While David Mitchell was on holiday, stand-up comedian Stewart Lee had the opportunity to take his place as a columnist for the Observer and his latest book, Content Provider, is a collection of some of the funniest of those written between 2011 and 2015.
Lee’s appearance at the Book Festival is chaired by Ian Rankin of Inspector Rebus fame, and having spotted Rankin at a Stewart Lee stand-up gig in Edinburgh last year and assuming they also share a love and deep knowledge of music – evident from even the most cursory glance at their back catalogues – the easy rapport between them comes as no surprise.
Rankin begins with the two quotes that are on the front cover of the book: “Stewart Lee is not funny and has nothing to say.” from the Daily Telegraph; and from sesquipedalian satirist Will Self, “I just want to be Stewart Lee”. Rankin playfully asks whether Lee has ever wanted to be Will Self, and when he answers ‘no’ Rankin quips, ‘that’s going to be awkward when you next meet’.
Moving on to the book, Lee bemoans the fact that no-one knows where half the politicians he mentions are now, as many of the key figures disappeared in the recent political upheavals. However, he lets slip how he inadvertently started a rumour about George Osborne and some pencils, and turns in a witty remark about how Michael Gove was ‘the gift that kept on giving’ before going on to explain that a lot of the humour in the book comes from the inclusion of aggressively scathing below-the-line comments from members of the public, who appear to wilfully misunderstand the deliberately ironic stance he adopts. Reading out a couple of prime examples, Rankin jokes that they’re so good Lee must have written them himself, to which Lee laughingly responds, ‘No! I don’t have multiple identities that attack myself online!’
We’re all having a lot of laughs, but Lee does intermittently touch on some serious business close to his heart. He talks about The Stand comedy club, ‘one of the best venues in the country’, where he and wife Bridget Christie are performing this year, moving on to discuss what he calls ‘the battle for the soul of the Fringe’. He mildly jokes that Tommy Sheppard had to fight a ‘coterie of English Public School boys’ which was good practice for the job he does now as SNP spokesperson in the House of Commons.
Some of the morally/ethically-serious issues he cares about are included the book and he mentions secondary ticketing – a process whereby touts buy up large amounts of tickets, selling them on at vastly increased prices, with none of the extra money finding its way back to either the artist or the venue. He is understandably incredulous and incensed that Sajid Javid, when Culture Secretary, called the ticket touts ‘classic entrepreneurs’. He also noted that the ‘machine’ dealt with the publication of this piece by ensuring that when Sajid Javid’s name was googled the next day, pictures of him with a cat he had once helped topped the search-list. As Lee puts it, ‘How do they deal with covering up corruption? They literally throw kittens at it!’
Ending with questions from the audience, Lee responds to a question about wife Bridget with an emphatic endorsement mildly made, that if he weren’t married to her, she would be his favourite stand-up comedian and he would be trying to marry her. He leaves us with the tantalising snippet that the two have discussed doing an act together at some point far, far down the line. Perhaps, he says, something about their honeymoon in Shetland in December 2006, where they didn’t realise how little there was there, or how dark it would be…
Having got used to Lee’s sardonic, spitting, spewing stand-up persona, it’s a real treat to see the real man.
Content Provider: Selected Short Prose Pieces, 2011-2016