by Stewart Lee
Richard Thomas wrote this line. I remember him singing this new section through for the first time in his damp and cluttered studio under a Brixton railway arch, where he would urinate into pint glasses and then hide them under piles of rubbish, rather than make the lengthy journey to the dark toilet, some five metres away outside the door. It was an irresistibly funny bit, but we knew we would be challenged over it, so we needed to get our defence straight in our heads. First of all, it didn’t really matter what it meant, as it was happening in a vivid fever dream, as a result of taunts by devils, as Jerry’s life flashed before him in-between the moment he is shot and the moment he dies. Secondly, we decided that we wanted our Jesus to speak for all mankind and embody many varied fragments of all human sexuality.
It wasn’t a line I felt I personally could have submitted to the opera, as it flirts with a kind of schoolboy homophobia, albeit ironically and in the mouths of demons, whom one assumes aren’t operating to a contemporary moral agenda, and are in the dream of a dying talk-show host anyway. But Richard is 100 per cent gay, without a straight bone in his body, so it was up to him to use these words if he wanted to. I seem to remember that he has come out to his family, but if this is not the case, I do apologise for breaking the news so clumsily here.
The character of Stewart Lee on the doorstep here, unsure of whether to ask the vision of Jesus in, in case he assumes he is propositioning him, is an exaggerated form of myself, so worried about what is the politically correct course of action that I may end up making a massive social blunder. This Stewart Lee doesn’t want Jesus to assume that he thinks he is gay, but if Jesus is gay, he also doesn’t want Jesus to think he has a problem with that. The joke is on me here, but I distanced Jesus from the suggestion that he is gay via my own panicked assumptions about his sexuality.
† It’s important that I feel I’ve betrayed Jesus by being hesitant about asking him in. I need to establish that there’s a kind of bond developing. This moment also deliberately echoes Peter’s denial of Christ after his capture. The suffering servant knows we will betray him, but forgives us and loves us all the same.
And I let myself into the house, and as soon as I got in I realised I was going to be sick. But I didn’t want to go upstairs where my mum was asleep and wake her up. So I ran round to this little room my mum’s got by the back door. Your mum’s probably got a room like this, OK? It’s about as big as the front of this stage, OK? And there’s a little hand basin here, and there’s a toilet here, and here there’s a towel rail. And in the towel rail is a little hand towel. That hand towel isn’t to be used for hands, OK? That hand towel is only to be used for wiping the cat’s feet when the cat comes in wet from the garden, OK? It’s the cat’s-feet towel. ‘Don’t wipe your hands on that, Stew, it’s the cat’sfeet towel. Use your hair.’*
* Despite the obscenities that follow in the next fifteen minutes, many people would talk to me after the show about this ‘cat’sfeet towel’ idea, about how they had had cat’s-feet towels in their childhood homes, or that they had one now. The cat’s-feet towel becomes more important as this routine drags on, an island of domestic normality in the midst of a horrific nightmare.
I discovered the comedic power of the cat’s-feet towel entirely by accident, while looking to give the story of my imaginary encounter with Jesus in my mum’s toilet the ring of truth by loading it with vividly remembered local detail. We had a cat’s-feet towel in the toilet, so I put it in the story. I didn’t realise how strongly people would identify with it. I had a brief taste, by complete accident, of what it must be like to be Michael McIntyre at Wembley, on a massive screen, talking about a drawer full of insulating tape. Ironically, I am reliably informed that Michael McIntyre doesn’t actually have a ‘man drawer’, and invented the concept in order to ridicule ordinary people, for whom he has nothing but haughty contempt.
So I ran round to this little room. But before I could get a grip, I was immediately sick all over the floor, right, all over my mum’s floor. So I bent down – I wasn’t myself, remember, I was mad. And I tried to scoop up the sick. But doing that made me be sick again. And I was sick all down my clothes, until my clothes had become covered in, in sick. And I groped around and I ended up grabbing the cat’s-feet towel. And I used that to try and wipe it up, but there was too much and the cat’s-feet towel became overwhelmed, saturated with sick. If the cat had come in now, with wet feet, they would have had to stay wet. Or have sick put on them. Which would leave worse footprints.*
* This routine, with the addition of the new cat’s-feet towel element, is a jazzed-up version of one of the first routines I wrote, from about 1991, when I was beginning to develop the irritating repetitive style with which I am closely associated today. It is based on an entirely true incident when I still lived with my mum as a teenager and came home from a heavy Christmas Eve and vomited everywhere, and blocked up the sink with sick. As explained in the previous chapter, an impulsive improvisation off the back of this bit, late at night in New Zealand in May 2005, provided the starting point for this whole show.
And looking at that cat’s-feet towel, that made me be sick again. And I was sick into the, to the basin, until the hand basin was overflowing with sick. So I tried to scoop the sick out of the hand basin and fling it into the toilet. But doing that made me be sick again, and I was sick on top of that sick in there, until the toilet was blocked up with sick. And I stepped back and I shut my eyes and I thought, ‘That’s it now, surely. No more.’
But then I felt the sick rising in me again, and I thought, ‘What am I supposed to do? The floor’s covered in sick. My clothes are covered in sick. The cat’s-feet towel is a writeoff. Frankly. The hand basin’s overflowing with sick. The toilet’s overflowing with sick. What am I supposed to do?’
And I opened my eyes and I looked down, and on my left, on the floor, kneeling down, smiling, looking up at me, was Jesus. And He was pointing at His open mouth, as if what He wanted was for me to vomit into the open mouth of Christ. And I looked down and I thought, ‘This can’t be right.’ But He was pointing and laughing and smiling, and encouraging me. And then I remembered He did have some history of sacrifice. So against, against my better judgement, at his apparent insistence, I did it – I vomited into the open mouth of Christ, until the mouth of Christ was overflowing with my sick.
Now, right. I’ve been doing standup for seventeen years, OK? And I can sense when there’s tension in a room. And I know why it is and I un–, I understand it. Basically there’s a performer–audience bond of trust built up. We have worked on that together over the last hour. And, and, and you think, ‘Yes, there is, Stew, but you’ve broken that bond of trust. Because we weren’t expecting to be made to visualise this image. There was no warning of this, it wasn’t flagged up. There was no indication that you would do something like this, especially when you opened with all that light-hearted material about the bombings.’* And if you feel betrayed, I am … You have my sympathies, I’m sorry, right, there’s … But I’m just trying to understand this. And there is a performer–audience relationship, and there are probably people here thinking, ‘Yes, there is, Stew, and you have presumed upon that relationship. This is inappropriate, it’s too much too soon. It’s gone too far. It’s presumptuous to do this. It’s like fingering someone on a first date, you wouldn’t do it. Even at arm’s length, wearing a mitten, through the shattered window of a rural bus shelter, at the end of an otherwise pleasant evening, as an in appropriate gesture of thanks. You wouldn’t do that, Stew, so why are you doing this? Why? Why?’†
* Here I am trying everything I can, with soft-voiced confidentiality, in order to give the audience permission to laugh. ‘Permission to laugh’ is a phrase I always remember the dramaturge Tom Morris, of Battersea Arts Centre, using when describing the comedy process, and I think it’s an extremely helpful notion. We can appear to deny the audience permission to laugh at something apparently serious, thereby ensuring that they laugh, or we can try and
find a way of giving them permission to laugh at something about which they may feel uneasy.
† When some horrible English sports fans came to see this show in New Zealand during a British Lions rugby tour, this was the only bit they laughed at. ‘Now you’re getting somewhere,’ they said, when I used the word ‘fingering’, after they’d spent the previous hour sabotaging the show. It seems too coarse in retrospect, this bit, to sit in amongst the rest of the story, strangely. But it got a laugh in a dry patch, and if one must write about teenage sexual fumblings, at least let it have lyrical Proustian pretensions.
And there are probably other people here going, ‘Yeah, it is like a relationship, Stew, the performer–audience relationship. But tonight, with what you’ve done, you’ve made it feel like a marriage, and it feels like a marriage that’s gone on for too long and is in its death throes.’ And if you feel like that, if you feel like this is a marriage that’s gone on too long, right, then maybe it’s time for you to start seeing other comedians. Right? And I can’t pretend that I’d be happy about that, right, I wouldn’t be, OK? But if that would help to keep the spark of this alive, then you should do it. You should go and see them. Go and see them. And I will wait for you to come back to me because I love you.
And I will come here, come here when you’re all laughing at something else, when you’re laughing at Nicko and Joe’s Bad Film Club, I will come here and I’ll be behind those railings up there.* And I’ll be watching you giving them the laughs that you owe to me. And I’ll be crying. But because it’s you, because it’s you and I love you, I won’t be able to stop myself from becoming aroused. Behind the fence thing. And I’ll be crouching down. And I’ll be watching you all laughing – ‘ha ha ha’ – and I’ll be crying, right, but I will also be masturbating. Right? And I will be enjoying that unique fusion of profound grief and violent sexual arousal. And that’s the most profound feeling anyone can ever have. And if you have never had that feeling, you won’t understand me. And if you don’t understand me, how do you expect this to work out, right? So you have to understand that feeling. If you’ve never experienced that, then … If someone that you love has, has died, right, don’t take flowers to the grave, take whatever apparatus you need to achieve a state of mind whereby you can pay them the highest tribute of all.†
* Nicko and Joe’s Bad Film Club was a regular night at the venue where this transcript was recorded, the Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff. During this bit, I would try to hide somewhere in the dark, in the back of the room, leaving the audience looking at an empty stage for as long as possible. Since ’90s Comedian I always aim to try and spend as much time during the show offstage as possible. I interviewed Mark E. Smith of The Fall for the Sunday Times in 1996, who at that point was spending increasingly long periods of the band’s shows offstage or hiding behind curtains and amplifiers while singing. Oddly, this absence of a focus point only seemed to make the performances more exciting, an effect I expect I noted. Smith joked that his ambition was to be able to vacate the stage permanently during his own shows. ‘That’d be ideal,’ he said, ‘I’ll just stand down the front watching with a pint.’
† I never articulated the course of action suggested here, and preferred to let the audience figure it out for themselves, absolving me of blame. I can honestly say I have no idea where this notion came from, and I don’t think I’d have the courage to try and make something like this work now.
[back on mic] So I’d vomited into the open mouth of Christ. And I stepped back and I shut my eyes and I thought, ‘That’s it now surely, no more.’ But then I felt the sick rising in me again, and I thought, ‘What am I supposed to do now? The floor is covered in sick, my clothes are covered in sick, the cat’s-feet towel is covered in sick, the sink’s overflowing with sick, the toilet’s overflowing, the open mouth of Christ is overflowing with sick. What …? What …?’ And then I opened my eyes and I looked down, and He was there again, Jesus, on my right. But this time He had His back to me and He was doing a kind of handstand by the sink. And His raiment had slipped down, it looked like a kind of thirdlength, floral-print hospital gown. And He had His right hand on the floor to, to balance Him upside down, and with His left hand He was using the fingers to kind of splay open His anus. As if what He … As if what He wanted was for me to vomit into the gaping anus of Christ.
[off-mic, shouting] And don’t imagine, Cardiff, that I come here and talk about this lightly, OK? I thought about it, I asked around – well, I know it’s a bit much but I asked around, I said to – oh look, I asked Tony Law, he’s a Canadian standup comedian, he’s the most reasonable man I know. I said to him, ‘Tony, do you honestly think I can go round the country in front of people and use the phrase, “I vomited into the gaping anus of Christ”?’ And he said, ‘Well, possibly, if it’s in context. But’, he said, ‘you won’t be able to use it as the title of a live DVD.’ I said, ‘I’m not going to do that, Tony, I’m not insane.’*
* I would launch into this bit, again off-mic, after a big pause. It was based on an actual conversation with the sturdily surreal Canadian comedian Tony Law, and he did say, ‘Possibly, if it’s in context, but you won’t be able to use it as the title of a live DVD.’ But we were not discussing this piece of material. We were discussing a routine I had written about the idea of parents embarrassing their children, based on something my father said about a woman he saw coming up a gangplank onto a pleasure cruiser on the Thames in May 2000. It was a sentence which, almost brilliantly, managed to be simultaneously racist, sexist, fattist and blasphemous, and yet concealed within it an obvious lust forits subject that seemed, somehow, to render it almost charming, which was my father’s gift. And yet it remains a sentence so offensive that even here, in a section of this book in which we are discussing at length the idea of vomiting on Jesus, I am not prepared to repeat it. And yet Carol Cleveland quipped that I was sick and needed help.
But imagine this situation, it is impossible. There is no right way out of it. I bent down, I said to Jesus, ‘Are you sure this is what you want?’ And He said to me, ‘Look, you’re going to be taken to court for blasphemy for doing nothing, I feel like I owe you one, knock yourself out.’*
* This was usually a real watershed moment, where even punters that were until now suspicious would buy into the show. In my twisted cosmology, Jesus has offered himself up for humiliation in an attempt to redress the balance of the wrongs his followers have done unto me.
So against my better judgement, ’cause He told me to, I did it. I vomited into the gaping anus of Christ till the gaping anus of Christ was overflowing with my sick. I did that. Are you happy now?*
* This whole shtick of dropping the mic, wandering about in despair, falling to my knees, lying on the ground and then reconnecting with the mic has become a regular trick in all my recent sets. When I finally got to play bigger rooms, I’d end up in balconies and the back of the circle, standing on chairs, shouting. I recently saw a young comic do a miniaturised, shot-for-shot duplication of it in a ten-minute benefit slot. It’s probably time to stop now.
[back on-mic] And then I stepped back, and I shut my eyes, and I thought, ‘That’s it now surely, no more.’ But then I felt the sick rising in me again. And I thought, ‘What am I supposed to do? The floor is covered in sick, my clothes are covered in sick, the cat’s-feet towel is ruined, the sink’s overflowing with sick, the toilet, the anus of Chr– …’
Then I remembered, lads, you know when you’re doing a wee in the toilet, right? And there’s a bit of poo on the back of the bowl. And you think, ‘Ooh, I’ll hose that off. That’s my cleaning done for the week.’* So what I did was I got my penis out and as, as respectfully and tenderly and accurately as I could, I urinated into the gaping anus of Christ so that all the vomit there kind of foamed up and went on the floor, leaving just enough room for me to vomit one second and final time into the gaping anus of Christ, which I then did.
* This joke was one of Dave Thompson’s, which I remembered f
rom touring with him in the early nineties. I can’t remember if I bought it off him, but I certainly asked his permission to use it. I felt at this point that I needed to slip into standup comedy mode, to change the mood and get a good solid laugh before going deeper up river with the climax of the routine, and Dave’s joke popped into my head.
Dave was one of the best comics around when I started out, and once performed a one-man show in Edinburgh in a leotard in which he did the dance of an imaginary worm. Dave also wrote the most brilliant proper gags, but was best known as the original Tinky Winky on Teletubbies, a role he was then sacked from after the producers claimed he interpreted the purple-bodied felt creature ‘incorrectly’, though Dave has a more sinister story about his dismissal, involving a dog. Dave subsequently enjoyed more costume-character work, though his role as a horse in the 2004 live Harry Hill show Hooves was similarly compromised, as Dave was too weak to carry the floppy-collared loon™ on his back.
And then my mum came in. She looked at the sick on the floor. She looked at the sick all down my clothes, she looked at the cat’s-feet towel, all covered in sick, she was irritated by that. She looked at the sink overflowing with sick, the toilet overflowing with sick, the gaping anus of Christ overflowing with my sick. And she said to me, ‘Have you been sick? Into the gaping anus of Christ?’ And I said, ‘No, this was like this when I got here, the cat must have done it.’ And she said, ‘The cat’s in the garden and his feet are wet. And I’d like to know what you propose to do about that, given the current state of the cat’s-feet towel.’*
* Again, this is the bastardised pay-off to the lengthy ‘vomiting in my mum’s toilet’ routine I did in the early nineties, with added religious elements and cat’s-feet-towel coda.
And then she said to me, ‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ And she said, ‘Let me give you some advice.’ And I listened because I love her and she tends to be right. She said, ‘Given your current situation,’ she said, ‘and the state of the world as it is,’ she said, ‘under no circumstances can you ever consider talking about this incident onstage.’* And I said to her, ‘Well, I might have to.’ And she said, ‘Well, I can’t stop you, but’, she said – that’s what she always used to do when I was a kid, ‘I can’t stop you, but’, it’s like putting the ball in your court – she said, ‘I can’t stop you, but’, she said, ‘if you are going to talk about this, you have to know why you’re doing it, what kind of point you’re trying to make.’†
