Mark Watson's Blog

THE FIRST THING TO SAY is, things are going to be a little bit different on this website from now on. This ‘news’ section – what we used to call a blog – is going to be updated much more regularly, and by me, the actual Mark Watson. You can easily make a case that this could have happened much sooner, had I not failed to realise for literally *three years* that I have the login details and so can actually do it whenever I like. You can very easily make that case. But let’s do a bit less ‘making ...

Oh hello.

This Easter weekend sees the third and final piece in the jigsaw of 24-hour shows with which I’ve attempted to break up the – let’s be honest – somewhat trying times of this pandemic. (Three pieces is a pretty unchallenging jigsaw, you might say, but here we are.) In many ways, this one is reasonably similar to the hopefully memorable events that have gone before it. But because this one is part of the famous Melbourne International Comedy Festival, there will be a few differences, ...

24 HOUR ONLINE SHOW
Fri 1 May 9pm Sat 2 May 9pm

Me for the whole time, and anyone else I can plead to take part from home. 

TICKETS >

WATCH ON TWITCH >

Any money we can raise will be split three ways, between @FareShare, @HospiceIGNet and the @nextupcomedy Heckle The Virus fund, which supports comedians who have seen all their work disappear indefinitely.

I’ve had a slightly strange 24 hours on the popular website Twitter dot com. Yesterday evening, while I was trying to distract myself from the psychological warfare of my kids’ bedtimes, I idly tweeted the following:

I’m really fond of Americans in a lot of ways but when they committed to saying ‘I could care less’ for ‘I couldn’t care less’, it was inevitable their society would fall apart.

I suppose ‘idly’ is the adverb for 90 percent of the tweeting that I do, actually, and that many of us...

Because of the events of last weekend, a lot people online have been saying that the biggest thing we need is a commitment to kindness. Those people have tended to get the piss taken out of them. Partly because logging onto Twitter to say ‘Be kind, guys!’ and collecting the likes feels like a pretty ineffective way to change the world, and partly because as soon #BeKind became a popular hashtag it was destined to look as disposable and faddish as all of Twitter’s brief obsessions do. But also...

As I’ve made a gigantic fuss of mentioning on all possible outlets, February 13th was my fortieth birthday. In the past I’ve tended to play down birthdays, as people do as they get older. Not because of some shame about my advancing age – on the contrary, I think it should be seen as an achievement to rack up the years, when you look at what life throws at us all – but just because it comes to seem embarrassing to be skipping around on a particular date like you’re still 11. This, though,...

I wanted to write a few words about the tour I’m doing this year. It’s a smallish tour by my standards: those being the standards of a man who has wandered the country relentlessly for the last twelve years like some spirit in a folk tale trapped in the Underworld, except instead of the Underworld it’s Gordano service station. This is because it’s a different type of show for me. It’s a little bit like a TED talk meets an inspirational address meets a comedy show. What can I say: I’ve never...

Is this a good time?

It’ll only take five minutes. I know, yes – people say that kind of thing all the time, and the next thing you know you’ve signed up for a standing order with a charity you’re only half-interested in/are taking part in a consumer survey about ‘your A+E experience’ which turns out to have 70 questions; have joined the Army. But this WILL be quick. We’re both busy. I’m currently on tour – markwatson.seetickets.com/tour/mark-watson – and you’ve got your saxophone lesson.

I j...

It’s not much of a secret by now, but finally I can talk about the dual project I’ve spent the last few months of my life on. It’s a 13-episode comedy series for Audible about the London Marathon. I’ve written it all and the cast is bloody amazing. It includes, but is not limited to, Sara Pascoe, Derren Brown (!), Rufus Hound, Harry Enfield (you could put ! after quite a lot of these actually), Sofie Hagen, Desiree Burch, Angela Barnes, Adam Kay, David Baddiel, Lolly Adefope, Ray Winstone (th...

‘Why would you kill yourself when your life was that good?’ I’ve seen so many tweets like that, the past week or so, that I’ve decided to write this. I don’t presume to have a clue what drove either of last week’s high-profile suicide victims to their decisions, and it feels pretty irresponsible to speculate about it in the way plenty of people already are. Nor do I liken myself to either of those far more prominent people. But I do know what despair feels like, and I’ve decided to revive thi...