How I’ve Tried to Change the World by Alexei Sayle review – does protest make a difference?

The comedian charts his life in demos from 1960s Liverpool to 2020s London in this fiery and addictive book At 74, the comedian Alexei Sayle is approaching a dangerous phase for veteran British leftists: becoming a national treasure. Once described by special branch, in a surveillance file gleefully quoted in this memoir, as an “intellectual thug” who made “foul-mouthed comments about the royal family”, Sayle now appears regularly on Radio 4. His jolly, self-deprecating, man of the people sid...

By Andy Beckett