Stewart Lee

How did you first get into comedy?

When I was a teenager I'd go to see bands in Birmingham and they'd sometimes have alternative comics supporting. I saw Peter Richardson opening for Dexy's, and Phill Jupitus opening for Billy Bragg, but even so I still didn't think I could do stand-up.

But then I saw Ted Chippington opening for The Fall and he taught me you didn't need a personality or any material to do stand-up. That was one of those thunderbolt moments when you go 'stand-up can be whatever you want it to be and you don't have to do it like anyone else'. So I decided to do it like him.

Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, is about books - you've written a novel and done lots of journalism. Any more writing projects on the go?

I started writing another novel a couple of years ago but when people know you're going to be on telly you get rung up by all these rubbish publishers that do shit books. One wanted me to do a book about cars to tie in with Comedy Vehicle.

A few years ago I was ill and I could only eat baked potatoes, so I was going to do a book about baked potatoes around Britain, but they said there was already a book called Pies and Prejudice by Stuart Maconie which had a foodstuff in the title.

You were named the 41st best stand-up ever - has that started to mean something at home or does your mum still prefer Tom O'Connor?

My mum still prefers Tom O'Connor. It was an enormous help being called the 41st best stand-up though. I'm not really known outside a small coterie of stand-up fans, Broadsheet reviewers, and the programmers of small provincial Art Centres.

The average person doesn't know who I am, so if you can put on a poster that you are officially the 41st best stand-up ever people go 'he must be alright'. I did get a few people posting online saying 'I don't believe he is the 41st best stand-up' though. Even that humble claim got a backlash.


You recently had a reunion with Richard Herring - any plans to do more stuff as a double-act?

We decided to do it when we're 75, at the Glasgow Empire, because old men bickering is very similar to young men bickering. The double act was based on adolescent stupidity, which is very similar to senility.

The other thing is either he needs to gain weight or I need to lose weight, because another way it worked was he was fat and I wasn't whereas now I may be fatter than him because he's had a mid-life crisis - he's got long hair, he wears Who t-shirts and thinks he's in Coldplay or something. We can start writing for it now. It's going to be great.

You're a DJ with Resonance FM and a music reviewer - do music and comedy still go together like they did in the early 80s?

I don't know. There was a weird thing in the early 80s where alternative comedy was the punk of comedy, so it made sense for people to be on with those groups, and there was an odd vaudeville thing about the post-punk scene. Also alternative comedy was for weirdos, so you could put an alternative comic on with a weird band and people would go for it, but comedy now is so broad - I mean where would someone like Michael McIntyre fit into that?

You've directed Jerry Springer the Opera, The Mighty Boosh, Simon Munnery, Johnny Vegas - any more directing work on the horizon?

The last thing I did was at the Manchester International Festival with Johnny Vegas. I would do it again, I got asked to adapt an interesting Russian book, and direct that for the stage but I've been doing the telly show. I only really like directing new things or things I've worked on, not really plays and stuff.

We hear you had a bit of a run in with movie bigwig Ang Lee. What happened?

That was sort of an exaggeration. I did have to interview him but I get tinnitus and he was a really long way away and I couldn't work out his accent or hear him, so I had to cobble this interview together from half-heard notes, so that's where I got the idea for that routine.

The nice thing was that years later, out of the blue, I found myself in a Hulk comic. One of the artists who draws the Hulk had heard that routine and thought it was funny so he put a poster up on the back wall of a fight in a Hulk comic for me. I really like comics and as a result of that routine I ended up in one, which was good.

Have you found the BBC more sensitive about what people are allowed to say since you've been back, after the whole Brand and Ross debacle?

They are. I had to go through loads of compliance and checks. But in a way it's not such a problem for me, I don't really swear. Over the course of the new series there are only two swearwords. Most of the stuff I do about politics or personalities is based on some kind of opinion or fact, so it's normally a little bit easier for the lawyers to make a case as to why it should be said.

If anything I think it's benefitted me, because it feels like I'm the man for the hour. I fully expect somebody will kick up a fuss about something I'd never imagined would cause any trouble, which is why me and the entire family are leaving the country the day before the series airs. I'm going to a camping site in France.

What's the wittiest thing you've ever heard?

You see some good heckle comebacks. Jim Tavares, when he was doing stand-up, came out at the Comedy Store in 1988, and opened with "I'm a schizophrenic." Some wag shouted out "why don't you both f\\k off?"

Or for proper witty stuff, someone like Samuel Johnson. I wrote a play about him and I went through all the funny things he'd said, like "the noblest prospect that a Scotsman ever sees is the road that leads to England."