This was not really a proper live show at all. The lengthy run is, by Stewart Lee's own onstage admission, "faffing" to prepare episodes for his next BBC2 series. Luckily for his audience, Stewart Lee faffing is preferable to a lot of comedians' faffless finished articles.
The title, Much A-Stew About Nothing, is presumably meant to be ironically corny but despite the smirky self-referential asides, this was Lee at his most accessible. At times he came perilously close to mainstream Live at the Apollo badinage, bemoaning his declining sex appeal and making quips about Peter Stringfellow that could have fallen from an old Spitting Image script.
Somehow he managed to have his cake and devour slice after slice, doing cheap gags about vasectomies, demolishing BBC2’s The Culture Show and haughtily dismissing the recent Paxman/Brand face-off as lacking the gravitas of David Frost probing Richard Nixon. Smug and superior, but still very funny.
Elsewhere he seemed to be channeling comedy history. A stand-out riff about Ukip’s anti-immigration stance had an echo of the classic Four Yorkshiremen sketch, as he imagined the party rejecting increasingly ancient arrivals. When making a cheeky remark he glanced into the wings to check the coast was clear like a latterday Max Miller.
While the episodic format meant that there was no overarching theme, there was clearly a left-of-centre undertow. This was certainly clever in places, yet unusually for this performer, rarely too clever. The ripples of laughter were almost constant. Not uncomplicated enough for Live at the Apollo, of course, but Lee might be relieved to read that.
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