Researching Joe Thomas

Category:1963 birthsCategory:Living peopleCategory:Sportspeople from Lafayette, LouisianaCategory:Players of American football from LouisianaCategory:American football wide receiversCategory:Mississippi Valley State Delta Devils football playersCategory:New Orleans Saints playersCategory:National Football League replacement players

After The Inbetweeners concluded, Thomas remained connected to Channel 4, joining the cast of comedy-drama series Fresh Meat in 2011, portraying the role of Kingsley Owen until 2016. He was reunited with his The Inbetweeners colleague James Buckley when they both joined the cast of BBC Two sitcom White Gold, with Thomas portraying the role of Martin Lavender. In 2018, he starred in the comedy film The Festival.

Joe was born to Welsh parents in Cricklewood, London on 27 February 1912. His father was a shop-keeper in the leather trade and an active freemason. Joe attended Haberdashers' Aske's Hampstead School, a local minor public school, to which his father was a supplier. His interest in socialism may have arisen in reaction to this establishment. He was active in the Young Communist League, coming into contact with Tom Mann, John Gollan and John Ross Campbell. By 1933 he was a junior clerical worker for ASLEF in Hampstead.

He visited Campbell in Paris in 1936 and met senior Russian members of the Comintern. He was involved in the Workers' Olympic Committee which planned to organise an alternative to the Nazi Berlin Olympics. The proposal was shelved because of the Spanish Civil War.

In 1945 Joe joined the Oehlerite Leninist League set up by his old comrade Dennis Levin, the group changing its name in the process to the Revolutionary Workers Association, the fused group then reforming in 1947 as the short-lived Socialist Workers League. In the following decade Thomas and Levin formed the Workers League.

Thomas's first professional gig was in New Orleans with trombone player Joe Harris in 1923. Soon after that, he worked with Jack Carey, Chris Kelly, and Kid Rena. He recorded with Charles Derbigny in 1941, but the recordings were not publicly released until the 1960s, by which time Thomas had become a figure in the Dixieland revival movement. He led his own ensemble at New Orleans's H&J Tavern for much of the 1940s, then, in 1951, became a sideman for Papa Celestin. He worked with this ensemble for years, including after Papa French and Eddie Pierson had taken over as leader. Other associations in the 1950s and 1960s included work with Freddie Kohlman, Punch Miller, the Olympia Brass Band, and on Swedish television with Sweet Emma Barrett in 1968. In the 1970s he worked with the Legends of Jazz, replacing Joe Darensbourg.