Moirism voyeurism

July 20, 2011 7:20 AM

Comedian Stewart Lee clarifies his view of comedian Michael McIntyre following a Jan Moir (the very same) article in the Daily Mail (itself a culmination of coverage elsewhere), which included for me the definitive out of context quotation...

From Moir's article:

"Stewart Lee, McIntyre’s chief tormentor, has form in this department. Referring to the car accident that left Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond with brain damage, Lee quipped: ‘I wish he’d been decapitated, and that his head had rolled off in front of his wife.'"

The routine quoted goes on to include the following (restated in Lee's article):

"I don’t really think Richard Hammond should die. What I was doing there, as everyone here in this room now understands, just in case there’s anyone from the Mail on Sunday watching this, is I was using an exaggerated form of the rhetoric and the implied values of Top Gear to satirise the rhetoric and the implied values of Top Gear. And it is a shame to have to break character and explain that. But hopefully it will save you a long, tedious exchange of emails.'"

posted by nthdegx (35 comments total)

Of possible tangential interest is istyosty, a proxy set up to provide access to Daily Mail content without providing the Mail with page views. I think this may be the first time this has been done for a specific news source.
posted by running order squabble fest at 7:27 AM on July 20, 2011 [2 favorites]

"Nevertheless, Monday’s Metro carried the following headline; ‘Michael McIntyre has told of his upset after fellow comedian Stewart Lee insulted him at the British Comedy Awards.’

"I wasn’t at the British Comedy Awards..."

posted by Sys Rq at 7:46 AM on July 20, 2011

Stewart Lee earned my undying man-crush love with this routine about cries of 'political correctness gone mad'.
posted by edheil at 7:56 AM on July 20, 2011 [11 favorites]

Look, it's just really hard for Jan Moir to generate 1500 words of vitriol every week. I mean, no-one is that angry or bigoted or outraged. Selective quotation is the only way to generate the requisite level of GRAR.

I laugh more loudly at Michael McIntyre but I think Stewart Lee is funnier.
posted by bright cold day at 8:12 AM on July 20, 2011

Just a latest in a long line of examples of the Daily Mail in the UK taking quotes out of context in a way that is completely designed to fuel the prejudices of the Little Englanders that read it.

I think it was the comedian Frankie Boyle (who Lee has also had a go at, in fact he's had a go at quite a few of his contemporaries) who said that he had used a computer to work out the average Daily Mail headline, and it was:

"Immigrants Carry New Form Of AIDS That Lowers House Prices"
posted by GallonOfAlan at 8:24 AM on July 20, 2011

I hate that we consider Daily Mail links the 'best of the web'.
posted by londonmark at 8:27 AM on July 20, 2011

I'm glad I've never heard of Michael McIntyre.
posted by scruss at 8:27 AM on July 20, 2011

I hate that we consider Daily Mail links the 'best of the web'.

Hm. I think you may have missed the point of the post.
posted by Sys Rq at 8:28 AM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

"I hate that we consider Daily Mail links the 'best of the web'."

Clearly... clearly... the post is for Lee's response. The Mail link is for context. I really have to spell that out? I even rephrased the post so Lee's piece would appear first. Blimey...
posted by nthdegx at 8:28 AM on July 20, 2011 [6 favorites]

londonmark, Stewart Lee's response is pretty "best of." The Daily Mail link is just context for it, to me.

The thing about Stewart Lee is that he reserves his bitter, angry, biting remarks for people who are engaged in mean-spirited, hateful, bullying behavior.
posted by edheil at 8:30 AM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

I hate that we consider Daily Mail links the 'best of the web'.

To be fair to the post, I do think Stewart Lee's piece is the best of the web, and the Daily Mail link is just context for it.

I love Stewart Lee and don't know any of these other people, so my opinion is pretty useless. But! Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle is available on YouTube.
posted by gladly at 8:30 AM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

Your best of the web is a direct response to a Daily Mail hatchet job. It only exists in the context of the DM's black hole of hysteria.
posted by londonmark at 8:33 AM on July 20, 2011

(I didn't mean to suggest it shouldn't be a post, I wast just instinctively bemoaning the all-pervasive dark presence of the DM in my life. Sorry for the derail.)
posted by londonmark at 8:34 AM on July 20, 2011 [2 favorites]

"Your best of the web is a direct response to a Daily Mail hatchet job. It only exists in the context of the DM's black hole of hysteria."

Yup. But you didn't say that. I think I now understand what you meant to say.
posted by nthdegx at 8:35 AM on July 20, 2011

Here is my emotional spectrum for this.

I love Stewart Lee and Frankie Boyle. Michael McIntyre is unfunny and mildly annoying. I hate The Daily Mail and Jan Moir.
posted by Decani at 8:56 AM on July 20, 2011

Mandatory link (this is what the DM _really_ is like)
posted by MessageInABottle at 9:16 AM on July 20, 2011 [4 favorites]

I like Stewart Lee. I love Dara O Briain.
posted by Pendragon at 9:16 AM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

Moir's claim that

It is so un-British.

made me stop, doubt, wonder, then laugh. In oppostion I would like to repeat my favorite AA Gill quote:

The English aren't people who strive for greatness, they're driven to it by a flaming irritation. It was anger that built the Industrial Age, which forged expeditions of discovery. It was the need for self-control that found an outlet in cataloguing, litigating and ordering the natural world. It was the blind fury with imprecise and stubborn inanimate objects that created generations of engineers and inventors. The anger at sin and unfairness that forged their particular earth-bound, pedantic spirituality and their puce-faced, finger-jabbing, spittle-flecked politics. ...

Anger has driven the English to achievement and greatness in a bewildering pantheon of disciplines. At the core of that anger is the knowledge that they could go absolutely berserk with an axe if they didn't bind themselves with all sorts of restraints, of manners, embarrassment and awkwardness and garden sheds.

posted by benito.strauss at 9:17 AM on July 20, 2011 [11 favorites]

And for the convenience of having your headlines even if you don't have the DM around...
try this.
posted by MessageInABottle at 9:18 AM on July 20, 2011

I like Stewart Lee, but I'm not sure what the appeal of this essay is. It seems like a pile of drama-induced self-consciousness. I only got up to the part where he started listing the times he's met McIntyre in person, though. Did I miss anything good?
posted by Coventry at 9:59 AM on July 20, 2011

The Stewart Lee article is great. If you haven't read it yet, I can thoroughly recommend his book.
posted by ob at 10:56 AM on July 20, 2011

I don't think Jan Moir should be encouraged - her only function, really, is to get liberals to add to the Mail's media profile and ad revenues - but I did just laugh uncontrollably for a minute at the out-of-context quotation.
posted by running order squabble fest at 11:05 AM on July 20, 2011

Stewart Lee earned my undying man-crush love with this routine about cries of 'political correctness gone mad'.

That's gold. Especially the end.

I think this is the routine about Top Gear referred to in the article. Relevant part is from about 5:15 but really the whole thing is worth watching.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 11:22 AM on July 20, 2011

I've never understood the appeal of McIntyre. Sometimes I'll chuckle at his observations, but I just don't find him that funny and am baffled by his success. Lee, on the other hand, can be a funny fucker.
posted by Elmore at 11:26 AM on July 20, 2011

In case you gave up before getting to the main point: part of Moir's objection to Stewart Lee's comedy was based on a piece he did about Top Gear, in which he breaks character specifically to address anyone from the Mail who might willfully misinterpret what he was saying. Which is exactly what happened. QED.
posted by Acey at 11:28 AM on July 20, 2011

Wow. How have I never heard of Stewart Lee before this? That is one funny motherfucker. In case anyone in this world needed me this morning, I'm very sorry but I was on the Youtube watching a lot of Stewart Lee stand-up. Again, very sorry.
posted by NoMich at 11:53 AM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

So apparently Michael McIntyre is a British Dane Cook. Good to know.

Stewart Lee is excellent, though. Here he is on Joe Pasquale and joke theft.
posted by Navelgazer at 12:23 PM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

It is so un-British.

This could be turned around nicely, Bill Hicks style, in discussions with Daily Mail types. E.g.

"I support our troops in Iraq/Afghanistan, aren't you proud to be British?"

"Sure I am, that's why I support the underdog"
posted by iotic at 12:54 PM on July 20, 2011

Yeah, I'd love it if someone would do a post on Stewart Lee. I don't think he's known at all here in America, but every time I stumble across him (and do the Youtube binge that NoMich mentioned) I'm reminded how good he is.
posted by benito.strauss at 1:24 PM on July 20, 2011

Stewart Lee is very funny. He always somehow reminds me of Norm Macdonald. They're almost completely different, but somehow the idea of parodying standup comedy by doing comedy dressed as an insect to an audience of insects and Norm's performance at the Bob Saget roast are examples of comedic convergent evolution.
posted by Grimgrin at 4:06 PM on July 20, 2011

If I am ever funny, I want to be funny like Stewart Lee.
posted by luminous phenomena at 5:51 PM on July 20, 2011

This growing trend of making comedians apologize for things they say in their comedy needs to fucking stop, and comedians need to stop doing it.

The line becomes less clearly drawn when the comedians in question are unfunny as well as offensive (to some people) -- which Stewart Lee isn't -- but it is not a sustainable state of affairs.

Comedy doesn't have to be transgressive to be funny, but it must be allowed to be.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:51 PM on July 20, 2011 [1 favorite]

I don't know. It's not really an apology (heck, he even says "I ... would hate this piece to be misconstrued as an apology").

It's more like "I'm sorry you don't understand comedy.", followed by an explanation of how the bit in question works. I think it's nice when people at the top of their field will explain the basics to people who have no understanding. Kind of like Feynman and Physics.
posted by benito.strauss at 7:05 PM on July 20, 2011 [4 favorites]

Daily Mash: Stewart Lee-Michael McIntyre feud referred up to Jethro.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 2:27 AM on July 21, 2011

So I looked for this McIntyre fellow on youtube and the first result was him performing at the Apollo. That was not the Apollo that I was expecting.
posted by horsemuth at 6:02 PM on July 25, 2011