As Used On The Famous Nelson Mandela - Mark Thomas

[mathare]

As an employee of the arms trade (sort of, although my current employers don't specialise in defence work anywhere near as much as my old employers) I thought this book by Mark Thomas would be an interesting read and I wasn't wrong. Mark Thomas has long been a favourite of mine and his stuff on Channel 4 over the years has been brilliant. His latest book is a typical example of his hard-hitting political activism and humour.

Read about him pretending to work in PR and 'educating' foreign dictators on how they should behave when Amnesty International start asking awkward questions and in doing so getting them to admit to torture and human rights violations. Follow the progress of the arms dealership he sets up with a group of schoolkids and how easily they are able to buy illegal arms and have them shipped to enbargoed countries. See what the goverment is doing about it all and how they are protecting one of the countries biggest arms companies (and my former employers :yikes:).

If you've not come across Mark Thomas before you're missing out. He's very different to any other comedian on the circuit. He doesn't tell jokes. He recounts his tales of political activism and makes you think, but he's amusing too. He likes to embarrass politicians into action and it works.

A recent article in the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1920095,00.html) will help give you a flavour of what he's all about.

[markwales]

Mark Thomas has long been a favourite of mine.

Why thank you :D

I thought this thread was about me for a sec :yikes:

Yes, I'm Mark Thomas

[vegyjones]

Doesn't he also run a very good Racing Simulator? :doh

[mathare]

I knew I'd get responses like this :rolleyes:

[Fadetoblack]

Ironically, I've just finished this book. Used to like the Mark Thomas Comedy Product

[mathare]

Ironically, I've just finished this book. Used to like the Mark Thomas Comedy ProductWhat did you think of the book?

[vegyjones]

Makes a good stool prop!

[Fadetoblack]

To be honest I was surprised by it. In a good way. It's a very serious and eye opening subject but it helps that Mark is such a likable guy. Brave guy too.

[mathare]

To be honest I was surprised by it. In a good way. It's a very serious and eye opening subject but it helps that Mark is such a likable guy. Brave guy too.It really surprised me too. I was staggered at how easily he was able to get hold of contraband and have it shipped to Zimbabwe and so on. He is a brave chap, I agree. But he is very well connected with the underground (no Vegy, not the tube) and seems to have a lot of friends on both sides of the demonstrations and so on. I think it helps a lot that he goes about things in the right way in the eyes of the law and so on but in doing so he highlights a lot of flaws in the system.

Take an example from the Guardian article. He filed applications for licences to legally protest in London and in doing so was told by the police that this would mean a lot of paperwork from them. Mark agreed and acknowledged this fact and indeed one of his demonstrations was to reduce the amount of police paperwork.

He is a very bright guy and obviously has a good team behind him looking to expose many of the daft political loopholes that currently exist.

[Onlyforfun]

I liked his TV programme, was sometimes a bit hit and miss, loved it when he crashed a tree-huggers demo in Crystal Palace protesting about the potential building of a cinema that would have meant a few scraggy trees next to the bus station being chopped down and he took over one of the megaphones and started shouting "DOWN WITH TREES" and so on.

On the other hand I saw him live in Balham and he came across as an angry student, very disappointing.

[Onlyforfun]

Just read the article and I can honestly say its the first time I've found anything intentionally funny in the moth bitten rag - I just hope the book is as good. :)

[Onlyforfun]

He must be spitting today after the BAe slush fund decision. Personally I think it was the right decision, but from a so called Labour government?!?!?

The book on the other hand, at 350 pages is about 250 too long.

[mathare]

Not seen the BAE thing, what's happened?

[Onlyforfun]

Thats because it was buried among yesterdays bad news.

BAe allegedly had a £70million slush fund used to bribe Saudi Princes with cars, hookers etc. The SFO investigated for 2 years, but when the Saudis said, "'ang on a mo' guv'nor, cancel the enquiry or we'll cancel our multi billion Eurofighter order" guess what happened.