March of the Lemmings

by Stewart Lee

  Oh, come on, you’ve seen them, haven’t you? You’re at the – you’re at the O2, seeing the American stand-up, it’s ninety-five quid for their forty-two-minute club set, and you’re sitting there watching the American stand-up, and you’re going … ‘We don’t have those cakes here, mate. Sorry. Don’t have those cakes.’ OK, all I’m saying, right, is I don’t go to New York and do two hours on Mr Kipling, do I? You know? I’m not in Madison Square Garden going, ‘And there’s like a shortbread bit. Then there’s jam on there, then there’s like a Bakewell – is this on?’99

  So to get everyone in the mood I thought I’d play the first Deacon Blue album, Raintown, at half-time, right, and I found it second-hand on the Internet, 69p. That’s not very good, is it, Annette? 69p! No! I can teach Deacon Blue a thing or two about online reputation management. What I don’t understand is, there’s six of them, they should be on the Internet in shifts driving that price up. D’you know, if there was six of me, my DVD would be about £5.100

  That’s right. You were right to clap. So what we do there, we get a problem, it’s not a problem, you store it away, bring it back later on. I know you’re laughing, the people up there, they’re going, ‘No one could be that good, she is a plant, that woman. He takes her round the whole country, and she shouts out “£5”.’ You’re not a plant, are you, Annette? No. Only four more shows left anyway. You don’t know what’s going on now, do you?101

  So I ordered it off, er, Music Magpie, Deacon Blue’s first album, and the bloke, Rick at Music Magpie, he sent me an email, he said, ‘We’re sorry to inform you that Raintown by Deacon Blue, order 2032917358, has failed its final quality inspection.’102 So I said, ‘Well, don’t worry if the case is damaged, I just need to play the – the music at half-time in my show.’ And he said, ‘No, not its physical-quality inspection. Deacon Blue’s mix of soulful singer-songwriter sensibilities and plastic mid-’80s production values has not aged well. But we notice from our files that all your fans who buy your live DVDs from us then go on to buy 1970s Turkish funk albums.103 So as a goodwill gesture, here’s some to play in your interval.’ And that’s the interval now.

  STEW WANDERS OFF, CONCLUSIVELY. ERKIN KORAY’S ‘CEMALIM’ STARTS PLAYING IN THE INTERVAL,104 FOLLOWED BY A MEDLEY OF OTHER ’70S TURKISH PSYCHEDELIC FUNK.

  SECOND HALF

  THE TURKISH FUNK FADES OUT AND STEW WANDERS ON, TRIPPING OVER DVDS AGAIN.

  Right, in the first half I said, didn’t I, I was trying to do two hours on the idea of the individual in a digitised free-market economy. I said I was gonna base it around this painting, Caspar David Friedrich’s 1818 German Romantic masterpiece Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog [crosses the stage with the painting and leans it against a pillar stage left], and I said I couldn’t do that ’cos I had to talk about Brexit, then I did talk about Brexit for about twenty-five minutes, then I got back on to talking about digital media, physical media, so that was all right, that was the first half, that was done.

  Then about sixteen months ago I started writing the second half, and that was coming together all right, and then America voted for Trump and there seems …105 there just seems to be an expectation everywhere that I should’ve written something about Americans voting for Trump. And I haven’t written anything about, er, Trump because I’m trying to write a show that I keep on the road for eighteen months, and as I didn’t know how America voting for Trump was gonna pan out, I didn’t write anything about it in case I couldn’t keep it in the show for the full length of the tour and monetise the work I’ve done. So I haven’t written anything about America voting for Trump ’cos I don’t see the point of committing to a course of action for which there’s no logical or financial justification.

  Well, typically, it’s going better down here, isn’t it, down here, the elite of Southend. They’re going, ‘How amusing, Lee, how amusing, Lee has used exactly the same syntax at the start of both the first and second half, with only two nouns changed in order to drive home the notion that both the Trump and Brexit victories are driven by the same populous rhetoric. How clever.’ People up there are going, ‘How embarrassing, he’s done the same bit twice.’ ‘He must be drunk.’ ‘He’s an alcoholic, I saw it on Twitter.’106

  So, you know, ’cos I’ve got a Trump bit, I have to check at half-time every night that he’s not been assassinated or fallen into a barrel of porn actresses107 or something, and, er,108 but it does mean that I see the same crass anti-American generalisations online every night, social media, and it – it annoys me, to be honest, because I don’t know if you can make massive generalisations about Americans who voted for Trump.

  Because Americans voted for Trump for all sorts of different reasons. And it wasn’t just racists who voted for Donald Trump [delays moving on and milks the laughter of anticipation, like a milkmaid of swearing]. Cunts did as well, didn’t they?109

  Yeah. Stupid fat American cunts. The worst kind of cunts, aren’t they? Much worse than our British cunts, ain’t they? Salt of the earth, British cunts. [sings] ‘British cunts. British cunts. British Brexit-voting cunts from Southend.’110

  But it’s you, isn’t it? But I don’t know – well, I don’t know if you can make massive generalisations about Americans who voted for Trump. Seriously. I mean, not all Americans who voted for Trump wanted to see America immediately descend into an unaccountable single-party state, exploiting people’s worst prejudices to maintain power indefinitely. Some Americans just wanted to be allowed to wear their Ku Klux Klan outfits to church, didn’t they?

  Perked up, haven’t you, at half-time! Had a little chat, have you, with the people that brought you? ‘Oh, d’you think he’s funny, John?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Oh, I do as well then.’ You make me sick.111

  It’s very difficult, though, nowadays to write a joke that everyone either understands or finds funny, you know, er, or relates to. And it’s partly because we live in such fragmented times in terms of how we consume news information, there’s no dominant trusted news narrative, no news source, everyone’s going down their own little digital wormholes, and you’ll be on some website and it says, ‘D’you agree with this? Then click on this ’cos it’s the same as what you already think.’

  And no one – no one’s got any overview, have they, and that’s partly how a Trump and a Brexit can – can happen. It didn’t use to be like that, did it, Southend, we used to be part of a collective consciousness, didn’t we? In 1978, for example, 28 million British people watched the same Christmas Morecambe and Wise, as it was broadcast in real time. Half the population. And this is held up as a sort of apogee of our collective experience. But it doesn’t really hold water ’cos there was no competition then, was there? There was no DVDs, there was no Internet, and there was only two other TV channels. And on one of them was a documentary about Burnham-on-Crouch. And on the other was a drawing of a clown sitting near a blackboard. And that got 27 million viewers. ‘Did it?’ No.112

  But young people today are very proud of the fact that they don’t interact with conventional terrestrial media at all, aren’t they? They go, ‘Mate,113 I don’t even know what that is, mate. Terrestrial media? I just watch the Internet, Netflix, cable, download computer television. I haven’t even got the thing that you need to – I haven’t even got any eyes. Mate, I haven’t even got any, you know, senses to perceive any physical stimuli. I just have memes Bluetoothed into my cortex, you know?

  ‘Have you not got the Internet, Netflix, cable, Sky computer-download television, Stew, have you not got that, mate? It’s amazing. Some amazing things on, er, Internet, Netflix, cable, Sky. I mean, there’s er, there are, there’s some really good stuff. I mean, there’s Game of Thrones, for example, which is – oh, have you not seen Game of Thrones, mate?114 Have you not seen Game – uh. Not seen Game of Thrones, mate? Uh, it’s not just about a gnome, Stew. He’s a dwarf anyway. You’re racist against gnomes. You’re a gnome racist. It’s a completely different thing.

  ‘Have you not seen Game of Thrones?
It’s – it’s not for kids, Stew, no, I mean, yeah, there’s – there’s magic in it, but it’s not like, you know, Harry Potter or the Faraway Tree115 or something like – you know. I mean, what is magic anyway? That’s what I say to you. I mean, magic could be, like, kind of energy force that we just don’t understand yet. Could be? Think about it, I mean, once upon a time, you know, people would’ve run away from Doritos, wouldn’t they?116 But there are people eating them now and dipping … I don’t, but it’s what – you know, some people, I’ve seen people eat them.

  ‘Have you not got – have you not seen Game of Thrones? It’s – I don’t know when it’s set, Stew, no, you know, could be in the past, yeah. Could be in the future after Brexit. There’s a big wall coming off the north of the country, everyone’s in rags, no one’s got any Toblerone, so it could be.

  ‘Have you really not seen Game of Thrones, mate? It’s – I mean, it’s not just about a dragon flying around with a hat on, it’s really – So actually, Stew, Game of Thrones is a really amazing programme because actually it’s very clever, Game of Thrones, ’cos what it’s actually about, it’s about history and, you know, philosophy and politics and things like that.’

  ‘Is it? Game of Thrones? Peter Stringfellow’s Lord of the Rings. Bilbo Baggins at the Spearmint Rhino. I’m not going to watch Game of Thrones, I can get the same experience from sitting around with a Terry Pratchett novel in one hand and a copy of Hustler’s Barely Legal in the other.’

  ‘It’s not like that, mate, have you actually watched Game …?’ ‘I haven’t watched Game of Thrones. If I want to understand the ongoing weft of history, while simultaneously being mildly sexually aroused, I’ll forcibly dress David Starkey in Agent Provocateur underwear117 and pay him to give a lap dance118 to Simon Schama.’119

  ‘It’s not like that, mate, have you actually watched Game of …’ ‘No. I haven’t watched Game of Thrones. And I shall never watch Game of Thrones. “I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children.120 I shall wear no crown and win no glory, and I shall not watch Game of Thrones.”’ [There is limited applause from Game of Thrones fans who recognise the quote from the series.]

  D’you like that, do you, Game of Thrones fans? D’you know what? I don’t even fucking know what that is. I copied that off the back of a cup in HMV.121 Right? OK? No, I did. And everything I need to know to do an hour of stand-up on Game of Thrones I can get off a cup. So grow up, you stupid Warhammer twats. You’re about forty-five years old.

  ‘Have you – it’s not like that, have you actually w—’ ‘No, I haven’t watched Game of Thrones. If I want to understand the ongoing collapse of ancient dynasties while simultaneously being barely semi-tumescent,122 as usual,123 I’ll read Tolstoy’s War and Peace while sitting over the wheel arch of a diesel-powered double-decker bus’124 – first laughs from the friends up there. Some of the older supporters of the theatre going, ‘Yeah, remember the old days? You could get on, couldn’t you, could get on the bus in Billericay,125 and by the time …’126

  STEW ASSUMES THE VOICE, BODY POSTURE AND MICROPHONE STANCE OF AN OLD-SCHOOL CLUB COMIC.

  ‘Hey, I’ve got a joke for you now, Southend, it’s a Game of Thrones joke. Hey, I tell you what, you may laugh, madam, if you were my daughter, I’d still be bathing you.127 It’s a joke … Come on. It’s the 1970s, it was a different time. It was a time of innocence and fun, laughter. So, got a joke for you, it’s a Game of Thrones joke, hey, so, you may laugh, sir, if you were my son I’d still be bathing you. Different times weren’t it, ’70s, it’s – all the children were clean, weren’t they? In the ’70s. Weren’t they? Get in the bath. Get out the bath. Dry yourself off. Get back in the bath, now! Get in the bath! So there’s people up there going, ‘Oh, now it’s picked up. A proper comedian’s come on.’ So got a joke for you now, it’s a Ga—You may laugh, sir, if you were dead I’d still be bathing you.128 Different times, weren’t it, the ’70s? You could bathe the dead, couldn’t you? ‘Is he dead?’ ‘Yes, but he’s clean.’ ‘Oh.’ ‘Nice and clean.’ So I’ve got a joke for you now, it’s a Game of Thrones joke. Hey, I tell you what, right, there’s so many naked young women in that Game of Thrones programme … [looks into the wings, as if to check that there is no one monitoring him]129

  Now I’m just checking back there for the old PC thought police. Gary Lineker’s liberal Stasi.130 No offence, the metropolitan liberal elite of Southend, but how fucked are you when the main champion of your liberal values is Gary Lineker? ‘My name’s Gary Lineker, I like to wake up in the morning and send out a succession of tweets in support of broadly progressive causes. Then, in the afternoon, I like to relax with a great big bag of crisps.’131 Are you there, Gary? He’s not there tonight. Are you there? Some nights he’s there and we have a – we have a little chat, don’t – hello. But no, Gary, I don’t think – well, given how the first half ended I don’t think tonight’s the sort of night where the audience will go with a long improvised dialogue with an invisible off-stage Gary Lineker. So I know, Gary, it worked very well in Leicester, but that’s your … that’s your home town, and what began as a regionally specific ad lib has gradually depreciated in value as we’ve gone further south. I know. So he’s not coming on tonight, he won’t – he won’t – he’s not there anyway, he w— … he won’t come this far south, Gary Lineker. He won’t cross water. In case his crisps get damp.132 Anyway, I need to get on with the joke now because, er, the longer I talk in this voice the more I realise I’ve not really given enough thought to who this is supposed to be.133 Just started off as a throwaway thing. So – anyway, so I’ve got a joke for you now, it’s a Game of Thrones joke. Hey, I tell you what, right, there’s so many naked young women in that Game of Thrones programme they have now, it’s hardly surprising what stunted Tyrion Lannister’s growth.134 It were wanking, ladies and gentlemen. He’s wanked hisself into being a dwarf.135 He was six foot six in the pilot episode.

  [adopts an annoying, whining voice] ‘Oh. Hang on a minute, mate, wasn’t that a sizeist joke?136 About the dwarf community?’

  [as himself again] Yes, it was. But I ridiculed the dwarf community in order to satirise the ongoing exploitation of women in mainstream media, so it cancels it out. It’s the kind of split-second collateral-damage decision Frankie Boyle has to make every time he opens his mouth.137

  [as the whiner again] ‘Oh, hang on a minute, mate, who’s the sole arbiter of taste in stand-up comedy? Who’s the self-appointed moral judge of right and wrong in stand-up comedy?’

  [as himself again, but almost incoherently furious] It’s me, I am! It’s been me for about seventeen years now! And there’s nothing the passive-aggressive indifference of the people of Southend-on-Sea can do about that! Not now!

  [makes a sudden jarring shift into a friendly, chatty, observational-comedy stand-up persona] But, hey, the world’s gone mad, hasn’t it? Yes. D’you know what, I blame – I blame the young people, by which I mean people under forty, and I hope there’s none in.138 ‘I’m under forty. I’m disillusioned. I like Russell Brand, I didn’t vote, yeah. Oh no, I’ve got no future now. Never mind, I’ve got this phone.’

  STEW MIMES A YOUNG PERSON TAPPING THEIR PHONE FOR ABOUT SIX MINUTES, WORKING WAVES OF LAUGHTER THAT GROW, SUBSIDE, THEN RECONFIGURE, UNTIL THE ACTIONS HE IS PERFORMING NO LONGER BEAR ANY RELATIONSHIP TO PHONE USE AND HAVE BECOME A MEANINGLESS, REPETITIVE, RITUAL DANCE. FINALLY, HIS TROUSERS FALL DOWN, AND HE ADDRESSES THE AUDIENCE WITH A CONFIDENCE THAT IS NOT AFFECTED BY HIS HUMILIATING PARTIAL NUDITY.139

  People under forty, what a shower of shit, aren’t you? That’s you! This is you.140

  STEW BEGINS THE PHONE-TAPPING DANCE AGAIN, AND CONTINUES IT WHILE MOCKING THE AUDIENCE.

  ‘I’m under forty, I like the Pokeman Go.141 I’m under forty, in the morning I don’t eat bread for breakfast like an adult, I suck drinking yoghurt out of a pouch [sucks]. I’m under forty, this is my food [sucks].142 I’m under forty, this is me on the bus to work in the morning [pokes his phon
e, dances and sucks]. People under forty, you like stupid fads, don’t you? A Japanese cat’s face drawn on a satchel, that’s what you like, isn’t it? ‘We’ll get up early and get down the market.’ ‘Why?’ ‘The Japanese-cat-satchel-face man’s coming.’ ‘You’ve got loads of satchels with a Japanese cat’s face on, mate.’ ‘I know, but they might be a blah blah blah aaaaaaah …’ [dissolves into an incoherent frenzy of twenty-something babbling].

  Bondage sex and S&M and the fetish scene, that’s the new thing, isn’t it, for the under-forties? Which they think they’ve fucking invented. ’Cos they read about it in Fifty Shades of Grey. Or they saw it in a FKA Twigs video.143 I know who he is actually, mate, so you can fuck off.144 This is exactly my problem actually with the under-forties, if you’re – if you’re fifty like me and you make some joke about popular culture, people under forty go, ‘Ah-hah, grandad, you don’t know who FKA Twigs is.’ Well, I do know who he is, FKA Twigs. They don’t know, do they, the Southend theatre people. But I do know who FKA Twigs is. FKA Twigs, right, he’s not a twig, like you think. ‘Is he a twig? Is he from the woods?’ FKA Twigs, he’s a – he’s a rap singer, he’s one of these – he is, he’s one of these rappers, he’s – well, he is, I’ve – you know, he’s done loads of tapes, I’ve got his tapes.145 And he’s – he’s got a video, FKA Twigs, where all sort of Japanese bondage ropes go round him and he flies up in the air and he has to try and – right, has anyone seen this?146 ’Cos I’m looking for stuff to drop, to be honest.147 No. I’ve seen it, I – I saw it on, er, oh, not Top of the Pops, what is it they have now? The Internet, it was on that. It’s like Top of the Pops, isn’t it, the Internet? Full of pop music and sexual predators. Yeah, see, see, I can write jokes, I could be on Mock the Week easily.148 This is Mock the Week, isn’t it? [backs off from the mic, and then scampers back up to it, Mock the Week-style] ‘The Internet is a bit like …’ – fuck off for God’s sake. Pathetic, isn’t it? ‘Oh, I’ve written a joke.’ Imagine writing jokes. What a waste of time. ‘Oh, this thing is like this, only this is different.’ For God’s sake.