And This Blog Loves Alexei Sayle

"If you travel to the States ... they have a lot of different words than what we use. For instance: they say 'elevator', we say 'lift'; they say 'drapes', we say 'curtains'; they say 'president', we say 'seriously deranged git!" Alexei Sayle.

Headlong into a Brit-com binge, Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog is revisiting the career of one of our favorite comedians who is still living and performing, Liverpool's Alexei Sayle.

A standup comic and actor, Alexei Sayle made his name along with Rik Mayall and Nigel Planer as one of the punk rock comedians who performed at Soho's The Comic Strip in the late 1970's and early 1980's.

First noticed the comedy of Mr. Sayle in The Secret Policeman's Other Ball, a favorite film, which also features John Cleese, Peter Cook and Rowan Atkinson.



For many, the first look at Alexei Sayle was as one of numerous over-the-top characters in The Young Ones.



In this clip from The Young Ones, Alexei Sayle does a sendup of Benito Mussolini, which now comes across as most apropo in fascism and authoritarianism-friendly 2020, the era of Vladimir Putin, Mohammed bin Salman, Kim Jong Un, Viktor Orban, Jair Bolsonaro, Narendra Modi, Rodrigo Duterte and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.



Very much Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, we'll quote Wikipedia's entry on Alexei:


When the Comedy Store opened in London in 1979, Sayle responded to an advert in Private Eye for would-be comedians and became its first master of ceremonies. In 1980, comedy producer Martin Lewis saw Sayle perform at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and became his manager. Sayle became the leading performer at the Comic Strip. He appeared on The Comic Strip Album (1981) and recorded Cak! (1982). He also appeared in the stage show, film and comedy album of The Secret Policeman's Other Ball (1981–1982). Sayle's material covered a broad range of topics, but one of his favourite subjects remained politics. His angry persona, coupled with his vociferous delivery, gave immense bite to his material.


Our favorite of his TV series remains Alexei Sayle's Stuff.



This show carries on the anarchic tradition exemplified by Peter Cook & Dudley Moore's Not Only But Also, Spike Milligan's Q series and Monty Python's Flying Circus.




There were three Alexei Sayle's Stuff series, first broadcast in 1988-1991.



All three series are hilarious.



Of the British comedy shows from the late 1980's and early 1990's, they are right up there with Red Dwarf and A Bit Of Fry & Laurie in the untethered inspiration department.



They would be followed later in the 1990's by The All New Alexei Sayle Show and Alexei Sayle's Merry-Go-Round.



Do we love the Bobby Chariot character in The All New Alexei Sayle Show? Yes, very much.



Bobby Chariot is as unrelentingly terrible a performer as Andy Kaufman's tres toxic lounge lizard Tony Clifton, not to mention SCTV's egocentric entertainer Bobby Bittmann (Eugene Levy) and even less talented brother Skip Bittmann (Rick Moranis), but weirdly endearing.


The last of the comedian's TV shows we can point to that is still within the 20th century pop culture focus of Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog is Alexei Sayle's Merry-Go-Round.





While we in the States have not seen Alexei Sayle on TV in too many moons, the actor-writer continues to tour, write new material and perform standup comedy. In the past decade, this has included extended engagements at London's Soho Theatre and at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He also hosts and writes the BBC 4 radio series Alexei Sayle's Imaginary Sandwich Bar, a.k.a. stand-up, memoir and philosophy from behind the counter of his Imaginary Sandwich Bar.