The Oscar for best satirist goes to ...


Next Sunday, Jon Stewart will walk on stage in front of the biggest audience of his life. It won't just be the stars of Hollywood staring up at him that will be unsettling, though performing before the likes of Brad Pitt, Steven Spielberg and Judi Dench would intimidate anyone.

No, it will be the tens of millions of Americans watching at home and hundreds of millions more viewers around the globe. Most will be seeing Stewart for the first time, as will the world's critics, pens at the ready, itching to condemn any misfiring quip.

There is nothing small about hosting the Oscars; he will be joining a select band of comic stars such as Steve Martin and Bob Hope. Nor is success guaranteed. Greater names than Stewart have blown this chance at glory. Just ask last year's try-out, Chris Rock.

But how did Stewart get here? He is largely unknown outside America. His movie career, with films such as Big Daddy and Death to Smoochy, is so unremarkable that Stewart himself lampoons it. Yet there he will be, caught in the spotlights with the world at his feet. Stewart's tale is remarkable, of a man who has become a star turn by biting the very hand that feeds him. His vehicle, the 'fake news show', The Daily Show, may get just 1.5 million viewers but it is required viewing for America's political and entertainment elite. With Stewart as the razor-witted host, it skewers the great issues of the day in the guise of a news bulletin .

He has ridden this unlikely horse to become a star in America. Stewart's humour takes no prisoners - he slams everybody. Here's a recent take on the US military in Iraq: 'The bombs destroyed the area and left behind a 60-foot crater or, as coalition forces prefer to call it, a freedom hole.'

He can slice politicians of both stripes in a single sentence: 'Please explain to me why John Kerry sounds more dickish telling the truth than Bush sounds when he's lying?' he asked during the 2004 presidential election. Or: 'Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Don't eat pork. I'm sorry, what was the last one? Is that the word of God or is that pigs trying to outsmart everybody?'

It can be brutal stuff and it is hard to think of a target in American life that could escape his barbed humour. Nor are Stewart and his team of writers afraid of the powerful. They delight in taking a swipe at a self-satisfied elite. And there can be few elites more self-satisfied (or smug?) than Hollywood's top tier. Stewart has vowed not to upset anyone at the Oscars too much ('I'm not an anarchist, I'm a comedian,' he said).

But a few Oscar organisers will probably be holding their breath when he steps up to the mike. On reflection, it probably won't be Stewart who will be nervous on Sunday - it will be the crowd watching him. 'To have a public intellectual host the Oscars, that doesn't happen too much. My biggest worry would be that he'd upstage the entire night,' said Robert Thompson, professor of television and pop culture at Syracuse University.

Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz was born on November 28 1962, in Lawrence, New Jersey. It is not uncommon in entertainment to change one's name, but there is a slight mystery surrounding Stewart's metamorphosis. His father, Donald Leibowitz, a physicist, left the family when Jon was just nine and Stewart has hinted that is why he shed his surname. His father has still never seen Stewart perform live. However, like much of Stewart's biography, such stories are gleaned from his own comedy act. Stewart is, in fact, highly private and has admitted he exaggerates his past for his shows. 'I made up shit for the show about my family,' he once confessed.

Whatever the truth of his parents' divorce, Stewart's childhood was largely happy. His mother, Marian, a teacher and educational consultant, brought up Jon and his elder brother, Larry, in the rough and tumble of Jewish life in New Jersey. Some of it was plain slapstick. He once got fired from Woolworths after diving on to a beanbag and knocking over $10,000-worth of aquarium equipment. The manager who sacked him was his brother.

His humour showed early. Stewart's school yearbook entry paid tribute to his ability to make other pupils laugh. But he has also said he was picked on at school for being Jewish. If Stewart's humour developed as a defence mechanism, he would be travelling a well-trod psychological path from being bullied to stand-up comedy. It would also give him a healthy disrespect for the establishment that The Daily Show would come to define. A short, Jewish guy was never going to penetrate America's Wasp elite, but as a comic, Stewart can stand outside it and use his jokes as a weapon.

Stewart went to college in Virginia where his adult character quickly emerged: he is a workaholic, an insomniac and thoroughly addicted to news. He also became similarly addicted to cigarettes (he finally kicked the habit in 2000). When he graduated in 1984, he followed the route of all aspiring performers: he headed for New York.

There, he worked, variously, as a barman, a puppeteer and a contract administrator at a university, yet he really wanted to be a comic. His first gig came at the Bitter End, in Greenwich Village. He got through two minutes before being jeered off.

He eventually landed a slot at the famed Comedy Cellar, albeit the 1.45am gig, playing to the bar staff. It was enough to launch a career. His first break came in 1989, with cable TV's Short Attention Span Theatre. He then forged an influential friendship with David Letterman. By 1993, Stewart was hosting his own MTV show, but when his show was cancelled in 1995, it seemed he had peaked. He signed a movie deal with Miramax and played bit-parts in a series of forgettable comedies.

Then he landed the show that would catapult him on to the national stage. The Daily Show is now so associated with Stewart that few people realise there was a host before him, Craig Kilborn. When Kilborn left in 1998, Stewart replaced him. Under Stewart, The Daily Show became, if not the most watched, certainly the most talked about comedy show in America.

Stewart's style is to mug for the cameras, playing the befuddled nice guy confused by the insanity of the modern world. Until he hits out with a well-placed aside. These are good times to be a satirist. Just as Spitting Image thrived during Thatcherism, so The Daily Show, with its liberal bent, flourishes in Bush World. Sometimes, though, reality can even trump Stewart's taste for the absurd. When Dick Cheney shot his 78-year-old hunting companion, Harry Whittington, Stewart reduced his audience to hysterics by simply looking skywards and saying: 'Thank you, Jesus.'

Under Stewart's guidance, the show has won Emmys for its comedy and Peabodys (second only to the fabled Pulitzer in American journalism) for its election coverage. It has a guest list few normal news shows can rival. Democrat Senator John Edwards even announced he was going to run for the presidency on the show. Stewart told him: 'We're a fake show, so I want you to know this may not count.'

That success has outraged some mainstream media, but the joke has really been on them. For Stewart's main obsession and The Daily Show's real target is no single politician or political belief - it is the media themselves. And here is where Stewart has had his greatest success. In one incident in 2004, Stewart appeared on CNN's Crossfire political show. It is a programme full of angry 'debate' hosted by Republican Tucker Carlson and Democrat Paul Begala.

On the show, Stewart took off his clown's mask and berated the hosts for reducing politics to a slanging match, avoiding real issues in favour of slogans. As Begala watched open-mouthed, Carlson tried to respond, telling Stewart he wasn't being as funny as he was on The Daily Show. 'You're as big a dick on your show as you are on any show,' Stewart retorted.

On the next day's The Daily Show, Stewart hit out again with this zinger: 'Tomorrow, I'll go back to being funny, but your show will still blow.' The clip of the slanging match was downloaded 670,000 times from the internet in the next few days. A few months later, CNN axed Crossfire as the channel's top executives publicly admitted that Stewart had a point. The fake news show had just scalped a real one.

That led to a backlash against Stewart. Mainstream pundits suddenly started attacking him for softball interviews. Certainly that is true. Stewart does not grill Kerry or the Clintons when they appear on his show. The interviews are opportunities for banter and a light-hearted ribbing. Stewart's response to this criticism was frank: he is a comic, not a journalist. The Daily Show is fake, not real. It is the real media's job to confront politicians, it is their job to hold the powerful to account. He believes they have roundly failed.

When Americans have to hold up Jon Stewart as their great journalistic hope, the big joke is actually on the media. But suddenly it is not very funny.

The Stewart lowdown

Born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz in New Jersey, on 28 November 1962. His father, Donald, was a physicist and his mother, Marian, an educational consultant. He how lives in New York with his wife, Tracey. They have a son, Nathan, born in 2000, and a daughter, Maggie, born this year.

Best of times Next Sunday. Jon Stewart will host the Oscars before an audience of hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide. It is a traditional launching pad for a comic career (or potential graveyard) and is the highest profile moment of Stewart's comic life.

Worst of times His first ever gig in 1986. He took the stage at the Bitter End comedy bar in Greenwich Village in Manhattan. He got through just two minutes of his four minutes of prepared material before fleeing the stage.

What he says 'How can Washington criticise Hollywood when they use Hollywood principles to design campaigns? There are no leaders anymore, only studio executives. Our country's chief executive runs focus groups every four years and tries to make sure his movie opens bigger than the other guy's.'

What others say 'No one upholds the honour better of what remains of the media than this fake news comedian. How pathetic is that?' Eric Alterman, media critic for the Nation magazine.