"Funniest Comedian STEWART LEE vs JANE LEEVES"

STEWART LEE

Stewart Graham Lee (born 5 April 1968) is an English stand-up comedian, writer and director. In the mid-1990s he was one half of the radio duo Lee and...

Stewart Graham Lee (born 5 April 1968) is an English stand-up comedian, writer and director. In the mid-1990s he was one half of the radio duo Lee and Herring, alongside Richard Herring. His stand-up is characterised by repetition, callbacks, deadpan delivery and a pronounced use of deconstruction, which he often discusses on stage. In December 2011 he won British Comedy Awards for best male television comic and best comedy entertainment programme for his series Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle. A 2009 article in The Times referred to him as "the comedian's comedian, and for good reason" and named him "face of the decade". In June 2012 Lee was placed at number 9 in the Top 100 Most Influential People in UK Comedy. He co-wrote and co-directed the West End hit musical Jerry Springer: The Opera, a critical success that sparked a backlash from Christian groups who staged a series of protests outside its early stagings. Lee has written music reviews for publications including The Sunday Times. His influences include Ted Chippington, Jerry Sadowitz, Simon Munnery, Kevin McAleer and Johnny Vegas. While studying at Oxford in the 1980s, he wrote and performed comedy in a revue group called "The Seven Raymonds" with Richard Herring, Emma Kennedy and Tim Richardson, but did not perform in the well-known Oxford Revue, though he did write for and direct the 1989 Revue. Having moved to London and begun performing stand-up comedy after university, he rose to greater prominence in 1990, winning the prestigious Hackney Empire New Act of the Year competition. With Herring, Lee wrote material for BBC Radio 4's On the Hour (1991), which was anchored by Chris Morris and was notable for the first appearance of Steve Coogan's celebrated character, Alan Partridge, for which Lee and Herring wrote much early material. After a disagreement with the rest of the cast, Lee and Herring did not remain with the group when On The Hour moved to television as The Day Today, and their material was excised from an official release of the radio show in the mid-1990s, although it was included in a CD released in 2008. In 1992 and 1993, he and Herring wrote and performed Lionel Nimrod's Inexplicable World for BBC Radio 4, before moving to BBC Radio 1, for one series of Fist of Fun (1993), followed by three series of Lee and Herring. Throughout the late nineties he continued performing solo stand-up (something that has always been a mainstay of his career – even whilst in the double act with Herring) and has collaborated with, amongst others, Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding of The Mighty Boosh. Indeed, though Barratt and Fielding had worked together in the past, the first seeds of the Boosh were sown while working as part of Lee's Edinburgh show King Dong vs Moby Dick in which Barratt and Fielding played a giant penis and a whale, respectively. Lee returned the favour by going on to direct their 1999 Edinburgh show, Arctic Boosh, which remains the template for their live work.

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JANE LEEVES

Jane Elizabeth Leeves (born 18 April 1961) is an English actress. She played Daphne Moon on the television sitcom Frasier from 1993 until 2004, for wh...

Jane Elizabeth Leeves (born 18 April 1961) is an English actress. She played Daphne Moon on the television sitcom Frasier from 1993 until 2004, for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award. She is also known for her role as Joy Scroggs on TV Land's sitcom Hot in Cleveland. Leeves made her screen debut with a small role in 1983 on the British comedy television show The Benny Hill Show, and appeared as a dancer in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. She moved to the United States, where she performed in small roles. From 1986 to 1988, she had her first leading role in the short-lived sitcom Throb, and then secured a recurring part in the television sitcom Murphy Brown. She received further recognition for roles in films such as Miracle on 34th Street (1994), James and the Giant Peach (1996), Music of the Heart (1999), and The Event (2003). In 2018, she began starring in the Fox medical drama, The Resident. Leeves was a regular on The Benny Hill Show (as one of "Hill's Angels"), later making use of her experience as a dancer in a scene in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life and appeared as a tourist with a baby in the David Lee Roth music video for the song "California Girls", but struggled for several years to establish herself. She became somewhat visible as the flighty record company employee, Blue (née Prudence Anne Bartlett), on the syndicated sitcom Throb. She had a recurring role in the television series Murphy Brown which provided her first period of success, playing Audrey, the smart but awkward girlfriend of producer Miles Silverberg (played by Grant Shaud). Leeves also appeared as the troublesome Marla the Virgin in four episodes of Seinfeld: "The Virgin", "The Contest", "The Pilot", and "The Finale – Part 2". During this period, Leeves was cast as Holly for the pilot of the US version of the science-fiction comedy Red Dwarf. She also had a role as a lesbian avant-garde dancer, the girlfriend of the girlfriend of Willem Dafoe’s character, in the 1985 film To Live and Die in L.A.

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