Thatcher Stole My Trousers Synopsis
'Enlightening … Funny, smart, original and provocative ... It is hard to imagine the stalwarts of Mock the Week recognising the Druze militia leader Walid Jumblatt in a London cinema' NEW STATESMAN
'Few standups have come close to capturing a fraction of this creative energy in a book … Alexei Sayle is an exception' GUARDIAN
"What I brought to comedy was an authentic working-class voice plus a threat of genuine violence - nobody in Monty Python looked like a hard case who'd kick your head in."
In 1971, comedians on the working men's club circuit imagined that they would be free to continue telling their tired, racist, misogynistic gags forever. But their nemesis, a nineteen-year-old Marxist art student, was slowly coming to meet them…
Thatcher Stole My Trousers chronicles a time when comedy and politics united in electrifying ways. Recounting the founding of the Comedy Store, the Comic Strip and the Young Ones, and Alexei's friendships with the comedians who - like him - would soon become household names, this is a unique and beguiling blend of social history and memoir. Fascinating, funny, angry and entertaining, it is a story of class and comedy, politics and love, fast cars and why it's difficult to foul a dwarf in a game of football.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9781408864548 |
| Publication date: |
3rd November 2016 |
| Author: |
Alexei Sayle |
| Publisher: |
Bloomsbury an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
336 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Biographies & Autobiographies
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| Recommendations: |
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Alexei Sayle Press Reviews
'The inventor of alternative comedy' David Baddiel
'Comedy underwent seismic change in the 1980s, and Alexei Sayle was at the forefront of it ... Thatcher Stole My Trousers, is full of self-accusation, pratfalls, memories of idiocy and delusion, all built up for comic effect. But about his debut he is deadly serious: he knows he helped change the tone of British comedy. He blazed a trail for a new generation of punkish comic violence (such as The Young Ones) and politically engaged stand-up, that consigned to oblivion the old gag-merchants; he effectively silenced the humour of mothers-in-law, tits, arses, Pakis, micks and poofs' Independent
'It's not like other comedians memoirs. It's funny' Guardian on Stalin Ate My Homework
'As strange and fascinating as any fiction ... This would be excellent even if it weren't by someone famous' The Times on Stalin Ate My Homework
'Fascinating and hugely entertaining' Telegraph on Stalin Ate My Homework
'A great memoir of a strange childhood. Just let me read you this bit funny' Frank Cottrell Boyce on Stalin Ate My Homework
'An entertaining history of British stand-up' -- Hannah Stephenson Yorkshire Post
About Alexei Sayle
Alexei Sayle is a comedian, actor, presenter and writer. His television work as a writer and performer includes The Young Ones, Alexei Sayle's Stuff, and The All New Alexei Sayle Show. He has written regularly for the Observer, Indepedent, Time Out, Car Magazine and Esquire and he has appeared in numerous films, from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade to Gorky Park and Swing.
Photograph © Poppy Berry
More About Alexei Sayle
