Stewart Lee

Stewart Lee on his Comedy Vehicle

The man behind Fist of Fun (with Richard Herring) and Jerry Springer - The Opera is back on screen in his own 'Comedy Vehicle'. He talks to The Times.

Taking a stand pays off for Stewart Lee

Stewart Lee has had something of a tumultuous relationship with television. Widely regarded as one of this country's riskiest and most insightful stand-up comedians, the last time Lee fronted a TV show of any kind was ten years ago, when he appeared with Richard Herring in BBC2 show This Morning With Richard Not Judy.

Stewart Lee, when on form, is almost untouchable. Recent stand-up shows have seen critics, fans and innocent bystanders agog at the stream of brilliant words tumbling out of that weary gob. He's tackled weight issues, made light of the death of Princess Diana and told Scottish people that Braveheart was a child-abuser. He's brave and darkly comic. Lee turns his eye to the TV world after a decade of absence, starting off with peering at the phenomenon of books you keep in the bog. Where did these books come from? Who decided that we needed books in the lavatory? Lee will have all the answers. Just don't expect him to be nice about it...

Putting his neck on the line

The last time a show penned by the veteran stand-up comic Stewart Lee was broadcast by the BBC, it was no laughing matter. The channel's executives received death threats and one of them was placed under police protection. Fast forward four years and BBC2 will broadcast the first episode of a six-part series called Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle.

They're all scum

It is currently showing at 11.50 pm on Sunday nights, without any trailers, following apologetic announcements warning that it "may not be to all tastes".

Theoretical comedy it may be; but Lee and Herring are no less in the thrall of the scatalogical than many of their less crafty counterparts. Another of their sophisticated satires, on relativism, has it that the businessman in his suit and tie is just as "sick" as the man who masturbates over incinerating cows.

Comedians like Lee and Herring, who write their own jokes, tend to watch a lot of terrible afternoon television. Somehow it's a very effective form of fertiliser. [...] Fist of Fun is highly concentrated comedy. It'll go a long way.

Whole chunks of Munnery's show are hilarious, but occasionaly it runs out of steam, either through inaccuracy (show surely wouldn't insult Lee for his fatness - a running gag - but defend him against body fascism) or by going for easy targets and turning show into the demonised leftie of Portillo-ish imaginations rather than the real and much funnier one

David Baddiel and Rob Newman may sport the least convincing Cockney accents since the glorious days of Dick Van Dyke, but their loyal middle-class student audience are hardly likely to know that.

Sometimes Herring and Lee sound too much like clones of their generation - their opening jokes might have come from The Mary Whitehouse Experience - but there are undoubtedly some inspired sketches, like the recent skit on the University of Life, whose graduates have learnt how to write letters to the Daily Star saying that all criminals should be castrated.