Mark Tonderai was born in London but was raised in Zimbabwe, Africa, which is where his surname name comes from. Tonderai is SHONA for ‘remembrance.’ After graduating from Kingston University and UNC Charlotte with a degree in Architecture, Tonderai started his career in radio, as the writer/producer/presenter of the “Mark Tonderai Show”, on BBC Radio 1, the first national radio show that broke hip-hop and R&B to the British public. In his time there Tonderai was responsible for getting many urban tracks on the play list. He then moved into producing comedy for Light Entertainment radio. His credits there include ‘Alan Parker Urban Warrior’ for BBC Radio 1, and for BBC Radio 4, ‘The Rainbow Nation’ and the topical sketch show ‘Weekending’ where he supervised a writing staff of 30.

After a short stint hosting the weekend breakfast show on London’s Kiss 100, he then moved on and began writing and directing for television, his credits include “Homie and Away” for Channel 4 and “The Beginner’s Guide 1 & 2” for BBC2 and he also worked as a writer, director and editor on ITV’s “Ian Wright Show” and Sky One’s “Prickly Heat.” All of this culminated in 1998 when Tonderai wrote, directed and starred in his own sketch show which was aired on BBC 2 ‘Uncut Funk.’

The next natural step of Tonderai was film and in 1999, he co-wrote and starred in “Dog Eat Dog” financed by Film 4. In 2002 feeling a need to control his work, he founded Shona Films with partner Zoe Stewart. Shona P acquired slate funding from the UK Film Council Development and Tonderai developed the urban vampire script ’10 Hours from Light’ as well as selling the screenplay ‘PowerMike’ to Company Pictures. PowerMike is now a major graphic novel. Tonderai was also a reader for Robert Jones of the Premier Fund.

In 2008 came his debut as a writer/director, the psychological thriller “Hush.” Distributed by Pathe International/Studio Canal, “Hush” travelled to multiple international film festivals garnering numerous audience prizes for most popular and well liked film, as well as being nominated for a British Independent Film Award and selling at  AFM to over 25 territories. This garnered the attention of Hollywood and led to him getting an offer from FilmNation to rewrite and direct his US debut, “House at the End of the Street.” The film stars Jennifer Lawrence, Max Theriot and Elizabeth Shue, and is slated for release in the first quarter of 2012.

Anyway in my final year of Architecture myself and Bernd Ertl, who has now become a storyboard artist extraordinaire in Austria, made an animation film.

My tutors figured I was never really going to study architecture and one gave me a pamphlet that was an animation studio looking for animators. But above it was a trainee presenter job at the BBC. I applied for both. Got the BBC one and 3 months later I’m on air following the late great John Peel and sharing an office with Annie Nightingale. Ain’t Life strange!!

My brief was to play hip hop and r’n’b. But the BBC instigated a D list playlist which was all the hip hop and r’n’b tunes on the A, B and C playlist gathered on one. So we’d play something rally cool like Jeru the Damaja and have to then play ‘Oh baby I love your way’ by Cold Mountain or whatever those cunts were called. We were always doomed. Doomed. Doomed Doomed.

I have some funny stories like when I interviewed Snoop and the BBC wouldn’t let me do it live. They insisted that we pre-record it. So I have to go onto Johnny Walker’s show. Tell anybody listening who might be interested in Snoop — please don’t forget, Johnny played rock and roll—to call in with any questions. Snoop went through the whole thing with a bemused look on his face. And he did freestyle for me. Afterwards we went down to the Gram library which is the biggest private collection of records in the World. Snoop’s looking for some samples and so we call up some obscure records.  Snoop looks at one and says to me. ‘Shit. The nigga that recorded this don’t even have a copy.’