Mark and Lard - The Graveyard Shift, Radio 1

Mark and lard

The Grave Yard Shift Days

When you are 12, and all you’ve ever know of comedy was Jeremy Beadle, Jim Davison’s Big Break and Mr Bean, nothing quite prepares you for Mark and Lard but jees did I embrace Radio1's The Graveyard Shift hard. I had never heard anything like this radio show before, it was hosted by two northerners, Mark Radcliffe and Marc Riley and on 25 October 1993, my life changed forever, i was 13.

Their show exposed to new music from the likes of Pavement, The Flaming Lips, Ian Dury, and The Devine Comedy but also to poetry from Ian McMillan and John Hegley. Poetry - I’d always felt that poetry was something from a world that felt very far away from my own. And books! where extracts were read by pop stars, I read London Fields by Martin Amis because Justine from Elestica did and it was the first book I ever owned and read, because I wanted to.
Each week there’d be an eclectic mix of guest such as Marc Lamar, Side Show Bob and Katie Puckrik (who i adore) joining in the show. I felt socially educated and I listened with great intent. But it was the relationship between Mark and Lard that made the show what it was, it was genuine, a friendship. As a listener, I felt privileged to be a part of it.

I wrote letters, drew postcards and occasionally called the show. I was that fan, that one totally obsessed fan. I have cassettes upon cassettes of recorded shows. When i got a mention they'd play a tune for me and say, "'This is for Sad-im' our regular correspondent" which i would dine out on for about a month!

A couple of years ago in Robin Hoods Bay I went to give our car parking ticket to a car pulling into our space as we’d decided to leave early and had loads of time left on the ticket and the driver of the car was Mark Riley, I gasped and said “I know who you are.!!!” .he laughed..That was probably one of the best days of my life....