Really good interview with Stewart Lee on The Comedian’s Comedian Podcast with Stuart Goldsmith. It’s lengthy—over 2 hours when Goldsmith’s extras are tacked on—and not a work of comedy in itself, so don’t listen if you’re expecting a laugh-fest. It is an actual interview with the person, not the character, inasmuch as they can ever be fully separated.

Also don’t read the description and be put off by how much Goldsmith talks him up in it; it’s a good humble interview that goes into the craft of it.

Some of the incidents he mentions in the interview were either filmed professionally or caught on camera phone and if you are a Stewart Lee fangirl like me then they’re interesting to watch in light of his comments about them.

1. Glaswegian audience member gets hung up on Lee’s Caffe Nero card during DVD recording.

2. “Stewart Lee destroys a heckler” which Lee complains is misnamed because he doesn’t set out to destroy hecklers, but rather to simply address their concerns, in character.

3. “I think he’d feel flattered to be misquoted by me“. Out of context on YouTube it would be easy to mistake this for a genuine (but very silly) debate, but it was entirely written by Lee and is presented in-character as part of a show, as a justification by the character of Stewart Lee as to why he can mock and misquote Russell Brand.

4. “There’s just so much now it’s unmanageable … it had a positive effect on the act in that I just decided to become more like the thing they hate.” Lee’s now-frozen file of abusive online critiques is also worth linking to.