Mark Thomas: 40 In Stand Up Years
One of alternative comedy's oldest surviving comics, Mark Thomas is marking 40 years at the mic with a brand-new show taking him on the road this autumn. In that time he has won eight awards for performing, four for human rights work, and one he invented himself. He made six series of the Mark Thomas Comedy Product for Channel 4, written six books and five play scripts, five series of the Manifesto for Radio 4, and three Dispatches for Channel 4. He has sued the police and won three times, holds a Guinness World Record for staging 20 protests in 24 hours, walked 724km around the length of the Israel Wall in the West Bank, and started a comedy club in Palestine with Dr Sam Beale. The show is a taster menu of political and personal mayhem, jokes, rants and a state of the nation broadcast, as Thomas tries to turn "what the hell is going on" into a cogent evening of stand-up.