by Stewart Lee
VEGAS AND LEE SIT FACING ONE ANOTHER IN CHAIRS IN THE CELLAR OF THE KING’S HEAD, CROUCH END, LONDON.
JOHNNY VEGAS: But, er, is it right, I, I’ve got here … Is it an actual quote that, um, that you have Russell Brand saying about racism on Celebrity Big Brother? ’Cause you claim …
STEWART LEE: Yeah … No, he …
VEGAS: … that he said, ‘Ooh, there’s some bad racism and stuff like that going down today and no mistake, my liege. It’s made my winkle go right small, it has …’
LEE: Yeah.
VEGAS: ‘Oh yes it has, yeah, and my ball-bag, my ball-bag [laughing] has gone up my bum. Here’s H from Steps.’
LEE: Yeah it was. When I saw it, it was literally about two days after that had broke. And I saw him say that. And I thought that he was, was trying to, like, smooth over the whole thing, and I thought, ‘That is so brilliant, ’cause if you just say that onstage, if it will expose the kind of ridiculousness of the attempt of a light-entertainment celebrity in a light-entertainment programme to deal with something as serious as this kind of racial bullying …’ So, I mean, I just thought it was perfect, so I wrote it down and, um, and it, you know, people just laugh openly at it, ’cause it’s so stupid.
VEGAS: Yeah, but …
LEE: It was great.
VEGAS: Um, I’ve … been back. I actually checked it.
LEE: Oh well, I’m glad.
VEGAS: Yeah, yeah …
LEE: No, it’s good, ’cause you should, you know … I’m glad.
VEGAs: Yeah, yeah, but what he actually said was, ‘Racism, it’s such a wank thing, innit? It’s such a pain in the arse that someone would go round being racist …’
LEE: [quietly agreeing] Mmm.
VEGAS: ‘And individually, I think if people were made culpable for their actions and were made to look at themselves, they’d think, “Oh God, I shouldn’t say that.” And yet the way that they are behaving collectively is obviously abhorrent.’ Now, do you think it’s … you’ve got enough artistic licence to …
LEE: Well, I think …
VEGAS: To actually twist the words of another, of a fellow comedian?
LEE: I don’t think they’re really twisted, I think that the essence of what he said is, um … The essence of what he said is the same as what I said. The only, the only difference between what I said he said and what he actually said is that what he actually said, it starts to make quite a lot of sense towards the end, and obviously that wouldn’t …
VEGAS: That didn’t suit your …
LEE: Doesn’t suit my …
VEGAS: Comedic …
LEE: … purposes. ’Cause what I’m looking at … This is like a meta-discussion about the event, it’s not to do with what he actually said, it’s to do with how celebrity culture cannot address a serious issue, and that is the important thing. It doesn’t really matter, er …
VEGAS: I think it …
LEE: It doesn’t really matter what he said. I mean the important thing is that he’s … something … he said something like it. And it can just be changed to my own ends. And I think Russell himself would agree …
VEGAS: And where does that, where does that …
LEE: … that it’s fine.
VEGAS: … where does that end, in terms of, you know … So you, so you see yourself as Stewart Lee, demigod, who can take anything out of context … lee: Well …
VEGAS: … as long as it suits the purpose of your comedy?
LEE: It’s not taking it out of context, because it wasn’t actually …
VEGAS: Well …
LEE: It wasn’t said, it wasn’t said.
VEGAS: Well, misquoting …
LEE: It’s not even misquoted, it has almost no …
VEGAS: It’s misquoting, ’cause he never said …
LEE: … relationship with it.
VEGAS: ‘My winkle has gone right small …’
LEE: No, but he has said …
VEGAS: ‘… oh yes it has, and my ball-bag has gone right up my bum.’
LEE: He’s said things like that on other, on other occasions.
VEGAS: Yeah, but maybe not in relationship to racism.
LEE: No, but he, you know …
VEGAS: [something indistinct] loves genocide …
LEE: But if he had, if he had, if he had tried to address racism, er, and he, and he had …
VEGAS: That’s how you think he would have …
LEE: Yeah. And the fact that he didn’t do that, and he actually said something quite good is not … that’s not … it’s not … that doesn’t detract from what I’m trying to do. What I’m trying to do is look at the bigger picture about how … You know, racism’s bad, we all agree with that. Yeah? But it’s not something that can be easily dealt with by celebrity. And, and when you think of celebrity, the person you think of, I think, for most people is Russell Brand. And the way that they think he speaks is in the way that I’ve said. So to me, it doesn’t really matter what he’s said. The important thing is that, you know, it’s … And I don’t think he would mind either. I think he’d look at that piece and he’d go, ‘Well, fair play, that’s a good bit …’
VEGAS: Have you asked him?
LEE: I haven’t asked him, no. But I think … I know that he likes my work, and I think if he saw that he’d feel flattered to be misquoted, rather than annoyed. I think he’d, d’you know what, I think he’d be delighted by it.
VEGAS: Doesn’t that sound presumptuous?
LEE: It’s not … It’s … It is presumptuous, but I think that you … When you, when you’re, when you’re working with these kind of ideas, you’re working in … You have to make these kind of bold leaps, of connecting ideas. And if, in connecting them, you’re not strictly … If, if in connecting them, you, er, betray someone and make them look worse than they are, then that, that’s like a casualty of war. And the war is about trying to reach the greater truth. And the truth is that racism is a bad thing, and that’s what … And I think that if … You know, oh what, ‘He didn’t say that, he said, “It’s a wank,”’ you know. It doesn’t really matter, does it, what he said. The point is that, er, that the … there’s a different … there’s a thing we’re driving at that’s more important than what he actually said.
VEGAS: But, sorry, do you … Would you … Do you sort of see … I suppose it’s a mad thing with comedy, isn’t it, because you go … You’ll … You’ll make friends sort of within the industry …
LEE: Yeah.
VEGAS: … but then you have kind of got to intellectually remain completely impartial …
LEE: [neutrally] Mm.
VEGAS: Do you know what I mean? Do you ever, do you ever struggle with that, with going, ‘This is perfect for having, like, the piss taken out of it, but … I’m going to see him in a bar, I’m going to come across this person’ – do you know what I mean? – ‘and I’ll actually feel quite awkward about …’
LEE: Yeah, well, I mean …
VEGAS: ‘… what I’ve said about them’?
LEE: You know, I feel the same about Russell Brand as I would about Tom O’Connor. You know, the stuff ’s out there now, and, er, you know, let’s see, see what happens, you know. And I, er, it’s not like throwing down a gauntlet to him. But, er, I’m just saying that I view him as a kind of resource now in the way that I would, you know, f– … a funny animal or something …
VEGAS: [laughs.]
LEE: Or, er … a bad … bad weather. It’s just something to, to exaggerate. And like, he’s become like a phenomena, you know …
VEGAS: Mmm.
LEE: Like a, a, a … a rain or something, and, and less like a … He’s not like a person to me now, you know?
VEGAS: He’s a product, or …
LEE: He’s a product. And if I choose to attribute things to him that he didn’t say, then that’s my prerogative, I feel, now.
VEGAS: Right.
LEE: It’s like if you, you know, when, if you’re doing a routine about a
funny dog, and you imagine what the dog’s thinking, no one goes, ‘Oh, you don’t know that that dog thought, “Oh, I wish I could have a bone.”’ It’s the same … That’s how I feel about a celebrity, about a, about a Russell Brand character … I have to, I kind of have to impose my thoughts onto …
VEGAS: I know.
LEE: … canvas.
VEGAS: In theory, in theory, if he got in touch and said, ‘Actually, I find that deeply offensive,’ would you remove it?
LEE: Well, um, you know this is a discussion we had before filming the, er … the DVD. It was pointed out to me that he didn’t actually say this. And I said, ‘Well, the way we’ll get round it is I’ll get Johnny Vegas in the DVD extra to ask me a question about it, so we can put what he actually said out there and say, you know, we’re covered,’ but the, but most people won’t watch this part …
VEGAS: Yeah [laughs].
LEE: And so, you know, it’s sort of, it’s covered legally, but not in such a way as it impacts on the, er, the actual piece itself.
VEGAS: Right.
LEE: So this in many ways is a, a coping mechanism.
VEGAS: So you’ve … I wondered why you’d bring in such a simpleton to interview you. I’m just a patsy.
LEE: Yeah. You’re a patsy. And you’ve been given the … You’ve been primed with that quote so that it would come up and I can address the issue.
VEGAS: Am I allowed to …
LEE: It’s like a footnote.
VEGAS: Am I allowed to feel stupid now?
LEE: Um, no, you need to feel that you’ve done …
VEGAS: Have I done great things here?
LEE: You’ve done great things here, yeah, yeah.
VI: Pestival Set, May 2007
Here is the set I actually performed at Pestival, not the insect observational comedy one I put into the show 41st Best StandUp Ever.
Hello. I am Stewart Lee. I’ve been asked to come here and do standup tonight. And I was reluctant because, as you can imagine, it’s difficult to know how to pitch it. It’s difficult to know how many of you are here because you are fans of insects, and how many of you are here because you are Resonance FM listeners, and thus fans of improvised and experimental music, and whether there is any crossover between them.
So what I decided to do was to come out dressed as an insect and do about half an hour of standup from the point of view of an insect. So I investigated how much it would cost to have an insect costume made, and it was about four to five hundred pounds for quite a good insect costume, and I thought, ‘There’s no way I can justify that for this because it will make a huge loss.’
But I was supposed to be doing a pilot for the BBC of a standup show, so to try and offset the cost, at the last minute I put in that I wanted them to film me doing standup as an insect, and then they withdrew the offer of the programme. So thanks. Thanks for having me here. My TV series has been cancelled. Because of you. I hadn’t set up any other work. I thought I was filming a TV series. This is all I have in my diary. Pestival.
Now, it is nice to be at this insect-themed event, but usually I start my act like this: ‘Hello. I’m Stewart Lee. Later on I’ll be talking to you about how my tragic and ultimately fatal addiction to various forms of hard drugs has helped me to overcome my previous dependence on Christianity,’ and then I talk about religion, politics and despair. But I can’t do that tonight …
So I am going to read you the letter I got through after I accepted the booking. This is dated 20th September last year and it’s from Miss B. Nicholls.
Dear Mr Lee
I am delighted you have accepted our offer to perform a short standup comedy set at our Pestival event. Now the contracts are exchanged I was just checking that you appreciated that we require your humorous material on the night to deal exclusively with insects, and insects only.
Straying into any other areas of subject material will be considered a breach of contract, and if such a breach of contract occurs, we intend to prosecute you with the full force of the law.
I only mention this because at a recent entomological event in Beijing I am informed the comedian told an inappropriate joke about spiders which went thus:
Why do black widow spiders kill their males after mating?
To stop their snoring before it starts.
The joke is inappropriate for two reasons:
(1) it is crude, and there may be children present;
(2) the black widow spider (Latrodectus mactans) is not strictly an insect, an insect being defined as a creature with a body segmented into three parts, with three pairs of legs.
We would be grateful if you did not step outside your insect remit. If you are stuck, here are four insect jokes you might like to tell. One is about a wasp, two are about bees, and the other is about insects generally. Perhaps begin with the general insect joke, and then move on to the other three specific gags.
What car does an insect drive?
A Volkswagen Beetle.
Why do bees hum?
Because they’ve forgotten the words.
Why do bees have sticky hair?
Because of the honey combs.
Where do you take a sick wasp?
To waspital.
I hope you find these helpful.
Yours truly,
B. Nicholls, Pestival.
Now, I’m known as a maverick within the world of comedy, I play by my own rules, not the rules of entomologists. If I want to do a joke about a spider, no amount of entomologists are going to stop me. You can threaten me with court and I’m still not scared … except with that TV thing cancelled I need this to work out, I need this. I need this. I need Pestival.
So I wrote back to Miss Nicholls in a slightly facetious manner, and asked her if there were any particular insects which she thought I should write a joke about.
And she replied:
Dear Mr Lee
For me the most suitable insect for your comedy would be the aphid. The aphid reproduces parthenogenetically, that is to say without mating, so you should at least be able to work clean. I think we at Pestival would be happy with a fifteen-minute routine about aphids, perhaps something about the initially mystifying discovery of Russian spruce aphids in Switzerland in 1947, which was ultimately explained as being the result of involuntary migration by wind. I am sure you could think of something amusing about that incident! Perhaps you might like to mention how some ants farm aphids for their juices, but you must be careful that this observation does not
(a) imply any sexual undercurrent;
(b) suggest that the aphid is harmed in any way, as an insect-friendly audience will not like to hear about injury to any insect.
Also, if you do go with my aphid suggestion, please do not draw attention to the potato peach aphid, which carries fifty different kinds of virus, as there may be people at the event who are unconvinced about insects, just casual attendees, and who are not great lovers of insects, and they are sure to take against the potato peach aphid, and by association all aphids, if you describe it in these terms. At Pestival this year we are hoping to brush the potato peach aphid under the carpet, metaphorically speaking. These restrictions apart, feel free to say pretty much anything you like about aphids. We in the entomological community pride ourselves on having a sense of humour. In fact, only the other day someone told me this joke:
What do you call a top pop group made up of insects
which infest the hair of children?
You call them The Lice Girls
Yours truly,
Miss B. Nicholls, Pestival
P.S. You can use the Lice Girls joke if you like, although it doesn’t really make sense. It would be difficult to be sure that the group of singing lice were really The Lice Girls as the gender of the head louse (Pediculus humanus capitis) is only discernible in the later stages of its life.
So … a number of difficult restrictions placed on me. It was last week, while I was trying to write a funny story about aphids that
I began to hate all insects. Try as I might, I couldn’t see the humour in insects. And so I come here tonight, not to praise insects, but to bury them. Except for the ones that like living underground. Burying is too good for them. They will be dug up and exposed to the light.
Of all the creatures in the animal kingdom, insects are the most numerous. Likewise, of all the people in the world, the Chinese are the most numerous. Unlike insects, the Chinese have at least given us fireworks, fried rice and the bamboo flute. Insects live in swamps, jungles and deserts; they live in temperate zones and in severe mountain climates. Doubtless the insect fans here tonight choose to view this as evidence of their adaptability. I view it as evidence of the fact that insects are lazy and indiscriminate. Don’t give them the oxygen of publicity.
So as you can see, I was sitting there, struggling to write jokes about insects, and I was just about to give up. And then I remembered the story of Robert the Bruce. I don’t know if you remember the story of Robert the Bruce. Robert the Bruce was fighting a battle against the English, and he wasn’t getting on so well, so he ran away and he hid in a cave. And while he was there his eye fell on a little spider, which was trying to swing from one high rock ledge to another. And Robert the Bruce watched the spider once and it didn’t quite make it and it fell down. And then Robert the Bruce watched the spider again and it didn’t quite make it and it fell down again. And then Robert the Bruce watched the spider a third time, and the third time the spider attempted the swing, it made it from one ledge to the other. And Robert the Bruce thought about what he had seen, and he went back to the battle against the English, and remembering the example of the spider, he spun a huge web out of his own bodily fluids, in which the English soldiers became trapped, allowing Robert the Bruce to crawl stealthily from one soldier to the next, crushing them to death in his enormous mandibles. And so he won the battle and became the king of Scotland.
