It’s not just takeaway food that’s moved on for the Liverpool comedian and diarist – now he’s cultivated a taste for roast grouse
I’ve got it on the best authorities that he’s a changed man. After all, before I head out to meet Alexei Sayle for lunch I’ve read the two volumes of his compulsive and funny autobiography, and I’ve seen him many times presenting thoughtful arts shows on the BBC, and we have a couple of mutual friends who tell me what a friendly bloke he is, but still I can’t help feeling a slight vestigial anxiety. What if I find myself sat opposite that indelible 1980s Sayle, scourge of wrong-thinking hecklers, tight-suited, headbanging monologuist, undisputed heavyweight champion of the Comedy Store, taking on all comers, and ranting them eruditely and gobbily into spittle-flecked submission?
It’s fine. When I get to the Quality Chop House, Sayle has arrived early and manoeuvred into one of their unforgiving seats, side on “like a pasha”, and is all beard and grin and handshake. It turns out, at 64, he’s wary of that former version of himself too. He talks about him as if he’s safely locked up in the past: “When I did standup back then,” he says, “if there was an ounce of warmth in the audience, I would do all I could to destroy it. I would leave the venue immediately after the gig because I didn’t want to dilute his threat. To be honest, I grew to hate him …”
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