R.i.p Mark Speight

[*Tom*]

I remember watching SmART when i was younger.

R.I.P

[Bluegrass]

My girlfriend and I went to London last Friday for site seeing etc. Were joking around saying maybe we'll see Mark wondering the streets (not in a horrible way). Really sad to hear he's now dead. Was a top bloke for the kids on tv. Big loss

RIP

[The Duck]

I think its very sad. Most of the time on Smart he was a very happy chappy (and pretty hot shit when it came to arty things), can't imagine him hanging himself.

[Mark W]

From before he was found dead...

ELIZABETH SANDERSON

I was just leaving the hotel in Blackfriars when I heard someone calling my name.

I turned round and spotted Mark Speight, standing in the shadows and smoking a cigarette. As I walked back to meet him, he said: "Sorry, can I ask you something?"

"Yes anything", I replied.

"Will I ever get through this?" he asked, his bright-blue eyes dull and full of despair.

It was an unusual question to ask a journalist he barely knew but then for Mark nothing is 'normal' any more.

Ever since he found his fiancee Natasha Collins dead in the bath of their London penthouse after she'd taken "significant" amounts of cocaine, the world had become a confusing, essentially meaningless, place.

Which is why his disappearance last week is of such concern to his family and friends.

Four days after our conversation, Mark failed to arrive for a planned meeting with Natasha's mother Carmen in a Covent Garden coffee shop.

CCTV footage shows him boarding a Bakerloo line underground train at Queen's Park station, North-West London. He hasn't been seen since.

A week ago last Thursday was the first time I had met Mark Speight. I had seen him on television presenting the BBC children's show SMart and, like everyone else, I was impressed.

He seemed much younger than his 42 years with a natural, bouncy enthusiasm for life.

And when we spoke, there were still traces of that person he had once been. He was friendly and polite and would occasionally light up at some memory of Natasha – yet each smile was tinged with an unbearable sadness.

There was no question that Mark had been utterly devastated by Natasha's death back in January.

He had the dishevelled demeanour of an old man but the helplessness of a little boy who didn't know where to turn next.

We met because I was doing an interview for The Mail on Sunday with Carmen. Mark accompanied her to the hotel because, as we revealed last week, he had barely left her side since his fiancee's death.

His agents had advised him not to speak to the Press, yet there was obviously much he wanted to say. Before Carmen and I went to speak in private, the three us had coffee.

It was the day after the inquest at Westminster where a coroner had ruled that Natasha, a 31-year-old actress, had died from cocaine toxicity and immersion in hot water.

Mark had taken the stand but when asked if he wanted to add anything to the evidence, he said he did not.

That day, Mark told me he regretted the decision and said: "When I was up there I really wanted to say something – to say what an amazing girl she was but when I got up there I just couldn't do it.

"I went dry. I just couldn't get the words out. I wish now that I had said something."

He was worried that people wouldn't understand how much he had loved Natasha and was concerned that their relationship had been portrayed in a trivial way.

"I don't think people realise," he said. "But we were very much together. That night we had been making plans, which makes it even harder to accept she has gone. We were getting married. We were in love."

And it was tragically apparent that the prospect of life without Natasha – or Tash as Mark always called her – was unimaginable.

Seated in the foyer of the Crowne Plaza and still bewildered by the horror of recent events, he said: "Everyone keeps saying [about the inquest] that it's an ending, that at least it's over; but it's not is it?

"This is the beginning. This is it now. This is life without Tash and we've got to work out how to live with it."

Given his disappearance last Monday, this is something that Mark is clearly struggling with. Two policemen who stopped the presenter in Kilburn, North West London, that afternoon said he had appeared "distracted and deep in thought".

They offered to call him a doctor or simply someone to talk to but he declined, telling them: "I need to leave."

He later withdrew some money from a cashpoint before boarding the Tube. His mobile phone has been switched off ever since and police believe that he may have gone to one of the places that he and Natasha used to visit.

They are now focusing their search on the Thames Valley and Dorset and admit there are grave concerns for his safety.

As one of only a few journalists to speak to Mark about Natasha's death, I know that there were a number of points he wanted to get across.

On a scrunched-up piece of paper, he had written down some notes for Carmen's interview that he hoped she might say on his behalf.

He wrote that Natasha was his "cheeky monkey – his soulmate and best friend rolled into one".

He said their "motto for life was that you can't argue with a smile" and that "she loved people and loved life".

"I loved her for those reasons," he wrote. "We were happy and very much in love."

Most poignantly of all he said: "My life without Tash will never be the same. A part of me has died with her and her loss will be with me for life."

Mark and Natasha met in 1999 when they both appeared in the BBC children's programme, See It, Saw It.

While it was Natasha's first acting job, Mark was already established on the circuit.

The son of art teacher Jacqueline and property developer Oliver Speight, Mark grew up in the well-to-do suburb of Tettenhall near Wolverhampton.

He had his first break when he appeared as a contestant on ITV's Blind Date, hosted by Cilla Black.

By 1992, his talent for comic expressions landed him a role in an advert for crisps. That year he also made his West End debut in the musical Moby Dick and appeared in a video with Kylie Minogue.

He has since starred in programmes for the BBC, CITV and the Discovery Channel.

His friendship with Natasha developed into something closer in 2001 after she was in a near-fatal car accident.

She had just won a major part in the Channel 4 soap, Hollyoaks, when she was knocked down by a car in North London.

She spent six weeks in a coma and afterwards her memory was badly affected, making it difficult to learn lines.

Her career never really recovered but in retrospect the most devastating side-effects were the panic attacks and nightmares she suffered as a result.

Mark has told Carmen that Natasha turned to drugs as a release from all the flashbacks.

The inquest into Natasha's death heard that the couple had been "partying" on the night of January 2; that they had taken cocaine and sleeping pills and hadn't got to bed until 4am the following morning.

Mark found his fiancee in the bath when he woke up just after one o'clock that afternoon.

Tests showed her blood contained a by-product of cocaine at a level of 3.42mg per litre. Just 0.7mg per litre can be fatal, depending on an individual's reaction to the drug.

Mark was insistent that Natasha was not an addict and he was clearly upset about the way their last evening has been portrayed.

He told me: "We weren't "partying". We had been to a party in Maida Vale. It was a friend of Tash's. We hadn't even wanted to go. We had a few drinks there. We didn't do anything and then we came home.

"I wish I'd never told the police now. They kept saying at the inquest that we were "partying" and it just wasn't like that."

Mark has always remained vague on the exact details of that evening and had told Carmen that he couldn't remember what happened.

That night outside the hotel I told him that I thought Natasha's mother deserved to know more.

He seemed hesitant – not, I felt, because of the drugs involved but because those memories were all he had left.

It was, after all, the last night he and Natasha would ever spend together.

In the end he agreed and said: "It was just the two of us. We were talking about the future. We were planning for our wedding and writing poems for it.

"We were looking forward. We were a couple. I feel as though the way it has been reported it's as if this was just some kind of relationship that wasn't very important.

"But it wasn't like that. We were getting married. We were everything to each other."

Mark hasn't been back to the flat since Natasha's death and told me: "I just can't do it. I can't go there. I'll never go there. Eventually I'll sell it."

"I haven't really thought about that yet but there's no way I could ever go back. It's so hard. Tash was my life.

"At home I have to be strong for Carmen but it's just so hard. I miss her so much. She was everything to me. Nothing really matters any more, now she's gone."

And then he said: "I want to tell you something about Tash."

Just weeks before her death Mark had played Buttons in Cinderella at the Watersmeet theatre in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire.

Natasha worked there too, selling T-shirts. Mark knew how hard it must have been for her not to be on stage but he was so proud as he recalled a night in the theatre before the cast had arrived.

"The theatre was empty," he said. "I lifted her into the pit where the band played and she started playing the drums. [Natasha was a talented drummer who had performed at the Albert Hall.]

"Bit by bit people started coming in and everyone was getting into the music.

"Someone said, "Oh, the band's in early tonight." And then Natasha stood up. They said, "Oh, it's not the band, it's the T-shirt girl."

"Tash kind of gave them a look and a click of her fingers as if to say, "Take that, see, I'm not just the girl who sells the T-shirts. I'm me and I'm worth more than that."

"And I lifted her out of the pit and I was so proud of her. Because she wasn't just the T-shirt girl, she was Natasha Collins."

And with that Mark dissolved into tears, into the type of hard, racking sobs that come only with utter despair.

There are those who will always blame Mark for what happened that night – although none more so than himself.

True, Natasha and Mark did not stop to consider the danger of taking drugs but her death was not Mark's fault.

Carmen herself admitted that her daughter was her own woman and that she would never have been forced into doing something she didn't want to do.

Judging from the man I met that evening, Mark is a gentle, loving individual who truly cares.

And that, of course, is why everyone is so worried about him.

There has already been tragedy enough in the lives of Mark and Natasha and all those that love them. Please don't let there be one more.

[MadManMike]

[Joe Papasnap Maher]

:(

[Boswell]

His girlfriend Died in a drug induced accident when he was also stonned, he would have been a high risk of suicide, you would have though his family/friends/police would have kept a better eye on him!

Edited April 14, 2008 by Boswell

[Mark W]

Not that I'm trying to imply you're being an ignorant judgemental twat here, but you may want to read around the subject a little first.

[Skoze]

Mark's post was really hard to read

It's good to see how he actually felt about it all, not how the papers have made it out to be.

Once again,

R.I.P fella..

[Al_Fel]

Drugs are bad kids. It can all go tits up in a flash.

[Boswell]

Not that I'm trying to imply you're being an ignorant judgemental twat here, but you may want to read around the subject a little first.

Why you being so rude! Your being so hypercritical as you warn people for acting like this! I do no quite abit about this and was just expressing my opinion!

[Mark W]

Why you being so rude! Your being so hypercritical as you warn people for acting like this! I do no quite abit about this and was just expressing my opinion!

I actually don't often warn people for acting like that, but nice try.

If you "no (sic) quite abit about this", then why were you unable to work out that he'd been with his family for the whole 3 months since it originally happened? In that interview that was posted just above your post, it even clearly states that he was almost inseperable with "Carmen". In all the reports that feature interviews with his family, they say they've all been speaking to him a lot, and have been trying their hardest to help him out. Read the interview, there wasn't much they could do.

Being buzzed off coke, alcohol and sleeping pills doesn't make you 'stonned' either, as far as I'm aware.

[John Shrewsbury]

They were both in love, he felt it was his folt and wanted to be with her.

RIP both of you, now that your together.

[Dan6061]

That sucks.

He must've been in a really bad state. People need to realise that you don't just get over stuff like that with a click of the fingers...

[Caleb]

Why you being so rude! Your being so hypercritical as you warn people for acting like this! I do no quite abit about this and was just expressing my opinion!

well for a start he wasnt stoned . . . .

secondly he went missing for 6 days or so and his friends and family were all looking for him

[Ducko]

poor fela,

and another reason that proves drugs are bad,

r.i.p

[Mark W]

I think I know more people who do drugs, than don't do drugs here in London. Literally every single one of the wide range of people I worked with last summer blew (well, snorted) most of their wages away on coke.

[Dale-Hill]

R.I.P Dude going to miss you

Dale

[zoo]

The more I read up on this the more down it makes me, R.i.p guy. I heard earlier he was found in the roof space hanging from a joist, but on these websites it says he was found in a deserted office.

[Mark W]

Yeah, to be honest, I'd wait for a while before you started believing each report about where he was actually found. He WAS found hanged, but no-one's saying where yet, so in the race for getting The Exclusive, a lot of journos are gonna run with the first glimpse of a clue they find/get given.

[SCOTTY___]

Good ridence to another smack head. No simpathy.

[Mark W]

Yeah, I'd wait a while before you start believing rumours about where exactly he was found. The only thing everyone seems to agree on in the online news world is that he hung himself, but the race to get The Exclusive means that most journos are submitting the first vague idea of where he was found they have from a clue/source as fact...

[Dr. Nick Riviera]

Good ridence to another smack head. No simpathy.

[zoo]

Very true that, very weird for me to think he's done this considering how whenever I've seen him on TV he's always had a grin from ear to ear.

edit: I was agreeing with onzaboymark obviously

Edited April 14, 2008 by zoo

[Mark W]

Good ridence to another smack head. No simpathy.

Yet again, the level of drug knowledge on TF reaches new heights. Congratulations for possessing less intelligence than the usual smackheads I have to get heckled by on my ride to Southbank.