I lived with Mark from 2000 to 2002. We were students together at Leeds Uni and we lived in a flat in Kensington Terrace, which was a seven bed student house in Hyde Park.

Mark had just returned from his year in Spain. He really enjoyed his year in Spain and he came back very passionate about Spanish culture and the language.

One of the nice things I remember was that when we were at University, we spent a lot of time hanging out together because we lived together for two years. It was actually at the time when Big Brother started, or certainly near the beginning of Big Brother, and we used to LOVE Big Brother. We watched it all the time together and one of the years they started streaming Big Brother. So you’d have the episodes, but then you'd have a constant stream from the Big Brother House, 24 hours a day. And we used to love it so much that we just had it on the telly in the corner the whole time. So we'd sit and spend our evening hanging out with the TV on in the background. We'd kind of be hanging out with the Big Brother people - we'd be watching them sitting playing cards in the evening while we were playing cards in the evening and we thought it was brilliant. We absolutely loved it.

When I think about Mark and tried to describe him, I would say that he was, he was a quiet guy but he had a really dry sense of humour, so he might not say anything for a while, but then when he would, it would crack the room up. He enjoyed a bit of gambling, so we did enjoy going to the casino when we were. When we were students and living together and he had a kind of famous phrase that every time that someone would say should we ‘should we go out tonight to the casino?’ Mark would just give a look and say ‘I'll get my shoes’. He had his special casino shoes.

He was he was a really good friend, and he was really good fun to be around. We actually we didn't study the same things, we didn't have the same group of friends outside the flat and our interests weren’t obviously the same, but we were really good friends and that's exactly because Mark was so easy to get on with. He was so kind, so funny and just an all around great guy.

Mark we all miss you terribly. You were an amazing friend and companion. I've never before had the fortune to work with someone who could make every aspect of your working day so much better. Whilst you knew the rota inside out, I didn't. I would walk into the office each morning not knowing who was going to be there. Whenever I arrived to see you sat at your desk already working away I instantly knew that the day was going to be enjoyable. Your companionship, work rate and positivity was infectious. I hope that you enjoyed working with us as much as we enjoyed working with you. You were small in stature but a mighty human being and I can only imagine that in our team you felt like a dime thrown in with a bunch of nickels.

Mark and I were close friends at MGS and occasional contacts since those days. We bonded over a shared love of WWF and went to several Bury games together in the 90s when tickets at Old Trafford were scarce for me. I was there for 2 promotions, perhaps a lucky charm in some way!
He ran our class Fantasy Football for 2 seasons in the days when it was all done by hand in an old notebook of his and still sent me racing tips from time to time. He sent me a random WhatsApp in 2017 wishing me happy birthday, having remembered the date from school days somehow! Was so sorry to hear the news through some other old Mancunians last year... thoughts with his family.

Mark and I first met in around 2008 when we worked for the same bookmaker. I say met, but despite knowing his name and speaking to him on a weekly basis, I knew nothing else of him given he worked in London and I was in Leeds. For several years, our only contact was on the telephone; the mind’s eye filling in the blanks when it came to what the person on the other end looked like, as we debated whether we should pay a particularly bet out or not. (Eternally a gent, Mark would be saying yes, whilst I was almost contractually obliged to disagree.)

Fast-forward to 2014 and I had joined a different company, with a fresh-faced young man starting alongside me in the same role. Sitting next to him that day, it dawned on me, as it appeared to dawn on him, that an extraordinary coincidence had occurred, and the ‘meet the other new-starter’ process was actually a reintroduction to someone I had shared countless conversations with. Once we were over the initial amazement of how we actually appeared in person, (I assumed Mark was in his early twenties; he assumed he had not heard from me in a while as apparently my voice suggested retirement was imminent), we set about the overdue task of actually getting to know one another.

It transpired we had much in common: we went to the same university, and had lived in the same block in the same halls of residence. We had mutual friends, a shared love of football, pub quizzes, and working out where the value lay in betting on the Eurovision Song Contest. When Mark found out my father was born opposite the Talmudical College in Gateshead it may have seemed we had more in common than first thought, especially when I brought in chopped liver for lunch one day, but that particularly connection only went so far.

Tributes can be revealing in the sense that we all live our lives in various circles, some of which will never intertwine. I knew Mark was a man with a deep and evidently loving connection to his family, but these occasions are for others to speak of. The Mark Saunders I knew personally was the man who could gracefully take apart a complex fraud case in characteristically debonair fashion; where others would buckle under the pressure, he would remain the very image of apparent confident stoicism. After putting the phone down, and with a glint in his eye, he would reveal he had conducted the whole investigation with half an eye on the tennis, confirming his Garbiñe Muguruza tip for the French Open looked a good thing.

And whilst his job was one thing, Mark’s relaxed and gentle nature was truly unmasked when discussions rose regarding his beloved Bury Football Club. A trip to see them alongside colleagues resulted in a nerve-shredding 4-3 win, and left the evening coffers brimming following a last minute winner that Mark celebrated by adopting the very dictionary-definition opposites of relaxed and gentle.

Mark bore his illness with dignity, and when I last met him, he was keen to discuss how our small team were getting on and what the future held. He is missed by everyone at work who knew him, but particularly among the three individuals who, alongside him, made up the seemingly constant team in the midst of an ever-changing business. I hope my presumptions can be forgiven for saying Sunil, Oli and myself were a positive addition to Mark’s life. I can say without question that he was to ours.

Mark,

We have so many wonderful memories of you, I'm really blessed to have had you as a friend. From meeting on Aish through to our weddings and becoming parents, we loved sharing those times with you, Sharna & Joshua as well as seeing the pride and overjoy that you had. Your kindness and warmth will always stay with us.

Zoe

Hey Mark, thanks for all the great Bury FC memories at Gigg Lane and beyond. The time we beat Man City at Maine Road, the many ups and downs over the past 30 years and getting the tickets for Ellie's first game. I'll always treasure the signed shirt you gave me. You'll always be in our thoughts xx

Mark,

Forever in our hearts and minds. I will never forget all the fun times we had together. Meeting in Israel on Aish in 1999. Together for the millennium New year's eve in a rain soak London with a million other people. Hanging out at Leeds University and just having lots of laughs.

You are missed so much. Your memory will forever be a blessing. Our lives are richer for having had you in it.

Jon.

This is from dad , master at whatsapp
But not with Facebook....

Mark ❣️ I only have funny memories of which my favourite one is of course with you and Lee going to the Bury game getting me in as a pensioner a.k.a Victor Melldrew. Have that picture ️ and when I pull it out and show the kids they howl with laughter. That's how you will be remembered. Lots of laughter.

Uncle Malcolm

Mark ,
I can't believe its been a year already.
I there isn't a day that goes by that I don't think of you , either when talking to lee or seeing beautiful pictures of Joshua and Sharna.
You will never been forgotten and always in our hearts
Love you cuz

I miss you Mark!

I can’t believe it’s been a year. I still can’t think about you without welling up.

I think of you often, replay joint experiences and shared events in my mind, like video playback. I remember your voice, the silliness, the seriousness.

I miss your competitiveness, your neuroses, your quick thinking and wit, skill at beating any company at anything, your sense of humour, and your loyalty to your family and friends.

I miss how you used to play with Lily when we would visit, how you’d get down on the floor with her and Joshua.

I miss your hugs - you were such a good hugger.

I’m glad I got to be a part of your life, even a small one. It’s added so much value to mine.

Mark my darling cousin.....

I never thought of you as my cousin you were always by kid brother.

Twelve months ago today you left us all to be in gods beautiful garden. 

No poems, words, eulogies can ever really understand how broken my heart is. It will never repair. We had a truly wonderful bond.

I miss your smile, kindness, understanding, wisdom, boy did you know it all .

You were in my life for only 41 years but you've never left me really. 

We made lots of memories in our childhood days.

I can't even remember the first time I saw your face.

But I do know within my life, no-one can take your place.

We we're there for each other,right until you left.

By blood we we're cousins but this is not the end.

But in my heart and forever, we were always best friends.

Never gone, never forgotten. My love is everlasting

I didn't always want a little brother. I really wanted a dog. Born 5 years later, but with a birthday just 1 day before, Mark revelled in telling me who had given him what gift vouchers for his birthday every year, thereby spoiling any surprise for me the following day.

Still, although somewhat different, he seemed to grow on me. Tiny, ginger, quietish, so vulnerable at the school bus stop. He eventually got a bit taller and darker, and more evil. Testing out his love of wrestling by putting me in headlocks under the dining room table, progressing to virtual thug when bury beat city at Maine Road, sitting separately from me and Dad and dancing back to the car through the streets of Moss Side, still expecting a lift home.

I began to think I was also being followed. the same Sunday newspaper, the same schools, the same uni, similar degree and when he showed up in London living at one point with Sharna, a stone's throw from my lounge window in Hendon, I was tempted to call the police. But the truth is he has bailed me out, far more than the other way round, even if it came with a disapproving shake of the head.

A few of Mark's traits that many of you will be familiar with: Loyal, thoughtful, helpful, a sense of doing the right thing, things he got from Mum and Dad, and which has so astonishingly been reciprocated by his friends who have sat with him over the last two days, even in these crazy times.

His competitive streak is well known, poker, quizzes, getting winner after winner in the Grand National, which we enjoyed last year at Aintree, or tenpin bowling. One time in his bowling league in Finchley, he was so furious with my score, when we left the alley, I was so puddled, I was still wearing the bowling shoes.

And Mark is also incredibly a warrior of such epic proportions, I don't even know where to start. I don't know many people who would perform their barmitzvah piece barely a week after a 3rd brain surgery.

So, in addition to the family, I only ask that his friends, who may know him from school or JLGB, Leeds Uni or Gigg Lane, London or here in Manchester, that they talk about him often and upload some pictures and write what the funny and warm and other stuff they recall.

It will remind Joshua he is very much cut from the same reddish cloth as his dad.

X