Career to 2000
In 2001, Lee published his first novel, The Perfect Fool. It attracted a degree of critical acclaim as a debut novel, but this was not matched in sales figures.
In the same year he performed Pea Green Boat, a stand-up show which revolved around the deconstruction of the Edward Lear poem The Owl and the Pussycat and a tale of his own broken toilet.
In 2002 Lee played the role of Carey in the Doctor Who webcast Real Time, together with Richard Herring as Renchard and Colin Baker as the Doctor, and accepted an offer from the composer Richard Thomas to contribute ideas to the fledgling production, Jerry Springer - The Opera.
Whilst Lee found himself moving away from the stage, he continued his directorial duties, this time on television. Two rejected pilots were filmed for Channel 4, Cluub Zarathrustra and Head Farm. Neither went to series. The former, however, would feature all the ingredients that would later appear in Attention Scum, a BBC2 series fronted by Simon Munnery's League Against Tedium character, which also featured the likes of Kevin Eldon, Johnny Vegas and Roger Mann, as well as Richard Thomas and opera singer Lori Lixenberg, in their guise as "Kombat Opera".
All the while, however, the theatre piece Jerry Springer - The Opera had been evolving. From its small scale beginnings as a scratch piece at Battersea Arts Centre, it achieved its finished form at London's National Theatre via performances at the 2002 Edinburgh Fringe.
At the 2003 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Lee directed Johnny Vegas's first DVD, Who's Ready For Ice Cream?, a move away from the traditional "stand-up comic releases a DVD" format, involving a plot in which Vegas loses his comedy "mojo" and has to track it down via a journey of personal discovery. That said, there is a full version of Johnny's stand-up set featured as an extra on the DVD.
In 2004, Lee returned to stand-up comedy with the show Standup Comedian, which earned him a "Tap Water Award" in Edinburgh and was released on DVD in October 2005. This features extra footage of performances from his earlier career. This show was toured extensively throughout the UK, Australia and USA.

Career 2000-2004
In January 2005, Jerry Springer - The Opera, a satirical musical/opera based upon The Jerry Springer Show, was broadcast on BBC Two, following a highly acclaimed West End run for several years, and as a prelude to the show's successful UK Tour. There was an outcry from many Christians, who tried to prevent it from being aired. As well as objecting to the constant strong language, they believed it to be blasphemous and claimed it ridiculed Jesus Christ, despite most of their numbers having not seen the show, heard the recording, or read a script. Their campaign allegedly forced some BBC executives into hiding temporarily. Some Christians protested at several of the venues where the UK Tour was playing, but often were disagreed in protest by the show's audiences, as well as counter-protest groups protesting for freedom of speech and art.
In 2005, Lee tackled the subject of the religious hatred he experienced after the broadcast of Jerry Springer - The Opera in his stand-up show, 90s Comedian. This show has earned him some of the best reviews of his career, largely due to the un-checked vitriol he unleashes in the latter half of the set, "taking no prisoners" in his attempt to display the lunacy of sacred cows. Again, this show was taken on the road much as "Stand Up Comedian" was. A recording was made in Cardiff in March 2006, although there was no distribution deal in place because of the commercial failure of the Standup Comedian DVD and the controversial nature of the show's material. The show has now found its way onto the market thanks to marketing and distribution via the internet. This has been done by Go Faster Stripe, the company who set themselves up in order to film the show.

2005: Jerry Springer The Opera controversy
Many assumed Lee would bring a new hour of stand up to Edinburgh in 2006 to consolidate his "comeback" success, but he did not. Implying that it might have happened under different circumstances, he comments on his website, "I assumed I was going to be working out 6 half hours of stand-up for a TV project but it fell through". However, he did visit the festival in capacity of director with a production of the Eric Bogosian play Talk Radio with a cast which included Phil Nichol, Mike McShane, Will Adamsdale, Stephen K Amos and Tony Law.
2006 appears to have been an eventful year for Lee. As well as his directorial contribution to Talk Radio, he still gigs regularly & appeared regularly on television and radio, in - amongst others - Armando Iannucci's, Time Trumpet, as a version of himself thirty years in the future looking back and commentating on the present day. The show ran on BBC2 from 3 August 2006 to 6 September 2006 on Thursdays at 10 pm. Also in August, Lee presented a programme in the Five series Don't Get Me Started. The documentary discussed the issues of blasphemy, religious censorship and the rise in protests from religious groups over perceived attacks on their faith. This was of course of some interest to Lee, especially considering his experience in the Jerry Springer -The Opera controversy. (See above)
He separated from his long standing management company, Avalon for reasons undisclosed, and on September 25, 2006, he appeared on the BBC Radio 4 quiz Quote Unquote. On November 9, 2006, he was guest on Never Mind the Buzzcocks and on November 24, he appeared on Have I Got News for You. In October, he presented a forty year tribute to Star Trek on BBC Radio 2, and on November 24, 2006, he presented White Face, Dark Heart, the first of two programmes on Radio 4 about clowns, during which he fulfilled a ten-year desire to witness the rituals of New Mexico's sacred clowns.[3]
Lee has also just recently curated a CD for the Sonic Arts Network called The Topography of Chance. Lee explores different artists, writers and musician's experiments with randomness and chance and has brought together an eclectic mix of artists including tracks by; Simon Munnery, Arthur Smith, The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players, Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, Jem Finer, Kombat Opera, Jon Rose and more.

2007

Fist of Fun (with Richard Herring; non-fiction) BBC Books, 1995. ISBN-10: 0563371854; ISBN-13: 978-0563371854
The Perfect Fool (novel) Fourth Estate, 2001. ISBN-10: 1841153656; ISBN-13: 978-1841153650
Sit-Down Comedy (contributor to anthology, ed Malcolm Hardee & John Fleming) Ebury Press/Random House, 2003. ISBN-10: 0091889243; ISBN-13: 978-0091889241