In short
Alexei Sayle discusses his life story and politics, arguing that left-wing activism and comedy have always been intertwined, and that he’s now processing the emotional reality of recent pro-Palestinian demonstrations and “genocide” coverage. He also explains how he helped create modern alternative comedy and how his onstage persona differs from his offstage self.
Guest backgrounds
No guest is named; the episode is an interview with Alexei Sayle. He describes his own background: Liverpool upbringing, trade-union railway worker father, communist mother with a Yiddish-speaking Jewish household, and a childhood mixing Jewishness, atheism, and communism.
Key claims
He says his mother never “resiled from Stalinism” (e.g., “can’t make an omelette without murdering 40 million people”). He claims he “started what is modern comedy now” and that punk changed performer/audience dynamics. He rejects charity-single mainstreaming as “piddling” compared to restructuring society. He says he stopped stand-up in the 1990s, then returned in 2011–12 with a more authentic, vulnerable approach.
Notable examples
Capital Radio comedy series “Alexei Sayle the Fish People” winning a Pi Radio award; Comedy Store audition; Comic Strip club (1980); Sandwich Bar on Radio 4 (with guests like Jeremy Corbyn and Tim Peake); Desert Island Discs cancellation attempt by MP Matthew Offord.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOAlexei Sayle's Early Life and Career
0:49 to 3:18
A discussion on Alexei Sayle's background, career beginnings, and influences.
“So I just thought of, you know, people ask me who I would have been if I hadn't been a comic.”
A Unique Childhood
3:18 to 6:16
Exploration of Alexei's childhood, family dynamics, and political upbringing.
“We will get to that, but we'll begin at the beginning in a minute.”
Jewish Identity and Communism
6:16 to 7:40
Alexei discusses his Jewish identity and the influence of communism in his family.
“You wouldn't be aware of it when you were tiny, tiny.”
Cultural Differences in Upbringing
7:40 to 10:40
Insights into Alexei's unique upbringing compared to his peers and cultural influences.
“Well, you know, it's just one of my lines.”
Expectations and Aspirations
10:40 to 14:00
A look at the expectations his family had for him and how they shaped his aspirations.
“communist family and it's not actually a line, is it?”
Early Aspirations and School Life
14:00 to 17:40
Explore Alexei Sayle's childhood aspirations and school experiences.
“And so first of all, I was going to emulate him.”
Family Trips Behind the Iron Curtain
17:40 to 21:28
Learn about the trips to Eastern Europe that shaped Sayle's perspectives.
“And so my father became, I think, besotted with Czechoslovakia.”
Art School and Exposure to Avant-Garde
21:28 to 25:08
Discover Sayle's journey through art school and encounters with avant-garde influences.
“parents were still clinging to the idea that this was the promise yeah yeah yeah they had no problem It is odd, yes.”
Transition to Comedy and Political Engagement
25:08 to 28:04
Uncover how Sayle's comedic journey began alongside his political activism.
“But I, you know, it's, you know, the late, when the last one leaves off in 1984, you know, my life after that was a story of relative success, really.”
The Emergence of Stand-Up Comedy
28:04 to 31:42
Explore the origins of Alexei Sayle's comedy career and the evolving landscape of stand-up in the 1970s.
“And then we, just me and Bill and my partner and Cliff, the director, we just toured around the, you know, just, you know, old people's homes and stuff, just doing it really to make the results.”
Show all 21 chapters
Forming a Comedy Collective
31:42 to 33:00
Discussing the relationships and dynamics within the comedy community during the early years of stand-up.
“Were you all conscious of, because comics can be very competitive, but were you all conscious of a collective?”
The Persona On and Off Stage
33:19 to 42:05
Alexei Sayle reflects on his stage persona versus his true self and the perception of anger in performance.
“The views expressed should not be used for medical diagnosis or treatment as a substitute for professional medical advice.”
The Evolution of Stand-Up Comedy
42:05 to 44:20
Alexei discusses his shift away from stand-up and reflections on the 90s comedy scene.
“And, you know, you got all this, like, lads mag and, you know, Italian 90 and then, you know, all that.”
Rebirth Through Authenticity
44:20 to 47:30
He shares his return to stand-up and how authenticity changed his performance style.
“What were the biggest differences when you came back?”
Imaginary Sandwich Bar and Creative Freedom
47:30 to 49:50
Alexei reflects on his Radio 4 show and the whimsical nature of his creative projects.
“So I just took the bits from the Q &A at the literary events, which was me talking about my own life.”
Personal Connections and Podcasting
49:50 to 52:30
He discusses his podcast origins, the impact of his friend’s death, and dance videos.
“the recordings that, you know, I thought.”
Political Disappointments and Writing
52:30 to 55:20
Alexei shares insights on his political experiences and the writing of his new book.
“And then during lockdown, you start the podcast.”
Reflections on Humanity's Challenges
55:20 to 56:00
He reflects on the emotional impact of current global events and their historical context.
Reflections on a Changing World
56:00 to 57:28
Exploration of the emotional impact of current global conflicts and personal reflections on experiences.
Career and Controversy
57:28 to 59:57
Discussion on the effects of political views on career opportunities and personal beliefs.
“I mean, it makes my next question feel a bit silly, Alexia, to be honest with you.”
Martyrdom and Personal Limits
59:57 to 1:01:54
A conversation about the concept of martyrdom and knowing personal boundaries in activism.
“to have suffered for your business no I don't I don't I don't see the point in you know martyrdom really I don't see the point in like I mean I think I I've always known how if I can go really.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:02This is a global production. When did comedy appear in your head, let alone... Well, I always knew I was funny, really. I started what is modern comedy now. Somebody else would have done it, but I just happened to be there. You've described your upbringing as two-thirds Jewish, atheist, communist. It's not actually a line, that, is it? It's pretty statistically accurate. Yeah, yeah. My mother never really resiled from Stalinism. She used to say you can't make an omelette without murdering 40 million people. You truly believe not just that the world needs to change, but that change can be effected.
0:39Yes. Despite all the evidence to the contrary.
0:49Alexei Sayle, welcome. Thank you. can we begin with the uh media studies lecturer at a at a provincial further education college as indeed the new book um uh alexis how i've tried to change the world by walking down the middle of the street shouting the new book begins with that as well and it just i think i'd like to hear you explain it yes that's uh seems to cause some consternation i just wanted to i mean yeah i mean it's a book about obviously it's about being on the left and uh various ideas of left but i just wanted to put in an extra kind of dimension really i think that that's that's always what i've done you know my later radio work and stuff is to is to just uh you know put in kind of kind of levels of of kind of writing that just confuse and upset people really I wanted a kind of mournful kind of aspect to it, really.
1:54So I just thought of, you know, people ask me who I would have been if I hadn't been a comic. And I genuinely say I think I would have been a very bitter media studies lecturer at a college outside. And I would tell my students that the three greatest scripts ever written were Chinatown, Casablanca, and my 1997 script for Casualty, which they refused to make. And so, you know. So it's this kind of other character who is me, but not me, really. Is that a reflection, in part, on the very strangeness of your career? The fact that it is kind of the opposite of moribund or the opposite of predictable.
2:39And yet you are just a person. So perhaps it could have gone down a very boring route. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I was a college lecturer when the comedy store opened. So when it wasn't, I mean, I was a terrible, I mean, kids, when I used to teach printing apprentices general studies, they'd say to me, say, why are we here? And I'd say, fuck Divino. Do you want to go home? So I was a very unpredictable teacher. Yeah. So I don't know if I would have stayed that way. But yeah, that's what I was doing when Linda saw the advert for the comedy story. We will get to that, but we'll begin at the beginning in a minute.
3:20But before we begin at the beginning, it just occurred to me when you mentioned your later radio work. Did you do, back in 1981, I think, did you do Alexei Sailing the Fish People in this building? No, it was in... The Old Capitol Radio. Old Capitol Radio, yeah. Houston Tower. where I'd also been a Department of Health and Security clerk. I never know when I'm researching a guest. I never know where the lines in the notes have come from. But there was one, the use of the word peculiar in describing some of your jobs. Yeah, well, I was a clerk. Because there was like two entrances at Euston Tower, one for Capital Radio and one for DHSS.
4:01It was what was really interesting building, really, because the DHSS was the first 15 floors. Then there was 16th floor in which all the doors, you could get out the lift, but all the doors were locked, and that was MI6. And then the rest of it was what was then called the post office, I think. And there was a story, whether apocryphal or not, of a body. Coming over there. Anyway, so I dreamt, when I was a clerk in the DHSS, I dreamt, I thought that one day I will go through, I won't go through that door for this clerk, I'll go through that door for Capital Radio. I swear that one day I'll go through that door.
4:39And I did, and it was a tremendous anticlimax. Really, it was like, oh, you know. Oh, well. Yeah. But, yeah, no, I did the series for Capital, and it won, it was, it won, well, Sony, is it? No, Pi, it was Pi Radio, which later became the Sony's. It won the Pi Radio World for Best Comedy, Radio Comedy of that year. and it was very unusual for you know something that wasn't the BBC to win and I remember because I've won two awards I've won an advertiser I've won both both awards the chairman started by saying well it's been a very poor year
5:21but yeah so it was it was the guy it was an old capital producer I think he devised millionaire millionaire i think david uh i can't remember his name now but he said oh there's lots of like local stations taking it i thought it was great and he said no they just take it because then those days it was tape and they can reuse the tape yeah right let's back up so 1952 anfield um i mean your your childhood is fascinating in in many many ways it mean proper proper trade union activist communist dad who works on the railways but your mum if anything was an even more committed member of the communist party of great britain molly yes mulca queen um yeah i mean i i think they i mean they met in the late to 40s 47 i think i think a left-wing theater group and you know my mother up until then i think had very devout jewish household they only spoke yiddish um uh my father you know by then i mean i think 10 years older than my mother you know unmarried and they just you know they just found soulmates in each other really and yes so they married and then i was born in 1952 but i always said my mother i suspect that my mother had been her father's favorite and he'd you know he'd talk to her and then a kind of a son was born and he switched his affections to him and i think i mean i would say that my mother swapped one religion which is judaism for another which was communism.
7:16She believed in shit. I mean, she was a real, you know. How early did that land in your life? You wouldn't be aware of it when you were tiny, tiny. No, I just kind of grew up. It's a gradual kind of understanding. I mean, you take it as normal, don't you? Because it's the only childhood you know, isn't it? It's a tough one, isn't it? Because there's love and loyalty involved, which blinds you to the... Well, you know, it's just one of my lines. But, yeah, but, you know, it's the same. You know, my mother always, you know, never really resiled from Stalinism. She used to say, you can't make an omelette without murdering 40 million people.
8:01What else happened at primary school? Were you a bright lad, I presume? I mean, it's quite an intellectual background. and your dad taught himself French and Esperanto, which was quite a rare thing to do anywhere. Yeah. And obviously a lot of politics at home. Did you thrive? Did you flourish at school? Yeah, it was all right. I don't think I was academic, really. No, I think I was always a bit of a nuisance, really. I mean, not as much of a nuisance as I later became. you know so right i mean bright but not bookish i mean i read a lot really did you yeah i mean obviously that whole you know which i think every bright working class you know i mean i started going to the adult library i found the the books in the in the children's library beneath me you know pretty soon um i'm struck i mean how conscious were you of your jewishness as well i mean because your granddad, your maternal granddad.
9:05I don't know what a shamash is at Liverpool's Crown Street Synagogue. Your mum's dad. Kind of rabbi, I think. I think he's got caretakers. Okay. But it was a huge part. And you say your mum grew up in a Yiddish-speaking household. Yeah. How Jewish was your childhood, looking back? It was Jewish, but, I mean, my mother talked every day about being Jewish, and she'd say, you know, in Yiddish we call this a, you know. but on the other hand you know they i mean they're not you know if if a in an orthodox family if a a woman marries out since the lines carried through the the um female line a lot of orthodox families will actually treat them if they're dead as they're if they're dead you know they say the caddish and they uh you know cover the mirrors and stuff and then they're completely excluded We weren't that, but there was a very, it was quite a tense relationship that we had with, she had with the rest of her family.
10:04Did you go to synagogue and stuff? No, never. Not at all. No, but we used to go and visit them sometimes, you know, her family, which was just, you know, and I remember, you know, just, I mean, finding my uncle Monty sitting in the backyard in a, you know, a shed he'd made out of palm. that he was eating fried eggs and I thought, I mean, I know now it's the Festival of Succoth. I mean, it's like, oh, fuck, this is mad. I thought we were bad. Well, I mean, I was going to say there was enough madness at home. This is the bit of your, I mean, you've described your upbringing as two-thirds Jewish, atheist, communist family and it's not actually a line, is it?
10:45It's pretty statistically accurate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. and yeah I just I don't know you know because it's I mean obviously I mean I don't know about being Jews because obviously it's something you know being as we move through time being pro-Palestinian I mean being extremely pro-Palestinian it's something you can be tempted to wheel out you know as a Jew you know I condemn you know and so
11:21it's I think it I kind of think it runs deep really but it's complicated I understand so it's not as if there's any particular battle inside you when you espouse the Palestinian cause you don't feel that you're detaching yourself or letting down any sort of family heritage or anything like that. I mean, you shouldn't, obviously, but I know a lot of people with a Jewish heritage are accused of that. So we'll talk about the communism then, the new religion for your mum. You weren't even allowed to watch Bambi at the cinema. No, my mother was, as you tell her. Yeah, I mean, my mother, I mean, she was weirdly kind of worried about me being, she was worried that I was, I would be upset by the scene, you know, where Bambi is murdered by the hunters.
12:18Bambi's mother's murdered by the hunters in the forest. And so she forbade me to go and see it. But as a kind of consolation, they took me to see Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky. Yeah. Which features the famous scene on the ice. How long is that? It's pretty long. But there's a particularly extended scene where all the Teutonic knights die and are dragged beneath the black ice of the lake. What was that? I mean, as a kid in Liverpool, all your mates are going to see Walt Disney films and you're going to see an Eisenstein film. Were you conscious of how different that was from what everybody else was doing?
12:59Yeah, but I kind of embraced it. I think I always, you know, I was never... It seemed, you know, it seemed cool, really. Yeah. What did they want for you? I mean, did you become aware of... Did they have ambitions for you? it's only I mean um I think I was always treated that I was going to be that I was special really I think my mother you know only child Jewish mother that I was I had a unique vision that I was going to uh communicate to the world at some point I think I mean beyond that I don't I don't know that i mean there was well there was there was various um collective kind of delusions that we we uh we we all kind of took part in the first one was i was a great athlete uh because there'd be the the the the lemuel zatepec the flying czech had won the marathon i think in the olympics and And so first of all, I was going to emulate him.
14:08So I joined the running club and, you know. So your mum had an image of you as being a superstar of some description. Of some description. And when you say that you had a sense that you were going to address the world, is that real? I mean, you did think that you were in some way destined to appear on a very big stage in some way, shape or form. Yeah. I mean, obviously, there were some days when you believed it less than others. Yeah, but it was there in the back of your mind. So did that manifest itself at school? I don't mean were you the class clown, I just mean were you declamatory? Did you behave?
14:44I think I was fairly... I was fairly...
14:52I was all right at school at first.
14:58it's very easy to imagine some people as children i don't find it very easy immediately to imagine you as a child i think i was uh i don't know i mean it i mean i'm unsure of the timeline as well myself really but i think also my father started to suffer memory problems and I would have been probably in the fifth form or sixth form and that certainly, there was something making me misbehave by then. I had long hair, I wouldn't wear the school uniform, which was unhaired of them. Whether it was that or whether it was just my own personality, I don't know. But I started becoming more of a... I mean it wasn't pretty much but I mean there was like a they decided that each class was going to have a class representative and so my classmates elected me and so they made them have the election again and my classmates still elected me so they had the election again and by then they got the point and elected somebody else So your teachers didn't like you very much There was a couple who did English and art I think Yeah, yeah.
16:13No, I mean, bizarrely, there was a teacher called Mr. Abrams, who's Jewish and also had been in the Communist Party, and he hated me. He couldn't stand me. Why? I don't really know. I mean, he was mad about cricket, which I wasn't keen on. But he was part of my downfall, really, is that we had a fight in the tuck room. I think he pushed me, and then I pushed him. and is that why you got thrown out of the school no that was it was later really this i don't know is it expelled if they just tell you not to come back i think it is yeah but you but your parents pretend it isn't your parents pretend it's a bit it's a euphemism same thing happened to me it's asked to leave they used to say yeah yeah it wasn't expelled he was asked to leave we can't go back no but it's not like no i said like over some i wouldn't bother coming back next year.
17:04What were you rebelling against? Well, I think... I mean, the... I love school. I mean, I think they could have... You know, they could have had... I mean, I was the only kid in the sixth form as well. I wasn't asked, I think, to be a prefect, you know.
17:28But I love... I really liked it. Just didn't like it back. yeah yeah i just you know but before your dad's memory started um before he started suffering from it i'm interested in the holidays that you used to go on so this would be by dint of working on the british railway you'd get free access to eastern european railways yeah so you would spend your well your summers or all your holidays going going to sort of delegations and locomotive factories behind the iron curtain yeah from well from in 1958 there was the world's fair in brussels you get the atomium and all that and we went to that and my father was and it's it's it was a huge success at the at the world's fair was the Czech pavilion, which was full of kind of incredible ceramics.
18:26And so my father became, I think, besotted with Czechoslovakia. So the next year, 1959, when I would have been seven, we went to Czechoslovakia. Just the three of us, really. Yeah, I mean, just without any approval or, you know, just, I don't know, we just ended up there. I mean, we were quite used to, I mean, obviously by then, And, you know, you'd get these, we'd usually change, we'd had to spend the night in Paris or, you know, you change trains, you get these grand, you know, you would get, you know, the Orient Express or one of those, you know, one of those grand expresses that traversed Europe.
19:05It was just kind of, just kind of what we did, you know. And they signed you up for the Czechoslovak Young Pioneers. Yeah. This was after your athletics career had come to an end. I think probably, yeah. I was thinking though I don't know just trying to think about there's a there's a a character very popular in Czech kind of literary history which is called The Good Soldier Schweik which is a huge book written by a guy called Jaroslav Hasek and I actually read it I think and there's like the Schweik pub and I had a little a little Schweik made out of felt I figure it and Schweik is a soldier in the first world war in the austro-hungarian empire and is completely amoral he steals dogs for a living and i think that i'll just i think i think that really it's one of those you know it's one of those kind of great i mean it's very much like it's unfinished but it's very much like a kind of earlier version of catch 22 in a way about the absurdity of war and the absurdity of of human you know human nature and kind of structures and i think that really affected i was thinking i think that gave me very early on a kind of uh um the critical attitude towards authority really and also an appreciation of the absurd yeah well you know it's an overused word surreal but it but it obviously fits a lot of your work quite tightly yeah accurately and i think also i think it was I mean again I don't really know where it comes but I think I pretty pretty quickly came to see that what my parents were doing was kind of had its absurd aspects I think I mean it was also that we were you know I mean people they talked about it often that like our our interpreter would be security would be you know would be you know we'd you know they'd say yeah you know the six you know the interview is usually a blonde woman you know and she'd try and get off with one of the members of the delegation you know just kind of you know that we were you know that was talked about openly we talked about being you know we knew we were being followed and stuff like that i mean it's it's an odd yeah and the parents were still clinging to the idea that this was the promise yeah yeah yeah they had no problem It is odd, yes.
21:37And so you go back to the economic ideas of Marxism rather than the actual incarnation of it, the alleged incarnation of it in Eastern Europe. And that stays with you throughout your life, which is where the new book comes in. So as everybody's aware, well, most people are aware of your comedy and your activism. You can't separate the two. The two have always been hand in hand with each other. yeah is southport college of art next was that a natural progression or was it just because art was the only thing you were good at by the time i was yeah i mean i was this was the next i suppose this was the next kind of collective delusion that we had i was going to be a great artist and so
22:25so when you know when they told me not to come back to allsop i applied for foundation college Southport College of Art, yeah, and they accepted me on a two-year foundation course. That was a little less strict than Alsop Grammar School. Yeah, I mean, it was, yeah. But I was good at drawing, you know. And did you meet people there, the likes of which you hadn't met before, or was it just a general sort of...? I was already mixing with people like that in Liverpool. I mean, I was very, you know, I had long hair and a beard at the age of 14, so it was like, you know, I was hanging around. I mean, again, and I don't know whether it's kind of connected with my father's illness or just to kind of growing up.
23:14But I used to just take the dog for a walk and then be home by half six. And I sort of have this. I mean, it's apocryphal. But the idea of just thinking, fuck this one day and I'm going to the pub. And then I was never home. I never spent another night at home. But, you know. Sure. I got in late, really. So I started hanging around with people from politics in Liverpool. But yeah, also in Southport. And the teachers, you know, the teachers were... Max Eden was a particular... Yeah, Max is, yeah, yeah. Introducing you to a world... I mean, it's funny, isn't it? Because you have this image of a lad from Liverpool who's had this odd childhood and being exposed to very odd things by his parents.
23:54But at the same time, it's an incredibly cosmopolitan experience that you've had. you've been to foreign countries you've you've visited um exhibitions and things that most kids in liverpool would never have visited and then you have this teacher who introduces you to the avant-garde to samuel beckett to did that begin to excite you in ways that normal schooling hadn't yeah i mean uh yeah i mean well you know i mean we got some of that at school but i mean yeah like alfred jerry and uh you know the surrealists and i mean max had been you know you know had known Picasso and stuff like that he'd literally known Picasso yeah yeah yeah teaching at Southport College yeah I mean he yeah I think he decided you know for your quiet life really then we come to Chelsea or rather yeah you come to art school in London you come to Chelsea art school what were you hoping to be at this point was the delusion that you were going to be a big artist still in place i think so yeah i mean uh chelsea suit beat that out to me really but uh i always thought i was going to go to come down to london really i mean my generation really you know we uh i was never staying in liverpool i once again put a good 200 miles between me and my mother apart from anything else yeah um uh so i was always going to move down to london and i was familiar i thought i was from i was familiar with london from demonstrations you know so i you know but i mean i you know i said the only way i would know how to get around london was to start at speaker's corner and then or saint paul's and march you know walk down the middle of the street to the american embassy shouting um because you've been doing that the first one in the book is 1959 yeah i mean that's a guess i mean we would i know that we we went on ban the bond demonstrations from uh when you know i was a child you know when i was one or two i think yeah and so you would work in a wheelchair in a push check you'd be wheeled through you'd be wheeled through the pages so i mean i should have explained earlier that the book is a is it's really a it's a chronology of your life through marches and causes that you've supported um where did you get the idea for that from well we i mean my i've always you know as i write in i've always struggled to come up with a kind of third volume of you know i've done which uh you know be relatively popular and i i tried for years and years to come up with the third volume.
26:36But I, you know, it's, you know, the late, when the last one leaves off in 1984, you know, my life after that was a story of relative success, really. You know, and so if you write, you know, and I did, you know, I had a meeting, you know, I went for lunch with Alan Yenton with me. You know, and he said, you're one of the TV series. I said, yeah. It's like, you know where's the tension where's the you know yeah and then so it's partly that that when my editor at orion said you know you're right i just thought there is a part you know happiness rights wise and i just thought there is a part of my life that has been a almost constant story of of of you know failure and unhappiness and that's been on the left political failure political unhappiness yeah yeah because you know you so it's weird isn't it you you saw through if that's the right way of putting it your parents politics but you stayed welded to elements of marxism and elements of of leftism and yeah and have done yeah forever really until today yes um we haven't mentioned comedy for people who haven't read your first two volumes so you're now in london um embarking upon your course at chelsea and then subsequently this litany of peculiar jobs that you did when did comedy when did you i mean when did it appear in your head let alone well i always knew i was funny really right but i wasn't like uh yeah i didn't dominate but i just knew and then there was a friend of mine whose parents had also been in the communist party and he he started a theater group a brechtian theater group he asked me to be part of it we're still in liverpool now no this is it's down here now right it's like 76 okay and he asked me to be a part of it and then that split up there was like 14 and then there was two people and i just had this idea one night really of just writing why don't we do a comedy show so I basically wrote it.
28:49And then we, just me and Bill and my partner and Cliff, the director, we just toured around the, you know, just, you know, old people's homes and stuff, just doing it really to make the results. But I knew that I had something really. I knew that I had. Enough to have a crack. Yeah. So now you're just waiting for an opportunity. Yeah. I mean, what I felt was lacking was a collective, you know. I knew that if I could find a group of like-minded people, then this, what I was doing, was going to be something significant. Really? Yeah. I think so, yeah. I thought this is going to go. Because there was just a, there was an audience out, you know.
29:39It's really difficult to tell people about the show business landscape. but the 1970s really I mean there was all these you know these racist comics like bernard manning and stuff and then the only people doing that uh anecdotal comedy were folk musicians ex-folk musicians billy connolly jasper carer max boys god yeah mike hart and they were the only ones who did it really you know and they were fine but you know they're folks so they're like they're not going to give you a kind of Lenny Bruce kind of, you know. So I just thought there's got to be a market for, you know, this new audience that's, you know, this new market in the sense that's emerging, you know, people buying their furniture from Habitat and buying, you know, all that stuff.
30:32There's got to be a market for stand-up. Because if they wanted to see anything left-wing or about, They had to come and see a play, like a fringe play. And, you know, so I just had this idea that, you know, yeah, there was a market, there was an audience out there for stand-up comedy, which was about people's real lives. And when I got the, you know, when they offered me, when the comedy store opened and they offered me the job of being there. So you auditioned? Yeah. The legend is that you were the first in the queue for the audition. No, I wasn't the first. I was going to say that's probably a bit of an embellished.
31:13I was just the first. It wasn't insane. Obviously. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And did you know that that was the beginning of the fruition of what you'd kind of been feeling? Yeah. I mean, some of that, you know, that knowing is obviously composed to a degree. Yes, of course. Of what happens subsequently. But, yeah, I thought this, the opening night at Combsy's store, I thought, yeah, this is, yeah, this works, you know. And this is where the collective begins to appear. Yeah, and through that I started to meet like-minded individuals, Tony Allen, Keith Allen, and then obviously Rick Mayer, Adrian Edmondson, and then Peter Richardson, Nigel Plainer, and then later on, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders.
31:58And what was that like? What were the relationships like? Were you all conscious of, because comics can be very competitive, but were you all conscious of a collective? Were you all conscious of being stronger as a part of something? It was a bit, I mean, the ones who were all left wing, I mean, the reason I left the comedy store is because everybody was shouting about Thatcher and I thought, I want to be amongst people who aren't doing this. So the relationship with people like Tony Allen was a bit spiky. But once, when we got Peter Richardson opened this club called Comic Strip in 1980, and we didn't, you know, we didn't compete with each other.
32:39And then we went on tour of the UK and then we went on a tour of Australia. And we really became a family, you know. I mean, it really was, there was a, me and Linda were like their mom and dad, really. They'd hide what they were doing from us.
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33:32for people who don't know what was your act then so i was the uh i was the emcee so i'd come on between acts uh but i would do material you know material between the acts um and the essence of it was a kind of this i mean i thought of it as a a bloke a scouse bloke who's gone to prison for some violent crime read a load of books in prison and then they've let him out and they've given him his suit back you know so like from the mod and that that's kind of and so that because because um you know one of the things i mean punk music wasn't that important to me but one of the things that i think punk also changed was not just music but was the relationship between the performer and the audience and so the audiences were much less passive and so you needed you needed to frighten the shit out of them otherwise things would get out of hand you know and it was my proud boast that at the comedy store the police were never called while I was emcee um and I just so just very naturally I just developed this just terrifyingly angry just kind of character really violent you know anger is an energy to consider with the punk vibe but um but you weren't angry off stage no no i wasn't and that i mean that kind of confused me for many years yeah it was a it was kind of probably yeah it was weird really um you're quite happy really off stage yeah happily married you've got one of the most enduring marriages yeah in in the business and and successful now and enjoying life and yet on stage, um, furious.
35:22Yeah. Yeah. This persona. And most people thought that was you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'd say, yeah, I used to do Richard and Judy, but Judy'd never, she wouldn't come in when I was on because she's frightened of me. Yeah. And that was like a, that was a, that was a funny thing to live with really. because I wasn't him, you know, but he was my living, really. And possibly why you became alive quite quickly to the fear of somehow selling out or the way that alternative comedy became so mainstream so quickly. Yeah, I mean, I think I always, I mean, a lot of this stuff is just kind of intuitive in a way, but I just, you know, I mean, I remember, like, Lisa and Rick doing the pre-genitor to comic relief was, they went to some village somewhere, you know, and all the left, Stephen and Hugh, all those Oxbridge people, and they said, yo, we're all going to do this thing for charity.
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36:39I was like, I'm not doing that. you know and i i i very and you know i was i when i was i think they asked me to come somebody asked me this they asked they asked me to come when they recorded live aid the same when they record do they know it's christmas they said do you want to come down the studio and kind of do some funny stuff i said no you you were already a pop star by now i was yeah but i just i could see that I it seemed to me that there was always um I mean several problems inherent in you know the charity single one it's kind of high you know it's sure you're using the suffering of others to promote your career and also to it is it's a it's a sticking plaster for the uh you know for capitalism well and that's that's probably why you felt the way that you did because you didn't want to just put some money in a tin or help put money in a tin you did want to restructure i mean you did want a restructured society which again brings us back to the new book which is which is about genuinely trying to change the world albeit the self-deprecating subtitle by walking down the middle of the street shouting because you were not on these marches as a tourist or or for fun any more than you're um going through the motions or trying to be hit when you speak out in favour of Gaza.
37:59You never cease to be your parents' son. You truly believe, not just that the world needs to change, but that change can be affected. Yes. Despite all the evidence to the contrary. Yeah. Most of which is in that book. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's... Did you keep them separate? I mean, obviously your comedy was very political in some ways, and in some ways it was just surrealism but did you keep them separate in your own looking back now rather than at the time were you you know okay i'm going to go on that march and then i'm going to do that tv show you whereas what you're describing is people who were trying to sort of juggle both things i'm going to do some good i'm going to do some good now some charity goodness while i'm still being a comic do you have more of a dichotomy than they did or not um i guess i I mean, yeah, it was, you know, it was, you know, sometimes I would do, you know, a benefit for some anodyne cause.
39:08Of course, but that wasn't your politics. Your politics was the activism and the actual campaigning and the marching. Whereas for other comics, that was the beginning and the end of their activism was doing the benefits. Yeah, so I would do. It felt a bit piddling, the benefits, compared to what some of the people you'd be knocking about with on the marches were dedicated, or what your parents dedicated their lives to. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, yes. No, it was, I mean, it was all contradictory, really. Yeah, okay. You know, because it's also, like, for instance, Tony Allen, you know, you know, he chose, you know, he chose the founder of Alternative Cabaret, he chose to live a much more off-grid, you know, counterculture life.
39:56You know, I remember getting, he's briefly in the young ones and the amount of negotiations we had to get him to be, you know, he could do this, but he wouldn't do that. He could take that, but yeah, it's a kind of trade-off really. how far you will go along with the machinery. And there are people, yes, certainly who I was on those demonstrations with who would think I went way too far, you know, in terms of my idea was, I think, that what I wanted to do was to become as popular an entertainer as I could, to get as far into the mainstream and to take those ideas into the mainstream. coupled with a Ravnic ambition, you know.
40:45Of course, yeah. So, I mean, that was, I just wanted to, you know, yeah, I just wanted to get on primetime, but also without diluting what I did, you know, the references and stuff. And you did? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the acceleration into primetime was extraordinary in many ways given where it started you know big old films steven spielberg films all sorts of things but did you sort of was it a was it a natural trajectory or was it like a succession of cliffs that you fell off you just went flipping how did this happen well it's a bit like i would say you know it's like you've you know you've got talent when you're doing it when you're starting out you're doing a gig and somebody offers you 40 quid and then somebody says oh we'll come and do my pub and I'll give you 50 quid and sort of doing films with steams people it's just a kind of another aspect of that that you go you go further and further people just offer you if you're talented if you're doing you know you just people people just offer you better and better gigs until they until it stops it didn't did it it didn't really stop you you knocked the stand-up on the head yourself you decided you didn't want to do stand-up anymore why was that i well i i think and it's again because nothing goes out of fashion i think there i mean and i i revel in this no i think i went out tremendously out of fashion for a while i think and i was very on you know i was kind of unhappy you know i was um sort of the 90s you know i talk a lot about uh 1990s alexis sale that he was a bit of a shitbag, I think, because he was unhappy.
42:34And, you know, you got all this, like, lads mag and, you know, Italian 90 and then, you know, all that. And people, you know, as I say, you know, people realised they could... You got, you know, people could go and see a comedian. You know, it wasn't a fat Marxist screaming at them. Realised they could go out and have a nice night out, you know. So you got people like, I guess, Frank Skinner. And I was just, people were like, this is my memory I may have constructed. It may be false, but at that point, no. I mean, one of the reasons that people are interested in me now is because authenticity and history are important to people now.
43:25in a way that, and because I invented alternative comedy, I invented. Somebody else would have done it, but I just happened to be there. I started what is modern comedy now, and people are interested in that, so I got a lot of respect for them. You know, when I decided to go back to stand-up in 2011, 2012, I liked to go backstage at the comedy store, and all the young comedians had to pretend to be excited. I used to love that. I was like, oh, yeah. It was like, yeah. But, you know, because by then, those comics were interested in the history of their trade. People in the 90s didn't give a fuck about, you know, what had gone before.
44:10No, so they kind of got, they'd come in on the rising tide that you guys had started, but don't stop. But they wanted just, yeah, go away. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. What were the biggest differences when you came back? I mean, just in terms of stagecraft and audio. Yeah, well, what I hadn't realized was that the guy in the tight suit was a persona, really. He was just a character, you know, like what we talked about. I didn't know. That's amazing, isn't it? It's really stupid. So you didn't know where you started and he finished? You thought it was all you? It was all me? Kind of, I thought, yeah.
44:47That's mad, that. Yeah. It was like I'd never sell merch or signs because I always thought I can't meet the public because that would dilute his power. So I missed out on a lot of merch.
45:11In 96, I did a tour of Australia. and I just, it just was, you know, it did feel like it was working for me, really, and it just... Was that scary? Did that frighten you? It's terrifying, yeah, it was terrifying, yeah, because, you know, it's, yeah, it's really, it's the first, yeah, intimation that, you know, what you're selling's not being bought anymore, you know I mean the gigs were pretty successful but I mean I just but you know in your bones don't you yeah I was like fleshing it out I was like two dancing girls and stuff but I knew and I would sort of say I would do you know I'd finish with me here tell her John got a new motor and I would say you know I've been doing this song for 15 fucking years now I'm fucking hardly sick of it it's like it's a bit unsettling yes you know But you meant it, really.
46:10Yeah, yeah. But I didn't really, I didn't, so I thought I'd run out of road with stand-up. And then, so what, I mean, I had a few years thrashing about, really, just doing all kinds of nonsense. You know, as my popularity slowly declined. And then in 1999, 2000, I wrote a collection of short stories, which was pretty popular. and I just got on that kind of book reading circuit and so you know you do you do you'd be interviewed by a bitter local author you know at some festival why haven't Hodder bought my sex fucking sci-fi detective media studies professor yeah exactly so I would just talk about my own life in the interview, in the Q &A.
47:07And I just put a comic spin on it. And then in 2011, Stuart Lee was doing this thing. Sorry, I've heard. Yeah, but no, it was Queen Elizabeth. Oh, yeah, sorry. Southbank, yeah. And just asked me to... It's called The Last of the Night, the 1981 show. And I just thought, you know, I can't go and just do the old act. So I just took the bits from the Q &A at the literary events, which was me talking about my own life. Yes. Just strung them together. Unfiltered, entirely authentic. Yeah, completely true. All of it was absolutely true. And people started using words like thoughtful and vulnerable for the first time.
47:56Yeah, exactly. because he was, yeah, yeah, it was, it was magical. I mean, one, the audience, it was obviously like, it was, you know, it was, there was a tremendous amount of just affection for me, I think, as a, you know, a kind of survivor. And then there was also the material, it was great, you know, it really killed. And so that's, that was the basis. The second coming, really. Yeah. A proper rebirth. Yeah, and I'm really proud of it because it's completely different. You know, there's no connection between the old comic and the new comic. Which means you're a different person when you sit down a few years later to write Thatcher Stole My Trousers.
48:37Yeah. You've kind of reconciled yourself with that period when you were being on stage someone who wasn't actually you, even though it was like an Uber you. Yeah. Yeah, I've started to understand it, I think. who I was really and then other stuff other little milestones, you do the imaginary sandwich bar on Radio 4 which is an extraordinary piece of work again actually makes a lot more sense given what you've just said about becoming more contemplative and becoming more whimsical is the word it is a whimsical piece isn't it It is, yeah. I mean, I'm very grateful to Radio 4 for letting me do it, really.
49:31But it was the, I think it was the first series of Sandwich Bar. You know, I just, yeah, I mean, it's everything that, you know, I wanted to be, really, as a performer. And I thought the first couple of nights was so magical, the recordings that, you know, I thought. You can hear that. You can hear that in the recording. I mean, I just, I love the audience and they love being there. Utterly bonkers, isn't it? I mean, it just. It probably took like a year. I think Sean and William, who was at the comedy, came to me and said, we think he should be on Radio 4. So then, you know, it took me a long time to work out, you know, the idea that I own a sandwich bar, which is imaginary.
50:21and then it's like somebody comes in but they all talk in the same voice. And we've had a lot of people. Yeah, we've had Hitler in, haven't we? We've had Jeremy Corbyn. We've had astronaut Tim Peake, you know. They've all come in, really. And before that, there's a bit walking to the sandwich bar, which is a slightly more cerebral bit. then there's the and then there's the rest of the show you've always been apart from that little period that you've talked about in the 90s you've always been able quite rarely really in your world to do what you want haven't you in a way yeah i guess so i mean i fit yeah i guess i mean i think i probably fit my ambitions to what's possible you know um it was funny me and nigel did the Nigel Plainer I'm still very very close to I mean we are still I should say that the the comic strip we are still tremendously close really you know yeah I mean particularly me and Nigel and Peter are just you know just um you know close very close now Nigel's friendly with Adrian and you know
51:39but me and Nigel did Celebrity Antiques Road Trip I thought when I saw that this can't be real I thought but I was thinking maybe we could get a bit of that Paul Whitehouse and Bob Mortimer vibe you know and it's just shit isn't it nobody's like nobody's going to give us a fucking show I don't know I mean, it is for people who don't know. It is exactly what it says on the tin. He's just driving around getting antiques and trying to auction them for a profit. It's really stupid. It's also that, like, me and Nigel, you know, whatever we have, you know, in private, it doesn't translate to the screen.
52:25I don't fucking like Bob Mortimer and Paul Rice. Just fishing, for fuck's sake. It's a lovely show, though. It reaches parts, doesn't it? And then during lockdown, you start the podcast. That was a bit of a departure. Because it's encounters rather than interviews, isn't it? It's interviews, really. Some interviews, yeah. I mean, it's mutated over the years. I mean, it's interesting. I had a very dear friend, Mustafa Khak, who was a Syrian journalist. And he died during lockdown. I'm one of Mustafa's claims famous he was one of the hostages in the Iran embassy siege I was very friendly with him and his family and then his son Talal came to me at Mustafa's funeral and said, pitch me about doing a podcast pure class yeah, I thought well if you're that determined hard to say no yeah, really it is sorry your dad's dead I'm not going to do a pocket so so Talal really took out you know did all the the the technical stuff and then um yeah so we just started very slowly feeling our way into it and then of course that's the other thing the other thing that makes me inordinately pleased with myself is the the dance videos you know these are the interpretive dance explaining Marxist theory and similar which have got crazy numbers on yeah TikTok and social media million I mean 15 million something like that I don't know yeah and uh I just I just think you know I mean it just makes me extraordinarily smug that I did that well you've cracked that generational phenomenon I mean that's like it's another zeitgeist that you found a place in yeah yeah well then to steer back because it's seven decades of political activity that's contained in the new book um less successfully really than than the other side of your life the the i mean so the professional performing side has gone with occasional hiatuses it's gone brilliantly well and yet the political side of your life has been one disaster after another yeah well i always say yeah because me and linda have obviously been together an awful long time and she she said uh you know i'm not going to get a pension i said no i'm not going to pension either and she said, I'm not going to get a pension because by the time I'm of pension age, we'll be living in a socialist society in which each according to their needs.
55:02And I said, I'm not going to get a pension because I'm going to be tremendously rich and famous. Turns out I was right. But yeah, the story of the left has been, even when it seems like we're winning, we were losing really. yeah uh it's been um yeah it's been uh it's it's i mean in the writing the book i mean was you know i started writing it i think round about the start of the genocide and and um you know it was it's partly about coming to terms with that you know i i those first few demonstrations I was in tears and you know I still you know it we we've crossed that I believe that we've crossed over into some kind of place I never thought I would be really and um never thought the world would be no and so you know writing the book was partly I think about coming to term with to terms with that really that new this altered reality that i live in you know yeah so i mean vietnam was pretty awful but but some of the other stuff and iraq was awful as well but that but i mean it reads differently when you get to gaza it reads even i mean it's obviously different from the miners struggles and and um ban the bomb and stuff like that there is a sense that when you get to covering gaza covering genocide you but i'm not surprised to see you looking so emotional because it is as if you can't quite believe what we we have become yeah yeah it's it's it's very difficult really and it's you know that i mean it did give me i think you know if you if you saw a film set in the early years in Nazi Germany like Mephisto or Cabaret you would have to make a cognitive leap to understand what it was like to live in that period I think once October 7th happened and then the subsequent you know the genocide that followed you didn't need to make that cognitive leap anymore we are living in a version of that reality really and um it's you know it's extraordinary to i don't know how you cope with that really you know but i mean a lot of people struggle don't they yeah that's all and yeah classic human survival mechanism yeah i mean stuff that's happened it's forgotten like you remember like a u.s serviceman set themselves on fire and yeah you know a hind or a jab you know they if family were killed then they killed the medics who went to save her you know there was a it was a woman who looked after turtles in southern Lebanon and they killed her 71 years old, they killed her a few weeks ago, there was a bloke who organised like big screens so people in Gaza could see the World Cup, they killed him you know so West Bank now the last Christian villages is under siege.
58:33I mean, it makes my next question feel a bit silly, Alexia, to be honest with you. But do you feel that the... Has the politics had any sort of negative effect upon the career? Do you think there's things that you were not... Because, I mean, looking at your CV, it's hard to think that you were crossed off lists, or I don't know that you were. I can't claim any kind of martyrdom. I'm not asking. I'm just wondering if you were aware of any moments where someone has said, oh, I'm not sure about him. They tried to get my Desert Island Discs cancelled, you know. Really? Yeah. An MP called Matthew Offord, who's in Conservative Friends of Israel, tried to get my Desert Island Discs.
59:19As a barometer of a level of suffering, it's not like, you know, you can't. Yes, there's people in Raffa think they've got it bad, right? my struggle yeah yeah um my yeah i mean me you know i mean it wasn't you know the bbc stood up so you know so you know it was it all went away really but now i can't claim that i've i've suffered for my beliefs really i mean i've probably i've suffered i've suffered i made myself suffer for my beliefs yeah you know uh but uh nobody else has done it to me okay i have got a serious question to end with then would you like to have suffered for your business
1:00:05no I don't I don't I don't see the point in you know martyrdom really I don't see the point in like I mean I think I I've always known how if I can go really. And, you know, that's what I've done really. So I've never really been, I've never really, you know, if I want, I could have at any point really, of course, it, I think, uh, uh, a flame out really. Um, yeah, I don't see, I don't, I don't see the point of it really. There's a clue in the title. You're out. Aren't you? If you flame out, you're out. Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know it's conspicuous kind of you know it's it yeah i mean i think i've always i think part i mean it's always been my yeah modus operandi is to this to know how far you can go i mean you know great i mean you know i say radio four first i don't think any other comedy series on radio fours use the term genocide i'm not aware of it if it has but you know that's pretty yeah it's pushing yeah how I've tried to change the world by walking down the middle of the street shouting by Alexis is out now some of the other projects that we've touched upon are also still going and I believe that Celebrity Antiques Road Trip is available on it will be the iPlayer yeah Alexis thank you thank you very much
1:01:51This has been a global production.
From the publisher
Alexei Sayle has spent a lifetime finding humour in anger, absurdity and the systems that shape us. Raised in Liverpool by fiercely committed communist parents, his childhood was filled with politics, protest marches and unusual cultural influences - from Soviet cinema to family trips behind the Iron Curtain.
In this episode of Full Disclosure, James O’Brien sits down with the comedian, writer and actor to trace the path from a rebellious schoolboy and struggling art student to the incendiary force at the heart of alternative comedy. Alexei recalls discovering his voice at the Comedy Store, forging lifelong friendships with Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, Nigel Planer and the Comic Strip generation, and becoming known for a furious on-stage persona that often bore little resemblance to the man offstage.
He reflects on success, creative reinvention and the strange experience of falling out of fashion before returning to stand-up with a more personal, contemplative voice. Alexei also discusses his lifelong political activism, the ideals he inherited from his parents, and the tension between wanting to change the world and recognising the limits of protest.
It’s a funny, candid and deeply thoughtful conversation about comedy, conviction, reinvention and the complicated business of staying true to yourself.
Find out more about How I've Tried to Change the World: By Walking Down the Middle of the Street Shouting by Alexei Sayle here
Full Disclosure is a Global Production
Listen or watch every Friday on Global Player, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.