Monday, Oct. 03, 2005 - 9:17 p.m.
What are you arresting me for?
Don't you think that if you were to pick a scant 150 people from all of London and the surrounding area who wanted to see Stewart Lee on Saturday night, they would likely have a little more than just wanting to see Stewart Lee in common? I'm not talking about taste in music or clothes or a preference for coffee over tea or anything like that. I'm talking a more basic trait of decency and politeness and, well, NOT HECKLING.I don't get the point of heckling because I've not heard any member of the audience be funnier than the guy on stage, and if the person on stage can't handle the hecklers, well then I don't derive any pleasure from seeing them corpse. So I don't like it at all, but I understand that some people don't think a night at comedy is complete without a good bout of heckling.
So, at the beginning, Mr Lee said that any hecklers would be removed forcibly and arrested (qf old gimmer at Labour party conference who shouted 'nonsense!' from the audience and was forcibly removed by security staff). But I don't think he counted on the very drunk odd people who kept just grumbling on to themselvesm, which became very tired and boring after a while.
Imagine our surprise, therefore, when it ended and we were outside the theatre making our goodbyes, when we saw policement enter the building and return with the two hecklers. Drunk Lady starts screaming 'WHAT ARE YOU ARRESTING ME FOR?', to which the policeman calmly responded, somewhat obviously, 'being drunk and disorderly'.
Anyway, funny that, that Stewart Lee was actually not joking when he said that. Maybe he wasn't joking about vomitting into the gaping anus of Christ, either.
I could hear the woman screaming as I skipped off along Oxford Street. Wazzock.