Unfunny face of TV comedy
Email me at: garry.bushell@ dailystar.co.uk or write c/o Daily Star Sunday,
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STEWART Lee was on TV for two hours last night, although it felt much longer.
We can’t be sure which part of his marathon snooze-athon appealed most to the BBC. But I’ll go out on a limb and suggest it was when Lee put the boot into Brexit supporters.
“It wasn’t just racists who voted to leave Europe,” he sneered. “C***s did as well, stupid f***ing c***s”. Wow. Such wit! Such subtle elegance! Truly he is the Oscar Wilde of our times...
Lardy Lee describes modern Britain as “a chaotic inferno of hate”. The seaside town of Southend, where he recorded the show, is “a hive of racists”. And non-city people are ignorant “trolls”.
He claims to be playing a caricature of himself, but there’s too much venom in his material for it to be just an act.
Educated at private school and Oxford, Lee represents a privileged world view that sees itself as radical but really isn’t.
He once said that comedy’s job isn’t to protect power structures, but doesn’t seem to have noticed how corrupt, unaccountable, inefficient and institutionally anti-democratic the EU is.
Lee had a dig at me for saying his anticomedy shtick appealed to the “Metropolitan liberal elite”. But that’s a fact. The Times newspaper recently – madly – dubbed him the funniest person alive. The establishment seal of approval. That’s how unthreatening he is.
And here’s a scary thing, scarier even than the thought of Big Mo in Victoria’s Secret lace-time baby-doll lingerie: thousands of posers and snobs agree.
Many of them work in TV and share his contempt for everyday people and popular comedy.
Lee hates Fools & Horses and lays into more successful turns (Jimmy Carr, Corden, McIntyre, drivelling goon Russell Howard...), stomping on their DVDs.
He is a Twitter mob made flesh, and over-nourished flesh at that – an intolerant smartarse who despises anyone he disagrees with.
Lee’s act is the comedy of self-indulgence. It isn’t anything most people would recognise as humour. But then it’s not meant for us.
We’re just the mugs whose licence fee money has subsidised his bile-spewing career for decades.
I’d rather neck a Novichok smoothie than suffer that again.
●LEE wore a Les Rallizes Dénudés T-shirt. The 60s band were renowned for their tediously repetitive instrumental passages and painful use of guitar feedback. Pretentious? Naturally. Eve Myles, right, Keeping Faith... Max Bennett, Poldark... Nicola Walker, Unforgotten. Hannah Gadsby, left, (Netflix) – the antidote to comedy...Stewart Lee – nonsense provider... The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco...Eat Shop Save – re-heated seconds.