Alexei Sayle

Speaker 10:01

BBC Sound

Presenter0:02

Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book, and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:40

My castaway this week is the comedian and writer Alexei Sale. A founding father of alternative comedy, he first broke through as the MC at the fabled Comedy Store Club in Soho with an act that was by turns confrontational, political and surreal. He says it didn't feel like an act at all, perhaps because as the child of communist parents growing up in working class Liverpool, life itself was confrontational, political and surreal. Family holidays involved interrailing round the Eastern Bloc and cinema trips in choosing Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky over Bambi.

Presenter1:14

Like so many of the comedy store regulars, he would go on to become a household name, but he hung up his mic for a literary career he adored, in his words, like a middle-aged man going all gooey over his second wife. Lately, he's been back on stage after 16 years away. He says, As soon as I get in front of an audience, the old manic energy possesses me and I realize that I'm still full of hate. I just don't call the audience names anymore.

Presenter1:39

Alexi Sale, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Alexei Sayle1:42

Thank you.

Presenter1:42

Although you've lived in London for the majority of your life, of course you are Liverpoolian.

Alexei Sayle1:46

Yeah.

Presenter1:47

And I know that you've written about the city a child in Liverpool grows up understanding comedy in the same way that a young Mongolian nomad knows his way around a horse.

Presenter1:55

How central is your regional perspective to your comedy, do you think?

Alexei Sayle1:59

You know, Liverpool people have chosen to be funny, you know, and and you know, like in normal schools, you know, you go into class next day and they say, Oh, wasn't Monty Python, you know, great? It was like you know, in Liverpool they go, Yeah, well, I felt that the second act sagged and some of the sketches, you know, had an element of pathos, which I actually found uh, you know, technically it verged towards the dad artist rather than you know, Liverpool people have always been much more analytical, I think, about comedy.

Presenter2:22

So, what's it like playing at home? Because it's not always easy to play to a home crowd. Are there clichés about regional variations in sense of humour true?

Alexei Sayle2:30

I've never really found that. I think with my audience, I mean, even from the early days, really, because in a sense the people who came to see my comedy were kind of uh the same, you know, had the same references and it didn't matter what part of the country they lived in really. So, um, well, I mean, Liverpool's o always been obviously been amazing for me that it's been

Alexei Sayle2:52

There's a kind of telepathy, I think.

Presenter2:54

We're going to talk about some of your many adventures today. I don't think we're going to have time to talk about your experience as a recording artist too much, though. We've had to sub it down. But you did have a spell. Hello, John. Got a new motor. A top twenty hit in nineteen eighty four. So what criteria have you used to select your discs for us today?

Alexei Sayle3:02

Much that we

Speaker 13:04

Uh

Alexei Sayle3:04

Did have a spell?

Alexei Sayle3:13

This is something I've been thinking about for thirty years. I'm not the first person probably to have said that, that I I've been constantly composing my list, putting in additions, dropping things, obviously stuff that makes me look good regardless of whether I like it or not.

Presenter3:32

Let's get started then. Disc number one. What are we going to hear?

Alexei Sayle3:35

It's Carlos Gardell Volver. Carlos Gardell was the El Rey de Tango. He was the king of tango music in Buenos Aires in the 30s. And my best friend is Argentinian. And so he told me about Carlos Gardell. But my other thing is that I and it's a failing in me, but I've never really quite understood live music, that I don't understand what it's for. Really, that for me, music is either to listen to or to dance to. I thought, well, I chose Carlos Cardell because he's the king of tango and tango was also was developed in the brothels of Buenos Aires and it would be men who would dance with other men. Well, I'll have to make myself a kind of like in Castaway or something. I haven't asked for this, but if I could have a a basketball Wilson written on it, and then I'll make myself a woman or a man and I will on my desert island I will dance the tango to Carlos Gardell.

Speaker 14:38

Sol admi machia lumperaro un con suparido repleco condas.

Speaker 14:46

Uh

Alexei Sayle4:52

Yeah.

Speaker 14:52

Uh

Alexei Sayle4:52

Yeah.

Alexei Sayle4:53

Uh

Speaker 14:53

La via caca donde colico.

Presenter4:58

Carlos Gardell and Volver. So Alexei Sale, you were born in Liverpool 1952, the only child of Molly and Joe, and I know that you say their sense of humour was very different to yours, but I think that your dad had a manner about him that people really warmed to. How would you describe him?

Alexei Sayle5:09

Think that

Alexei Sayle5:14

People loved me Dad really. He was a very genial man, I think. People were so he's a lovely man. My mother, on the other hand, was a nightmare, really, in various iterations. I mean, an extraordinary force of nature. The other thing that I should say about Molly, of course, which was also an unusual thing about us, was that my mother had grown up in a very orthodox Jewish family who only spoke Yiddish. They didn't speak English in her house. And so she'd grown up in this real hothouse, hyper-religious atmosphere, really, and a marrying out of the Jewish religion and stuff, which had also meant that she was estranged from her family.

Presenter5:56

You said that the pillars of our family life were the railway, the union, and the communist party.

Alexei Sayle6:01

Yeah.

Presenter6:02

Both your parents were members. How fundamental were their values to the childhood that you had?

Alexei Sayle6:07

Well, I think they were very fundamental, really. I mean, the Communist Party always said that, particularly if you were a job steward, or if you were that you had to be a good worker, the men had to see that if you were spouting this revolutionary kind of stuff or you're trying to get them to go on strike or whatever, that you had to show that you were the also the best, that you weren't a Skyver, you were an honourable, decent person. And I think some of that stayed with me. I mean, I had like five years of doing terrible jobs. That was I actually didn't really live up to that. That was pretty bad Skyver. But since I've been in comedy, I think by and large that I've tried to be, you know, not somebody who kinda messes around, you know, but somebody who's always reliable and and so on and so forth. And I think I think I got that from my dad really.

Speaker 16:16

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 16:38

That idea.

Speaker 16:47

Uh

Presenter6:47

But somebody

Presenter6:50

Yeah.

Presenter6:53

And life when you were young was very much dictated by their politics.

Alexei Sayle6:58

By the party, yeah, yeah. It was like being in any kind of cult in a way that you also not only you was there the meetings and all that, but if you wanted a plumber, then you get a party plumber.

Presenter7:08

And and for you, what did that mean on a day to day basis? You must have done a lot of things that your peers didn't and not done a lot of things that they did. The Walt Disney Sergei Eisenstein example is really the apotheosis of

Alexei Sayle7:22

Yeah, I mean my mother didn't want me to go and see Bam because she thought I'd be upset by it. And so sh this but that's a conversation they took me to see Sergei Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky, which features this scene of of Teutonic Knights drowning on a frozen lake in graphic detail and uh several scenes of ritual child sacrifice as well.

Presenter7:43

But it sounds like you had your own way of seeing the world as your parents saw it from quite a young age, too.

Alexei Sayle7:48

Yeah, they never quite fitted in. I mean, particularly Molly really,'cause she was such a big character that they never fitted into the drab bureaucratic world, either of the unions or the Communist Party. So they were always slightly outsiders, even within our cult, really. And I just I think from a very early age, I just w on one level I accepted it, but on another level I thought this is nuts. I mean, this doesn't make any kind of sense.

Presenter8:15

Tell me about your next disc. It's time for some more music.

Alexei Sayle8:17

Well, this is Joe Hill by Joan Baez, and one of the reasons that I chose this was it was actually, um, there was a guy called uh Toyo Aluko. This was played at my mother's uh funeral.

Alexei Sayle8:30

And uh he sang it and uh you know it's a it's a kind of anthem of uh you know kind of revolutionary politics and uh he actually ch changed the words so he said I he put Molly Sale where Joe Hill was so he said I dreamed I saw Molly Sale last night alive as you

Presenter8:49

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night, alive as you or me.

Speaker 19:00

Uh

Presenter9:00

Says I but Joe, you're ten years' dead I never died, said he I never died, said he

Speaker 49:12

Yeah.

Presenter9:17

Joe Hill by Joan Byers. So, Alexa, your dad Jo was a guardsman on the railways and a trade union official, and I know that he brought a bunch of flowers home for your mum, Molly, every Friday, which I would have thought is a bit of an unexpected quality in a revolutionary.

Speaker 19:22

Peace.

Alexei Sayle9:34

But they were both, you know, amazing people in their own way, really. Joe was besotted with Molly really and, uh, you know.

Presenter9:41

You had some incredible adventures as a family. Because of your dad's job, you had free railway travel. But these weren't ordinary holidays to Skegness or Devon. I mean, you must have been the best traveled kid at your school.

Alexei Sayle9:43

Because you

Alexei Sayle9:50

Done.

Alexei Sayle9:53

Yeah, because we could travel right up to the borders of the Soviet Union, as it was then called, for nothing. We went all over Eastern Europe, Vienna, we knew, you know, like the back of our hands. If we ever got into trouble, my dad would just go looking for communists, which he would always find, you know. And so, you know, if we didn't have a hotel room or something, or we wanted a meal, he'd just go looking for communists. And then we'd find ourselves in, like, a workers' canteen at the Volkswagen factory or something, you know, eating these eating these sumptuous meals. You know, the first time we went to C Czechoslovakia, I think because we'd made our own way there, we were dumped on this campsite out of season, and it was horrible. And so Joe went looking for communists and he found a building which was their version of the TUC. And he went in there and it turned out that everybody in there had been like a bomber pilot in Burnley during the war. So there was all these Czechs who'd been in the RAF. He told them that we were having a very nice time and that they said, oh, they were sorry. And then on the Monday, the people who'd been running the campsite had been horrible to us were suddenly really panicky because there was this fleet of you know, Czechoslovakia had a lot of really interesting kind of engineering. I get really boring about cars now, but they had these amazing limousines called the Tatra 603, which had like a glass front with three headlights in it, and then had a a V8 engine, but in the back with a big kind of air scoop, like these air scoops at the side. It was really futuristic looking. And usually, if a fleet of like party limousines turned up, it meant nothing good was gonna happen to you. So the people who ran the campsite were really worried. But it turned out that they'd come for us. We were bundled into these, you know, these limousines, driven to Prague, and then from then on we were heroes. You know, we were treated like kings, really.

Presenter11:38

Alexi, it's time for your next piece of music. Disc number three. Tell me about this one.

Alexei Sayle11:43

Well, this the thinking behind this is that, um

Alexei Sayle11:47

If I'm alone on this desert island, then it will of essence be a socialist republic, see as I'm a socialist, and so it'll need an anthem. And so I have chosen for the anthem of the Tropical Socialist Republic of Alexei Sale, I have chosen the battle hymn of the Soviet Air Force.

Alexei Sayle12:09

And I can sing this if you want. I do know the words in English.

Alexei Sayle13:01

Red Square is dark, our engines roar, Cross polar regions and icy seas, Our cable lines of peace are laid, Fly higher and higher and higher, Our emblem, the Soviet star.

Alexei Sayle13:19

This

Presenter13:19

Sea creatures are in for a treat.

Alexei Sayle13:23

I don't even know why I know that.

Presenter13:26

The battle hymn of the Soviet Air Force, technically called The Aviator's March, sung by Yevgeny Kipalo and conducted by Alexei Kovalyov. Alexei Sale, lots of comics talk about how they were the class clown at school and your command of an audience is notorious and fascinating, your relationship to them. Did you have that as a kid?

Alexei Sayle13:48

Uh

Presenter13:48

Yeah, I

Alexei Sayle13:48

I think so. I mean, a lot of comics talk about how they use their comedy to avoid being picked on. But that wasn't the case with me, that I was both a troublemaker, but I was also funny with it.

Presenter14:02

So during your teenage years, was there evidence that would have been obvious to other people that you were going to be a performer? I know that you were an artistic kid. You were drawing more than performing.

Alexei Sayle14:11

Yeah. I was never academic really. I mean, I always drew really and I would draw you know, I had my own country called Salovia that I that I drew. If I was gonna get further or higher education, it was never gonna be through passing exams'cause I was n never any good at that really. You know, I think art was gonna be my way out really in a sense.

Presenter14:34

So after school you got a place at Chelsea College of Art and Design.

Alexei Sayle14:37

Yeah.

Presenter14:37

Yeah. Why London and and why that college in particular?

Alexei Sayle14:40

First of all, they threw me out of school after halfway through the sixth form really, because partly'cause I had a fight in in the tuck shop queue with a teacher who incidentally was also in the Communist Party. So I went to Southport College of Art halfway through sixth form, and that was that was wonderful, really. When I was looking at art schools, I remember going to see David Hockney give a talk at Chelsea and it just seemed very exciting and stuff. But, you know, and they accepted me for whatever reason. And then but then moving down to London was a a terrible shock really. I mean, I think

Alexei Sayle15:11

And I've been to visit friends in London, but the only other time I'd been down to London was on demonstrations, you know, and I used to say the only way I could find my way round London was to start a speaker's corner and then, you know, walk to the walk to the American Embassy and or start at St Paul's and kind of wander down the middle of the street shouting about Vietnam. So, you know, and I also for the first time I came up against the upper classes. You know, where I was in an art history lecture in my first or second week in um

Alexei Sayle15:39

At Chelsea and uh the the art history lecturer put up a slide of a Van Gogh painting and a girl in my class said, Oh, she said, Oh yes, I know that painting. Uh the original's in the hall of our flat in Rome. It's not even in the living room.

Alexei Sayle15:55

It's in the hall, you know, where you hang your coat.

Presenter15:58

We've got to make some time for the music. This is desk number four.

Alexei Sayle16:01

One of the things about my parents was it was a highly literate household and it was also a household in which the theatre, particularly political theatre, was very important really. And my parents had actually met, I think, at a place called Unity Theatre just after the war, which was and still going today in Liverpool, was a place where working class people would go and put on plays. Brecht was very important in our house, really. And I just love Brecht from a very early age. I particularly like the Typney Opera. And I also just think Pirate Jenny is also because it's this idea of a woman who's a waitress in a hotel, but she dreams that she's really a pirate and that the ship will come one day into the bay. And I love that bit where in the German version she says, you know, and they'll they'll clap all the townspeople, you know, being horrible. They'll clap them in irons and they'll drag them to me and they'll say, which ones shall we kill? And I'll say, oop la.

Alexei Sayle16:57

All of them.

Alexei Sayle16:59

So that's how I felt. When I worked in the civil service, I felt a bit like that.

Alexei Sayle17:06

Meiner Harmony.

Presenter17:07

See

Alexei Sayle17:08

Ease it up!

Presenter17:20

Und sie wissen nich nit wam sie Reiden.

Speaker 417:23

Abraham is taxed with angish raisin half man fragment.

Speaker 117:27

Hey!

Presenter17:28

And my wir mich lechen seen by my English.

Presenter17:32

Un manned fracht, bas lechild died.

Presenter17:37

Und ein school und mid fürnde can wirkliegenam ka.

Presenter17:56

Pirate Jenny from the Threppenny Opera by Bertold Brecht and Kurt Viel sung by Lotta Lenya.

Presenter18:03

So Lexi Sale, having got to art school and finding out you were pretty different from most of your classmates, you almost got kicked out.

Alexei Sayle18:10

Yeah.

Presenter18:11

Bye.

Alexei Sayle18:11

Yeah.

Alexei Sayle18:12

Because I was so kind of confused and kind of depressed, really, that I wasn't doing much work. And they'd taken very enthusiastically to the kind of ideas, you know, advanced in Paris in 1968. The teaching was pointless. You couldn't teach anything. So they'd taken to that quite. So you were just kind of thrown into a studio at the start of three years. And then occasionally it was a way to subsidise practicing artists that they'd be given like a day's teaching a month. And so you just about managed to kind of scrabble together some painting. And then, you know, this guy had come along in a leather jacket and say, ah, that's the worst thing I've ever seen.

Alexei Sayle18:47

And then I'll see you in two months' time. And it's sort of really demotivating, really. I mean, it was sink or swim, and in the end, I did swim. It was pretty.

Speaker 118:53

Uh

Presenter18:53

Yeah.

Alexei Sayle18:58

Pro ready.

Presenter18:59

So once you graduated from art school, how did you make ends meet when you were waiting for your break?

Alexei Sayle19:05

I had this sequence of jobs. I was a clerk in the civil service. It was just rotten. I was a part-time administrator for a while, and I was a dinner lady in a private school. I was a assistant to a school caretaker. Cleaned children's toilets. And they had them used to have outside toilets. That's not a nice job. If you go south from Green Park on the Jubilee line, I dug the first four feet as you go south, leaving Green Park Station before they fired me. I was a terrible employee. I was awful really. I mean, completely contradicting what I said before about being a good employee. I was shocking.

Presenter19:41

You're also performing in threepenny theatre group shows like What a Load of Balkans. Tell me a bit more about the kind of performances that you're putting on.

Alexei Sayle19:49

There was a boy who was at school a couple of years above me called Cliff Cocker, whose parents were also in the Communist Party. And he's also the one who introduced me to Linda. And he'd gone to Bristol Olvik Theatre School, been in Paris for a couple of years, and then he'd come back and he wanted to do this fringe show about Bertol Brecht called About Poor BB. And because we'd been in the school play together, he asked me if I wanted to be in it. So this was around about 1976. So we did this show, which was songs and poems of Bertol Brecht. It was quite a large company of kind of, you know, nobody was getting paid really, but it was we had a little band. It was my first taste of the theatre and I loved it really. I just thought it was just fantastic. And I just had this idea that there was an audience out there for comedy that was smart and kind of had a kind of cabaret vibe, but was like about politics and drugs and lifestyle. And so I just wrote it, you know, and then we just did it, you know.

Presenter20:42

The life

Presenter20:46

Well, Alexi, we'll find out where that took you next after this piece of music. It's disc number five. What have you got and why are you taking it to the island?

Alexei Sayle20:54

This is Linda's favourite singer, which is Janice Joplin. And I, you know, when we were on the road, you know, we'd have long drives and we'd have a sing song, really. And this is one of the songs that I sing to my wife.

Speaker 421:05

I pull my harpoon out of my dirty red bandana I was playing soft wobbab and sang the blue

Speaker 421:15

When she walked for slapping time, I was holding Bobby Stan and Matt. We sang every song that driving.

Speaker 421:27

Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.

Presenter21:33

Me and Bobby McGee, Janice Joplin. That one for your wife Linda, Alexei. And I think it was she who spotted the ad for the job of MC for the very first night of the comedy store in nineteen seventy nine.

Alexei Sayle21:44

Yeah, 1970.

Alexei Sayle21:46

Well, she used to get a private eye, I think, and she'd buy it on the way to work, and uh she just saw this ad really, and as soon as I saw the ad, I knew that that was it, really. It said looking for, you know, aspiring comics to work at a club in Soho, really. This new kind of comedy club.

Presenter22:02

And you knew that you were going to get it.

Alexei Sayle22:04

I knew first of all that this was what I'd been looking for because the thing was that when we've been doing through me, we didn't know anybody. We were just in a vacuum really. And I know that, you know, for a movement to take off, it needs to be a group of people. It needs to be a gestalt, really. Picasso or something couldn't have been Picasso without the support of all the other Cubists. I knew that what I needed was a place where I'd find other like-minded people. So I turned up at the audition and everybody else was just.

Alexei Sayle22:34

You couldn't see what they were attempting a lot of the time.

Presenter22:37

So take me back to opening night then, you got the game.

Alexei Sayle22:37

So same

Alexei Sayle22:39

Yeah, so opening night was it was in a strip club called the well the Gargoyle Club and it was a topless bar and the girls all put their tops on at midnight and uh it was this amazing club and the show started at midnight. The opening night, everybody was blind drunk. Clive Anderson, host of Loose Ends, I think was there on the opening night. And there was a few kind of half decent acts. But the thing that was needed most was somebody who was funny, but also somebody who carried this physical threat. And that's what I did. That I, it's not really me, but when I'm on stage, you know, it's a kind of, I just have this, you won't argue with me. I'm just fearless and frightening. And I just controlled that. I wasn't trying to ingratiate myself with the audience. I want the victory for me was if they disliked me, but they still.

Alexei Sayle23:35

They laughed, you know.

Presenter23:36

It's time for some more music, Alexi Sail. Disc number six, what is it?

Alexei Sayle23:40

Well, obviously, there's the idea with the protest song, you know, the political song is, you know, very central to my understanding. And this is Shipbuilding by Robert Wyatt. I think it's the greatest protest song of all time. It gets into talking about the Falcons War via a metaphor, which is about shipbuilding, you know, and just beautiful, beautiful lines, you know. And Robert Wyatt also came when we were at Thripney Theatre, he was the first famous person, I think he came to see. But also, it's written by Elvis Costello, of course, and by Clive Langer, who also produced my hit, Alojohn Got New Motor.

Speaker 124:16

Is it worth

Speaker 124:21

A new winter coat and shoes for the white

Speaker 124:28

And a bicycle on a boy's birthday It's just a rumour that was spread around town

Alexei Sayle24:36

Um

Alexei Sayle24:38

By the women and children, soon will be ship-building

Presenter24:46

Robert Wyatt and Shipbuilding. So Alexi Sale, alternative comedy really took off in the eighties and you were in some of the biggest comedy shows of the decade, The Young Ones, Comic Strip Presents, and your own award winning series Stuff, too. How ambitious were you?

Speaker 124:51

Yeah.

Alexei Sayle24:51

Yeah.

Speaker 124:51

And

Speaker 124:59

Yeah.

Alexei Sayle24:59

Yeah.

Alexei Sayle25:02

I was tremendously ambitious in that I wanted to be big. I wanted to be really

Alexei Sayle25:10

Bay

Presenter25:11

What did that look like to you?

Alexei Sayle25:13

Beyond the tally, really.

Presenter25:14

Mm-hmm.

Alexei Sayle25:15

I kind of came to realize that there was a limit ultimately because like I was on this live comedy show on ICV in 1982 called OTT. So you know it's my chance of big time fame but at the same time my close to my act was singing a song about Albania which was then a you know Marxist-Leninist dictatorship and I think the song ended with a reference to Joseph Stalin. So I was like I wanted to be big but I also just wanted to do this mad stuff. You're never going to be like family friendly entertainer really doing that stuff.

Presenter25:51

Tell me about going to LA because you went out to LA in the late eighties to break America.

Alexei Sayle25:59

What was I thinking? What were you thinking? I don't know. I thought. Well, it seemed like.

Alexei Sayle26:04

I thought it seemed like a good idea. And I had this American agent called Joan Scott at Wright as an artist who who thought I was great and she's a really powerful agent. So, yeah, I went to LA and when B. Arthur left the Golden Girls, I got cast as hair replacement, kind of thing. What happened was that the series it was called Golden Palace and I was the wacky East European chef. And the other three women had somehow managed to scrape together the money to buy a hotel. Yeah, and I was the East Europe wacky East European chef in the hotel.

Speaker 126:35

Hmm.

Alexei Sayle26:37

Unconsciously, I didn't want to be there, and I thought, you know, I would act very odd, and my performances were very patchy. One of the things that I did, which I think is really funny, is that, like, because I can dance a bit. If I tap danced in the UK, people would go, oh, that's amazing. They would flatter me. But I tried to tap dance in front of the Golden Girls. Now, these were three women who'd, you know, been on Broadway, who'd, you know, who Cole Porter had written songs for and stuff. I cannot tell you how unpleasant those three women were about my tap dancing.

Alexei Sayle27:12

It's not a sign.

Alexei Sayle27:15

And me kind of clumping and humping about like usually and it was like it was oh they were so unpleasant. Anyway, so yeah, I was in oh yeah, I got fired. They fired me on my 40th birthday, yeah. When I was in LA, I turned into LA Alexei, who was this like kind of really nice guy who wore like pastel coloured polo shirts and Chinos. And I don't know who the hell he was. I mean, if I was gonna break the States, I should have done.

Alexei Sayle27:43

stand up really. I should have gone you know, but I I couldn't be bothered.

Presenter27:48

Well, on that note, I think we'd better have some more music to tap dance to, if you don't mind, Alexisl, what's next?

Alexei Sayle27:53

It's my favourite hip-hop song. It's called It Was a Good Day by Ice Cube.

Alexei Sayle27:58

Just waking up in the morning, gotta thank God. I don't know, but today seems kinda odd. No barking from the dog, no small. And mama cooked the breakfast with no hump. I got my grub on, but didn't dig out. Finally got a call from a girl I wanna dig out. Hooked it up for later as I hit the door. Thinking, will I live another 24? I gotta go, cause I got me a drop top. And if I hit the switch, I can make the ass drop.

Presenter28:28

Yeah.

Presenter28:28

It was a good day, ice cube, before L A Alexi, I'm guessing.

Alexei Sayle28:32

Yeah, yeah, LA Alexi, he was cool. You know, he'd be cruising in his Jeep and he'd be like, yeah, what up, dog?

Presenter28:41

So by the early 90s, Alexi Sale, you were falling out of love with stand-up. Why was that?

Alexei Sayle28:46

Why was that? Well, I could say I'd I think I'd reached the end of the road with that the guy in the tight suit really'cause he was a ki kind of comic character and so he couldn't really talk about my life that much really, or only in the broadest terms,'cause he wasn't me, he was some other kind of nutter and I didn't realize that at the time, but I I just knew the playing that the crowds were the same and all that, but I just knew that I wasn't

Alexei Sayle29:11

It wasn't working for me anymore really, you know

Presenter29:14

Do you think you were becoming too different f from him?

Alexei Sayle29:17

And maybe it's one of the junctures that you reach as an entertainer, you know, and it's it's hard. You either reach a point where you do you do something and it really works and then it stops working. And so then you have that choice about whether you keep on still doing that old thing and you just keep on doing it. You don't update yourself. You go down a few steps like a footballer going from the premiership to championship. You go to a smaller club, but you're you're still working kind of thing. You know, you just keep on doing the same old thing. Or whether you kind of blow it up, you stop and.

Alexei Sayle29:56

Find something else.

Presenter29:57

And having been there at the birth of alternative comedy, where do you see its DNA four decades later?

Alexei Sayle30:03

You know, up to a year ago, it was the giant industry that is stand-up comedy now, the Arena Acts, the Michael McIntyre's and Jack Whitehalls, and Sarah Millikans and so on, that they all spring from what we did in that strip club in Soho, you know. It all comes, the DNA, that little club in Soho was that one racehorse that sired all the other racehorses, you know, and it's that's partly just luck, that's just a question of time, and to be there then and to be instrumental in the birth of a an entire art form or subset of an art form and an entire industry. It's a a privilege that's granted to very, very few people. And I'm just I'm grateful to have been there, you know. So I had the phrase of going, you know, going backstage at the comedy store and all the comics that have to pretend to be delighted that I was there, you know.

Presenter30:53

Uh

Alexei Sayle30:53

Uh

Presenter30:53

It's a bit like Jesus turning up at your score. It's nativity play, isn't it? Really? It's not very fair.

Alexei Sayle30:59

Yeah, it was a bit yeah. Somebody else would have done it if not me, but do that, you know.

Presenter31:04

So Alexei, the time is nearly upon us. You alone, cast away on the desert island, away from your wife, Linda, you've been with forty-seven years now, I think.

Alexei Sayle31:13

All right.

Presenter31:15

How will you be with just yourself for company?

Alexei Sayle31:18

Can't imagine I'd be great really. I'm not that resilient. My main hobby is thinking.

Presenter31:23

So you're the kind of person who could construct a mind palace to live in until rescue arrives.

Alexei Sayle31:26

So rescue arrives.

Alexei Sayle31:29

I don't know if I'm that good at it really. I'll be all right for a bit.

Presenter31:33

Before you go then, one more tune, what's it gonna be?

Alexei Sayle31:36

Uh this is uh Dizzy Rascal Bonkers. This just trying to make me, you know, seem like I'm vaguely in the twenty first century. Bonkers.

Alexei Sayle32:02

I win crops and

Speaker 132:03

Today is the pay dream. Everything in my life ain't what it seems. I went crock just to roll back to sleep. I act real shallow, but I'm in too deep. And all I care about is sex and violence. And every base line is my kind of silence. Everybody

Alexei Sayle32:13

It says that I gotta get a grip, but I let Sanny Eve give me the slip.

Presenter32:18

Dizzy Rascal and Bonkers. So.

Alexei Sayle32:21

I'll be like waving my hands in the air, getting freaky, dancing, you know. That's what it's made for. Yeah, Desert Island Festival.

Presenter32:24

It's what it's made for.

Alexei Sayle32:27

Yeah.

Presenter32:28

We'll give you the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible to read. You can have the books to take with you.

Alexei Sayle32:32

Yeah.

Presenter32:32

You can have another book of your own choice as well. What would you like?

Alexei Sayle32:35

You know, my parents, they only ever really listened to voices that confirmed their worldview, really. I wanted to listen to voices that challenged my worldview, really. And so, my favourite author has always been Evelyn Waugh, really. I think that he's an alcoholic, hated the working class. But on the other hand, I always think there's a tremendous humanity, I think, in his works. What would you take with you? The only book that I really, really read is

Presenter33:00

Do we have to do that?

Alexei Sayle33:04

Sort of honour trilogy, which is also, I think, probably the best book about certainly Britain during.

Alexei Sayle33:11

Yeah, the Second World War was really mine.

Presenter33:12

It's yours. Thank you. We'll also treat you to a luxury item, of course. What will that be?

Alexei Sayle33:17

I do Chinese martial arts, but I also do weapons and so I do staff and I do broadsword. And I thought, first of all, I could have me staff and then maybe I could use that to fish with and stuff. And then I thought, well, if I have a broadsword, if I have like a Chinese broadsword, I can use that as a machete. I can cut myself a staff from a tree. So I can have the staff and the broadsword. Mostly I'll practice me patterns, honestly. I'll practice me swan young patterns.

Presenter33:42

Well, that's what I want to hear because the luxury item can't be for a practical purpose.

Alexei Sayle33:43

Yeah

Alexei Sayle33:45

No, no, no, no. It'll give me I mean, that's what I'll do all day. I'll practise me my Tai Chi, my kung fu and my patterns. That'll get me through. But also it will come in handy for splitting coconuts and stuff.

Presenter33:57

And finally, if you had to save just one of these disks from the waves, which would you go for?

Alexei Sayle34:00

From the waves. Which would you go for? It'd have to be me and Bobby McGee, wouldn't it, really?

Presenter34:04

Alexi Sale, thank you very much for sharing your Desa Island discs with us.

Alexei Sayle34:08

Thank you.

Presenter34:22

Hello, I really hope you've enjoyed that interview with writer and comic Alexi Sale. We've cast many comedians away over the years, many of whom have performed at the comedy store. They include Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders and Sir Lenny Henry. You can hear their programmes if you search through BBC Sounds.

Presenter34:39

Join me next time when my guest will be charity worker Amanda Kozi Mokwashi.

Speaker 434:57

Charlie, I have been so excited to speak to you. Hello, Mana. Hello, how are you, Joe? I'm Joe Wicks, and I'm back for the second series of my podcast that's all about sharing ways to help you live a happier and healthier life. Doing a bit research, and apparently you're into something called Inversion Therapy, where you hang upside down. What does that look like a bat?

Speaker 135:12

Yes.

Speaker 135:13

Exactly. I I do it every day. You know, it all just sort of clears your head a little bit.

Speaker 435:17

Yeah.

Speaker 435:19

I get to speak to some heroes of mine, from the legend that is Sir Tom Jones, who I'm literally obsessed with, to one of our most successful UK athletes, Sir Mo Farrow. You have to be smart and control the race in in the way that you want it. Well, he just settles me it.

Alexei Sayle35:26

Are you having a

Speaker 435:32

Organizes my brain. Meditation I think is the cultivation of a space within you that if you don't turn to it, life will get in the way.

Alexei Sayle35:33

He made it.

Speaker 135:33

Yeah.

Speaker 435:41

Subscribe now on BBC Sound so you never miss an episode. And you can also check out every single episode in video format on BBC iPlayer, the Joe Wix podcast for BBC Radio 4.