"Hi, mum? Yeah... It’s Mark... Colonel Gadafy, semtex, AK-47, Hezbollah, Martin McGuinness, Jerry Adams, the UDF, the UDA, Swampy, peace protesters, Delia Smith, shipment of arms, British aerospace, nuclear fuels, " the short man in the duffel jacket pauses for a second, a large puff of hot air makes the hot-air balloon he’s travelling in rise slightly, "No, I’m not smoking mum; it’s a balloon... I swear, it’s a balloon!"
When you think about British stand-up comedians, you immediately think of Frankie Boyle, Hugh Dennis or Mitchell and Webb; the guys who appear on the telly every night. And while there’s no doubt that these guys are indeed very funny, I yearn for a comedian who’s willing to do more than just make people laugh.
The scene detailed at the beginning of the paragraph is from the third season of the Mark Thomas Comedy Product. Mark is flying over the top secret US spy-base Menwith Hill in a hot air balloon, as he’s just found out that there are no air restrictions over the base. This is but one example of his many political endeavours, as he’s not content just standing back and slagging off the government... No, he’s creating anarchy.
The first series of the MTCP concentrated more on crazy antics aimed at trying to put various corporations and government bodies to shame. Thomas’ antics included creating havoc and chaos at a McDonald’s drive in, nearly giving the manager a brain embolism; projecting a massive message in front of the MI5 building, proudly proclaiming it was such in order to, as Thomas put it, "make sure people don’t get lost" and even betting the final show’s budget on a horse race.
One of the most memorable of his schemes was driving a tank-come-ice cream van around London trying to find various government ministers who had relaxed the arms dealing laws to Iraq, wondering if they could help him get the tank out to a mate in Iraq, in order to "give him an edge on the ice cream competition".
The third series shifter more to a purely political aspect of Thomas’ comedy. The show took on a much more serious tone, delving into the many ways of how our government are fucking us over. Why, in the very first episode, Thomas posed as a PR company at an arms fair in Greece and managed to get the Indonesian head of army Major General Widjojo (spelling?) to confess to the use of torture in the Indonesian army. Other ploys included showing the complete incompetence of the British rail system, exposing corporate fraud and even hounding MP Geoffrey Roberts after exposing his incompetence.
My point? We need more comedians like Mark Thomas.
http://www.markthomasinfo.com/
Enjoy,
James.
