Had you been fortunate enough to be roaming around the Glastonbury Festival at about 2:25pm on Friday the 25th June 1999, and had you read your program correctly and realised that the best place to be was the Cabaret tent, then you just might have seen hilarious comedian Tucker Jenkins (with a very distinctive Mark Fowler haircut) Live. Oh sorry, I meant Stuart Lee. My mistake. Yes that's right, it was Stuart Lee live.
And bloody good he was too!
Having arrived at the tent a little over ˝ an hour before the show was due to start, I was able to safely secure my place to watch Stu; at the front of the crowd of standing people, in the shade, with a good view. And the stage was not at all far away, even had you been sat right at the back of the audience.
So anyway, I waited for a bit and watched some act that involved a bunch of foolish people just basically hitting some drums for far too long completely oblivious to the fact that they were crap, before eventually on came Stuart Lee.
Unlike the television, where Stu is made up to look very smart and perhaps even "stupidly cool" as Richard Herring once put it, in his collar and shirt etc, today Stu made his entrance wearing a pair of jeans, a T-shirt and smoking a cigarette.
Impressed to find that 99.9% of all jokes made were completely new and funny material (to me at least), and any material that I had already heard had been expanded on a great deal and still made for very amusing stuff, I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the show. And before now I hadn't ever seen Stu performing on his own before, so I was very interested to see how this would go.
Despite the complete and utter total twat who took it upon himself to display his utter devotion to being a fully paid up hardcore fan to the WANKERS society by having no consideration for anybody but himself and standing up and abruptly shouting a load of bollocks to his mate at the top of his voice, which would have blatantly been off putting to anyone, Stu continued to carryout the show with hardly any hesitation at all.
And then again later after another joke of Stu's which was worth a giggle, some other bloke, obviously another religious follower of the W.S., found it necessary to completely go over the top and shout out some pathetic exaggerative laugh, just to prove that he was cool and a big hard man for not enjoying the show. This was replied to by Stu making a witty quip along the lines of "Hmmm, one man over the found that joke funny. I wonder if it was sarcasm or not!?"., followed by laughter, inevitably making the other guy look stupid.
After the show, Stu disappears back through the curtains and a guy comes on to introduce the next act. I believe his words were something along the lines of this…
"Ladies and Gentlemen, give a huge round of applause for Stuart Lee!!!!! And for the next act today we've got…erm.. (notices literally about 40% of the people there get up and leave the tent).. er we've got.. (goes quiet for a few seconds). Don't go!! Please! Look there's more to come please don't go!!!! COME BACK!!"
Blatantly the majority of people had just gone the Cabaret Tent to watch Stu, and then left again. HA HA HA!
And as I was leaving I just caught a little bit of the next act who began by saying to the remaining few people in the tent "Stuart who? - We don't need him." Twat. But, to be fair I never stayed around to give him a chance so who's to know, - he might have been good I suppose. But he would have had to be to follow Stuart Lee.