A Review By Keith Smith

Experience how it feels to be the subject of a blasphemy prosecution! Find out why ‘wool’ is a funny word! See how jokes work, their inner mechanisms revealed, before your astonished face! In 2001, after over a decade in the business, Stewart Lee quit stand-up, disillusioned and drained, and went off to direct a loss-making opera about Jerry Springer.

“How I Escaped My Certain Fate” details his return to live performance, and the journey that took him from an early retirement to his position as the most critically acclaimed stand-up in Britain. Here is Stewart Lee’s own account of his remarkable comeback, told through transcripts of the three legendary full-length shows that sealed his reputation.

Astonishingly frank and detailed in-depth notes reveal the inspiration and inner workings of his act. With unprecedented access to a leading comedian’s creative process, this book tell us just what it was like to write these shows, develop the performance and take them on tour. “How I Escaped My Certain Fate” is everything we have come to expect from Stewart Lee: fiercely intelligent, unsparingly honest and very funny.

I can’t disagree with any of the above. I saw the book climbing the charts and thought I better have a look, somebody is bound to ask about it. I started at the beginning where the boring bits in biographies are usually located, and was drawn inexorably deeper. I was soon for instance reading the whole of his stand-up routine in Glasgow, trying to imagine how he was going to get a laugh for treating 9/11 as a subject of comedy, and talking about things in general straight as a die, seeming to go nowhere, when I was caught. I would love to have been there. Not only is the man a comedian he is also a thinker and a philosopher, and Glasgow loved him. The extensive footnotes and explanations are truly astonsishing, as are his views on other comedians. This is the book you didn’t know you wanted to read…it’s terrific.