Mark Thomas marks 40 years of stand-up on new tour - Fareham

Mark Thomas insists comedy is all about moving forward, coming up with new ideas and coming up with new shows.

But just for the moment he's happy to look back a little and to celebrate a remarkable 40 years of stand-up on his new tour.

Dates include October 29 at 8pm at Fareham Live, Osborn Road, Fareham, PO16 7DB; November 7 at 8pm in The Old Market, 11a Upper Market Street, Hove, BN3 1AS; November 24 at 8pm in the Minerva Theatre, Oaklands Park, Chichester, PO19 6AP; and November 29 at 7pm at the Wedgewood Rooms, 147b Albert Road, Southsea, PO40JW.

And each one of those dates is a dream fulfilled as far as Mark is concerned.

“The thing is when I was 16, I wanted to be a performer. My first stand-up gig on the circuit was November 19 1985 in a pub called The White Hart (in Putney).

“I was very lucky. I went to Bretton Hall. It was a theatre arts college. My dad was very insistent that I went to university. He was delighted when I did but slightly conflicted when I told him that I was going to drama school. But I'd always wanted to do that from when I was 16. I remember going round Clapham Junction and walking into bars and asking if I could do a set in people's bars. They said no! But it's funny looking back on it.

“But for me the important thing is not looking back at 40 years. The more important thing is always thinking what am I going to do next. There is such an ephemeral nature to comedy. It's just you in the moment, a moment between you and the audience. It exists in that moment only. Sometimes you can do something on stage that you will never ever capture again. You just do something that is absolutely perfect in that moment. You can try to capture it and sometimes in some ways you can almost capture it but because stand-up is so ephemeral it really is gone when it's over. And I think that's why it's not a habit for stand-ups to look back. It’s really all about looking forward.”

But the fact is that the 1980s when Mark started were “very, very exciting times.”

“It was new. There were not many of us. There were only about 80 of us on the London circuit, and they were not all comedians. There were all sorts of acts, all sorts of alternative cabaret performers. And it was great fun.”

And the culture was political: “The gigs I saw then had a political dimension that does not exist in some ways now but more it was just an explosion of creativity, people doing things that you just couldn’t see on TV. People weren't going with an air of expectation but more an air of curiosity. People just didn't know what they were going to get and that's what was so exciting about it.”

And that's the attitude that Mark has carried forward: “I'm always wanting to do new stuff. That applies to me as a writer and a performer, in everything that I do.”

And filtering into it all now is the fact that he is a carer, alongside his sister, for their 91-year-old mum whom he gleefully describes as “the rudest woman in the world.”

“With my mum, you know that you're going to get all of the seven dwarfs but you just don't know what order you are going to get them in!”

As for his career, as Mark says: “I made a career built on burning bridges. If you've not got a CV that smells of wood smoke, I don't want to see you. I do what I want to do. It's about coming up with new ideas and new ways of working whether it's plays or whatever. There are always half a dozen new ideas that I've got going on – all on top of this show.” And the enjoyment is just as great as ever: “I wanted to be a performer when I was 16 and the fact that I'm still a performer now and have been for this long shows that I have won. As far as I'm concerned, I am literally living the dream. This is what I always wanted to do. I thought it might be unobtainable but maybe I thought I could get there, that it was perhaps just a little bit out of reach but I could try. There are lots of conflicting emotions when you start but the overriding thing is just ‘Let's have a laugh!’ and that's what I'm still doing!”