HOWZAT

As for his new show, “it follows a night in a comedy club and it’s in German,” he cheerfully explains. “It’s about an Arthur Smith or Malcolm Hardee character who’s been hosting a club for 25 years. He introduces a surprise act. It turns out to be Death, who does a stand-up set and has come to take him away.”

Lee, whose career started in the 1980s before the “new lad” model took over the world, remains nostalgic for an age when comedy was “for people who didn’t like football”, offhandedly conceding that he’d “quite like to end up like Arthur Smith really”.

Certain cultural differences have proved interesting. Lee and Thomas have faced queries about whether the English word “act” equates to sexual congress. There’s also the pertinent fact that Germany has no history of stand-up at all, historically preferring cabaret.

“I was trying to write parodies of types of comedy and I found I liked them all, even though they offended on some level. I find the observational one really funny, even though I tried to write the worst set I could. Rich really improved it because the music’s so good.”

The fiercely analytical young man who pointed out the techniques used by comics to score with audiences has mellowed.

“I was a twentysomething adolescent wanting to spoil it, trying to prevent people enjoying Eddie Izzard by revealing the little man behind the Wizard of Oz persona,” he now concedes. The older Lee is more relaxed. “At 36 you’re in no danger of being seen as a pop star. You’re just a man talking about some things, and you are judged on that. I feel really lucky to be able to come back.”

On his return to the circuit he’s been delighted to share bills with talented “contrary freaks” 15 years younger than him, while a whole generation of stand-ups venerate him. Ricky Gervais, for one, makes a point of praising Lee at every opportunity.

“When I went to see him he was doing a lot of the things I used to do ten years ago, only they were working really well in front of 2,000 people, rather than confusing a hundred,” says Lee, who now appreciates turns with a new clarity.

“Having been caught up in commercial West End theatre, it seemed spontaneous and refreshing and honest to see a persona controlling a space.”

The progression of Springer from fringe theatre to the National and then the West End exposed him to the peculiar world of music theatre, and he wasn’t too impressed. “It just isn’t equipped to deal with important subjects. That’s why The Producers is funny. The basic premise is, ‘What if you tried to do a musical about the Holocaust?’ It wouldn’t work,” he says. “But its central joke is that the audience knows, on some level that, for music theatre to cover it, would be laughable.”

Lee fears that exposure to the unexpected, such as the John Peel shows which piqued his youthful interest in music and comedy, is becoming marginalised, which makes this current bunfight all the more depressing.

“There’s something about inappropriate behaviour which is what comedy is for,” says Lee, evoking the spirit of the native American “contraries” mentioned in his novel The Perfect Fool. “The whole job of the Hopi clown was to say and do the wrong thing whether it was morally right or not. Working on the opera I was into the psychedelic nature of a shock moment where people would say, ‘I never thought I’d see that!’ ”

The American Government considered the Hopi clowns subversive enough to ban them from performing. Right now this experienced stand-up must be wondering just how he’s become such a target for the fundamentalists.

• Stewart Lee is on tour from Jan 30. Jerry Springer — The Opera continues at the Cambridge, WC2 (0870 8901102).