Mark Steel

Comedy review: Mark Steel - Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Mark Steel is a worried man. He's fretting about being in his 50s, which means he's getting ever closer to taking a cruise holiday and he's concerned that he now has a teenage son with his own ideas and, it seems, a promising talent for jokewriting.

Mark Steel's in... Leith

Mark Steel's In Town has come up to the fringe festival to record a one-off episode of the stand-up show - this time about the Edinburgh district of Leith, home of Irvine Welsh, the Proclaimers, and some of the most bonkers pubs in Christendom. Here's some of what we picked up along the way...

This can't be right. The comedic chronicler of small-town Britain tackling the majesty of Auld Reekie? But fear not, Mark Steel is not concerned with the tourists traps on the Royal Mile; he's down the road in Leith. It may now be considered part of Edinburgh, but it only became so in 1920 despite fierce opposition from the locals, and Steel will be casting his, er, steely gaze upon the unique characteristics of the area.

And unique it is: there's the pub where staff perform The Rocky Horror Show on the bar and a cycling shop that held a birthday party for a hole in the road. It should make for a lively show, as long as there's no mention of trams - Leithians hate the new tram project with a vengeance.

New panel game, the premise of which is to see how well the contestants know their nearest and dearest. Rachel Johnson, Des Lynam and Mark Steel will each nominate a chosen relative or friend to whom, privily, a list of questions will be put. Chairman Miles Jupp will then test the panel's knowledge by asking them to predict what answers the nominees gave. Sounds oddly similar, perhaps, to those old TV games that came with loud buzzers, manic studio audiences and major prizes. No prizes though for guessing this week's celebrity guest, Michael Winner.

It was a formula that could have easily have been as self-indulgent as Dave Gorman's pub quiz disaster, but thankfully the show had several redeeming features. Host Miles Jupp's convoluted links between rounds were so bizarre they were funny and the contrasting personalities of those taking part also proved to have comedy value.

Best of all was hearing the celebs second-guessing the answers given by friends and family and getting it wrong. Mark Steel's nerves might have been on edge every time it was his son's turn but it made for very funny radio. This was especially true when young Elliot was asked if he had a motto and replied: "never do it without an alibi".

Radio weekly #7 - Mark Steel's in Town

This week saw the return of the multi-award winning stand-up radio series Mark Steel's in Town, in which the socialist comic performs some specially tailored stand-up to the locals of a particular town.

Legend has it that when the Crimean War came to an end, Berwick-upon-Tweed - which, caught between England and Scotland, always had to be mentioned separately in legal documents - was left off the end of the Treaty of Paris, and so remained at war with Russia.

In 1966 the UK correspondent of Pravda travelled north to declare peace, but Mark Steel wrote to the Foreign Office to clarify matters anyway.

It responded: "If Berwick-upon-Tweed is at war with Russia they certainly haven't informed us."

It sounds as if they were entering into the spirit of Mark Steel's in Town, a jolly romp around places that are off the beaten comedy-gig track, in which he mugs up on the location and delivers a bespoke show. The third series kicked off in Berwick, whose split identity makes it an assured winner in the comedy department. It has switched allegiance 13 times, Steel reported. "The last time, the mayor said, 'Thank Christ for that - I couldn't stand another bloody Scottish winter.'"

It's not just an Anglo-Scots thing, he observed: it's Border Scots versus North-east England: "When you see salmon swimming up the Tweed, you must be unsure whether to sit on the riverbank, gently fishing for them, or wade through the river shouting, 'Who are you looking at, yer pink bastard?'"

I hope Steel wouldn't mind my saying, though, that for all his good work - and it is consistently the funniest programme on the radio - the best remark was from a local woman: "If Berwick was an animal I think it would be an octopus. Because it looks quite simple just lying here, but when it moves it moves in all directions."

This panel show is returning for its eighth series, the fourth to feature Victoria Coren as host. The series began with guests Mark Steel, Christopher Biggins and novelist Jessica Berens (whom I've never heard of).

For those not familiar with the show, in each programme the guests talk about a normally held assumption and argue against it. In this week's edition the statements they had to argue against were: "Pantomime is an outdated art-form,", "Drunken displays on our nation's streets are a sign of national shame," and "It would be nice to live in a house like Downton Abbey."

While Biggins is obviously passionate about pantomime, not surprisingly it was Steel who was the funniest on the programme, especially with his idea of doing a panto version of King Lear. Berens seemed to add little to the programme, though. Obvious solution - have more comedians and less novelists. Not much else to be said.

Mark Steel's In Town, by Mark Steel

Many books are compared to Priestley's English Journey but Steel is as perceptive as JB and far funnier.