The following programme contains strong language and adult humour.
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(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE) (TRUMPET RIFF)
STEWART LEE: It's always difficult to know how to start a show,
I've only ever written one decent opening routine.
I wrote it in September 1989. And I'm gonna open with it tonight...
(AUDIENCE CHUCKLES)
..without changing any of the now irrelevant cultural references.
So all the way back now to September 1989.
Oh, it's great to be here.
It's annoying being alive though, isn't it?
Isn't it? (SIGHS)
I'll give you an example of what I mean.
Last Sunday at 6:30, there was a knock at my door,
and I went down and I answered it.
There was one of these born-again Christian evangelists
that they have now there, you've seen them about.
And he said to me, "Sir, the answer is Jesus.
Now what is the question?"
And I said, "Is the question for which role...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
..was Robert Powell...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS, SCATTERED APPLAUSE)
..nominated for a BAFTA?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And he said, "No, it isn't that."
I said, "Can I have another guess?" He said, "Yes."
I said, "Is the question: I was born in zero BC...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
..and I am commonly regarded as being the inventor of Christianity,
but which J am I?"
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And he said, "No, it isn't that."
And I said, "Can I have another guess?"
He said... There's no point coming in now really,
the people that are late there.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
I said, there's no point coming in really now...
I said, there's no...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
(SCATTERED APPLAUSE)
Don't tell me to carry on. The problem is...
Look.
OK, the problem is you've missed the opening line, right,
which ties in with the final line of the thing,
creates a whole through line for the whole show.
And you've missed the opening two jokes,
which set up a half-hour section in the second half,
which will now make no sense, so...
(SIGHS)
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
You can stay, right, but I don't want to...
I don't know why you're laughing,
I don't want to be looking at you later on,
and seeing you going, "This doesn't make sense."
Cos it does.
Just you've not...
You can't really come in late to me, right, because...
The thing about me, right, it's all very...
It's all very carefully worked out.
The thing about me, right, is I'm not really a stand-up comedian.
A lot of people on social media will tell you that.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
I'm more of a sort of a literary artist, right.
And what I do is I use stand-up comedy
as a sort of Trojan horse,
to deliver literary art to places it's not really wanted.
Like Salford on a Monday.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Come in late to me, right, it's a bit like thinking,
"Oh, I'll read Tolstoy's War and Peace,
but I'll rip out the first ten chapters."
And then you're going, "Who the fuck are all these Russian people?"
I'm not going back to that joke about the door now, what's the point?
Forget it.
Ah, well, you know... people should get here on time.
So uh...
It's always very difficult to know how to start a show, as I said.
If you've seen me before, and I hope you have,
I don't really like new people coming. We've seen...
We've seen the problems it creates.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
What I'd normally do,
I'd take whatever the prevailing political narrative is
and I'd weave it through the following two hours.
"Is it two hours this, you've brought us to, Jeff?
I thought there'd be... Is this him? Is this the main one?
I thought it was Lee Mack we were going to, Lee...
I thought you said it was Lee Mack. So...
Yeah, but what is the prevailing political narrative at the moment?
I started writing this show in January last year.
We're already on the third Conservative government of the run, you know.
I'm trying to write a joke about the Rishi Sunak cabinet,
it makes about as much sense
as trying to befriend a disposable barbecue.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Or marry a mayfly.
Short lifespans they've got, haven't they, madam with the...
with your arms folded?
The mayfly has... (AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
It's got a short lifespan.
That's why you should be laughing at that.
Don't come and see me if you don't know what anything is.
(APPLAUSE)
There are more fucking pricks coming in late now.
And I've already done the bit I do when people come in late.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
You can't really come in late to me, cos the thing about me is...
What are they laughing at?
You don't know, do you? Cos you weren't here.
I'm not really a stand-up comedian, I'm more of a sort of a literary...
No, no, I'm not gonna do that.
If there's one thing I can't bear in stand-up, it's repetition.
So... I can't bear it.
(APPLAUSE)
So...
I've written some jokes about the Rishi Sunak cabinet.
I've written them on this piece of card.
I'm just gonna read them out.
There's no point learning them at this late stage.
Case in point, in January I had a good bit about Therese Coffey,
the then Environment Secretary, but she's gone.
Actually... you'd think Therese Coffey
would have understood the environment, wouldn't you?
And the wilderness, and the forests, and the hedgerows,
and the ditches, and the culverts.
Cos it looked like that was where she lived and foraged for food.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
But she's gone, we've got a new bloke,
Steve Barclay, Environment Secretary.
What he needs to do, he needs to stop the privatised water companies
creaming off all the profits and pumping millions of tonnes
of human excrement into our seas and rivers.
The problem he's got there, is cos we've left the EU,
everything's been deregulated,
and we can't impose the pollution fines from Brussels.
Now, the problem for Brexiteers here,
is there's now so much human excrement in the English Channel,
there's a risk it will harden into a crust
and the migrants will just walk over.
(LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE)
Don't clap!
It's not Feargal Sharkey's birthday party.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
So that's all I've got on the Tories, anyway.
Cos they've all... you know. So I thought,
"What can I do for the top of the show fun bit?"
I thought, "Well, the Royal Family, that's ongoing, isn't it?"
And I was very sorry to see the Queen go,
cos I respected and admired the Queen.
She was obviously ill, wasn't she, in those last few weeks, the Queen?
But she hung on, didn't she, the Queen?
She hung on to make sure
she had accepted the resignation of Boris Johnson.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
I don't know what it's like here in Salford, but down in London,
the monarchists struggled to know how to grieve for the Queen.
And because she'd been in that little Paddington comedy sketch on Comic Relief,
a lot of the monarchists, they left marmalade sandwiches outside...
They did, outside Buckingham Palace, like Paddington would eat.
And then the police said to the monarchists,
"Can you not leave those marmalade sandwiches
there, please, monarchists?
Cos they rot down and they attract other vermin."
(LAUGHTER, SCATTERED APPLAUSE)
A lot of the monarchists, they left little Paddington Bear dolls
outside Buckingham Palace - that was alright.
So what happened to them, the Royal Footmen gathered them up
and they were given to Prince Andrew to use as bait.
(LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE)
You've got a little Paddington Bear doll there in the...
grass by the swings. Next to that,
some kind of stick or a sceptre stuck into the ground.
On top of that, the lid of an empty Pizza Express box.
They crawl in there.
I submitted that joke to a Sunday newspaper.
And they said, "We can't really print that.
Can you rewrite it?" So I rewrote it.
I put, "The Royal Footmen gather up the Paddington Bear dolls,
and give them to Prince Andrew to use as he sees fit."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
They said, "That's worse, really."
Cos of what's left unsaid.
You know, the suggestion Prince Andrew is sitting...
lying on silken sheets in the Royal Apartments,
calling to the Footmen beyond the door,
"More Paddingtons, more Paddingtons now!"
And they're throwing the Paddingtons in one after another
as fast as Prince Andrew can ruin them.
Paddington, Paddington, Paddington.
Ruined, ruined, ruined, and he never broke a sweat.
He never broke a sweat!
He doesn't sweat.
So...
I was supposed to have a stand-up show on BBC Two
the night before the Queen's funeral, on the Sunday night.
And they cancelled it on the day cos everyone was so worried,
weren't they, about what was the right thing to do, you know.
So the BBC pulled me off and... (AUDIENCE CHUCKLES)
Now, that's never got a laugh anywhere else.
And that tells us something about Salford, doesn't it?
You can spend as much as you like on culture,
but at the end of the day, they're still scum, aren't they?
And they're still little...
It doesn't even make sense. What you, why you laugh...
The BBC pulled me off, did they?
What, everyone that works for it in a big...
in a big line all round Media City.
All in the big line,
rolling up their sleeves, spitting on their hands?
All of them, is that what you think? All of them?
All the BBC employees, all the...
All the BBC employees, you know.
Clive Myrie.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS) All the BBC employees.
So I was...
Yeah, so they cancelled it on the day.
And it was such a late decision that there was no listing anywhere
saying what was going on instead.
So I sat up till 10 o'clock. I thought, "Let's see what comes on."
And what came on instead of me at 10 o'clock on BBC Two,
the night before the Queen's funeral,
was this sort of erotic biopic,
a biopic of a 19th-century French pornographer called Colette,
played by Keira Knightley.
Has anyone seen this film?
No, no-one's seen... You have?
OK, it's quite a sexually explicit film, isn't it?
As you remember, there's seven full frontal nude scenes,
four heterosexual, three lesbian.
And I was sitting there watching this, thinking, "This is a bit..."
Presumably, some BBC bloke's been through the archive and thought,
"This is what the Queen would have wanted, probably, to see.
To remember her life, you know.
And it was pretty full on. I was sitting there watching it, you know,
and I thought I'd better see what was on instead of me.
And I'm a man, you know,
certain involuntary physical reactions started to occur,
and then I became very annoyed with the BBC.
Cos what they'd done to me, in my mind, subconsciously,
like one of Pavlov's dogs,
they'd now forced me to associate mild involuntary sexual arousal
with any prolonged period of enforced public mourning.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
The problem started the next day, to be honest, with the Queen's funeral.
I was sitting in, patriotically trying
to watch the news coverage with the kids, you know.
The Queen's decomposing body starts rolling down the Mall.
I thought, oh, dear, here we go.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
I had to go and finish myself off in the shed.
And I haven't even got a shed.
I was just sitting in the garden on a workbench.
Right, that's the end of the fun, topical bit at the top of the show.
It's not really of interest to me, that sort of stuff.
I just do it cos I'm sick of reading,
people going, "The reason you don't see Lee on Have I Got News For You
is cos he can't write economic, topical jokes."
Oh, I can write them, as we've seen, I can write them very easily.
But... it's beneath me.
Uh, it's beneath you.
And it's time now to move on into the punishing experimental stand-up
that has kept me out of the arenas for 35 years now.
(LAUGHTER, SCATTERED APPLAUSE)
So...
So if you've seen me before, and I hope you have, as I said,
you'll know... I didn't really know what to do with this show, you know.
Normally, I would take whatever the political through-line is.
I couldn't work out what that was cos everything's in collapse.
Or I might have a big prop-based show with a huge falling shark,
or a landscape, you know, made out of rubbish.
I couldn't really afford that this time.
So I thought, "What I'll do, I'm gonna take stand-up...
..back to basics and I'm gonna ask,
what, in essence, is stand-up comedy, right?"
And in essence, stand-up comedy is this, isn't it?
It's one man, one microphone, one audience.
Pure, simple, classic.
"But hey, hang on, granddad, it's the 21st century now.
That definition's a bit out of date, isn't it?
Cos women are allowed to do comedy now.
Not in Salford, by the sounds of it.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS) They are! There's loads of them.
When I started in the '80s,
there were so few women doing stand-up,
comperes didn't really know how to bring them on, you know.
The bloke would come out and he'd go, "Last week we had a bloke
who could hang a massive weight off his penis,
and another bloke who could shoot a firework out of his arse,
and another bloke who could do an impression of Charles de Gaulle
using only his testicles. They were brilliant.
But this week, ladies and gentlemen, we've got a woman for you."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
"And she's gonna try and do comedy now.
I know, I've seen her backstage, she's a very attractive girl.
But...
will she be funny? Probably not.
But it don't matter, does it?
Cos you don't laugh at the mantelpiece
when you're fucking someone."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
That's... Right. That... Turn round, look at this bloke.
That's supposed to be an example
of out-of-date '80s sexist comedy, sir.
Not the first bit you've really enjoyed in the whole...
(LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE)
Are you getting that, bloke?
Andrew Tate fan club member there.
But of course, today, loads of the best stand-ups are women,
so let's change that definition.
Stand-up comedy, one man or woman,
yeah, one microphone, one audience.
Pure, simple, classic.
But if you've got teenagers, or maybe you are a teenager,
I hope there's some teenagers in, some younger people in tonight,
I've got ten years left on the mortgage.
There's no real future in this audience is there?
Sort of Saga... Saga holidays theatre trip.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
But um...
Yeah, I... see...
A teenager would think that was a very reactionary definition.
I went to the Edinburgh Fringe last summer with my kids,
I'd never seen so many transgender people doing stand-up.
And I remember the first transgender comedian I met, actually,
it was in November 1989,
backstage at the Euston Comedy Club,
and it was Fay Presto, who was a brilliant...
Still is a brilliant close-up comedy magician.
And Fay Presto did an amazing thing backstage that night, just for me.
Fay Presto made a dove disappear in front of my eyes.
But Fay Presto also made something else disappear that night,
didn't she? Do you know what it was?
That's right.
It was my prejudices.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
(APPLAUSE)
Not against transgender people,
but against magicians.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Because before I met Fay Presto,
I'd always assumed all magicians were just creepy old men
with suspiciously young female assistants.
But after I met Fay Presto...
blah, blah, blah, rhythm of a joke.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
That's how jokes work. Yeah, they're shit, aren't they, jokes?
I hate jokes.
All jokes are the same with the words changed, aren't they?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Do you know what I mean?
Na-na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na, ah-ha-ha!
Fucking pointless. I'm not gonna write any more jokes.
I'm gonna come out here with a blackboard
with a list of topics on it, I'm gonna point at one of them,
and you can have a good laugh imagining
what I might have said about it. (AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
So let's change that definition.
Stand-up comedy, one person,
one microphone, one audience,
and if you're Frankie Boyle, a large team of uncredited writers.
Pure, simple, classic.
So there was a definition of stand-up comedy,
but as well as a definition of stand-up comedy,
there's something else you need to do a show,
and that's some material, you're gonna need some material.
And I don't mind telling you, Salford,
I was struggling a bit with this one, I thought, "What I'll do,
I'll go in the kitchen, I'll shut my eyes, I'll spin round,
and whatever the first thing I see when I open them is,
I will write a hit Live At The Apollo-type routine about that."
Right? So I went in the kitchen, opened my eyes,
and the first thing I saw on the shelf was a cookbook,
called Veg by the TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, right?
I thought, "Right, I'm gonna write a hit
Live-At-The-Apollo routine about that.
OK, here we go, Live At The Apollo.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
(AUDIENCE MEMBER WOLF WHISTLES)
(SNIFFS, GRUNTS)
(VOCALISES)
You know... (STUTTERS)
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, he likes meat.
Yeah. In fact, in 1998,
he actually cooked and ate a human placenta live on Channel 4,
for which he was roundly criticised by the Watchdog,
who said he should at least have detached it from the baby first.
Thank you, and you can follow me on Instagram, yeah.
So... (AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
So...
So what I'm saying is, OK.
This is me now, madam. I've stopped doing that character.
This is...
What I'm saying is, right, if he's gonna change tack
about what he's writing about, or any writer,
you've got to flag it up.
You know, like Iain Banks, the Scottish novelist,
when he wrote science fiction,
like, consider Phlebas and that, he called himself Iain M Banks.
And when he wrote The Wasp Factory and The Crow Road,
he called himself Iain Banks, so you knew where you were, right?
It's like JK Rowling, OK?
When JK Rowling... writes the Harry Potter books for children,
she calls herself JK Rowling.
And she writes sentences like,
"Tall Harry saw the frightening thing."
Right? (AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
But when JK Rowling writes thrillers for adults,
she calls herself Robert Galbraith,
which is a man's name.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHTER BUILDS)
I don't know where you think this is going.
But it's not fucking going anywhere near that.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
No, it's not worth it, no way. I've got...
I've got kids, I don't want the grief, right.
I know what you're thinking, madam, you're going,
"It is about that, it's a clever double bluff."
It fucking is not about that, no way.
It's not worth it.
This is not about that, it's about this, OK?
So settle it down, right?
So what I'm saying is,
when JK Rowling writes thrillers for adults,
she calls herself Robert Galbraith, which is a man's name.
I've said, haven't I, I've said...
What part of "it's not about that"...?
You know? It's not fucking... It's not worth it.
It's alright for you, isn't it, sitting in the dark in Media City?
No-one comes here, right? But...
I mentioned this about 18 months ago, all hell broke loose.
I didn't know, I'm not on the internet, you know,
a friend of mine rang me up from Ireland,
and she went, "Oh, it's awful what's happened to you, isn't it?"
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
"What's happened to me?"
And she said, "Oh, have you not looked?"
I looked on the internet, there's all these people, "Get him, kill him!"
There's a funny little old man,
he lives in a Martello Tower, have you seen him?
He's got a three-cornered hat on, he films himself shouting at me,
and puts it... I'm not there, he puts it on the internet.
Have you seen that?
They put my home details on Mumsnet. On Mumsnet!
They went, "That's where he lives, get him!"
But what was worse, the next line underneath, someone had put,
"I've walked past that house and it isn't very nice."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Well, but that's why this is not about that, it's not worth it.
Right? So what I'm saying is, when JK Rowling...
It's fucking not about that, I've said stop!
You do it, I'm not...
They put my home details on Mumsnet!
Have you... Mumsnet has gone insane!
Everyone on Mumsnet has been radicalised around a single issue.
If Mumsnet was an Islamic website, they'd shut it down!
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Cos it's a load of old women that start drinking rose
at four in the afternoon, they think, "Oh, it doesn't matter.
They'll never find his house."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
"Especially if there's a branch of Carluccio's on the way."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS, SCATTERED APPLAUSE)
This is not about that
cos it's not worth the grief, right? So get over it.
So what I'm saying is, when JK Rowling writes thrillers for adults,
she calls herself Robert Galbraith, which is a man's name.
She isn't actually a man,
she just identifies as a man for the purpose of writing thrillers.
Which women can't do because they get too frightened while writing them.
See! (AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
It wasn't what YOU thought!
It was just a sexist joke from the '80s.
You liked that, didn't you, sir? That was your favourite bit.
Second bit for you.
Loved it. He's going, "Oh, now it's picking up."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
(MANCUNIAN ACCENT) "Women writing thrillers,
what the fucking hell's that about, ey? Fuckin..."
(REGULAR VOICE) So...
So what I'm saying is, right? JK Rowling...
is he still talking about that? Yes!
This is a short bit by my standards.
In the second half, there's a routine,
it's half an hour long, there's no jokes,
and it doesn't make any sense. (AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And it's the best bit.
So what I'm saying is, right?
JK Rowling doesn't become a man when she writes her books for adults.
She doesn't sit there in the morning
with all women's genitals all over her.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Writing Harry Potter books for children, you know.
Writing about a moth that had a hat on
and was in charge of a library.
Or a...
a dish that was ashamed of its memories.
Have you read them, madam? You look like a Harry Potter fan?
Have you read the Harry Potter books? Yeah? Would you read that?
Harry Potter And The Dish That Was Ashamed Of Its Memories?
You wouldn't read that? Wouldn't you be...
You wouldn't read that one? Wouldn't you be curious about... to see?
Cos it's a tragic idea, isn't it? Cos it's ashamed,
the dish, of its memories, isn't it?
But can it tell anyone about it?
No, cos it's a dish, so it will...
it will never have closure.
It's a terrible... Would you read that?
Are you the sort of person that thinks they're quite well-written,
actually, the books? Cos they're not.
So I... (AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Then... (APPLAUSE)
They're for children, they're for children! Then...
She doesn't pop up to Hanover Street, Edinburgh, at lunchtime,
have gender reassignment surgery,
and go back in the afternoon with all men's genitals on her
and write about things men are interested in, you know.
Like batteries or the Bay of Pigs massacre.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS) It's what you like, isn't it?
Then...
..she just rings up her agent.
She goes, "Hello, Jeff, I'm a man now."
And he goes, "Oh, good." And then when her...
When her husband comes in at night and she's still working,
he doesn't go, "Oh, God, what is she now?"
And he knows that she's a woman and she's writing Harry Potter books
if she's writing about a ferret that had a motorbike.
Or a...
(LIP TRILL)
..a cup that was an ombudsman.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Would you read that madam? Harry Potter And The Cup That Was...
You'd read it, wouldn't you, sir? Yes.
No? Leave her alone? OK, fine.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
The thing about audience interaction?
you have to know when to just walk away.
"Leave her alone." OK, fine.
It's a bit of fun, fuck's sake.
You don't mind, do you? Would you read that?
An ombudsman, it's an ombudsman. The cup.
How would it arbitrate a dispute? No-one knows.
That's all I was gonna say. A reasonable question.
She's what?
MAN: If you don't stop it, I'll punch ya.
You'd what? Punch her?
Who, me?
I'm not gonna punch anyone.
You'll punch me.
What, for asking what a dish would be like if it was an ombudsman?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Fucking overreaction.
What would you do if I asked you...
..what a fork would be like if it was a gynaecologist?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
If you're gonna get into this.
What would you do... If you'd punch me if I said,
"What would you do if a dish was an ombudsman?
What would you do to me if I said that a...
(CHUCKLES)
..a lemon squeezer was a chartered accountant?
What would you do there?
I think you've got out of your depth, sir. So...
(APPLAUSE) Then...
He's a plant, people at home are going, "He's a plant, that man.
He's an actor. I've seen him in Coronation Street."
So...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
(CHUCKLES) Then...
And he knows that she's a man
if she's writing about things men are interested in, you know.
Like fuse boxes or who would win in a fight between a shark and a zombie?
That's what men like. The laughter's fading away a bit, isn't it?
I think it's cos the momentum of the routine was somewhat derailed.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS) But it may be...
It may be... (CHUCKLES)
It's out of date now, innit? It's irrelevant, that kind of stuff.
It's irrelevant, that routine.
Because everything's gone woke now, hasn't it?
I don't know if you've noticed. Everything's gone woke,
and these days... Look, I know it has,
because I saw Liz Truss talking about it to some neo-Nazis in America.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS) So everything's gone woke, hasn't it?
Oh dear. And...
these days people... It's all gone woke.
People are allowed to write about whatever they like,
irrespective of their gender.
It's all wrong, isn't it, sir? It's all wrong.
And it was better... It's a shame, isn't it?
Cos he, we're cutting across to this man
for all the responses about sexism.
But he's sat next to a man who hasn't laughed once at anything.
And he's gonna be in all the shots, isn't he.
Grey haired, judgemental haunted figure.
Like a... Like a...
..premonition of my own death in a big coat.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Fucking nightclub bouncer and Ingmar Bergman's death,
from The Seventh Seal. (AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And then Sid The Sexist next to a fucking ridiculous trio of...
The three main kinds of men, actually.
So...
These days, people are allowed to write
about whatever they like, aren't they? Irrespective of their gender.
It was better in the old days, you knew where you were, didn't you?
You went in the bookshops, in the '70s.
Not in Salford, there weren't any, there was just things on fire.
You went in... Better, though, wasn't it, in those days?
Because you could leave your door open
cos you didn't even have one, it had been smashed in.
And... (AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
..you could...
How interested are people from other parts of the country
gonna be in this? I don't think so. But um...
"I don't live in Salford. I don't want to know about it.
Talk about London like the others." So...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
You knew where you were, didn't you, in the old days?
You went in the bookshop.
Women's books in the '70s, they were pink, weren't they?
With curly writing on them
and a pastel drawing of a woman crying into a bowl.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And men's books, they were black, weren't they?
Or red, some of them, with block capital letters on them
and a photograph of Hitler being castrated.
Now, I went in a bookshop the other day, the book was green.
What the fuck's that all about?
It had Hitler on the front, yeah, but he was like a cartoon character.
He was on holiday with loads of grapes, geese following him.
What the fuck's going on? I don't want to read that! So...
I don't want to read that. So what I'm saying is...
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, from earlier, you remember.
That's why you can't come in late and wander about.
He's... If he's gonna write about different things,
he should flag it up. So when he writes about veg,
he should call himself Hugh Fearnleaf-Whittingstall.
And when he writes about meat,
he should call himself Hugh-man Placentas Are Delicious.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
So some material there, 17 minutes of material there.
Sometimes runs a bit longer, that bit.
The JK Rowling bit didn't quite land like it usually does tonight.
The beauty of that routine, to me,
is that I never make clear what it isn't about.
The problem tonight is a lot of you
didn't realise what it wasn't about anyway.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
So...
..we're about halfway through now.
And so far we've seen a definition of stand-up comedy, haven't we?
That was good. And then...
It was. And then...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
We saw...
And then we saw some stand-up comedy being invented, didn't we?
In front of your menacing, threatening faces.
And...
And later on in the show,
we're gonna see something quite impressive, actually.
We're going to see how I am able to give stand-up comedy
a genuine emotional weight and depth.
And we're gonna see how stand-up comedy is delivered.
I've not been delivering it so far, I've just been saying it.
And you should notice a real gear shift later in the show.
One of the great things about the way stand-up is delivered
is you can address the audience directly, can't you?
You can address the audience directly. People love that.
Bald man with glasses there. Bald man with a beard there.
Bald man with a beard and glasses there.
Bald man with glasses there. Bald man with a beard there.
Bald man with a beard there.
Bald man with glasses there.
Bald man there with a beard. Bald man.
Bald man there. Bald man with a beard.
Bald man with a beard and glasses. Bald man.
The classic Stuart Lee audience there.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS, APPLAUSE) That we've seen...
..repeated night after night all round the country.
Looking like nothing so much
as a group of disappointed sub-postmasters...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
..vainly waiting for the justice that will never come.
It will never come, that justice.
You can talk to the audience directly. People love that.
Man in the third row, what's that on your T-shirt there?
Sort of like some kind of mountain or something?
It's a mountain, yeah. And what do the words...
What do the words say on it?
MAN: Original. Original what?
Original mountain?
You've just come out not knowing what that is. It could mean anything.
Well, is it... a brand of something? No.
It's just a mountain with "original" written on it.
See, I've done this show...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
..two hundred times now. Normally, I'll point at someone's T-shirt.
They know what it means.
And then...
I'm able to have some fun interaction with them.
But it's very misleading when a man comes out
strewn with images and symbols and words that mean nothing to him.
"I don't know what that means. I'll put it on."
What's that on your T-shirt there, sir? What does that say?
MAN 2: It says Brand New. It says Brand New?
It's a band.Oh, the band, the band is called Brand New.
But is the T-shirt brand new as well?No.
No. It's misleading, isn't it? (AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
If I saw you wearing that,
I'd come up to you and go, is that brand new?
And you'd go, "Yes." And I'd go, "When did you get it?"
You'd go, "Three years ago." I'd go, "What do you mean?"
And you'd go, "It's a band called Brand New."
And I'd go, "Oh." So...
What's that on your T-shirt, sir?
MAN 3: Catalonian.
Catalonian?Yeah. What does that mean?
Pep Guardiola.
What? Pep Guardiola.
Cat Graviola? (LAUGHTER)
Pet Graviola.
I've got hearing aids. Look, I don't know...
I can't understand what you're saying.
It says... Pep Guardiola.
Pet Gladiola.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
It says Catalonian and now you're saying Pet Gladiola.
What does it say? What is it?
It's a man in a kind of lift shaft with a...
That's the shadow of who? Pet Gradiola. Who's he?
The Catalonian. Is that a...? What is that?
What is it? He's from Catalonia, in't he.
I know he's from Catalonia, yeah.
One would hope so, unless he's as misleading as some of these people.
The Catalonian. Well, what does he do, this Catalonian man?
He's what? He's a football manager.
Pet Gladiola is a football manager.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS) Right.
It's a shame...
It's a shame we're filming this cos that's the shittest that's ever gone.
Fucking...
A load of people in Salford.
What's that? He says in desperation.
You with a beard, what's that say?
MAN 4: It says Explorer.Explorer. Are you an explorer, are you?
Or do you not even know what that is?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
It's a great isn't it, towards the audience, people love it. There's...
This is supposed to be sold out as well.
There's an empty seat there, there's two there.
Three there, rather unhelpfully, in the front row.
They'll be watching that, won't they?
The... Jimmy Carr and people like that.
Going, "Look, there's no one there."
And... You've scared them off cos you symbolise death.
People won't come there.
They're worried you're gonna challenge them to a game of chess
and then it'll all be over. So...
Yes, I'm improvising around an Ingmar Bergman film.
Yeah, that's what you get off me. So I don't know...
I don't know anything about football.
I know about Scandinavian art house cinema.
Not a man called Pet Gladioli.
So I...
There's always weird empty seats when I'm sold out.
What it is with me,
is I'm coming to a place and people don't know who I am,
and they look in the brochure and they go,
"Should I go and see this Stewart Lee? Should I go and see him?"
And then their friends go, "Yeah... you should go and see him."
Really, it's the sort of thing that you SHOULD,
you SHOULD go and see.
Like it's a necessary but unenjoyable experience, you know.
A bit like when you're on holiday in Eastern Europe
and you're having a really great time, but just down the road,
there's the scene of some awful World War II atrocity, you know.
And your partner goes, "We should, we should go and see that really,
because we're... we're here."
And then you go, "Well, I'm in the sea. I'm having a..."
"Well, we're here. We should, we've come."
"I've got a pina colada." "We should go and see it."
And then you go and see it, don't you? And it's awful.
And it makes you despair of all humanity. And you have a horrible...
And I'm the that of comedy, basically.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS) And...
So has anyone come on their own tonight?
(WOMAN WOOS) Yes, congratulations yelping person there.
Congrat... Give this person a clap for coming on their own.
(APPLAUSE) Very admirable.
There's no shame in it.
Do you find, as you get older...
What I think, as you get older, you prefer going to things on your own,
cos you're not really interested in what anyone else thinks of anything.
You're one of tonight's winners. You can just go, can't you?
But all these other people, they've got to wander out,
listening to people going, "I thought that the best bit..."
The fuck, who fucking cares?
We're not interested. Shut up!
Anyway, it's great talking to the audience. People love it.
And...
When you're really good at it, like I am, people forget...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Pet Gladioli, yeah.
People forget... (CHUCKLES)
that they're... even in a show,
and they just think they're having a conversation.
But it's a conversation in which the other people
are not really invited to contribute anything at all.
So it's a bit like the sort of conversation that you might hear
on an edition of Richard Herring's podcast, if you've heard of that.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Come on, it's a good podcast, don't be rude. It's a good...
It is a good podcast because it's always interesting, isn't it,
to hear a string of talented young people
listening to what he's been up to this week.
And all the different thoughts that he's had about things.
So people love...
..talking to the audience. It's actually a relatively new thing.
When you go out now, to anything, comedy, music,
you'd expect to be addressed, wouldn't you, by someone?
If you went to see Pet Gladioli doing a talk, then he might go,
(BAD CATALONIAN ACCENT) Hello, I am Pet Gladioli.
Well, what... (AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
What is that on your t-shirt?
(REGULAR VOICE) And you'd expect...
That won't make the cut, will it? That won't make the cut.
It's racist. It's racist.
They don't sound like that, do they, the people of Catalonia? No.
No one knows what they sound like.
So...
(CHUCKLES)
Why...
So what...
You expect to be addressed, don't you, madam? Yes, you expect it.
But it's actually a relatively new thing. And believe it or not,
no one had actually addressed an audience directly like this
in any form of the arts, whether it's theatre, or television,
or anything, before 2016.
That was the first time that...
Well, I expect you to be suspicious, yes, madam.
You're going, "This is either wrong
or it's a set-up for a very long routine."
And it's the latter, isn't it? So...
No one...
No one had addressed an audience directly like this before 2016.
No one. And the first person ever
to address an audience directly in 2016,
it was Phoebe Waller-Bridge, wasn't it?
from the programme Fleabag.
She invented it. Didn't she?
Yes, man with a beard. And no one... Didn't she, stripy red man?
And no one had ever addressed an audience directly before.
And she invented it in Fleabag,
and she was rightly given acres of broadsheet newspaper coverage
and a James Bond script-writing deal,
and billions of dollars of Netflix money.
Because no one had ever spoken to an audience directly before.
Had they, madam? No. Had they, Ingmar Bergman's death?
No, no one had ever done it.
And she invented it.
And there certainly hadn't been a long-running proletariat art form
running many hundreds of years,
in which the audience were routinely addressed on a nightly basis
in venues that appeared to have been purpose-built to accommodate that.
Well, of course, there had been.
There was pantomime, variety, stand-up.
But the problem with all those genres
is they were performed and consumed principally by working-class people,
and they weren't educated enough to realise how innovative they'd been.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS, APPLAUSE)
They were too busy...
just spilling Bovril all down themselves...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
..and appraising greyhounds.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And it took a posh, educated woman to come along
and explain to them what they'd been doing,
cos they didn't even understand what it was that they'd done.
And it changed everything, didn't it,
when Phoebe Waller-Bridge addressed the audience directly in Fleabag.
It changed everything. And, like me,
you can probably remember where you were
when you saw the first episode of Fleabag.
I remember I was at home watching the first episode of Fleabag.
I like to watch the new comedy shows as soon as they're broadcast,
so I can save time by dismissing them out of hand immediately.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And it started, didn't it, the first episode of Fleabag.
You probably remember, Fleabag was lying in bed, wasn't she?
And there was a young man behind her, sir, like you,
but he wasn't wearing a Pet Gladioli T-shirt.
(CHUCKLES) He was wearing nothing.
And he was wriggling about,
making a lustful face, you probably remember.
And then suddenly, an amazing thing happened.
It was incredible, like the moon landings it was.
Fleabag looked up directly into the camera, didn't she?
Do you remember that? No one had ever done that before.
I'm like, "What the fuck? What's going on here?"
It was incredible.
Then suddenly, she spoke to us. Do you remember...
She spoke to us directly, didn't she? She went...
(NASALLY VOICE) "Hello. My name's Fleabag.
And I'm afraid I've been rather naughty
and you have just caught me having anal sex.
(NORMAL VOICE) I went, "What's going on?"
I was freaking out.
I thought she could see me through the television.
So I jumped up, I put my trousers back on, sir...
..and I realise...
..nothing was ever gonna be the same again, was it?
No! And it wasn't.
And suddenly people were being addressed
right, left and centre, weren't they? In film, theatre, television.
But do you remember what it used to be like in the pre-Fleabag days,
before Phoebe Waller-Bridge invented talking to the audience?
Do you remember? It was rubbish, wasn't it?
Do you remember the news in the 1970s?
Angela Rippon was under the desk, wasn't she, in a...
in a hessian sack, just... just mumbling, going like this.
(MANCUNIAN ACCENT) "That fucking Colonel Gaddafi.
What a fucking bastard. Colonel Gaddafi, the fucking...
Hey! Have you seen this fucking Colonel Gaddafi?!
Have you seen him? Colonel, fucking Colonel Gaddafi. Hey!
(NORMAL VOICE) Angela Rippon there from GB News.
Do you remember?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS, APPLAUSE)
Good impression, that. Do you remember...
When she was young. She's not like that now.
When... Do you remember?
You remember her, don't you?
On Morecambe and Wise with her legs. Do you remember?
She had legs, no one could believe it.
Thought she was just some stumps being wheeled around.
So... (CHUCKLES)
Do you remember?
She's got legs, people couldn't believe it.
Do you remember... Oh,
do you remember what the weather forecast was like
before Fleabag invented talking to the audience?
It was rubbish, wasn't it?
Michael Fish was... He wasn't a real fish, madam.
he was just a man called Michael Fish.
Not like Mickey Mouse. Do you understand?
Michael Fish...
He wasn't a real fish, if there's any children at home.
Michael Fish was...
He was behind the weather map, wasn't he? Reaching round.
He's going, "What's this? Is it fog, Jeff?
Is it fog or wind? I can't see, can I?
Cos it's not... Looking at the audience hasn't been invented.
You'll have to cut the felt more accurately in future. I don't know."
It was rubbish, wasn't it? The weather in those days.
Do you remember what stand-up used to be like in the pre-Fleabag times?
It was terrible. I remember my first gig,
the Acton Banana, Acton High Street, September 1989.
I was called on by the compere.
I shuffled along the back wall...
..as everyone did in the pre-Fleabag times,
taking care not to address the audience
because Phoebe Waller-Bridge hadn't invented it.
I did my act. (REPEATS OPENING BIT AT DOUBLE SPEED)
"Hello. Annoying being alive, isn't it?
Last Sunday at 6:30 there was a knock at my door...
born-again Christian evangelists. 'What is the question?'
'Is it for which role was Robert Powell nominated for a BAFTA?'
'No.' 'Can I guess again?' 'Yeah.' 'I was born in 0 BC...'
It's rubbish isn't it? It's rubbish.
Cos I can't see the audience.
I can't read the room, it's terrible.
But that's what everything was like before Fleabag invented...
talking to the audience.
I remember that night I was walking home after my first ever gig.
Up Horn Lane in Acton, I was 21 years old.
I'd done one gig,
and I was already thinking to myself,
"There has to be a better way of doing this."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
I wasn't sure what it was, Salford.
I suspected it might have something to do
with the relative positioning of audience and performer.
(AUDIENCE CHUCKLES)
But I wasn't sure, right?
But the main thing is,
I was 21 years old, I'd done one gig,
and I was already thinking outside the box, yeah?
Now, if you've been coming to see me these last...
..thirty-five years or so,
in Salford, Manchester.
You'll know that I've always been regarded
as something of an innovator, an iconoclast.
And if you're a woman who's been brought here tonight by a man,
he will have explained that to you on the way here.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
He'll have gone,
(POSH ACCENT) "Yeah, my favourite, uh, comedian actually.
Uh, there's a guy called Stewart Lee.
No, you won't have heard of him because he's...
he's not on all the kind of shit you watch."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
"Stewart Lee.
Yeah, he's amazing. You'll... Oh, he's amazing, Stewart Lee.
When you, you know, when you've seen Stewart Lee...
..you will find you can't really watch
other stand-up afterwards, he's amazing.
Stewart Lee, no, he's not been on that.
He wouldn't go on that. But um...
Stewart Lee. Yeah, he's uh...
Stewart Lee. Stewart Lee. Stewart Lee.
Stewart Lee. It's Stewart...
No, Stewart Lee. Stewart Lee.
Stewart Lee. Stewart Lee.
It's Stewart Lee. Stewart Lee.
Stewart Lee. It's Stewart Lee.
Stewart Lee. That's his...
It's Stewart Lee. Stewart Lee.
(NASALLY ACCENT) It's Stewart Lee. It's Stewart Lee.
(DEEP POSH ACCENT) Oh, yeah, the first time you've seen Stewart Lee,
you won't understand what he's doing at all.
But...
by about the 15th time, you'll see...
..it's very clever.
What he does is... he comments on his act as he goes along.
Often in the character of another person. It's amazing.
So yeah, no. He wouldn't go on that.
He was asked to, but he's turned it down.
He's...
Stewart Lee. Yeah, he's amazing.
I... Yeah, he's amazing.
Stewart Lee. Uh, Stewart Lee. Yeah, Stewart Lee.
Yeah, Stewart Lee. Yeah.
I'm not even sure that what Stewart Lee does is comedy, really.
It's more like it's some kind of art.
Or it's jazz, actually. It's a kind of like a jazz...
A bit of ideas. Not the sound. It's amazing.
Stewart, no, that's Lee Mack, he's completely different.
He's a clown or something for children.
So I... So..." (AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
(CHUCKLES, NORMAL VOICE) It's true, Mum.
He's in the Choker Brothers or something, I don't know.
But it's um...
So...
(POSH ACCENT) "Stewart Lee, yeah.
I've got tickets for him at the Salford Lowry on Monday,
so uh... you should come, actually.
Cos Monday's a difficult night for comedy.
I think he's done too many dates there.
A lot of the people won't really be that into him.
They won't understand what their clothes mean.
And some of them will be
both physically and spiritually menacing."
(LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE) "And um...
it's sure to be a struggle for him and it may not go well.
And that, to me, is when he's at his best, actually.
I actually...
I actually prefer Lee when it's not working.
I think it's more interesting. And it probably won't work on Monday.
So you should come. You don't want to come?
OK, fine. Well... we'll do something else.
You don't want to do anything with me? OK."
(NORMAL VOICE) Is this a bit close to home for you, madam, is it? Yeah?
It is, innit? There's never a queue for the ladies,
though, is there, at my shows? Have you noticed that?
It's not my fault. I try to be inclusive.
You've seen me. The problem is,
a lot of the women, wives, girlfriends, partners,
they don't want to come and see me, right?
Because the problem is a lot of the men that like me,
they're sort of the same as me. OK?
So the wives, girlfriends, partners, grandmothers, they don't want to come
and see another monotonous, passive-aggressive man...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS, SCATTERED APPLAUSE)
..just waffling on about things.
But it's worse than at home, isn't it?
Cos it's coming through these massive speakers.
So you can't just go, "That's very interesting, dear, yes.
I've just got to go in the garden, actually, cos I...
I think the hedgehog's fallen in its milk."
You have my sympathy, ladies. I know what it's like,
you're trying to get ready for bed at night, aren't you?
You're trying to get in the shower
or have a talk about the gas bill or something.
And he's lying in bed, isn't he? On his back.
He's got a laptop on his chest,
and he's watching little clips of me on YouTube, isn't he?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And he's going, "Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho.
Ah! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
Aah-ha-ha.
Aah-ha-ha-ha-ha. Ah.
Oh, God, oh. Oh. Oh, he's a genius."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
"And so am I, because I like him."
And you're going, "Are you watching that boring bloke again?"
He goes, "No, not boring, actually.
But you can't just watch a minute of it.
You have to watch the whole four and a half hours.
Cos it's all about structure, like Tolstoy."
So...
I know this is the case, cos they tell me, the women.
A woman came up to me in Leeds in May, and she said...
"I wasn't gonna come and see you tonight," she said.
"But I did come. And do you know what?
I enjoyed it more than I thought I would."
I said, "Oh, and will you be coming again?"
And she said, "No."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
A woman came up to me in Edinburgh in August.
And she said, "Do you know that bit you've got about JK Rowling?"
She said, "I agree with you about that,
intellectually and morally," she said.
"But all the same, it's not great, is it?
To be having a go at someone,
a successful woman, for having an opinion.
And I wondered what you thought of that."
And I said, "Well, I can see where you're coming from.
I don't know what I can do about it in that joke."
And she said, "Well, maybe you can address it later in the show."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
I said, "I don't think that would work."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
You are supposed to talk to the audience now.
I very nearly invented it, but I lost my nerve.
And, of course, Phoebe Waller-Bridge got there first.
I don't resent her that. I think it's...
better that ultimately, all that broadsheet newspaper coverage
and James Bond script writing commissions
and billions of dollars of Netflix deals
went to someone who already had an enormous private family income.
But...
Cos I'd only have wasted it, you know, on beans, probably.
Um...
But you are supposed to talk to the audience now.
I... Who's seen me before, here?
(SCATTERED WOOS) Yeah.
So you've noticed tonight I'm addressing the audience
a lot more directly than I normally would.
I don't, really like doing it. I find it very stressful.
I... don't really like talking to people generally,
in real life, to be honest.
If I have to talk to people, I normally look at the floor,
or I look sort of to the side of their face.
And if I have to lip read, cos I've got... (MIC FEEDBACK)
..hearing aids on, I actually look directly at someone.
And I find it incredibly terrifying.
And I hadn't really realised
that I'd spent my life avoiding eye contact till it was...
About 15 years ago,
I was working with a TV director, Peter Orton.
You probably know Peter, and...
I'd... (SIGHS)
It had obviously been building up cos suddenly,
he just lost his rag with me, and he shouted,
"When talking to someone, Stewart,
it's customary to look them in the eye."
And then he walked off and...
..I was left alone. And I kind of went to pieces, really.
Cos I realised, for the first time,
that I'd spent my whole life trying to avoid any...
Yeah, you know. And I don't know why...
Look, I'm not a therapist,
but I was trying to think why this might be.
And... I...
I spent the first eighteen months,
two years of my life in care.
I was shunted around a succession of children's homes
in Shropshire and Staffordshire.
So I wouldn't have had...
the kind of moment-to-moment understanding of intimacy.
So there's about 20 minutes of the show left now.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And this is the optimum point for bringing in this kind of material.
About 20 minutes from the end,
you bring in an emotionally manipulative subplot.
And you normally find that gives you enough of a push
just to carry the audience with you through to the end.
If you've seen a lot of long-form narrative stand-up,
you'll have seen other stand-ups doing this,
people like Daniel Kitson, Hannah Gadsby, Fern Brady.
I was the first person to do this.
(AUDIENCE CHUCKLES)
But yeah, it's been...
It's been a struggle in adult life. I...
(AUDIENCE CHUCKLES)
I suspect that I've had periods of undiagnosed depression.
Certainly I was fast-tracked by my...
You know, and I...
I...
I found lockdown particularly difficult.
I know a lot of us did. I-I...
I just lost it, really. I stopped caring about myself. I...
I gained weight and I lost weight, gained weight again.
Drinking.
At the end of lockdown, I went to see my GP.
And I did something I wouldn't normally do.
I went to see my GP and I said to him,
"Doctor, doctor I think I'm depressed."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And he said, "We're doing this are we? Seriously?
A fucking doctor, doctor joke? What's fucking wrong with you, prick?"
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS, APPLAUSE)
"I've got patients to see." And, I said, "Come on!
Return the ball!
Doctor, doctor, I think I'm depressed."
And he said, "Well," he said, "Whenever I'm depressed," he said,
"I cheer myself up by going to see the funniest comedian that there is.
Stewart Lee."
And I said, "I am Stewart Lee."
He said, "Oh, I didn't recognise you, you've put on a lot of weight."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Good joke that, I think.
And then...
(SIGHS) Then he said, "Well," he said.
"You may have an undiagnosed neurodiverse condition," he said.
"Most comedians have and they've all been able to monetise it."
Um...
He said, "I'm gonna ask you five questions that will tell me,"
he said, "If that's the case."
And I've got these five questions here.
And I'd like to read them out.
If people have seen me before,
you'll know there's normally a bit in every show,
if you've seen them on the telly, where I read out some serious thing,
like a death threat or something that I've had.
And to make it funny, underneath,
I will play in a light...
..jazz instrumental, normally in a major key.
And you find the contrast between the seriousness of the questions
and the frivolity of the jazz will create humour.
Now... I'd like to do that tonight,
read out these questions and play in the jazz,
but I can't play in the jazz, because we've left the EU.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And I don't want to get back into all that, OK? We are where we are.
People knew what they were voting for,
and to suggest otherwise is patronising, I think.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
But the problem is...
OK, I need... to read this out,
but I can't play in because we've left the EU.
The problem is...
I'm filming this, right, and...
when you film it and then sell it on to a broadcaster,
you have to pay a clearance fee for the music, any music in it.
And that's normally about six grand, right?
Now, when we were in the EU, that one six grand fee,
that would cover you for selling it to...
selling this to any EU territory.
And because of the negotiating power of a trade block,
Brussels could get really cheap deals off,
you know, Canada or America or whatever.
The problem now is we've left the EU,
so when I film this, and if I want to try and sell this on,
even just to the Republic of Ireland,
if it's got music in it, I've got to pay another six grand every time.
Now, these two hour blocks of shows you see of mine,
they normally give me about 110 grand to film them,
and then after all the costs,
I'm left with about eight, nine thousand
before tax and an agent's commission.
So as you can see... (AUDIENCE CHUCKLES)
..I've only got to try and sell it on one more time,
and I've lost money.
Because we can't play in the jazz, because we've left the EU.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And I know there's been a lot of problems with Brexit
people didn't see coming.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
But I think if people had known
that it would limit their access to jazz...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
..we may have seen some very different voting patterns.
Particularly in a lot of the hardcore leave-voting towns,
you know, like... South Shields...
..Peterborough, Scunthorpe.
They're all big jazz towns.
Scunthorpe's like New Orleans, isn't it, in the '50s.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Paris after the war, you know...
..melodies drifting through every wrought iron balcony.
Um...
So I can't play in the jazz because we've left the EU.
The problem is, this doesn't really work,
these questions, without the jazz playing in underneath.
So what a lot of you will be thinking,
"Oh, well, just cut this bit." Right? "Just cut it."
I can't cut this bit, right? Because...
Right, if you've seen it before...
OK, you'll have noticed this show...
..it's a lot more fun than they normally are, isn't it?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
There's a kind of solid 20 of Frankie Boyle,
kind of punchy gags at the top,
there's a lot of fun interaction with the audience,
sometimes it goes wrong, but it's mainly...
The show feels a lot looser than they normally do, a lot less formal.
But when you get home tonight, and you think about what you've seen,
you'll realise that, of course,
this show is as rigorously structured as they always are.
You may realise that, you may not realise that.
None of the critics did.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
The problem is I can't drop this bit,
cos it ties back to the beginning, sets up the end,
and it's sort of the emotional through line
of what the show is about.
But it won't work without the jazz, but I have got to do it.
So what I'm gonna ask you to do here tonight is...
No, is in your own heads...
..when I read these questions out.
Yeah, all of you just imagine, silently,
a simple jazz instrumental in a major key
running underneath what I'm saying, and then it'll be fine.
And if you're sitting there thinking, "This isn't funny."
then you've imagined the wrong music.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Because it fucking is funny.
(APPLAUSE)
Right, now, we need this bit to work,
otherwise the last ten minutes goes wrong, right?
So we're just gonna talk you through it. So I will say...
Imagine your jazz now, Salford,
and then you... and at home,
you can imagine your jazz as well, probably better to be honest.
And you... And then...
let the jazz run on underneath, right?
When I start reading out these questions,
just sort of dial it down a little bit,
and then bring all the jazz up together at the end, yeah?
A lot of people look like they're really struggling here in Salford.
Let's talk you through it again. So I will say...
No, we need this to work cos otherwise the last ten minutes...
So I'll say, "Imagine your jazz now, Salford."
Run the jazz on underneath, simple.
There's no need to do anything... Don't go mad, you know.
Don't suddenly do an amazing trombone solo and go,
"Oh, have you heard these trombones, they're incredible?
I didn't know the trombone could be like that."
Don't do that cos that's for your benefit, isn't it?
This is for me. Help me. Don't do that.
Do you understand? Right, what I'm saying is,
I will say, "Imagine your jazz now, Salford."
Right? Run the jazz on underneath, a simple...
This man in the stripes, you're looking...
You don't have to worry about it, sir. It is jazz, right?
But nothing that sounds like it could have come after about 1956/57.
OK?
Well, because that's when the avant-garde influence
started to come in isn't it?
Yeah? You got people like Sunny Murray on the drums, yeah.
Yeah, changing our idea,
not just of rhythm but of what time itself was, really.
Admittedly, mainly in his Scandinavian radio session work,
with Henry Grimes, people like that.
But...
Well, those tapes must have been heard in New York, I think,
because...
in terms of the approach to the kit at that time,
it's almost like a switch is...
Or... (AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Someone like Albert Ayler on the saxophone,
a lot of you are, like, ravers from here,
you'd think, "Oh, that just sounds like old gospel music."
And it does, but what Albert Ayler was doing
is he was using that music sort of ironically,
as a critique of post-war American race politics, right?
And both those things are great,
but they're not really relevant to what we're trying to do.
You know, just park that. Worry about that.
Get back on board, and I will say, "Imagine your jazz now, Salford."
Run the jazz on under... Look at you, you're going,
"Uh, what kind of line-up is it?" It doesn't matter!
Just a simple trio, mate. Can you do that?
Just drums, base, gui... not the fucking Sun Ra Arkestra.
Twenty blokes dressed as Egyptians from space,
throwing mincemeat into a well.
Or whatever the fuck it is they do
in a publicly funded venue.
Right? So... don't do that.
Just, I will say... Listen!
Don't... This is being filmed, right? So pay attention. Right?
Let's get this good.
I will say, "Imagine your jazz now, Salford."
Run the jazz on underneath, simple trio that...
You know, give everyone a solo if you must,
I'd rather you didn't.
But if you do, keep it in the same key, yeah?
Don't think, "Oh, let's go like Eric Dolphy,
dissonant, challenge the fascism of harmony."
Don't do that. Same time signature.
Don't think, "Oh, I'll leave the drums in four four,
everything else in six eight.
After 28 bars they'll all meet up at the end like Van der Graaf Generator.
It's not fucking... fucking prog rock wank...
That you... This is jazz! Jazz!
Salford, I will say,
(CHUCKLES) "Imagine your jazz."
Run the jazz on a simple three or four note, run it underneath,
keep in the right side of the '50s avant-garde explosion, yeah?
Simple trio, right, give ev... If you must give everyone a solo...
Don't, but if you do, keep it in...
Make sure the solo quotes fairly heavily
from whatever melodic themes you've established at the top.
So people feel like they're in safe hands,
they're not going, "Oh, where's this going?"
Right? So establish...
I will say, "Imagine your jazz now, Salford."
run the jazz on underneath,
a simple three or four note theme from a little trio.
I'll start speaking... If you do solos,
relate back to the original theme.
When I'm speaking, drop the jazz down
and then bring all the themes together at the end
and resolve it perhaps with a diminished seventh,
and for God's sake, don't get side-tracked
into a long, self-indulgent improvisation!
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS, APPLAUSE)
That was touch and go, wasn't it?
Do you think, people at home, I'd still be doing that routine
if it was normally received with that level of bafflement?
That's normally flying out the traps.
Tonight there's people going, "What's this? What's going on?
He's doing some kind of lecture." Of course I'm not!
That's what I do, that's my comedy, it's not a mistake!
That kind of routine,
that's why the broadsheets call me the world's greatest living stand-up,
which they do in case you...
"Why have we not heard of him?"
I don't know, there's been an administrative error!
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
It's cos of stuff like that. That's what they like.
It flatters their intelligence, the broadsheet newspaper critics.
Cos what I do is as close to being not funny at all
as it's possible to be!
And then just at the last minute when you want to blow your own head off,
you go, "Oh, it turns around." And, "Oh, it's brilliant."
Right.
So we're gonna read out the five questions from the doctor.
Remember? From earlier, can you remember?
Start your imaginary jazz now, in your head!
Don't start humming it.
I don't want to have to come back here and...
get copyright clearance off you.
Question one, he said,
"Do you take things very literally? For example,
you may become fixated on particular words or phrases,
or not understand simple social customs?"
It's been the base of my act for 35 years.
Then he said, "Do you always have the same routine
and get very anxious if it changes?"
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
(APPLAUSE)
Fuck... Fuck you. I....
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Fuck you, I find that genuinely off...
I...
It's not the same routine!
I am the most prolific stand-up there has ever been!
I'm known for that. I've written more than any...
It's not the same... Not the same...
I come round all these fucking shithole towns
every two years with a whole new...
it's not the same routine...
Admittedly, I work within very narrow stylistic tram lines.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Tram lines, yeah, you like that, don't you?
But it's not...
Admittedly I did the same routine twice tonight,
but the second time, I was facing the wall.
So it's completely different. I don't know what you're laughing at,
you weren't even here for the beginning! Fucking idiot.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
It's not the same and you can fuck off, right?
Because that... I don't get any of the credit that I deserve.
Fuck off.
Then he said, "Do you find it hard to make friends
and prefer to be on your..."
(LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE)
We do, don't we, person on their own? I don't care. I don't care.
I haven't got any friends.
When I was gonna get married, right, there was only two blokes
who I felt I knew well enough to ask to be my best man, right.
And one of them didn't want to do it
because he'd been invited to a party in Tiverton.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Where he'd been told there would be free cannabis-flavoured jelly.
And he was 52 years old.
And the bloke who did do it, I am very grateful to him to this day.
But I find I can't really talk to him anymore,
cos I voted for remain and he voted for leave.
And I don't know about you, but I find I can't really talk to someone
unless they can see that I'm right about everything
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
I'm 56, I've got coronary artery disease, I'm deaf,
I'm not... I don't want to waste whatever time I've got left
talking to someone I don't agree with about anything!
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
(SINGULAR CLAP) Yeah, then he...
That's right, one person clapping on their own.
It's gonna be a hard edit this, isn't it? There's been a lot of...
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
I'll say it myself, there's been some good ad libs and improvisation.
It's gonna be a hard edit. Much easier, isn't it,
to be like Jimmy Carr and write a very tightly structured set
of short economic jokes, like cracker gags written by Hitler.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
(APPLAUSE)
And then he said...
Do you remember this bit from earlier? He said,
"Do you have a very keen interest in certain subjects
or activities bordering on obsessional?"
Well, I did win Celebrity Mastermind
answering questions on the free jazz guitarist Derek Bailey
where I scored an unprecedented 38 out of 40 with no passes,
but to say it's obsessional is a stretch, I think.
Then he said, "Do you like change?" I don't like change.
Stop your imaginary jazz now, stop it.
You weren't doing it, were you, sir?
I've seen through you, you weren't doing it.
You only get out what you put in.
You should know that by now. So...
He wasn't doing it, I could see him. So...
(CHUCKLES)
No, I don't like change. I...
I appreciate I'm very lucky to do this for a living.
But it's the... the things that I struggle with, you know,
and when I do these shows in London,
I'll do a 350 seater for sort of five nights a week, six months.
Cos I like to go in the...
I could do a week in a big place,
but I like to go to the same place every night, I know where I am.
I go in, I hang this up, I've got a hearing aid charger
and my stereo, and I know where I am.
But on tour it's very... every night is different, you know.
Tuesday I might be in Crewe, and I go in there,
and I'm wearing this, and I'm doing this, and it's the same,
but in the dressing room, there's sort of...
there's four chairs and two cups,
and a kettle with a kind of a black plastic housing.
And that's fine, but then the next night I'll be in Chester,
I go in, I'm wearing this, I'm doing this, that's the same.
But I go in the dressing room, and there's six chairs and four cups,
and the kettle is like a silver 1970s one with a black lid,
and there's absolutely no need for it to be different like this.
Then the next night, I'll be in Glasgow or somewhere,
and I go in there, I'm wearing this, I'm doing this, that's the same,
but I go in the dressing room, there's one chair, there's five cups.
I go, "Where's the kettle?" There isn't one.
And the bloke goes, "You go down there,
and in that room, there's an urn,
and that's always boiling and it's better."
And it isn't better cos it's got no relationship whatsoever
with the previous two nights.
(AUDIENCE CHUCKLES)
And you sit out there, don't you, and you...
you look up at me, and you envy me.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
(LAUGHTER CONTINUES)
Right, you listen to me, right?
This is being filmed... This is being filmed.
And I need this to work, I'm not on telly much anymore,
I need this to work.
There's about ten minutes left, and then we can go.
And for the last bit to work,
you have to envy me.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
(APPLAUSE) And you should...
And you should envy me.
Cos you know what I've got in the fridge in my... hotel?
Before I came here, in London,
I bought six 150 gram packs of sliced mushrooms
that were reduced at Sainsbury's.
(AUDIENCE CHUCKLES)
And I boiled all them up,
and then I've grilled some chicken and I've cut that up,
and I have made six equally...
and I've sized meals in little tubs
that I've kept from the Vietnamese takeaway.
And I've put 30 grams of low calorie mayonnaise in each one.
And I can eat... I don't have to think about what I'm eating at all.
I can just eat those. So...
So you should envy me. But I...
But I stand up here and I look out at you, Salford, and I...
I envy you, I...
I envy you the simplicity of your humdrum lives.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS) Cos...
The pleasures of the simpletons, the simple...
Salford jobs of, you know,
the tram drivers and...
..baristas.
You know, cos look at me, I'm a mess.
I don't mind, I'm a shambles, I'm all over the place.
I'm up, I'm down, I don't know what's going on.
But you, look at you. You all...
You go in and work at the same place every day, don't you?
You see the same people, your work mates,
they're not your friends, really,
but you're on nodding terms, speaking terms with them.
And you all live in a comforting web
of elasticated familiarity that is denied to me.
And I envy you that.
Cos you go into work, don't you, on Monday morning,
and you go,
"Morning."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
"Morning.
Cheers."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And at the end of the day.
"Yeah, see you tomorrow, yeah.
Alright, yeah, I'll see you tomorrow, yeah.
Yeah, I'll see, I'll see you tomorrow."
(LAUGHTER)
"I'll see... Yeah, I'll see you tomorrow, yeah, yeah."
And the next day, Tuesday.
"Morning.
Aye, yeah, yeah."
(MUMBLES)
And at the end of the day.
"Yeah, I'll see you tomorrow, yeah."
"Yeah, I'll see you tomorrow."
(HIGHER PITCHED) "See you tomorrow."
"See you tomorrow."
"See you tomorrow, yeah, I'll see you tomorrow, yeah."
(DEEP PITCH) "I'll see you tomorrow.
I'll see you tomorrow, yeah."
(NASALLY VOICE) "I'll see you tomorrow."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And the next day.
Wednesday.
(JAZZ MUSIC PLAYS)
"Morning."
"Morning, yeah, cheers."
"Morning, yeah.
Yeah, cheers, yeah."
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
"It was cold in the night, yeah."
(WEST COUNTRY ACCENT) "Cold all, cold all night, yeah."
(NORMAL VOICE) And at the end of the day.
"Yeah, I'll see you tomorrow, yeah."
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
"Yeah, I'll see you tomorrow, yeah, yeah, yeah."
"That's alright, I'll see you tomorrow, yeah, see you tomorrow."
(GARBLED SPEECH)
"Yeah."
(GARBLED SPEECH)
"Yeah, a bit warmer tonight, hopefully."
"Bit...
A bit of a warmer night.
God... God willing, yeah, yeah, yeah."
And the next day. Thursday.
"Morning, yeah. Cheers.
Morning, yeah.
Yeah, cheers.
Yeah, morning, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah."
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
"Did rain in the night, yeah, yeah."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
"No.
Because I was asleep, I was asleep, so..."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
"Well, because when I went down in the morning I could see it was..."
And at the end of the day.
"Yeah, I'll see you. Yeah, have a good...
Yeah, I'll see you.
Yeah, I'll... Tomorrow, yeah.
I'll se... yeah, to... I'll see you. I'll see you.
I'll see you. Yeah, I'll see, I'll see you.
See ya, mate. Yeah, see ya, mate.
Yeah, see ya, mate. Yeah, I'll see ya, mate.
Yeah, I'll see you mate. Yeah, yeah, I'll see, I'll see, I'll see you.
Yeah, it's Friday tomorrow, yeah.
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
Roll on the weekend."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
And the next day, Friday.
"Yeah, it's Friday, yeah.
Yeah, it's Friday, yeah.
Friday, it's Friday, yeah.
It's Friday, yeah, it's Friday.
Friday, yeah.
Fr... Friday!"
(AUDIENCE CHUCKLES)
(AMERICAN ACCENT) "Party on, dude."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
(NORMAL VOICE) And at the end of the day.
"Have a good weekend, I'll see you on Monday.
Have a good weekend, I'll see you on Monday.
Have a good weekend, I'll see you on Monday."
(SLOWER) "Have a good weekend, I will see you on Monday."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
(MUSIC ENDS)
"Listen, uh, you don't fancy going for a quick drink after work, do you?
Cos... No, well I, well, well I can't go actually, so...
and I didn't want to so it doesn't matter."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
But you did want to, didn't you?
And you craved that one moment
of human intimacy
perhaps more than anything else you could imagine.
And that's your life, isn't it?
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Your shit life.
This is my life. (TAPS MICROPHONE)
Pure, simple, classic.
But listen to that - there's no laughs, are there?
There's just a strange tense atmosphere of hopeless despair.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
A bit like the kind of atmosphere you might get
at the end of an award-winning piece of theatre.
(APPLAUSE) But no, it's not...
It's not appropriate to end a comedy show.
So we'll... we'll end on a laugh.
And we will, we will end on a laugh.
I'll leave you with a final closing joke.
I've only ever written one decent closing joke.
I wrote it in September 1989.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
I don't know what you're laughing at you (BLEEP)
(LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE)
So...
..I'm gonna finish with it now,
without changing any of the now irrelevant personal details.
And then I'm gonna go. I'll see you in a couple of years.
So I was talking to my grandad the other day, he's 94 year...
Oh, he's dead now, obviously. (AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
But he was alive when I wrote this, I'm not sick, you know.
So I was talking to my grandad the other day, he's 94 years old.
I said to him, "Grandad, you are 94 years old.
What, in your experience, has been the worst thing
about growing so old?"
And he said to me, "Stew, in my experience,
the worst thing about growing so old
has been watching all of the friends that I grew up with
slowly dying off one by one."
And I said to him, "Well, Grandad,
you fed them those berries."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
(APPLAUSE)
Poisonous berries there, thank you for watching.
Goodnight.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
(JAZZ MUSIC PLAYS TO END)
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE END)
(INDISTINCT CHATTER IN AUDIENCE)
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