Stewart Lee
- 56 years old
- English
- Actor, writer and stand-up comedian
Press clippings Page 43
Why Stewart Lee is wrong about slapstick
In his TV series Comedy Vehicle Lee pours scorn on slapstick by berating Del Boy's fall through the bar for being voted number one in a Funniest TV Momentclip show: "Is that really what we've come to, Britain? Del Boy falling through a bar, and Trigger making a face?!" Significantly, many of the other top clips were also sight gags - Cleese's silly walks, Dawn French collapsing into a puddle... It seems that 80 years since the advent of sound technology we still favour the sight gag over the verbal. Why?
Julian Dutton, The Huffington Post, 3rd March 2014Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, TV review
This comedy about comedy would be unforgivably self-indulgent if Stewart Lee wasn't just as incisive on every other facet of modern life as he is on his own comedic genius.
Ellen E Jones, The Independent, 2nd March 2014Radio Times review
Stewart Lee is a stand-up who doesn't do stand-up. He doesn't tell gags; often he isn't very funny. Fellow comedians hate him - he's pleased with Lee Mack's description of him as a "cultural bully from the Oxbridge Mafia" and he's regularly denounced on Twitter as "fat" and "depressed-looking" and much, much worse.
So he's an acquired taste. I like him, though I don't know why, possibly because he's astute and clever. He takes the Twitter loathing and turns it around, pulping the social network site and its users as "a state surveillance agency staffed by gullible volunteers... it's the Stasi for the Angry Birds generation". If you don't laugh at that, then possibly this show isn't for you.
Alison Graham, Radio Times, 1st March 2014Preview: Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, BBC Two
Let's hope this series picks up some new fans as well as his usual followers who watch him with religious devotion. Well, I say religious devotion, but, of course, as I said, god doesn't exist.
Bruce Dessau, Beyond The Joke, 25th February 2014Chris Morris: the comeback starts here
After a rare stage appearance at Stewart Lee's recent stand-up gig, the Brass Eye comedian is returning to TV. Now, more than ever, we need a satirist with his fearlessness.
Brian Logan, The Guardian, 20th February 2014Chris Morris joins Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle Series 3
Stewart Lee will be interviewed by Chris Morris during the third series of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, starting next week.
British Comedy Guide, 19th February 2014It seems safe to say the short-lived glory days of the series are already behind us, seemingly in favour of the producers tilting the Hoxton branch of Toni & Guy and employing whoever tumbles out. For those comedy fans who wouldn't know Stewart Lee from Kristen Stewart, Russell Kane discovers that people from different regions of the UK are different, Marcel launches his smut-drenched autobiog and half of Totally Tom embraces his Scottish side in a typically overblown manner. Live at the Appalling, more like.
Mark Jones, The Guardian, 14th February 2014Review: Stewart Lee, Much A-Stew About Nothing
It would, of course, be delusional to conclude he'd taken on board what I said but I found it interesting that he had moved the most audience-testing section to the end of the evening and didn't refer to the crowd using four-letter words.
Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph, 20th November 2013Giving Stewart Lee way to an acquired taste in comedy
Well, well, if I ever thought I was in Stewart Lee's comedy 'bad books', I think Dominic Cavendish of The Telegraph may well have topped me.
Julian Hall, The Stage, 15th November 2013Review: Stewart Lee, Much A-Stew About Nothing
Faultless entertainment from a comic at the top of his game.
Veronica Lee, The Arts Desk, 14th November 2013