Stewart Lee.co.uk

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Standup ComedianStandup Comedian

The Observer Posted on Sunday, August 1st, 2004

Don’t take children to see Stewart Lee, however. Not because he’s too rude or too satirical, although he is, but because when he kicks off with a line about how 9/11 is actually 9 November, they will quite reasonably turn to you and ask why someone as good as Lee still thinks this is a joke worth using three years after it did the rounds of every playground and office water cooler in the land. This quibble aside, Lee’s show is a masterclass in what the best stand-up can look like.

With a fine balance between current affairs and fart jokes, self-mockery and derision of celebrities (Graham Norton is ‘like a pink jackboot stamping on a human face for all eternity’), Lee, co-writer of Jerry Springer: The Opera, delivers so many good lines at such high density that the audience barely has time to keep up.

The greatest target of his wrath is Ben Elton; rebutting comparisons for the musical thing, he asserts that more people like Osama bin Laden than Ben Elton, because bin Laden ‘has at least lived his life to a consistent code of ethics’.

The Observer on 1st August 2004. Filed Under: Reviews, Standup Comedian
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