Stewart Lee: Snowflake (2022) Movie Script
This programme contains very strong
language and adult humour.
- Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to
enjoy Snowflake,
starring the self-styled Snowflake of
Stand-Up, Mr Stewart Lee.
- CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I know what
you're thinking.
Ted Bovis has let himself go.
LAUGHTER
This is called Snowflake.
And it's about how I,
as a 1980s politically correct liberal
snowflake comedian,
am no longer sure exactly where I fit
into a comedy circuit
that is drifting away at some speed
from the liberal orthodoxies that
originally characterised it.
They say you should always open with
your strongest bit.
You know, there are millions and
millions and millions of snowflakes
and every single one is different,
but there are only three members of
the '80s pop group Bros,
and two of them are identical.
LAUGHTER
See? I can write jokes, but it's not
of interest to me.
So... Right, the idea with this set,
this is supposed to look like a sort
of 1970s
BBC light entertainment Christmas
show,
the sort of show where if you google
it now,
all the guests are in prison.
Got a guitar there.
Don't worry about that.
Because no-one's thinking,
"Oh, brilliant, the middle-aged
comedian's got an acoustic guitar.
"Superb, what are you going to do with
that guitar, granddad?
"Are you going to satirise the news in
song form
"while simultaneously parodying
"a modern urban music genre that you
don't fully understand,
"like the Laurence Fox of drill?"
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
You like that, the Laurence Fox of
drill?
I don't actually know what drill is.
I said to my 15-year-old, I said to
him,
"I need a single-syllable name of a
modern kind of music for a joke.
"What should I say?" And he said, "Say
drill, Dad.
"And stop breathing so heavily."
So I've said that, the Laurence Fox of
drill.
That's gone all right, hasn't it?
But like I say, I don't know what
drill is.
And my son, he doesn't know who
Laurence Fox is.
So there's a joke that's been
co-written by two people,
neither of whom fully understand it.
And it's not made a blind bit of
difference,
which makes me wonder, what is the
point of spending days, weeks,
years trying to write accurate jokes
when you might as well just come out
and do a load of stupid non-sequitur
surrealist nonsense
like Noel Fielding would, you know,
come out and go,
"Ooh, Tony Oxley has put a llama
hospital in the..."
I couldn't think of anything. I was...
Well, I thought of something.
I was going to say, "He's put a llama
hospital in the meadow",
right, but they would like that,
wouldn't they?
They'd go, "Oh, great. A meadow, let's
frolic in it", you know,
but it doesn't work
because the thing about that Noel
Fielding surrealist stuff
is each element has to have no logical
relationship with the...
It's much harder than it looks,
actually.
I've gone from disparaging Noel
Fielding
to thinking he's a genius in the space
of 30 seconds.
Anyway, don't worry about that... that
guitar.
You know, all stand-up comedians are
failed musicians.
A lot of stand-up comedians are failed
stand-up comedians.
I am. I'll be honest with you.
I am a failed stand-up comedian.
I spent the first 20 years of this
going to silence night after night.
No laughs, dying night after night for
20 years.
But I didn't give up.
And in the end, people assumed it was
deliberate.
"He's actually a genius,
"because nothing he says is funny
ever, even by accident.
"Yes, it's called anti-comedy,
actually,
"and it's a rejection of the rules of
the genre.
"Five stars, The Guardian."
But then I just got sort of stuck
doing this, you know.
And what is this?
It's nothing, is it?
Is it? I mean, I've never really
understood
what it is I'm doing, to be honest.
I haven't. I've just sort of stuck in
it.
It seems to me I come out here
and I describe things that have
happened to me
to the best of my ability,
and people go, "Ha-ha!"
For example... That's how you know
we're heading
into a fairly tightly written bit,
isn't it?
Use of the phrase "For example",
that's the giveaway there.
Anyway, for example... "What?
Something you've written?" "Yes."
So...
Anyway.
So, for example... I know, it seems
contrived now, doesn't it?
For example... "What? You've
obvious..." You know. Anyway.
So, for example...
I know, who says that? It's like your
dad, isn't it?
For example, "Put that over there."
Anyway...
That's what I'm talking about.
Not there... Anyway, so...
For example, erm...
Last year, right, and this is actually
true. I...
No, it is.
Sounds like it isn't, doesn't it?
Because... I don't know. Anyway.
So... It is, though. Anyway.
For ex... Oh.
For example, last year,
and this is actually true...
It is. It is true.
Well, the first bit is.
The second bit's...
The second bit's an exaggeration
based on the first bit.
So... You'll see when we get there.
Don't worry about it.
Anyway. So, anyway, for example...
For example, last year, and this is
actually true...
It is. It is true.
Right.
I know what you think.
That's what the normal comedians do,
isn't it?
They do like an hour and about halfway
through they'll tell a story
and they go, "And this is actually
true."
And you go, "Oh, what about all the
other stuff?"
You feel cheated, don't you?
No? OK, never mind. So...
For example, last year,
and this is actually true. It is.
So... Imagine if you weren't enjoying
this bit.
LAUGHTER
Be irritating, wouldn't it?
SCATTERED APPLAUSE
I sympathise, to be honest. If you
were...
If you were to come up to me
afterwards and say to me,
"I didn't really enjoy that bit",
I would struggle to make a case for
it.
LAUGHTER
But it is going well, isn't it? Listen
to the room.
A lot of people, this is their
favourite bit, but it's nothing.
It's awful. It's rubbish, isn't it?
Anyway...
It's pointless, isn't it? A waste of
time.
So anyway, for example, last year,
and this is actually true... It is.
Wait till you hear it. The first bit,
you'll go, "That's true.
"Not sure about that second bit.
That's an exaggeration, I think."
It is. I've told you. Anyway...
For example... Let's get on with it.
It's being filmed, isn't it?
People don't want to see this on TV,
do they?
Anyway, for example...
I know you like it, but I'm telling
you now,
this will not translate to television.
The viewers at home will feel
alienated
by the amount of fun the audience
appear to be having...
..because the cruel light of
television
will expose this as the sham it is.
Anyway, for example, last year, and
this actually happened...
No, that's what Greg Davies says.
All the others say, "And this is
actually true",
but Greg Davies, he says, "And this
actually happened".
And that's his contribution, I
think...
..to the genre.
He took an old favourite,
he put a spin on it.
So... Anyway...
For... No. For example, last year,
and this really, this actually
happened...
It did. This is actually happening
now.
You're thinking, "Is this actually
happening?"
Yeah, it is. "Really? But it's shit."
I know, but it's happening, and it's
getting loads of laughs, isn't it?
Can you imagine how irritating that is
for me?
I struggle to write these great
things... This is nothing
but there's a palpable sense of
hysteria here in York tonight,
a notoriously taciturn city, if I
don't mind telling you.
APPLAUSE
Anyway...
For example, last year, and this
actually happened, right?
It did. Not only is this actually
happening, but Ben Thompson,
who is a very respected critic,
who writes books about the theory of
comedy,
he came up to me after he saw this in
Bexhill-on-Sea, this bit,
and he said that he thought this bit
represented the apogee
of everything I've been trying to
achieve for 30 years.
I know. I find that quite offensive,
to be honest.
Anyway, so... What is it? It's
nothing, is it? So...
For example, last year, and this
actually happened...
..I was bitten in the leg by a false
widow spider.
I was.
So I went to the hospital
and they prescribed me
anti-inflammatory drugs,
and they sent me to see a doctor of
tropical medicine.
Now, the bloke in before me,
he'd been bitten in the leg by a false
widow spider as well.
But he had a false leg.
LAUGHTER
So they prescribed him anti-irony
drugs.
And they sent him to see a doctor of
philosophy.
That went all right, didn't it, in the
end? It's quite good.
I'll tell you what, because that went
well,
I've got an extra possible third
section of that joke I can do.
So we'll try it, an extra possible
third section
of the false widow spider joke.
It's what we call a topper in the
trade,
if you're a comedian in the room
tonight, or watching at home.
A topper is when you've done a bit and
you think,
"Well, I can put an extra little bit
on the top there."
So we'll see how this goes.
The wife of the man...
LAUGHTER
Ah, it's already been worth it for
some people, hasn't it?
There's a bloke over there going,
"He's got a wife, brilliant!"
"What's she going to be like?"
Quite a character, I expect, given
that she's appearing in a joke.
She's bound to either change the
direction of the narrative
or at the very least alter the
perspective from which we view it.
Otherwise, what's she even doing in
the joke?
She's just a passenger, isn't she, a
passenger in the joke.
And there are no passengers in my
jokes.
There's no dead wood in my material.
It's lean, cut to the bone.
It isn't, is it? That's why that's
funny.
So...
Possible...
It's the opposite of that.
The possible third section to the
false widow spider joke.
Here we go. If it doesn't work, it
doesn't matter.
The wife of the man who was bitten by
the false widow spider
was told erroneously by the hospital
that her husband had died.
LAUGHTER
Thank you for laughing there,
because...
Ideally, you should be able to leave
that joke there,
because everything you need to know to
find that funny
is actually implicit within that
sentence.
And in fact, if you're near the front,
you can see I've written that on my
notes.
I've written, "Ideally, you can leave
it there.
"Everything you need to find that
funny
"is implicit within that sentence."
But what, sir, if you wouldn't mind
popping up here,
what have I written just there in
block capital letters?
- "May need clarification."
- May need clarification. That's
right.
May need clarification.
So when the woman who wasn't widowed
came in to claim the false leg man
who hadn't been killed by the false
widow spider,
the levels of verbal confusion were
unprecedented.
That's the punchline there.
APPLAUSE
The Dave channel's punchline of the
year 2022.
So... That's finished now, that bit,
relax.
So I was in the hospital in the
waiting room with my leg
and I found myself in the waiting room
reading a magazine that I wouldn't
normally read.
It was the men's fashion magazine GQ,
and I'm not really the target audience
for the men's fashion magazine GQ.
Although this is actually a very
expensive jacket,
particularly in this size.
So...
So I found myself reading an article
in GQ
by the 1970s punk-era polemicist
and popular 21st century novelist Tony
Parsons.
Do people know who Tony...?
MURMURS OF AGREEMENA lot of you, not everyone, which is a
shame,
because I'm now going to talk about
Tony Parsons for 45 minutes.
But anyway, Tony Parsons had written
an article about a man
who he described as being, and I
quote,
"A woke, enlightened, professionally
sensitive Guardian columnist,
"BBC-approved comedian who can be
guaranteed to dress to the left."
And I thought, "This bloke sounds
great.
"It's exactly the sort of person I
like
"and I'm really going to enjoy reading
this."
And then I realised it was about me
and it wasn't meant to be
complimentary.
"Dress to the left."
What does that even mean?
Dress to the left. Now, if you're near
the front,
you can see that I dress to the right,
right? There is the...
There's the bulge of my penis there on
the right.
But over here, there's just a gap.
There's nothing there. But there's a
bulge there.
So I dress to the right, OK?
But...
But I've never voted for a right-wing
party.
So it's almost as if there's no
relationship...
..between the shape of your genitals
and your long-term voting intentions.
Of course, when I was young, my penis
hung directly vertically
down the middle of my groin.
But over the years, as I've got older,
it has drifted to the right.
Like Eamonn Holmes.
But stinking less of stale old piss.
Now...
In the 1970s, take my word for it,
Tony Parsons, he was a sort of
left-wing punk rock,
socialist worker party, Marxist kind
of bloke.
But today, he's a Brexiteer Tory
voter.
He writes for The Sun and GQ.
So presumably, over the last 45 years,
Tony Parsons' genitals
have changed shape and they've moved
across
from the left-hand side of his groin
to the right.
Either that, or they've stayed in the
same place
and Tony Parsons' body has revolved
around them.
Like a horrible Catherine wheel made
of meat.
Anyway, I carried on reading this
article,
and it wasn't just me that Tony
Parsons was annoyed with.
He was annoyed with any man, me
included, to be fair,
who had publicly used the C-word,
right, which I assume was "cunt"
although, to be fair, it was quite
hard to tell because,
rather unhelpfully, throughout the
article
the last three letters had been
asterisked out.
And there's a lot of annoying
four-letter C-words, aren't there?
Like "czar", for example.
What an annoying four-letter word that
is, czar,
because it starts with a C,
but it sounds like it starts with a Z,
and I hate the word "czar".
The word "czar" gave me no end of
trouble in the noughties,
when I was briefly the head of a large
Slavic dynasty.
But it was "cunt". I worked it out
from the context.
LAUGHTER
Thank you for that. It's a good joke,
that,
doesn't normally get the laughter it
deserves.
Tony Parsons said that any man who
would use the C-word, cunt, was,
and I quote,
"The rancid tip of a cesspit
"that is the modern male attitude to
women".
"The rancid tip of a cesspit
"that is the modern male attitude to
women."
Now, I've got two problems with being
called
the rancid tip of a cesspit that is
the modern male attitude to women,
or possibly three if the second one
goes well, but let's...
So the first problem I've got with
being called
the rancid tip of a cesspit that is
the modern male attitude to women
is this, OK?
I'm not an expert on cess, right, I'm
not an expert on cess. I'm not.
You are, aren't you? You love it here.
The faces lit up here in York when I
said "cess".
Around the country, London,
Manchester, "cess" - nothing.
Here in York, you can see the people
go, "At last, cess!"
"Something we in Yorkshire can relate
to.
"Is this what the levelling up agenda
looks like?"
Now, I'm not an expert on cess, right,
or the collection, distribution
disposal of cess, right?
But I'm not sure that it's even
possible
for a cesspit to have a tip.
Right? Because in all the cesspits
I've seen, right,
which is about eight I've seen...
I have, all of them in Yorkshire.
All of them in Yorkshire.
In all the cesspits I've seen,
the cess, yeah,
the cess, that lies flat, doesn't it?
Flat surface of cess, yeah?
You could dig your cesspit into a
conical shape.
You could dig it into any shape you
like, but even then,
the bottom of that cesspit,
that would be the tail, wouldn't it,
not the tip.
The only way that cesspit could have a
tip
is if you could somehow flip it upside
down
and then freeze-dry it before it caved
in on itself.
And I'm not sure that Tony Parsons has
got access
to that kind of technology.
And the second problem I've got with
being called
the rancid tip of a cesspit that is
the modern male attitude to women
is that I'm being called that in GQ
magazine...
..which has an online Hottest Woman of
the Week feature.
And they shouldn't be hot, should
they, the women?
No. Don't leave them locked in the
car.
And if you must, if you are a GQ
reader, crack the window a bit.
Crack the window.
And the third problem I've got with
being called
the rancid tip of a cesspit that is
the modern male attitude to women -
that is a very bold, dogmatic,
opinionated statement
by that Tony Parsons there, isn't it?
And the problem with making a bold,
dogmatic, opinionated statement
these days is that it's very easy,
isn't it,
for someone to use modern technology
like search engines and Google
to go back over everything you've said
in the last 20 or 30 years
until you find something that
contradicts what they say now
and makes them look like a stupid,
vacuous, hypocritical twat, right?
But just because it's easy to do that,
that's no reason not to do it.
So here...
Here's an article that Tony Parsons,
he's called me a misogynist rancid tip
of a cesspit, remember?
Here's an article that Tony Parsons
wrote for The Observer.
It's from a weekly column called
What's In My Shopping Basket?
A different person would write it each
week.
And this contradicts a lot of the
positions he's expressing now.
And this is from 2003, which is only
19 years ago,
so I think it's entirely reasonable to
hold him to account,
Even though every single atom of Tony
Parsons' body
will literally have been replaced
since he wrote this.
So...
Here is What's In My Shopping Basket?
by Tony Parsons from 2003.
I'm going to read the last paragraph.
"Bananas are another snack."
That's not the contentious bit.
No-one would argue with that, would
they?
Bananas are another snack.
"Bananas are another snack.
"I like my bananas firm and fresh,
like my women."
AUDIENCE MEMBERS GROAN
Boo, Tony Parsons, listen.
Listen to woke York booing you.
Tony said I'm a misogynist, right?
A cesspit.
But here he is, only 19 years ago,
He has said that women are the same as
bananas.
and they're not, are they?
They're completely different, and that
is sexist.
It gets worse.
Listen to this from Tony Parsons.
"I like my bananas firm and fresh like
my women,
"not bruised and past their sell-by
date."
AUDIENCE GASP
That's right. Tony "Banana women"
Parsons
has said that women are the same as
bananas.
He thinks they should be bruised and
he thinks
they have a sell-by date.
He thinks that women should be sold,
probably, into slavery, I expect.
That's not acceptable to me.
I may be...the rancid tip of a cesspit
that is the modern male attitude to
women,
but I am against the enslavement of
women.
The enslavement of women runs entirely
contrary
to the values of the Stewart Lee brand
and all of its shareholders.
But I do like my women like I like my
bananas -
not genetically modified and ethically
farmed
by a unionised workforce.
AUDIENCE CHEER
Yeah, listen to that, because that,
John Cleese...
That's how you do a woke joke,
you stupid, miserable, geriatric
bastard.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Listen to them, cheering me
and despising you and your Pythonesque
legacy of privilege.
Anyway...
Tony Parsons said that I was the
rancid tip of a cesspit
because he said I had quipped
something, right,
and he put the word "quipped" in
inverted commas, right?
That's what they do,
the right-wing opinion columnists in
the right-wing newspapers.
They put a word in inverted commas and
then they step back and they go,
"Ha, look, I've put that word in
inverted commas
"and now it means the opposite of
that, ha!"
And they do that to me all the time.
They put comedian Stewart Lee,
but they put...
They put... what they do, they put
"comedian" in inverted commas,
and then they ring each other up
and they go, "I've put this in the
Spectator."
"I've put Stewart Lee in inverted
commas.
"Yeah, that means he isn't a comedian.
Ha!" Right?
But I am a comedian. Look.
So that's the end of that.
They're rubbish, aren't they, the
right-wing opinion columnists?
If I was Putin, I'd want my money
back.
So anyway, Tony Parsons, he said he
said I'd quipped something,
right, which means he's never seen me,
has he,
because I've never... I've never
quipped anything, have I?
No-one's going to come away from this
tonight, are they,
and go, "I loved all the quips.
"It was one quip after another all
night.
"Quip, quip, quip, quip, quip, quip!
"I said to you, didn't I, at one
point,
"'When will the quips end? I can't
stand it'.
"'It's like Tim Vine on
amphetamines'."
No-one's going to say that. What's
going to happen is,
the bored person you brought with you
by accident is going to go,
"It was all right, but it took him 45
minutes
"to tell a barely adequate anecdote
"about a writer I've never heard of."
But, according to Tony Parsons, I had
quipped,
quipped the following sentence -
"It wasn't just racists that voted to
leave Europe,
"cunts did as well."
Now...
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Don't clap.
It's not the Liberal Democrats'
conference.
There's too many people in, look.
"Argh!"
"Ahh!"
Now, I did say that sentence, "It
wasn't just racists that voted
to leave Europe, cunts did as well."
But I didn't, I didn't quip it.
If you saw that show - I did it at the
Barbican here, I think -
I didn't quip it. I didn't come out
and go, "Hello, good evening.
"Hey, I'll tell you what, right? No,
listen in.
"It's not that. Hey! Now..."
"Hey, It wasn't just racists that
voted to leave Europe,
"Cunts did as well, didn't they? Thank
you and good night."
I didn't do that, did I?
I did say that sentence, yes, but,
typically, I said it
at the end of a long, tedious,
45-minute-long routine...
..where I spent the first 20 minutes
attacking the metropolitan liberal
elite for living in a bubble.
That's you, isn't it? You're the
metropolitan liberal elite of York.
Yeah, and you're like the metropolitan
liberal elite
of London, but you've got all batter
spilt down you, haven't you?
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE All batter...
It's all down you.
And you've gone, YORKSHIRE ACCENT:
"I'd quite to go
"and see Jez Butterworth's new play at
the Royal Court...
"Oh, I've got batter all down me. I've
got batter all down me."
"I've got batter...all down me."
"I understand Professor Alice
Roberts's book tour is very...
"Oh, I've got batter all... I've got
batter all down me.
"Just got batter all down me."
"How long is the show tonight? Nearly
three hours, you say?
"Better eat some batter before we go
out, to give us strength.
"What if we get hungry during it?
"Put some liquid batter in a flask
"and you can drink that at half-time.
"Doubtless the bar will be very
overpriced.
"So we're taking a flask of liquid
batter.
"We are from York, after all.
"And that's what we like to drink."
So...
I spent... That's never worked
anywhere else.
It's made the viewers at home feel
alienated. They don't understand it.
They're going, "I don't live in York.
Why should I have to listen
"to this filth?"
So...
What was I talking about? Oh, yeah.
So, I spent the first 20 minutes
attacking the metropolitan liberal
elite.
Then I spent the next 20 minutes of
that routine -
you may have seen it - appearing to
side with the disenfranchised
Leave voter, taking on board their
anxieties,
before turning on a sixpence,
reversing those sympathies for comic
effect
and calling them cunts.
And what was funny about doing that
was the shock and surprise
of the reversal. It was the two hard
consonants, the C and the T,
cutting through the surrounding
vowels.
It was the shock of me using the C
word - cunt - on stage,
cos, as a rule, I wouldn't normally
use the C word - cunt - on stage.
And the only reason I'm using the C
word - cunt - so much tonight
is to explain how I wouldn't normally
use the C word - cunt.
So, it was shock, surprise, reversal
of sympathy.
That was what was funny about it. To
me, it wasn't misogynist,
the use of the word, the C word, at
that point, because it didn't
relate to gender, although I do
appreciate it isn't up to me,
a man, to go around laying down the
law about exactly
when and where you can use the C word.
Ultimately, it's up to women, I think,
to say whether they feel
that word can be sort of severed from
its traditional associations.
And it's up to women to call that, and
it's up to women to say
whether they feel the use of it is
appropriate.
I did ask one, though, and she said it
was fine.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
She said, "It's fine.
"Now, let me out of this hot car."
BANGING
AMERICAN ACCENT: "Oi, let me out of
this car!"
"Let me out. Let me out!"
That's what American stand-ups do,
isn't it? They bang on things.
You notice that?
Bang on things.
AMERICAN ACCENT: Fuck, man.
"Fuckin' fuck!"
"Fucking dyke bitch. Fuck you. Fuck."
"Fuck, man. Fuck. Yo, fuckin' York,
London, England.
"Fuck."
"Fuckin' fuck. Fuck.
"F-F-F-Fuckin' fuck. Fuck, man. Fuck,
fuckin' fuck."
Yeah, American stand-up there.
Brilliant, innit?
So much we can learn from it, I think.
So much we can learn from it.
So...
The question is,
is it more misogynist to say that to
use the C word
in a way that doesn't relate to gender
than it is to say
that women are the same as bananas and
that they should be bruised
and sold into slavery?
I don't know. It's a very difficult
argument.
But what we're thinking here about
here, I suppose, is language.
And we've all thought a lot more about
language
in the last two years.
Black Lives Matters made people think
about language.
Those leaked police emails here in
England did.
And, I suppose, we're all thinking
about are our attitudes formed
by the words we use, or do they
reflect them?
And I think comedians probably can
still use some of these bad words.
But I think you have to think about...
You have to know why you're using it.
You need to know the history, the
etymology of that word.
So, if you're called out on it, you
can say,
"Well, I did think about..."
You know, so, with the C word, for
example, I thought,
"If I'm going to use that, I need to
know all about it."
So I got my old dictionary down from
school.
And do you remember when you got your
first dictionary
and you couldn't believe there were
swearwords in it,
could you? It seemed insane.
So I got my old dictionary from school
down
and I turned to the page where there
should have been a definition
of the C word - cunt - and all there
was there
was a massive picture of Tony Parsons'
face.
And someone - and this is absolutely
pathetic, I think -
had, erm,
got a magazine, probably National
Geographic or something.
And there must have been an article
on, you know, these little orange
monkeys that live in Gibraltar?
And they'd got that, and what they'd
done, they'd got scissors
and they'd cut out all the photos of
the penises
of these little orange monkeys,
about three dozen orange monkeys'
penises.
Utterly pathetic.
And they'd... I'd stuck them in a ring
all round Tony Parsons' face.
And then what's even worse than that
is, erm,
someone has obviously got like Tipp-Ex
or glue or something,
and they'd put all, like,
streaks of stuff coming from the
monkeys' penises,
going all over Tony Parsons' face,
as if, all at the same time, you know,
as if on a command
from Dr Doolittle or something, who's
sort of gone,
"Now, my monkeys! Now!" You know?
And even more pathetic than that,
probably the worst thing,
was someone had got like a speech
balloon,
drawn a speech balloon coming out of
Tony Parsons' face.
And he was going, "Mm."
"I like this."
Pathetic, isn't it?
Imagine even thinking of that in your,
in your mid-50s.
So...
But he is right about me, Tony
Parsons.
That's probably why I'm annoyed with
him.
You know, I am, I am a 1980s,
politically-correct, liberal
snowflake, and I can't do much about
that.
I was a student in the 1980s,
when the political correctness kicked
off -
the wokeness, they call it now.
And we marched against the Clause 28
and all these sorts of things,
and it seemed like the right thing to
do.
And, on balance, I still think the
political correctness,
the wokeness, is a good thing.
I know there's awful collateral damage
- people losing their jobs
cos they use the word, they didn't
know it had changed its meaning,
or they showed a load of kids some
film
and the kids couldn't believe it could
ever been made.
And all that's bad, right?
But, on balance, I think the political
correctness,
the wokeness, it is better than what
we had before,
because what we had before, if you
remember,
was the entire 1970s...
..which, in retrospect, we now realise
was unacceptable.
What's going on there?
So... When someone goes "Oh, it's
political correctness gone mad.
"It's wokeness," it's normally someone
like Dominic Raab, isn't it?
Trying to get a bloke who thinks
homosexuals should be executed
to be the new head of the National
Trust or something like that.
Yeah. You know that's true.
It's not even a joke.
So, erm...
So I'm suspicious of it on the whole,
unless it's my gran,
when my gran goes, "Oh, that political
correctness
"has gone mad, Stu. It's all the woke
brigade."
I go, "Why is that, Gran?"
And she goes, "Well, I was in the
chiropodist's
"the other day, Stu,
"and... With me feet, you know?
"and Jane, the chiropodist, she said
to me,
"'Oh, it's nearly lunchtime, Mrs
Dowden.
"'Would you like some of our broth
that we make here,
"'our chiropodist's broth?'
"And I said, 'Oh, yes.' Lovely
chiropodist's broth.
"'Yes, please.'"
"And Jane the chiropodist, she said,
'Well, you can have some
"'of that chiropodist's broth, Mrs
Dowden,
"'but you've got to drink it all down
in the waiting room
"'because we can't have hot broth
"by the chiropodists' workstations.'"
"It's political correctness gone mad.
Seriously."
"It's the Woke Brigade."
"They're saying that we can't have
broth any more...
"..in case it annoys these transgender
people."
Basically, there's a whole generation
that's confused
political correctness with health and
safety legislation.
"It's political correctness gone mad,
Stu. It's the Woke Brigade.
"In the old days,
"you could get in the bath with an
electric toaster."
"And you could get a Japanese
blowfish,
"the most poisonous fish on earth,
"slice the blowfish up, put it in the
toaster,
"toast the fish slices, shoot the
toasted, poisonous
"fish slices out onto the bathroom
mat,
"drop the toaster in the bath,
electrocute yourself,
"go, 'Argh! Argh!'
"fall on the floor all dying, get the
toast,
"spread it with all AIDS, anthrax,
whatever you like,
"eat it, dissolve your own intestines,
"and then vomit out the bloody liquid
slurry onto the bathroom mat
"in the shape of a Nazi swastika."
"But now...
"The Woke Brigade."
"They're going, 'Oh, don't do that...'
"'What if queers see it?'"
"It's political correctness gone mad.
"They've torn down all the statues,
haven't they, the woke brigade?
"In Bristol, they tore down a slave
bloke and, in Oxford,
"they tore down a South African bloke.
"They're tearing down all the statues,
the Woke Brigade.
"In Glasgow, in the leisure centre,
the Woke Brigade,
"they've even tore down a statue of
old Jimmy Savile."
"What's he ever done? He just fixed it
for people, didn't he?
"Probably used the wrong pronoun about
someone, these days.
"Where am I even supposed to go to the
toilet now?
"Jane, the chiropodist, she said,
"'You go in the unisex toilet,' Mrs
Dowden.'
"What if you haven't been to
university?
"And you don't want to have sex in the
toilet. What then?
"Do you go in a ditch like a pig while
a paedophile films it
"and uploads it to TikTok?"
"It's all wrong. In the Bible, it's
Adam and Eve, isn't it?
"Adam and Eve.
"Not like now, with Steve and Eve."
"They've banned Christmas, Stu, the
Woke Brigade. That Nish Kumar,
"he's put all the reindeer in a meat
grinder.
"They've ba... You can't even say
Merry Christmas any more
"in case it gives a Hindu an
involuntary rectal prolapse.
"You can't say Merry Christmas.
"You have to say 'Hail, Satan! Hail,
Satan!
"'And all the devils of hell. Hail,
Astaroth. Hail, Asmodeus.
"'Hail, Yokshodoth. Hail, the wicked
kings of the ninth circle!
"'Piss into the eyes of the infant
Christ!'
"You have to say that now."
"That's written in lights at
Birmingham Shopping Centre."
"It says, "Piss into the eyes of the
infant Christ.
"Enjoy your Winterval..."
"..at the Palisades Shopping Centre,
Birmingham."
"On Wednesday, at 7:30,
"a blasphemous symbol will be
illuminated
"by Benny from Crossroads."
Right, meet me halfway, whatever your
politics.
It is a bit of a stretch, is it not,
for the current government to say that
we live in a kind of
woke dictatorship where you can't say
anything,
when the highest office in the land,
the Prime Minister has,
with impunity, called Muslim women
letterboxes,
gay men tanktops, bum boys,
black people picaninnies,
all single mums unfit parents,
and all kids born out of marriage -
including, presumably,
half a dozen of his own - ill-raised,
ignorant and aggressive.
If the politics doesn't work out for
Boris Johnson,
he can put all that stuff together
into a tight, 50-minute Netflix
stand-up special.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Cos that, to me, that's what all the
Netflix stand-up specials are now,
American stand-ups saying they can't
say things that they're then saying.
AMERICAN ACCENT: "Fuck, fucking fuck,
man!
"Fuck! Fuck that! Can't do it, can't
fucking Tik fuck!"
Basically for a Netflix stand-up
special, you've got to get
all the things that you can't say -
because of political correctness
gone mad and the woke brigade - and
then you put them all together,
and you say them, and you find that
you CAN say them after all.
With the full approval of all
Netflix's advertisers and lawyers
and shareholders for a $60 million
pay-out and a Grammy Award.
And that - being shown all over the
world and getting a $60 million
pay-out and a Grammy Award -
that's called being cancelled.
AMERICAN ACCENT: If that's being
cancelled,
waitress, I'll have me a slice of that
cancellation pie, please!
This what a Netflix stand-up special
looks like to me.
AMERICAN ACCENT: "You can't say this,
man.
"I'm not allowed to say all the things
I've just said for an hour
"for $60 million. I'm not allowed to
say them.
"This is cancelled. It's all censored.
"You can't see this, except on every
TV in the fucking world."
Ricky Gervais, in his stand-up, he
says the unsayable, apparently.
Except he doesn't, does he?
He says the sayable.
By definition.
We all do.
If he was really saying the unsayable,
Ricky Gervais,
he'd be coming out at the Hollywood
Bowl or something and spending
47 minutes trying to say things that
literally couldn't be said.
He'd be coming out and he'd be
going...
LAUGHTER
HE GASPS
HE PANTS
HE STAMMERS
HE YELPS
HE RETCHES
HE RETCHES
HE SHRIEKS
HE STAMMERS AND YELPS
HE WHINES
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
HE RETCHES
HE WHINES
GUTTURAL RASPS
HE SHRIEKS
HE SHRIEKS
HE YELPS AND RASPS
HE SCREECHES
HE WHINES
HE GROANS
HE SHRIEKS
Do you know, I went on the guestbook
of...
LAUGHTER
I went on the, er...
APPLAUSE
I went on the guestbook of the website
Mumsnet.
And somebody on the guestbook of the
website Mumsnet had said
that the problem with that bit was
that it went on for too long.
And what I like about that comment is
it suggests that that bit
has a correct length.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Now, I know The Office was really
brilliant back in the '90s,
but, to me, in his stand-up, Ricky
Gervais is sort of like
the Boris Johnson of stand-up, right?
By which I mean, he is a narcissistic
populist
who's clever enough to know better
courting the attention of angry,
disappointed people and taking no
responsibility
for the consequence of his words.
Yeah.
- Woo!
- What about that?
SCATTERED APPLAUSE
Not really, er... No laughs there,
were there?
There was some...
LAUGHTER
..some applause there from people.
And if you go on all the right-wing
news and culture websites
or the below-the-line in The Telegraph
or The Mail,
when they write about me, they say
there's no laughs in any of my shows.
For two-and-a-half hours, they say
there's just liberals
clapping, going, "Yes, that's true."
I've seen that written about me and
they say that any laughs,
I dub them on when I film them.
You know, I'll be dubbing on a few
more than that at that point.
LAUGHTER
So that's what they say,
they say there's no laughs for
two-and-a-half hours
and there's just liberals going, "Yes,
I agree with that."
But that was true of that, but there
wasn't really any laughs there.
It was just a few people going, "Yes,
I agree with that."
And I actually wrote that bit to be
like that,
to show you who I would be if I was
who they say I am.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Right? Yeah.
That's right. Listen to that.
And that - that's how good I am.
I can write jokes that fail in exactly
the way I want them to,
which is much harder than writing
the kind of shit funny jokes that you
like.
But they were right about that bit,
that bit about Ricky Gervais
and Boris Johnson, that didn't really
get any laughs
and that's cos it wasn't really
stand-up,
it was just a piece of opinion, right?
And the way you make opinion into
stand-up is you have to express it
in the form of a joke and then people
will laugh. Whatever. Right?
So here is that opinion expressed in
the form of a joke.
And to make it hard for myself, I'm
going to express it in the form
of a joke I'm not really very good at
-
a 1970s working men's club joke. OK?
So here we go.
GRUFF VOICE: Well, it's great to be
here in York and, er...
You may laugh, madam.
If you were my dog, I'd still be
worming you...
LAUGHTER
I don't really know what that means,
to be honest, but, er...
I'm assuming it would involve medicine
or pills rather than me
just pulling the worms out with me
hands.
I don't know. Anyway, I'd best get
into the joke now because
the longer I improvise in this
character,
the more the accent will slip, so...
Got a joke for ya.
A Ricky Gervais Netflix stand-up
special walks into a pub
with a massive, stinking pile of dog
shit on its shoulder.
And the barman says,
"Where'd you get that massive,
stinking pile of dog shit?"
And the dog shit says, "Netflix.
They've got bloody loads of them."
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Yeah. See?
That's how jokes work.
I've got three more jokes and a song
and then we're done.
Before that, I would like to break
with the convention of a lifetime
of stand-up and thank you very much
for coming out
into what has been an uncertain world.
I really appreciate being back on the
road
and although I've always affected to
have a disdain for audiences,
one of the things I've learnt as a
live performer under two years
of lockdown is that, in many ways,
the audience are an essential part of
what we do.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
So...
..thank you for coming out...
..to this beautiful theatre in York.
I'm going to leave you with... I've
got three jokes and a song.
This is the same joke, rewritten at
three-year intervals
over a six-year period between 2013
and 2019.
You may have seen some of these
before.
Here's the first version of this joke
from 2013.
Do you ever wake up in the morning and
go, "Hang on a minute -
"Boris Johnson is the actual, genuine
Mayor of London?"
He's the Mayor of London!
He's not some kind of clown mayor who
runs around London being amusing
while the real Mayor of London work is
done by Ken Livingstone
locked in a shipping container.
He's the genuine Mayor of London, in
Britain!
This isn't Italy...
..where the mayor's just the man
who's touched the most women in the
town.
Cos that'd be Boris Johnson's dad,
wouldn't it?
That never got a laugh nine years ago.
But I kept it in.
Here's the second version of this joke
from 2016.
Do you ever wake up in the morning -
"Hang on a minute. Boris Johnson is
"the actual, genuine Foreign Secretary
of Britain?"
He's not some kind of clown Foreign
Secretary
who runs around the world being
amusing while the real Foreign
Secretary work is done by a
pole-dancing data analyst in
a hotel room he's paid for with public
money.
He's the genuine Foreign Secretary of
Britain!
This isn't America, where the Foreign
Secretary is anyone
who can find their house on a map.
And here's the third version of this
joke from 2019.
Oh, do you ever wake up in the morning
and go, "Hang on a minute -
"Boris Johnson is the actual, genuine
Prime Minister of Britain?"
In the developed world.
He's not some kind of clown Prime
Minister of Britain
who runs around being amusing while
the real Prime Minister
of Britain work is done by Dominic
Cummings, like...
Ah, it doesn't make sense any more.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Reality has outstripped comedy.
I've got to tour this show till the
end of August 2022 this year,
so I'm the only champagne socialist
that's hoping
Boris Johnson hangs on to his job
cos I've got a tight five about him at
the end, you know.
And two weeks ago, I was in Reading
and in the afternoon
on the Friday, I thought he was bound
to have to resign
cos all this stuff was coming out. And
I was sitting there thinking,
"I've got to try to rewrite the end of
the show."
And then the news came in and all the
opinion people were saying
that he would definitely hang on till
October
and I was going, "Yeah! You hang in
there, mate!
"Don't let the haters grind you down!
Yeah!"
But he's still there for now.
But whatever your politics, don't get
caught up in their fabricated
culture war, hating people that aren't
to blame.
Try and stay a snowflake if you can.
But what is a snowflake?
Well, the answer to that question
comes in the form of a song.
Can we have the singer-songwriter
lighting state, please?
Rather an abrupt change.
Please welcome, all the way from
Brighton,
the octopus of sound, Nick Pynn.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
# If you're worried that your country
# Is run by lying cheats
# And there's hungry polar bears
# With barely any polar food to eat
# And the $60 million Netflix
comedians punching down
# And people die alone
# While politicians pass the porn
around
# You're a snowflake
# You're a snowflake
# You're a snowflake
# But when the snowflakes blow
together
# They can make a blizzard... #
HE COUGHS
# ..of powerful weather
# Don't let them close you down
# Don't let them shut you down
# Don't let them close you up
# Don't let them shut you up
# Cos the snowflakes
# Must never be
# Silent. #
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
See you next year. Thanks a lot. Good
night.
language and adult humour.
- Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to
enjoy Snowflake,
starring the self-styled Snowflake of
Stand-Up, Mr Stewart Lee.
- CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I know what
you're thinking.
Ted Bovis has let himself go.
LAUGHTER
This is called Snowflake.
And it's about how I,
as a 1980s politically correct liberal
snowflake comedian,
am no longer sure exactly where I fit
into a comedy circuit
that is drifting away at some speed
from the liberal orthodoxies that
originally characterised it.
They say you should always open with
your strongest bit.
You know, there are millions and
millions and millions of snowflakes
and every single one is different,
but there are only three members of
the '80s pop group Bros,
and two of them are identical.
LAUGHTER
See? I can write jokes, but it's not
of interest to me.
So... Right, the idea with this set,
this is supposed to look like a sort
of 1970s
BBC light entertainment Christmas
show,
the sort of show where if you google
it now,
all the guests are in prison.
Got a guitar there.
Don't worry about that.
Because no-one's thinking,
"Oh, brilliant, the middle-aged
comedian's got an acoustic guitar.
"Superb, what are you going to do with
that guitar, granddad?
"Are you going to satirise the news in
song form
"while simultaneously parodying
"a modern urban music genre that you
don't fully understand,
"like the Laurence Fox of drill?"
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
You like that, the Laurence Fox of
drill?
I don't actually know what drill is.
I said to my 15-year-old, I said to
him,
"I need a single-syllable name of a
modern kind of music for a joke.
"What should I say?" And he said, "Say
drill, Dad.
"And stop breathing so heavily."
So I've said that, the Laurence Fox of
drill.
That's gone all right, hasn't it?
But like I say, I don't know what
drill is.
And my son, he doesn't know who
Laurence Fox is.
So there's a joke that's been
co-written by two people,
neither of whom fully understand it.
And it's not made a blind bit of
difference,
which makes me wonder, what is the
point of spending days, weeks,
years trying to write accurate jokes
when you might as well just come out
and do a load of stupid non-sequitur
surrealist nonsense
like Noel Fielding would, you know,
come out and go,
"Ooh, Tony Oxley has put a llama
hospital in the..."
I couldn't think of anything. I was...
Well, I thought of something.
I was going to say, "He's put a llama
hospital in the meadow",
right, but they would like that,
wouldn't they?
They'd go, "Oh, great. A meadow, let's
frolic in it", you know,
but it doesn't work
because the thing about that Noel
Fielding surrealist stuff
is each element has to have no logical
relationship with the...
It's much harder than it looks,
actually.
I've gone from disparaging Noel
Fielding
to thinking he's a genius in the space
of 30 seconds.
Anyway, don't worry about that... that
guitar.
You know, all stand-up comedians are
failed musicians.
A lot of stand-up comedians are failed
stand-up comedians.
I am. I'll be honest with you.
I am a failed stand-up comedian.
I spent the first 20 years of this
going to silence night after night.
No laughs, dying night after night for
20 years.
But I didn't give up.
And in the end, people assumed it was
deliberate.
"He's actually a genius,
"because nothing he says is funny
ever, even by accident.
"Yes, it's called anti-comedy,
actually,
"and it's a rejection of the rules of
the genre.
"Five stars, The Guardian."
But then I just got sort of stuck
doing this, you know.
And what is this?
It's nothing, is it?
Is it? I mean, I've never really
understood
what it is I'm doing, to be honest.
I haven't. I've just sort of stuck in
it.
It seems to me I come out here
and I describe things that have
happened to me
to the best of my ability,
and people go, "Ha-ha!"
For example... That's how you know
we're heading
into a fairly tightly written bit,
isn't it?
Use of the phrase "For example",
that's the giveaway there.
Anyway, for example... "What?
Something you've written?" "Yes."
So...
Anyway.
So, for example... I know, it seems
contrived now, doesn't it?
For example... "What? You've
obvious..." You know. Anyway.
So, for example...
I know, who says that? It's like your
dad, isn't it?
For example, "Put that over there."
Anyway...
That's what I'm talking about.
Not there... Anyway, so...
For example, erm...
Last year, right, and this is actually
true. I...
No, it is.
Sounds like it isn't, doesn't it?
Because... I don't know. Anyway.
So... It is, though. Anyway.
For ex... Oh.
For example, last year,
and this is actually true...
It is. It is true.
Well, the first bit is.
The second bit's...
The second bit's an exaggeration
based on the first bit.
So... You'll see when we get there.
Don't worry about it.
Anyway. So, anyway, for example...
For example, last year, and this is
actually true...
It is. It is true.
Right.
I know what you think.
That's what the normal comedians do,
isn't it?
They do like an hour and about halfway
through they'll tell a story
and they go, "And this is actually
true."
And you go, "Oh, what about all the
other stuff?"
You feel cheated, don't you?
No? OK, never mind. So...
For example, last year,
and this is actually true. It is.
So... Imagine if you weren't enjoying
this bit.
LAUGHTER
Be irritating, wouldn't it?
SCATTERED APPLAUSE
I sympathise, to be honest. If you
were...
If you were to come up to me
afterwards and say to me,
"I didn't really enjoy that bit",
I would struggle to make a case for
it.
LAUGHTER
But it is going well, isn't it? Listen
to the room.
A lot of people, this is their
favourite bit, but it's nothing.
It's awful. It's rubbish, isn't it?
Anyway...
It's pointless, isn't it? A waste of
time.
So anyway, for example, last year,
and this is actually true... It is.
Wait till you hear it. The first bit,
you'll go, "That's true.
"Not sure about that second bit.
That's an exaggeration, I think."
It is. I've told you. Anyway...
For example... Let's get on with it.
It's being filmed, isn't it?
People don't want to see this on TV,
do they?
Anyway, for example...
I know you like it, but I'm telling
you now,
this will not translate to television.
The viewers at home will feel
alienated
by the amount of fun the audience
appear to be having...
..because the cruel light of
television
will expose this as the sham it is.
Anyway, for example, last year, and
this actually happened...
No, that's what Greg Davies says.
All the others say, "And this is
actually true",
but Greg Davies, he says, "And this
actually happened".
And that's his contribution, I
think...
..to the genre.
He took an old favourite,
he put a spin on it.
So... Anyway...
For... No. For example, last year,
and this really, this actually
happened...
It did. This is actually happening
now.
You're thinking, "Is this actually
happening?"
Yeah, it is. "Really? But it's shit."
I know, but it's happening, and it's
getting loads of laughs, isn't it?
Can you imagine how irritating that is
for me?
I struggle to write these great
things... This is nothing
but there's a palpable sense of
hysteria here in York tonight,
a notoriously taciturn city, if I
don't mind telling you.
APPLAUSE
Anyway...
For example, last year, and this
actually happened, right?
It did. Not only is this actually
happening, but Ben Thompson,
who is a very respected critic,
who writes books about the theory of
comedy,
he came up to me after he saw this in
Bexhill-on-Sea, this bit,
and he said that he thought this bit
represented the apogee
of everything I've been trying to
achieve for 30 years.
I know. I find that quite offensive,
to be honest.
Anyway, so... What is it? It's
nothing, is it? So...
For example, last year, and this
actually happened...
..I was bitten in the leg by a false
widow spider.
I was.
So I went to the hospital
and they prescribed me
anti-inflammatory drugs,
and they sent me to see a doctor of
tropical medicine.
Now, the bloke in before me,
he'd been bitten in the leg by a false
widow spider as well.
But he had a false leg.
LAUGHTER
So they prescribed him anti-irony
drugs.
And they sent him to see a doctor of
philosophy.
That went all right, didn't it, in the
end? It's quite good.
I'll tell you what, because that went
well,
I've got an extra possible third
section of that joke I can do.
So we'll try it, an extra possible
third section
of the false widow spider joke.
It's what we call a topper in the
trade,
if you're a comedian in the room
tonight, or watching at home.
A topper is when you've done a bit and
you think,
"Well, I can put an extra little bit
on the top there."
So we'll see how this goes.
The wife of the man...
LAUGHTER
Ah, it's already been worth it for
some people, hasn't it?
There's a bloke over there going,
"He's got a wife, brilliant!"
"What's she going to be like?"
Quite a character, I expect, given
that she's appearing in a joke.
She's bound to either change the
direction of the narrative
or at the very least alter the
perspective from which we view it.
Otherwise, what's she even doing in
the joke?
She's just a passenger, isn't she, a
passenger in the joke.
And there are no passengers in my
jokes.
There's no dead wood in my material.
It's lean, cut to the bone.
It isn't, is it? That's why that's
funny.
So...
Possible...
It's the opposite of that.
The possible third section to the
false widow spider joke.
Here we go. If it doesn't work, it
doesn't matter.
The wife of the man who was bitten by
the false widow spider
was told erroneously by the hospital
that her husband had died.
LAUGHTER
Thank you for laughing there,
because...
Ideally, you should be able to leave
that joke there,
because everything you need to know to
find that funny
is actually implicit within that
sentence.
And in fact, if you're near the front,
you can see I've written that on my
notes.
I've written, "Ideally, you can leave
it there.
"Everything you need to find that
funny
"is implicit within that sentence."
But what, sir, if you wouldn't mind
popping up here,
what have I written just there in
block capital letters?
- "May need clarification."
- May need clarification. That's
right.
May need clarification.
So when the woman who wasn't widowed
came in to claim the false leg man
who hadn't been killed by the false
widow spider,
the levels of verbal confusion were
unprecedented.
That's the punchline there.
APPLAUSE
The Dave channel's punchline of the
year 2022.
So... That's finished now, that bit,
relax.
So I was in the hospital in the
waiting room with my leg
and I found myself in the waiting room
reading a magazine that I wouldn't
normally read.
It was the men's fashion magazine GQ,
and I'm not really the target audience
for the men's fashion magazine GQ.
Although this is actually a very
expensive jacket,
particularly in this size.
So...
So I found myself reading an article
in GQ
by the 1970s punk-era polemicist
and popular 21st century novelist Tony
Parsons.
Do people know who Tony...?
MURMURS OF AGREEMENA lot of you, not everyone, which is a
shame,
because I'm now going to talk about
Tony Parsons for 45 minutes.
But anyway, Tony Parsons had written
an article about a man
who he described as being, and I
quote,
"A woke, enlightened, professionally
sensitive Guardian columnist,
"BBC-approved comedian who can be
guaranteed to dress to the left."
And I thought, "This bloke sounds
great.
"It's exactly the sort of person I
like
"and I'm really going to enjoy reading
this."
And then I realised it was about me
and it wasn't meant to be
complimentary.
"Dress to the left."
What does that even mean?
Dress to the left. Now, if you're near
the front,
you can see that I dress to the right,
right? There is the...
There's the bulge of my penis there on
the right.
But over here, there's just a gap.
There's nothing there. But there's a
bulge there.
So I dress to the right, OK?
But...
But I've never voted for a right-wing
party.
So it's almost as if there's no
relationship...
..between the shape of your genitals
and your long-term voting intentions.
Of course, when I was young, my penis
hung directly vertically
down the middle of my groin.
But over the years, as I've got older,
it has drifted to the right.
Like Eamonn Holmes.
But stinking less of stale old piss.
Now...
In the 1970s, take my word for it,
Tony Parsons, he was a sort of
left-wing punk rock,
socialist worker party, Marxist kind
of bloke.
But today, he's a Brexiteer Tory
voter.
He writes for The Sun and GQ.
So presumably, over the last 45 years,
Tony Parsons' genitals
have changed shape and they've moved
across
from the left-hand side of his groin
to the right.
Either that, or they've stayed in the
same place
and Tony Parsons' body has revolved
around them.
Like a horrible Catherine wheel made
of meat.
Anyway, I carried on reading this
article,
and it wasn't just me that Tony
Parsons was annoyed with.
He was annoyed with any man, me
included, to be fair,
who had publicly used the C-word,
right, which I assume was "cunt"
although, to be fair, it was quite
hard to tell because,
rather unhelpfully, throughout the
article
the last three letters had been
asterisked out.
And there's a lot of annoying
four-letter C-words, aren't there?
Like "czar", for example.
What an annoying four-letter word that
is, czar,
because it starts with a C,
but it sounds like it starts with a Z,
and I hate the word "czar".
The word "czar" gave me no end of
trouble in the noughties,
when I was briefly the head of a large
Slavic dynasty.
But it was "cunt". I worked it out
from the context.
LAUGHTER
Thank you for that. It's a good joke,
that,
doesn't normally get the laughter it
deserves.
Tony Parsons said that any man who
would use the C-word, cunt, was,
and I quote,
"The rancid tip of a cesspit
"that is the modern male attitude to
women".
"The rancid tip of a cesspit
"that is the modern male attitude to
women."
Now, I've got two problems with being
called
the rancid tip of a cesspit that is
the modern male attitude to women,
or possibly three if the second one
goes well, but let's...
So the first problem I've got with
being called
the rancid tip of a cesspit that is
the modern male attitude to women
is this, OK?
I'm not an expert on cess, right, I'm
not an expert on cess. I'm not.
You are, aren't you? You love it here.
The faces lit up here in York when I
said "cess".
Around the country, London,
Manchester, "cess" - nothing.
Here in York, you can see the people
go, "At last, cess!"
"Something we in Yorkshire can relate
to.
"Is this what the levelling up agenda
looks like?"
Now, I'm not an expert on cess, right,
or the collection, distribution
disposal of cess, right?
But I'm not sure that it's even
possible
for a cesspit to have a tip.
Right? Because in all the cesspits
I've seen, right,
which is about eight I've seen...
I have, all of them in Yorkshire.
All of them in Yorkshire.
In all the cesspits I've seen,
the cess, yeah,
the cess, that lies flat, doesn't it?
Flat surface of cess, yeah?
You could dig your cesspit into a
conical shape.
You could dig it into any shape you
like, but even then,
the bottom of that cesspit,
that would be the tail, wouldn't it,
not the tip.
The only way that cesspit could have a
tip
is if you could somehow flip it upside
down
and then freeze-dry it before it caved
in on itself.
And I'm not sure that Tony Parsons has
got access
to that kind of technology.
And the second problem I've got with
being called
the rancid tip of a cesspit that is
the modern male attitude to women
is that I'm being called that in GQ
magazine...
..which has an online Hottest Woman of
the Week feature.
And they shouldn't be hot, should
they, the women?
No. Don't leave them locked in the
car.
And if you must, if you are a GQ
reader, crack the window a bit.
Crack the window.
And the third problem I've got with
being called
the rancid tip of a cesspit that is
the modern male attitude to women -
that is a very bold, dogmatic,
opinionated statement
by that Tony Parsons there, isn't it?
And the problem with making a bold,
dogmatic, opinionated statement
these days is that it's very easy,
isn't it,
for someone to use modern technology
like search engines and Google
to go back over everything you've said
in the last 20 or 30 years
until you find something that
contradicts what they say now
and makes them look like a stupid,
vacuous, hypocritical twat, right?
But just because it's easy to do that,
that's no reason not to do it.
So here...
Here's an article that Tony Parsons,
he's called me a misogynist rancid tip
of a cesspit, remember?
Here's an article that Tony Parsons
wrote for The Observer.
It's from a weekly column called
What's In My Shopping Basket?
A different person would write it each
week.
And this contradicts a lot of the
positions he's expressing now.
And this is from 2003, which is only
19 years ago,
so I think it's entirely reasonable to
hold him to account,
Even though every single atom of Tony
Parsons' body
will literally have been replaced
since he wrote this.
So...
Here is What's In My Shopping Basket?
by Tony Parsons from 2003.
I'm going to read the last paragraph.
"Bananas are another snack."
That's not the contentious bit.
No-one would argue with that, would
they?
Bananas are another snack.
"Bananas are another snack.
"I like my bananas firm and fresh,
like my women."
AUDIENCE MEMBERS GROAN
Boo, Tony Parsons, listen.
Listen to woke York booing you.
Tony said I'm a misogynist, right?
A cesspit.
But here he is, only 19 years ago,
He has said that women are the same as
bananas.
and they're not, are they?
They're completely different, and that
is sexist.
It gets worse.
Listen to this from Tony Parsons.
"I like my bananas firm and fresh like
my women,
"not bruised and past their sell-by
date."
AUDIENCE GASP
That's right. Tony "Banana women"
Parsons
has said that women are the same as
bananas.
He thinks they should be bruised and
he thinks
they have a sell-by date.
He thinks that women should be sold,
probably, into slavery, I expect.
That's not acceptable to me.
I may be...the rancid tip of a cesspit
that is the modern male attitude to
women,
but I am against the enslavement of
women.
The enslavement of women runs entirely
contrary
to the values of the Stewart Lee brand
and all of its shareholders.
But I do like my women like I like my
bananas -
not genetically modified and ethically
farmed
by a unionised workforce.
AUDIENCE CHEER
Yeah, listen to that, because that,
John Cleese...
That's how you do a woke joke,
you stupid, miserable, geriatric
bastard.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Listen to them, cheering me
and despising you and your Pythonesque
legacy of privilege.
Anyway...
Tony Parsons said that I was the
rancid tip of a cesspit
because he said I had quipped
something, right,
and he put the word "quipped" in
inverted commas, right?
That's what they do,
the right-wing opinion columnists in
the right-wing newspapers.
They put a word in inverted commas and
then they step back and they go,
"Ha, look, I've put that word in
inverted commas
"and now it means the opposite of
that, ha!"
And they do that to me all the time.
They put comedian Stewart Lee,
but they put...
They put... what they do, they put
"comedian" in inverted commas,
and then they ring each other up
and they go, "I've put this in the
Spectator."
"I've put Stewart Lee in inverted
commas.
"Yeah, that means he isn't a comedian.
Ha!" Right?
But I am a comedian. Look.
So that's the end of that.
They're rubbish, aren't they, the
right-wing opinion columnists?
If I was Putin, I'd want my money
back.
So anyway, Tony Parsons, he said he
said I'd quipped something,
right, which means he's never seen me,
has he,
because I've never... I've never
quipped anything, have I?
No-one's going to come away from this
tonight, are they,
and go, "I loved all the quips.
"It was one quip after another all
night.
"Quip, quip, quip, quip, quip, quip!
"I said to you, didn't I, at one
point,
"'When will the quips end? I can't
stand it'.
"'It's like Tim Vine on
amphetamines'."
No-one's going to say that. What's
going to happen is,
the bored person you brought with you
by accident is going to go,
"It was all right, but it took him 45
minutes
"to tell a barely adequate anecdote
"about a writer I've never heard of."
But, according to Tony Parsons, I had
quipped,
quipped the following sentence -
"It wasn't just racists that voted to
leave Europe,
"cunts did as well."
Now...
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Don't clap.
It's not the Liberal Democrats'
conference.
There's too many people in, look.
"Argh!"
"Ahh!"
Now, I did say that sentence, "It
wasn't just racists that voted
to leave Europe, cunts did as well."
But I didn't, I didn't quip it.
If you saw that show - I did it at the
Barbican here, I think -
I didn't quip it. I didn't come out
and go, "Hello, good evening.
"Hey, I'll tell you what, right? No,
listen in.
"It's not that. Hey! Now..."
"Hey, It wasn't just racists that
voted to leave Europe,
"Cunts did as well, didn't they? Thank
you and good night."
I didn't do that, did I?
I did say that sentence, yes, but,
typically, I said it
at the end of a long, tedious,
45-minute-long routine...
..where I spent the first 20 minutes
attacking the metropolitan liberal
elite for living in a bubble.
That's you, isn't it? You're the
metropolitan liberal elite of York.
Yeah, and you're like the metropolitan
liberal elite
of London, but you've got all batter
spilt down you, haven't you?
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE All batter...
It's all down you.
And you've gone, YORKSHIRE ACCENT:
"I'd quite to go
"and see Jez Butterworth's new play at
the Royal Court...
"Oh, I've got batter all down me. I've
got batter all down me."
"I've got batter...all down me."
"I understand Professor Alice
Roberts's book tour is very...
"Oh, I've got batter all... I've got
batter all down me.
"Just got batter all down me."
"How long is the show tonight? Nearly
three hours, you say?
"Better eat some batter before we go
out, to give us strength.
"What if we get hungry during it?
"Put some liquid batter in a flask
"and you can drink that at half-time.
"Doubtless the bar will be very
overpriced.
"So we're taking a flask of liquid
batter.
"We are from York, after all.
"And that's what we like to drink."
So...
I spent... That's never worked
anywhere else.
It's made the viewers at home feel
alienated. They don't understand it.
They're going, "I don't live in York.
Why should I have to listen
"to this filth?"
So...
What was I talking about? Oh, yeah.
So, I spent the first 20 minutes
attacking the metropolitan liberal
elite.
Then I spent the next 20 minutes of
that routine -
you may have seen it - appearing to
side with the disenfranchised
Leave voter, taking on board their
anxieties,
before turning on a sixpence,
reversing those sympathies for comic
effect
and calling them cunts.
And what was funny about doing that
was the shock and surprise
of the reversal. It was the two hard
consonants, the C and the T,
cutting through the surrounding
vowels.
It was the shock of me using the C
word - cunt - on stage,
cos, as a rule, I wouldn't normally
use the C word - cunt - on stage.
And the only reason I'm using the C
word - cunt - so much tonight
is to explain how I wouldn't normally
use the C word - cunt.
So, it was shock, surprise, reversal
of sympathy.
That was what was funny about it. To
me, it wasn't misogynist,
the use of the word, the C word, at
that point, because it didn't
relate to gender, although I do
appreciate it isn't up to me,
a man, to go around laying down the
law about exactly
when and where you can use the C word.
Ultimately, it's up to women, I think,
to say whether they feel
that word can be sort of severed from
its traditional associations.
And it's up to women to call that, and
it's up to women to say
whether they feel the use of it is
appropriate.
I did ask one, though, and she said it
was fine.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
She said, "It's fine.
"Now, let me out of this hot car."
BANGING
AMERICAN ACCENT: "Oi, let me out of
this car!"
"Let me out. Let me out!"
That's what American stand-ups do,
isn't it? They bang on things.
You notice that?
Bang on things.
AMERICAN ACCENT: Fuck, man.
"Fuckin' fuck!"
"Fucking dyke bitch. Fuck you. Fuck."
"Fuck, man. Fuck. Yo, fuckin' York,
London, England.
"Fuck."
"Fuckin' fuck. Fuck.
"F-F-F-Fuckin' fuck. Fuck, man. Fuck,
fuckin' fuck."
Yeah, American stand-up there.
Brilliant, innit?
So much we can learn from it, I think.
So much we can learn from it.
So...
The question is,
is it more misogynist to say that to
use the C word
in a way that doesn't relate to gender
than it is to say
that women are the same as bananas and
that they should be bruised
and sold into slavery?
I don't know. It's a very difficult
argument.
But what we're thinking here about
here, I suppose, is language.
And we've all thought a lot more about
language
in the last two years.
Black Lives Matters made people think
about language.
Those leaked police emails here in
England did.
And, I suppose, we're all thinking
about are our attitudes formed
by the words we use, or do they
reflect them?
And I think comedians probably can
still use some of these bad words.
But I think you have to think about...
You have to know why you're using it.
You need to know the history, the
etymology of that word.
So, if you're called out on it, you
can say,
"Well, I did think about..."
You know, so, with the C word, for
example, I thought,
"If I'm going to use that, I need to
know all about it."
So I got my old dictionary down from
school.
And do you remember when you got your
first dictionary
and you couldn't believe there were
swearwords in it,
could you? It seemed insane.
So I got my old dictionary from school
down
and I turned to the page where there
should have been a definition
of the C word - cunt - and all there
was there
was a massive picture of Tony Parsons'
face.
And someone - and this is absolutely
pathetic, I think -
had, erm,
got a magazine, probably National
Geographic or something.
And there must have been an article
on, you know, these little orange
monkeys that live in Gibraltar?
And they'd got that, and what they'd
done, they'd got scissors
and they'd cut out all the photos of
the penises
of these little orange monkeys,
about three dozen orange monkeys'
penises.
Utterly pathetic.
And they'd... I'd stuck them in a ring
all round Tony Parsons' face.
And then what's even worse than that
is, erm,
someone has obviously got like Tipp-Ex
or glue or something,
and they'd put all, like,
streaks of stuff coming from the
monkeys' penises,
going all over Tony Parsons' face,
as if, all at the same time, you know,
as if on a command
from Dr Doolittle or something, who's
sort of gone,
"Now, my monkeys! Now!" You know?
And even more pathetic than that,
probably the worst thing,
was someone had got like a speech
balloon,
drawn a speech balloon coming out of
Tony Parsons' face.
And he was going, "Mm."
"I like this."
Pathetic, isn't it?
Imagine even thinking of that in your,
in your mid-50s.
So...
But he is right about me, Tony
Parsons.
That's probably why I'm annoyed with
him.
You know, I am, I am a 1980s,
politically-correct, liberal
snowflake, and I can't do much about
that.
I was a student in the 1980s,
when the political correctness kicked
off -
the wokeness, they call it now.
And we marched against the Clause 28
and all these sorts of things,
and it seemed like the right thing to
do.
And, on balance, I still think the
political correctness,
the wokeness, is a good thing.
I know there's awful collateral damage
- people losing their jobs
cos they use the word, they didn't
know it had changed its meaning,
or they showed a load of kids some
film
and the kids couldn't believe it could
ever been made.
And all that's bad, right?
But, on balance, I think the political
correctness,
the wokeness, it is better than what
we had before,
because what we had before, if you
remember,
was the entire 1970s...
..which, in retrospect, we now realise
was unacceptable.
What's going on there?
So... When someone goes "Oh, it's
political correctness gone mad.
"It's wokeness," it's normally someone
like Dominic Raab, isn't it?
Trying to get a bloke who thinks
homosexuals should be executed
to be the new head of the National
Trust or something like that.
Yeah. You know that's true.
It's not even a joke.
So, erm...
So I'm suspicious of it on the whole,
unless it's my gran,
when my gran goes, "Oh, that political
correctness
"has gone mad, Stu. It's all the woke
brigade."
I go, "Why is that, Gran?"
And she goes, "Well, I was in the
chiropodist's
"the other day, Stu,
"and... With me feet, you know?
"and Jane, the chiropodist, she said
to me,
"'Oh, it's nearly lunchtime, Mrs
Dowden.
"'Would you like some of our broth
that we make here,
"'our chiropodist's broth?'
"And I said, 'Oh, yes.' Lovely
chiropodist's broth.
"'Yes, please.'"
"And Jane the chiropodist, she said,
'Well, you can have some
"'of that chiropodist's broth, Mrs
Dowden,
"'but you've got to drink it all down
in the waiting room
"'because we can't have hot broth
"by the chiropodists' workstations.'"
"It's political correctness gone mad.
Seriously."
"It's the Woke Brigade."
"They're saying that we can't have
broth any more...
"..in case it annoys these transgender
people."
Basically, there's a whole generation
that's confused
political correctness with health and
safety legislation.
"It's political correctness gone mad,
Stu. It's the Woke Brigade.
"In the old days,
"you could get in the bath with an
electric toaster."
"And you could get a Japanese
blowfish,
"the most poisonous fish on earth,
"slice the blowfish up, put it in the
toaster,
"toast the fish slices, shoot the
toasted, poisonous
"fish slices out onto the bathroom
mat,
"drop the toaster in the bath,
electrocute yourself,
"go, 'Argh! Argh!'
"fall on the floor all dying, get the
toast,
"spread it with all AIDS, anthrax,
whatever you like,
"eat it, dissolve your own intestines,
"and then vomit out the bloody liquid
slurry onto the bathroom mat
"in the shape of a Nazi swastika."
"But now...
"The Woke Brigade."
"They're going, 'Oh, don't do that...'
"'What if queers see it?'"
"It's political correctness gone mad.
"They've torn down all the statues,
haven't they, the woke brigade?
"In Bristol, they tore down a slave
bloke and, in Oxford,
"they tore down a South African bloke.
"They're tearing down all the statues,
the Woke Brigade.
"In Glasgow, in the leisure centre,
the Woke Brigade,
"they've even tore down a statue of
old Jimmy Savile."
"What's he ever done? He just fixed it
for people, didn't he?
"Probably used the wrong pronoun about
someone, these days.
"Where am I even supposed to go to the
toilet now?
"Jane, the chiropodist, she said,
"'You go in the unisex toilet,' Mrs
Dowden.'
"What if you haven't been to
university?
"And you don't want to have sex in the
toilet. What then?
"Do you go in a ditch like a pig while
a paedophile films it
"and uploads it to TikTok?"
"It's all wrong. In the Bible, it's
Adam and Eve, isn't it?
"Adam and Eve.
"Not like now, with Steve and Eve."
"They've banned Christmas, Stu, the
Woke Brigade. That Nish Kumar,
"he's put all the reindeer in a meat
grinder.
"They've ba... You can't even say
Merry Christmas any more
"in case it gives a Hindu an
involuntary rectal prolapse.
"You can't say Merry Christmas.
"You have to say 'Hail, Satan! Hail,
Satan!
"'And all the devils of hell. Hail,
Astaroth. Hail, Asmodeus.
"'Hail, Yokshodoth. Hail, the wicked
kings of the ninth circle!
"'Piss into the eyes of the infant
Christ!'
"You have to say that now."
"That's written in lights at
Birmingham Shopping Centre."
"It says, "Piss into the eyes of the
infant Christ.
"Enjoy your Winterval..."
"..at the Palisades Shopping Centre,
Birmingham."
"On Wednesday, at 7:30,
"a blasphemous symbol will be
illuminated
"by Benny from Crossroads."
Right, meet me halfway, whatever your
politics.
It is a bit of a stretch, is it not,
for the current government to say that
we live in a kind of
woke dictatorship where you can't say
anything,
when the highest office in the land,
the Prime Minister has,
with impunity, called Muslim women
letterboxes,
gay men tanktops, bum boys,
black people picaninnies,
all single mums unfit parents,
and all kids born out of marriage -
including, presumably,
half a dozen of his own - ill-raised,
ignorant and aggressive.
If the politics doesn't work out for
Boris Johnson,
he can put all that stuff together
into a tight, 50-minute Netflix
stand-up special.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Cos that, to me, that's what all the
Netflix stand-up specials are now,
American stand-ups saying they can't
say things that they're then saying.
AMERICAN ACCENT: "Fuck, fucking fuck,
man!
"Fuck! Fuck that! Can't do it, can't
fucking Tik fuck!"
Basically for a Netflix stand-up
special, you've got to get
all the things that you can't say -
because of political correctness
gone mad and the woke brigade - and
then you put them all together,
and you say them, and you find that
you CAN say them after all.
With the full approval of all
Netflix's advertisers and lawyers
and shareholders for a $60 million
pay-out and a Grammy Award.
And that - being shown all over the
world and getting a $60 million
pay-out and a Grammy Award -
that's called being cancelled.
AMERICAN ACCENT: If that's being
cancelled,
waitress, I'll have me a slice of that
cancellation pie, please!
This what a Netflix stand-up special
looks like to me.
AMERICAN ACCENT: "You can't say this,
man.
"I'm not allowed to say all the things
I've just said for an hour
"for $60 million. I'm not allowed to
say them.
"This is cancelled. It's all censored.
"You can't see this, except on every
TV in the fucking world."
Ricky Gervais, in his stand-up, he
says the unsayable, apparently.
Except he doesn't, does he?
He says the sayable.
By definition.
We all do.
If he was really saying the unsayable,
Ricky Gervais,
he'd be coming out at the Hollywood
Bowl or something and spending
47 minutes trying to say things that
literally couldn't be said.
He'd be coming out and he'd be
going...
LAUGHTER
HE GASPS
HE PANTS
HE STAMMERS
HE YELPS
HE RETCHES
HE RETCHES
HE SHRIEKS
HE STAMMERS AND YELPS
HE WHINES
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
HE RETCHES
HE WHINES
GUTTURAL RASPS
HE SHRIEKS
HE SHRIEKS
HE YELPS AND RASPS
HE SCREECHES
HE WHINES
HE GROANS
HE SHRIEKS
Do you know, I went on the guestbook
of...
LAUGHTER
I went on the, er...
APPLAUSE
I went on the guestbook of the website
Mumsnet.
And somebody on the guestbook of the
website Mumsnet had said
that the problem with that bit was
that it went on for too long.
And what I like about that comment is
it suggests that that bit
has a correct length.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Now, I know The Office was really
brilliant back in the '90s,
but, to me, in his stand-up, Ricky
Gervais is sort of like
the Boris Johnson of stand-up, right?
By which I mean, he is a narcissistic
populist
who's clever enough to know better
courting the attention of angry,
disappointed people and taking no
responsibility
for the consequence of his words.
Yeah.
- Woo!
- What about that?
SCATTERED APPLAUSE
Not really, er... No laughs there,
were there?
There was some...
LAUGHTER
..some applause there from people.
And if you go on all the right-wing
news and culture websites
or the below-the-line in The Telegraph
or The Mail,
when they write about me, they say
there's no laughs in any of my shows.
For two-and-a-half hours, they say
there's just liberals
clapping, going, "Yes, that's true."
I've seen that written about me and
they say that any laughs,
I dub them on when I film them.
You know, I'll be dubbing on a few
more than that at that point.
LAUGHTER
So that's what they say,
they say there's no laughs for
two-and-a-half hours
and there's just liberals going, "Yes,
I agree with that."
But that was true of that, but there
wasn't really any laughs there.
It was just a few people going, "Yes,
I agree with that."
And I actually wrote that bit to be
like that,
to show you who I would be if I was
who they say I am.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Right? Yeah.
That's right. Listen to that.
And that - that's how good I am.
I can write jokes that fail in exactly
the way I want them to,
which is much harder than writing
the kind of shit funny jokes that you
like.
But they were right about that bit,
that bit about Ricky Gervais
and Boris Johnson, that didn't really
get any laughs
and that's cos it wasn't really
stand-up,
it was just a piece of opinion, right?
And the way you make opinion into
stand-up is you have to express it
in the form of a joke and then people
will laugh. Whatever. Right?
So here is that opinion expressed in
the form of a joke.
And to make it hard for myself, I'm
going to express it in the form
of a joke I'm not really very good at
-
a 1970s working men's club joke. OK?
So here we go.
GRUFF VOICE: Well, it's great to be
here in York and, er...
You may laugh, madam.
If you were my dog, I'd still be
worming you...
LAUGHTER
I don't really know what that means,
to be honest, but, er...
I'm assuming it would involve medicine
or pills rather than me
just pulling the worms out with me
hands.
I don't know. Anyway, I'd best get
into the joke now because
the longer I improvise in this
character,
the more the accent will slip, so...
Got a joke for ya.
A Ricky Gervais Netflix stand-up
special walks into a pub
with a massive, stinking pile of dog
shit on its shoulder.
And the barman says,
"Where'd you get that massive,
stinking pile of dog shit?"
And the dog shit says, "Netflix.
They've got bloody loads of them."
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Yeah. See?
That's how jokes work.
I've got three more jokes and a song
and then we're done.
Before that, I would like to break
with the convention of a lifetime
of stand-up and thank you very much
for coming out
into what has been an uncertain world.
I really appreciate being back on the
road
and although I've always affected to
have a disdain for audiences,
one of the things I've learnt as a
live performer under two years
of lockdown is that, in many ways,
the audience are an essential part of
what we do.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
So...
..thank you for coming out...
..to this beautiful theatre in York.
I'm going to leave you with... I've
got three jokes and a song.
This is the same joke, rewritten at
three-year intervals
over a six-year period between 2013
and 2019.
You may have seen some of these
before.
Here's the first version of this joke
from 2013.
Do you ever wake up in the morning and
go, "Hang on a minute -
"Boris Johnson is the actual, genuine
Mayor of London?"
He's the Mayor of London!
He's not some kind of clown mayor who
runs around London being amusing
while the real Mayor of London work is
done by Ken Livingstone
locked in a shipping container.
He's the genuine Mayor of London, in
Britain!
This isn't Italy...
..where the mayor's just the man
who's touched the most women in the
town.
Cos that'd be Boris Johnson's dad,
wouldn't it?
That never got a laugh nine years ago.
But I kept it in.
Here's the second version of this joke
from 2016.
Do you ever wake up in the morning -
"Hang on a minute. Boris Johnson is
"the actual, genuine Foreign Secretary
of Britain?"
He's not some kind of clown Foreign
Secretary
who runs around the world being
amusing while the real Foreign
Secretary work is done by a
pole-dancing data analyst in
a hotel room he's paid for with public
money.
He's the genuine Foreign Secretary of
Britain!
This isn't America, where the Foreign
Secretary is anyone
who can find their house on a map.
And here's the third version of this
joke from 2019.
Oh, do you ever wake up in the morning
and go, "Hang on a minute -
"Boris Johnson is the actual, genuine
Prime Minister of Britain?"
In the developed world.
He's not some kind of clown Prime
Minister of Britain
who runs around being amusing while
the real Prime Minister
of Britain work is done by Dominic
Cummings, like...
Ah, it doesn't make sense any more.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Reality has outstripped comedy.
I've got to tour this show till the
end of August 2022 this year,
so I'm the only champagne socialist
that's hoping
Boris Johnson hangs on to his job
cos I've got a tight five about him at
the end, you know.
And two weeks ago, I was in Reading
and in the afternoon
on the Friday, I thought he was bound
to have to resign
cos all this stuff was coming out. And
I was sitting there thinking,
"I've got to try to rewrite the end of
the show."
And then the news came in and all the
opinion people were saying
that he would definitely hang on till
October
and I was going, "Yeah! You hang in
there, mate!
"Don't let the haters grind you down!
Yeah!"
But he's still there for now.
But whatever your politics, don't get
caught up in their fabricated
culture war, hating people that aren't
to blame.
Try and stay a snowflake if you can.
But what is a snowflake?
Well, the answer to that question
comes in the form of a song.
Can we have the singer-songwriter
lighting state, please?
Rather an abrupt change.
Please welcome, all the way from
Brighton,
the octopus of sound, Nick Pynn.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
# If you're worried that your country
# Is run by lying cheats
# And there's hungry polar bears
# With barely any polar food to eat
# And the $60 million Netflix
comedians punching down
# And people die alone
# While politicians pass the porn
around
# You're a snowflake
# You're a snowflake
# You're a snowflake
# But when the snowflakes blow
together
# They can make a blizzard... #
HE COUGHS
# ..of powerful weather
# Don't let them close you down
# Don't let them shut you down
# Don't let them close you up
# Don't let them shut you up
# Cos the snowflakes
# Must never be
# Silent. #
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
See you next year. Thanks a lot. Good
night.