Few contemporary comics divide opinion like Stewart Lee. For long-time fans and comedy obsessives, he is touched by genius, a maverick whose deep-rooted fascination with comedy lies in seeing how far he can stretch the boundaries of the form while still making an audience laugh. For those who prefer a more obvious strike rate of gags per minute, he "doesn't have any jokes", a criticism Lee sends up by announcing that he has included three "jokes" in this new touring show.
Charity, Adrian Chiles ("a Toby jug that has somehow learned to speak") and the government are his three principal themes here, but as ever he manages to wrong-foot his audience by making you question what exactly you are laughing at almost before the laugh has left your lips. After a crude line about teenage mothers, he remarks: "I've been told I could sell that joke to Mock the Week – it shows the requisite level of contempt for the poor."
It's not his only shot at the programme, and the particular contemptuous brand of humour it has popularised, but his real target throughout is the public's unquestioning compliance with what we are fed by the media, advertisers and spin doctors. He illustrates this with an anecdote about his own encounter with the Bullingdon Club during his Oxford days.
His style of nuanced repetition won't please everyone, but Lee is a true original, embodying the spirit of the Shakespearean fool; his jests conceal a sharp-eyed wisdom that might just make you revise the way you look at the world.
