Mark Ellen

Mark Ellen is a English magazine editor, journalist and broadcaster who lives in West London.

Whilst at Oxford University in the 1970s, he briefly played bass alongside Tony Blair in Ugly Rumours, a band that according to Ellen was created primarily to meet women.

After graduating, he wrote for Record Mirror, NME and Time Out before signing up as Features Editor of Smash Hits in 1981, where he became the editor in 1983. He was the launch editor of Q, the re-launch editor of Select, and the launch managing editor of Mojo. He later became the editor-in-chief of EMAP Metro overseeing 14 consumer magazines but he left Emap after 16 years to join the independent publishing company Development Hell in 2002.

He also has a long broadcasting career which includes contributions to BBC Radio One in the early 80's as stand-ins for Kid Jensen and John Peel. He presented the BBC's Old Grey Whistle Test from 1982 to 1987. He also co-presented the Live Aid TV broadcast in 1985.

Ellen was the editor of The Word, a UK music magazine which he started with long-time colleague, business partner and Whistle Test co-presenter David Hepworth. The first issue was published in February 2003 and the magazine celebrated its 50th issue in March 2007. The closure of the magazine was announced in June 2012.

Links To Peel
In an interview with the Liverpool Echo in 2014, Mark Ellen described how Peel was paranoid about a new presenter taking over his show for two weeks while he was on holiday:

"“I sat in his chair rather nervously with a quarter of a million people listening and I looked through the glass and there was John Peel who’d come in to check out the competition and who’d made no attempt to disguise the fact at all. He was very, very paranoid about being replaced at Radio 1. I think he felt he was older than most of the other DJs and all the others who’d been signed up in 1967 had been got rid of or left. He said (holiday cover) is like ‘letting somebody borrow your toothbrush or letting somebody sleep with your wife’.”"Their rather odd first meeting blossomed into friendship, and Mark stayed at John’s home (which was covered in pictures of Liverpool FC players) not long before his death in 2004:

"“We stayed up until three o’clock in the morning playing records, just the two of us, drinking red wine, and he burst into tears when he played old Lonnie Donegan records.”"

Shows
Mark Ellen sat in for Peel on the following occasions:

1982
 * 14 June 1982
 * 15 June 1982
 * 16 June 1982
 * 17 June 1982
 * 21 June 1982


 * 22 June 1982


 * 23 June 1982

1983
 * 24 June 1982
 * 23 May 1983

1984
 * 24 May 1983
 * 25 May 1983
 * 26 May 1983
 * 26 March 1984
 * 27 March 1984
 * 28 March 1984


 * 29 March 1984