If you prefer a milder comedian, please ask for one

// August 21st, 2009 // Comedy and Satire, Edinburgh

Stand-up “veteran” Stewart Lee has been doing comedy for over 20 years and during that time has found both general popularity, as one half of the Lee/Herring duo who fronted Fist of Fun on Radio and TV in the early 1990s, and more specialised rejection after the broadcast of the Jerry Springer – The Opera stage show he co-produced with Richard Thomas on national television in 2005. The rejection came, almost exclusively, from religious protest groups lead by Christian Voice UK. I think Jerry Springer – The Opera is about the only thing Stewart has been involved in making that I haven’t seen. This is not because of any deeply held religious beliefs I might hold and, after the heated “discussions” that resulted from enquiring into the subject of seemingly (to me anyway) unreasoned and yet unyielding belief with people I know and like, I’m not going to be commenting any further on the subject here in a public space.

A group of ten of us, all locals, descended on The Stand in Edinburgh as part of an evening of Festival cheer. I had never seen Stewart perform live before, outside of television or DVD, and I felt my high expectations for the hour long set could not possibly be met. This set starts without making any reference to a distressing world event in an unfamiliar and confrontational manner in the way some of his earlier shows have done. Never more hilariously than at the very start of 2004s Stand Up Comedian where Lee opened with his take on American “over-reaction” to the events of 9-11 (the 9th of November). This evening’s opening material centres instead on an incident which happened to Stewart in a London branch of Café Nero with his young son.

One of the great things about Stewart Lee’s stand-up is that you just don’t know how serious (or not) he is about some of his pronouncements. Does he really wish full blindness upon Jeremey Clarkson’s three children? Does he wish equally, that Richard Hammond had been decapitated during the dragster crash he had in 2006, his still sentient head bouncing across the tarmac into a pool of urine? These are just “jokes” he says. In the Top Gear sense of the word that is. Still, “they are also co-incidentally” what he actually believes. This ambiguity creates a real emotional awkwardness in his audience which rarely fails to induce laughter.

Did Lee really attend the same school as Richard Hammond? I suspect he did, but the stories of their time there together probably hold only the very slightest grain of truth, if any. Does it matter? Of course not. Lee finishes a tale of his heroic, but ultimately thankless, rescue of Hammond from bullies through the use of his privileged status as a library monitor with the proviso “now, that story about Richard “The Hamster” Hammond (he isn’t a real hamster) isn’t true, but I think it tells us a lot about him”. Such is Lee’s relaxed manner with the audience, and the rapid rapport he builds up with us, that we all nod along in agreement. Hammond is indeed an ungrateful rat of a man who selfishly sold us out. Us, the rightful heirs to any profit to be made from book or TV deals resulting from the near-fatal crash which we, the licence fee payer, funded. Relax, it’s a “joke”.

Like Hammond, the cider manufacturer Magners was also the recipient of Lee’s ire. Not only had they appropriated their TV ad strapline “Give it to me straight, like a pear cider made from 100% pear(s)” from the common and varied usage the phrase had enjoyed within the Lee family for generations but, more painfully, they had ruined Steve Earle’s The Galway Girl for Lee by using it in a previous TV ad. The song had been Lee’s favourite of the past decade or so and had held warm associations with his wife, the comedian Bridget Christie.

Stewart Lee is always keen to push the boundaries of his chosen artform and closed his set by confronting what he described as “the final comics’ taboo”. This, in his words, “is to do something sincerely, and to do it well” and involved him performing The Galway Girl (albeit with a couple of comic additions) with an acoustic guitar, accompanied by an on-loan fiddle player. Whilst this form of finale is almost the stylistic polar opposite of the surreally dark “vomiting into the anus of Christ” skit which closed his 90s comedian show of 2005/06, it still surprised his audience. It was heartfelt and the audience saw that. Highly recommended.

photo of Stewart Lee credit to: Gavin Evans