Island Life Magazine Ltd February/March 2009 | Page 36

life

OUT & ABOUT

Wight Rock‘n’Roller
Mark Wilkinson’s determination to become a cameraman has led him all over the
world, in very prestigious company. He talks to Roz Whistance

“There I was, in the pit at Hyde Park,
filming Tom Jones. And within 30 seconds
of his opening number I was covered,
head to toe, in knickers.”
As occupational hazards go this might
to some be more enviable than most.
Mark Wilkinson is a cameraman who has
travelled the world with stars so numerous
he genuinely forgets when asked to list
them.
“It sounds crass,” he apologises, “but
it would be easier to list those I haven’t
worked with. Um, I haven’t done the
Rolling Stones, or U2 . . . “
It is Mark who films the footage on
those huge screens that are used to make

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events visible to huge crowds. He is
part of the entourage that accompanies
musicians and groups on stints which last
weeks at a time. The names that drop from
his lips so casually are the legends of the
music and entertainment world. He has
just returned from a tour with Queen,
with their new frontman Paul Rogers, and
before that it was The Who, and Elton
John. He’s toured with all the boy bands
– “It was obvious Robbie Williams wasn’t
going to be regimented by the minders
from the beginning”, he notes. Sting is
a perfectionist, Elton John, well, not so
easy. And then there are the comedians .
..

As he lists them, Mark isn’t scouring
your face for signs of jealousy or envy.
He’s not exactly world-weary – he
repeatedly says how lucky he is to be
living a life where he visits the corners
of the planet – but has long ago got over
being star-struck.
It is a life that no-one would have
predicted for him. At school where he
lived in Burgess Hill, Sussex, he was, he
says, “a cabbage”, completely uninterested
in what he was being taught. “Then one
day when I was about eight or nine I had
an ear test – you remember those mobile
units that used to come round to schools?
– and it turned out I was pretty nearly

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