Mark Hughes

Not to be confused with actor Marc Hughes.
Mark Hughes arrived in the village as a 14-year-old in 1988 with his mother Kate and sister Rachel. 
Mark had been a model son until the breakdown of his parents' marriage. He then became a troublesome teenager which coincided with his mother's relationship and subsequent marriage to Joe Sugden. 
Mark died in the 1993 plane crash that devastated the village.
==Biography==
In January 1989, Mark ran away from home after Kate announced her intention to move in with Joe. Mark intended to go to Germany to be with his father but only made it as far as Hull. His father David alerted Kate who brought Mark home. Despite this Mark tried to get his parents back together on numerous occasions and he reacted badly to being clipped around the ear by Joe for messing around with a gun.
In January 1990, Mark and some friends tried trapping some mink using dangerous and illegal snares but only managed to succeed in trapping a puppy called Lucy. Mark also got into trouble when he went to the pub with his sister and her older friends. He wanted to prove his manhood by drinking alcohol but was cautioned for underage drinking.
Mark then began shoplifting. He stole things he didn't need but was caught by Rachel and Sarah Connolly. He was arrested and given a warning at the police station but afterwards his mother collapsed and suffered a miscarriage. Mark blamed himself for this.
After leaving school Mark initially intended to join the army and follow in his father's footsteps. However he then decided to stay at school and study A-Levels in Art, Technical Drawing and English. But he refused to turn up to his final exams and as a result his girlfriend Melanie Clifford split up with him and he lost his place at Glasgow University.
Mark also got himself into debt by letting his friends use telephone chatlines and he had to get a job at the Woolpack to pay them off. Annie Sugden later paid the bill for him.
In 1992, Mark started work as a handyman at the holiday village where he had a holiday romance with an older woman called Lisa. He also worked as an assistant gamekeeper to Seth Armstrong.
Mark did have a sense of fun and he organised the village's sheep race in 1992 and in 1993 he organised the fell race which was a challenge between the village's teenagers and his sister Rachel's student friends from Leeds. But it ended in disaster when Lorraine Nelson was bribed to move the signs and mountain rescue teams had to be called out to search for the lost runners.
Mark died in the 1993 plane crash that devastated the village. Joe had wanted him to return a vacuum cleaner that evening which had been borrowed from Lynn Whiteley, and this resulted in Mark being in the wrong place at the wrong time when a large section of the Eastern European airliner came down on Whiteley's farm. Mark was crushed by a falling wall and Jack Sugden identified his body after recognising his watch amongst recovered items. Rachel blamed Joe for Mark's death, as Joe nagged him to send the hoover back, and into the path of disaster, but later realised it was nobody's fault. Mark was buried in the village cemetery in January 1994 along with other villagers who died as a result of the plane crash. Mark's parents David and Kate did not attend his funeral.
In June 1995, Rachel gave birth to a son, whom she named Joseph Mark Tate in honour of her late brother Mark Hughes and stepfather Joe Sugden who had died in a car crash just days before. In February 2009, 15 years after Mark's death, Annie Sugden mentioned how he died in the plane crash.
==Notes==
*Despite dying on 30th December 1993, Mark's corpse was seen in the next episode broadcast on 4th January 1994, which Craig McKay was credited for.
==See also==
*Full list of appearances
Category:Emmerdale Farm characters
Category:Emmerdale characters
Category:1973 births
Category:1993 deaths
Category:1988 debuts
Category:1994 departures
Category:Hughes family
Category:Gamekeepers
Category:Residents of Emmerdale Farm
Category:Residents of Mill Cottage