Faber & Faber, 1 June 2017

Pb, 320 pp

Over the last five years, often when David Mitchell has been on holiday, the comedian Stewart Lee has been attempting to understand modern Britain, and his own place in it, in a series of irregular newspaper columns. Will Scotland become the Promised Land of the Left? Is it possible to live a life without crisps? Who was Grant Shapps? What does your Spotify playlist data say about you? Are Jeremy Corbyn and Stewart Lee really the new Christs? And so on. Selected, introduced, and where necessary, explained by the author and corrected by readers, Content Provider is funny, grumpy, provocative, confusing and brilliant.

'I just want to be Stewart Lee . . . Perhaps the most intelligent comedian ever to tread British boards.', Will Self

'The hostile below-the-line comments from Lee's online readership are almost as funny as the columns and essays they're vilifying, and so go some way to explaining this brave and doomed comedian's innovative technique of spraying his own audience with caustic bile.' -- Alan Moore, New York Times

'Stewart Lee is not funny and has nothing to say.', Daily Telegraph