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“Mark Thomas Comedy Product S5 E4 ‘Pester Power’“
An episode of a satirical TV series starring comedian-activist Mark Thomas broadcast on the UK’s Channel 4.
Full episode embedded above.

Mark Thomas is a British activist-comedian who has a long-running stand-up comedy / satire show on TV. He’s filming an episode in a North London secondary school with a geography teacher called Noel Jenkins and his students. It starts off being about government cutbacks which mean that schools are relying on free books from publishers like Jazzy Books which contain advertising. When the Jazzy Books CEO refuses to talk to them on the phone, he asks the students if they would like to talk to one of the advertisers: adidas. Mr Jenkins has been teaching them about sweatshop production Indonesia, so they are primed. Mark Thomas says he has the phone number of David Husselbee, adidas’ ‘Global Director of Social and Environmental Affairs’. He calls him, and his crew film what happens. Husselbee is out of office. So Thomas asks the students to leave him a message. What questions do they want to ask him? They’re all about adidas sweatshops. Everyone at the school goes go to lunch and, when they get back to class, Husselbee – surprisingly – returns the call. He spends an hour on the phone answering the student’s sweatshop questions. It’s all filmed. Thomas asks the students if they’re happy with Husselbee’s answers. Nobody is. Husselbee says it would be different if he was there in person. So Mark Thomas and Mr Jenkins invite him to visit. He does so a few weeks later. Thomas also invites Richard Howitt, an MEP who has been trying and failing to get adidas to turn up to an EU hearing about sweatshop labour. Also present are two women from Indonesia, one who works for a mission supporting factory workers like those who make adidas shoes, and the other her translator. Thomas’ crew films the discussion, which Thomas talks about in the stand-up comedy show that’s made about it. This classroom is the site of an extraordinary get-together of supply chain actors, and an extraordinary discussion unfolds that is rooted in the direct, heartfelt and cheeky style of questioning from the young people present. This is ‘pester power’ (the episode’s title): showing what young people can do to get adults to change their behaviour. It’s common knowledge in trade justice activism that different actors in supply chains have different experiences of, and roles in, keeping the flow of commodities going. And it’s common knowledge that different priorities, ethics and value systems are more or less at home in different roles. But, when you bring these together in a discussion like the one in this classroom, with people they don’t normally talk to each other as equals, they can clash horribly. That’s what’s so revealing about this example and why it has to feature on our site. This example of trade justice activism comes from an time when corporate executives were less guarded, when they might turn up to explain on camera the way that the economy works from their perspective (see also our page on the BBC documentary Mangetout here), and before they started using corporate PR firms to protect themselves from such scrutiny (when they didn’t come out of this very well). Putting corporate executives under the spotlight this can have an impact. Husselbee says to Howitt at the end of the discussion that adidas will turn up to the next EU hearing. Would that have happened without this ‘pester power’ show? The students are inspired by the power they find they have.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) Mark Thomas Comedy Product S5 E4 ‘Pester Power’. followthethings.com/mark-thomas-comedy-product-s5-e4-pester-power.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 40 minutes.