Alexei SayleBesprekingen

I finally got around to reading the first part of Alexei's autobiography.

I found it more interesting than I thought it would be. Alexei is a gifted storyteller and makes even unfunny things funny.

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.

Mister Roberts starts out as a tale of British expats in bucolic Spain. Then Sayle pulls a mind-snapping narrative shift, yanking the reader into an extra-terrestrial space battle. To which the only response can be WTF?

Soon things become clearer, as a robot escapes from the battle and winds up in bucolic Spain with one of the expat kids. His mother soon cottons on to the benefits of having a human-looking indestructible robot on her arm, and prevails on her son to use him for her own purposes. Mayhem ensues.

This is an OK farce, with a few giggles. Nothing fantastic, but a diverting read.

Dreadful. So glad I have an 'abandoned' shelf!

Weeping Women Hotel by Alexi Sayle As usual, a bit over the top by well paced, amusing, well written and enjoyable.
 
Great

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 ).

I finally got around to reading the first part of Alexei's autobiography.

(You can read my review of the second part, Thatcher Stole My Trousers, here https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2196567171?book_show_action=false&from... ).

I found it more interesting than I thought it would be. Alexei is a gifted storyteller and makes even unfunny things funny.

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'.

Dreadful. So glad I have an 'abandoned' shelf!

Having parents who took me to 1980s Poland (just before martial law was declared in 1981!) and Czechoslovakia in 1982 this brought back many memories. Particularly the tour of the Heydrich assasination sites in Prague, although I found it more interesting than young Alexei...

My parents were not hard-core British Communist Party members, and this aspect of Alexei's upbringing I found particularly interesting, especially their responses to Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

The book is slow in a number of places and I found the last 40 or so pages less interesting than the earlier ones, however this account of 1960s and 70s Britain reflects accurately some of the conflict and dogma that dominated the politics of the period.


Some non UK readers will find aspects less easy to follow, but UK readers should find some resonances with their lives in the 60s and 70s.

I've read several novels by British comedians in my time and would classify none of them as really funny. (I'm looking at you, Stephen Fry and Ardal O'Hanlan!) Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just mildly surprising and makes me wonder whether there's a bit of a fashion for comedians to write gruelling, hard-hitting prose, a bit like the trend of every British detective having a tortured personality and shady past to overcome.

This one somewhat breaks the mould, with just enough glimpses of comic genius to keep me happy, and otherwise being well-written with an interesting (and somewhat mysterious) plot. Good stuff.½

Pleasant, witty, self-deprecating memoir of a childhood unimaginable today.

I loved this book. Like (my memories of) Sayle's comedy routines, it takes some unusual routes to explain growing up in Liverpool's Anfield. It made me laugh out loud. Having spent some time in Liverpool some of the comments (hard hippies) made me nod in recognition, and his memories of being a child amongst adults are fascinating. I loved his willingness to mock himself, too. Accounts of trips across Europe and being an angsty teenager in pubs pursued by (more popular) parents were highlights for me.

Hilarious,love the Nic and Tob story.

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1809011.html

I don't think I'd read anything by Sayle before; I remember him from the 1980s as the landlord in The Young Ones and also memorably playing a radio disc-jockey in a funeral home which turns out to be run by Daleks, but I'm not sure I was even all that familiar with his standup routines. In this book he recounts the story of his childhood and adolescence as the sole offspring of two Communist Party activists in Liverpool, the standard stories of growing up as a smart kid in a tough-ish neighbourhood interspersed with trips to Hungary and Czechoslovakia where they were feted by cabinet ministers. There are a few laugh-out-loud moments, but mostly it is a wryly affectionate account, vividly depicting the strengths and weaknesses of each of the family members.

Of course, for those in their 20s and below, the idea of people actually dedicating themselves to a revolution to bring about Communism and rule from Moscow in Liverpool must seem vanishingly farfetched. (Sayle as a dissident teenager later attached himself to the followers of Mao and Enver Hoxha.) It's a fascinating reminder of a part of the political landscape which has been utterly (and, to be honest, rightly) buried by history.

Highly amusing stuff! If you're a fan of Alexei's original brand of humour you will really enjoy this early collection.

My favourite story in this collection is 'Big-Headed Cartoon Animal' which I think may be a mini-masterpiece. It is a really clever commentary on the sterility of 'Disney Land', California and whole of Western consumerism. In fact, the more I think about it the more I realise it has.

The rest of the stories vary in quality, the most successful among them being the ones that allow you to empathise with the main character - no mean feat given that they are all thoroughly unlikeable. What the stories have in common is to show the ease with which social conventions are destroyed and the consequences of such actions. They are about revealing the fragility of social order, if it exists (cf: 'Locked Out') . How does a have-a-go hero feel after his moment of heroism? What happens if you cross a dwarf? Actually, 'My Shrinking Circle of Acquantances' is funny and worth a read; 'Minister of Death' and 'Lose Weight, Ask Me How' are rather creepy but also of merit.

'The Last Woman Killed in the War' is as good as Douglas Adams says and, rather like 1984, is a poignant example of the collective amnesia that we all prefer when the 'Zeitgeist' changes. We don't want to admit we have learnt that we were wrong, we prefer to alter history to fit the new policy.

The first story in this collection is excellent and all the rest are remarkable. Sayle's trick is to twist his tales in the final sentence. This is the defining characteristic of classic short stories but Sayle takes it to a savage height. The tenor of all the stories here is laden with an alienated irony even though the strange characters are treated sympathetically. The overall effect is thought-provoking and memorable.½

Very funny

if you only read the title story then its worth it. However the others are almost as good I love how he changes direction just when you think he won't or better still cant.

A good novel. It is witty, without trying too hard and the tale it tells is involving and clear. Harriet, the main character, lives in north London and seems a lovely person. She is over-weight and takes on a personal trainer to get fit; this changes her life. Other characters are neighbours, friends and family of Harriet's. Alexei Sayle gives us a bizarre world with its feet in reality and its head in the clouds, providing him with all sorts of opportunities for fun. The book has a dark side, but nothing that will give you nightmares. It is clearly written and well constructed.½

I picked this up in a second hand bookshop on account of Douglas Adams' blurb on the front cover calling it "Completely Brilliant."

Must be one of the strangest short reads I have had in a long time. A short story collection stringed together only by virtue of wicked humour, steak cooking cynicism & the most insane, ironic pathos delivered with such everyday matter-of-factness I felt like I was not normal to not have yet had any of these extremely impossible situations accost me. Thankfully, if ironically, most of these little skits features a comedy writer - so I was able to pat myself on the back & quash all previous want of such delusional fame.

Don't pick it up if you're jobless, homeless & looking for a cheer up. Might do if you were just hard done by someone & wanting ideas for revenge.

This is a cruel book. It celebrates unpleasant behaviour in the name of retribution: even the last few pages which show that our "hero's" actions do not have the desired effect, does not change that, for me.
The book is well written, and I did make it to the end, but it is not an experience that I would repeat. Perhaps, this is a child of its time: I cannot think of a cultural format, in this country, which is not being given a large dollop of violence to increase its titillation appeal and I, for one, am getting more and more tired of this.
Not a book that I could recommend.