YOU’VE been a comedian, author, activist, protester, actor, artist, curator, playwright, journalist and… pastor? Perhaps it would be quicker to tell us what you can’t do and haven’t done?

Ah, the pastor. I think it was related to finding out that religious buildings were exempt from council tax and as an experiment I wanted to see if I could convert my office into a temple, so I became a pastor online, and in the US I can legally marry, baptise and bury someone.

As for things I can’t do: I can’t drive, and I am useless at angling, sharpshooting, rodeo tricks, and have never hunted foxes. I am average at crazy golf.

Can you tell us something about your career as a comedian?

My first political shows were in the Red Shed in Wakefield as a student. It’s a socialist club and mates and I would write and perform shows to raise money for local campaigns. You get up, chat, rant, misbehave, tell jokes and get paid. 

What about your lifelong political activism, can you tell us something about its highs and lows?

The most formative events for me have been punk rock, Rock Against Racism and the miners’ strike, when we did gigs in soup kitchens. I attended the 40th anniversary of the strike with the striking Notts miners recently. It was a privilege to be in the same room with the men and women who stayed out in the face of the Notts scabs. 

I suppose one of my favourite things has been working with Dr Sam Beale and the Jenin Freedom Theatre in the West Bank to set up a comedy club in the refugee camp. It is something that we are both incredibly proud of because the students and young comics and performers have moved on way beyond our initial engagement and are now trying to establish a circuit for Palestinian comics in the West Bank and beyond. 

Looking back over the last 50 years or so, what do you see as the main things that have happened to this country?

Gangster capitalism, climate change and debt are the big changes. Corporations have increased their capture of the public realm. It’s socialism for the rich and capitalism for the rest of us. The Labour Party has increasingly shrunk from the fray, and the Tories barely bother to hide their kleptocratic behaviour.

What’s your view of the state of the main political parties and their leaders?

Labour didn’t win so much as not fuck up and allow the Tories to lose. Fifty eight per cent of voters went for the two main parties, that leaves a hell of a lot of people who can and will vote for smaller parties. Labour did not inspire — on Palestine, poverty, spending, future of the NHS — lots of things that just were business as usual. 

Starmer and Labour are of course better than the Tories, they have scrapped the Rwanda policy and not stolen anything yet. So we are ahead so far. 

Green policies on renationalising essential services (train, water, energy) were what the left wanted, and in Brighton and Bristol that proved winning. But they also managed to put up winning threats in rural Tory heartlands. Four Green MPs is a move forward, and four pro-Palestinian independents and Jeremy Corbyn: hurrah! 

The Tories are entering a prolonged period of self-destruction, and I have the popcorn ready. But Labour has vacated the battlefield of inequality and the fight against poverty, so the right wing could take that ground and claim themselves the only ones capable of winning. 

Your last show was England and Son, a tremendously powerful and poignant one-man play written by Ed Edwards. What’s your current project?

England and Son won six awards, toured the UK, and we did the Adelaide festival, performed the show in prisons and in workshops with addicts in recovery. Now there is talk of being invited to bring the show to New York next year — and the team is completely skint.

So I am back doing stand-up on the comedy circuit, creating a new show called Gaffa Tapes for the Edinburgh Festival, and then touring. To find my feet again I did a load of free gigs and open spots on the circuit — one show was in a pub kitchen, which shows how far I have come from the soup kitchen gigs 40 years ago.

Mark Thomas will be at the Edinburgh Festival from July 31 to August 25, then touring. For more information see: markthomasinfo.co.uk.