Sayle stands up for the comedy revolution

Vivid social history, thoughtful self-analysis and colourful showbiz anecdotes

Margaret Thatcher: one of Alexei Sayle’s favourite targets Picture: Getty

Memoir; Thatcher Stole My Trousers; By Alexei Sayle; Bloomsbury, €17.25

Not many autobiographies include the claim that their author invented “a completely new art form”. Alexei Sayle’s is one of them. In the early 1980s, at a dingy club in Soho, this burly, shaven-headed, Liverpudlian Marxist became famous largely for standing on stage and shouting about how much he hated Margaret Thatcher.

“The whole comedy revolution and the gigantic arena-filling business that is ...