Writing is a solitary sort of job. I have the radio on, usually Radio 4. I like to have a racket in the background. My day begins with a short drive to my office in a converted tannery in Bermondsey where I have a yuppie loft. I arrive at about 10 a.m., switch on the computer, and have a cup of coffee. I could be working on a film script, a short story, or my column for Car magazine. I tend to work on several things at once.
I sit with my feet on the desk and my keyboard in my lap. This is hard to balance, and the keyboard keeps falling off. I work until about 12.30 p.m. and then I go to the local old-fashioned cafe around the corner for a take-away and a bit of banter with the working-classes.
I bring the lunch back to my loft and listen to World at One. After that's over I work until about 3 p.m. when I pack it all in and go for a walk. I either walk by the Thames towards Greenwich, or else I drive home and go for a walk on Primrose Hill. Sometimes I just walk all day. I get into a trance. It's a good reflective state to work out ideas. If I'm walking on Primrose Hill, I stop at a little Russian cafe called Troika for a cup of coffee. My grandparents were from the old country, one of those Baltic places that starts with an "L" where they didn't like Jews. But the real reason I go to Troika is because you can get a cappuccino there for £1 and in the summer you can sit outside. I have my little notebook and I jot down funny ideas.
In the early 1980s I wrote a novel called Train to Hell. It was the traditional comedian's novel. Barcelona Plates is my first venture into literature. I'd been doing a lot of telly and movie projects, and everything goes into slow motion after you write your treatment. So I started writing my ideas as short stories. It was a release to write them. I seem to have acquired a clinical descriptive language. I've written some scripts that read great but don't always play so well. They work as pieces of reading but the dialogue when spoken by actors doesn't always fly. Maybe I'm just better at writing prose.
Even if you are doing well writing scripts, it's a tedious, awful business where the money falls through or the guy who gives you the commission gets fired and the new person cancels it. Two out of three projects never get realised. Also you are in the hands of people who are not necessarily the finest minds of their generation. The story, `My Life's Work', in Barcelona Plates is based on some of my own experiences - for example, the guy writes a comedy sketch for TV about a brave boy who has been decapitated by a rhino and has had his head replaced with a wooden head. Then by coincidence, a woman tourist in Zimbabwe has her head torn off by a charging hippo, so the TV people have to edit out the skit. That actually happened to me.
I like writing my column for Car magazine, except for the fact that I have to write about cars all the time. I'm ambivalent about cars, I mean they are poisoning the planet.
I eat at about 7 p.m. If my wife is around, we eat together, but some evenings she's at university, studying. Sometimes I go out with friends. I like to have an early night every so often. I go to bed at 9 p.m., taking my laptop with me, and watch TV. Usually I watch UK Gold, a channel that has re-runs of hospital and cop shows, like Casualty and The Bill. They're all my TV friends.
Writing short stories is a great chance to be more discursive, which I never had the nerve to do before. I was too tied to the neurosis of getting a laugh every two minutes. I still tend towards the gag, though. There's always going to be a joke, even in the bleakest situations.
(in conversation with Katie Donovan)
Alexei Sayle's collection of short stories, Barcelona Plates, is published by Sceptre at £12 in the UK