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Mark Philip David Billingham (born 2 July 1961) is an English novelist whose series of "Tom Thorne" crime novels are best-sellers in that particular genre. He is also a television screenwriter and has become a familiar face as an actor and comic.
Mark Billingham was born in Birmingham and grew up in the city's suburb of Moseley. He attended the King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Boys grammar school in nearby King's Heath, and lived in that general area "right the way through university". After graduating with a degree in drama, he stayed in Birmingham and helped form a socialist theatre company (Bread & Circuses). Bread & Circuses toured with a number of shows in schools, colleges, arts centres and the street. In the mid-1980s he moved from Birmingham to London as a "jobbing actor", taking minor roles in episodes of TV shows Dempsey and Makepeace, Juliet Bravo, Boon, and The Bill. After finding himself playing a variety of "bad guy roles such as a soccer hooligan, drug addict, a nasty copper, a racist copper, or a bent copper", he became somewhat disenchanted with acting, perceiving that the emphasis was not on talent, but on looks.
Around 1987 he decided to pursue a career in comedy, in part because:
"[The] one great advantage of stand-up comedy nobody gives a stuff about what you look like – as long as you're funny, and if you can do it, and people laugh, then you'll get bookings."
At the time, breaking into stand-up was not as difficult as it would later become, nor was there the modern infrastructure and chain businesses. Billingham cites his own route as a simple progression from 5-minute, unpaid "try-out" spots to (if one was deemed worthy) 10-, 20- and 30-minute paid slots. As he stated, "within a year, you could be playing The Comedy Store". Indeed, Billingham has headlined at The Comedy Store on many occasions, where he also appears regularly as a Master of Ceremonies.
Despite feeling rather ambivalent towards "serious" roles, Billingham still found considerable success by merging his careers as actor and comic to work in comedy shows. He was the human face on the puppet-representation-of-celebrities series Spitting Image, and "the taller half" of top double act "The Tracy Brothers" with Mike Mole from Bread & Circuses days (now guitarist with British comedy punk band Punks Not Dad), appearing regularly on the radio version of The Mary Whitehouse Experience. In 1988, he was seen on the children's comedy series News at Twelve, in which the central character "broadcasts his own (imaginary) TV news bulletin every evening". In 1989, a new role in a children's series written by Blackadder's Tony Robinson, would have a lasting impact, both on the nations' children and on Billingham himself.
From an early age, Billingham can remember writing, often "funny" stories for purposes of popularity and enjoyment. As he grew older, and his interests moved towards crime fiction, he began to skew his writing that way, setting an early novel (the as-yet unpublished The Mechanic) in his native Birmingham. Inspired by the comic-crime work of Carl Hiaasen and other authors, he attempted to use his experience as a stand-up comedian and crime fan to write a similarly comic novel. Ultimately he abandoned his unfinished novel and the comic-crime genre to focus on his other idea—a book that would become Sleepyhead.
Mark lives in North London with his wife Claire and their two children; Katie, 17, and Jack, 14.
More info:
Code:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/142411.Mark_Billingham |
Tom Thorne Series
Mark Billingham - Sleepy Head (read by Christopher Kay)
Mark Billingham - Scaredy Cat (read by Christopher Kay)
Mark Billingham - Lazybones (read by Steve Perrin)
Mark Billingham - The Burning Girl (read by Paul Thornley)
Mark Billingham - Lifeless (read by Paul Thornley)
Mark Billingham - Buried (read by Paul Thornley)
Mark Billingham - Death Message (read by Paul Thornley)
Mark Billingham - Bloodline (read by Paul Thornley)
Mark Billingham - From The Dead (read by Paul Thornley)
Mark Billingham - Good As Dead (read by Mark Billingham)
Mark Billingham - The Dying Hours (read by Mark Billingham)
Mark Billingham - The Bones Beneath (read by Mark Billingham)
Mark Billingham - Time Of Death (read by Mark Billingham)
Mark Billingham - Love Like Blood (read by Mark Billingham, Avita Jay, Sagar Arya)
Mark Billingham - The Killing Habit (read by Mark Billingham)
Mark Billingham - Their Little Secret (read by Mark Billingham)
Mark Billingham - Cry Baby (read by Mark Billingham, Robert Glenister, David Morrissey)
Mark Billingham - The Murder Book (read by Mark Billingham)
Detective Miller Series
Mark Billingham - The Last Dance (read by David Threlfall)
Mark Billingham - The Wrong Hands (read by David Threlfall)
Non-Series
Mark Billingham - Rabbit Hole (read by Maxine Peake)
Mark Billingham - Die Of Shame (read by Mark Billingham)
Mark Billingham - In The Dark (read by Adjoa Andoh)
Mark Billingham - Rush Of Blood (read by Toby Longworth)
Code:
https://rapidgator.net/folder/2889435/Mark%20Billingham.html |
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