Comedy gold: Stewart Lee's 90s Comedian

Title: 90s Comedian

Date: 2006

The set-up: Stewart Lee is currently Britain's best standup comedian. No poll will ever crown him that, and he has certainly not made the money or the heavy impact of, say, Billy Connolly or Eddie Izzard. But if we are judging this on who causes most laughter, provokes most thought, and does both in new ways, then Lee owns the podium.

His career began brightly in the mid-1990s, when he wrote and performed some excellent work in a double act with Richard Herring. By 2001, however, television had lost interest in him, and he had lost interest in standup, devoting much of his time instead to a new musical called Jerry Springer – The Opera. This became a big success, before almost collapsing under the weight of protest from Christians who had heard about its irreverent portrayal of Christ, and were provisionally offended. Lee was subjected to a hate campaign, which he lost much sleep and money over.

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Yet it is strange how often a comic's best work comes out of turmoil and failure. (See also Chris Rock, Ellen DeGeneres and Margaret Cho.

Lee had already returned to standup the previous year, but in this show, for the first time, he addressed what he had gone through. "An insane overreaction to religious censorship" is how he describes his performance in the DVD extras. "Doing it makes me quite miserable a lot of the time, if I do it properly."

Funny, how? The phrase "anti-comedy" has begun to adhere to Lee's work since its renaissance – and the fact that he has a style worth naming tells you a lot – but to my mind the description isn't right. Yes, he leaves punchlines unspoken and deconstructs his own jokes, but so do many comics. Yes, he speaks in a drab, affectless monotone. Yes, he is sarcastic, deadpan, outwardly miserable, obsessed with technique and fourth-wall-breaking – to the extent that this show begins with him telling the audience that he won't pick on them if they go to the toilet, before peering into the camera to explain that we can press pause to do the same. ("And I won't even know that it's happening.")

What is most distinctive about his work, however, is not that it is anti-comedic, but that it is so theatrical. Lee has since analysed this performance in a book, which picks apart the fine decisions behind every laugh, yet it is just as important that he performed it with such dramatic intensity. The long pauses are what Lee commands a room with, the repetitions, the climbing down into the audience, the delivery of some bits with his back turned, the sudden dropping of the microphone and deciding just to shout. There are comedians who risk all kinds of rudeness, but how many dare to take themselves this seriously? The exciting feeling with Lee is that he is completely in control of what he is doing, yet he could do anything – as witnessed by the extraordinary moment where, in the wake of the 7/7 attacks, he gets this audience to applaud the "gentleman bombers" of the IRA.

While later, in a bravura last half-hour, he sneaks up on just about the most extremely blasphemous image that any Christian could imagine – Christ splaying open his own anus for Lee to vomit into, since you ask — before coolly setting out his reasons.

Lee used to like saying that his critical reputation oscillates, roughly, on a five-year cycle. This must be why, six years after I first saw it, I am still deluded into thinking that 90s Comedian is the best standup show I've ever seen.

Comic cousins: Steven Wright, Neil Hamburger, Chris Morris, Tim Vine, Simon Munnery.

Steal this: "In January last year, the Vatican issued an official statement reminding Dan Brown readers that the books are largely fictional and full of historically unverifiable information." [Pause.]