Laurence Marks

Who is Laurence Marks?

Laurence Marks is a British sitcom writer and one half of writing duo Marks & Gran, his collaborator being Maurice Gran.

Prior to becoming a sitcom writer he was a reporter for a local weekly paper, the Tottenham Weekly Herald and, according to information he provided to Who's Who, he was also briefly a staff writer for The Sunday Times in the mid- to late 1970s. Following a chance encounter with comedy writer Barry Took, he and childhood friend Maurice Gran got an opportunity to write a radio show for comedian Frankie Howerd, which led to their becoming full time comedy writers.

Marks subsequently wrote with Gran the TV comedy-drama Shine on Harvey Moon and the popular sitcoms, The New Statesman, Birds of a Feather and Goodnight Sweetheart. They are also the authors of Prudence at Number 10, a fictional diary written as though by a P.A. of UK prime minister Gordon Brown.

Marks is an Arsenal fan and wrote the book "A Fan For All Seasons", a diary of his life as a writer and an Arsenal supporter.

His father was one of over 43 people who died in the Moorgate tube crash of 1975. In 2006 Marks made a documentary for Channel 4 about his father and the crash. At the time of the crash, Marks was a freelance writer and in the documentary he stated that he had spent a year investigating the crash for freelance reports that appeared in The Sunday Times. Rejecting the verdict of accidental death by the coroner's jury and the official in-depth report, Marks advocated his theory that the driver of the train had committed suicide by deliberately crashing the train.