Stuart Lee is an English comedian, writer, director and musician. He became famous thanks to the radio duet "Lee and Herring". In 2011, he received an award for his series Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle ("Stuart Lee's Humor Machine") at the British Comedy Awards as the best male television comic. He is also known for Jerry Springer's stage productions of The Opera and The Morning with Richard Not Judy.
He is a patron of the humanists of Great Britain, an honorary member of the National Secular Society and a member of the Arts Emergency. His influences include Ted Chippington, Simon Mannery, Kevin McAleer and Johnny Vegas.
Biography
Comedian Stuart Lee was born in Wellington, Shropshire on April 5, 1968. He was adopted as a child and grew up in Solihull in the West Midlands. Studied at Solihull School on a scholarship.
He made his name in the mid-1990s,as part of the Lee & Herring radio duo, whose popular success was accompanied by extensive touring to build a loyal following on the air. He quit comedy in the early 2000s when he became disillusioned with the industry. Stuart Lee believed he was destined to be a "one-part actor" who reached the scale of any potential audience. Lee returned to the field of humor after co-writing and co-directing the Broadway hit Jerry Springer - The Opera ("Jerry Springer - Opera"). He has since returned to live action through BBC and C4 specials, reclaimed a niche audience and established himself as an anti-populist.
He is a big hit in the UK despite his refusal to appear on popular talk shows. Although Lee's audience numbers are relatively small, he usually draws 400-600 concert halls and stands outside the mainstream of the comedy genre, he is well received by critics, and he was a regular pundit on BBC political programming. A 2009 article in the Times called him "a comedian and with good reason" and "the face of the decade". In June 2012, Lee was ranked 9 on the Top 100 Most Influential People in British Comedy. His stand-up performances often use "repetition, callbacks, sloppy messaging and deconstruction" techniques that he jokingly attributes to his tedious, demanding middle-class persona.
Lee has been reviewing music for a number of publications since 1995,including Sunday Times. In the early 2000s, he performed regularly on Resonance FM 104.4. He is known for his unusual musical taste. In 2003, when asked what his current favorites were, he said: "Most of my favorites are still The Fall, Giant Sand and Calexico. I listen to a lot of jazz, 60s music and folk music, but I really like Ms. Dynamite and The Streets." He once said that the only band he liked that anyone else had heard of was R. E. M. His debut novel The Perfect Fool includes an "audio bibliography" - a recommended listening list. It was his love for the band Giant Sand that first drew him to the American Southwest.
His first novel, The Perfect Fool, was published in 2001, followed by How I Avoided My Destiny: The Life and Death of a Standing Comedian in 2011.
Performance style
Stand Up Lee features a thematic and occasionally observational comedy that touches on religion, feminism and life in multicultural London. However, he also uses meta-humor (referring to several different but related categories: joke patterns, self-referencing jokes, and jokes about jokes), and sometimes describes set structure using technical terminology such as "callback".
Ironically, he often criticizes the audience for not being smart enough to understand his jokes, saying that they would have preferred more simplistic material or enjoyed the work morepopular comedians such as Michael McIntyre or Lee Mac. He often compares his critical success to the more commercial success of other comedians.
Awards
Together with Richard Thomas, he would have been awarded the London Critics Circle Award 2003, as well as the Theater Prize. Laurence Olivier 2004 for Best New Musical of the 2003 Season and Best Director for "Jerry Springer - Opera" performed at the Royal National Theatre.
In December 2011, he won Best Male TV Comic Award for his series Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, which was also awarded Best Comedy Entertainment at the 2011 UK Comedy Awards.
Private life
Stuart Lee has been married to Bridget Christie since 2006. She is an English stand-up comedian and writer who has received the Foster Edinburgh Comedy Award, formerly known as the If.comedy Awards. Whatever it was called, Lee was usually quite outspoken about his antipathy for such awards. Bridget Kristen and Stuart Lee have two children together.
