Stewart Lee: Tornado (2022) Movie Script
This programme contains strong
language and adult humour.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I know what you're thinking.
"Stewart Lee's let himself go."
LAUGHTER
Since you last saw me, I've gone bald,
I've gone blind,
I've gone grey, I've gone deaf, I've
put on a lot of weight.
I've put on so much weight, I'm now
the sort of person
who buys his shirts at motorway
service station lorry drivers'
clothing outlets, and I pay for them
with points earned
on a loyalty card from the West
Cornwall Pasty Company.
LAUGHTER
I've developed high blood pressure. I
have to go in for a check-up
every three months at my GP in Hackney
in north London.
I went in about two months ago and I
sat down
and the nurse sort of took a look at
me there and she made...
She doesn't know who I am, the nurse.
She doesn't know that
I'm The Times newspaper's world's
greatest living stand-up comedian.
LAUGHTER
A lot of people don't, do they?
There's a couple of empty seats there.
LAUGHTER
No, she just sees a little grey, fat
old man,
and she sat me down and she put a
comforting hand on my knee,
the nurse, and she said to me,
"Is there anyone looking after you at
home?"
LAUGHTER
Then she said, "Do you know, Mr Lee,
you're over 50 years old now.
"You're over 50 years old.
"If you go down to any Hackney
Council-funded leisure centre,
"you now qualify for free sessions of
chair-based activity."
LAUGHTER
It's a low bar, isn't it, chair-based?
"Don't get him out of a chair. He'll
die."
I... I stand up for living. It is in
my job title, literally.
LAUGHTER
So I was blind, I was bald, I was
deaf, I was grey, I was fat,
medical professionals said I shouldn't
risk getting up
out of a chair, so I was feeling
pretty depressed about myself.
So in search of self-esteem, I googled
myself,
right, which you must never do.
And I found the most visited reference
to me on the internet,
the thing most people have read about
me,
It's on the website of Netflix, the
world's largest
stand-up comedy content provision
platform.
This is the most visited piece of
information about me in the world.
There's a picture of me going like
that...
CHUCKLING
..and underneath it says...
.."Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle -
"reports of sharks falling from the
skies are on the rise again."
LAUGHTER
"And nobody on the Eastern Seaboard is
safe."
LAUGHTER
And that's most people in the world's
idea...
LAUGHTER
..of what I'm all about. Let's have a
look at that again.
There's a picture of me going like
that
and underneath it says, "Stewart Lee's
Comedy Vehicle -
"reports of sharks falling from the
skies
"are on the rise again."
You thought you'd seen the back of
that, probably.
"And nobody on the Eastern Seaboard is
safe."
And that listing stayed up there on
Netflix for two fucking years.
LAUGHTER
Is it any wonder that the Netflix
viewers stayed away in their droves?
Cos when they tuned in, they were
disappointed, weren't they,
to find that Stewart Lee's Comedy
Vehicle
contained precisely no falling marine
carnivores whatsoever.
And at no point was anyone on any
seaboard of the United States
put in any kind of shark-based
jeopardy!
Featuring instead, as it did, merely
an out-of-shape, middle-aged man
complaining about global politics from
a centre-left position
while simultaneously pretentiously
deconstructing
the very art form of stand-up itself.
And they didn't want to see that, did
they?!
LAUGHTER
The Netflix viewers. No, they wanted
to see the sort of thing
that Netflix viewers like to see, like
Ricky Gervais's Afterlife.
LAUGHTER
The televisual equivalent of a
nine-hour crying wank.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
"Oh, my wife, she died."
"Oh, she's on the beach with... Oh,
she's in the hospital now.
"Oh, she's swimming in the river...
"Urgh! Urgh!
"Urgh...! Ah!"
LAUGHTER
That's my review of that.
LAUGHTER
Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle -
reports of sharks falling from the
skies are on the rise again
and nobody on the Eastern Seaboard is
safe.
I thought maybe if I made that show as
described by Netflix,
they'd buy it, right?
It's quite difficult, isn't it, to
combine stand-up comedy
with loads of falling sharks,
particularly if you're trying to tour
it.
You'd need...
LAUGHTER
You'd need loads of articulated
lorries, loads of tanks
of saltwater, loads of shark handlers,
loads of sharks,
some method of launching the sharks at
the stage.
LAUGHTER
So I wrote a proposal for that tour.
I submitted it to the Ambassador
Theatre Group chain
and they wrote back saying raining
live sharks down onto stage
and audience would, and I quote,
"Almost certainly fall short of even
the most cursory risk assessment."
LAUGHTER
"Theatres' policies...", it goes on,
"..irrespective of whether
"the venue is privately owned or
council-funded,
"are to prioritise the elimination of
hazards,
"so it is unlikely, therefore, Mr Lee,
that any performance
"based on the introduction of live
marine carnivores
"into an area where the public are
likely to be present
"could be staged by any British
theatre, though it is possible
"that these draconian restrictions may
become more liberal
"since our departure from the EU..."
LAUGHTER
"..allowing members of the public to
submit themselves deliberately
"to fatal shark attacks should they
wish to do so,
"free from the interference of
Brussels. Take back control."
LAUGHTER
Normally, there's applause there and
there's a little extra bit
I can do in all the other towns, but,
erm...
LAUGHTER
..not here tonight.
APPLAUSE
No, it's gone now. Shame. No, I'm not
doing it.
It's a shame because I'm filming this
for the BBC
and it would have been nice to get all
the best bits in,
but obviously, here in York, there's a
resistance to joy, so...
LAUGHTER
You know, where other crowds would
respond ecstatic.
I chose this venue because of the
architecture, really,
not because of the sort of people that
live here, so...
LAUGHTER
Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle - reports
of sharks falling...
Those of you who've brought people
with you who've not seen me before
because you told them I was good,
this is the point where they nudge you
and go, "Is this it?
"Does he just repeat the same
sentences over and over again
"like an angry TED talk?"
Yes.
LAUGHTER
In the first hour, it's just this
sentence over and over again
about the sharks and then it stops.
Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle -
reports of sharks falling from the
skies are on the rise again
and no-one on the Eastern Seaboard is
safe.
I would go as far as to suggest that
that being
the world's main point of information
about me for two years
may have negatively impacted on the
market penetration
of my brand, right?
So let's have a look at some of the
listings
for some of the other top comedians on
Netflix.
And let's see if in their case there's
a closer relationship
or indeed any fucking relationship at
all...
LAUGHTER
..between what Netflix have said they
do and what they do.
This is the Netflix listing for Dave
Chappelle.
If you've not heard of Dave Chappelle,
he's massive in the States and he's
Rolling Stone magazine's
the world's ninth best living
stand-up, so...
LAUGHTER
You can snigger about that if you
like, but actually I don't...
Well, I don't set any store by any of
those lists of the 100 best.
I think they're all nonsense.
But The Times is probably better,
isn't it, as a...
LAUGHTER
..journal of record.
So...
LAUGHTER
This is Netflix's listing for Dave
Chappelle.
"Dave Chappelle gets real about
racially-charged run-ins,
"celebrity scandals and fatherly
dilemmas
"in a searing stand-up set recorded at
Austin's Moody Theatre."
That's the kind of thing you want,
isn't it?
Yeah, you'd read that, you'd watch
that and you'd go,
"Yeah, that's what it is. It was
that." Right? And that's...
Are there any sharks falling on him?
No.
LAUGHTER
And that's all I'm asking for, York -
a level playing field.
Let's have a look at this one.
This is the Netflix listing for Jimmy
Carr.
Right, Jimmy Carr has been in the news
this year
for being controversial.
I actually wrote this material before
the pandemic, right,
so I don't want you to think I've
tried to write topical stuff.
I don't do sort of topical
ambulance-chasing material.
I write what I write and I wait for
reality to align with it.
LAUGHTER
The Netflix listing for Jimmy Carr.
"Jimmy Carr. Nothing is off limits..."
Except compassion, humanity,
self-knowledge and shame.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
It doesn't say that. I've written that
in.
Let's read the real thing and stop
mucking around.
"Jimmy Carr. Nothing is off limits..."
Except tax. Tax and the payment of
tax!
LAUGHTER
It doesn't say that, York. I've
written that in.
Let's read the real thing. "Jimmy
Carr. Nothing is off limits..."
LAUGHTER
Except a five-star review in a
broadsheet newspaper.
Yeah, look at me.
Guardian, Independent, Times,
Telegraph, Mail on Sunday.
That's right.
Even the right-wing press must bow
towards my obvious superiority.
Let's read the real thing.
"Jimmy Carr. Nothing is off limits..."
Except an honorary fellowship from a
top university.
I've got one, York.
LAUGHTER
And a parking space. Let's read the
real thing.
"Jimmy Carr.
"Nothing is off limits as Jimmy Carr
serves up outrageous jokes..."
He serves up his jokes, doesn't he?
Serves up his jokes.
Some comedians deliver their jokes,
don't they?
They deliver them. Like timid little
postmen, they deliver them.
"Hello, Mrs Jenkins.
"I've got a joke for you."
LAUGHTER
"No, you've got to sign for it I'm
afraid, love,
"because it's racist." But...
LAUGHTER
..Jimmy Carr serves up his jokes,
doesn't he?
He serves them up out of a massive,
steaming-hot cauldron
full of rape jokes. All the rape jokes
are in there.
"Get your dish! Rape jokes!
"Rape jokes! Rape jokes!
"Rape! Rape!
"Ha-ha! Rape!"
LAUGHTER
Those are awfully generous helpings of
rape jokes, Jimmy.
LAUGHTER
Are you sure that's cost-effective?
Doesn't matter. It's tax deductible.
Let's read the real thing.
APPLAUSE
"Jimmy Carr. Nothing is off limits as
Jimmy Carr serves up
"outrageous jokes in a special that's
not for the faint of heart."
That's the kind of thing you want,
isn't it?
And that's all I'm asking for, yeah?
I would like it if in the Venn diagram
of this,
the circle of what Netflix say I do
could overlap at some point with the
circle of what I do.
LAUGHTER
Rather than them being two entirely
free-floating spheres.
LAUGHTER
Trigonometry joke, York, on a
Wednesday.
Not a massive response for that, was
there?
Not a massive response.
WOMAN SHOUTS
And yet one person enjoying it alone.
LAUGHTER
They imagined if they cheered, other
people would join in,
but it didn't happen.
LAUGHTER
Weird though, because you take,
like...
Six weeks ago I was in Oxford
and that was the most popular joke of
the night there,
the trigonometry joke.
LAUGHTER
And that's the thing about this job.
I've been doing it 33 years now.
Every town, every night, every
audience, every show is different.
And that's why I'm fucking sick of it.
Really.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
I'm sick of it because...
..no matter how many...
There doesn't seem to be any way to...
LAUGHTER
So I was blind, I was bald, I was fat,
I was grey,
medical professionals said I shouldn't
get out of a chair,
and Netflix have told the whole world
that all my shows
are just fish falling out of clouds
and...
I was sick of it.
And then a friend of mine said, "This
will cheer you up.
"You've got a really good review in
the London Review of Books..."
It's a classy paper. "..from none
other than Alan Bennett," right?
Do people know who Alan Bennett is?
CHEERING
Some people, not everyone though, even
in York, and that's because
there are too many young people here,
aren't there...
LAUGHTER
..dragging it down, and what happens
is...
LAUGHTER
People that have been coming to see me
for 30 years, you think,
"Ooh, let's take our teenagers to see
him," don't you?
And you go, "You really should see
this guy, actually, Jeremy."
LAUGHTER
"Yeah, he's quite a significant
figure. Erm..."
LAUGHTER
"Me and your mother used to go and see
him all the time in London
"before we moved up here in the
pandemic, and..."
LAUGHTER
"You probably won't understand it, or
like it,
"but when you're old, you'll think
it's amazing that you saw him."
LAUGHTER
"And of course he died soon
afterwards."
LAUGHTER
"He seemed unwell on the night. He
seemed...
"..tired and agitated."
But, erm...
Alan Bennett is your fucking spiritual
king of York,
You know, Alan Bennett,
the godfather of post-war British
comedy.
In the '50s, Beyond the Fringe.
And then he wrote Talking Heads and
The Lady in the Van
and all this stuff, and without Alan
Bennett,
you wouldn't have had Monty Python,
you wouldn't have had
the '70s alternative comedy. Nothing.
There would be nothing.
You might be here tonight, but you'd
be looking at an empty stage, right?
But because it's my empty stage,
it would still get five stars in The
Guardian.
LAUGHTER
"Lee didn't even come to York that
night.
"The stage was empty for
two-and-a-half hours.
"What better comment is there on the
state of government today?
"Five stars, the Guardian." So...
LAUGHTER
I was very pleased to get a good
review off Alan Bennett.
I thought maybe I could meet Alan
Bennett
and maybe I could become friends with
Alan Bennett, right,
because I've not got... I've not got
many friends who are comedians.
LAUGHTER
No.
I don't know why that is.
LAUGHTER
I think it's been difficult for the
other comedians
to make friends with me since The
Times called me
the world's greatest living stand-up.
LAUGHTER
# Heavy is the head that wears the
crown. #
LAUGHTER
Do you know who that song is by? Do
you?
You don't, no? It's Stormzy.
Yeah. And you are racist.
LAUGHTER
So...
He's not. He's not really.
So...
LAUGHTER
He's just the person that looked least
likely
to know who Stormzy was.
But I did want to make friends with
some of them.
And there was one young comedian
particularly I wanted to
make friends with because he'd
inspired me to carry on
when I was going to give up. You would
know who he is.
He's on TV all the time. But I can't
tell you who he is
because when we finally did meet, it
didn't reflect well on either of us.
What happened was, we were both on
this sort of charity bill
at the London Palladium, right?
I thought, great, I'll get to meet the
young TV comedian,
because normally he's got all minders
around him and stuff.
I thought, what I'll do is, when he's
on, I will sort of hide
at the side of the stage and as he
comes off I'll jump out on him
and I'll become his friend. So he was
on, right...
He's a young TV comedian, he's on
stage, he's doing his act,
and he was going, "Why is it, right,
that when you go in the...
LAUGHTER
"When you...
"When you go in the shop, yeah,
there's, erm...
"Down in the front bit, like, where
all the stuff is...
"there's like...
"There's loads... It's all cramped up
in the front,
"where they sell the stuff, it's all
cramped and small,
"where they sell the stuff in the
front of the shop, yeah?
"But then out the back, behind the
counter,
"that's all empty and it's massive.
What's that all about?"
LAUGHTER
"What's going on there?"
LAUGHTER
And all the audience are going, "Ah,
ha-ha! Ha-ha! Ha!"
And I was watching that, right?
And I thought, well, I know why that
is.
LAUGHTER
Right, does anyone...? This isn't a
trick, right?
Does anyone here tonight know why it's
in the financial interest
of shopkeepers to try to reduce the
floor space
of the retail area of a shop? Anyone
know?
Anyone? No?
Every other night of the tour,
someone's known.
LAUGHTER
Does anyone know?
In what's normally a quick exchange...
What?
INDISTINCT SHOUWhat?
INDISTINCT SHOUWhat?
INDISTINCT SHOUWhat?
Has someone brought a dog?
It isn't that. It's not... Whatever
that was...
..it's not a one-syllable phrase.
Does anyone know?
- Business rates.
- Business rates is the exact correct
answer.
That's very helpful tonight. How do
you know that?
Do you work in local government, or
retail?
- No.
- What?
So...
Did you say "both" or "no"?
No. Well, how do you...? Do you just
know things?
How do you know it?
- Knowledge is power.
- What?
- Knowledge is power.
- Did you just say Reginald Farrell?
That's what it sounded like.
It's not Reginald Farrell, no. What it
is, um...
Reginald Farrell is nothing to do with
how...
With business rates. I don't know why
you'd say that.
So... It's, um...
Reginald Farrell? What the fuck's
that?!
So, the... Reginald Farrell? Who
shouts that out at a...?!
"Ha, I'm going to should out Reginald
Farrell, that'll get him!
"Cos he'll think it's someone he
should have heard of,
"but he won't know it's a name I just
made up.
"It sounds like a historic person,
doesn't it, from York,
"that he should have known of, and
he'll be thinking, Who's that?
"It isn't anyone! Ha!" So...
Right... It's not Reginald Farrell.
What it is is...
It's business rates, right? You pay a
higher business rate
depending on the size of the floor
space of your shop and obviously...
And I thought I'd better tell this
young comedian that, right?
In case he came here to do his act and
someone went...
Someone shouted "Reginald Farrell" at
him.
And threw him.
I thought I'd better tell him, but
I've got a problem
and I don't mind owning up to it.
There's something about me,
if I know something and I try to tell
someone
they're wrong about something,
it could come across as patronising, I
think. And...
Luckily, I've been able to monetise
it, professionally.
But it's awkward in life. I'll give an
example of what I mean.
I was in Nottingham about a year ago
and I was walking along the main
street in Nottingham
and I walked past one of these baked
potato vans in the street,
you've seen them about, and it was
green and on the side of it,
there was a picture of Robin Hood,
shooting his arrow,
and then on the top, and this was the
stupid thing about it,
really, it said, "Robin Hood's Jacket
Potatoes."
I know. I thought, "Well, I can't
leave that..." So, I...
So I got in the queue and, um...
And after about 25 minutes, I was at
the front...
..and the baked potato woman,
Nottingham woman, she said,
"Can I help you, me ducks?"
And I said, "Yes, is this your baked
potato van,
"Robin Hood's Jacket Potatoes?"
She said, "It is. I set it up with my
husband about 30 year ago,
"he's passed on now, but I like to
come down and do the potatoes."
And I went, "Oh..." And, um...
"Was it your idea to call it Robin
Hood's Jacket Potatoes?"
And she said, "Well, he were from
here, Nottingham,
"so I thought that was a good name."
I went, "Yeah, the thing is, it isn't,
is it? Because, um..."
She said, "I beg your pardon." And I
went, "Well, the problem is,
"and I'm sure you've looked into this,
that if...
"If Robin Hood was a real historical
character,
"he would have been around between
about 1350 and 1380.
"But potatoes...
"..didn't even come to Britain until
the mid-1500s."
She said, "Well, what's your point?"
And I said, "Well...
"The point is that Robin Hood
"wouldn't have even known what a
potato was,
"let alone have had a preferred method
of baking them."
She said, "Do you want a jacket
potato, what?" I said,
"No, I don't want one from you,
"cos you don't know anything about
them.
"I'll just get one out of a dog-muck
bin on the way home, you know,
"and eat that."
And then she's crying, people are
shoving me around,
but so, that's the...
That's the problem I have, right?
So anyway, he's finished his act, this
young comic,
and as he was coming off, I jumped out
on him and I went,
"Ooh, can I talk to you about your
act, please?"
And he went, "Well, it looks like
you're going to."
And I went, "I am, yes, cos some of it
is wrong
"and you need to look at it. Now, you
know when you're talking about
"the floor space in the shops being
small?
"Do you know why that is?"
And he went, "No, but you're going to
tell me, aren't you?"
And I said, "I am, because it's wrong
"and what you'll find in stand-up, the
older you get
"and the more you do it is that you
can have an exaggerated
"sort of punchline, or something,
"but the set-up of things does need to
be factually accurate, otherwise
"we're in a sort of lawless zone, the
desert in Mad Max, you know."
So, I said to him, "What it is, it's
business rates
"and you pay a higher business rate
"depending on the floor space of your
shop,
"so your joke needs to either be cut
from your set,
"or it needs to address that, and you
need to look at that."
And he went, "Well, you've told me
now, haven't you?"
I went...
"Do you want to go for a Chinese?"
And he just walked off.
Josh Widdicombe, that was.
Josh Widdicombe. And, um...
It was, it was Josh Widdicombe. And
it's a shame, right,
because I did want to make friends
with Josh Widdicombe
and I'll tell you why.
Because about 15 years ago, he
inspired me not to quit, right?
What happened was, I didn't know,
but I'd been going progressively deaf
and I got to the point where I
couldn't hear audiences at all
and I think that's partly why I
developed
this belligerent onstage persona.
Actually, the gigs were going a lot
better than I realised.
Er...
I've got hearing aids now, so I'm all
right.
FEEDBACK There they are. Feeding back.
But there was a point where I couldn't
really work
cos of my disability, I suppose,
and I was very depressed and one
night,
I was sitting at home and I found
myself watching The Last Leg
on Channel 4, with all the disabled
comedians on it, you know.
And...
Josh Widdicombe came on.
And I thought, "Well, if he can do
it..."
APPLAUSE AND LAUGHTER
"You know, with whatever it is he's
got..."
I don't know what it is, but it must
be really bad,
cos they always gloss over it, don't
they? They don't mention it. So...
So I went out and I bought a copy of
the London Review of Books
and this is Alan Bennett, godfather of
post-war British comedy's idea
of a good review of me.
AS ALAN BENNETT: "Lee makes
stand-up..."
Yeah, I've not wasted the last two
years.
I've been learning all the
impressions.
All the different impressions.
Alan Bennett...
All the impressions.
AS ALAN BENNETT: "Lee makes stand-up
"almost a moral pursuit,
"predicting an audience's reaction, or
lack of reaction..."
"..to his material in a way that makes
other stand-ups
"seem obvious. He's fearless,
undeterred by an audience's failure
"to respond." Sick of it! What's this,
now?
What's that?! What's that, there?
That's people responding!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
"Erving Goffman would have liked
Stewart Lee..."
What does that mean?! Who's Erving
Goffman?!
"Erving Goffman would have liked
Stewart Lee."
That's a quote for the poster, isn't
it?
That'll pack them in at the Bradford
Alhambra!
"it's austere stuff. Stewart Lee is
the JL Austin of comedy."
What does it mean, JL Austin?!
"Erving Goffman... Erving Goffman
would have liked Stewart Lee."
I Googled Erving Goffman.
"Erving Goffman was the most
influential American sociologist
"of the 20th century.
"His major areas of study include
social interaction,
"the social construction of self,
social organisation of experience
"and particular elements of social
life
"such as institutions and stigmas."
And he would have loved me, wouldn't
he, Erving Goffman?
He'd be rolling around in a tsunami of
his own urine by now!
"Stewart Lee is the JL Austin of
comedy." Right, "JL Austin...
"..was a British philosopher of
language,
"perhaps best known..." If at all, to
be fair!
"..for the theory of speech acts.
"Austin's work ultimately suggests
that all speech and all utterance
"is the doing of something with words
and signs,
"challenging a metaphysics of language
that would posit
"propositional assertion as the
essence of language and meaning."
And I'm the him of this!
I'm the him of this.
And if you've come along here tonight,
York,
hoping to see two and a half hours of
the kind of
JL Austin-influenced stand-up that
Erving Goffman would have loved,
you can fuck off, cos it's not going
to be that, is it?
This is the kiss of death, this Alan
Bennett review.
This is worse, isn't it, than,
"Reports of sharks falling from the
skies are on the rise again,
"and no-one on the Eastern Seaboard is
safe."
It's not fair, is it?
You know, this Dave Chappelle bloke
from America
and Jimmy Carr and that, they're not
being compared unhelpfully
to loads of dead linguistic
philosophers, are they?
This Dave Chappelle bloke, and Jimmy
Carr,
they've not got Netflix telling the
whole world that
all their shows are just fish falling
out of clouds and stuff.
Doesn't say on Netflix, does it,
"Dave Chappelle. A turbot lands in
North Hertfordshire...
"..and a woman in Hitchin is
bewildered."
No, it doesn't say that. And you know
why?
Cos this Dave Chappelle bloke from
America, he's a Hollywood superstar
and he's got status - some of it
earned, some of it manufactured.
In fact, last year, Dave Chappelle's
Hollywood people,
they sent out a press release and it
said, "Dave Chappelle is so massive,
"he's done over 1,600 shows in the
last four years."
Now, I worked that out, right?
That's more than one show a day, which
is possible,
but only if Dave Chappelle lives
permanently on a private plane that
is always flying in the opposite
direction to the Earth's rotation.
It's not a great joke, that, I'll
level with you.
It's sort of garbled,
but it sets up a much better joke in
about ten minutes' time.
And when you see that, you'll go,
"Oh, I see why that was there." So...
No, he's got status...
Hollywood superstar comedian, he's got
status, Dave Chappelle.
And I saw how this status worked close
at hand. I'll tell you why.
What happened was, right,
when I write a new show, I run it in
for six months,
six nights a week, at this 350-seater
little theatre,
the Leicester Square Theatre in
London, right?
And I got to the end of a six-month
run there,
it was a Saturday night, I was doing
the seven till nine slot,
and everyone was really excited, cos
for one night only,
American Hollywood comedy superstar
Dave Chappelle, he was doing
a sort of one-night low-key test the
water in London sort of show.
And I thought I'd better see Dave
Chappelle,
so I bought a ticket, 150 quid, and...
All right, fine. It's not...
Normally, the whole room goes, "Ooh!
That's a lot," you know?
Weird, York, isn't it? "Oh..."
It's not a wealthy county, is it?
But the actual town itself, as you
walk around the streets, it's...
It is marked by conspicuous
consumption
of expensive tat, isn't it?
LAUGHTER
You'd spend that on a teapot, wouldn't
you? 150 quid.
With a picture of Freddie Trueman's
face on it.
It's a lot of money to a normal
person, 150 quid, right? So...
And I thought maybe I could meet Dave
Chappelle, you know,
maybe I could become his friend.
LAUGHTER Why do you find that
laughable?
I find that quite offensive!
I knew I'd meet him, right? Cos
there's only two dressing rooms
in there, they're both about the size
of a Travelodge bathroom.
They're not miles away, like here,
they're just on the side of the stage,
so...
And he couldn't get to the one he was
in without going past
the one I was in, so I knew I'd see
him.
The only awkward thing was it might be
difficult, what with me
being the world's best living stand-up
comedian
and him being the ninth, you know.
But I thought, I'll make a joke out of
it. I'll go...
"Hello, number nine. Number one here."
"Welcome to England. You'll find the
audiences aren't armed." So...
So I came in, you know, six o'clock,
to set up,
but all the staff were in a panic,
freaking out, cos what had happened
was Dave Chappelle's Hollywood people,
they'd sent through a rider,
that's a list of demands for
backstage,
but it was the same sort of rider they
obviously normally send to,
you know, Caesar's Palace in Las
Vegas, or the Hollywood Bowl,
or something, and they'd sent it to
this little 300-odd seater
fringe theatre, so the woman on duty,
she was absolutely in a panic.
She'd been told to take all the
lightbulbs out of Dave Chappelle's
dressing room, 100-odd white
lightbulbs round the mirror,
and to replace them all with red
lightbulbs,
the idea being presumably that it
would feel like
some sort of boudoir, but the room was
so small,
it just felt like you were trapped in
the rear light of a Ford Fiesta.
There was people carrying in buckets
of champagne on ice,
I've never seen that, and the weirdest
thing of all,
on the one flat surface in the room,
presumably at his insistence,
there were two rotisserie chickens,
spinning on their own rotisserie
skewers.
Red lights, champagne on ice,
and two rotisserie chickens,
spinning on their own rotisserie
skewers.
Now, bear in mind, Dave Chappelle's
done over 1,600 gigs
in the last four years.
at two chickens a gig, that's nearly
3,500 chickens.
APPLAUSE AND WHOOPING
That's not a backstage rider. That's a
pogrom against poultry.
Red lights, champagne on ice,
and two rotisserie chickens, on their
own rotisserie skewers.
That's not a backstage rider.
That's a shopping list for a date with
a woman
who you really want to sleep with,
who you've been told really, really
loves rotisserie chicken.
AMERICAN ACCENT: Come on in, honey.
I got soft red lighting...
I got chilled champagne on ice...
I got John Coltrane on the stereo...
I got fine wine in the freezer...
And, honey...
..cos I know what you like...
..I got two...
..fine, fine, fine...
DEEP VOICE: ..rotisserie chickens,
honey.
Yeah.
And... And they're spinning...
..all night long...
..on their own...
..rotisserie skewers.
And all of that hot, hot chicken juice
is...
It's bubbling up out of the chicken,
honey.
And it's dripping down the chicken.
The chicken juice is dripping down,
dripping down the chicken. It's
dripping down...
..into the drip tray.
And if you like, honey, cos I know
what you like...
..you can lap that chicken juice up...
..straight out of the drip tray...
HIGH VOICE: ..like a hungry little
cat. Like a cat!
Like a hungry cat!
DEEP VOICE: Yeah, that's right...
That's right, honey. That's right.
Bathe in the soft red lighting.
Sample my fine champagne.
And drink that hot chicken juice,
yeah.
Drink the chicken juice, honey. Drink
it down.
Drink the chicken juice. That's what
you like. You like chicken juice.
So drink it down. It's hot... Hot,
juicy chicken juice.
Drink it down, honey. Drink the
chicken juice. It's what...
It's what you like, you like the
chicken juice.
Drink it down. Drink the chicken
juice. Drink it.
That's a good girl. Drink the chicken
juice down.
Good... That's a good girl.
Drink it down. Drink the... Drink the
chicken juice.
Drink the chicken juice down, honey.
Drink it down. It's hot!
Hot chicken juice.
Drink it down, drink the chicken
juice, down, honey.
Drink it down. Drink the chicken juice
down.
Drink it down. Drink the chicken
juice. Dri... Dri... Oh, honey!
You got some chicken juice running
down your face!
Hold still while I kiss it off. I'll
kiss...
I'll kiss the chicken juice off your
beautiful face.
LOUD SLURPING
That's right, honey! Drink... Drink
the chicken juice, honey.
Drink it down. Drink the... Put
your...
Put your face in the drip tray... Put
your face...
I'm not sure about that bit, really.
I'll probably...
Should probably not do that.
APPLAUSE
Red lights! Champagne on ice!
And two rotisserie chickens, on their
own rotisserie skewers!
That backstage rider, that's just
about status.
It's designed to intimidate people.
Do you know what my backstage rider
is?
Pork pie, tin of Bovril, unpublished
Franz Kafka manuscript.
So...
I was coming up to the end of my act,
I was supposed to finish at nine,
I thought I'd try and come down early
for Dave. Shows can overrun.
I was down by 8:58, two minutes early,
I thought I'd try and help him out,
you know, and by nine o'clock,
I was in the bar, drinking,
celebrating the end of my six-month
run,
with a view towards being drunk by ten
o'clock,
when Dave Chappelle's 150-quid show
was supposed to start,
cos I don't know about you,
but I can't really relax or enjoy
myself unless I'm drunk. Er...
Particularly in the evenings, cos the
voices come.
You're sitting there trying to watch
something and the voices come,
don't they? And they go, "Kill
yourself, you stupid fucking idiot!"
And you go, "Argh! No!"
But if you... If you drink,
they go quiet, don't they? You know
what I'm talking about.
Yeah, you know! You know, the voices
that come at night.
We all get them, don't we? Did you,
um...?
Yeah, the night voices. Yeah, you know
what I'm talking about.
Did you find...? A lot of people did,
I know I did.
Did you find under lockdown
they were worse, weren't they, the
voices?
Because they started coming in the
day, didn't they, as well?
Not just at night. And you'd be out...
You probably did the same as me, you'd
be out for your walk
in the park in the day, and then the
voices come, they go,
"Eat that fucking dog shit! Eat it!"
And you...
You're going, "No, I don't want to!
No! Leave me alone!"
So you know what I'm talking about.
You've had that problem.
So what I... Yeah, the voices in the
day.
So what I did, I bought a big black
coat -
you probably did something like this -
with pockets,
big pockets and I'd hide bottles of
gin and vodka in there,
and then I'd go out for my walk, you
know, and they'd go,
"Put glass in that pram! Put glass in
the pram!" And I'd go, "Neh..."
Then I'd get the vodka and drink all
that down in one and I'd go,
"Yeah, that's made you go! Go away!"
Yeah, you know what I'm talking about,
don't you?
You know what I'm talking about. The
voices. In the day.
Yeah? A bit of observational comedy,
there. Trying to...
Trying to... Trying to broaden my
range.
I sense some of you have been a bit
baffled by some aspects of the show,
but there's something we can all
relate to.
Not forgetting the viewers at home,
thinking,
"It looks a bit like Live At The
Apollo, but it isn't.
"It seems to be a documentation of
mental breakdown."
So...
So by...
So, 9:30, the doors opened, and then
9:30,
the rotisserie chickens were spinning
in the dressing room,
but they weren't miles away, like at
Wembley,
they're just at the side of the stage,
right?
So 9:30 on a Saturday night, there's
loads of drunk Londoners
wandering in, going, "Do they do
chicken here now?
"Can you get chicken sent to the...?"
I sat down in my 150-quid seat. It got
to ten o'clock,
Dave Chappelle's 150-quid show was
supposed to start.
Nothing happened. He wasn't even in
the building.
I would have seen him, right?
It got to 10:45, an hour and a quarter
after doors,
three-quarters of an hour after his
150-quid set
was supposed to start, he still wasn't
in the building.
And then, suddenly, unannounced, this
little bloke comes out,
Neal Brennan, quite a good American
stand-up,
who writes a lot for Dave Chappelle,
and he did about three minutes
and then he lost his nerve and he just
ran off, right?
And I think what had happened was...
It was actually going well, right, but
by British standards. OK?
But...
You know...
He wouldn't have known what the fuck
was going on here, I tell you.
But it wasn't like when you watch
stand-up in America on TV
and it's just an hour of people going,
"Argh! Ah-ah! Argh! Argh!"
Bloke comes out, he goes, "Boston!"
And they go, "That's here!
"This is Boston! He's just said the
name of where we are!
"That's here!"
33 years of touring the UK, that
doesn't happen here, right?
If I go out and I go, "Carlisle!",
people go, "Yeah, we know."
"We only come out to forget."
So he runs off, this Neal Brennan. A
good act, to be honest.
And then it gets to about 11:15, an
hour and three-quarters after doors,
75 minutes after Dave Chappelle's show
was supposed to start,
150-quid show, he's still not in the
building, I'd have seen him.
Suddenly, unannounced, your favourite
comes out,
that you all like, Jimmy Carr, for a
tight ten of rape
and anti-gypsy stuff, so that was
good.
Everyone loved that. And then he goes
off.
Then it gets to 11:30, and I see, two
hours after doors,
90 minutes after his 150-quid show was
supposed to start,
I see Dave Chappelle sneak in via the
box office.
He comes round and he comes out onto
the stage, unannounced,
half 11, and there's a kind of weird,
confused smattering of applause.
And then I felt almost patriotic
as a lone English voice shouted out...
"Why are you late?"
LAUGHTER
And it wasn't like America,
where they go, "Argh! I've seen you in
a film! Argh!"
It was just someone, probably with a
baby-sitter, you know, going,
"Why are you late?"
And this is what he said, Dave
Chappelle, I wrote it down.
He said he'd been waiting backstage
all night,
which was a 100% barefaced lie, he
hadn't been there.
"But," he said, "there was another act
on before us
"and he didn't finish on time."
GASP FROM AUDIENCE
Yes!
That's right, York.
Far from becoming my friend,
American Hollywood comedy superstar
Dave Chappelle,
he just threw me under the bus. He
threw me under the bus.
Now, it's fair to say that on that
night,
what with it being the end of my run
and what with the delayed start,
I'd miscalibrated my drinking.
LAUGHTER
So he came out and he said I'd made
him late,
so I jumped up in my seat and I went,
"No, I fucking didn't!
"I was done at 8:58... Fucking hell,
eh!"
And then my wife, she grabbed me and
she stopped me.
That's what they're for, isn't it, to
stop you?
She said, "Get out."
I stumbled out into the foyer and
Martin, who owns the theatre,
he stopped me and he said, "Are you
all right?"
I went, "Not really, Martin. That
wanker Dave Chappelle
"is a wanker, and he's on stage and
he's making up...
"Making up lies about me."
And then I realised I was being
approached at speed
from all different corners of the room
by six big blokes in combat uniforms,
on walkie-talkies - Dave Chappelle's
private security team,
that he takes everywhere round the
world with him, right?
Now, I don't have a private security
team.
Or, maybe I do, and that man over
there who shouted out,
"Business rates," he's the head of it.
And if he answers, fast, "Business
rates," like that,
that's a signal to me that there's
nothing to worry about in the room.
And then, when I press him further,
he has a succession of different
codenames,
all of which alert me to different
potential problems.
And if he says Reginald, like you with
Reginald,
that is a signal to me that there have
been some threats online.
So...
They're coming at me, Dave Chappelle's
security guards, they don't know who I
am,
they don't know that I'm the Times
newspaper's world's greatest living
stand-up, they don't know that, a lot
of people don't, as I say.
They just see a little grey, fat old
man calling Dave Chappelle a wanker.
They're American. They don't know what
that is.
They think it's some kind of British
regional biscuit, or something.
Then they hear me say that Dave
Chappelle is making up all
lies about me on stage, which to be
fair, does sound like the kind
of thing a deranged, paranoid stalker
would say, doesn't it?
So they ran at me, so what I did was,
I ran away, up the stairs, out
of the Leicester Square Theatre with a
150 quid
ticket for an unseen Dave Chappelle
show burning a hole in my pocket.
I ran up to Leicester Place, north of
Leicester Square, I ran
across there, I hid behind a kind of
electricity substation.
They came out, Dave Chappelle's
security guards, they ran down
towards Leicester Square, I ran up
north to Lyle Street,
round the side of the Prince Charles
Cinema, they saw me,
they ran up there, up into Chinatown,
but I hid behind a kind of curtain
outside a gay bar.
Yeah, they're trained professionals,
but I've got local knowledge, like the
Taliban, right?
I ran west, along Lyle Street, over
Wardour Street,
down the alleyway by the side of the
Blue Post, over Shaftsbury Avenue.
I was up in Soho now, running around.
Dave Chappelle's security guards,
they're still down in Chinatown,
asking people if they've seen a bloke
called Lee. They're fucked! Right?
Then...
I ran into this little alleyway,
Walker's Court, used to be all
sex shops in the '80s, and I tucked
myself into a doorway there to hide.
And I'm shivering and I'm shaking and
I'm paranoid
and I'm afraid and then,
I realise I'm in the doorway of what
in 1979 was
the entrance to the Comic Strip club,
where Alexei Sayle
and all that crowd changed British
stand-up forever.
And when I used to play that gig, in
1989, I did it,
it was booked by Eddie Izzard, right?
And I remember, at half time,
we used to have to share our dressing
room with the male
strippers from the Raymond Revuebar
next door,
who were appearing in a show called
Carnival of Erotica,
which was neither of those things.
And they used to come in at half time,
the male strippers, and
they would sit down, naked, in their
chairs,
making small talk with us and
masturbating, right?
But they weren't trying to masturbate
to climax,
they were just trying to keep their
penises sort of respectably
tumescent for when they went back on.
They didn't actually want them to be
erect,
cos it's illegal to show an erection
on a British stage and the
legal definition of an erection, if
you're interested, is 45 degrees.
Now...
Personally, I think that's too
ambitious a target.
And one of the things I was looking
forward to when we finally left
the EU was getting rid of all this
stupid red tape and regulations.
And I know that was one of Jacob
Rees-Mogg's main
interests in supporting the project.
But I was 20 years old, right?
I was sitting backstage in a club in
Soho, looking at naked men,
sitting in chairs, masturbating.
It was everything my gran had warned
me showbiz would be.
It was chair-based activity of the
very worst...kind.
And as I stood there in that doorway,
drunk, shivering,
shaking, afraid,
I remembered all the people I used to
do that gig with 33 years ago,
all the comics that I thought were
great and all forgotten now, all
dead or given up, or disappeared, you
know,
they're the real greats to me.
Paul Ramon and Johnny Immaterial,
Malcolm Hardy,
Shelagh Martin, you know, and they're
the greats, not...
These lists of the 100 best comics of
all time, everyone in those
lists, they're just sell-outs, all of
them,
and I'm in some of them and I don't
even know why,
because all the people I think are any
good are dead
and I think if I was any good, I'd be
dead and I felt...
I felt this hand on my shoulder, and I
thought, "Well, this is it. This is
payback time."
And I spun round and it was one of
Dave Chappelle's security guards.
And he said, "Stewart Lee?" I said,
"Yeah. Do you know my act?"
And he said, "No, but I've read about
it on Netflix."
"It sounds amazing, man.
"All Dave does every night is ridicule
the transgender community, but...
"But sharks falling out of the sky...
"How do you even do that in a tight
seven-minute club showcase?"
I said, "I don't. It was a mistake."
He went, "What?!
"When you shouted out in that show, we
should have got you,
"broken both your arms, punched your
face into a pulp
"and put you in a stretcher to the
hospital.
"But you know what, son? I'm going to
let you leave this place
"and I'm going to give you a chance to
make something of your life,
"if you promise me when you leave
here,
"you will work out how to do your act
as it's described on Netflix."
I thought, "A deal's a deal," right?
So I went away, York, and I Googled
the phrase, "Reports of sharks
"falling from the skies are on the
rise again
"and no-one on the Eastern Seaboard is
safe,"
and it turned out, that is
a description of a modern American
horror film called Sharknado,
in which a tornado snatches up loads
of sharks out of the sea
and drops them on a city, on dry land,
and they kill loads of people.
And for some reason,
that's spent two years as the
description of me on Netflix.
And they wouldn't do anything about
changing it.
Right? I don't know if the same was
true in reverse.
I don't know if on the Sharknado page,
there's a picture of a surfer's head
being bitten off and underneath,
it says, "More deadpan humour...
"..from Britain's master of the
multiple call-back ending."
That's right, that's what this is,
isn't it? Yeah. So...
So I carried on looking into it
and I found out a lot of these
American horror films from now,
they're based on British horror
stories from the '20s
and '30s, people like Arthur Machen,
or MR James, you know,
The Birds, that's an early example,
based on a Daphne du Maurier
novel and Sharknado turned out to be
no exception.
That was based on British source
material as well.
In fact, in 1959, when he was
appearing on Broadway,
in Beyond The Fringe, Alan Bennett
actually...
He supplemented his income by writing
horror
fiction for the last of the American
pulp magazines
and I can't give you sharks falling
down onto a stand-up
set in York tonight, but what I can
do,
I'm going to finish this hour by just
reading to you
briefly from Alan Bennett's Sharknado.
AS ALAN BENNETT: "Nora...
"..watched the gathering breeze blow
the dandelions bare
"in the front garden,
"as she anxiously awaited the grocery.
"It would ensure Colin's
"70th birthday celebrations were well
stocked
"with wines, cheeses and nibbles.
"Friends and relations had been
summoned to the neat semi
"and Nora had planned every moment of
the event in meticulous detail,
"from the admittedly rather squeezed
seating plan.
"Some guests were going to have to eat
their dinners
"on the kitchen sideboard.
"To the songs and speeches that would
follow Colin's birthday meal,
"there was only one blot on the
horizon."
OK, right, there should be a big laugh
there, normally, so...
I don't really know what's happened,
but it suggests to me no-one's really
followed the...
Do you want me to carry on doing the
voice,
or shall I just get through it and we
can...?
Do the voice, OK. No, it's up to you,
whatever you...
There's only one... "A strangely
garbled local news report
"suggesting that huge
and ferocious sea creatures..."
LAUGHTER
Yes, well, that should have been
earlier because it's obvious what it
is, I think.
"..were raining down onto the streets
of Barnsley.
"But Barnsley were 30 mile away, at
least,
"across the moor.
"And the weather outside Nora's front
window seemed normal enough for the
time of year.
"Colin and Nora's oldest friends, Alan
and Mildred,
"had already arrived and were settled
down in the kitchen
"sampling some of Nora's homemade
sausage rolls,
"a course of action Colin thought
displayed an unattractive
"streak of impatience.
"In the sitting room, Nora nervously
tuned in the radio.
"Apparently, the falling sea creatures
had been identified
"as sharks.
"And the mysterious purple cloud
containing them
"was now heading towards Nora and
Colin's hometown of Dewsbury.
"Yorkshire folk were warned to stay in
their homes
"and not to go outside, not even to
fetch clean washing off the line.
"Or to chase a gypsy away from a tree.
"Nora looked back into the open plan
kitchen-diner.
"The sideboard at which Alan and
Mildred were munching the nibbles
"was situated in what suddenly seemed
a somewhat perilous position,
"directly beneath the rather
flimsy-looking glass skylight.
"Nora nudged Colin, gestured towards
it and whispered to him
"quietly, so as not to alarm their
guests,
"'Colin, reports of sharks falling
from the skies
"'are on the rise again.
"'And no-one eating on the sideboard
is safe.'"
"But it was too late.
APPLAUSE
"The first of the sharks crashed
without warning,
"through the shattering window and
shards of glass embedded themselves
"in the ham and tomato quiche.
"Nora looked up from the ruined
celebration flan.
"She saw the falling shark rolling
around on the Axminster,
"a floral design, which they had put
down when the extension was built.
"Mildred's head was trapped between
its jaws.
"Alan tried in vain to wrestle her
free, but succeeded only
"in severing his wife's head from her
spasming body.
"Without even a moment to grieve, Alan
found himself in mortal
"combat with the displaced sea
creature, its massive tail
"thrashing around the room, sending
sausage rolls
"and vol-au-vents flying,
"many of which were crushed into the
carpet, creating stains,
"which would be difficult to remove at
a later date,
"even for Nora, who had worked in the
dry-cleaner's...after the dentist's.
"Other guests had arrived in the front
garden, which was now awash
"with dozens of falling sharks, their
huge jaws making mincemeat
"of the fleeing pensioners, as the
newly tarmacked driveway
"foamed with blood, the garden path
slippery with disgorged human
intestines.
"Two spleens, for example, and a
number of pancreases.
"It was then that a crestfallen Nora
had to admit the facts.
"Colin's 70th birthday party was not
going to go quite as she had planned."
CHEERS AND APPLAUSE
LOUD BURP
- Erving Goffman would have liked
that.
- # I got some John Coltrane on the
stereo, baby
# Make it feel all right
# I got some fine wine in the freezer,
mama
# I know what you like
# Oh, we gonna take it, turn it, set
it down
# We gonna learn about love on a three
ply rug
# My baby, gonna be all right... #
language and adult humour.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I know what you're thinking.
"Stewart Lee's let himself go."
LAUGHTER
Since you last saw me, I've gone bald,
I've gone blind,
I've gone grey, I've gone deaf, I've
put on a lot of weight.
I've put on so much weight, I'm now
the sort of person
who buys his shirts at motorway
service station lorry drivers'
clothing outlets, and I pay for them
with points earned
on a loyalty card from the West
Cornwall Pasty Company.
LAUGHTER
I've developed high blood pressure. I
have to go in for a check-up
every three months at my GP in Hackney
in north London.
I went in about two months ago and I
sat down
and the nurse sort of took a look at
me there and she made...
She doesn't know who I am, the nurse.
She doesn't know that
I'm The Times newspaper's world's
greatest living stand-up comedian.
LAUGHTER
A lot of people don't, do they?
There's a couple of empty seats there.
LAUGHTER
No, she just sees a little grey, fat
old man,
and she sat me down and she put a
comforting hand on my knee,
the nurse, and she said to me,
"Is there anyone looking after you at
home?"
LAUGHTER
Then she said, "Do you know, Mr Lee,
you're over 50 years old now.
"You're over 50 years old.
"If you go down to any Hackney
Council-funded leisure centre,
"you now qualify for free sessions of
chair-based activity."
LAUGHTER
It's a low bar, isn't it, chair-based?
"Don't get him out of a chair. He'll
die."
I... I stand up for living. It is in
my job title, literally.
LAUGHTER
So I was blind, I was bald, I was
deaf, I was grey, I was fat,
medical professionals said I shouldn't
risk getting up
out of a chair, so I was feeling
pretty depressed about myself.
So in search of self-esteem, I googled
myself,
right, which you must never do.
And I found the most visited reference
to me on the internet,
the thing most people have read about
me,
It's on the website of Netflix, the
world's largest
stand-up comedy content provision
platform.
This is the most visited piece of
information about me in the world.
There's a picture of me going like
that...
CHUCKLING
..and underneath it says...
.."Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle -
"reports of sharks falling from the
skies are on the rise again."
LAUGHTER
"And nobody on the Eastern Seaboard is
safe."
LAUGHTER
And that's most people in the world's
idea...
LAUGHTER
..of what I'm all about. Let's have a
look at that again.
There's a picture of me going like
that
and underneath it says, "Stewart Lee's
Comedy Vehicle -
"reports of sharks falling from the
skies
"are on the rise again."
You thought you'd seen the back of
that, probably.
"And nobody on the Eastern Seaboard is
safe."
And that listing stayed up there on
Netflix for two fucking years.
LAUGHTER
Is it any wonder that the Netflix
viewers stayed away in their droves?
Cos when they tuned in, they were
disappointed, weren't they,
to find that Stewart Lee's Comedy
Vehicle
contained precisely no falling marine
carnivores whatsoever.
And at no point was anyone on any
seaboard of the United States
put in any kind of shark-based
jeopardy!
Featuring instead, as it did, merely
an out-of-shape, middle-aged man
complaining about global politics from
a centre-left position
while simultaneously pretentiously
deconstructing
the very art form of stand-up itself.
And they didn't want to see that, did
they?!
LAUGHTER
The Netflix viewers. No, they wanted
to see the sort of thing
that Netflix viewers like to see, like
Ricky Gervais's Afterlife.
LAUGHTER
The televisual equivalent of a
nine-hour crying wank.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
"Oh, my wife, she died."
"Oh, she's on the beach with... Oh,
she's in the hospital now.
"Oh, she's swimming in the river...
"Urgh! Urgh!
"Urgh...! Ah!"
LAUGHTER
That's my review of that.
LAUGHTER
Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle -
reports of sharks falling from the
skies are on the rise again
and nobody on the Eastern Seaboard is
safe.
I thought maybe if I made that show as
described by Netflix,
they'd buy it, right?
It's quite difficult, isn't it, to
combine stand-up comedy
with loads of falling sharks,
particularly if you're trying to tour
it.
You'd need...
LAUGHTER
You'd need loads of articulated
lorries, loads of tanks
of saltwater, loads of shark handlers,
loads of sharks,
some method of launching the sharks at
the stage.
LAUGHTER
So I wrote a proposal for that tour.
I submitted it to the Ambassador
Theatre Group chain
and they wrote back saying raining
live sharks down onto stage
and audience would, and I quote,
"Almost certainly fall short of even
the most cursory risk assessment."
LAUGHTER
"Theatres' policies...", it goes on,
"..irrespective of whether
"the venue is privately owned or
council-funded,
"are to prioritise the elimination of
hazards,
"so it is unlikely, therefore, Mr Lee,
that any performance
"based on the introduction of live
marine carnivores
"into an area where the public are
likely to be present
"could be staged by any British
theatre, though it is possible
"that these draconian restrictions may
become more liberal
"since our departure from the EU..."
LAUGHTER
"..allowing members of the public to
submit themselves deliberately
"to fatal shark attacks should they
wish to do so,
"free from the interference of
Brussels. Take back control."
LAUGHTER
Normally, there's applause there and
there's a little extra bit
I can do in all the other towns, but,
erm...
LAUGHTER
..not here tonight.
APPLAUSE
No, it's gone now. Shame. No, I'm not
doing it.
It's a shame because I'm filming this
for the BBC
and it would have been nice to get all
the best bits in,
but obviously, here in York, there's a
resistance to joy, so...
LAUGHTER
You know, where other crowds would
respond ecstatic.
I chose this venue because of the
architecture, really,
not because of the sort of people that
live here, so...
LAUGHTER
Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle - reports
of sharks falling...
Those of you who've brought people
with you who've not seen me before
because you told them I was good,
this is the point where they nudge you
and go, "Is this it?
"Does he just repeat the same
sentences over and over again
"like an angry TED talk?"
Yes.
LAUGHTER
In the first hour, it's just this
sentence over and over again
about the sharks and then it stops.
Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle -
reports of sharks falling from the
skies are on the rise again
and no-one on the Eastern Seaboard is
safe.
I would go as far as to suggest that
that being
the world's main point of information
about me for two years
may have negatively impacted on the
market penetration
of my brand, right?
So let's have a look at some of the
listings
for some of the other top comedians on
Netflix.
And let's see if in their case there's
a closer relationship
or indeed any fucking relationship at
all...
LAUGHTER
..between what Netflix have said they
do and what they do.
This is the Netflix listing for Dave
Chappelle.
If you've not heard of Dave Chappelle,
he's massive in the States and he's
Rolling Stone magazine's
the world's ninth best living
stand-up, so...
LAUGHTER
You can snigger about that if you
like, but actually I don't...
Well, I don't set any store by any of
those lists of the 100 best.
I think they're all nonsense.
But The Times is probably better,
isn't it, as a...
LAUGHTER
..journal of record.
So...
LAUGHTER
This is Netflix's listing for Dave
Chappelle.
"Dave Chappelle gets real about
racially-charged run-ins,
"celebrity scandals and fatherly
dilemmas
"in a searing stand-up set recorded at
Austin's Moody Theatre."
That's the kind of thing you want,
isn't it?
Yeah, you'd read that, you'd watch
that and you'd go,
"Yeah, that's what it is. It was
that." Right? And that's...
Are there any sharks falling on him?
No.
LAUGHTER
And that's all I'm asking for, York -
a level playing field.
Let's have a look at this one.
This is the Netflix listing for Jimmy
Carr.
Right, Jimmy Carr has been in the news
this year
for being controversial.
I actually wrote this material before
the pandemic, right,
so I don't want you to think I've
tried to write topical stuff.
I don't do sort of topical
ambulance-chasing material.
I write what I write and I wait for
reality to align with it.
LAUGHTER
The Netflix listing for Jimmy Carr.
"Jimmy Carr. Nothing is off limits..."
Except compassion, humanity,
self-knowledge and shame.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
It doesn't say that. I've written that
in.
Let's read the real thing and stop
mucking around.
"Jimmy Carr. Nothing is off limits..."
Except tax. Tax and the payment of
tax!
LAUGHTER
It doesn't say that, York. I've
written that in.
Let's read the real thing. "Jimmy
Carr. Nothing is off limits..."
LAUGHTER
Except a five-star review in a
broadsheet newspaper.
Yeah, look at me.
Guardian, Independent, Times,
Telegraph, Mail on Sunday.
That's right.
Even the right-wing press must bow
towards my obvious superiority.
Let's read the real thing.
"Jimmy Carr. Nothing is off limits..."
Except an honorary fellowship from a
top university.
I've got one, York.
LAUGHTER
And a parking space. Let's read the
real thing.
"Jimmy Carr.
"Nothing is off limits as Jimmy Carr
serves up outrageous jokes..."
He serves up his jokes, doesn't he?
Serves up his jokes.
Some comedians deliver their jokes,
don't they?
They deliver them. Like timid little
postmen, they deliver them.
"Hello, Mrs Jenkins.
"I've got a joke for you."
LAUGHTER
"No, you've got to sign for it I'm
afraid, love,
"because it's racist." But...
LAUGHTER
..Jimmy Carr serves up his jokes,
doesn't he?
He serves them up out of a massive,
steaming-hot cauldron
full of rape jokes. All the rape jokes
are in there.
"Get your dish! Rape jokes!
"Rape jokes! Rape jokes!
"Rape! Rape!
"Ha-ha! Rape!"
LAUGHTER
Those are awfully generous helpings of
rape jokes, Jimmy.
LAUGHTER
Are you sure that's cost-effective?
Doesn't matter. It's tax deductible.
Let's read the real thing.
APPLAUSE
"Jimmy Carr. Nothing is off limits as
Jimmy Carr serves up
"outrageous jokes in a special that's
not for the faint of heart."
That's the kind of thing you want,
isn't it?
And that's all I'm asking for, yeah?
I would like it if in the Venn diagram
of this,
the circle of what Netflix say I do
could overlap at some point with the
circle of what I do.
LAUGHTER
Rather than them being two entirely
free-floating spheres.
LAUGHTER
Trigonometry joke, York, on a
Wednesday.
Not a massive response for that, was
there?
Not a massive response.
WOMAN SHOUTS
And yet one person enjoying it alone.
LAUGHTER
They imagined if they cheered, other
people would join in,
but it didn't happen.
LAUGHTER
Weird though, because you take,
like...
Six weeks ago I was in Oxford
and that was the most popular joke of
the night there,
the trigonometry joke.
LAUGHTER
And that's the thing about this job.
I've been doing it 33 years now.
Every town, every night, every
audience, every show is different.
And that's why I'm fucking sick of it.
Really.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
I'm sick of it because...
..no matter how many...
There doesn't seem to be any way to...
LAUGHTER
So I was blind, I was bald, I was fat,
I was grey,
medical professionals said I shouldn't
get out of a chair,
and Netflix have told the whole world
that all my shows
are just fish falling out of clouds
and...
I was sick of it.
And then a friend of mine said, "This
will cheer you up.
"You've got a really good review in
the London Review of Books..."
It's a classy paper. "..from none
other than Alan Bennett," right?
Do people know who Alan Bennett is?
CHEERING
Some people, not everyone though, even
in York, and that's because
there are too many young people here,
aren't there...
LAUGHTER
..dragging it down, and what happens
is...
LAUGHTER
People that have been coming to see me
for 30 years, you think,
"Ooh, let's take our teenagers to see
him," don't you?
And you go, "You really should see
this guy, actually, Jeremy."
LAUGHTER
"Yeah, he's quite a significant
figure. Erm..."
LAUGHTER
"Me and your mother used to go and see
him all the time in London
"before we moved up here in the
pandemic, and..."
LAUGHTER
"You probably won't understand it, or
like it,
"but when you're old, you'll think
it's amazing that you saw him."
LAUGHTER
"And of course he died soon
afterwards."
LAUGHTER
"He seemed unwell on the night. He
seemed...
"..tired and agitated."
But, erm...
Alan Bennett is your fucking spiritual
king of York,
You know, Alan Bennett,
the godfather of post-war British
comedy.
In the '50s, Beyond the Fringe.
And then he wrote Talking Heads and
The Lady in the Van
and all this stuff, and without Alan
Bennett,
you wouldn't have had Monty Python,
you wouldn't have had
the '70s alternative comedy. Nothing.
There would be nothing.
You might be here tonight, but you'd
be looking at an empty stage, right?
But because it's my empty stage,
it would still get five stars in The
Guardian.
LAUGHTER
"Lee didn't even come to York that
night.
"The stage was empty for
two-and-a-half hours.
"What better comment is there on the
state of government today?
"Five stars, the Guardian." So...
LAUGHTER
I was very pleased to get a good
review off Alan Bennett.
I thought maybe I could meet Alan
Bennett
and maybe I could become friends with
Alan Bennett, right,
because I've not got... I've not got
many friends who are comedians.
LAUGHTER
No.
I don't know why that is.
LAUGHTER
I think it's been difficult for the
other comedians
to make friends with me since The
Times called me
the world's greatest living stand-up.
LAUGHTER
# Heavy is the head that wears the
crown. #
LAUGHTER
Do you know who that song is by? Do
you?
You don't, no? It's Stormzy.
Yeah. And you are racist.
LAUGHTER
So...
He's not. He's not really.
So...
LAUGHTER
He's just the person that looked least
likely
to know who Stormzy was.
But I did want to make friends with
some of them.
And there was one young comedian
particularly I wanted to
make friends with because he'd
inspired me to carry on
when I was going to give up. You would
know who he is.
He's on TV all the time. But I can't
tell you who he is
because when we finally did meet, it
didn't reflect well on either of us.
What happened was, we were both on
this sort of charity bill
at the London Palladium, right?
I thought, great, I'll get to meet the
young TV comedian,
because normally he's got all minders
around him and stuff.
I thought, what I'll do is, when he's
on, I will sort of hide
at the side of the stage and as he
comes off I'll jump out on him
and I'll become his friend. So he was
on, right...
He's a young TV comedian, he's on
stage, he's doing his act,
and he was going, "Why is it, right,
that when you go in the...
LAUGHTER
"When you...
"When you go in the shop, yeah,
there's, erm...
"Down in the front bit, like, where
all the stuff is...
"there's like...
"There's loads... It's all cramped up
in the front,
"where they sell the stuff, it's all
cramped and small,
"where they sell the stuff in the
front of the shop, yeah?
"But then out the back, behind the
counter,
"that's all empty and it's massive.
What's that all about?"
LAUGHTER
"What's going on there?"
LAUGHTER
And all the audience are going, "Ah,
ha-ha! Ha-ha! Ha!"
And I was watching that, right?
And I thought, well, I know why that
is.
LAUGHTER
Right, does anyone...? This isn't a
trick, right?
Does anyone here tonight know why it's
in the financial interest
of shopkeepers to try to reduce the
floor space
of the retail area of a shop? Anyone
know?
Anyone? No?
Every other night of the tour,
someone's known.
LAUGHTER
Does anyone know?
In what's normally a quick exchange...
What?
INDISTINCT SHOUWhat?
INDISTINCT SHOUWhat?
INDISTINCT SHOUWhat?
Has someone brought a dog?
It isn't that. It's not... Whatever
that was...
..it's not a one-syllable phrase.
Does anyone know?
- Business rates.
- Business rates is the exact correct
answer.
That's very helpful tonight. How do
you know that?
Do you work in local government, or
retail?
- No.
- What?
So...
Did you say "both" or "no"?
No. Well, how do you...? Do you just
know things?
How do you know it?
- Knowledge is power.
- What?
- Knowledge is power.
- Did you just say Reginald Farrell?
That's what it sounded like.
It's not Reginald Farrell, no. What it
is, um...
Reginald Farrell is nothing to do with
how...
With business rates. I don't know why
you'd say that.
So... It's, um...
Reginald Farrell? What the fuck's
that?!
So, the... Reginald Farrell? Who
shouts that out at a...?!
"Ha, I'm going to should out Reginald
Farrell, that'll get him!
"Cos he'll think it's someone he
should have heard of,
"but he won't know it's a name I just
made up.
"It sounds like a historic person,
doesn't it, from York,
"that he should have known of, and
he'll be thinking, Who's that?
"It isn't anyone! Ha!" So...
Right... It's not Reginald Farrell.
What it is is...
It's business rates, right? You pay a
higher business rate
depending on the size of the floor
space of your shop and obviously...
And I thought I'd better tell this
young comedian that, right?
In case he came here to do his act and
someone went...
Someone shouted "Reginald Farrell" at
him.
And threw him.
I thought I'd better tell him, but
I've got a problem
and I don't mind owning up to it.
There's something about me,
if I know something and I try to tell
someone
they're wrong about something,
it could come across as patronising, I
think. And...
Luckily, I've been able to monetise
it, professionally.
But it's awkward in life. I'll give an
example of what I mean.
I was in Nottingham about a year ago
and I was walking along the main
street in Nottingham
and I walked past one of these baked
potato vans in the street,
you've seen them about, and it was
green and on the side of it,
there was a picture of Robin Hood,
shooting his arrow,
and then on the top, and this was the
stupid thing about it,
really, it said, "Robin Hood's Jacket
Potatoes."
I know. I thought, "Well, I can't
leave that..." So, I...
So I got in the queue and, um...
And after about 25 minutes, I was at
the front...
..and the baked potato woman,
Nottingham woman, she said,
"Can I help you, me ducks?"
And I said, "Yes, is this your baked
potato van,
"Robin Hood's Jacket Potatoes?"
She said, "It is. I set it up with my
husband about 30 year ago,
"he's passed on now, but I like to
come down and do the potatoes."
And I went, "Oh..." And, um...
"Was it your idea to call it Robin
Hood's Jacket Potatoes?"
And she said, "Well, he were from
here, Nottingham,
"so I thought that was a good name."
I went, "Yeah, the thing is, it isn't,
is it? Because, um..."
She said, "I beg your pardon." And I
went, "Well, the problem is,
"and I'm sure you've looked into this,
that if...
"If Robin Hood was a real historical
character,
"he would have been around between
about 1350 and 1380.
"But potatoes...
"..didn't even come to Britain until
the mid-1500s."
She said, "Well, what's your point?"
And I said, "Well...
"The point is that Robin Hood
"wouldn't have even known what a
potato was,
"let alone have had a preferred method
of baking them."
She said, "Do you want a jacket
potato, what?" I said,
"No, I don't want one from you,
"cos you don't know anything about
them.
"I'll just get one out of a dog-muck
bin on the way home, you know,
"and eat that."
And then she's crying, people are
shoving me around,
but so, that's the...
That's the problem I have, right?
So anyway, he's finished his act, this
young comic,
and as he was coming off, I jumped out
on him and I went,
"Ooh, can I talk to you about your
act, please?"
And he went, "Well, it looks like
you're going to."
And I went, "I am, yes, cos some of it
is wrong
"and you need to look at it. Now, you
know when you're talking about
"the floor space in the shops being
small?
"Do you know why that is?"
And he went, "No, but you're going to
tell me, aren't you?"
And I said, "I am, because it's wrong
"and what you'll find in stand-up, the
older you get
"and the more you do it is that you
can have an exaggerated
"sort of punchline, or something,
"but the set-up of things does need to
be factually accurate, otherwise
"we're in a sort of lawless zone, the
desert in Mad Max, you know."
So, I said to him, "What it is, it's
business rates
"and you pay a higher business rate
"depending on the floor space of your
shop,
"so your joke needs to either be cut
from your set,
"or it needs to address that, and you
need to look at that."
And he went, "Well, you've told me
now, haven't you?"
I went...
"Do you want to go for a Chinese?"
And he just walked off.
Josh Widdicombe, that was.
Josh Widdicombe. And, um...
It was, it was Josh Widdicombe. And
it's a shame, right,
because I did want to make friends
with Josh Widdicombe
and I'll tell you why.
Because about 15 years ago, he
inspired me not to quit, right?
What happened was, I didn't know,
but I'd been going progressively deaf
and I got to the point where I
couldn't hear audiences at all
and I think that's partly why I
developed
this belligerent onstage persona.
Actually, the gigs were going a lot
better than I realised.
Er...
I've got hearing aids now, so I'm all
right.
FEEDBACK There they are. Feeding back.
But there was a point where I couldn't
really work
cos of my disability, I suppose,
and I was very depressed and one
night,
I was sitting at home and I found
myself watching The Last Leg
on Channel 4, with all the disabled
comedians on it, you know.
And...
Josh Widdicombe came on.
And I thought, "Well, if he can do
it..."
APPLAUSE AND LAUGHTER
"You know, with whatever it is he's
got..."
I don't know what it is, but it must
be really bad,
cos they always gloss over it, don't
they? They don't mention it. So...
So I went out and I bought a copy of
the London Review of Books
and this is Alan Bennett, godfather of
post-war British comedy's idea
of a good review of me.
AS ALAN BENNETT: "Lee makes
stand-up..."
Yeah, I've not wasted the last two
years.
I've been learning all the
impressions.
All the different impressions.
Alan Bennett...
All the impressions.
AS ALAN BENNETT: "Lee makes stand-up
"almost a moral pursuit,
"predicting an audience's reaction, or
lack of reaction..."
"..to his material in a way that makes
other stand-ups
"seem obvious. He's fearless,
undeterred by an audience's failure
"to respond." Sick of it! What's this,
now?
What's that?! What's that, there?
That's people responding!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
"Erving Goffman would have liked
Stewart Lee..."
What does that mean?! Who's Erving
Goffman?!
"Erving Goffman would have liked
Stewart Lee."
That's a quote for the poster, isn't
it?
That'll pack them in at the Bradford
Alhambra!
"it's austere stuff. Stewart Lee is
the JL Austin of comedy."
What does it mean, JL Austin?!
"Erving Goffman... Erving Goffman
would have liked Stewart Lee."
I Googled Erving Goffman.
"Erving Goffman was the most
influential American sociologist
"of the 20th century.
"His major areas of study include
social interaction,
"the social construction of self,
social organisation of experience
"and particular elements of social
life
"such as institutions and stigmas."
And he would have loved me, wouldn't
he, Erving Goffman?
He'd be rolling around in a tsunami of
his own urine by now!
"Stewart Lee is the JL Austin of
comedy." Right, "JL Austin...
"..was a British philosopher of
language,
"perhaps best known..." If at all, to
be fair!
"..for the theory of speech acts.
"Austin's work ultimately suggests
that all speech and all utterance
"is the doing of something with words
and signs,
"challenging a metaphysics of language
that would posit
"propositional assertion as the
essence of language and meaning."
And I'm the him of this!
I'm the him of this.
And if you've come along here tonight,
York,
hoping to see two and a half hours of
the kind of
JL Austin-influenced stand-up that
Erving Goffman would have loved,
you can fuck off, cos it's not going
to be that, is it?
This is the kiss of death, this Alan
Bennett review.
This is worse, isn't it, than,
"Reports of sharks falling from the
skies are on the rise again,
"and no-one on the Eastern Seaboard is
safe."
It's not fair, is it?
You know, this Dave Chappelle bloke
from America
and Jimmy Carr and that, they're not
being compared unhelpfully
to loads of dead linguistic
philosophers, are they?
This Dave Chappelle bloke, and Jimmy
Carr,
they've not got Netflix telling the
whole world that
all their shows are just fish falling
out of clouds and stuff.
Doesn't say on Netflix, does it,
"Dave Chappelle. A turbot lands in
North Hertfordshire...
"..and a woman in Hitchin is
bewildered."
No, it doesn't say that. And you know
why?
Cos this Dave Chappelle bloke from
America, he's a Hollywood superstar
and he's got status - some of it
earned, some of it manufactured.
In fact, last year, Dave Chappelle's
Hollywood people,
they sent out a press release and it
said, "Dave Chappelle is so massive,
"he's done over 1,600 shows in the
last four years."
Now, I worked that out, right?
That's more than one show a day, which
is possible,
but only if Dave Chappelle lives
permanently on a private plane that
is always flying in the opposite
direction to the Earth's rotation.
It's not a great joke, that, I'll
level with you.
It's sort of garbled,
but it sets up a much better joke in
about ten minutes' time.
And when you see that, you'll go,
"Oh, I see why that was there." So...
No, he's got status...
Hollywood superstar comedian, he's got
status, Dave Chappelle.
And I saw how this status worked close
at hand. I'll tell you why.
What happened was, right,
when I write a new show, I run it in
for six months,
six nights a week, at this 350-seater
little theatre,
the Leicester Square Theatre in
London, right?
And I got to the end of a six-month
run there,
it was a Saturday night, I was doing
the seven till nine slot,
and everyone was really excited, cos
for one night only,
American Hollywood comedy superstar
Dave Chappelle, he was doing
a sort of one-night low-key test the
water in London sort of show.
And I thought I'd better see Dave
Chappelle,
so I bought a ticket, 150 quid, and...
All right, fine. It's not...
Normally, the whole room goes, "Ooh!
That's a lot," you know?
Weird, York, isn't it? "Oh..."
It's not a wealthy county, is it?
But the actual town itself, as you
walk around the streets, it's...
It is marked by conspicuous
consumption
of expensive tat, isn't it?
LAUGHTER
You'd spend that on a teapot, wouldn't
you? 150 quid.
With a picture of Freddie Trueman's
face on it.
It's a lot of money to a normal
person, 150 quid, right? So...
And I thought maybe I could meet Dave
Chappelle, you know,
maybe I could become his friend.
LAUGHTER Why do you find that
laughable?
I find that quite offensive!
I knew I'd meet him, right? Cos
there's only two dressing rooms
in there, they're both about the size
of a Travelodge bathroom.
They're not miles away, like here,
they're just on the side of the stage,
so...
And he couldn't get to the one he was
in without going past
the one I was in, so I knew I'd see
him.
The only awkward thing was it might be
difficult, what with me
being the world's best living stand-up
comedian
and him being the ninth, you know.
But I thought, I'll make a joke out of
it. I'll go...
"Hello, number nine. Number one here."
"Welcome to England. You'll find the
audiences aren't armed." So...
So I came in, you know, six o'clock,
to set up,
but all the staff were in a panic,
freaking out, cos what had happened
was Dave Chappelle's Hollywood people,
they'd sent through a rider,
that's a list of demands for
backstage,
but it was the same sort of rider they
obviously normally send to,
you know, Caesar's Palace in Las
Vegas, or the Hollywood Bowl,
or something, and they'd sent it to
this little 300-odd seater
fringe theatre, so the woman on duty,
she was absolutely in a panic.
She'd been told to take all the
lightbulbs out of Dave Chappelle's
dressing room, 100-odd white
lightbulbs round the mirror,
and to replace them all with red
lightbulbs,
the idea being presumably that it
would feel like
some sort of boudoir, but the room was
so small,
it just felt like you were trapped in
the rear light of a Ford Fiesta.
There was people carrying in buckets
of champagne on ice,
I've never seen that, and the weirdest
thing of all,
on the one flat surface in the room,
presumably at his insistence,
there were two rotisserie chickens,
spinning on their own rotisserie
skewers.
Red lights, champagne on ice,
and two rotisserie chickens,
spinning on their own rotisserie
skewers.
Now, bear in mind, Dave Chappelle's
done over 1,600 gigs
in the last four years.
at two chickens a gig, that's nearly
3,500 chickens.
APPLAUSE AND WHOOPING
That's not a backstage rider. That's a
pogrom against poultry.
Red lights, champagne on ice,
and two rotisserie chickens, on their
own rotisserie skewers.
That's not a backstage rider.
That's a shopping list for a date with
a woman
who you really want to sleep with,
who you've been told really, really
loves rotisserie chicken.
AMERICAN ACCENT: Come on in, honey.
I got soft red lighting...
I got chilled champagne on ice...
I got John Coltrane on the stereo...
I got fine wine in the freezer...
And, honey...
..cos I know what you like...
..I got two...
..fine, fine, fine...
DEEP VOICE: ..rotisserie chickens,
honey.
Yeah.
And... And they're spinning...
..all night long...
..on their own...
..rotisserie skewers.
And all of that hot, hot chicken juice
is...
It's bubbling up out of the chicken,
honey.
And it's dripping down the chicken.
The chicken juice is dripping down,
dripping down the chicken. It's
dripping down...
..into the drip tray.
And if you like, honey, cos I know
what you like...
..you can lap that chicken juice up...
..straight out of the drip tray...
HIGH VOICE: ..like a hungry little
cat. Like a cat!
Like a hungry cat!
DEEP VOICE: Yeah, that's right...
That's right, honey. That's right.
Bathe in the soft red lighting.
Sample my fine champagne.
And drink that hot chicken juice,
yeah.
Drink the chicken juice, honey. Drink
it down.
Drink the chicken juice. That's what
you like. You like chicken juice.
So drink it down. It's hot... Hot,
juicy chicken juice.
Drink it down, honey. Drink the
chicken juice. It's what...
It's what you like, you like the
chicken juice.
Drink it down. Drink the chicken
juice. Drink it.
That's a good girl. Drink the chicken
juice down.
Good... That's a good girl.
Drink it down. Drink the... Drink the
chicken juice.
Drink the chicken juice down, honey.
Drink it down. It's hot!
Hot chicken juice.
Drink it down, drink the chicken
juice, down, honey.
Drink it down. Drink the chicken juice
down.
Drink it down. Drink the chicken
juice. Dri... Dri... Oh, honey!
You got some chicken juice running
down your face!
Hold still while I kiss it off. I'll
kiss...
I'll kiss the chicken juice off your
beautiful face.
LOUD SLURPING
That's right, honey! Drink... Drink
the chicken juice, honey.
Drink it down. Drink the... Put
your...
Put your face in the drip tray... Put
your face...
I'm not sure about that bit, really.
I'll probably...
Should probably not do that.
APPLAUSE
Red lights! Champagne on ice!
And two rotisserie chickens, on their
own rotisserie skewers!
That backstage rider, that's just
about status.
It's designed to intimidate people.
Do you know what my backstage rider
is?
Pork pie, tin of Bovril, unpublished
Franz Kafka manuscript.
So...
I was coming up to the end of my act,
I was supposed to finish at nine,
I thought I'd try and come down early
for Dave. Shows can overrun.
I was down by 8:58, two minutes early,
I thought I'd try and help him out,
you know, and by nine o'clock,
I was in the bar, drinking,
celebrating the end of my six-month
run,
with a view towards being drunk by ten
o'clock,
when Dave Chappelle's 150-quid show
was supposed to start,
cos I don't know about you,
but I can't really relax or enjoy
myself unless I'm drunk. Er...
Particularly in the evenings, cos the
voices come.
You're sitting there trying to watch
something and the voices come,
don't they? And they go, "Kill
yourself, you stupid fucking idiot!"
And you go, "Argh! No!"
But if you... If you drink,
they go quiet, don't they? You know
what I'm talking about.
Yeah, you know! You know, the voices
that come at night.
We all get them, don't we? Did you,
um...?
Yeah, the night voices. Yeah, you know
what I'm talking about.
Did you find...? A lot of people did,
I know I did.
Did you find under lockdown
they were worse, weren't they, the
voices?
Because they started coming in the
day, didn't they, as well?
Not just at night. And you'd be out...
You probably did the same as me, you'd
be out for your walk
in the park in the day, and then the
voices come, they go,
"Eat that fucking dog shit! Eat it!"
And you...
You're going, "No, I don't want to!
No! Leave me alone!"
So you know what I'm talking about.
You've had that problem.
So what I... Yeah, the voices in the
day.
So what I did, I bought a big black
coat -
you probably did something like this -
with pockets,
big pockets and I'd hide bottles of
gin and vodka in there,
and then I'd go out for my walk, you
know, and they'd go,
"Put glass in that pram! Put glass in
the pram!" And I'd go, "Neh..."
Then I'd get the vodka and drink all
that down in one and I'd go,
"Yeah, that's made you go! Go away!"
Yeah, you know what I'm talking about,
don't you?
You know what I'm talking about. The
voices. In the day.
Yeah? A bit of observational comedy,
there. Trying to...
Trying to... Trying to broaden my
range.
I sense some of you have been a bit
baffled by some aspects of the show,
but there's something we can all
relate to.
Not forgetting the viewers at home,
thinking,
"It looks a bit like Live At The
Apollo, but it isn't.
"It seems to be a documentation of
mental breakdown."
So...
So by...
So, 9:30, the doors opened, and then
9:30,
the rotisserie chickens were spinning
in the dressing room,
but they weren't miles away, like at
Wembley,
they're just at the side of the stage,
right?
So 9:30 on a Saturday night, there's
loads of drunk Londoners
wandering in, going, "Do they do
chicken here now?
"Can you get chicken sent to the...?"
I sat down in my 150-quid seat. It got
to ten o'clock,
Dave Chappelle's 150-quid show was
supposed to start.
Nothing happened. He wasn't even in
the building.
I would have seen him, right?
It got to 10:45, an hour and a quarter
after doors,
three-quarters of an hour after his
150-quid set
was supposed to start, he still wasn't
in the building.
And then, suddenly, unannounced, this
little bloke comes out,
Neal Brennan, quite a good American
stand-up,
who writes a lot for Dave Chappelle,
and he did about three minutes
and then he lost his nerve and he just
ran off, right?
And I think what had happened was...
It was actually going well, right, but
by British standards. OK?
But...
You know...
He wouldn't have known what the fuck
was going on here, I tell you.
But it wasn't like when you watch
stand-up in America on TV
and it's just an hour of people going,
"Argh! Ah-ah! Argh! Argh!"
Bloke comes out, he goes, "Boston!"
And they go, "That's here!
"This is Boston! He's just said the
name of where we are!
"That's here!"
33 years of touring the UK, that
doesn't happen here, right?
If I go out and I go, "Carlisle!",
people go, "Yeah, we know."
"We only come out to forget."
So he runs off, this Neal Brennan. A
good act, to be honest.
And then it gets to about 11:15, an
hour and three-quarters after doors,
75 minutes after Dave Chappelle's show
was supposed to start,
150-quid show, he's still not in the
building, I'd have seen him.
Suddenly, unannounced, your favourite
comes out,
that you all like, Jimmy Carr, for a
tight ten of rape
and anti-gypsy stuff, so that was
good.
Everyone loved that. And then he goes
off.
Then it gets to 11:30, and I see, two
hours after doors,
90 minutes after his 150-quid show was
supposed to start,
I see Dave Chappelle sneak in via the
box office.
He comes round and he comes out onto
the stage, unannounced,
half 11, and there's a kind of weird,
confused smattering of applause.
And then I felt almost patriotic
as a lone English voice shouted out...
"Why are you late?"
LAUGHTER
And it wasn't like America,
where they go, "Argh! I've seen you in
a film! Argh!"
It was just someone, probably with a
baby-sitter, you know, going,
"Why are you late?"
And this is what he said, Dave
Chappelle, I wrote it down.
He said he'd been waiting backstage
all night,
which was a 100% barefaced lie, he
hadn't been there.
"But," he said, "there was another act
on before us
"and he didn't finish on time."
GASP FROM AUDIENCE
Yes!
That's right, York.
Far from becoming my friend,
American Hollywood comedy superstar
Dave Chappelle,
he just threw me under the bus. He
threw me under the bus.
Now, it's fair to say that on that
night,
what with it being the end of my run
and what with the delayed start,
I'd miscalibrated my drinking.
LAUGHTER
So he came out and he said I'd made
him late,
so I jumped up in my seat and I went,
"No, I fucking didn't!
"I was done at 8:58... Fucking hell,
eh!"
And then my wife, she grabbed me and
she stopped me.
That's what they're for, isn't it, to
stop you?
She said, "Get out."
I stumbled out into the foyer and
Martin, who owns the theatre,
he stopped me and he said, "Are you
all right?"
I went, "Not really, Martin. That
wanker Dave Chappelle
"is a wanker, and he's on stage and
he's making up...
"Making up lies about me."
And then I realised I was being
approached at speed
from all different corners of the room
by six big blokes in combat uniforms,
on walkie-talkies - Dave Chappelle's
private security team,
that he takes everywhere round the
world with him, right?
Now, I don't have a private security
team.
Or, maybe I do, and that man over
there who shouted out,
"Business rates," he's the head of it.
And if he answers, fast, "Business
rates," like that,
that's a signal to me that there's
nothing to worry about in the room.
And then, when I press him further,
he has a succession of different
codenames,
all of which alert me to different
potential problems.
And if he says Reginald, like you with
Reginald,
that is a signal to me that there have
been some threats online.
So...
They're coming at me, Dave Chappelle's
security guards, they don't know who I
am,
they don't know that I'm the Times
newspaper's world's greatest living
stand-up, they don't know that, a lot
of people don't, as I say.
They just see a little grey, fat old
man calling Dave Chappelle a wanker.
They're American. They don't know what
that is.
They think it's some kind of British
regional biscuit, or something.
Then they hear me say that Dave
Chappelle is making up all
lies about me on stage, which to be
fair, does sound like the kind
of thing a deranged, paranoid stalker
would say, doesn't it?
So they ran at me, so what I did was,
I ran away, up the stairs, out
of the Leicester Square Theatre with a
150 quid
ticket for an unseen Dave Chappelle
show burning a hole in my pocket.
I ran up to Leicester Place, north of
Leicester Square, I ran
across there, I hid behind a kind of
electricity substation.
They came out, Dave Chappelle's
security guards, they ran down
towards Leicester Square, I ran up
north to Lyle Street,
round the side of the Prince Charles
Cinema, they saw me,
they ran up there, up into Chinatown,
but I hid behind a kind of curtain
outside a gay bar.
Yeah, they're trained professionals,
but I've got local knowledge, like the
Taliban, right?
I ran west, along Lyle Street, over
Wardour Street,
down the alleyway by the side of the
Blue Post, over Shaftsbury Avenue.
I was up in Soho now, running around.
Dave Chappelle's security guards,
they're still down in Chinatown,
asking people if they've seen a bloke
called Lee. They're fucked! Right?
Then...
I ran into this little alleyway,
Walker's Court, used to be all
sex shops in the '80s, and I tucked
myself into a doorway there to hide.
And I'm shivering and I'm shaking and
I'm paranoid
and I'm afraid and then,
I realise I'm in the doorway of what
in 1979 was
the entrance to the Comic Strip club,
where Alexei Sayle
and all that crowd changed British
stand-up forever.
And when I used to play that gig, in
1989, I did it,
it was booked by Eddie Izzard, right?
And I remember, at half time,
we used to have to share our dressing
room with the male
strippers from the Raymond Revuebar
next door,
who were appearing in a show called
Carnival of Erotica,
which was neither of those things.
And they used to come in at half time,
the male strippers, and
they would sit down, naked, in their
chairs,
making small talk with us and
masturbating, right?
But they weren't trying to masturbate
to climax,
they were just trying to keep their
penises sort of respectably
tumescent for when they went back on.
They didn't actually want them to be
erect,
cos it's illegal to show an erection
on a British stage and the
legal definition of an erection, if
you're interested, is 45 degrees.
Now...
Personally, I think that's too
ambitious a target.
And one of the things I was looking
forward to when we finally left
the EU was getting rid of all this
stupid red tape and regulations.
And I know that was one of Jacob
Rees-Mogg's main
interests in supporting the project.
But I was 20 years old, right?
I was sitting backstage in a club in
Soho, looking at naked men,
sitting in chairs, masturbating.
It was everything my gran had warned
me showbiz would be.
It was chair-based activity of the
very worst...kind.
And as I stood there in that doorway,
drunk, shivering,
shaking, afraid,
I remembered all the people I used to
do that gig with 33 years ago,
all the comics that I thought were
great and all forgotten now, all
dead or given up, or disappeared, you
know,
they're the real greats to me.
Paul Ramon and Johnny Immaterial,
Malcolm Hardy,
Shelagh Martin, you know, and they're
the greats, not...
These lists of the 100 best comics of
all time, everyone in those
lists, they're just sell-outs, all of
them,
and I'm in some of them and I don't
even know why,
because all the people I think are any
good are dead
and I think if I was any good, I'd be
dead and I felt...
I felt this hand on my shoulder, and I
thought, "Well, this is it. This is
payback time."
And I spun round and it was one of
Dave Chappelle's security guards.
And he said, "Stewart Lee?" I said,
"Yeah. Do you know my act?"
And he said, "No, but I've read about
it on Netflix."
"It sounds amazing, man.
"All Dave does every night is ridicule
the transgender community, but...
"But sharks falling out of the sky...
"How do you even do that in a tight
seven-minute club showcase?"
I said, "I don't. It was a mistake."
He went, "What?!
"When you shouted out in that show, we
should have got you,
"broken both your arms, punched your
face into a pulp
"and put you in a stretcher to the
hospital.
"But you know what, son? I'm going to
let you leave this place
"and I'm going to give you a chance to
make something of your life,
"if you promise me when you leave
here,
"you will work out how to do your act
as it's described on Netflix."
I thought, "A deal's a deal," right?
So I went away, York, and I Googled
the phrase, "Reports of sharks
"falling from the skies are on the
rise again
"and no-one on the Eastern Seaboard is
safe,"
and it turned out, that is
a description of a modern American
horror film called Sharknado,
in which a tornado snatches up loads
of sharks out of the sea
and drops them on a city, on dry land,
and they kill loads of people.
And for some reason,
that's spent two years as the
description of me on Netflix.
And they wouldn't do anything about
changing it.
Right? I don't know if the same was
true in reverse.
I don't know if on the Sharknado page,
there's a picture of a surfer's head
being bitten off and underneath,
it says, "More deadpan humour...
"..from Britain's master of the
multiple call-back ending."
That's right, that's what this is,
isn't it? Yeah. So...
So I carried on looking into it
and I found out a lot of these
American horror films from now,
they're based on British horror
stories from the '20s
and '30s, people like Arthur Machen,
or MR James, you know,
The Birds, that's an early example,
based on a Daphne du Maurier
novel and Sharknado turned out to be
no exception.
That was based on British source
material as well.
In fact, in 1959, when he was
appearing on Broadway,
in Beyond The Fringe, Alan Bennett
actually...
He supplemented his income by writing
horror
fiction for the last of the American
pulp magazines
and I can't give you sharks falling
down onto a stand-up
set in York tonight, but what I can
do,
I'm going to finish this hour by just
reading to you
briefly from Alan Bennett's Sharknado.
AS ALAN BENNETT: "Nora...
"..watched the gathering breeze blow
the dandelions bare
"in the front garden,
"as she anxiously awaited the grocery.
"It would ensure Colin's
"70th birthday celebrations were well
stocked
"with wines, cheeses and nibbles.
"Friends and relations had been
summoned to the neat semi
"and Nora had planned every moment of
the event in meticulous detail,
"from the admittedly rather squeezed
seating plan.
"Some guests were going to have to eat
their dinners
"on the kitchen sideboard.
"To the songs and speeches that would
follow Colin's birthday meal,
"there was only one blot on the
horizon."
OK, right, there should be a big laugh
there, normally, so...
I don't really know what's happened,
but it suggests to me no-one's really
followed the...
Do you want me to carry on doing the
voice,
or shall I just get through it and we
can...?
Do the voice, OK. No, it's up to you,
whatever you...
There's only one... "A strangely
garbled local news report
"suggesting that huge
and ferocious sea creatures..."
LAUGHTER
Yes, well, that should have been
earlier because it's obvious what it
is, I think.
"..were raining down onto the streets
of Barnsley.
"But Barnsley were 30 mile away, at
least,
"across the moor.
"And the weather outside Nora's front
window seemed normal enough for the
time of year.
"Colin and Nora's oldest friends, Alan
and Mildred,
"had already arrived and were settled
down in the kitchen
"sampling some of Nora's homemade
sausage rolls,
"a course of action Colin thought
displayed an unattractive
"streak of impatience.
"In the sitting room, Nora nervously
tuned in the radio.
"Apparently, the falling sea creatures
had been identified
"as sharks.
"And the mysterious purple cloud
containing them
"was now heading towards Nora and
Colin's hometown of Dewsbury.
"Yorkshire folk were warned to stay in
their homes
"and not to go outside, not even to
fetch clean washing off the line.
"Or to chase a gypsy away from a tree.
"Nora looked back into the open plan
kitchen-diner.
"The sideboard at which Alan and
Mildred were munching the nibbles
"was situated in what suddenly seemed
a somewhat perilous position,
"directly beneath the rather
flimsy-looking glass skylight.
"Nora nudged Colin, gestured towards
it and whispered to him
"quietly, so as not to alarm their
guests,
"'Colin, reports of sharks falling
from the skies
"'are on the rise again.
"'And no-one eating on the sideboard
is safe.'"
"But it was too late.
APPLAUSE
"The first of the sharks crashed
without warning,
"through the shattering window and
shards of glass embedded themselves
"in the ham and tomato quiche.
"Nora looked up from the ruined
celebration flan.
"She saw the falling shark rolling
around on the Axminster,
"a floral design, which they had put
down when the extension was built.
"Mildred's head was trapped between
its jaws.
"Alan tried in vain to wrestle her
free, but succeeded only
"in severing his wife's head from her
spasming body.
"Without even a moment to grieve, Alan
found himself in mortal
"combat with the displaced sea
creature, its massive tail
"thrashing around the room, sending
sausage rolls
"and vol-au-vents flying,
"many of which were crushed into the
carpet, creating stains,
"which would be difficult to remove at
a later date,
"even for Nora, who had worked in the
dry-cleaner's...after the dentist's.
"Other guests had arrived in the front
garden, which was now awash
"with dozens of falling sharks, their
huge jaws making mincemeat
"of the fleeing pensioners, as the
newly tarmacked driveway
"foamed with blood, the garden path
slippery with disgorged human
intestines.
"Two spleens, for example, and a
number of pancreases.
"It was then that a crestfallen Nora
had to admit the facts.
"Colin's 70th birthday party was not
going to go quite as she had planned."
CHEERS AND APPLAUSE
LOUD BURP
- Erving Goffman would have liked
that.
- # I got some John Coltrane on the
stereo, baby
# Make it feel all right
# I got some fine wine in the freezer,
mama
# I know what you like
# Oh, we gonna take it, turn it, set
it down
# We gonna learn about love on a three
ply rug
# My baby, gonna be all right... #