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March of the Lemmings: Brexit in Print and Performance 2016–2019
As a Metropolitan Elitist Snowflake, Stewart Lee was disappointed by the Brexit referendum result of 2016. But he knew how to weaponise his inconvenience.
He would treat all his subsequent writing, until we left the EU, as interrelated episodes of a complete work. The cast of characters include Lemming-obsessed Michael Gove, violent tanning-salon entrepreneur Tommy Robinson and Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Bumboys Letterbox Cake Disaster Weightloss Haircut Bullshit Johnson. A dramatic chorus is made up of online commenters and Kremlin bots. And Lee himself would play the defeated, unreliable narrator-hero, whose resolve and tolerance would gradually unravel as the horror show dragged on. Until the 29 March, 2019, when it would all definitely be over.
Drawing on three years of newspaper columns, a complete transcript of the Content Provider stand-up show, and Lee's caustic footnote commentary, March of the Lemmings is the scathing, riotous record the Brexit era deserves.
357 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 5, 2020
83 people are currently reading
396 people want to read
About the author
Stewart Lee
36 books238 followersFrom Wikipedia (accessed Oct 2010):
Stewart Lee (born 5 April 1968, Wellington, Shropshire) is an English stand-up comedian, writer and director known for being one half of the 1990s comedy duo Lee and Herring, and for co-writing and directing the critically-acclaimed and controversial stage show Jerry Springer - The Opera. In a review of the comedy of the previous decade, a 2009 article in The Times referred to Lee as "the comedian's comedian, and for good reason" and named him "face of the decade".
Lee has been described as "Unflinching in his scathing satire, unapologetic in his liberal, middle-class, highbrow appeal, and fiercely intelligent, his comedy certainly does not pander to the masses". His stand-up features frequent use of "repetition, call-backs, nonchalant delivery and deconstruction".
Stewart Lee (born 5 April 1968, Wellington, Shropshire) is an English stand-up comedian, writer and director known for being one half of the 1990s comedy duo Lee and Herring, and for co-writing and directing the critically-acclaimed and controversial stage show Jerry Springer - The Opera. In a review of the comedy of the previous decade, a 2009 article in The Times referred to Lee as "the comedian's comedian, and for good reason" and named him "face of the decade".
Lee has been described as "Unflinching in his scathing satire, unapologetic in his liberal, middle-class, highbrow appeal, and fiercely intelligent, his comedy certainly does not pander to the masses". His stand-up features frequent use of "repetition, call-backs, nonchalant delivery and deconstruction".
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews
November 16, 2019
It didn’t make me laugh, but I agreed the fuck out of it
June 14, 2022
I’m a card carrying Stewart Lee superfan who at one point in my life went to so many of his live shows in rapid succession that I was quite possibly being monitored for a potential restraining order. I hugely admire the niche he’s carved out for himself as a bitter, sneering intellectual snob with a provincial chip on his shoulder, and I applaud his stated objective of progressively refining his audience down to the lowest possible number from which he can extract a viable living, thereby not having to go on TV panel shows. Stewart Lee’s is definitely the side I want to be on during this divided, dispiriting period in British political life. All of which being the case, it pains me greatly to give anything by him fewer than five stars. But the fact is, as Lee himself points out in the introduction, that this is essentially a stitched together compilation of newspaper columns rather than a properly structured book, in contrast to his brilliant How I Avoided My Certain Fate. As such, it does start to feel a bit relentless and repetitive - not just in the deliberately unsettling way in which he structures his live shows but in the boring way of a succession of pieces of exactly the same length and following a broadly similar formula. The gimmick of printing verbatim the hostile comments of various online haters, most of whom have completely missed the point, at the end of each of the articles is initially funny but also starts to wear a bit thin. Having said all that, there is some unforgettable imagery and the laugh out loud rate for this reader was probably one every 4-5 pages, which is pretty good going by any reasonable standard (although slightly lower than the PG Wodehouse I read immediately before and which if I’m entirely honest enjoyed more and probably derived greater spiritual benefit from).
Read
September 10, 2020Assuming you're in the same metropolitan liberal bubble as I am – and heavens know why you're reading this if not – then you've probably read Stewart Lee's Brexit columns online when they were shared online by fellow-thinking liberal bubble chums, and watched Content Provider on iPlayer, because that's what we do, isn't it? So why would you read them again, too late to change anything but too soon for them quite to have settled into history? For the comments, of course. Online one should proverbially never read the comments, but here the best (by which I mostly mean worst) of them have been artfully, masochistically curated into a sort of found poetry, the rubbish usernames, weary outrage and missed points serving as an authentically hideous portrait of the times, a 'Greek? None of that foreign nonsense!' chorus. Also for the footnotes, which purport to be the real story behind the comic flights of fancy, but if you believe that then you also think you're getting the real Coogan and Brydon in The Trip, or in interviews about The Trip, or in interviews about interviews about The Trip, and frankly with that sort of willingness to take obvious bullshit at face value it's no wonder the country voted Leave. But not clever Stewart Lee fans like us, of course. Hell, even when he's going for wilfully obscure reference points like Robin Askwith giant monster sex comedy Queen Kong, I've seen that too (though the experience was only slightly less gruelling than following the Brexit debacle).
The book also includes a transcript of Lee's Content Provider show – no, not in his previous book Content Provider, where the sort of lazy comedy hacks you like would have put it. Again, this is extensively annotated, proving like all of his recent work that anyone who says 'a joke isn't funny if you have to explain it' probably likes Michael McIntyre. As Stew explains in footnote number 50 (of 185), "When people say I 'have no jokes', they are right to some extent. A lot of the jokes have been removed, and the audience are invited to find them for themselves in the joke-shaped spaces that have been left behind." As a further curious bonus, at some point in my reading, the cover of the book sort-of-changed, such that in my Kindle library it was one thing, but whenever I clicked on it, before seeing the text, I'd get the cover of a different edition, not at all like the one I'd chosen. If that's a further clever commentary on how far impending Brexit will be from the model advertised, then Lee is even cleverer than I thought. Maybe even cleverer than he thought, though that would take some doing.
Of course, over the time I've been reading it, that wasn't the only thing that's changed: these are for the most part columns from 2018 - which with hindsight was a pretty good year - footnoted in 2019, which if really not on the same level as 2018, was still considerably better than 2020, let alone the prospects for any further entries in the 2020s franchise, the only release schedule as unwelcome yet seemingly inevitable as the DC cinematic universe. It's not an entirely pleasant experience getting nostalgic for those halcyon days when we innocently thought Brexit and then climate change were the worst we had coming for us - and they still are, but then the plague jumped the queue just to soften us up and make sure we didn't even get one last half-decent 'make merry, for tomorrow we die' year to fortify us first. Hell, even Lee's subsequent columns have struggled to do much to raise the mood. But maybe the footnotes and comments will salvage them when they get collected, if that's still allowed and/or economically feasible in whatever post-pandemic, post-Brexit, post-hope shell is left of Britain by that point.
The book also includes a transcript of Lee's Content Provider show – no, not in his previous book Content Provider, where the sort of lazy comedy hacks you like would have put it. Again, this is extensively annotated, proving like all of his recent work that anyone who says 'a joke isn't funny if you have to explain it' probably likes Michael McIntyre. As Stew explains in footnote number 50 (of 185), "When people say I 'have no jokes', they are right to some extent. A lot of the jokes have been removed, and the audience are invited to find them for themselves in the joke-shaped spaces that have been left behind." As a further curious bonus, at some point in my reading, the cover of the book sort-of-changed, such that in my Kindle library it was one thing, but whenever I clicked on it, before seeing the text, I'd get the cover of a different edition, not at all like the one I'd chosen. If that's a further clever commentary on how far impending Brexit will be from the model advertised, then Lee is even cleverer than I thought. Maybe even cleverer than he thought, though that would take some doing.
Of course, over the time I've been reading it, that wasn't the only thing that's changed: these are for the most part columns from 2018 - which with hindsight was a pretty good year - footnoted in 2019, which if really not on the same level as 2018, was still considerably better than 2020, let alone the prospects for any further entries in the 2020s franchise, the only release schedule as unwelcome yet seemingly inevitable as the DC cinematic universe. It's not an entirely pleasant experience getting nostalgic for those halcyon days when we innocently thought Brexit and then climate change were the worst we had coming for us - and they still are, but then the plague jumped the queue just to soften us up and make sure we didn't even get one last half-decent 'make merry, for tomorrow we die' year to fortify us first. Hell, even Lee's subsequent columns have struggled to do much to raise the mood. But maybe the footnotes and comments will salvage them when they get collected, if that's still allowed and/or economically feasible in whatever post-pandemic, post-Brexit, post-hope shell is left of Britain by that point.
November 27, 2019
'Boris Picaninny Watermelon Letterbox Johnson is a fat naughty dog, running away from the butcher's with a string of racist sausages, made of all the least nourishing parts of already discredited arguments, chased by betrayed Leave voters in straw hats and blood-stained aprons, shaking their fists and waving their cleavers.'
June 13, 2022
I bought this at a recent gig (A Stewart Lee gig, I probably didn't need to point that out, though I have) and found it witty and interesting as expected. Perhaps not quite as impactful as a couple of other previous works by the same author - partly because two thirds of this book is recycled newspaper columns mainly about the single theme of Brexit - but the copious analytical footnotes and the transcription in the final third of one of Lee's stage shows made for an often funny and definitely insightful read. I echo other reviewers' criticisms of the focus on the post Brexit political and cultural landscape as leading to some repetition, I also found the inclusion of comments from readers of his online column to soon become a little tedious, but aside from this I found this somewhat brilliant.
July 24, 2021
Just to get my bias out of the way: I am a massive fan of Stewart Lee. I regularly rewatch his BBC series Comedy Vehicle (particularly the latter couple of seasons), have cry-laughed a ridiculous and frankly inexplicable amount of times at his Office World Man bit, and inordinately enjoy his free jazz spoken word collaboration Bristol Fashion, where he spends the 6 minute opener repeating/butchering the words "How old are you? I'm 22 maaaaate" until they eventually resemble the tortured oedipal death-whines of a Russell Howard imitator sequestered in a Victorian mental asylum by his own father/comedic forebear (this does make sense I promise). Given that, it's no surprise that I enjoyed this book immensely.
However, I don't want to give the impression that reading this is enjoyable solely to an uncritical lapdog of Lee's; as a cohesive, themed work, as a showcase and deconstruction of a brilliant stand-up performance, and as a display of genuinely great (and often fantastic) prose writing, this book is a resounding success. Unlike Lees's previous collection of articles, the selection making up the first half of this work manages to feel like a coherent narrative, offering a singular perspective on the ongoing (2 years later and the word still fits) process/slow-motion motorway pile-up of Brexit. And Lee's viewpoint is singular in both senses of the word, constructed usually via extended metaphors wrangled through an esoteric lens of folklore, forgotten pulp novelists, and 80s Birmingham post-punk bands (half the books I mark as to-read on here are found through reading this man). His lens and absurdist vision is always wholly original, and this extends to the writing: where else would you find the following paragraph:
Lee strings sentences together with sadistic glee, somehow creating unique images of already deeply over-satirised characters. Take Theresa May, whose memorable onstage Abba dancing is "like a mantis with an inner-ear infection"; or Michael Gove, "that cunning twig, nursing ambition beyond the scope of his tiny wooden body, buffeted by the river currents, hoping to drift towards the distant shore of victory, and blown along the surface by the storm breath of his giantess troll [Sarah Vine]". Admittedly, almost 300 pages of generally similarly themed and structured articles does occasionally become tiresome to read, and the reprinted below-the-line comments (made up of football hooligans and probable Kremlin bots acting as a Greek Chorus to remind Lee of his limited, ivory-tower-windowframed understanding) are, for the most part, repetitive and uninteresting; but Lee's humour, imagery, and quality of being eminently fed-up more than makes up for this. Fantastic book.
I've mostly focused on making the case for Lee as a columnist (and if you're not convinced, read his most recent article, a brilliant piece of writing), because I think by now it's pretty clear that his stand-up work over the past couple of decades is amongst the best the UK has to offer, but just to hammer this point further home: yes, Lee's set here reproduced in the second half is hilarious and thoughtful, and required viewing for all those who consider themselves part of the metropolitan liberal elite.
However, I don't want to give the impression that reading this is enjoyable solely to an uncritical lapdog of Lee's; as a cohesive, themed work, as a showcase and deconstruction of a brilliant stand-up performance, and as a display of genuinely great (and often fantastic) prose writing, this book is a resounding success. Unlike Lees's previous collection of articles, the selection making up the first half of this work manages to feel like a coherent narrative, offering a singular perspective on the ongoing (2 years later and the word still fits) process/slow-motion motorway pile-up of Brexit. And Lee's viewpoint is singular in both senses of the word, constructed usually via extended metaphors wrangled through an esoteric lens of folklore, forgotten pulp novelists, and 80s Birmingham post-punk bands (half the books I mark as to-read on here are found through reading this man). His lens and absurdist vision is always wholly original, and this extends to the writing: where else would you find the following paragraph:
Each morning in the small hours, Donald Trump’s bladder slowly fills with urine. The president wakes and looks at his phone in the bathroom while fumbling in his silken sleeping pants for the flesh pyracantha of his genital. He sees something true online and instantly sends off a combative Tweet. Sad! Bleary journalists panic and the fairy tinkling of Donald Trump’s cold night penis dominates the daily American news cycle once more.
Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Johnson obviously aims to surf the British news wave in a similar fashion to the orange goblin. But unlike the instantaneous nocturnal pee pee spatterings of Trump, the massive faecal log of Watermelon’s weekly column in the Daily Telegraph takes a full seven days to bake.
Lee strings sentences together with sadistic glee, somehow creating unique images of already deeply over-satirised characters. Take Theresa May, whose memorable onstage Abba dancing is "like a mantis with an inner-ear infection"; or Michael Gove, "that cunning twig, nursing ambition beyond the scope of his tiny wooden body, buffeted by the river currents, hoping to drift towards the distant shore of victory, and blown along the surface by the storm breath of his giantess troll [Sarah Vine]". Admittedly, almost 300 pages of generally similarly themed and structured articles does occasionally become tiresome to read, and the reprinted below-the-line comments (made up of football hooligans and probable Kremlin bots acting as a Greek Chorus to remind Lee of his limited, ivory-tower-windowframed understanding) are, for the most part, repetitive and uninteresting; but Lee's humour, imagery, and quality of being eminently fed-up more than makes up for this. Fantastic book.
I've mostly focused on making the case for Lee as a columnist (and if you're not convinced, read his most recent article, a brilliant piece of writing), because I think by now it's pretty clear that his stand-up work over the past couple of decades is amongst the best the UK has to offer, but just to hammer this point further home: yes, Lee's set here reproduced in the second half is hilarious and thoughtful, and required viewing for all those who consider themselves part of the metropolitan liberal elite.
August 31, 2021
Love a good footnote
December 29, 2020
After experiencing slight disappointment with the previous collection of columns, collected in Content Provider (book), as a result of their wide-ranging nature, I was expecting more of the same here. This, too, is a collection of footnoted columns but also includes the transcript of Content Provider (show), making it a hybrid between the last book and his earlier stand-up focused, memoir-ish books. As ever, the glimpses into the writing and thinking process provided by the footnotes is invaluable and the dissection of his various personae is endlessly fascinating. Having seen the live shows in various incarnations throughout the development, I was already quite familiar with the transcript material and loved the aspect of having it near-constantly interjected upon to be explained, which fits very well as the written form of Lee’s performance style. This book is aided by having the unifying theme —ironically— of Brexit, which allows for a narrative arc of sorts or, at the very least, a shape and purpose. Your mileage may vary —and I don’t always find Lee’s columns among his finest work— but I thought the quality of writing here was fantastic and definitely aided by his having this collection in mind while writing the original pieces, as published in the Observer. An excoriating document of an extraordinary time, recorded by the most individual, questioning voice in comedy.
November 8, 2025
A presumed quick read that I somehow dragged over 10 days due to working on my own novel and struggling to find a window, ‘March of the Lemmings’ is made up of Lee’s Guardian columns (generally deputising for David Mitchell) and a transcript of the ‘Content Provider’ standup show.
The window of opportunity to have read this and it feeling like relevant topical satire rather than like I was, for example, browsing my parents’ Not The Nine O’Clock News annuals, was 2019, when it came out. Not for the first time, I’ve picked up a bit of political comedy made within the last decade and it still feels impossibly ancient; we have changed UK prime minister four times since this book came out, US president twice (albeit back where we started in that respect) and UK monarch once, as well as having left the European Union, the latter being the narrative that dominates this selection.
That’s not to say that there aren’t some very funny bits in this, or that reading it was a complete waste of time, more that, in 2025, reading this is like watching an old ‘Have I Got News For You’ on Dave or something.
The window of opportunity to have read this and it feeling like relevant topical satire rather than like I was, for example, browsing my parents’ Not The Nine O’Clock News annuals, was 2019, when it came out. Not for the first time, I’ve picked up a bit of political comedy made within the last decade and it still feels impossibly ancient; we have changed UK prime minister four times since this book came out, US president twice (albeit back where we started in that respect) and UK monarch once, as well as having left the European Union, the latter being the narrative that dominates this selection.
That’s not to say that there aren’t some very funny bits in this, or that reading it was a complete waste of time, more that, in 2025, reading this is like watching an old ‘Have I Got News For You’ on Dave or something.
May 11, 2023
Extremely handy book in what it takes for stand-up comedians and columnists to keep themselves relevant in the ever-changing No Man's Land of contemporary writings. Stewart Lee conjures up the positives of long-term planning and begins with something that could not have seen its end. Segue into a transcript and explanation of Content Provider (a la If You Prefer A Milder Comedian...) and there is much joy to be had in the footnotes of context and the annals of post-Brexit meltdown. Where the usual gambit of comedians talking politics is a dull and tired affair, Lee manages to make it interesting by making it personal, riffing on the events of the week in a state of cathartic, pre-planned and well-acted meltdowns that seem to stem from the minutiae of everyday living. Extremely fun stuff, funnier still when on the inside, a peek behind the wizard's curtain, as Lee aptly describes it.
Has had a monumental and immediate effect on how I write, why I write and what I write. Thanks, Lee.
Has had a monumental and immediate effect on how I write, why I write and what I write. Thanks, Lee.
June 5, 2024
The title doesn’t lie - it is based on Lee’s Brexit columns for the Observer, supplemented with angry online comments from readers. The same subject matter means it does get repetitive and even the ‘liberal Remoaner’ complaints become the same after a while. Okay but not as strong as Lee’s other books.
June 30, 2021
3.5
I like Stewart Lee, so I enjoyed this collection of his columns about Brexit, and got them, even though I wasn’t closely following politics at the time. The comments from readers under the articles were hilarious.
I didn’t necessarily appreciate the inclusion of the diary from The New Statesman, or the transcript of his stand-up show, which I have seen. Stand-up, oddly enough, works better as stand-up! I think the book would have worked better if it had just been the columns.
I like Stewart Lee, so I enjoyed this collection of his columns about Brexit, and got them, even though I wasn’t closely following politics at the time. The comments from readers under the articles were hilarious.
I didn’t necessarily appreciate the inclusion of the diary from The New Statesman, or the transcript of his stand-up show, which I have seen. Stand-up, oddly enough, works better as stand-up! I think the book would have worked better if it had just been the columns.
June 16, 2020
I don't particularly like Stew's columns tbh, but the annotated stand up is excellent as always.
August 13, 2025
Morrissey has let himself go
September 20, 2019
Stewart sort of mirrors the brexit approach of the current government. There are wild accusations, lies- willfully given, half-truths, deliberate obfuscation, distraction in abundance etc. In the book there is the stand- up Lee, the columist Lee and the "ordinary person" Lee (evident in the plethora of footnotes) looking on. He is able to bring in some choice comments, ranging from the pithy to the downright scathing, from his column. I find Stewart's comedy very funny and clever. He is a Thomas Pynchon type and the footnotes help the reader/listener to get some of references more clearly. I've seen him live and he can really make an audience feel very uncomfortable as well as telling them what they want to hear. Therefore, I think his comedy is memorable, stays with you, and makes you think.
February 22, 2020
I prefer the stand-up Stewart Lee to the columnist Stewart Lee, as does the real Stewart Lee. This book is a collection of both: columns and an annotated stand-up transcript. 5 stars for the transcript, 3 for the columns.
February 20, 2020
I enjoyed the transcript of Content Provider, but the old newspaper articles didn't do much for me. Brexit was tedious enough at the time, I don't know what made me think I might like to re-live it all over again.
October 14, 2020
It came up for £1.19 on an Amazon deal, or something like that, so i gave it a go.
As a stand up comedian i think Stewart Lee is really good and very enjoyable to watch: if you're a person of lower intelligence then you will probably disagree with that statement, that's fine, really, we can't all be part of the liberal intelligentsia.
But as a newspaper columnist, he pretty much sucks donkey balls. So why did i buy this book when, after all is said and done, it's just lots of his newspaper columns regurgitated with foot notes? Because i don't read newspapers and had no idea that he sucked so badly at writing columns for them. But i do now.
To be fair though, it's hard to ridicule and take the urine out of a bunch of narcissistic psychopaths and sociopaths -- the career politicos of our age -- when they themselves revel in being caricatures of their own urine, faecal and menstrual stains and happily parade their utter incompetence across all public realms for all to see: which bizarrely does actually encourage middle england to eagerly clamour and queue to vote for more. Why even attempt this satire and/or parody or whatever it is? Because the newspaper offered him money to make the attempt because David Mitchell wasn't up for it and he'd have been a fool to not take said money: he's got a mortgage to pay after all.
So i got 11% into this and mostly got utterly fed up going back and forth to the footnotes that explain the minutiae of every column that no one really cares about other than broadsheet newspaper readers just in case these things become part of a clue in the cryptic crossword the next day.
So if you are one of those broadsheet readers then this might amuse you, or not, i don't really care. After 11% i'm done with it as i have many other more interesting looking books clamouring for my reading hours. The problem with brexit now is that there's nothing more to say or read on the matter that hasn't already been said or read -- all we've so far achieved is the creeping erosion of our legal rights and a trade deal with Japan that's worse than the one we had when we were in the EU -- all the other trade deals we were promised have not emerged. The NHS is a complete mess, the economy is in tatters, unemployment is sky rocketing, Boris is determined to spend 100 billion to create 20,000 jobs building a new toy train set for the rich and wealthy while the old, decrepit, poor-people's trainset's franchises are all handing their franchises back to the government and are merrily washing their hands of the whole affair: the post brexit future is exactly what every remainer said it would be -- but oh, thank heavens for corona virus, at least the leave camp have something else to blame for the mess we're all in.
As a stand up comedian i think Stewart Lee is really good and very enjoyable to watch: if you're a person of lower intelligence then you will probably disagree with that statement, that's fine, really, we can't all be part of the liberal intelligentsia.
But as a newspaper columnist, he pretty much sucks donkey balls. So why did i buy this book when, after all is said and done, it's just lots of his newspaper columns regurgitated with foot notes? Because i don't read newspapers and had no idea that he sucked so badly at writing columns for them. But i do now.
To be fair though, it's hard to ridicule and take the urine out of a bunch of narcissistic psychopaths and sociopaths -- the career politicos of our age -- when they themselves revel in being caricatures of their own urine, faecal and menstrual stains and happily parade their utter incompetence across all public realms for all to see: which bizarrely does actually encourage middle england to eagerly clamour and queue to vote for more. Why even attempt this satire and/or parody or whatever it is? Because the newspaper offered him money to make the attempt because David Mitchell wasn't up for it and he'd have been a fool to not take said money: he's got a mortgage to pay after all.
So i got 11% into this and mostly got utterly fed up going back and forth to the footnotes that explain the minutiae of every column that no one really cares about other than broadsheet newspaper readers just in case these things become part of a clue in the cryptic crossword the next day.
So if you are one of those broadsheet readers then this might amuse you, or not, i don't really care. After 11% i'm done with it as i have many other more interesting looking books clamouring for my reading hours. The problem with brexit now is that there's nothing more to say or read on the matter that hasn't already been said or read -- all we've so far achieved is the creeping erosion of our legal rights and a trade deal with Japan that's worse than the one we had when we were in the EU -- all the other trade deals we were promised have not emerged. The NHS is a complete mess, the economy is in tatters, unemployment is sky rocketing, Boris is determined to spend 100 billion to create 20,000 jobs building a new toy train set for the rich and wealthy while the old, decrepit, poor-people's trainset's franchises are all handing their franchises back to the government and are merrily washing their hands of the whole affair: the post brexit future is exactly what every remainer said it would be -- but oh, thank heavens for corona virus, at least the leave camp have something else to blame for the mess we're all in.
March 20, 2020
This is a collection of newspaper columns by Liberal-Elitist-Snowflake-Remoaner Stewart Lee that span from the Brexit vote to March 2019 when we were told Brexit was going to happen. Each column is followed by selected online comments made by people who disliked the column.
If you like a cynical and verbose commentary to the madness that is and was Brexit, then this is perfect for you. However, Stewart Lee is quite a niche comedian and you'll very possibly hate it. I'm one of those horrible Stewart Lee fans that thinks that everything he does is genius since he won me round with a re-telling of 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' on Fist of Fun on BBC2 in the Nineties. And I watched it first time around, not on repeat which is important in proving my credentials as a true Stewart Lee fan.
The collection of columns is then followed by a transcript of his Content Provider show that was broadcast on the BBC, with footnotes to explain stuff about the routine in more detail. This is the routine with my favourite line: "It wasn't just racists who voted for Brexit was it?" which is then repeated in the second half of the show as "It wasn't just racists who voted for Trump was it?"
I'll not complete the next line in case my mother reads this review.
If you like a cynical and verbose commentary to the madness that is and was Brexit, then this is perfect for you. However, Stewart Lee is quite a niche comedian and you'll very possibly hate it. I'm one of those horrible Stewart Lee fans that thinks that everything he does is genius since he won me round with a re-telling of 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' on Fist of Fun on BBC2 in the Nineties. And I watched it first time around, not on repeat which is important in proving my credentials as a true Stewart Lee fan.
The collection of columns is then followed by a transcript of his Content Provider show that was broadcast on the BBC, with footnotes to explain stuff about the routine in more detail. This is the routine with my favourite line: "It wasn't just racists who voted for Brexit was it?" which is then repeated in the second half of the show as "It wasn't just racists who voted for Trump was it?"
I'll not complete the next line in case my mother reads this review.
August 28, 2021
Unlike the Brexit negotiations, I think this book ends quite well. I got through it, but it was slow reading, with all the footnotes, although for a true Stewart Lee fan I would imagine that the footnotes are probably the most interesting bit. This because of the biographical information they contain, and the discussion of how much of the stage/newspaper material is true and how much is made up or exaggerated for comic effect. There were some good laughs during the book, but they were mostly the laughs from the stand-up material and the newspaper articles. I think that if, like me, you enjoy watching Stewart Lee's stand-up on TV, and the occasional newspaper article, but you're not a massive fan of his, you might do better just to watch some recordings of his shows than plough through this book. I think I only really got through it because I was also interested to remember a bit about some of the things that happened between the Brexit referendum and the final decision to leave the EU. Some of the footnotes were interesting and even sometimes thought-provoking though.
March 19, 2022
I don’t think this is going to convert any non-fans but I loved it. The only reason I gave it 4 stars is because the transcript of the show doesn’t do justice to Lee’s timing and performance. (I can hear him chastising me for not putting in the appropriate effort levels). I loved the footnotes though. It was digressions on top of digressions on top of digressions. They had an elegiac quality (god, this is turning into a Guardian review) describing recent events that already feel far distant somehow.
Stew is a good advert for an English degree - I came away from this hungry to read more local history and British folklore. One of the ironies of the “inward-looking” brexiteers, as Stew characterises them, is that for all their focus on Great British values, they seem to have such a narrow conception of Englishness. By contrast, although he might sometimes claim to pick place names purely for their comedy value, rather than any particular familiarity, he shows what a perspective touring up and down the country for over 30 years can provide a person.
Stew is a good advert for an English degree - I came away from this hungry to read more local history and British folklore. One of the ironies of the “inward-looking” brexiteers, as Stew characterises them, is that for all their focus on Great British values, they seem to have such a narrow conception of Englishness. By contrast, although he might sometimes claim to pick place names purely for their comedy value, rather than any particular familiarity, he shows what a perspective touring up and down the country for over 30 years can provide a person.
December 24, 2022
I left this on the shelf all year as I wasn't sure I'd really enjoy it; I'd grown a bit tired of Stewart Lee's column and thought the second half of his latest show tailed off a bit. But this book was wonderful, really helped by Lee's footnotes, and probably just the amount of Stewart Lee - you're either going to get on board or throw it away. It was a lovely surprise to find that the Content Provider show is also part of this book, suitably footnoted of course. Glad to still be a Stewart Lee fan.
December 9, 2024
His newspaper articles are borderline unreadable, incomprehensible and too obviously bitter to be funny when they occasionally made sense. I was in agreement with most online commenters whose thoughts were included with supposed irony!
BUT the text of "Content Provider", plus the enlightening footnotes, are well worth the book overall. Some such performance texts were published in "How I Escaped My Certain Fate" along with autobiography, and some are published on their own ("If You Prefer a Milder Comedian...")—and they're golddust for comedians or comedic writers.
BUT the text of "Content Provider", plus the enlightening footnotes, are well worth the book overall. Some such performance texts were published in "How I Escaped My Certain Fate" along with autobiography, and some are published on their own ("If You Prefer a Milder Comedian...")—and they're golddust for comedians or comedic writers.
November 2, 2025
Finishing this book at the end of 2025 taught me two things:
-Brexit has been an absolute shit show and disaster for the UK, predictably.
-We have gone nowhere socially or culturally, and are currently waiting to go round the u-bend.
Lee is a great writer, however this book is not a Tesco Xmas Celebrity Hardback-type thing if you assume On Telly=Celeb LOLZ. It’s leftist metropolitan liberal elite Caffe Nero sofa literature, which I finished in the tax-avoiding competitor Starbucks.
-Brexit has been an absolute shit show and disaster for the UK, predictably.
-We have gone nowhere socially or culturally, and are currently waiting to go round the u-bend.
Lee is a great writer, however this book is not a Tesco Xmas Celebrity Hardback-type thing if you assume On Telly=Celeb LOLZ. It’s leftist metropolitan liberal elite Caffe Nero sofa literature, which I finished in the tax-avoiding competitor Starbucks.
November 8, 2021
A collection of Stewart Lee’s articles about Brexit that swing from hilarious to mildly amusing- but then not everything’s for everybody. The biggest joke being the respondents who take it all so seriously. The last chapter is a transcription of Stewart’s stand up show that I was lucky enough to see and it was just as funny in print as it was live, I was literally in tears for both!!
March 10, 2020
Metropolitan elitist snowflakes of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but teeth gnashing frustration at the way populist leaders are sending us to hell in a handbasket, and the occasional humble brag about your precocious children.
May 9, 2021
The loneliness of the human soul
One of a few books that my son read before me. My son have up on this book and I can see why but as a fifty something remainer this book reflects something of my rage at living in a country run by Calibans who now see their faces in the mirror.
One of a few books that my son read before me. My son have up on this book and I can see why but as a fifty something remainer this book reflects something of my rage at living in a country run by Calibans who now see their faces in the mirror.
July 21, 2021
The columns were of mixed quality, some genuinely funny moments, but the best bit was the transcription of his live act which reminded me of how good Lee is at the old standup. He went a bit mad for footnotes though eh.
July 26, 2021
I love Stewart Lee's comedy . The live set transcript is fantastic funny and revealing . The columns from the observer I have mainly read previously so if you have never read them before I would say this should be a 4 . Funny smart
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September 3, 2023This is difficult to rate because I think his columns are absolutely dreadful and the odd one I looked at in this book didn't change that impression, and there weren't many footnotes either. The annotated stand-up routines are great as with his previous ones.
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