Hard-sell stand-up

If it hadn't been for delusions of financial security, Stewart Lee might never have come up with the finest stand-up show of his life. He has spent the past three years directing and co-writing Jerry Springer - The Opera, nursing it from Fringe try-outs to the National Theatre and the West End.

So when he returned to the stage earlier this year, he had the daring of a man who was no longer in it for the money. Or so he thought. 'I was under the misapprehension that I didn't have to worry about making a living from this,' says Lee. 'To be on stage at the Edinburgh Fringe thinking "I don't need to do this, I'm doing this because I really like it" was liberating. I ended up doing the best I've ever done up there.'

But when he returned to London, he and Springer co-writer Richard Thomas were asked to take a royalty cut to keep the opera afloat. It will stay open indefinitely, Lee suggests, despite recent turbulence. But his chances of being a millionaire showbiz dilettante have taken a battering. 'There was a period when Richard and I allowed ourselves to entertain the idea that this could be a life-changing amount of money,' he says. 'As it is, it's been a car-changing amount of money.'

So Lee doesn't overestimate his own pulling power. He's still a famous face, thanks to his 1990s TV series with Richard Herring, Fist Of Fun and This Morning... With Richard, Not Judy. And he's been cajoling live audiences with his playfully steady delivery since 1989. But this show, with its elisions of fact and fiction, of the PC and the unsayable, can't be consumed casually. It doesn't tell us how to respond, which makes it a hard sell, he reckons.

He even starts the show by playing some fabulously unrelaxing free jazz as people enter. 'I wanted to make people frustrated and ready to listen to something else,' he says.

Lee performs this show until March. Then he plans to build up a new set from scratch. Move now, then, to catch the opening salvo about 9/11, which simultaneously mocks prejudice, political correctness, sentimental censure and stand-up comedy itself, along with his relentless routine about mourning Princess Diana. Best of all, his toast-dry delivery seems less affected than ever - wryly articulate, it is a sane response to a world plagued by pumped-up half truths.

'I always really like cynical humour,' he says. 'I find that tone of voice in stand-up really funny. But that's become the tone of everything. Xfm, Radio 1, advertising and youth journalism all sound like early-1990s stand-up. So I wondered if there was some way of talking about things I actually like and believe in. It's easier to do that at the moment because there are clearly, obviously, major things wrong with the world. So a lot of fairly ambivalent stand-ups find themselves politicised.'

Lee and Thomas have written Stand Up Opera, which opens in Germany in the New Year and he is writing a play for the National Theatre studio. He believes the circuit is now more open to the unconventional. 'I think also, being heavier, greying, balding and 36, it makes more sense for me to have that slightly detached, wise overview of things,' he says. 'You don't really need that off a 28-year-old who looks like a young Roland Gift. You just think, well, why don't you cheer up?'

Nov 16 to 27, Soho Theatre And Writers Centre, 21 Dean Street W1, Tue to Sat 9.30pm, £15, £12.50 concs. Tel: 0870 429 6883. www.sohotheatre.com Tube: Tottenham Court Road/ Piccadilly Circus