After spending last year being cluster-bombed with yoghurt on ‘Taskmaster’ and half-killed by Bear Grylls, multi award-winning Mark Watson returns to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2018 with what he’s best at: being indoors.
Inspired by the basically shocking state of the world his children are growing up in, and a genuine, urgent desire to do something about it, Watson’s new show is about empathy. 99 percent of the world’s population is made up of other people: why can’t we understand them? As scrawny and impassioned as ever, Mark tears into his topic with his notoriously high joke and rant-per-minute rate. And as the title suggests, in this show he takes his unusually collaborative approach one step further, aiming for an evening which will last longer in the mind than the hour the audience spend with him…
Mark is one of the country’s most beloved and critically acclaimed live comedians, and has had a long and notable Fringe career since he was nominated for Best Newcomer at the 2005 Perrier Awards, before being awarded the 2006 if.comedy Panel Prize for performing one of his now-legendary marathon stand-up shows. Away from Edinburgh, he’s taken home the Time Out Critics Choice Award, been nominated for a Barry Award from the Melbourne Comedy Festival, as well as winning Best Show at both Sydney and Adelaide.
Last year saw Mark write songs, hurl coconuts and beg piggy-backs as part of Dave’s BAFTA-winning Taskmaster. In a less pleasant TV engagement, he lost almost three stone and faced a crippling lifelong phobia during a much talked-about stint on The Island with Bear Grylls (C4). Mark has also regularly appeared on BBC 2’s Never Mind The Buzzcocks, and Mock the Week, BBC 1’s Would I Lie To You and Have I Got News For You. He has performed stand-up on BBC 1’s Live At The Apollo, Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow and Channel 4’s Comedy Gala and was the star of Dave TV’s Road to Rio, as well as the host of BBC 4’s We Need Answers. He’s won Celebrity Mastermind and Celebrity Pointless and he once dressed up as a badger for terrible Sky One show Wild Things.
As well as his TV and live work Mark has been a Radio 4 mainstay for a decade, with his various series Mark Watson Talks A Bit About Life, Mark Watson Makes The World Substantially Better and Mark Watson’s Live Address To The Nation. For the past two years he’s hosted the final of the BBC New Comedy Award – one of the only comedy shows on the network to go out live.
On top of his comedy stardom Mark has seven books under his belt. Since last Edinburgh, his graphic novel Dan and Sam has been optioned as a feature film by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment and is now in development.
