Content Provider

Selected Short Prose Pieces, 2011–2016

Stewart Lee

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9780571329045
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Television

Over the last few years, often when David Mitchell has been on holiday, the comedian Stewart Lee has been attempting to understand modern Britain in a weekly newspaper column. Why are there so few right-wing stand-ups? Who was Grant Shapps? What does your Spotify playlist data say about you? Are Jeremy Corbyn and Stewart Lee really the new Christs? And so on.

Introduced, annotated and, where necessary, explained by the author, Content Provider is funny, grumpy and provocative.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Landing Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Stewart Lee’s insider’s take on William and Kate
• My perfect pub
• The National Trust doesn’t even trust us to have our own thoughts
• If Damon Albarn is serious about the occult, shouldn’t we call him Damien?
• What a tragic wasted opportunity to present a true portrait of the Iron Lady
• Shame on you, Alex Salmond, for selling us out to the Bullingdon Club
• I was getting on so well with Gillian Welch. Then David Cameron butts in
• How I was busted by the O—— Advertisement Enforcement Office
• Movements afoot to return Tony Blair to Labour’s seat of power?
• This truly was an event that regenerated a community, but what of its legacy?
• Brooks and Cameron’s texts? They’re pure Shakespeare
• What does the insect community make of ITV’s celebrity freak show?
• Interlude: ShortList, Censorship and the New Statesman
• Lowlights of 2012
• “A View from a Hill”: A Christmas Ghost Story
• What’s so bad about UKIP members being foster parents?
• New year raises the eternal question: is it possible to live a life without crisps?
• Fists full of sausage, Michael Gove declaims his vision of the future
• Farewell, BBC TV Centre. You were Britain’s very own Disneyland
• I’ve seen Jesus and thanks to Iain Duncan Smith She’s in a bad way
• Margaret Thatcher is dead. But someone has reinvented her life
• Gobbling pâté allowed a nation to scoff at the legacy of Thatcherism
• The rich get richer, the poor get poorer and the coalition plays silly burgers
• The end of the world is nigh … anyone out there interested?
• What to do if millions of Romanian vampires pitch camp at Marble Arch
• Another goddamned appreciation of the late, lamented Bill Hicks
• Sarah Vine sets a new bog standard. But will Mr Gove leave the seat up?
• The maggots that changed my life (and the future of the Tory party)
• Why I’m a leading contender for the Great British fruitcake bake off
• Sex and drugs? Real rock rebels are into tax-efficient accountancy abuse
• The search for the nation’s identity: my part in Cameron’s odyssey
• Want to know what’s really killing Christmas? Just ask Ben Stiller …
• I’ve had it with comedy awards – and so has my bounty hunter alter ego
• Farty TV and BBC3
• “Secondary ticketing” might be legal, but that doesn’t make it morally right
• Privatising BBC3 would be as pernicious as Isis destroying Iraq’s historic sites
• If Grant Shapps was made by little green aliens, what’s left?
• If we send the migrants back, who will cook my late-night steak?
• Truly, this man was the son of God. And I don’t mean David Cameron
• On the A1, at the border of England and Scotland, a miracle unfolded …
• From pagan rituals to the Queen’s speech: the more things change …
• FIFA, Eurovision, the BAFTAs … the poison is all around us
• Top Gear: can any mortal control this foul, pulsating orifice?
• A passport to my lovely garden? Dream on, you wretched souls
• It’s too late to save our world, so enjoy the spectacle of doom
• Cameron’s monkeys are feasting on the BBC’s nuts
• The government’s witch-hunters are ready to reform the BBC to death
• The Tories are using my holiday to change history
• Can we be absolutely certain Iain Duncan Smith is real?
• Time to embrace the horrors of your Spotify playlist data
• Jeremy Corbyn and I are the new Christs
• It’s not easy getting laughs out of the migrant crisis
• Jezza the jester? He’s here to satirise politics as we know it
• Cameron’s piggy is in the middle of a question we’re not asking
• Now even Bake Off is being used to stir the pot on immigration
• So David Cameron can tell lies but stand-up comics can’t …
• Royal kisses on the cheeks of a flatulent superpower
• My name is Stewart Lee, and I’m an AAlcoholic
• A pyre of burning hate in a pagan, polluted England
• Sun slams Corbyn’s nod and gets a rise out of me
• Out of the mouths of babes, real religious truth
• I wouldn’t have an OBE unless they gave me one
• Why I mourn for Eddie Redmayne’s old phone
• In need of an affordable home? Turn left at Pluto
• Osborne’s tax deals are the stuff of spaghetti westerns
• Who will write the front page this nation needs?
• Jeremy Hunt is an ethical columnist’s nightmare
• Wolf People – Fain
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• By the Same Author
• Copyright