Stewart Lee: Carpet Remnant World Page #6

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(LAUGHTER)

Trying to get out, you know.

It's an interesting problem.

It's not fun, is it?

Hundred and fifty nights and I...

You know, I used to like that

in the '80s, going around,

but now, everywhere is the same,

you know.

Sheffield is quite interesting.

It keeps changing.

It'll be nice when you've decided

what it's supposed to be, I think.

(LAUGHTER)

That place, The Park,

I remember when that was awful.

That's brilliant now, isn't it?

You know, you never know...

But most places are just...

They're all the same now.

There's an old bit

that was like a Victorian slum,

that's now the bit

everyone wants to live in.

Then there's a '70s bit that was

the bit everyone liked in the '70s

is now the bit everyone hates.

And in that bit, there's a

Poundland,

a Superdrug

and a branch of The Works.

(LAUGHTER)

In every town.

And The Works, to be honest,

that's the only thing to me

that's interesting

about travelling around Britain now,

going in The Works.

Because you never have any idea

what's gonna be in The Works.

(LAUGHTER)

Sort of stocked at random.

(LAUGHTER)

It's nominally a bookshop,

but it appears to be run by people who

have a deep-seated suspicion of books.

(LAUGHTER)

And they'll do anything they can to

stock anything other than a book.

(LAUGHTER)

You go in The Works,

"Is this a bookshop?" "Yes."

"Have you got Ragnarok, by A.S. Byatt.

It's won lots of awards?" "No."

(LAUGHTER)

"Have you got this new book,

Savage Continent,

"about the aftermath of World War II?

It's been..." "No, no."

"Have you got any novels by Dan

Rhodes? He has a new novel out.

"A novelist.

Everyone thinks he's good."

"No."

"Have you got a triple pack

of 1930s Belgian horror films,

(LAUGHTER)

"A 1998 Richard Bacon calendar,

(LAUGHTER)

"And a papier-mach Make Your

Own Concentration Camp craft book?

(LAUGHTER)

"Oh, we've got them, yeah.

"And they're on a three for

the price of two offer at the moment."

Apart from The Works,

going around the country is just...

Going back to the same places

year after year, it makes you feel...

Twenty-five years

makes you think about

your own mortality, your own life.

I'll give you an example

of what I mean.

My dad, for example.

My dad is dead now,

but my dad was a rep

for a cardboard company.

And he spent 50 years driving around

the motorways,

showing people samples of cardboard.

Not real cardboard, obviously.

Samples of what cardboard

could be like.

(LAUGHTER)

I think about him, I think about me.

I've spent 25 years

driving around the motorways

showing people samples of jokes.

(LAUGHTER)

Not, er...

(LAUGHTER)

Do you see how impossible it is to

work this room? Because I... No...

You can't because...

Down here, I don't even need

to finish that joke off. They...

They've thought,

"Oh, yeah, samples of jokes.

"That will be the same

as samples of cardboard.

"Samples of what jokes could be like."

But up there, you're just going,

"Why is he talking about cardboard?"

It's actually not do-able.

(LAUGHTER)

There's very...

Because down here,

this is like a vision of a...

This is what it could be like,

you know?

(LAUGHTER)

Where you don't...

You're not like some dick,

like, doing jokes, you're

just putting an idea out there

and they play around with it

and it comes back to you.

It's like a dialogue, like a vision

of a Utopian... And then up there...

(LAUGHTER)

It's never gonna be that because of...

it's extremely fru... Particularly

tonight, it's frustrating

that this would happen

when it's being filmed,

because you can feel...

This could be the best...

It is within sight of being

the best standup

that's ever been filmed.

(LAUGHTER)

But it won't be because

about a third of the room...

That's why I came back here.

I love this theatre. This is the...

Two or three years ago this was

the biggest room I'd ever played.

I thought, "I'll go to Sheffield,

I'll do it there."

And it's not... it's...

What's so frustrating,

twenty-five years and I have been...

Every year, I build up,

getting them people.

I don't know what's gone wrong.

I don't know what's gone wrong.

(LAUGHTER)

You can feel, down here,

it's like a different thing.

You can feel down here.

I wish I was dead.

(LAUGHTER)

Not dead.

I wish I was a dead comedian.

Because you love dead comedians,

don't you, all of you.

You love the dead comedians,

don't you?

Oh, Frank Carson. Oh, dead.

Brilliant, Frank Carson. He's dead.

Oh, Ken Goodwin. Oh, dead

Ken Goodwin. Oh, he's brilliant.

The middle class people.

Oh, dead Bill Hicks. Oh, Bill Hicks.

Dead Bill Hicks.

Oh, he was brilliant.

I wish I was dead Bill Hicks.

(LAUGHTER)

I wish I could be judged

on two hours of material.

(LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE)

Lazy, dead, fat Bill Hicks.

It'd be easy to be dead Bill...

it's easy being dead.

(LAUGHTER)

The hard thing, if you're a comedian,

is to stay alive.

(LAUGHTER)

People knocking out

a new two hours every year,

gradually decreasing

the quality of your own obituary.

(LAUGHTER)

This is an incredibly

frustrating situation for the...

To be filming tonight

and to have this...

It makes me feel impotent, you know.

Powerless. No control.

Of course, my wife wants me

to have a vasectomy.

(LAUGHTER)

Though even she admits

there isn't really any pressing need.

(LAUGHTER)

(LAUGHTER CONTINUES, APPLAUSE)

Do you feel...

When you've been married

a long time, anyone,

do you feel that your partner stops

viewing you as a sexual being?

Do you find that?

Sheffield?

(LAUGHTER)

I do.

(LAUGHTER)

As an example of what I mean,

I've been married seven years.

Six years ago,

we'd been married a year.

I went off to work in Germany

for two months.

And while I was there

I ran out of pants, yeah?

Now like a lot of men, I don't really

know where my pants come from.

(LAUGHTER)

I always seem to have some,

but I don't remember ever buying any.

(LAUGHTER)

So I bought some pants in Hannover.

German pants.

Blue pants with yellow stars on them.

I got back to London, one year of

marriage, and my wife said to me,

"You bought new pants.

Are you having an affair?"

(LAUGHTER)

Which is funny but it's also...

it's good.

Because within that is the suggestion

that I could have an affair.

That someone could desire me,

that I could desire someone

as a sexual being in her eyes.

Six years later,

seven years of marriage,

I've been on this tour for months.

I ran out of pants.

I bought some new pants

in Lincoln, I think.

Lincoln pants.

(LAUGHTER)

Green ones, you know.

(LAUGHTER)

They didn't have any other colours.

(LAUGHTER)

It hides the stains, doesn't it?

Of my urine, which is green

for the purposes of this...

(LAUGHTER)

I got some new pants,

six years of marriage later,

seven years of marriage.

And my wife said,

"Oh, you've bought new pants.

"Did you sh*t yourself at work?"

(LAUGHTER)

It doesn't give me any pleasure

to get such big laughs off a...

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