BBC2 pilot for Stewart Lee

Mix of stand-up and sketches

Stewart Lee is working on a new stand-up show for BBC Two.

He says he wants the show to be like Dave Allen’s old programmes, which mixed monologues with sketches.

The corporation has ordered a pilot episode, to be recorded late next month, pending a decision to commission a full series.

By coincidence, part of Lee’s current live show is about how earlier plans to make the pilot were axed because of ‘internal politics’.

‘But, after I’d written the new show and was performing it, they decided due to internal politics to put it back on the slate again,’ Lee said in an interview on Chortle today. ‘If it gets made, it’ll make it look like I was lying in the new show.

‘But I made sure I got a contract this time, and we’re filming at the end of November – just a one-off pilot. If they like that, there’ll be a series.

‘Hopefully, it’ll be a stand-up show with some sketches in it. I want to do something like the old Dave Allen shows, really.’

‘It’s kind of weird – I’d love to get the series because I’d love to see if you could make proper stand-up work on telly, and also because I’ve just had a baby and it’d be really nice to get paid and then we could get an bigger flat with an extra room for him to sleep in.

‘If the pilot gets commissioned, that would solve all my financial worries in the short-term and allow me to do more interesting things. But it’s out of my hands, it’s in the lap of some blokes in suits.’

Click here to read the full interview.

Published: 17 Oct 2007

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