Life

Educated at Highgate School

Highgate School

-Notable members of staff and governing body:* John Ireton, brother of Henry Ireton, Cromwellian General* 1st Earl of Mansfield, Lord Chief Justice, owner of Kenwood, noted for judgment finding contracts for slavery unenforceable in English law* T. S...

 and Worcester College, Oxford

Worcester College, Oxford

Worcester College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. The college was founded in the eighteenth century, but its predecessor on the same site had been an institution of learning since the late thirteenth century...

, he began his career as a freelance journalist, contributing to computer and gaming magazines. In the 1990s he had stints as television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 critic for the Daily Mail

Daily Mail

The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...

and the Sunday Express and has written a monthly pop music

Pop music

Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...

 column for The Spectator

The Spectator

The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...

since 1987.

With his schoolfriend Harry Thompson

Harry Thompson

Harry William Thompson was an English radio and television producer, comedy writer, novelist and biographer....

, he scripted the BBC Radio

BBC Radio

BBC Radio is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927. For a history of BBC radio prior to 1927 see British Broadcasting Company...

 comedy Lenin of the Rovers

Lenin of the Rovers

Lenin of the Rovers was a BBC Radio 4 comedy series from 1988 written by Marcus Berkmann and Harry Thompson and starring Alexei Sayle as Ricky Lenin, Russian captain of Felchester Rovers - Britain's only communist football team. Other players in the team were Stevie Stalin and Terry Trotsky...

. He came to prominence with his 1995 book, Rain Men, which humorously chronicles the formation and adventures of his own cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

 touring team, the Captain Scott Invitation XI, giving every average club cricketer something to identify with. Berkmann has continued to write newspaper and cricket magazine columns, such as the Last Man In column on the back page of Wisden Cricket Monthly

Wisden Cricket Monthly

Wisden Cricket Monthly was a cricket magazine that ran from June 1979 to September 2003.The driving force behind the creation of WCM was its first editor, David Frith, formerly an editor of its rival, The Cricketer. At first, it operated under the Wisden name using license from John Wisden & Co;...

, while producing a number of critically well-received humorous books. In Brain Men (1999), he applied his sardonic observations to the world of pub quizzes, and takes the same approach to Fatherhood (2005). Later in 2005, he released the book Zimmer Men, as a sort of sequel to Rain Men, describing his next team, and his transition into middle age with cricket.

He is also credited as one of the writing team of the BBC Three comedy show Monkey Dust

Monkey Dust

Monkey Dust is a British satirical cartoon, notorious for its dark humour and handling of taboo topics such as murder, suicide and paedophilia. There were three series broadcast on BBC Three between 2003 and 2005...

, and compiles the "Dumb Britain" column in Private Eye

Private Eye

Private Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop.Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic and lampooner of public figures and entities that it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency,...

magazine. In 2009 he set up the quiz company Brain Men with Stephen Arkell and Chris Pollikett.

Monographs

• The Complete Guide to Test Cricket in the Eighties (Partridge Press, 1990)
• Other People: Portraits From The 90s with D. J. Taylor
  D. J. Taylor
  David John Taylor is a British critic, novelist and biographer. After attending school in Norwich, he read Modern History at St John's College, Oxford, and has received the 2003 Whitbread Biography Award for his biography of George Orwell. His novel Derby Day was longlisted for the 2011 Man Booker...
  
   (Bloomsbury, 1990)
• Rain Men: The Madness of Cricket (Little, Brown, 1995)
• Brain Men: A Passion to Compete (Little, Brown, 1999)
• Fatherhood: The Truth (Vermilion, 2005)
• Zimmer Men: The Trials and Tribulations of the Ageing Cricketer (Little, Brown, 2005)
• The Prince of Wales (Highgate) Quiz Book (Hodder & Stoughton, 2006)
• Ashes to Ashes (Little, Brown, 2009)

Journalism

• "iPod dilemma" The Spectator
  The Spectator
  The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
  
  308/9397 (4 October 2008) : 53

External links

• Marcus Berkmann index at The Your Sinclair Rock 'n' Roll Years website, listing reviews and articles written by Marcus for Your Sinclair
  Your Sinclair
  Your Sinclair or YS as it was commonly abbreviated, was a British computer magazine for the Sinclair range of computers, mainly the ZX Spectrum.-History:...
  
  
• Brainmen website