Sounds a bit like Lee read Maclaine's tweet and thought, 'I'll show you bullying, mate'. Considering that a lot of people find Lee unfunny and insufferable, it seems a bit childish to pick out a very minor entertainer to bring negative attention to, especiallyfor one tweet. Stewart seems a bit thin skinned if one obscure tweet struck such a nerve.
Did you watch the video? Lee's issue with Pasquale was that he stole other comics' material, even had his 'writers' go round harvesting it. The example he refers to is Pasquale plagiarizing from a much less well-known comic. He's standing up
against the bully here.
He's not the only person to have made such an accusation. Lee is a meticulous writer and his whole routine already satirised the idiotic position that he somehow didn't understand how jokes/comedy/intellectual property works. Maclaine brought the whole Twitter storm on by complaining about being on a list of people/things Lee doesn't like, despite having slagged him off first and being too stupid to figure out that people would simply search his timeline to find out what he had said.
Nimco Ali being on the list sounds like guilt by association then. Nobody is ever ideologically pure enough for the Left anymore. I would have thought there were people more worthy of inclusion on the Naughty list than a campaigner against FGM, but it seems not.
I don't know what specifically irked Lee about Ali this year, but there's plenty to choose from and none of it is reducible to 'guilt by association' - she's a public apologist for the Johnson-Symondses, was gifted a public role through being their mate, and couldn't even manage to admit in an interview that calling gay men 'bum boys' is homophobic, or admit that she was Johnson's mate whilst shilling for him in the media.
I suspect most people will continue to regard Maureen Lipman as a bit of a national treasure despite being on the Naughty list
Lipman, in my view, is utterly poisonous, and if the tendency for unpleasant celebs to out themselves as such on social media (see also Frances Barber, Eddie Marsan, Rachel Riley and the aforementioned Robinson) results in fewer dreadful people being fêted and indulged as national treasures or important luvvies, it's probably a good thing. But I guess she's on Lee's list because if the utter bollocks she spouted about comedy not very long ago.
Anyway, it's only a list - it has things on it as repugnant as Jacob Rees-Mogg and as silly as Lee's Fred Perry shirts. We can argue about who deserves to be on it, ignore it, or make our own...
