Freedom of expression, poverty, politics and urine – Stewart Lee talks about his new show in progress as he heads to Dorset

THE writer, comedian and co-creator and director of ‘Jerry Springer: The Musical,’ Stewart Lee will be heading to Dorset next month for two gigs in Bridport and Poole as he builds up material for his latest TV series, Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle.

This will be the fourth series and Stewart will be exploring new subjects and trying out brand new material, by turns moody, intelligent, infantile, angry, abstruse and surreal – adding and cutting sections as he goes.

He will be on his ‘Room with a Stew’ tour until June.

Ahead of his two Dorset gigs, the BAFTA and Comedy Award winner spoke about the process behind the 66 date show, growing older and how he’s looking forward to getting on the road again.

The fourth series of the BBC2 show will be aired next spring and Stewart says he needs to get six hours of new material out of the tour.

Stewart said: “Most stand-up comedians on television use teams of writers now like in the 1970s, although they don’t admit to it, but that doesn’t really work for me because I don’t really do jokes and line.

“It’s more about mood and attitude so you can’t just buy in things wholesale from the anonymous humour content providers that all the others use.

“It is quite hard to generate that amount of material, even if you talk as slowly as I do, and repeat yourself all the time and use pauses.”

He added that the tour was billed as a work in progress.

He said: “Hopefully, as it continues, I’ll have about three hours of material on the go, although I won’t perform all of it every night.”

Writing the fourth series had been a bit of a challenge, Stewart said, adding: “I’ve got three or four half hours on the go which are coming together nicely but the news is so volatile at the moment.

“Last year I re-jigged and expanded an old bit about the banal tabloid newspaper assumption that comedians need to do more anti-Islamic stuff, and don’t because they are scared, and this bit was working quite well. But since the Charlie Hebdo murders people’s reactions to it are all over the place.

“You can’t really use irony because people in the public eye have said much worse things for real than comedians would say as jokes.

“I have a funny half hour on the go about UKIP, but any massive fall or rise in their fortunes would probably change how it works.

“Initially I was worried about doing it on tour because last year Paul Nuttall of UKIP was leading a campaign to have comedians that did jokes about UKIP banned from theatres, but he seems to be saying the opposite of that since the Charlie Hebdo murders. "He is now saying that making jokes is a democratic right in a free society so I am pleased about that.”

He added: “I mean, I’ve got kids and a mortgage and this is my job, and you do worry about 'would you be allowed to carry on working if a right wing group like UKIP got in.' "I’ve got another half hour on poverty, which is always going to be topical sadly, and a bit on urine, which I think is timeless.”

He said he was looking forward to going out on the road again. He said: “I like sitting in the van and having music on in the day, even though I miss the kids.

“But I can’t remember a time in my life when the country has seemed so fragmented in terms of politics, culture, wealth, attitudes, so it’s going to be fun seeing how badly and well different bits go in different places and then bringing what I’ve learned from that to bear on the finished routines when I film them for the telly in December.”

Stewart first broke into the comedy scene in the mid-90s in radio and has toured extensively as a comedian, written music reviews and won awards and praise along the way.

In 2009 The Times named him the ‘face of the decade’ and called him the ‘comedian's comedian, and for good reason,’ and has been full of praise for his new show saying ‘What is exhilarating is how many surprises he still throws in and how deft his jumps are from one tone to another.... invigorating.’

No mean feat for someone who has been in the business called show for 20 years now.

But Stewart, now 46, jokes that the ageing process has necessarily not been the easiest, joking: “I am what I am. In a way my physical collapse has been a huge advantage, it’s given the 'stage me' some tragedy, some gravity.

“Also I am going deaf, and now wear hearing aids, which has been an interesting challenge on stage.

“My knees are shattered and don’t work – I think I ruined them during the 200 dates I did of a show where I pretended to be Jeremy Clarkson kicking a tramp to death – and that has had an interesting effect on my physicality.

“If I jump off stage now or climb things, there’s a genuine element of pain and danger. "I’m like Eddie The Eagle or something.”

Stewart Lee will be deploying his incendiary comedy at the Lighthouse in Poole on Friday April 24 and he will also be at Bridport’s Electric Palace on April 27.

Contact the venues for more details and tickets.