2012 Edinburgh Fringe

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After walking the wall in the West Bank, becoming Guinness World Record holder for political protests, and chasing arms dealers around the country, one of Britain's most acclaimed comics and influential activists, Mark Thomas, turns his attention to matters closer to home with a show about his father.

First commissioned by London's prestigious Royal Opera House, Bravo Figaro! is the true tale of Mark's father, a self-employed builder with a passion for opera, his degenerative illness, progressive supranuclear palsy, and Mark's attempt to put an opera on in a bungalow in Bournemouth. It is about love, death, fathers and sons, and the search for peace in an imperfect world, with a few gags thrown in for luck.

Mark's biography is simply too long to list in detail on one little press release, so let's sum up... six series on Channel 4, numerous awards, several television documentaries, three books, a Guinness World Record, sell-out tours, a published manifesto, a series on Radio 4, writing for various publications, producing charity benefits, a Medal of Honour, secretly filming torturers, stinging arms dealers, battling multinational corporations, exposing abuses of civil liberties and corporate skulduggery, and succeeding in changing some laws. These are just a few of the things that have kept him mildly busy over the last few years.