Alexei Sayle: Why there's no point being nostalgic for Morecambe and Wise

On the 1980s alternative comedy circuit there was one easily identifiable figure. In his tight, shiny suit, Alexi Sayle was the self-styled angry young man who ushered in a new, anarchic style of stand-up.

Today Sayle is 63 and while the button-popping suits maybe no more, he is still in combatative mood. Not least in the second instalment of his autobiography, Thatcher Stole My Trousers, which charts his years from the early Seventies through to the Eighties. It was, he says, a period which he was instrumental in changing the landscape of British comedy.

“There aren’t many people who can look at an art form and say, ‘I invented that’. But with modern comedy, I did. It would have happened without me, but it would have looked a bit different.”

As the MC of London’s Comedy Store, Sayle helped to breed a new wave of British comedian from French and Saunders to Adrian Edmondson and Rik Mayall and was rewarded with his own TV show, various live tours and some lucrative voice-over work. By the mid-1990s he’d had enough and quietly retired from the comedy circuit. He was burnt out, but a few years ago he was back, embarking on a mammoth 100-gig tour for the first time in almost two decades.

“I thought I’d come to the limit of what I could do. I’d hit a wall. I was tired. Then I was invited to do a nostalgia show and I thought, rather than do old material, I’d write something new.”

Today, he’s keen to remain more neutral when it comes to political comedy, saying audiences seem uncomfortable with the genre. However, he is no less opinionated. His latest tour still managed to target what he sees as the betrayal of New Labour and in his latest memoir he takes aim at some of his comedy predecessors.

“No woman was safe from their attentions. In contrast, all the comedians I worked with, despite our acts often being aggressive and challenging, were in stable relationships, were non-racist and non-sexist, didn’t drink or take drugs to excess very often and were able to have a normal conversation that didn’t end in a punchline,” he writes.

“I came to the conclusion that mainstream comedians were nasty men pretending to be nice, whereas alternative comedians were nice men pretending to be nasty. I try and stay clear of saying, ‘It was all great in my day and now everything’s rubbish’, but we were fortunate in that we had this terrible vacuum to fill. Everything else was so bad, the conventional comedy.”

That’s a sweeping statement. What about Morecambe & Wise, or The Two Ronnies?

“There’s a revisionist thing to go back and say they were great. Technically, all them guys were great comics who could work a crowd. Technically Bob Monkhouse was skilled, but the material was terrible. Maybe I’m being a bit harsh on them, but the range of material was limited.”

Sayle admits that he has all but lost touch with many of his comedy peers. Only Lenny Henry, Nigel Planer and Peter Richardson remain close friends.

“It was more that I drifted away from The Comic Strip. Ultimately, I wanted to be by myself, I wanted to perform solo, that’s what I’d always been aiming towards. That was the price I paid.”

“It’s harder to be a comic now,” he adds. “Now it’s very difficult to distinguish yourself. There’s always somebody who’s a bit like you.”

While he may have been a natural loner, the deaths of fellow comics Rik Mayall, Robin Williams and Mel Smith have made him think about the legacies that entertainers leave.

“It’s a business that takes its toll. The consolation to any kind of artist is to say, ‘At least I’ve made a mark’.

Thatcher Stole My Trousers by Alexei Sayle is published by Bloomsbury, priced £16.99. Available now.