TRIGGERnometry - "The Left Used to Believe in Winning People Over" - Mark Steel

Episode Date: August 6, 2023

Mark Steel is an English author, broadcaster, stand-up comedian and newspaper columnist. He is a regular on British TV and radio, appearing on such shows as Mock the Week, Have I Got New for You and QI. He has also written for The Guardian, The Independent and Daily Mirror. He presents BBC Radio programmes The Mark Steel Lectures, The Mark Steel Solution, Mark Steel's in Town and the podcast What the fuck is going on? SPONSORED BY: ExpressVPN. Go to https://www.expressvpn.com/trigger/ and get an extra 3 months free on a one-year package! Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube:  @xentricapc   Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You should be excited as a lefty that Labor are going to get back in. Surely we've had a conservative government for nine, what, 13, 14 years? This should be a galvanising moment. Yeah, I don't feel it. Stahlers' great genius is he says nothing and then a week later goes back on it. The Corbyn Project's attitude towards the media, for example, I do not think was helpful. I think you have to try and win people round. I think if someone's Oswald Mosley or Hitler, there's no point in trying to win them round,

but most people aren't that. Try to sort of engage with people and look for the positive, not just go, ah, fucking damn you're a fucking good part, and just try to just shut the argument down and see everybody who says something that might possibly be interpreted as bigoted as they shouldn't be allowed to say that. I think that that doesn't help.

Hello, and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kisham. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today is a well-known British comedian. Mark Steele, welcome to Trigonometry. Hello, God, I hope I could be fascinating. We'll find out.

We'll see if you are. Because when you're introduced as a comic, you think, as long as me jokes work, I'm all right, but fascinating. That, by the way, is the most British comedian thing to say. A lot of Americans are thinking, why has he got low self-esteem? It's just what you're supposed to say if you're a British comedian. Yes, if I was American. Hey, too right, I'm fascinating. Exactly.

And that is what you are. So welcome to the show. Tell us why you're fascinating. How are you here? What has been your journey through life, Mark? How did you get into stand-up? What's been your career since, etc.? Wow.

I started as a stand-up in the 1980s. The route into it was very dull. I just looked, I just fancied doing it. There wasn't really anything else I could do. I tried working in an office. I tried being a milkman. I loved being a milkman. Not that far from where we sit here.

There was a village. There is a village called Orton Kirby. And I was responsible for delivering their milk every day. And I was sacked because I was the most useless milkman in history. but when they sacked me, the manager said, they all like you, Mark. They just say he's bloody useless at delivering milk.

And I was so happy. I thought that was the greatest review. And I was useless. Like, sometimes you would, some of the milk would get back and go, oh, Christ, I forgot the number 21. I would forget whole streets. I'd get back two hours early and think,

I've got all my milk. Oh shit. I just, because my mind's just, gone. I've just, you know, it's drifted off. And I would forget to deliver someone's bread and just leave it in the back of the truck and give it to them a week later. And they rang up and said the bread's green. It's just gone rotten. And they, oh, I had a bloody work, not to get the stumbody environment. Lelf, I remember. And it was just, I crashed the milk float because I wasn't concentrated. Anyway, I did various things like that and couldn't do any

of them. But all the while, I thought, I really fancy the idea of being on stage. And so I just sort of rang up lots of the clubs that was like, you know, there's nothing very interesting. I often make things up. I did that by accident. I did it saying I was going to make story up once. And I was on midweek with Libby Purvis, bless her. And the researcher rang the day before the show. And she said, Mark, can you sort of tell us how it is that you got started into it.

stand up, you know, it's young research, all very excited. Libby really wants to know. And I said, but it just won't be very interested. She said, well, just, you know, if you can embellish it a bit. I said, well, I can embellish it to the point where I'll just make it up. So I said, well, I'll tell you what, all right then. My dad, my dad was a Polish diplomat.

And every year I used to go with him to Poland and he had to make a speech. And it's the tradition out there that their son has to make a speech as well at Christmas. And the only Polish I knew was these jokes. And the jokes went down so well that I was booked up to do a regular spot at the lunch interval in a nearby vodka factory. And I just made that.

So the next day, live, live on Radio 4, Libby Purvis is going, my next guest, there's Mark Steele. And, well, he had rather an extraordinary introduction into the world of comedy, didn't you, Mark? I said, Mark's being rather modest. His father was a Polish diplomat.

And she went through, you read it all out. And so at various points, you know, years later, people would go, that's amazing about your dad and the vodka factory. So the sad truth is you tried lots of other jobs, weren't very good at any of them, so you thought you'd give stand up and a god. I think I tried every other job. No, I could have tried every other job.

It would have been the same result, mining, airline pilot. Hot air balloon repair man. Oh shit, I've let it go. And so you start stand-up in the 80s. What was it like back then? Was it an exciting time to be getting into stand-up? Did it feel like you're part of something fresh and new? That's a brilliant question.

What did it feel like? It's hard to say because if you look back on it, it was quite an important little cultural moment. Stand-up as we knew it. Before that, stand-up was... club comics. It was people who told jokes. I think most of them were great, actually.

We can come on to sort of some of the problems with them and so on. But I love, in fact, right, this probably isn't very special. I've been doing, there's no better way of doing this, I don't think. There's a bit in my show that I've been doing. Because they, the stand-ups of those times would do jokes

and then they would finish on a song. And that was the rule and I've been doing an impression of me in my show they go so they come on the telly they do their jokes and then they go fly me to the moon

and let me play among the stuff I fell and go to the doctors he said I've got a letty stuck up my ass the doctor has a feel about he said I've got bad news that's only the tip of the iceberg let me know what spring is like in Jupiter and Mars and so so I

thought this is this looks great and then stand-up changed and you had this sort of very, very, quite a big cultural shift, really in stand-up being something that was different. It was people writing their own material, not just telling standard jokes about, you know, two Jews in a pub or whatever, but their own stuff and their own experiences or doing characters. And it was like Rick Mayle and Alexei tale. And if you did the clubs, there'd be, in those days, there'd be these,

crazy at the there was a bloke who melted ice. The ice man. The ice man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was a legend on the circuit, but carry on. No, I just remember that. Someone telling me, I was like, oh, you're the ice man.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, the thing is, there is a, there is a myth that is told so often about the comedy circuit of those days, which is that what drove it was politics and a sort of it was part of the anti-Fatcher world. Now, it did sort of dovetail with that a bit, and part of it was a rejection of a lot of the sort of racist jokes and so on of the 70s.

But that wasn't what drove it. What drove it was that it was this different sort of cabaret-type act. And so there might be one act that did something political out of four at a night in the 1984 in Camden or something, but that would literally be all it. was. Or they'd be a poet, but they'd just be bonkers. They'd just do some crazy bonkers thing, or someone are coming and start throwing lettuces at people or something. It was just bonkers and exciting. And of course, now, the question, was it exciting at the time? Of course, you didn't,

we didn't know we were at the middle of something that you would look back on and go, oh, that was a brilliant cultural show? I don't know, did Beethoven, was Beethoven aware that he was at the beginning of a massive cultural shift of romantic music is against the sort of royal court minuettes or whatever. Was he aware of it? He probably was. But I bet there probably loads of people that weren't, you know, at the time or any musical, maybe, I suppose, in the early days of hip-hop or something

or any, you know, maybe were people aware of it. And it's only when you look back on it and go, wow. God, that was great to be at the start of that. I hope that it's, I hope the history of it's written accurately at some point because it was one of the, my favourite acts of the time. And when comics of my vintage get together, we're always talking about these people, there was a guy, you know, this is why it's so frustrating

when you sort of see, oh, it was all, it was all about being about anti-Thatcher and anti-Tibbitt. One of the greatest acts on the circuit was a guy called Randolph the, remarkable, right? And he was this very campman. And his whole act, just with sheer charisma, he would take 20 minutes to do this. He would take off his shirt, revealing quite a girth. And he would get a washing-up bowl and put it on the floor. And he would announce that he was going to pick up the washing-up bowl with his stomach. And then the great sort of finale was that he would bend over to do this. So the thing that I always remember,

was that, of course, people would be tittering, and he'd stand up and say, stop it! I cannot achieve maximum suction without total silence. I was fucking mad, but wonderful. And probably not that different from something you might have seen in the musical, I guess, in the 30s or the 50s, I guess. But it was just in these little pubs and clubs. And then the store, the comedy store, which I think was a really important,

culturally, a very important little place, you know, the equivalent of CBGBs in the punk, you know, in New York or whatever. It was a really, really important little place. So it was really, really, it's more exciting looking back on it than maybe at the time. And of course, at the time, of course what you're thinking most of the time is I'm bloody skint and I was living in a squat and then a council. flat and it was, and you just think, I wish I could earn a bit of money, really,

rather than thinking, oh, I am at the heart of an innovative cultural movement. I wasn't thinking about anything more than Mozart might have been as he was carking it before he was chucked in a rotten old grave. But yeah, it was, but looking back on it, yeah, it was really, really exciting, yeah. We have a tendency to do that, don't we, with all cultural moments, Mark, whether it's the punk, whether it's, you know, the new romantics or, you know, all of these musical moments, Elvis, rock and roll, where we go, but where we look back at it, and particularly if we haven't lived through it,

we go, that must have been so exciting. And it must have been, mustn't it? I mean, yeah, imagine being at one of Little Richard's first gigs or something, the excitement of that. I mean, I remember on the downside of it, this is one moment. moment I remember and I was this fun so I remember going to Newcastle

and these there's two bloke around this club and they one of them goes you'll be steering with meat and eat leak I said alright and then on the way back walking around there I can't remember where

it was in Newcastle him and his mate went I suppose I'll tell you before we get wrong there leak there's a term late my girlfriend like she just left me and she took all the stuff and there's like not in there i said i don't want much he said well it's just not in like she's out of the furniture was hoarse or nothing she's just taking it our league and it's just right and we got in there and it was just a bear there was no furniture nothing and it was freezing absolutely freezing

and uh and he said oh like if you've got a court or something that made help a link And I was just supposed to sleep in the corner in this bare room. And then he went and got some wood from out in this backyard and brought it in. And I said, what are you doing? He said, well, I thought, league, I'd be to start a fear. And I went, what indoors? You fucking mad, man. You want to start a fire.

Well, that's fucking freezing, Lake. And I thought, this is just mental. And I just got, I just walked. I just walked around Newcastle all night until the first train come at like six in the morning, which was, you know, because I thought there was many ways I might die in this house. Burnt to death, freezing to death.

And I don't know, it seems funny looking back on it, but I was... No, I don't... No, it's not good to be in that. I didn't enjoy that at the time. No, I can't imagine you did, Mark. Whenever anyone mentions your name, they always say, obviously, a comedian, but it's prefaced with two words, which is left-wing comedian.

You're identified very much by your politics. You're a left-wing comedian. You're a member of the Socialist Workers' Party. Yeah, that probably didn't help, do it? Before we go, before we delve further into that, do you still identify as being left-wing? And what does that mean to you now? I've never really been a big fan of the phrase, the left,

because it makes it, to me, it makes it sound like a club, and it makes it sound as like it's something you're either part of or you're not. And I think that that goes against the very notion of what anyone who would be part of the left, if it exists, should want to do, which is to find ways of communicating with and engaging with and winning over people who aren't in the left. And I think when I became, I was definitely still so I'm a socialist. I wouldn't hesitate to say that. But I think that when I'd first become a socialist, and there were lots of, you know, it would be very, very easy to be very disdainful towards

the far left and some of their less, some of their more eccentric ways. But when I first sort of engaged with them, it was in the late 1970s, what I loved about them, there was a sense of humour about them, there was a sense of wanting to engage with everybody about them. And I still, I think,

I think I still retain that. So when someone, because a lot of the people in the socialist works part, when I met them, they were people who were from very, very working class backgrounds, and they were members of the trade union movement. Quite a lot of them would be teachers and people like that, which I would say very much a working class job. But quite a lot of them were van drivers and worked in factories and bus drivers and stuff like that, worked in hospitals and so on.

And they would talk all the time about how they would try to win people over, not in a manipulative way, but, and they'd have mates, and they'd go out in all the sort of social events and so on, and they'd be like, they'd say, you've got to be liked, you've got to do your job well. I remember learning that. It's one of people, if you want to be, you know, if you want to have any influence with your work, mate,

you've got to do your job well. It's no good turning up late and people have to cover for you and all that sort of thing, and then start telling them about the Spanish Civil War. They'll just think, well, you, you're wangker. You can't even, I'm not listening to you about the bloody derruthy column. You can't even bloody turn up to fucking work on time. So there was a whole, I sort of learned that early on,

that you've got to try and win people over, really. And that means you've got to be pleasant, you've got to listen to people. That, for example, when it comes to dealing with racism, right? So this is something that lots of people would talk to me about who are older and so on. go in a workplace, you've got to, in your mind, think, who is the hardline racist? And there aren't many of those. You know, the people, in those days, it would be NF supporters,

National Front supporters, who were fascists, who were run by people who celebrated Hitler's birthday, literally those people. Now, in a normal workplace, there might be one or two of them, there's not going to be many. And then you'll have other people who had, ideas that you could say were racist or they go, oh yeah, no, I'll tell you what, they do, they do do most of the muggings or something like that. But those are people, you take a different

attitude to you. You go, they're not bad people. You understand where they're coming from, why they're thinking that, what makes them angry in the first place, just try to put the facts to them that they're blaming the wrong people and so on, that some of the nonsense and ridiculous claims that are made about how immigrants take all the jobs or so on, Just gently talk to people and get on with them. And I think that a great many people who consider themselves the left now, they don't seem to follow that same sort of method. I think part of it is social media,

because it's much, much easier on social media, to just call someone an ass, oh, wanker, you said the wrong thing about this, that, and rather than trying to, also similarly, or probably a slightly different point, but sort of coming from the same place, you would try and find where you have a connection with someone. So that's what I would try and do.

Failed miserably, I was absolutely useless, but I, would you try to find a connection with someone. So you meet someone, they might be back, you know, say this is in 1982, they might be someone who, as a, well, for example, there might be someone who is very, anti-racist, but they might be very anti-gay, for example. That would be quite common to find someone like that. So you go, right, okay, well, we'll start from the positive,

and then you would try and find a way of saying, well, wait, mate, you know, you're saying this about gay people, but you're believing the same newspapers that would say that about black people. So you would try to sort of engage with people and look for the positive, not just go, Oh, fucking damn you. Fucking good, and just try to just

shut the argument down and see everybody who says something that might possibly be interpreted as bigoted as they shouldn't be allowed to say that. I think that that doesn't help. Anyway, that's a very long...

Last time we were talking, Francis, we were talking about ADHD, and I've never been diagnosed with ADHD, but sometimes I've won. I hear my... diagnose you with ADHD, Mark. I'm not a professional. What was the question?

The question was, could you pass me the sort? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, so I very much, I, although it would be very, very, very easy, and I have done this to take the piss out of people who consider themselves the left, especially the far left, I think that there were lots of things at the time in the people that I came across who were, um, who I think I learned a lot from in terms of just being able to engage with people.

And certainly as a comic, I mean, if you sort of go out there and just call everyone an asshole who doesn't agree with you, then you're limiting your audience, aren't you? And one other thing on that is that the Socialist Workers Party, and like I say,

I can and would happily go through much of the madness. But one thing that was brilliant that they did was that they had, their starting point was that this mattered so much at the time that the Soviet Union is not in any way a socialist country. Now, if you're sort of 30 now, you might think, why would you get obsessed with a question like that? What does it matter? But at the time, to me, that was absolutely central,

because I thought, I like the idea of a sort of fairer and more equal society, but there is a place that calls itself socialist, and it is clearly the most barbaric, appalling, despicable tyranny. And that's just a, that's quite a barrier. And so... But there's a lot of lefties, Mark, who at that time would be pro-Soviet Union. Oh, mostly they would be. Mostly.

I mean, yeah, the Socialist Party was in a minority in many ways, but particularly on that issue because you would... I mean, I remember going to the Labour Club, you know, where I used to go to in Croydon, and a load of them went, and bless them, they were, I think they were sweet, well-meaning people, but they went on a tour of Eastern, East Germany. I remember them coming back,

and they were so excited. The workers are treated so well. We got given a tour of the town. Hall, you should see the beautiful building. And I go, well, you could go to the town all in, even Croydon, which is not a place over, in which beautiful buildings are in abundance. Even the town hall, no, that's tabernar house, that was shit.

But you could go anywhere, couldn't you, and go, Nottingham, you know, look at the beautiful buildings, therefore Nottingham is so, they're just bollocks. But if you're in that mindset, but the workers are treated so well we were shown. Of course you were. They showed you the fucking, But oh look, they're all in the canteen happy.

It's because the first time in a week they were getting some food, yeah. Yeah, of course, of course. And I used to do, oh, God, if I could remember it, it was a joke that, how did it go? It went, yeah, it puzzled me that if it was such a wonderful society, why did they have to build a 200-foot high wall covered in barbed wire with snipers stationed across it to keep people in? If you had a party one night,

and the only way you could keep people there was to build a 200-foot wall around it with barbed wire and snipers across it, and even then some people at the party tried to escape in a hot air balloon, you wouldn't go, well, that was a successful evening. So that was, I was, and that I haven't changed my mind on at all. I think the Soviet Union and all those other countries, you know, East Germany, Hungary or whatever,

were, they weren't socialist, but they were appalling tyrannies that deserved to be dismantled completely. Paradey present Ojos with Alergy and Pickasone Contra the Gardiner And the ganador is Paraday extra-furte To alleviate

Toer more rapid And supera Clarity Niflonez Aunae At least Faraday Adelante Mark, so your interest in the left

sounds to me Like came through a concern for the ordinary person Was that fair to say The work etc Is that was that

Your kind of intellectual entry into Or? Yeah, I think it was as simple as that. Yeah, I think it was. I think it was just, it's not, it's not fair. I mean, my, my, yeah, I think that, I think that anything that's, any sort of political philosophy that you, that you, you adopt that doesn't come from

something in the gut, I think I wouldn't trust. You know, because so I think you, it's absolutely, absolutely, absolutely intellectualise it, absolutely go away and get fattenated and read a load of books. For example, I remember for the first time hearing that the British had done terrible things in Ireland and thinking, wow, I didn't know this. Oh, and so I just got obsessed with reading loads of books about Ireland and become all a bit stupid and crazy and listening to silly Irish songs and things. But I do want in my show actually A Republican song

I'm mad, you know, all that But you get, you know, I was 18 in my defence And it was all very But it came from a sort of feeling in me gut And then you intellect, you want to You want to go and read the books I suppose that back up your instinct I suppose that's what you do, isn't it?

And I wouldn't trust anything that came, I don't think anyone's become a socialist, but I don't think anyone's become any sort of political, adopt any sort of political philosophy. Have they because they've read a series of books and gone, I wonder which one is the one that seems to make the most sense. I think you read the book that were, reading a book can make an enormous amount of sense,

but because it connects with a feeling that you have anyway. I know exactly what you mean I don't think those two things are incompatible though so for example there is my favorite sort of philosopher and he's an economist and many things a guy called Thomas Sol now he's probably is a

an American still alive he's quite old now and he wrote a series of books that he was able to write to some extent he wasn't able to write them because he's black but they were able to get the level of attention that they got because he was able to say it

and not be accused of being racist or discriminatory or whatever. They got more resonance. And when I read his stuff, even when I sort of in my old day, in my days where I probably would have considered myself somewhere on the left, reading things like that where I was like, wait, this makes way more sense than the stuff I've been told to date. Right.

That's where you start to change your mind. When you're given an explanation for what you observe in the world that seems to be more accurate than the one you had prior to that. Do you see what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, absolutely. But it has to connect with something that's... Yeah. So I think if you've got a sense of unease,

I suppose especially if you've got a sense of unease about the ideas that are the dominant ideas in a society, and then you read something, wow, you know, like the impact that, say, early feminist writing would have had, not early feminist writing, because that goes back to the 79. But say in the 60s, and the first time you had, not actually middle-class women, but writing about the plight of being a woman in America, say.

And if you were a woman reading that for the first time, then the impact must have been enormous. Wow, yes, I do feel that. I do feel completely misunderstood. I do feel as if my life is just a pointless series of drudgery or whatever. You know, whatever. I don't know what they're not up to me to say what they felt, but that, but that. And as you did, I think it connects with something that is in your gut at the time.

I had a sort of deep sense of injustice. I don't know. I was very angry. I was very, very angry. And I suppose at the time, if someone had said, oh, well, you're probably a very angry person because you've got a load of anger issues deep down, blah, blah, blah. I'd have gone, fuck off! No or not, right?

I'm fucking how dare? You say that. I'm fucking angry because you're a fucking millions of people in Africa and starving when there's enough food in the world to fucking feed them but the capitalist system doesn't feed. But now I think, no, but I probably was, that's true, but I probably was angry as well because I was 16 and not allowed to go in the pub,

and that gave me a huge sense of injustice. And how much of your political leanings, the way that you see the world, was informed by how, you grew up, where you grew up, the fact that you grew up under the shadow of Thatcher. And, you know, there'll be lots of people who say what Thatcher did for this country was necessary. It had to be done. But there was also a lot of people who suffered under her policies. So where do you stand on all of that, Mark?

And was that, like, a really important part in your... Well, I'm a little bit older than that. So I was, well, whatever brought up means, I don't know what age you're brought up. But when I was young, when I was 10, I was 10 in 1970. And one of the things that I think must have landed in my head without us realized, because we grow up thinking that we're just completely in control of our philosophy, don't we? But we're not. We're all created by the times in which we live.

You know, you don't realize it at the time. You know, there were no atheists in, as we know it, in 30. because it wasn't really possible to think in that way or what have you. And so, and in the early 1970s, everything around you told you that working class people had a little bit of power, collective power. Now, the most obviously, the miners went on strike in 1972. and the and they won. And so there was a sense of like the minor

and there was an enormous amount of miners. Even at the start of the 1984 strike, there was 180,000 miles. A million miners in 1920, I think, in this country. The population was 40 million. A million minors. You'd think if you had all the families and so on. And so it was much less than that in 1972.

But there was a sense that working class people, the docks, the car factories and so on, there was a sense that people had a sense of power. And take a program like On the Buses, right? I mean, I don't know if you've ever watched On the Buses. Oh, my God, what a magnificent little snapshot of early 1970s Britain it was. I looked at one when it come on some UK gold thing, and I thought, oh, this will be interesting. and it is so, so terrible. I mean, it's just the one I saw Stan,

so it's two blokes who are played by actors of 50 and they're pretending to be 25. And it's all about the birds, the birds on the bus, all that, and it's so bad. Sounds right up my street, my name. Oh, God. No, it is entertainment. You're bringing back a classic, mate.

A classic genre. That's what I'm doing right here. You know, I'm a fan of loads of that stuff, and I forgive it loads. But anyway, but the whole, the central premise of on the buses was there was a, an inspector called Blakey, who used to talk like that, and he used to get so fed up. Because the bus drivers, they wouldn't turn up at work.

They would do what they wanted. They would drive the bus the wrong way and crash through a gate or something. and come in, it'd be going, come here, I'll get you for this. And it just, if that had been made 10 years ago, it just wouldn't have made sense because this was a time, it reflected, obviously it wasn't real, you couldn't really do that if you're a bus driver,

but it reflected a time when working class people had a sense of like, we've got a bit of collective strength. It was a time of strong trade unions. So regardless of whether you say that, went too far or not, leaving that aside, I was brought up in a world where, yeah, if you were, if you were working class person, you could, and you would, you could win.

Now, a few, by the time of the Thatcher years, if I was a few years older, I'd have been brought up with a sense that if you were a working class person and you were campaigning for something, you couldn't win. The best you could do is make a song and dance and march up and down and then... Hang on, Mark.

Isn't that a little bit unfair? Because you've got Mondaio, man, you got like the Essex boy, wheeler dealer, loads of money. Do you know what I mean? Like the working class kids. Yeah, you could win individually. Yes, I should... But you couldn't win if you were a minor

and get together with a bunch of other minors and get your agenda. You couldn't win collectively. If you couldn't win by forming a trade union and going, we're going to demand this, this and this. and that was broken. Yeah, that was certainly broken by, through the Margaret Thatcher years.

Yeah, it definitely was. And particularly through the minor strike in 1984, they went off strike for a year and they lost and the pits was shut, so on. And so that, yeah, you wouldn't, you just wouldn't grow up with the same sense of bravado and confidence that you must have. that someone might have had, you know, in the 1970s.

And what do you make of the situation now, Mark, because, I mean, one of the things that has happened, obviously, with your perspective, I mean, in that whole period of time to the present day, is you've got far fewer working class jobs in that conventional sense. The country's been de-industrialized. I mean, what is a working-class job? Maybe working on a train or, you know, there's obviously driving a van, right? But there's not really any institutions that employ hundreds of thousands,

of people, other than the NHS, maybe, where there's even the opportunity for something like that. I mean, OK, you get the teachers' union, but that's not the same as going down the pit either. Now, what does that mean for, is that why the left is kind of on this weird journey? Because there's not really that sense of working class solidarity that's at the bottom of it, because there's not really that much of a working class left identifiably. I think there is a working class as much as there was, but it's, so much more fragmented. One thing I would say is that those mining unions, engineering unions and so on,

they didn't, when engineering started, it didn't start with mass trade unions. They had to be built for massive battles in the 1880s or sometimes little ones before that. And then before the First World War and so on, they didn't come out of nowhere. but I don't know how many people work in supermarkets in this country, how many people work in call centres. I think that they are the sort of mines and docks of our day, if you like, but of course it's very, very difficult to, you know, I guess that at some point, you know, there will be a movement.

Well, there already is a movement to you to form trade unions in places like that and bring about some sort of collective strength. But it's, yeah, it's not going to be anything like it was in the shipyards. Well, because they're not really careers, are there? Most people who work in a supermarket aren't going to start out as a junior shelf stocker and move up to senior shelf stocker and then, you know, this and progress through it and still be there 30 years from now. Most people now are there for a few years.

They get another job. They work in a call center. There's not that sense of continuity. And so the solidarity then becomes. much more difficult as well as a result, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I think that's, I think that's absolutely right. And it is certainly a people who would call themselves socialist. So I think when I, you know, in the 1970s, if you called yourself a socialist,

you would automatically look to being part of the working class, what was known as the working class movement, the trade union movement or whatever. Now, that's, that's not the case. Now you would, I don't know, you would, I, I mean, I think there's still a, enormous numbers of people who would call themselves socialists. But I'm not sure what... They're much less likely to join any organisation in any mass way, I guess.

I don't think the feelings necessarily changed. Potentially as, I don't know. I don't know. The reason I ask you this question is it feels to me like, and please challenge me if you disagree, is in having lost that solidarity that you talk about in that sense that there's a big group of people who have similar interests, who work in similar industries,

who can get together and achieve some kind of outcome, there's been a move on the left, having realized that's not available, to look at things from a more sort of privilege, underprivilege, race, ethnicity, sex, sexuality, sort of creating a coalition of people. You know, the working people might have argued in the 70s that they are disadvantaged by being working class,

so they need to get together and advocate for their interest. And now there seems to be an attempt to kind of unite people around a shared disadvantage that comes from various forms of discrimination and so on. Yeah, yeah, no, that's absolutely the case. And I think that it's so complex this. And of course, we're sort of forever looking for simple solutions and simple solutions in 280 characters on Twitter. That is just, I just don't engage with it at all

because it just no good is going to come of it. I've seen you engage sometimes, Mark. Have I? Well, I did, I said what I did once. I'd never again, so that this will be a good story. We don't do gotchas on the show, but go on. I, do I? No, no, I remember there was a little one,

there was a little one where you just had a little bite back. Was it when, well, there was, the time that I did was when Shappi mentioned something about Eddie Isard. And it was something so innocent. It was like, good luck to Eddie Isard or something. And then a lot of people who are very anti-the-the- idea that you could be, bona fide trance then piled in and she was getting all this abuse and then a few of them were going I bet Mark wouldn't agree with this and then I thought oh no well I'm going to have to

sort of say what I do here aren't I because otherwise it looks like I'm not going to back random complete random person angry angry person from Romford 2381816 on Twitter against my own partner. And I'd sort of, similarly, you know, with my son, we've just talked about this before, my son put a... Your son's also a stand-up. My son's just standing up, and he sometimes puts things on there that end up causing controversy.

He was quite a very funny joke. I thought it was like, cyclists say they've got, we've got the law of the highway code, and that's true. But the thing is, a truck driver also has a law on his son. which is Newton's third law of motion that says if the truck gets the cyclist the truck will win. Now that's a good joke, right? That's a good joke but of course

and I'm a cyclist. I cycled here today. Well, except I went to the wrong place and you had to come and pick me up. But but it's funny. That's funny. But of course, oh dare you! I've had fun about all the people who are killed. I think they're... Oh, fuck off,

you bloody, that's a joke. It's don't take things literally. And so then again, I got a load of abuse, you know, from people saying your son's been saying, do you honestly think that in an argument between you, or I don't know who the fuck you are, who sent an angry message in Twitter and you've got a little fucking St George's flag and your little thing behind and you, and my own son, I'm going to go, no, sorry, son, I'm with him. I'm with Terry.

Of course not. Anyway, what? Well, the reason I, so we came on to that, but it's a curious thing that you make the point of and we talked about it before we started. Do you think what's happening there? Because there's an argument about free speech and comedy and whatever.

And every political side wants to sort of position that as a left versus right thing. But what's actually happening there is a lot of people don't understand jokes. They don't understand comedy. And what social media has done is it has given those people a window into what comedy actually looks like

and they have no fucking idea what's going on and so they're like, oh, this was meant, do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you think that's what's happening? Yes, but I think the question you were raising is a more fundamental one. Okay.

And I think it is one that people who are trying to sort of campaign in such way to make the world a fairer place or so on after try and get to grips with it. So this is, I would generally, when I hear, there are certain people who, when I hear them attack the woke, woke arguments, oh, it's all woke these days. I think, right, well, hang on, first of all, get this in perspective.

The woke are not running the world. We've had Donald Trump as president, who boasted he grabbed women by the pussy. and it was hardly, you've really got to stretch woke quite a distance to include Donald Trump. Boris Johnson, with all the statements and so on that he's made that we know what they are and so on. So the world is not run by the woke. Little bits of institutions are or maybe the odd comedy place. But even there, do you really get, I don't, you know, I don't know.

Well, hold on, Mike. Just to counter that, I'm keen to hear you're. argument. However, in 2018, Nika Burns, who's the director of the Edinburgh Comedy Awards, said that she looked forward to a new woke future in comedy when comedians decide what isn't acceptable.

And people would argue, I'm just putting the counter argument, people would argue that the education system is largely run by people who lean in that direction. There's quite a lot of evidence for that, right? You could talk about mainstream media. Now, there's very different types of mainstream media. There's Fox News, and there's the Daily

Telegraph and whatever, but there's also the Guardian and the BBC, which increasingly lean in that direction. So I think one of the reasons, this is a different issue, but one of the reasons people increasingly sort of not interested in party politics in general is there's a sense in which our lives are not really run by the people we elect anyway. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's because a lot of the institutions that inform us and persuade us and show us things

and whatever are run by a certain group of people. people who have a certain vision. And that vision isn't, you know, top down. It's just kind of coalesced around certain ideas. And so I think some people would argue that just because our elected politicians aren't woke does not mean a lot of our institutions aren't. But anyway, yeah, yeah, I just throw that in. I accept that. Yeah. And there are places where, and again, it would be so easy to, it's so easy to take. I don't want you to slam woke people. It's not what it's is about at all. I mean, you can if you want to.

No, no, no. I'm curious to hear your point about jokes and freedom of expression. That's what you were talking about. Right. Well, I'll tell you, I would start with this, which is, I'm saying, like a lot of politics, I'm very glad you are. And I'd like to answer it by making these two points. I think what the British people really want right now is to,

I was with Matt Ford the other day, and he's got, he does, I can't, I haven't got it, but he does it. He's a very good political impression. He's got the Stama voice, absolutely, and he does the hands. And I can't, I'm very jealous of it. I haven't got it at all yet. But I think that there is, right, I'm going to come on to say that I think that there is a, that there is a problem, really, with seeing arguments.

that might be described as woke as being what the main argument of the left. I think that that, given that, you know, I find that even the term the left problematic in the first place. So I'm in a sort of spiral of difficulties with this. I think that the main argument of the left, should we say, should be that, for example, the water companies and the rail companies should be taken away from the people. who are the utter criminality of these people who, Barrett people who clearly don't know how to run the place at all other than to pay their shareholders and so on.

So that sort of argument that there should be something, that there are all manner of things that could be done about rents being so high that it causes such an enormous sort of dislocation for younger people with housing, for example, that those issues. That doesn't mean that I would therefore say that arguments about racism, sexism are irrelevant, absolutely not. I think that for example, I think one of the great successes of, I won't say the left, but of people who have fought against the prevailing ideas,

when back in those sort of late 70s, early 80s times, if you, were in favour of gay marriage, you were an extremist. Now you are an extremist if you are against it, because the ideas have largely won. It doesn't mean it's all one, but if you are gay in 2003 in Britain, life is incomparably easier than it was if you were gay in 1979 in Britain. now it's the virgin trains have a pride rainbow thing on the front of the I'm not saying that's a good or bad thing but just as an example there are gay clubs of gay politicians people who are no one was out gay when I was in 1978

no one and it was so that is if you could sort of if you could jump from 1978 to now and just look at attitudes towards homosexuality that would be tremendously exciting, I think, the fact that that has changed as much as it has. I don't think that's irrelevant. And I think also more complex, but attitudes towards women,

it's so, so, so much different as a sports fanatic. The fact that now you've really got to be on the margins to go women's football, women's cricket, that's not put with sport. That's one now. You're on the margins, mate. No, no. Thanks, mate.

Is that a boss? There you go. Throw you on. I'm a fanatic cricket fanatic. On race. All of that. But I think that

for this to be the central argument of our time does not help people who are trying to make society more equal. It does not. I would, on the side generally of people

who I think, if someone wants to be trans, let me be trans. I think that's fine. It's completely on the side of people who are combating racism and so on. What I really, really do find myself frustrated with is someone who will say that a writer should be, a writer should, for example, be, I don't, I think cancelled is the wrong word

because I don't think that's in reality what happens. But I think for them to be harangued in the way that does happen sometimes, because of something that they've written that could be interpreted as racist, I think is not right. I think it's morally not right. But also I don't think it helps win the argument because I think that there are people who you might disagree with and you go, I disagree with you.

I don't think you should have written that. I don't think that means you shouldn't be allowed to turn up at a university and make a speech. I think that that is shutting down an argument. And it doesn't, how does it help? It doesn't help the cause. You're just making it impossible for people. So therefore, it just angers people. And you can't say nothing anymore these days.

I don't think that's true, but I think that that doesn't. I'm probably not arguing this very well. I think partly it's affected by my age because I was brought up in a town Swanley not all that far from it as I said and it was brutal the racism was brutal it was not

it was just foul you know the N word said a hundred times in a night in a pub you know when I was a milkman I have this really clear moment this is just this is not it doesn't even stand out that much, but I'll just say it as an example. There were two black lads sent down by

express dairies to hose down the yard. The manager, I just happened to be in the office because on a Monday you had to go in and give all your money in and this was on a Monday and the managers come fuming, fuming in the office, slammed something down on the table. I said I wanted them to send someone down to clean a yard, they'd sit down a couple of fucking monkeys. Like that, I remember that really clearly, but almost, but most clearly because it wasn't that out of the ordinary.

And it was foul. And I think that a lot of what we would consider woke, right, we're not going to accept that sort of language anymore, has been what has turned that around. But it's also required an enormous amount of patience, arguing with people, sitting and talking to people who tell racist jokes and going, mate, you know, finding ways of combating it without just calling them assholes. I think you have to try and win people round. I think if someone's Oswald Mosley or Hitler, there's no point in trying to win them round, but most people aren't that.

And that's a real problem that I have with the left is I agree with a lot of the ideas of the left but then I see some of the behaviour of the people on the left and who identify as left and I think to myself, bloody hell, I don't want anything to do with you. Your behaviour is terrible. Well, they ain't me, some of them people.

But that's... They'll probably slag me off more than... Don't think so. Do you know what? I don't know. I get, I get, there are sort of, there's people, for example,

that, on social media, they will call themselves, you know, we back, or bring back Corby or something. Yeah. And they,

I've never said anything publicly, you know, I think there were, that clearly, until today. Yeah. Clearly, right, I don't think this is that controversial. Clearly, there were a number of problems with the Corbyn Project.

It didn't go as well as it might have been hoped. And that was all a Jewish conspiracy, Mark. This is the point I was trying to make. And, you know, so, but if... But you're not allowed to say that to these people, But I would just get in perspective that this is a... I don't know how many people there are like that going angry, angry, angry, angry, angry on to it.

I'm a joke in the actor. I say there was no collection of words you could put on Twitter that wouldn't annoy someone. You could say, I'm enjoying a delightful sunset across Dorset this evening. And someone would have put, not so delightful if you suffer from sunset aversion, Dorset syndrome, actually, bark.

Have a thought for sad, for us in future. I thought you were better than that. That's very accurate. This is true. I did this react, but I mentioned Donald Trump. I referred to Donald Trump as a psychopath.

It's just in passing, it wasn't? And four people sent me messages saying, don't add to the stigma against psychopaths. It's meant to be a stigma against psychopaths. They're fucking psychopaths. Well, it is, but this, you see, this is a problem. It's, you know, the left go, why don't we win? I'm going, because you behave like dicks.

If you were nice about it, not all of the left, I know, but there is an absolute fringe of them. But what is the left, though? This is what, you know, this is what I think it comes down to, because, you know, almost anything, you know, once you break it down, you could go, well, what is that? What is that political philosophy? What is that even race?

You know, how do you define someone who is Jewish or who is an Arab? It's not an easy thing to do. There's a brilliant thing, isn't the Sartre wrote a book about that? And, of course, every definition you would give actually breaks down, except for one, which is that Jewishness is defined. by the anti-Semite.

So obviously the Third Reich had very clear ideas of what was a Jew. They needed to define it and categorise it because they wanted to know who to cut away. But... It was a great detour. Just park it there. The thing about the Jews, right?

We went from Corbyn't a politician, isn't it? Corby, yeah. Clearly there were, clearly there were my stuff. I don't, right, things that you could say that are clearly, that should not be controversial. The Corbyn project's attitude towards the media, for example, I do not think was helpful. I think that to sort of say, well, the media,

the mainstream media is basically not something that we want to engage around, because that's just the media and you know what they're like. And I know I've come across people who would call themselves on the left who would very much have that attitude, are dismissive towards the media. I think that that's not, I don't think that's Marxist for a start. The media isn't a group of,

it isn't just Rupert Murdoch and Dacre sitting there, like sort of dictators of some planet that you might get in Star Trek, that just run everything. The media is made up of, it's a huge industry. The media is someone, I know you might meet from, I don't know, from the bright and bloody Argus. Go and talk to them, to establish a relationship with them, learn from them, talk to them, what are the issues in the area and so on?

Meet up with people from the media. You know, we all work in the media. I've been working with people all the time in radio. They're mainstream media. Most of them are wonderful, brilliant people and they talk to you about ideas. And you think, oh, I hadn't thought of that and listen and learn to them. Don't just go, I'm not going to go on, I don't know, Radio 5.7. Sunday morning politics show because it's the BBC and why should I go on that?

That's an awful attitude. And so, you know, I think that there was certainly, there was certainly that. There was certainly that from the Corbyn project. And I think that that didn't do any good at all. I think it's much better to go on. And John McDonnell, for example, did go on things and come over very well. It was very popular, I think. Anyway, I don't know.

That's enough. That what I just said is enough to go, You slag it on Corby, you fucking, it's your fault. I mean, anyone who's watching this is used to Corbyn getting slagged off, I promise you. But I'm curious what you think from your position, what I hear out of you is you're an old school lefty, right? You care about equality, you care about wages, you care about ownership of infrastructure, not being in the hands of people who are not running a well, etc. The question obviously there is, there's almost certainly going to be an incoming Labour government under Kirstama by the looks of the politics today as it is.

Are you excited from your perspective where you sit on the left about that prospect? No. This is what I meant earlier when I said there's no one you can vote for that's really going to change anything. But please, tell me more. Well, I'll repeat a discussion I had with Matt Ford the other day. And bearing in mind, Matt Ford is very much his hero is Tony Blair. I don't think that's being unkind to him to say that.

And it's disgusting, a lovely, lovely fellow, I really like him. And I like most people, really. You're a nice guy. It gets me in trouble. Right. So, the discussion we were having, I said, Matt, it's something that I think is very different between the situation we're in now

and the equivalent situation you might say in the summer of 1996, you know, a year before an election, maybe a little bit more than a year for an election now. Blair, people remember obviously Iraq, and he's also in New Labor and all the tearing up the left and so on. But Blair, by this time,

was very much associated with bringing in the minimum wage, which now, oh, everybody accepts that. But that, the Conservatives were going, this will cost a million jobs and so on. They were going to bring in a windfall tax on the mobile phone companies of billions of pounds and use that for Shawstart and various projects, NHS and so on, which did happen. There was devolution for Scotland.

The Good Friday Agreement was, Blair was quite central to, wasn't he? I know John Major was as well. There, the gay civil marriage and abolishing fox hunting, right? Which is easy to dismiss. But at the time, a combination. of all those things, plus the fact it was sort of, there was so many, there were openly gay people

and the shadow cabinet and lots of women and so, it just looked, the whole sense of it felt like this was, like there was a radicalism to it. It felt like there was a radicalism to, I was never a fan of Tony Blair, even in those days, but it felt like there was a sense of excitement. It felt like something was going to change. If you ask someone, what will change?

if Tony Blair becomes Prime Minister, most people could reel off three or four of those things. Always going to abolish the fox hunting and put more money to so. Now, is that true with Starma? I've got a line of being said about Starler's great genius is he says nothing and then a week later goes back on it.

About a year ago, I started to be excited when he was made it, we're definitely going to bring the railways back into. a public ownership. Now, I don't think he doesn't mention that. The water is not going to... I don't know what he's going to do. Do you know?

I don't know. I follow these things more than most people. I don't know what he's planning to do. It's just Britain can do better. Can't do it. Mark, do you think the problem is is that the conservatives have been so appallingly useless that he doesn't really need to offer an opposition.

All he needs to do is basically stand back, watch the Conservatives implode and he knows he's going to win anyway. So why would he make policy pronouncements when he doesn't have to? I suppose that's his thinking, isn't it? I suppose that's his thinking, but I don't know. But, you know, what do I know?

I stood for election once. I was fucking useless. And so... So I can't. I know what you mean. But do you not... Because you should be excited as a... lefty that Labour are going to get back in. Surely we've had a conservative government for

nine and what, 13, 14 years. This should be a galvanising moment. I don't feel excited. I felt more excited. I mean, when Blair, the night Blair got in, I had a wonderful time and I wasn't a fan of Blair's at all. I was at the Croydon Labor Club. Fantastic night. It was just brilliant. All these people who had seen and there. And I'd been in the same room in 1992 and everyone was sort of, you know, it was awful and people started scrapping an argument with each and stuff. Doesn't sound like the left mark. No, no, no.

And so, oh, I'm trying to think of a joke I had. I used to do that sort of left-win benefits was about where, yeah, when the police would go, there was an organised press, organized left on the demonstration. That's how you know they were lying. The left is never organised. How did it go? Yeah, if the police had the same level of organisation on demonstrations as the left,

they'd just be going, oh shit, we've locked the trunchons in the pan. That's basically where they've got to, made, by the looks of things at this point. Mark, we're running out time. Oh, no. I'm just getting going. It's been a real pleasure talking to you. Before we go to our last question, I wanted to ask you, you've had a long stand-up career, and it's always an evolution, right? Creatively, it's an evolution in terms of your views.

It's an evolution. you were telling me on the way here how much you were enjoying performing in a way that you might have been more apprehensive in the past or worrying about, you know, this gig didn't quite go as well as that gig. Like what have you learned over a whole career as a creator, as a performer,

something for people watching this or maybe up and coming? I think you've got to... It sounds like such a trite thing, but I think you've got to sort of find a way of really enjoying it and the audience will know that and all the little...

Something I'm only really just learning. All the little details and stuff that you do. If you're an actor, you know, and you're in the six weeks before a play starts, a director all say, try it like this, move over there, be physical in a different way. And as comics, we sort of don't really...

We don't really apply that same discipline. And I've been trying to do that lately and I've been trying to go for every little bit and think, if I'm doing an impression, just spend an hour getting it right. And it goes better. It's better. It's more fun, you know, move in a certain way.

Do something. Just enjoy doing things a little bit better, really. And don't forget while you're on stage to have a moment where you think, I'm enjoying this. This is especially, and I'm lucky, you know, I mean, these beautiful theatres and stuff. And, you know, see, not always. sometimes in Croydon, for example,

the Fairfield All was very much Soviet Union, 1952. But it's, no, I've really, I've been really enjoyed it. How did you go from the state of most stand-ups are in, which is, oh, didn't quite get a big enough laugh there, just didn't happen that, to the point you're talking? Oh, I'm still a neurotic mess. I'm still the same fruit bat that all comical are. So how did you become slightly less fruit bat is where I'm getting that?

No, I don't think I am less fruit. back. I think I've just accepted that I'm less fruit back. I think a big thing for me was, obviously, if people know me there, I know me mostly through a radio series called Mark Stills in town where I go around, the towns of Britain, we pick me and the producer pick six a year, and we go and have to write a whole show about the town and do it in front of people in the town and be as rude as possible and get away with it. It's why the people who get obsessed with, how dare you say that, those sorts of people. That's the mistake they make. Left and right do this. They both do it.

They'll go, the right might go, Frankie Boyle said this, our dairy. And the left might go, oh, you know, someone else, someone that we don't like, said this, how dare they? And if you just transcribe the words on a page, you don't see the, twinkle in the eye and that's everything and so in the Marksdale's in town series I have to like the place I have to and I do I go to these places every single one I've done 60 of these programs now every single one of them I get there and within a couple of days I've met a load of people who are just brilliant and they're passionate and they love the place and they love the fact that there's a barman who everybody knows in that pub

who's just horrible and it's funny or there was a bloke in Shrewsbury there was a bloke who ran the park and he was horrible to everybody and I just spent half an hour with him and watched him just shout at everybody and did a little impression of him in the show and you just do enough,

you learn enough about the place that you can be horrible about it in a way that shows you love it in a way that you were with a mate you know like if you've got a really good mate you can go what's the fucking matter with you? fucking useless swat.

If you were just to write that on a page, how dare you? But it's said with such love, you know, because it's not like just going up to saying it to someone at random. And I think that doing that, the last 12, 13 years, I've done that show. First of all, one very quick example, two very quick examples.

Last year I did Newport, and as I was about to do it, I thought, I can't do this. This was Newport itself, a very industrial town. And one of the opening lines was, this is a town built on the mines and the docks and grime and squalor. And now, I don't know, how you've done this, the mines and docks have gone,

but the grime and squal have gone. I thought, I don't know how you've managed that. And I thought, I can't say this. And they go nuts and cheer. Or in Gibraltar, when we were doing it in Gibraltar, and I said to the only one possible opening line, I'm so pleased at last to get to do this show in Spain. That's the only possible line we could see.

start with. And people going, you can't start with that, but you can because they know I'm doing it on purpose. They know it's deliberate. You could do it if you went and going, yeah, I'm in Spain. They go, fuck off. Or if you did it out of ignorance, but if you do it like, but you can't fake that. And I spent a week there and I love the people there. It was just a brilliant, I think, all the sort of characterisation of Gibral or being this stupid old English. 1950s racist place. That's not true at all. They're not anti-Spanish, the people who live there.

It's a wonderful, lovely place. And they knew that I could feel that. So it was fight. And I think I've learned from that. You've really got to like people. You've really got to want to see people at their best. And I think if you're trying to change the world and make it more equal and make it less racist

and make it so that it serves more people, you've got to start from that point of you. I think there's so many people on left as well as the right who really basically don't really like people. And I think if you're going to be a stand-up, you've got to do that. You're trying to make them laugh if you've got to like them. It's such a profound point, Mark. Thank you.

It's been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. The question we always finish is, what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be? Oh God, I so much want to say something earlier comic. Go on, say it, say it, say it. Rights for serial killers. So what's the question again?

What's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be? This was an issue when I got here. Cushans. Yeah. I fucking ate them. Can't be doing with them. Women love cushions.

Do they? Yeah, they do. Whether you, whenever, Just what I'm going wrong. Yeah. That explains 30 years. I mean, that's not the only thing that require, but nonetheless. Yeah, they'll have a cushion, mate.

Mark, you're on tour at the moment? Yeah, I'll be back doing the show called an evening and part of the next morning with Mark Steele because I go on too long. Well, make sure you check that out and follow us. And he's using, he's playing the piano in it as well. So do make sure you check that out. And of course, follow us over onto locals where we will. We'll ask your questions to Mark.

We'll see you there. Just how far would the Labour Party have to go before you decide you couldn't vote for them anymore? He says the true right no longer supports the Tories. How long until the true left likewise abandons labor?