Line #95 Creator/StewartLee


1	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Stewart_Lee_4002.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:300:Terry Christian's let himself go.]]
3
4	->''"I can [do standup], I can do it really well, actually. I'm so good at it, one of the things that I do, [[StylisticSuck I make it look like I can't do it, but I can.]] And if you're sitting there, having been brought by friends, thinking I can't do it, the question you have to—I've been on stage thousands of times, literally—the question you have to ask yourselves ... is, 'How many times have I been to standup and what kind of acts have you seen?' Maybe four or five times, you haven't seen the right sorts of people, you have no context for me, so--you're not in any position to have an opinion about me.'' ({{beat}}) ''[[SarcasmMode Good, that's warmed the room up.]]"''
5	-->--''Carpet Remnant World''
6
7	Stewart Graham Lee (born 5 April 1968) is a British [[RecordedAndStandUpComedy stand up comedian]], writer and director. Early on in his career he wrote material for ''Series/SpittingImage'' and ''Weekending'' before teaming up with Creator/RichardHerring to write material for ''Series/TheDayToday'''s radio predecessor ''Radio/OnTheHour''. Lee And Herring later started in their radio [[SketchComedy sketch shows]] ''Lionel Nimrod's Inexplicable World'' (Radio 4) and ''Series/FistOfFun'' (Radio 1) and presented three series of ''Lee and Herring'' on Radio 1 which mixed sketches which music chosen by the duo themselves. They later starred in a television version of ''Fist of Fun'' and a live Sunday afternoon show called ''This Morning With Richard Not Judy''. Lee then moved away from performing to concentrate on directing shows for fellow comedians ''Series/TheMightyBoosh'' and Simon Munnery before co-writing and directing the notorious musical ''[[Series/TheJerrySpringerShow Jerry Springer]] - The Opera'' which attracted a prosecution for blasphemy. He then returned to stand-up and, in 2007, was awarded the dubious honour of being the 41st best Stand Up Comedian (which he took as the title of his next tour). He returned to television with ''Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle'', a mixture of stand-up and sketches, with three series filmed.
8
9	Stewart Lee's comedy is noted for his extensive use of {{Deconstruction}} and {{Lampshading}} (to the point where he is likely to lampshade his deconstruction of a piece of {{lampshading}} and then deconstruct himself doing so) and his ability to mine over half an hour's comedy from the most mundane of subjects.
10
11	He has so far released seven stand up specials:
12	* ''Stand-Up Comedian'' (2005)
13	* ''90s Comedian'' (2006)
14	* ''41st Best Stand Up Ever!'' (2008)
15	* ''If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One'' (2010)
16	* ''Carpet Remnant World'' (2012)
17	* ''Content Provider'' (2018)
18	* ''Snowflake'' (2022)
19	* ''Tornado'' (2022)
20
21	He wrote a novel called ''The Perfect Fool'', and a book called ''How I Escaped My Certain Fate'' which is a sort of DVDCommentary on his first three [=DVDs=].
22
23	----
24	!The tropes page has let itself go
25
26	* ActuallyPrettyFunny: Discussed in his book ''How I Escaped My Certain Fate – The Life and Deaths of a Stand-Up Comedian''. In his commentary on one of his routines, transcribed from a show that took place in Glasgow, he notes that the Scottish in particular tend to have a bit of a persecution complex about their relationship with the English, and often look deeply into the material English comics do about them for perceived insults and reasons to be offended, even if they were unintentional or minor. As an English comedian, he admits to initially finding this intimidating before hitting on the strategy of baldly insulting his Scottish audiences to their faces, but in a way that often used facts about Scotland or irritants the Scottish have that are obscure and little-known outside of the country. He gradually found that combination of deliberately pushing their specific buttons ''and'' demonstrating that he'd done his homework would actually earn their respect and laughs, even if grudgingly. [[spoiler: Specifically, he did this by arguing that legendary Scottish hero William Wallace was gay. Scottish audiences didn't know whether or not to be insulted, and so were amused.]]
27	* AlwaysSomeoneBetter: Lee describes feeling something between this and genuine offense regarding Creator/RickyGervais. After Gervais toured his first stand-up show "Animals". Lee describes how he felt both insulted that Gervais, from his point of view, stole his persona and technique to create his show, and incredibly jealous that Gervais was nevertheless able to play to sell out crowds that had dwarfed those that Lee had enjoyed. Lee credits this as being a big push to him to resuming his stand up career and prove that he could be successful at it.
28	** In a 2022 interview with Creator/RobBrydon, he went a little further, describing Gervais' show ''Series/AfterLife2019'' as "the worst thing ever created by a human."
29	* AndThatsTerrible: Invoked when he imagines Creator/DanBrown as a doctor delivering the news of a dead relative in the [[TakeThat typical]] [[StylisticSuck style of his prose]].
30	-->'''Dr. Dan Brown''': The seventy-two year old man died a painful death on the large green table...it was sad.
31	* {{Angrish}}: He broke into this during part of his ''Top Gear'' routine, after quoting Jeremy Clarkson's cruel description of then-UK Prime Minister as a "one-eyed Scottish idiot". Veers into TearJerker territory before MoodWhiplash sets in:
32	-->Now, by all means, make fun of UsefulNotes/GordonBrown's policies, make fun of him being Scottish, at a push, if that is amusing to you. But "one-eyed"? Whatever you think of Gordon Brown, right, he lost his sight as a child, he went blind as a child, and ... [''pause, sighs''] Is that a funny thing to do a joke about, I dunno, he went, he went, he went, he went [''stuttering''] blind as a child, he's got about 30% vision now, I think, which may be why he didn't cross his t's in that letter to that dead serviceman's mother, mightn't it, yeah? Rather than being a calculated insult to the dead. Might be, blind --I'm not an optician. But if I was the editor of a tabloid newspaper I'd have investigated the ''blindness''. He went blind as a child, and Jeremy Clarkson thinks that is a legit-, a legitimate... [''pause, sighs''] I dunno. If you've got, if you've got kids, or any sort of, shred, of human empathy, why would you...if you've got kids, and they're ill, or in hospital...every...you, you say to them, "You'll be all right tomorrow," next day, you try and reassure them. And, uh... [''pause''] But presumably there came a point where Gordon Brown's parents didn't do that any more, 'cause he was blind, and that was that. And Jeremy Clarkson thinks that's a funny thing to do a joke about. [''Pause, quietly''] Now. Jeremy Clarkson has three daughters. And I hope they all go blind. [''shouting''] Not one of them in one eye! All of them, in all their eyes! COME ON, IT'S JUST A JOKE! LIKE ON ''TOP GEAR''!"
33	* AscendedMeme: The "[Insert celebrity here] has let himself go" meme is so ubiquitous (check the comments section of anything he's written for the Guardian, the Youtube comments of any of his videos, and [[BreakingTheFourthWall under his picture up there]]) that he regularly riffs on it in his specials and on Comedy Vehicle.
34	* BerserkButton: Don't ever refer to him with 'comedian' in inverted commas or suggest sarcastically that 'comedian' is a matter of opinion...you'll be subjected to a rant pointing out that while you may not like his comedy, there's no possible doubt that a man who stands on stage telling jokes and manages to make a living that way is a comedian.
35	* BitingTheHandHumor: Lee thought nothing of making fun of BBC Radio 4 comedy on his BBC comedy series, and once wrote a drunken sarcastic riposte to the Foster's Comedy God Poll while drunk on Foster's.
36	* BlackComedy: Surprising amounts of it. (See page image.)
37	** Notably, the "moving to the countryside" bit from season 2 of Comedy Vehicle, most of the "Marriage" episode from season 3, and the part of the "Top Gear" routine where the show's hosts beat a homeless man to death.
38	** ...And most infamously, the [[spoiler:"vomiting into the gaping anus of Christ"]] bit from 90's Comedian, which was a self-admitted over-the-top reaction to the ability of religious bigots to suppress free speech.
39	* BreakingTheFourthWall: A running joke in his TV series had Stewart Lee speaking favourably to his studio audience; and then turn round to the camera and berating the tv audience for not being at a live gig.
40	* BrokenRecord: Lee's structure often involves a great deal of repetition, but when CreatorBreakdown also enters the fray we often see this effect such as with his TravelLodge rant from ''Comedy Vehicle'' or railing against a cider advert from ''Milder Comedian''.
41	--> "Just give it to me straight, like a pear cider that's made from 100% pear!"
42	* CallBack: One of the masters of this technique.
43	--> ''My Grandfather built his house out of old [[UsefulNotes/ThePoppy discarded poppies]]...now remember that because I'll be coming back to my Grandfather and, um, his nest of poppies and it'll be, um, extremely satisfying.''
44	** He usually structures an entire two hour show around a series of ludicrously convoluted callbacks. His most recent tour, Carpet Remnant World, goes so far as to lampshade this technique, as he repeatedly states that there is no running thread or theme to the show but he is planning a series of callbacks at the end which will give the illusion of a unified whole.
45	* CannotTellAJoke: He can, but his on-stage persona is that of a miserable failure, and so he takes great delight in pretending to tell awful jokes, when the comedy really comes from his despair.
46	** He will also frequently tell a joke that is different from his usual style and then berate the audience for liking it, because it was shallow and simple-minded.
47	** Season 2 of Comedy Vehicle drives this home. He's told [[ExecutiveMeddling if he wants a third series]] he needs to put more jokes in it. So he comes up with 4 jokes, and within the first episode, he tells three of them. They aren't great jokes.
48	* ComicallyMissingThePoint: He gets highly amused when people do this about his work. He talked in an interview about doing a show in Inverness, after which the venue forwarded him a letter of complaint from someone in the audience who wanted to know why he was doing stand-up at all since he clearly didn't like doing it. Lee thought it was hilarious to think that someone was under the impression that he'd sort of accidentally blundered into doing comedy, and that all the rants and apparent joke fails in the show were entirely unintentional.
49	* ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontWatch: One episode of 'Comedy Vehicle' contained a five minute attack on comedian Franklin Ajaye based purely on the sleeves note of his record, which Lee admitted to never actually having listened to.
50	* CountryMatters: He explored this in a routine in ''Snowflake'', the premise of which was that right-wing journalist Tony Parsons had attacked him as a misogynist for using the c-word onstage. The climax of this is Lee looking the word up in a dictionary and discovering that instead of a definition of it, there was simply a picture of Tony Parsons' face, which to Lee's [[AndThatsTerrible disapproval and disappointment]] someone had decorated with cut-out photographs of monkey penises and splashes of correcting fluid.
51	* CoveredInGunge: In ''Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle'', Paul Putner and Cathryn Bradshaw play a middle-aged couple who this happens to, in reference to Lee's comment that while "Channel 4 is like a flood of sewage that comes unbidden into your home whereas E4 is like you constructed a sluice to let it in":
52	-->[''A husband and wife are sitting in their living room watching TV'']
53	-->'''TV''': And now on BBC One, it's ''The One Show''.
54	-->'''Man''': Nothing on One.
55	-->'''TV''': With comedian Michael [=McIntyre=] and-- [''Man changes channel. People on TV drunkenly hum "Here Comes the Bride"'']
56	-->'''Man''': Nothing on Two. [''changes channel'']
57	-->'''TV''': ...Fish and a raw chicken.
58	-->'''Man''': Nothing on Three.\
59	[''He changes channel. A huge torrent of brown sewage bursts from the TV screen, completely drenching the man and woman. This goes on for a long time. Eventually it dies down and they wipe their faces'']
60	-->'''Woman''': Try E4.\
61	[''The man pulls a lever next to the sofa. The picture behind them on the wall flips upward, revealing a giant opening. A huge torrent of sewage pours out of it onto the man and woman, completely drenching them. This goes on for a long time.'']
62	* CrazyPrepared: The opening routine of his fourth DVD ''If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One'' has a classic example. Ostensibly he starts by complaining about a piece of officiousness from Caffe Nero refusing to recognise that he has enough stamps on his card for a free coffee. However, the routine would constantly fail because no-one in the audience could see what was wrong with the card (there were three stamps in blue) which made it look as if Lee was complaining about absolutely nothing. However, he would suddenly reveal that this was all a set up by going off stage and coming back on with a '''huge''' painted mock-up of the card painted by himself to show the three blue stamps.
63	* DamnedByFaintPraise: The premise of ''41st Best Standup'' and frequently worked into other parts of his routine.
64	* {{Deconstruction}}: Lee loves to set a joke up or a particular set or style, completely ruin it, then spend the next 20 minutes explaining in detail every aspect of the joke and why it is funny.
65	** For instance, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Z3nJ0HKKjQ this routine]] deconstructs the sort of things that observational comedians derive humour from:
66	* DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment: Talking about the comments he gets on twitter, he noted one saying "I've just seen Stewart Lee eating a burger. He looked fat, depressed and fat"
67	* DigitalPiracyIsEvil: Seemingly played straight when he addresses the audience at home and tells them that illegally downloading his [=DVDs=] is like stealing food from his children's mouths... well actually it's getting in the way of saving up so they can buy a nicer house nearer the better schools.
68	* DisposableSexWorker: He rips into the ''[[UsefulNotes/BritishNewspapers Daily Mail]]'' columnist Richard Littlejohn for displaying this attitude, imagining Littlejohn travelling the UK carving "Prostitute... not someone who works as a prostitute... P.S... I hate women, obviously... and I'm glad when they die. Yours, Richard Littlejohn... [[CountryMatters cunt]]" onto the graves of such victims.
69	** [[spoiler: "P.S: Not someone who works as a cunt."]]
70	* DivideAndConquer: He turns this into a stand-up comedy technique by isolating different corners of the audience he's appearing before, identifying one group as being able to get his style of humour, and then repeatedly lambasting the other group for not getting it.
71	* DontExplainTheJoke: Lee's humour often revels in subverting this comedic rule, sometimes deliberately pushing it deliberately to reveal the absurdity of the jokes, other times just to save Daily Mail journalists a long and pointless email correspondence. His book ''How I Escaped My Certain Fate'' is basically him dissecting his routine and explaining the thought process behind each joke.
72	** Taken to the extreme in ''If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One'' when he deconstructs an entire satirical routine involving irony; by speaking atrociously about how he wishes ''Series/TopGear''[='=]s Creator/JeremyClarkson and Creator/RichardHammond suffer and die horribly, he follows it up by [[TakeThat promptly making a forced, poor apology about how he doesn't think that.]] Cue Lee then looking straight into the camera and explaining the humour and the structure of the joke itself, before mentioning it's a shame to break character but entirely necessary as some ''Top Gear'' fans will definitely send him hate mail if he doesn't.
73	* GenreDeconstruction: Reduction ad absurdum is frequently used to highlight the hypocrisy of whomever Lee happens to be railing against. For instance, in ''Much A-Stew About Nothing'', there is a routine in which the anti-immigration argument is taken to its absurd logical conclusion, suggesting that everyone who has ever immigrated to the UK is a foul wastrel merely trying to take our jobs. By the end of the routine, the UK is devoid of human life.
74	* GrammarNazi: The "Pear Cider" routine ends with him bitterly noting that the thing that really stings about Magners (supposedly) stealing his family's ancient and beloved saying ("Give it to me straight, like a pear cider made of 100% pears") is that in doing so, they changed "pears" to "''pear''", and removing the plural completely mangles the meaning of the saying by making it seem like the cider is only made from a single pear, rather than multiple pears.
75	* HappilyAdopted: Several of his routines touch on how he was adopted at birth. Despite some bitterness he seems relatively relaxed about it.
76	* HypocriticalHumour: From ''How I Escaped My Certain Fate'. "I'm sick of reading on Daily Mail message boards that I am 'one of these foul-mouthed modern comedians' when I am absolutely not. Honestly, who are these cunts?"
77	* In the second series "Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle" he devotes the episode Charity to attacking comedians who only do charity events to make themselves good...while constantly reminding the audience of how many charity events he's done (a number that steadily increases throughout the show).
78	** This is one of Lee's defining characteristics. As [[http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2009/dec/06/stewart-lee-comedy-interview Sean O'Hagan put it during an interview]]: "He operates out in that dangerous hinterland between moral provocation and outright offence, often adopting, as in this instance, the tactics of those he targets in order to highlight their hypocrisy".
79	* HypocriticalHeartwarming: Despite frequently making more mainstream observational comedians such as Michael [=McIntyre=] the butt of many of his jokes, he has confessed that he often feels the need to come to their defence when non-comedians mock or belittle them around him, on the basis that comedy can be a very hard job and the fact that these comedians are able to make large numbers of people laugh means that they're doing something right and have ''some'' talent, even if what they do isn't particularly to his personal taste.
80	* IncrediblyLamePun: In a routine about interviewing Ang Lee about his making of Film/{{Hulk}}, Stewart Lee milks a joke about 'Don't make me Ang Lee. You wouldn't like me when I'm Ang Lee' for all it is worth (finishing with another incredibly lame pun about him going to the dentist at 2.30).
81	* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: For a comedian whose entire persona is of someone who is unreasonably aggrieved about things that few other people care about, in his book ''How I Escaped My Certain Fate'' he is extremely generous to and appreciative of (most) other comedians, especially if he's mocked them (or a parody version of them) for comic purposes. Justified in that his entire act has become about despising meanness and cruelty, while maintaining a self-consciously arrogant, condescending and bad-tempered demeanour.
82	* JustJokingJustification: He ''mercilessly'' parodies this defence and its frequent use in ''Series/TopGear'', in a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRrTMhAO4ac nearly fifteen minute-long routine]] in which he mocks Richard Hammond and the other ''Top Gear'' presenters to the point that he states he wishes Richard Hammond had been decapitated and killed in his famous dragster crash in 2006. He then mock-clumsily follows up the increasingly violent outbursts several times with "it's just a joke, like on Top Gear", demonstrating how lame an excuse this actually is.
83	* NeverMyFault: Part of his StylisticSuck act is to blame the audience for being incapable of understanding his routine rather than consider the potential faults in the material. As one example, in ''If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask for One'', he makes an IncrediblyLamePun regarding a one-legged pirate's response to a children's pirate-themed leisure centre ("The Pirate's Adventure Castle Activity Centre my foot!"), and then proceeds to lecture the audience for about five minutes on why they should have found it funnier as if they wouldn't have got the joke.
84	* NostalgiaFilter: Frequently invoked, discussed, subverted and then deconstructed in any skit involving his childhood or [[NostalgiaAintLikeItUsedToBe someone wistfully reminiscing]] about the [[YeGoodeOldeDays good ol' days]].
85	** Taken to ludicrous lengths during his [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KVO378tjsw UKIP rant]] -- after descending into a ramble about the last time things were good was before anything existed:
86	--->The old "nothing" times, remember? When there was nothing? Ah, it was brilliant. There was no planets, was there? And there was no suns, was there? No. [[RuleOfThree There was no crime]]... make of that what you will. You could leave your house unlocked, couldn't you? Cause it didn't exist.
87	* MadLibsCatchphrase: In ''Comedy Vehicle'', it's "One of these [plural noun] they have now".
88	* ObligatorySwearing: Deliberately averted in ''90s Comedian'', the last half hour of which consists of a surreal and outrageous story about Lee stumbling home to his mother's house in the company of Jesus, only to lose control of his stomach contents. [[spoiler: This was the infamous "vomiting into the gaping anus of Jesus" routine.]] The entire routine doesn't contain a single swearword.
89	* OnlySaneMan: His main role in ''This Morning With Richard Not Judy'' was to play the long-suffering sane man watching in exasperation as Richard Herring increasingly fell down the rabbit hole of yet another eccentric obsession.
90	* OverlyLongGag: He deliberately plays with this in a routine about ''Daily Mail'' columnist Richard Littlejohn chiselling misogynistic abuse into the headstones of murdered sex workers, in which much of the tension comes from Lee tapping his mic against the mic stand in imitation of the sound of Littlejohn's chisel.
91	** Also applies to his Paul-Nuttall-UKIP rant. He does (what starts as a) clever parody about [[StrawmanPolitical straw immigrants]] taking jobs; it goes on for ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HMhWB95ldQ fifteen minutes.]]''
92	** Invoked with the vandals who changed the name of a town on the signs on the road to the Edinburgh Festival:
93	--->"By the tenth 'Shitbottle' sign I had to pull off into a layby in case I crashed"
94	** "You've seen them, the rapping singers..." See Quotes page.
95	** Used, lampshaded and deconstructed in his "Office World Man" routine, in which he describes going to various stores with 'world' (World of Leather, World of Golf etc.) in the title in a desperate attempt to get material by riffing on what it would be like if the world was literally made out of the things the store titles promised. He ends up at an Office World where the owner comes out having undergone many excruciating operations to replace his body parts with various office supplies and stationery in an attempt to thwart him. When Lee points out that he can simply mine the sheer list of things he's done to himself to get humour out of this trope, the Office World Man replies that he's anticipated this and had more operations than would be optimally funny done, banking on Lee being unable to stop himself reciting them all.
96	** His anecdote about a conversation with a cab driver who insisted that if you say you're English, you'll be arrested and thrown in jail goes on for about three minutes, consisting mainly of himself and the cab driver repeating the premise to each other.
97	** One joke revolves around a lengthy argument between himself and film director Creator/AngLee over the phonetic similarity between the director's name and part of the famous CatchPhrase of ComicBook/TheIncredibleHulk.
98	** His 2022 show ''Snowflake'' has one of these in which he parodies the idea that Creator/RickyGervais "says the unsayable" in his stand-up shows, by imitating Gervais coming onstage and then emitting a series of [[EldritchAbomination incoherent, tortured groans and shrieks]], in an attempt to ''literally'' say the unsayable. He lampshades it by saying that someone had complained that the gag went on too long, and commenting that he liked the idea that that person thought the gag must after all have "a correct length".
99	* OverlyNarrowSuperlative: On one of his stand-up tours, he billed himself as "Britain's Third Most Rigorously Analytical Comedian".
100	* PetTheDog: In series 2 of Comedy Vehicle, at the end of a brutal piece mocking Russell Howard for not quitting his comedy career to do full-time charity work, he admitted it was born out of frustration that Howard had raised so much more money for charity than he would ever be able to.
101	* PoliticalOvercorrectness: Strongly opposed to people invoking this. He points out that even health and safety regulations [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmsV1TuESrc are twisted into hatred of the "PC Brigade".]]
102	** He revisited this bit and {{exaggerated\|Trope}} it in his 2022 show ''Snowflake'', in which his nan is now complaining that you can't wish anyone "Happy Christmas" anymore, you actually have to ''invoke Yog-Sothoth''.
103	* PresentCompanyExcluded: Real Life example, when Lee won the City Limits New Act of the Year competition, the judge told him 'Well done, we'll show those Oxbridge wankers like Rob Newman and David Baddiel what real comedy is". The judge then resorted to this trope when Stewart Lee informed him that he too was an Oxbridge graduate.
104	* QuoteMine: Lee frequently subverts this both as a form of SelfDeprecation and as a TakeThat against his critics. For example, the posters for his latest show proudly display "A True Artist of Comedy" from The Observer alongside "A Slimepit of Bitterness" from The Daily Mail.
105	** He was delighted that a reviewer scathingly called his tone one of "constant smug condescension" because it meant he could use it on a poster.
106	** He's also been on the other side of this; in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrXVaytvJtQ&ab_channel=StEdmundHall this]] lecture he discusses reading a bunch of ''Franchise/ScoobyDoo'' comics to his young son, finding them more enjoyable than he'd expected, and discovering that they were written by Creator/DanAbnett, an old university acquaintance who had also written other comics he'd enjoyed. He called Abnett to express his appreciation, and at one point commented that the ''Scooby Doo'' comics were "much better than they were necessary to be". Abnett, of course, immediately asked to use that as a pull quote.
107	** ''Snowflake'' has a routine in which he does this to the formerly liberal, now right-wing journalist Tony Parsons, who'd attacked him in a ''GQ'' for using the c-word onstage; Lee dug out a 2004 quote from a Parsons article comparing women to bananas, and argued that the particular wording Tony Parsons used demonstrated that he, Parsons, likes women to be beaten up and sold into slavery.
108	* RealLifeWritesThePlot: His show '41st Best Stand Up Comedian' was based on the fact that Stewart's mother once raved about a joke told by cabaret entertainer and former TV Quiz show host Tom O'Connor, which she said was better than anything Stewart had done. When he had nearly finished writing the show, he rang his mum to ask for permission to use this in the show...she responded that the comedian she liked wasn't Tom O'Connor but someone she couldn't remember. Rather than abandon the idea, Stew thought that the idea the his own mother thought he wasn't as good as some unknown comedian was so hilarious that he incorporated it into the show.
109	* RedOniBlueOni: He's the dry-witted Blue Oni to his partner Richard Herring's more excitable Red.
110	* SelfDeprecation: ...No, not Terry Christian, that other one, Mark Lamarr, but he's really fucking let himself go.
111	** Series 2 and 3 of Comedy Vehicle have Creator/ArmandoIannucci and Creator/ChrisMorris playing interviewers critiquing almost ''everything'' he says in his stand up.
112	** ...Ooh, Music/{{Morrissey}}'s let himself go. Ratko [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratko_Mladic Mladic]]'s let himself go.
113	** A section of his website contains all his reviews, including the bad ones. His 2016 book of his selected journalism, ''Content Provider'', has a self-deprecating title and a jacket quote from the conservative UK newspaper ''The Daily Telegraph'': "Stewart Lee is not funny and has nothing to say." After most of the pieces reprinted in the book, he includes a selection of comments from the website of the paper that first printed the article, many of which are along the lines of "This article should never have been written."
114	** Also on his website, several of the pages have a flash animation that pops up quotes from various people criticising his work. This starts with fellow stand-up comics, goes through to newspaper critics, and then works through a truly bewildering amount of negative comments from social media, most of the latter basically describing him as a talentless alcoholic hack who's an asshole to everyone he encounters and whose death would be no great loss to humanity.
115	* SoUnfunnyItsFunny: See StylisticSuck.
116	* SpeakingLikeTotallyTeen: His TV routine about rappers: "You know the rappers that they have now, on the top of the pops? And outside the shopping precincts."
117	* StylisticSuck: One of the modern masters of it in stand-up, as explained by the title quote. He - or the character he plays - frequently fumbles his routines, goes on long tangents, [[DontExplainTheJoke explains the jokes]], especially the ones that don't need explaining, storms off stage, and [[YouBastard berates his audiences]] for not appreciating his TrueArt. All intentional, of course, which is why it works. And also lampshaded; at several points, within the context of a joke Lee notes that despite appearances he is a professional comedian who has been successfully entertaining audiences since the 1980s and so knows full well what he's doing.
118	* TakeThat: Radio/ChrisMoyles, Creator/DanBrown, Creator/JeremyClarkson, Creator/JimDavidson, Joe Pasquale, Creator/MichaelMcIntyre=]...When discussing common traits of his comedy, he mentions that it often involves "disproportionate hatred towards relatively innocuous figures."
119	** Lee even has a special section of his website called [[http://www.stewartlee.co.uk/plagiarists.php Plagiarists' Corner]] dedicated to various people who have ripped off his material over the years. Considering his humour, it's unsurprisingly an ironic venture, in that most of the material has only passing similarities which get more bizarre as you go through the list.
120	*** The framing device for the infamous [[spoiler:vomiting into the gaping anus of Christ]] routine is wanting to write a joke that Joe Pasquale won't be able to steal.
121	** Tom O'Connor comes in for ''massive'' mockery in the [=41st=] Best Stand Up Ever, due to his mother's love of him. He also rips into Creator/Channel4 and [=E4=] whilst simultaneously lampshading how this will stop them buying the routine for distribution.
122	*** Subverted later when he discovers that his mother was actually talking about a completely different comedian. Also, Stewart Lee has noted that when he finally listened to Tom O'Connor's routines, he quite enjoyed them.
123	** Exaggerated in his rant [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_Xg51oCJdo about the countryside from his Comedy Vehicle series]]; when he mentions the countryside has nothing but has-been celebrities, he mentions that Paddy [=McGuinness=] will undoubtedly turn up "with his joke", before moving on and mentioning that [[spoiler:the horse in the field he was previously discussing noticed a flyer for [=McGuinness=]' appearance, and it responded by slowly killing itself over four hours by sawing it's neck on a barbed wire fence.]]
124	* TerribleTrio: He thinks that the ''Top Gear'' presenters are these, with James May as the leader, Jeremy Clarkson as the fat, bullying henchman and Richard Hammond as the scrawny, sniggering henchman.
125	* ViewersAreMorons. Especially when they vote [[Series/OnlyFoolsAndHorses Del Boy falling through the bar]] the funniest comedy moment of the century. "That's what you like is it? A man falling over!"
126	* UnusualEuphemism: On his 'Much A Stew About Nothing" he somehow manages to turn 'Opened the backdoor to negotiations with the IRA' into a euphemism for anal sex.
127	* TheUnreveal: The whole point of the "Princess Diana" bit. After talking about his confusion at seeing a life-sized inflatable ET doll among the late princess's memorial tributes, he launches into a ten-minute one-man play explaining why someone might think that was an appropriate gift. ...Only for it to turn out that there's still no logical explanation.
128	* VitriolicBestBuds: With Richard Herring. The CausticCritic skits in ''Comedy Vehicle'' with real-life mates Creator/ArmandoIannucci and Creator/ChrisMorris also qualify as this to the extent that they include some {{Corpsing}}.
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Context Creator / StewartLee