Being Scottish

At the Glasgow Comedy Festival London preview show 2010

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Stewart Lee: If You Prefer A Milder Comedian Please Ask For One, London run
Live Review
Leicester Square Theatre

Stewart Lee is past it. Ensconced in comfortable middle-age, the essential anger of comedy has deserted him. It’s time for him, at 41, to retire gracefully.

Or so Frankie Boyle would have you believe.

The Mock The Week star’s comments that no stand-up over 40 is funny was the spark that ignited these 90 unforgiving minutes of perfectly-measured sarcasm, using deconstruction, repetition and moral superiority as the sharpened tools with which to slay the very idea.

Boyle’s proposition is conclusively refuted, while he becomes the object of Lee’s scorn, his supposedly controversial line about the Queen’s vagina being meticulously picked apart, revealed as ridiculous under the scrutiny. This is Lee’s usual MO, and it’s as effective today as it has ever been.

The show’s title, as well as serving as a warning for those who like their humour lass challenging to stay away, comes from the sign behind every Caffe Nero counter. It was there that Lee was embarrassed when his loyalty card was refused because of an irregularity in the accumulated stamps.

The incident is typical of the sort of minor irritant that middle-class comics of a certain age – the very people Boyle was presumably thinking about – often build routines around, getting laughs from their impotent fury. Lee proves he can easily fit into this category, though it soon becomes apparent his heart is not in it. He berates us for chuckling at the ‘wrong’ places and subtly highlights the artifice of the supposed rage behind the genre. Never mind the free coffee, he’s certainly having his Danish raisin swirl and eating it….

This show of extended set pieces then moves on to the life expected of a fortysomething parent, skewering the bucolic idea of moving to the country with its cultural malnourishment before moving on to an attack on the unedifying ‘politically incorrect’ ideology as espoused by Top Gear that culminates in a daring piece about Richard Hammond’s near-fatal crash. Here, Lee moves the audience between discomfort and laughter with deceptive ease.

Because they are so distinctive, it’s easy to focus on Lee’s techniques; the deadpan delivery, the constant reiteration of his themes, the aloof demeanour. But there’s also a playfulness that imitators often miss, while the intelligent but unpretentious writing builds skilfully to make punchlines out of the most unexpected places.

Only in his final routine, based on the artistic bankruptcy of advertising executives, is in danger of becoming a parody of his own methodology – but the payoffs are certainly well worth it, and you’ll never watch Mark Watson’s Magners cider ads in quite the same way again.

Comedy in-jokes are, of course, an integral part of the show’s fabric. As well as Boyle, Lee takes pot-shots at the easy target of Michael McIntyre and creates a whole new genus of stand-up: the ‘Russell comedian’. But such asides hit a wider audience, not just the comedy cognoscenti.

In what will come as a surprise to long-term fans – though it’s entirely in keeping with his compulsion to keep the audience out of their comfort zone – Lee ends with a sincere song. It’s a cover version of a Steve Earle track, not a schmaltzy Lee Evans-style number; but it’s enough to show that he still has the capacity to surprise – even at a positively geriatric 41

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Saw him at the Leiecester Square Theatre he was brilliant brilliant brilliant a total master of his art.

Geoff, November 2010

Geniunely can't stand him, he comes across as the sort that thinks that live comedy should just be kept to smokey art student union clubs and that any comedian that plays in arenas is destryoing the so called "artistic intergrity" of stand up when we all know stand-up comedy is not an art form it's a form of live entertainment. P.S. Just becuase your TV show is terrible dosen't mean that you have to rip into Russel Howard and "That Roadshow".

Someoneyoudon'tknow, October 2010

I saw Stewart Lee on his 'If you prefer a milder comedian, please ask for one' tour last year and it was absolutely phenominal. Everything about it was perfect. My absolute favourite comedian, bar none.

Billy, October 2010

If you are a comedy nerd, buy his autobiography! It's brutally honest and quite revealing about the comedy world, without being overtly gossipy.

James Evans, September 2010

Saw Vegetable Stew @ The Stand @ The Fringe. Excellent! Thoroughly recommend!

sm, August 2010

I saw SL with my three housemates earlier in the year on his "If you prefer a milder comedian" tour. Probably the best stand-up I have seen live, all three of us are from different backgrounds and we were all crying with laughter! Can't wait to see him again! What I would say is, you need to have a lot of patience to like Mr Lee, if you're someone who can only laugh at a quick one liner, Stewart's comedy is not for you. He isnt the 41st best stand up, he's in the top 10. Leave your Frankie Boyles behind, because he just recycles his old material from whatever TV show he was on last. All I can say is roll on Series 2 of Comedy Vehicle!

Jaff, August 2010

Watched Stew on his 'If You Prefer A Punnier Comedian, Please Ask For One'. Not one pun delivered. Definitely the most bad pun deliverer I have ever had the bad luck to see. Don't spend your cash or pun seeking time. Only funny man that never delivers any puns. Why does he expect me to think?

Matthew Roberts, July 2010

Saw Stewart on his 'If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One'. Not one joke delivered. Absolutely the worst comedian I have ever had the misfortune to encounter. Don't waste your money or time. Only comedian that I have ever thought of walking out on.

Dave Wilson, July 2010

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