It doesn’t matter what Mark Thomas is talking about – preaching about I should say – he has the energy and forcefulness of the Hell Fire sermon; he is riotously funny, scream out loud funny, roaring funny.
He is the master of delivery, he paints word pictures, he peoples the stage with characters and caricatures. He is political, he is observational. He is lofty and he is prosaic. There’s a lot of swearing.
There are one-liners: “A misogynist, a racist and a homophobe walk into a bar – the barman says: ‘good evening officer.’”
And: “There is one thing I do agree on with Kier Starmer – no one should pay to see Arsenal.”
But mostly Mark tells stories – the punchline comes back to something he said at the beginning and the audience love him. His tales are finely crafted. Cambridge is his seventh gig on this tour he says.
‘Skint’ Mark Thomas returns to Cambridge in magnificent one-man show
You can always tell a place by its charity shops,” he says. You can tell as soon as you go in. He was in Chester. “I didn’t know there were so many surplus autobiographies by ex-Tory ministers.”
St Andrews is a dump he says. Every shop has pictures of Will and Kate. “They claim to have invented golf – anyone here who plays golf (he tells the audience) this is not for you – you are not welcome. Golf is played by peer pressured misogynists.” No one leaves.
HERE COME THE STATISTICS
And here come the statistics – he always peppers his show with them. “One point four per cent of this country’s land mass is inhabited – it’s where we live. Two per cent is golf courses. More land is taken up by golf than where we live!”
Previous tours have dissected the National Health Service – or rather looked at how successive governments have taken the NHS apart.
His show Extreme Rambling described the people he met when he walked the length of the wall between Israel and Palestine.
He has performed a play about drug addiction called England and Son. It was a one-man play, but you felt you had met a lot of people.
Another show was called 100 Acts of Minor Dissent – his protests against today’s wrongs. He has tackled most of them.
This new gig was supposed to be all about him. That’s what he said in press interviews to promote this tour. But it isn’t. It’s about the world around us like all the others.
DEMOCRACY HAS DIED HE SAYS
He is inescapably political. Democracy has died he says: “We’ve had six prime ministers in the past eight years. We’ve had 16 housing ministers – that’s one for every council house built. We’ve had 12 Irish foreign secretaries. Thank God the IRA are not active. They couldn’t keep up with the hit list.”
He goes on: “The last time a democratically elected prime minister was voted out was John Major in 1997 – 27 years ago.”
And he lists all the prime ministers since who have stepped aside rather than be voted out.
Yes it’s all something to think about but most of all its sheer entertainment. I was shrieking with laughter.
There are a couple of lines about how surprised he is to have fallen in love at 61 – but mostly this is pure, gold-standard Mark Thomas- and it’s the wittiest and most poignant satire around.
Mark Thomas’s Gaffa Tapes is touring until the end of February.
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