Introduction: A Book That’s 40% Footnotes and 60% Sneering Disdain
In a publishing world choking on ghostwritten celebrity “autobiographies” and motivational sludge that reads like a TED Talk wrote itself, Stewart Lee’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate is a molotov cocktail lobbed directly into the comedy-industrial complex.
Released in 2010, this isn’t your standard “then I got on telly and everything was brilliant” memoir. It’s a self-aware, self-critical, painfully honest post-mortem of Lee’s own career, complete with annotated transcripts, footnotes that go rogue, and a tone so dry it could sand wood.
It’s not a book for the casual reader. It’s a book for the jaded, the bitter, the comedy nerd and anyone who’s ever wanted to scream into the abyss of panel show mediocrity.
Table of Contents
The Premise: Death, Resurrection and the Comedy Carpet
The book revolves around three full-length stand-up show transcripts:
- Stand-Up Comedian (2005)
- 90s Comedian (2006)
- 41st Best Stand-Up Ever (2008)
Each show is introduced and footnoted extensively, with Lee using the margins like a literary therapist’s couch to explain, apologise for, and occasionally eviscerate his own material.
Between the shows, Lee recounts his early success with Richard Herring, his implosion post-Jerry Springer: The Opera, his wilderness years (which mostly involved eating crisps and watching Time Team) and his grudging re-entry into the comedy world, minus the desire to be liked.
The result How I Escaped My Certain Fate is a memoir that functions like a mixtape of breakdowns, with the tone of a man trying to describe the end of the world while stuck on a Megabus.
The Style: Footnotes Are the New Punchlines
What sets How I Escaped My Certain Fate apart is Lee’s format, one part script anthology, one part director’s commentary, and one part “comedy manifesto for misanthropes.”
The footnotes (which are frequent, lengthy, and often more entertaining than the main text) serve as mini-rants, essays, or confessions. They range from revealing backstage mechanics (“this bit always dies in Wolverhampton”) to acerbic jabs at fellow comedians and the general public (“I do not care if they do not laugh”).
It’s like reading a comedy DVD with subtitles written by someone having a midlife crisis.
The Comedy Philosophy: Have You Tried Alienating the Audience?
Stewart Lee’s comedy isn’t for everyone, and he knows it. In fact, he banks on that fact. His routines are slow-burning, repetitive and often delight in drawing attention to their own structure. He’s the sort of performer who explains the joke mid-joke, pauses for discomfort, and then does it again. Twice.
How I Escaped My Certain Fate is a manifesto of sorts for the value of failure, of silence, of pushing against mainstream taste and of believing, against all commercial odds that comedy can be more than a parade of Live at the Apollo mediocrity.
There’s a section where he discusses the difference between jokes that make you laugh and jokes that make you think. There’s another where he calmly dismantles the mechanics of panel shows like a man describing a dog’s autopsy.
The Good, The Bad and The Self-Inflicted
The Good:
- Brutally honest insight into the industry
- A masterclass in stand-up construction
- Hilarious, biting, unapologetically niche
- Educational in the most cynical, entertaining way
The Bad:
- Not for casual readers or those who enjoy joy
- Footnote format may induce migraines
- Occasional whiff of smugness (which he’s aware of, so it’s meta-smugness)
The Self-Inflicted:
- Lee documents his own failures and decisions with the tone of a man who set his own house on fire just to complain about the heat
Is It Worth Reading If You’re Not a Comedy Nerd?
Let’s be clear: if your idea of comedy is Mrs. Brown’s Boys or you’ve ever said “I just love Mock the Week,” this book will read like a hostage letter. But if you’ve ever written stand-up, watched Edinburgh Fringe performances in a damp cave, or ranted about why observational comedy is the death of art, you’ll find this cathartic.
It’s not a laugh-a-minute riot. How I Escaped My Certain Fate is a smart, layered, often caustic look at the cost of trying to stay honest in an industry that rewards the opposite. It’s the equivalent of shouting “No!” at a room full of marketing executives while setting your own career prospects on fire.
So yes – it’s essential.
Final Thoughts: Comedy Autopsy with a Scalpel Made of Irony
How I Escaped My Certain Fate is half comedy textbook, half memoir, and half extended sigh. Which, yes, is three halves, but Lee’s entire schtick is about subverting expectations, so just go with it.
It’s laugh-out-loud funny, but only if your idea of comedy involves hating other comedy. It’s personal, yet clinical. It’s angry, yet strangely affirming. And more importantly, it’s honest – in a way that most showbiz memoirs wouldn’t dare be unless dipped in irony and slowly roasted.
If nothing else, it proves that you can fail spectacularly, rebuild your life, and still have time left over to write the funniest book about bitterness this side of Morrissey’s autobiography.
How I Escaped My Certain Fate
Experience how it feels to be the subject of a blasphemy prosecution! Find out why 'wool' is a funny word! See how jokes work, their inner mechanisms revealed, before your astonished face!
In 2001, after over a decade in the business, Stewart Lee quit stand-up, disillusioned and drained, and went off to direct a loss-making musical, Jerry Springer: The Opera. Nine years later, How I Escaped My Certain Fate details his return to live performance, and the journey that took him from an early retirement to his position as the most critically acclaimed stand-up in Britain, the winner of BAFTAs and British Comedy Awards, and the affirmation of being rated the 41st best stand up ever.
Here is Stewart Lee's own account of his remarkable comeback, told through transcripts of the three legendary full-length shows that sealed his reputation. Astonishingly frank and detailed in-depth notes reveal the inspiration and inner workings of his act. With unprecedented access to a leading comedian's creative process, this book tells us just what it was like to write these shows, develop the performance and take them on tour. How I Escaped My Certain Fate is everything we have come to expect from Stewart Lee: fiercely intelligent, unsparingly honest and very, very funny.
