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Stewart Graham Lee (born 5 April 1968) is an English comedian. His stand-up routine is characterised by repetition, internal reference, and deadpan delivery.
Lee began his career in 1989 and formed the comedy duo Lee and Herring with Richard Herring. In 2001, he co-wrote and co-directed the West End hit musical , a critical success that sparked a backlash from Christian right groups who staged a series of protests outside its early performances. In 2011, he won British Comedy Awards for Best Male Television Comic and Best Comedy Entertainment Programme for his series Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle. He has written music reviews for publications including The Sunday Times.
In 2009 The Times referred to Lee as "the comedian's comedian, and for good reason" and named him "face of the decade". In 2012, he was placed at No. 9 on a poll of the 100 most influential people in UK comedy. In 2018, The Times named him as the best current English-language comedian.
With Herring, Lee wrote material for BBC Radio 4's On the Hour (1991), which was anchored by Chris Morris and was notable for the first appearance of Steve Coogan's celebrated character, Alan Partridge, for which Lee and Herring wrote early material. Owing to creative differences with the rest of the cast, Lee and Herring did not remain with the group when On The Hour moved to television as The Day Today.
In 1992 and 1993, he and Herring wrote and performed Lionel Nimrod's Inexplicable World for BBC Radio 4, before moving to BBC Radio 1, for one series of Fist of Fun (1993), followed by three series of Lee and Herring. In 1995-6 two series of a television version of Fist of Fun were broadcast by BBC2, followed in 1998-99 by two series of This Morning with Richard Not Judy. Throughout the late nineties he continued performing solo stand-up (even whilst in the double act Lee and Herring) and collaborated with, amongst others, Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding of The Mighty Boosh. Indeed, though Barratt and Fielding had worked together in the past, the first seeds of the Boosh were sown while working as part of Lee's Edinburgh show King Dong vs Moby Dick in which Barratt and Fielding played a giant penis and a whale, respectively. Lee returned the favour by going on to direct their 1999 Edinburgh show, Arctic Boosh, which remains the template for their live work.
During late 2000 and early 2001, Lee retired from stand-up comedy. 2001 became the first year since 1987 that he did not perform at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. While Lee found himself gradually performing less stand-up and moving away from the stage, he continued his directorial duties on television. Two pilots were made for Channel 4, Cluub Zarathustra and Head Farm, but neither was developed into a series. The former featured all the ingredients that would later appear in Attention Scum, a BBC Two series fronted by Simon Munnery's "League Against Tedium" character, which also featured Kevin Eldon, Johnny Vegas and Roger Mann, as well as Richard Thomas and opera singer Lore Lixenberg.
At the 2003 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Lee directed Johnny Vegas's first DVD, Who's Ready For Ice Cream?. In 2004, he returned to stand-up comedy with the show Standup Comedian. Lee is a regular music critic for The Guardian. In 2003, he said that his favourite bands include The Fall, Giant Sand and Calexico and that he listens to "a lot of jazz, 60s and folk music but I really like Ms. Dynamite and The Streets".
At around the time of the Jerry Springer: The Opera broadcast, Lee, Thomas and translator Hermann Bräuer developed Stand Up, a German-language opera set in a fictional London comedy club and performed in Hannover, after an adaptation of Jerry Springer proved impossible for legal reasons.
In 2006, finding himself "really broke" he appeared as a guest on three comedy panel shows. The first was Never Mind The Buzzcocks, where Simon Amstell made frequent mock-offended references to the controversy over Jerry Springer: The Opera. This was followed by appearances on Have I Got News For You and 8 Out of 10 Cats, before Lee decided to quit them altogether. A profile in the Financial Times in 2011 stated Lee did not want to alienate his audience in exchange for quick money by such appearances, as working as a stand-up had been the only thing that had generated reliable income for him.
Lee took part in "A Show for Gareth Richards" at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2023, which was staged by fellow comedians Mark Simmons and Danny Ward to honour Richards life after he died in a car-crash in April 2023. The show won the first Victoria Wood award at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards 2023 and raised almost £20,000 for Gareth's family.
In 2023 Lee wrote a contemporary version of the Porter scene for the Royal Shakespeare Company production of Macbeth. Director Wils Wilson said "The Porter is dark, funny, edgy, political, clever, a truth teller - Stewart is all of these things, and straight away I knew I wanted to ask him to write to. He has a really deep understanding of how comedy works. The Porter scene is a strange meta moment in Macbeth and I knew Stewart would enjoy playing with that."
Lee performed his 2024 tour show "Basic Lee" at The Lowry in Salford, which was filmed and broadcast on 20 July by Sky Comedy, as Stewart Lee, Basic Lee: Live at the Lowry. The film was produced by Drum Studios in association with Awkward Films, with producer director Colin Dench.
It was followed by "Stewart Lee Vs The Man-Wulf", which toured the UK through 2025.
His comedy covers a wide range of forms and subject material. It is often World news, observational, self-deprecating and Surreal humour. Notable routines have focused on topics like religion, political correctness and artistic integrity. He also employs Meta-joke, openly describing the structure and intent of the set while onstage, and Fourth wall of his routines as spontaneous acts.
In a 2006 Guardian article, Lee wrote that his recent experience of developing the German language opera Stand Up made him realise that much British humour is dependent on the English grammar and vocabulary of English allowing for confusion among multiple meanings of statements or Homonyms. He highlighted the technique of concealing the true subject of a joke until the last moment, a method he labelled "pull back and reveal", which is usually much more difficult to achieve in German. As a result he said that he had abandoned writing jokes in a traditional sense, instead focusing on writing humorous material about ideas which would be more easily translatable, and stated that felt he was "a better stand-up because of it... Germany kicked away my comedy crutches and taught me to walk unaided".
Lee's delivery uses onstage , frequently alternating between that of an outspoken left-wing hero and that of a depressed failure and champagne socialist. In an ironic manner, he often criticises the audience for not being intelligent enough to understand his jokes, saying they would prefer more simplistic material, or enjoy the work of more mainstream "arena" comedians such as Michael McIntyre or Lee Mack. He will also scold them as a bias-seeking "liberal intelligentsia". His routines often culminate in feigned depressive episodes and Mental disorder.
Lee caused controversy on his If You Prefer a Milder Comedian tour with a routine about Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond. Referring to Hammond's accident while filming in 2006, in which he was almost killed, Lee joked, "I wish he had been decapitated". When he was Doorstepping by a Daily Mail journalist, Lee quoted the routine by replying "It's a joke, just like on Top Gear when they do their jokes". He said, "People who read things like that in the Mail on Sunday and who think Clarkson is funny aren't going to come and see me, so it doesn't matter". Explaining the joke, Lee said:
In an Observer interview, Sean O'Hagan says of the Hammond joke that Lee "operates out in that dangerous hinterland between moral provocation and outright offence, often adopting, as in this instance, the tactics of those he targets in order to highlight their hypocrisy".
After accepting an honorary fellowship from St Edmund Hall, Oxford, Lee gave a lecture to aspiring writers in which he discussed the fact that performers such as Frankie Boyle, Michael McIntyre, Jack Whitehall and Andi Osho used writers who were not credited. He compared the practice to athletes using performance-enhancing drugs. Along with plagiarism and extremism, Lee has brought moral issues surrounding stand-up to the public's attention.
Personal life
Lee married comedian Bridget Christie in 2006; "Comedy profile: Bridget Christie", The Guardian, 26 March 2010. Accessed 15 April 2013 they separated amicably in 2021. He lives in Stoke Newington and has two children. He is a patron of Humanists UK, a member of Arts Emergency and an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society. Lee has stated that he had an unofficial autism diagnosis from his GP. As of 2024, Lee is in a relationship with fellow comedian Rosie Holt.
Selected works
Books
Fist of Fun BBC Books 1995 with Richard Herring The Perfect Fool Fourth Estate 2001 novel How I Escaped My Certain Fate – The Life and Deaths of a Stand-Up Comedian Faber and Faber 2010 The 'If You Prefer a Milder Comedian Please Ask For One' EP Faber and Faber 2012 Content Provider: Selected Short Prose Pieces, 2011–2016 Faber and Faber 2016 March of the Lemmings: Brexit in Print and Performance 2016–2019 Faber and Faber 2019
Other contributions
Sit-Down Comedy Ebury Press/Random House 2003 contributor to anthology, ed Malcolm Hardee & John Fleming More Trees to Climb Granta Books 2009 by Ben Moor (foreword) Death To Trad Rock Cherry Red 2009 by John Robb (foreword) The Wire Primers: A Guide to Modern Music Verso Books 2009 chapter on The Fall I'm a Joke and So Are You: Reflections on Humour and Humanity Atlantic Books 2018 by Robin Ince (foreword) The Bloater Vintage Classics 2022 (reprint) by Rosemary Tonks (foreword) Melt It! The Book of the Iceman Go Faster Stripe 2023 by Anthony Irvine and Robert Wringham (afterword)
Stand-up DVD releases
Stand Up Comedian 17 October 2005 2 entertain 90s Comedian 15 November 2006 Go Faster Stripe 41st Best Stand Up Ever 28 July 2008 Real Talent If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask for One 11 October 2010 Comedy Central Carpet Remnant World 12 November 2012 Comedy Central Stewart Lee: Content Provider 24 September 2019 BBC
Television DVD releases
Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle – Series One 7 September 2009 2 entertain Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle – Series Two 20 June 2011 2 entertain Fist of Fun – Series One 2011 Go Faster Stripe Fist of Fun – Series Two 2012 Go Faster Stripe The Alternative Comedy Experience – Season One 18 November 2013 Comedy Central Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle – Series Three 10 November 2014 2 entertain The Alternative Comedy Experience – Season Two 10 November 2014 Comedy Central Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle – Series Four 10 October 2016 2 entertain
Documentary film releases
King Rocker 6 February 2021 Sky Arts
Audio releases
Stand-up tours
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!Title
!Year
!Notes Stewart Lee 1994 King Dong vs Moby Dick 1997 American Comedy Sucks, And Here's Why 1998 One off lecture at Edinburgh Fringe Stewart Lee's Standup Show 1998 Stewart Lee's Badly Mapped World 2000 Pea Green Boat 2002–03 Stand Up Comedian 2004 DVD Release 90s Comedian 2005 DVD Release What Would Judas Do? 2007 41st Best Stand Up Ever 2007 DVD Release, work in progress title: March of the Mallards Scrambled Egg 2008 Work in Progress – notes toward Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle Series 1 If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One 2009 DVD Release Vegetable Stew 2010 Work in Progress – notes toward Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle Series 2 Flickwerk 2011 2011 Work in Progress – notes toward Carpet Remnant World Carpet Remnant World 2011–12 DVD Release Much A Stew About Nothing 2013–14 Work in Progress – notes toward Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle Series 3 A Room with a Stew 2015–16 Work in Progress – notes toward Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle Series 4 Content Provider 2016–18 Recorded for BBC2 and released on DVD. Snowflake/Tornado 2019–22 Shown on BBC2 in 2022. Basic Lee 2022–24 Recorded for Sky Stewart Lee vs the Man-Wulf 2024-
External links
Categories: Official Website, 1968 Births, Alumni Of St Edmund Hall, Oxford, British Humanists, English Radio Writers, British Critics Of Religions, English Adoptees, English Atheists, English Film Directors, English Male Comedians, Comedians From Birmingham, West Midlands, English Male Television Actors, English Satirists, English Stand-up Comedians, Living People, People Educated At Solihull School, People From Wellington, Shropshire, 20th-century English Comedians, 21st-century English Comedians, English Musical Theatre Lyricists, English Columnists, 21st-century English Non-fiction Writers, People With Ulcerative Colitis
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