Mark Austin - 25 Years at ITN

I still associate Mark with being a youngster, for some reason. I guess it's because his predecessors were a bit longer in the tooth when they carried out the same role (being Sirs Alistair Burnet and Trevor McDonald, not to mention the incomparable Sandy Gall).

Anyway, Mark has now been at ITN for 25 years, albeit not all of those years were in newscasting. I still remember the many years he used to do alongside Jan Leeming and BIG MOIRA, presenting the weekend sport on the BBC1 and BBC2 Saturday News many years ago (26 years ago, actually). To me, it literally only seems like yesterday.

And because he looks like a youngster, many will overlook Mark's anniversary. Many thanks to our friends Damon and Matt over at Twitter for this photograph of the event.

Here's to another 25 years, Marky!

http://yfrog.com/g0e75skj

Edit: Thanks to Matt for the info, but in continuation of the "youthful" comments, today is also Mark's birthday and tomorrow he will perform as a drummer at the O2 for (I believe) Newsroom's Got Talent!

Could never imagine Sir Alistair Burnet playing the drums..........Sandy Gall on the flute, maybe.

So it 1986 he jumped ship to do the sport on itn? I still think one of his best moments was during the royal wedding

He was still doing weekend sport on BBC1 bulletins in the early/mid 90's. Are you sure?

There is a clip from you tube from the 80s with mark doing the.sport.on itv

He must have had a break from ITN then as he was definitely presenting the sports news at the BBC in the mid 90's.

No he wasn't. He worked for the BBC in the early 80's before joining ITN in October 1986.

Maybe Mark just forgot his own life history.

LOL. You're right. I've never seen that wedding clip before. Just watched it now. Quite funny. Thanks for it.

"we're going to show you the kiss again. Oh no, we can't show you the kiss. We will show it to the people at home. Just imagine what you saw before. Here it is. Right now......"

Classic.

I know how to settle this argument. Find us some footage please!

Grow up. Hardly an argument. I am willing to be corrected but I thought I saw Mark presenting the sport on weekend BBC bulletins as a child in the 90's.

He definitely wasn't at the BBC in the 1990s. Read his biography: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Austin_(journalist) I know Wikipedia isn't always the most reliable source, but I'm fairly certain it's accurate where this topic is concerned. I grew up in the 1990s as well and I have absolutely no recollection of Mark presenting during the BBC virtual era. At that time sports news was usually done by someone like Rob Bonnet or Helen Rollason at the BBC.

I think it was actually 'Survivor' which really pushed him up in the ITV news rankings oddly enough.