Thatcher Stole My Trousers PDF Download

Author: Alexei Sayle
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 140886455X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
'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.

Author: Alexei Sayle
Publisher: Sceptre
ISBN: 1848945000
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
'Fascinating and hugely entertaining' Daily Telegraph 'It's not like other comedians' memoirs. It's funny' Guardian 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. 'Sayle's book has charm and substance, both as memoir and history' Times Literary Supplement

Author: Alexei Sayle
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1408895846
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 97

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Book Description
Alexei Sayle reveals his true vocation: proprietor of an imaginary sandwich shop. Blending politics, comedy, philosophy and memoir, this is the Godfather of Alternative Comedy at his most anarchic and irresistibly entertaining Alexei Sayle has been telling people he runs a sandwich bar on Gray's Inn Road that doesn't exist since the mid-1970s. From behind this imaginary counter Alexei dispenses wisdom and focaccia to his famous customers as he explores his love of pretending, reveals why he disappeared from our TV screens in the 1990's, lobbies for eleven-hour long episodes of Newsnight and discusses rampant nepotism in coveted careers. And from drawing striking comparisons between capitalism and all-you-can-eat buffets to discussing the hidden depths of Taylor Swift, this flight of fancy packs a surprising punch and will leave you hungry for more.

Author: Alexei Sayle
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780340936382
Category : England
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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A septuagenarian contract killer, a chronic hypochondriac, two zombie-creating comedians, a good Samaritan and a man called Barnaby whose holiday takes an unexpected turn. In these sleek and witty tales, described by Loaded as 'an excellent collection of dark, funny and bizarre short stories', Alexei Sayle's characters are vividly, wryly - and occasionally disturbingly - portrayed. Their voices, and the stories they have to tell will remain in the mind for a long, long time.

Author: Louis Barfe
Publisher: Atlantic Books
ISBN: 0857896709
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
STRONGThe first ever narrative biography of a towering figure in British comedy Les Dawson, more than any other comedian, spoke for the phlegmatic, pessimistic British way of life. A Northern lad who climbed out of the slums thanks to an uncommonly brilliant mind, he was always the underdog, but his bark was funnier and more incisive than many comics who claimed to bite. Married twice in real life, he had a third wife in his comic world—a fictional ogre built from spare parts left by fleeing Nazis at the end of World War II—and an equally frightening mother-in-law. He was down to earth, yet given to eloquent, absurd flights of fancy. He was endlessly generous with his time, but slow to buy a round of drinks. He was a mass of contradictions. In short, he was human, he was genuine, and that's why audiences loved him. This is his story.

Author: David Aaronovitch
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0224074717
Category : Children
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
'An affectionate and insightful account of 20th-century history that also amounts to a manifesto for the power of words - and belonging.' Helen Davies, a Sunday Times Book of the Year In July 1961, just before David Aaronovitch's seventh birthday, Yuri Gagarin came to London. The Russian cosmonaut was everything the Aaronovitch family wished for - a popular and handsome embodiment of modern communism. But who were they, these ever hopeful, defiant and (had they but known it) historically doomed people? Like a non-magical version of the wizards of J. K. Rowling's world, they lived secretly with and parallel to the non-communist majority, sometimes persecuted, sometimes ignored, but carrying on their own ways and traditions. Where others went to church they went to Socialist Sunday School, society's up was their down and its heroes were their villains. Who wanted American TV when you could have Russian movies? A memoir of early life among communists, Party Animals first took David Aaronovitch back through his own memories of belief and action. But there was much more to it. He found himself studying the old secret service files, uncovering the unspoken shame and fears that provided the unconscious background to his own existence as a party animal. Only then did he begin to understand what had come before - both the obstinate heroism and the monstrous cowardice. And the elements that shape our fondest beliefs.

Author: David Mitchell
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 158836528X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas | Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize Selected by Time as One of the Ten Best Books of the Year | A New York Times Notable Book | Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post Book World, The Christian Science Monitor, Rocky Mountain News, and Kirkus Reviews | A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist | Winner of the ALA Alex Award | Finalist for the Costa Novel Award From award-winning writer David Mitchell comes a sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new. Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. A world of Kissingeresque realpolitik enacted in boys’ games on a frozen lake; of “nightcreeping” through the summer backyards of strangers; of the tabloid-fueled thrills of the Falklands War and its human toll; of the cruel, luscious Dawn Madden and her power-hungry boyfriend, Ross Wilcox; of a certain Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, an elderly bohemian emigré who is both more and less than she appears; of Jason’s search to replace his dead grandfather’s irreplaceable smashed watch before the crime is discovered; of first cigarettes, first kisses, first Duran Duran LPs, and first deaths; of Margaret Thatcher’s recession; of Gypsies camping in the woods and the hysteria they inspire; and, even closer to home, of a slow-motion divorce in four seasons. Pointed, funny, profound, left-field, elegiac, and painted with the stuff of life, Black Swan Green is David Mitchell’s subtlest and most effective achievement to date. Praise for Black Swan Green “[David Mitchell has created] one of the most endearing, smart, and funny young narrators ever to rise up from the pages of a novel. . . . The always fresh and brilliant writing will carry readers back to their own childhoods. . . . This enchanting novel makes us remember exactly what it was like.”—The Boston Globe “[David Mitchell is a] prodigiously daring and imaginative young writer. . . . As in the works of Thomas Pynchon and Herman Melville, one feels the roof of the narrative lifted off and oneself in thrall.”—Time

Author: Alexei Sayle
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780340767696
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Kelvin is a 33-year-old property developer living in a small Lancashire town. He has five close friends, all in well-paid jobs. Having bought their lovely houses cheaply in the early 1990s, they are free to spend money on their own pleasures - particularly clothes, meals and cars. Most of all, their life revolves around going to see things - art exhibitions, comedians, live music, plays... When we first meet the six friends they are on their way to see a new kind of circus. Once there Kelvin does something unforgivable to a clown, has a strange snack and meets the most beautiful girl he has ever seen. It's the beginning of the end of the good life.

Author: Upton Sinclair
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : California
Languages : en
Pages : 544

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First edition of Sinclair's savage satire, loosely based on the life and career of Edward L. Doheny, and the Teapot Dome scandal of the Harding administration. Although Sinclair's famous novel The Jungle deals with Chicago's meatpacking industry, he moved west to Pasadena in 1916 and began writing novels set in California, the best of which was Oil!, the story of the education of Bunny Ross, son of wildcat oil man Joe Ross after oil is discovered outside Los Angeles. The novel was the basis for Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 film There Will Be Blood. In California Classics, Lawrence Clark Powell called Oil! "Sinclair's most sustained and best writing."

Author: Sue Townsend
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060533994
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Adrian Mole's first love, Pandora, has left him; a neighbor, Mr. Lucas, appears to be seducing his mother (and what does that mean for his father?); the BBC refuses to publish his poetry; and his dog swallowed the tree off the Christmas cake. "Why" indeed.