Mark Kermode began his career in film journalism and broadcasting in the 1980s after studying English at Manchester University, where he wrote his Ph.D thesis on horror fiction. After starting work as a van driver (he claims he was appointed as a film critic after he crashed the van), he began working for magazines such as City Life, Time Out and the NME and since then has also worked for The Independent, The Guardian, Vox, Empire, Flicks, Fangoria, and Neon among others. In the early 1990s he moved into radio broadcasting, contributing to and presenting various programmes and shows on BBC radio networks. He also worked as film critic and presenter for Channel 4's 'Extreme Cinema' strand, introducing notorious films such as Crash (1996) and C'est arrivé près de chez vous (1992), and he wrote and presented many documentaries for Channel 4 and the BBC such as On the Edge of 'Blade Runner' (2000), and Scream and Scream Again: A History of the Slasher Film (2000), The Fear of God: 25 Years of 'The Exorcist' (1998) and The Poughkeepsie Shuffle: Tracing 'The French Connection' (2000) etc. His trademark intense, often frightening rants about various films which he likes or dislikes has earned him something of a 'cult' following in the UK.