Bring an extra plate when you come and hear Mark Thomas’s Christmas special

COMEDIAN Mark Thomas is, by his own admission, a little distracted when we talk. He’s busy in his kitchen making a festive treat for his audiences.

“I’m doing the final scoring of my homemade mince pie baklava which the audience get when they come in,” he says. “It’s made with pistachio, almonds, layers of filo pastry, covered in butter individually and then layered up with a vegetarian mince pie filling the middle, all mixed up with orange zest, then put in the oven and cooked for an hour, then finished with a brandy and sugar glaze.

“This isn’t a mince pie, it’s an act of love.”

You don’t get that at a Jim Davidson gig. Then again, Mark Thomas is not your average comedian. He’s a sublime storyteller with a gift for conveying complex situations in just a few deft strokes. And the sharing of his culinary skills is one part of his new show, An Extra Plate.

It’s coming to South Street Arts Centre on Thursday, December 30.

He says that he loves Christmas – singles, films, carols, decorations, presents and the food. And he also loves stories.

The show features tales such as when his Dad was Santa at the school fair, the Christmas spent alone, the unexpected guests and the broken hearts.

But he says the show is also about sharing, celebrating, and finding hope in the darkest times of the year.

“What makes Christmas special is the combination of family rituals,” he says. “Every family has their own, a combination of riches unique to families, some common for all of us.

“What’s great is that we just take it, we go right, okay, we’re gonna have a good laugh … everything is about being over the top, and going overboard. We’ve had enough of the misery, enough of the winter.

“That’s what makes Christmas for me.”

And, he adds while washing up the mixing bowl, “it’s about the people about the centre of it. It’s about being with the people that we love. This tradition of sharing and welcoming all are things that press my buttons.”

The food is a large part of that. Mark has travelled extensively, meeting people in some of the poorest and deprived parts of the world. One such time was when he stayed in a refugee camp in the Sahara, a shanty town home to 250,000 people since 1974.

“People with the least seem willing to share the most,” he says of the hospitality he received, recalling the homes made of tents and mud but full of love. Making a cup of tea was like brewing a coffee but everyone wanted to offer him one.

“Once, we walked around the camp early in the morning and this family just invited us in. All they had was flat bread and jam, that was it, but they wanted to share it,” he says.

A similar thing happened to him in Palestine, in a Bedouin village, a shanty town made of corrugated iron, with no running water and no permanent roads, just tracks.

“When I’d finished interviews, a family came and sat down on something like a porch, a stoop on a shack like the front of a blues album cover. They sat me down and brought out an art deco cup and saucer to serve coffee. I had to take a photo of it because they were serving their best China to me.

“You really get this all over the place. People forget how generous we can be.”

He continues: “You have to mount some fierce ideological propaganda to get us to turn against our natural instincts (to help others).”

Mark cites lifeboat rescues as an example of communities coming together, putting their own lives at risk to help others in danger.

“It’s a brilliant example of how we naturally are as human beings. We do actually go the extra mile, we do care about our communities, we do want to help each other. Those are really great things, they’re not unusual things, they’re common things,” he says.

“One of the positives to come out of lockdown is the realisation of how much we need each other … Christmas is an example of tradition, and it gives us a chance to find each other again, to see how we’ve changed. This is a rebellious time; people forget how rebellious Christmas is. You’ve literally had the darkest day of the year, the day with the least sunlight has occurred a couple of days in advance.

“It’s the day we decided to have our biggest party, that in itself is a rebellious and wonderful thing.”

Mark is looking forward to returning to South Street next week, praising its recent makeover.

“It’s one of those venues that really punches above its weight, and I think a lot of people in Reading appreciate it,” he says. “It’s remarkable in what it does, and it’s such a beautiful place. It’s one of my favourite venues.”

He’s also aware of its heritage, being Reading’s former job centre. “It’s a gorgeous venue and I’d like to thank that centre for providing me with the means of keeping away from the labour exchange.”

He chuckles. But then again, if Mark’s career as a stand-up ever does grind to halt, just one taste of his mince pie baklava and you can tell he could retrain not in cyber, but in cooking. n Mark Thomas: An Extra Plate takes place at South Street Arts Centre on Thursday, December 30 from 7.30pm. Tickets cost £17 or £15 for members. Date, and baklava subject to any change in covid restrictions introduced. For more details, or to book, call the box office on 0118 960 6060 or log on to www. whatsonreading.com