Mark Thomas

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mark Thomas
Born	Mark Clifford Thomas April 11, 1963 (1963-04-11) (age 45) South London, UK
Residence	Balham, London, UK
Occupation	Comedian Presenter Reporter Columnist
Employers	New Statesman
Known for	Political activism
Spouse	Married
Children	2
Website MarkThomasInfo.com

Mark Clifford Thomas (born 11 April 1963) is an English comedian, presenter, political activist and reporter from south London. He first came to light as a guest comic on the BBC Radio 1 comedy show The Mary Whitehouse Experience in the late 1980s. He is best known for political stunts on his show, The Mark Thomas Comedy Product on Channel 4.

[edit] Biography

Mark Thomas was born in South London. His mother was a midwife and his father a self employed builder (and ex lay preacher).^[1] Thomas was educated at a local primary school and then won a scholarship to Christ's Hospital School, where he attained O-levels and A-levels. He went on to be awarded a degree in Theatre Arts at Bretton Hall College, just south of Wakefield.

Prior to his most renowned vehicle, The Mark Thomas Comedy Product, Thomas was the resident stand-up comic on Saturday Zoo, a Channel 4 comedy series first screened in 1993. He also presented the highly successful BBC Radio 1 talk show Loose Talk and is also a founder member of the London Comedy Store's hard hitting Cutting Edge show.

His political comedy shows, The Mark Thomas Comedy Product and The Mark Thomas Product on Channel 4 earned him criticism from politicians but were seen by critics as a crucial investigative tool. In one edition, Thomas investigated the practice of avoiding inheritance tax by declaring art, furniture, homes and land available for public viewing. Thomas showed how Nicholas Soames hid this fact from the public and at the same time avoided paying tax. After being pursued relentlessly by Thomas legitimately asking for permission to see his furniture, Soames eventually paid the tax, and Gordon Brown, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, changed the law.

Leaving Channel 4 was a mutual decision, following a series of disputes over how far the channel would go in its broadcasting, one of which concerned the channel's reluctance to support actions concerning corporate accountability and corporate manslaughter laws — a cause he had campaigned for — which coincided with the Queen Mother's funeral. He declined to take part in a proposed Celebrity Guantanamo Bay 'reality TV' show.

Receiving a certificate for the world record number of demonstrations in 24 hours from Guinness

Thomas has appeared at numerous comedy benefit nights, and is a well established stand-up comedian in the UK. He is the Chairman of the Ilısu Dam Campaign, a campaign which was successful in temporarily blocking the development of a large-scale hydroelectric dam in southeast Turkey that campaigners claim will lead to the displacement of up to 78,000 people, mostly Kurds, without adequate compensation or consultation, as well as to environmental and cultural destruction.

Recently Thomas has been working with War on Want in India and investigating and filming human rights violations in Colombia (by, amongst others, Coca-Cola)^[2] where trade unions are targeted by militia allegedly controlled by the government.^[3] He has written a regular column for the New Statesman since 2001.

The Parliamentary committee which oversees weapons exports, the House of Commons Quadripartite Select Committee, commended him for his undercover work, which led to official warning letters being issued to a number of companies.^[4] His work in this area is covered in As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandela: Underground Adventures in the Arms and Torture Trade, a book chronicling his experiences undercover, his political activism and his projects designed to find and report loopholes in arms trading laws, which culminated in a controversial unbroadcast Newsnight article about the Hinduja brothers.^[5][6][7]

Whilst promoting this book on his latest tour, Thomas is also organising Mass Lone Demonstrations, in protest at the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005, which prevents any demonstrations around London's Parliament Square without prior police approval. The last event attracted over 100 lone protesters at the same time.^[8] In 2006 he was added to the Guinness Book of Records for most demonstrations held on one day, 20 individual protests in 20 different locations. He actually performed 21 protests, but for the purposes of the record it was agreed that only 20 would count as two (the first and last) took place in the same location.^[9][10]

[edit] Television programmes

• Friday Night Live, Channel 4 (1988)
• Saturday Zoo, Channel 4 (1993)
• Viva Cabaret, Channel 4 (1993)
• Denton, Channel 7 Australia (1994)
• Mark Thomas Comedy Product (later renamed The Mark Thomas Product), Channel 4 which ran for six series totalling 45 episodes (1996 – 2002)
• Dispatches: The Lie Of The Land, Channel 4 (1998)
• Thomas Country, Channel 4 (1999)
• The Immigration and Asylum Bill, Channel 4 (2000)
• Secret Map of Britain, Channel 4 (2002)
• Dispatches: Mark Thomas — Weapons Inspector, Channel 4 (2003)
• Dispatches: Mark Thomas — Debt Collector, Channel 4 (2003)
• Dispatches: After School Arms Club, Channel 4 (2006)
• Dispatches: Mark Thomas on Coca-Cola, Channel 4 (2007)

[edit] Radio programmes

• The Mary Whitehouse Experience, Radio 1 (1989)
• The Mix, Radio 5 (1990)
• Sleeping with the NME, Radio 5 (1991)
• Loose Talk, Radio 1 (1991-1992)
• Booked!, Radio 4 (1995-1998)
• Celluloid Psychiatrists, Radio 4 (2000)
• Left Bank of the Mind, Radio 4 (2001)
• Mark Thomas Presents…, Radio 4 (2005) (shows on Stan Freberg, the Firesign Theatre, Shelley Berman and Mort Sahl)
• Chain Reaction, Radio 4 (2006)
• My Life in Serious Organised Crime, Radio 4 (2007)
• Ramblings, Radio 4 (2008) (walking The Ridgeway track in Wiltshire and Oxfordshire)

[edit] Books

• As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandela: Underground Adventures in the Arms and Torture Trade, Ebury Press ISBN 978-0-09-190921-5 (2006)

[edit] Discography

• Sex, Filth and Religion (video) (1995)
• Live (1998)
• Dambusters (2001)
• The Night War Broke Out (2004)
• Mark Thomas Comedy Show (DVD) (2005)
• Mark Thomas:Serious Organised Criminal (DVD) (2007)

[edit] Awards

• Time Out Comedy Award (1990)
• Perrier Comedy Award nominee (1992)^[11]

In addition to being recognised for his comedy career, Mark Thomas has been awarded various citations for his political campaigning, including:

• Kurdish National Congress Medal of Honour (2002)^[12]
• UN Global Human Rights Defender Award (2004)
• MediActivist Awards (MISTY) (2005)^[13]
• Guinness World Record Holder for Most Number of Political Demonstrations in 24 Hours

[edit] Additional Information

• He gave out the mobile phone number of former MI5 agent David Shayler at a demonstration at the US spybase Menwith Hill in February 2001.
• On one stand-up show, Thomas gave out Michael Heseltine's home address and encouraged the audience to enter his details into all their junkmail, so that he would receive free book club memberships, collectible plates and subscription magazines.
• In an interview for The Guardian in 1999, Thomas described himself as a "libertarian anarchist."^[14]
• In his 4 March 2002 New Statesman column,^[15] Mark placed a bounty on the head of US President George Bush to the value of £4,320^[11] (his total earnings writing for the magazine to that point).
• Despite pranking him on the first episode of The Mark Thomas Comedy Product he appeared on a platform with controversial left-wing MP George Galloway in the "Troops out, no Trident" demonstration on the 24 February 2007.^[16]
• Mark is an atheist. Interviewed for the Daily Telegraph, Mark said "I've been an atheist since the age of eight. A visiting pastor at church performed a magic trick that ended with him tapping a chalice and it filling with coins. I asked him how he did it and he said, 'All you need is faith,' When I got home I rushed down to the cellar and found an old Half Corona tin and a stick from my dad's wood box (he was a self-employed builder). I sat there for an hour and left an atheist."^[17]

[edit] See also

• Ilisu Dam Campaign
• Robert Newman
• Southeastern Anatolia Project
• Corporate crime
• Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 (see "Protests near Parliament" section)

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• Mark Thomas — "The 'officially official' Mark Thomas site.
• The Mark Thomas Product — unofficial fan page
• Mark Thomas: Taking comedy seriously — BBC profile
• the unofficially official reading list of the officially unofficial Mark Thomas mailing list (list)
• Mark Thomas: method and madness of a TV comic — interview in the UNESCO publication The New Courier
• Mark Thomas Alive: An online video about COKE.
• Old Blue Mark Thomas publishes his first book, As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandela: Underground Adventures in the Arms and Torture Trade
• Mark Thomas at the Internet Movie Database
• Mark Thomas interview
• My life in serious organised crime - Radio satire about demonstrating in Parliament Square.