Stewart Lee
Stewart Lee was born in 1968 in Shropshire but grew up in Solihull. He started out on the stand-up comedy circuit in London in 1989, and started to work out whatever it was he was trying to do zoo after the turn of the century. He has written and performed four series of his own stand-up show on BBC2, had shows on at the Edinburgh fringe for 28 of the last 30 years, and has the last six of his full length stand-up shows out on DVD/download/whatever. He is the writer or co-writer of five theatre pieces and two art installations, a number of radio series, three books about comedy and a bad novel. He lives in Stoke Newington, North London with his wife, also a comedian, and two children. He was enrolled in the literary society The Friends of Arthur Machen by Alan Moore, and is a regular, if disguised, presence on London's volunteer-fronted arts radio station Resonance 104.4 fm. His favourite comics book characters are Deathlok The Demolisher, Howard The Duck, Conan The Barbarian, Concrete and The Thing. His favourite bands/musicians are The Fall, Giant Sand, Dave Graney, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Bob Dylan, The Byrds and Shirley Collins. His favourite filmmakers are Sergio Leone, Sergio Corbucci, Andrew Kotting, Hal Hartley, and Akira Kurowsa. His favourite writers are Arthur Machen, William Blake, Ian Sinclair, Alan Moore, Stan Lee, Ray Bradbury, DH Lawrence, Thomas Hardy, Philip Larkin, Richard Brautigan, Geoff Dyer, Neil M Gunn, Francis Brett Young, and Eric Linklater and Robert E Howard.