- published: 23 Feb 2016
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Mark Lamarr (born Mark Jones on 7 January 1967 in Swindon, Wiltshire) is an English comedian, radio DJ and television presenter.
Lamarr was born in the Park South area of Swindon and has three elder sisters. His father is Irish. He passed five O-Levels at Park School (renamed Oakfield School) but dropped out of school at 17 and moved to Harrow, Middlesex, which was the centre of the early 80s British rockabilly revival scene. After his poem Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Work was published in 1987, his act developed from poetry to stand-up comedy. He took to performing at The Comedy Store, London in 1985, was spotted on the touring circuit for the launch of Channel 4's The Big Breakfast in 1992 and co-presented The Word.
Lamarr first came to the public's attention as a co-presenter of the early 90s late night variety show The Word. The magazine format of the series allowed for interviews, live music, features and even game shows. The flexible late-night format meant that guests could do just about anything to be controversial. Talking about his TV career to Jo Brown of Cheers Magazine, Lamarr said The Word was:
Pete Burns (born 5 August 1959) is an English singer-songwriter, author and television personality, who founded the band Dead or Alive in 1980, in which he was vocalist and songwriter, and which rose to mainstream success with their 1985 single "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)". He later rose to further celebrity status in the British media following his appearance on Celebrity Big Brother 2006 and his own television show, Pete's PA in 2007.
Burns was born in Port Sunlight, Bebington, Wirral, to an English father and German mother. His mother Eva was Jewish and born in Heidelberg, Germany. She had fled to Vienna, Austria to escape the anti-Semitic laws of the Nazis. It was in Vienna that she met Burns' father, then a British soldier, at a soldiers' tea dance.
When talking about his late mother in an interview for television programme Psychic Therapy, he said "as far as parental skills go in the conventional, normal world, she certainly wasn't a mother, but she's the best human being that I've ever had the privilege of being in the company of, and I know that she had a special plan for me. She called me Star Baby and she knew that there was something special in me. Just an incredible German woman; tiny, five-foot-one, but she could move a fucking wardrobe, she could lift a wardrobe." Burns also told that for the first five years of his life, he and his mother spoke to one another in German. "I grew up until I was five speaking German and a bit of French. There was no English spoken in my house. My father spoke to my mother in French, she spoke to me in German."[citation needed]