Missing television presenter Mark Speight found dead
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Mark Speight had been missing since Monday of last week, when he was supposed to meet a friend
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The body of the missing children’s television presenter Mark Speight was found today at a London railway station.
He disappeared last Monday amid concern about his state of mind after the death of his fiancée, Natasha Collins, in a scalding hot bath at their home. She had taken cocaine and sleeping pills.
Speight, 42, who discovered his fiancée’s body on January 3, was arrested on suspicion of murder and supplying Class A drugs. Scotland Yard said last month that he would not face charges.
After he disappeared from the house of Collins’s mother, she said that Speight had been discussing wedding plans with her daughter, who was 31. Carmen Collins said that she could hear him crying at night, adding: “She was his soulmate and now life has died for him.”
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Speight had been dropped off at Wood Green station, North London, last Monday morning and had been due to meet Mrs Collins, 57, later that day to visit some of his dead fiancée’s favourite places in London. The presenter was recorded on camera entering Queen’s Park Tube station at 2.25pm and was last seen 22 minutes later boarding a southbound train on the Bakerloo Line. He was seen in Kilburn by two police officers who said, after he had been reported missing, that he seemed “distracted and deep in thought”. They had asked him if he wanted medical assistance.
Speight, originally from Wolverhampton, rose to fame on the ITV Saturday morning programme Scratchy & Co and is best known for presenting the BBC children’s art show SMart, which has run for more than ten years. He and Collins appeared together in 1999 on the CBBC programme See It Saw It, in which she played the court jester to his king.
Regular television roles then dried up for Collins. Her acting career had become restricted after she was hit by a car and seriously injured seven years ago, and she had been working as a model and presenting corporate videos.
In February Speight announced that he was leaving SMart because his “tragic loss” had left him unable to continue. At the time of his fiancée’s death he told police that the couple had been “partying” at home and had taken cocaine and sleeping pills, as well as drinking wine and vodka.
At her inquest, which was held this month, the court was told that Collins had burns covering 60 per cent of her body. Paul Knapman, the Westminster Coroner, recorded a verdict of death by misadventure and said that although she had taken enough cocaine to kill her it was likely that a heart problem had caused her to lose consciousness in the bath.
A postmortem examination found a 1cm hole in her nasal septum, consistent with prolonged cocaine use.
Nabeel Sheikh, Speight’s lawyer, described the presenter as a “complete one-off”. Mr Sheikh said “He was a very sensitive character, and he was a very giving person. I think that the whole traumatic experience he has been through is something that he needed help with and unfortunately he’s taken his own life, which is a tragic loss of another young person.”
A spokesman for British Transport Police said that a formal identification would take place tomorrow.
Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3739263.ece
Wow that is insane, he was like one of the biggest childrens TV presenters of my generation. I can't believe he's dead.
