Alexei Sayle
The Stand Comedy Club |
My earliest memory is of being pushed around in a Silver Cross pram down Jackson Street, Gateshead. I must have been young if I was still in that pram so maybe my recollection is hazy but then it took me a while to get off the tit, so who can tell? I remember some noise, a kerfuffle and my mother gasping. Next thing I know a stentorian Welsh voice wails ‘Hey missus! Your shopping’s rolling down the street!’ This voice belonged to former Labour Leader Neil Kinnock. It’s indicative of the type of childhood that I had that my first memory should involve a politician.
My dad grew up in Beeford, a small village about 8 miles south of Bridlington. He was one of 12 children in a house that survived The War. Bearing in mind its proximity to the blitzed-to-buggery Hull, that is no small miracle. My dad, Terry, began work at the frail old age of eleven (kids those days – didn’t know they were born), driving tractors. This early dalliance with working the land along with some dilly-dallying around Robert Tressell’s Ragged Trousered Philanthropists roused an interest in Agriculture and Politics for the young lad. He studied Economics at Hull University – rubbing shoulders with John Prescott and Larkin, the University’s Librarian – and went on to work for the Transport and General Workers Union. Somewhere in between all that he met my mother and had a hand in creating a phenom in me, your author. What a guy. So I grew up in the house of a Labour Party member and Union Worker. Much of my childhood consisted of watching my father nose into copies of Tribune magazine when he got in from work, which he’d collect from the local shop no matter the circumstances. Nothing else mattered. Let’s say that by some utterly demented twist of fate my dad found himself in an outside latrine on an Island inhabited by genetically recreated dinosaurs. Let’s imagine for argument’s sake a Tyrannosaurus Rex disturbed his afternoon toffee by rudely ripping off the roof of said shithouse. When faced with more teeth than a Freddie Mercury blow job, if the time was approaching anything close to evening my dad would likely turn away casually and opine ‘I must pop to Bob’s shop for the paper’. His devotion to politics and the Labour Party could be extremely intense. One election year my mother had visited the polling station at my primary school just across the way from our home. She must have been feeling particularly larkish because on a car ride out to the supermarket that same day she joked to dad that she’d voted Lib Dem. The car stopped. Words were exchanged. I’m not excusing him for the violence but this was the 90s – they were different times. (Joke!) Even when watching television dad would sneer at someone or other being interviewed on some talk show, ‘bloody Tory, don’t like him’. To my naïve eyes the interviewee always seemed affable; a slick PR machine who had an easy rapport with the host. Dad would just mutter ‘creep’ or ‘twat’ whilst scowling at the tube. Fortunately, I haven’t inherited this tendency to judge a person on their politics and whilst I share a lot of my dad’s beliefs it’s not purely through osmosis. We also disagree on a lot. I once tried to get him to read Max Stirner and he nearly applied a triangle choke on my young, vulnerable, startled soul. (Joke!) Something that was great about living with a man so inveigled in politics, especially in the late 80s and 90s were the television programmes that were always on. When the Tribune was read inside and out my dad would feast upon Yes, Minister; Drop the Dead Donkey; Not the Nine O’ Clock News; Spitting Image and more besides. It was through The Comic Strip Presents though that my dad seemed to enjoy the biggest laughs from the a la mode anti-Thatcherite stand-ups, one of whom was Alexei Sayle. I only recently read Alexei Sayle’s memoirs, Stalin Ate My Homework, and I was surprised to learn that our childhoods shared some similarities. Malka Mendelson, a Jew of Lithuanian descent married a non-Jew, Joe Sayle. If Malka’s family were to have found this out at the time they would have sat Shiva for her, as if mourning her actual death. So Malka lied until the patriarch, Alexander passed away. She then anglicised her Hebrew name to Molly and had a child with Joe whom she named after Maxim Gorky – real name Alexei Maximovich Peshkov. Maxim was an alias to bewilder the tsarist secret police. Molly was a Gorky fan. Molly was a member, as was Joe, of the Communist Party. Joe was a goods guard on the national trains and benefitted from free rail travel. Whilst other kids were off to Clapton for the summer, the Sayles would be off to the Soviet Bloc. My dad and I visited Budapest recently to learn all about the ’56 student/worker uprising. Just like my dad would rail against Tories on the TV, when the Sayles acquired a Regentone television from the Co-op, Molly and Joe would hark ‘Capitalist Propaganda!’ at newsreaders. Poor Alexei though; when as a young boy he asked for a child gun he was met with Molly’s rigidity. A popular theory of the time that Alexei’s parents bought into was that giving a child a war-like toy would be conducive to anti-social, aggressive behaviour. They refused to buy him one. As Alexei outlines in his memoirs, in the chapter entitled ‘Disarmament Talks’: “…despite the fact that, as Marxist-Leninists, they believed in the violent, armed overthrow of Capitalism. If they had been consistent they would have purchased a .22 rifle or a shotgun and booked me shooting lessons.” Alexei lived through this unique, dictatorial upbringing and naturally became a stand up comedian. He got his break MCing at The Comedy Store where he cultivated an act in Coco - a skinhead bovver boy in a two-tone suit. This was Sayle’s alter ego that reflected how the Establishment treat the working classes. He went on to write for television and radio, starred in the Young Ones and had a couple of chart bothering singles. In 1989, Sayle was awarded an Emmy for his TV show Stuff. Sayle apparently had no idea about this until he watched the news and saw Benny Hill claim the award on his behalf. In 1990, Sayle had a fatwa taken out against him by a Muslim cleric from Syria after a mild joke on the aforementioned show. This fatwa has never been withdrawn. Considering this I feel very fortunate to be sat in front of Alexei Sayle at The Stand Comedy Club. It’s been sixteen years since he last did stand up and we can thank Stewart Lee for his return. Lee curated a nostalgia night of sorts at the Royal Festival Hall for which Alexei compered which set the wheels in motion for his return to the circuit. What’s immediately obvious now is that Alexei is no longer dependent on that alter ego of yesteryear. He is no longer the brash bovver boy with a bee in his bonnet. His demeanour is commensurate with a man of his age (60) and his approach is more personable and observational than the postmodern Spike Milligan warblings of the past. He opens by lamenting that he can no longer scream on about Thatcher, that he needs to contemporise. ‘That twat Dizzee Rascal – he sunk the fucking Belgrano!’ he cries. Alexei expresses his disdain for modern panel shows featuring comedians, explaining that they’re the only shows that pardon war criminals – like Have I Got News for You asking John Prescott to host. ‘If Goebbels were around he’d probably be presenting it!’ Whereas Coco might have yelled this salvo out and then launched into a surreal stream of non-sequiters, the Alexei Sayle of today quietly admonishes himself and carefully iterates that he respects all comedians. ‘I think of us all as soldiers in the same war’ he states. Well that’s actually a bit cheesy there Sayle. Is this the same Scouser who gave us acerbic comedy classics such as Cak? ‘In which case Jim Davidson was definitely in the Waffen SS!’ he finally appends, proving that his caustic edge remains serrated. ‘ The world went to shit when we all started applauding Lottery numbers. 27 – YAY! Haven’t fucking seen you in a while! Well done!’ Thus commences an accidental running joke for the show. When Alexei begins to regale us with tales about his Communist parents he mentions that his mother is now 97. The crowd erupts into applause. The next time a number is mentioned somebody shouts ‘house!’ Alexei rests against the wall with a big grin on his face, evidently drinking in what he’s been missing for nearly 20 years. So what has he been up to? ‘Well, after I invented alternative comedy…’ he gabs, a wry smile forming at his lips. He then tells us that he attempted to make-up with Ben Elton whom he’s publicly slated for the last few years for pilfering from his act. Ben graciously accepted Alexei’s apology apparently, offering a free ticket to his latest Rod Stewart Musical. ‘In those three fucking hours I feel like I atoned for EVERYTHING bad I ever said about anyone!’ he bellows and after a well timed pause follows up with ‘so Ben’s still a cunt!’ The best line of the night doesn’t come from the stage. Alexei mentions his placing in channel four’s top 100 comedians in their 2007 list (18th). In a moment of sincerity, of which there are many - a huge diversion from the early days – Alexei drops his guard and worries aloud about his embarking on stand up after all this time. ‘Can the fat bastard still do it? My wife, Linda has a term for this tour,’ he turns stage left, addressing the shadows, ‘what is it dear?’ The room falls silent, the laughter simmering momentarily. A lone, languid and wearisome female voice deadpans, ‘diluting the legacy!’ |