So when I saw bored and apparently unwashed people sheltering under insalubrious doorways on wet weekends, shouting for trade as they damply failed to shift copies of Socialist Worker magazine, my impressionable mind somehow associated them with my fear of punk. Maybe it was their utilitarian clothes, maybe some of them were socialist punks, it’s too long ago for me to remember accurately, but the punk manifesto was to shock, and it altered the perception of a small boy in Wales. Subsequently he learned, I learned, that the scary punks were mostly exceptionally nice people, but socialism somehow remained stuck with all kinds of negative baggage. Perhaps it was reinforced by the general public repeatedly voting for Conservative governments; I don’t know. It wasn’t until I’d left secondary school that we saw Margaret Thatcher leave 10 Downing Street (and I vividly remember Chris walking into the computer lab, arms aloft, beaming from ear to ear, proclaiming “Maggie’s out!”), yet even then it was another Conservative, John Major, who became PM and then won the 1992 election. 1992 was the first year in which I was eligible to vote in a general election and I didn’t bother, it seemed of no relevance to me.

In 1996, by happy chance, I stumbled onto a TV programme called The Mark Thomas Comedy Product. The blend of self-deprecating humour and sharp social observation (of how we all seem to fail despite our good intentions, and how our elected representatives and corporate leaders fail with far greater regularity and impact) had me enthralled. This was comedy at it’s best – Thomas acting as court jester for the British populace, speaking unsightly and apparently uninteresting truths; using comedy to bring them to virgin ears.

Back then I was still young enough that I really didn’t care about stuffy old politics, but this bloke was talking sense.

I’ve enjoyed many of his programmes since then, and in advance of his current tour he’s released a series of interviews as podcasts. So engaging and engrossing are they, that there’s been nothing else on my iPod for the last week. The topic at hand is the economy, including banking, tax, the credit crunch, the sub prime market, RBS, Northern Rock, corporate tax avoidance, international money movement and many other related things that are, when presented with a pinch of mirth, both interesting and entertaining.

The interviewees are a diverse group of unrelated socio-political campaigners who all share a common vision of “something better than the status quo”, including: Sargon Nissan & Josh Ryan-Collins of the New Economics Foundation, Austin Mitchell MP (Lab), Dr Paulo Dos Santos (lecturer in Economics), Paul Kenny, John Christensen, Prof. Prem Sikka (Essex), Faisal Rahman of the Fair Finance Campaign, Vince Cable MP (LibDem), Nick Dearden of Jubilee Debt Campaign, Richard Brooks, Paul Mason of Newsnight, Nick Hildyard of The Corner House, Prof. Richard Wilkinson (Em. Nott & Hon. UCL) and Gerry Gold of A World To Win.

The podcasts can be downloaded from Mark’s website, or for those with an iPod, free from the iTunes store.

And for a generally interesting read, try http://markthomasinfo.com/. It’s reassuring to know there are people like Mark, and his interviewees out in the world. Socialists really are a heartwarming and idealistic bunch (they’d have to be to survive a right wing Conservative government, followed by a right-of-centre Labour one) and they’re not in the least bit scary.