According to new time-wasting device YouGov Profiler, which uses data to guess the demographics of different groups of people, fans of Stewart Lee and the Observer are virtually indistinguishable. If you’re reading this, the website suggests that you’re likely to be leftwing, in your mid-to-late 20s or 30s, work in education or the media, enjoy politics, culture and cricket, and own a cat. Although Observer readers are keener on vegetable samosas than halloumi-loving Stewart Lee fans, there is definite crossover.
Which is fortunate, because we are putting together a “You ask the questions”-style interview with Stewart Lee to mark his 2015 nationwide tour A Room with a Stew and Comedy Vehicle series three DVD launch. Now is your chance to ask the comedian and occasional Observer columnist anything. Can you be arrested just for being English? Why have you let yourself go, Morrissey? Why do your fans love halloumi so much? Now is your chance to put him to the test.
Stewart Lee grew up in Solihull, West Midlands. While at university he met Richard Herring, and together they made their name in comedy circles in the 1990s with shows such as Fist of Fun and This Morning With Richard Not Judy, as well as writing for Chris Morris’s BBC Radio 4 programme On the Hour.
In 2003 Lee attracted controversy with religion-baiting musical Jerry Springer: The Opera, which led advocacy group Christian Voice to protest against its “blasphemous and offensive” content. Since 2009 Lee has been talking about political correctness, the countryside and crisps in his Bafta-winning BBC programme Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle. In the Observer, he has tackled a range of topics including EU immigration, national identity and, again, crisps.
It’s fair to say that Lee’s idiosyncratic style of comedy divides opinion. In 2009, Dominic Maxwell in The Times named him “face of the decade” in comedy, stating that he has “an intellectual rigour and a preoccupation with pushing the form that sets him apart”. Two years later, Jan Moir of the Daily Mail named Lee (along with Frankie Boyle) as part of a “deeply unpleasant cabal of foul-mouthed leftwing comics”. In 2013, Telegraph journalist Dominic Cavendish walked out of a Stewart Lee standup gig because of “the disdain he showed towards those who’d paid to see him”. Last week, Guardian critic Brian Logan said a recent show was “a rarefied viewing experience… more skilful and playful than ever”.
Submit your questions in the comments section, email us at review@observer.co.uk or tweet @ObsNewReview by 4pm on Tuesday 25 November.
