Alexei Sayle

Only last year he signed up to write a motoring column for The Daily Telegraph.

Yes, the once vitriolic leftie, raised by communists in Red Liverpool, penning articles for the right-wing broadsheet aimed at the nation’s business leaders and old money.

After a croaky laugh comes a diplomatic reply, print-ready.

“I don’t think I was ever bothered about who I worked for. Personally, for me, as long as you don’t tailor what you write to whom you’re writing for.”

Now into his 60s, pragmatism has replaced ideology.

“If you want to be a popular entertainer, you are always going to be compromised in a sense.

“You are always going to end up working for somebody who is to some extent dubious.”

He believes all newspapers are compromised in some way.

“I love working for The Telegraph: it drives the readers nuts, they hate me. Why is this commie writing for our paper? Get this man out or I’m gonna stop…”

The gig landed in his lap when Citroen loaned him an electric car on the basis he got them a piece in the newspaper.

Top Gear’s James May had just finished writing the column and Sayle slotted into the gap and on to a permanent role.

“I’ve always been fascinated by cars because we didn’t have one. My parents were communists and poor. Cars seemed like these remote magical things.”

He used to have a column in The Independent and has written for car magazines. But cars? Really? Surely they’re the ultimate capitalist product, America’s toy.

“They allow people to go where they want, which communists weren’t keen on. They are destroying the planet and all that. But it’s swings and roundabouts really.

“When I write about cars it is not a [Jeremy] Clarkson thing. I love them but there is a lot that is bad and I write about that dichotomy, which again drives The Telegraph’s readers nuts.”

Despite the fact he’s had a Ferrari and a Porsche on loan, visitors to Sayle’s London residence will not be greeted by a fleet worthy of a showroom.

His love of cars saw him record a film for BBC’s The One Show a month back to celebrate 50 years of the Ford Cortina.

During the filming he kept being asked if the car was named after the Cortina Snack Bar in High Holborn.

“This is actually a lie that I made up for the 1982 Arena documentary I took part in about the car. It is one of several I have made up over the years concerning cars that seem to have become accepted fact.

“Another is about the Mitsubishi Pajero, which I once wrote means wankers in Spanish.”

Sayle was at the heart of the alternative comedy explosion through the 1980s. He was the first compere at the UK’s first comedy club, The Comedy Store, in Soho.

“It was something that never existed before. It offered a route in – you could be intelligent and funny. That place made modern comedy possible.”

He says some other place, some other comic, would have come along had he not happened to be there.

“It led to everything there is now. Before then you could either be a folkie with a guitar like Billy Connolly or Jasper Carrot or some bloody racist like Bernard Manning. There were no other possibilities.

“From the Comedy Store there became an infinite number of possibilities.”

Through the 1980s Sayle continued doing what he now sees as a comic persona: the man in a tight suit, the projection of Alexei Sayle, the crazy self-educated ex-Mod.

“He wasn’t me. He never talked about things that happened to me.”

Back on the circuit after 16 years, the emphasis has changed.

“I’ll be talking about myself. That persona I had before was confrontational. I had come out, and in 1979 it was close to punk and post- punk, which I continued.

“I would often turn on the audience (which made it quite hard work) so obviously being myself, it’s more friendly. I don’t physically attack people like I used to.”

The spark to get back on stage was Stewart Lee’s invitation to join At Last! The 1981 Show, at the Royal Festival Hall last year as compere.

“I had a drink with Stewart afterwards. He presented a template of a way you could do without it having the downsides that stopped me doing it last time.”

Away from the big audiences and weighty expectations, two-hour long shows and a large entourage, he will pick up themes from his recent autobiography, Stalin Ate My Homework, which focuses on his early life. He describes it as a satirical memoir.

He takes in the titanic struggle between Thatcherism, monetarism and the dying embers of old-style socialism and up to the 30th anniversary of the massacres in the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.

“I don’t want to sound like some prophet retuning from the wilderness. But I’m surprised how little politics gets talked about now.

“Maybe nobody is interested, but I’m surprised how little rage or satirical stand-up there is.”

• The Old Market, Upper Market Street, Hove, Friday, October 19. Starts 7.30pm, tickets £14. For more details, call 01273 201801