
The BBC, in its search for edgy, new and original comedians, has turned up someone called Stewart Lee, presumably someone also thought he was a bit ethnic with a name like Lee and booked him having seen him perform…..

Only joking…he is of course tried and trusted by the Liberal intelligentsia to be a reliable purveyor of right-on comedy to the Guardianista in-crowd since the 90’s…..here he is recently with his little, very little, red book of the Regime’s best jokes…or is that John McDonnell?


but where did it all go so wrong Stew?…..

He’s gone from the bright young thing to that bedraggled tramp shouting abuse at people on the streets.
Steve Martin had some good advice for budding comedians…..

Still, don’t worry Stewie, the Guardianistas don’t have a sense of humour so not having any jokes isn’t much of a problem for you is it?
The BBC is disinterring the old faithfuls such as Alf Garnett but reconfigured for the modern age…anyone want to bet that the new BBC version will be, snigger snigger, ‘Nigel Farage’?…and keeping Stewart Lee on the books seems to be in line with that policy of keeping the oldies on life support despite the fact he seems to have run out of decent material….never mind this recent series had not one, not two, not three but four writers.
The first episode was on wealth and I gave up after 10 minutes or so….it is slow and torturous with pretend angst whilst naturally still targeting the same old, same old.
The funniest thing he said was ironically a right-wing joke about the pretentious language of the left as he talked of his own artistic ambitions…
‘[I aim] to create a secondary character driven narrative that runs both in tandem with, and in dramatic opposition to, the surface level stand-up. I want you to laugh in spite of me not because of me…an example of theatrical practise known as Brechtian Alienation….an incredibly high risk performance strategy that few people seem to appreciate… and no-one is equipped to review me..’
In fact it wasn’t really a joke…that is genuinely the effect he seeks to create. Wonder how that worked out for him.
Moving on from ‘Wealth’ he hits his stride with ‘Islamophobia’ in the second episode. Clearly he left the house in a rush and forget to bring the jokes along….this set consisted mostly of shouting abuse at the ‘home audience’ of Islamophobes who are just ‘awful people’ and shouting out the names of the guilty ones in the Media who incite such hatred towards Moooslims…the Mail, the Sun, Rupert Murdoch, the Telegraph and of course John Whittingdale.
Lee naturally made no attempt to argue his case [He did admit ‘I’ve done no fucking research’], he would have lost, and instead made what he hoped was a poignant and powerful comparison of Quakers to Muslims and our ‘hypocritical’ attitudes and yet managed instead to make a completely spurious and very weak pointless point. ….and the irony being that the Quakers decamped to the US and now are derided and sneered at by the BBC as ‘Bible Belt’ right-wing religious fanatics who probably vote for Donald Trump….however, no comedy routine from Lee defending them against the BBC’s anti-Christian crusade…or is that jihad?
He worked up that whole routine in order to finish on the pithy punch-line that we musn’t expect Muslims to integrate and be just like us. Well no, we don’t expect them to turn into happy-clappy Christians, going to Barmitzvahs, and drinking Stella at the pig roast…the trouble isn’t us…it’s them, to generalise…wanting us, non-Muslims, to integrate with their Muslim culture.
Naturally Lee didn’t dare come up with any jokes critical and satirical about Islam or Muslims…..he’s not a gutless coward he’s just a righteous anti-Establishment lefty as he refuses to comply with BBC corporate orders…..the BBC’s head of religious programming, Aaqil Ahmed, insists on more jokes about Muhammed….so that we can learn more about him and his fantastic religion…
“The day we have people standing up and telling detailed jokes about Muhammad and have the audience understanding that humour, then we will have come a long way in society and we will have a lot more religious literacy about a major world figure.”
Go on Stewie….do it, take a deep breath and be ‘Charlie’….tell the one about Muhammed beheading all the males in a Jewish tribe and enslaving the women and children.
He ended with the line that he was ‘funny once’.….’once’…surely he exaggerates.
Anyway onto the next epsiode….need I tell you? It’s about ‘Patriotism’ for those who have never watched the BBC or one of Lee’s routines….Mark Easton probably co-wrote this one…..should be a laugh….I joke.
Apparently there are three more episodes….as yet subjects unannounced….feel free to list the possibilities in the comments.