Mark Thomas: ‘Don’t come if you’re a Tory’
Everyone is welcome at Mark Thomas’ Cambridge gig this month, but there’s one demographic who the comedian, author, presenter, journalist and political commentator doesn’t think should attend: Conservative voters.
Mark’s new offering, Black and White, includes a bit with the political godfather of UK comedy doing an impression of Les Dawson discussing recently departed Prime Minister Liz Truss. “I absolutely love Les Dawson,” says Mark, 59, speaking to the Cambridge Independent from his home in London. “There’s a whole load of comics who are just absolutely stunning, who my generation revered and adored – or I hope they do.
“Whether it is Dave Allen, whether it is Les Dawson... there’s actually amazing regional comics like Bobby Thompson, who very rarely went outside the North East. The club circuit was so big there – the working men’s club – that he could perform and not bother to leave the North East, and his humour was incredible. It was very regional, beautiful stuff, and it was all about being in debt. It was really funny.”
Mark, who is perhaps best known for Channel 4’s The Mark Thomas Comedy Product, which ran for six series, names Josie Long, Bridget Christie, Shazia Mirza, Imran Yusuf, Dane Baptiste, Kate Smurthwaite, Rachel Fairburn and Kiri PritchardMcLean among his top modern-day comedians.
He continues: “I talk about Max Miller as well, ‘The Cheeky Chappie’, at a time when you could actually be taken to court over what you said on stage. There’s loads of comics that I deeply love, old comics that I think people should revere but don’t. Les Dawson was an absolute genius and I do tell jokes about Liz Truss in the style of Les Dawson.”
A review of Black and White on the Chortle website states: “Mark Thomas acknowledges that he creates two sorts of shows: theatrical ones that win him awards and stand-up ones that are half the ticket price and twice as funny. Black and White is firmly in the latter camp”.
“I started as a stand-up – I’ve been doing this for 37 years,” notes Mark, previously a Guinness World Record holder for holding 20 protests in 24 hours, “so I started as a stand-up and really spent the first decade doing that. I just adored stand-up.
“Then I started to get stuff on telly and do the Comedy Product show, which sort of became this investigative journalism. Then I started doing shows that were theatre shows – they were plays – and they were written by me, performed by a stand-up, that would involve recorded and documented stuff, looking at ideas and issues and stories, and I’ve always nipped between the two things: between doing plays and theatre shows, which often have a very emotional content, and doing stand-up.
“I love them both but there’s something brilliant about the immediacy of stand-up, that you can talk about something you’ve just seen on the telly, you can talk about something that’s just happened outside. Graffiti and stand-up are the two things that are the most reactive in the world – they can react quicker than any other art form.
“If you’re in theatre, it takes ages to write a play, to get a play on, to get it rehearsed, to put it out. The same with cinema, the same if you’re going to make a work of art – with stand-up, you can just ‘bang!’ and it’s there. And I love that. I love that sense of play, the roughhousing, the misbehaviour, the rudeness, the communality of it, having fun, being together – those are all the things that we missed during lockdown.”
Fresh off the back of a sold-out run at this year’s Fringe, Mark’s new show involves taking down politicians, mucking about, new ideas, and finding hope. “It is also about the simple act of being in a room together and toppling international capitalism.”
What else can the star tell us about it? “It’s really good,” he replies, “and it will change every day. But basically, don’t come if you’re a Tory. It’s very interesting because you say to people, ‘Don’t come if you’re a Tory’ and someone will go, ‘But aren’t you preaching to the converted?’
“As if there’s only two ideas, as if there’s only Tory ideas and then Labour ideas, and it’s like no, everything to the left of the Tory party – there’s an enormous difference.”
In previous shows, Mark – who has won eight awards for performing, three for human rights work, and one he invented for himself – has talked about visiting the West Bank and Jenin, lobbying Parliament, walking in the footsteps of the highest NHS officials, playing at the Royal Opera House, making stuff for TV, radio and newspapers, and going undercover.
[Read more: Review: Arthur Smith pays tribute to the Edinburgh Fringe in new show, My First 75 Years in Comedy, ‘I haven’t watched TV since 1987’: interview with Australian comedian Steve Hughes]
See what he has to say in Black and White at the Cambridge Junction on Monday, November 14. For tickets, priced £20.50 in advance, visit junction.co.uk. For more on Mark, go to markthomasinfo.co.uk.
