Stewart Lee

And then when you see their shows, there are a load of little bits stuck together.

They don't often... And in fact, some of the theatre managers have been saying this to me on this tour.

They go, that was really refreshing to see a finished work because we get these people coming and it's just lots of bits.

There's lots of bits for 50 minutes and then it stops.

But that is from the past.

It's not going to be the way that people write.

comedy in the future was a kind of little blip because people are generating those little bits.

People see them in little bits.

So I think the idea of the comedian as an auteur, as the author of their own thing is probably not as important to people as it used to be.

But it was important to me and it made me feel... One thing I share with the character of Stuart Lee

is I'm a kind of intellectual snob.

And I think I wanted to feel that I was working in a valid art form.

That's why I ended up going to the southwest of America, to the deserts, and trying to see the Native American clowns in Taos or the Hopi Reservation because I wanted to see

comedy that had a purpose and a function and was on some level sacred.

I think it was important to me to feel that I was in some kind of tradition that was worthwhile as I'd become so disillusioned.

So that's why the being a writer part of it was important to me, I think.

But whatever other people want to do, it's up to them really.

I'm not the police.

How's your health?

A lot better than it was.