Alexei David Sayle. Born Liverpool 7th August 1952.
For Tour Details starting 4th Oct, 2013. www.alexeisayle.me/appearances/
Parents Molly (Malka) Sayle ne Mendelson and Joseph Henry Sayle.
Married 1974 to Linda Rawsthorn.
Anfield Road Junior School. 1958-1964
Alsop Grammar School. 1964-1969
Southport College of Art. 1969-1971
Chelsea School of Art. 1971-1974
1978-1979. Garnett College Roehampton. [After being more or less unemployed for four years I thought might have to become a college lecturer so I did this one year course on teaching in further education. The exam was on the Monday after the Comedy Store opened and I’d been on stage until 2a.m. so I left the exam ninety minutes early but they gave me a degree anyway. I also got offered a job at the college where I did my teacher training so for the first year of my career I was teaching during the day and then cycling to gigs at night.]
1979-1980. Drama Lecturer North London College Holloway. [My students won the Evening News drama competition that year against Oxford University and one of my students, Eamon Walker, is now a big movie star. None of that is down to me since I was usually asleep in a cupboard]
1979-1980. First Mc of London’s Comedy Store.
1979. Alexei Sayle and the Fish People. Capital 95.8. Capital was very much your cheezy local radio station but late at night me and David Stafford made these two insane series about me working as a council funded community detective on a housing estate in Stoke Newington. We won the Pye (later Sony) radio award that year.
1979. TV series- Wolcott. I think this might have been my first telly. Wolcott was a series about a black detective which was very pioneering for 1979. I played a heckler who got into a fight with another hecklerplayed by Keith Allen at a political meeting in Ridley Road Market. I recall me and Keth were hysterical with excitement at being in a TV show and that Keith, being much more convivial than me, got invited into the house of some of the people who lived next to the location. I seem to remember him leaning out of a window and shouting “Lex there’s a bloke here with a pet goose!”
1980. Alexei Sayle and the Dutch Lieutenants Trousers. Capital 95.8.
1980. Edinburgh Festival with Tony Allen. In summer 1980 I quit the Comedy Store after attempting to strangle one of the owners, a guy called Peter Rosengard. I was convinced that without me the whole enterprise would fold. A theatre troup based at Bristol University called Bristol Express asked me and Tony if we wanted to go up to Edinburgh and do a half hour of comedy each. They had the crazy idea that you could put on a late night standup comedy show up there. I think we went on at 10p.m. at the Heriot Watt Theatre and that was considered the middle of the night, we were empty for a couple of nights, then word spread and we were full. This little show started several traditons at Edinburgh, firstly of course all the thousands of standup shows spread from those few appearances and secondly, afterwards Bristol Express wrote to me and Tony and said that although we were packed out nearly every night they hadn’t made any money so we didn’t get paid.
