Mark Thomas will spend the next three months criss-crossing the country with his new show Gaffa Tapes.

With more than 60 dates before Christmas and a whole lot more in 2025 he’s clearly making up for having been away from stand-up for some time.

Mark Thomas (Artwork by Tracey Moberly)

“I’m quietly surfacing on to the world,” he said. “It has been a while since I did proper, straight stand-up. The ting is stand-up is an absolute monster; you have to rule it with a rod of iron or it will rise up and kill you. You can’t just wander back on stage and go ‘OK, I’m ready now’.

“So once I’d got the tour in the diary, I gave myself four months to do 100 gigs wherever I could. I did whatever I could get from new material nights, to shows where you didn’t get paid or where there was a bucket collection at the end.

“Like any job, you can’t just walk straight back into it. You have to train and get match fit and I’ve got to say I’ve really enjoyed coming back and going ‘how do we do this again’.”

Mark incisive mind and readiness to tilt at windmills wherever he may find them have led to him being described as’ the godfather of political comedy’.

With a career spanning almost 40 years and numerous awards, he’s also one of the original alternative comedians whose live shows can be a mix of withering observations, hilarious put downs and intellectual debate.

And there’s every indication that that heady mix will continue with the Gaffa Tapes tour.

“One of big criticisms if you do political comedy is that people say you are just preaching to the converted,” he said. “That is just a nonsense. Have we taken a census of the audience beforehand? Do we know exactly what everyone in that room is thinking? Of course not.

“I did a warm-up gig where someone said I was talking rubbish. When I asked them why they said they were a Trump supporter and that everything the media was saying was lies.

“They certainly weren’t ‘the converted’.

Mark Thomas     (Picture: Tony Pletts)

“When you’re doing a show the question is not ‘what are you going to talk about?’ You’re always going to things you want to say and ideas to discuss.

“What is interesting for me about stand up is that each night it gets to be different. There’s new material, the audience is different - you should be aiming for something unique each might; it’s not a recital this is more jazz.

“There is a set list of sorts but just that can go up in the air and you can talk about anything.

“I find that really exciting, it’s thrilling.”

Sometimes audience members will take exception to what Mark is saying

“I can count the number of gigs when I’ve not heckled on one hand,” he said. “There is always going to be something that someone says. You can deal with it differently; you can creatively remove the obstruction and just move on or there are other times when you think ‘here we go, we’ve got an idea here - let’s run with this’. That’s great fun.”

Mark is returning to stand-up after performing in the one-man play England and Son which was written for him by Ed Edwards.

“It was a brilliant play, it won six awards, we took it to Australia and there’s talk of us taking it to New York,” he said. “It’s clearly a very good piece of work - and yet it made no money.

“People say it must take confidence to get back up there doing stand-up. Having nothing in the bank, that’s what makes you get up there; that’ll concentrate the mind.”

This sparks a whole conversation about the slack of funding for the arts which in typical Mark Steel fashion includes references to Keynesian economics, politicians getting ‘freebies’ and the cost of living crisis.

“I find it really annoying when short-sighted and bigoted people go ‘we’re not going to fund the arts’ Don’t they realise how much the arts contributes to this country?

“We just need a commitment for funding for the arts and for arts in school.

“If those in the arts were defence contractors they’d have deals for us. If we were selling stuff that goes bang, yet makes a relatively small contribution to economy we would get far more money.

“There are people who support arts but they are few and far between.”

With so many inequalities in the world which help provide much of the content of his shows, would Mark swap his career for a time when injustices were not so common place.

“Sadly there will always be things to talk about,” he said. “In a perfect world you wouldn’t need to. I’d be sitting in a hammock. But the perfect world doesn’t exist.”

So as long as there are rights to be wronged and opinions to be changed, Mark is quite happy to once again hit the road acting as a conscience for his audience - and bringing plenty of laughs long the way.

“I enjoy travelling by train,” he said. “It gives you time to think and read. It’s a beautiful thing to have a book in your pocket.”

Mark Thomas plays Chorley Theatre on Wednesday; Darwen Library Theatre on Thursday; the Lowther Pavilion, Lytham on Saturday and The Lowry, Salford on Sunday. Details from www.markthomasinfo.co.uk