Mark Thomas

Work for Paines Plough: Ordinary Decent Criminal

Mark Thomas is 62 and is a comic, theatre maker and writer…. Oh and now actor.

Has won five Fringe Firsts awards, a Herald Angel award, Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award, Stage Special Contribution Award, The Howard Street Theatre Award, a Lustrum Award, Time Out Award for contribution to comedy, MISTY media activist award, UN Association Global Human Rights Defender Award, Kurdish Congress Medal of Honour, Sony Radio Award.

He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate and is a Doctor of Letters from Bradford Uni and in 2022 was awarded an Honorary Doctorate and is a Doctor of Arts from Kent University.

He appeared on 3 series of The Mary Whitehouse Experience radio show on Radio 1, Hosted LooseTalk topical comedy show on Radio 1 for 3 series, Ran his own show The Manifesto show for 3 series on Radio 4

TV show The Mark Thomas Comedy Product ran for 6 series on Channel 4, during which the show cost more than 1 MP their career, exposed corruption in Department of Trade and Industry deals, put an arms dealer in jail, changed tax law in the U.K. and arms control in Europe; and bet an entire shows budget on a horse.

He has written 6 books and had four play scripts published.

Has performed his shows at the National Theatre on three occasions.

Walked the entire length of the Israeli wall, wrote and performed about the experience.

Set up a comedy club in a refugee camp on Jenin in the West Bank, a project that is still running and aims to create a comedy circuit in Palestine.

He wrote and performed a play about the Palestinian club which toured the UK featuring two Palestinian performers, Faisal and Alaa.

Has curated 2 art exhibitions, one of which appear in Venezuela.

He has given evidence before Parliamentary Select Committees on three occasions.

He has taken the police to court four times, won three, the fourth is pending in Europe. Also won compensation from Met- twice. For wrongful stop and search and curtailing right to protest.

He was spied upon by BAE Systems which was proven in court and wrote an award winning show about it.

He won £10,000 of compensation from the Construction Blacklist companies including Skanska, Balfour Beatty, McAlpine and Taylor Woodrow.

He held the world record for most political demonstrations in a day and has a Guinness Book of World Records certificate to prove it!

Helped unionise the Curzon cinema chain.

He was a columnist at the New Statesman for four years.

Ran the Ilisu Dam Campaign for three years targeting dam building in the Kurdish region of Turkey.

Took UK government to court twice, once over the Iraq war and once when serious fraud office collapsed the investigation into bribery between Saudi Arabia and BAE systems. The later case resulted in a victory only to be overturned by the Supreme Court.

He has three children.