At Home with John and Debbie

There seems to be a trend developing for comedians to come to go on major tours of the UK in order to share their catharsis of some personal issues with us.

When we saw Dave Gorman at Warwick Arts Centre, he was upset at himself for having driven himself mad with his crazy obsessive Googlewhack quest, and got angry, drunk and insane enough to get a driving license tattooed to his arm.

Last night, we went to see Stewart Lee. I’ve seen him a few times, and always found it to be hilarious, but usually lightweight. For example, he once turned up at the Gag Club in Birmingham with an A3 colour photocopy of a cute dog and a cute cat sat at a piano, while another cat looks on. He spent half an hour riffing on the theme of the photo, musing on whether the dog had extensions fitted to its legs so it could reach the pedals, or whether it had extra long legs; and speculating on a conversation where the watching cat was saying “Wait a minute, this isn’t what we rehearsed”, while the other two laugh at him arrogantly , saying “What’s the matter? Can’t you do jazz?”

Last night’s Stewart Lee looked a bit the worse for wear. According to his material, getting formally charged with blasphemy (Jerry Springer: The Opera) caused him stress, making him drink rather a lot, ultimately leading to him being hospitalised with a gastric illness. The charge was eventually thrown out by the High Court “on the grounds of it not being 1508″.

Lee’s catharsis seems to be to tour the country seeing just how blasphemous he can be. It is actually very funny, but it’s also very uncomfortable — especially for Lee himself.

There is a key phrase in the show which basically represents the apex (or nadir) of its shockingness, and I won’t repeat it in case anyone reading expects to see the show. I’m afraid, Stu, I’ve seen a similar, but probably more offensive phrase in a comedy routine from a Muslim comedian who’s name I forget (Hacki?). He didn’t force us to visualise the whole situation in quite so much detail though…, and the thing is that Lee adds depth to it with his understanding of what Jesus represents (he has, understates Lee, “a history of self-sacrifice”).

In any case, difficult stuff, but then if I’d wanted the guarantee of a lighthearted evening, I’d have gone to see Joe Pasquale.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 21st, 2005 at 10:57 and is filed under Social. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.