Interview with comedian, author and columnist Mark Steel

Interview I did last week with Mark. He was brilliant fun. Very engaging and I am looking forward to seeing his show in Leicester next month.

Text of interview follows.

So, Mark, have you recovered from panto season, er the General Election campaign (can't think why I get those two things muddled!)

I went to a panto this year because my mum (she is her 90s) was down at Christmas and we took her to see one and I was really disappointed. I really wanted them to get us all singing and shouting 'where's the monster?' - it's behind you; but they didn't seem to try.They just half-heartedly shuffled about.

A mate was telling me about one he went to where the actors were clearly so bored and had clearly all fallen out with each other and there was a panto cow in it, wandering about and then went off, and the main man, quite a well-known actor came on and a child shouted: 'Where's the cow? I want the cow.” and the actor said: 'He's gone to see a man named Fray Bentos', which was harsh. I expect the poor kid will be in therapy now as we speak and for years to come.

The election? Well that wasn't the result I preferred but about an hour after the exit poll, I'd sort of come to the terms that we sort of knew it was going to be Boris, and for about a year beforehand I suspected so. And Labour, I don't know. In the past parties have been unpleasantly nastily awful but with Labour this time, they were just hopeless.

The result will have longer-term ramifications, do you feel your own message, as well as Labour's, whatever is might be, has relevance in the wake of this result?

I think that comics, strangely, because especially when we start out, we have to get out there and be popular for at least 20 minutes, You sort of get a sense how to try and engage with people. I see politicians and think they are just rubbish. They try to joke and they are awful, they they say stuff that makes no sense at all. God forbid that comics should rule the world, but can they not learn to say things that at least sound plausible?

The trouble is they get media trained to within an inch of their lives, though, which makes them sound mechanical, no?

One of the reasons Jeremy Corbyn was so popular for significant periods when he first became leader and again around and shortly after the 2017 election – and of course history will now forget that he ever was - is that he didn't look like a normal politician and hadn't undergone all that media training so he would answer questions directly. But then maybe he fell into it and was the worst of all worlds, trying to sound like a media-trained person and not being himself. When you hear them trying to be cute and say 'Let me be clear', I feel like tying them in a sack and tossing them into a canal. They then go on to be completely unclear.

Interesting to hear you say about comics ruling the country, at least you have done your bit to hold them to account on Question Time.

I suppose it is the case that perhaps the only weapon we have left is ridicule because reason sure as hell isn't working. It is very difficult now, we have gone the full Trump. It is so uncannily similar and that is deliberately so. Johnson has copied Trump and has learned all the rules of politics of things you can't say or do because it would finish your career no longer apply. You could be caught siphoning public money to some woman you fancy, be taped on the phone saying you can get someone beaten up – things that would have ended careers 20 years ago. You could be caught lying utterly barefaced, as they do now with no consequences.

Indeed, the Christine Keeler drama on ITV, highlighting the downfall of War Minister John Profumo essentially for lying as much as anything else, shows how far standards in politics have fallen. He not only had to go but that was his career in public life done for.

That is a very good observation, I have been watching it and I thought exactly that. If that had happened today with Profumo, it just would not have mattered. Same when Jeffrey Archer was caught out paying off a prostitute £2,000 at a railway station. He wouldn't have to bother now. But you have to find a way of combatting that. I know everything is against Labour press-wise but they have to accept that. It's like after the football, if the manager spends the whole interview moaning about the referee, I always think, 'you're not very good'. You have to deal with that.

I've spoken to people In a few places since the election and they have said how they were lifelong Labour supporters who voted Tory 'for a change' and I wondered where they had been for nine nears. How does that happen?

That is amazingly common story. Voting for a change form a government we have had for a decade. This is an extraordinary trick they have pulled to convince people that if you want a change, to vote for the thing there already is, against someone campaigning for the biggest changes in 70 years. But also I heard so many people say they could not vote for Corbyn but you ask them why and they have no answer. Even my mum did it. She'd say, 'I don't know, I just can't stand him.' Labour's press strategy was just to ignore the press, just lay there and be kicked and that's no good. I know people, including my missus who works for TV and they were desperately trying to get Labour people on and they just never got an answer. You have to at least put up a fight.

You start your tour on February 1 in Henley, which is about as Tory as it gets. It is also the day after Brexit. In boxing parlance, they'd say that was leading with your chin. How do you expect that one to go?

It will be lovely in Henley. A beautiful theatre, a beautiful place and in fact the places you think might be resolutely right wing, you go there and they are really nice. There is a divide but it is not that divide. I don't want my audience to be just left-wing remainers, but the EU divide has straddled both main parties. A cultural divide has opened up, too. I know a comic from Blyth in the North East who has regular shows there and the working men's club has a food bank that he set up as part of the gig. It is an area that went from red to blue and he was depressed but the gig was brilliant, so much fun, yet very different from Henley.

Your In Town shows on Radio 4 are great. You poke fun at the places in a way that seems to resonate with the audiences. Where would you like to go with it next?

We are currently having a discussion at the moment about a new series in a few weeks and whether they could afford to send us to the Scilly Isles, so that says a lot about the budget we have! I know some people who come to my shows are fans of my newspaper columns and I sometimes worry that people read that and come along expecting a 90-minute TED talk about the state of the Hungarian economy or something. Instead, I'm jumping about doing things in stupid voices! What I like is people say it's sort of warm and stuff and that is what it is aiming to be, really. Through the process of being as rude as possible about these places, there is an affection underneath.

What about the mechanics of writing a show. Have you written your tour material, polishing it or will you ad lib some at each place?

I'm not chipping away – I'm still nipping down to B&Q getting the material! You always have to keep coming up with new things or people won't come back to see you again. But also for your own peace of mind. There is never enough time to put it together. I think when a show is going well, one sign is that at a certain point there should be such a relaxed atmosphere that people feel comfortable, maybe calling stuff out. I really like that when you are an hour and a half in and it it's fun and it can be quite intimate really. At first, when I started doing theatres and I'd think, 'oh, this isn't like the clubs with just 80 people and you have a stage where two steps either way and you are in amongst them,' but there is a way you can make a theatre just as intimate. Perhaps I am just getting used to it. Then you can improvise.

Do you have any comics you like to watch?

I saw Al Murray the other day and his opening 20 minutes when he is just going round the audience is brilliant. Whatever anyone says, he will instantly take them on.

And what of Derby? Do you know the place? We have Wayne Rooney now?

I saw him the other day – the FA Cup game at Crystal Palace. You just find yourself drawn to him. Even if he wasn't famous, you'd go, 'well that bloke is just everywhere'. Yet he probably didn't run that far, but just always seemed to know where the ball was going to be and then he would just ping it 30 yards right to the perfect place, he was so good. Derby looked good value for the win but we didn't have Wilf Zaha, then had our captain sent off which was a bit of a disaster. Rooney could still play in most Premier League teams, playing like that – even Man United. He probably wouldn't last 90 minutes, mind.

Has football ever got you in trouble, because I read that you were expelled from school over cricket – bunking school to go to a week's coaching course?

Not football, but cricket for sure. I got expelled. But 20 years or so after that I was talking to someone who was from Essex and they said their son wanted to go to a coaching course, which was the case with me all that time ago with Kent. He said public schools' holidays start a week earlier than state schools and so the course is set up to coincide with public schools' breaks. It never occurs to them that it makes it impossible for state school kids to take part. I thought, 'oh that's why the course was that week'. I was already aware at that point that life was unfair in that direction but this confirmed it. You can see why there are more ever public school kids in the English game. I hope the Ben Stokes phenomenon might change things a little bit. He is astonishing – we've had nothing like him since Ian Botham.

Mark Steel's Every Little Thing's Going to be Alright tour – in which he promises to make the world 'sound more mental than it is' – plays The Curve in Leicester on Saturday February 8 (tickets 0116 242 3595 or curveonline.co.uk) and Derby Theatre on Sunday, February 2 (01332 5939 39 or derbytheatre.co.uk, from £15.50).

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