Mark greets me at a cafe in the centre of Cardiff with suitcase and bags, ready for a quick chat before he jumps on the train to make his gig later that night. A ranting, energetic Welshman on-stage, I’m eager to meet the real Mark and find out whether that accent is actually real or not.
So, how’s the tour going so far?
“Its been really nice so far. I was worried I may be a little sick of the show by now because I’m doing a similar show every night but in fact I’ve really enjoyed it. It’s nice to get audiences that have come especially to see you instead of doing the club circuits the whole time. By the time Cardiff comes round it will be near the end of the show so I think I’ll have a little more umph for that show.”
Is it hard to keep your material fresh then?
“It is hard, yeah. The more it goes on the better you do it because it’s really polished, but at the same time it’s hard if it becomes boring to you – however funny it once may have been. I think the audience can sense if you’re just churning it out a bit. You see comedians all the time who are just doing their stuff; they’re still very proficient at it but it’s just not funny to them anymore.
With my show there’s stuff where audiences draw things out of the hat and it can go either way. That helps me to feel like I’m not just trudging through the same stuff.”
Do you ever improvise?
“I do [sometimes improvise]. Again it depends on the night. Sometimes you get an audience that just wants to be entertained which is fair enough but I’ve got bits where I play with the audience so it can often end up being quite improvised.”
Onstage you have quite a strong Welsh accent but it’s not strong at all now. Is your accent fake?
I play it up a bit on stage but also everything just gets more pronounced anyway.
It’s partly a conscious thing, partly not really. I am aware of it but I don’t strain for it. I suppose it’s part of how I differentiate between how I am offstage and how I am offstage. Onstage I’m much more energetic and excitable generally so it helps me to go into that mode if I’ve got a slightly different voice. My parents are Welsh but I’m from Bristol so I’m sort of half and half really.
Are you proud of your Welsh connections?
Absolutely, yeah. That’s why it doesn’t feel odd to me to be basically described as a Welshman. I mean if I was something that I just chose randomly, like a Zimbabwean or something then I couldn’t commit – I couldn’t possibly do it!
But [the Welsh accent] is so instinctive to me because I’ve heard it all my life but I think if you were actually trying to do a fake accent then it would be impossible but I don’t really feel like it’s a fake.
Are you the same person onstage as offstage?
It’s kind of is me onstage but exaggerated. My character onstage is quite ranting and sort of hyperactive and highly strung which is kind of what I’m like but a much more exaggerated and much more hysterical version of that. It’s all the things that I would want to say if I was like that in real life but I’m not. I store things up for my act.
Is doing stand-up quite liberating then, in a way?
It is for me, yeah. If I wasn’t a stand-up I think I’d probably be moaning a lot more in real life and be boring people a lot more! But by doing stand up I get the chance to get it out of my system without causing too much misery to other people! It’s nice to have a job where you can just go on and shout and complain about stuff and get things off your chest.
How do you come up with your material? Do you just write things down when they pop into your head?
Sometimes I write things down. I’ve got a little book which I’ve starting keeping recently because I’ve had thoughts before and then when you cant remember them it’s really frustrating! But I tend to just write tiny little notes. I never really write full jokes or anything. So even in a full show I’ve never got all of it written.
You used to be a writer, is that right?
My thing was to be a writer. I’ve written a couple of books – the second book comes out in August, Bullet Points. I didn’t actually see myself doing this. There was never a point where I thought ‘I’d like to be a comedian.’ I just thought ‘Maybe I’ll have a go at doing stand-up.’ I wouldn’t have thought it would be possible really because I didn’t know how you broke into the circuit. The first six months of a year I was just doing any gigs I got offered and I didn’t have a clue what I was doing.
And gradually you get a manager and get a sense of how it all works. I really just went into it thinking, ‘lets see how far I can push my luck’ and I still feel a bit like I’m doing that.
Do you prefer stand-up to writing and TV?
It depends. With writing books, or with TV there’s always a lot of other people involved. In fact just pure stand-up is the best thing because noone knows what you’re going to say except you – even you don’t know what you’re going to say! So it’s the one thing that you have total control over.
Do you try out material before you go onstage?
I never really do. I might say to my wife ‘I’m thinking of talking about this…’ but I never try out jokes. Some people will. Sometimes in dressing rooms people may say ‘What do you think of this?’ but I never do. Also you need the context of the actual performance. In a gig where all the audience are up for it and everything’s flowing that’s very different from just being in a room with somebody and saying ‘see if this makes you laugh.’
Have you had any nightmare interviews where someone has said ‘say something funny…’
Occasionally I’ve done live radio interviews and the DJ has said ‘so can you give us a sample of what our listeners can expect’ and you’ll think ‘well, no. Because the only way to do that is to do like half an hour or something and I don’t wanna do that…’ Also I once had a haircut and I don’t know how but the guy knew I was a comedian – maybe I stupidly mentioned it – and the guy was going ‘come on then, give us a joke, give us a joke!’ and because you’re just kind of trapped in this chair I was trying to change the subject saying ‘I don’t want to do a joke’ but in the end he said ‘I’m not cutting your hair until you do a joke.’ I can’t remember what I said, but it wasn’t very funny. He said ‘yeah, it needs a bit of work’ and we just sat there in silence. It was horrible! So now I don’t tell people I’m a comedian at all!
What motivates you? Is getting rich something you strive for?
I’m not really motivated by money as such. I’d rather have a following and be really well-regarded and just do alright financially rather than make a shit load of money and everyone not really rate you – I don’t see the point in that.
I’m sure if you do makes loads of money and people think you’re a tosser you can easily just not worry about that by going and living in a nice house and never seeing them again but I’d rather be sure that everything I did I was really proud of.
Finally, can you tell me about your marathon gig at the Edinburgh festival?
I did a 24 hour gig and then a 33 hour gig last year, no, the year before and then 36 last year! So a day and a half just talking! The 36 hour show was the longest show anyone’s ever done apparently! It was just me but I did have guests come in and the audience doing stuff but I’m on stage pretty much the whole time.
What gave you this idea?
I don’t know I just wanted to do something really unusual that noone else would really bother to do. That was in 2004 and I thought a 24 hour show would be a funny way of doing that.
Also physically I didn’t know if I would be able to do it and it’s quite fun doing stuff that you don’t know will work or not.
You surely didn’t write that much material…
No there was no way you can write something like that. It’s never really material based it’s just audience stuff, more an interactive community. Some people stayed for ages and they become like part of the show. So it becomes more like a big team effort really.
I’m doing something like that this year as well but it won’t be as long. I don’t want it to be really miserable for everybody!
