Mark Steel

I knew I was adopted, strangely, before I knew where babies came from. I didn’t feel different or special, and I don’t ever remember giving the slightest damn about it. I knew because my very lovely auntie Gwen would tell the story of how she got talking to a blonde girl, Frances, who had moved into a flat in the same house in London. She was 19. She was in a bit of a state because she was pregnant. Her parents didn’t know and she’d run away from home. It was 1959, so this wasn’t easy to deal with. So my auntie Gwen said to her, 'Well, I've got a solution. Have the baby and give it to my brother.' So this girl had me in 1960 and I was handed over to Doreen and Ernie.

In 2017, Mark was seen back on stage with his new show Every Little Thing’s Gonna Be Alright.

Prior to the 2015 UK general election, he was one of several public figures who endorsed the parliamentary candidacy of the Green Party's Caroline Lucas.

In February 2013, Steel was among those who gave their support to the People's Assembly in a letter published by The Guardian newspaper. Steel spoke at a press conference to launch the People's Assembly Against Austerity on 26 March 2013 and regional public meetings in the lead up to a national meeting at Westminster Central Hall on 22 June 2013. Steel also gave a speech at the People's Assembly Conference in Westminster.

Steel is a supporter of Crystal Palace F.C. and Kent County Cricket Club and enjoys watching both play on occasion. He was interviewed by Jonathan Agnew on Test Match Special during the South Africa series in 2008, giving an interview on his love of cricket.

In 2007, he left the SWP and justified his decision in his book What's Going On? In the book he wrote that he left the party because whilst the membership base had become smaller and smaller, the members who remained became increasingly deluded regarding the size and importance of the organisation. He also condemned the manner in which, at a time when there was broad public support for socialist ideals, increasingly bitter and futile in-fighting on the left made political success impossible.

He has a son, Elliot Steel, who is also a stand up comedian and a daughter from a relationship that ended in 2006.

In 2000, Steel took part in the London Assembly elections on behalf of the London Socialist Alliance (part of the Socialist Alliance) in the Croydon and Sutton constituency; he received 1,823 votes (1.5% of the vote).

Steel has given varying accounts of his early career: He became bored with constantly being asked how he had started in comedy and took to telling the questioner the first thing that came into his head. He is often described as having worked as a television repair man but confesses that he has no technical abilities. He worked the comedy circuit for several years, and has acknowledged that his comedic influences included Alexei Sayle. In 1992 Steel presented a satirical radio show The Mark Steel Solution on BBC Radio 5, consisting of half-hour monologues which offered solutions to social problems. It ran to four series. It's Not a Runner Bean, a comic autobiography, was published in 1996, and this led to a column in The Guardian which appeared between 1996 and 1999. According to Steel he was sacked because the newspaper wanted to "realign towards Tony Blair", though The Guardian denied this. In 2000 he started writing a weekly column for The Independent, which appears in the Wednesday Opinion Column.

Viewing the Soviet Union as "sh*t", and as a state capitalist system rather than truly socialist, Steel joined the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) instead of the Communist Party of Great Britain. He supported strikes and demonstrations, and was present in Southall during the riot in which Blair Peach was killed. In the early 1980s he also persuaded his mother to allow striking steelworkers to spend a night in the Steel residence. By the end of the 1980s, he had moved into a squat with his old friend Mick Hannan, before taking up residence in a flat.

In the late 1970s his adoptive father suffered a mental breakdown and was placed into care at Stone House Hospital. Steel says that his first encounter with social injustice was when he saw how mentally ill patients were being treated in that hospital. The shabby conditions of the home reinforced Steel's political beliefs.

Mark Steel (born 4 July 1960) is an English comedian, broadcaster, newspaper columnist and author. A stand-up comedian known for his left-wing beliefs (he was a long-standing member of the Socialist Workers Party) he has made many appearances on radio and television shows as a guest panellist, and has written regular columns in The Guardian and The Independent. He is perhaps best known for presenting The Mark Steel Lectures, The Mark Steel Revolution, The Mark Steel Solution and Mark Steel's in Town.

He grew up in Swanley, Kent. Steel claims that he was expelled from school for attending a cricket course without permission: "I thought, fantastic! The punishment for not coming in is that I'm not allowed to come in." He traced his biological mother later in life but she said that she did not want to know him. She died soon after Steel attempted to contact her. He learned that she was from a Scottish working-class family with an active involvement in left-wing politics, and that she had subsequently married an Italian and lived in Rimini. She had met his biological father Joe Dwek at a party in London. Dwek was an Egyptian Sephardic Jew whose family left Egypt after Gamal Abdel Nasser became president in the 1950s. Dwek had subsequently become a multi-millionaire trader on Wall Street, as well as a successful professional backgammon player and the 1976 World Backgammon champion. He met Dwek only once, around 2006, after writing and emailing him, and arranging to meet in a London restaurant. In 2015, Steel told The Guardian's Lee: