Harry Deansway: I’ll start with a nice easy one - how did you both get into comedy?

Stewart Lee: I saw him and he made me wanna do it. Up to a point, that’s kind of true.

Simon Munnery: I saw him and it made me want to get out

Stewart Lee: hahahaha! I always wanted to write things…

Simon Munnery: …you’ve done that haven’t you?

Stewart Lee: yeah. I always wanted to write comedy but I never thought I could do stand-up because none of the people I saw were doing anything I thought I ever could or would want to do. And then I saw this one mad guy, Ted Chippington supporting The Fall in ’84. It wasn’t like comedy, it was like the person didn’t want to do it really. And then the first time I went to Edinburgh in ‘87 I saw a line up that was amazing. It was Arthur smith introducing Jerry Sadowitz, Norman Lovett, and Arnold Brown, and I just sort of copied them all really. And then a year after that I saw Simon’s double act as well, and it was one of the early things that made me really wanna .. made me think you could do stuff on the stand up circuit that wasn’t … there was a big deal about alternative comedy not being like working men’s club comedy but there was another kind of orthodoxy that was like Ben Elton’s stuff. So it was interesting seeing other kinds of people. How did you get into comedy?

Simon Munnery: Uhh, drifted into it, went to college, didn’t like it very much. Tried to join every club in order to meet girls. But it didn’t work. And every play there were auditions for, I didn’t get into anything.

Stewart Lee: Because you couldn’t get in on anything else? You did comedy because you were rejected by ALL other forms of the performing arts.

Simon Munnery: And the whole of the female population it seems. It was an act of revenge.

Stewart Lee: I sort of copied Ted Chippington for my act. And when I saw God and Jesus I really liked it, but I thought it was copied off Ted Chippington too. So independently in different towns, growing up in different parts of the country, we’d be copying the same people.

Harry Deansway: So he was quite influential then, Ted Chippington? He influenced a lot of people’s acts around that time?

Stewart Lee: No not really! Probably just us.

Simon Munnery: There might be others.

Stewart Lee: He couldn’t make it work himself! What’s the point in copying it?

Harry Deansway: So how did you two make that style work? How did you develop your style.

Stewart Lee: The thing about him was he gave you the confidence to think that you didn’t have to be funny. So then you could build from there!

Simon Munnery: Yes, our double act was funny by being not funny. Unfunnily funny.

Stewart Lee: It was really fantastic.

Simon Munnery: It is available, the only recorded performance, as an extra on my DVD.

Stewart Lee: The Go Faster Stripe DVD.

Simon Munnery: My “Hello” DVD.

Stewart Lee: The point I tried to make with the Tedstock benefit, is that the history of comedy is written by the victors…

Simon Munnery: By the victims…

Harry Deansway: So what sort of major changes you have noticed in the industry between now and when you started?

Stewart Lee: Until Newman and Baddiel did Wembley, I don’t think anyone realised it could be a career. Alternative comedy was just happening in some pubs and it was a bit of fun. You might get some cash. But now people go into it thinking I could be a TV presenter or something.

Simon Munnery: It’s a little like the story of the original variety circuit, that began in Free ‘n’ Easy’s, which were the backrooms of pubs, where you’d just go in and sing a song or something. And gradually it started to get more popular and they’d build extra big rooms on the back of pubs, charging people to get in. Then professional acts would develop and tour around and end up in the big variety theatres. Then it all collapsed in the ‘40s or ‘50s.

Stewart Lee: The collapse is due.

Simon Munnery: We’re midway through the same sort of process. There’ll be huge Jongelurs stadia all around Milton Keynes.

Stewart Lee:
And then people will think they don’t like stand up anymore.

Harry Deansway:
How far away is that?

Stewart Lee:
About six months.

Stewart Lee: The problem is its quite hard to stop. I tried to stop… I did stop! I gave up in 2001 for a number of reasons. And I was just reviewing records for papers and things for about two years while I was thinking of what to do.

Simon Munnery: You didn’t do a gig in all that time?

Stewart Lee: I did benefits and things. I didn’t write any stuff or do any paid stand up. Then Richard Thomas asked me to help out on Jerry Springer the Opera. But I didn’t get paid anything for three years – or subsequently.

Simon Munnery: It makes you think you’d be better off doing stand up.

Stewart Lee: Well to be honest, yeah. When it got to the West End, and there were so many layers of people involved, it was so difficult to do anything it suddenly seemed like the most brilliant thing in the world to just be able to write something and just say it, without layers and layers of interference.

Harry Deansway: So have you had projects that you wanted to get on TV that haven’t happened?

Stewart Lee: Yeah millions.

Simon Munnery: I’ve had none!

Stewart Lee: Yeah you have - things like Alan Parker.

Simon Munnery: Yeah, that’s true. Not for years though. Every time I get tempted into it, they say write some proposals, we’ll get you some development money. Then they say things like “who’s it aimed at” and it’s embarrassing. You know that Larry David thing where he peers round people’s eyes, like he’s trying to see into people’s souls? They look at you like that.

Stewart Lee: That was one of the things about Attention Scum. Partly why they stiffed it was they said it didn’t appeal to the new BBC2 demographic, which at the time was described as affluent, sophisticated over 35 year olds. Now to equate affluence with sophistication is quite offensive.

Simon Munnery: Stick them next to each other and you make a subcategory affluent and sophisticated. Which is a category of very few people. It’s only actually aimed at the head of BBC2.

Stewart Lee:I’ve got a thing on the go again now. I got asked in two years ago, “do you want to do a series” – not even a pilot, a series. I went, “yeah thanks, that’d be brilliant”. Then it got cancelled. I don’t know why …Then it was off. It was on, it was off.

Simon Munnery: It’s like dealing with the gas board.

Stewart Lee: Yeah. So then I gave up and just forgot about it. But my new agent said resubmit it. So I sent in exactly the same idea and now I’ve got a pilot. I don’t understand what’s going on. I think you have to stop thinking that television likes you or dislikes you. It’s like if the rain made you wet, you wouldn’t feel like the rain hated you, it was just some rain. And likewise if the sun made you warm, you wouldn’t thin that the sun favoured you. They’re just phenomena that overlap occasionally with your needs. And I think the television commissioning process is very like that. It has no logic to it, and there’s so many layers of problems involved in it that whether something gets made or not has no relation to whether it’s any good or any bad.I think at the moment I’m on some kind of preferred list, but that will go away again soon, so I have to get in there.

Harry Deansway: So I think that’s why people like Go Faster Stripe are good. They don’t have any politics; they’re just producing stuff by people they like.

Stewart Lee: Yeah. I think the nice thing about it is, you can feel like you’re working In a bit of a vacuum as a stand up. But it’s nice to do things for them, you have a record of the show and you think, “I can move on now”.

Simon Munnery: I feel it’s the opposite of working in a vacuum with stand up, because you have an audience. The audience is the thing itself with stand up. It’s direct communication with an audience of people who hear you there. Which makes it better even than writing

Stewart Lee: But I like to do a finished piece of work, do that for a year then move on to the next one. So it’s nice to draw a line under by having it recorded somewhere, then you can move on to the next one.

Harry Deansway: So how do you feel about doing the same material for a year? How do you keep it fresh?

Simon Munnery: …. Try ten years fella!

Stewart Lee: I don’t. I can’t keep it fresh.

Simon Munnery: What’s your cycle time then?

Stewart Lee: Well for the last four years its been a new hour every year.

Simon Munnery: I started my Annual General Meeting at Edinburgh this year, like the last four years really, with nothing. So you’re making it up as you go along, or you’re doing stuff you’ve written over the years but never tried. The first couple of days are very exciting, then the fourth day in you hit a wall where it’s neither new nor honed - and I’m tired. Anyway, you struggle through that and it builds up until by the end you have a nice slab of fairly honed stand up.

Harry Deansway: How does it compare with the TV process?

Simon Munnery: It’s just a long process of waiting for someone else to make up their mind.

Stewart Lee: It’s awful. It’s an interminable process.

Simon Munnery: Also what about the Internet though? Surely that’s gonna take over

Harry Deansway: Yeah, you can do it yourself now.

Simon Munnery: We’ve been able to do it ourselves for years. You get a video camera, make something, then show it in a room. But somehow you need that pat on the back with the official backing of money. It’s like you never got into stand up for money, but then somehow you end up in a situation where it has changed from being something you did for the love of it to something you need to earn a living out of – because you have been!

Harry Deansway: You’re too far in.

Simon Munnery: The poet Tim Wells publishes a poetry magazine, Rising, which he just prints himself and gives it away to people he likes - and certain strangers. So why not just walk around telling jokes to people? And amusing them in pubs. Why not just do that? Well, because you need to earn a living out of it. What I think made Eddie Izzard a bit chang – I used to think he was awful, and I wasn’t alone in that – I couldn’t bear him standing on stage going “Errrrr”, now that’s his trade mark. Now it’s the funniest thing ever, someone standing there going, “Errrr”. Well not now, because it’s died off a bit, but there was a time when everyone used to do it. That “Errrr” just took over the circuit. It was like it was the standard between jokes noise! Making It look like… errr… you’re making it up as you …. errr…. go along. Errr. That’s the trick to it. But what brought him to prominence and made him what he was, was his prolonged residency at Screaming Blue Murder, in I think kit Hampton Court or somewhere.

Stewart Lee: The places were so small, he was doing fifty-seater rooms when he had a hundred that really loved him, so they were always sold out. I think he applied a real business strategy to it. I think he was one of the first people to do that.

Simon Munnery: And he used to do the same place every week, so, he was forcing himself to write, so it was a good honing of the art. Whereas now you can get your act together, you can go round the country, different place each time and you never have to do any new material. But the joy of it is doing new things, saying something new and it working, that’s the utter joy. Then the earning a living bit comes along and it’s like, you’ve got a gig, it’s a tough crowd - what are you doing, your new stuff you’ve hardly written? No. Then you get new material nights where it’s a very odd night because everyone’s trying out new material and going “well that didn’t work did it? Ha ha.” So, it’s not a proper test.

Harry Deansway: Do you think there could be a place like the Comedy Store for alternative comedy, like your sort of comedy?

Stewart Lee: Well you know, when the Comedy Store started it was called alternative comedy - it was in opposition to working men’s club comedy. But now it is the working men’s club comedy of today. But you can’t use the word alternative - you can’t say “alternative” comedy. That word’s been used up.

Simon Munnery: You can though! It’s a great joke isn’t it? We’re starting up alternative comedy again! What about… you could do a kind of “non comedy” night. That’d bring in the crowds. “It wasn’t funny”. Well there you go! ….I’ll tell you what it’s not…

Stewart Lee: But I think someone needs to think of a word for it, because every now and then people do coin these amazing words. Like when Janet Street-Porter said “comedy is the new rock n roll” in 1991, it kind of defined something. And I think it was John Harris that came up with the phrase “Britpop”. We all knew what that meant in ‘95. It would be quite good if there was a word for people that aren’t Comedy Store and Jongleurs acts. And I don’t mean the words “open spots”! I mean something else.

Simon Munnery: Shit acts.

Stewart Lee: Shit acts! Incompetent acts.

Simon Munnery: The ”shit scene” is developing! It’s always on the fringes that things happen, there’s always something going on somewhere

Harry Deansway: The name I’m hearing is “twee” at the moment.

Stewart Lee: I don’t think that’s right. I think in its own way that seems a bit short-sighted to say that.

Simon Munnery: There’s lots of scenes aren’t there. There’s the burlesque scene taking off, the poetry scene going haywire. What else? The folk scene. You know there’s lots of scenes that could coalesce around, there could be I dunno, an event or something. I don’t think you should choose the name and then try and create it! Something will happen, and they’ll call it art.

Defining it. The naming of a thing changes it - forever. God. Infinity. You could talk about nothing. Nothing! There’s no such thing as nothing! Ever! It’s as absurd to talk about nothing as it is to talk about the infinite. You have no experience of it. There is no nothing. Never has been. Get a vacuum, take all the particles out; it’s still not nothing.

Stewart Lee: I remember going on This Morning with Richard and Judy and she watched a clip of me and Rich Herring doing something with a really disdainful face. We were arguing about the moon I remember. And then she went “Hmmm, its comedy about NOTHING what you do, isn’t it!” I really like that, comedy about nothing! You could put that on the poster!

Simon Munnery: (sings) Put it on your poster – boom boom! You could have Richard and Judy’s Comedy Club. Never mind their book club. It’s be the comedians they liked.

Harry Deansway: Who would be on it?

Simon Munnery: Just Stewart.

Stewart Lee: Talking about the moon.

Harry Deansway: So who are your favourite comedians?

Stewart Lee: Simon Munnery.

Simon Munnery: I like Stewart Lee.

Stewart Lee: Simon Munnery really though, genuinely. Kevin McAleer. Then Sadowitz.

Simon Munnery: He’s one of the people, Kevin McAleer, who made me want to do it. Seeing him on Saturday Live. I remember falling off my chair laughing when he did “the owls”.

Stewart Lee: But yeah, Kevin McAleer, Jerry Sadowitz, John Hegley – they’re all people who made me wanna start out. And then in the last ten years Brett Fleet from Australia I really like, Boothby Graffoe, Josie Long and Steve Carlin who I’m touring with at the moment

Simon Munnery: People that made me wanna do it… Jerry Sadowitz, the first time I saw him, was amazing, at the Comedy Store. I’d never heard of him, but there had been an American comedian on before. I hadn’t even realised I didn’t like the American comedian’s act. I’d sort of laughed. Chuckled slightly.Then Sadowitz came on and said “I hate fucking American comedians like…” and names this bloke. “They come over here and say things like ‘have you ever noticed how blind people can’t do crosswords’. And then he was telling jokes at a hundred miles an hour. It was so fast you couldn’t get them all. It was impossible. Some of them were hilarious. Some of them were so offensive. There were these waves of different noises criss-crossing the crowd. People would be laughing at him one minute and going “ooohhh” the next. Different waves were crossing. The audience had broken up. It was the most exciting thing I’d seen in stand up.

Stewart Lee: John Hegley’s show was the best show I saw in Edinburgh this year.

Simon Munnery: If John Hegley is in a room, it’s a great room to be in

Simon Munnery: Andrew Bailey - he’s a one off original.I remember I saw him years and years ago at the Earth Exchange cafe, early alt-com was going on in odd places.

Stewart Lee: Yeah; squatted venues. They seem hard to believe now

Simon Munnery: A bloke came down my club – The Others, 6-8 Manor Road, Thursdays (N19) – he said he’d just recently become a Bard. I didn’t know there still was such a thing. He hadn’t been doing the commercial circuit. He said, “I’ve been doing the hippy circuit where you do gigs in exchange for mushrooms”. There is such a thing! Amazing.

Harry Deansway: What about old school comedians? Do you just dismiss all that stuff?

Stewart Lee: No, not at all. I mean there wasn’t really any stand up in Britain. There was just all the club comics telling the same jokes. But what there was, which people forget about, and unfairly malign, were all those folk singers in the seventies. And all the bits between the songs got longer. You had Billy Connolly, Jasper Carrott, Mike Harding, Malcolm Stent from Birmingham, Max Boyce. There were loads of them and they were really good, and they don’t get a look in. And also there was a slight, weird pre-alternative scene. You know, people say alternative started in ’79, but there were people like Victoria Wood and John Dowie who were both coming out of the Arts Lab in Birmingham. Dowie was doing what you would recognise as modern stand up in a decade when it was not wanted at all

Simon Munnery: What is he doing now?!

Stewart Lee: He had the sense to give up before…

Simon Munnery: … before it got ruined by money.

Stewart Lee: Yeah. And Dave Allen - again another oddity. He was doing those kind of club gigs, and was from that generation, but was actually writing material and most people weren’t.

Simon Munnery: Yes, that’s one of the early definitions of a modern comic. That thing of ‘write your own material’.… I dunno, if someone wants to do someone else’s joke it doesn’t really worry me anymore.

Stewart Lee: The best thing is, when it‘s hard for other people to do them because it’s informed by your point of view. But you still have this thing where… I mean on that 100 best comics run down, Joe Pasquale was talking about Jasper Carrott and he went “of course Jasper was the first person to do the insurance claims routine.” Oh hang on; HE WROTE IT. He wasn’t the first person to do it, it’s not like it existed and he went “I’ll have that”! - HE WROTE IT. And then you all fucking nicked it.

Simon Munnery: But where does it come from? What do you mean he wrote it? It came out of something didn’t it? He wrote it in English, a language he borrowed.

Stewart Lee: But it wasn’t part of a common treasury that was available to all.

Simon Munnery: (sings) A common treasuryyyy, to alllll….comedyyyy materialll… I sing Billy Bragg songs walking down the street. I don’t feel I owe him any money. Or anything.

Stewart Lee: But you’re not being paid to do them

Simon Munnery: If I was being paid to sing in a pub, Billy Bragg songs…

Stewart Lee: … he wouldn’t mind, would he.

Simon Munnery: Of course he wouldn’t mind.

Stewart Lee: He’d be delighted.

Simon Munnery: Maybe we should have a bit more of his attitude: “take my jokes; they don’t work for me…”

Harry Deansway: Cool, anything you want to finish off with?

Simon Munnery: Hide from the police; one day you may need to.