To understand the mindset of a comedian, Mark Steel says, you should imagine you’re on a plane that’s going down. While most people are screaming, hugging loved ones, saying their final prayers, the comic is sitting quietly, mind whirring, thinking, “I wonder what the joke in this is? It would be even worse if it was a plane full of comics,” Steel says when we meet at his home in south London. “Everyone would be trying to come up with the darkest, funniest thing to say before they hit the earth.”
This certainly explains his new book: The Leopard In My House: One Man’s Adventures in Cancerland. Back in 2023, the 64-year-old was diagnosed with throat cancer – the “leopard” in the book’s title – and he’s spent the past year recovering from debilitating chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment. His gruelling account hardly glosses over anything: there are tales that make you wince, moments of gripping drama and a seemingly endless flow of mucous stories (the unstoppable production of snot was one particularly unpleasant side-effect of the treatment).
