Indefatigable comedian Stewart Lee tells Katherine MacAlister that his career has taken its physical toll

Top comedian Stewart Lee is giving his fans the chance to be ahead of the game by seeing his new show A Room With A Stew ahead of the new BBC2 series of Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle.

“Most stand-up comedians on television use teams of writers now like in the 1970s, although they don’t admit to it, but that doesn’t really work for me because I don’t really do jokes,” says Lee.

Coming to the Oxford Playhouse tomorrow night, the writer and performer admitted that writing his new show had been “ a challenge this time – it is quite hard to generate that amount of material, even if you talk as slowly as I do, and repeat yourself all the time, and use pauses.

“I’ve got half hour on poverty, which is always going to be topical sadly, and a bit on urine, which I think is timeless, but you know, I’ve got kids and a mortgage and this is my job.

Lee was last at the Playhouse in March 2015 but the country is quite a different place now with the Tories’ surprise General Election victory followed by the rise of Jeremy Corbyn to the Labour leadership.

“I can’t remember a time in my life when the country has seemed so fragmented in terms of politics, culture, wealth, attitudes, so it’s going to be fun seeing how badly and well different bits go in different places and then bringing what I’ve learned from that to bear on the finished routines,” he says gleefully.

But more than 20 years in comedy is taking its physical toll on Lee: “My knees are shattered and don’t work – I think I ruined them during the 200 dates I did of a show where I pretended to be Jeremy Clarkson kicking a tramp to death – and that has had an interesting effect on my physicality. If I jump off stage now or climb things there’s a genuine element of pain and danger, but in a way my physical collapse has been a huge advantage, it has given the stage me some tragedy, some extra gravity.”

SEE IT
A Room With A Stew is at Oxford Playhouse tomorrow.
Call 01865 305305 or see oxfordplayhouse.com