The Mark Steel Lectures.

[Stewart]

Anyone else enjoyed these on BBC4 and BBC2? I've been watching the new series and very much enjoyed the last as well. Now, while Mark is the sort of person I know I'd loathe if he uttered a single word of politics during these things (Hard lefty that he so obviously is), these are brilliantly written, genuinely interesting and very funny half-hour lectures on various famous thinkers, artists, and general genius types from various periods in history.

Normally, you'd have to nail me to the chair to get me to sit through a half-hour lecture on Karl Marx or Byron, and although some of the others are more immediately to my interest (Darwin, Da Vinci, etc), not once have I been tempted to turn over and watch something with bombs going off in it.

The mix of well delivered factual content and genuinely funny and well written jokes is balanced perfectly, so every strand of information is presented in a style that you can just allow to wash over you, never getting bored.

I've really enjoyed them, which for a potentially dull lecture series on BBC 4 presented by a hard-left comedian, is saying something.

"You get the feeling that Da Vinci never quite understood the concept of work, nor the fact that if you were a Postman and you were asked 'have you delivered those letters', people wont be pleased if you say 'no - not a single one... but I have invented a wind-powered cork screw."

Mark Steel (without the politics) = top man.

[TiG]

Yeah i've caught a few of them, Fraud and Darwin where both very interesting.

Quite agree with your take on Mark Steel tho

TiG

[Stewart]

Quite agree with your take on Mark Steel tho

TiG

You mean, in general a decent, funny bloke, but politicaly, a bit of a militant lefty who you soon end up starting to dislike?

I suppose its the same as Mark Thomas; very funny man and his series 'The Mark Thomas Comedy Product' is a great watch and very funny, but he's another 'angry lefty', sadly.

[Stewart]

Pretty sure that was Mark Thomas.