Comedy review: Stewart Lee

Published on Tuesday 16 March 2010 18:06

STEWART LEE: IF YOU PREFER A MILDER COMEDIAN PLEASE ASK FOR ONE **** CITIZENS' THEATRE, GLASGOW

FRANKIE Boyle would have you believe that comics hitting 40 lose their potency, the righteous anger that compels them to mock the Queen's anatomy on comedy panel shows. At 41, Stewart Lee is not about to let this lie and meticulously dissects the Glaswegian's assertion, as he does everything else in this show, with playful aggression and measured sarcasm.

One of the genuinely thrilling aspects of seeing Lee is trying to ascertain just how deep his distaste for something extends before he blows it up into one of his elaborate set-pieces, especially as some of the targets are so close – his employers at the BBC and a Sunday newspaper are guilty by association of the emergence of the "Russell comedian" and the rise of Jeremy Clarkson.

Yet it's Clarkson's partner in politically incorrect sniggering, Richard Hammond, who bears the brunt of Lee's ire. And just so any tabloid newspapers or bootleggers posting out-of-context YouTube clips of him denouncing his ex-schoolmate understand, he truly wishes Hammond had died in his car crash, with all the jollying contempt the Top Gear presenters reserve for Gordon Brown's blindness or the "myth" of climate change.

His last routine, some furious grandstanding at the vacuity of advertising, is rendered all the sweeter for taking a pop at the cider sponsors of the Glasgow Comedy Festival, which, despite flirting with self-parody, is a suitably impressive climax. As a coda, he adds something allegedly shocking in contemporary stand-up, a seemingly genuine attempt to do something sincerely and well, singing Steve Earle's Galway Girl.