed it as a spoken word piece then I might have enjoyed it more. And I don’t think he’s very funny. I didn’t laugh once. Repeating words over and over again while shuffling around a stage isn’t hard, neither is taking pot shots at other more successful comedians. It’s like watching Morrissey having a breakdown, only without the laughs.” Dr Sanchez, comedy.co.uk
“He looks like Morrissey’s elder, fatter, less funny brother! Utter shite (and he does). This guy makes Russell Brand look like a comedy genius. ‘Ere, you can stick this review on your website Stewart!” Mark Beales, Digital Spy
“Looks like Morris out of the Smiths and is an equally unfunny fat dwarf.” Simonsays, Chortle
“He’s attractive, but in a seedy way. He hasn’t worn well for 40. I think he looks a lot like Morrissey.” Morriszapp, Mumsnet.com
“Mark Lamar’s really fucking let himself go.” Mr Dilkington, Twitter
“He might look like a fat Charles Grey now, but in ’93 Ratko Mladic looked like a mix of Morrissey and Stewart Lee.” Bob Winkworth, Twitter
“How the hell does he pass himself off as a comedian, Those people in the audience must be really easily pleased n life to find him even mildly amusing.” Chef, Ush.net
“Try looking up the word comedian in a dictionary. Stewart Lee… comedian? Not two words I would use in the same sentence!” Rachael, Peterborough, Dailymail.co.uk
“God this bitter whining silly man really needs to shut up lol. I mean seriously, people pay this man money to listen to him whine like this? Pathetic.” Superiority85, Youtube
“If leonardo di caprio lived mainly on pies, fags and lager he would look just like stewart lee.” Dick Turpin, Guardian.co.uk
“His smug attitude and the fact that he comes accross like a grade A bellend makes him unwatchable for me.” Joycey33, readytogo.net
“The biggest pile of crap I have ever seen! Boring and unfunny. Childish. Made an absolute fool of himself.” Lianne, Chortle.co.uk
“One of those deluded self righteous liberal cunts who choose to be blind to certain issues.” Luke Griffiths, Youtube
“Urgh i don’t think stewart lee’s voice could get any more smug and annoying.” Vicki Fran, Twitter
“Consistenly dreadful. His slow lazy delivery it’s not particularly funny from my point of view, for instance the rappar ‘joke’ a few weeks ago had some initial laughs but he dragged it on for far too long, often repeating himself after long silences. He doesn’t interact with the audience, which is a major negaitve giving how close he is to them during the show, and looking straight at the camera during it to try and engage with the audience at home is needless and desperate.
Without doubt the joke he done lying on his back was the worst, I was embarressed for him by the end. He doesn’t fall into any particular categories, he is not edgy enough to shock the audience and he lacks persona and stage presence, not creative enought to preach a political mantra or try something that hasn’t been done hundreds of times by different comedians and he doesn’t have any angle beside the boring grumpy middle aged man. And he is not fat, he should stop saying that he is.
The sketches actually make the show worse, sewage coming out a television, I pay a license for this? :unsure: I don’t have anything against him, I’ve never seen him live and there are plenty of worse comedians out there but some reviewers are hailing this as the funniest thing on TV at the moment, I just don’t see the attraction.” St Hugh, football forum
“That humourless apparatchik Stewart Lee is genuinely offensive. He gives me the willy’s.” Norcalmo, Guardian.co.uk
“Self-righteous hypocrisy at its finest.” Dqniel, Youtube
“Stewart Lee is just bitter no-one finds him funny and he isn’t famous anymore. He is also too stupid to notice his jokes are far more offensive than anyone of the peoples jokes he picks on. Unadulterated TWAT.” Gonzo Mouse, Youtube
“Christ I hate stewart lee – he really is a pompous fucking wanker. He really is a pompous fucking wanker a pompous wanker he really is a pompous fucking wanker.” Al, urban75.net
“Fuck me Lee, boring much!” Alpha50, Guardian.co.uk
“England today is full of these spineless immigrant loving fags.” MCBathtub, Youtube
“I’d like to complain in the strongest possible terms about the fact that Stewart Lee’s programme is listed as “comedy”.” Sven945, Twitter
“This guy can’t deliver a joke for shit.” Itwasifwfr, Youtube
“Stuart li kind of sucks. I keep trying to like him, but shit, he blows.” Jerry Hello 100, Youtube
“Absolutely shite. Wank comedy made by a wanker for wankers. Loads of “safe” and tedious jokes while constantly peddling his left wing views to appear fashionable. Perfectly suited to the bbc. Go to your local pub and chances are you’ll meet someone funnier than him. He is arguably worse than Lenny Henry.” Archer, Readytogo.net
“Worst comedian ever (along side David Baddiel). Saw him live once, and had to get a refund. He lacks one ingredient of comedy – he’s not funny.” Good Evans, tvguide.co.uk
“Fat unfunny tit. More dead air, no jokes, the audience must be family members to laugh at this drivel. Get stuffed Lee!.” Mikey, tvguide.co.uk
“Awful. Without a doubt the world’s worst comedian. He makes getting run over seem like a better night than watching his painful performances.” Frankieboylenot, tvguide.co.uk
“Stewart Lee ? Oh , right . He’s supposed to be funny in some unique way but he isn’t , and don’t dare diss him or you’ll be told ” you just don’t get it “…………The king’s new clothes ?………………….. Stewart Lee is a great cure for insomnia and little else. Come on guys , wise up and think.” Cornishfieldmouse, Guardian.co.uk
“Not funny. How can he take the mick out of anyone when hes the worst comedian ever. The audience gives him alot of pity laughs. Too smug!” The Truth, tvguide.co.uk
“His main problem is that he has about 2 jokes per episode and then streches them out (mainly by repeating them). I simply can’t get over the smugness of the guy, the poor sketches and his (at times pointlessly) anti-religious jibes. And before anyone judges me I enjoy sophisticated, eye-opening comedy, but it doesn’t tick the key boxes in terms of humour.” Tony Roy, tvguide.co.uk
“Simply not funny enough. The leading stand-up in the country? Having a laugh. Repetitive drivel. The studio audience could barely rustle up a snigger. It’s like the bad bits of Python which even hardliners find hard to enjoy. Poor.” Santos, tvguide.co.uk
“I expected to see a video slagging off overly PC idiots but he is doing the opposite :/ pointless sketch, PC HAS gone mad!” ESPZ8, Youtube
“Yawn. I hope he hates himself.” Jesus, tvguide.co.uk
“Watch the audience – they’re constantly nodding. And mostly pricks. I’d love to see Stewart Lee turn up and do a set in an average comedy club, get no laughs and then whinge about how stupid his audience is.” Wil Robbo, Twitter
“WTF? woah this has to be the worst tele ive ever seen and ive seen some crap in my time. the dingy setting the dated jokes and just plain not funnyness of this programme make it one of the wordt ever broadcast. beeb what were you thinking. i dont understand the great the reviws, you must have a scree, or twoo loose” Ed, tvguide.co.uk
“How annoying. Put this on whilst in a fantastic mood and it completely ruined it. Just the annoying… pauses in the .. sentences is enough to put you off without him looking at the camera every once in a while saying ‘laugh at me, I’m funny, look at all these clever people laughing at me, you must not be very intelligent’.” Jono, tvguide.co.uk
“Stupid deluded cunt.” Commanchio1976, Youtube
“Have never heard of Stewart Lee before now. If I never hear of him again it will be too soon! The one thing he is not, is a comedian.” David Spark, Leeds, Dailymail.co.uk
“Fna fna… not remotely funny, another one who thinks hes funnier than he is. Its soooooo trendy to like these so called intelligent comedians… oh please, give me a break… Middle class up his own backside twddle…” Baabaa, Digitalspy
“Sociology lecturers aren’t really funny, are they? No matter how smug they are.” Roger Hoare, Youtube
“Cnt beileve i pay my taxes for this shit the BBc shold make good programs like balls of steel and jackass!! infact get moyles to do a program where he takes the piss out of this wanker!!!!!!! and OMG not knowin what a rapper iz!! wt sort of grandad iz he!>!>?!??!? so yeah dnt watch this shit watch horne and corden instead a decent program frm the BBC for once not the usaal tax wasting shit like this!!!” Tom W, Chortle
“Stuart Lee is a fcking coward. He wouldnt dare insult the prophet muhhummed. stuart Lee a pathetic little worm! ps im nt viewing any of this rubbish.” Christian1truefaith, bagito.com
“What a fucking idiot. It’s hard to believe people listen to this drivel. Is this really what they’re preaching in England?” Mikeman, Youtube
“Incredibly unfunny in a way that only Lenny Henry can replicate. Lee’s attempt to appear intellectual betrays the fact that it is actually pretty lightweight comedy, dressed up with some long(ish) words, and playground insults. He was a witless pseudo-intellectual snob 10 years ago and he still is. At least he has got rid of the floppy fringe.” Matt, tvguide.co.uk
“Stewart Lee is shit and I’ll be doing any damn thing I can think of rather than watch this, including sleeping.” Your Once And Future King, 40percent.tv
“I put it to you Mr Lee that you are earning a liveing from using race related issues in your pointless act. How many times did i hear, Nigger, Wog, Darky, Paki and a whole plethora other ‘un-pc’ racist derogatory remarks? Hypocritical pointless arsebert. That’s first thing that sprang to mind, what an ironic cunt he is. Not only does he use racist remarks but there’s an underlined air of bullshit in his anectdotes and stories that are purely used make a point where there’s absolutly no point to be made.
He goes on about how if it wasn’t for the PC brigade the Conservatitive party would still be useing slogans like “Want to live next door to nigger? Vote Labour”. He’s a liar, the Conservative party has never used slogans like that so he is lieing to make a point at people that are stupid enough to believe him. He should be arrested for incitement. I can’t believe that i’ve just sat through 3 mins of his smarmy leftwing shite. A true cunt in every sense of the word.
It’s very sinister to be honest, getting a cunt like that on the telly to spit his vile liberal lefty rhetoric with the soul intent of planting a warped ideology into the minds of innate inanimate robots. Soapy looking cuntwrap. You could actually lose all faith in humanity after watching this macaroon for any amount of time. I have a problem with his stupid audience that allow themselves to be duped by a cunt like that into thinking that he has something of value to offer them, he’s a confidence trickster so more fool them. I could sit on a stool with a guitar and mumble shit under my breath to a group of retarded train spotters, it can’t be that difficult. He is a cheesy wotsit of a cunt. And he’s all sweaty and speedy. ‘Comedy genius’? I never know wether to laugh or cry when they say that.
This cunt couldn’t deliver a ham sandwich let alone a punchline. This cunt must be laughing all the way to the bank, although he’s the only one laughing mind. To be completely frank he depresses me. I watched him last week and his show created a depressive atmosphere in the room. It was like he was trying to prove a point that’s completely wasted on me.’ Honest George, dontstartmeoff.com (footnote 2 ).
“What a wanker I heard he and satan have gay sex together then they go to th local primary school together and pick up kids” xXCelticwarriorXx1, Youtube
“The same sort of cheap shots and playing to the gallery that Ben Elton used to come out with in the 80s and every bit as self righteous. Personal abuse dressed up as comedy.” Dinoysus Reborn, Guardian.co.uk
“I don’t like Stewart Lee. I like my comedy to be funny and not a story of someones meaningless opinions of which I have no interest in.” Frednut, Twitter
“I and by the sounds of it, many others fail to find Stewart Lee “funny”. To hear the audience braying with laughter always puzzles me; it makes me think I’m too “daft” to get it. However, I really think the audience forces laughter beacuse, as fully paid up members of “the Liberal Left/Starbucks Society” demographic, they feel they have to. Mr Lee’s take on the tics and foibles of humankind can be amusing but not laugh out loud funny. However if you get tickets to a Stewart Lee show or recording, you know what to expect and therefore you “know” it’s going to be hilarious and you wouldn’t want to be left out, would you. My, that’s a lovely new suit the Emperor’s wearing isn’t it. He is not a genius. He is shit on a stick.” Processedpea, Guardian.co.uk
“You know what’s going through his head as he continues to waffle. Nothing. Not a fucking thing. He just… talks. I can feel my brain fossilising. This is unbearable. He can pack his bags and fuck off back to whatever exile it was he’d been wanking himself smug in, the boring cocksocket.” Spanner, dontstartmeoff.com
“But has he ever taken the piss out of Islam?” Angel Interceptor, Guardian.co.uk
“He doesn’t particulary challenge anything does he, it’s all rather lazy, let’s see him take on the prophet Mohammed,off course he won’t. The way his fans sycophantically fall over themselves just to merely be able to say ‘i get it’ is ridiculous. Stewart Lee, brave No, Lazy,repetative and extremely unfunny, absolutely.” Guest, dontstartmeoff.com
“This is one of the biggest shitloaded pretending to be funny alike speaches that I ever heard, Not only this psicopath looking dog shit bag is hating without anfact to do so, but then thinks other people are also skizofrenics too. I hate you. This irrational hateress that makes someone to try to make fun out of talking shit from others for 15 min. So be aware Stewie. I know your face.” Hormigaz, Youtube
“I just woke up from a nightmare were the only comedians left in the world were stewart lee and steve coogan. what a boring nightmare of right on “sophisticated” never “offensive” islington humour it was indeed, were the laughs are just a smirk and nothing more. get over yourselves, your generation of comedians aren’t actually very funny – they are amusing at best.” Westmorland, Guardian.co.uk
“I think Stewart Lee is boring me into slumber. Surely I’m not the only person who doesn’t find him funny? I’ve seen funnier roadkill.” Mrs Self Destruct, Twitter
“It’s the Emperor’s New Clothes syndrome all over again. He’s just a lazy, incredibly tedious performer who, by some miracle, got lucky.” Lindy Lou, dontstartmeoff.com
“Watching Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle and seeing how brilliant the Armando Iannucci’s bits are, reiterates that Lee is best in a double act.” Tegs1973, Twitter
“What a butt-hurt old man, deeply unfunny and a waste of time.” Grandurr 1327, Youtube
“Stewart Lee is like a Richard Hawley who’s let himself go.” Chris Thompson, Twitter
“His 1980s, anti-Thatcherite style rhetoric is looking very dated. Maybe that’s why his career never really took off – although he’ll tell us it was because he loathed the idea of a becoming a ‘celeb’.I imagine he s well connected and quite privileged, like Julian Fellowes, but don’t tell him that as he’d have to start mocking himself in his rather bland and bitter stand-up routines.” Allgoaliesaremad, Guardian.co.uk
“Stewart Lee SHOULD be on TV. Why should funny comedians only be represented?” Karire Marks, Twitter
“Stewart lee just came on my tv. GET OFF GET OFF GET OFF YOU UNFUNNY KNOBBER.” Carson Matthew, Twitter
“Oh Jesus! I used to like Stewert Lee. He just turned into the embodyment of a couple of people I used to work with, liberals who lived their lives in order to be offended. Complete shits who changed my personal politics.” Sven T Viking, Youtube
“What a boring whinging moaning drab self obsessed wanky cunt!” Theowilstoman, Youtube
“Well, he came 11th in the Greatest Stand Ups of All Time poll shown on Ch4 the other month (yes I know it’s a fiddle – but still). If you went out in the street and asked a hundred people about him you’d be hard pressed to find a handful who’d even heard of the miserable coconut. Never mind think he was funny. I saw him on an old 8 out of 10 Cats repeat the other day. He hardly made a contribution, just sitting there partly looking out of his depth and embarrassed to be there exposed as talentless and partly with a smug look on his fat ugly mug. The only few people who even claim to rate him are the usual crowd who think he may in some way be “clever” and so by claiming to like the unfunny twonk somehow raises their own “status”.” Voiceofreason, forum.football.co.uk
“Jeez, this was so not that funny tonight. The sketch at the end with all the apples was just unfunny rubbish and to see all that fruit wasted in such a pointless way was just plain dumb. I found the show as a whole to be as clumsy and tiresome as Al Murrays Multiple Personality Shite on the other channel straight after it.” Head Gardener, Fall Forum
“That was gay wasnt evn funny why the fuk r they laughen 4” Trumaoril, Youtube
“All Stewart Lee managed to do though, was wind me up by dragging “jokes” out for too long.” Cassiejackson, Chrismoyles.net
“I don’t know how to feel about Stewart Lee. Sometimes I think he’s quite funny, but most of the time overwhelmingly smug.” MouseY, Twitter
“I watched this DVD after seeing a praise filled recommendation from Dara O’Briain, the Irish comic. And I usually check the Amazon reviews of something as well, especially if it evokes a strong reaction. I was surprised to see no negative reviews for this. So I’m going to add this one, in the hopes that it might be of use to like minded comedy fans. In a nutshell, it was the worst comedy show I’ve ever ever sat through, that I can remember anyway. What could explain it, I wondered to myself? I clearly like Dara O’Briains comedy. Why did this not appeal to me? Well, I think what’s happened is this. A comedian knows comedy, so if you present A and B and C together, the comedian can probably immediately see how they fit together, even if he’s never heard the joke before. We also know that laughing is a result of the unexpected. Stewart Lee seems to put together A and B and C in unexpected ways. This means comedians might find it funny. But the general public would find utterly unfunny. To give an analogy; Picasso could actually paint really really well. Almost photographic quality. It was only when he broke all the “rules” of painting that he became famous though. And people said he was a genius. But if all you saw was his messed up paintings of women with a nose where their ear should be, you could be forgiven for saying “This guy can’t paint. Why is he famous?”
Stewart Lee, I think, might be the Picasso of comics. He didn’t make me laugh. But professional comics can probably appreciate it, and laugh or whatever. Of course, that could all be rubbish. Maybe he’s hilarious and I just don’t get it. But I don’t personally see much difference between a guy who studiously and ironically pretends not to be funny and pretends to have a comedic routine fall apart on stage and pretends to restart the show… and a guy who simply is not funny and who’s comedic routine falls apart and has to restart the show.” John R Finnan, Amazon
“Think I’d rather listen to that documentary on moss than watch anymore Stewart Lee.” Gonzonmouse, Youtube
“Stewart Lee is about as funny as a car crash. He really is the most boring comedian out there. I thought he was unfunny last time I saw him. Surely a tiny requisite for being a comedian is to be at least slightly funny? A total hypocrite – he has a go at people making money from writing books – which is something he does and then goes on to make other points that he himself does. Stewart Lee is just a hypocritial, unfunny, weird looking gobshite. He’d be crap on Top Gear.
He seems to be from the Jack Dee school of unfunny monotone comments that are just comments. Not funny comments or ones you agree with. Most of the laughter comes across as sympathy ‘Wow, this fella is really boring and as funny as my cat eating whiskers’. I think Stewart Lee is a total cock, unfunny as a dose of the clap and boring as shite and therefore don’t watch him. He had a go at Clarkson for making money off a book. He himself makes money off books. The ‘comedian’ had a go at someone else for making money off books. And he makes money off books himself. He is saying ‘not good’ for something he does himself. = Hypocrite. An unfunny cock. ” Andy@allerton, redandwhitekop.com
“The people who enjoy his comedy also like boring dinner parties, socialism even though they are all living the capitalist lifestyle and think nothing at all bringing up the topic of cheese boards into a conversation and make a joke out of it that only they find funny. They probably hate country folk that hunt even though they them selves have done fuck all to preseve our natural enviroment and are too busy indulging themselve inn their own smuggness to stop and realise what twats they are. Stewart Lee+Comedy= does not work out.” 22623501, Youtube
“Watching Stewart Lee certainly is a break from comedy. The last funeral I went to was genuinely far funnier than Lee’s gig.” Janean Patience, Twitter
“Stewart lee is a prick. Saw him live he isn’t funny just obsessed with stupid issues like political correctness.” Fogjinda, Youtube
“He is NOT funny… In what way is this man a comedian?” Mr Angry, bbc.co.uk
“I hate his face and hair too much to go and see him.” LHC, forum.breakbeat.co.uk
“I find Stewart Lee annoying and largely talentless. I was at Grenwich comedy festival, and many people walked out of his act. Indeed, it appears people walked off in the recording of his current TV series, due to his smug, self satisfied, comedy-free act. He is awful.” Bobsyouruncle, Guardian.co.uk
“He’s a comedian who I have to say I have never heard of and who doesn’t appear to have made much of a name for himself by being a “funnyman” with jokes like that are we really suprised ??” Julie, Highland, Dailymail.co.uk
“An up-his-own-arse tosser who isn’t very funny but is perceived to be a slightly edgy, niche comedian and is therefore popular with up-their-own-arse tossers that enjoy being in the niche up-their-own-arse tosser club. Lee’s always been about as funny as getting spit roasted by Little and Large. I wish he’d fuck off, the unfunny cunt. He’s a cunt. I have a remit to chronicle cuntishness through the ages. I am writing the definitive compendium of cunts. The Lee Anus has a chapter all to himself. If you have no sense of humour, he’s the comic for you. Boring, smug, unfunny, whispering, shit clothed cunt. Shut up Lee, you boring, unfunny fannyclacker.” Withnail555, Youtube
“I always thought stuart lee was a smug, unfunny, my view’s right and if you disagree you’re wrong, right on lefty, cunt.” MadDog, westhamonline.com
“Its just another over-educated, middle class man getting pointlessly angry about a lot of things that aren’t very important in the great scheme of things….’ Tristran Fabriana, bbc.co.uk
“I think stewart lee should be banned from actually being a so called “comedian”.” Sophie, Spalding, Dailymail.co.uk
“If this guy is supposed to be a comedian how come he never makes me laugh?” PoppaAlcohol, Guardian.co.uk
“This man isn’t a comedian. He is disgusting, unfunny and a man full of hate. I think some members of the crowd agree with my statements.” Sireld, Youtube
“If you’re a comedian how come you’re not funny?” Elamigo, Guardian.co.uk
“What a massive cunt. What a massive cunt. Cry some more, Stewart Lee.” Fiendish77, Youtube
“If you’re a comedian why don’t you ever say anything funny?” Atrack, Guardian.co.uk
“He has thrown two heads but he missed the third catch and the coin rolled under the wardrobe. We are still looking. On our knees. With a torch.” A J King, Amazon
“My husband is trying to convince me that Stewart Lee is funny. I’m not convinced…” Serem, Twitter
“I wish that he would show more evidence of the fact that he read English at Saint Edmond’s Hall Oxford. The evidence of this has been carefully sifted out along with his Shropshire accent as he has adopted both the speech and cognitive vocabulary and conventions which are the default position of the speakers of Estuary English with whom he presumably spends his days. ?During the Fist OF Fun days he made a darkly glamorous, if static, foil to the far more comedically gifted Richard Herring, but that was then, the glamour has long departed ( welcome to the club Mr Lee ), and he does not seem to have gained anything in the way of skill from the period working alongside his erstwhile partner. And I was able to predict his line on any subject with completely accuracy to the lady of the house.” Greysimon1, bbc.co.uk (Footnote 3 ).
“Stewart lee is so over-rated. Does he say something then leave a… Long pause?” Kilburnmat, Twitter
“A slightly embarrassing 40+ year old man ranting like a teenage student activist whilst labouring “jokes” and being, what seems, almost deliberately unfunny.” Tony Cowards, comedy.co.uk
“This guy is so smug he nearly fell into his own arse. Smart arse twat – not funny at all.” Gallowgrey, Youtube
“Stewart Lee isnt even funny. He’s disgusting and i hope they ban him from performing. Stewart Lee is a pathetic little man. The only thing funny about him, is his looks.” Hammondx3, richardhammond.net
“Burn in Hell Scum.” Christian1truefaith, Youtube
“A hate filled little man.” Willdaq, finalgear.com
“I saw Stewart Lee live in Galway a couple of years ago and he wasn’t very funny. I used to really like his early stuff and I always REALLY want to find him funny, but he’s just not.” LMNR, Youtube
“Did watch this guys comedy. I got it straight away. It was look at how clever I am. I really am clever, None of you are as clever as me. Just join mensa stewart.” Davy123, Guardian.co.uk
“A heckler could destroy his entire act simply by shouting “we get the fucking picture” from the back of the room in the first 5 minutes.” Dirtbox, eurogamer.com
“Stewart Lee : A man so far up his own backside he sneers at his own poop as it passes by.” Clampdown59, Twitter
“To have a smart ass Oxbridge sasnach making shit jokes about Gaelige irritates me beyond belief. Stewart Lee a patronising English imperialist cunt.” Lars3939, Youtube
“Stewart Lee fans can shove their meta-textual up their raspberry infundibulum.” Perforlauta, independent.co.uk
“It’s a disgrace that someone like this no talent comedian can say something like this and not be arrested. Surely there should be a ban on the arts to some degree?” Danny, London, Dailymail.co.uk
“Both Lee and Iannucci appeal to people who like to think they are clever. They are both exercises in smugness and try to be clever. People only laugh at them because they don’t want to appear stupid. Credit where it’s deserved though – Ianucci can be a good comedy writer (i.e. Alan Partridge).” Eborian, bbc.co.uk
“Stewart lee cannot hold sean lock’s jockstrap. Absolutely unfunny and overrated.” Mordin909, Youtube
“The holocaust was funnier than Stewart Lee.” Anon, dontstartmeoff.com
“An unfunny, smug, supremely pleased with himself bellend.” Jerrymorris, Youtube
“I think Stewart Lee has just one problem as a comedian, for all his faux intellectual affectations and his penchant for student union politics, he just isnt funny. I tried hard to like it but it all has a whiff of the emporers new clothes. For me he has just about managing to maintain his status to a level where you actually remember who he is since that awful lee and herring thing. I guess that as fringe acts/celebs, who struggle to capture the audience they are clearly desperate for, begin to fade, their act has to become more shocking to maintain their profile, rather than funny.” Matt, York, Daily Mail.co.uk
“A two bob unfunny ‘comedian’ still trying to make it at the Edinburgh festival…” English Cad, Cad Towers, Dailymail.co.uk
“Stood behind him in the queue at Forbidden Planet last year, he was reading a poor collection of Hellblazer rather than anything substantial, and anyone who buys their books at FP is a nob-ed. I was hoping for quality comedy, but this stand up was padded out with drivel (ie the rapper thing, y’know, the thing about rappers, you know don’t you, rappers, yeah, rappers, on the bannister, rappers, they slide along ’em, rappers, they do, they’re called rappers etc.) I didn’t laugh once despite being ripped to the t’s and wanting to find it funny. His act really misses Herrring’s over eager schoolboy to his aloof indie schtick, and maybe an editor to tell him ‘This isn’t funny, go and rewrite it till it is. I’d love to join the Stewart Lee bandwagon that all the reviewers seem to be on, but I’m going to sit on the sidelines and throw the rotten tomatoes till he starts being funny. I too have loved Stewart, but this seems more like I’ve met up with him through Friends reunited after years apart, had one bad shag, gone back for another just to find that he was a bad shag first time.” Beef, eastdulwichforum
“Did anyone notice the prompts he had written on the back of his hand. Oh the joys of HD.” Philap, bbc.co.uk
“During the phone routine in Stewart Lee’s comedy vehicle it was apparent that Stewart Lee had written notes or prompts on the back of his hand. I was watching in HD.” Phil Alpin, BBC Points Of View.
“I wonder of he’d been giving himself a bit of help with his GCSE the day before. Naughty Stewart.” Jeremy Vine, BBC Points of View.
“Stewart Lee, you can get fucked. Your not witty, you’re just pessimistic, and hypocritical. Don’t understand how these people earn money.” Rawjb, Twitter
“If you cut him in half it says ‘cunt’ all the way down like a stick off smug greasy rock.” Supporter, dontstartmeoff.com
“Stewart Lee is a fucking asshole; another left-wing, Labour, BBC luvvy propagating politically correct bullshit.” Lightfoot, Youtube
“Crap… like ‘bottom’, just not funny.” Frigadol, Youtube
“What a SICK man Stewart Lee is. My condolences to his family and friends.” Sharon, Shoreham, Dailymail.co.uk
“How the hell does he pass himself off as a comedian, Those people in the audience must be really easily pleased in life to find him even mildly amusing.” Chef, Ush.net
“Lee is, without doubt, a charm free vacuum who has bathed in a bath of shit. Emotionally unintelligent and intellectually retarded, he offers up a form of comedy that is both visually appalling and aurally disingenuos. A twat in other words. Top marks to him for foisting this crap and people buying it.” Cameron Borland, Offthetelly.com
“You really are just an unutterably loathsome little man aren’t you Lee? I might add as this point you are about as funny as a pile of rotting fish guts.” TV Witter, Guardian.co.uk
“This guy is a twat, he is not funny at all.” jaabui, bagito.com
“Steward Lee is a bitter, cynical and arrogant prick. Wat a hateful cunt.” Tommart123, Youtube
“I don’t like Stewart Lee. So any people treat him like the second coming of comedy, but I find him to be a smug tosser. This programme hasn’t changed my mind.” Lady Laughter, comedy.co.uk
“I went to see Stewart Lee in Brighton last night and it was thoroughly disappointing. He’s become formulaic and large parts of the show were just a rambling mess. Stewart Lee is also shorter than you’d think, and fatter than he looks on stage.” Willybum, zetaboards.com
“If that’s the state of British comedy today then come back Bernard Manning all is forgiven!” Andrew Hall, Bradford, Dailymail.co.uk
“Miserable whining-voiced cunt. Bernard Manning on the right, Stewart Lee on the left… bury them all together, dead or alive, and leave us with the genuinely funny people.” Mr Dogshit, b3ta
“I think Manning and Lee have more in common than most would care to admit, even if, for some, his politics make him almost impossible not to like (even when he doesn’t crack many genuine funnies). If Manning lazily picks easy targets, then what does Lee do in relation to the supposed stupidity of Americans (implicit – ‘we’re better than Americans’ – a cheap way to win over an audience)? And his taking the piss out of other comedians is a bit desperate (implicit – ‘I’m better/ more intelligent than other comedians – and so are you for coming to see me’ ).
And people say he’s not smug. It’s this suffocatingly self congratulatory aspect of his comedy which stops me enjoying him (alongside the sparsity of genuinely funny stuff) . Then of course, there’s the suffocating smugness of his fans. ‘We’re clever like Stu. Not like you oiks laughing at toasters’.” Sam Beckett 2, Guardian.co.uk
“I’ve got an English Degree and I’m gonna use it! Lee reminds me of a passage in Frank Skinners book, when, after he graduated, he became impossibly pretentious pseud, until someone knocked the shit out of him in a pub (sadly this has never happened to Lee). Stewart lee is clever, not funny, stylistically boring – another Guardian favorite along with Jarvis Cocker (they can do no harm). The point is for Stewy to show all his snidey fellow Morrisey fans how smart he is, and that’s it really, an almost unbearable ego-fest of 80’s alternative comedy.” Whiteyed, Guardian.co.uk
“Is this comedy? not really. stewart lee is massively overated. people who tend to think he’s funny (despite not laughing at him) think they are more intelligent because they ‘get him’ . well i think i’m more intelligent than anyone who likes stewart lee because i’ve realised he’s shit.” Jimthemofo, Youtube
“Stewart Lee has NEVER been funny and never will be. The BBC have to name his show a ‘comedy’ vehicle, because you wouldn’t be able to tell by the content.” Hatexfactor, Guardian.co.uk
“I understand his comedy. its subtle but malicious mockery of heteronomous individuality, and takes the smug autonomous likening towards collectivity, as is emphasized by material, such as attacking those who do not give to charity and people who dont follow his strict and defined moral codes. its bullshit. he may have some funny lines, observations and word-play, but he’s still totally close-minded, which only fuels his act. A smug git, who i cant work out if he’s just cornered a market (in which id respect him), or if he really is that vindictive towards political incorrectness (which makes him a twat).” Baz Bonehead, Youtube
“He certainly no Bernard Manning. Complete and utter shite. A smug lefty arse. Bernard was a genius, from the golden age of comedy that’s sadly gone now in a time where you can’t insult anyone any more. You can’t even take the piss out of gays now, they’re passing a law to make homophobic jokes illegal. Scots are fair game still though so I’ve seen from Lee’s DVD.” Magnificent Bastard, Readytogo.net
“I hate Stewart Lee he is a prick. Clarkson’s views are all spot on. Top gear is class and laughing at gipos and the Mexicans is hilarious.” Sam Rooney, Youtube
“Stewart Lee- every pseudo-intellectual’s favourite comedian! “If you don’t find him funny it’s because you can’t comprehend his comedic style” or “You’re just not clever enough” are usually responses to people who consider him unfunny…” Cabluigi, Guardian.co.uk
“Apart from Asher D’s book, he appeared to have read the first page of Chris Moyles’ “Difficult Second Book” and there was no evidence that he had read anything at all of the others he mentioned (Clarkson, Brand, Brown, Rowling). Brown’s literary construction lends itself to being battered (he writes as if his prose is converted from stage directions), but Lee just made up a line.
A funny line, yes, but that doesn’t make it intelligent criticism. It just makes it a sneery one-liner from a comedian who didn’t bother to research his material. He didn’t actually refer to the content of “My Booky Wook” (I haven’t read it either, but then I’m not the one claiming intellectual superiority by dismissing it purely on the basis of its title) or the Harry Potter series… or the Clarkson books. That just leaves the Asher D book (which he did seem to have read, and on which subject he actually was quite intelligent and funny â though the sausage-on-fork thing was a rather embarrassing lapse into reference-in-place-of-actual-joke) and the Chris Moyles book.
What does Lee attack Moyles for? Not his literary construction, not his factual veracity, not his underlying political leanings, but… knowing and admitting to his own limitations. I don’t buy this theory that Lee’s rant is any less reactionary than those of the Grumpy Old Men. It’s sneering, posturing, made from a position of ignorance, aiming at easy targets… and missing them. He really has become a lazy comedy slag.” Alex Gray, Offthetelly.com
“Intellectual pretensions aside for a moment Stewart Lee is a bit of a knob sometimes., isn’t he?” Contrapuntal, Twitter
“This guy is a douche bag who probably drank to much before going on stage to prove what a complete and utter asshole he is.” GRTak, finalgear.com
“It is basically him making a few different faces and reading the text while some idiots mindlessly laugh for no reason. He says a few words, just normal words and the audience laugh. “Well I was walking down the road” Pauses and makes a face *laughter* “And I saw a dog” Pauses and makes a face *laughter* “I think it was a Poodle” Pauses and makes a face *laughter* “Maybe a Jack Russel with Curly hair” Pauses and makes a face *laughter* “I walked past it while looking at it” Pauses and makes a face *laughter*. You get the picture. I hate this * shite. Painful… I started to feel sorry for him. Worst thing is that he obviously thinks a lot of himself.” Monkeymonger, Chrismoyles.net
“The IRA were not British. Only a tosser would say that the IRA were British. That is the opinion of a cocky little Brit, which he so obviously is. I’ve nothing against the British, but I don’t happen to like cocky wankers, as it happens. If there was an Irishman saying that an English group were Irish, i’d call him a dickhead too. If Lee is into facts, as he preaches about in another clip, then he should sit down and look at them – instead of talking total shite.” Wilzer, 808
“I must admit I have heard of Mr Lee, having seem two of his televised “shows”. However, it seems that he is now definitely not worth bothering about. Bye bye loser.” Harry, Rugby, Dailymail.co.uk
“Im sorry stewart lee fans but his material is lazy, repitive, dirivative and aimed squarely at the sychophants.” dufftownallan, eurogamer.com
“What a prick.” Jordanrowell555, Youtube
“Absolutely the saddest so called comedian I have ever heard. Trash is the only word I can think of this person. Disgusting!!!” Carla, St Albans, Dailymail.co.uk
“Who is this sumg gimp?” Cojones2, Guardian.co.uk
“Stewart lee is an english wanker who is a racist prick who is the unfunniest comic who I have had the mis fortune to see.” El Duderino, Twitter
“I watched the whole thing and didn’t even smile once. What a terrible comedian…” Sthhlm, Youtube
“Stewart Lee – haven’t watched you for years. Just realised why – you’re still not funny.” Saint Larry, Twitter
“I cant recall a single time this cunt has ever me laugh. Shite at his job. Useless cunt..” BigCJ, dontstartmeoff.com
“Is Stewart Lee meant to be funny?” Shoegirlsarah, Twitter
“Stewart Lee is not funny.” Club20, Twitter
“What happened to Stewart Lee? Used to love him, but right now, is there a more overrated comic?” Chris Tilly, Twitter
“Stewart Lee – one of the unfunniest men around.” George Powell, Twitter
“Whoever gave Stewart Lee a TV series with the word comedy in it should be shot.” Ubern, Twitter
“He’s a c*nt, people lap it up like they do Charlie Brooker yet both are prejudiced middle class tosspots. Brooker is a weetabix haired trendy tosspiece trying to cling on to anything remotely cool these days and Stewart Lee is a hypocrite.” Lents, redandwhitekop.com
“Come back Mr Lee when you have achieved 1% of what Ben Elton has achieved.” Redandwhiterob, readytogo.net
“Please Mr Lee do humanity a favor and scuttle back under your rock” Charles, North Carolina, Dailymail.co.uk
“It’s true, he is a genius. I heard him interviewed by Clive Anderson on a R4 review programme. Anderson was enthusiastic about Lee’s recent gigs and upcoming new shows and Lee lapped up the attention. Then Anderson brought up a personal attack by Lee on fellow “funny man” Russell Brand during one of Lee’s stand up shows. Apparently during this attack, Lee quoted Brand, the quote demonstrating that Brand is an immoral, shitty, worthless excuse for a human being, and not the intellectually and morally superior experimental kind of individual that Lee is. Unfortunately, Anderson reveals, Lee misquoted Brand, and so changed the entire meaning of what Brand had originally said.
So far, so you’ve-not-done-your-research. Lee’s true genius shone through moments later though when Anderson put it to him that he had deliberately misquoted Brand, and so was not just a bit lax, but actively dishonest. “Well…”, squirmed Lee, “..when you’re on stage…performing, I mean…you’re not really being yourself. And…I…wanted to show this by quoting something that Brand didn’t actually say to…say something about the nature of…performance”. Throughout his passage of discomfort he didn’t sound smug once, and I never laughed so much in my life. Genius.” Kakworm, Guardian.co.uk
“This Stewart Lee so isn’t funny. He is just bitter and jealous.” TJ Taylor 182, redandwhitekop.com
“Hes a pile of crap. Not funny whatever” skype29, skyvu.com
“Stewart Lee is a sick, unfunny excuse of a man…” Rusty, Surrey, Dailymail.co.uk
“He was struck off the comedic role-call forever with his breath-taking hypocrisy over the Danish cartoon controvesy.” Nadel, Guardian.co.uk
“I can’t stand his smuggy smug bastard smugface.” PES Fanboy, eurogamer.com
“I’ve gigged with him and he’s an arrogant twat. Maybe he thinks comedy should be challenging conventions and intelectually complex. Maybe he thinks comedy is a form of high art, perhaps there is a place for that. But there is also a place for comics who work fucking hard on their material and delivery and include Pull Back & Reveal’s and puns and all that stuff and just want to be FUNNY and make a living out of making people happy.” Japaneseboy, chortle.com
“Stewart Lee is a fat jealous cunt, he should be strangled.” Aceshigh, finalgear.com
“The man’s falling apart. He keeps a bottle of poppers back stage.” Neva2busy, dontstartmeoff.com
“Stew, you should give up the ‘comedy’ lark. You’re not half as funny or intelligent as you think you are. In fact you’re just silly, cruel and crude.” Zolash, Guardian.co.uk
“Is this supposed to be funny? It comes across as drawn-out tedious tripe.” Licensetodrive, Youtube
“Smug, unberable ranty bollocks.” Jah Lion, Guardian.co.uk
“Stewart Lee, avoid pissing off your dedicated fans by not word for word recycling your 10 yr old stand up on yr BRAND NEW BBC2 show .” LornaLaLaLion, Twitter
“Stewart lee is arguably the least funny man alive.” DoDavieGood, Twitter
“What a wicked viscious man this Stewart is (never actually heard of him). There really are some nasty people posing as entertainers.” Hilary, Staffs, Dailymail.co.uk
“His delivery moves at a slower pace than an ancient, artritic sloth. He whispers too, because he thinks, entirely wrongly, that that lends his awful act a certain gravitas. What an insufferable twat he is. The most interesting thing about his stand-up is watching the audience. You will not see one person there laughing in a natural, spontaneous manner. It’s all ridiculous Liberals laughing when they think something is supposed to be funny. It’s genuinely cringe making. What an unfunny, faux tortured intellectual cunt he is. The only thing worse than him are the humorless liberals who pretend to find him funny. “One of the most respected performers on the circuit.” Yes, this is always a euphemism for “he’s fucking useless, but we don’t want to tell him”.
The British Bill Hicks, without the swearing. A comedian who isn’t funny, followed by cunts that think they are brighter than everyone else and laugh way too loudly at the ‘jokes’ to show how much they get it. The Pied Cunter of Cuntlyn. Literally packed to bursting with cuntishness. The knobs in the business always describe him as ‘honest’ and having integrity, which actually means ‘useless unfunny shithead.’ Just the same as saying that an old biffer has a nice personality. Apparently he’s very popular amongst his peers on the comedy circuit. Thinking about it, it’s the same in any occupation really. The journeyman arseconker is generally liked because a) they’ve been trying and not getting anywhere for years and b) nobody feels vaguely threatened by them. So, it’s a case of ‘yeah, he’s alright him’ but when you examine why, it only highlights his uselessness. This boring cunts on the tv now, going on and on and on and on and not raising a single smile. Fuck off, you arsehat. I think he sees himself as the Morrissey of the comedy circuit. What a shitsplat. Lee has developed a new style of niche comedy. He’s become so niche, he’s a complete non-entity and invisible to all but the biggest, most self absorbed pricks in society. He’s the ‘comic’ beloved by people without a sense of humour, that think he’s a bit niche and edgy. He’s just a good old fashioned cunt. I laughed more when I went for my vasectomy and the nurse suck a javelin like needle in my bollocks. Whenever I see his photo, I dream that he’s just seen my boot, a split second before it turns his oily face inside out.
I’m just writing my new routine. This is it “My Nan likes Twiglets ……………………….. twiglets ……………….. twiglets ………………. packets of twiglets ……………….. my Nan likes twiglets …………………. twiglets ……………….. twiglets ……………….” I bet you’re all pissing yourselves. “The Top of the Pops” ……. “The Top of the Pops” ……. “The Top of the Pops” ……. “The Top of the Pops.” The big joke appears to be that older, untrendy folk prefix phrases and names with the word ‘the’. This is true and would have been ok had he said it once or even twice. He just can’t do it though. He simply has to then repeat the observation 30 times and batter everyone into submission with it. So fucking tiresome. The audience? Ohhhhhh the cunts that they are. I wouldn’t hate them if I thought they genuinely found him funny. I’d think they were dickheads, but wouldn’t hate them. It’s the fact that they don’t understand humour and are simply there to be on the fringe of what they see as an enlightened Liberal club that makes me fucking puke. What an agonisingly tedious, fat necked, shuffling bum’ole he is. The more I review his work, the more convinced I am that he must be stopped before he causes any more misery. He is evidently much better suited to working in a library or similarly un-dynamic public sector void than he is doing ‘comedy’. At least there, his whispering would be acceptable and there would be a number of other humourless retards there to stare blankly at him when he launches into another whisperfest about horses or crisps. Let’s start a campaign to get The Lee Leprosy off the telly and into somewhere more suited to his abilities. Last night, he was mumbling like a wino about Russell Howard. You can see he’s consumed with rage at being consigned to the graveyard slot and not being remotely popular.
Fucking hell!! He looks like a Munchkin that’s just invented a clockwork wanking machine. Unfortunately the dyed-in-the-wool Liberal will never grow up. They are genetically predisposed to always be intellectual infants. It’s extraordinary that someone as old and eroded as Polly Toynbee can still talk out of her gaping axe-wound as if she’s doing a Wolfie Smith in a student union bar, wearing a beret and Che Guevara T-shirt. Stewart Lee is just the same. When he’s 70, he’ll still be wafting out dreadful leftish platitudes from that unbearably smug face, while suggesting that anybody who disagrees is simply too dim to understand him. He’s only proud of being the 41st best stand-up ever because, whilst on the surface it makes him look a loser, technically it still makes him one of the funniest people on the planet. He knows he isn’t as do we all, but by using it, it looks like he’s being self deprecating, when in reality he’s bigging himself up as much as he can. The cunt. Looks like Stephen Gately just before he got arsed into the hereafter. 4 mentions of the Tories/Conservatives so far. Good God, change the record you anus. I’d love to grab that guitar and smash it over his great bequiffed head.
A gammon-faced greying indie kid in a Burton’s jacket. He looks as Gruntfuttocky as Ali Campbell! He was even more unbearable than usual tonight. It occurred to me that I don’t even really know what he is. I know he’s categorised as a comedian, but surely to be one, you must be capable of being funny. He simply isn’t, but he gets away with it by only standing in front of small groups of virgins, who wear CND badges and go away for wanking weekends to Bournemouth. If he stood in front of any other audience, he’d get bottled off stage. I’m sure he kids himself that this is just the way he likes it and that being unfunny in the eyes of the vast majority of the population is a vindication of his ethos and material. Secretly though, whenever he sees a Michael McIntyre type dickhead packing huge venues to the rafters, a little bit of his gammon being must die. Lee, as ever, picks on an easy and safe target, in this case Winston Churchill. “He was cleverly playing on lazy national identities”; oh do fuck off you irksome bumcheese. Is Winston Churchill a ‘lazy national identity’? You don’t know what you’re talking about. Can we look forward to him telling the audience next week that the Prophet Mohammed was a paedophile and liked bumming children? Will this be challenging the Muslim population to look at themselves? No, thought not. If you type ‘Stewart Lee is’ into google, the first auto match is ‘Stewart Lee is not funny’ and the second is ‘Stewart Lee is about as funny as bubonic plague’. The cunt could come on and sit in complete silence for 30 minutes and the Guardian would still suggest it was brilliant, intelligent comedy. How does he avoid a lynching? I’d like to see his decapitated gammon head in a microwave oven.
A damp sponge, masquerading as a comic and social commentator. Who the fuck does he think he’s kidding? Maybe if he had been genuinely angry apart from slightly grumpy, he’d be able to fill a venue larger than a shoe box. An angry person, even an angry idiot is entertaining. A slightly grumpy idiot is not. I do wish he’d fuck off and set himself on fire. The ridiculous twat is going on and on and on about the class system and simply proving that he is the very worst type of snob. An inverted snob, but a snob nonetheless. What a dreadful, awful cunt. Being turned inside out from your foreskin up and fed through a mangle is funnier than Stewart Lee. Having digested the almost indigestible over the last few hours, a couple of things have become even more apparent than before. The fat necked quimblast is the most appalling inverted snob. To hear him attempting to lampoon the Tory political elite only served to make him look even more petty-minded and bitter. He kept reminding us, as if we needed it, of how things were in the 1980s.
Perhaps he thinks we don’t remember. His ‘politics’ show did not contain the word ‘Labour’ even once. Perhaps young Stewart stopped reading the newspapers in 1997. He devised the story about meeting David Cameron in order to drive home his belief that the ‘Tories…………… Tories…………. Tories’ are moulded to govern as they do from the cradle. Be this as it may, the subsequent admission that the story was made up made him look a crushingly massive cunt. There aren’t many comics around who would go to the trouble of making up a story and deliberately make it unfunny. The audience watching (and listening) was, as usual, the most interesting bit. The more technical the point, the louder they laugh and it’s simply a way of letting their fellow cretins know that they really, really get it. Last night, his finale was a routine a quarter of a century old and crustier than Amanda Holden’s knickers. Yet there are still people who praise it, people who will do or say anything to appear right-on. He’s Ben Elton on Prozac; the only difference is that Ben Elton used to be able to tell a joke. Someone’s nicked some of my comments and put them on cooked and bombed!!! They are now credited to those cunts! That’ll teach me!” Ricardo, dontstartmeoff.com
“It’s obvious that Stewart Lee’s audience pretend to laugh to look clever and highly literate. I can back this up because I have done this myself with other ‘comedy’ in the past and I know others who have said the same. My older sister used to do it when she was studying a couple of Shakespeare comedies. She’d laugh at the totally unfunny lines in front of me but, being my sister and knowing her ways, I knew she was faking it in an attempt to look intelligent and clued-up. A few years later I found myself doing a similar thing so I would look clever around draftpak chavs that used to call round for me.
It wasn’t before long when we both realised just how cuntish we were being and packed it in. It’s just that pretentious stage that many teenagers go through. Stewart Lee and his head in the sand fans obviously need to fucking grow up. Or even better: go through that other phase many teens go through and just end it all! His fans think his detractors are just non-understanding, common halfwits and say “Stick to your Peter Kay, Two Pints of Lager…, Chubby Brown, etc”.
I would rather be subjected to Chubby Brown than this borefest. At least the fat idiot has a bare minimum of personality in his ‘act’ (even if it is that of a thick cunt) and uses some expressions other talking monotonously or whispering monotonously.
The girl singer in one of my old bands (who incidentally liked this twat, The Boosh and probably likes The Long Mong and Dross NobJob) seemed to think I was a total dreg just because I swore a lot, wasn’t into her dire, whimsical, student dunce type humour and had watched a Chubby Brown gig. I had been surrounded by crap 1990s ultra PC ‘comedy’ for most of my life, so you can hardly blame me! Whenever I told her she wasn’t singing something correctly, she’d try some stupid non-sensical retort reminiscent of these arse sopranos, when all I was doing was trying to make the tune sound better and wasn’t being patronising or a cunt.
I was 21, she was 30 and spoke to me like I was fucking clueless, even though she’d joined after answering an ad the band put out and was singing vocal lines I had written. (Sorry, I’m going off on one.) She was all overly happy and seemingly friendly to the untrained eye, but deep down inside lay a thoroughly selfish, backstabbing, uncompromising, dishonest, pretentious, patronising piece of low-life shit. I eventually left the band when the guitarist took her side over mine, (I wanted to kill them both at that time) and the last gig I did with them was a private party organised by her lentil-eating film-maker cronies who were just as whimsical and stupid. I got smashed on the free booze and said over the mic that they’d all been a lousy audience and called them a shower of dumb, pig ignorant, shit talking cunts who couldn’t shoot a porno. If I had been a girl, I would’ve fucking kicked her to a pulp!” Pezzer, dontstartmeoff.com
“His delivery moves at a slower pace than an ancient, artritic sloth. He whispers too, because he thinks, entirely wrongly, that that lends his awful act a certain gravitas. What an insufferable twat he is. It’s obvious that his audience pretend to laugh to look clever and highly literate. I can back this up because I have done this myself with other ‘comedy’ in the past and I know others who have said the same. It’s just that pretentious stage that many teenagers go through. Him and his head in the sand fans obviously need to fucking grow up. Or even better: go through that other phase many teens go through and just end it all.
Unfortunately the dyed-in-the-wool Liberal will never grow up. They are genetically predisposed to always be intellectual infants. It’s extraordinary that someone as old and eroded as Polly Toynbee can still talk out of her gaping axe-wound as if she’s doing a Wolfie Smith in a student union bar, wearing a beret and Che Guevara T-shirt. Stewart Lee is just the same. When he’s 70, he’ll still be wafting out dreadful leftish platitudes from that unbearably smug face, while suggesting that anybody who disagrees is simply too dim to understand him. Imagine there’s a parallel universe where being a famous comic who knocks ethnic minorities earns you 20 grand a gig, but being a liberal loving little cunt means doing the rounds in seedy old social clubs for your petrol money and a round of flat pints. If this arsehole were to be stripped of his earnings and permanently teleported there, do you think he’d spice up his act with a few Ahmed and Sanjeev jokes? If he did, he’d probably make the excuse: “I’m just taking the piss out of bigots!” This agonisingly tedious, gammon headed, fat necked, squinty, shuffling, cunt with an inimitable droning monotone arsehole (has) ideas so far above his station they might as well be on the fucking moon.
Here, cheer yourself up with Uncle Stewart and his HILARIOUS “crisps…crisps…crisps” routine. Shit as it is, it’s all people like you deserve. “Hello, I’m the controller of the BBC. Is there anything you’d like to see repeated?” “No thank you mithter, we’re quite happy with Thtewart Lee and hith edgy uncompwomithing humour, thank you thir.”
I won’t go into detail about what I did or didn’t think of the Stewart Lee Comedy Vehicle, because what I’m about to say isn’t an opinion, it’s a FACT. Stewart Lee is NOT FUNNY. Not remotely. He is to comedy what elephants are to ice skating. As for his audience, Jesus, the typical gaggle of smug liberals revelling in an ego massage from the stumpy, whispering, tedious humour void, with the usual cunt laughing first, loudest and longest as if to say to everyone else “I GET THE JOKE! I’M SO CLEVER!” Maybe I repeat myself because nobody is fucking listening? Stewart Lee is the emperor’s new clothes. He can’t honestly be described as a comedian, surely? I decided to watch Comedy Vehicle in its entirety last night in an attempt at seeing what the fuss was all about, and it just left me baffled and angry. He actually managed to exceed his usual levels of smug, self-important, aren’t-I-clever-and-shocking self-indulgent cockery and was even more unbearable than usual. I grew up with comedians who were actually funny, who made you laugh and made you think.
This is what Lee claims to be, hence the “if you prefer a milder comedian” schtick, but he isn’t. However much he bleats about being confrontational and shocking and daring, he isn’t. He gets away with it by sticking like glue to his target audience, a bunch of self righteous liberal Guardian readers who wear CND badges and actually believe all that shite about enrichment and ethnic diversity, even when their hometowns have turned into gang-infested, graffiti-strewn ghettos with skyrocketing crime rates. “I love the hip-hop graffiti…sorry, street art…on our garage, darling, it’s soooo ‘real’!” If he stood in front of any other audience, he’d get bottled off stage. I’m sure he kids himself that this is just the way he likes it and that being unfunny in the eyes of the vast majority of the population is a vindication of his ethos and material. Secretly though, whenever he sees a Michael McIntyre type dickhead packing huge venues to the rafters, he must die a little inside. Look, for the billionth time, saying Stewart Lee is unfunny is like saying fire is hot, water’s wet and salt tastes salty. It’s not an opinion, it’s a fucking FACT.
Stewart Lee is an embarrassment, and the fact that he has a career at all is as depressing as it is baffling… stumbling around like mange ridden dog on its last legs in front of an audience full of simpering liberal arsemongers, repeating (him)self and talking bollocks. A damp sponge, masquerading as a comic and social commentator. Who the fuck does he think he’s kidding? Maybe if he had been genuinely angry apart from slightly grumpy, he’d be able to fill a venue larger than a shoe box. An angry person, even an angry idiot is entertaining. A slightly grumpy idiot is not. I do wish he’d fuck off and set himself on fire.” Nelson Swillie, cookedandbombed.co.uk
“Shit-haired cunt who resides at the very apex of all that is absolute, patience-testing wank. Repeating the same thing a hundred times in a monotone is NOT comedy, Stewart, now cunt off. I was having such a lovely day then someone reminded me of the unfortunate ongoing existence of this unutterably smug, self-satisfied, student-friendly arsewhistle, which has left me wanting to carve the word ‘Nicobobinus’ into my wrist with the sharp end of my front door key. Comedy for people whose idea of a fun night out is a glass of lemonade and a game of darts. His audiences always contain klaxon-heads who bray with inane “I GET IT!” laughter. Twats.
He’s the comedy Billy Bragg. He’s been around for fucking ages yet absolutely nobody seems to have a good word to say about him. Just another leftie button-pusher who makes the right noises and who it’s cool to name-drop in supposedly ‘elevated’ company. A superannuated indie kid who needs to fuck off back to 1991 and stay there, like a fly in amber.
Another total cunt who’s apparently a genius. Fuck him. What a patronising, condescending, smug, worthy, self-righteous tool he is. He’s a fur-lined, ocean going cunt. The alarm bells should be ringing in the Lee household, as he’s turned into a fat, unfunny bastard with a pretentious quif who is now more Miss than Hit – and we all know what that did for former edgy comedian Alexi Sayle’s career. I don’t like him anymore coz he looks like Mark Lamaar with a pie factory problem. Rank.
He’s not even fucking good enough to tie Bill Oddie’s shoelaces. I’d sure like to roll over the cunt in a Sherman Tank. Fucking HELL. “Imagine me, being carried off by a bird! It’d be hilarious!” Not as hilarious as seeing you get ground up in a fucking waste disposal compactor, you ABSOLUTE turd soufflé. I’m sorely tempted to hit the stand-up circuit with an ‘old school’ Jim Davidson-style act, calling myself Stew Atlee, in the hope that it will finally discredit this useless CUNT. “I saw Stew Atlee last night, he was AWFUL”…laugh THAT one off you charmless left-wing PC cuntbubble. I’d rather shoot a kitten in the face than listen to this cunt. What a self-indulgent bollock blister. How has this cunt got the brass neck to assume the moral high ground, when he was responsible for the abortion that was ‘Jerry Springer – the Opera’? Cuntox. If Stewart Lee wrote it you just know it’s going to be shit. And by God it is. It’s unhealthy how much I hate this cunt, really it is. I still remember tuning into the very first episode of ‘Fist of Fun’ in 1995, after the papers described it as “promising”. Promising? It was a fucking disgrace.
I’d hoped that would be the beginning and the end of the monotone arse-smear, but never underestimate the power of wanky student cults. He’s still with us, almost two decades later, and if anything all that adulation from the lentil-munchers has made him even more of an insufferable wanky cunt. He’s an inch away from wearing a fucking ‘Rik from the Young Ones’ beret (when his greying hair finally falls out and he can’t sculpt it into a Morrissey quiff any more). Trust me on this. And why is this twat so proud of being ‘the 41st best stand up ever’? That means there are forty people funnier than him. More than that, if you count the entire rest of the world. Fucking typical, Bernard Manning dies but this cunt lives. I really wish the Grim Reaper would show some fucking taste. Tedious shuffling monotone bumwad. He’s just launched his own brand of crisps. Gammon-faced twat flavour. I won’t go into detail about what I did or didn’t think of the Stewart Lee Comedy Vehicle, because what I’m about to say isn’t an opinion, it’s a FACT. Stewart Lee is NOT FUNNY. Not remotely. He is to comedy what elephants are to ice skating. As for his audience, Jesus, the typical gaggle of smug liberals revelling in an ego massage from the stumpy, whispering, tedious humour void, with the usual cunt laughing first, loudest and longest as if to say to everyone else “I GET THE JOKE! I’M SO CLEVER!” Yes, describing Winston Churchill as a pig in a hat is so edgy, isn’t it?
Fuck me, even Family Guy is nearer the knuckle than this fucking cuntwagon. He’s got a stupid quiff, he rambles on about crisps, I’ve seen more comic timing in a row of fucking stiffs, the pay he gets from the BBC is really quite obscene, please bury the ham-faced cunt somewhere that’s green. Seriously, when there is the comedy equivalent of the Nuremberg trials, this gammony bastard is going to be hung from the highest fucking lamp-post, pelted with wasp’s nests and dog turds, and eventually blasted with a flamethrower. Fucking Hell! I can’t out into words how much I detest this utter fucking cunt. I’m sure, in his mind, he thinks he is still seventeen, at college, listening to the Smiths and impressing dopey cunts called Josh and Amanda in the refectory with his mock intellectual pose. Cuntstack. Stewart Lee is the emperor’s new clothes. He can’t honestly be described as a comedian, surely? He leaves me baffled and angry.
He actually managed to exceed his usual levels of smug, self-important, aren’t-I-clever-and-shocking self-indulgent cockery last night and was even more unbearable than usual. I grew up with comedians who were actually funny, who made you laugh and made you think. This is what Lee claims to be, hence the “if you prefer a milder comedian” schtick, but he isn’t. However much he bleats about being confrontational and shocking and daring, he isn’t.
He gets away with it by sticking like glue to his target audience, a bunch of self righteous liberal Guardian readers who wear CND badges and actually believe all that shite about enrichment and ethnic diversity, even when their hometowns have turned into gang-infested, graffiti-strewn ghettos with skyrocketing crime rates. “I love the hip-hop graffiti…sorry, street art…on our garage, darling, it’s soooo ‘real’!” If he stood in front of any other audience, he’d get bottled off stage. I’m sure he kids himself that this is just the way he likes it and that being unfunny in the eyes of the vast majority of the population is a vindication of his ethos and material.” Jimmy Vespa, dontstartmeoff.com
“Talk about a pseudo-intellectual with a slow delivery and unfunny anecdotes. He’s also a smug, liberal, PC douche bag to boot.” Merriol, Youtube
“Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle has been total pish. Such a smug cunt.” Fruit Fly Killa, projectcorvo.com
“Stewart Lee is a fucking cunt.” Nial, derryforums.com
“Never, ever again will i watch anything this adolesent-minded, middle aged twat does. I still can’t believe there are grown men who still think like a 15 year SWP member. Silly me. The BBC are putting their/our money on this piece of faded crap and making sure he has a renaissance.” Monkey, dontstartmeoff.com
“I’d rather watch sprouts growing.” Shibayaku, Guardian.co.uk
“Stewart Lee is so shit it makes my blood boil.” Liam, breakbeat.co.uk
“I know hes the latest thing n all? but just not that funny ?well hyped tho…i want his pr team.” Matt Vauxhall, Guardian.co.uk
“Stuart Lee is not funny! And thats a problem if you’re suppossed to be a comedian. Jesus is Lord philippians 2:11. Burn in Hell Stuart Lee.” Christian1truefaith, bagito.com
“Stewart Lee is one unfunny, smug, public school Tarquin.” Parvulesco, Guardian.co.uk
“In my opinion Stewart Lee is a very dangerous man who needs to be locked away in a strait jacket in a psychiatric hospital.” Expat, Australia, Dailymail.co.uk
“Bizarre looking bloke. Looks baked.” Godineavenelpus, Guardian.co.uk
“Stewart Lee went goes in a bar .he saw Joe Pasquale and joe Pasquale said Hi Stewart Lee how is your career as a successful telly comedian going ? and Stawert Lee said not well ,i only get telly work on the paramount comedy channel.Joe Pasquale said WELL FUCK OFF THEN STEWART LEE. CAME BACK WHEN YOUR A HOUSE HOLD NAMES!! wheres Richard Herring he was the funny one ,NOW PISS OFF.” Chrisspencerbarnes, Youtube
“Lee is preaching to a gradually decreasing audience of weak sycophants who prefer their need for sneering political/moral guidance, wrapped up and disguised as comedy. Meanwhile the rest of us persue and enjoy the search for genuine comedy and real laughs. I think he’s a smug arrogant bighead whose main function is slagging off others, whilst surrounded mainly by sycophants who seem to have fallen masochistically under his subtle bullying “I’m cleverer than you” style. The laughs per minute are very few and far between. Lecturer? Sociologist? – Maybe. Proper comic – nah. After over 35 years of being a professional comic you learn to weigh people up pretty good, and as far as I’m concerned the man is struggling to get over himself and positively exudes contempt for everybody but himself, which btw he can barely conceal – from me anyway – even if some more naive others don’t see it.
If a man’s style, presentation or material is so indeterminate that several interpretations can be taken – especially negative ones, then he is a fool for not removing all doubt, thus not allowing himself to be unecessarily, and perhaps possibly wrongly, judged either a genius (good) or merely a big head (not good). What can he actually DO? All he does is stand on the sidelines being “clever” and knocking others like some showbiz Jeremy Paxman equivalent (only with even less personality).Does he ever do anything funny without it being at somebody else’s expense? A good comic should have empathy and sympathy with an audience, should be “vulnerable” or self depreciating at the same time as being confident (not easy).
They should be very human and not make an audience feel inferior in any way. Bob Monkhouse achieved all this and at the same time was far cleverer and funnier than the soulless cold fish Lee could ever hope to be. Stewart Lee has never depreciated himself – in fact, with his gradual weight gain, I would describe him as stubbornly augmentative. He stands on the sidelines and critises/takes the piss out of other artists while contributing very little himself – that is nothing to do with who he chooses to work with. As for Armando Ianucci, Chris Morris, Simon Munnery, Miles Jupp – I’ve never heard of any of them – could it be that he has “got them on board” because of their desire for TV exposure and of course the fees or is that just cynical old me?
I am not denying that he is a very clever man – but so is Stephen Hawking but I wouldn’t expect many laughs there either. Whispering, piggy eyed, smug, arrogant, arty farty twat. All those that like him come on – be honest – would your mum, dad, uncles, brothers and sisters, gran and most of your mates and work colleagues laugh at him? – would they fuck and you know it. At my age and being in business I know and meet hundreds of people from all walks of life, many of them young as well as old, so I conducted a little survey and roughly half had never even heard of him and of those that had, most didn’t think he was funny. Mind you to be fair, hardly any of those asked were spotty, right on, supercool dudes/students.” Roy, Chortle.co.uk
“Am I the only person who doesn’t find Stewart Lee funny in the slightest?” Mr T Grady, Twitter
“I’ve just watched loads of videos of this guy on a friend’s recommendation and I really don’t find him that funny. His stories are painfully drawn out. This ‘smug superiority complex’ that some people have about his comedy is bullshit! What? Is this supposed to be the ‘thinking man’s’ comedian? Give me Frankie Boyle any day!” Hexedkid1, Youtube
“There is a disgusting comedy routine by Stewart Lee in which he slags Richard Hammond off, tells lies about him and says that he hopes that Richard dies. It certainly is not funny. I was at school with both of them and I know why Lee is so bitter about Richard. Richard has always been a thoroughly nice chap.
He is unbelievably kind and always stuck up for people who were being bullied. His artistic skills are fantastic and he was always way ahead of everyone else in terms of having a mature outlook. However, the senior school we went to in 1981 was extremely old-fashioned and had an awful “macho culture”.
Richard disliked it from the start. Lee was at least two years older than Richard and a typical arrogant posh-boy. I am certan he never knew Richard at all. Lee always arrogantly thought he was going to be a big star and is now very bitter that an unacademic, down-to-earth character like Richard is a well-loved superstar whilst Lee is just treading the comedy circuit.
That’s what happened. Lee never knew Richard and anything Lee has said about knowing Richard is a almost certainly a complete lie. Thanks for letting me put the record straight.” Charlie, richardhammond.org.uk
“Comedy Vehicle? I thought rogue traders was still on and they were catching out comedians. Not one funny gag, a small audience who seemed to be embarrassed into laughing along and a general bitter tirade of insults and jealousy from Lee. Am i alone in wondering how this was commissioned? Can i have my half hour back please?” Dachshund Steve, bbc.co.uk
“Smug, pretentious, self important, pompous, self indulgent…. and they’re his good points…. No…he’s not funny either…” Dog Day, Guardian.co.uk
“Met him in Stoke Newington last year when he was rehearsing new material on an appalling all female bill in some grotty pub. I accused him of carrying the germ of a curse of the Broken Brothers pentacle Church and he immediately fired back. The Fall, Hex Enduction Hour, 1982. A genuinely nice bloke we thought, and not a bit snobby or pompous like we had been led to believe.” Sven Hassel Schmuck, Fall Forum
“You must have been well pissed to come out with that! I find his response train-spotterly creepy, and like him less, not more, for it.” Starsky Tandoori, Fall Forum
“It’s time to start calling bullshit on Stewart Lee.” Splendid Timwah, Twitter
“Smug + knows the right people in the right place + will be on tv no matter unfunny he is = stewart lee.” Sweetas, Guardian.co.uk
“He’s a cunt, a smug cunt, and a cunt.” Outcast, lineoutrecords.com
“Tedious, smug unfunny, slightly unwashed looking, cunt.” Minor Miracle, lineoutrecords.com
“The guy is painfully unfunny, its just a shame my friend who loves him cannot see this. Also hate it whenever someone raises that he isn’t funny, you get the standard remark “oh you dont get him”. What is there to get. I couldnt stand him with his mate herring and cant stand him As for his sycophantic crowd, thats a whole new topic….” Cuthbert Greenrdge, dontstartmeoff.com
“An aging cunt with an Eskimo face from the 90s.” Shindig, thedugout.net
“He comes across as a stuck up snob cut, and worse he tries to come across like that.” Davgooner, thedugout.net
“He’s on 11.25 on BBC2 because he’s simply not funny to anyone outside of a very small niche audience (the smug middle-class smug liberal left). That’s why he’s on after Newsnight. He can be as smug and unfunny as he wants, but as long as he recieves a BBC paycheque, I have the right to be critical of him. He’s not funny, and he’s clearly got friends in high places to have continually been promoted as a funnyman for over a decade.” Stabbo, Guardian.co.uk
“Even Mark Thomas, the Voice of the Socialist Worker, is funnier than Stewart Lee. Having said that, there’s few things in the history of the world less funny than Stewart Lee- most of which are far too obvious to list. I could go on stage at the Comedy Store, die on my backside so hard I would be pelted off with broken bottles, and still be far better at comedy than him. IMO, Stewart Lee’s show ranks on a level with terminal disease, the rise of China and the worst BBC comedies I ever saw: the 2000s Ardal O’ Hanlon vehicle “My Hero” (and all those American family aspirational sitcoms that it was based on); and “Little Miss Jocelyn”, in my personal list of comedy choices. We asked for a new Bill Hicks and got Stewart Lee.” AnonUK, Guardian.co.uk
“I had a dream last night I was beating this guy up. This fucking cunt is devastatingly unfunny. A ridiculously unfunny cunt. I was in shock for a couple of days after his last show. I am rarely shocked at stuff on TV, but I could scarcely believe my eyes or ears that what I was watching was actually happening. Political correctness seems to guarantee an unfunny, student humour cunt of a comedian. I was watching a Bernard Manning DVD recently, he was a proper funny cunt.
He told one about 2 Jews who were best mates, one asks the other what he would do if he won the lottery, his mate says: “Well, I would share it with you for a start, you are my best friend and I would share anything with you”, His mate says “That is very generous, what would you do if you had 2 houses?”, “Well, of course I would give you one of them.” “What about 2 cars?”, “I would give one of them to you, my friend.”, “What if you had 2 chickens?”‘ “Now fuck off, you know I’ve got 2 chickens.”
Press the red button, I fucking dare you. ‘Stewart Lee Presents’ is on, featuring some weirdo, in drag, who has just said he gets his material directly from Satan. I won’t argue with you on that one, you poof. And Stewart Lee, you can stick your crisps, and your Grandad, right up your fucking arse, you boring cunt.” Willy Digits, dontstartmeoff.com
“Complete shite. His fans claim him to be some comical prophet turns out he’s just awful.” Tsuandthecrew, Youtube
“The least funny thing I’ve ever seen.” Andy0284, Youtube
“He now does the kind of thing he used to mock in the Lee and Herring days. ‘So I got off the bus…eh!’. Stewart Lee has become a lazy comedy slag! Oh irony!” Belated Comission, Youtube
“Is he always this dull???I used to think he could be quite amusing.” Sharbie, Mumsnet
“Agree. Dull. Something made me think, maybe this time he’ll be funny, but no.” RoobyMurray, Mumsnet
“Its so sloooooooooooooooow.” Sharbie, Mumsnet
“I can’t stand him. Smug man.” Duelling Fangom, Mumsnet
“Burn in Hell stuart lee. You are a scumbag.” Tristan2929, Youtube
“Stewart Lee. Jesus, what a lame muppet.” Radeeboi, Twitter
“What an absolute wanker, not funny at all. Attention seeking idiot.” Carlen, Youtube
“I had to check.. Stewart Lee – still not funny. I was right. Self awareness alone does not equal humour. You need dick jokes too.” AbbasAli5000
“Stewart Lee last night was crap. He may think it’s irony to bore the audience, it wasn’t. However sycophants in the audience loved it!” Lunacycle, Twitter
“A very annoyed man who craves attention.” SK187Payback, Youtube
“Is it just me who thinks that Stewart Lee takes himself too seriously? It is as if he has appointed himself Mr credibility. Frankly, if you are a comedian, I don’t care about credibility; I just care if you make me laugh. And watching your recent BBC 2 series, you didn’t do that Mr Lee. In fact you were interminably dull.” Purewater01, Guradian.co.uk
“Would rather scoop my eyes out with rusty spoons then watch him again.” Maxdaman19, Youtube
“Getting a blood transfussion then finding out that due to a mix-up, you received the blood of an AIDS ridden junkie is funnier than Stewart Lee.” The Iceman, dontstartmeoff.com
“Stuart Lee is certainly good at being funny in his tubby, middle class, knowing way, but to be fair his ‘Robbie Williamsesque’ habitual self-deprecation stinks of a desperate need to pre-empt and avoid criticism of any kind and is unfortunate. If only he could let it go (as is so true with Williams) and simply let people make their minds up without the immense childlike immaturity of trying to appear so cool about it he would be not only more likeable, but just a much better comedian. He would have a witty and clever reply even to this though no doubt. Poor Stu.” JMR81, Guardian.co.uk
“What’s happened to Stewart Lee? He was hilarious back in the 90’s now he just sounds bitter.” Muppet135, Youtube
“Go fuck yourself ya cunt!” Warbrain88, Youtube
“Fuck this ELITIST-I’m-just-like-David-CrÂoss boring “comedian” that calls himself Stewart Lee.” Yourface, Youtube
“Half a preacher, half an unfunny prick hiding behind unfunny sarcasm.” Diabolik, pistonheads.com
“This guys is the worst comedian ever… i remenber him with some boring jokes about receipts… it was so bad.. telling people what is the receipts is for…. and that he had a receipt. i cant believe people liked it.” Quaive, Youtube
“Another devastatingly unfunny cunt, according to his bastard fans, anyone who doesn’t find him funny aren’t intelligent enough to get his humour. Since when has being smug, boring, spiteful and not to mention extremely fucking creepy been the height of hilarity? They can keep him the weirdo bastards. Solely put on this earth to condescend the absolute fuck out of anyone that’s stupid enough to listen, mainly liberals who, like him, believe their smarter than everyone else.
I remember seeing this cock on 8 out 10 cats once, not a great show i know although i quite enjoy watching sean lock on it, everytime he spoke he fell flat on his arse, it was so amusing watching him be outwitted by the very type of people he regulary deems witless, he went on to say that it was one of the lowest points of his career, not because he made himself look like a prick oh no, but because he wants people to believe he’s to good for a show of that nature. It pains me to say it, bit i think i’m witnessing someone who’s even more undeservedly aggrandized than even Bill fucking Hicks is, he’s lucky that theres people stupid enough out there that will settle for someone like him who cannot, for the life of him, muster up the main ingredient that someone in his position SHOULD have, the ability to make others laugh, instead he gives them nastiness, bitterness, huge amounts of snobbery and one great big condescension, appalling beyond belief!
I’ve been unfortunate enough to pay money to watch this talentless buffoon. He had this part of his act whereby he held an vinyl record above his head repeating the title, the multitude lapped it up as insecure in their intellect as lee himself. Only a fucking moron would put up with being patronised to fuck by such a unfunny, clearly bitter, out of date prick such as this 90’s fucking throw back, there’s no intelligence required for this onslaught of pure cuntishness.
He tells what he thinks is a joke, then has the nerve to turns smugly to his audience and practically ask what type of joke it is and whether it’s funny, again thinking he get’s something everyone else doesn’t, talk about vilifying the very people that pay for his meaningless existence, it’s not their job to be judged it’s yours you useless fucking humour vacuum. he’s a cunt.” Guest, dontstartmeoff.com
“He is the comedian every Guardian journalist can relate to. Smug, egotistical and self-contented.” Jim24, Guardian.co.uk
“I know this guy… not well… but I can in fact confirm that he is a cock ! I’ve spoken to him several times in the past at various get-together’s (although not recently) and he is a bit of a pillock! He used to go out with my wifes’ cousin. He came up a few times for Xmas and one or two other things. I found him to be a little condescending and a bit arrogant… I think it must be a thing with people who become famous, whereby they automatically think they are superior to you, just cos they’ve been on Telly… Anyway they’ve split up now and my wifes cousin seems a lot happier. I’d expect him to keep his stand-up routine seperate from day to day life, but then perhaps I’m expecting too much. I like his comedy, but as a person, he’s a bit of an arse.” MrBloefeldt, readytogo.com
“You can tell that the laughing is uncomfortable laughing. They don’t know when to laugh but feel they should. He thinks he’s clever by explaining his own jokes and how they work. Other comedians could do the same but realise it’s lazy and crap, but with a coating of Stewart’s smug veneer it becomes ‘intelligent’ to his audience, cunts sucked into the Lee vortex of smug who think Lee is some military general of comedy who sets trap that allow him the have the last laugh as victory, when in fact he’s just exploiting daft self-proclaimed comedy connoisseurs who he knows will like anything that’s deemed intellectual, no matter how many times he mumbles ‘crisps’.” Otis, dontstartmeoff.com
“Ah Mr Lee is doing postmodernist comedy. Not only does he tell ‘a joke’ he then asks the audience whether the ‘joke’ is funny/offensive/ironic/slapstick/ … or just crap. So now standup turns on its head by vilifying the audience for laughing/not laughing at a particular time during the performance. Hmm. Like prog rock which disappeared up its own arsehole or conceptual art which just relies upon the talentless flagellating the ‘uneducated’ so standup now moves into realm of not being funny, which (strokes beard here) is er… funny. Ladies and gentlemen and reviewers who “think he’s the funniest thing on television right now” please get a grip…… or watch some vintage Les Dawson to see how it’s really done.” Scousetone, Guardian.co.uk
“You do a 9 minute routine on extreme misogyny and then finish it by describe someone as a `cunt’ to get a cheap laugh. Pathetic hypocrisy… and not funny. Stewart Lee is using the word cunt – which is a misogynist word. He is a witless, hypocritical prick. And he isn’t funny.” Danizawa, Youtube
“Stewart lee seems like hes stuck in a ‘right on’ era. Hes not as funny, cutting edge or clever as he probably thinks he is. He gets some things right but his deire to challenge modern life and society dont quite hit the spot and come over as both studenty and smug. He reminds me of that other ‘protesting’ comedian Mark Thomas. Allthough both are probably well intentioned.” Jackoscarsargeant, makeapost.com
“I never really got Stewart Lee. His routine is simply tell a joke, take a 15 second pause, tell another joke, another pause. Irritated me so much that I could only stand 15 minutes of one show.” The British Way, Reddit.com
“SL’s mastery of the English language and history has not made him funny, it appears to have just made him an arrogant twat. I’d rather listen to Chris Moyles than sit through Stewart Lee’s unfunny drivel.” Nexxxxeh, reddit.com
“Went to see this ‘funny’ guy last night. Funny he was not. Load of rubbish. Hardly anyone was laughing because his act is rubbish! I really fancied a good laugh to cheer my self up. Unfortunately I didn’t get it. His style is to bang on about something for ages and ages and then come back to it for ages and ages. It was like being stuck with a bore at a dinner party, one that you want to punch.” Denadainit, Sheffieldcityforum
“It’s amazing he can’t get a decent audience at this slot. It’s probably because he’s unfunny. Isn’t it BBC?” Cripesonfriday, Twitter
“I’d rather hear some good arse jokes than endure Lee’s self satisfied smuggery…” Sparebub, Guardian.co.uk
“Classic left wing socialist comedian. If they don’t approve of you and you don’t conform to their world view they’d rather put you up against a wall (a la Che Guevara). I hate this comedian. He’s about 25 years out of date and is no doubt coming to the fore just as another failed Labour government is about to be kicked into the political wilderness for a generation.” Doug, Aberdeen, Dailymail.co.uk
“He sounds like Pam Ayres grandson, without her intellect. I’m sorry but this is self indulgent tedious piffle, allowed only because this ‘worzelette’ has been to oxford. Something funny please. More haha and less ooh ahh!” Kevin1M, Chortle.co.uk
“The reason he doesn’t get invited onto Live at the Apollo is because the audience for that show tune in because they want to have a laugh, not be lectured by a pretentious, smug sixth form socialist.” The Star Destroyer, Guardian.co.uk
“Didn’t laugh once and his smugness irritates the fuck out of me.” Foo, urban75.net
“I sat through one episode of the Stewart Lee’s “Comedy Vehicle”. Half an hour thinking, “he can’t be THIS bad surely? When’s he going something, anything funny or even mildly interesting?….but the Guardian loves him!” Half an hour of my life wasted that I’ll never get back. Oh I see, it’s post modern irony – he’s a comedian who ironically, doesn’t make you laugh.” Rowing Rob, Guardian.co.uk
“Same old mis-informed deluded shite from the master of donkeys wank humour.” Anon, Marublog.net
“I have been watching Stewart Lee religiously for a few years but season 2 of Comedy Vehicle is awful so far. He bounds back and forth between smugly denigrating other, more commercial standups, and self-indulgently whining/bragging that he isn’t himself more popular. Making “ironic” jokes about his poor audience and venue.
I know people will insist he is ‘playing a character’ here, but after dozens of references it comes off as extremely bitter, sad and misanthropic. His criticisms of modern stand-up would be valid were it not for the fact that more than half of the material is recycled from his old DVDs. You can’t blast other comedians for a lack of talent/imagination and then rely on decades-old tried and tested material. Half the problem is his unbearable audience, insisting on articles like this that he is a ‘thinking man’s comedian’ while lazily bellowing with laughter at each prompted pause in his speech, like a bunch of dogs being taught to beg for a treat.” Bob Kennedy, Guardian.co.uk (footnote 4 ).
“He was very disappointing when I saw him at the opera house about ten years ago. Gave the impression he couldn’t really be arsed.” Dr Kenneth Noise, Toontastic.net
“I thought he was rubbish. He spent the whole time talking about nooks and crannys.” Mikeregan559’s Mum, Twitter
“He’d be a lot funnier if he didn’t repeat the same parts over and over again, he’d be a lot funnier if he didn’t repeat the same parts over and over again in the buildup to the punch line Stewart Lee comedian on BBC2 would be a lot funnier if he didn’t repeat the same parts over and over again in the buildup to the punch line whilst telling his joke.” Toxic, Ush.net
“He is a commie and a leftist oh i wonder why the BBC gave him a job ? Well the British brainwashing corporation is on the ropes and with a bit of luck they will die and we can get rid of communism and leftism once and for all.” 21stcenturynostradamus, youtube
“Im a big fan of Stewart Lee. The best part about being a fan is that i can tell people he’s my fave comic and if they know who he is then we can both bask in our feeling of superiority over the rest of the plebs. cos then we are both smart obviously cos Stewart Lee is smart and his jokes are clever and we get it and then we are clever obviously.” Poineroff, Youtube
“Stupid. Just kept saying weathercock. Awful.” Quavercheese, Youtube
“I believe in giving everyone a chance. Sadly, every time i give said “comedian” that chance i find it reinforces my views: Pompous, self interested and self important twaddle. Maybe those who find him funny do it because it makes them feel clever. Its always good to play to the ego of your audience.” Citizen X3, Guardian.co.uk
“He’s got one of those faces I just want to burn. He hits the cunt button every time. Brisket headed, slanty eyed, repetetive dog’s log. He has the puffy, flat faced appearance of a post-op rhinoplasty patient. I bet he stinks of ham, the Findus crispy cuntcake. He uses power of suggestion so that some people assume he’s being clever and actually means something, when really he’s just a complete fucking dickhead. To the gallows….”, Coxy, dontstartmeoff.com
“This guy is a comedian? You do realise they are meant to be funny? He really SHOULD give up his day job, if that is the case. You’ll be telling me Bidisha is a journalist next. “Gerrawaywiyer”, as my beloved Gran used to say. Adding, “You silly buggeranti”. Ps. A tip. If you want to see a real comedian at work, hi thee to YouTube and cop some Tommy Cooper. He could make people wet their pants without saying a word. If this is what passes for comedy, I’m happy it has passed me by. Mind you, I was brought up on the likes of Laurel & Hardy, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton, so WTF would I know about comedy?” Cornelius Lysergic, Guardian.co.uk
“His look screams ‘yeah, you know I’m awful but it could be alot worse’. So a liar as well. Self defeating burk. All of him looks constipated. Chocked up full of shit. Grim. An absolute fried cunt’s testicle.” Joe Ego, dontstartmeoff.com
“Stewart Lee is pretty shit. He’s a bog standard comedian, except he has this pseudo ironic facade, and it’s all very lazy, because if he’s funny then yay he’s funny everybody praise the funny man and if he’s not funny then oh lawdy he’s not supposed to be funny that’s the JOKE I can’t believe you were so stupid as to expect that bit to be funny it’s making a STATEMENT. It’s the exact same covering-all-angles, non committal, insincere, bastardise-irony-for-your-own-self-aggrandisement approach as every 4chan acolyte who ever ruined your game of TF2, except because it’s an ugly middle-aged bloke saying it to a crowd of thirty-something Londoners and making them feel clever, rather than making them feel like the superfluous sacks of skin they are, it’s suddenly genius.” Jfjnpxmy, Cookedandbombed.com
“Stewert Lee, im sorry i dont find you funny, but someones got to tell you, its no good the few people who come to see you telling you, you wont believe them, especially if most of them are your family and your friends, i suggest you wear a funny hat and a funny red nose on a spring, and forget writeing on the paper till you can find something funny to write, ps dont take this personell.” Marketman, Youtube
“To call Stewart Lee a comedian is fucking stretching it. He comes across as SUCH a cunt, so unfunny, so unoriginal, so needlessly offensive (still without being funny) and so prone to pointing out the bloody fucking obvious, in a manner which packs in all the charisma of a miscarried lamb, I don’t actually know how he’s got a career out of it. Stewart fucking Lee can fuck off, I hope I never see his ugly piggy little cunty slant-eyed face again, or hear his wretched, self-congratulating drawl ever again for that matter. The stout loathsome little twat.” Xnulian Rudho, westhamonline.com
“This guy is a complete cunt!” Straight86edge, Youtube
“Overwhelming smugfest. Snoreworthy.” Evan Crackdust, Foreverdoomed
“Smug. And therefore unfunny.” Alythyr, Foreverdoomed
“He would be funnier if he dropped the minuscule little knowing smirk he makes after every gag just to show how oh-so very clever he’s convinced he is.” Gaendaal, Foreverdoomed
“Just like Blackpool. You’ve heard of Blackpool, in the pictures and the holidays and that… Blackpool. One of England’s iconic towns with the tower… and the slappers of a weekend. But…. yeah.. Blackpool. Little Richard the Hamster Hammond went up there once.
With the Top Gear lads…. crashed a Ford Focus. This isn’t even funny is it…. BUT YOU’RE STILL LAUGHING YOU HORRIBLE PLEBS.” Pigriser, rateyourmusic
“Thought I’d just do catch-up T.V to see what all the fuss is about,Holy Shit this man is truly Dia-Fucking-Bolical. How that shit rates as comedy is beyond me. I feel dirty now. Utter Wank.11’s all the way..” Spinal Crap, dontstartmeoff.com
“I always found Richard Herring funnier.” Ashtre, rateyourmusic
“last night I had a dream in which me and a girl I used to know were in a sort of plunge pool thing and Stewart Lee was stood at the side. He was holding her head underwater while she thrashed I tried to push her up for air. He was smoking and wore a grin that told me he had a point but I didn’t really understand it and he didn’t seem to care. I’m not entirely sure what to make of it.” Whence, rateyourmusic
“Dont get this guy ,not funny at all….didnt he do fist of fun shite with that unfunny cunt richard herring……..he wants fisting with a nailbomb up his arsehole…heard him on 5 live the other day….I didnt laugh once. richard bacon was practically sucking his cock.” Smasher, dontstartmeoff.com
“He wishes he was as funny as Michael McIntyre.” Anonymous, network54
“What a sad fat individual. If as a self proclaimed comedian if you can’t be funny which is after all a basic requirement, time to do something else. ” Julia, Ilkley, Dailymail.co.uk
“Sooooooooooooooooooooo fucking shit there all laughing at nothing he keeps repeating him self what a joke.” Dedringer2, Youtube
“Stewart Lee is a cunt. I’ve always thought this and every utterance from his boring little sphincter of a mouth just proves it more and more…” Al, Urban75.com
“I think Stewart Lee is a cunt. He really is not funny. I’ve seen him live and the dead pan got old after about 5 minutes.” Lee, wordsfromreuben.com
“Worst comedian ever. Hes a fuckin bore.” Zacfanere, Youtube
“Wow, this hack has some balls ripping into Russell Brand – a far sharper and more original comedian than he is.” Kentrel2, Youtube
“His comedy schtick seems to be a chippy, elitist sneer at anyone who doesn’t share his Public School/Oxbridge background and he has no sense of comic timing whatsoever. Watching his act, I found myself checking my phone to see if anyone had texted me, even though I knew they hadn’t. Lee’s audience is full of the right on sector of society, his act is feeding and reinforcing their prejudices, much the same as some of the ultra right-wing American comedians who have been around in the last few years. It’s a cheap shot, which guarantees him laughs from an audience bound to agree with him, and it’s much easier than having to write decent gags.” Amie8, finalgear.com
“Smug as fuck. Who is this douche?” AAAAGordon, Youtube
“He rambles on and on to a meaningless ‘punchline’ with a consistent smug look on his face and a constant thinly veiled attempt to look ironically cool. I detest him.” Darksoldier, f2010.com
“..saw him live, and he died then tooo….,only saying . Dont recall any of the greats dying on stage , do you?” Antmartin, Youtube
“He drags stuff out so long to the point of tedium. Can only watch about five minutes, laugh, then I’m fast asleep.” Cpfc.org
“Stewart Lee is shit. He’s like a small child in the way that he thinks if he tells you the same joke over and over it will become funny.” Peter G, b3ta.com
“It’s been a lot longer than 3 years since Stewart Lee was even remotely funny. You couldn’t find a more tiresome, self-regarding twat masquerading as a comedian.” Chronos, Guardian.co.uk
“Stewart lee is fucking shit.” Sweetlouis12345, Twitter
“I used to think I’d find stewart lee funny but he’s kinda boring and shit.” Sifront, Twitter
“Stewart Lee is a bell end and a cunt.” Naughty Kid, redandwhitekop.com
“Had the misfortune of watching Stewart Lee absolutely awful, shocking excuse for comedy!!!” Bitpartplayer, Twitter
“What a bore. Not fit to lace Steve Coogan’s boots.” Morris233, Youtube
“I’ve never seen Stewart Lee so I watched 10 minutes on iplayer the other day to see what he’s like. Is he a comedian?” Claudia, Fall Forum
“I find Lee’s deconstructionism obvious, boring, and teenage and I think his material’s crap. The whole TV show struck me as hugely pompous, especially the insets with that smug twat Iannucci, and the attempts to justify weak material by having Iannucci point it out made me angry. The fact that his “interesting” bit of format-twiddling was plagiarised from Steven Wright was just the icing on the cake. If Lee devoted less time to deconstructing things and more time to thinking up funny things to say he would be a better comedian. I do find it very hard to watch Lee. He really irritates me – when he does one of his trademark “slow repetition” bits I get the red mist and start to have fantasies of going round his house with a sledgehammer and smashing all his Fall albums.” Maybeimdoingitwrong, Cookedandbombed.co.uk
“I didn’t listen long to Lee. If I don’t find it funny in the first 20 seconds, it’s not there imo.” Nick Stedman, Youtube
“Watching Stewart Lee is like having sex with someone who enjoys the foreplay so much, he almost forgets to finish.” Dick Turnip, Guardian.co.uk
“Muzzie ass-licking dog filth. Lower life form scum.” The Der UKSS, Youtube
“Stewart reminds me of a college socialist. I think he has grown out of it really & now its all a bit of an act to support his act.” Daniel Thomas Slade, Youtube
“I hate stewert lee. He thinks he’s funny but he’s not.” Megsey1995, Youtube
“This piece of disgusting shit isn’t even close to funny.” Rock3tCat, Youtube
“His voice sent me to sleep in about three minutes.” Confused Proud, Youtube
“Sickening to watch. Nice how some people can claim the moral highground whilst also being dreadful human beings.” EFG9000, Youtube
“Being just a little bit younger than Stewart Lee, I’ve always felt like he’s somehow the king of the musty self-righteous twisters whose bobbing nape-over-Crombie I’ve been forced to stare up at my whole life long.” Benjamin Rollanson, Amazon
“He had about 5 jokes which he made last 1 and a half hours. I’ve never been closer to walking out of a gig and I closed my eyes at one point I was so bored.” AMD, Chortle.com
“Leftie nobhead hates god big surprise!” Araregoodguy, Youtube
“Absoluetly shite. Probably one of the most unfunny “comedians” I’ve ever seen. Didn’t even make me crack a smile.” Leeuk66, Youtube
“Stewart Lee was 75 minutes of self-indulgent resentment and bitterness, all dressed-up as “unique”, “quirky” etc. If it wasnt for the polite laughter from half the room (the half at which Stewart aimed all his remaining material once he identified them – literally – five minutes in) and the 15 simpletons laughing their heads off in the first two rows it would have been a wake. How can he think it funny to impersonate his mother advising him to be more like Tom O’Connor over and over and over again? Lazy, lazy performing.” Peacheycarahan, Guardian.co.uk
“Wow, what a not-funny and stupid performance.” Chailzard, Youtube
“Watched Stewart Lee on Xmas eve 2009 and he was pretty crappy. The jokes were stretched out endlessly – imagine a 30 minute long joke where you only probably laugh at the 24th minute once. It wasnt genuinely funny at all – it was like he was trying very very hard and ended up being stupid. It was yawn-inducingly boring.” SGT, timeout.com
“Stuart Lee is well over rated. He’s the comedian people say they like, just to appear cool and above the rest of us proles. I’m sure Mr Lee hasn’t written 100% of his own material. Actually, maybe he has and that’s why none of it is funny. Just repeat what you’ve said, 98 times, each time more slowly with a longer gap between words. HA HA HA YOU FUCKING GENIUS THAT’S WELL FUNNY HA HA HA.” Monders, Guardian.co.uk
“His delivery is fucking putrid. It’d send a chinchilla to sleep during the night hours. For a better deadpan comic, seek out Jack Dee.” Vizitron3, Youtube
“Non-eyed pig faced repeat offender chancer who confuses a cock-tail of contrived pauses, volume shifts and repetition for true wit. I repeat, not funny.” Jockass, Holymoly.com
“Poor comedians like Stewart Lee are whats killing comedy …he wasnt funny years ago when he had that double act with the little fat bloke ..and hes even less funny now …but he ticks boxes for white middle class BBC 2 comedy bosses …” The Little Waster, Guardian.co.uk
“I’ve got two questions 1) What the fuck is going on with his mancicured eyebrows 2) When was the last time this man wasn’t high?.” Tosser Spotter, dontstartmeoff.com
“There are other comics in need of a gig, some of whom do not slavishly adhere to the party line and the usual guardian prejudices. But then, we can’t have a national newspaper presenting articles which challenge the views of its core readership can we? that’d be too much like old school journalism. recite after me: ‘all posh people are horrible’, ‘all tories are bastards’, ‘the left has never committed any crimes whatsoever and is committed to democracy’…repeat mantra several thousand times a day, until the more gullible among you believe it.” Dr John Zoldberg, Guardian.co.uk
“What a truly smug, self-righteous, unfunny prick Stewart Lee is. He’s also a thoroughly unpleasant bloke he is in real life. Ever wondered why you’re not on telly much anymore? It’s because you were such an insufferable cunt to all the people you worked with you utter arse. My name’s Rich, I’m 30, straight and a Leo. I studied film and media production at Sheffield Hallam University and I spend my time working as a freelance Film Producer and sitting on funding panels for the UK Film Council, Film4, Momentum Pictures and Working Title.” Donuticus, thestudentroom.co.uk
“He has glimmers of great comedy, but he does labour his jokes to the extent that it becomes akin to milking an udderless cow.” J I Smith, thestudentoom.co.uk
“I personally didn’t find it funny, and saw it as just a rather pointless endeavour.” Lyndon1504, thestudentroom.co.uk
“Stewart Lee isn’t that funny. He’s always way too PC and loves the sound of his own voice.” Uarecheapm, Youtube
“He’d be a lot funnier if he didn’t repeat the same parts over and over again, he’d be a lot funnier if he didn’t repeat the same parts over and over again in the buildup to the punch line. Stewart Lee comedian on BBC2 would be a lot funnier if he didn’t repeat the same parts over and over again in the buildup to the punch line whilst telling his joke.” Toxic, Ush.net
“On 8 out of Ten Cats Stewart Lee’s an unfunny cunt who couldn’t get away with smuggly thinking he knows something that the other people on the panel don’t know like he does with his stupid fucking fans, he’s trying though the smug prick,hence why he keeps dying on his arse everytime he opens his mouth.” The Aralih, Youtube
“Comedy is so subjective but nevertheless… Self-indulgent, dull, superannuated indie boy who takes himself way too seriously, which is not really a good quality for a comic.
He’s the comedian people say they like, just to appear more intelligent than the rest of us, a bit like those student union bores I remember from the ’80s who seemed to think all indie music was automatically more radical than pop when it was often more conservative. What I object to most is his obvious envy and resentment for comedians more successful (and usually more funny) than he is. Ahem, sorry for the rant – I just can’t bear this ‘credible’ comedian reputation he’s been uncritically allowed to cultivate!” Richjw, digitalspy.com
“One thing i dont get…why do people find stewart lee funny? Is it his lack of comic timing, monotonous delivery, predictable topics or something else?” Oscar, NME.com
“Personaly I can’t see this guys humor… and I like Frankie Boyle!” Captain70s, finalgear.com
“Stewart Lee (who he?)…..is a relatively unknown so called comedian I’ve never heard of, although with his style of comedy I question as to if he’ll ever achieve greater ‘stardom’ than he has to date! Apart from Paul Merton and Julian Clary I admit to disliking contemporary comedians as I see no reason for swearing and tasteless patter on stage, I much prefer comedians who make audiences laugh because they are funny men (or women)!
I would have enjoyed watching audience response to many of todays ‘comedy kings’ should they have played some of the northern cabaret clubs of the 60’s and early seventies……walking off to the sound of your own boots wouldn’t have been in it! Tasteless ‘comedy’ a la Stewart Lee style leaves him in the gutter alongside the likes of Jonathan Ross and and the long-haired scruffy one he got into trouble with! ” Mal, Norfolk, Dailymail.co.uk
“I have very strong reservations about uber-smug unfunny Stewart Lee.” Karile Marks, Twitter
“This pc cunt only appeals to cunts with no sense of humour who need to be told what to laugh at. Claims on his website to be “officially the 41st funniest comedian”. No you pile of shit… you`ve never been funny but you may well be in the top 5 biggest “comic” cunts in England. Cunt!” Despoileruvcunts, cuntscorner.com
“The pic (of some excrement) is of stewart lee’s fucking cunt brain he held his nose and it came out of his mouth.” Spirit, cuntscorner.com
“Just watched a bit of Stewart Lee for the first time on youtube. He’s crap.” Spotthebollocks, Guardian.co.uk
“S Lee comes across as an unfunny cunt – he was a twat when he came out with his floppy hair and he’s still a cunt now he’s fat and full of hate. Unfunny cunt for unfunny cunts.” Claretbadger, westhamonline.com
“This guy is as funny as a steaming pile of shit. What a wanker.” Pete1839, Youtube
“Could all the interested Guardian “Journalists” please form an orderly queue and await their turn to blow smoke up Stuart Lee’s arse! He’s not even as good as Janet Brown.” Processedpeas, Guardian.co.uk
“He does look a bit weird nowadays. Physically, middle-age doesn’t suit him the way it suits some people.” Chipolata, comedy.co.uk
“His approach to gag telling seems to be that because he is so much more insightful than his audience that is just going to bloody well keep going until even the most retarded of them has got the joke. Sorry I did not see what was so intelligent about his act. Sneering about other people being stupid is not in itself clever. The basic problem is that there are not enough gags. He gets an idea, and instead of building on it and developing it into a proper routine, he just hammers home the same point until any possible humour has been drained out of it” Timbo, comedy.co.uk
“I am clearly bedazzled by Stuart Lee’s genius, which has been cleverly disguised as crap comedy.” Zernan Toledo, Youtube
“Stewart lee is probably that smug white skinned pc cunt who spends half his conversations calling everyone out on racism when he’s got no ethnic mates. most myu mates are asian, we tell loads of racist jokes to each other 4 a laugh, and i’ve been called out on it by so many white people who remind my of lee, all my mates in question and the others i know dont give a fuck. real racism stewart lee dont know themeaning of it.” Hjastroi, Youtube
“What the fuck does he think he looks like doing that stupid fucking “aren’t I soooo ironic?” sideways look? Cunt.” Ebeneezer, dontstartmeoff.com
“He doesn’t challenge his viewers views – he merely reinforces their sacred cows whilst deconstructing, what he sees as the oppositions beliefs. He is the most laziest comedian out there.” Yukio Mishima, dontstartmeoff.com
“Jesus Christ. Death by a thousand cunts.” Ebeneezer, Youtube
“This guy must be so hard to get along with in real life.” Deanocfc, Youtube
“Drivel. A series of cheap shots by someone I’ve never heard where both his and the audiences hearts aren’t in it. He’s found a massive mine of rhetorical middleclass self-loathing but is only taking the topsoil. Really, listen to the audience. Not exactly falling about are they? A little bit concerned, perhaps introspective, wondering if Mr Lee will hit a target that really IS US?” Lonesometwin, Guardian.co.uk
“Stewart Lee preaching again. Yawn.” Plumjam, Youtube
“Stewart Lee wants to replace the ethnically homogenous and relativily stable british society with a totalitarian multicultural PC society full of strife and conflict. PC has gone wild, its time to stop this leftist madness.” Dringles, Youtube
“Miserable fecker with an annoying delivery.” blythy, readytogo.net
“Lee & Herring used to have an bright young fan base looking optimistically to the future, but I guess where he`s headed for now is small club & publand with a dwindling audience that just wants to relive the nostalgia of their student days from yesteryear. The Lee fans that I hung around with in the 90`s used to be bright & a laugh & you could debate with them in good humour. It seems what`s listening to him now is a crowd of kidults who what to regress into their past & wrap themselves up in the cosy quilt of yesteryear. Pseudo-phoney student bar talk, sitting around a table with 1/2 a pint wearing donkey-jackets, been there done it & bought the t-shirt.
Lee’s not satarizing anything here but trying to re-live old battles from the 1980s in a tired routine. Meanwhile Stu`s stuck in 1988 having a go at Littlejohn, Jim Davidson (when`d you last hear fro m HIM? – lol) & advocating the benefits of P.C. Let`s embrace the reality: Lee & Herring, Iannucci & Morris = Generation Underachievement.
Time to look elsewhere for laughs & some insights. As for Lee not being concerned with breaking into the mainstream – show me an artist of any sort that doesn`t want as big an audience for their material as possible & I`ll show you a fibber. If Lee doesn`t create better material than this he doesn`t deserve to get to a bigger stage. I hadnt seen him for a while, & thought the “Comedy Vehicle” was good in parts, but I was alarmed by this routine as recent material.
It`s old hat & sounds like mid 1980`s stuff. Next he`ll be having a go Thatcherism. If Lee can`t develop new material he`ll end up as a back number pretty quickly, playing only the nostalgia circuit. I like Lee, but this is out of date early leftie mid-1980`s student stuff that`s tired & anachronistic. He needs to move with the times or he`ll become an act caught in a generational rut only talking to itself like Freddie Starr ended up. With this haircut, he`s even starting to look a bit like him.” Kcirdrab, Youtube
“If, after watching Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, impressionable muppets who watch Kevin Smith films every weekend believe that laughing at Dan Brown and J.K. Rowling automatically makes them very clever, then – somewhat ironically given the oft-missionary nature of Lee’s stand-up – we’re no further on; indeed, the bar for acknowledged intelligence may have been lowered further. That is, if Lee has read the works of William Blake, then why not attempt to perform some truly intellectual comedy about those?
If anyone can do it, he can. Instead, though, he opts to pander to an advertisably middle-class crowd who might dip into the new Ian McEwan or Ali Smith book when it comes out, rather than to a genuinely academic demographic. Is he afraid of encroaching on a demographic amongst which he would he a disciple rather than a doyen? Or his he just settled where he is? Possibly a bit of both; possibly neither – but it isn’t good enough to just offer a few token criticisms of the, and then to go, ‘But it was still better than almost any other comedy programme on TV at the moment,’ which I can confidently predict will be the case with many broadsheet reviews of the episode.
The flipside must be considered, however: is the Hairyapplefeed’s more negative review of Comedy Vehicle not perhaps some sort of subconscious dick-measuring contest which resinscribes the same small-town elitism of which it has been critical throughout, an elaborate way of saying, ‘I liked Stewart Lee before everybody else did, in the same way that I liked Biffy Clyro, or the Coen Brothers’?
No, it isn’t. Here’s why: I’ve heard Stewart Lee discuss, in a non-comic forum, the sexualization of Christ in Old and Middle English literature; I’ve heard him quote at will from Milton to illustrate salient points; and I’ve heard him craft a 75-minute joke which intertwines religious fundamentalism, ideological prescriptivism and Joe Pasquale.
He has it in him to perform something like verbal magic. He does not need to sully himself encouraging smug laughter from people who aren’t very clever, really, at a half-arsed book release from So Solid Crew’s publicity department. It was like Louis Theroux or internet blogger Maddox at their smug, soft-targeting worst, but nothing like Chris Morris at his knuckle-nearing best. That isn’t the right order of things, now, is it? Ironically, given his well-documented love for The Fall, episode 1 of Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle represented a similar turn towards easy street to that of which Fall frontman Mark E. Smith’s recent autobiography was culpable. Both relied on an audience indulgence produced by past glories; both remained very firmly in a comfort zone (surprising, given arch-experimenter Armando Iannucci’s involvement in production); and both were very, very minor addenda to generally impressive bodies of work. Shame, that.” Hairyappleman, Hairryapplefeedblogspot
“He’s from Shropshire, maybe that’s why he’s a smug unfunny cunt.” Tte, ush.net
“I think i will lis10 to chris moyles, wots the differNce? They’re both self-satisfiyd arseholes but moyles is mor likly 2 raze a smile.? This is not funny, you can delete my comments, but you can’t delete the truth.” Seppo2009, Youtube
“His “acclaimed” show is so bad that it could case peoples hearts to stop through utter dispair! ” Adam, Dorset, Dailymail.co.uk
“A shot-filled donut of wank. Material? Got no material. No material. Material – none. Got no material. Material … material … no … no material. Got material? No. No material. Got … no … materi … al. No material … at all. Watched snippets on i-Player. Just shit. All of it. I stopped being even slightly fucking interested in Lee’s cunt show after the last time I watched it for 5 minutes, which induced 156 narcoleptic episodes. A right load of old cunty piddle wank from beginning to end. What a greasy bastard he is. Use some fucking soap on your hair you dirty, oily flap. Shampoo. Never used shampoo. Shampoo … shampoo … … … … … never used shampoo. Shampoo … … … never … … … used it.
How DID this cunt EVER get back on telly? He was a spazmo back in the frigging 90s – and in the intervening years has only grown ugly and greasy. It’s beyond all reasoning. ‘Stewart Lee’ isn’t an anagram of ‘cunt’ but it should be. He’s never been anything other than ludicrously self-deluded about his ability to be funny. Beneath that crap and greasy exterior is a crap and greasy Student Grant-cum-Millie Tant caricature, hopelessly lost, now an irrelevant anachronism, and also a colossal cunt. Stewart Lee’s on tonight? Oh dear, I seem to have double-booked and am cleaning the toilet bowl with my tongue, instead … thank fuck. I was absolutely sickened by the Churchill thing. Still am. It really has got to me.
I said, last week, that I hoped Lee would d-e of c—-r, but that is a violation of House Rules, and so my comment was removed – fair enough, I should have read the rules more carefully. So I will, instead, say that I hope he trips at the top of a very, very high flight of stairs, bangs his gammon face on every step on the way to the very bottom, and is then run over by an ambulance, or a Walker’s Crisps lorry.
As long as there exist cunts who pretend to see content and substance where neither exist, then soiled Kleenex like Lee will continue to prosper. Where was the 13 years of New Labour? Where was Blair and Mandy – hardly council estate cast-offs? Where was cash-for-peerages? Where was the unfettered New Labour spending? Where was the undermining of British suffrage by the policy of letting any fuck in to the UK in the (entirely correct) assumption that they’d vote Labour to hang on to their benefits? Where was the New Labour casually not noticing the housing time-bomb? Where was New Labour’s standing idly by whilst private landlord numbers hit the stratosphere? The partisan, snide, slithering gammon fuck.” Bismark, dontstartmeoff.com
“Typically unfunny left-wing ‘comedian’ who thinks he’s more clever than he really is, spouting a diatribe to Guardian reading Psuedo-intellectuals, who think they are more clever than they really are!.” Yorkie, tvguide.co.uk
“I don’t find him particularly funny. Besides he looks like hes taken something.” Kotapaka, Youtube
“I’ve never in my life, wanted to punch someone as much as I do Stewart Lee after seeing his ‘Top Gear’ stand up thing. AWFUL he is.” MichaelaSHDK, Youtube
“He comes across as the oldest sneering student in the room everytime I see him. ” Graham Casey, Chortle.co.uk
“Stewart Lee is just word soup. Throwing together buzzwords doesn’t make an argument you fucking idiot. Political correctness is genocide against white nations perpetrated by Jews. This is your argument, I distilled it so people could see just how moronic you are.” Kobaltchris, Youtube
“What a smug, Guardian reading leftie tosser, adored by bedwetting student cunts. Worst of all he’s not fucking funny.” Caspian50, Youtube
“May I sudgest dropping a piano on this guy? Prefarrably one made out of lead…….” Cowboy, finalgear.com
“He is such a boring comedian! The only shred of comic value I got out of this was laughing at a grown man making an idiot out of himself on stage.” Callisto, Youtube
“Inane prattle. And what’s with the drawn out silences he does? Normally a long silence usually means a drum roll and you get a reward at the end, in the way of a big laugh, or a triple somersault or the magician going abracadabra, not Stewart Lee though, he pushes the humour envelope to 11 with his long silences, and then says ‘Cheese And Onion’ at the end. To embarrassed laughter I might add. He can fuck off with that kind of bullshit and his Phil Collins short-armed jackets. He looks like someone has stuffed a bad suit full of sweaty sausage meat then squeezed it until a head has popped out of the top with a glutinous schlop sound.” Milo, dontstartmeoff.com
“He’s the comedian people say they like, just to appear cool and above the rest of us proles. I’m sure Mr Lee hasn’t written 100% of his own material. Actually, maybe he has and that’s why none of it is funny. Just repeat what you’ve said, 98 times, each time more slowly with a longer gap between words.” Monders, Guardian.co.,uk
“If I ever end up like Stewart Lee cut off my head with a garden implement.” Mark E Smith, The Fall
“My mate has had a huge crush on SL forever, but even she’s starting to admit that time hasn’t been kind to him. ?” Queenoftheharpies, mumsnet.com
“Stewart Lee basically massages the prejudices of Guardian readers to make them feel better about themselves.” Unecom, Guardian.co.uk
“I run the oldest conservative think tank in the UK, the Bow Group, I also recently put on an exhibition on Sir Winston Churchill in Madrid. In a recently broadcast edition of “Stuart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle”, Mr Lee claims that Sir Winston Churchill was, in fact, a dressed pig. He wasn’t though was he. I know that it was supposed to be funny surrealist comedy. It wasn’t though was it.” Ben Harris-Quinney
“My Dad is a better comedian than Stewart Lee. Lee’s comedy is based on slating other people, most notably sardonic talents like Chris Moyles and Jeremy Clarkson, both of whom, incidentally, are immeasurably funnier than Lee. Lee elevates his sense of self with his own callous brand of intellectual elitism,” Sally McIlhone, channelhopping.onthebox.com
“I think the problem is he’s not actually funny. Lying on the floor ranting about Del Boy just made him look mentally ill frankly. He comes across as arrogant and condescending. A final point – Lee should get a suit that actually fits.” Morris Minor, comedy.co.uk
“Stewart Lee needs a bigger size of suit jacket. He looks like rather like an over-stuffed armchair. He needs to either undo his jacket, get the next size up, or lose some of the belly!” Pink Tribble, Twitter
“His suit does not fit. He should get a bigger one. Those poor buttons.” Potkettle, tvguide.co.uk
“Dear Stewart Lee, Are you just bitter cause you got all fat and old and saggy?” Elvis Chomsky, Fall Forum
“Bitter fat unfunny comedian.” Jen, Vancouver, Dailymail.co.uk
“How fat does Stuart Lee look. That jacket’s not doing him any favours either, it looks like it’s gonna burst open at any point…… he looked really fat in that bloody suit.” AndyB, Chrismoyles.net
“FUCK ME! What a massive fat cunt he’s turned into.. he’s huuuuuge!!!!” Thepopesmokesdope, officeonline.com
“Wow hes got fat and old.” Quincy, Football Forum
“Just seen Stewart Lee in the street. He’s massive.” Little Boots, Twitter
“Dont think I’m ever going to get over just how fat he’s obviously become during his years in the wilderness. He’s a sign of where we’re all heading. Well most of us anyway. Poor chap.” PapaJaro, forum.breakbeat.co.uk
“What’s fat, repetitive, self pitying and dull? Stewart Lee. Sorry, were you expecting a punch line? Jokes don’t need them. Overgrown student.” Mark John Ramsden, Twitter
“Unfortunately, Stewart has changed somewhat since his younger days and is now only available in widescreen.” Tvc18, youtube
“Comedy Central Extra that keeps changing aspect ratio? Stewart Lee looks like he’s switching between Barry Bethell before and after.” Fergle, Twitter
“Just seen Stewart Lee stuffing his face with a burger in Dalston. K.D. Lang has let himself go.” Pikeytv, Twitter
“The jokes were dragged out for too long. He has got fat and old. I miss the days of this morning with richard not judy.” Quincy, Chrismoyles.net
“Stewart Lee is so fricking smug. Any wit he might have is offset by his irritating smugness.” Drama Mean UK, Twitter
“When you’re old enough to start going to fat too, you’ll realise that most fat people like him have lovely skin – it’s the stretching.” Fritter, Fall Forum
“Let’s see Stewart Lee try and archly deconstruct my jokes about how fat he is.” Pyramid Face, Twitter
“Stewart Lee: Twitter’s pouchy-faced unfunny comic of choice.” Gooddayyay, Twitter
“His looks have gone.” Sbtfgn, Youtube
“I keep being told what a genius Stewart Lee. But every time I watch any of his work he just comes across to me as a bit of a sanctimonious prick.” Sam Roony, Guardian.co.uk
“Stewart Lee is a borderline alcoholic comedian, who aggressively taunts and down right insults society.” Chong Nhu, martialartsplanet.com
“He’s like the boring guy in the pub. I have seen him at the fringe in Edinburgh, and he is the only comedian ive ever seen who died on his arse so badly that he sat at the front of the stage and said something like “im sorry, this isnt working , is it?” Davetay, Youtube (footnote 5 ).
“Last night my wife insisted that we watch the news re Italian earthquake rather than Stewart Lee. her words: “there’s only ever one funny bit anyway”. when i then protested that in watching the first news item we might miss that funny bit, she replied “no, it’s usually towards the end”.” Hofstadter, Fall Forum
“Whilst Michael MacIntyre is a tit at least he doesn’t Repeat the same unfunny line, repeat the same unfunny line, repeat the same unfunny line, repeat the same unfuny line, even though it remains unfunny with the repetition and leave enormous spaces between his words to emphasize just how laden with gravitas his Comedy actually is instead of admitting that it is just a good way of padding twenty minutes of material out to an hour and a half.” Lennie Law, wordmagazine.com
“Stewart Lee supports the dangerous ideology of political correctness- that makes him very unfunny.” Culave, Youtube
“Stewart Lee does come across as a preachy, sanctimonious berk an is actually quite patronising to the audience” Thenewnumbertwo, Guardian.co.uk
“Johann Hari has really let himself go. Hasn’t changed his tone though.” MrKingclumsy, Youtube
“He’s a self-impressed, patronising, up-his-own arse, condescending twat.” Vagabond, b3ta.com
“Stewart Lee is bigoted unfunny dick.” Andy Bolton, twitter
“Dumb, and cocky, and bollocks. He can grab his witty irony and ram it up his ass, and run around in circles singing ‘I’m a little tosser boy, and my arse is full of irony” I’m sorry mate, I don’t like that guy. He’s a smarmy little toss-off.” Wilzer808, Youtube
“Stewart Lee is the pied-piper of the pseudo-intellectuals.” ChrisWales22, youtube
“Probably the worst comedian performance I’ve ever seen. An old man talking about what he ate for dinner the last week would have been equally giving.” Tom Jones, whoateallthepies
“You know who I can’t stand? Stewart Lee!” Hammondette, twitter
“I do dislike the way that he has assigned himself the role of Comedian in chief and conscience/ gatekeeper of ‘Alternative Comedy’. I can’t tolerate all the condescending looking down their noses at the audience that he and his minions seem to partake in.” Paddy H, wordmagazine.com
“Without doubt the world’s least funny comedian.” Pierre 3030, Youtube
“Stewart Lee: You are not funny. Almost a Dane Cook level of NOT funny.” May Pescante, Twitter
“Can everyone stop pretending Stewart Lee is funny please? He’s really anything but.” Andy Punktastic, Twitter
“Stewart Lee funny? I’m sure AIDS is funnier… Jesus. Fucking garbage. Didn’t laugh once.” Ben Brazier, Twitter
“Satire can be funny, and funny is something that Stewart Lee truly ain’t. But I’m sure he prefers it that way, so it’s fine. If you’re reading Stewart, feel free to put that on your next poster.” Kfed99, Guardian.co.uk
“Am I the only one who thinks Stewart Lee is shyte? Have a feeling a lot of people claim they like him just to be appear highbrow.” Alan Dudman999UK, Twitter
“I’m not defending Clarkson and Co of anything. But at least they aren’t basing their careers on belittling other individuals doing far better in their chosen career of “entertainment”. I just can’t side with a guy who calls himself a “politically correct liberal”. Anyone with half a fkn brain cell can understand being “politicly correct” and a “liberal” is a conflict of interests. If you want funny, liberal and relevant comedy I suggest Doug Stanhope.” Gonzomouse, Youtube
“I thought he was ok when he started but hes a tit now ok. Imo.” Tonny44able, Youtube
“Another marxist idiot who doesn’t realize he’s the one to be wiped out.” Linxx88, Youtube
“Stewart Lee, the uninformed, permanent sixth-former, rebelling against a society that his ideology has already reduced to ruins and spitting on the remains. No faith or belief in or love for anything but himself. The true sign of a nation is terminal decline. No wonder all the Guardian readers love him. O tempora, o mo. ‘Yes, I am a virus. I am the virus that kills socialists’. – Enoch Powell, 1968.” Edmund Burke Lives On, Guardian.co.uk
“Thank you for encouraging me to waste half an hour of my life…it was utterly, utterly crap… Lowlights included the long, long riff on Travelodges, the final punchline being that jokes about Travelodges can never be funny â I suppose that a comedian deliberately telling an hackneyed, unfunny joke in order to challenge his self-satisfied audience might be quite amusing in some hands â unfortunately it just made Lee look like a smug twat…
The final apple sketch was, I suspect, another attempt at ‘subversive’ comedy by deliberately extending a ‘joke’ that was barely amusing in the first place into an interminable, embarrassingly unfunny sketch-show parody in order to mock the BBC bigwigs who commissioned the show in the first place… Well done Stewart, very clever. Not very funny though…” Simon C, Fall Forum
“That waste of apples annoyed me out of all proportion to its likely cost. I mean, they probably waste more apples than that just in the mouths of the pigs that ornament each of the many BBC staff parties each year. But whatever, I was like “stop ruining those fucking apples you dickwad.” It honestly spoiled the sketch for me.” Hoftstadter, Fall Forum
“I hate to see food going to waste.” Davey B, Fall Forum
“Looks like a young Matt Bianco.” Peas Graveny, Youtube
“What an unfunny cunt. He just isnt funny – hes incredibly dull. The problem with stuart lee is that he’s A. He’s not as clever, original or interesting as he thinks he is. B. He just isnt very funny, C. He wasnt funny to start with anyway. Just shit. What a pretentious wanker. Sixth form art schooll ‘humour’ which thinks its more clever than it is. Shit. He keeps doing the same tired sixth form iroinic ‘liberal’ shite. He doesnt even come close to Mcintyre in wit, entertainment or popularity. Pleeeeease!!!
What he does is basicly sixth form college humour that thinks its alternative, clever and a bit on the edgy/social commentary side. But its just predicatble. And just not funny. I think he thinks hes cleverer and more insightful than he actually is, very simillar to richard herring. And no i dont find al murray, roy chubby brown or jim davidson funny either. Incredibly dull sixth form humour. Not funny really is he?” Chrisjoneschrisjones, Youtube
“I’ve given him two chances and fail to see why he’s classed as comedy. I think I’m meant to have laughed but didn’t. If he’s trying to shock or offend he’s failing at that too. It’s just painfully unfunny. I just feel slightly sorry for him.” Tintin, UKTV.co.uk
“Stewart Lee. Your comedy was sharper when you didn’t talk about youself so much, or “how the jokes were going”. Self obsession does not automatically mean intelligent “meta” comedy gold. And it makes you look even more like an ageing Morrissey impersonator.” Faustus Kelly, Guardian.co.uk
“I do not think he is as funny as he used to be in the good old days or as funny as that Chris Moyles from off Radio 1. Also, I do not trust anyone who still has the same haircut they had in 1984. Like Mark Kermode or Morrissey, by way of two more quiffular examples.” Elvis Chomsky, Fall Forum
“God this is just not funny …. you have to be naturally funny to be a comedian … not just stand there speaking lines.” Boygeniuz, Youtube
“Lee, great comedian? He has never made me laugh; but then I don’t find totalitarians funny. The joke wears off after the first ten million corpses.” JoeSoap, the UKLibertarian.co.uk
“The Fall and Stewart Lee have something in common, both are beloved of Broadsheet Journalists and Pseuds on the Internet but out in the real world you would be hard pressed to find anyone who was even familiar with their work let alone considers themselves a fan.” Valten78, Guardia.co.uk
“Drags out that not routine far too long. Presumably to fill space in this dead, lifeless, self-important show.” DavidUK84, Youtube
“Stewart Lee isnt even funny. He’s disgusting and i hope they ban him from performing. The only thing funny about him, is his looks.” Hammondx3, richardhammond.net
“A fun game to play is “spot Stewart Lee using ‘fancy’ language incorrectly in a slightly cringeworthy (and failed) attempt to sound extra clever”. He does it a fair bit, often when he improvises. It wouldn’t bother me, but when his routines, and fans, make proclamations about how articulate, sharp and well-read he is, it makes me wince a little.” Greyztone, Youtube
“I don’t hate stewart lee but i do hate his fans. he has come to represent this kind of smug superiority of the lower middle class with these strawman arguments turned into fairly poor jokes. he does seem like a very nice and quite smart guy, but there is a reason that only people who are a bit like him like him, he’s incredibly pedestrian and mediocore.” Torotrototo, Guardian.co.uk
“Personally I find this way too laboured and smug and most importantly not particularly funnny given it’s his career. Its natural not clever clever.??? Very vogue at the moment with the Guardian readers. Can’t do wrong apparently until the next great middle class wannne be different joy thing comes along.” Johnanthonyp, Youtube
“I have just returned from viewing the sensation that is Stewart Lee! Now I am being ironic and sarcastic. There is nothing sensational about Stewart Lee. The reviews I have read have put him somewhere between a comedy genius and a funny grumpy old man. To be honest he isn’t and I would advise anyone who isn’t a fan to not bother seeing his show on a whim.
His innane ramblings are neither informed, funny, ironic, or angry. Everything is forced in his delivery, his jokes come at a rate of 1 every 8 mins 40 seconds, and even they are only of sniggering quality. He specialises in a type of story that apparently reflect his intelligence and wit, instead I ended up feeling sorry for his wife and son who have to spend Sunday afternoon with someone who thinks they are funny.
I originally thought I was being obtuse in the first 10 minutes of the show, as a couple of people around me quite literally burst with side splitting laughter to jokes that were so innane I was wondering if I was too stupid to understand. Then I started to think maybe the manager of the joint had got a Stewart Lee mask and given it to the stage hand and told him to get out there and do his best, due to the inappropriate, forced and unfunny delivery. Very disappointed.” Dino, spoonfed.com
“I don’t think Lee could make funny TV even if he let himself be kicked in the balls repeatedly for 30 minutes.” Lent, 40percent.tv
“He’s as funny as cow sh1t…” Jeff Faa Faa, Vauxhallownersnetwork.co.uk
“Reminds me of David Brent. What a sad middle aged twat.” 001908, Youtube
“So I was persuaded by someone to go and see Stuart Lee, one half of former comedy duo Lee and Herring last night but it ended in bitter disappointment. So, to any Scousers that might be tempted into parting with some hard-earned, I just wanted to know what you’d be letting yourselves in for. ” MBE, redandwhitecop.com
“What is all this buzz about this fat old man? I don’t think I’ve ever found a comedian funny from south of Derby. This jerks frm the f-ing midlands so he shed have sum NORTHERN SOUL in his set. But its like a rant. Where are the jokes? Nothing he talking about happen to me. Ever.” Cardiffwilly, Youtube
“Went on too long and his moaning just made him look like a cock. Yeah, used to be funny. Shouda stuck to radio 4” Fishlick, dogsonacid.com
“Stewart Lee you poor middle classed idiot. What ever to just being yourself without some loser telling you what to say or think. If I don’t like or agree with well that is just to f-ing bad so put that in your filthy bong and smoke it. No one and I mean has the right to tell me or anyone what to believe or think, so cram it with walnuts or if that doesn’t do it, find another way. PC thugs are Nazis.” Thepast2012, Youtube
“Lee leaves me completely cold. It’s like watching Ernie Wise soldiering on decades after the funny one has died, or the bass player of a ’60s pop band playing a workingmens’ club in Barnsley. Life-affirming it ain’t. There’s more joy in a Viz knob gag or five seconds of Frankie Boyle – “Yes sir, there is a vegetarian option. You can fuck off” – than a miserable 45 minutes spent in the company of Stewart Lee. If you have to analyse comedy, it ain’t comedy. It’s not big; it’s not clever; and it sure as shit isn’t comedy.” Merperson, Guardian.co.uk
“He came 11th in the Greatest Stand Ups of All Time poll shown on Ch4 the other month (yes I know it’s a fiddle – but still). If you went out in the street and asked a hundred people about him you’d be hard pressed to find a handful who’d even heard of the miserable c*nt. Never mind think he was funny.
The only few people who even claim to rate him are the usual crowd who think he may in some way be “clever” and so by claiming to like the unfunny tw*t somehow raises their own “status”. Hs face says it all really – he’s got a twat face.” Voiceofreason, totalfootballforums.co.uk
“Stewart Lee funny? I must be in a parallel universe. Ten minutes of last week’s show was enough for me.” Sansrife, Guardian.co.uk
“He’s not gay. He’s just British.” Stud000000079, Youtube
“This isn’t satire. It is shit.” Rincewind, Youtube
“Not as clever, or as funny as he thinks he is, really just smug and elitist, with the odd laugh as a byproduct.” Firetotheworks, dooyou.co.uk
“People who like Stewart Lee are arrogant, self righteous cunts.” 32Wallace, Youtube
“Stewart Lee is not funny. Fact. Whether I personally find him funny is neither here nor there. I could also say ‘Les Dennis is unfunny’ – It might be my opinion, but it’s also more importantly a scientifically proven fact. A good indicator of whether something is funny is whther it makes people laugh, and considering the paying audience at his shows rarely laugh, I think that’s a fair indicator that he is not funny. I saw his stand up live and you could hear a pin drop.
He may be clever, cutting, subtle, absurd, different etc etc….but he’s just not (that) funny. Reminds me of a ‘comedian’ called Mark Thomas, who also forgot to be funny and was more concerned with being intelligent, clever and ‘different’. Stewart Lee fans don’t have a sense of humour. Case, rested. Stewart Lee gives smug, tedious people hope that other people find them anything but smug and tedious.” HNIC, Guardian.co.uk
“Who is this old gimmer and what is he blabbering on about, he is not funny and he whispers?” Marshalllucky, Youtube
“Spineless liberal faggot.” MCBathtub, Youtube
“What an unfunny fuck.” Biffjohnson, Youtube
“Its his whole intelligent bullsht that grates on me, extending joke after joke to the point of fucking tedium to prove a point.” Dark Soldier, forums.nextgen.biz
“Just not half as smart arse and funny as he thinks he is – pretentious guff for white middle aged men frustrated by their lack of achievement .” White Eyed, Guardian.co.uk
“He is soooooooooooo fucking dull.” Spr66, Youtube
“Stewart Lee is a despicable Student Union throwback and the idea that anyone would look to him for material is horrifying indeed. I saw him live not too long ago and he still had faded black jeans, DM shoes and that stupid Morrissey quiff like the superannuated indie kid he is.” I am nice, Guardian.co.uk
“Bernard Manning just happened to be well talented and he was not right up his own arsehole like Lee is !!” Guest Hagen, dontstartmeoff.com
“I took my girlfriend to see Stewart perform in Cardiff recently. She fell asleep.” Amos The Cat, Guardian.co.uk
“Stewart Lee wasnt funny at all. i dont care if his opinion is different from mine when it comes to top gear. what im saying is hes a shit comedian who isnt funny because he sucks at being a comedian. that is all.” Teedle, Youtube
“I would prefer 30 minutes of root canal work…The most unfunny, smug, and unoriginal of the whole tribe of alt com’s.
He was on a radio 4 programme recently where he proved himself to ba not only unfunny, smug, etc etc but the most embarrasingly pretentious man in the Brit media.
Truly deepy creepy. I truly believe Lee to be unintelligent and untalented…but to be an accomplished con artist. There is nothing inside the package. I think the man is a deeply dull narcissist.
The fact that he scans websites in search of reference to himself is completely consistent with his solipsistic narcissism.? In fact he has no more depth or validity than Paris Hilton.
She at least has the merit of honesty. She is not pretending to be anything other than an ego looking for some kind of affirmation in a big scary world.?? One of the things that was most notable in the recent radio 4 programme I mentioned which was unscripted, was the degree to which he was all at sea.
It culminated in his taking refuge in semi hysterical laughter of a nervous kind as the sheer paucity of his ideas was made manifest. Highlighted by the fact that one of the other guests was completely no nonsense and saw through his particular brand of pretentiousness, and he was reduced to trying to to appease her, and failing miserably. It became clear that he is used to fawning from his show biz peers…he couldnt deal with it at all. He couldnt even allow himself to express anger because his whole stage personna is about being above such considerations. He was truly hoist with his own petard.
I made a seperate post because with overquoting, the previous one was becoming unwieldy. I (seriously) have a theory that Lee is seeing how bad he can be before shaking off his sycophants… Clearly if he was working on things like “Partridge” 20 years ago he wasnt churning out the pretentious faux minimalist garbage he is getting away with now…so it cant be compared.
Even Fist Of Fun had merit, although I always preferred Herring.
I am unconvinced that he is just playing a character. I heard him on a discussion R4 programme with among others the poet John Cooper Clarke and he was not in character, and he was dull, repetitive and predictable. I think much of what happens with Lee is that his loyal audience projects qualities onto him undetectable to non fans because they ARE projections. You have to admit…he has pulled off a neat trick. I am actually not convinced that he is intelligent…but he is undoubtedly clever.
Much more clever than most of his audience. and thats the crucial issue.?? His whole career is posited on that.
His career is much like any other venture that calls for suspension of disbelief. Those unable or unwilling to suspend same can see the wires. He pretends to expose the wires, but a closer look reveals the wires he deploys in that pretense.
He is in fact as showbiz as Tarby and Brucie.. he just sticks a minus sign in front of the showbiz schtick and hopes that no one looks too closely. Stephen Merchant said recently ” Lee claims to be widely plaigerised, he even highlights it on his website. There are two problems with that…one is it is easy to see where HE rips off stuff, and two the people who rip off his stuff turn it into something funnier than he ever has. We all have our blind spots.? Next time you watch Lee, take your eyes off him for a few minutes when the camera pans to the audience.
Watch the body language and facial expressions.? Its exactly like watching the congregation at a Billy Graham Revival meeting. All disbelief is suspended. They laugh at very little because they are predisposed to laugh. They have entered the mindset which predisposes to that. As I said, his trick is to pull that off with an audience who see themselves as ironically post modern and who would consider themselves impervious to mass suggestion. It was clear that they were ” jokes” although unfunny and painfully obvious ones.. it was also clear that the walks out were set up.? His viewing figures are dropping. Even his big fan Caitlin Moran has professed herself disappointed with the present series… He has to do something to stop the rot… I dont think Lee is a hypocrite…I think he is a very clever boy. I watched (the show with the walk outs on TV) and it didnt strike me remotely funny or in any other way interesting. As for his response I have seen far funnier responses to such events ( staged or not ) from the kind of traditional acts that Lee would see as beneath him.
I think what Lee has achieved is to become a kind of blankish canvas for Liberals and those who would see themselves as at the cutting edge of society to project themselves onto. Its a neat trick which involves little effort on his part after the initial priming of the canvas. His devotees do the rest. ?Its a religion. I am more than happy to concede that a number of people are good at what they do…but are not to my taste. ?They would include Rufus Wainwright, all rugby players, Graham Norton, Eddie Izzard, Harold Pinter, Kenny G, Jude Law, Julia Roberts, and others.?? Kenny G is a dreadfully anodyne, but highly technically skilled, sax player,? playing in a lift near you right now. He sells millions. This has a different feel. Its a cult. Lee dispenses brain killing Kool-Aid disguised in a charter of emancipation. I am neither annoyed or confused by his expressions of social stance.
Merely astonished at the lack of perception of his shallowness.? His knee-jerk predictability, his lame attempts to shock ( as with the IRA schtick ) the astonishing fact that some of the time he succeeds in shocking…. ??He is every bit as predictable in his own way as the Top Gear boys, but not half as funny. There is actually only one thing that is left that would actually shock, particularly his devotees…to ( actually ) convert to Catholicism… Otherwise its all sooooo predictable. A modern day Billy Graham with a secular gospel. And lots of Kool Aid.And willing devotees.
Done you up like kippers mate. There is a certain type of Guardian reader who finds Lee’s obvious and wordy routines an apt expression of their own predictable social view. Last nights end of season was a good case in point.??We were back to Ben Eltons anti “Thatch” schtick updated to the noughties. The same lazy knee-jerlk metaphors. The same blunt satirical sword. The same sense of old ground being retrampled without wit or anything new to say. And all the while the rapt gaze of the converted, the smug self satisfied mien of the audience congratulating themselves on being among the elite who stand apart from others in their celebration of egalitarianism, “fearing not to become their own enemies in the instant that they preach.”
Before returning to their apartments in Islington or Hampstead to toast their innate superiority to Daily Mail readers and to look in on little Jasper and Dido before breathing a sigh of relief that their children will be free of the taint of class consciousness. And resuming the debate about how to assuage their consciences concerning the children’s education. The point being that they live lives of an impeccably middle class nature but feel that by their appointing Lee as their spokesperson that they are showing their solidarity with the plucky working class. And do you know what, I suspect that in the unlikely event of Lee reading these words he would know exactly what I mean… Medieval kings had their fools and jesters. WE have conduits for our envy. Lee’s humour is deeply conventional…It relies on taking certain well worn social and/or political conventions and putting a minus sign in front of them.
The result is a new or different conventionallity. The only difference is in the label on the box that he does not think out of. If you want unconventional humour you might want to investigate the late Chick Murray, or the very much alive Milton Jones. I actually do not care what you think of me or my views concerning Lee.? I post them for my entertainment. ?Not to participate in a debate over matters which are in the end entirely subjective and a matter of taste and which are by definition not a matter of debate. You of course need not read them or respond.
I truly don’t mind either way. I have no emotional investment in opinions expressed by me to anonymous strangers, or by them to me, and i find it puzzling that anyone should care what my opinions are. Ignore me. I’m not worth it.” Lord Gaga, bbc.co.uk
“He’s not my cup of tea either. Too self-referential. Eventually he’ll disappear up his own fundamental orifice.” Federo Caladash, bbc.co.uk
“My mum always said that I’d laugth to see a pudding crawl, but Stewart Lee? NOOOO!!!” Spiky, Guardian.co.uk
“Is he drunk?” Jobe129, Youtube
“No, but the audience must be drunk to laugh at him.” Capitalsho, Youtube
“If it’s true the Beatles made the White Album because “they’ll buy anything we make now” then it’s utterly possible Stewart Lee could make a living standing on stage and reading aloud from the instruction booklet he got with his microphone. They’d still be rolloing in the aisles, such is the devotion of his devotees.” Jabjabmove, Youtube
“This is not funny and what is he saying?” Sha8088, Youtube
“SHIT!” Sexpistols100, Youtube
“Very vogue at the moment with the Guardian readers, Can’t do wrong apparently until the next great middle class wannne be different joy thing comes along.Personally I find him way too laboured and smug and most importantly not particularly funnny given it’s his career.” JonathanYP, Youtube
“I’ve tried to listen to Stewart, but because i didn’t go to Private School & Oxford, i feel he has a air of Superiorty (sorry if thats spelt wrong). No bodys opion or veiws matter. Thats what you call a MIDDLE CLASS TWAT……………..!” Rightwing1969, Youtube
“I saw his shows was described as comedy and it looked like some sort of stand up but I watched it and couldn’t for the life of me find the comical part of the show. Perhaps it was some sort of ironic comedy thats only funny cos its really crap but I just didn’t get it.” Dr Boris Gobshite, totalfootballforums.co.uk
“Michael McIntyre is funnier. The Stewart Lee cult are driven by nothing but jelousy.” Rattlesnakemeuk, Youtube
“You know…the cunt. The shit haired, monotonous cunt. The cunt who repeats things….in a monotone. You know, the repetitive, liberal cunt. The monotonous cunt, repeating his liberal jokes, over and over…repeating them…in a monotonous way. You know…the smug, liberal cunt…” Stewart Lee, donstartmeoff.com
“You really call this crap intelligent? Juvenile adult/humour. Stupid. ” Finnsia, Youtube
“I’m a comedian and I’m better than this guy, no wonder he’s unknown in the UK, it’s just not up to standard – it’s tired, derivative, vapid and tedious – come on Stewart. You’ve been doing the same routine since 1993.” Rainbowchild8888, Youtube
“I disagree with Stewart Lee. I believe morality is derived from our evolution, so it is fixed – or at least, hasn’t changed since ancestral times. Perception of what is morally right may fluctuate throughout our history but I think there is a rational and absolute morality at the core of it.” Svelter, Youtube
“I’ve always thought of Stewart Lee’s comedy as doing the opposite of what really good comedy should do. He essentially uses comedy to browbeat people in to agreeing with his rather dogmatic left wing political points of view. It’s as though he’s essentially taking what is the sort of prevailing politically correct dogma of his generation and aggressively ridiculing anyone who doesn’t sign up to it, using comedy as an instrument to enforce conformity, not as a means of subversion.
He’s a red faced man jabbing his finger in my face because I don’t agree with him.
He may as well be playing to an empty room, for all the concessions he makes to the audience. His refusal to concede to the audience is part of an ongoing desire to be taken seriously, but someone who wants to be taken so seriously is quite hard to take seriously.” Toby Young, A Good Read, BBC Radio 4, March 2011
“He seems to have spent an awful lot of time looking for negative comments about himself. As he’s going through one of his most successful periods in a long time, I assume this is a desperate attempt to convince himself that he is still an ‘outsider’.” Danger Man, cookedandbombed.co.uk
“I am a middle-aged man and I take my sense of humour very seriously. Laughter is often the only real let up from embracing my deep disappointment in myself, my loved ones and my general situation. As a result, I feel strongly engaged in the issue of who has the right to be paid to make me laugh.
Even if they’re being paid to make other people laugh. Even if other people have paid them to make them laugh. I feel that as someone who is capable of laughter I am much like a tax payer, a stakeholder in the laughter industry and have a burning sense of entitlement to express my opinions on any comedy anywhere. I will keep on doing so with more and more rage until I die, and no one will have paid attention except other men with slightly differing but no less forcefully expressed resentments.
And when I die, then someone somewhere will be sorry. Or something.” Brace, Guardian.co.uk
“Haha;) i do hope he’s aware of our site, i think it would really get to him if he did, he’d shit his high almighty y- fronts everytime he’s charactor got a good kicking on here because it’s fucking accurate and he knows it, the useless cunt.” Guest, dontstartmeoff.com
“I’d like to of seen his face the moment the smug little git found us on the google enquiry “watch stewart lee stand up comedian dvd”.” Tosser Spotter, dontstartmeoff.com
“Stewart Lee hasn’t been truly funny since he and Richard Herring went their separate ways.” Blue Baby, Guardian.co.uk
“I’m going off Stewart Lee.” Phil Swales, Twitter
“Morrisey’s piling on the pounds.” RonMexico121, Youtube
“He does come across as a bit of a bell-end though. Really, trawling online through negative online comments about yourself and reproducing them? Hi Stewart, if you’re reading this.” The Tourist, cookedandombed.co.uk
FOOTNOTES
1) In every single live show from May 2010 until January 2011 I began by explaining clearly and at length that all the material, which was in clearly delineated 30 minute chunks, was being honed for TV recordings for a new series, in order to avoid this sort of idiocy. Back Up
2) I have never used the words wog, ‘darky’, or paki on stage, and used the word ‘nigger’ when quoting a famous football commentator. The Conservative Party slogan ‘If you want a nigger for a neighbor vote liberal or labour‘ was used in Smethwick, Birmingham by Conservatives in 1964. Back Up
3) I left Shropshire at the age of 9 days old and was adopted by family from a different part of the country. This is why I do not have a Shropshire accent. Accents are not in your genes. Back Up
4) About 15 minutes of the 180 minutes of material broadcast in the second series of SLCV had been commercially available before transmission, a figure short of the ‘over half’ Mr Kennedy cites. The material previously commercially available is about half of the Braveheart routine (10 mins) in week 5, a one-liner joke about racist dyslexics in week 2, the set up and punchline and some of the otters routine in week 2, and the set up and punchline and some of the IRA routine in week 4, both of which were varied considerably by improvisation and the addition of new ideas. There was other, new material generated for show 5, which could have gone in instead of Bravehart, but it didn’t fit as well or seem as funny… Back Up
5) This was an intentional piece of the show, which was performed each night for 9 months. I was acting. Back Up