Fringe Therapy: Stewart Lee

Stewart Lee spends some time on Dr Fest's Fringe Therapy couch

feature (edinburgh) | Read in About 2 minutes
Published 24 Jul 2007
Tell me about your Fringe show and what it is really about to you?

Stewart Lee: Well, the show's called 41st Best Stand-Up Ever, which is where I came in this C4 on-line vote TV show rundown thing in April. So I suppose it's about how we value what we do. Public and private. Professional and personal.

What is your greatest worry at the minute?

Stewart Lee: Not being able to ever afford a flat with a spare room for the baby. But loads of people have just had their homes flooded out so I suppose it's a luxurious worry.

What inanimate object do you most identify with and why?

SL: I have a ceramic figure of a dog shooting itself in the head with a gun and holding an empty booze bottle. It was my grandfather's. It plays a happy tune. I love it.

How is your relationship with your mother?

SL: I am very grateful to her. She is a bit disappointed that I am a comedian, I think, but she copes.

Tell me about you most vivid or recurring dreams.

SL: I used to have a reoccurring dream about being chased through a maze in a kind of byzantine citadel by hordes of half-man/half-chimp characters. It's night, but there's fire in the sky behind the hill on which the citadel stands. The whole scenario still makes me go cold.

What is your biggest fear.

SL: Being chased through a maze in a kind of byzantine citadel by hordes of half-man/half-chimp characters.

Which historical figure do you most relate to and why?

SL: Martin Luther. He stood up for what he believed in, was oppressed by religious bigots, and had Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

What is your earliest childhood memory?

SL: Holding up my foot to my father to show him my new red shoes. I was 28 years old.

What is you biggest regret?

SL: I regret doing the 2nd series of Fist of Fun with Richard Herring for BBC2 in 1996, having accepted the changes imposed from above that compromised it. I think it took me five years to find my feet again after that, having settled for something that wasn't right.