Mark Thomas

From August 2016

A few years ago I wrote about my experiences of scout camps in the mid-1970s and in particular the unsuitable repertoire of post cocoa drinking songs. I was reminded of this yesterday while watching Mark Thomas at the Traverse Theatre.

His show The Red Shed is partly about his quest to check the veracity of a memory he has of the end of the miners' strike in 1985. As he walked through a Yorkshire village with defeated strikers he observed school children in a playground singing a song of solidarity to the tune of Mine Eyes have Seen the Glory as they welcomed their fathers, brothers & uncles home, defeated but heads held high.

The version that I recall from my scouting days was less prosaic:

Father Christmas do not touch me
Father Christmas do not touch me
Father Christmas do not touch me
As she lay beneath the lily white sheets with nothing on at all

Subsequent verses were the same but with the last word dropped on each round ie Father Christmas do not touch, Father Christmas do not, Father Christmas do, etc, etc. I have subsequently discovered (ie this morning) that this was a version of a Goodies song released in 1974, a year before their career defining tour de force, Funky Gibbon. 

As Thomas reminds us, truth should never get in the way of a good story, but - contrary to my original observations of 5 years ago - the bearded Scout leaders (they were all bearded) sung this with much gusto, the final line of each verse being as close to actual sex with an actual woman as they were likely to get. Happy days.

It's difficult not to like Mark Thomas. No beard for a start and although there are a lot of laughs to be had as he explores the history of Wakefield's Labour Club (the eponymous shed of the show's title), there are some genuinely moving moments. Solidarity is a fast diminishing concept in this country and we need more people like Mark Thomas to remind us of the power of union.

The Red Shed, Traverse Theatre, until 28th August 

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