The Manifesto

At The Laughter Lounge, Dublin

More Mark Thomas videos

One of the few stand-ups still to carry the political standard of alternative comedy, Mark Thomas is essentially an observational comic – only his observations tend to revolve around the crusading anti-corporate, anti-greed investigations he undertakes.

He is best known for his campaigning Channel 4 series, in which he employed, Michael Moore-style, televisual stunts to get his message across. But his work also has a serious side: in one episode he got an Indonesian military chief to admit on camera that their government used torture.

Thomas has said his passion for politics was inherited from his father, a builder and lay preacher at Clapham's Nazarene Church, even if he didn’t inherit his Thatcherite beliefs.

He won a scholarship to Christ's Hospital public school, but he would frequently play truant, often to the theatre, before going on to study at Bretton Hall drama college in Wakefield.

There he began performing his own sketches and shows, doing benefit shows for the miners' strike while still a student. After college he worked for his father by day and did stand-up by night until he could turn pro.

In 1992, his Edinburgh show was nominated for the Perrier award – the same year the fizzy water brand was bought by Nestle, one of the corporations Thomas now campaigns against so vociferously.

Four years later, he launched his strident TV programme, which ran for seven years. To this day he continues to be involved in the political causes that so influence his comedy.

Mark Thomas: It's The Stupid Economy
Live Review
Leicester The Y Theatre

Since MPs, not bankers, have become public enemy number one, this now inaccurately named tour is more about politics than economics. And Thomas takes a suitably democratic approach to the material, with his big idea being to draw up a manifesto, based on policies suggested by audiences around the country, then do his best to enact them. He’s even got think tanks set up to test the viability of some of the more intricate ideas.

The suggestions, as you might expect, range from the sublime to the ridiculous: from ensuring the 1967 Abortion Act applies to Northern Ireland to disguising panthers as foxes to terrify the aristocracy. Thomas has fun with the silly ones, but nudges the audience towards voting for those with a serious agenda. Nonetheless, the people of Leicester tonight insisted that the policy ‘people who sell homeopathic medicines should only ever be treated with homeopathy on the NHS’ is the one that should be adopted.

This is clearly a show that will morph as the tour goes on, with Thomas planning all manner of direct action en route. At this show, he urged his audience to join him the next day in a demo outside the local HM Revenue & Customs office calling for an invasion of the Jersey tax haven, followed by a mass descent on MP Keith Vaz’s constituency surgery to demand a go on his lavish, taxpayer-funded silk cushions.

The bulk of the show discusses the best such suggestions from tonight and earlier in the tour, mixed with a few from Thomas’s personal manifesto, such as ditching the National Anthem and enforcing a maximum wage, with allows him to perform some more polished set pieces, more substantial than simply tagging a gag onto the end of a serious point.

Mind you, for all the world-changing political posturing, the one thing that winds Thomas up the most is visiting Ikea on a Sunday afternoon, in a rather conventional, if furiously animated, stand-up rant. See, it’s not all edgy stuff…

Unlike Thomas’s previous shows tackling the likes of the arms trade or Coca-Cola’s corporate practices, there is no one defining villain here, which does mean there’s not a strong narrative drive. It’s more of a scattergun approach to much that he sees wrong with Britain and the world, so he’s not short of causes. Some aims are clearly more practical and achievable than others, but there’s a lot of activity here which everyone is urged to follow – and participate in – via Thomas’s lively website. Yes, this is a comedy show with homework.

But if anyone can recruit followers to the cause, it’s him. Campaigning often sounds worthy and po-faced, riven with internectine rifts between ideological factions, but Thomas makes campaigning sound playful. Changing the world becomes a game, so we start to cheer every one of his smart-arse victory against the State as we would cheer a football team. He got his DNA records erased? Starts suing the police for an unlawful stop-and-search? Launches legal action against the on-his-way-out Commons Speaker over the expenses scandal? 3-0 to the good guys.

The fragmented nature of the show, plus the fact it uses so many often baffling audience suggestions, does mean that the quality of the comedy is inconsistent, but Thomas’s passion and good humour as he squares up to The Man means that his call to arms is as entertaining as it is well-intentioned. If the revolution is going to start anywhere, here seems as likely a place as any.

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I went to Primary School with Mark, being in the same class for 5 years! His party trick then was to recite the beginning of the four gospels. Must have been his father's influence! Good on you, Mark!

Chris Ivory, March 2010

The guy's brilliant, and makes you think twice about global capitalism, and companies who manufacture weapons. These companies who help assist death and murder must be shown up for what they are. I, if I was investing money would never have anything to do with British Aerospace, as they have been found to make torture equipment.

Ralph Lawren, August 2007

Saw him at The Shaftesbury Theatre two weeks ago. Brilliant live.

Sarah Davis, April 2007

The man is a genius

Lynda Coates, November 2006

Just very very very funny

Kenny, August 2006

I think Mark should stick to stand up comedy rather than the preachy stuff hes been doing lately. Hes a brilliant enough stand up to get his point across through comedy. Still the best in the business.

Jo Wood, August 2006

Thomas can be quite uplifting but that brand of political humour lost its teeth when aspiration rather than defiance became the mainstream response to capitalism in Western nations.

Johnny Rebel, June 2006

Mark Thomas is funny, insightful and, like the late great Bill Hicks wants to make his audience stop and think about what is happening around them. Mark Thomas is not afraid of making "fine upstanding" members of parliament squirm like the slimy eels they really are.

Carl Matthew, March 2006

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