Marriage Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle

Coming back from the pub on a Tuesday afternoon about

six months back, and a woman was coming along the road towards me.

I thought, "That is a very beautiful woman."

Even though... Even though you're married, you can't shut down

that part of your aesthetic appreciation of people.

Then, as she got nearer to me,

I realised it was actually my wife,

which is a very funny thing to happen.

And I thought, what an amazing thing, to mistake a stranger...

to not know who that stranger was, to find a stranger attractive

and then to realise that it was your wife.

It was a great thing to happen.

But then she lifted up her arms, this beautiful woman,

my wife, and she said...she said,

"You were supposed to defrost that ham pie.

"Why couldn't you even defrost the ham pie?

"Now we'll have to take the kids to Nando's again."

Tax breaks for married people are great, aren't they?

They're worth up to £70 per person per year!

With that money, you can buy an HBO box set

and then you never have to talk to each other in the evenings.

And, no, I haven't seen Breaking Bad, I haven't seen Breaking Bad.

I don't need to watch hundreds of hours of television

about an educated man who supports his family

by doing something he knows is beneath him.

LAUGHTER

-Now...

-LAUGHTER

..earlier this year, my wife insisted I have a vasectomy.

I don't know why,

she'd be the first to admit there wasn't really any pressing need.

What you will find if you...

LAUGHTER

You like that, do you? You like that Charlie Chaplin shit?

LAUGHTER

I tell you, if you've enjoyed that, if you've enjoyed that,

if you're a viewer at home and you've enjoyed that, that's...

there's no more like that in this episode. Turn off now.

But if you've been married for a long time,

you will find your partner ceases to view you as a sexual being.

I've been married ten years now.

Now, nine years ago, I'd been married one year,

and I went off on tour, and while I was on tour, I ran out of pants.

Now, like a lot of men,

I don't really know where my pants come from.

I always seem to have loads,

but I don't remember ever having bought any.

So, I bought some pants in Lincoln, went home,

one year of marriage, new pants.

And my wife said to me, "Oh, you've bought new pants.

"Are you having an affair?"

In a sort of sarcastic way.

Which was funny, but it was also nice, because it suggested,

in her mind, I was still a sexual possibility, see what I mean?

Now, last year, I'd been married ten years, I went off on tour,

I ran out of pants, and I bought some new pants in Bovey Tracey,

and I got back to London, ten years of marriage, new pants.

And my wife said to me, "Oh, you've bought new pants.

"Did you shit yourself at work?"

LAUGHTER

I mean, I had done, but it was a coincidence.

Now, earlier this year, our cat was walking around

with a parasitical worm hanging out of his anus.

To be honest, I envied him that level of intimacy.

And my daughter, who's two,

she saw the parasitical worm hanging out of the cat's anus,

and she said to me, "Dad, what is the point of that worm?

"Why is it alive?"

And I said to her, "I suppose the point of a parasitical worm

"is to stay alive long enough to mate and reproduce

"and make more versions of itself."

And she said to me, "Oh.

"What's the point of you, then, Dad? You've had a vasectomy.

"Why are you still alive?"

LAUGHTER

She'd been reading my Wikipedia page.

My wife updates it.

And I thought, you know what, I find it quite offensive.

I'm much better than a parasitical worm, you know.

For a start, I don't live in a cat's anus.

I live in Hackney.

Then I thought, you know what, maybe she's right.

What's the point of me?

If you're an impotent, vasectomised, 45-year-old

functioning alcoholic father of two, what is the...

There's not really any point in you, is there?

You're a waste of air, a waste of space. You're pointless.

You're like a three-week-old chop gradually going green in a hot room,

or an Amstrad games console,

or Vernon Kay. There's no point in you.

If you're an impotent, vasectomised, 45-year-old functioning alcoholic

father of two, the best you can hope for, I think,

is you just drop dead in the street,

and maybe flies will lay their eggs in your eyes,

and if maggots hatch out, then you're part of the cycle of life...

Why do the kids ask me these depressing questions?

I read my six-year-old son the myths of the Norse gods

in an attempt to neutralise my wife's Catholicism.

And earlier this year, he said to me,

"Dad, is Thor a goodie or a baddie?"

And I said, "He's neither.

"He's a chaotic individual, driven by pride, shame and lust

"who embodies an essential moral relativism."

And he said to me, "Oh.

"So, he's like you, then."

At some level, you're not just shitting on your own doorstep...

-No.

-..you're blasting sewage through the letterbox with a fire hose.

Yeah. And I'm choosing to do that.

You're like Bobby Sands with a muck spreader.

What I've tried to do here is write a kind of

mainstream-y, dad-husband-parent act.

But see if you can put into it some feeling of

apprehension of mortality and dread.

And I think it comes out with such a tone of depression

and fatality that you can see why those guys,

the popular stadium guys, tend to keep it light.

I've found I've been drinking a lot more since the vasectomy and, er...

..my wife had been away working for a couple of weeks, and she was

coming back that night, so I thought I'd go and get a bottle of wine,

you know, like I have on all the nights she's been away.

So, I went to the corner shop in Hackney.

I thought, "I'm not going to get a 3.99, cheapskate bottle of wine.

"I'm not going to get an 18.99 bottle of wine, like I've been unfaithful or something.

"I'm going to get a 12.99 bottle of wine."

That's the kind of guy I am,

I'm a 12.99 bottle of wine kind of guy.

I took the 12.99 bottle of wine up to the guy at the counter,

and he looked down at it and he said to me...

.."That's the best wine in the shop. You have good taste, sir."

And just making chit-chat, just friendly banter, I said to him,

"I'll tell my wife you said that.

"She'll be very surprised to find out that I've got good taste."

Just making sort of chit-chat, banter with the bloke.

And then he said,

"Yes. Bitches."

LAUGHTER

"You try and do your best for women,

"but they all just run us down,

"the fucking bitches."

That's a little bit I like to call

When Polite Conversation Goes Wrong.

LAUGHTER

Now, if you're an impotent, vasectomised, 45-year-old

functioning alcoholic father of two,

you can't fail to have noticed how all supermarket alcohol

marketing campaigns are now targeted directly at you, aren't they?

You walk round the Sainsbury's aisles every week,

there's more of these exotic bottled beers

with names like Wizard's Sleeve

and Goblin's Hole.

Catamite's Regret.

And the pretend folksy names and fake artisanal packaging

of these bottled beers conspires to give the functioning

45-year-old alcoholic the impression that he's not a functioning alcoholic,

but is instead some kind of connoisseur of beer,

cutting a valuable exploratory swathe

through an uncharted wilderness of 7.8% proof alcohol

that's all got to be...

I've got news for you, Sainsbury's!

I've seen through The Matrix,

and an alcoholic is an alcoholic is an alcoholic,

whether it's a tramp lying in the gutter drinking Buckfast

or a 45-year-old father of two sitting at home alone

in the middle of the night drinking Hadron's Collision.

LAUGHTER

And scowling and sneering to himself

as he watches Andrew Graham Dixon

talking about art on The Culture Show.

Andrew Graham Dixon.

Our fathers' generation had Late Night Line-Up

with Joan Bakewell, the thinking man's crumpet.

And what have we got? The Culture Show with Andrew Graham Dixon.

The crumpet man's thinker.

LAUGHTER

Culture Show. What is that?

It's like a children's programme from a collapsed Soviet state.

Where they're still bewildered by Velcro.

You know what? When I...

It took the BBC three years to decide to recommission this show.

I don't care about that.

I don't think anyone's got a God-given right to be on television.

What annoys me is, during that period, they said to me,

"Maybe it would help if you were more of a personality," they said.

"Perhaps you could host The Culture Show."

Host The Culture Show.

I AM culture.

I've got an Olivier Award,

for directing an opera,

at the National Theatre.

I've done a John Cage piece at the Barbican.

I've done the voiceover for a Kurt Schwitters app

at the Southbank Centre.

And I've had two books published by Faber And Faber.

Not Tesco's own-brand books,

like all the Mock The Week twats.

Faber And fucking Faber.

I am...

Every week, The Culture Show should just be me sitting on a massive jewelled throne...

LAUGHTER

..while Andrew Graham Dixon crawls around in the dirt in a nappy,

like a hog,

occasionally looking up at me and saying,

"So, Stewart Lee, what have you been thinking about this week?"

LAUGHTER

Host The Culture Show!

The only way I'd host The Culture Show is if I was dead.

And you could wheel my decomposing corpse

through the streets of Florence in a shopping trolley,

using a lolly stick to move my lips,

so they appeared to mouth platitudinous phrases clipped out of Wikipedia,

like, "Of course, what you need to understand about Giotto is...

"open square brackets, citation needed, close square brackets."

LAUGHTER

Host The Culture Show.

We're a betrayed generation, we've got nothing.

We've got vasectomies

and Andrew Graham Dixon

and three for the price of two at Sainsbury's

on Higginbotham's Wrench and Dunbar's Retaliation

and Vincent Crane's Atomic Rooster

and Drake and Theaker's Rustic Hinge

and Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera

and Principal Edward's Magic Theatre

and Andweller's Dream

and Gorky's Zygotic Mynci

and Bevis' Frond

and Noel's Chemical Effluent.

We've got nothing. We've got...

We've got nothing.

I've got no idea what's going on.

I've got no idea...

I didn't even know that Mutya

had left The Sugarcubes.

She's not been in it for years, apparently, The Sugarcubes.

I don't understand it, cos I saw...

I saw a picture just last week, and it was Mutya and Kerris,

whatever she was called, and the Irish one, Siobhan,

and I thought, "Good, there's The Sugarcubes."

And then underneath, it says it's MKS.

That's The Sugarcubes.

And then there's another picture, there's a load of...

Oh, that's The Sugarcubes.

A load of women about 12 years old.

Never seen them before, they're not old enough to have even been

with Gary Numan when he was with the other one.

It doesn't make any sense.

Why is it...

That's The Sugarcubes, Mutya, Kelly and Siobhan,

they're not dead. Why are they not called...

Why is...the other ones called The Sugarcubes?

The Sugarcubes, they're alive.

Why are they not called... Why are these other ones...

It doesn't make any...

You can't have The Sugarcubes without Mutya, I don't think.

That embodies it to me.

The whole...

It's not fair, there should be...

It's not fair on older people to change things like this.

There should be an alert you can sign up for and it will tell you.

It's like being Rip Van Winkle. It's like that.

I went to bed, I thought, "Oh, good, Mutya's in The Sugarcubes."

LAUGHTER

I have a checklist every night of things that are not changed.

You wake up the next day, "Oh, she's not been in it for years, didn't you know?"

"No, I didn't, why would I know that?"

Happens to me all the time.

I thought I lived on my own in a flat.

Wake up, I'm in a house, there's a woman there.

Children. A cat.

Parasitical anus worm.

That I'm envious of.

So, I've been up all night, drinking Gandalf's Memory Stick, and...

LAUGHTER

..Hogwart's Bukkake.

LAUGHTER

I was just having a little lie down on the kitchen floor.

I looked up, I saw the strip light was flickering on the...

on the unit. I've got a unit!

I've got no social life,

I've got no sex life, I've got no inner imaginative life.

I've got a unit.

I thought I'd climb up...

"I'll climb up on the unit, I can fix that."

I climbed up, I was jiggling the light, and I slipped.

I fell back.

I thought, "I'm going to hit my head on the wall there."

And as I was falling back, I thought to myself, in slow motion,

I thought, "Oh, I might die now.

"I wonder what that will be like?

"Shit, I expect...

"..if being alive's anything to go by."

I come round at A&E on the Euston Road.

They said to me, "Do you feel disorientated? Do you feel distressed?

"Do you feel bewildered? Do you feel confused?

"Do you feel unsteady? Do you feel unstable?

"Are you having trouble remembering who you are?

"Are you having trouble remembering where you are?"

And the answer to all those questions was, "Yes."

Because the symptoms of mild traumatic brain damage

are the same as the symptoms of being

a 45-year-old father of two small children.

But they don't... they don't tell you that.

LAUGHTER

Because if they...

If they did, you would all have vasectomies.

Self-administered, if necessary.

With whatever kitchen utensils were to hand.

Spatula and a...

tea-strainer and a...

garlic press.

LAUGHTER

And I was... I was left lying all night on a trolley

in a corridor at A&E, and there's been a lot of people lately

complaining about being left lying all night

on a trolley in a corridor at A&E, but I liked it.

Because it was quiet and it was peaceful

and no-one was trying to wake me up or argue with me

or demand things or

curse me for their very having been born.

I tried to pretend to be asleep so I could stay,

but they woke me up and they discharged me

and they sent me on my way with some antibiotics,

because apparently, the wound in my head

had become very slightly infected, and I was overjoyed, to be honest.

Because that meant that my...

impotent, vasectomised, 45-year-old body

was at least home to something living.

LAUGHTER

Even if it was just germs.

And I thought...

..if I was kind to the germs...

..maybe they would be my friends.

That night, my wife was coming home from being away,

so I thought I'd go out and buy her...

She suggested we buy...

open the 12.99 bottle of wine to

celebrate my not being dead.

I told her while she'd been away

the kids had been asking me difficult questions, as usual.

I told her my son had said to me, "Dad, what are stars?"

And I said to him, I said, "Stars are faraway suns.

"Because of the way gas burns out, the theory of relativity

"and the speed of light, some of the light we see reaching us

"is coming to us from stars that are already dead."

And I said to my wife,

"That's what I am."

LAUGHTER

"The children are the light that has poured out of me...

"..and I am a star that is dead."

And she said to me,

"When you won a BAFTA, they cut you out of the television broadcast.

"You and Terry Pratchett.

"Maybe they'd have kept you in if you hadn't had done such a weird, boring speech."

LAUGHTER

"I told the kids you'd be on, and they'd stayed up and you weren't there,

"and they were angry and they were embarrassed and ashamed.

"They kept the woman from Mrs Brown's Boys in...

"..and he's a man.

"And you've never been on the Channel 4 Stand-Up Comedy Gala...

"..and they allow anyone to do that."

LAUGHTER

"No-one knows who you are," she said.

"When we walk along in the street, I hear them whispering behind you,

"'Oh, look...

"'..the Serbian warlord Ratko Mladic...

"'..has let himself go.'

"And so," she said,

"at the risk of compromising your neat, light-based metaphor,

"I think it's something of an exaggeration

"to say that you are a star."

And I looked down at the 12.99 bottle of wine

and I thought to myself...

"Yeah. Bitches."

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

Is it entertainment? I don't know. Is it meant to be entertainment?

I don't know. But you know what's important? Time's passed.

And at the end of it, people go, "Oh, something happened."

Is there anything that you couldn't say that about?

No, I guess not. But...

Have you been reduced to that? That's your defence for everything.

Time's passed. And at the end of it, you say something happened.

-You can't use that as a defence...

-You can say that...

-No, you said that!

-I know.

Well, I think that people will be hard-pressed to say that the money's

been wasted, because you can see... you can see...

It seems like you're drunk, I don't know what you're saying!

Words being... This man's been speaking.

A man was speaking.

You saw him from... you saw him from...

-Angles. Some angles.

-Different angles, and...you know...

And it can't be said not to have happened!

I don't know why you would put that forward...

Some music came on at the end.

It's finished now.

They can't say that...

they can't say that nothing happened,

because you can see it did.

All right. OK. It's fine. It did.

They can say it wasn't any good,

but they can't say nothing happened, because there was loads...

There's six pages of words, minimum, for each episode.

You can see in the film bit at the end,

someone's put a lot of work into that.

It goes at different speeds, the cameras...

You can still say it didn't happen, though, can't you?

Well, you know, first...

I resent the idea that it was...

people's time has been wasted. It hasn't.

You know?