Mark his words: Hot Press meets Mark Thomas

“I don’t think I’m rebellious,” declares Mark Thomas. “I want to do things because I think they’re right. If you just do things to be rebellious, then you’re a contrarian.”

Thomas may not see himself as a rebel. Still, he’s certainly never been short of a cause. Now 50, the London-born comedian, writer and political activist has poked his inquisitive snout into enough dark corners over the years to cause a politician to resign, arms deals to collapse, reform inheritance tax, force the odd multinational to clean up its act a little, and accidentally become a Guinness World Record holder for political protests.

“I do things because I think they’re right,” he repeats. “That’s that. I don’t have an idea of crossing or transgressing boundaries as a matter of principle. I have a principle that we should do things because we're human beings. We have rights to do things, and we should assume we have a right until we're told we shouldn’t. Until we are told to stop. So I don’t regard myself as rebellious.

“One of the things I did a while ago was walk the length of the Israeli barrier on the West Bank [for 2011 show, Extreme Rambling: Walking the Wall],” he continues. “And somebody asked me did I have permission from the Israeli authorities. Why on earth would I do that? Why would I seek permission for something I have a right to do? As soon as you go and say to someone, ‘Do you mind if I do this?’, there's somebody that will go, ‘Yeah, fuck it, I might do’. Why would I go and talk to people who are likely to say ‘no’?”

Of course, even if they did say ’no’, there’s absolutely no guarantee that Thomas would take it for an answer. Following his critically acclaimed, award-winning and deeply personal theatre show Bravo Figaro about his difficult relationship with his opera loving, builder father, he’s back to doing what he does best: subversively shit-stirring.

On May 13, 2013, Thomas set himself the task of committing 100 Acts of Minor Dissent in the space of a year and, on the stroke of midnight on May 13, 2014, the task will end.

“The show is very simple,” he explains. “In part it was in reaction to me having done Bravo Figaro, which was a very personal show, a lot more personal than previous. Then my dad passed last April. The idea of doing the new show after that was, as much as anything, a reaction to that. It’s like, let’s just get out there and have some fun, 'cause a bit of mayhem.”

How far into it are you now? “I’ve done 58,” he says. “We’re behind schedule, and it worries me like hell. Because I’ve said that if I succeed, we'll do one show and one show only, documenting all 100 acts. Which would be at The Leadmill in Sheffield on May 15. And then all the art works and stuff, the making of the show, will go to an exhibition
in Sheffield. If I fail, I have to donate £1,000 to the UKIP.”

Are these dissenting acts all planned out in advance, or are you making it up as you go along? “There’s a certain amount of making it up as I go along,” he admits. “There's some work of plotting it out. Sometimes you just go, ‘Oh, let’s do that!’ And other times you go, ‘Oh, this is a good idea’. And it turns out to be a bad idea. Then you go, ‘Oh, we should do it this way’. They evolve and mutate, which is fun.”

Last June, as one of his earliest dissenting acts, Thomas organised an Irish flashmob to descend on the Apple Store on Regent Street in London. The idea was to protest the fact that Apple route most of their European profits through their Irish HQ, thereby avoiding paying tax in the UK.

A large tricolour-bearing crowd entered the shop, led by a group of fiddlers playing ‘The Irish Rover’. Meanwhile, thanks to some neat hacking, all of the shop’s computer monitors displayed the message: “APPLE. iDODGE TAX.” A moment later, they switched to: “You can buy the SAME products at the SAME prices at John Lewis around the corner and THEIR MD SLAMS tax avoidance.”

“Apple were severely displeased,” he laughs. “It ended up being reported all over the place. I ended up doing a lot of interviews for radio stations on tax avoidance. And I remember talking to someone from a Boston station the day after. He said, ‘Tell me, do you think you’ve had any impact with your flashmob event? How far have you reached?’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m talking to you in Boston, mate!’

“So the power of the internet, the actual ability to communicate across thousands of miles is really interesting. And I think it raises the flag to say it’s one of those things that companies can’t expect to get away with, something like tax avoidance. This is a major issue here, and in Ireland, and all across the world.”

What do you feel is your greatest achievement? “Well, I’m sitting here full of cold so my greatest achievement today is getting up out of bed just managing to get up and walk around the house. I don’t know, really. You do stuff and it goes well and you go, ‘Hooray!’, and you do stuff where it goes shit and you go, ‘Oh blimey, I better not do that again!’”

What’s your greatest ambition then? “I’m not sure that I have any ambitions left,” he avers, after a pause. “You know somebody asked me the other day have you got anything on your bucket list and I was like – ‘What do you mean bucket list?’ These are just things that we should do. I think that we should lead our lives the way we want to lead them, you know. I ended up walking the length of the Israeli barrier. I’m not sure swimming with dolphins really features after that.”

Mark Thomas will be performing 100 Acts of Minor Dissent at Roisin Dubh, Galway (April 2); Liberty Hall, Dublin (3); An Grianan Theatre, Letterkenny (4) and The Playhouse, Derry (5).