Manchester’s grey acorn Morrissey was at the Lowry not so long ago complaining about how often he’s mistaken for indicted war criminal Ratko Mladic, award winning chanteuuuuuuse Kd Lang or even a young Stewart Lee.

Talking of Stewart Lee – there’s a man that divides opinion. Moist lipped Guardianistas hanging on his every weighted pause while the haters line up to rip new holes in the fantastic tales threading them together.

And wonderfully inventive vitriol it is too.

Here’s a couple of examples:

“I hate Stewart Lee with a passion. He’s like Ian Huntley to me.” Wharto15, Twitter

“An aging **** with an Eskimo face from the 90s.” Shindig, thedugout.net

“Sickening to watch. Nice how some people can claim the moral highground whilst also being dreadful human beings.” EFG9000, Youtube

Does he care? Does he ****.

Now, unlike Stewart Lee, I do. I want to please all the people all the time. That’s why I put the fours *s instead of spelling out the word ****. It’s prudent. I don’t know anything about you. I have no idea how sensitive you may or may not be to the word ****. And as I’d like you, or a colleague or good friend, or someone you met a some networking event at Manchester Airport to contact me and employ my expert copywriting services, I’d be foolish to jeopardise that possibility for the sake of me writing ****.

For those of you who I may eventually have ended up working with but now won’t as I chose not to include the word ****….oh dear. Now there’s the irony.

Universality – such a flawed ambition.

Clever. Stewart. Lee. Clever, clever, clever Stewart Lee. Such a clever man. He’s really…

Clever.

He’s not mass consumption. He won’t skip around the stage for laughs (though he does). And in flagging the fact that others simply don’t see any merit whatsoever to his existence, let alone his comedy he’s hating the haters. Cleverer than that – He’s hating haters who hate haters who hate haters. See… he’s niche. National theatre tours niche. National paper writer niche. BBC TV show niche. Nice niche.

He’s clever brave, clever vivid. Clever unsuitable, clever inappropriate. Clever clever.

Those that love him love him all the more for it. Those that don’t? Were they ever going to? Nah….. Fuck ‘em.

Here’s an unsuitable song wot I wrote that sounds it much better than I can blog it.