Alexei Sayle's bizarre brush with the Golden Girls

They have the image of sweet old ladies, but The Golden Girls were thoroughly ‘unpleasant’ to Alexei Sayle when he tried to break America.

The comedian has spoken about his ill-fated attempts to make it big on the other side of the Atlantic after finding fame in the UK via his manic, tight-suited alter ego.

He managed to land a role on Golden Girls spin-off The Golden Palace – but was fired before the pilot was shot, to be replaced by Cheech Martin.

Appearing on Desert Island Discs today, Sayle admits that  in the 1980s he ‘was tremendously ambitious in that I wanted to be big, really big’.

‘[But] I came to realise there was a limit, really. I was on this live comedy show on ITV in 1982 called OTT - my chance for big-time fame. But at the same time the closer to my act was singing a song about Albania, which then was a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship and ended with a reference to Joseph Stalin. 

‘So I wanted to be big but also just wanted to do this mad stuff. You’re never going to be family-friendly entertainer doing that stuff.’

Host Lauren Laverne then raised the subject of his attempts to crack the American market, prompting gales of laughter from the 68-year-old comic.

‘What was I thinking?!,’ he guffawed. ‘It seemed like a good idea. I had this American agent who thought I was great...'

In 1992, he was cast in The Golden Palace, a follow-up to the Golden Girls after Bea Arthur left. Set in a hotel owned by Betty White, Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty’s characters, he was to play the ‘wacky East Eurotpean chef’

‘Unconsciously, I didn’t want to be there and I would act very odd and my  performances were very patchy,’ Sayle confesses.

He said that ‘because I can dance a bit’ he said he tried it out in front of his co-stars – who with their long careers working with the best in the business were distinctly unimpressed.

‘I cannot tell you how unpleasant those women were about my tapdancing,’ he said. They were so rude about me kinda clumping and humping about. They were so unpleasant.

‘They [the show's producers] fired me on my 40th birthday.  If I was going to break America, I should have done stand-up really, but I couldn’t be bothered.’

Sayle also revealed a change came over him when he went to Hollywood, saying: ‘I turned into LA Alexei, this really nice guy who wore pastel coloured polo shirts and chinos. I don’t know who the hell he was.’

The comic also spoke about his breakthrough as the first compere of the Comedy Store when it opened in 1979.

‘The giant industry that is stand-up comedy now - the arena acts, the Michael McIntyres, the Jack Whitehalls, the Sarah Millicans - they all spring from what we did in that strip club in Soho. 

‘That little club in Soho was the one racehorse that sired all the other racehorses. Partly that’s luck, a question of timing, to be there then and to be instrumental in the birth of an entire artform - or a subset of an artform - is a privilege that’s granted to very few people. I’m grateful to have been there.’

Recalling the opening night, he said: ‘It was in a strip club called The Gargoyle Club… It was this amazing club and the show started at midnight and everybody was blind drunk.

‘The thing that was needed most was somebody who was funny, but somebody who carried this physical threat, and that’s what I did. 

‘It’s not really me, but when I’m on stage I just have this "you won’t argue with me". I’m just fearless and I’m frightening and I just controlled that night. I wasn’t trying to ingratiate myself with the audience. 

‘The victory for me was if they disliked me but still laughed.’

But Sayle said he eventually had to step back from stand-up when his larger-than-life alter-ego became too restricting.

‘I just knew that it wasn’t working for me any more,’ he said, acknowledging that he faced a choice of whether to  ‘keep on doing the same things [and] go down a few steps like a footballer going from the Premiership to the Championship… or  blow it up and stop and do something else.’

He chose the latter, and became an author.

His chosen tracks included Joe Hill by Joan Baez, which had been sung at the funeral of his communist mother; Dizzee Rascal’s Bonkers, and the Battle Hymn Of The Soviet Air Force, technically known as the Aviators’ March, which he said would be the national anthem of the Tropical Socialist Republic Of Alexei Sayle he would set up on the fictional island.

His luxury item was a Chinese broadsword, both because he enjoys martial arts as a hobby but also because he could use it as a machete, and he chose Evelyn Waugh’s  Sword of Honour as his book to challenge his

The BBC had come under pressure not to air this episode over Sayle’s alleged antisemitism. Matthew Offord, the Conservative MP for Hendon in North London, called for a ban over the comedian’s comments, including  a 2017 interview in which he claimed allegations of antisemitism among supporters of Jeremy Corbyn were fabricated.

But fans rallied to his side, including David Baddiel, who has just written a bestselling book on antisemitism. He tweeted: ‘Me and Alexei Sayle don’t agree on much about the present nature of antisemitism. But he’s a very great comedian, the Godfather of modern alternative comedy, and perfectly entitled to his opinions. The idea of banning his Desert Island Discs is culture war nuts.’

• Alexei Sayle’s Desert Island Discs is on BBC Radio 4 at 11am today.

Published: 23 May 2021