How I’ve Tried to Change the World by Alexei Sayle review – does protest make a difference?
The comedian charts his life in demos from 1960s Liverpool to 2020s London in this fiery and addictive book
At 74, the comedian Alexei Sayle is approaching a dangerous phase for veteran British leftists: becoming a national treasure. Once described by special branch, in a surveillance file gleefully quoted in this memoir, as an “intellectual thug” who made “foul-mouthed comments about the royal family”, Sayle now appears regularly on Radio 4. His jolly, self-deprecating, man of the people side – one of his radio series is called Alexei Sayle’s Imaginary Sandwich Bar – has made him almost cosy.
But not quite. One fascination of his meandering career, which has included villainous Hollywood cameos, subversive podcasts and successful novelty pop songs, is the persistent fierceness of his politics – the underlying subject of this short, sharp book. “My decision to become … a professional funny man,” he writes, “wasn’t a choice made simply out of monstrous vanity … I was also … taking part in [Antonio] Gramsci’s war of position: attempting to get examples of communist thought on to Top of the Pops, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Doctor Who.”
Alongside such sometimes well-paid efforts to apply the culture war strategies of the late Italian Marxist, Sayle has also been on a lot of marches. The contrasts and contradictions between these two forms of activism – one repetitive but comradely, the other more glamorous but often isolated – are pondered, mocked and mined for anecdotes in these busy, digressive pages. From marching against American imperialism with his communist parents in Liverpool in the 1960s to marching for the Palestinians in London last year, Sayle richly conveys the mix of enthusiasm and doubt which anyone who goes on demos will recognise: “believing in the cause but also sceptical that protesting about it would be sufficient”.
He confesses to other complicated feelings about street politics. “I have always found it a sad thing to be alone on a demo, lonely in a crowd,” he writes. Then he describes watching protesters fight the police: “I didn’t join in but nevertheless experienced a tremendous rush of exhilaration.” With his bulging eyes and cannonball head, straining suits and air of menace, the Sayle who first became famous as a standup and a star of the boisterous sitcom The Young Ones in the early 1980s seemed like someone who could handle himself in a political pavement battle. But this book shows he is much less macho, constantly examining his own motives and often finding himself ridiculous, “a capering jester”.
In 1991, during one of his sporadic attempts at US success, he went to Hollywood with his wife for auditions. Beforehand, “we went out for a walk along Sunset Boulevard in the hot night,” he writes. “The pavement was deserted except up ahead … was a single figure. ‘I bet they’re British,’ I said to Linda. When we reached this solitary pedestrian it turned out to be Billy Bragg.” There is a beautiful absurdity and melancholy about these two mouthpieces of austere alternative Britain in the 1980s now wandering a seductively escapist part of California in a less politicised decade. Although, given the way the book flits cheekily between droll stories, polemic and fantasy, we can’t be completely sure this meeting actually happened.
There are other irreverent encounters with fellow radicals. The Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arabian Gulf once held their annual congress in a small, suburban London flat where Sayle lived in the 1970s. To him at least, “Their main activity seemed to be smoking, staying up all night and reading foreign newspapers in cafes.”During the 1990s, he drifted away from activism, disillusioned by the left’s flagging momentum and distracted by his career’s proliferating demands. He is cutting about the left’s – and his own – frequent lack of focus and forward thinking. But then the 2003 Iraq war protests re-energised him: “There is something elemental, ancient and magical about … a huge crowd of one mind.”
Towards the book’s end, its tone becomes more consistent and serious. “I have marched on every Palestine demonstration since October 7,” writes Sayle, who is Jewish, and he has lost friends as a result. Like a good political pamphlet, this slim volume is fiery and addictive. Yet unlike a pamphlet, it shows how politics relates to the rest of life.
• How I’ve Tried to Change the World By Walking Down the Middle of the Street Shouting by Alexei Sayle is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (£16.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.