Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you and welcome to Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle,
which I, Stewart Lee, am driving towards your face.
Now, it's my belief that we're living in
the last days of Western civilisation from a cultural,
artistic and intellectual point of view,
and I first noticed this about 18 months ago.
I went into a branch of YO! Sushi,
the YO! Sushi fast food sushi chain,
where they were then offering a dish, a sushi dish,
named after the Joy Division song Love Will Tear Us Apart.
Thought, does lan Curtis's wife look at that...
Does she look at a tiny parcel of rice and fish...
...going round and round
on a fish juice-smeared conveyer belt and think,
"Yes, that's what he would have wanted"?
(# JOY DIVISION: Love Will Tear Us Apart)
Once you've started to feel like this,
the evidence of the collapse of civilisation is everywhere.
No more so than in the medium of television.
Television, drug of the nation.
My granddad used to call television the idiot's lantern.
The idiot's lantern.
And it was as a result of that
that he lost his job as head of the ITV Network.
Yeah, my granddad used to call television the idiot's lantern,
and it was as a result of that
that he was given the job of head of the ITV Network.
Yeah, my granddad used to call television the idiot's lantern,
and it was as a result of that
that he lost his job as John Logie Baird, inventor of television.
Television's not what it was.
My mum says that as a child
I learned to speak from watching children's television.
Apparently there was a woman on Play School
dressed as a kind of Commedia dell'arte clown.
And she said, "I'm a Pierrot. Can you say Pierrot?"
And I said, "Pierrot." My first word, "Pierrot."
I was 28 years old.
Of course, since then, my own son's actually...
He learned to speak from watching BBC children's television.
But he learned to speak from watching Dick And Dom's In Da Bungalow.
I say "speak"...
You know, what he does is, he goes into a public place
and shouts as loudly as possible
the word "bogies" over and over again.
He's 28 years old.
My main problem with television is
I can't work out which of the main channels to hate the most.
BBC One, watching BBC One, watching The One Show
with Adrian Chiles.
It's like being trapped in the buffet car of a slow-moving express train
with a toby jug that's somehow learnt to speak.
A speaking toby jug filled to the brim with hot piss.
The inexorable rise of Adrian Chiles makes me long for the days when
a regional accent was considered a professional disadvantage.
And watching BBC Two with Nigella Lawson and Rick Stein
and Ready Steady Cook.
Watching BBC Two, I feel like I know how one of those French geese feels
that are stuffed to make pâté foie gras -
bloated, nauseated, frightened and yet somehow simultaneously bored.
Watching ITV1, with Ant And Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway
and Ant and Dec's I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here
and Ant and Dec's Telephone Voting Scandal.
I feel like I'm being spat at full in the face by Ant and Dec,
one after another, in any order - it makes no difference.
Watching Channel Five, I feel like I'm wandering around Woolworths.
Remember you used to wander around Woolworths
and you'd think, "What kind of shop is this?"
"It sells rawl plugs, Murray Mints, Bratz dolls and topless calendars.
"Surely it can't last."
It's as if there's no guiding intelligence involved.
Watching Channel 4 used to be great, didn't it, when it started out
27, 28 years ago with all the innovative programs
for minority audiences.
Not any more. It's awful now. It's terrible, terrible.
And the head of Channel 4,
whoever he is this week, when he looks at the old schedules,
he must feel like an elderly, syphilitic ladies' man
leafing through a photograph album
of all the society beauties he used to romance...
...all of them now dead...
...because of him, because of what HE did.
But I don't know if Channel 4's the worst channel across the board.
I think it might be E4,
because Channel 4 is like a flood of sewage
that comes unbidden into your home...
...whereas E4 is like you constructed a sluice to let it in.
PRESENTER ON TV: And now on BBC One, it's The One Show...
Nothing on One.
ON TV: With comedian Michael Mclntyre and...
(PEOPLE ON TV DRUNKENLY HUM HERE COMES THE BRIDE)
Nothing on Two.
WOMAN ON TV: ...fish and a raw chicken...
Nothing on Three.
Try E4.
Now, Channel 4 has obviously betrayed its founding principles,
but what about the BBC?
Now, in 1927, when Lord Reith was head of the BBC,
he said the purpose of the BBC was to educate, inform and entertain.
That's a fantastic mantra - educate, inform and entertain.
Course, Lord Reith also described Hitler as magnificently efficient.
And he forbid the playing of black American jazz music
on the grounds that it was filthy.
So, you know... educate, inform, entertain.
That was good, but he supported Hitler and he was a jazz racist.
Yeah, a jazz racist.
Hitler's racial hatred worked within very strict principles.
But Lord Reith like to improvise.
He'd come in on different mornings,
no-one knew which race he was gonna hate next.
"I hate the Portuguese today."
"Lord Reith, you surprised us." "Try and keep up."
Even though Lord Reith was a jazz racist and supported Hitler,
Lord Reith never commissioned any program
as appalling as Andrew Lloyd Webber's Any Dream Will Do.
A program which the BBC boasts has led to a 300º% increase
in attendances for West End musical theatre shows.
As if that were anything but an atrocity.
And who's the real evil man? Is it Lord Reith,
supporting Hitler, being a jazz racist,
or is it Andrew Lloyd Webber,
sitting back in a throne - in a throne, no less...
...with his weird, stretched face
and his medieval ecclesiastical tonsure of hair,
looking like a monk in a wind tunnel...
...sitting there, smiling to himself
as he mentally calculates an estimated £10 million
of extra ticket sales,
drunk, drunk on the smell of his own farts,
his own cold, grey farts,
or musicals, as he will insist on calling them.
Andrew Lloyd Webber in a throne,
drunk on the smell of his own cold, grey farts.
A wind tunnel monk king, Andrew Lloyd Webber,
rich, rich on your purloined gold,
freely given by you in ignorance to Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Great art should be mysterious.
Great art should be opaque.
And of course, it's possible
to make an early Saturday night game show format
out of an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical,
cos an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical is already facile,
but you couldn't invite the public to use a telephone voting system
to cast a production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot.
ANNOUNCER ON TV: The show that solved a problem like Maria
and made Joseph's dream come true is back.
But this time around we've gone all highbrow - ooh! -
with the Nobel prize-winning absurdist playwright,
Samuel Beckett.
Man is born astride the grave.
The gravedigger weeps into our mouths
and covers us with clay.
ANNOUNCER: And Samuel needs your help
casting one of the best-loved characters
from 20th-century experimental theatre.
From Waiting for Godot,
it's the bipolar idiot savant
and deranged brain-damaged tramp slave clown,
Lucky!
We whittled down Samuel's potential Luckys
from literally thousands of applicants.
Then they'll fight it out on stage
in front of the master of misery himself,
but only the chosen one will win
the chance to earn £364 a week Equity minimum wage
performing the role to bored GCSE students.
SAMUEL BECKETT: You should be so Lucky.
- Pretentious rubbish. - Put it on 4 again.
But there is still one thing that the BBC do brilliantly,
and that is David Attenborough.
The BBC do the thing of David Attenborough brilliantly.
David Attenborough believes in television.
David Attenborough believes that you could learn about insects
by making a documentary where
you look at insects' lives and their feeding habits
and their courtship dances.
But David Attenborough would not think
that you could learn anything about insects
by flinging insects into the berry brown face of Robert Kilroy-Silk.
You don't even really learn anything about Robert Kilroy-Silk
from flinging insects into the berry brown face of Robert Kilroy-Silk -
other than that Robert Kilroy-Silk does not like
having insects flung into his berry brown face.
Because one, they're insects,
and two, they're foreign insects.
And there's the terrible risk that
some of them might make their way back to Britain,
secreted in the saggy folds of his neck skin.
I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here is presided over by Ant and Dec.
Ant and Dec harm insects.
They humiliate vulnerable celebrities and they teach us to fear nature.
Ant and Dec are the smiling apologists
for television's worst excesses, aren't they?
Their souls are caked in sin.
And yet they never grow old, do they, Ant and Dec.
They never grow old.
We grow old.
You grow old, I grow old,
but Ant and Dec do not grow old.
David Attenborough grows old. David Attenborough's very old.
David Attenborough is so old,
he can remember when Charles Darwin first brought him back
from the Galápagos Islands as a young naturalist
and made him dance before Queen Victoria.
But Ant and Dec do not grow old as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not wither them, nor the years condemn.
Why?
Did you see Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly
on the television last night, Basil?
Television has yet to be invented, Henry, as you know.
Yet I fancy I saw them, nevertheless.
Throwing insects into the berry brown face of Robert Kilroy-Silk.
Indeed.
Must be, what, 20 years
since the Geordie duo first appeared on our screens
in the children's drama series Byker Grove.
And yet...
And yet, despite all their sins, all their corruption,
they have remained utterly unchanged, unaltered by the passage of time?
Yes.
But how?
20 years ago, Henry...
20 years ago, they came here to this very studio
and had me paint their portrait.
They have remained beautiful.
But look at the picture, Henry.
Look at the picture of Ant and Dec.
(THUNDERCLAP, RAPID VIOLIN CHORDS)
Nooooo!
The BBC still make the best nature documentaries.
But the most successful nature documentary of all time
is actually the worst nature documentary of all time,
and that is March Of The Penguins.
David Attenborough wouldn't make a film like March Of The Penguins.
It was a French film and it was redubbed by the Americans
and it was a massive hit with the religious right in America
because in that film, the penguins pair off in a monogamous fashion
and they raise their chicks in a kind of ethical, caring way.
And so the American religious right decided that this meant
that nature wanted us to be good, because the penguins were.
Now, I know David Attenborough was suspicious of this logic.
I was as well.
Cos I started reading about mallards, the mallard duck,
which also occurs in nature - it's from nature.
I don't know if you know, but the mallard,
it's the only animal which reproduces exclusively by gang rape.
It's also the only bird ever to have been caught on film
indulging in the act of homosexual necrophilia.
So...
I've been trying to raise money...
...to make a documentary film called March Of The Mallards...
...which will prove that nature wants us to be evil.
And ideally I'll have that with a voiceover from Morgan Freeman...
going...
(IMPERSONATES MORGAN FREEMAN) "There goes that little mallard,
"raping that dead mallard...
"...in his dead ass...
"...in a dance as old as time."
Morgan Freeman lied knowingly about penguins for money.
David Attenborough would not have done that.
My only hope, some weird kind of cosmicjustice,
is that in a parallel universe somewhere,
there's an inaccurate documentary about Morgan Freeman
narrated by a dishonest penguin.
(PENGUIN CALLS)
But March Of The Penguins is the most successful documentary of all time.
Any Dream Will Do, a hugely rated television program.
It's very difficult to know what it is you want.
What is it that you want, the public?
It's easy to blame programme makers and schedulers for these things,
but you're complicit in watching them, aren't you?
What is it that you want?
I'll tell you what I don't understand about you.
Thanks for watching, but what is it that you want? Eh?
Cos every couple of years there's a survey, isn't there,
where the public... Not you, you're good people,
you've come out to live entertainment,
but you people, you people at home...
Not them, look at them,
but you, every couple of years, you... You, not them. They're here.
...you are asked every couple of years, aren't you,
to vote for the funniest thing ever on television.
It's in the Radio Times or a website or Channel 4 or something,
and you always choose the same thing, don't you?
Every couple of years when they're asked to vote
for the funniest thing ever on television,
you always choose the same thing, don't you?
You always choose Del Boy falling through the bar
on Only Fools And Horses.
The funniest thing ever on television,
according to you, the public - thanks for watching -
the funniest thing ever on television
is Del Boy falling through the bar on Only Fools And Horses.
So let's have a look at that, yeah? See how funny that is.
So... he's...
...he's standing at the bar, isn't he, Del Boy
and then that's raised
and he goes... (GRUNTS WEAKLY)
(LAUGHS PATHETICALLY)
Del Boy, Stew.
He fell through the bar on Only Fools And Horses.
And it's the funniest thing there's ever been on television ever.
He fell through the bar, Stew.
Del Boy...
He was standing up and then he fell through the bar...
...and Trigger made a face.
And it's the funniest thing there's ever been on television ever.
Is it? Is it funnier than Monty Python and Spike Milligan?
Yes it is, Stew. Cos he fell through the...
He was... He was vertical, Stew...
...and he became horizontal...
...and then Trigger made a face.
Del Boy, Stew. David Jason.
From Inspector Frost.
No, Stew, Inspector Frost didn't fall through the bar.
He wouldn't do something frivolous like that.
Inspector Frost would apprehend a paedophile.
And then Trigger would make a face.
A serious face.
He fell through the bar, Stew.
It's the funniest thing there's ever been on television ever.
Play it again, play it again.
Play it again and again and again, every Christmas, over and over
until the death of recorded time.
Play it again until the rocks melt and the seas burn.
Del Boy falling through the bar on Only Fools And Horses.
Burn it into the retina of my eye...
...so that every time I blink,
I see a lightbulb-textured image
of Del Boy falling through the bar on Only Fools And Horses,
the funniest thing on television ever.
And when I die and shut my eyes for the last time,
I'll go to my grave laughing
as I see Del Boy falling through the bar on Only Fools And Horses,
the funniest thing on television ever.
That's what you like.
I think we're on a winner 'ere, Trig.
All right? Play it nice and cool, son.
Nice and cool, you know what I mean?
It's January 8th.
And as they have done every year,
the people of Verity Saint Margaret
are about to celebrate the day when British people were first exposed
to perhaps the greatest moment in entertainment history.
MAN: I don't think anyone really knows when Del Day started.
I mean, when I moved here from Leamington Spa about 15 years ago,
it was already well under way.
Slowly! Easy does it.
Every year we recreate this moment with a giant Del Boy.
And everyone has a good old drink and a feed-up
and there's no harm in it, no harm at all.
STEWART: I never said there was any harm in it.
Good, cos there isn't.
STEWART: So what have you come as?
Well, I've been on the Del Day committee for five years now
and this year I'm the Trigger Man,
hence this rather outlandish garb, I suppose.
So at midnight Del Boy falls through the bar,
I come out, look around, pull a face.
Brilliant.
So this is the bar here that he's gonna fall through.
Do you think that dropping a big Del Boy through a bar made of straw
is funnier or less funny than
the actual film of the real Del Boy falling?
- It's more funnier. - Why?
Because, um,
you can watch it on telly and laugh at that,
but when you see it falling through the bar,
it's actually happening in front of your eyes.
So it isn't on the telly, it's big.
So it's not small in the corner of the room, it's actually big.
Five, four.
The choirmaster and myself are going to dress as women
and later on, we're going to be the ladies in the wine bar
who tempt Del Boy to his almighty fall.
As so often with these traditions,
it's full of Christian symbolism,
because it's Del Boy's pride and Del Boy's lust
that lead him, like Adam, to fall.
STEWART: The Church of England's always been very good, hasn't it,
at accommodating these kind of events.
Yes. We have a Halloween-themed service
in the church for the children every year
and last month I blessed the electric wheelchair
of a rather splendid old lady in the village.
STEWART: And would you bless a civil partnership?
No.
Can you pass me my stockings, Peter?
I think we're in here, Trig.
CROWD: Ooh!
(CROWD CHEERS)
Play it cool, son.
CROWD: Play it cool.
No income tax, no VAT...
MIKE CHAMBERS: Del Boy falls through a bar, Trigger makes a face.
Brilliant.
The funniest thing on television ever,
Del Boy falling through the bar.
(LAUGHS MOCKINGLY)
And I just think it's fortunate
that Sir Isaac Newton...
...did not share the sense of humour of a member of the public.
Because had he done so,
he would have been so amused by the simple effects of gravity
that he would never have got round
to making a comprehensive study of its causes.
That's the punch line,
the phrase " a comprehensive study of its causes."
I worked for that.
I smashed my head repeatedly on the floor
as a lead-up to this line.
"A comprehensive study of its causes."
Will you be repeating it at work? No.
And yes, I am aware that I say this to you
while hanging precariously off this Art Deco balcony.
And I do so deliberately
in the hope that I will fall to my death
and that you will learn about
the thin line between slapstick and tragedy.
And where have you left me?
Literally hanging, because the point at where
I thought the routine would peak
turned out to be about 90 seconds earlier than where I thought it would.
This is dead time.
But we can't leave. We can't stop, viewers at home,
until these people have provided some sense of closure.
Yeah.
The asked-for, the begged-for applause.
The begged-for applause.
It's undignified but it still... it still counts.
Good night.
(GROANS) Pretentious rubbish.
Put it on 4 again.