Chief feature writer Paddy Shennan talks to Alexei Sayle about his old and new lives - and why he thinks Ben Elton could be losing the plot
By Paddy Shennan, Liverpool Echo
WILL the real Alexei Sayle stand up? No, really. Will the real Alexei Sayle please stand up, put on his Bobby Chariot wig and tell us some funny jokes?
I apologise. I sometimes find it hard to move on. Unlike the Anfield-born wordsmith, who has moved on from being a self-styled ugly, fat b*****d who told daft stories on stage and screen to Alexei Sayle: Novelist.
The Young Ones. The Comic Strip Presents. Alexei Sayle's Stuff. The All-New Alexei Sayle Show.
His latest novel, The Weeping Women Hotel, is out today.
This is now.
Admitting defeat, I ask Alexei, famed in la-de-da literary circles for his Evelyn Waugh-esque style, if he now calls himself a "novelist" on his passport.
He laughs and says: "Yes, I try to pass myself off as a writer. It was a very conscious decision to do that. You get treated differently by people as an author.
"When you're an actor on a set people treat you like you've got brain damage - they try and help you down steps. And when you're a comic, even if your material is about Proust, they tend to treat you as if you're Freddie Starr."
