Introducing Zero, Lead Guitarist and Programmer for Celtic Cross.

Born in Whalley 15th April 1964, he grew up in Clitheroe but now resides in Springhill USA. (Uther Side of Accy) He started out in music at an early age taking Piano lessons from Charles Myers in Clitheroe where he achieved grade 8 theory of music and a GCE O-Level in Music. There his academic career ended after taking up guitar at age 13 and forming several unruly school punk rock bands playing a selection of self-penned songs and classics of the day.

After leaving school and working in the local supermarket and Still being called Mark Fox in them days he was in a band with the Blackledge brothers called Turn for the Worse who did quite a lot of local gigs and were Tight as a Gnats Chuff. They did the Bandstand of course but eventually went their seperate ways leaving him to team up with some real nutters from Nelson and form the infamous 13 Horses Legs. 13 Horses legs (besides being...All sawn off below the knees and strewn along a highway) were a quite outrageously brilliant combination of 5 bundiles of explosive madness rounded up and pointed in roughly the same direction, this time playing purely self written and self styled music and even supported Black Flag. All kinds of excesses lead to an explosive or was it implosive ending (everyone was too out of it to tell), after which our subject took to the road to find himself (as always realising he`d been there all along).

What he did find as he travelled the streets of England and Europe Busking was the ability to deliver the message and the aggression of a tune whilst still maintaining the enjoyment and happiness of playing the music. He also learnt to say "thanks" really quick in between lines and it was on this adventure where every meeting was a new accquaintance that he adopted the name Zero (Do You want me to go into the psychology of that ? Thought not)

Upon returning to this Dog forsaken country he met up with all his old Festy mates down in the smoke and lived a foolish vagabondish existence playing with Phuck Nose then later 2000DS but living in London is so depressing when Lancashire boys need green hills and space so he did one back to the Red Rose County and breathed a sigh of relief (or was it Chemfuel)

Back in Lancs. He chanced to meet up again with Mr. Guy, they Jammed, they liked it, they said : "Let`s make a Band". Both musicians had plenty of their own material and they were Joined by Simon "Bro" Briggs and Robert "Jake" Poole to form Devils Chocolate Toothpaste. DCT were an excellent Punk Rock band who encompassed a wide variety of styles within that and the Celtic Roots of the Guy/Fox combination began to become more evident in the entirely self written set. Just as everything seemed to be coming together, everything fell apart (as usual) but Mark and Ian continued as a duo and concentrated more on the acoustic side of things for a while. Just before Christmas 1995 TV Smith (ex of the Adverts) gave them his old QY20 sequencer and this nutter using as few bits per song as possible crammed it full of as many songs as its poor little tiny could cope with. All the songs were based on what people asked for at gigs so by Nov `96 the entire set had taken on an entirely different shape and sparsely populated by original songs. This however resulted in more people enjoying gigs because it was the songs they wanted and knew so going with the flow the name Celtic Cross was adopted to reflect the crossbreeding of musical styles and technologies. Since then our Anti-Hero Zero as you know as been up and down the place relentlessly rattling out loads of old Paddy Toons and never enjoying music so much in his life. Except that since he got that bloody computer that`s the only time you`ll ever see him except in Netto.

Now currently involved in several music projects including guitar lessons, recording, and a new four piece band with a girl singer. For Guitar Lessons call 01254 875301.