Comedian Mark Steel on the rant in Newbur y
IF you’ve heard Mark Steel’s in Town on BBC radio – when he visits places across the UK, meets the locals, and creates a stand-up show for them about the town – you’ll know just how funny and spontaneous this stand-up comedian and writer is.
So now he is on the road with his new show An Evening and A Little Bit of a Morning With Mark Steel and heading for Newbury’s Corn Exchange.
“There is so much to yell about,” he says. “There’s the modern world in which you spend so long trying to work out iTunes, that it’s easier to form a band and learn the songs. “But there’s also so much to be delighted with. Like the fact that everyone in Northampton knows the sign that says ‘Family Planning Advice – Use Rear Entrance’.
“Then there’s the crazy story of being brought up in a working
class street in Kent, to discover my natural father was a millionaire backgammon player who was best mates with Lord Lucan.
“I’ve come to terms with the fact
I’m a heap of contradictions, trying to stay young while being unable to log into any website. Trying to be respectable and mainstream
(in this show there will even be a piano and a bit of singing) until I can’t help breaking into a steaming rant that would get me locked away somewhere secure if it wasn’t on a stage.”
And this is stand-up, so whatever has happened in the room, in the town or in the world that day will almost certainly be in the show.
“I’ll try to keep it to a decent length, but it could so easily end up as an evening and part of the next day.”
An Evening and A Little Bit of A Morning reaches the Corn Exchange on Saturday, September 10. https://cornexchangenew.com/
The critically acclaimed Mark Steel’s in Town was voted the sixth best radio comedy ever and Mark is a regular on the BBC’s Have I Got News For You, QI and BBCR4’s News Quiz. He has been named newspaper columnist of the year and is author of the award-winning audiobook