Rabble-rousing investigative journalist and comedian Mark Thomas surprised his fans by writing a show about his opera- loving father.

Colin was a builder with a history of domestic violence. At the end of his life he suffered a degenerative, incurable disease.

Bravo Figaro, which toured last year, opened up their rocky relationship.

“It only became difficult to do once my dad died. For me it was always about writing. It was not cathartic. It’s a personal, idiosyncratic story about death, love, opera and relationships that aren’t as good as they could be.”

The show was political as well.

“He was a working class man who left school with no qualifications who loved opera. My dad epitomised that idea of working class self-improvement.”

Mark eschewed the trade. He spends his life on stage creating entertainment which reveals wrongdoing and establishment hypocrisy.

Among the feats from his 27 years on the comedy circuit – on TV, touring, in magazines, on radio – are helping to change laws (on inheritance tax, the right to protest) and encouraging the audience to come up with their own policies to make their lives better in People’s Manifesto.

He held the Guinness World Record for most demonstrations held on one day (20 different protests in 20 different locations), which was later bettered by ambitious schoolchildren trying to emulate him.

In 2010 he went rambling in the Middle East – the length of the Israeli separation barrier – for Extreme Rambling: Walking The Wall.

“The point about performing is to find new ways of doing it, to surprise yourself and your audience about the nature of what you are doing.”

His latest show – 100 Acts Of Minor Dissent – is back to the mischief making.

“It is about having fun and about creative dissent,” he explains, ahead of a preview show in Brighton.

“There is a funny old thing that whenever you walk through the streets there are all sort of things happening around you that you have given your consent to without knowing about it.

“You don’t do anything about it, so this is about making interventions.”

For the past two weeks Thomas has been stopping policemen in the street and taking their photos. He will do it every day, except weekends, for a year. It is one of the acts in his year-long project, which started this month.

“They have tried to stop people photographing police in the past using section 58 of the Terror Act because they have claimed harassment but it is not illegal.

“It’s interesting because I’m potentially in conflict with the police every day. So far seven out of nine have been fine with it. One accused me of harassment, one got very upset and another covered his face.”

Thomas has been continually photo-graphed by the police. He was once on a police spotter card and labelled as someone likely to cause trouble at demonstrations.

“People sometimes write a project because they have a plan of what they want to do and say.

“I go to do things to find things out. I never know exactly why I am doing it until I have stopped at the end.”

But he knows by the end of the year he will have enough material – films, posters, documents – to fill an art exhibition to open on May 14, 2014.

He has created websites, too, including the recently created www.wewilldrivethemtotheairport.co.uk.

Thomas and his team are finding volunteers to drive bankers to airports.

“Next time they say, ‘If they take away my bonus, I will leave the country’, we will do it.

“We are building up a map of volunteer taxi drivers who will literally take them out of the country. Go on, f*** off.”

The B*****d Trade Logo Certificate is an award he has invented to present to companies with substandard practices. A trademark application is in process.

“Much like Fairtrade, we will have a certification programme whereby people can apply and say this company is working to substandard behaviour and we would like to give them the B*****d Trade Logo Certificate.

“We would then say yes or no according to what the company has done.

Two news reports from national newspapers or four from local papers or a couple of TV reports will be needed to cite behaviour that is aberrant from social norms.

“If a company gets approved for one, we will award them a certificate in some shape or form.”