Sometimes, I read that I'm this leftwing comic who just goes on

The words of Stewart Lee — “Sometimes, I read that I’m this leftwing comic who just goes on about politics the whole time. Other times, I read that it’s just surreal nonsense about crisps. It’s both of those.” — shine with the paradox of the artist’s voice. In them he acknowledges that the power of comedy lies not in one path alone, but in its freedom to wander between the serious and the absurd. For laughter can be a weapon against tyranny, and it can also be born from the simple strangeness of everyday life. Politics and nonsense are not opposites, but companions in the comic’s craft.

The meaning here is that true art refuses to be confined. Society may demand that a man be serious or frivolous, political or playful, but Lee declares himself both. To speak of politics is to challenge the structures of power, to pierce the armor of authority with satire. To speak of crisps — that most ordinary and ridiculous of subjects — is to remind us that life itself is strange, fleeting, and worthy of laughter. The union of these extremes is what gives comedy its enduring strength: it can both comfort and confront, both delight and disturb.

History offers proof of this duality. Consider the plays of Aristophanes in ancient Athens. He mocked war, leaders, and the follies of his city with biting politics, yet filled his works with bawdy jokes, absurd imagery, and surreal exaggeration. To his audiences, both elements were inseparable: they laughed at the ridiculousness of power and at the ridiculousness of life itself. Stewart Lee’s words stand in this same lineage, where the comic is both jester and philosopher.

The origin of his statement lies in the tension between perception and reality. Critics, ever eager to categorize, attempt to bind the artist into a single identity — the leftwing satirist, or the absurd surrealist. But Lee reminds us that to be true to oneself is to refuse such narrow cages. Art that endures is not predictable, but expansive, embracing contradiction as the very essence of humanity.

Therefore, O seekers of wisdom, mark this truth: do not fear contradiction, for it is the pulse of life. One may speak with fire about politics, and in the next breath muse upon the absurdity of crisps — and both are worthy. For laughter is a bridge that carries us across the harshness of the world, and the comic who unites the serious and the surreal teaches us that wisdom need not always wear a solemn face. As Stewart Lee declares, it is not one or the other — it is both of those, and therein lies its power.