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Brick Wall Comedy
Brick Wall Comedy

Stand-Up Comedian

Stewart Lee

2 Entertain · 2005 · 78 min

A quiet, confrontational return to the stage at a Glasgow club.

Watch it free on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Stewart Lee begins his first solo stand-up special by bringing four volunteers onstage, handing them party poppers, and directing them to pop them over his head before immediately sending them back to their seats. Left alone under a few sad strands of metallic streamer, he begins a deliberate deconstruction of stand-up comedy. The routine progresses into a slow dismantle of easy punchlines, mocking standard setups and forcing the audience to reckon with the actual architecture of a joke.

Filmed on a Thursday night in March 2005 at The Stand in Glasgow, this show marked a critical pivot in his career. After a long hiatus from stand-up, during which he directed the controversial West End hit Jerry Springer: The Opera and faced intense backlash from religious groups, he returned to the stage with this material. The special highlights his transition from sarcastic minimalism into a self-aware, confrontational stage persona.

Notable routines include a detailed critique of Scottish patriotism and William Wallace delivered right to a Glaswegian crowd, a breakdown of why “wool” is inherently funny, and a lengthy narrative about the events of September 11. Critics praised the show for its intelligence and structural daring, though the commercial distributor declined to pick up his next special immediately after its release.

The set list

3 bits

  1. Being in Granada, Spain on September 11, 2001, and defusing cross-cultural tension with a fart.

    Lee recounts watching the 9/11 attacks in an Andalusian bar amidst growing tension between Arab Spaniards and white European Spaniards, accidentally farting in the restroom, and using the universal humor of farts to defuse international and racial tension.

  2. Mocking Scottish nationalism to a Scottish audience.

    Performs in Glasgow and provocatively jokes that Scottish national hero William Wallace may have been gay or a paedophile, and jokes that Gaelic is the language of gays.

  3. Putting a tea cosy on one's head as an improvised hat.

    Argues that only a person lacking any imagination could sit in the presence of a tea cosy and not put it on their head.

How it plays

Tone
Near-the-knuckle, bone-dry, provocative, and satirical.
On stage
Quiet, slow, thoughtful, uncompromising, and deadpan, avoiding cheap crowd-pleasing gags.
Pace
Slow and thoughtful tempo with a soothing, unhurried cadence and bone-dry delivery.
About
September 11 attacks and political language, nationalism and Scottish identity, the nature of comedy and scatological humor, cultural shifts and appropriateness

What the critics said

Hailed by Time Out as one of the top living stand-ups delivering smart and subtle bone-dry comedy, and described by Ricky Gervais as the cleverest, funniest, most cliche-free comedian on the circuit.

In the room: Tense and near-the-knuckle room atmosphere playing in the notoriously comedy-hostile city of Glasgow to an inebriated crowd.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: imdb.com, letterboxd.com, scrapsfromtheloft.com, thetvdb.com, en.wikipedia.org, aspentimes.com, independent.co.uk, yorkpress.co.uk, oxfordmail.co.uk, charleshutchpress.co.uk.

Backstory

Lee returned to stand-up following four years spent working on 'Jerry Springer - The Opera', which had achieved critical success but subsequently faced intense protests and accusations of blasphemy from Christian right groups following its BBC television broadcast in early 2005.

Details

Released
Taped
The Stand, Glasgow
Runtime
78 min
Where
2 Entertain
Director
Peter Orton
Honors
Featured in The 100 Greatest Stand Ups 2010
Topics
After
Content Provider (2018)

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