Homepage News Reviews - Acts - Shows - Screen - Radio - Books - Clubs Interviews Awards 2006 Edinburgh 2005 - Reviews - Blog - Previews Features Archive Awards 2005 Edinburgh 2004: - Previews - Shows - Diary Guestbook Forum © Emporium Of Mirth 2004 Editor: Lauren Murphy Reporters: Fiona Wilkie Natalie Joanne	Emporium of Mirth Stewart Lee I like Stewart Lee. He makes me laugh. He also has good taste in music, and works on my favourite radio station in London. For those blatantly biased reasons, I arranged an interview with him to find out what he’s up to. How did you get the job with Resonance FM? It was years ago. Resonance got allowed to broadcast out of the Royal Festival Hall, and I got to do some breakfast shows for them. Well I actually knew about it because me and Rich Herring did this lunchtime show in Edinburgh from about ‘94 to about ‘97 called This Morning With Richard Not Judy (which became a telly show) where we’d used to try and get strange guests on every day, and the early 70s German avant-garde band Faust had reformed. They were playing Edinburgh, and I got in touch with their tour manager to ask if they’d come on the show and on our funny lunch time chat show, and they did. Their tour manager at the time was Ed Baxter who has ended up running Resonance FM and works for the London Musicians Collective and promotes lots of weird gigs. The band came on and did a load of stuff with an angle-grinder and a piano that scared all the nice old ladies who used to come to our lunchtime shows ‘cos they thought it was something to do with Judy Finnegan, and it was really great. It was great actually because when they began, they began by getting laughs. There were two of them: a hairy little bloke and a big scary bloke, both in their 50s looking like frightening German terrorists. In fact, they had some weird connection with the Baader-Meinhof group in the early 70s - and they just did this thing that they specifically told the stage manager that they wouldn’t do, shooting sparks of metal from a piece of steel on an angle-grinder out across the room, people getting burnt and going ‘oww’ and whatever and it was really good. But people started off laughing and then realised that it was actually a beautiful thing. They did this piano thing where they kept playing a note and then walking around and it was great, really great and I was really delighted to have had some kind of impact on that. In the late 70s when the punks were against hippies, Jim Kerr who went on to be in Simple Minds was in a band called Johnny and the self abusers based in Glasgow, and in a strange situationists gesture they threw hundreds of copies of Faust records off the top of a tenement building. So I went out and brought loads and loads of Simple Minds records that you can now get for 10p each and Faust smashed them to bits on stage and it felt yeah, really good. How would you describe your radio show? It’s not a big deal; it’s just a talk show. It’s the easiest simplest show on Resonance FM; there is no overriding theory. It’s organised by a bloke called Pete Seargent who’s a blues fan, he does every third week; David Quantick who is a comedy writer and a journalist does every other week, and then I do every third week and I just have guests on and play music. What other shows do you recommend on Resonance FM? Well you can always get the Simon Munnery show off the archive on the website. There’s lots of good music on Edwin Pouncey’s one which is called ‘Diggers’, and they had a really good documentary series on French chanson on recently. It’s always worth listening ‘cos you never quite know what’s happening, but it’s nice to know that it’s on, and I’m very pleased to be even remotely associated with it. I also kind of think as mainstream broadcasting is marginalizing the fringes, with things going to Radio 6, Radio 7, BBC4, E4 whatever, there might be a little window created for enthusiasts to actually do interesting new things off their own backs rather than being state or Channel 4 approved, and I think this is going to have to happen in a way. Okay, your writing projects. Your first novel ‘Perfect Fool’ came out a couple of years back and it has been mentioned in other interviews that you are writing a second – can you tell me anything about that? How is it going? Yeah I did and then I got involved in Jerry Springer the Opera and that just took up all my time for three years. I wrote the majority of that book [Perfect Fool] in hotel rooms while I was doing stand up, and I then had a kind of weird year in 99 / 2000 when I wasn’t doing anything when I finished it off, so I just literally haven’t had the time. I’ve done lots of research, and started on things, so I know what it will be. But what I learnt recently, I keep thinking that the Jerry Springer stuff will stop, and it doesn’t and I’m just having to force my hand to do other things and trying to delegate more in the show so I can claw some time back, so I think I’ve got another 6 months to a year on it, so hopefully I’ll be able to make a go of it soon. Performance poetry – you are reading a poem for an Apples and Snakes gig at BAC and a poetry library reading (in Lewisham) for the London Comedy Festival over the next few weeks. Is this something that you’d like to do more of? I was asked to write a 5000 word piece for a book on 5000 word pieces by stand ups called ‘Sit down comedy’ edited by Malcolm Hardee. I wrote a 5000 word poem and they said they couldn’t publish a poem, so I knocked all the commas out and gave it back to them as prose and they ran it; so I will be reading it as the poem it was meant to be at those two dates. Basically I wanted to write something about the early days of the comedy circuit and how it had these legendary heroic figures on it and it seemed to lend itself to writing it as an epic poem taking this composite character of Malcolm Hardee, Arnold Brown, Jerry Sadowitz, John Dowie, Roger Mann, lots of them, Simon Munnery to some extent and it felt like it should be written about in a grandiose way so I wrote it as a heroic poem so it’ll be interesting to see if it works as a spoken word thing. Journalism – You’ve also interviewed and reviewed a range of artists and arts projects as a freelance writer. Is there anyone who you’d love to interview / review now? Well, most people I’ve done now really. There’s a few people I really wish I hadn’t, as you can go off them once you’ve talked to them and you used to really like their records. I would have liked to have interviewed Spike Milligan, but it didn’t happen as I got as far as his house and I had to go home again as he wouldn’t let me in because he wasn’t feeling very well [an account of this aborted interview is very sensitively and respectfully written up in the writing section of Stewart Lee’s website], so probably only him. I was really excited when I first got the job of reviewing records in about 94’/ 95. It was really great, and I was thrilled to bits and now, well, the last three or four years its become a vital financial life-line, because the first two years of working on Jerry I wasn’t earning anything, so you know I tended to do more features to earn money but I wouldn’t like to do it unless I felt I had something that I had something really worth asking someone about. Producing and Directing – you’ve produced the likes of Johnny Vegas, The Boosh, and Garth Marenghi – did you enjoy the experience and is there anyone at the moment you’d like to work with? I produced the pilot that they were all in, not them. Not really no; I wouldn’t mind doing a film with those sorts of people, but I don’t really want to do telly again. Ultimately, I’ve had so many knock-backs, it gets me really angry and depressed and I hope I’ve the courage to refuse it. What I really want to do is get through this phase of Jerry Springer. I don’t want to direct musicals or any work I get offered like that. I don’t want to produce any telly, I’d just like to write another book in the short term, and there’s a theatre piece that I want to do and it’ll take me about three years to develop it and that’s all I want to do. I don’t want to be tempted back into telly because you never know; I’ve just had such bad experience of it. It’s really nice to hear Stephen [Merchant from The Office] talking about when something works out, but for me its usually been a disappointment, either in the creative process itself or in what happens to the show afterwards. I just think I’m so much happier not doing it, you know. I would rather not earn the money, it breaks my heart and I’d rather not do it again. Something might come along, you never know, it might change. Stand up – where are you getting material to inspire the subject content for your Edinburgh show? Well the new half hour I’ve got is mainly about working in music theatre because it’s mainly what I’ve been thinking about. It’s quite interesting in terms of the moral compromises one makes by being involved in something that’s a success. I’m going to start with that, and then go off into the wider implications of this by basically using Ben Elton as a metaphor for corruption throughout the hour. I had my first serious stab at it at the Chuckle Club [LSE, London] last night, and I think it’s on the way; but again, I don’t have any ambition to go back onto the circuit full time, and I certainly don’t want to tour around the country to 50 people in a massive empty room again. So basically I’m partly doing it because working on a massive show with loads of other people involved in it, you start feeling far away from the point where it connects with people, so doing stand up again is partly therapeutic. I’ve got to do something, for a bit, that isn’t thinking about Jerry Springer the Opera after three years. I need to do about another nine months work on it just to hand it on into the future in safe hands or else finish it off if that’s not going to happen; but I’ve really got to do something else, and it seemed the thing I could easiest do was do some more stand up again. It just seemed an interesting thing to talk about. Also I kind of felt like that some people in audiences know I’m associated with the show, and know its been perceived a success and by extension they assume that you’ve had a big financial success out of it as well. Being perceived a success changes the vibe of you on the stage and so I felt like I couldn’t do stand up without addressing it. As an aside, do you get frustrated for Richard Thomas, because it seems to me that the general press associate the show mainly with you rather than giving credit to Richard who instigated it during scratch session at BAC We always talk about ‘we’ and always try and share it out. It depends who’s writing about it. It might look like that to you, but if you read theatre or classical music press, it goes the other way; it just depends who the journalist knows about. So I think comedy people think it’s me. On the other hand, the score was finished 14 – 16 months ago, and maintaining it has been down to me and I’ve had more experience of answering questions from the press, so he tends to defer some things to me. I’m sure it’s annoying, but on the other hand he owns a bigger percentage of it than me so it kind of all works out. It was really bad early on, and I just think it’s easier for press people to place stuff with me because I’m known for my other stuff, you know, so it’s a fucker, but um, what can you do. I mean, Stephen was just there talking about Jane Root sending Ricky Gervais a bunch of flowers or something and not him and they co-wrote the thing [The Office] I mean it fucking happens, and its just weird to be on the other side of it. You are involved with a number of comedy benefits including the BAC benefit in June... Yeah, yeah, I hope it works out alright If you could have a fantasy line up of 10 comedians who would you have? Arnold Brown, Simon Munnery, Jerry Sadowitz, Victoria Wood, Johnny Vegas, John Hegley, Harry Hill, Chick Murray, Chris Rock, and another one, which would be, that’s nine. I’d shuffle about. What about Spike (Milligan)? Um, probably not, he’d be too much of a risk for the evening; I don’t know what he could do really on a benefit night. You didn’t ask me who my favourite acts were, you asked me to say what would work for an evening, you know, it’s not necessarily the same thing, so that yeah. Okay, other things, you started in the 6th real time Doctor Who (laughs) yeah Are there any other small projects you would love to have involvement with? I didn’t really love to be involved with it, I was just asked and it seemed such a weird thing to do I thought it would be funny. Not really, I haven’t really got any ambition left other than to do another book and the weird thing is that if Jerry Springer the Opera ever went into profit, it’d buy you a couple of years to do things, you know. I’d really like to make some programmes for Resonance for no money that were really good and put them on and get completely out of the loop. I’d like to do something one day with Simon Munnery that really works, but I don’t really know. It’s been so weird the last couple of years that I don’t really have any plans left at all, and I never would have thought I’d have ended up directing a piece of music theatre. People say to me you should seize the moment at the moment ‘cos people want to speak to you and you’re ’hot’, but actually there isn’t an easy thing – I mean, I got this idea that I’d quite like to do a sort of piece of theatre about folk singers in the Napoleonic wars, but I know if I start that it won’t be ready until about 2007. I’d like the film script I wrote to get made, that looks increasingly likely. What’s it about? It’s the book – Perfect Fool. Quickfire Round Ones to watch Comedy: Arnold Brown. I’m going through a bit of a phase about him again. He’s getting a load of new stuff together. Music: the Ken Vandermark Trio (they’re on this Sunday at the Vortex jazz club in Stoke Newington). TV: I only watch about 5 hours of TV a week. I’m not trying to be clever, but I can’t think of anything that’s on right now. I’m sure there are lots of things I’d like that I haven’t seen. I like three non-blondes, how about that. Film: Recently that I’ve liked? Spirited Away, the Japanese cartoon. Website: um, I like to look at Richard Herring’s on-line diary [http://www.richardherring.com] to see what he’s up to … It’s seductively addictive … Yeah. Ones to avoid: Of the same? Wow, I don’t know for comedy. Music? Well, I wouldn’t go to anything I wouldn’t like so I don’t know. TV? Again, wouldn’t if I didn’t like. Film? Mmm, I probably won’t be seeing the new Harry Potter when it comes out as I haven’t seen any of the others; and websites? Well, you should avoid a lot of them as they imbed themselves into your hard drive. Best heckle: Wow, um, what me personally or overall? The best heckle put down is Simon Munnery and Steve Cheek in their old double act ‘God and Jesus’ in 1998. They were being heckled and heckled in their fringe show in Edinburgh and saying ‘we’ll only go if you throw glass’. That was really good, but that’s a put down. Best Heckle? I don’t know really, I mean people think they’re really clever and you’ve probably heard them all before. To find out more about Stewart Lee and his spoken word and stand up appearances, go to: www.stewartlee.co.uk To find out about Resonance FM or listen to archived shows wherever you are in the world go to www.resonancefm.com To find out more about Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) and how you can help in their fundraising campaign or buy tickets for their comedy benefit (BAC Sausage Night 4th June 2004) go to www.bac.org.uk To find out about Jerry Springer the Opera go to: www.jerryspringertheopera.com Interview by Jo - Spring 2004 RSS  Printable version	Visit our Siamese Twin Sister Site!