Stewart Lee

Experience how it feels to be the subject of a blasphemy prosecution! Find out why 'wool' is a funny word! See how jokes work, their inner mechanisms revealed, before your astonished face! In 2001, after over a decade in the business, Stewart Lee quit stand-up, disillusioned and drained, and went off to direct a loss-making musical, Jerry Springer: The Opera. Nine years later, How I Escaped My Certain Fate details his return to live performance, and the journey that took him from an early retirement to his position as the most critically acclaimed stand-up in Britain, the winner of BAFTAs and British Comedy Awards, and the affirmation of being rated the 41st best stand up ever. Here is Stewart Lee's own account of his remarkable comeback, told through transcripts of the three legendary full-length shows that sealed his reputation. Astonishingly frank and detailed in-depth notes reveal the inspiration and inner workings of his act. With unprecedented access to a leading comedian's creative process, this book tells us just what it was like to write these shows, develop the performance and take them on tour. How I Escaped My Certain Fate is everything we have come to expect from Stewart Lee: fiercely intelligent, unsparingly honest and very, very funny.

The Life and Deaths of a Stand-up Comedian

How I Escaped My Certain Fate

Over the last few years, often when David Mitchell has been on holiday, the comedian Stewart Lee has been attempting to understand modern Britain in a weekly newspaper column. Why are there so few right-wing stand-ups? Who was Grant Shapps? What does your Spotify playlist data say about you? Are Jeremy Corbyn and Stewart Lee really the new Christs? And so on. Introduced, annotated and, where necessary, explained by the author, Content Provider is funny, grumpy and provocative.

Selected Short Prose Pieces, 2011–2016

Content Provider

the 'If you prefer a milder comedian, please ask for one' EP

Stewart Lee!

The Perfect Fool charts the progress of a collection of misfits, spread across the wide open spaces of Arizona and the narrow streets of South London, all unwittingly caught up in a quest for the Holy Grail.

The Perfect Fool

Following his hugely acclaimed TV come-back Comedy Vehicle, Lee finds himself in search of ideas for a new Edinburgh show. On a long walk across London, he endures a coffee shop humiliation involving a loyalty card which suggests itself as a framing device. Later that month, thanks to Jeremy Clarkson's casual slur against Gordon Brown and the appearance of a well-meaning young comedian in an advert, a show is born. Featuring a transcript of the show fully annotated with footnotes, the If You Prefer A Milder Comedian EP confirms Stewart Lee as the most original, daring and brilliant comedian of his generation.

Stewart Lee! The 'If You Prefer a Milder Comedian Please Ask For One' EP

Stewart Lee's comedy vehicle

The raucously filthy lyrics and entire script, photographs of cast and crew from performances, rehearsals, and behind the scenes, as well as a revealing introduction by the show's creators. It's triumph, tragedy and trailer trash as high art meets low in this revealing book.

Jerry Springer - the Book of the Opera

Maria Whatton

Original tales by remarkable writers Hometown Tales is a series of books pairing exciting new voices with some of the most talented and important writers at work today. Some of the tales are fiction and some are narrative non-fiction - they are all powerful, fascinating and moving, and aim to celebrate regional diversity and explore the meaning of home. In these pages on Birmingham, you'll find two unique tales. 'Silver in the Quarter' is a vivid coming-of-age fiction about a boy who finds himself caught up in the Birmingham pub bombings of 1974 by Maria Whatton. 'In the Ape's Shadow' is a fascinating exploration of the music scene that inspired him growing up in Birmingham, by BAFTA Award-winning comedian and author Stewart Lee.

Hometown Tales: Birmingham

“The Perfect Fool” charts the progress of a collection of misfits, spread across the wide open spaces of Arizona and the narrow streets of South London, all unwittingly caught up in a quest for the Holy Grail.

Richard Herring

Linked to the BBC2 television series of the same name, this book consists of zany ideas for things to do. They include a collage of visual atrocities made or cut from magazines, or found in a plastic bag in a wood; a logic pamphlet for those who've searched for the meaning behind our hymn heritage; mediocrity awards for showbiz, sport and broadcasting; and an A-U of things to do with food.

Lee & Herring's Fist of Fun

As a Metropolitan Elitist Snowflake, Stewart Lee was disappointed by the Brexit referendum result of 2016. But he knew how to weaponise his inconvenience. He would treat all his subsequent writing, until we left the EU, as interrelated episodes of a complete work. The cast of characters include Lemming-obsessed Michael Gove, violent tanning-salon entrepreneur Tommy Robinson and Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Bumboys Letterbox Cake Disaster Weightloss Haircut Bullshit Johnson. A dramatic chorus is made up of online commenters and Kremlin bots. And Lee himself would play the defeated, unreliable narrator-hero, whose resolve and tolerance would gradually unravel as the horror show dragged on. Until the 29 March, 2019, when it would all definitely be over Drawing on three years of newspaper columns, a complete transcript of the Content Provider stand-up show, and Lee's caustic footnote commentary, March of the Lemmings is the scathing, riotous record the Brexit era deserves.

Stewart Lee

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