Australian Comedy Review

Stewart Lee began performing as a stand-up comedian at the age of 20 in 1988, and won the Hackney Empire new act of the year award in 1990. In the early 90’s he wrote for and performed in various BBC Radio comedy shows, including Fist of Fun with Richard Herring, and On The Hour, with Steve Coogan and Chris Morris. For the rest of the decade he performed as a stand-up almost nightly on the London comedy circuit and wrote and performed in four series for BBC2 with Richard Herring, the duo’s work eventually being cancelled in 1999 by the then channel controller Jane Root.

Stewart directed the Mighty Boosh’s breakthrough Edinburgh show, Arctic Boosh, in 1999. The following year Stewart directed Simon Munnery’s Golden Rose Of Montreux nominated show, Attention Scum, for BBC2, which was also cancelled by Jane Root before broadcast. After this, Stewart gave up comedy for four years, wrote an acclaimed novel called The Perfect Fool, published by 4th Estate in 2001, and moved into theatre. His show about Edward Lear, Pea Green Boat, ran at the Traverse, Edinburgh and Battersea Arts Centre, London, and is soon to be released as a limited edition 10” single.

In 2002, Stewart was also invited to help write and direct the composer Richard Thomas’ developing work, Jerry Springer The Opera. The show won four Olivier awards after its National Theatre run, though its touring prospects and commercial future were eventually scuppered by the right wing pressure group, Christian Voice.

Returning to stand-up, Stewart’s successful 2004 Edinburgh Fringe show, Stand-Up Comedian, was released on DVD in 2005. A film of his 2005 Edinburgh show, 90’s Comedian, is available from www.gofasterstripe.com. A BBC2 stand-up series was commissioned in 2005, but the offer was inexplicably withdrawn in April 2006. In 2006, Stewart directed Eric Bogosian’s Talk Radio at the Edinburgh fringe, authored a Channel 5 film about blasphemy, New Puritans, and went to New Mexico to make a BBC Radio 4 documentary about Native American clowns, White Face Dark Heart. In January 2007 a new solo theatre piece, What Would Judas Do?, ran for a month in a double bill with Mark Ravenhill’s Product at the Bush Theatre, London.

Stewart is currently working on a second novel, and a new stand-up show for the summer of 2007, called 41st Best Stand-Up Ever, reflecting his position in a recent and spurious Channel 4 run-down of comedians. He is in an ongoing process of devising a show at the National Theatre studio workshop about William Blake, and folksingers in the Napoleonic wars, with assistance from Johnny Vegas and the musician Eliza Carthy, and is also collaborating with Vegas on a theatre piece called Interiors, due to premier at the Manchester festival in July 2007.

Stewart writes weekly about music for the Sunday Times, has had poems and stories published in various anthologies, penned sleeve notes for albums by The Go-Betweens, The Fall and Trees, and is a patron of London’s Arts Radio station Resonance FM. His awards include the anti-Perrier Tap Water Award, Greg Fleet’s Melbourne Festival Piece Of Wood Award, and a Chortle award for Outstanding Contribution To Comedy, as well as various chunky lead statuettes of famous actors’ heads for his work with Richard Thomas on Jerry Springer The Opera. Stewart has performed in comedy festivals in Adelaide, Melbourne, Auckland, Montreal, Cork, Leicester, Glasgow and Kilkenny, and has worked on the Edinburgh fringe for 20 of the last 21 years, where he plans to die.