The Mark Thomas Comedy Product was ground-breaking television when it first hit our screens back in 1996.
The show challenged corporations, found Mark setting up a PR company at an arms fair, and even led to changes in the law on tax and inherited wealth.
Now, the comedian of more than 35 years is revisiting some infamous moments with a new tour. He’ll show his favourite clips from the seven series and explain what went on behind the scenes in a cinematic live experience.
Community
Mark is at home in Tooting, South London when we chat, and he talks enthusiastically about the fact that his is an area of London that has held on to its sense of community.
“It’s one of those areas where it has held off the gentrification,” he points out. “Next door, I have got a teacher, there’s a student flat downstairs and Latvian cleaners, who are great. It’s a great community.”
He is feeling bad because he has work and interviews to do rather than putting in a shift helping to sort donations for Ukrainian refugees at the local Polish centre.
Affable and more than a little bit sweary, he is proud of his local fan-owned football club Wimbledon AFC and their “amazing outreach trust”.
“Every game, there is a collection for foodbanks. It’s as important as the football,” he says. “These are the things that bind us together.”
And that is probably the essence of Mark’s Comedy Product, whether he was gunning for arms dealers, flying a hot-air balloon over a military listening base, or driving a tank, a clown car or a herd of cows through a McDonald’s, he was always aware of the impact of the actions of government and big business on the lives of ordinary people.
“I feel passionately about getting involved – this matters, it’s people’s lives,” he insists. “It’s communities that feel the brunt always.”
Live via the big screen
So what can fans expect from the tour? The show is relayed on the big screen but it is very much a live experience for the audience.
“I introduce it all,” says Mark. “I have my tour manager with me; she plays all the bits and bobs. I’m a bit jazz, so she keeps me on the straight and narrow and we have a Q&A at the end of it.”
Comedy Product producer Geoff Atkinson has also been involved.
“He came along and just chipped in,” says Mark. “It’s a lovely thing to be able to come back to a relationship that I left 20 years ago, friendship that developed and it’s still there.”
Looking back, making the programmes “felt like a mission. It wasn’t like having a job. Every series we treated like it was our last”.
From the outside, it looked like Mark and his team broke every rule in the book but, while they certainly pushed the boundaries, he is clear that they had to stick to “really strict broadcasting rules”.
“You have to respect those things otherwise you end up like the News of the World,” he points out.
He says that the show wouldn’t have been possible without the support of Channel 4’s commissioning editors and their lawyers, adding: “The lawyers were great — the lawyers were people who tried to make it happen.”
Looking back on some of his adventures Mark admits that it’s sometimes hard to believe he ended up in those situations. And that he managed to emerge in one piece.
“It’s quite often I do think that!” he laughs.
Walking the Israeli wall
“One of the things I did was walked the length of the Israeli wall in the West Bank. We literally got stones thrown at us. We got nicked so many times, I thought we were going to get deported and, at one point, all these Palestinians came out who thought we were settlers come to do a raid. This stuff was f*****g lethal – what the f*** was I doing!?”
Remembering the hot-air-balloon-over-a-military-base incident invokes similar incredulity: “We ran out of fuel directly over the base.
“If you are running out of fuel, you have no control over where you can go…
“You do look back and think what the f*** were we doing there, but it was brilliant.”
Mark may now be “just couple of years off me bus pass”, but he still has a lot to share.
Alongside the Comedy Product tour, he’s also treating audiences to his irreverent and meticulously researched take on national identity in the UK in 50 Things About Us, which has so far included a lively discussion about slavery in Glasgow!
The Mark Thomas: Product tour comes to Strathearn Arts, Crieff on Friday March 11.
