What has Stewart Lee done?

[concernedfriend500]

I see lots of people on Twitter are slagging off Stewart Lee because he listed a lot of non-woke folk like Graham Linehan in his "pedal bin" of people he doesn't like. What is his public stance on the Trans Rights campaign though? I've not heard/read anything but I've probably missed it.

If you want to see the list, it’s here, you have to scroll through a lot of navel gazing guff to get to it though.

I'm a big fan of Stewart Lee and agog at the immaturity of this. For someone who's made a career as a high brow 'comedian's comedian' it's just embarrassing playground stuff.

Arguably if Glinner hadn't drawn attention to it I wouldn't have known it was there, but fair enough he felt the need to respond.

@Clymene

Yeah Bridget, just let people go to the fucking toilet

Jeezus, Stewart Lee's looking hellova rough there....

I started a thread a few years ago about Stewart Lee after seeing his live show. I was a big fan, had seen him before etc.

When I watched his show, he made rape jokes (but in an oh so ironic way, of course) which the mainly male, bearded audience found hilarious. He 'joked' about the Mumsnet 'pearl clutchers' a couple of times.

I wanted to walk out after the rape jokes. I felt so uneasy with all the beardos nodding away. It was a real eye opener. Lee showed me who he was that day.

Blimey. It takes a certain amount of um...bravery?!...for a wealthy, middle aged white dude to put a working class, Somalian-born anti-FGM campaigner "in the bin".

I've met Nimco Ali before and she was absolutely lovely and incredibly inspiring. We don't share all of the same politics but fortunately for me I'm an adult and I don't have a melt down every time someone disagrees with me.

Bridget Christie is full on TWAW. In her live act, she has a go at both Ricky Gervais and Dave Chapelle, who, coincidentally, Stewart Lee also attacks in his live act. They seem obsessively fixated on those two.

It's funny how you can do a whole 90 minute standup routine about the menopause - which exclusively affects biological women - and simultaneously believe that trans women are women.

Lee's list is particularly nasty. Why attack Nimco Ali, who has done so much to campaign against female genital mutilation and violence against women? Really hurtful to attack Linehan as well, whose only crime is to stand up for women at great personal cost.

As for putting Maugham, Jones and Sarkar on the pedestal, he either hasn't been paying attention or he doesn't like women very much.

I suspect even Jolyon Maugham’s own family don’t like him much.

He was the captain (of course) of a Christmas Special University Challenge team last week and he had my 17 year old dd raging at the television because he put "Jeremy" at the end of every sentence as in "Oh we don't know this, Jeremy" said with a little chuckle. I'm not sure I've ever seen her that irate about someone on a quiz show before. I waited until the end of the show to tell her who he is. She felt fully vindicated about her instinctive dislike.

Have now read the lists and am cringing.

Says a lot that his list of people, groups and things he hates is over twice as long as the things he approves of.

Listing your enemies because Ewwwww Tories and Yuk Thicky Brexiteers is just so….cringe 😬

What is the point though? The list (not just pedal stool / bin but the rest too) is far too long and with no further info is just completely meaningless. Does he do this every year?

Here is Graham Linehan's blog post explaining his views. SL has waded into a very divisive argument, siting GL (amongst many others) as a bad person, ultimately for standing up for women. It would be lovely if he could engage his brain and answer GL's questions

And yes, handsoff, he is no fan of Mumsnet, which he clearly feels is full of silly wittering stupid middle class mummies, and has featured as a lazy sexist punchline in his routine.

Sorry, I contributed to this thread, didn't start it, but my sentiment was the same. The thread was started in response to Lee's Twitter post about Ricky Gervais/transgender.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3811414-Stewart-Lee

I wrote: 'Just seen his show and I can confirm that his scathing of Mumsnet users was peppered in between jokes about rape, Ricky Gervais' transgenderism and right wing suburbia who don't understand 'unisex' toilets or 'gender' (I think you mean mixed sex and sex).

The audience was two woke males per female and I found him worse than the Bernard Manning character this so called progressive Guardianista parodies.

I'm so disappointed that he's just another misogynist that believes he has the right to give away my rights and to joke about rape.'

@Sophoclesthefox

I saw him live once, and left with the sensation that he had just convinced me to pay him to stand there while he sneered at me and everyone else there for not meeting his exacting standards.

Not my idea of a fun night out. Much as I get that to comedians, he’s revered because of his ability to dissect and skewer how comedy happens, and that the way he plays with how people react, our preconceptions etc is masterful, it’s all just so fundamentally mean spirited, like the bully who says “I was just joking, can’t you take a joke?”

All of a piece with dividing people into goodies and baddies, though I expect that he believes he’s doing it on some meta level, way above the ken of normies like me.

This is how i feel about him too. DH thinks he's brilliant, sadly. I'm sad to hear BC is full on TWAW. I've seen her live a couple of times and thought she was brilliant, much more intelligent than her knob of a husband and a strong feminist. I'll rethink that view now.

@RoyalCorgi

Bridget Christie is full on TWAW. In her live act, she has a go at both Ricky Gervais and Dave Chapelle, who, coincidentally, Stewart Lee also attacks in his live act. They seem obsessively fixated on those two.

It's funny how you can do a whole 90 minute standup routine about the menopause - which exclusively affects biological women - and simultaneously believe that trans women are women.

Lee's list is particularly nasty. Why attack Nimco Ali, who has done so much to campaign against female genital mutilation and violence against women? Really hurtful to attack Linehan as well, whose only crime is to stand up for women at great personal cost.

As for putting Maugham, Jones and Sarkar on the pedestal, he either hasn't been paying attention or he doesn't like women very much.

Ah yes, he did a whole section on Gervais and Chapelle when we watched him in Feb 2022. He was fixated on them both.

Feb 2020!

I saw him about four years back, in that little theatre off Leicester Square.

Honestly, I found it so funny, I nearly had a full-on asthma attack. I think he's a genius.

Which is why this is shit.

I wonder if Nimco Ali is also because she is good friends with Carrie Johnson? She is supposed to have gone and visited/stayed with Carrie during the winter lockdown I think.

I like him, but admittedly I haven't heard about this pedestal/pedal bin stuff. I think (though I may be wrong) part of his appeal is his smug condescending approach. I think he may be doublely clever- clever enough to make "wokes" feel smug, and than a bit more clever again. I just read he's a billionaire- wonder where he got his money, can't have just made it through his act?

@WalkOnGildedSplinters

I wonder if Nimco Ali is also because she is good friends with Carrie Johnson? She is supposed to have gone and visited/stayed with Carrie during the winter lockdown I think.

Carrie Johnson gets paid £150k per year by the Aspinall charity for 'interior design' work for them- that might be enough to annoy SL.

SL spends a lot of time reading about himself online. He'll have lots to read about himself now. He'll probably read this thread.

I’ve seen him a couple of times, but he does have a rather unpleasant superiority complex.

He’s made a couple of nasty little jibes at mumsnet and as far as I’m concerned, if you are angry about a forum for, predominantly, women then you are an unapologetic misogynist.

Also, putting Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais in the naughty pile like they give a shit what he thinks is almost as funny as him brown nosing the likes of Jolyon Maugham and little Owen.

I used to like Stewart Lee and Richard Herring when they worked together. As time has gone on I have liked one less and less, and the other more and more.

Richard Herring is great

Stewart Lee is cut from the same cloth as Billy Bragg and thinks that because he is 'of the left' he is just an all round brilliant bloke.

I actually have tickets to go and see him later this year with DH so will be interested to see if this comes up in his show!