Mark Thomas

Mark Thomas

Date of birth: 11-04-1963

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.

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© Jane Hobson

Mark Thomas: Black and White

Edinburgh Fringe comedy review

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 & White is firmly in the latter camp.

Free from too many constraints of structure, he’s having fun just cracking jokes – albeit always at the expense of the venal incompetents at the top of the Conservative party, and those who enable them. 

For an opening routine, he combines the proudly working-class comedy of the Victorian music halls with his radical policies, like a sort of Max Millertant, if you will. Later we hear Les Dawson’s take on Liz Truss – with Thomas a better mimic than you might expect.

The bin fire of the Boris Johnson regime has given the comic plenty to mock, with the cringe of his quoting Kermit The Frog at the United Nations achieving near peak satire. It’s fast and funny for 20 minutes, packed full of proper, hard-hitting punchlines before the pace slows as he subtly shifts the focus from the Tories being a Laughing Stock to the real consequences that 12 years of their rule has had.

Even in the sillier segments, he’s fuelled by an outraged anger, a passion that then comes into its own when talking about serious issues, such as the link between health and wealth, toxic immigration policy, the right to protest and strike under threat like never before and the Tories being quicker to protect statues than women. Everything is political in Thomas’s hands – even diabetes.

There’s a bit of soapboxing, but you’re never far from a sharp line. That's true even as the tone gets increasingly revolutionary, with Thomas predicting fuel riots and describing how the one per cent despise the working class, and just about hold their noses long enough to tolerate the middle class. This segment took a particularly hilarious detour tonight when one punter did a Sunak and confessed she’d never been in the home of a working-class person – an honesty which Thomas greeted with delighted incredulity rather than scorn. 

It’s typical of the lively, upbeat and inspiring energy that the comic brings to his work, expressing an optimism for change undimmed by recognition of how shit things have become. If only the official Opposition front bench could display a fraction of this positivity.

The hour ends up back where we started, in the music halls – right down to a singalong – and a shaggy dog story about Boris that might be more about the journey than the destination. But we have achieved Thomas’s aim for the show to be a post-lockdown celebration of ‘the simple act of being in a room together and toppling international capitalism’. 

Mark Thomas: Black And White is at Stand 1 at 1.30pm tomorrow then on a UK tour in the autumn

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Published: 27 Aug 2022

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Agent

Mike McCarthy
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