I might be bold here when I say the third episode of Stewart Lee's comedy series, his second on the subject of charity, is the best and funniest one yet. It's certainly crowd pleasing, with Lee doing jokes on the millionaire ITV (shudder) presenter, Adrian Chiles, and Russell Howard, for their work for the charity Sport Relief, which by far outweigh Lee's 55-60 charity shows his does per year. Lee goes into full on bitter mode gloriously, calling back to his jibes at Chiles last year, which revolved around Chiles being compared with a Toby jug, before going into a joke about him doing the unthinkable and shaving his beard off for charity, describing in childlike detail about the process of shaving, noting that Chiles raised £60,000, a tenth of his fee from ITV. Unlike other victims of Lee's visceral hatred, namely Joe Pascquale, Richard 'The Hamster' Hammond and Tom O'Connor, Chiles is more accepted as a figure of mockery, universally viewed with loathing, so the audience is expected to be on side with Lee. At first I wasn't a fan of the piece, since Chiles was too easy a target, but I quickly figured out the rant was to mock his "generosity" and play on Lee's "insecurity", I knew what lay ahead: an off-microphone rant. But not yet.
After attacking Chiles' measly charitable feat compared to his 65-75 shows a year, Lee draws his attention to another charitable comedian, Russell Howard. Lee touched upon Russell Howard and Mock the Week team in his latest live show, "If You Prefer a Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One," in the midst of a piece towards Frankie Boyle in which he cited those comedians as "angry young men". So an extended routine on Russell Howard was inevitable. Here, Lee talks about the young Russell comic doing a sponsored bike ride for Sport Relief, for which he raised £44,000, but, through some long calculations, Lee works out that if he gave up his job as a comedian and spent more time bike riding, he could have raised £13 million, but he chose not to. That is why he's the reason for Lee's angst.
In an inspired spiel, Lee takes swipes at Howard's comedy styling ('What about Ninjas') and Mock The Week for "mocking the weak" (particularly Susan Boyle for having a hairy face) and spitting at Downs Syndrome people. He words his rant in a way that Russell Howard wouldn't know if Lee was insulting or complimenting him. Lee goes into a monologue from the perspective of a dying African child mourning over Howard's refusal to make more money for the charity. Maybe this is a response to a "joke" Russell Howard did where he called out people who moaned about the wheely bins being changed once a week, implying that it's nothing compared to a starving child. It was very right-on, but not in a humorous Stewart Lee way. The utterly absurd monologue from this dying child included quotable gems such as 'Russell Howard must want us all to die, why ? why?' and 'he had to go on Mock the Week- to make sure Susan Boyle is ugly and mental.'
Lee's audience, broadsheet reading intellectuals who hate BBC 3, were sure to be eager to laugh at Russell's mocking as much as I was, since I don't care for Howard's pseudo weekend liberal student humour. Lee was quick to point out Howard's hypocrisy by noting that Howard laughed on MTW whenever someone would make fun of a mentally handicapped person. Lee laments that he struggles to pay babysitting fees and goes to 90-95 charity gigs, and yet Russell Howard is clearly more generous, arguably justifying the whole rant.
The show's sketch played during the credits and was essentially a Toby jug being pissed in, a callback to the Adrian Chiles bit. Clearly this episode was the best one yet. High on comedy and momentum, low on quick cut away and quick gags. What a week for the telly programmes I watch.
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