30 Facts About Mark Speight

Mark Warwick Fordham Speight was an English television presenter and host of children's art programme SMart.

Mark Speight took a degree in commercial and graphic art and, while working in television set construction, heard of auditions for a new children's art programme.

Mark Speight was successful in his audition and became one of the first presenters of SMart, working on it for 14 years.

Mark Speight was a presenter on See It Saw It, where he met his future fiancee, actress and model Natasha Collins.

Mark Speight took part in live events, such as Rolf on Art and his own Speight of the Art workshops for children.

Mark Speight was involved in charity work; he became the president of the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign's Young Pavement Artists Competition, and was a spokesperson for ChildLine.

In January 2008, Mark Speight found Collins's body in the bath of their shared London flat.

Mark Speight was arrested on suspicion of her murder, but not charged with any offence.

Mark Speight grew up in the village of Tettenhall, Wolverhampton and had two siblings, Tina-Louise Richmond, and Jason Speight.

Mark Speight's father, Oliver Warwick Speight, is a property developer, and his mother, Jacqueline Fordham Speight, was an art teacher.

Mark Speight stated in an interview he was a slow learner at school, with a short attention span, and art was a way for him to communicate.

Mark Speight left aged 16 and went on to attend Bilston Art School, where he took a degree in commercial and graphic art.

Mark Speight intended to become a cartoonist, but he eventually became a TV presenter following a job painting the set of a television production.

Mark Speight auditioned for SMart and, following a successful interview where he met future co-presenter Jay Burridge, he went on to present SMart from its first edition in 1994.

Mark Speight worked on This Morning, The Heaven and Earth Show, The Big Breakfast and was a contestant on ITV's Gladiators and Celebrity Wrestling.

Mark Speight played the king on children's programme See It Saw It, where he met Natasha Collins.

Mark Speight began dating her in 2003, and they became engaged in Barbados in 2005.

In 2004, Mark Speight participated in Rolf Harris's Rolf on Art, for which a giant reproduction of John Constable's The Hay Wain was created in Trafalgar Square.

Mark Speight had planned a project involving a trip to Borneo in March 2008 to train abused orangutans not to fight each other, but this never took place.

Mark Speight regularly toured with Mark Speight of the Art, a series of art workshops he ran for children, and during the Christmas period, he performed in pantomime as "Buttons" in Cinderella at the Watersmeet, Rickmansworth, in December 2007.

Mark Speight was President of the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign's Young Pavement Artists Competition, originally a one-off, year-long project that ended up lasting eight years, and he was a spokesperson for ChildLine.

Mark Speight told police that he and Collins had spent the previous evening "partying", drinking wine and vodka, and taking cocaine and sleeping pills.

Mark Speight said that it was "more likely than not" that a heart problem had caused Collins to fall unconscious while the hot tap was running.

Mark Speight was dropped off at Wood Green tube station that morning, but never appeared at the planned meeting.

Mark Speight missed an appointment with a counsellor, but this was because of confusion over dates.

Mark Speight was captured on CCTV in the afternoon taking money from a cash machine at Queen's Park station, and he subsequently boarded a southbound Bakerloo line train.

Mark Speight was reported missing the following day by family and friends, and his mother and the mother of Natasha Collins made a public appeal in which they urged him to make contact.

On 13 April 2008, Mark Speight's body was discovered hanging from the roof of MacMillan House, adjacent to London's Paddington Station, hidden from public view.

Mark Speight was later cremated and his ashes were interred in Tettenhall.

In May 2008, Mark Speight's father created a foundation, Mark Speight of the Art, or SP8 of the Art and launched it at a memorial service that took place on what would have been his 43rd birthday, 6 August 2008, at St Paul's Church in Covent Garden, London.