Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee trade comments on a one-off script

A script of Jerry Springer: The Opera, with new notes added by writers Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee is going under the hammer for charity.

Bids of at least £1,000 are invited for the vocal score from the controversial 2002 show, with proceeds going to refugee theatre charity Good Chance.

The cover is date May 2004 and says the work is by ‘Richard Thomas with some bits by Stewart Lee’ – to which the composer has suggested ‘many’ instead of ‘some’.

He adds: ‘Stewart practically sent me a Paradise Lost’s worth of rhymes for Act 2. I cherry-picked.

‘I never expressed my gratitude then. Stewart never one complained about all the discarded material. I took it for granted.’

Lee then added in red pen: ‘I get aroused by the abandonment, by the contempt.’

On another page, Lee writes: ‘This should have been the end. What follows is an act of cowardice. I left every night as it started.’

And on the following page Thomas scrawled a cock and balls.

According to the online auction: ‘There are a lot of jokes, a lot of laughs, there’s a lot of Stewart Lee not remembering things! There are comments on the music (they apologise for the tempo being so fast and the range so high so often - "stupidly difficult"), and on the characters and Richard and Stewart’s own views on them.

‘’This is a unique object to behold, a one of a kind, with big handwritten splurges, pictoral penises and much more. This annotated script of one of the most controversial musicals of the 21st century seeks one very lucky, ready to laugh-out-loud owner.’

The auction closes on October 8 here.

Published: 27 Sep 2023