There are timeless pieces of culture - even though most timeless pieces are in themselves of a particular time.

Stewart Lee - Content Provider.

(Few things are as tragic as the youtube ads for Michael Mcintyre shown over this video. It's like you're driving a Bugatti Veyron, when you're held up by a human billboard, advertising a great deal on a 1986 Lada Samara, burnt out in a ditch on the side of the highway.)

If you haven’t watched the above video, which is from Stewart Lee’s show “content provider” then watch it now. They go ahead and buy all of his works. And come back when you’ve done so.

Ok, I’m continuing now on the assumption that you have gone head and bought all of Mr Lee’s work, as this discussion will not be conducted in “talk like a pirate”-ese, me hearties, and you will miss the point entirely. I’m also assuming that you have watched the above video, possibly more than once, as there are definitely “spoilers” ahead, if you haven’t watched it.

Ideally you’ve watched it about 3 times.

I like this piece of work so much that I’m willing to analyse it to death and remove all possible ability for myself and anyone who reads this essay to ever watch it again with cherry eyed amusement. Instead you will watch it through the same cynical cloud of half baked mismatched critical theory in which I intend to now wallow.

There are always, always levels with Stewart’s work. To be fair, there are levels with all jokes — there is the false belief conjured prior to the punchline, and the actual belief revealed within the punchline. But with Stewart’s work there is always at least one more layer than that, sometimes more. And for this technique to be effective he needs the audience to put in some extra work. Not a lot of extra work. They don’t need to write a 10,000 words essay on his humour — that would be insane and only an idiot would even consider doing that. But he wants you to be at least 1 and preferably 2 steps ahead of where a regular comedy listener is expected to be.

There’s a particular line, not too far into this piece where he claims that some people are laughing at things that aren’t even there. This is pure genius — and this is the wink to those who get it, that they are indeed picking up on something that is intended to be there, but which the character Stewart Lee portrays is allegedly, himself, not getting.

One of the unspoken beliefs which Stewart intends to create during this piece is quite simple: “S.Lee has a urine fetish,” — or at a slightly deeper level. “S Lee has a urine fetish but is not aware that he has a urine fetish.” Than at a deeper level again, this becomes, “you, the audience are expected to realise, that S.Lee is aware that you are expected to think that he is oblivious to this ragingly obvious urine fetish that is the simplest explanation behind this entire story, but in actual fact,