Radio Weekly #7 – Mark Steel’s in Town
Radio Weekly With Ian Wolf
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.
As this is a website dedicated to comedy north of Manchester, I’ve decided to devote this week’s column to the show, as the first episode takes place in the most northern of English towns (unless you believe it is part of Scotland), Berwick-upon-Tweed. I’ve been there and it looks like a nice place; although admittedly the last time I was there it was just for a few seconds – I got on the wrong train in Newcastle Central station when I was meant to be going to Darlington.
Not surprisingly, the arguments about the town being either English of Scottish is one of the main themes running through the show. Berwick has swapped between England and Scotland 13 times. While the town officially resides in England, the local football club plays in the Scottish league; some Scottish ministers want to return to Scotland, too…and the place is surrounded by huge walls. To quote Steel, Berwick is: “The most heavily fortified place in the world, relative to what it has to protect.”
Steel seems to reveal in the historical side of the town, and the history of the town has been especially bloody. He highlights, for example, that one local history book has a chapter called “The Golden Years”, which is mainly about torturing – and that poaching was once widespread in the area.
However, there are also present day issues. For example, Steel talks about the supposed extreme sport of walking across the A1 Bridge, and the controversial issue of putting barriers on the Lindesfarne causeway.
Most of the show was very entertaining, although I do feel that that there is one issue that needs to be highlighted. Namely the urban myth which Steel repeated about Berwick and Russia being at war for 160 years because of the wording of the treaties during the Crimean War, and the “fact” that it was not resolved until the mayor of Berwick signed a peace treaty in 1966. It should be pointed out that he is not the first comedian to mention this as the same myth was repeated on QI, but when they released a DVD of the series they corrected their mistake.
What actually happened was that after several pieces of legislation about the window tax had been past, the acts declared that Berwick would be properly part of Great Britain, thus it would not be exempt from any such treaties. The other issue is that a mayor would have no power to sign a peace treaty, therefore the signing was just for show and to attract gullible tourists.
Despite this minor quibble, I still find Mark Steel’s in Town to be hugely enjoyable, and I would argue it’s the best stand-up show currently broadcast on TV or radio. The series consists of three hours of unique stand-up material, while some comics make do with about one or two for an entire year.
I just hope he records a show in Stockton-on-Tees for his next series.
