Stewart Lee: 10 Best Standups in the World review

Comedy fans of a certain vintage will have fond memories of Stewart Lee, the acerbic, Buddy-Holly-coiffed genius behind Fist of Fun and This Morning With Richard Not Judy. After a few years away from the comedy scene, during which he has directed the uproarious, affectionate, yet toweringly controversial Jerry Springer - The Opera, he has been provoked in to re-emerging. The catalyst for his reappearance was the Channel 4 show, The 100 Best Stand-Ups. Gratified though he was to sneak in at 41, he felt that he could improve upon the list. In his own words: “I have arrived at my own list of the ten best stand-ups of all time, based on my insider knowledge and a secret ballot of myself conducted by me”. This first show in a series of five at UCL’s Bloomsbury Theatre, then, was advertised as featuring Simon Munnery and a “Mystery Star”, “so damned famous that he cannot and will not be named”, with Lee himself compèring. Looking older and somewhat portlier than in his lean, youthful days on C4 with Richard Herring, Lee’s laidback, undemanding style nonetheless is no more than a velvet glove around the iron fist of his sardonic, angry humour. He opened with a tale about a Jehovah’s Witness who accosted him at his door (“Jesus is the answer. What is the question?” “Um. Complete the name of this seventies rock and roll band - The Blank and Mary Chain”) and a section about his attendance at Stoke Newington Weight Watchers which managed to be both an exercise in gentle self-mockery and a searing piece of religious satire. He claims to be the only man whose attempts to lose weight have been thwarted by Islam, and I see no reason not to believe him. His best work, though, is when he unleashes his ire on political targets. It is actually very refreshing to see good old-fashioned political comedy - the style these days seems to be towards directionless offensiveness-for-its-own-sake and unstructured surrealism, so his volleys against the halfwits who complain about “political correctness gone mad” were both welcome and inspired. Reminding us of some of the more disgraceful episodes in British political life of the last few decades, he mused that, if PC-dom had achieved anything, “it has made the Tory party dress up its inherent racism in more creative language”. A cleverly mimed bit about Richard Littlejohn amending the gravestones of murdered prostitutes also worked well, and ended with the most thoroughly-deserved use of a word that rhymes with “runt” you are ever likely to hear. Of course the risk is that a legendary comic such as Lee could easily be the best thing on the bill, which might not be what you want out of a compère. And, to an extent, so it proved, at least compared with the next act. Simon Munnery Simon Munnery - or rather his alter ego, angry not-so-young man Alan Parker Urban Warrior - is a fine performer, and quite capable of carrying a show on his own, but next to the feline, unflappable Lee his shouty, aggressive style seemed uncouth, almost attention-seeking. While many of his jokes were excellent - referring to a comment by Brett Anderson, late of Suede, that he considered himself a homosexual despite not having ever had any sex with a man, Munnery/Parker opined that he still regarded himself as a Worker - it never felt like anything other than a mismatch; a heavyweight (Stoke Newington Weight Watchers notwithstanding) against a middleweight. To give Munnery his due, the audience were generally on his side, and his lengthy skit about masturbation (“I’m a wanker. That’s my sexual preference. Or rather predicament”) and joined-up thinking about how a nation of wanking males and bulimic females could be used as the solutions to each other’s problems (think it through) got some of the best laughs of the night. But it felt almost cruel lining him up against Lee. The Mystery Guest After all the suspense and intrigue surrounding the Mystery Guest, it was hard to imagine what name would be anything other than a let-down when they were announced. Short of a Bill Hicks comeback tour, I couldn’t think of one. In the circumstances, therefore, the discovery that it was none other than Johnny Vegas was actually a pleasant surprise. The self-confessed idiot - who looked rather slimmer than his previously-advertised eighteen stone; presumably his Weight Watchers experience was more successful than Lee’s - is nothing if not watchable, albeit often in a multi-car pile-up sort of way. And so it proved. He opened his set with an actual attack, warning the audience that he was going to stage-dive. No-one really believed him until he took a run-up and launched his still ample frame fully eight feet through the air, landing on some poor unfortunate in the front row. Astonishingly, paramedics were not required, and Vegas was able to carry on his show, his strange, angry, self-pitying - yet oddly engaging - persona in full swing. As is his way he selected one or two audience members and made their life hell. One girl got what we assumed was the full blast of his neediness (“You’re lovely. A really good listener. Maybe it’s because you’re petrified”) early on, but the true extent of his audience abuse was yet to be revealed. Somehow veering between discussing defecating on children’s heads and encouraging audience members to digitally penetrate strangers, Vegas seemed in his element, although as ever with him it is hard to tell where the character stops and the real man starts. Was he serious, as he claimed, when he started talking about his mother having cancer? He revels in making the audience uncomfortable, which is a Marmite tactic - you either love it or hate it. He attempted to end with a Snow White skit, bringing the same unlucky girl from the front row up, carried on as though dead by six (for some reason) “dwarfs”, also selected from the audience. Bizarrely - after unreservedly groping her supposedly-unconscious form for half a minute or so - when he tried to wake her with a kiss (and predictably went in for the full French with tongues) she responded, and we were treated to a frankly unlikely image of Vegas enjoying a several-second snog with a girl he had apparently never met before. It all seemed fitting, though - after starting the show with a physical assault, it seemed meet to end it with a sexual one. One day I imagine he will get sued, but the Bloomsbury audience loved it. Regarding Stewart Lee’s project to bring together the ten greatest stand-ups of all time - you imagine he is doomed to failure. However, he certainly managed to find two good ones for his opening night, and besides, as long as the man himself is there to bind things together, I for one wouldn’t care greatly who filled in the gaps. Just rename it the Stewart Lee Show and he’ll be fine.