Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle (2009) s02e05 Episode Script
Identity
The show's all about identity.
Who is Stewart Lee? I dunno.
The thing is, I I'm quite keen to not give anything away.
I like to be quite an anonymous figure - then I think you can talk about anything.
I don't really I don't know how to describe it.
OK.
Why is Stewart Lee? I dunno.
These are like Sunday supplement questions.
I don't know Where is Stewart Lee? Well, I'm here, but I don't I don't know where this is.
Where we live to a point defines us.
People feel like they're defined by where they live, where they're from.
Americans, for example, are very proud of being from America.
I used to love the Americans, but I went off them last year, the Americans, because of them all ganging up on the bloke from BP - do you remember? All the Americans picking on the bloke from BP about that oil slick.
It seems unfair, doesn't it, given that America is the largest consumer of oil per head in the world and they seemed annoyed with the bloke from BP for merely trying to provide them with the oil that they craved.
Americans, picking on the bloke from BP.
It's ridiculous.
It's like a furious customer punching a prostitute in the face because he's sickened by his own desire.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE Australians are very proud of being from Australia.
It's an interesting country, Australia.
In Australia it's illegal not to vote.
Australia has a compulsory democracy.
Bizarrely, it's compulsory to vote in a country where the citizens are, to be fair, perhaps least equipped to make choices.
It's not their fault! Australian life has not prepared the Australian for complex choices, cos every Australian day is like a sort of decision tree of simple binary choices.
Sleep or wake? Shorts or swimming trunks? Beach or park? Smoothie or heroin? Hepatitis or skin cancer? Up at the end of a sentenceor down.
It's very funny the way foreigners talk.
Are you going to be doing any of that? Yeah, I It's another thing makes me realise how lucky I am to be on at all.
I can't really do accents.
Cos that'sthere's a whole rich area of comedy there.
Yeah.
It's not something I've deliberately avoided, I'm just not able to really do do the voices.
Which nationality do you hate the most? Cos being Scottish and Italian, I hope you lay off of us.
HE CHUCKLES There's a bit of Italian stuff.
There's Scottish stuff There's a bit of Italian stuff in? Yeah, and Scottish stuff.
And Scottish stuff?! Yeah, but the Scottish thing, it's not really Sorry, hang on, there's a bit of There's about ten minutes on Scotland, but it's not really Ten minutes?! Yeah, but I'm not really making fun of the Scots.
What I'm trying to do is look at how It's about national folk myths.
Hang on.
You said you're not having a go at lots of nationalities, just one or two, and now you say there's ten minutes on Scots.
Well, that's because You just thought they would be funny.
Where we're from defines us, up to an extent.
National identity.
I always thought I was English, but I found out about 20 years ago that my real father is actually Scottish.
Which of course means that I'm Scottish, because as you know, Scottishness is passed on through the male genes.
Like a disease.
It overwhelms all female chromosomes.
And that's why there are no Scottish women.
There aren't, are there? It's a funny thing.
You think about it.
You think, "Oh, there are," but there aren't! Do you know any? No! There's no Scottish women.
There's people sitting at home thinking, "Hang on! I'm a Scottish woman!" You aren't, right? There's none.
There's no Scottish women.
And I'm really proud of having noticed that, cos that's one of those classic bits of observational comedy, I think.
It is.
What you're sort of looking for in observational comedy is a thing that is across the board true, that no-one's really noticed before.
Like the fact that there's no Scottish women.
I'll give you another I'll give you another example of an absolute bulletproof piece of observational comedy I've thought about.
It's like Receipts, what are they all about, right? What's the The five most terrifying words in the English language.
"Would you like a receipt?" "Er, why?" "Proof of purchase, sir.
" "I don't need it, I've got the thing here.
I know I've bought it.
" It's mad, innit, receipts? Proof of purchase? I've got the thing! Here! And that's another one of those things that's true, isn't it, and no-one's thought about it.
It's there.
One of those things that's generally true.
That's kind of the Holy Grail of observational comedy.
Another thing like that.
When you look in fish tanks, right, tropical fish tanks, in the dentist's or in someone's house or in a zoo aquarium or something, why's there always, at the bottom of the fish tank in the gravel, a little tiny statue of Napoleon? Have you noticed that? There is, isn't there? You think about it, in the In the fish tanks, the tropical fish tanks, there's always a tiny Napoleon, isn't there, about that big.
Why? Why is there always a Napoleon in the fish tank? Has he got some connection with tropical fish that we don't know about? But that's another one of those great little observational comedy Holy Grails.
What you're looking for is a thing like that.
It's true, there's always Napoleons in fish tanks but no-one's noticed it before.
And those things in comedy, those Holy Grails of observational comedy - there's no Scottish women, the receipt, the Napoleon - what we call those in the trade, we call them examples of McIntyre's Speculum.
Er But there aren't any Scottish women.
There's no Scottish women.
There's men in kilts, but that's not the same thing, is it? That's just nature trying to correct itself.
There's no Scottish women.
What that means is if a Scottish man wants to breed, they have to head south of the border.
Normally they get as far as a railway station in a major English city, come outside, lie down in the gutter and hope some pollen lands on them.
That's unfair, and of course inaccurate.
Er Scots don't reproduce like that, as you know.
They, er, they in fact lay eggs.
That's right.
Despite being mammals, the Scots actually lay eggs.
Like birds! And what that means is they're the third member of a very rare class of animal.
Like the platypus and the echidna, the Scots are monotremes - mammals that lay eggs.
Monotreme, from the Greek "mono", single, and "treme", opening.
Single opening meaning that their reproductive and excretory organs are all funnelled through a single duct.
Mono-treme.
The Scots lay eggs.
Scotch eggs LAUGHTER .
.
which of course are a delicacy south of the border.
Though not in their fertilised state.
We're not barbarians, are we? Look, I haven't done I don't know what I'm talking about in there.
I made a number of generalisations for comic effect.
You're now trying to ask me to justify them.
Most people who do comedy on television are not put through this sort of rigorous "Explain yourself" grilling.
No-one asks these sort of questions of them.
I'm not trying to deconstruct your whole act.
I'm fine with most of it.
Look, just shut up, cos there's no way round it.
Look, I was None of that's true, right, I'm mucking about.
Um, and I feel sort of entitled to have a bit of fun with my ancestry, because of course as it turns out, I'm Scottish.
And I think that I always knew that I was Scottish, because, um, when I was growing up I thought I was English, remember.
When I was growing up, I'd go into school, 12, 13 years old, and people would go, "Oh, did you see the sport last night, Stew? "The English sport, with England beating someone from somewhere else "in the football or something? It was good, wasn't it?" And I'd go, "No.
" Watching the sport, the English sport, left me with a feeling of black despair.
I took nono pride in it whatsoever.
"That's weird, Stew.
"Do you not like being English? "Do you not take any pleasure in the cavalcade of English history "and all the archaeology and the castles?" And I'd go, "No.
Whenever I think about English history and English culture, "it just makes me feel Just a feeling of like, "I just want to kill myself.
I hate it.
" And they'd go, "What about the English language, Stew? The tongue of Shelley, "Shakespeare, erChaucer, Churchill? "Do you take no pride, no residual pride in the English language?" And I go, "No.
Whenever I hear someone speaking in an English accent, "I have to be physically sick.
" And I would hear myself speaking and I'd be sick as I heard myself answering the question.
So I always hated I hated being English.
And yet conversely, I always harboured secret cravings for shortbread, offal and heroin.
LAUGHTER So I think I knew all along that I was Scottish.
In my heart, in my brave heart, I knew LAUGHTER With the benefit of hindsight now, we can look back on that film, Braveheart, and see it for what it was, which was a sort of accidental cornerstone in the drive for Scottish independence, SNP guys used to be handing leaflets outside - it helped kind of crystallise a national myth.
Er But of course it is one of the worst films ever made.
It was directed by Mel Gibson, the reactionary bigot and international judge of Russian women's breasts.
And there's so many historical inaccuracies in that film.
It's a shame, really, cos it meant a lot to the Scottish people, but there's things wrong with it For example, in Braveheart, they make out that Braveheart, William Wallace, the Scottish national hero, was a kind of like an ordinary kind of bloke.
Savage kind of guy living in a mud hut.
He wasn't - he was a wealthy nobleman.
Secondly, it's not mentioned in the film, but when he was a young man, William Wallace, Braveheart, the Scottish national hero, he actually fought as a mercenary for the English.
So that's a bit weird, isn't it? That's not mentioned.
And thirdly, you might remember in that film, there's a French princess in it and William Wallace, Braveheart, has sex with her, and the implication is that she marries into the English family so the English royal line is Scots.
Um, now, that French princess, she did exist.
She was real.
But at the time of William Wallace, Braveheart, the Scottish national hero's death, she was only four years old.
LAUGHTER Now I'm not saying .
.
that William Wallace, Braveheart, the Scottish national hero, didn't have sex with her.
But if he did - and he did .
.
then it would have been a very different, a much less romantic scene, umthan the one enacted in the film Braveheart, because that would have made William Wallace, Braveheart, a paedophile.
A Scottish paedophile.
The worst kind of paedophile .
.
that there is.
Coming at you across a brae.
Shortbread all round his face.
Muttering vague sexual threats in a frankly unintelligible accent.
There's a hilarious bit of the show where you, er, talk about paedophilia.
You say that the a Scotsman being a paedophile is the worst sort of paedophile there is.
What would you say is the best sort of paedophile? Um, well, Italian, I think, because I think it's already very much in the culture.
The way that they It's all very much in the family, in the culture, isn't it, that children are always welcome anywhere, and I think Italy would be the place where there'd be most opportunities for them.
I think you're confusing broad-minded civility with paedophilia.
Another odd thing about that film, I think, when you look back on it, is, as I said, there's a lot of Mel Gibson in it.
And it sort of takes Scottish history and Scottish folklore hostage to Mel Gibson's own kind of view of the world.
In that it makes the combat between Scotland and England basically a sort of war between heterosexuals and homosexuals, if you've noticed that.
Like William Wallace in it, he's very much portrayed as this kind of macho national folk figure, whereas Edward II - I mean, he was gay, but part of the problem for Mel Gibson seems to be that not only are the English oppressing the Scots, but they're doing it in quite a gay way.
And yet of course the irony historically is that we now know that William Wallace, the Scots' national hero, was actually himself gay.
And, um we know this from a couple of things that have come out in the last few years.
First of all, about two years back they found a cache of letters in ain a nook LAUGHTER Yeah, a nook, yeah.
What's funny about that? You not have Do we not have nooks any more? Do we not? A nook.
People at home, you're comfortable with the idea of a nook, aren't you? They were in a nook, all right? The letters were in a nook, or a .
.
a cranny, if you prefer.
If you've a problem with "nook"! They were in a cranny.
Sorry, do we not say "nook" any more? Have I done something? "Yeah, Grandad, saying nook.
Showing your age.
" That's what they were in the '80s, when I was a kid.
Things were in nooks, weren't they? Put stuff in a nook, didn't you? Not now, we don't have nooks any more, Stew.
The kids are putting stuff in crannies.
They were in a nook.
It doesn't matter, does it? A cleft.
Is that all right? A cleft in the stone.
God's sake! Older people at home watching this must be thinking, "God, what is going on? "He said nook, we know what that means.
" Young people in London "Ha, he said nook, ha!" A chink, then, is that all right? A chink.
A chink's more like a crack, isn't it, it's not like a Like a nook.
A nook, that's what I meant, I'm sticking with it! You get the shows you deserve.
LAUGHTER Nook Hour.
"He's doing a show called Nook Hour.
" "What is it?" "He says 'nook' for an hour.
" "Is it funny?" "Not at first" "Then it is funny for a bit.
"Then it stops being funny.
" "Does it become funny again?" LAUGHTER "Yes!" Anyway, the reason they know that William Wallace was gay is because a few years back they found, um, a cache of letters, in, um, a nook.
In LAUGHTER .
.
in, um, Glamis Castle.
LAUGHTER Which is a real place in Scotland.
And the letters had been exchanged between William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, and they went into great detail about their feelings for one another, andand the very physical nature of their love-play.
And Then the next thing they found was a piece of graffiti, some old graffiti on an old Scottish rock, it was on the One of thethe Callanish Stones on the Isle of Lewis.
And it's possible that William Wallace went there.
And the graffiti said, "I am a gay.
" "Signed William Wallace, Braveheart.
" And the The interesting thing, the "Braveheart" bit, that was in inverted commas.
So that's how they know it was real, yeah? Cos that's what you'd do, isn't it, if it was your nickname.
You'd go, "Oh", you know.
So, um And I was talking about this on stage at the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh, a lot of people were booing and were angry, but And they're going, "Why don't we know about this?" And the reason why is because the letters and the graffiti were both written in Gaelic, and so they hadn't been translated.
And the Scottish audience were like, "They would have been translated, cos everyone speaks Gaelic.
"It's the Scottish old language.
" It isn't.
What Gaelic actually is is a very highly evolved form of medieval Scottish homosexual patois.
LAUGHTER And the clue's in the name, isn't it? "Gae" meaning "gay" and then "lic" - "language of".
The language of gays.
Er And I think it's a great thing that Scots should be proud of.
National myths are normally tied up with very macho ideas of culture - "Oh, here's our strong leader" or whatever - and I think it's great that Scotland's always been a very progressive, forward-thinking, liberal sort of country, and I think it's highly appropriate that in the 21st century their national folk hero should turn out to be gay.
I think it's great.
And I wish some of the English folk heroes had been gay.
Like, er, Robin Hood or King Alfred or Winston Churchill or something.
But they weren't.
Um And it's only William Wallace, Braveheart, the Scottish national hero, that definitely was gay.
LAUGHTER Now again, I'm just having a bit of fun, I don't mean any offence to the Scots.
I am Scots, for heaven's sake.
I'm just thinking about, you know, looking at how national myths get tied up with these kind of identities.
But, you know, fair play to the Scots.
At least their national folk heroes are real.
William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, Ossian the Bard.
The English folk heroes, there's not really any evidence for most of them.
It's sort of It's sad, isn't it? St George fought a dragon - that didn't happen, did it? Winston Churchill, there's not really any historical evidence for Winston Churchill.
Winston Churchill was a 1930s cigar marketing campaign that got out of hand.
It was a pig in a hat.
Proved so popular it eventually got elected.
I actually made a documentary about it for Channel 5.
It was originally entitled The Porcine Prime Minister, which I thought was quite good, yeah.
But before broadcast, Channel 5 changed it to Churchill Was A Pig, Says Stewart Lee: Deal With It, Fuckers.
Alan Moore is a writer, magician and expert on what his critics call justly forgotten knowledge.
And as a reckless Northamptonshire teenager in the late 1940s, Alan made an astonishing discovery.
We were just mucking around in a field as teenagers, and we came across this weird little structure that was a bunker of some sort.
Yeah.
And I later realised that this actually proved all of the rumours circulating just after the war that the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, was actually a pig with a hat on The next day, mysterious government officials sealed it up.
Today, almost 70 years later This is it.
Exactly as I remember it.
.
.
Alan returns to the Churchill Pig Bunker for the first time.
Do you think we could get in? I mean Oh, yeah.
So is this, er is this as you remember it? This is incredible, yeah.
This is pretty much as I remember it, yeah.
Let's have a look at this - the cigar campaign that got out of hand.
Well, as far as I know, it was Hamlet cigars.
This was the name of the pig.
"Ham" Yeah, it was a pun.
It worked on Well, it worked on one level.
Yeah, yeah.
Really.
But you'll notice a cigar can be held between the cleft in the hoof of the pig.
Yeah.
The other interesting thing here, you can see from it holding the cigar, is the trotters form that shape.
Exactly, yes.
It's the only gesture, the only political gesture that an animal with a cloven hoof can make.
Well, what came first? The discovery that the pig could do that, or the existence of the V for Victory gesture? That was purely based upon the fact that we had a pig as Prime Minister.
Right.
How did they get him to speak? This is a complicated mechanism of springs and pulleys.
This would actually be fitted around his mouth, his jaws, then this is connected up to this very old reel-to-reel tape recorder.
Let's have a listen to see.
And therewhat we would believe to be the voice of Churchill, presumably an actor voicing lines that could then, for publicity purposes, if the pig was being filmed, then it would appear that these words That the mouth was actually moving, yeah.
It's incredible that still works.
I mean, it's a long time now since the war.
Why do you think this place has been sealed up rather than being made into a scene of national historical importance? This is part of our heritage.
It is part of our heritage, but I don't think it's part of our heritage that we're particularly proud of.
Right.
The fact that if it wasn't for a pig, we would possibly all be speaking German.
So I like being from here, I like being British.
A lot of people don't, though.
In 2008, 427,000 people emigrated, left the country, for quality of life, going abroad.
Emigrated.
And if there's one thing I can't stand, it's emigrants.
LAUGHTER APPLAUSE Rats! Leaving the country.
Always the same places, isn't it? Former British colonies, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, United States of America.
Rats, emigrants, emigrating, going over there LAUGHTER .
.
having sex with their women, taking their money and skills.
Emigrants.
They ring you up, don't they, the emigrants, from their new home in New Vancouver Zealand Frisco.
They go, "We love it here, Stew, in the former British colony.
"Quality of life.
The quality of life is superior.
" "What do you mean? What quality of life is there, emigrant", you must ask them, "in your new former colonial home? "Is there any good news coverage there? "In the printed word, or? "Is there any news coverage you can trust in any way? "Is there any good news coverage?" "No, there's nothing like that here, Stew.
"We don't know what's going on.
"Has there been a war?" "But the quality of life here, Stew, is superb.
"You can't put a price on it.
" "What do you mean, emigrant? "Former British colony, quality of life.
Is there any, um "Is there any cultural stimulation, "any kind of good, er, documentaries or theatre, anything like that?" SMALL VOICE: "No.
"There's nothing like that here, Stew.
"It's like having your brain cut out and flung into a swamp.
" "But the quality of life here, Stew, is absolutely "You can't put a price on the quality" "What do you mean, emigrant, "quality of life in your former colonial home? "Is there any sort of, er, intellectual or social pleasure for you there "of any form?" They go, "No, there's nothing like that, Stew.
"It's like being dead.
" "But the quality of life here, Stew, "in the former British colony, it's fantastic! "You can't put a price on it.
" "What do you mean, emigrant?" Nail them down! "Quality of life, what do you mean by quality of life "in your former colonial home?" They go, "I'll tell you what I mean, Stew, by quality of life.
"I'll tell you what there is here in the former British colony, quality of life.
"There's massive prawns, Stew!" "There's massive prawns here, Stew! "In the former British colony, massive prawns! "Five times the size of your British prawns.
"Massive prawns, Stew.
" "Dear Mother, I am living in Orconto in New Canastralia, "a former British colony where, sadly, all the indigenous people "have been systematically exterminated.
"But their memory lives on "in the names of sports cars, sandwiches and juice bars.
"I am happy here, Mother! I am enjoying the quality of life here! "I have prawns! On the beach! Massive prawns! "Prawns on Christmas Day! "Prawns on New Year's Day! "Prawns on Boxing Day, prawns on Easter Sunday! "Jesus Christ in reverse.
"Massive prawns, Mother! "On the beach! In winter! "That's right, I remain unduly delighted by the fact "that being in the southern hemisphere "has changed my position relative to the sun "at specific times of the year.
"Prawns, prawns, prawns! "Prawns on my birthday, Mother.
Massive prawns.
"Five times the size of your British prawns.
"Quality of life! "Prawns! "Massive prawns! "Quality of life! "Prawns, prawns, prawns, five times the size of your British prawns, "quality of life, prawns.
" CHEERING AND APPLAUSE So what I do is I stay here, in England, and I eat five prawns.
WINSTON CHURCHILL BROADCAS .
.
of storm clouds in bloom, by the weather .
.
go to war, we shall always remember the hollow of our hearts.
We shall not weep for their women.
We shall laugh, showing confidence, showing justice in the years to come.
We shall not capitulate, whatever the cost may be.
We shall struggle on the beach head, we shall struggle in the dales and downs.
We are engaging to spare the wide world with the deficiencies of black infamy.
At the centre of all, that is uppermost in hand.
This is no sport of enslavement or empire-building, financial acquisition, nor services to close the door on any nation's delight BOMBER APPROACHES EXPLOSION AND SCREAMING .
.
solid ground, the safety of all men, we shall fight all ill, for ever and ever.
And men will still say, "This was their finest hour.
"
Who is Stewart Lee? I dunno.
The thing is, I I'm quite keen to not give anything away.
I like to be quite an anonymous figure - then I think you can talk about anything.
I don't really I don't know how to describe it.
OK.
Why is Stewart Lee? I dunno.
These are like Sunday supplement questions.
I don't know Where is Stewart Lee? Well, I'm here, but I don't I don't know where this is.
Where we live to a point defines us.
People feel like they're defined by where they live, where they're from.
Americans, for example, are very proud of being from America.
I used to love the Americans, but I went off them last year, the Americans, because of them all ganging up on the bloke from BP - do you remember? All the Americans picking on the bloke from BP about that oil slick.
It seems unfair, doesn't it, given that America is the largest consumer of oil per head in the world and they seemed annoyed with the bloke from BP for merely trying to provide them with the oil that they craved.
Americans, picking on the bloke from BP.
It's ridiculous.
It's like a furious customer punching a prostitute in the face because he's sickened by his own desire.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE Australians are very proud of being from Australia.
It's an interesting country, Australia.
In Australia it's illegal not to vote.
Australia has a compulsory democracy.
Bizarrely, it's compulsory to vote in a country where the citizens are, to be fair, perhaps least equipped to make choices.
It's not their fault! Australian life has not prepared the Australian for complex choices, cos every Australian day is like a sort of decision tree of simple binary choices.
Sleep or wake? Shorts or swimming trunks? Beach or park? Smoothie or heroin? Hepatitis or skin cancer? Up at the end of a sentenceor down.
It's very funny the way foreigners talk.
Are you going to be doing any of that? Yeah, I It's another thing makes me realise how lucky I am to be on at all.
I can't really do accents.
Cos that'sthere's a whole rich area of comedy there.
Yeah.
It's not something I've deliberately avoided, I'm just not able to really do do the voices.
Which nationality do you hate the most? Cos being Scottish and Italian, I hope you lay off of us.
HE CHUCKLES There's a bit of Italian stuff.
There's Scottish stuff There's a bit of Italian stuff in? Yeah, and Scottish stuff.
And Scottish stuff?! Yeah, but the Scottish thing, it's not really Sorry, hang on, there's a bit of There's about ten minutes on Scotland, but it's not really Ten minutes?! Yeah, but I'm not really making fun of the Scots.
What I'm trying to do is look at how It's about national folk myths.
Hang on.
You said you're not having a go at lots of nationalities, just one or two, and now you say there's ten minutes on Scots.
Well, that's because You just thought they would be funny.
Where we're from defines us, up to an extent.
National identity.
I always thought I was English, but I found out about 20 years ago that my real father is actually Scottish.
Which of course means that I'm Scottish, because as you know, Scottishness is passed on through the male genes.
Like a disease.
It overwhelms all female chromosomes.
And that's why there are no Scottish women.
There aren't, are there? It's a funny thing.
You think about it.
You think, "Oh, there are," but there aren't! Do you know any? No! There's no Scottish women.
There's people sitting at home thinking, "Hang on! I'm a Scottish woman!" You aren't, right? There's none.
There's no Scottish women.
And I'm really proud of having noticed that, cos that's one of those classic bits of observational comedy, I think.
It is.
What you're sort of looking for in observational comedy is a thing that is across the board true, that no-one's really noticed before.
Like the fact that there's no Scottish women.
I'll give you another I'll give you another example of an absolute bulletproof piece of observational comedy I've thought about.
It's like Receipts, what are they all about, right? What's the The five most terrifying words in the English language.
"Would you like a receipt?" "Er, why?" "Proof of purchase, sir.
" "I don't need it, I've got the thing here.
I know I've bought it.
" It's mad, innit, receipts? Proof of purchase? I've got the thing! Here! And that's another one of those things that's true, isn't it, and no-one's thought about it.
It's there.
One of those things that's generally true.
That's kind of the Holy Grail of observational comedy.
Another thing like that.
When you look in fish tanks, right, tropical fish tanks, in the dentist's or in someone's house or in a zoo aquarium or something, why's there always, at the bottom of the fish tank in the gravel, a little tiny statue of Napoleon? Have you noticed that? There is, isn't there? You think about it, in the In the fish tanks, the tropical fish tanks, there's always a tiny Napoleon, isn't there, about that big.
Why? Why is there always a Napoleon in the fish tank? Has he got some connection with tropical fish that we don't know about? But that's another one of those great little observational comedy Holy Grails.
What you're looking for is a thing like that.
It's true, there's always Napoleons in fish tanks but no-one's noticed it before.
And those things in comedy, those Holy Grails of observational comedy - there's no Scottish women, the receipt, the Napoleon - what we call those in the trade, we call them examples of McIntyre's Speculum.
Er But there aren't any Scottish women.
There's no Scottish women.
There's men in kilts, but that's not the same thing, is it? That's just nature trying to correct itself.
There's no Scottish women.
What that means is if a Scottish man wants to breed, they have to head south of the border.
Normally they get as far as a railway station in a major English city, come outside, lie down in the gutter and hope some pollen lands on them.
That's unfair, and of course inaccurate.
Er Scots don't reproduce like that, as you know.
They, er, they in fact lay eggs.
That's right.
Despite being mammals, the Scots actually lay eggs.
Like birds! And what that means is they're the third member of a very rare class of animal.
Like the platypus and the echidna, the Scots are monotremes - mammals that lay eggs.
Monotreme, from the Greek "mono", single, and "treme", opening.
Single opening meaning that their reproductive and excretory organs are all funnelled through a single duct.
Mono-treme.
The Scots lay eggs.
Scotch eggs LAUGHTER .
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which of course are a delicacy south of the border.
Though not in their fertilised state.
We're not barbarians, are we? Look, I haven't done I don't know what I'm talking about in there.
I made a number of generalisations for comic effect.
You're now trying to ask me to justify them.
Most people who do comedy on television are not put through this sort of rigorous "Explain yourself" grilling.
No-one asks these sort of questions of them.
I'm not trying to deconstruct your whole act.
I'm fine with most of it.
Look, just shut up, cos there's no way round it.
Look, I was None of that's true, right, I'm mucking about.
Um, and I feel sort of entitled to have a bit of fun with my ancestry, because of course as it turns out, I'm Scottish.
And I think that I always knew that I was Scottish, because, um, when I was growing up I thought I was English, remember.
When I was growing up, I'd go into school, 12, 13 years old, and people would go, "Oh, did you see the sport last night, Stew? "The English sport, with England beating someone from somewhere else "in the football or something? It was good, wasn't it?" And I'd go, "No.
" Watching the sport, the English sport, left me with a feeling of black despair.
I took nono pride in it whatsoever.
"That's weird, Stew.
"Do you not like being English? "Do you not take any pleasure in the cavalcade of English history "and all the archaeology and the castles?" And I'd go, "No.
Whenever I think about English history and English culture, "it just makes me feel Just a feeling of like, "I just want to kill myself.
I hate it.
" And they'd go, "What about the English language, Stew? The tongue of Shelley, "Shakespeare, erChaucer, Churchill? "Do you take no pride, no residual pride in the English language?" And I go, "No.
Whenever I hear someone speaking in an English accent, "I have to be physically sick.
" And I would hear myself speaking and I'd be sick as I heard myself answering the question.
So I always hated I hated being English.
And yet conversely, I always harboured secret cravings for shortbread, offal and heroin.
LAUGHTER So I think I knew all along that I was Scottish.
In my heart, in my brave heart, I knew LAUGHTER With the benefit of hindsight now, we can look back on that film, Braveheart, and see it for what it was, which was a sort of accidental cornerstone in the drive for Scottish independence, SNP guys used to be handing leaflets outside - it helped kind of crystallise a national myth.
Er But of course it is one of the worst films ever made.
It was directed by Mel Gibson, the reactionary bigot and international judge of Russian women's breasts.
And there's so many historical inaccuracies in that film.
It's a shame, really, cos it meant a lot to the Scottish people, but there's things wrong with it For example, in Braveheart, they make out that Braveheart, William Wallace, the Scottish national hero, was a kind of like an ordinary kind of bloke.
Savage kind of guy living in a mud hut.
He wasn't - he was a wealthy nobleman.
Secondly, it's not mentioned in the film, but when he was a young man, William Wallace, Braveheart, the Scottish national hero, he actually fought as a mercenary for the English.
So that's a bit weird, isn't it? That's not mentioned.
And thirdly, you might remember in that film, there's a French princess in it and William Wallace, Braveheart, has sex with her, and the implication is that she marries into the English family so the English royal line is Scots.
Um, now, that French princess, she did exist.
She was real.
But at the time of William Wallace, Braveheart, the Scottish national hero's death, she was only four years old.
LAUGHTER Now I'm not saying .
.
that William Wallace, Braveheart, the Scottish national hero, didn't have sex with her.
But if he did - and he did .
.
then it would have been a very different, a much less romantic scene, umthan the one enacted in the film Braveheart, because that would have made William Wallace, Braveheart, a paedophile.
A Scottish paedophile.
The worst kind of paedophile .
.
that there is.
Coming at you across a brae.
Shortbread all round his face.
Muttering vague sexual threats in a frankly unintelligible accent.
There's a hilarious bit of the show where you, er, talk about paedophilia.
You say that the a Scotsman being a paedophile is the worst sort of paedophile there is.
What would you say is the best sort of paedophile? Um, well, Italian, I think, because I think it's already very much in the culture.
The way that they It's all very much in the family, in the culture, isn't it, that children are always welcome anywhere, and I think Italy would be the place where there'd be most opportunities for them.
I think you're confusing broad-minded civility with paedophilia.
Another odd thing about that film, I think, when you look back on it, is, as I said, there's a lot of Mel Gibson in it.
And it sort of takes Scottish history and Scottish folklore hostage to Mel Gibson's own kind of view of the world.
In that it makes the combat between Scotland and England basically a sort of war between heterosexuals and homosexuals, if you've noticed that.
Like William Wallace in it, he's very much portrayed as this kind of macho national folk figure, whereas Edward II - I mean, he was gay, but part of the problem for Mel Gibson seems to be that not only are the English oppressing the Scots, but they're doing it in quite a gay way.
And yet of course the irony historically is that we now know that William Wallace, the Scots' national hero, was actually himself gay.
And, um we know this from a couple of things that have come out in the last few years.
First of all, about two years back they found a cache of letters in ain a nook LAUGHTER Yeah, a nook, yeah.
What's funny about that? You not have Do we not have nooks any more? Do we not? A nook.
People at home, you're comfortable with the idea of a nook, aren't you? They were in a nook, all right? The letters were in a nook, or a .
.
a cranny, if you prefer.
If you've a problem with "nook"! They were in a cranny.
Sorry, do we not say "nook" any more? Have I done something? "Yeah, Grandad, saying nook.
Showing your age.
" That's what they were in the '80s, when I was a kid.
Things were in nooks, weren't they? Put stuff in a nook, didn't you? Not now, we don't have nooks any more, Stew.
The kids are putting stuff in crannies.
They were in a nook.
It doesn't matter, does it? A cleft.
Is that all right? A cleft in the stone.
God's sake! Older people at home watching this must be thinking, "God, what is going on? "He said nook, we know what that means.
" Young people in London "Ha, he said nook, ha!" A chink, then, is that all right? A chink.
A chink's more like a crack, isn't it, it's not like a Like a nook.
A nook, that's what I meant, I'm sticking with it! You get the shows you deserve.
LAUGHTER Nook Hour.
"He's doing a show called Nook Hour.
" "What is it?" "He says 'nook' for an hour.
" "Is it funny?" "Not at first" "Then it is funny for a bit.
"Then it stops being funny.
" "Does it become funny again?" LAUGHTER "Yes!" Anyway, the reason they know that William Wallace was gay is because a few years back they found, um, a cache of letters, in, um, a nook.
In LAUGHTER .
.
in, um, Glamis Castle.
LAUGHTER Which is a real place in Scotland.
And the letters had been exchanged between William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, and they went into great detail about their feelings for one another, andand the very physical nature of their love-play.
And Then the next thing they found was a piece of graffiti, some old graffiti on an old Scottish rock, it was on the One of thethe Callanish Stones on the Isle of Lewis.
And it's possible that William Wallace went there.
And the graffiti said, "I am a gay.
" "Signed William Wallace, Braveheart.
" And the The interesting thing, the "Braveheart" bit, that was in inverted commas.
So that's how they know it was real, yeah? Cos that's what you'd do, isn't it, if it was your nickname.
You'd go, "Oh", you know.
So, um And I was talking about this on stage at the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh, a lot of people were booing and were angry, but And they're going, "Why don't we know about this?" And the reason why is because the letters and the graffiti were both written in Gaelic, and so they hadn't been translated.
And the Scottish audience were like, "They would have been translated, cos everyone speaks Gaelic.
"It's the Scottish old language.
" It isn't.
What Gaelic actually is is a very highly evolved form of medieval Scottish homosexual patois.
LAUGHTER And the clue's in the name, isn't it? "Gae" meaning "gay" and then "lic" - "language of".
The language of gays.
Er And I think it's a great thing that Scots should be proud of.
National myths are normally tied up with very macho ideas of culture - "Oh, here's our strong leader" or whatever - and I think it's great that Scotland's always been a very progressive, forward-thinking, liberal sort of country, and I think it's highly appropriate that in the 21st century their national folk hero should turn out to be gay.
I think it's great.
And I wish some of the English folk heroes had been gay.
Like, er, Robin Hood or King Alfred or Winston Churchill or something.
But they weren't.
Um And it's only William Wallace, Braveheart, the Scottish national hero, that definitely was gay.
LAUGHTER Now again, I'm just having a bit of fun, I don't mean any offence to the Scots.
I am Scots, for heaven's sake.
I'm just thinking about, you know, looking at how national myths get tied up with these kind of identities.
But, you know, fair play to the Scots.
At least their national folk heroes are real.
William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, Ossian the Bard.
The English folk heroes, there's not really any evidence for most of them.
It's sort of It's sad, isn't it? St George fought a dragon - that didn't happen, did it? Winston Churchill, there's not really any historical evidence for Winston Churchill.
Winston Churchill was a 1930s cigar marketing campaign that got out of hand.
It was a pig in a hat.
Proved so popular it eventually got elected.
I actually made a documentary about it for Channel 5.
It was originally entitled The Porcine Prime Minister, which I thought was quite good, yeah.
But before broadcast, Channel 5 changed it to Churchill Was A Pig, Says Stewart Lee: Deal With It, Fuckers.
Alan Moore is a writer, magician and expert on what his critics call justly forgotten knowledge.
And as a reckless Northamptonshire teenager in the late 1940s, Alan made an astonishing discovery.
We were just mucking around in a field as teenagers, and we came across this weird little structure that was a bunker of some sort.
Yeah.
And I later realised that this actually proved all of the rumours circulating just after the war that the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, was actually a pig with a hat on The next day, mysterious government officials sealed it up.
Today, almost 70 years later This is it.
Exactly as I remember it.
.
.
Alan returns to the Churchill Pig Bunker for the first time.
Do you think we could get in? I mean Oh, yeah.
So is this, er is this as you remember it? This is incredible, yeah.
This is pretty much as I remember it, yeah.
Let's have a look at this - the cigar campaign that got out of hand.
Well, as far as I know, it was Hamlet cigars.
This was the name of the pig.
"Ham" Yeah, it was a pun.
It worked on Well, it worked on one level.
Yeah, yeah.
Really.
But you'll notice a cigar can be held between the cleft in the hoof of the pig.
Yeah.
The other interesting thing here, you can see from it holding the cigar, is the trotters form that shape.
Exactly, yes.
It's the only gesture, the only political gesture that an animal with a cloven hoof can make.
Well, what came first? The discovery that the pig could do that, or the existence of the V for Victory gesture? That was purely based upon the fact that we had a pig as Prime Minister.
Right.
How did they get him to speak? This is a complicated mechanism of springs and pulleys.
This would actually be fitted around his mouth, his jaws, then this is connected up to this very old reel-to-reel tape recorder.
Let's have a listen to see.
And therewhat we would believe to be the voice of Churchill, presumably an actor voicing lines that could then, for publicity purposes, if the pig was being filmed, then it would appear that these words That the mouth was actually moving, yeah.
It's incredible that still works.
I mean, it's a long time now since the war.
Why do you think this place has been sealed up rather than being made into a scene of national historical importance? This is part of our heritage.
It is part of our heritage, but I don't think it's part of our heritage that we're particularly proud of.
Right.
The fact that if it wasn't for a pig, we would possibly all be speaking German.
So I like being from here, I like being British.
A lot of people don't, though.
In 2008, 427,000 people emigrated, left the country, for quality of life, going abroad.
Emigrated.
And if there's one thing I can't stand, it's emigrants.
LAUGHTER APPLAUSE Rats! Leaving the country.
Always the same places, isn't it? Former British colonies, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, United States of America.
Rats, emigrants, emigrating, going over there LAUGHTER .
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having sex with their women, taking their money and skills.
Emigrants.
They ring you up, don't they, the emigrants, from their new home in New Vancouver Zealand Frisco.
They go, "We love it here, Stew, in the former British colony.
"Quality of life.
The quality of life is superior.
" "What do you mean? What quality of life is there, emigrant", you must ask them, "in your new former colonial home? "Is there any good news coverage there? "In the printed word, or? "Is there any news coverage you can trust in any way? "Is there any good news coverage?" "No, there's nothing like that here, Stew.
"We don't know what's going on.
"Has there been a war?" "But the quality of life here, Stew, is superb.
"You can't put a price on it.
" "What do you mean, emigrant? "Former British colony, quality of life.
Is there any, um "Is there any cultural stimulation, "any kind of good, er, documentaries or theatre, anything like that?" SMALL VOICE: "No.
"There's nothing like that here, Stew.
"It's like having your brain cut out and flung into a swamp.
" "But the quality of life here, Stew, is absolutely "You can't put a price on the quality" "What do you mean, emigrant, "quality of life in your former colonial home? "Is there any sort of, er, intellectual or social pleasure for you there "of any form?" They go, "No, there's nothing like that, Stew.
"It's like being dead.
" "But the quality of life here, Stew, "in the former British colony, it's fantastic! "You can't put a price on it.
" "What do you mean, emigrant?" Nail them down! "Quality of life, what do you mean by quality of life "in your former colonial home?" They go, "I'll tell you what I mean, Stew, by quality of life.
"I'll tell you what there is here in the former British colony, quality of life.
"There's massive prawns, Stew!" "There's massive prawns here, Stew! "In the former British colony, massive prawns! "Five times the size of your British prawns.
"Massive prawns, Stew.
" "Dear Mother, I am living in Orconto in New Canastralia, "a former British colony where, sadly, all the indigenous people "have been systematically exterminated.
"But their memory lives on "in the names of sports cars, sandwiches and juice bars.
"I am happy here, Mother! I am enjoying the quality of life here! "I have prawns! On the beach! Massive prawns! "Prawns on Christmas Day! "Prawns on New Year's Day! "Prawns on Boxing Day, prawns on Easter Sunday! "Jesus Christ in reverse.
"Massive prawns, Mother! "On the beach! In winter! "That's right, I remain unduly delighted by the fact "that being in the southern hemisphere "has changed my position relative to the sun "at specific times of the year.
"Prawns, prawns, prawns! "Prawns on my birthday, Mother.
Massive prawns.
"Five times the size of your British prawns.
"Quality of life! "Prawns! "Massive prawns! "Quality of life! "Prawns, prawns, prawns, five times the size of your British prawns, "quality of life, prawns.
" CHEERING AND APPLAUSE So what I do is I stay here, in England, and I eat five prawns.
WINSTON CHURCHILL BROADCAS .
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of storm clouds in bloom, by the weather .
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go to war, we shall always remember the hollow of our hearts.
We shall not weep for their women.
We shall laugh, showing confidence, showing justice in the years to come.
We shall not capitulate, whatever the cost may be.
We shall struggle on the beach head, we shall struggle in the dales and downs.
We are engaging to spare the wide world with the deficiencies of black infamy.
At the centre of all, that is uppermost in hand.
This is no sport of enslavement or empire-building, financial acquisition, nor services to close the door on any nation's delight BOMBER APPROACHES EXPLOSION AND SCREAMING .
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solid ground, the safety of all men, we shall fight all ill, for ever and ever.
And men will still say, "This was their finest hour.
"