comedy feature
Unscrambling Lee
Thomas Meek talks to the 41st best stand-up ever, Stewart Lee
"It’s been 23 years since I first came here, but I still love it. I don’t think I could ever miss it.” Stewart Lee is one of the Festival’s real veterans, and with both a stand-up show and a play to put on, he’s back.
“This year’s been really relaxing so far, actually,” says Lee, who recently became a father. “I’m usually up at 5.30am now for the baby, which used to be the time I’d get in when I was here a few years ago. I can almost see the ghost of my past self as I go out the door.”
And it’s not just fatherhood in the future for Lee, as this year’s Festival run sees him perfecting ideas for a much anticipated BBC TV series in 2009. “The show is really for a TV series that’s been four years in the pipeline. There’s old and new material in there. It might seem a bit bitty, but the audiences are responding well.”
It will be a welcome return to our screens for Lee, whose last creative television work was directing the sorely under-rated ‘Attention Scum!’ “I’m back on BBC2 now its ratings are down 50%,” he jokes. “I’m even getting on with the executives this time. I’m so old now, they leave me alone to do what I want, really. Like a real grown up.”
But it’s not only his solo stand-up show Lee’s involved with this Festival. Following on from last year’s sell out play, ‘Johnson And Boswell: Late But Live,’ where Miles Jupp and Simon Munnery played Samuel Johnson and James Boswell attempting to plug their 18th century travel novels, he’s teamed up again with Jupp and Munnery to bring a new version based on Elizabeth I and Sir Walter Raleigh to the Fringe. “They’re both fantastic comedians,” he says of his cast. “And just as good actors as it turns out. It all started as a joke, really, to cast Simon as Elizabeth, but he does actually play it really well.”
Things aren’t all perfect at this year’s Fringe, however, and Lee isn’t afraid to speak his mind on the matter. “There are two bad things with this year’s Festival. The first is the failure of the website to sell tickets. And that’s discouraged the lovely little people with their flasks and sandwiches who come up and fill shows and allow interesting acts to be discovered. The Edinburgh Comedy Festival has also effectively introduced a two-tier system this year. It’s a nice, sane thing to have everyone together on the same footing. But this separates the big acts from the smaller ones and is destroying much of what’s good about the Festival for awful marketing reasons.”
This cynicism of the marketing approach has affected the way Lee distributes his own recorded work. His latest DVD release, ‘41st Best Stand-Up Ever,’ named after a Channel 4 show that ranked him as such, is produced by an independent company. “I did it with Real Talent, and I’m really pleased with the way it’s all worked out. It’s sold more in the first week than my first DVD ever did. It’s certainly helpful to have 90 minutes of material out there that will always be around. It keeps you motivated. From 1997 to 2001 I was doing pretty much the same show, as there was no real incentive to move on.”
This new-found ability to move on has brought Lee full circle to a stand-up show that spans his career and should see his cult status firmly cemented onto the grey streets of Edinburgh.
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Stewart Lee's 'Scrambled Egg' was on at The Stand Comedy Club, while his DVD ‘41st Best Stand Up Ever’ is out now, more details at http://www.stewartlee.co.uk
published: Oct-2008
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