Mark Steel

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book, and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:45

My castaway this week is Mark Steele. He's a prize-winning stand-up comedian, broadcaster and writer who has spent his working life getting under the skin of the absurdities, contradictions and curiosities of British life. His targets range from the upper echelons of politics to our more parochial obsessions in his long-running Radio 4 series Mark Steele's In Town. His upbringing was every bit as suburban as some of its episodes. He was adopted as a baby and spent his early years in Swanley in Kent. He found it stifling. After being expelled from school, he made his escape to the bright lights of South London via the emerging punk scene, political activism and what would become known as alternative comedy. Over the years, he's skewered pomposity in high places, but he's also subjected his own story to similar treatment. He took delight in revealing that his biological father turned out to be a multi-millionaire professional gambler. He says, I've got loads of burning issues to talk about on stage, but the first thing you start with is, what are the things I think are funny? There's great comedy in things not turning out as you expect. Mark Steele, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Mark Steel1:55

Thank you, Owen.

Presenter1:57

So Mark, there have been twelve series now of Mark Steele's in town, and you travel across the country to a particular place and then create a stand up show for that town. You're looking for the unexpected then. Where is a good place to find it? Where do you start?

Mark Steel2:11

There's not really a formula. I just go somewhere and think there will be something funny in this place. There will be people who are passionate about the place, always. It started in Skipton. I said Keith lives round the corner.

Mark Steel2:27

Do you get on with them? And it went really quiet. And this one woman went, Keithley is a sink of evil.

Mark Steel2:38

And I won't share.

Mark Steel2:40

And I thought, I wonder if you could do a whole show about Skipton to people in Skipton and it would make sense to people who weren't in Skipton.

Presenter2:50

You showed an appetite for performing from a very young age. I think you were around eight when you first took part in a show at a holiday camp in Devon. What do you remember about it?

Mark Steel2:57

Bing!

Mark Steel2:58

Most performers have this, this terrible ego that means you just want to be on stage in front of people. Now at the age of eight, I really hadn't developed anything that was worth watching.

Mark Steel3:13

I knew I wanted to be on stage. I'd got that bit. So I wrote a poem. I wrote a poem about the A to Z of animals.

Speaker 23:14

Yeah.

Presenter3:16

So what did we do?

Mark Steel3:21

I don't know how it went. A is for ant that crawls on the ground. B is for bee that makes a buzzing sound or something.

Presenter3:26

So you do know how it goes. I don't know how it went. Yes, he says we're reciting it.

Mark Steel3:28

He says

Presenter3:33

Now listen, I know how much you love music, Mark, so I'm imagining pulling your discs together for the program has been quite a challenge.

Mark Steel3:40

Torture.

Presenter3:41

What's your first selection and and why are you taking it to the island?

Mark Steel3:44

This is Millie Small with My Boy Lollipop because it was the start of my affection for music. I was not brought up with any music in the house or with any sort of discernible music about at all. Sometimes the radio would be on. This song, My Boy Lollipop, I think I was five when I heard it, but I do remember thinking, wow, I like this. However, you articulate that when you're five. And now, I'm quite proud of the five-year-old me because it's, and of course it's a historic song because for most people it would be, yeah, it was the first reggae song that was played really to any great degree in this. I know if you were in the clubs and so on, you'd have heard Island Records and the early Scar or before that, Lord Kitchener or whatever. But this, yeah, this is quite an important record, isn't it? And I do have a memory of me mum with it sort of the song coming on. I'd have been five or six and my mum going, oh, he likes this one.

Presenter4:16

Yeah.

Presenter4:17

Yeah.

Presenter4:19

Bill Island Records, yeah.

Speaker 34:55

You're my shiva then

Speaker 25:10

We told me some

Presenter5:14

Millie Small and My Boy Lollipop. So Mark Steele, you were adopted in nineteen sixty when you were just a few days old, and you were brought up in Swanley by Ernie and Doreen, their only child. How would you describe your parents?

Mark Steel5:27

My dad had got a job in the insurance office, right? He collected the insurance. So he was the bloke who came round, knocked on the door. One on six, this is Tid Marsh, and I would go round with him. He was so classically working class bloke at that time. I would go round with him on a Saturday when he had to collect the money. And then we'd get up to the I Street and he'd stop for a pint and he'd go in the bookies. And he'd so you'd wait in the car and I'd I'd sometimes get out and look through these streamers things that used to like hang down in the bookies and just see this magical I think, oh, it must be so exciting to be an adult and to be in that.

Mark Steel6:06

Magical world. I mean, mum

Mark Steel6:09

I mean, mum bless her, she's still with us. She was, you know, I suppose the sort of the reverse side of that being like a very typical classical

Mark Steel6:20

working class family of that time.

Speaker 36:22

Mm-hmm.

Mark Steel6:23

And so my mum was that, and I think she felt very unfulfilled. Of course, she did. Last thing I'm going to do is to be rude or disparaging about either of them. So when I say this, there were no books in the house. There was no music really in the house. They weren't really interested in ideas very much. But I think they would have been, I think, if they'd been to a school that had encouraged that. We had a bookcase, and the top shelf just had little jugs that people had brought back from somewhere like Claveli or Western Supermare, and it was full of elastic bands. And then the second shelf was empty. And then the third shelf had my dad's A to Z. I remember this really well, my dad's A to Z of gardening. And Pride of Place was this screwdriver that was at the end that he would show like my mates when they come around. This screwdriver had a woman in a bikini on it, but the bikini was ink. Oh, okay. So she tipped it upside down.

Speaker 36:27

Cool.

Presenter7:18

Oh yeah.

Mark Steel7:21

Look at that.

Mark Steel7:23

That was culture, my ambition.

Presenter7:24

I remember them as ballpoint pens back in the day. And yet, you know, your parents were raised in this this kid who was determined to perform. You you had another chance to do that on holiday in the Isle of Wight. You were thirteen and got the chance to get up on stage. I think it was uh the interval during a dinner and dance.

Mark Steel7:35

For thirteen

Mark Steel7:41

Yeah, absolutely. There'd be a band playing bye-bye Blackbird and those sorts of songs. And young dad would be in his suit. And in the interval, yeah, someone said, if there's anyone who can do anything, maybe the first couple of minutes after the interval, then come up here and let's see what you can do out there, ladies. And I just thought, I'm going to tell some jokes. So I just got out and told two or three jokes that had gone around the school, every single one of which now would get me cancelled. And quite rightly, that would be me. I thought, I like it up here. And I started to tell another one. And I remember the bloke going, Mark, that's enough.

Presenter8:12

And another one.

Presenter8:16

You got the bug straight away.

Mark Steel8:18

Yeah, I'm not going to pretend anyone laughed. I don't think anyone probably absolutely died. I didn't care.

Presenter8:22

But it's interesting that you still enjoyed it, even though he says that's enough, Mark. And you know, like you say, you might not even have got a laugh.

Mark Steel8:28

No, I just thought I liked being up here. It's not healthy, is it?

Presenter8:33

I think we better get back to the music, Mark. Your second disc today. I want to hear it. What's next?

Mark Steel8:38

I was 17 when punk arrived and I bought the Clash album that I knew would come out that week and I got it home. I had these little chipboard speakers, this record player, the first thing that I'd bought of any value at all and really wasn't getting on with my mum and dad at the time. We had nothing really in common. I remember just putting that in a little needle on it and this is the first track of the first Clash album and by the time the drumming, the opening drumming bit stopped, I was in a different world.

Mark Steel9:12

I was angry about the world. I was angry about me dad.

Mark Steel9:18

But then when I was 16, my dad had to go to a mental home in nearby Dartford. So I was angry about him, but I was also angry that he'd had to go there. Nobody at that time really took it seriously. You know, when I say someone now going, oh, all this stuff about mental health, we never used to have that. No. And this was one of the things that happened is that, so my dad, who was, I think now he'd probably be diagnosed as bipolar, but I don't know. He would behave in manic ways, behaving really, really like rapidly and just talking all the time, couldn't stop talking. And then he would have six months where he would barely say a word. And then he seemed to stop altogether.

Speaker 29:49

Yeah.

Speaker 29:54

Just talk

Mark Steel10:03

And he was put in this home in Dartford, first of all for two or three days a week and then permanently. And it was really very much like the cuckoo's nest. It was horrible. It was just the carpet was as threadbare as it could be without ceasing to exist.

Presenter10:21

So you went to visit him, you saw him there.

Mark Steel10:24

Yeah, yeah, I used to go and loads. They were all on these drugs, which just makes them shuffle. So then people look crazy, but it's not. It's the drugs, you know. It was really, really horrible. And I used to go in there. And funnily enough, in the years where I used to go and see him in there, that's the best we ever got on in some ways. He'd sit and chat. And then I'd say, just go for a pint. There was a little gap in the hedge. Go out there. You weren't supposed to go out at all. And we'd go to this pub and he goes, I'm sorry, son. I don't have a lot of money on me at the moment. It's all right, Dad. And we'd have a couple of beers and then I'd sneak him back in. That'd be very sad. I'd have to leave him behind. And it was great. And we'd talk about him being in the Navy and stuff in a way that we never had when he wasn't mad. So it certainly gave me a sort of view of like what's considered.

Mark Steel11:15

normal what's considered isn't, and so on.

Presenter11:17

So how long did this go on for?

Mark Steel11:20

Well, he died in there about nine years after he first went there.

Presenter11:25

Oh wow.

Mark Steel11:27

The Christmas before he died, I had a girlfriend.

Mark Steel11:32

Debbie, it was very lovely and she said we should get your dad out for Christmas and it was quite an administrative palava and then they said here's all his drugs, make sure he has all of them.

Mark Steel11:46

and gave me a great big schedule.

Mark Steel11:48

And I didn't give give him any of'em.

Mark Steel11:51

And he was absolutely fine.

Mark Steel11:53

And he sort of got up early in the morning. They said, oh, he stays in bed till one in the afternoon. And each day he got up about.

Mark Steel12:00

Eight in the morning, had a shave, put his like jacket and tie on, went down to the local pub that I went to with my mates and he was down there. He came down there and sat there with us. It was brilliant. It was really brilliant. We were so glad we did that.

Presenter12:10

Mm-hmm.

Presenter12:13

But no wonder you were angry.

Mark Steel12:15

Yeah, that didn't help.

Presenter12:16

You must have been furious.

Mark Steel12:17

I think it's more complex than that, Lauren. I was furious, but also confused, because I hadn't really got on with my mum and dad. There was always shouting. There was always, the bloody state are you, you know, you treat this place like a hotel. When I was sort of, that's when I was 17. I left home at 18. So there'd been a lot of that. Anger doesn't follow a nice, neat pattern, does it? So then, in the early stages of this, I'm just about the world in general. And I get... home with me clash album and I put this further clash. This wasn't like any music I'd heard up to then. It just seemed to speak to my generation. It's like even in the drumbeat, it's like they were going, you know that you're angry and everyone tells you you shouldn't be angry and it's your fault. Well, try this for anger.

Speaker 212:30

Bye.

Mark Steel13:03

This trumps you, mate.

Mark Steel13:06

Ba boom ba ba boom ba ba.

Presenter13:25

Tell him both, he don't like it, but it's a mouth. And he knows what he got to do. In house, he's gonna have fun with you.

Presenter13:38

The Clash and Janie Jones. So Mark Steele, you were expelled from school when you were fifteen. The story I've read about you is that it was because you went off to do a cricket course. But actually, given what you've told us about what was happening at home in the background, it does put it in a different light.

Mark Steel13:55

Yeah, I suppose so. Now I used to skip off quite a lot. I really didn't like school. You know, I've never been very good at cricket, but I absolutely love it.

Mark Steel14:03

And there was a course at Beckenham and it was during term time. So I asked the teachers if I could have a week off to go on this course and they said, no, you've got your O-levels coming up. And I thought, oh, I don't care about them. And they said, no. So I just went on it anyway. And then the most strange meeting where I was called in to see the headmaster and he said, you're not allowed to come here anymore. And I thought, so the punishment for not wanting to come in.

Mark Steel14:33

Is I'm not allowed to come in.

Mark Steel14:36

This is the happiest moment of my life!

Mark Steel14:40

I think I probably...

Mark Steel14:41

I hated being told what to do. Everything I found boring at school, I found fascinating since I left.

Speaker 214:44

Everything on

Mark Steel14:48

History, languages, you know, I've learnt French in recent years. And there were teachers who were good and I thought, oh, yeah, no, I've got to try and learn that'cause they're putting a bit of effort in.

Presenter14:58

But Mark, how interesting that you've spent a life accruing such esoteric, deep knowledge about all of these strange little quirks at the quirky corners of our country, these historical figures, you know, the Mark Steele lectures, like you say, you've spent a lifetime researching, really. It's a weird contradiction, right?

Mark Steel15:16

It's sort of a contradiction, but I think that anyone, if they're really interested in something, they can have that interest driven out of them by someone who just makes them learn a series of dates or makes them learn a series of names or kings and queens and that sort of thing.

Presenter15:30

Uh

Presenter15:35

It's time to go to the music, Mark. Your third choice today. What are we going to hear next and why are you taking it with you?

Mark Steel15:40

Johnny Cash, for many reasons. When I look back at it, there's so many things I love about Johnny Cash. First of all, if you were to sort of ask most people to list radical protest singers, people would go from that area. He'd obviously go Bob Dylan and many others singing about Vietnam and so on. Very few people would think of Johnny Cash, but I think a greater percentage of his output was overtly political than almost any of them. But also, he had such a charm and such a love and such a compassion, and there was nothing preachy about him at all. He was always singing to try and win you over, if you like. And this track in particular, I think, is.

Mark Steel16:24

Beautiful. He's singing in a prison. His idea, he sang a lot in prisons. And as far as the story goes, he was told on this particular occasion, you can do this, Mr. Cash, but you can't sing about the prison itself, which he agreed to. And then he sang this. And I would ask anyone listening to this track to listen to the gap between the line that he sings and the cheer that comes from the prisoners. San Quentin, you've been living hell to me.

Mark Steel16:58

You posted me since 1963

Mark Steel17:04

I've seen them come and go and I've seen them die.

Mark Steel17:10

Uh

Speaker 217:10

And long

Mark Steel17:10

Uh

Speaker 217:10

Go I stopped asking why

Mark Steel17:15

Uh

Speaker 217:15

San Quinn, I hate every inch of you.

Mark Steel17:18

Yeah.

Presenter17:23

JOHNY CASH AND SAN QUENTIN Mark, you left home at eighteen for a lively sounding squat in Crystal Palace initially. You also discovered the Socialist Workers' Party around that time. How did your parents react to your choices?

Mark Steel17:36

Well, I just wanted to get away from the tower. And you could in those days. That's what's so difficult now. Amongst the options of being able to move out was you could move into a squat. In Crystal Palace, there were some houses that were going to be demolished and then an estate built in their place. But the council moved everybody out and then didn't have the money to build the houses. So a load of squatters moved in. There were three roads. There must have been about 80, 90 houses, I guess, something like that. And it was mad. Just the most normal things were things that should never become normal. People would knock on the door at two in the morning and who's that? And they'd go, oh, do you need some peanut butter? Have you got any peanut butter? Things like that. Someone knocked on the door once, and I'm very glad that my mate, who I still see a lot now, was there as well. Otherwise, I'd think I'd misremembered this. And he went, complete stranger. He said, Have you got a wardrobe?

Mark Steel18:38

What did your wardrobe for? And he went, I need somewhere to keep me owl

Presenter18:45

But Mark, you had grown up desperate for excitement, for culture. You found the counterculture. It must have been an absolute paradise for you.

Mark Steel18:52

Fantastic. It was fantastic and everybody played records all day and people didn't know whether it was day or night.

Presenter19:00

So you were finding the the music that you loved, you were finding a kind of political voice. Had you thought about stand-up by that point? Was that something that you were ambitious about?

Mark Steel19:10

I don't think I've thought about being a stand up other than in a sort of vague sense that I would like to do something like that. But I couldn't make that real in any way because there just wasn't anywhere to do it. And what I didn't realise and then came to realize is that

Mark Steel19:29

The very early signs of a new comedy scene had been started, especially by Alexei Sale, who deserves enormous credit for his role in it, and the comedy store that also deserved enormous credit. And so there was just the beginnings of this idea that you could do a sort of stand-up act that wasn't as comics had been up to then, when they just told a series of jokes. And I think that was the big change between the comedy of my youth and then comedy as we've come to know it. You know, there's a sort of lazy version that says all the comics of those times were racist. But that's not true. They weren't. What was true is that it was people thought of stand-up comedy as just a series of jokes. Bloke goes onto a building site, two fellas, you know, on a bus, whatever. And now for the first time, you could have somebody talking about their life, talking about ideas, saying their own things, doing impressions and so on. And I thought, oh, I could sort of talk about why I hated school or whatever. If I could make that funny, that'll work. So I just start to get that idea, yeah.

Presenter20:34

Well, I want to find out what happened next, but first we've got to hear your next disc. It's number four, Mark. What's it going to be?

Mark Steel20:41

Having said what I loved about Johnny Cash was his how to change the world but be kind and compassionate and not to scream and rage, I will now contradict myself as much as it's possible to do. This is killing in the name of by rage against the machine as magnificent a screech against everything as has ever been created.

Speaker 321:20

Suppose that work forces.

Presenter21:23

On a saint that bar crossed

Presenter21:25

Some of those that work forces

Presenter21:28

On the Saint La Bar Crossing

Mark Steel21:31

Some of those that workforces

Presenter21:34

Rage against the machine and killing in the name. So, Mark, I want to find out about your first steps into stand-up. Your first gig was at the Dulwich Poetry Society. How did it go?

Mark Steel21:45

Well I was full of rage and I had written this angry poem that was screaming about being unemployed, which I was at the time, full of fire and there was twelve people I seem to remember in the Dulwich Poetry Club in this little back room in a quite pristine pub in Dulwich, Dulwich Village it's called.

Presenter22:05

So quite a posh part say a bit.

Mark Steel22:07

Posh, yeah, I mean it's not that posh, but at the time everything was posh to me and I was living in a squat, so if you had floorboards in your living room, ooh, get you, Your Majesty. But I did my poem thinking either these people will be violently sick because I've had such an impact on them, or they will take up arms and form a militia.

Presenter22:32

Both of these outcomes for you would have been ideal, I'm imagining.

Mark Steel22:34

Oh yeah, either, yeah, just because I was just to convey my rage. And I finished the poem, which was snarled. Whatever it was.

Mark Steel22:47

And I think the last line was directed at Margaret Thatcher, how pathetic it is, and it went, I'd rather you were dead.

Mark Steel22:55

And I thought now comes the reaction.

Mark Steel22:58

And there was nothing and then

Mark Steel23:02

And this one woman leant right over to me, and she said, I think you did very well to remember all the words.

Presenter23:10

Was it humbling in the moment, that reaction?

Mark Steel23:12

Yeah, I knew at that point, don't think you're going to get anywhere like this.

Mark Steel23:17

This isn't gonna work.

Mark Steel23:20

If you go up.

Mark Steel23:22

And everything manages to go right and you do your jokes and everybody laughs, that doesn't mean you're gonna keep doing it. It's because of before long, you'll get an audience that it's just awful and it's depressing. And if you come out of that being insane enough to go, I'm gonna try and work out what happened there and put that right.

Mark Steel23:46

That's a mad thing to think, but if you do do that, then you've got whatever it is.

Presenter23:52

Uh

Mark Steel23:52

Inside you, that's going to mean that you're going to do this. That 40 years later, you'll still be going, What went wrong there?

Presenter23:59

And what is that whatever it is? What is that mechanism inside, do you think?

Mark Steel24:03

There's probably a bit of it that's that's kind, you know, that I think eventually you do think, oh, that's nice. I've, you know, you've made people laugh and people go, oh, I really like that program you did, or that was really funny listening to you, or something like that. And you think you've made people feel a bit better. But also, it's an ego thing. Oh, I suppose I mattered in that moment. Everybody's looking at me. It must be that as well, which probably isn't very healthy. I think if we manage to sort out mental health, as you know, people are saying, I wonder if one of the downsides of that is that no one will want to do stand-up.

Speaker 224:24

No.

Presenter24:33

There'll be less stand-up comics around. All right, let's get back to the music. Disc number five. What are we going to hear?

Mark Steel24:39

Top Marx if people know this, this is a woman called Ivor Pals. here. I was asked to do a couple of shows in Iceland about 20 years ago. I've always had a fascination with Iceland and Greenland and the Faroe Islands that I have no idea why that is. And I was over there once doing a couple of shows and I was staying at someone's house and they had a record by her, which I put on and I thought, that sounds amazing. And this bloke called Stainworth said, she's on tonight. There's a Pharaoh Ease. She's from the Faroe Islands. There's a Faroese music festival on in Reykjavik. And she was playing at a disused cinema and it was one of the best gigs I've ever seen. She was amazing. And it's in Faroese. And I think I just adore.

Mark Steel25:29

Anybody who's speaking, singing, acting with passion about their local quirky place. And I think the reason I love this track is the same reason that I go to Stoke and find myself thinking, this is fantastic. It really has got pots.

Speaker 326:13

God would fasting me, fasting me.

Mark Steel26:24

I'm sorry Laura for picking something that everyone picks.

Presenter26:28

It's a bit root one mark. Ivo, Palsdo Tere and Trettler Bunden.

Presenter26:35

So Mark, you'd always known that you were adopted, but I think it was when you had your son Elliot in 1995 that you started thinking about tracking down your birth mother.

Mark Steel26:37

But I think

Mark Steel26:43

It occurred to me when I became a father that having known all along that I was adopted, and I thank my mum and dad for that, that's a brilliant thing, that they told me very as soon as I could know. In fact, I knew I was adopted before I knew where babies came from that weren't adopted, which must have been quite a strange thing in my mind.

Mark Steel27:05

But I had no interest in pursuing them my my natural mother at all. When I had a son of my own I thought, my natural mother

Mark Steel27:14

She'll probably remember having me, won't she? I don't know why I'd not thought like that before. So I spoke to a couple of people at an Adoption Society thing and wrote letters and investigated it a little bit.

Presenter27:30

So what did you find out?

Mark Steel27:31

My aunt which so my dad as I knew him my dad's sister Gwen.

Mark Steel27:37

A very, very fine woman. And she had told me when I was young that living in a rented flat in West London, there was a new woman came to live in the next door flat, a young woman of about 19. And one day, Gwen found her crying as she was going in the door and said, what's the matter, love? And this young woman said, I've run away from home. I'm pregnant. I don't know what to do.

Mark Steel28:03

And

Mark Steel28:04

My Aunt Gwen said Well, my brother, Ernie, lives in a town called Swanley, and him and his wife can't have children, and they would very much like to adopt a baby, so maybe

Mark Steel28:20

You can give the baby to them. And in those days, that's pretty much how it was done. It was probably more administrative work to hand over a washing machine. That was how it was organized, as I was told. Now, I came to realize in subsequent years there was a little bit more to it than that, but not much more. And that's how I came to be in Swanley brought up by the people I was brought up with. And then I started investigating it. I went to Gwen. She didn't really know. No, I haven't kept in touch. And it took years to find anyone. And then something came back from one of the people I'd written to saying that my natural mother's name was the name of a woman who owned a delicatessen in a little town called Dunkeld up in Scotland past Perth. So I went to one of these people who's a professional. I can find people. Two weeks later, she called and said, right, well, we've located Frances and she's living in Rimini in Italy. And she said, come in and write a letter. So I wrote a letter.

Mark Steel29:28

And we heard nothing.

Mark Steel29:31

And a few months went by,

Mark Steel29:33

And

Mark Steel29:34

This lady said, I've got her phone number. I think the time has come when I should ring her.

Mark Steel29:41

I said, okay. The drama of it was amazing. It was like watching a thing on Netflix, but I'm living it. And she said. So I spoke to Francis and she was rather cross. She was rather angry that she said, who on earth gave you my number? And I had to just try and calm her down and tell her that we meant her no harm whatsoever. And then all of a sudden, she said, out of nowhere, Francis said, I would like to ask three questions. And she said, the first question is, does he have any children of his own? And I said, well, yes, he does. He has a son and he has a daughter. She said, and then the second question, she said, what does he do? And I said, well, he's a comedian. And then the third question, and I have to confess to you, Mark, in all the years that I've been doing this, not one person that I've ever located that belongs to an estranged family such as this has asked such a conundrum.

Mark Steel30:21

She said, And what are his politics?

Mark Steel30:26

What a question What is politics?

Mark Steel30:30

She said, I believe he's on the left. Then she said to me, Mark, I'm going to put the phone down, but before I do, let me tell you the name of the father. And she blurted out this name with such vigour

Mark Steel30:43

I thought, oh

Mark Steel30:45

Well, that is like a drama. You've now left it, you know, that's when it then Netflix, boom, boom.

Presenter30:51

So you didn't get to meet her?

Mark Steel30:53

No, what did happen though, the next bit of the the story is that sometime later, maybe nine months later, I might have got that wrong, I was up in Scotland and I was uh married at the time and was up there with my wife, and we went to the town of Dunkeld and She said, We'll go and look for the delicatessen. It was quite odd sitting there thinking, Well, this is

Speaker 231:16

Uh

Mark Steel31:18

where my natural mother owns this. And then as I was leaving, I just said to the woman working there, Do you know who owns this place now? and she went, Oh, it's front sense.

Mark Steel31:30

Frances, Frances, she said, she's away living in Remony right now.

Mark Steel31:36

I thought, so it's it's her So this was sort of almost proof that she exists, it's not just a story. I said, Did she come in? and she said, Oh, no, no, she's no she's a we and remanie.

Mark Steel31:46

And so we left, and I was thinking, how strange and just as we were leaving, this woman shouted out, Her sister lives a few doors along the way.

Mark Steel31:54

We went and knocked on the door, and this lovely sister's name was Margaret.

Mark Steel32:00

And this woman answered Yes.

Mark Steel32:03

And I said, Margaret, I think we're related.

Mark Steel32:08

And she just fell backwards against the wall.

Mark Steel32:12

And was like

Mark Steel32:15

Oh, you Francis sweet boy

Mark Steel32:18

We s sat there for the afternoon and then it turned out there was another sister lived around the corner and a brother that lived a couple of miles away and by the evening we were all in this pub, we were all talking in this pub and they're showing me pictures of her and everything and so she's a real person at last. I said I'd written and she hadn't wanted to know and all that.

Presenter32:39

So going back to the cliffhanger though Mark, Frances had given the lady who called her a name, the name of your genetic father.

Mark Steel32:46

Hmm.

Presenter32:47

Joe Duack

Presenter32:48

I think you got to meet him, didn't you?

Mark Steel32:51

I did get to to meet him and we are still in touch just about. I looked looked him up.

Mark Steel32:59

And I thought, well, now what do I do? So I looked him up and found out that the Jodwick in question had been the world backgammon champion, amongst other things. He'd then used his ability to remember numbers and, I don't know, what other abilities you need to become a Wall Street trader and become exceedingly wealthy. He was also, in the early 70s, part of a group called the Claremont Club that met in Mayfair. The Claremont Club had been set up when gambling became legal in the late 1950s by a man called John Aspinall. And amongst the people who were part of the Claremont Club, Lord Lucan.

Presenter33:43

Wow What a story What was it like sitting down opposite him?

Mark Steel33:47

He was great. I found uh an email address for him. He didn't reply to that and I thought

Mark Steel33:53

Did I not get a reply from any of them? And then a few months later, I wrote another message and he did reply to that with a really sweet email saying that he remembered Frances. And he said in his message to me that she'd contacted him some weeks after they'd had this little weekend fleeing and said that she was pregnant. And he said, I told my dad and I met up with her and arranged for an abortion, which wasn't an easy thing to do back in those days. It was a few years before the 1967 legalisation. So he said, I gave her the money and arranged for it. But I met Joe. He was very nice. We met in a sort of coffee shop. And he came over to me and said,

Mark Steel34:44

His first words, he said, I've got a lot of meetings today. This is the most awkward.

Mark Steel34:51

And I said to him, Oh, that's okay, Joe I said, Incidentally, I'm in touch with the uh family. So if you want the money back that they clearly owe you for the abortion, I can ask if they've got it. And he went, hmm.

Mark Steel35:08

I said it was a better joke than that one and he went, Yeah, yeah, it was.

Mark Steel35:11

Then we've got an all right.

Presenter35:13

Yeah.

Mark Steel35:13

Yeah.

Presenter35:16

Alright, Mark, let's take a break for the music. It's uh your sixth choice today. What's next?

Mark Steel35:21

So, this is Nina Simone. It's Love Me or Leave Me. And.

Mark Steel35:27

The piano bit in the middle, there's about two minutes of her just playing the piano. It's such a tremendous bit of playing. It's jazz, obviously, but uh she was such a fine classical pianist that it's that as well. It's jazz and classical.

Mark Steel35:46

And there's another reason for choosing it, which is that my lovely daughter has a daughter of her own called Ray Simone, named after Nina Simone.

Speaker 335:56

I want your love, I don't wanna borrow

Mark Steel35:59

Have it today to give back tomorrow Your love is my love, there's no love for n

Speaker 336:04

Nobody else

Presenter36:25

Nina Simone Love Me or Leave Me

Presenter36:28

So you found Jo and you had that meeting. Did you try again with Frances or did you get to understand why she wasn't able to meet you?

Mark Steel36:37

The reason is that she just couldn't face it. This was, I was born in 1960. And at that time, it was so common. I'd sort of learned this as I started to write a book about it. It became so common for women, young women who were pregnant and didn't want to be pregnant, to be told that you'd been naughty, you've brought shame upon the family. And therefore, the only decent thing is to have the baby. taken away and adopted and they would have the baby in the hospitals but up until that point they would be in what became known as mother and baby homes.

Speaker 237:13

Do you have a

Mark Steel37:14

very strongly suspect that she just

Mark Steel37:17

Had to put it out of her mind. I went to Rimini after she died.

Mark Steel37:22

And I met this lovely woman who was a friend of hers called Antonella. And I met some of her friend's sons as well. We went out to this English pub one night and this guy called Salvatore, such a nice lad, and he was so they were all so excited to see me. They didn't know she'd never told any of them. These people who she'd lived in this community, she'd never told any of them this kind of baby.

Presenter37:44

Did you have a family? Did you have a family?

Mark Steel37:47

She was married, but they never had any children. And this one lad, just as I was leaving, if it was in a film, you'd go, it's too obvious. Just as I was leaving and I was coming back early the next morning, he said to me, We loved Francis. She used to like a drink, I think, and she was always sort of the one who would start the singing in the bars and all that. Very communisto. Francis, very communisto.

Mark Steel38:11

And one of em said that Oh, we always used to argue with Francis, argue, argue, argue, and then we'd say, Forget arguing. Let's just talk about Johnny Cash. She loved Johnny Cash.

Mark Steel38:25

As I was leaving, this guy Salvatore said

Mark Steel38:28

I love Frances so much, he said, but always, all the time I knew her, I thought, There is something angry in you angry Why are you so angry? And then he sort of just give us a little hug and went, Now I know why she's so angry.

Mark Steel38:48

And I think that's why she couldn't meet me,'cause she was just so angry.

Mark Steel38:53

Bless her.

Presenter38:55

Mark, listeners might know that you've been treated for throat cancer recently. You were very open about your diagnosis and about your treatment while you were going through it. How are you now?

Mark Steel39:06

I'm absolutely fine. I've probably got less reason to think I've got worries from cancer than anyone who hasn't been through this treatment because now I'm being scanned regularly, and the last scan showed there was absolutely nothing to worry about at all. So, yeah, really very, very lovely outcome for me. It was quite brutal, the treatment. There were days where.

Presenter39:28

So it's chemo and radiotherapy.

Mark Steel39:29

Chemo and radiotherapy and an operation.

Presenter39:32

Mm-hmm.

Mark Steel39:32

And so that battered everything between the sort of ears and the throat really was just absolutely battered with this stuff. That was a tricky nine months.

Presenter39:43

Mark, it's time for your penultimate disc today. What are we gonna hear?

Mark Steel39:48

I've got to have a romantic song and.

Mark Steel39:52

I chose this one. It's Into My Arms by Nick Cave.

Mark Steel39:58

I think partly because his sort of voice and his whole demeanor doesn't lend itself naturally to romance. You know, he's spent so much of his life singing about rather dark things. And I just love piano. So, and it sounds beautiful on this. And again, it's so simple. And.

Mark Steel40:20

This makes me think of one person in particular, even though she doesn't really like Nick Cave.

Presenter40:24

Can I ask you?

Presenter40:29

So you said you have to have a romantic song. So are you a romantic person?

Presenter40:34

BING

Mark Steel40:34

I think so. I think genuine romance is coming through the tricky things and finding the love despite all that, isn't it?

Presenter40:41

So who's it dedicated to?

Mark Steel40:43

Well, there's a question.

Mark Steel40:47

So over the last few years me and Chappy have been together and they're not together and I don't know what state we'll be in.

Presenter40:58

So this is Chappy Kosandi, fellow Stand Up Comic.

Mark Steel41:01

Yeah.

Mark Steel41:02

And

Mark Steel41:04

We'll always be entwined in some way or other.

Speaker 241:09

Whereas you

Mark Steel41:09

And yeah.

Mark Steel41:11

Yeah.

Mark Steel41:12

Yeah, we will always be entwined somewhere or other.

Mark Steel41:15

But we've not found it easy, but

Mark Steel41:17

We will in the end.

Mark Steel41:19

Into my arm

Speaker 241:22

Yeah.

Mark Steel41:22

Oh no

Speaker 241:23

Into my arms, O Lord into my arms, O Lord, into my arms.

Mark Steel41:43

And I don't believe in the existence of angels.

Presenter41:48

Nick Cave and Into My Arms. Mark Steele, your first appearance on Radio Four was in nineteen eighty four. Forty years ago it was. It was a show from the Edinburgh Fringe. You were doing a short sketch about arguing.

Mark Steel42:02

Oh my god.

Presenter42:02

Oh my god.

Presenter42:03

How much do you think comedy's changed since then? It's a long time to be in the job.

Mark Steel42:08

I think the main way it's changed is it's become something that you can realistically think that you can go into, and that's a brilliant thing. So it was something that you had to be really very mad and quirky to think about going into it 40 years ago. And now you can go into it thinking, no, that's quite viable and possible. And there are clubs about everywhere. Every town pretty much has got a comedy club. That's a brilliant thing. What I think has changed as well, and this is not the fault of comedy, is that because it's so difficult now to find anywhere to live, to find that isn't like a thousand pounds a month to live in some awful little place, there's no squats, it's really difficult if you're from a normal working-class background to take a job where you're going to be five years not earning any money and then there might not even be any at the end. And that's why the percentage of people now in acting, in sport, comedy and so on is far more weighted towards people who come from wealthier backgrounds as it was. How have we managed to become more unequal over that time? But that's not the fault of comedy.

Presenter43:13

Mark, you're an inveterate traveller to the towns and cities of the UK, but we're about to cast you away to a new location much further afield, to the desert island. How are you picturing it? What's the first thing you imagine yourself doing when you get there?

Mark Steel43:28

I will spend about half an hour thinking, I wonder if it's possible for me, despite my unbelievably useless inability to do anything practical, to construct a shelter and something that can catch fish and maybe grow things. Oh, I suppose if I take that and I put that and I learn a knot and I put that there and I make that out of wood, then I will come to terms with the fact that there's no point in doing that. I'll just sit here and waste away.

Mark Steel44:05

You could send me a flat-packed cabin with an oven that floated off the ship. That wouldn't be enough.

Presenter44:12

Oh wow, okay. So not even if you had an Allen key. You'd you're really gonna be in trouble.

Mark Steel44:16

Oh, what?

Presenter44:17

What are I done with that?

Presenter44:19

Ibun's taken it!

Mark Steel44:20

I'd be hopeless.

Presenter44:22

What about the solitude? We've talked a lot today about how much you like people, like getting out there and meeting them.

Mark Steel44:25

Like getting

Mark Steel44:27

I'd find that really, really difficult. I'd really love to be around people and uh so that I can say something to them that hopefully they'll laugh at.

Presenter44:38

Exactly. And I was just going to say, no audience. Must be awful. Nobody to hear your musings.

Mark Steel44:41

Phoebe.

Mark Steel44:44

Absolutely'd be terrible if there'd be some rodent.

Presenter44:47

I know we get don't walk off in the middle of me and I don't

Presenter44:51

Would you do a show for the island? Like an in-town style on the desert island?

Mark Steel44:57

The rules here, couldn't you find

Presenter44:58

And anymore? No, there's no people. There might be, you know, animals.

Mark Steel45:03

Four.

Presenter45:03

There could there could be an audience.

Mark Steel45:05

They'll be animals for a bit.

Mark Steel45:07

But I think after a while the hyenas will go, he never stops.

Mark Steel45:14

I'm sick of it. I'm just I'm trying to howl at the moon and I've got oh man oh oh oh

Mark Steel45:22

I thought you'd't least change your material, mate.

Presenter45:26

Well, we'll let you have one more disc before we cast you away, Mark. What's your final choice today?

Mark Steel45:31

I had to have some hip-hop in there. I don't know why, just as I don't know why I got fascinated with the Nordic countries, but I got fascinated with foreign language hip-hop. This is Anna Tijou and it's 1977. I think it's beautiful because it's got a lovely Central American sort of, but she's Chilean, but it's got a very sort of South American beat, I think, to it.

Speaker 345:53

Dora Finar.

Presenter46:01

Anna Tiju and 1977. So, Mark Steele, it's time to cast you away to your desert island. I will, of course, give you the books, the complete works of Shakespeare, and the Bible to read, as well as a book of your own choice. What would you like?

Mark Steel46:22

Anna.

Mark Steel46:36

I'm going to have the latest wisdom.

Mark Steel46:41

Cricket book that's got all the every ridiculous statistic about cricket.

Presenter46:45

So this is a a cricket almanac, a legendary cricket almost.

Mark Steel46:48

The Legendary Cricket Almanac. I think whatever book I take is going to end up disappointing because once I've read it eight or nine times, I'll know it off by heart.

Presenter46:57

Why do you love cricket so much? Been with you your whole life?

Mark Steel46:59

I have no idea why I love cricket so much, but all sport cricket more than anything I suppose. But all sport. I don't know why I get so emotional about it. I don't know what that means. But I think people who don't get sport think that it's just about a ball or it's just about a race, but it isn't. It's the drama. It's everything around it. I just find it so immensely emotional.

Presenter47:22

We'll let you have a luxury item tomorrow. What will that be?

Mark Steel47:24

Uh I'm going to take a piano, please.

Presenter47:27

Do you play well?

Mark Steel47:29

I don't play well. I can play. I can play it. I'm not a good singer at all, but I can sort of sing. And that's a bit sort of.

Mark Steel47:38

That's a bit spoilt really by the radio therapy, but uh you know I don't know if that'll come back. But yeah, that won't matter, will it, if I'm on a desert island.

Presenter47:47

And you're out of tune, you're all out.

Mark Steel47:48

Why not today?

Presenter47:48

There's no such thing as out of tune on the island. And finally, if you had to save just one of these discs that you've chosen today.

Presenter47:56

Which would you go for?

Mark Steel47:57

So difficult. I think

Mark Steel47:59

Nina Simone.

Mark Steel48:01

Because I think with my piano I can make a pathetic attempt at trying to learn that piano that she does. I won't get near it, but I can try it and that's all we can do.

Presenter48:14

Mark Steele, thank you very much for sharing your desert island discs with us. Thank you.

Presenter48:38

Hello, it was lovely to chat to Mark and I hope he's happy on his island with his piano. There are more than 2,000 programmes in our archive which you can listen to. We've cast many other comedians away over the years including Alexi Sale, Adrian Edmondson, Sue Perkins and Catherine Ryan. You can hear their programmes if you search through BBC Sounds or on our own Desert Island Disc's website. The studio manager for today's programme was Andy Garrett, the production coordinator was Susie Roylance, the assistant producer was Tim Banno and the producer was Sarah Taylor. Join me next time when my guest will be the former cricketer and commentator Ebony Rainford Brent.

Presenter49:36

Fifty years ago, a crime took place that captured the British imagination. I want to find out why. Part Dracula, part Scarlet Pimpanelle, this figure that has haunted our national consciousness. Lord Lucan is said to have killed the family nanny before attacking his wife and vanishing.

Speaker 249:54

Some of the details are ready. I don't think I can even sort of say them.

Presenter49:57

Come with me into a murky world of madness, myth, and murder.

Presenter50:02

The police got the lock off this door. You can really see why they believed Lord Lucan would have been hidden in here. The Lucan Obsession with me, Alex von Tunselmann, from BBC Radio 4. Listen now on BBC Sounds.