1989–1999: stand-up, radio and TV While a student 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 production. 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. 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 early material. Owing to creative differences 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. 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. In 1995 and 1996, two series of a television version of Fist of Fun
were broadcast by BBC2, followed in 1998-99 by two series of This Morning with Richard Not Judy. Throughout the late nineties he continued performing solo stand-up (even whilst in the double act Lee and Herring) and 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.
2000–2004: quitting stand-up In 2001, Lee published his first novel,
The Perfect Fool. 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 Pussy-Cat" 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 retired from stand-up comedy. 2001 became the first year since 1987 that he did not perform at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. While Lee found himself gradually performing less stand-up 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
BBC Two series fronted by
Simon Munnery's "League Against Tedium" character, which also featured
Kevin Eldon,
Johnny Vegas and Roger Mann, as well as
Richard Thomas and opera singer
Lore Lixenberg. At the 2003
Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Lee directed Johnny Vegas's first DVD, ''Who's Ready For Ice Cream?
. In 2004, he returned to stand-up comedy with the show Standup Comedian
. Lee is a regular music critic for The Guardian''. In 2003, he said that his favourite bands include
The Fall,
Giant Sand and
Calexico and that he listens to "a lot of
jazz,
60s and
folk music”. A private court case brought by Christian Voice against Lee and others involved with the production for blasphemy was rejected by a
magistrates' court. At around the time of the
Jerry Springer: The Opera broadcast, Lee, Thomas and translator Hermann Bräuer developed
Stand Up, a German-language opera set in a fictional London comedy club and performed in Hannover, after an adaptation of
Jerry Springer proved impossible for legal reasons. In 2006, finding himself "really broke" he appeared as a guest on three comedy panel shows. The first was
Never Mind The Buzzcocks, where
Simon Amstell made frequent mock-offended references 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 Lee decided to quit them altogether. A profile in the
Financial Times in 2011 stated Lee did not want to alienate his audience in exchange for quick money by such appearances, as working as a stand-up had been the only thing that had generated reliable income for him.
2009–2010: Comedy Vehicle ''
Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle'', a 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 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 described it as "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, "His whole tone is one of complete, smug condescension". Lee used the line to advertise his next stand-up tour; he frequently uses negative reviews on his posters to put off potential audience members who are unlikely to like his comedy style. The first episode was watched by approximately one million viewers. The show ran for 25 episodes 2013–14, but in 2015 Lee confirmed that Comedy Central were not commissioning a third series.
2020s: recent work In September 2020,
Asian Dub Foundation (a political band from London who had a Top 40 hit with "Buzzin'" in 1998) released a song called "Comin' Over Here", which was based on a sketch from ''Lee's Comedy Vehicle'' about the UKIP party leader
Paul Nuttall. In December 2020, Lee teamed up with Asian Dub Foundation to release a video for the song, which was at that time part of an internet campaign (in the style of
LadBaby, Rage Against The Machine et al.) to get the record to number one in time for the chart published by the Official Charts Company on 31 December 2020, thereby making the record the 'Brexit Day Number One'. On 1 December 2020, the song debuted at number 65, making it the week's highest new entry and the best-selling single of the week (though "Comin' Over Here" was absent from the Official Audio Streaming Chart Top 100). In 2020, Lee wrote the documentary film
King Rocker about singer
Robert Lloyd and the band
The Nightingales. The film featured
Frank Skinner,
Marc Riley,
Robin Askwith, Duran Duran's
John Taylor and
Samira Ahmed. In 2022, Lee removed his material from
Spotify because it refused to stop
The Joe Rogan Experience spreading
COVID-19 misinformation on its platform. Lee took part in "A Show for
Gareth Richards" at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2023, which was staged by fellow comedians
Mark Simmons and Danny Ward to honour Richards life after he died in a car-crash in April 2023. The show won the first Victoria Wood award at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards 2023 and raised almost £20,000 for Gareth's family. In 2023, Lee wrote a contemporary version of the Porter scene for the
Royal Shakespeare Company production of
Macbeth. Director Wils Wilson said "The Porter is dark, funny, edgy, political, clever, a truth teller – Stewart is all of these things, and straight away I knew I wanted to ask him to write to. He has a really deep understanding of how comedy works. The Porter scene is a strange meta moment in Macbeth and I knew Stewart would enjoy playing with that." Lee performed his 2024 tour show "Basic Lee" at
The Lowry in Salford, which was filmed and broadcast on 20 July by
Sky Comedy, as
Stewart Lee, Basic Lee: Live at the Lowry. The film was produced by Drum Studios in association with Awkward Films, with producer director Colin Dench. It was followed by "Stewart Lee Vs The Man-Wulf", which toured the UK through 2025. ==Style and material==