SOME forecasts are easy, like putting your house on mischief-making comedian and activist Mark Thomas bringing A Show That Gambles On The Future to Pocklington Arts Centre on October 3 and The Crescent in York on November 28 because the dates are already in the diary.

Instead, in his new touring escapade, Thomas wants you to take rather bolder punts when he is in Yorkshire in the weeks ahead, against the backdrop of a political climate when few could have anticipated the events of 2016, and even fewer seem to know where they will lead us or where we are going.

"Basically, I ask people to come up with forecasts of what they think will happen in the next four years. I go through them – it takes 20 minutes to go through 100 – and in the show we choose our favourite and have a collection at the end to put a bet on the forecast that we think will happen," he says.

Thomas advises audience members to arrive ideally half an hour early to write down their forecast, giving him plenty of time to work his way through the predictions with his marker pen. Picking out 30 to 40, he then he constructs a fantastical but possibly accurate snapshot of the future world from his own forecasts and those of that night's fellow futurologists.

"Some of the predictions, you know from past shows; others you just busk like hell," says Thomas. "Interestingly, always about a third of them are about Donald Trump and I don't want to spend too much on those, so I cut through them quite quickly."

York Press:

Fingers crossed: Mark Thomas hopes that a bet might pay out in his new gig, A Show That Gambles On The Future. Picture: Jane Hobson

What has been the most unusual punt so far? "There's one bet we've placed that Britain will abolish the metric system in four years. Paddy Power [the Irish bookmaker] have given us 2/1 on that," says Thomas.

By comparison with past Thomas shows, A Show That Gambles On The Future is "just me just mucking about having a hoot". "No show is the same, not knowing what [predictions] we'll get it," he says. "Quite a lot of politics comes along, but in amongst all the doom and gloom, we had one person saying 'I'm going to get a waffle nightgown', and so we had a whip-round at the end and I presented her with a new nightgown two nights later."

You could have put very short odds on Brexit popping up in a conversation with the polemicist Thomas and sure enough it does, as he reveals his initial inclination was to vote Leave "until it became more and more about race and immigration" and so he switched his Referendum cross to Remain. "We are over the edge, yet to drop. It's that Wile E Coyote moment," he says. "I think we should now have a second Referendum as we voted to leave but we didn't vote on the deal."

Don't bet on that happening, Mark.

Mark Thomas in A Show That Gambles On The Future, Pocklington Arts Centre, Tuesday, October3, 8pm, and The Crescent Community Venue, York, presented by Even Better Comedy, November 28, 8pm: doors 7pm. Box office: Pocklington, 01759 301547 or at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk; York, 0113 376 0318 or wegottickets.com