Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle

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.