Mark Cooper is the co-creator and founding producer of Later... with Jools Holland and the Annual Hootenanny, booking and shaping both for 26 years without missing a single recording. He also led the BBC's TV coverage of Glastonbury from a muddy 1997 until a locked down 2020 and executive produced over 250 BBC music documentaries including the Britannia and America strands, the year-by-year Top of the Pops histories and Reginald D. Hunter's Songs of the South.

Mark began writing about music when he reviewed The Sex Pistols' last ever show at San Francisco's Winterland in January 1978. His first book, Liverpool Explodes!was published in 1982 and was one of Jarvis Cocker's Ten Best Music Books in the Guardian.