Martin Short

Martin Short has been working in comedy for fifty years and his chart contains four T-squares, which is about as many as a chart can carry and is worth leading with.

He was born at Hamilton, in Ontario, on 26 March 1950 with the Sun in Aries and Mercury beside it, and Mars retrograde in Libra directly opposite. Every one of the four T-squares involves that Mars. Two planets facing each other with a third pulling at right angles, four times over, all hinged on the same retrograde planet, means nothing in this chart resolves internally and all of it routes through drive that is running backwards.

That is an uncomfortable thing to describe and a very recognisable thing to watch. Comedy of the kind he does is built on exactly that: enormous energy with no natural outlet, discharged into characters at a pitch nobody else would attempt. His Moon squares Mercury five minutes of arc from exact, closer than anything else he has, which puts feeling and speech at permanent right angles. A performer who cannot say a thing straight and converts it into a voice instead is that aspect with an audience.

Four of the ten planets are in air and a single one in earth, so the chart thinks and talks and has almost nothing that steadies it. Four are retrograde, including that Mars, which turns the drive inward and makes the comedy look effortless from outside while being nothing of the kind.

Fifty years of work is the evidence. A chart with four T-squares does not produce a comfortable life, and it does produce somebody who never runs out of material, because the pressure that generates it is structural and was never going to be resolved. Four T-squares is an uncomfortable inheritance and a very reliable one, and it has kept him working for half a century at a pitch most comedians cannot sustain for a decade.