Stand up comedian Mark Thomas is marking 40 years of gigging with his latest national tour. We caught up with him ahead of stops in Bury St Edmunds and Cambridge.
40 years is quite a landmark. How has stand up changed in that time?
Yes it has, and some of it for the good. The comedy circuit is the most diverse I have ever seen it, more black and brown performers, more women, gays and trans performers, more performers who are disabled. And all of that is great.
When you began gigging, did you think you would still be doing it 40 years later?
I started performing – 19 November 1985 – I couldn’t think of the next 40 days.
At that age, all I wanted to do was to do as much stand up as I could. At that point in time I thought the real C word was ‘career’. I was in seventh heaven gigging and hanging out with other comics slagging off people three-years older than us for being sell outs.
I deeply mistrusted anyone who said they had a ‘career plan” and I was right to do so as those people now have well-paid careers on panel shows and advertising, so their mundanity is profound and very public.
Your style of comedy stunts seems to have inspired people like Led By Donkeys. Politicians often fixate on legacy. Do you think you’ve secured yours?
Come on, give me a break… I say ‘yes’, I sound like an arse. I say ‘no’ I sound like a ‘twat’. Let’s leave the legacy business to the eulogy.
Your People’s Manifesto shows and book set out some radical – and some less serious – changes. What would you be putting forward today?
Tax the rich, shut down UK connected off shore entities, nationalise water, gas and electric, send Andrew Windsor to the US, ban all political donations, introduce low budget state funded election funds – if the rich want to donate to politics they can pay their taxes like the rest of us.
Also anyone who is based and lives abroad and tries to donate to a political bribery shall be arrested and prosecuted for bribery. Then it is all hands to the pumps for the climate crisis.
Anyone who wants to reintroduce the death penalty should be legally entitled to receive it.
Your career has spanned 11 prime ministers: Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, and now Burnham. Who was the best and who was the worst?
Best of a bad bunch, bizarrely, is Gordon Brown, for all his fiscal conservatism he proved to be the most adept international statesman to muster a plan around the collapse of the banking system and the credit crunch in 2008. It was shit and we are still paying for it BUT it could have been so much worse.
The worst is tied; Thatcher because she started the process of privatising, attacking working class communities and eroding civil liberties, Blair for carrying on her work and Iraq, Cameron for austerity, Johnson for being a lying venal pathetic narcissistic weasel and proto-mini Trump incapable of thinking beyond the end of his own cock, AND Truss for being an inept, careerist, imbecile who is frankly so shallow a being that her own shadow has more depth.
How does political satire function in Trump’s post-truth world?
Oh mate, do you want me to write your doctorate? Is that the gig?
Satirical gags depend on everyone in the room roughly agreeing on a a collection of facts. So when the culture warriors and far right attack the very basis of factual truth, a world wide recognised scientific fact, well at that point satire becomes more restricted to who it appeals to.
I once saw a very right wing comic try to satirise ‘ANTIFA’ the mythical terrorist threat that Trump invented, it was excruciating. It was a fantasy born of wilful ignorance and the only people who liked it were those that agreed with the propaganda it promoted.
You’re well known for your political comedy, but you’ve also done more personal shows like Bravo Figaro. How do you decide which direction to take a show?
There is only one way of deciding what the show is and that is: decide the story you want to tell and start. And the story just depends on what I am fixated on at the time.
You’ve done so much over four decades. What is the thing you’re proudest of?
I am proudest of not having a proper job for 40 years.
Comedy is about the moment. It is ephemeral, you tell a joke, people laugh, then it’s gone and we are off to the next joke. So comics tend to be thinking about what happens next rather than what has gone before. All the other stuff is in the rear mirror.
I am working on two plays after I finish this tour, one with the Paper Birds which is co-written by Jessica Forteskew, the other is with my long term collaborator Ed Edwards, I’m working with the performance artist Vic Melody on her next work as well as devising a new show for me… continued cardio pending.
You’re 20-years younger than Mick Jagger, who’s still touring at 83. So what will your 60 In Stand Up Years tour look like?
A hologram.
- Mark Thomas: 40 Years In Stand Up Years is currently touring nationally, including Friday 30 October 2026 at Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds, and Sunday 22 November at Cambridge Junction.