Mark Gardiner (television presenter)
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For the UK footballer, please view Mark Christopher Gardiner.
Mark Gardiner is a British television quiz show regular who has also appeared on a variety of other television and radio shows, and met a number of famous personalities, all whilst maintaining his day job in Edinburgh. Gardiner maintains a heavy veil over his private life, which is why the following only represents his many and varied appearances in the media spotlight.
Gardiner's first fleeting brush with fame occurred during the 1981 Crosby by-election for the UK parliament. Mark, then a pupil of St Mary's College, Sefton, was accosted by David Owen in front of the TV cameras as Owen campaigned on the behalf of his Social Democratic Party colleague Shirley Williams. The meeting was featured on the national news. He also met David Steel, one of four meetings with the long-serving Liberal leader.
Two years later, as the Conservative party regained the seat from the Social Democratic Party in the 1983 General Election, Gardiner met comedian Ken Dodd in a branch of Sattherthwaites in Crosby's Moor Lane.
By 1989, Gardiner was a student at Heriot-Watt University where he met rising actor Robbie Coltrane during a student union sit-in.
In 1991, Gardiner was present in the crowd that saw Sean Connery made a Freeman of the City of Edinburgh. Connery's shaking hands with Gardiner was filmed by both the BBC and ITV news crews, and the clip of their meeting was later re-used on Newsnight (complete with Jeremy Paxman talking about how loved Connery was by the Scottish public, ironic given he was shaking hands with an exiled Liverpudlian) and the Biography Channel where it was used worldwide (some years later a colleague of Gardiner's, returning from a holiday in Canada, asked him whether he had ever met Sean Connery).
It was during the 1990's that Gardiner started meeting celebrities on a regular basis, including Sir Jeffrey Archer (allegedly), Joan Collins, Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker. Gardiner also had a rather lovely conversation with Sophie Aldred of Doctor Who fame, which would have a lasting effect on him when he came to name his first child.
During this period he also attended the movie premieres and after show parties as part of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, including rubbing shoulders with the likes of Alan Davies, Christopher Cazenove and Oscar nominee Samantha Morton. Of this last's attire that night, Gardiner was quoted as saying that he thought 'the blue shellsuit was a bit inappropriate', but given his taste in Bermuda shirts was hardly in a position to comment.
Gardiner also holds the record as being the only correspondent of UK Science Fiction magazine SFX to have demonstrated such an encyclopaedic knowledge of trivia on the subject of shared universes that even they asked him whether he 'had a lot of time' on his hands.
In 2001, Gardiner was ready to move into the world of television as a celebrity in his own right. His winning appearance on The Weakest Link, against a team of assorted oddballs (Michael Jackson fans, teddy bear fanciers, Rat nutter and Roller Coaster guy amongst others) was applauded by fellow Crosby alumnus Anne Robinson who gave him one of her rare smiles.
In 2002, Gardiner met two of The Goodies - the small hairy one was missing - during the recording of rubbish Channel Four gameshow Beat the Nation. During this encounter he met Shaun Wallace, fellow quiz show genius, who was to go on to win Mastermind two years later.
2003 saw Gardiner at BBC Television Centre for Jamie Theakston quiz show Beg Borrow or Steal, a quiz show based around contestants lying to each other. His dressing room on this occasion was in between those of Girls Aloud and Little Britain. Gardiner's rendition of the Hear'Say song "Pure and Simple" was regarded as a highlight of the series, with it actually being trailed during the closing credits of The Weakest Link.
Gardiner's success in this made him such a high profile quiz show contestant that he was rejected as 'too well known' for some of the shows he applied for in the next year or two, but by 2005 he was to be seen on Scottish television as part of the Scottish 500 for the General Election, and on BBC Radio Scotland doing his best Sean Connery impression as part of Fred MacAulay's radio show during the Edinburgh Festival.
2006 saw another appearance on the Fred MacAulay show, this time murdering the song 'When The Boat Comes In' in a 'geordie' accent that co-host Sue Perkins described as sounding 'more Gudjarati than Gateshead'. Auf Wiedersehen, Pet's Tim Healy, a guest that day, was suitably unimpressed. Earlier in the year, Gardiner was back at the BBC Television Centre in Wood Lane, London for a recording of SUDO-Q, the Eamonn Holmes quiz show based around sudoku.
Currently, Gardiner is considering his future options, with appearances on the National Lottery show and Deal Or No Deal being considered.
