Mark Steel


Mark Steel is an English comedian, broadcaster, newspaper columnist and author. A stand-up comedian, he has made many appearances on radio and television shows as a guest panellist, and has written regular columns in The Guardian The Independent and Daily Mirror. He is perhaps best known for presenting The Mark Steel Lectures, The Mark Steel Solution and Mark Steel's in Town''.

Early life

Steel was adopted 10 days after he was born. His adoptive father worked in insurance and his mother was a housewife who supplemented the family's income through factory work and working as a lollipop lady. He had a close relationship with his adoptive parents. Steel later told UK newspaper The Guardians Veronica Lee:
I knew I was adopted, strangely, before I knew where babies came from. I didn’t feel different or special, and I don’t ever remember giving the slightest damn about it. I knew because my very lovely auntie Gwen would tell the story of how she got talking to a blonde girl, Frances, who had moved into a flat in the same house in London. She was 19. She was in a bit of a state because she was pregnant. Her parents didn’t know and she’d run away from home. It was 1959, so this wasn’t easy to deal with. So my auntie Gwen said to her, 'Well, I've got a solution. Have the baby and give it to my brother.' So this girl had me in 1960 and I was handed over to Doreen and Ernie.

He grew up in Swanley, Kent. Steel claims that he was expelled from school for attending a cricket course without permission: "I thought, fantastic! The punishment for not coming in is that I'm not allowed to come in." He traced his biological mother later in life but she said that she did not want to know him. She died soon after Steel attempted to contact her. He learned that she was from a Scottish working-class family with an active involvement in left-wing politics, and that she had subsequently married an Italian and lived in Rimini. She had met his biological father Joe Dwek at a party in London. Dwek was an Egyptian Sephardic Jew whose family left Egypt after Gamal Abdel Nasser became president in the 1950s. Dwek had subsequently become a multi-millionaire trader on Wall Street, as well as a successful professional backgammon player and the 1976 World Backgammon champion. He met Dwek only once, around 2006, after writing and emailing him, and arranging to meet in a London restaurant. In 2015, Steel told The Guardians Lee:
Members of the royal family used to visit Dwek's house in London and he hung out with millionaires, like John Aspinall and James Goldsmith, at the Clermont Club Just last night I discovered that five years ago he bought a house for $12m. He said he remembered Frances vividly but it was all a bit of a shock because he had made all the arrangements to have me dispensed with. But she took the money and didn't go through with it, bless her.

In the late 1970s his adoptive father suffered a mental breakdown and was placed into care at Stone House Hospital. Steel says that his first encounter with social injustice was when he saw how mentally ill patients were being treated in that hospital. The shabby conditions of the home reinforced Steel's political beliefs.

Career

Steel has given varying accounts of his early career: He became bored with constantly being asked how he had started in comedy and took to telling the questioner the first thing that came into his head. He is often described as having worked as a television repair man but confesses that he has no technical abilities. He worked the comedy circuit for several years, and has acknowledged that his comedic influences included Alexei Sayle. In 1992 Steel presented a satirical radio show The Mark Steel Solution on BBC Radio 5, consisting of half-hour monologues which offered solutions to social problems. It ran to four series. It's Not a Runner Bean, a comic autobiography, was published in 1996, and this led to a column in The Guardian which appeared between 1996 and 1999. According to Steel he was sacked because the newspaper wanted to "realign towards Tony Blair", though The Guardian denied this. In 2000 he started writing a weekly column for The Independent, which appears in the Thursday Opinion Column.
He has appeared regularly on Have I Got News For You, on Room 101, Mock the Week, the Graham Norton Show, and made several appearances on Question Time. Mark Steel's in Town has won a Sony Award, Writers' Guild Award, Chortle Awards and British Comedy Guide Awards. In 2014 he won the British Press Award for Broadsheet Columnist, for his column in The Independent.
He has written and performed several radio and television series for the BBC, and written several books including Reasons to Be Cheerful, Vive Le Revolution, an account of the French Revolution and It's Not a Runner Bean.
In 2015 he toured a show 'Who Do I Think I Am', about his adoption and tracing his biological parents. This was broadcast as a show on Radio 4.
In 2017, Mark was seen back on stage with his new show Every Little Thing’s Gonna Be Alright.

Personal life

Steel is a supporter of Crystal Palace F.C. and Kent County Cricket Club and enjoys watching both play on occasion. He was interviewed by Jonathan Agnew on Test Match Special during the South Africa series in 2008, giving an interview on his love of cricket.
He has a son, Elliot Steel, who is also a stand up comedian and a daughter from a relationship that ended in 2006. He was married to Natasha Steel until 2016, and from 2017 has been in a relationship with a presenter from French television station France 24.

Politics

During the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, when he was in his 20s, Steel's objections to society's injustices were vented by political protests, punk rock and poetry.
Viewing the Soviet Union as "sh*t", and as a state capitalist system rather than truly socialist, Steel joined the Socialist Workers Party He was present in Southall during the riot in which Blair Peach was killed.
In 2000, Steel took part in the London Assembly elections on behalf of the London Socialist Alliance in the Croydon and Sutton constituency; he received 1,823 votes.
In February 2013, Steel was among those who gave their support to the People's Assembly in a letter published by The Guardian newspaper. Steel spoke at a press conference to launch the People's Assembly Against Austerity on 26 March 2013 and regional public meetings in the lead up to a national meeting at Westminster Central Hall on 22 June 2013. Steel also gave a speech at the People's Assembly Conference in Westminster.
Prior to the 2015 UK general election, he was one of several public figures who endorsed the parliamentary candidacy of the Green Party's Caroline Lucas.

Radio and television

Radio

He has also contributed to or appeared on the following shows:
He also appeared in the following shows: