Interview with Stewart Lee in the Shropshire Star on Friday 13th September 2013

Why Severn is just great for Stewart

Stephen Taylor meets a Shropshire-born
comedian who is in great demand
  

Stewart Lee loves coming back to the county of his birth

Life on tour for a successful comedian can be a bit of a slog, but for Stewart Lee, Shrewsbury left its mark when he performed in the county town last year.

“We walked past a pub where an acoustic guitarist was playing covers of John Martyn songs, and they were selling a nice local bitter—and that is about as good as it gets on the road,” the 45-
year-old recalled.

With the county town a regular date on his tours over the past 25 years, Lee’s association with Shropshire goes back even further than that, having been born in Wellington before moving
to Solihull, where he developed an early taste for comedy.

“My grandparents, who brought me up as a little kid, were very much of the area. They were both on the shop floor at Cadbury’s before the war, spoke with the accents of the area and had a distinct
sense of humour. My grandfather was a big influence on me in that way,” he said.

A London resident for many years, Lee admits that his Midlands accent has become somewhat diluted, yet he still sees his native tongue as a potent weapon in his comedic arsenal.

“If I’m saying something really pretentious, dogmatic or contentious, if I let a little bit of the lilt trickle back into my voice, it seems to neutralise it. I think people trust the Birmingham accent,
they don’t seem to think it’s capable of deceit or guile, or pretentiousness. There’s something really great about it,” he said.

Lee doesn’t confine references to his West Midlands roots to the accent. When asked about a type of curry that could sum him up, Lee stays very much close to home.

“A balti, probably. Something that began with a localised popularity, but appears to be becoming a national dish,” he joked.

Lee first rose to prominence as the writing and performing partner of Richard Herring, with Lee and Herring’s Fist of Fun comedy show a hit on BBC radio and television in the early to mid-1990s. A Sunday lunchtime show, This Morning With Richard Not Judy, took the pair to the end of the decade and, along with it, the end of their professional
partnership.

The past 14 years have seen Lee perform a number of themed stand-up shows, with titles such as 90s Comedian, 41st Best Stand-Up Ever, If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One and last year’s Carpet Remnant World. Hot on the heels of a run at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Lee’s new show, Much A-Stew About Nothing, kicked off its national tour on Tuesday, so what can the audience expect when it rolls into Shrewsbury on Monday?

“The idea of this tour is that normally when I do a tour I write a show that’s a two-hour through line, it’s got some kind of beginning, middle and end, and some kind of story to it. Every couple of years,
I do a tour where I try and work out three hours of stuff for the telly show, so any stories or ideas have to be self-contained within a 30-minute loop,” he explained.

The “telly show” Lee referred to is Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, the BBC production that won the Bafta award for best comedy programme last year. With a third series scheduled for March next year, Lee finds that his inspiration comes from a middle-aged point of view these days.

“I tried to fix a light in the kitchen about six months ago in the middle of the night, fell and ended up in A & E. I think they thought I had been drinking or was on drugs, and I worked that into half an hour about what it’s like to be a middle-aged dad and to be weak and vulnerable,” he said, adding that he still hadn’t lost his eye for a dig at politicians.

“I’ve got half an hour on UKIP policy. I’d dropped the kids off at school and I had the car radio on and the bloke from UKIP came on. He did a really incoherent, mad interview, which was quite
funny, and then I found it online and you suddenly had half an hour.”

With Much A-Stew About Nothing stopping off at some large venues, such as Birmingham’s 2,200-seat capacity Symphony Hall, Lee’s popularity is clearly broadening much to the comedian’s
consternation.

“The perception of me is that [my audience] is just a load of Guardian readers, but it’s hilarious now,
it’s so diverse. You get a whole spread,” he said.

● Stewart Lee: Much A-Stew About Nothing is at Theatre Severn, Shrewsbury on September 16, and Birmingham Symphony Hall on October 27. See www.stewartlee.co.uk for booking details.