Great partial autobiography of a very funny comedian. I didn't realize that this was the second installment in what, most likely, will be a series since this only covered his life between 1977 and 1984. I enjoyed it anyway. ( )

Great partial autobiography of a very funny comedian. I didn't realize that this was the second installment in what, most likely, will be a series since this only covered his life between 1977 and 1984. I enjoyed it anyway.

(Edited on December 21, 2018 to add a link to my review of the first part of Alexei's autobiography
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2597261188 ). ( )

It is 1971 and the invention of modern British comedy is about to begin... So says the Bloomsbury back cover, and that's pretty much it! Godfather of British stand-up Alexei Sayle, a long time favourite, tells the tale of his young adulthood from the art school days, to teaching drama (via many a pointless job) through to his early successes and first tastes of being a recognised comedy hero. With his usual humour he rewards the reader with many first rate anecdotes and recollections that place us in the mind's eye of the twenty-something or early thirties Alexei while vividly recreating the world of his 1979 or 1982. (Yes, it's mostly in London!)

Throughout this period Alexei would probably have been very far from what he was about to achieve without his partner Linda helping him at every step along the way. Together, they transition away from their Liverpool brand of anarchist-leftist activism and (via the Civil Service) towards a life in leftist-anarchist 'performancism'. In early Thatcherite Britain, the second seemed the more popular.

One weekend, when she was visiting me in London, Linda and I went to the Odeon in Leicester Square to see the newly released Sylvester Stallone movie Rocky. Before the lights went down I noticed in the audience a few rows behind me a mournful-looking, slightly pop-eyed, balding man with a droopy moustache. I whispered to Linda, 'You see that man in the fifth row, I think it's Walid Jumblatt, leader of the Druze militia from the Chouf Mountains of the Lebanon.'
'You're always saying that,' she replied.
'Yes,' I hissed, 'but this time I'm certain.'

He was right. It was Walid Jumblatt. He thought Rocky was 'all right'.

From his days as a late-70s era impostor Civil Servant, Sayle provides a delightful guided lunch-break tour of London's Piccadilly, his "Boulevard of Broken Dreams". There were the UK head offices of Aeroflot and the tourism boards of war torn Lebanon and Northern Ireland among others.

Next there was my favourite, a shop that formed the sole retail outlet of a government agency named the Egg Information Council, which was tasked with the dissemination of all ovum-related data. In their dusty unwashed window were displayed eggcups and a device popular in the 1960s which consisted of a pin on a spring-loaded plunger rather like the instrument diabetics use to take blood samples. With this contraption you could prick the egg you were boiling so that all its contents leaked out into the pan.

Eventually finding his way to a stage, Alexei stumbles on the medium he's most suited for - stand-up comedy. But wary of "the kind of heavy-handed left-wing 'humour'" he wants to avoid, he strives for something different.

What I wanted was smart relevant popular comedy that paid for itself. I was also certain I didn't want to confirm the opinions of the people in the audience like CAST did, rather I wanted to challenge and mock them. After meeting Roland Muldoon I wrote a bit about agitprop theatre that went, 'People think if you've got baggy trousers and a red nose, you're automatically funny. Didn't work for Mussolini, did it?

Smart and relevant, Sayle has always been. This book is a very enjoyable telling of how he came to be a popular comedian, and how he fitted in at the top of the fast-changing and heady atmosphere of what became known in the UK as 'Alternative Comedy'. ( )