For someone who left Liverpool when he was 18 and only comes back to visit his Mum, Molly, who still lives here, he did us no favours in his television documentary, mockumentary more like.
He kept up his, in my opinion, phoney leftie credentials by showing so much of what has made Liverpool the pariah of the business world and the reason why there was so little investment in Liverpool for so long.
“Alexei Sayles Liverpool” seemed to dwell on all the old chestnuts, the unemployment, the Toxteth riots, Militant, the strikes and the stereotypical scally scouser, Catholics and the Orange Lodge.
The scally image was dissected, the tracksuits and trainers. Alexei and his hatred of “Thatcher” who, as he said, was a gift to left wing comedians.
Now when you see his act, he was not funny, just loud. He kept spouting about his membership of the Young Communists.
Yet it would have stuck in his craw to admit that the intransigence of the commie union leaders helped in the decline of Liverpool.
He did not mention that the reason 20,000 no longer work on the docks is that the Transatlantic Liners no longer come here as most people fly when they travel abroad and that in the 1970s Containerisation replaced the cargo ships.
One container ship being able to carry what it took 6 cargo ships to carry in the 1960s and only 12 crew are needed on a container ship. Goods were packed away from the docks, so warehouses and dock labourers were no longer needed.
The world has moved on, it’s called progress. Does Alexei sail to his Spanish home or does he fly? A communist with 2 homes! Well Stalin had several so Alexei is only following in a Commie tradition.
He missed an opportunity, Sayle not Stalin, up until 1974 Liverpool had Conservative MPs and Conservative Council. It was also second only to London as a shopping destination. Alexei could have blamed them for all Liverpool’s ills.
He really got into his stride when it came to SLAVERY and Liverpool’s involvement in SLAVERY.
Every time he mentioned slavery there was a dramatic view of a chained man. Alexei failed to mention that the monument he used to illustrate slavery was in fact the Nelson Memorial in Exchange Flags.
The chained men are to represent Nelsons 4 victories over the French. Trafalgar, Copenhagen, Nile and Tenerife. Is an English Naval Hero too Imperial for Alexei?
Nelson was based in Liverpool as a mid-shipman so Alexei could have mentioned this connection. It was really underhand not to also mentiontion that slavery only accounted for about 10% of the trade of Liverpool and contrary to popular belief not every man, woman and child was involved in slavery. But it is not fashionable for a commie to say that.
He latched on to the fact that “Penny Lane” was named after James Penny, a slave trader, Wrong! it was named after the Penny family, who had farmed in the area for generations, of which James was one.
Do you hold it against a whole family if one member is a drug dealer or an alternative comedian? We now have the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool and have conveniently forgotten that Bristol and London were also involved in slavery.
More slaves were brought into Lancaster than Liverpool. Maybe he should have mentioned Dublin and Chester were slave ports during Roman times while he was at it.
Alexei left Liverpool when he was 18, to go to Art College in London, was Liverpool College of Art was not good enough for him?
Yet he can remember how dangerous it was in “The Phil” as philosophical fights broke out, I have been going to The Phil since I worked for John Mills Photography on Hope Street in 1967 and I have yet to see a fight there, philosophical or otherwise.
The centre of Liverpool “was a battle zone where even the emergency services were looking for a fight” Which clubs was he going to that he had to sign in? I cannot remember signing into any Liverpool Clubs and I think I have been to far more clubs and pubs in Liverpool than Alexei ever has.
So much of what he said was just wrong.
St Johns Beacon, for instance, which he wants to demolish, was built as a chimney for
St Johns Market, it was oil fired central heating in St. Johns Market, not as a revolving restaurant, it was not a cheap copy of the London Post Office Tower as Alexei thinks.
The Tower Restaurant was very good, I ate there several times and the views were worth the cost of the meal. The Tower stopped being used as a chimney in 1973 because of the oil crisis, yes there was an oil crisis then as well.
The Albert Dock was not revitalised because of the Tate, the Maritime Museum had been there 4 years before the Tate turned up, as had the shops and bars.
The interview with Lord Derby was contrived and embarrassing, it seemed as if Alexei just wanted an excuse to point out that you can see the Tower Blocks of Stockbridge Village, one of the poorest parts of Liverpool.
It did not start out as “one of the poorest parts” It was built, along with Croxteth, Kirby, Huyton and Speke as an improvement on the houses that people were living in at the time.
Those planners got it wrong, something I did agree with Alexei on.
The Garden Festival site was not derelict from the day the Garden Festival closed, it had several other uses, before it closed in the late 90s.
At 10 he knew “the fabric of the entire community” was being destroyed with the demolishion of terraced housing.
He admitted he was a “strange” child. Other 10 year olds were only interested in football and “Wagon Train”.
The souse accent section was patronising and he took advantage of the young people he got to speak.
He went on about the Overhead railway, his world “turned upside down” when the Overhead was scrapped, marvellous memory again; he was only 4 years old at the time.
He wants to bring it back. What a great tourist attraction it would be according to Alexei. When Alexei travelled on the Overhead railway he looked down the funnels of the ships, they must have been low in the water.
Now you would look at the mountains of scrap and breath in the Poo factory. I can just see Hank and his wife coming all the way from California to travel on the Overhead just to breath in the heady aroma of the Sandon Dock “Water Treatment” works.
This was a badly researched series, which must have had them switching off in their dozens, most certainly it was not their millions, hardly any-one I spoke to stuck with it as it was a self indulgent mish mash put to-gether by some-one who did not know his subject.
Also it was not funny, scousers are famous for their sense of humour, why is Alexei Sayle not funny?
Why the BBC allowed him 3 hours of time for this is obvious, he ticks all the boxes for the Management of the BBC, but no right of reply by people who have being promoting the City for years, again unfair.
So many people who leave Liverpool are called traitors, Jimmy Tarbuck is a good example, yet Alexei Sayle has not fallen into that category.
He has been forgiven for slagging off Liverpool yet still dismisses the locals who wrote to the Echo and appeared on local radio phone ins to vent their fury as “nutters”
Yet Alexei Sayle is a sneering traitor.
He picked some of the worst places in Liverpool to film and also some of the worse days for weather. He pandered to the stereotypical view of Liverpool.
I found “Alexei Sayle’s Liverpool” a sad place, not like the place I know and love. The glass and bottle in the face remark was uncalled for and if he had bothered to do any research he would have found that Liverpool is one of the safest European cities.
Most of this series appears to have been filmed over a year ago, certainly Keith’s and the Atlantic were filmed before the smoking ban, (ban came in July 2007) and the
Hard Days Night Hotel was still under construction, it open on the 1st of February this year, so there was really no need to show it as a building site.
Alexei Sayle made a big thing about Liverpool being the place that he was going to move back to, buy somewhere, rent somewhere bring the house plants.
I would like to know has he?
Or was this series just an excuse to make a few bob on the back of Capital of Culture?
I would like to award Alexei Sayle the “Boot up the Bum” award for Dis Service’s to Liverpool.
If you see Alexei Sayle in Liverpool feel free to give him his award, funny but I doubt if we will see much of him except when he has a book to promote or he is appearing in a show. Cannot say that I am sorry.
"It's a Wonderful Life"
(Thu 02/12)
TURN IT DOWN.
(Thu 11/11)
Do we need another Beatles book.
(Mon 11/10)
President or Pope, who is most welcome?
(Mon 16/08)
