Mark Steel, comedian

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 29 December 2024

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mark Steel is a writer, comedian and radio presenter.

His performing career began as a poet in the alternative comedy scene in the early eighties at the Comedy Store. A regular presenter on Radio 4, he began his award winning series, Mark Steel’s in Town in 2009.

Alongside his performing career, he’s been a regular newspaper columnist writing for the Guardian and Independent Newspapers. Mark was born in 1960 and adopted at ten days old by Doreen and Ernie. He grew up in Swanley, Kent and left home at 18 to live in a squat in Crystal Palace. After his own son was born, Mark spent many years tracing his birth parents and eventually met up with his genetic father who had been a professional gambler and a friend of Lord Lucan. Mark has two children and lives in London.

DISC ONE: My Boy Lollipop - Millie Small DISC TWO: Janie Jones - The Clash DISC THREE: San Quentin (Live at San Quentin State Prison, San Quentin, CA - February 1969) - Johnny Cash DISC FOUR: Killing in the Name - Rage Against The Machine DISC FIVE: Trøllabundin - Eivør Pálsdóttir DISC SIX: Love Me or Leave Me - Nina Simone DISC SEVEN: Into My Arms - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds DISC EIGHT: 1977 - Ana Tijoux BOOK CHOICE: Wisden Cricketers' Almanack LUXURY ITEM: A piano CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Love Me or Leave Me - Nina Simone

Presenter Lauren Laverne Producer Sarah Taylor

Transcript

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0:00.0	Before you listen to this BBC podcast, I'd like to quickly tell you about some others.
0:05.2	My name's Andy Martin and I'm the editor of a team of podcast producers at the BBC in Northern Ireland.
0:11.3	It's a job I really love because we get to tell the stories that really matter to people here,
0:16.3	but which also resonate and apply to listeners around the world.
0:19.6	And because the team is such a diverse
0:21.2	range of skills and strengths, we have trained journalists, people who love digging through
0:26.0	archives, we've got drama and even comedy experts. We really can do those stories justice. So if
0:31.8	you like this podcast, head to BBC Sounds where you'll find plenty more fascinating stories
0:37.1	from all around the UK. BBC Sounds where you'll find plenty more fascinating stories from all around the UK.
0:40.3	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:43.9	Hello, I'm Lauren Leverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast.
0:47.3	Every week, I ask my guest to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island.
0:55.5	And for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening. My castaway this week is Mark Steele.
1:26.8	He's a prize-winning stand-up comedian, broadcaster and writer,
1:30.4	who has spent his working life getting under the skin of the absurdities, contradictions and
1:35.3	curiosities of British life. His targets range from the upper echelons of politics to our more
1:41.2	parochial obsessions in his long-running radio four series Mark Steeles in town.
1:46.4	His upbringing was every bit as suburban as some of its episodes.
1:50.3	He was adopted as a baby and spent his early years in Swanley in Kent.
1:54.9	He found it stifling.
1:56.4	After being expelled from school, he made his escape to the bright lights of South London
2:00.7	via the emerging
	...

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