Stewart Lee: 41st Best Stand Up

On Tuesday I spent the evening in a subterranean ex-Victorian toilet watching three grown men perform for mine (and other people’s) pleasure.

Although the site is famous because Wilfrid Brambell was arrested for cottaging there, I was present for other reasons as it has since been gutted and turned into a “suburban beat bunker” - ginglik.

I was primarily there to see the Edinburgh preview for Stewart Lee, a comedian I’ve long admired since the halcyon days of Fist of Fun. Unfortunately, he was crap.

Well, not exactly crap but very disappointing. The main problem was his set hinged on an anecdote which relied on forced repetition instead of humour and with this type of gag it’s all too easy to end up being irritating instead of amusing. Some of the jokes also made it quite obvious how he pens them and he chose some very easy targets to make cheap gags about. Structurally his set was all over the place and needs a lot more work before the Edinburgh festival starts… next week. That said, I’ve now met one of my comedy heroes, just a shame it was after such a let down of a gig.

Still, it was a good night overall. I was much more impressed with the compere Alun Cochrane and second-on-the-bill Paul Sinha, who is a massive trivia nerd as well as being very very funny. I’ll be keeping an eye out for both of them in the future. The venue is pretty nice considering it’s history and seems to host interesting events. Oh and the company was pretty great too.