Mark Steel
| Mark Steel | |
|---|---|
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Mark Steel in 2008
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| Born |
4 July 1960 Swanley, Kent, England |
| Medium | Stand-up, television, radio |
| Years active | 1983-present |
| Genres | Political satire |
| Subject(s) | Politics |
| Notable works and roles |
The Mark Steel Lectures The Mark Steel Revolution The Mark Steel Solution Mark Steel's in Town |
| Website | www |
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.
Steel was adopted 10 days after he was born. His adoptive father worked in insurance and his mother was a housewife who supplemented the family's income through factory work and working as a lollipop lady. He had a close relationship with his adoptive parents. Steel later told UK newspaper The Guardian's Veronica Lee:
"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."
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 at a party in London. Steel's biological father was an Egyptian Sephardic Jew whose family left Egypt after Gamal Abdel Nasser became president in the 1950s. His father had subsequently become a multi-millionaire trader on Wall Street, as well as a backgammon champion. In 2015, Steel told The Guardian's Lee:
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