Mark Manchester is a professional broadcaster and voiceover artist based in West London. You can currently hear him on the UK’s biggest commercial TV channel, ITV1, as a live Network Continuity Announcer, a job he’s been doing since 2004.

He was born in Nottingham in 1978; destined to be a performer. School productions, playground theatre or weekend drama classes; you name it, Mark was at the centre of it. So, it was no surprise to anyone really when he eventually took to the stage of Nottingham’s Theatre Royal at the age of 9 and never looked back.

From a national touring production of Catherine Cookson’s ‘The Fifteen Streets’, to playing Fagin’s sidekick ‘The Artful Dodger’ in Oliver; Mark played both amateur and professional stage shows throughout the Midlands in his teens, Buxton Opera House being a particularly grand set of boards he ‘trod’ on numerous occasions. He was the very first school performer to play the famous role of P.T Barnum when the strict staging rights were relaxed and in 1993 he received the allocade of Most Promising Young Actor by the Nottingham Operatic Society.

Being an artistic individual, Mark always took the opportunity to get more creative in other ways too and by the time he left school, he had been Marks & Spencer’s national ‘Young Environmentalist of the Year’ for 3 consecutive years running. A bit of creative writing and a pack of felt tip pens was all that was required here, but the prize meant a celebrity-filled awards ceremony on London’s Park Lane and a free holiday! Every young boy’s dream…. From Ernie Wise to Tony Hart, Mark had the chance to meet some remarkable people, most of whom are sadly no longer with us, but I guess you could say that’s where he got the bug for showbiz!

It was radio that really grabbed Mark’s attention after that, and following a few false-starts, not least as one of Steve Wright’s Young DJ’s broadcast on BBC Radio One, he headed south to university and it was whilst studying in Farnborough, that Mark realised an ambition by having his own daily radio show. You could probably count the number of listeners on one hand, but it was the experience that mattered and it led to Mark’s first full time job in radio at the Student Broadcast Network in 1998.

By the new millennium, Mark had become responsible for looking after the entire output of the station. He managed things through turbulent times and as a sceptical radio industry became more accepting of this small radio service that was already making big waves in the music industry, Mark was asked to speak on a panel at the Radio Academy’s annual News & Speech conference. Here, he addressed key members of the radio community and even met with Prime Minister Tony Blair at a subsequent lunch at 10 Downing Street, so things were on the up!

Thanks to Mark’s aptitude for new technology, he joined the team at RCS UK in 2001. Here he spent 3 years as a member of the support team, providing help and guidance to users of the company’s software throughout the UK and Ireland. Training was a big part of the job and for a worldwide company meant a lot of travel too, so head office in New York beckoned on several occasions, and if you can cope with radio there, you can pretty much cope anywhere!

The call of the microphone was never far away though, and as Mark had undertaken many voiceover projects in the interim, it was the lure of television that brought him to ITV in 2004 as a Continuity Announcer for ITV1. He’s been there for 7 years now, and has introduced everything from The X Factor to Coronation Street. More than 18 million people have tuned in for some of the biggest TV events, so it’s fair to say at some point, you’ll have heard Mark without even knowing it.

Now based in West London, Mark is a keen ice-skater and snowboarder. Travel is a big passion too and his passport often gets a battering! He’s currently studying for a qualification in professional photography.