THAT Stewart Lee Review In Full...

Sometimes, it’s the most unlikely pieces of writing that provoke the most unexpected reactions. This was never intended anything more than a casual thumbs-up for the first episode of a series I really enjoyed, written in about an hour at the invitation of Off The Telly’s editor, and destined to become Just Another Review that nobody really noticed. Or so I thought. Within a day, it had been quoted in The Guardian. That was the good part. Shortly afterwards came a volley of protest from every imaginable direction, courtesy of comedy fans who had some sort of issue with the show, and with my saying I enjoyed it, that I could never quite figure out, many of them demanding a retraction or apology of some sort (apart from the prat who just said "No" as if it was in some way clever). And it just kept on and on and on and on and on, to the extent that I briefly considered giving up writing altogether out of sheer exasperation. I can’t pretend this is one of my better, cleverer, wittier or more perceptive reviews, but nonetheless it finds its way here out of pure defiance.

Not long ago, Stewart Lee was trading on the fact he hadn’t been on TV in a long time. Though his double act with Richard Herring had a huge following both on television and radio, they disappeared from the nation’s screens at the end of the decade, for reasons that have never been clear – even to the duo themselves – but seemed to involve little more than the personal dislike of a single executive and subsequent reluctance of anyone else to take a chance on them. Indeed, Lee’s most recent live show hinged around the bitterly amusing story of how the cancellation of a planned BBC2 series left him short of work, out of pocket and performing material he wasn’t interested in to an audience who weren’t interested in him while dressed as a giant insect.

Ironically, the success of that same show led to renewed interest from BBC2, resulting in a series that has actually made it to air. Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, rather like the BBC’s seventies mainstay Dave Allen at Large, takes the form of lengthy and laconic ruminations on various subjects in front of a live comedy club audience, with short sketches (featuring longtime associates Paul Putner, Kevin Eldon, Michael Redmond and Simon Munnery) acting as surreal and frivolous punchlines. From the opening sequence of Lee driving his ridiculous ‘Comedy Vehicle’ around in a pastiche of the titles of The Pink Panther Show set to shrill, jaunty music (South African kwela song Tom Hark, most famously a hit for ska band The Piranhas), it’s hard to shake the suspicion this show is a deliberate counterpoint to what has become the norm during his absence from the small screen. Television comedy has changed a good deal in the meantime, with taboo-breaking and an increasing reliance on cutting edge technology and interactivity – something Lee and Herring themselves did much to pioneer – seemingly considered as important as actual jokes.

This show is a step in the absolute opposite direction, albeit one robustly supported by a writer and performer with over two decades of experience and enough time spent away from television to tell what works and what doesn’t. It’s all the better for it. This first edition tackles the subject of ‘toilet books’, with Lee examining several popular tomes he clearly would not have personally chosen to read, among them the works of Dan Brown and Chris Moyles. All of these are subjected to merciless scrutiny, albeit in a manner that seems more tongue-in-cheek than vindictive. Indeed, there is a fair smattering of inspired silliness throughout – notably a superb visual gag about former Grange Hill star Asher D conducting a drive-by sausage-on-forking – and it could be argued some of the more incisive gags (such as Moyles’ choice of the title The Difficult Second Book) had basically already written themselves.

Some will undoubtedly berate the show for an apparent tendency towards ‘predictable’ targets such as The Da Vinci Code, as recent reviews of his live shows have done with regard to sections on Stuart Maconie and Del Boy Falling Through The Bar. The important detail is Lee has plenty to say on these subjects – much of it both new and extremely funny – and any such criticism is doubtless founded more on a personal jadedness with the subject matter than with any problem with the actual material. Indeed, it’s quite refreshing to see such familiar subjects tackled with gags that batter their literary construction, factual veracity and underlying political leanings, rather than just scoffing at the number of people reading popular books in public places.

Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle is a much-needed breath of fresh air, presenting material that is both intellectually and ideologically challenging in an upbeat, laid back and easily accessible format. Lee himself has suggested the show was conceived as a ‘liberal’ mirror to Grumpy Old Men, using the same sort of observational approach to frame less reactionary material, and with a bit of luck it may prove just as popular as the rantings of Clarkson, Wakeman and company. And who knows, maybe it’ll open the door for a couple of other sidelined ‘Nineties Comedians’ who really ought to have been back on the small screen a long time ago…

How To Irritate People

Some musings from the archives about a couple of occasions on which I managed to really, really annoy people by writing something throwaway, inconsequential and trivial that you'd never have predicted that anyone would possibly take exception to, whilst deliberate attempts to provoke and rabble-rouse usually went by without any reaction at all. And this was all before THAT Stewart Lee review as well... incidentally I won't be re-running the 'Diana and IT Crowd pieces' mentioned below, because they were both rubbish.

"I wish to protest most strongly about everything" - Henry Root, Park Walk, West Brompton

If you're going to write stuff then sometimes - as recent less-than overjoyed reactions to the Diana and IT Crowd pieces on here have testified - you're going to upset people. Whether you mean to or not. Over the years I have accidentally managed to enrage TV's Dave Gorman, a mad American who owns the supposed 'literary rights' to Graham Chapman, some jerk out of an early nineties pop duo who lasted for about five minutes and had literally half a hit, any number of ruralist pluralists, and countless 'man in the street' readers besides.

There was, for example, the person who took bile-spitting objection to a few throwaway observations about amusingly shoddy lyrics, fuming "have you never heard of POETRY or METAPHOR?". Or the cheerful and obviously well-balanced individual who took exception to some slightly frivolous (and, erm, patently appreciative) stuff about the glam-rocking likes of Flintlock and Sailor and sent in the following charming missive:

"You are a bitchy frilly little venting sod aren't you? Your site is more a rubbish bin with a used tampon in it than a paintbox. Angry at everyone because you've never achieved anything in life? Besides all the femme hysteria you get your facts all wrong, and that's the most disturbing and misleading aspect of your website. Don't write about the seventies without consulting facts. Disgusted with you"

What's more, the piece that instigated such ire appeared on a site that once provoked someone to send a terse email reading simply "more paragraphs, less green". Disgusted with myself.

So disgusted in fact that as an act of atonement, I will now outline a five-point plan of how to avoid recieving furious and badly-punctuated borderline threats in response to absolutely nothing from the sort of people who shouldn't even be trusted with the ability to read, let alone to hand out the scissors:


1. Don't Say Anything Less Than Complimentary About Silent Cinema

Lord alone knows why, but claiming nothing more provocative than a complete lack of interest in the soundless antics of Charlie Chaplin and his slow-laugh chums always provokes a flood of extremely long and irritated emails; striking back in their hundreds, albeit very slowly. You have to feel sorry for these people though - after all, it's no wonder they're angry when they're so regularly whacked on the head by unwittingly-rotated planks of shoulder-mounted wood that they've seen being carried towards them five minutes in advance of the impact.


2. Don't Play Devil's Advocate About Doctor Who

The majority of fans of Doctor Who are sensitive souls, and don't particularly appreciate any boat-rocking over widely-held majority opinions on the series. Suggest that The Underwater Menace is good and not rubbish like you thought, speak up for the Sylvester McCoy era, or point out that Tom Baker was occasionally phoning in his performance, and they'll come down on you like a ton of falling bits of scenery from a Colin Baker story. Worse still, the days when fans would have to spend several months typing out their own fanzine in order to argue back are long gone, and The Great Disgruntled can be online and calling you a 'congenital idiot' within minutes.


3. Don't Make Any Criticisms Of Chris Morris

To dispense with the witticisms for a second (much like Chris Morris has done himself for the past decade, ho ho), there are too many people out there who see Chris Morris not as a rather funny bloke who has made plenty of worthwhile 'points' with his humour and a couple of meandering and on occasion dangerous and stupid ones besides, but as some kind of religious visionary whose every utterance must be accepted as law. So if you're out to argue that you didn't enjoy one of his works, you're on to a loser from the outset. Considered expressions of genuine dismay at the hateful and poorly-focused Brass Eye Special, for example, were brushed aside with comments like "it was the satire that had to be made!", "you just didn't get it!", "what are you, a Daily Mail reader?", and, of course, "Morris is a godlike genius, I think you'll find, and essentially what he was trying to do was...". Similarly, lukewarm reviews of My Wrongs #Ohwhogivesaflyingfuck found themselves dismissed 'invalid' on account of containing a sentence calling the Brass Eye Special 'poor', or worse still, getting two numbers in the title the wrong way round. Pointing out that Nathan Barley was relevant to about three people in London and had no sodding jokes in anyway met with cries of "too close to home eh? ;) u just dont like it because u ARE nathan barley!! :)" and what have you. That said, when the same review causes perrennial indie no-hoper Momus to sneer at you for mentioning The Housemartins, you're clearly doing something right.


4. Don't Mention Britpop

Do you remember Britpop? That period between roughly 1992-1996 when Blur, Suede, Pulp and Elastica made some genuinely thrilling records, Paul Weller made some records, and just for the tiniest fraction of a second, it really did feel like so-called 'alternative' culture was about to take on the mainstream and win? Well, whatever you do, never mention this anywhere. Because if you do, you will be inundated by communications from angry shouting individuals pointing out how there were other people making records too you know, how it was all a load of media hype and never actually happened, and how grunge remained really really really popular despite what the weedy girly indie kid geeks might try to tell you with their short washed hair and (spit) trainers. This goes beyond mere expressions of personal distaste for the bands themselves (despite the fact that an expression of distaste for Elastica is pretty much a scientific paradox), and into a risible insistence that because someone didn't experience an era or subculture a certain way, nobody else in the world could possibly have done so, almost like some kind of Stalinist attempt to rewrite history to ensure that Eddie Vedder was victorious. In other words it's like, erm, Britpop never happened!


5. Don't Say You Liked Doctor Who And The Idiot's Lantern

Because you'll never hear the end of it.

Thrust By Standard Three And Rising

 

I have a long, long history of accidentally upsetting people with things I've written. And an equally long history of accidentally upsetting Blake's 7 fans.

This piece about and indeed extract from my first ever published piece of writing was originally going to open Well At Least It's Free, an anthology of various columns, articles and other bits and pieces that I've written over the years (including a large amount about Doctor Who both 'new' and 'classic'), but ultimately ended up being cut for space reasons. And because, well, it sort of didn't fit thematically with everything else. As a result, and in the conspicuous absence of any other suitable or even potential outlet for it, you're getting the strange story of how Blake's 7 is ultimately responsible for everything that you've ever read by me right here...

Outside of banging on about Max Headroom and The Housemartins in small-scale fanzines (some of which ran to nearly twenty copies), my first significant published piece of any note was, amusingly, about a TV series I’m notorious for not liking.

To cut a long story short, I used to attend a local sci-fi group (you had to make your own entertainment in those pre-Internet days) who decided to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the BBC’s ‘space opera’ Blake’s 7 by holding a special event with series stars Brian Croucher and Peter Tuddenham as guests. They were stuck for someone to write a feature for the accompanying programme, and I volunteered. It was hardly an interesting piece, and based perhaps rather too liberally on information gleaned from old issues of Starburst, but still managed to provoke two unexpected reactions.

The first was from the Official Blake’s 7 Appreciation Society, who got very cross indeed about some supposed errors and made such a fuss that an apology was later printed in the group newsletter against my wishes. Regular readers of my work may spot a running theme making its first appearance here. Oddly enough they seemed most annoyed by a statement that Paul Darrow was working on a novel based on his character Avon, information derived from the News page in American magazine Starlog, which they insisted could not possibly be happening because they would have heard about it. One can only assume that they were in some kind of before-the-event denial about the existence of eventual literary masterpiece Avon – A Terrible Aspect.

The other unexpected reaction came when Brian Croucher asked to speak to me. Fearing another telling-off over those ‘errors’, imagine my surprise when he remarked instead that he’d been reading the article and wanted to offer some words of advice. Though as he said it was still clearly the work of a young and inexperienced writer, he did feel that it had something that made it stand out from the endless reams of fan writing he had to endure on a regular basis, and was keen to encourage me to keep on writing about whatever I felt like writing about because “it’s worth working on”. So I did, and while I've not always been that positive about Blake's 7, I can never thank Brian Croucher enough for all the fun I’ve had as a result of his little chat.

Anyway, here's a brief extract from that oh so controversial piece. Lawyers at the ready...

"The major difference between Blake’s 7 and the other science fiction show on BBC1, Doctor Who, was the distinct lack of monsters. There was rarely need for them in the series and on the odd occasion they did appear, it was purely to elaborate a criticism of the world in which we live. For example, in the episode entitled The Web, the crew meet up right a rather strange race of half machine dwarf slaves called The Decimas. The story was basically a clever exploration of man’s use of his kind for racial or class reasons".

Take THAT, something!

Well At Least It's Free, a book collecting some of my articles and columns about Cult TV, is available as a paperback here or as an eBook here.