Mark Found - you either love him or loathe him, but he is the one getting all the nice railway trips on the tele. So how did that happen?

Born forty one years ago in Padiham, Lancs he was brought up in Whitstable, Kent. This may go some way to explaining his love affair with class 71s.

Much of his childhood was spent listening to Radio Caroline, in fact too much really, Mark admits that many an hour that should have been spent doing homework was lost to the sounds of Loving Awareness.

It was this manic love affair with a radio station that led to Mark's desire in becoming a radio presenter - and when Mark found himself in London, on his own, at seventeen this is what he set out to do. Oh, the fun of making tapes in the bedroom with the mic balanced in front of the speakers and then talking for as long as it took to change the records! Oh, how all his flatmates must have been sick of him!

Still, he did it, and eventually found himself on hospital radio (where he met the similarly aspiring Mark Collins) and he enjoyed quite a run on Radio Jackie, back in the days when pirate radio was good!

For some reason (a lack of desire to play Kylie Mynogue records has always been Mark's excuse) He then gave up trying to get in front of the microphone and began a career behind it.

Mark's work as a television sound recordist has lasted some years, and taken him all over the world. You will have seen, though maybe not memorised, his name at the end of such programmes as "Ross Kemp in Alaska", "French and Saunders" and "The Office", but years of holding a furry thing on the end of a pole and saying "We'll need to do it again, I can hear someone breathing" took it's toll, and Mark yearned for something more creative.

A chance meeting with television producer Dave Hatter saw Mark's career taking a new turn.

Mark had been given, some years ago, a large collection of LGB model railway gear. Pretty well mint condition, all in boxes. Tempted though he was to sell, Mark hung on to the stuff, even though it spent many years in the boxes under the bed in the spare room and when, finally, he left his small three - bedroom terrace house in Streatham and moved into a slightly more palatial spread in Saffron Walden, Mark saw his chance. The garden needed landscaping, his partner, Sophie, had no objections, and so, armed with C.J. Freezer's excellent book "The Garden Railway Manual" Mark set to work researching.

It was telling this story to Dave Hatter, and mentioning that it might make a good series, that "The Garden Railway" series was conceived.

For Discovery Home & Leisure viewers the rest is history - "Garden Railway" is still being shown, "Supermodels" followed soon after and now, having finally persuaded the channel that there are a lot of blokes out there that really do like railways, "Trainspotting" is on the air.

William Besley 2002

mark found's favourite links

www.lufc.com
a life blighted and made miserable by a schoolboy decision to support this lot. Still, at least they're not Man Utd, which would be too horrible to contemplate.

www.tmufc.co.uk
So? I like non-league football, what's wrong with that? Great web - site by the way, well worth a look.

www.multimap.com
Lots of travelling around the UK, and this has proved invaluable.

www.railwayregister.co.uk
hats off to the bloke who put this lot together. Brilliant.

www.radio-locator.com
If you're going to spend hours in front of the computer what could be better than listening to heavy rock from Andorra? It's all here.

www.tvcream.org
35 - 50 years old? You'll find it hard to tear yourself away from this website. Nostalgia by the bucketload.

www.advertsongs.co.uk
The car advert where you know the song but don't know what it is? Help is at hand my friend.