Why There Are More Laughs On The Hard Path

Alexei Sayle made a huge mark on the comedy scene in the early '80s, first with his distinctive stand-up act — a tightly wound, manic persona perpetually clad in an ill-fitting suit and pork pie hat, found either dousing the crowd with vitriol or embracing the surreal and the absurd with open arms — and then as part of the 'alternative comedy boom', which culminated in his numerous zany characters that coloured The Young Ones each episode (including the whole unforgettable Balowski clan).

But his new memoir Thatcher Stole My Trousers —  the follow-up to 2010's Stalin Ate My Homework — takes up the story in the early '70s, when a young Sayle moved from Liverpool to London with a head full of Marxist revolutionary ideals and a thirst to change the world. What follows are some most excellent adventures, a ton of weird vocations, and finally a firsthand account of one of the most fertile comedy movements in history. The book's main strength, however, is Sayle's wonderful way with words and canny ability to spin a yarn, no real surprise given that he's penned numerous acclaimed novels and short stories over the last three decades.

"You could write the same events and make them dark if you chose to — but I've chosen to see the comic possibilities in things."

"[The tone's] not consciously based on anybody but I guess you're influenced by all the stuff you've read," he offers. "I've chosen to view it through a humorous lens —  you could write the same events and make them dark if you chose to — but I've chosen to see the comic possibilities in things. Not always, but that's my sort of default position. I guess there's stuff like Gerald Durrell's My Family And Other Animals and stuff like that which maybe unconsciously influenced me. Obviously I'm a great fan of semi-comic writers like Evelyn Waugh, and I suppose I was thinking to some extent about Dave Sedaris and people like that — in a different sense, because this is a libertarian turning real life into humour." 

While recounting the genesis of The Young Ones Sayle admits that he demanded that the writers craft him a different character for each episode so that he wouldn't be "stuck as one person".

"I sometimes think I was being a bit of a prick for insisting on doing that really," he laughs. "In a way it's the whole thing the book's about — it's not a stupid decision, but it's a decision that makes life more complicated for myself. They could have written a much-loved character for me, that would have been nice. People loved Rik or Vyvyan or Neil more than they loved me because I wasn't a very lovable character.

"With what I do on The Young Ones, some of it's character acting when I play say Jerzy [Balowski] or Brian Damage, but some of it's then just bits of my stand-up act or bits of stand-up that I've written especially for the show. And my stand-up act was not me really it was just a performance. I'm not at all like the guy in the tight suit really, and I used to be surprised that people would think I was going to be."