Mark Durkan MP
Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland
In office 6 November 2001 – 14 October 2002
First Minister	David Trimble
Preceded by	Seamus Mallon
Succeeded by	Martin McGuinness
Leader of SDLP
In office 2001–2010
Preceded by	John Hume
Succeeded by	Margaret Ritchie[1]
Member of Parliament for Foyle
Incumbent
Assumed office 5 May 2005
Preceded by	John Hume
Majority	4,824 (12.7%)
Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for Foyle
In office 25 June 1998 – 9 November 2010
Preceded by	new assembly
Succeeded by	Pól Callaghan
Personal details
Born	(1960-06-26) 26 June 1960 (age 52) Derry, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland
Nationality	Irish
Political party	Social Democratic and Labour Party
Spouse(s)	Jackie Durkan
Children	1
Alma mater	Queen's University Belfast, University of Ulster
Religion	Roman Catholicism
Website	Mark Durkan

(John) Mark Durkan^[2][3] MP (born 26 June 1960) is an Irish nationalist politician in Northern Ireland who was leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) from 2001 to 2010.

Early life[link]

Durkan was born in Derry; his father, Brendan, was an Royal Ulster Constabulary District Inspector in Armagh.^[4] He was raised by his mother, Isobel, after his father was killed in a road accident in 1961. He was educated at St. Patrick's Primary School and at St. Columb's College. During his time at St. Columb's, he was Head Boy.

He studied politics at the Queen's University of Belfast and later did a part-time postgraduate course in Public Policy Management with the University of Ulster at Magee.^[5] While at QUB Durkan served as Deputy President of Queen's Students' Union from 1982 to 1983. He was also elected Deputy President of the Union of Students in Ireland from 1982 to 1984.

Political career[link]

He became involved in politics in 1981 when he became a member of the Social Democratic and Labour Party. In 1984 he went to work for John Hume as his Westminster Assistant. He became a key figure in organising by-election campaigns for Seamus Mallon and Eddie McGrady in the 1980s.

In 1990 Durkan became chairperson of the SDLP, a position he served in until 1995. He was a key member of the party's negotiating team in the run up to the Good Friday Agreement.

Following the Agreement Durkan was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1998, and became a member of the Northern Ireland Executive as Minister for Finance and Personnel.

He served in that position until 2001 when he replaced Seamus Mallon as deputy First Minister. He was also elected Leader of the SDLP in that year. Durkan was reelected to the Assembly in the election of November 2003. However, the Assembly and the Executive remain suspended.

In the 2005 general election he retained the Foyle seat at Westminster for the SDLP. While down on Hume's vote, Durkan won with a comfortable majority, despite a strong effort by Sinn Féin to take the seat. Durkan won 21,119 votes which was 46.3% of the total.

Durkan announced his intention to stand down as leader of the SDLP in September 2009^[6] as he did not want to continue to lead the party past his 50th birthday and so he could concentrate on his parliamentary career.^[6] He was replaced as leader by Margaret Ritchie in February 2010.^[7]

He is a Fellow of the British-American Project.^{[citation needed]}

Family[link]

He and his wife, Jackie, to whom he had been introduced by John Hume, celebrated the birth of a daughter, Dearbhail, who was born in January 2005.

References[link]

External links[link]

• thederryvoice.com - Mark Durkan Election 2010 Website
• markdurkan.ie - Mark Durkan MP for Foyle Website
• Mark Durkan's profile at the official SDLP website
• Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: Mark Durkan MP
• TheyWorkForYou.com - Mark Durkan MP
• Mark Durkan's Biography at the Northern Ireland Assembly
• Maiden Speech : House of Commons - 30 June 2005

David Dimbleby
Born	(1938-10-28) 28 October 1938 (age 73) Surrey, England, United Kingdom
Nationality	British
Occupation	Television presenter, journalist

David Dimbleby (born 28 October 1938) is a British BBC TV commentator and a presenter of current affairs and political programmes, most notably the BBC's flagship political show Question Time, and more recently, art, architectural history and history series. He is the son of Richard Dimbleby and elder brother of Jonathan Dimbleby. In 2010 he received nationwide recognition and respect for hosting the BBC's election coverage for 18 hours straight.

Early life[link]

Dimbleby was born in Surrey^[1] and educated at two independent schools, the then Glengorse School in Battle, East Sussex,^[2] and Charterhouse School in Godalming, Surrey (where he was a contemporary of Adam Raphael). After learning French in Paris and Italian in Perugia, he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Christ Church, Oxford and graduated with a third-class honours degree. While at Oxford he was President of the Christ Church JCR, a member of the Bullingdon Club - a socially exclusive student dining and binge drinking society - and editor of the student magazine, Isis.

Career[link]

Dimbleby joined the BBC as a news reporter in Bristol in the 1960s and has appeared in news programmes since 1962, early on co-presenting the televised version of the school quiz Top of the Form. In 1974, he became the presenter of Panorama, which had been presented by his father, Richard Dimbleby, and was involved in a number of projects which combined his established role as presenter and interviewer with documentary making. An early example of this was Yesterday's Men (1971), a film held to have ridiculed the Labour opposition and led to a major conflict between the BBC and the Labour Party; Dimbleby had his name removed from the credits for concessions that were made.^[3] Later films were not the source of such controversy, they include The White Tribe of Africa (1979), an award-winning four-part history of South Africa's Afrikaans community and the rise of apartheid, An Ocean Apart (1988), an examination of the history of Anglo-American relations, and Rebellion! (1999), a history of Britain's troubled relations with Zimbabwe).

In 1980, he appeared in an episode of comedy sketch show The Goodies as "David Dimbumblum" in which he parodied himself, after being caught on camera during the 1979 election night coverage eating a sandwich, by carving and eating a roast turkey during a spoof election.^[4]

Dimbleby was the main presenter of the BBC's flagship 1980s political series This Week Next Week,^[5] broadcast on Sunday early afternoons from 1984 to 1988, as a competitor to ITV's long-running Weekend World series. Both the BBC and ITV series came to a permanent end in the same year. This Week Next Week was replaced in 1988 by the On the Record political series.

Dimbleby anchored his first General Election Night results programme for the BBC in 1979, when he presented alongside Bob McKenzie, David Butler, Sir Robin Day, and Angela Rippon. He has anchored every general election results programme for the BBC since then: in 1983 and 1987 with Sir Robin Day and Peter Snow; in 1992 with Peter Snow and Peter Sissons; in 1997, 2001 and 2005 with Peter Snow and Jeremy Paxman;, and in 2010 with Jeremy Paxman and Jeremy Vine. He is also seen on BBC Budget specials, and was a presenter of the BBC early evening weekday current affairs series Nationwide, on which he famously addressed Paddy Ashdown as "Panty Ashdown". During the same period (beginning in 1979), Dimbleby has also been the anchor for the BBC's European Elections results programmes and in 2008 anchored the BBC's coverage of the US Election night.

Since 1994, Dimbleby has been chairman of Question Time, the BBC's flagship programme of topical debate. This is the role in which he is now best known. One of the most memorable moments from Question Time was when Dimbleby accidentally referred to Robin Cook as "Robin Cock", to which Cook responded by jokingly referring to Dimbleby as "David Bumblebee".

Dimbleby has also covered outside broadcast events of national importance, such as the State Opening of Parliament, the Trooping the Colour, the Remembrance Day service at the Cenotaph in Whitehall, London, the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, royal weddings, and visits of US presidents. He commentated on the funerals of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997 and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in 2002, and the state visit of U.S. President George W. Bush to Britain the following year. In 1999, he opened BBC 2000 Today, the BBC's coverage of the millennium celebrations, from Greenwich, England.

There were reports in 2004 that Dimbleby was shortlisted for the Chairmanship of the BBC.^[6] However, the position was eventually awarded to Michael Grade. As early as 1987, he was a contender for the position of Director General of the BBC (losing out to Michael Checkland) and for the chairmanship in the Corporation's tumultuous period following 2001, which went to Gavyn Davies. He has instead remained best known for his role as a frank yet eminently impartial narrator, and occasional moderator, of British politics. He remains outspoken about the Corporation he has served for much of his life, but has stated that he will not apply for the chair or directorship again.

In 2005, he hosted a major BBC One series, A Picture of Britain, celebrating British and Irish paintings, poetry, music, and landscapes. In June 2007 he wrote and presented a follow-up, the BBC series, How We Built Britain, in which he explored the chronological history of British architecture by visiting a region of Britain and its historic buildings each week. David Dimbleby has, as of February 2010, recently started to present a new series on BBC One, Seven Ages of Britain. In early editions of the programme, he has looked at the Bayeux Tapestry and exhibits to do with Thomas Becket.

On 12 November 2009, Dimbleby missed his first Question Time in over 15 years, having been taken to hospital as a precaution after being briefly knocked out by a rearing bullock at his farm in Sussex.^[7]

Dimbleby hosted the third of three televised election debates featuring the leaders of the three main political parties held in the run up to the 2010 general election.^[8] On the night of the 2010 Election, Dimbleby hosted the BBC coverage, along with Jeremy Vine, Jeremy Paxman, Nick Robinson, and Emily Maitlis.^[9] Presenting from a specially built set in BBC Television Centre Studio 1, he was an anchor and involved commentary contributions, guest interviews, and introducing live outside broadcasts. He presented the election in 2010 for 18 hours.^[10]

Honours[link]

He was made an honorary graduate of the University of Essex in 2005,^[11] and is the President of the Institute for citizenship.^[12]

Family[link]

He is the son of the World War II war correspondent Richard Dimbleby and Dilys (née Thomas, from Wales) elder brother of Jonathan Dimbleby, also a current affairs commentator and presenter of both BBC and ITV programmes.^[13] David Dimbleby was chairman of the Dimbleby Newspaper Group, former publishers of the Richmond and Twickenham Times, acquired by the Newsquest Media Group in 2001 for a reported £12 million.

The younger Dimblebys made their television debuts in the BBC's first holiday travelogue programme Passport in the 1950s, when the entire family would visit locations in Switzerland or Brittany, for example. Several episodes of this series and the UK-based variant No Passport still exist in the BBC and BFI archives. Despite the brothers presenting election coverage on competing channels, when asked in an interview about rival ITV's plans to include a riverboat party with the likes of Kevin Spacey and Richard Branson in their broadcast, David Dimbleby commented "They've got Jonathan Dimbleby, what do they need Kevin Spacey for?"^[14]

Dimbleby has three children by his first wife, Josceline Dimbleby, a cookery writer: Liza, artist; Henry, chef and co-founder of the healthy fast food chain Leon; and Kate, musician. Henry Dimbleby had a brief television career in a BBC TV adaptation of Arthur Ransome's children's novels Coot Club and The Big Six.

In 2000 Dimbleby married Belinda Giles, a granddaughter of Herbrand Sackville, 9th Earl De La Warr.^[15] They have one son, Fred.^[16] Dimbleby lives in Polegate, East Sussex^[17] with a second home in Dartmouth, Devon.^[18]

References[link]

External links[link]

• David Dimbleby at the Internet Movie Database
• David Dimbleby at the British Film Institute's Screenonline

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (April 2012)

Mark H. Durkan is a Social Democratic and Labour Party politician in Northern Ireland who was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2011.^[1] Mark's middle initial "H" isn't short for anything but is, in fact, his middle name (similar to former US President Harry S. Truman).^{[citation needed]}

Work[link]

He was elected to Derry City Council in 2005 and also sits on the Western Health & Social Care Board. ^[2] He is the nephew of former SDLP leader Mark Durkan.^[3]

He served as his party's health spokesman from May 2011 to April 2012, and campaigned on the outbreak, in January 2012, of Pseudomonas in the Royal Jubilee Maternity Hospital, Belfast and Altnagelvin Area Hospital in Derry, which claimed the lives of several infants^[4]

Personal life[link]

In his spare time, Mark regularly gives his time to charitable causes, which has led him to compete in Ballroom and Latin Dancing competitions^[5] and White Collar Boxing bouts^[6] in his home city.

He became engaged to his girlfriend Anne in April 2012.^[7]

References[link]

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