Is Stewart Lee a comedy genius or just another smug leftie comic? The country’s 41st-best stand-up, as he likes to remind us in reference to a Channel 4 poll, has built up so many protective layers that he is almost beyond criticism – which I imagine suits him just fine. As if to prove the point, he’s posted dozens of negative reviews on his website, presumably to get one over on his more unenlightened critics: ‘See, not even your wrongheaded opinions affect me.’ He’s even included a quote from our own James Delingpole, writing in the Daily Telegraph, who describes Lee as ‘not funny and has nothing to say’.
So who the hell does Stewart Lee think he is and what’s he going on about? I fear by asking the question I may already have fallen into one of his traps where I end up being quoted on his website. You see Mr Lee enjoys playing with people’s heads, especially those who doubt his genius.
What we do know is that he began his career in 1989 as one half of a comedy duo with Richard Herring. He has written for the Observer and was named ‘Face of the year’ by the Times in 2009. He used to be on telly quite a bit and in 2011 won a British Comedy Award for best male television comic and best comedy entertainment programme for his series Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle. He now jokes about not being on telly. In 2001, he co-wrote and co-directed the controversial West End musical Jerry Springer: The Opera which gave him a whole new audience. He’s currently on tour with his latest show Stewart Lee vs. The Man Wulf.
Love him or loathe him, Lee has written some cracking sort-of one liners such as, ‘What Princess Diana would have wanted was to have not been killed, and then in death, not to have become the unwitting receptacle for the hysterical, over-emotional, shrieking grief of twats.’ But the joke, if you can call it a joke, that nails his style of comedy would have to be, ‘Hear that applause? I prefer that… I’m not interested in laughs. What I’m interested in is a temporary liberal mass-consensus.’ I would say that’s pretty accurate for most of his peers but for Lee, who knows? His various onstage personas are so couched in postmodern irony it’s hard to know whether to laugh or clap.
Is he a radical progressive or just a too-clever-by-half deconstructionist? He’s very good at playing the cynical, middle-aged grump – but is that really him? If so, why ruin it all by slipping into the whiny know-it-all who thinks that repeating his own name over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again is the height of sophisticated wit? Maybe if I sat him down he’d reveal how he is simply trying to understand the absurdity of human nature. But from what I’ve observed of his comedy, Lee’s underlying objective throughout has been to oh-so-subtly expose right-wing bigotry (that old chestnut), while pointing a finger at what he believes to be a shadowy cabal of fascists poisoning the minds of ordinary people.
As a Spectator reader, you probably take the opposite view – believing that a cabal of radical progressives like Lee have been the ones poisoning ordinary people’s minds. But Stew is a clever chap who graduated from Oxford with a 2:1. His fans treat him with the reverence of a rock-star philosopher, so perhaps he’s right and you have indeed had your mind warped by the evil right-wing press. His shows do feel like a subtle, if absurd, form of re-education.
That air of superiority laced with sneering disdain is usually associated with public-school types trying to intimidate the lower orders
You’d hardly describe Lee’s comedy as edgy, given he adheres to all the correct left-leaning orthodoxies – and while I admire his ability to deconstruct his own performances, being constantly reminded of how cleverly self-aware he is can easily slip into tiresome sixth-form post-structural hokum. And yes, I’m aware of how that last sentence sounds – a bit like sixth-form post-structural hokum, right? You see what happens when you become too aware of your own self-awareness. There madness lies.
Anyway, hiding behind masks is a clever device for those who wish to maintain an air of mystery – but it’s also a tactic used by bullies to disorientate their prey. Insist that you were only joking when you punched your weedy victim in the face and you can accuse them of being a spoilsport when they complain. I’m not suggesting Stew is a bully, but he does remind me of some of the tormentors I encountered as a boy. That air of superiority laced with sneering disdain is usually associated with public-school types trying to intimidate the lower orders – which is why it feels odd coming from a working-class lad from Solihull whose adopted parents separated when he was four. But maybe those traumatic early years are what inform his get-them-before-they-can-get-you style of comedy.
Either way, he wants you to know that he couldn’t give a monkey’s what anyone thinks – and nor could his loyal fans, who love that they are in on the joke. His latest tour asks, with ironic tongue firmly in cheek, ‘Can Lee unleash his inner Man-Wulf to position himself alongside comedy legends like Dave Chappelle, Ricky Gervais and Jordan Peterson at the forefront of side-splitting stadium-stuffing shit-posting?’ Familiar territory, then – but as Lee famously told a bemused audience member: ‘Don’t come and see me if you don’t know what anything is.’ But do any of us know who Stewart Lee is?
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