“The poor are always with us. So speaks the man who has not learned to use a whip correctly!” And also thus spake the unsung genius comedian Simon Munnery, in character in his 90s parody of impotent bedsit fascism, The League Against Tedium. The act seems arguably less satirical today as its best lines have become actual government thinking. What is Priti Patel’s proposed Channel migrant policy if not, however it is dressed up in the sterile language of info-deterrence and reasonable force and common sense and re-seized sovereignty and taking back control, merely cudgelling children back into the cold sea to die, the Kindertransport in satanic reverse? But what are we to do with the poor, who have the temerity to seem especially visible over the festive season, the smelly bastards?
A week before Christmas, I waited in the small hours at a bus stop outside Dalston’s Rio cinema, having spoken at the Covid-decimated London premiere of a film I wrote, King Rocker (“the new gold standard for rockumentaries” – the Scotsman). A babbling woman in a bobble hat approached me for money and, it being Christmas, I fished in my pocket. After all, it was highly likely the exuberant lich was in fact a manifestation of Christ himself, come to test my generosity, something that I am convinced has happened to me on several previous occasions. I would not banish this Dalston Christ to the lowly stable. I would welcome her at my Christmas Inn of Spare Change. For I am a good man.
Sadly, the only cash I had on me was a sizable Scottish £10 note, having just got back from Glasgow, which I was reluctant to part with. Even the disguised Christ would probably consider such ostentatious generosity over the top, the work of a whited sepulchre. I’m not made of money, especially after two years of no live gigs and the cost of the resultant need to drink heavily in order to compensate for the withdrawal of the massed nightly adoration of strangers. Nonetheless, I didn’t see any way out of the increasingly awkward situation except to hand the money over, as I was wary of being judged as ungenerous by the other two people at the bus stop, who might also have been further manifestations of the Christ. Perhaps they were appearing together as the holy trinity: the father, the son and the babbling woman in the bobble hat?
“What the fuck is this?” said my beggar Christ, angrily, on receiving the money, divine but nonetheless a Cockney, and thus culturally baffled by unfamiliar sterling, and also excellent at swearing. “It’s a Scottish £10 note,” I said, before adding: “If you can’t use it I’ll have it back,” sensing a way of getting my money returned while nonetheless having made the kind of generous offer that would secure me a decent placing in St Peter’s judgmental ledger. “No, no, you’re all right,” said Christ, scuttling off into the Dalston dark with my Scotch dosh. But the dilemmas didn’t end there.
“I’ll have a tenner if you’re giving them away,” shouted a tall man at the other end of the bus stop, angrily. “I didn’t mean to give her £10, it was all I had,” I said, defensively, realising it was possible to interpret my unintended generosity as offensively profligate. But then, realising the man may also be yet another Christ, attempting to provoke me into revoking the moral worth of my charity, I quickly added: “But it is Christmas, so if you can’t give a beggar £10 at Christmas when can you?” But the angry Christ continued. “They just spend it on crack. That’s where she’s gone now, to a crack den. You’re a fucking idiot.” Then an old woman Christ, who until now had been sitting quietly on the artfully angled bus sheltered seat, “defensively designed” to be just too thin and too slippery to enable a homeless person to sleep on it, piped up: “It’s fucking Christmas, let him give his fucking money to whoever he wants.” This, of course, would be exactly what Christ would say, albeit in less-colourful language.
Could both my Dalston bus-stop debaters be Christ? Yes, if you subscribe to the Manichaean doctrine of dualism, made manifest here tonight, an inexplicable theological survival, in this east London street. The angry man and the kind woman continued to argue with each other as my bus arrived and I slipped away unnoticed, leaving behind me a scatological street-level reimagining of Radio 4’s bloodless Moral Maze, passionate debate replacing masturbatory self-congratulation, educated arrogance and Baroness Fox.
But what is to be done? Will it be the be-jumpered LadBaby, loyally singing about inoffensive sausage rolls at No 1 for the Trussell Trust food banks every Christmas for all eternity now, without addressing the roots of the poverty their offal-inclusive songs seek temporarily to alleviate? Or will the novelty-single-loving British public join the dots and condemn the policies that create the need for both food banks, and the meat and pastry music of LadBaby, and vote out those responsible, who explicitly see wealth as a reward for virtue and poverty as punishment for laziness? On its website, the Trussell Trust’s own “strategic plan” is cautious to avoid direct political comment, anxious, I expect, to avoid being made into a culture war pawn by the usual unscrupulous bad faith operators on the right. Shadows take my hand and mist is on the land. Do we just wait until Christ comes back, with his baked-bean hampers and his top-down plan to end poverty? Until then, we live in a crumbling city built not on rock, but on sausage rolls.
Rescheduled national 2022 dates of Stewart’s 2020 tour, Snowflake Tornado, are on sale now; the autumn 2022 London dates of his 2023 tour, Basic Lee, are also on sale; the King Rocker soundtrack album can be ordered here; Stewart Lee winter hats are available here
