Alexei Sayle on activism, Marxism and comedy in new book interview

Alexei Sayle, the comedian and writer, has spoken about his new book on left-wing activism and protest in an interview with Krishnan Guru-Murthy for the Ways to Change the World podcast, broadcast on Channel 4 News. The 74-year-old, best known for his comedy career, grew up in a communist family in the 1960s and has lived through decades of protest movements, from the miners' strike to the pro-Palestinian cause.

In the interview, Sayle reflected on his Jewish identity, saying his mother talked about being Jewish every day but had swapped one religion for another, forsaking Judaism for communism. He said he always believed in both what his family believed and also thought it was absurd. He described discovering Marxism at 16 and said it always seemed true to him, though he stopped being part of organised politics in his early 20s.

Asked about his Liverpool identity, Sayle said it was important to have an awareness of somewhere that is not London, and expressed scepticism about Andy Burnham's talk of a "Northern number 10", calling it possibly performative.

On the question of how he would change the world, Sayle said people should stop believing lies, both the lies they tell themselves and the lies others tell them. He then made a direct reference to the conflict in Gaza, saying: "Since October 7th, 2023, we live in an era of a really big lie being told to us over and over again, which is that there's no genocide." He said he thought he would never think about anything apart from the genocide, but then came through it, and called it "a just a depressing thing in itself" that one can learn to live with it. He added that one no longer needs a leap of imagination to understand how people enjoy themselves while others are being murdered.

The interview also touched on his comedy career. Sayle said he did not want to write a straightforward memoir because it would have been boring. He described comedy as a job where you have to make people laugh every 20 seconds, and said everything should be subservient to that. He acknowledged that his comedy was overtly political but said the technique is the same whether you are a Victorian musical comic or a punky Marxist.

At the end of the broadcast, a note said that Israel and the IDF have consistently denied any allegation of genocide in Gaza, insisting their military operation is legitimate self-defence following the October 7 massacre by Hamas.