The insights of Stewart Lee feature regularly on here. Last week he did a wonderful guest slot of three programmes on Radio 3’s Late Junction (starting here):

Now who doesn’t like Czechoslovakian Communist-era free jazz…

And I now find a rich archive of his TV series Comedy vehicle on the BBC website. Among all the treasures there, I am most taken with his take on St George’s Day in the England episode (Bring it back, BBC!)—pursuing his bête noire of Paul Nuttall and the UKIPs.

As ever, he reformulates motifs from previous work, just like Bach and Miles Davis [fine new submission for Pseuds’ corner—Ed.]. But what I respectfully wish to submit [m’lud] is the passage from 20.31. He goes on (and on, and on):

[Nuttall is] only trying as best he can to ensure the future domestic prosperity of Bulgaria—I don’t doubt that for a minute. […]

I live here, in the People’s Republic of Hackney, in northeast London. It’s very culturally diverse (not really in this audience). I’ve had kids at nursery and playgroup here. And what they do at the nurseries and playgroups in Hackney, they celebrate all the different kids’ festivals and cultural events in what you might call a logical, sensitive, and pragmatic approach to cultural diversity… “gone mad”. They celebrate Christian Christmas, Chinese New Year, Muslim Michaelmas, Atheist April Fool’s Day, Pantheists’ Pancake Day, Odinist Oatcake Day, and Lesbian Gay and Bisexual Harvest Festival […]

But, EDL members and Daily Telegraph readers relax—they do celebrate St George’s Day as well. On St George’s Day they told me I had to send my little two-year-old girl into the Hackney playgroup dressed in traditional English costume. So I sent her in dressed as a 1970s’ English football hooligan, with a cross of St George and all swastikas drawn on her face… and I had her drunk on Special Brew, and high on amphetamines… I gave her sharpened coins to throw at horses, and I had her shouting,
“I’m English, I’m English! Wanna make something of it?”

Now, that led to a misunderstanding… and the police became involved. “Apparently if you say you’re English these days you get arrested and thrown in jail…”

The dénouement there refers back to his exchange with a taxi driver:

The bigoted taxi driver has long been a regular guest in his routines, as here.

I do appreciate that I will now look like the worst kind of BBC liberal apologist idiot if you’re all sitting at home watching this dubbed into Bulgarian. With Romanian subtitles.

All this ploughs a somewhat different furrow from that of The Archers. For more on being English, see here.