Mark Speight

Published Tuesday 22 April 2008 at 12:05 by Patrick Newley and John Byrne

Mark Speight, whose recent suicide made headline news, was a trained artist and was the highly popular children’s TV presenter of the art programme SMart!. He auditioned for the show in 1994 and presented it for more than ten years. In 1998 he found further recognition as Scratchy in the CiTV programme Scratchy and Co and he was also seen in See It Saw It, In the Toon Room, On Your Marks, History Busters and Beat the Cyborgs. History Busters won a Royal Television Society Award in 2003.

Born in Trowbridge, Wiltshire on August 6, 1965, the son of a property consultant, he was educated at Tettenhall College and Regis Comprehensive School. Speight left school at 16 and studied commercial art at Bilston Art College. He initially wanted to be a professional cartoonist but decided on a career in television.

Speight quickly became one of television’s most popular children’s presenters and was also a firm favourite in annual pantomimes around the country.

His fiancee Natasha Collins had appeared with him in See It Saw It. She died of an accidental overdose of cocaine and sleeping tablets, aged 31, at the couple’s flat in North London in January. Speight was devastated and resigned from SMart!, vanishing five days after Collins’ inquest. He was reported missing and was found dead at Paddington railway station on April 13, aged 42.

Patrick Newley

John Byrne writes: Having worked with Mark on one of his first TV shows In the Toon Room, I can confirm that he was genuinely warm, genuinely funny and, in marked contrast to quite a few so-called children’s presenters, genuinely enjoyed working with, and for, kids. Following his career with interest over subsequent years, I can’t recall meeting a single person, who knew or worked with him, who didn’t speak about him in the most affectionate terms. With his manic energy, real talent for comedy and Jim Carrey-like ability for facial contortion, he could well have made an impact in mainstream entertainment had he wanted to move on. His children’s TV career, tragically though it has ended, should ensure that he is remembered with the same affection with which he was universally regarded in life.