His performances unfurl like a stroll on a summer's day: scenery and good companionship take precedence over destination
When praising a comedian it is generally a good idea to quote one of his or her jokes. The trouble with Stewart Lee is that he doesn't really do gags – at least not in the traditional sense of set-up, fire, reload. His performances unfurl like a long stroll on a summer's day: scenery and good companionship take precedence over destination, and any laughter seems almost serendipitous. For all of his self-deprecation and apparent hesitancy, Lee is evidently a practised charmer. So too with the apparent shambling of his act: it is just that, a put-on. In a recent episode of his latest BBC series, Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, Lee discusses the evolution of modern comedy (something he is an expert on, as revealed in last year's memoirs How I Escaped My Certain Fate): "What the comedy is now – it's not like the 80s – what it is now, it's a load of people and they all hate their electrical appliances." This jibe about modern comedy's turn from shouty politics to smug consumerism slowly turns into a riff about how Mr Morphy Richards strives to make toasters that work, then advice on how to return broken toasters. Yet Lee can also do precise structure, as demonstrated by his sharply observed music journalism and his comedy musical Jerry Springer: The Opera. But let us return to the original question: what is a typical Lee gag? In desperation, this paper turned to the comedian's publicist. She could think of only one conventional one-liner ever made by Lee – and he'd bought it from another comedian for a quid. Typical.