Stewart Lee

Stewart Lee winds up the fourth series of his Comedy Vehicle. Recent weeks have taken in thorny subjects such as patriotism, wealth, Islamophobia and death with - and it's acknowledged with a heavy heart - varying degrees of success, when stood up against his previous, near-perfect series. Bringing things to a close this week in front of his audience of Guardian readers at the Mildmay Club in Stoke Newington, he delves into his own childhood for quarry, with Chris Morris berating him throughout.

Eddie Izzard may run marathons, but Lee remains the king of endurance comedy, a standup with the wit and grit to rolling-pin a single observation into a half-hour routine. Tonight's episode is nominally about dunderheaded reactions to the so-called migrant crisis but, like a glitch in the Matrix, Lee gets locked into a repetitive but endlessly rewarding riff about Rod Liddle and random foodstuffs. It trundles and builds to his most demanding, and impressively heroic, checkout of the series so far.

Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, BBC2, episode 4.5 preview

One thing in particular intrigues me about Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle. It felt as if he was doing warm-ups and works-in-progress for this series for at least a year in advance around the UK. I assumed that this was to get every phrase, every comma, every pause in the right place. And then along comes episode 5 and, unless he is pulling the wool over the liberal intelligentsia's eyes and engages plants and stooges like a hack magician, he frequently seems to be winging it here.

Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, TV review

Lee is the only comedian who thoroughly critiques his act as he is doing it, and then critiques the critique.

Preview: Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, episode 4.4

Conspiracy theorists can have a field day with the fact that in some places episode four was billed as The Migrant Crisis. In fact our stand-up sage-cum-holy-fool is here to guide us through his thoughts on death this time. Did it change or did someone get it wrong? More pertinently, however, the show is a return to top form after a spot of water-treading last week.

Russell Kane interview (Link expired)

Russell Kane on spring-loaded crotches, acting his age... and his stand-up war with Stewart Lee.

Stewart Lee said in an earlier broadcast that "no one is equipped to review me". That's me told, bless him. The alleged theme of last week's Comedy Vehicle was patriotism. He could so easily have been lazy. Stew is many bastarding things, but lazy isn't one.

Somehow, he managed - mouth-farting into a mic - to turn a full three minutes of the sounds of a cat's diarrhoea into the most plosive and gorgeous argument against deference. It was wonderful, and I still stand and applaud its sculpted perfection. A man mouth-farting into a microphone, while mumbling the national anthem badly and talking about cat shit shouldn't have been subtle, but somehow it and its wider points were, and clog-brained oversentimental deference might want to pipe down for a bit.

Stew looks at patriotism this week, in particular our difficult relationship with the St George's flag and what it has come to represent. He's revered - and rightly so - for his lengthy, repetitive, borderline operatic gags but, unfortunately, it's questionable whether the 20 minutes or so spent relating a story about his cat - called Jeremy Corbyn - and an exhausting case of its violent diarrhoea is worth the investment. It all feels a bit leaden come the punchline. But even at his worst, he's still better than most.

Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle preview - Patriotsm

The most interesting point Stewart Lee makes in the third episode of his current series, subtitled 'Patriotism', comes at the start when he talks about the biggest problem the modern satirist faces. The news is in such flux, says Lee, it is hard to get a handle on it for comedy. And if Lee is having that problem, spare a thought for lesser mortals out there trying to monetize their social commentary.

"I assure you, within three minutes, on this television programme, on this stage, a Muslim will have been lampooned." Well, sort of. This is a Stewart Lee joint, after all: a safe space for a complicit audience well-versed in the man's ziggurats of irony and meta-commentaries of unending depths. This week, then: Islamophobia, a deft high-wire act, further riffing on everything from Quakerism to Dapper Laughs ("What kind of person gets dropped by ITV2? It's like being barred from a pub that's already on fire").