Mark Holdstock was born in Eastbourne and went to Chichester High School for Boys. In 1981 he moved to Newcastle upon Tyne where he studied at Newcastle Polytechnic, now Northumbria University. These studies were quickly abandoned for a life mucking around in the studios of BBC Radio Newcastle. He presented the station's mid-morning programme for three years and then worked in the newsroom. He worked as reporter on several Radio 4 programmes including You & Yours, Costing the Earth and Farming Today, and started presenting Farming Today in 2001.

Mark lives with his partner in the Durham Dales, although locals argue that the area is really part of Yorkshire, snatched away in the local government reforms of the 1970s. Thanks to modern technology, the editions of Farming Today he presents are often made locally in the North. He's a keen cook, and a self confessed food tourist, often travelling miles to find decent ingredients and regularly ends up buying meat, cheese and vegetables from the people he's sent to interview for Farming Today.