Stewart Lee

Grumpy old men, like policemen, are getting younger. Take Stewart Lee, pushing 40 and furious, who took Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle as his invitation to drive a toxic sleenwagon at anyone and everyone who gets his goat. With the world of books as his first target, he had plenty to career into.

TV Scoop Review

A lot of what Stewart Lee said irked me a little. In last night's episode, Lee turned his admittedly sharp mind to books, and in particular toilet books and celebrity hardbacks. Perhaps it is just me, but isn't it a little obvious to suggest that these genres are inherently crappy? Taking potshots at the likes of Jeremy Clarkson and Chris Moyles felt pedestrian, and to suggest that he shouldn't read Harry Potter because it's intended for kids seems close-minded.

On his Comedy Vehicle Stewart Lee drove a cross between a tractor and the field it was ploughing into the debate that should start now about the purpose of BBC Two. After the silliest opening titles Lee could dream up, in which his tractor-field was followed by a troupe of circus performers, Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle provided the most intelligent half hour of stand-up you will see on television this year - outside, one trusts, the next five episodes of this series.

"The sat-nav is off," promised Lee at the start of his set, and for once the promise of unpredictability was not broken.

Lee, who has not had his own TV series since the juvenilia that was Fist of Fun, demonstrated that in the intervening years he has become the master of deadpan stand-up. A routine in which he repeatedly tried to explain who rappers were was almost surreally brilliant. But that is not the reason Lee's show was important: it suggested that intelligence might be valued again on BBC Two, after some decades in which intellectual snobbery was considered almost as vile as racism.

Last Night's Television - Keep taking the mic

In my front room, Stewart Lee was preaching not so much to the converted, as to an ayatollah. He did so brilliantly, though. And what I love about his act is that he does not feel remotely bound by the conventions of showbiz brotherhood.

Stewart Lee is a stand-up comedian who specialises in telling unfashionable truths. He has the manner of Gordon Brown at his glummest, but instead of being downbeat, this is comedy so accurate and courageous that its effect is exhilarating. His target tonight is the debased world of book publishing. "Did William Tyndale," he wonders miserably, "burn at the stake in 1536 in the cause of vernacular English literature so that you could read The Gospel According to Chris Moyles?"; He demolishes Dan Brown, explains why he has never read J. K. Rowling and disrespects the rapper Asher D's autobiography. "I like this book," he says, "because when I read a book, I don't like there to be too many words in it. What I prefer is for it to be pictures of the same man, over and over again, in a variety of different hats." It's the comic highlight of the week.

In the first of a witty new stand-up-cum-sketch series, comic Stewart Lee focuses on 'toilet books'. Having risked a good smiting from The Almighty for penning Jerry Springer: The Opera, it's not surprising stand-up stalwart Stewart is tackling big issues such as political correctness and religion in this darn fine mix of themed routines and sketches. First up, though, is the topic of literature, in which Stewart challenges Dan 'The Da Vinci Code' Brown's style and asks when it became acceptable to take books into the toilet.

Stewart Lee is a raconteur who might remind you of Dave Allen; he's clever, discursive and very funny. Though best known for co-writing Jerry Springer: The Opera, which made him the focus of a national hate campaign, Lee is a gifted stand-up with a laconic style. In the first instalment of a new series, his subject is books in general and so-called "celebrity hardbacks" in particular, which allows Lee, who looks a bit like a very young, very tired Morrissey, to give Jeremy Clarkson and Chris Moyles both barrels. I loved his dismissal of the latter's second autobiographical volume, The Difficult Second Book, as a title that showed "a degree of irony and self-awareness largely absent from the text". The sketches that smatter the show don't work very well (they never did for Dave Allen, either), but just go with the flow, because everything else works a treat.

It's easy to have a pop at telly executives (for example: telly is run by complete morons. See? Easy) but whoever decided that Stewart Lee was such a stand-up artist that he deserved his own show deserves much, much praise. The first ep sees him rail angrily against the modern world of publishing; Chris Moyles, Jeremy Clarkson and pity publishing all receive a marvelous dose of controlled anger. Crucially, despite the clear, genuine rage, he remains funny throughout (check out the brilliant pay off to the Asher D rant). A fantastic show.

London Paper Review

Stewart Lee is one of those comics who can sometimes be a bit too clever-clever for his own good. And by clever-clever, I mean finding irony-within-irony, making jokes about jokes, and being so self-referential he's in danger of disappearing up his own allusions. But fear not, because Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle is one of the funniest 30 minutes of TV you'll have seen in a while.

Stewart Lee Interview

Veteran comic Stewart Lee has been described as a 'crumpled Morrissey' and he's officially the 41st best stand up of all time.