'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.

BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY: FILM, TELEVISION, MUSIC, THEATRE. The Sayles might not have been the only Jewish atheist communist family in Liverpool, but Alexei knew from an early age that they were one of the more eccentric. Born on the day egg rationing came to an end, Alexei was the only child of Joe, an affable trade unionist who led the family on railway expeditions across eastern Europe, and Molly, a hot-tempered red-head who terrified teachers and insisted Alexei see the Red Army Choir instead of the Beatles. Perceptive and hilarious, this is a portrait of a family, a city, a country and a continent going through enormous changes.