Comedy
Interview
Mark Thomas’s favourite family tradition? Mosh pits
Getting to know the politically-charged comedian as he embarks on a new tour celebrating 40 years in the game
Mark Thomas has now been in stand-up comedy for 40 years. It’s a career that’s secured the activist comic his own series on both Channel 4 and Radio 4. He’s worked undercover in the arms trade, and he’s temporarily stopped thousands of Kurds from being displaced in southeast Turkey. He’s perhaps earned the right to celebrate completing his fourth decade.
So that’s what he’s doing: heading out on tour, with a show he’s decided to name 40 in Stand-Up Years. It’s a fairly straightforward approach to naming a tour. And if we’re honest, we’re all going to have to pull together to get word out about it, because – as will become gradually more apparent – Thomas himself isn’t much a fan of marketing.
Ask him if this show is a good jumping on point for people who’ve never seen him before: “It’s as good as any,” he answers. Ask him what the tour is about, meanwhile, and he almost delights in the fact that he still doesn’t know. He does concede it’s starting to come together, though. “I’m 63 and one of my jobs is to look after my mum, who’s 91 in July. Me and my sister are her carers. There’s lots of good things about that. One of them is the material that she gives me, because she is the most curmudgeonly, boundaryless, sweary… It makes Catherine Tate’s gran look like Christopher Robin”.
But how does a comedian not particularly interested in marketing, he feel about stand-up comedy itself?
Well, he loves it. Obsesses over it, even. “I was talking to some young comics the other day, who drove 350 miles to do a ten minute gig. And I’m like, “What is going on with the world?” This is insane! But people are desperate to do it. I love watching young comics. People are just tunnel vision [about it]. That’s all they think about, that’s all they want to talk about. You know, I traveled 350 miles. I kind of humiliated myself. I died on stage, I felt my soul leave my body, but the next day I wanted to do it again. That’s not a normal job.”
He enjoys the fluidity of it, as well: The great thing about stand-up is that it isn’t static. As an art form, it changes all the time. It changes every gig. And actually, you can write stuff on the hoof and just put it in. That’s the brilliant thing about it.”
“So when people say, what’s the show about? Well, I don’t know what’s going to be happening with me or with the world, or what I’ll be thinking about, or what I’ll be obsessed about, or what I find funny”.
If he’s been in this game for 40 years, it seems reasonable to assume that his process works handsomely, and the resulting show will make for another quality, thoughtful, entertaining night out. It’ll just be a case of booking tickets and then holding tight to see what the actual contents of the show are.
We, on the other hand, will move on to quiz him on some more random topics…
Who would you most like to be stuck in a lift with?
Oh, I’ve got loads of people I could be stuck in a lift with. It depends on the size, shape, and condition of the lift. Is there a camera in it? How long are we going to be there? There’s a whole load of answers that are based upon the conditions. You know, if it’s gonna be a long time, then I’d quite like… Can I have anyone?
Anyone, dead or alive.
I’ll have my mate Tracy, because she’s in Spain, and I don’t see her enough. She’s an artist who I love. Tracey Mobley. And I adore her. So, yeah, I’ll have her. Can I have more than one?
You can have alternative answers. You can’t have more than one.
That’s not fair, I want more than one.
I just think: have a load of mates and Johnny Cash. Wouldn’t that be brilliant? Johnny Cash doing a gig in a lift. That’s a proper story. “We were all stuck in a lift. Johnny Cash was there, so he got out his guitar and just sang for three hours”.
Or Les Dawson would just be great – just good stories. Same with Zero Mostel. [Significantly warms to this idea] No, I want Zero Mostel. Zero Mostel is just one of the greatest comic actors ever. He’s amazing in The Producers. He’s brilliant in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.
I met someone who knew him once. He was her godfather, and she described, for her 18th birthday, being taken to Sardi’s Restaurant in New York – the great showbiz restaurant – and Zero Mostel was there. I said, what was it like? And she said “it was just… exhausting”. You’d turn around and he’d have breadsticks up his nose, then he’d suddenly have a napkin over [his head]. He was just playing to the crowd. I think that’s the kind of person you want to be in a lift with.
The last person you want to be stuck in a lift with is… I don’t know, Noam Chomsky. You know, you don’t want to be stuck in a lift with him. Nice as he is, I’m sure.
You want to be stuck in the lift with someone who’s interesting, who’s going to make it interesting and a laugh. So that’s my answer. I think I’m going to stick with Zero Mostel. And did I say Dave Allen? Because I’ll have Dave Allen as well.
Why not Norman Chomsky?
I think the thing about Noam Chomsky is – I’ve met him a couple of times – and apart from his… disappointing association – and disappointing is as mild as I can get with Jeffrey Epstein, I think it’s f*cking devastating, you know, that someone of his calibre hangs out with Epstein. I just think that’s not on. That’s one. Number two is… I have met him, and when I met him, he was a very charming. I enjoyed his company. But when asked a political question, he would answer in a way that I’ve rarely seen people answer: it would just go on and on and on and on and on. He would just go to the minutest starting point and then sort of begin challenging assertions as you went along.
Fascinating. But, you know… he could do with a gag writer.
Who would you least like to be stuck in a lift with?
Anyone with a mobile phone.
Anybody with a mobile phone?
Yeah. I just fucking hate Instagram and TikTok and everything.
You know, I have enough trouble leading my life without f*cking documenting it for a group of random fucking strangers to comment on. What’s the fucking point of that? I am seen, therefore I exist. Well, you know, I exist anyway, regardless of whether some f*cking tw*t in Thailand is fucking giving me the thumbs up or not. Fuck that shit.
It’s seen as a very good marketing tool for stand-up comedians, Mark.
I couldn’t give a shit. I don’t care. I’ve done this for 40 years. You either like my stuff or you don’t. You know – regardless of whether I did a comical f*cking dance in a Marx Brothers nose while reciting bits of Proudhon’s works on fucking property and theft.
Can you describe your new tour show as if it was being marketed as a huge blockbuster film?
“Here we go again”.
What’s the weirdest interaction you’ve ever had with a famous person?
Loads. F*cking loads.
I used to work on a telly show called Saturday Zoo with Jonathan Ross and there’s a whole load of people – there’s Steve Coogan and Patrick Marber and John Shuttleworth and me. There’s all sorts of people involved in it and they used to have bands on every week. And I would embarrass myself every fucking week with the live band.
So the B-52s are on. Fred from the B-52s – I bumped into him on a stairway. I said, “Oh hi, I’m Mark, I’m on the show with you”. And he went, “oh, neat”.
And I said “I’m coming to see you at Hammersmith Odeon” (as it was then). And he went, “Neat”.
“I don’t know if you know this, but there’s a creperie in Clapham called the Love Shack”.
And he just went… “Neat. I like crêpes”.
It was so fucking awkward. Every single band that appeared! I love Paul Weller. We did the rehearsal and afterwards he comes up to me and just goes “That was really great.” I said, “Thank you very much”.
Then we’re walking down a corridor, and I said “I’ve just started to learn to play guitar” [visibly squirms at the awkwardness of it], and he just said “right”.
I said “the first song that I’ve learned is ‘That’s Entertainment’”. And I forget the chords, because I stopped playing guitar quite quickly afterwards. But I said something like, “Oh, it’s E to G”, and he said “no, it’s D to I”.
And I thought, “Oh fuck. I’ve got the chords wrong with Paul Weller”.
So every interaction we had on that show, I just got very tongue-tied. Particularly with musicians that I really love. Because I want to talk to them, but there’s that weird thing where you want to be their friend; you want to get to know them, but you want them to regard you as an equal. But you’re fucking not an equal to them, because you’re in the position of fandom. You’re too young to remember the old Marquee Club in Wardour Street, right? It was this wonderful venue. But the stage was just over a foot, maybe a foot and a half high. So it meant – at the end of the gig – you could literally walk onto the stage.
There was a door at the back: open the door, and that just went straight to the dressing room. And I remember just getting up there, I was about 16, and just walked into a room with The Fall and sat down with Mark E. Smith, and started chatting to him. You know, this precocious, stupid, slightly drunk 16-year-old, and I used to do that all the time with bands, and I loved that. But I never got over that feeling of total fandom. With music more than anything else. Comedy’s fine. If it’s anything to do with musicians, it’s awkward and odd.
Is there anything that we wouldn’t expect you to be into culturally?
I like barn dances. I think they’re enormous fun. You get very sweaty, you get to hold people you like, you get to have fun, and you giggle and somebody literally shouts at you and tells you where to go.
Who’s your favourite person who’s got very different political views to you?
That’s interesting. I mean, the thing about different political views is they’re not necessarily polar opposites.
You know, the different views that you have on things that you might be quite aligned with. I think, actually, my favourite person is Martin Rowson, the cartoonist, who’s a friend.
Attila the Stockbroker once described himself as a Zen Stalinist: he had all the compassion of Zen Buddhism and the rigour of Stalinism. And I think Martin Rowson is someone who sometimes will start holding forth – but that will be mainly about how we will be hanging up the clergy by the guts of the bureaucrats on the lampposts.
What is the last gig or live show that you just attended?
I just saw Kamasi Washington at the Southbank Centre, and he was fucking great. He was on stage for an hour and a half. The most captivating band I’ve seen in a while – just absolutely incredible. You know, the virtuoso accomplishments of each and every individual musician is enough in itself. But working together as a coherent band – as this force – It was magic. Absolutely magic.
I love the way that he pulls in funk, blaxploitation music and all of that, into the meld of jazz, which I find so exciting.
I’m also off to see Mulatu Astatke later in the week. We’ve got a family outing to go and see him later in the week. I quite like family outings. We had a family outing to see Mclusky, who are the kind of polar opposite of Mulatu Astatke, being sort of absurdist post-industrial Cardiff noise. So to have a family outing to see them was just… it’s great! I love them. And we all go nuts. There’ll be a bit where the family’s in the mosh pit. That’s quite exciting. Just being with everyone, and my partner and all of that, singing along.
There’s this one bit where we’re all just jumping up and singing “Alan is a cowboy killer!”. It just makes me laugh. It’s lovely. All moshing together at the same gig. I mean, I don’t last very long, and somebody always carries my inhaler.
What’s the worst advice you’ve ever been given?
I used to work with my dad. He was a self-employed builder. I always used to laugh, because when I first started to get a modicum of success, one of the criticisms of me was that I would talk about working on a building site with my dad, which I did, and how, actually, he was secretly the owner of the company. It’s kind of: well, technically he was, in the fact that he was self-employed. Do you know what I mean? It’s like technically anyone, you know, the bloke who cleans the gutters owns a company in the fact that they’re self-employed.
So I used to work with my dad, and my dad had a very, very lax view of what health and safety was.
So, if we were working on a roof, you’d put the ladders up. They’re beautiful old ladders. If it was just a patch job, if it was just sorting some bits and bobs out, he wouldn’t bother putting a scaffold up. So we’d be walking up the roofs, right? And my dad always used to go, “If you find yourself slipping, fall on your arse, put your heel through the slate. That will stop you”. It’s like, why can’t we have a scaffold? Why can’t we have something safe? Why are we taking these stupid f*cking risks for £5 an hour, you know?
I remember once, at Christmas, we had this emergency call out and we had to put a little scaffold around a chimney stack. A chimney stack was basically on the move.
I just remember putting a scaffold up. It was really cold, I’d forgotten my gloves. My dad’s comment was, “Well, that will f*cking teach you”.
The worst advice he ever gave me was that a forklift truck is really easy. I don’t drive because I backed a forklift truck into some portable offices and totalled them – because my dad said it was really easy. I mean, some of it was brilliant. We used to collect all the scrap from anywhere we were working. At the end of the day, you’d unload the van, and you’d put it down a little chute by the side of the house, and that would go down the cellar for sorting. Once every three months, you had to go and sort out all the scrap metal.
So you put all the copper in one bit, then all the zinc; the aluminium; cast iron gutters; whatever. And my job was to melt the lead off of brass fittings, which I loved, because it was fire and drippy metal. Then you’d load it up on the van and it was always quite the adventure because it was an old Commer van – like a Post Office van, so it had two seats in the front, and a metal engine hood between the two seats. So if there was three of you in the van, my dad would get a dust sheet out, because the metal engine hood got really fucking hot. And of course, there were no seatbelts or anything stupid like that. So my dad would load this van up with metal, and there was a bit where you go down a hill, and there’s traffic lights at the bottom, and you’d shoot up on the other side [of the hill].
I always remember him just trying to time it, because there was no way the van was going to stop with that weight of metal on it.
Where Chelsea Harbour is now, it used to be this massive scrap metal site. Fucking huge. And my dad used to go, go on [go off and play, and] see me back here in half an hour. His one bit of advice for playing in a scrap metal yard was: don’t lock yourself in a fridge. Which is sound advice. But limited, if you’re climbing up mountains of cast iron.
Once, we got there, and the car crusher was on fire. And there’s this bloke just having a cup of tea and a fag, and [there’s] some firefighters, and my dad said “what the fuck happened?” He said, “Well, someone left some petrol in the tank, and a few sparks have hit it. The whole things gone up in flames. There’s nothing you can do, just call the fire brigade, stand around, watch it go out, have a cup of tea and a fag”. My dad said “does it happen often?”. He said “every time I’ve got a hangover”.
Do you have a skill that no one else knows that you’re great at?
I can power nap at the drop of a hat.
If I’m touring, I’ve got a set routine. So you get into a place. I’ll write out notes, then I’ll shave and iron everything and get things ready. I’ll do the sound check, we’ll run through everything I need to do, talk to the front of the house, and then… 15 minute nap. I’ve got tour managers who’ve taken photographs of me asleep on a concrete floor under a table, with a coat draped over my head. It’s a f*cking gift, I promise you. It’s a very good gift.
I’m phenomenally jealous.
Other than that, I’m actually quite a good cook. And I’m not a bad gardener. I mean, there are casualties along that route to becoming not a bad gardener. There are things that have died.
What’s your controversial food opinion?
Desserts should be banned in restaurants. They’re just pointless. You’ve gone in there for a meal, you don’t need some frippery lump of sugar at the end of it. It’s overpriced shit. Tiramisu should be fucking banned. It’s an odd concoction of excess f*cking cream, leftover sponge, alcohol and f*cking cocoa powder. What the… it’s like a f*cking hodgepodge, it’s the bubble and squeak of desserts. Do you see what I’m saying? It’s a leftover meal. Crème Brûlée. It’s burnt custard. What the fuck is that?
You know, all these things, just crap. Ice cream? Go to a fucking van, what’s the matter with you?
I mean, Crème Brûlée… I like custard, and then if somebody’s going to caramelise the top of that, then that sounds pretty good to me.
Yeah. I think it probably does. And I think that says more about you.
What film have you most watched?
There’s half a dozen of them. The Blues Brothers, I’ve watched that fucking endlessly. I love that film. Hard Boiled, John Woo. Fucking adore that film. Absolutely adore it. Bringing up Baby, Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn. Absolutely magnificent. Every f*cking nuance in it. Perfect.
But you know? Hard Boiled. Just because it’s so preposterously over the top. It’s f*cking great. It’s just a delight to watch every f*cking time. A gunfight in a maternity ward, while the goodie is holding a baby with cotton wool in its ears, and blood spatters over the child.
Wow.
Have you not seen it? It’s magnificent. I mean, John Woo’s early stuff, whether it was The Killer, whether it was Hard Boiled, Bullet in the Head… it’s where Quentin Tarantino, along with films like Lady Snowblood, just ripped off, lock, stock and barrel, for Kill Bill.
Do you have any superstitions?
Actually, yeah. Whenever I go up to Edinburgh for the festival, I buy a coffee pot.
So let me show you this [shows collection of coffee pots]. This is the surviving collection at the moment. There’s a couple more. So, whenever I go up to the Edinburgh Festival, I buy a coffee pot, and it means that I can have stove pot coffee whenever I want. So it’s just this ritual that I have to buy a coffee pot. You make, you boil, you put the water through it twice, and then you do your first cup of coffee. And the Edinburgh Festival has started.
I don’t know whether that’s a superstition or a tradition. I remember we went touring in Australia, and the first thing I did was buy a coffee pot. I need to get a pot! It means I’m at home somewhere. That’s what it means. I’m making somewhere my home for that period of time.
Sorry, I need to revise something. Affogato: ice cream with a shot of coffee on it. I will allow that as a dessert. That is acceptable. Because that fulfills the obligation of the need for coffee.
