June 1983 MarxismToday 33

Interview with ALEXEI SAYLE

by Dave Triesman

The first thing I want to ask is about your background in comedy. Did you come to it through theatre or performing arts?

The way I got started originally was that there was a mate of mine, who went to Bristol Old Vic Drama School and acted, who started a fringe theatre group which did a Brecht cabaret. He was a member of the CP. We had always clowned around together at school and the theatre group was quite large and unwieldy. There were fourteen people or something in it. We did the usual outer fringe, the community centres, trades councils, the regional circuit and then the theatre group had the inevitable row and broke up. There was three of us left including the director. Me and the other bloke, who was also in the CP, we were just messing around at a party one Christmas and thought why don't we get some comedy material together and do that. Having done a bit of touring, we spent a The club that was opening in a strip artist although again I was a compere. It lot of time writing, very very slowly, club in Soho was called the Comedy Store. attracted a lot of media attention. acquiring the ability to do it. Once you've I went along to an audition. The rest of the acquired that ability it comes very quickly, people who turned up were fairly dreadful A lot of people describe you as having been but it took years to work out how to so they offered me the job of compere focal in the start of the Comic Strip. formulate material. Eventually we started rather than just being one of the performers. performing it, just the two of us were the Once that actually started a lot of people 1 was a fairly essential part of it. The theatre group. Again that circuited the started coming down. The theatre group reason that I was cheezed off with the community centres and trades councils, had been very isolated. We never knew Comedy Store was that we were not being peoples parties and what have you. We anybody else in the business. But once I obviously exploited. They were dictatorial. made about twenty quid. We did that for started at the Comedy Store, I found I had Before the Comic Strip had started I had probably a couple of years. The way I got a kind of natural aptitude for it, it was very already quit the Comedy Store. started was that my wife saw an advert in rough, it was also very heartless. It was a Private Eye for a 'improvisational comedy very cruel sort of place which I didn't have You told me before we started that you'd club' opening in the West End. I'd always any qualms about, but as the compere you worked in London as a teacher in various been aware that there was a larger audience had to be very cruel. London colleges. Did all these occupations than trades councils — a sort of rock Through this I started meeting other like overlap? audience. That sort of market had its own minded performers. First of all, me and music and clothes but never any comedy a mate, Tony Allen, had a group called The Comedy Store started the day I because in Britain everybody under 40 Alternative Cabaret for a while: similar finished my training course at Garnett has been expected to listen to their circuit but a bit more people. That went on College. I'd been there the night before I grandad's style of comedy apart from the till Peter Richardson managed to open the did my exams. I fell asleep half way public school orientated stuff like 'Python' Comedy Strip in Raymond's Review Bar through them. and 'Not the nine o'clock news' which had where I wasn't with the Alternative Cabaret a stranglehold on the 'intelligent' market to crowd but was with the Young Ones Comic You've mentioned some people you worked some extent. Strip axis. That's where I took off as a solo with who were members of organisations on 34 June 1983 Marxism Today

the left. Has it always been the case that you, is the fringe theatre, touring, Belt and musician never knows what I'm going to do by choice, worked with people like that Braces, agitprop. I never had the least next. Apart from that there's a big cult of because of your own politics? interest in that. improvisation. A lot of my act, 90% of it, I've said over and over again for a couple of I think they were the people I'd tend to That brings me to ask what sort of audience years. It appears that I'm coining it afresh. gravitate towards. At the Comic Strip I your humour gets to? Does it have a particular You can't possibly do that in practice. You think all the others were fairly apolitical audience, one that you can characterise? have to have a fairly light structure to and for them it was a career thing. But that improvise round but I make it appear as if was better than, say, Alternative Cabaret, No, not particularly. The most obvious way it's fresh. I try not to do anything where you would get three or four male of trying to get at me by people who have mechanically so that every time I do it the comics getting up and blagging on about the never been to a live show, is saying that I'm intonation is different. I won't grind Government, middle class mores, and so taking the piss out of the middle class to a through it and if I don't feel like doing a on. It all got a bit much. Not someone else purely middle class audience. Outside the particular bit one night I won't do it. taking the piss out of Protect and Survive*. West End that's not true. My audience when I do a live show is very broad indeed, You mentioned Jasper Carrot who made the which is what I always wanted. I did the point that he wasn't going to tell jokes that What formed your politics? Where did your Reading Hexagon on Sunday and that was were offensive to black people or offensive to own political stance come from? 1,200 people and in the front there were all women. It was at the beginning of telling jokes these skinheads, and behind them the that were offensive about Sun readers. Is it Both my parents were in the Communist young married and younger kids and older very difficult given the history and traditions of Party and had been since the war. I went people. People come along because they've British Comedy to construct a humour that lefter than them. I was in CND when I seen me on the telly. They may be attracted doesn't exploit racial groups or women? was twelve and then I went into the YCL, by what I do. But I'm at the upper limit. I and then I was in the Merseyside Marxist don't think I can break through to the Billy I don't think its difficult at all. Jasper also Leninist League and then the Communist Connelly, Jasper Carrot sized performance. said the reason he'd done that was because Party of Britain Marxist-Leninist-Maoist I felt that as soon as I started doing he'd seen me! It's not done so much out of although they hated to be called that. I was television. The only way to avoid being malice as stupidity. British comedy and in that for a long time. My dad wasn't really absorbed into the establishment is by being British show business is afflicted with the involved but my mother was involved over so politically unacceptable to them that you same problems that afflict every other Vietnam. My dad was an official in the can never be incorporated. I never did branch of British industry and the NUR so I'd always seen him involved in material you could call agitprop because I performers, the straight stand-up comics, meetings — CP and NUR branch meetings never saw the point. When you said are stupid. They've got no guts and the round our house. So I'd always been something nasty about the Royal Family or easiest way out is to tell jokes about black heavily immersed in left wing politics. The Mrs Thatcher the audience applauded or people, Irish people, and women. It is one thing about the Marxist Leninist Party laughed but they were mostly applauding malicious in some cases in Liverpool was that they had a very themselves. Once I got a broader audience — they are self-employed petit-bourgeois rigorous attitude to the study of Marxism. through television, it became a really people who own their own means of pro- It was very slow because people were exciting thing because the audience is duction. They are little businessmen and constantly grinding through Wages, Prices relatively apolitical, so if you do anti- they have that ideology. But they're also and Profit and The Communist Manifesto. government stuff in the largest sphere of dim as well. Anybody young wouldn't be a When somebody new joined, you'd have to entertainment, there is nobody else who is stand-up comic, they'd join a rock band, start again and so by constantly going doing that. That's more worthwhile. Plus so you are getting the dregs in comedy. through you didn't get very far but you got what you do is unacceptable to the establishment. But there's a block on how a meticulous grounding in the basics. I'd Is it possible to have humour which is about far you can go. You can't get the mums and always been left wing but I didn't know women or about race without falling into dads audience if you are doing relatively why. I don't think a lot of people do. Once the pitfalls? I'd understood the basics of Marxism it complex anti-establishment stuff. provided a bedrock for everything. I personally don't think it is. I won't deal How do you construct an act for a live with those areas because it would be very The reason I ask is that I think it has been, audience? What balance of comedy and music arrogant for me. There's a phenomenal historically, very unusual for comedians to do you look for? difference between what you do personally have a serious political background or and what you do as a performer. Often the commitment and make it funny. I don't do much rehearsing. I have a excuse that's made for racialist humour is musician who is also a guy that I write with. that at a workplace you can get away with it Yeah, I suppose it is exceptional. A lot of I've got a box which contains all my props because genuinely it doesn't mean much. people have got that background. When- and if I think of something I write the idea Working with someone who's black, who ever I said that I came from a CP on a piece of paper and sellotape it to the can also make jokes about mates, can be background I'd often get a lot of kids who box and then do it. With a song I might harmless, but when it gets into public came up and said 'Yeah, that was my rehearse. I work in a very ramshackle sort performance it takes on a completely background as well'. I avoided the usual of way and I often forget bits of the act. I different nature. It's not about genial career route of left wing entertainers which prefer to keep it very elastic and the relationships — it's vicious and horrible. June 1983 Marxism Today 35

There's a tendency for some politicians to won't get involved in these problems or become show business media figures, brought cope with the threat of being accepted by in to entertain. Is it inevitable that if you want the establishment, I will do agitprop and to reach a mass working class audience with nobody will want to know. That game of political statements you must involve yourself constantly performing the plays about the that way, or is it that people in these positions strikes within the precincts still goes on cannot resist living the lives of celebrities? You doesn't it? It still only attracts that float- are avoiding living like that for political ing group of people who will join left wing reasons, they court it for political reasons. organisations anyway. It doesn't get further than the pre-selected audience. I feel very Politics has always been a branch of show strongly that we must open doors on the business. Unfortunately the reactionaries Left, but we must get rid of all those stupid as opposed to progressives have more notions held out of cowardice. Just like the readily realised that. That's one of the stand-up comedians are being racist and frightening things about Margaret Thatcher. sexist out of cowardice and stupidity, then a I don't think society is in the kind of She understands that it's not about lot of left-wing performers are staying out situation where you can make it funny. You consistency, or policy. It's about the same of the larger mass media out of cowardice can't be funny by being a wanker. things to being a breakfast television and stupidity. presenter. They are adept at presenting a It takes a lot of discrimination to decide Do you write for other performers? simplistic but attractive media image. Our to do that. Most people on the Left are the side, the progressive left side, is much whatever the opposite of iconoclastic is. Never at all. If I think of anything funny, I further behind in doing that. Under- The most frightening thing about the Left use it myself. standably as a left-winger, you've also got is Their clothes. I can't imagine working the problem of the media being controlled class kids in ponchos and kicker boots. Nothing to sellotape to someone else's by the Right. I don't think that it's as Can't imagine it. They'll say 'Fuck, I'd cardboard box? insurmountable a problem as it might rather join the Nazis. They've got much seem. The problem seems to me that you nicer clothes'. You can't accept anything That's right. Won't send ii to anybody else. can't present the reverse. I'm an example of wholesale. You've got to question every- I wouldn't dream of giving anbody any- taking on those right wing shit bags in thing. The left wing has accepted a whole thing half-way decent. I try to work away performance, and I'm doing better than bundle of notions about art, performance from anyone else. them because I'm funnier than them and and design for 40 years. Take graphics in more talented and because I've got a better the party that I was in. Their media looked Earlier on you said that you geared your work ideology. I can take them on and beat them. 20 years old or more. Most of the Left so that it was sufficiently anti-establishment to Very few people from the Left have done media is the same. The trots are like that make it difficult for them to absorb you, so that, because the Left is shot through with as well. Their rhetoric, their style of talk- since you are a public figure, recognised all kinds of idealistic notions of what ing was in the 20s really. wherever you go, how do you given your performance should be. There are hardly 'Comrade. You've got to question all political commitment, live with that political any proletarian artists in the new comedy that, you can't go along with it'! existence? stock. Mostly they are public school stock. Public school performers could do anything To what extent is it possible to satirise the Left I don't find it particularly difficult. The they want — admirals, secret service, in public? public thing is no bother. I don't get hassled jockeys. I'm an anomaly rather than a by anybody. I occasionally get a bit of pointer to the future. The art that the Left I do but it's a problem. There is a lot of preferential treatment. I like it. That's one produces is shit. It's self reverential gar- ludicrous aspects to the GLC, for example, of the reasons that I joined up. As a bage. The fact that Tony Banks at the GLC but you think, well, all the other fuckers performer you do set rigid but arbitrary can give money to the Riverside Studio, are taking the piss out of the GLC, so barriers past which you won't go, I won't an elitist outfit producing Polish mime there's no way I can do it. You are often do television adverts, for instance, because troupers for the working class of Fulham, caught in that kind of cleft stick. The if you appear, you are obviously endorsing is ludicrous. It's awful and stupid. It's women at Greenham Common, for instance, a product. You can't go on about things possible for correct notions to appeal to in many ways, they look like a bunch of the way I do and be advertising the latest people and I've proved that to an extent. wallies but there's no way you can say that. Toyota. I do radio voice-overs, there's Yet people are still doing the same old shit. an arbitrary distinction for a start. I Tories do it great. They've got image, It could be taken over and used as part of the design style, graphical assurance. It appeals. deliberately don't go to charity functions, Right's attack on them. just the odd benefit, usually because I can't A lot of left wing design style, its get out of it. I wouldn't meet a member of aesthetic, it's shot through with idiotic So you tend not to push those disquiets. rubbish and the point is that you are either the Government or be presented to a But I do, in a general way, take the piss out going to get done in by the Right, or you member of the Royal Family. I won't have of the Left a lot. I do it because they are must get involved, to shake up the image in any merchandising at the the gigs, tee shirts so pathetic. But it's not done with hatred. the right way, realise that it's much easier and stuff, although there's an enormous It's done with despair, whereas the stuff for left wing people to cop out. They say I demand. about the Government is done with hatred.