Stewart Lee

Lee was born in Wellington, Shropshire. He was adopted as a child and grew up in Solihull in the West Midlands – his adoptive parents separated when he was four, and he was raised by his mother. He attended Solihull School, a local independent school, on a part scholarship, and received what he calls a "waifs and strays bursary" due to his status as an adoptee. He participated in his school's mountain-walking club, which went on regular excursions to Snowdonia, Wales; the original members of the grindcore band Napalm Death also took part. As a teenager he suffered from ulcerative colitis, which he has said caused significant weight loss and made him look "cadaverously thin". Lee has described how, at the age of 16, he was "doing a lot of reading, going to gigs, buying records, and listening to the John Peel show". He later read English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford and graduated with a 2:1.

After a return to the live circuit, and through BBC specials and series, Lee has rebuilt an audience and a reputation as an anti-populist comedian. In December 2011 he won British Comedy Awards for best male television comic and best comedy entertainment programme for his series Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle. A 2009 article in The Times referred to him as "the comedian's comedian, and for good reason" and named him "face of the decade". In June 2012 Lee was placed at number 9 in the Top 100 Most Influential People in UK Comedy.

Although he'd been supported by less established acts on his comedy tours before (including Josie Long and Tony Law), 2011 marked a shift in Stewart Lee's career towards doing a lot to promote other creative comedy talent. He curated 'At Last! The 1981 Show', featuring veteran alternative comedians Alexei Sayle and Norman Lovett at the Royal Festival Hall in May 2011 and by 2013 he was fronting a comedy showcase on Comedy Central called The Alternative Comedy Experience which featured 38 comedians who identified with alternative comedy, including Robin Ince, Sam Simmons and Eleanor Tiernan. The show ran for 25 episodes 2013–14, but in 2015 Stewart Lee confirmed that Comedy Central were not commissioning a third series.

The first episode was watched by approximately one million viewers, though the figure rose by 25% when BBC iPlayer viewings were factored in and, uncharacteristically, viewing figures rose over the series. The series was the BBC's second most downloaded broadcast during its run. In May 2010, the series was nominated for a BAFTA TV Award for best comedy programme. The series won a BAFTA TV Award for best comedy programme in 2012. After four seasons on BBC2 the show was cancelled.

Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, a new six-part comedy series featuring standup and sketches, began a six-episode run on 16 March 2009. The executive producer was Armando Iannucci and the script editor was Chris Morris. The first episode received positive reviews from The Independent. and the Daily Mirror. Lee himself wrote a negative review of the show in Time Out in which he described himself as "fat" and his performance as "positively Neanderthal, suggesting a jungle-dwelling pygmy, struggling to coax notes out of a clarinet that has fallen from a passing aircraft".

The Guardian named Comedy Vehicle as one of its top ten television highlights of 2009, commenting that it "was the kind of TV that makes you feel like you're not the only one wondering how we came to be surrounded by so much unquestioned mediocrity". One of the show's few negative reviews came in the Sunday Mercury, which stated: "His whole tone is one of complete, smug condescension". Lee subsequently used this line to advertise his next stand-up tour. Lee frequently uses negative reviews on his posters in order to put off potential audience members who are unlikely to be fans of his comedy style.

Lee also had a show at the 2009 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, named Stewart Lee: If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask for One in which he performed his own version of the song "Galway Girl". In December 2009 Lee was nominated for Best Live Stand-up at the British Comedy Awards.

In 2006 he appeared as a contestant on the comedy panel show Never Mind The Buzzcocks, where Simon Amstell made frequent mock-offended reference to the controversy over Jerry Springer: The Opera. This was followed by appearances on Have I Got News For You and 8 Out Of 10 Cats, before he decided to stop doing panel shows. In 2011 interviews Lee stated 'I can't do panel shows' and that he "doesn’t want to jeopardise [his lucrative standup career] by appearing in adverts or panel shows or doing things that will earn him quick money or fame while alienating a long-term audience".

Lee caused controversy on his If You Prefer a Milder Comedian tour with a routine about Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond. Referring to Hammond's accident while filming in 2006, in which he was almost killed, Lee joked, "I wish he had been decapitated". When he was doorstepped by a Daily Mail journalist, Lee quoted the routine by replying "It's a joke, just like on Top Gear when they do their jokes". He said: "People who read things like that in the Mail on Sunday and who think Clarkson is funny aren’t going to come and see me, so it doesn’t matter." Explaining the joke, Lee said:

In January 2005, Jerry Springer: The Opera, a satirical musical/opera based upon The Jerry Springer Show, was broadcast on BBC Two, following a highly successful West End run for several years, and as a prelude to the show's UK Tour. Christian Voice led a number of protest groups who claimed that the show was blasphemous and highly offensive. In particular, they were angered by the portrayal of Jesus.

At the 2003 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Lee directed Johnny Vegas' first DVD, Who's Ready For Ice Cream?. In 2004, he returned to stand-up comedy with the show Standup Comedian, which earned him a Tap Water Award in Edinburgh and was released on DVD in October 2005.

Lee is also known for writing music reviews and, when asked in 2003 what his favourites were, he said "Most of my favourites are still going like The Fall, Giant Sand and Calexico. I listen to a lot of jazz, 60s and folk music but I really like Ms. Dynamite, and The Streets". On stage, he has also referenced his love of free jazz, and used the music of avant-garde guitarist Derek Bailey as incidental music in his DVD release of the show "Stand-Up Comedian".

In 2001, Lee published his first novel, The Perfect Fool; it was republished in 2008. In the same year he performed Pea Green Boat, a stand-up show which revolved around the deconstruction of the Edward Lear poem "The Owl and the Pussycat" and a tale of his own broken toilet. This would later be condensed to focus mainly on the poem itself, and a 15-minute version aired on Radio 4. In 2007, Go Faster Stripe released a 25-minute edit on CD and 10" Vinyl.

During late 2000 and early 2001, Lee "gradually, incrementally and without any fanfare – or even much thought – gave up being a stand-up comedian", and 2001 became the first year since 1987 that he did not perform at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. While Lee found himself gradually performing less and less standup and moving away from the stage, he continued his directorial duties on television. Two pilots were made for Channel 4, Cluub Zarathustra and Head Farm, but neither was developed into a series. The former featured all the ingredients that would later appear in Attention Scum, a BBC2 series fronted by Simon Munnery's "League Against Tedium" character, which also featured the likes of Kevin Eldon, Johnny Vegas and Roger Mann, as well as Richard Thomas and opera singer Lore Lixenberg, in their guise as "Kombat Opera".

In 1992 and 1993, he and Herring wrote and performed Lionel Nimrod's Inexplicable World for BBC Radio 4, before moving to BBC Radio 1, for one series of Fist of Fun (1993), followed by three series of Lee and Herring. Throughout the late nineties he continued performing solo stand-up (something that has always been a mainstay of his career – even whilst in the double act with Herring) and has collaborated with, amongst others, Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding of The Mighty Boosh. Indeed, though Barratt and Fielding had worked together in the past, the first seeds of the Boosh were sown while working as part of Lee's Edinburgh show King Dong vs Moby Dick in which Barratt and Fielding played a giant penis and a whale, respectively. Lee returned the favour by going on to direct their 1999 Edinburgh show, Arctic Boosh, which remains the template for their live work.

With Herring, Lee wrote material for BBC Radio 4's On the Hour (1991), which was anchored by Chris Morris and was notable for the first appearance of Steve Coogan's celebrated character, Alan Partridge, for which Lee and Herring wrote much early material. After a disagreement with the rest of the cast, Lee and Herring did not remain with the group when On The Hour moved to television as The Day Today, and their material was excised from an official release of the radio show in the mid-1990s, although it was included in a CD released in 2008.

While studying at Oxford in the 1980s, he wrote and performed comedy in a revue group called "The Seven Raymonds" with Richard Herring, Emma Kennedy and Tim Richardson, but did not perform in the well-known Oxford Revue, though he did write for and direct the 1989 Revue. Having moved to London and begun performing stand-up comedy after university, he rose to greater prominence in 1990, winning the prestigious Hackney Empire New Act of the Year competition.

Stewart Graham Lee (born 5 April 1968) is an English stand-up comedian, writer and director. In the mid-1990s he was one half of the radio duo Lee and Herring, alongside Richard Herring. His stand-up is characterised by repetition, frequent callbacks, generally deadpan delivery and a pronounced use of deconstruction, which he often self-consciously refers to on stage.