Mark Steel

Dwek was an Egyptian Sephardic Jew whose family left Egypt after Gamal Abdel Nasser became president in the 1950s.

"I knew I was adopted, strangely, before I knew where babies came from. I didn’t feel different or special, and I don’t ever remember giving the slightest damn about it. I knew because my very lovely auntie Gwen would tell the story of how she got talking to a blonde girl, Frances, who had moved into a flat in the same house in London. She was 19. She was in a bit of a state because she was pregnant. Her parents didn’t know and she’d run away from home. It was 1959, so this wasn’t easy to deal with. So my auntie Gwen said to her, 'Well, I've got a solution. Have the baby and give it to my brother.' So this girl had me in 1960 and I was handed over to Doreen and Ernie."

He grew up in Swanley, Kent, and claims he was expelled from school for attending a cricket course without permission: "I thought, fantastic! The punishment for not coming in is that I'm not allowed to come in."

He traced his biological mother later in life but she said that she did not want to know him, and died soon after.

He learned that she was from a Scottish working-class family with an active involvement in left-wing politics; she had married an Italian and lived in Rimini.

She had met his biological father Joe Dwek at a party in London.

Mark Steel (born 4 July 1960) is an English author, broadcaster, stand-up comedian and newspaper columnist.

He has made many appearances on radio and television shows as a guest panellist, and has written regular columns in The Guardian, The Independent and Daily Mirror.

He presents The Mark Steel Lectures, The Mark Steel Solution, Mark Steel's in Town and the podcast What the fuck is going on?.

Steel was adopted 10 days after he was born.

His adoptive father worked in insurance and his mother was a housewife who supplemented the family's income through factory work and working as a lollipop lady.

He had a close relationship with his adoptive parents.

Steel told The Guardian':

In the late 1970s his adoptive father suffered a mental breakdown and was placed into care at Stone House Hospital.

Steel says that his first encounter with social injustice was when he saw how mentally ill patients were being treated in that hospital.

The shabby conditions reinforced Steel's political beliefs.

Steel documented his early life, adoption and quest to find his birth parents in an audio book for Audible Productions - Who Do I Think I am? - which was released in December 2021.

Steel had various early jobs including a stint as a milkman.

He became bored with answering how he started in comedy and took to saying the first thing that came into his head.

He worked the comedy circuit for several years, and acknowledges Alexei Sayle as an influence.

Dwek had subsequently become a multi-millionaire trader on Wall Street as well as a professional backgammon player who won tournaments in the USA and Europe, and represented the UK against the USA in 1973 and 1974.

In 1992 Steel presented the satirical radio show The Mark Steel Solution on BBC Radio 5, consisting of half-hour monologues offering solutions to social problems.

It ran to four series.

A comic autobiography, It's Not a Runner Bean, was published in 1996 which led to a column in The Guardian between 1996 and 1999.

In 2000 he started writing the Thursday Opinion Column for The Independent.

He has appeared frequently on Have I Got News For You, Room 101, Mock the Week, the Graham Norton Show, and has made several appearances on Question Time.

Mark Steel's in Town has won a Sony Award, Writers' Guild Award, Chortle Awards and British Comedy Guide Awards.

After writing and emailing, Steel met Dwek only once, in a London restaurant sometime around 2006.

He has a son, Elliot Steel, who is also a stand-up comedian, and a daughter from a relationship that ended in 2006.

During the South Africa series in 2008 he was interviewed by Jonathan Agnew on Test Match Special about his love of cricket.

In 2014 he won the British Press Award for Broadsheet Columnist for his column in The Independent.

He has written and performed several radio and television series for the BBC, and written several books including Reasons to Be Cheerful, Vive la Révolution – an account of the French Revolution, and It's Not a Runner Bean.

In 2015, Steel told The Guardian:

"Members of the royal family used to visit Dwek's house in London and he hung out with millionaires, like John Aspinall and James Goldsmith, at the Clermont Club [...] Just last night I discovered that five years ago he bought a house for $12m. […] He said he remembered Frances vividly but it [Steel getting in touch by email] was all a bit of a shock because he had made all the arrangements to have me dispensed with. But she took the money and didn't go through with it, bless her."

In 2015 he toured a show Who Do I Think I Am, about his adoption and tracing his biological parents.

It was broadcast as a show on Radio 4.

He was married to Natasha Steel until 2016.

In October 2023, Steel revealed he was undergoing surgery after a diagnosis of throat cancer.

In 2017, Steel was back on stage with his show Every Little Thing’s Gonna Be Alright.

Steel is a supporter of Crystal Palace F.C. and Kent County Cricket Club.