Katy Perry got into space but I can't get to Norwich
A group of six women returned to Earth from space on Monday, including Katy Perry, the former wife of the Trump cheerleader Russell Brand; and the former Fox news presenter and philanthropist Lauren Sánchez, fiancee of Donald Trump's media lapdog Jeff Bezos, who bent Washington Post editorial policy to favour the New American Fascism ™ ®. It's a shame they didn't fly straight into the heart of the sun.
The six compliant women were sent to space as a costly PR exercise for Bezos's commercial space flight ambitions, although Perry said it was actually about 'finding the love for yourself' and 'feeling that divine feminine'. Tell that to all the women worldwide whom Bezos's pal Trump's policies are penalising. Singing idiot. Katy Perry said she kissed a girl and she liked it. As Trump rolls back on LGBTQ+ rights I'm surprised the Trump-adjacent Bezos allowed a bi-curious woman into space. I suppose discussions of sexual identity don't matter if they're mere titillation. And if Perry is bisexual, she is at least less likely to influence vulnerable young people while orbiting the Earth.
Sánchez, meanwhile, is vice-chairman of Bezos's Bezos Earth Fund, an environmental group that ended its funding of decarbonisation initiatives in February, in line with Bezos's support of Trump, who denies climate change while simultaneously seeing that a defrosting Greenland offers superb mineral mining opportunities. Why are all these wankers so totally and unashamedly full of shit?
So I have come to Cornwall for a week, but still I can't escape the news. As I drove the Penwith peninsula in search of sacred underground Cornish fogous to decompress in, the dead car radio suddenly found a frequency to tell me Perry had sadly survived her Bezos-boosting spaceflight. If those women really cared about the future of the planet they'd have sabotaged themselves to discredit Trump's big tech donor, but they selfishly chose not to. History will be their judge.
Ostensibly I'm here to see the Tate St Ives exhibition of the mighty 20th-century surrealist Ithell Colquhoun, whose greatest works were inspired by the landscapes of Cornwall, and who died in its loving arms in 1988. Like the late standup comedian Jethro, Colquhoun is indivisible from the land that nurtured her talent, and both created works called This Train Don't Stop Camborne Wednesdays, though only one features an impressionistic portrayal of the vulva as twin columns of flame.
Thirty years ago I'd pick up Colquhoun's signed books, their value unacknowledged by vendors, in secondhand shops and wonder at her obscurity. But tides turn, and now she is venerated, 47 years from her passing. Maybe one day I may yet help Bloomsbury's Museum of Comedy stage that long mooted Jethro retrospective? But first, I have to file my final Observer column.
My sister asks why I am not appearing at Norwich Theatre Royal, and so do I, as my tour shows always sell it out, sometimes twice over. I begin rambling about 'visibility', and how a whole generation of us, as printed news and trustworthy current affairs television began to wither, came to rely on social media to bob us along on its churning sewage-strewn surface. Then Trump's tech bros skewed the algorithms away from liberal content and, in Google's case, even agreed to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to appease him. History is mutable, it seems.
I can feel people glazing over as I explain this. What does the end of verifiable information matter to them? After all, The White Lotus was fine, despite the flawed final episode, and that's enough surely? And all politicians are as bad as one another anyway. And I realise I sound like that American bloke on acid at a Butthole Surfers gig in 1988 saying The Man is controlling our minds with miniature ear robots and hidden smells. But this time around, all those stoned paranoid imaginings are finally true!
We put our futures, and it seems the future of facts themselves, in the hands of bent balding billionaires, still nursing a grudge against the kids from their high school who played guitar or drew cool comics. The Trump administration, accommodated by the likes of Keir Starmer and Katy Perry, is the geopolitical equivalent of a football player stuffing the face of the boy who won the spelling competition into the toilet bowl. For ever.
Here's where we, and random Venezuelans with random tattoos, start paying. Sometimes, I think one routine I wrote about immigration sometime in the early 00s was shared by socials so often it basically gave me a career, culminating in the Times calling me the world's greatest living standup comedian by osmosis. I'm the Ralph McTell of champagne socialist satire. Let me take you by the hand.
But now everything has changed. Campaigns, comedians, critics, charities, writing careers and worthy causes that gained traction in the tiny toilet window between the downturn in print media and the twin horrors of Musk's annexation of Twitter and Google's apparent abandonment of its 'Don't Be Evil' mantra would never flourish today. We give birth astride the grave. The light gleams an instant as Twitter helps Tracey Thorn from Everything But the Girl become a bestselling author. Then it's night once more.
I think someone needs to build a new global news network, disinvested from media money men and Trump knee-benders, to save objective truth as we know it. Maybe Andrew Neil could do it, using the skills he learned from kickstarting GB News? Meanwhile, sign up to my monthly mailing list at stewartlee.co.uk to find out if I ever play Norwich Theatre Royal again, or whether my permanent absence from eastern England becomes just another victory for the fascist future. So long and thanks for all the fish!
Stewart Lee tours Stewart Lee vs the Man-Wulf until spring 2026 with a Royal Festival Hall run in July. Sign up here to be kept up with future developments for ever
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Glasgow Times
8 minutes ago
- Glasgow Times
US and Europe trade negotiators discuss tariffs in Paris
The European Union's top trade negotiator, Maros Sefcovic, met on Wednesday with his American counterpart, US trade representative Jamieson Greer, on the sidelines of a meeting of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. 'We're advancing in the right direction at pace,' Mr Sefcovic said at a news conference. He said ongoing technical meetings between EU and US negotiators in Washington would be soon followed by a video conference between himself and Mr Greer to then 'assess the progress and charter the way forward'. Brussels and Washington are unlikely to reach a substantive trade agreement in Paris. The issues dividing them are too difficult to resolve quickly. US President Donald Trump regularly criticises America's persistent trade deficit with the European Union, which was a record 161 billion dollars (£119 billion)last year, according to the US Commerce Department. Mr Trump blames the gap between what the US sells and what it buys from Europe on unfair trade practices and often singles out for criticism the EU's 10% tax on imported cars. America's was 2.5% until Mr Trump raised it to 25% in April. The EU has argued its purchases of US services, especially in the technology sector, all but overcome the deficit. After the Trump administration's surprise tariffs last week on steel rattled global markets and complicated the ongoing, wider tariff negotiations between Brussels and Washington, the EU on Monday said it is preparing 'countermeasures' against the US. The EU has offered the US a 'zero for zero' deal in which both sides end tariffs on industrial goods, including cars. Mr Trump has rejected that idea, but EU officials say it is still on the table. US trade representative Jamieson Greer (Mark Schiefelbein/AP) The EU could buy more liquefied natural gas and defence items from the US, and lower duties on cars, but it is not likely to budge on calls to scrap the value added tax, which is akin to a sales tax, or open up the EU to American beef. 'We still have a few weeks to have this discussion and negotiation,' French trade minister Laurent Saint-Martin said in Paris on Wednesday ahead of the OECD meeting. 'If the discussion and negotiation do not succeed, Europe is capable of having countermeasures on American products and services as well.' Greta Peisch, who was general counsel for the US trade representative in the Biden administration, said the zero-for-zero proposal could provide a way to make progress if the Trump administration 'is looking for a reason not to impose tariffs on the EU'. But Ms Peisch, now a partner at the Wiley Rein law firm, added: 'How motivated is the US to come to a deal with the EU?' Mr Trump, after all, has longstanding grievances and complaints about EU trade practices. One target of his ire is the value-added tax. Mr Trump and his advisers consider VATs unfair protectionism because they are levied on US products. But VATs are set at a national level, not by the EU, and apply to domestic and imported products alike, so they have not traditionally been considered a trade barrier. There is little chance governments will overhaul their tax systems to appease Mr Trump. Likewise, the Europeans are likely to balk at US demands to scrap food and safety regulations that Washington views as trade barriers. These include bans on hormone-raised beef, chlorinated chicken and genetically modified foods. 'When you start talking about chickens or GMOs or automobile safety standards, you're talking about the ways countries choose to regulate their economies,' Ms Peisch said. 'We think that's protectionist. They think it's keeping their citizens healthy … It's been a sore point for 60 years.'
NBC News
20 minutes ago
- NBC News
Trump and Putin discuss war with Ukraine and Iran's nuclear program in call
President Trump posted on social media that he had a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin and that the two of them discussed the ongoing war with Ukraine and Iran's nuclear 4, 2025
Leader Live
23 minutes ago
- Leader Live
Trump says Putin told him Russia will respond to Ukrainian attack on airfields
The US president said in a social media post that 'it was a good conversation, but not a conversation that will lead to immediate peace.' The call that lasted for an hour and 15 minutes was Mr Trump's first known with Mr Putin since May 19. Mr Trump said he and Mr Putin also discussed Iran's nuclear programme. Ukraine's Security Service gave more details on Wednesday about its weekend drone strike on Russian air bases, which it claimed destroyed or damaged 41 Russian aircraft, including strategic bombers. The agency claimed the planes struck included A-50, Tu-95, Tu-22, Tu-160, An-12, and Il-78 aircraft, adding that artificial intelligence helped guide the drones thousands of kilometres from Ukraine. It also said it set off an explosion on Tuesday on the seabed beneath the Kerch Bridge, a vital transport link between Russia and illegally annexed Crimea, claiming it caused damage to the structure. But Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that there was no damage. Russia's Defence Ministry said on Wednesday that its troops have taken control of another village in Ukraine's northern Sumy region, on the border with Russia. Mr Putin announced on May 22 that Russian troops aim to create a buffer zone that might help prevent Ukrainian cross-border attacks. Since then, Russia's Ministry of Defence claims its forces have taken control of nine Sumy villages. Mr Trump says part of his call with Mr Putin was focused on Iran and 'the fact that time is running out on Iran's decision pertaining to nuclear weapons, which must be made quickly!' Mr Trump said in a post on his social media site that he told Russia's president 'that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon and, on this, I believe that we were in agreement'. He said Mr Putin suggested 'that he will participate in the discussions with Iran' and could perhaps 'be helpful in getting this brought to a rapid conclusion'. Mr Trump previously boasted that a major announcement on Iran was coming – but none has materialised. He suggested in his latest post that Iran has been slow-walking their decision 'and we will need a definitive answer in a very short period of time!'.
