Comments on: Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle Review: Mighty Mouth

By: lpsfsrvp

lpsfsrvp — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:03:47 +0000

it’s a bit tautological to describe Clarkson and Moyles as being ‘immeasurably’ funnier. how could they be measurably funnier?

By: redredbeard

redredbeard — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:58:47 +0000

Stewart Lee is intelligent and subversive. He appreciates irony. Cut off his arm and “irony” will be running through him, like Blackpool Rock. More than that, irony is his bitch, his marionette. He plays with irony to make you question your beliefs. He appreciates the irony that many modern, so-called ‘liberal’ comedians espouse egalitarian beliefs, whilst deriding unfashionable sections of society, as the “Chav” Zeitgeist aptly demonstrated.

Enjoying or not enjoying a television programme is no thing to get angry about, but debate is healthy. We can all learn something from informed dialogue with each other. If you are offended by what he is saying, examine why he is saying it. If you’re still offended just move along. He’s probably not for you. Which is fine.

But it also doesn’t necessarily make Stewart Lee bad at his job. He has more than paid his dues on the circuit and is now a real master of the comedic craft. Very few comedians could write and execute a show of this calibre. He is even brave enough to parody Monty Python and highlight the ultimate absurdities of surrealism in Art, even as reflections of this strange life.

The reviewer prefers Jeremy Clarkson and Chris Moyles, finding them immeasurably funnier. Your cornerstones are probably Spike Milligan and Peter Cook. Such is the rich tapestry of life, people. It is not nice to get anglee or make fun of the perceived shortcomings of others, wherever you might judge them to be.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Fri, 08 May 2009 11:00:18 +0000

“Yet, even people who are avid readers will feel like Lee is launching a personal attack on them, unless they are blessed with his level of acute pomposity.”

I didn’t feel like that. I am not pompose. Sorry to deconstruct and demolish your frightenly simple 2-path theory in two quick swipes. I love the fact that this ‘reviewer’ has missed the point. It’s just comforting proof that people like Stewart Lee, myself and the other dissenters on here aren’t mad…..the world really is going to sh*t – with so-called educated people such as Sally McIlhone seemingly blind to art-forms out there that might actually challenge the viewer/reader/listener and secondly, require some effort in understanding the message.

By: Gustav

Gustav — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 12:42:25 +0000

“his own callous brand of intellectual elitism”

Rather than, say, your own brand of dishwater-dull, unengaging banality?

I think you’ve completely missed the point on this one… I’d be happy to pay a licence fee to watch this.

By: Lewis

Lewis — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 20:33:39 +0000

‘Tobias’, that is my brother’s name.

By: Tobias

Tobias — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 13:31:31 +0000

Rubbish comedy (if you can call it that).

No im not a fan of Little Britain either, but the second show was just painfully embarrasing to watch. I wonder how much the crowd are getting paid to laugh at these attempts at jokes.

By: Richard

Richard — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 10:21:25 +0000

If you Google her name you’ll find that Sally McIhone is now known as “The World’s Worst Comedy Reviewer”(tm).

Still it’s only the internet, and any mouth breathing idiot can write on that.

By: Ang Lee

Ang Lee — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 14:31:00 +0000

Stewart Lee, that anti-taiwanesse idiot. What does he think, the world revolves around him? He’s certainly big enough. I have met him, he called my girl-friend a marxist and showed her his rump. But, in all seriousness, even with those things against his name, i am a film director of some note who has very few heroes in this world. Unfortuntely for Stew he is possibly the only one who is still alive. He also regards in high esteem drinking guiness, i was once told. Buy crouching tiger, hidden dragon on dvd, i also directed sense and sensability, which some of you may not know.

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 14:24:20 +0000

I saw the “rappers” bit live last year at the Edinburgh Festival and have to say that I have never laughed harder in my life.

Quite happy to pay for that mate.

By: HRamachandran

HRamachandran — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 06:12:37 +0000

Mike:
“You complain about lees snobbery and fey intellectualism and ‘name dropping’. You miss the point. THIS IS PART OF THE JOKE. Look back over the whole of lees career, at any or most of his stand-up, he acts like that FOR EFFECT and does so with a wink and a nudge to let you know its PART OF THE JOKE. The whole point is that only a superficial observeer would go “OMG, what a snob, how terrible.” Which is exactly what he wants. The point is that the content of his act is in tension with the method of presentation, in that his broard criticisms are valid, but earnestly bleating on about it isnt funny, but playing the grumpy self important intellectual whilst doing it and feigning fuddiness and confusion or whatever is. The method of presentation is PART OF THE JOKE, albeit a knowing one in that you cant be an idiot who takes it AT FACE VALUE. Like you do.”

Obviously you don’t realise that when Bernard Manning did his racist jokes his sweaty racist persona was PART OF THE JOKE, that the essential dichotomy of the performance is in the juxtaposition of racist jokes against the fact they were being told in the late 20th century.

If your idea of a great night’s comedy is going through three layers of meta-jokes via what certainly looks like the same boring material everyone else did 5 years ago, then I’m glad I don’t have to share a remote control with you. Just because he knows that his material is out-dated (ooh, adults reading Harry Potter books), and he knows that referring to Tyndale and Gutenberg and Icarus in a superior way makes him look like a pompous pr*ck, and he knows that long repetitive beat-poem interludes (with lots of pauses, taking the piss out of people who are out of touch, or think they’re really in touch, or laugh at people who are out of touch, or something) are dull and lose the audience, doesn’t magically make it funny/cool/interesting/clever.

Matt:
“As for the ‘repetitive four minute long monologue about “those rap singers”’, OK, that might not have been the out-and-out funniest part of the act, but it was surely the gustiest. It was clearly a deliberate move to lose the audience with an unsettling, surreal detour. I found it quite unnerving, and a huge relief when he finally reigned it back in. Good for him, though! Great comedy surely should be challenging, and not necessarily an unbroken series of belly-laughs.”

If you like people being pseudo-intellectual in an ironically motivated, but ultimately unfunny, way – learn to spell, numbnuts! Any comedian who deliberately bores the audience, and expects them to learn to laugh at it via some kind of twisted mental gymnastics, is not worthy of any intelligent person’s time.

I’m afraid you’ve both fallen into the trap of liking something because you think it’s the kind of thing intelligent people like, that liking it makes you a bit edgy, a bit off the mainstream, a trend-setter who likes a better class of comedy that the mainstream thickos will never be able to get their poor little heads round.

You will actually pay money to be bored!