Mark Thomas Comedy Show (Undercurrents 2005; DVD PAL; main feature: 60mins; price 14+. Available from Undercurrents (01792 455900;  http://www.undercurrents.org/markthomas. Reviewed by IPPY. Peace News Editor

While a sixty-minute Mark Thomas show may be the main feature, is worth pointing out that, once again, undercurrents have combined the “main event” with a handful of additional short films.
This DVD also includes: the award-winning Globalisation and the Media (24mins); animation in the form of Cows With Guns (3mins); Reach for the Sky - a 40 minute documentary about air travel and climate change; plus some “bonus extras” with Noam Chomsky, Howard Marks and Tony Benn. PN readers who picked up the 2002 PN/Undercurrents video CD Informed Dissent will find some of the extra content repetitive, however this DVD is worth the money for the main feature alone - with Reach for the Sky offering a worthy addition.
For those familiar and comfortable with Mark Thomas’s brand of “geezer-activist-humour”, the show is everything you would expect. From fox hunting to the Colombian death squads via the arms trade, censorship and the Saharawi struggle, a lot of ground is covered in just sixty minutes.
He talks about his experience of being arrested for the first time after blockading a BAe Systems delegate bus en route to DSEi in 2003 and manages to be both charmingly honest about his fears as an arrestee and typically blokeish in revealing his urge to masturbate while in the police cell (probably just nerves!).
At times hilarious, at others tear-jerking, with the final sequence – if a bit protracted - serving as a poignant reminder that the struggle for basic human rights can make you a target and that the consequences of speaking out can be fatal. It is a fairly emotional climax - revealing that, for all the geezer posturing, Thomas appears deeply touched by the injustices he witnesses and the people he meets along the way.

On the whole the feature is nicely edited and produced, managing to keep the viewer engaged through what could be visually very dull - some bloke standing there talking for an hour. But if you can’t cope with the blokey blah, then you are going to hate it. There are probably hundreds of expletives, a sprinkling of drug references and drinking anecdotes, and a couple of decidedly non-nonviolent jokes (involving blowing things up and whacking the landed gentry with batons). But as Mark reminds us part way through the show: if you believe everything a comedian says then you “may as well take instruction from a yoghurt pot”.