IN HIS latest show, 50 Things About Us, comedian Mark Thomas takes a trawl through some of the lesser known aspects of UK history and culture in an attempt to discern the reasons for Britain's Brexit-era identity crisis.
Billed as 'a show about money, history, songs, gongs, wigs, unicorns, guns, bungs, sods of soil and rich people, in the vein of The Manifesto-meets-sweary History Channel', the London agitator was still tinkering with its content when I spoke to him last week in advance of his Belfast date at The Black Box on February 9.
"It's been developing," Thomas said in the wake of his work-in-progress shows for the current tour. "Things always change in the show. I always add things in, things always come up that you didn't know about – I found out the other day that we're the only country in the world that doesn't have its name on the stamps. Everywhere else does, but in Britain we just think 'ah, bung the Queen on – everyone knows her.'
"I mean, it's not even a picture of her, it's a silhouette. It's like she's giving testimony at the Bloody Sunday inquiry."
This is precisely the kind of quirky fact that audiences can expect to learn from 50 Things About Us, which takes a humorous approach to scrutinising a serious issue: why has Britain gone so wrong?
"If you look at how we've got to here, it's about English nationalism," Thomas explained. "Northern Ireland didn't vote for Brexit, Scotland didn't and the Welsh-speaking part of Wales didn't. Having created the Union, English nationalism is now in danger of destroying it."
A regular visitor to Ireland north and south from the late 1980s right up to the present day, Thomas has a particular fondness for Northern Ireland and Belfast in particular.
"I think you can tell a lot about England by its relationship with the north," he told me. "And, I'll be honest with you, I think most people in England regard Northern Ireland as 'them', not 'us'. It's only in times of crisis when Teresa May reaches out to the DUP that 'them' become 'us' – but they're still 'them', really.
"I adore Belfast. One of the amazing things about it is that it's a wonderfully rich and complex city that has the most brilliant down-to-earth stories in it. Last time I was over, your election campaign was going on. A cabbie told me that a mate of his had been campaigning with John Finucane. He said that every other door he knocked on they were asking him if he wanted to come in and use the toilet. I just find that hysterical.
"What's really fascinating is when you go somewhere like the Shankill Women's Centre, which is doing this amazing work. Proper community work. I love is that everything isn't as binary as people like to make out.
"I love the fact that the DUP don't represent the loyalist community and the loyalist community is a wonderfully different fractured thing. Likewise, I love the fact that Sinn Féin are not the solitary representatives of the nationalist community.
"Tim McGarry was explaining to me the other day that the Irish language was kept alive by Presbyterians – which I think is just absolutely brilliant. They thought 'well, we have to convert the Catholics so we'd better speak the language'."
The comedian is also tickled by the fact that Irish nationalists are enjoying the fact that Brexit has put the prospect of a vote on Irish reunification back on the political agenda for the first time in years.
"I tell you, there's going to be rebel songs about Boris," he laughed. "I met an old sticky who was telling me that he has no love for Boris – 'but by God, let him get on with it'. And that's fascinating. The fact that there are Irish language courses being run out of the Shankill is fascinating. I love that.
"I remember talking to people about the complexities of a border poll, because one will be called at some point. I think that's becoming inevitable. But what you don't need is a Brexit type result – you need a big clear win, because a big clear win will take everyone."
Speaking to Thomas in the run-up to 'B Day' on Friday January 31, I asked him how optimistic he was feeling about what comes next for his home nation in the wake of Brexit.
"I'm always an optimist in that I think that human beings always have a good way of trying to help each other," he mused. "It's quite instinctive, really. Racism is something you really have to work at, which is why Farage and the Express and the Mail did that.
"There's a wonderful article written by a Dutchman who lived here for years and was passionate about Britain being in Europe: after Brexit, he suddenly came to realise that, actually, Britain needs to leave – for Europe's sake, so it can get on instead of having this psychodrama and so that Britain can go away and heal itself and work out what it is.
"There's a really interesting thing now where Britain now has to fix itself. It's not a matter of 'optimism' – it's a matter of recovery."
:: Mark Thomas, Sunday February 9, The Black Box, Belfast. Tickets via Blackboxbelfast.com
