BAFTA-nominated Mark Steel, a regular on the nations TV, radio and bookshelves, gives us insight into his journey surviving cancer...
The obligatory Derby and Robin Hood jokes and we are off. Steel sticks to his tried and tested ‘local stuff’, political anecdotes and funny impressions of QE2, the King, Farage and Boris Johnson. A regular trickle of punters arriving late provides ample opportunity for him to work the room on his feet. He shines with his well-written, well-rehearsed and well-delivered funny monologues which have the hallmarks of this veteran comedian’s forty plus years in the game.
His cancer section captures his very human journey. Reasons to want to live. seven a.m. hospital appointments, struggling to get a vein, lost biopsies and existential crisis’s resulting in the writing a will… just in case. He finds comedy in all these areas but also captures the exhausting emotional drainage that comes with cancer. He presents well this everyday grind that consumes hope and energy whilst giving him and his son reason to have an embrace for the first time since the night Thatcher died. Three times in fact. The last being at Wembley when Crystal Palace win the FA Cup. With touching poignancy, he affectionately remembers comedic comrades who didn’t make it. Summing up the wit and genius of the one-liners of the late Linda Smith and Jeremy Hardy, who faced their own demise with stoic resolve and their senses of humour that endeared them to so many, intact.
At just the right times, he reroutes into well-timed Steel-Esque detours into why the British will learn a language but not the accent. His Brummy French and Ulster German are hilarious. He dwells on his relationship with his centurion mother, about growing up in the cultural blackhole of small-town Kent and Saga holidays for 50+ Hip Hop acts. Then with a dedication of an Olympic swimmer, he dives back into his cancer journey, detailing us with the difference between Chemo and Radiotherapy. We learn that chemotherapy uses drugs, while radiotherapy uses high-energy rays. When given together, the treatment is called Chemoradiotherapy. But it is all not doom and gloom, he has us all laughing at how he feeds himself brown sludge via a Nasogastric tube through his nose and feels obliged to offer some to his frequent guests. He is not alone as evidenced by his online communication with local lad done good, the comedian and presenter Matt Forde, who was symbiotically surviving his own cancer scare. “Matt, we could go for a pint. But I can’t drink and you can’t pee.” Matt replies within a minute “Indeed Mark, we could have sex, but I can’t get an erection, and you can’t swallow!”
You try and give people what they want and what do you get
Mark hits a musical note with a piano singalong knees-up version of Arctic Monkeys Mardy Bum and other songs, interjected with Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club-ease gags thrown in between. Mark takes another dive back into the cancer world explaining how he took a call from his polar opposite, Tory comedian Jimmy Tarbuck, who gave him support and comfort. In this again, Steel presents a very human, warm side of how the most surprising of people conduct themselves when the chips are down. This is underlined, when he tells of his warm and affectionate relationship with fellow cancer patient who turns out is a general in the British Army, who is pictured on the front page of the Telegraph with the Queen. Cancer takes no sides; it kills all classes and all walks of life.
The good news is that Marks story has the happy ending, we’d all want. He survives throat cancer. He can’t hit the high notes anymore, but Hey-Ho! His comedic denouement of a difficult story is well-delivered; it carries the many emotions of surviving cancer, whilst acknowledging many don’t. He explains that a major cancer by the name of HPV is often contracted through giving oral sex. “You try and give people what they want and what do you get?” Mark concludes that he learnt to live with and then survived what he called The Leopard in my House. A savage beast that can kill you, that gave him the name of the show.
Tradition states things often come in threes. If that means that another excellent comedian survives cancer and writes an engaging and funny show and book about it, so be it. Like this aging reviewer did, count your blessings. Praise, protect and fight for the NHS. It is there for us when we need it. Long may it look after us.
Mark Steel's Leopard in My House appeared at the Nottingham Playhouse on Thursday 2 October 2025.
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