MARK was born in Whitefield, Lancashire in March 1967. He joined Raceform in 1997 as Product Manager for Computer Raceform but his knowledge and enthusiasm soon saw him writing for the newly formed newspaper, Raceform On Saturday.

His success in tipping big-priced winners in his weekly roundup of one of the weekend’s meetings soon led to having a regular column. He became the lead tipster for the paper in 2000 when he won the Racing Post/Coral sponsored Naps Table at his first attempt. After finishing runner-up in the following National Hunt competition he went on to join the sport’s best selling weekly newspaper, Racing & Football Outlook in 2001.

After a successful stint as the ‘Morning Mole’, mark was approached by The Sun to start a column in their new Saturday pull-out, The Favourite, where Mark continued his roll of tipping big priced winners as the ‘Bookie Basher’. Claude Duval took over at the end of the 2002 flat season, but not before Mark landed a huge 77/1 double on Cambridgeshire day. Beachamp Pilot and Somnus were two of his biggest bets during the season and rounded off another successful year.

Mark went on to punt on a full time basis before reuniting with the Racing & Football Outlook in the Autumn of 2003 following the untimely loss of speed figure guru Ken Hussey . Keen to preserve the popular ‘Time Test’ column , Mark now writes exclusively in the Outlook, calculating speed figures as Ken would have liked.

He lives with his wife Lynda and son Thomas in Swindon, Wiltshire, where he also enjoys brewing his own real ale. Cheers!