When you hear comedian Mark Thomas telling students at a graduation ceremony that Boris Johnson should be publicly horse-whipped, once a week, every week, you are under no illusion what to expect from one of his gigs.
The 61-year-old year has been venting his spleen for the past 39 years and there’s no sign that the angry young man, regularly seen on Channel 4 TV in the 1980s with his Mark Thomas Comedy Product, is ready to sit back and hold his counsel.
The Youtube clip of the Kent uni ceremony is classic Thomas, as he launches into the tirade lambasting the former PM, and the audience at The Laughing Bishops comedy club in Bishop’s Stortford on Saturday will discover there is still no holding back when it comes to political analysis.
Conservative governments have long been in his sights and he rails at homeless people being fined for “smelling” and was also seen on an RMT picket line last year, declaring a class war.
But a chance meeting with writer Ed Edwards saw him branch out with a play written for him and which was so successful that it was multi-award winning and led to them performing it in Australia.
“I met him [Ed] coming out of a previous play and we started to hang out together,” Thomas told the Indie this week.
“We got on really well, sort of a bromance,” he added and after several meetings and chats came the creation of England & Son, a play based on characters Thomas knew in his childhood and Edwards’ experience of prison.
It wasn’t totally away from Thomas’ skillset. “Over the years a lot of the stuff I’ve done has been theatre-based,” he said.
Stand-up has been put on hold for a while and he was keen to get back in the saddle, having launched a 100-gig warm-up of his Gaffa Tapes Edinburgh Fringe show from May to July.
“If you take your foot off its neck it will rise up and bite you, so I thought I’ll get in a whole load of gigs and just do the circuit,” he said.
That tour will only take in small venues and amongst it is a one-off gig at the Water Lane United Reformed Church Hall on Saturday – and then Thomas will return on Sunday June 2 to give Stortford audiences a preview of Gaffa Tapes.
“I don’t like stadium gigs at all,” he said. “They’re awful.” Venues for the tour include the kitchen of a pub and free gigs with collections on the door.
His ire is not totally aimed at the Tories – “I’m a political comic, all of it is fair game”. And he says he sees politics as more wide-ranging than just the parties. “It’s non-doms, Thames Water, foodbanks,” he said.
Thomas doesn’t veer away from hot potato topics and having set up his own comedy club on the West Bank in Palestine and spent a total of eight months of his life visiting the area and researching the Israel/Palestine problem he is informed enough to raise the issue.
But he is only too aware of the sensitivity of it. “I tend to think if you want to mention something like that the best thing is not to be glib,” he said. “You have to have empathy and the empathy has to be about the hostages as well.”
Having been on his soapbox for nearly 40 years and witnessing five Tory prime ministers in post without them being voted in, you might wonder whether he has become despondent and he does reflect on how the power of democracy has been diminished.
But he sees himself as a cheerleader for change and quotes the battles by 17th century English movements The Diggers and The Levellers as grounds for optimism.
“If you don’t have hope you don’t know your history,” he said. “We have a rich history of radicalisation and change.”
Thomas insists his act is his act and he never tailors it to different areas, so the audience at The Laughing Bishops will be given the full Thomas “product”.
“The interesting thing is because I’ve done it for 39 years there’s always going to be people who know [what to expect],” he added.
For tickets for Saturday’s gig, when doors open at 7pm and which also features wry American comic Dave Fulton, the “uncompromising” Gavin Webster and regular compere Paddy Lennox, see PaddyLennox.com.
Thomas will also be back at The Laughing Bishops on Sunday June 2 as he and fellow comedian Colin Hoult give Stortford a preview of their “work in progress” shows before they go to the Edinburgh Fringe. Tickets from PaddyLennox.com
