Personal, political, plenty of punch lines

Mid-life crises came mob-handed at comic Mark Steel.
Suddenly young people spoke another language, his own children needed constant looking after, his relationship with their mother collapsed, and his thirty year affair with the Socialist Workers Party ended in tears.
Like all good artists Steel used adversity for inspiration – turning his troubles into a book and a stand-up routine.
At Salford’s Lowry Centre on Sunday night he hit just the right note for an audience who – like him – were too old to rap but too young to lose the will to live just yet.
Steel’s highly personal show touched on everything from being banished to the sofa to his love of Test Match Special.
His impersonations of figures from Tony Benn, through Geoffrey Boycott, to a forgetful Ian Paisley were funny and well observed caricatures.
Probably the weakest part of the show was when Steel talked of his disenchantment with the disorganised organised left.
It will have confused the non-activists in the crowd.
And he didn’t have the heart to really go for his former comrades.
Many of the key players behind last month’s Convention of the Left were in the audience – no doubt desperate to read the nuances.
They will probably have liked the way his skit on the soul-destroying number of questions customers are asked while ordering a Subway sandwich, was used to introduce Marx’s theory of alienation.
The bravest moment was when Steel launched a blitz on educators for being boring.
Everyone in the house knew the formula for working out how many teachers and academics would be in an audience of lefties at the Lowry on a Sunday night. And we all knew the answer would be big.
Taking on your core audience – is that a sign of a mid-life crisis?
Mark Steel, Lowry centre, Salford - £14. Mark is on tour until Christmas.