Thatcher Stole my Trousers by Alexei Sayle

If I had to name my favourite comedian it would be Alexei Sayle. Not only - as this, his second volume of memoirs, goes a long way to prove - did he invent politically engaged alternative comedy, he can do whimsy and the absurd too.

Sayle is also a proper writer - not only memoirs but fiction. Every Oxbridge comedian has one novel in him before he gets the call from American television, but Sayle is a master of the unfashionable form of short stories.

Douglas Adams called Sayle's story 'The Last Woman to Die in the War' a masterpiece. He was right.

Thatcher Stole My Trousers is a good-natured romp through Sayle's rise to fame. It also tells us a lot about an important moment in British comedy:

verdict on the other comedians he met at this height of his fame is surely right:

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. (Apart from Keith Allen.)

Allen has a role as antihero of this book, exceeded only by Sayle's mother Molly. The heroine is his wife Linda.

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Stewart Lee talks to Alexei Sayle

The new series of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle starts at 10 this evening on BBC2.

While we are waiting, here he is interviewing Alexei Sayle about Thatcher Stole My Trousers, the latter's second volume of memoirs .

Something the two have in common is that, rather than flatter it like lesser left-wing comedians, they attack their audience's view of the world.

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