What Boris Johnson's advice to theatregoers did for me | Stewart Lee

Last week we all had moments where the reality of what we were about to go through as a species hit home

In a Southend Oxfam shop last week, I found a decadent 70s paperback of Clark Ashton Smith's Lost Worlds collection. In the 1932 story The Empire of the Necromancers, the Silver Death plague ravages the land of Zothique, and necromancers make the zombie survivors "labour in the vaults and serve their necrophiliac lust". Within days, Ashton Smith's lurid dreams would seem prophetic.

Is our prime minister, Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Vampires Haircut Wall-Spaffer Spunk-Burster Fuck-Business Fuck-the-Families Get-Off-My-Fucking-Laptop Girly-Swot Big-Girl's-Blouse Chicken-frit Hulk-Smash Noseringed-Crusties Death-Humbug Technology-Lessons Surrender-Bullshit French-Turds Dog-Whistle Get-Stuffed FactcheckUK@CCHQ 88%-lies Get-Brexit-Done Bung-a-Bob-for-Big-Ben's-Bongs Cocaine-Event Spiritual-Worth Three-Men-and-a-Dog Whatever-It-Takes Johnson, up to the coronavirus crisis? Or will he be to Covid-19 what the swiftly substituted Neville Chamberlain was to the second world war, remembered only for the futile statement: "I have in my hand a piece of toilet paper!"

It looked as if liability confusion meant I might have to tour the virus-ravaged country performing to empty theatres