Early Years
Born in Ayresome Park Road, the same street as Middlesbrough Football Club, Mark’s parents were Denis and Patricia. Mark’s Dad floated between several careers in his lifetime after 7 years in the RAF. He was a policeman for a few years and then returned to his original apprenticeship of carpentry. He went on to work for numerous Teesside companies, including running his own joinery firm and finally managing and running a council joinery workshop in Cargo Fleet.
Mark’s mother brought up 4 children of which Mark was the eldest. To supplement the lean family income, she worked in a dress shop, a butchers, was an Avon lady and was also a care worker in Linthorpe.
The family always lived in Middlesbrough until the children left home. Mark and his siblings enjoyed career success, from their Middlesbrough backgrounds he became a national broadcaster, another the manager of the Queen musical We Will Rock You, another a University Professor who has published several books on fashion, and the youngest who started in nursing at the local James Cook hospital, went on to become a director of the Harley Medical Group and the senior director of a regional 111 NHS service. All began their education at Green Lane school.
Mark’s biggest influence was his Grandad who ran his own insurance brokers in the town. He took Mark to Middlesbrough football matches from the age of 4 and so began his lifelong love and involvement with the Boro.
Mark attained 8 GCE O levels, including Russian. Within months of that he became a local radio personality (see career) and then spent 2 years at Sixth Form, leaving with 2 A levels. With a burgeoning career already underway, Mark saw University as blocking his work progress. He deferred it for a year, but by then had secured the biggest slot on his local station Radio Tees.
Radio Career
Mark began his radio career as a sports assistant on BBC Radio Cleveland aged 15. With commercial radio taking off, in 1975, Radio Tees, one of the first new stations, took on Mark as he was sitting his O levels. At 16, he was the UK’s youngest radio DJ. During the next two years he took over numerous weekend shows and was holiday relief on daily shows. One morning he hosted the daily breakfast show when the DJ was ill, and got a taxi to Sixth Form immediately afterwards. Mark deferred university to pursue his career. He took on a day job as an assistant cameraman at BBC Look North, but within 6 months at the age of 19, he became Britain’s youngest breakfast DJ, hosting a daily show that captured the station’s biggest audience in its history across nearly 5 years. Listening figures showed that more than half of Teesside was listening to “Me Mark Page”, a heritage still carried through to this day. People still remember Mark’s morning fun and characters. His show received a nomination for a national radio award. This soon led to a weekly spot on Tyne Tees TV’s 6’oclock news show, with Popspot running for 5 years. Mark also hosted several Tyne Tees TV shows with a music slant and a prime time series for young people. At the time Mark was also writing columns for 2 local newspapers.
Aged 21 Mark took on the Radio Tees Travel show and began his pursuit of visiting countries around the world. He hosted a 2 hour travel show for 3 months a year, featuring his travel recordings and interviews, often doing a dozen or more trips a year. This also included a guided tour of Australia with Paul Hogan, just before his Crocodile Dundee success.
At the age of 23, Mark was snapped up by BBC Radio 1 to host the weekend breakfast shows. Thus becoming the only Teessider to become a host on national radio. He would also broadcast shows on BBC Radio 5, and on BBC Radio 4, one of his recordings was Interview of the Year. Despite an already extensive TV career, he made just one Top of the Pops appearance. The feedback from the producer was that Mark was “too Northern”. He went on to make various ad hoc appearances on national TV and hosted a weekly Popspot on TVAM.
During his time at Radio One, Mark averaged 3 shows a week, which included hosting the station’s pop celebrity music quiz and for a year took over Friday afternoons from Steve Wright. He also did work on BBC local stations. He did weekly live gigs all around the UK, from Stornaway to Cornwall.
After 4 years of a split week between London and Teesside, Mark left Radio One, taking over the BBC Cleveland Breakfast Show and hosting weekly shows on Radio Clyde, Radio Luxembourg and Forces Radio. He has gone on to present a BBC Night Network Show on 14 stations, hosting award-winning shows for a number of years at breakfast on Aire FM (Leeds), The Pulse of West Yorkshire and on Forces Radio. Mark pioneered doing radio shows from his own studio from the 90s, (now a norm), linking direct to studios for shows both live and recorded. Mark has now appeared on over 40 UK stations, both commercial, BBC and Forces.
Forces Broadcasting
From the mid-80s Mark become a cult figure amongst HM Forces worldwide. He hosted a weekly radio show that became “Mark at the Manor” when broadcast from his home. For 5 years he hosted his own weekly TV show Popspot with music guests, videos and competitions. His TV show was often filmed in Germany and Cyprus and in Hong Kong where Popspot also ran on a local TV channel. Both shows were broadcast around the world in HM Forces locations. Mark was also in demand for appearances/gigs and made many appearances in Germany, Cyprus, Hong Kong and even Belize in Central America. Mark also went to broadcast live radio shows around the world. At his instigation Mark managed and DJ’d on several trial/temporary stations he set up in Army bases. Having always found BFBS a slow and intransigent corporation with little ambition, Mark left and set up a rival company to bid for Army work having built up an extensive contacts network across UK Army bases and senior Army figures in Whitehall. Mark hosted the first live broadcast on Forces TV in Cyprus and a Telethon.
Mark became the first person to buy a UK FM radio licence in 2005, after a change in Ofcom legislation, from a struggling business. With 6 weeks he had opened a radio station in Lanarkshire; L107, staffing it, marketing it, equipping the studio and office and built the transmission chain. He sold it at a profit 2 years later. He also ran trial stations in Perth and was awarded a new FM licence, opening his second commercial radio station in Scotland. It was sold to another radio group in 2011.
Mark’s work as a military broadcasting consultant has seen him work extensively in the Philippines, both personal and as Garrison Radio and also with AFN – the American Forces Network. One of Mark’s strengths has been to engage and network with everyone from private soldiers to Generals, with local business leaders and politicians in his home area, as well as national politicians and ministers in UK and the equivalents of all overseas. Mark’s expertise is also in meeting and presenting broadcast creative to government agencies overseas. He has also been a broadcaster with weekly contributions on radio stations in Germany and Australia.
Awards
Mark has won seven radio awards in addition to several nominations, the prime three being the Sony Gold for Britain’s Best Breakfast Show DJ in 1991 and Gold Medals for Best Comedy Personality and Best Radio Comedy at the International Radio Festival of New York. His awards were on Radio Aire, Radio Clyde, The Pulse and BFBS. As a media owner he won two Sony UK radio awards for the Garrison Radio network. He has also been awarded an Armed Forces Philippines commendation for work for the military community.
Football
Until January 10th 2020 Mark was the stadium announcer for Middlesbrough FC. For over 40 years he was involved with the club, doing half time pitchside activities on mic, before taking over the stadium announcing role 29 years ago. When the club moved to the new Riverside Stadium, Mark’s innovation resulted in other clubs copying what he had done. This even included a recce by Manchester United. At the Boro he was the first in the country to play goal and corner music. The tune Reach Out (Pigbag) pioneered by Mark and identified as the club’s theme, has grown to become a worldwide football anthem. Mark provided a service to the club with his own team, managing all aspects of PA work, co-ordinating with numerous departments and with Mark hosting half time activities, interviews and entertainment, which were done live to the Big Screen.
Mark’s biggest gig was in front of 84,000 fans at Wembley for the Premier League play-off in 2015. He got the crowd to do the first ever pre-match Mexican wave at Wembley. Mark also appeared in front of a similar crowd at the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff for the 2004 League Cup Final. For several hours he hosted the fans square in Eindhoven before doing team announcing at the 2006 UEFA Cup Final. Mark has been a regular announcer at his second team Hartlepool United, as well as being on mic at several other clubs. This also included pitchside activity for Spurs in the mid-80s including the UEFA Cup Final.