Stewart Lee
Rising to fame amid the 1980s alternative comedy boom, Ian Cognito was one of the UK's most popular comedians. His performances left audiences in hysterics - but behind the laughter was a troubled and often controversial figure. This is the story of the comedy scene that nurtured a comedic genius, and the real life of a man famed for his outlandish sense of humour.
The Bafta-winning Stewart Lee performs his latest touring show, focusing on a bizarrely erroneous description of his work on Netflix and a mind-boggling review from Alan Bennett.
Stewart Lee is a ‘snowflake’, and in this hour from his tour, the Bafta-winning comedian illustrates how being ‘woke’ doesn’t mean having to sacrifice freedom of speech.
Stewart Lee's latest live show, Content Provider, is also his most successful live show yet. He toured it for 214 dates from November 2016 to April 2018. This is a filmed recording of that show
One of the most important English singers of 20th century traditional song, Shirley Collins and her sister Dolly stood at the epicentre of the folk music revival from the 1950s through to the 1970’s. Directors Rob Curry and Tim Plester have created a poetic response to the life-and-times of this totemic musical figure. Four years in the making, and co produced by Fifth Column Films and Burning Bridges, The Ballad of Shirley Collins is the fascinating first release from Fire Films - available to you exclusively through the Lush Player. A captivating study of heritage, posterity and the true ancestral melodies of the people, this heartwarming film revolves around Shirley’s tragic loss of her voice and struggle back to the limelight. And ultimately, it suggests that in these turbulent and increasingly untethered times, we may just need Shirley Collins and all she represents more than ever.
Stewart Lee performs his stand-up comedy performance, recorded live at the Mildmay Club in Stoke Newington with a club audience.
Stewart Lee performs his stand-up comedy performance, recorded live at the Mildmay Club in Stoke Newington with a club audience.
In 1982, folk musician Nic Jones was at the peak of his career, but driving home from a gig one night a near-fatal car crash changed his life forever. Almost every bone in his body was broken and neurological damage meant that he would never play his guitar in front of an audience again. Apart from a couple of tribute concerts, Nic Jones disappeared from the public eye for thirty years. Then in the summer of 2012, encouraged by friends and family, Nic returned to the stage to play several festival performances.. The concerts were a resounding success and for his old and new fans, a moving comeback for their musical hero.
Over thirty years ago, a new wave of stand-ups spearheaded the Alternative Comedy movement, marking themselves out as different from the safe television turns, the Oxbridge satirists, and the racist and sexist Working Men’s Club comics of the time. The Alternative Comedy Experience captures that same schism happening again. An advance raiding party of modern day Alternative Comedians offering material too clever, thoughtful, radical, satirical, strange, or downright stupid to make it onto the stand-up outlets of contemporary television. Filmed in front of a real comedy club audience, with its fast-moving distinctive visual style and unique cast The Alternative Comedy Experience is original, unpredictable, and unlike any other live stand-up show on our screens.
What can a sexless middle aged married man, whose life now consists mainly of watching Scooby Doo cartoons with a four year old boy, possibly find to write comedy about? Formerly stand-up s youthful iconoclast, Lee now gawps blankly at News 24 as Britain burns down around him, and blinks weirdly at the vast wayside retail outlets during endless journeys to and from increasingly indistinct provincial theatres. Once he lived on the pleasure planet. Now he is trapped in Carpet Remnant World
A look at the life of John Cooper Clarke. From his rise as a 'punk poet', through his heroin addiction, and finally to his comeback.
Each Christmas, Santa and his vast army of highly trained elves produce gifts and distribute them around the world in one night. However, when one of 600 million children to receive a gift from Santa on Christmas Eve is missed, it is deemed ‘acceptable’ to all but one – Arthur. Arthur Claus is Santa’s misfit son who executes an unauthorized rookie mission to get the last present half way around the globe before dawn on Christmas morning.
Stewart Lee performs his stand-up comedy performance, recorded live at the Mildmay Club in Stoke Newington with a club audience.
TV's Frankie Boyle has declared that no-one over 40 should do stand-up, as the old comedians lose their edge and their anger. Stewart Lee is 42 and Frankie's heartless Scottish words have made him wonder if it's worth carrying on. Undaunted, the furiously baffled comedian tries to win round the legendarily harsh Glasgow audience with a crowd-pleasing Mcintyre-style routine about coffee shops, but is distracted by scores of imaginary pirates; he tries to talk about every day middle aged men's concerns, but is drawn into a forty minute rant against Top Gear and all it stands for; he attempts to find some common ground with happy childhood memories that he and the audience can share, but is instead consumed with loathing and despair as a result of a Magners' Cider advertising campaign.
'Welcome to my folly', declared Robin Ince as he opens Nine Lessons..., his massive sell-out Rationalist Celebration of comedy and science for Christmas. With a star-studded line-up included Richard Dawkins, Stewart Lee, Josie Long, Simon Singh, Richard Herring, Gavin Osbourne, Isy Suttie, Ben Goldacre, Andrew Collins, Waen Shepherd, Christina Martin and Philip Jeays - all accompanied by Martin White and his amazing Mystery Fax Machine Chamber Orchestra. What more could you ask for?.... Oh go on then, as it's Christmas there's also interview contributions from Dara O'Briain and Javis Cocker.
Stewart Lee performs his stand-up comedy performance, recorded live at the Mildmay Club in Stoke Newington with a club audience.
Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle is a comedy series created by Stewart Lee. The BBC Two series debuted on 16 March 2009, and featured stand-up routines filmed at The Mildmay Club in Newington Green, and sketches based on a weekly theme, featuring amongst others Simon Munnery, Kevin Eldon and Paul Putner with voice-over parts recorded by Peter Serafinowicz. The series is produced by Richard Webb and directed by Tim Kirkby. The programme is executive-produced by Armando Iannucci and script-edited by Chris Morris, marking a rare reformation of their creative double-act.
In 2007, Stewart Lee was voted the 41st best stand-up of all time in an official Channel 4 poll, apparently better than Lenny Bruce but not as good as Jim Davidson. But what real difference does this accolade make? His TV pilot has been cancelled and his mother still thinks the 1970s game show host Tom O'Connor is funnier than him.
You're looking at a very special DVD that very nearly didn't happen. Stewart Lee's tour de force, 90s Comedian, has been dubbed so controversial (along with his directing debut Jerry Springer the Opera) that none of the big DVD manufacturers would touch it with a barge pole. Which is a shame, and is why the fearless Go Faster Stripe stepped in and offered to organise a special one-off evening's pe
Following the fall out from Jerry Springer The Opera, the play's writer and comedian Stewart Lee explores religion and blasphemy in this documentary
In this documentary, taking the protests against Jerry Springer: The Opera (of which he was a writer) as a starting point, Stewart Lee explores the history of religious satire in the UK, and its position in modern legislature.
The satirical series, written by Armando Iannucci, "looked back" on events of the first 30 years of the 21st century from the perspective of a nostalgia show in the year 2031 in a similar manner to his earlier one-off programmes 2004: The Stupid Version.
A 1-hour Documentary looking at the Manchester post-punk group and its infamous leader Mark E Smith. The Film follows the current band recording their final Session for the John Peel Show (they were his favourite group and recorded more sessions than any other band) as well as chronicling the chaotic history of the band & its numerous line-up changes.
'Jerry Springer-The Opera' tells the story of a day in the job of world famous talk-show host, Jerry Springer. Jerry has to sort out a number of guests problems; including a man who wants to dress up as a baby, a man with 3 lovers (one of them a transexual) and a fat woman who wants to be a pole dancer. However, on this particular day, something out of the ordinary will happen...
"The cleverest, funniest, most cliché-free comedian on the circuit" Ricky Gervais After four years working on Richard Thomas' Jerry Springer - The Opera, Stewart Lee returns to stand-up in search of clarity, self-respect and immediate sensual and intellectual gratification.
A satire mocking a typical end-of-the-year show on British TV, recalling memorable events from that year. Featured are fake interviews alongside clips from news broadcasts and TV Shows popular at the time.
Johnny Vegas has crawled his way to the top of the showbiz ladder. Fame, wealth and awards are his but there's a problem...he's lost his edge. He's no longer funny and the fans have begun to take notice... The solution? Return Vegas to his stand-up roots - The Edinburgh Fringe Festival. How? Kidnap Johnny and surround him with a mad lifestyle manager, a meglomaniac sponsor and his obsessive comic flatmate who should've been sectioned years ago. Then just sit back, watch his world fall apart and hope his new found misery means he can reclaim his place amongst stand-up comedy's finest with hilarious results! Succeed or fail, one question must be answered...Who's Ready For Ice Cream?
This Morning With Richard Not Judy or TMWRNJ is a BBC comedy television programme, written by and starring Lee and Herring. Two series were broadcast in 1998 and 1999 on BBC2. The name was a satirical reference to ITV's This Morning which was at the time popularly referred to as This Morning with Richard and Judy. The show was a reworking of old material from their previous work together along with new characters. The show was hosted in a daytime chat show format in front of a live studio audience, although it featured a small proportion of pre-recorded location inserts. It was structured by the often strange obsessions of Richard Herring; examples include his rating of the milk of all creatures and attempting to popularise the acronym of the show. The show featured repetition, with regular and vigilant viewers being rewarded by jokes that would make no sense to casual viewers. The show seemed to oscillate between the intellectual and puerile. However, irony was often used, even though the citing of irony as an excuse was mocked by the show's stars in one of many self-referential jokes.
TV Comedy from radio award-winning writers Stewart Lee and Richard Herring.
'Using the stinking carcass of so-called comedy as a lens, we shall focus harsh philosophee, religion, poetrie and base animal passion onto your ear, causing it to smoulder'
Fist of Fun was a British comedy television and radio programme, written by and starring Lee and Herring. A lot of the show's comic material was adapted from Lee and Herring's radio programme Lionel Nimrod's Inexplicable World. Each episode of Fist of Fun featured several disparate sketches and situations. Fist of Fun began as a BBC Radio 1 series in 1993, before becoming commissioned as a television series on BBC Two in early 1995. It was broadcast at 9pm on Tuesday nights, and was successful, but not a major ratings-winner. The second series was aired on Friday nights, and although its ratings were relatively good, the show suffered from a lack of preparation and poor promotion. The show was not given a third series, and Lee and Herring went on to write This Morning with Richard Not Judy, for BBC Two. Many other comedians who appeared in the series went on to fame themselves, including Kevin Eldon, Peter Baynham, Ronni Ancona, Alistair McGowan, Al Murray, John Thomson, Rebecca Front, Mel Giedroyc, Sue Perkins, Ben Moor and Sally Phillips.
How does a working class autodidact, with no visible means of support, maintain his role as the leader of a cult British underground band into its fifth decade? Comedian and writer Stewart Lee, director Michael Cumming and James Nicholls investigate the mysterious existence of Robert Lloyd, Britain’s ultimate post-punk survivor. Robert Lloyd’s Prefects played with The Clash on the White Riot tour in 1977, and their ongoing incarnation, as Birmingham’s Captain Beefheart suffused post-punk poets The Nightingales, recorded more John Peel sessions than any other band. Ever. But what were the social, cultural and economic circumstances that enabled and sustained such outsider artists in the punk and post-punk eras, and how has the world changed to the point where such figures are unlikely to flourish in the same way today? Lloyd’s own odyssey echoes how abstract notions of social mobility, of the value of culture and music, have changed in the last five decades.
This feature-length big screen documentary tells the riotous inside story of the infamous sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll repertory cinema which inspired a generation during Britain's turbulent Thatcher years.
