Thatcher Stole My Trousers

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What to expect

Bloomsbury presents Thatcher Stole My Trousers, written and read by Alexei Sayle.

'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.

Critics Review

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 … Compared to today’s comics and the unctuous 1970s Variety Club of Great Britain golf club elite, Sayle – baleful, menacing, intelligent – comes over as a bloke whose company one might seek out, whether he cared or not. He is a master of the flashing en passant insult. I laughed out loud
New Statesman
Few standups have come close to capturing a fraction of this creative energy in a book … Alexei Sayle is an exception … The reader is left with a lesson so often imparted in the standup’s foray into memoir: comedy is no laughing matter
Guardian, Book of the Day
I devoured the first chapters of Sayle’s terrific second volume of memoirs … Thatcher Stole My Trousers, but he changed my life ****
Mail on Sunday
Thatcher Stole My Trousers deals with the birth of stand-up as we understand it in the UK … I really, really enjoyed this, I thought it was brilliant ... Laugh-out-loud
Stewart Lee
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
An unexpected delight. All those lefty stand-up comedians who monopolise the funny stuff now: their style started with Alexei Sayle and his comrades of the 1980s ... It is not packed with one-liners. It is much funnier than that ... Observant and wry
Independent
Sayle relates an endless stream of entertaining anecdotes ... An affectionate account of a group of performers who transformed British comedy
Sunday Times
An interesting social history here as comedy and politics come together in the late 1970s and his work with The Comic Strip and The Young Ones takes centre stage. It’s fascinating to watch Sayle battle with his principles
Observer
Alternative comedy’s erstwhile ranter-in-chief has mellowed with age but expect a few residual flecks of spleen
Daily Telegraph
The granddaddy of alternative comedy… Takes potshots at the establishment and his comrades. Laced with his trademark corrosive wit
Shortlist
This century he has reinvented himself as a writer. A good one too. Thatcher Stole My Trousers is a pleasure to read
Herald
Brilliantly funny
Waitrose Weekend
A combative return for a pioneer of alternative comedy … Anarchic
Yorkshire Post

User Reviews

Book 5.0
Narration 5.0
5.0
5.0
An enjoyable and interesting autobiography. Not a barrel of laughs but very interesting to hear some of Alexei's life stories following his mother and father journeys around Britain and the communist countries of Europe. Plenty of name dropping of the characters in pubs, clubs and television studios.
Certainly worth a listen.
Rocketman 23/04/2025

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