Mark Hughes

Mark Hughes arrived in the village as a 15-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.

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.