Mark Thomas

Quarantine Questions: Mark Thomas

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© Lesley Martin

Eleven weeks into the UK’s coronavirus-induced lockdown, now is a time where we need comedy more than ever. Unsurprisingly, it’s also a time where it’s perhaps hardest to find something that’s actually damn funny. MoodyComedy is trying to remedy this.

What is the first thing you plan on doing once the lockdown is fully lifted?

I’ll be investing in all the second-hand hair trimmers that will be appearing on eBay. Second-hand hair trimmers and yoga mats. Buy ‘em all up cheap. Sit back. Wait for the second wave and kerching. After the second wave I’m going to be rich and I’m going to open an Escape Room empire!

What’s your current lockdown binge watch?

I’d love to say something hip but I am in lockdown with my 84 year old mum. Elderly people like TV for company and noise. So I am passively watching daytime television, picking up secondhand TV, and have accidentally inhaled seasons of Father Brown. My respite is MUBI art house streaming club that did a 3 month free offer so I have done a lot of Fellini and Takashi Miike. Alongside This Country and Schitt’s Creek.

Has anything made you laugh recently?

I have been showing my 84 year old mum YouTube vids of people fishing with Coca Cola and Mentos. The pair of us have been howling at this. Snakes! They catch snakes after the catfish! I promise my mum is the rudest woman in South London and so when the snakes come out of the hole the shock elects a mix of laughter and her screaming ‘Fucking little bastards!’

How are you trying to keep sane at the moment?

Writing and working, plotting and watching videos of catfish and snakes. The great thing about writing is it gives a wonderful outlet to process and comprehend the madness of this government.

What thing would you like to draw our attention to?

Glad you asked. I am doing a monthly streaming of past shows with Go Faster Stripe (the people who filmed them). Tickets are a fiver and the next one is Tuesday 9th June At 7.30p.m.  There is a live intro from me, then streaming Showtime from the Frontline, then a live Q&A. The show is captioned and the Q&A and intro have a BSL signer.

The show is about trying to set up a comedy club in Palestine in a refugee camp. Two of the people who were part of that effort, Faisal Abu Alhayjaa and Alaa Shehada, came to the UK and wrote the show with me. They are going to join us live from Palestine in the Q&A. I also write a column for the London Economic.

THE QUARANTINE QUESTIONS

The Edinburgh Interviews 2017: Mark Thomas

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Mark Thomas’ most recent show is an exploration of the social and political state of humanity at this point in time. The infamous award-winning satirist examines the unexpected, and often disastrous, events of last year, before laying out well-considered predictions as to where we might now be headed. Thomas will be performing A Show That Gambles on the Future at Summerhall throughout August.

1) What excites you most about the Edinburgh Festival?

Going to see loads of shows and performers. It is the biggest arts fest in the world, what is not to like? I always try and see a minimum of 40 shows every fringe, I know others see more and other see many less, but with a target of 40 it means you get and out and don’t waste time.

Other things I like: actors being actory, spotting Nicholas Parsons in a cravat, arguing performance art at Summerhall, bumping into mates in queues for shows and/or chips, drama students practising by being actory, taking my kids to a performance that is inappropriate- last one was naked mine artist with 14yr old daughter, Fruitmarket gallery, being interviewed in the BBC tent in front of an audience in cogoules, seeing Kirsty Walk filming at the Traverse, the comics wrestling match, and having tourists from Norway asking me if I am Mark Steel.

© Jane Hobson

2) What was your first Edinburgh show about?

My first time at the fringe performing was as a stand in for Paul Merton. He broke his leg playing football, ended up in hospital with a blood clot and his promoter asked me to stand in. Lots of anti-Tory stuff and sex. People v disappointed 

3) Does your comedy attract a certain type of audience?

I hope so, otherwise my audience would be comprised of people taking random chances, which after 32 years performing would be a bit shit. According to bar staff and front of house folk, my crowd tend to be ‘nice’.

4) What is the worst experience you’ve had with Edinburgh accommodation?

One festival my accommodation was  sharing a mattress with a friend on the living room floor in a flat rented by  actors, which meant we would be woken by actors in their underwear stepping over us with mugs of coffee. Once we were woken by an actor with no underwear steeping over us looking for his underwear. He went on to star in Eastenders.

But the worst was a van. I spent most of the festival smelling of diesel and sweat and was shouted at for weeing out the side door directly into a drain. Which is fair enough.

5) What is your most treasured memory of your comedy career so far?

Winning 3 Bafta’s in one evening.

6) What show will you definitely be seeing at the festival this year?

Richard Gadd, Bilal Zafar, Archie Maddocks, Northern Stage and, if Gary McNair is around, him too.

7) What do you hope to gain from the Edinburgh Festival this year?

Money and a cure for Hep C.

8) What do you imagine your last ever show will be about?

An audience participation show teaching untrained amateurs the joys of the high wire without a net.

BOOK TICKETS FOR MARK THOMAS: A SHOW THAT GAMBLES ON THE FUTURE, AT THE EDINBURGH FESTIVAL

THE EDINBURGH INTERVIEWS 2017

The Edinburgh Interviews: Seven Questions With… Mark Thomas

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Summarised as “part theatre, part stand up, part journalism, part activism”, Mark Thomas’ latest show The Red Shed is the final instalment of a trilogy of critically acclaimed shows (Bravo Figaro, followed by Cuckooed), which sees him return to a labour club in Wakefield, a place Thomas credits for aiding him in developing his political conscience, as well as his public speaking skills. The satirical television show The Mark Thomas Product ran for six series, and is a prime example of the comic’s passion for influential socialist comedy that encourages action, thus showing the importance of comedy for social development.
To learn more about the man behind the satire, I asked Mark these seven questions…

1) Is it easier or harder to produce political comedy when the political landscape becomes so volatile?

If we were a half decent nation of comedy lovers we would erect a monument to all the topical gags that were cut down in their prime in the great post Brexit war.

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