ALEXEI Sayle has come a long way since his days as a brash Marxist comic.

He's had his own TV comedy shows, appeared in blockbuster films like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Gorky Park, and latterly he's become a popular author.

With two collections of short stories and a couple of well-received novels under his belt, his latest book, Mister Roberts, is already garnering plaudits and likely to enhance his growing literary reputation.

Like his previous books Mister Roberts isn't easy to categorise. It's part social satire, part comedy, part science-fiction and partly a coming-of-age tale about the corrupting influence of power, redolent of Kurt Vonnegut.

The narrative details the rivalries and pretensions of a British ex-pat community living in Spain.

It then takes a surreal turn when a couple of aliens crash-land in the nearby hills bringing with them a powerful robotic suit,
which ends up in the hands of a 13 year-old boy called Stanley.

"It's a novel that jumps around genres," says Sayle. "When I'm writing I always try to build several ideas on top of each other rather than just write about one thing.

"This often confuses the reader and they don't always like it, but I much prefer to make my work more challenging."

The book is also very funny at times, which you might expect from someone who spent years working as a stand-up comedian and helped write The Young Ones.

If his novels are hard to categorise, his upbringing was equally unconventional.

He was born in Liverpool, the son of a working class English railway worker and a Lithuanian clerk, both of who were members of the British Communist Party. It sounds like a challenging childhood, but Sayle disagrees.

"Where I came from, it was more unusual if you voted Conservative so it felt very normal. It was something to be proud of because it made me a bit different.

"At school the kids would come in and say they'd been to see Bambi, whereas I'd say I'd been to watch Ivan the Terrible and they'd all go 'wow.'" From an early age he felt he was destined to be successful. "I just wanted to be famous and I always felt I had a unique vision that I wanted to communicate to people, but I wasn't quite sure how I would do it. I always had that inclination that I would be somebody who did something. I know that a lot of people say this, but I actually managed it."

He initially wanted to be an artist rather than a comic. "I was interested in music, art and industrial design as much as I was with comedy," he says.

Then along came the punk movement which he found inspirational. "That was a big thing. It literally changed the relationship between the audience and performer and out of this you had punk-poets like Linton Kwesi Johnson, John Cooper Clarke and Ian Dury."

But success didn't arrive overnight for Sayle. "After art college, I was basically unemployed for six years and during that time I did a bit of fringe theatre in London and then I auditioned at the Comedy Store and was offered a job as its first MC."

This proved to be his big break and over the next few years he became synonymous with the alternative comedy scene, which included the likes of Ben Elton, Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson.

"We were a comic alternative to people like Bernard Manning and Freddie Starr. We were committed to a cabaret vibe without the nastiness and stupidity of those people."

Sayle graduated from stand-up to appearing on cult comedy shows like The Comic Strip Presents ... before he was given his own TV show, Alexei Sayle's Stuff and later The All New Alexei Sayle Show.

Since then his literary career has taken off, but now that he's in his mid-50s and a respected author, is the comic firebrand mellowing with age?

"I'm not as judgemental as I used to be, but I still believe in certain causes and I believe it's the role of the artist to show people the reality of things."

Which brings us back to Mister Roberts. "It's a parable for the modern age and I suppose it's about the last 10 years," he says. "But it's also about the choices that we make, because if there is a moral to the story, it's that it is never too late to change your mind about something."

Mister Roberts, by Alexei Sayle is published by Sceptre priced £12.99.To order from the Yorkshire Post Bookshop call 0800 0153232 or order online at www.yorkshirepostbook-shop.co.uk Postage and packing cost £2.75.