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Stewart Lee's comedy act fills the biggest venues. | 0:00:03 | 0:00:06 | |
He's been doing it for more than 25 years. | 0:00:06 | 0:00:08 | |
He's one of the biggest successes in stand-up. | 0:00:08 | 0:00:12 | |
He says he's a comic who investigates that territory | 0:00:12 | 0:00:15 | |
between what's acceptable and what's shocking and it's the same | 0:00:15 | 0:00:17 | |
in his writing. | 0:00:17 | 0:00:19 | |
He says his five years of collected newspaper and magazine pieces | 0:00:19 | 0:00:23 | |
in Content Provider, the new book, are meant to make | 0:00:23 | 0:00:26 | |
you smile and then to be used for lining a cat litter tray. | 0:00:26 | 0:00:31 | |
But they do also bristle with all his passions. | 0:00:31 | 0:00:34 | |
Welcome. | 0:00:34 | 0:00:36 | |
Stewart, dealing with a live audience is one thing. | 0:00:51 | 0:00:56 | |
You're playing with them, using them, feeding off them. | 0:00:56 | 0:00:59 | |
Writing for the page, this is a collection of newspaper | 0:00:59 | 0:01:02 | |
and magazine pieces, is quite a different thing. | 0:01:02 | 0:01:04 | |
Do you find it easy to adapt? | 0:01:04 | 0:01:07 | |
I don't find there's anything that I write for stand up that I can move | 0:01:07 | 0:01:11 | |
across to newspaper columns and I don't find there's anything | 0:01:11 | 0:01:14 | |
vice versa in newspaper columns that I can move across to stand up | 0:01:14 | 0:01:17 | |
because the thing is so different. | 0:01:17 | 0:01:19 | |
What is interesting though is the idea that in some ways | 0:01:19 | 0:01:22 | |
stand-up is a live art form and as such, you're shaped | 0:01:22 | 0:01:25 | |
by the audience response and the funny thing about writing | 0:01:25 | 0:01:27 | |
for papers now is there is this audience response. | 0:01:27 | 0:01:32 | |
You can look at the below the line comments, audience feedback, | 0:01:32 | 0:01:35 | |
and you can interact with them. | 0:01:35 | 0:01:36 | |
You can change the character to aggravate or patronise even more | 0:01:36 | 0:01:39 | |
the people that are reading it. | 0:01:39 | 0:01:41 | |
You can't do it in real time but you can do it over years. | 0:01:41 | 0:01:44 | |
You raise some interesting points there. | 0:01:44 | 0:01:46 | |
You're a polemical guy. | 0:01:46 | 0:01:47 | |
Anybody who reads anything you write or response to you or listens | 0:01:47 | 0:01:50 | |
to you on stage will know the people for whom you have contempt, | 0:01:50 | 0:01:53 | |
let's put it like that. | 0:01:53 | 0:01:55 | |
Or the things going on in the country you don't like. | 0:01:55 | 0:01:58 | |
I want to ask you something about that. | 0:01:58 | 0:01:59 | |
Isn't there a problem in this country at the moment | 0:01:59 | 0:02:02 | |
that all the people who do your sort of job, | 0:02:02 | 0:02:04 | |
well, 90% of them, have the same political opinion? | 0:02:04 | 0:02:12 | |
Yeah. | 0:02:12 | 0:02:14 | |
That they'll take the skin off anybody as long | 0:02:14 | 0:02:16 | |
as it's not Jeremy Corbyn? | 0:02:16 | 0:02:19 | |
Why isn't there anybody who'll take him apart? | 0:02:19 | 0:02:22 | |
I think a lot of the mainstream media is doing that job | 0:02:22 | 0:02:24 | |
perfectly well on its own. | 0:02:25 | 0:02:26 | |
That's a copout. | 0:02:26 | 0:02:27 | |
It's an interesting problem. | 0:02:27 | 0:02:31 | |
Certainly, I'm not sure what to do now because, | 0:02:31 | 0:02:35 | |
like you say, most people who work in the arts probably | 0:02:35 | 0:02:37 | |
have a particular view politically, the majority of them... | 0:02:37 | 0:02:41 | |
Well, I'm thinking about stand-up comics particularly. | 0:02:41 | 0:02:43 | |
There's a general view... | 0:02:43 | 0:02:46 | |
People say that but I don't know that that's the case. | 0:02:46 | 0:02:50 | |
There seems to be more... | 0:02:50 | 0:02:54 | |
You read in the Daily Mail that these people are left-wing | 0:02:54 | 0:02:57 | |
comedians and I don't necessarily see it coming | 0:02:57 | 0:02:59 | |
through in their lifestyle choices or the work they do. | 0:02:59 | 0:03:04 | |
I think it's just a sort of, a way of dismissing them | 0:03:04 | 0:03:09 | |
to the audience of that paper, so I'm not really, I certainly don't | 0:03:09 | 0:03:12 | |
see where this imaginary... | 0:03:12 | 0:03:19 | |
There doesn't seem to be that kind of content being created with that | 0:03:19 | 0:03:23 | |
political angle in the volume that people imagine it is. | 0:03:23 | 0:03:27 | |
Maybe you've got something there but I think just | 0:03:27 | 0:03:30 | |
reading your collected pieces and knowing your view, | 0:03:30 | 0:03:34 | |
particularly of the present government and its predecessor | 0:03:34 | 0:03:36 | |
government, which is a fairly poisonous view, | 0:03:36 | 0:03:40 | |
which you're entitled to, of course, it just strikes me that, | 0:03:40 | 0:03:44 | |
let's take what people call the Corbyn revolution. | 0:03:44 | 0:03:49 | |
There is no one looking at that with the same | 0:03:49 | 0:03:51 | |
critical eye in that form, as a comic art, or at | 0:03:51 | 0:03:54 | |
least if there are, theu are not very well-known. | 0:03:54 | 0:03:56 | |
Yeah. | 0:03:56 | 0:03:58 | |
And that's a very one-dimensional way of making ourselves | 0:03:58 | 0:04:00 | |
laugh at ourselves. | 0:04:00 | 0:04:03 | |
Well, I did half an hour on press attitudes to Corbyn | 0:04:03 | 0:04:10 | |
on TV in the last series, which was a sixth of the series. | 0:04:10 | 0:04:13 | |
And I wrote a column three weeks ago about the train thing, so... | 0:04:13 | 0:04:19 | |
Well, that is a comic episode. | 0:04:19 | 0:04:22 | |
You're perfectly entitled to have a go at the media in general | 0:04:22 | 0:04:25 | |
or indeed at the government in general. | 0:04:25 | 0:04:31 | |
I'm just surprised that, since we're talking about Corbyn, | 0:04:31 | 0:04:35 | |
he seems, as far as many comics are concerned, | 0:04:35 | 0:04:37 | |
to be off-limits. | 0:04:37 | 0:04:38 | |
You can't make fun of him. | 0:04:38 | 0:04:40 | |
Why not? | 0:04:40 | 0:04:41 | |
I think that it is covered. | 0:04:41 | 0:04:43 | |
The problem is that it's not as funny. | 0:04:43 | 0:04:48 | |
It's not as funny or as likely to inspire you in a passionate way | 0:04:48 | 0:04:55 | |
as the things that are happening on the other side of the house, | 0:04:55 | 0:04:59 | |
which you could argue, given the chaos that the country's | 0:04:59 | 0:05:03 | |
descended into in the last few months, as a result of people, many | 0:05:03 | 0:05:07 | |
of whom are still in government, has actually got off incredibly | 0:05:07 | 0:05:09 | |
lightly, because broadcasters are very worried about appearing | 0:05:09 | 0:05:11 | |
to make fun of it in too definite terms because of the extent | 0:05:11 | 0:05:19 | |
to which their future is beholden to the people on that side | 0:05:19 | 0:05:22 | |
of the house. | 0:05:22 | 0:05:24 | |
If you look at our present condition in this country, | 0:05:24 | 0:05:26 | |
what bugs you most? | 0:05:26 | 0:05:28 | |
What bugs me most? | 0:05:28 | 0:05:30 | |
It's difficult to know how to move forwards, | 0:05:30 | 0:05:33 | |
doing stand-up or sort of funny columns, because everything | 0:05:33 | 0:05:35 | |
is so influx at the moment. | 0:05:35 | 0:05:39 | |
There isn't a clear plan forwards post-Brexit. | 0:05:39 | 0:05:42 | |
We don't know what our international relationships are. | 0:05:42 | 0:05:45 | |
We don't even know which politicians are going to rise or fall | 0:05:45 | 0:05:47 | |
in the next six months. | 0:05:47 | 0:05:49 | |
It's very unpredictable. | 0:05:49 | 0:05:50 | |
So, now, I've got to file a column for Sunday. | 0:05:50 | 0:05:55 | |
And the worrying thing is you could put something | 0:05:55 | 0:05:58 | |
in on Thursday and the person you've written about may have | 0:05:58 | 0:06:01 | |
lost their job by Saturday. | 0:06:01 | 0:06:04 | |
Also, the public mood seems to swing back and forwards very quickly now | 0:06:04 | 0:06:07 | |
depending what information is given to us. | 0:06:07 | 0:06:09 | |
It's very hard at the moment to know how to write in opposition. | 0:06:09 | 0:06:13 | |
It's hard to know how to take a comic position against an accepted | 0:06:13 | 0:06:17 | |
truth because it's not clear what the accepted truths | 0:06:17 | 0:06:19 | |
are because we know the country is split 50-50. | 0:06:19 | 0:06:22 | |
It's an interesting point that, that you think people | 0:06:22 | 0:06:25 | |
don't have a settled view of where we are going. | 0:06:25 | 0:06:29 | |
Do you feel that sense of uncertainty quite strongly? | 0:06:29 | 0:06:31 | |
I do and the interesting thing now is I'll be going out on the road | 0:06:31 | 0:06:35 | |
in the autumn with a new show, partly out of my genuine beliefs | 0:06:35 | 0:06:38 | |
but partly as a comic position. | 0:06:38 | 0:06:45 | |
My role on stage is the sort of metrosexual, slightly out | 0:06:45 | 0:06:48 | |
of touch liberal. | 0:06:48 | 0:06:53 | |
But I know now that 52% of the country have taken | 0:06:53 | 0:06:55 | |
a kind of political stand, broadly speaking, against | 0:06:55 | 0:06:57 | |
the values of that class. | 0:06:57 | 0:07:02 | |
So it will be interesting to see how that plays around the place. | 0:07:02 | 0:07:06 | |
Obviously an audience going to a theatre on some level, | 0:07:06 | 0:07:09 | |
it's been thinned out or there's a filter on it, | 0:07:09 | 0:07:11 | |
but it's an interesting time to be a content provider. | 0:07:11 | 0:07:15 | |
I didn't really think about how... | 0:07:15 | 0:07:21 | |
That name was a bit of a fluke as well. | 0:07:21 | 0:07:23 | |
It was a sort of catchall title for the book but now | 0:07:23 | 0:07:26 | |
there is a question about what sort of content do you provide | 0:07:26 | 0:07:29 | |
to the country? | 0:07:29 | 0:07:30 | |
Are you one of the people who always likes to be in a minority? | 0:07:30 | 0:07:34 | |
Would you ever be worried if most people agreed with your political | 0:07:34 | 0:07:36 | |
position and you weren't in the minority? | 0:07:36 | 0:07:38 | |
Well, I think it would make doing stand-up harder because it's nice | 0:07:38 | 0:07:41 | |
to occupy an opposition position because I think, | 0:07:41 | 0:07:43 | |
on some level, all comedy is about tragedy. | 0:07:43 | 0:07:48 | |
The stand-up is a clown on some level and the clown for me, | 0:07:48 | 0:07:53 | |
the tragedy of it is that his ideals or hopes are continually defeated | 0:07:53 | 0:07:56 | |
by reality, so it would be problematic if you suddenly found | 0:07:56 | 0:07:58 | |
yourself on the winning side. | 0:07:59 | 0:08:03 | |
Then I think it would feel like you were the cheerleader | 0:08:03 | 0:08:08 | |
of some horrible rally rather than this tragically | 0:08:08 | 0:08:10 | |
frustrated figure railing against the dying of the light. | 0:08:10 | 0:08:12 | |
So I think there's an interesting thing in that. | 0:08:12 | 0:08:14 | |
Stewart Lee, thank you very much. | 0:08:14 | 0:08:15 | |
Thank you. | 0:08:15 | 0:08:17 |