- In January 2008 he found the body of his fiancée, Natasha Collins in the bath, where she had died of a cocaine and alcohol overdose. He was arrested on suspicion of murder and supplying Class A drugs but was soon released without charge. A week after an inquest returned a verdict of accidental death on Natasha, Mark went missing. His body was found several days later on 13 April 2008 in a building next to Paddington station in London.
- Was engaged to actress/model Natasha Collins until her death.
- Often mistakenly believed to have played the part of Sam the Lift in children's game show Incredible Games (1994), due to the similarities with the character he played in Scratchy & Co. (1995).
- He 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.
- He regularly toured with Speight of the Art, a series of art workshops he ran for children,[3] and during the Christmas period, he performed in pantomime as "Buttons" in Cinderella at the Watersmeet, Rickmansworth, in December 2007.
- On the afternoon of 3 January 2008, Speight called emergency services after waking up to discover Natasha Collins's body in the bath at their St John's Wood flat, in north-west London. Speight told police that he and Collins had spent the previous evening "partying", drinking wine and vodka, and taking cocaine and sleeping pills. Speight was questioned by police and was subsequently arrested on suspicion of murder and of supplying Class A drugs, but was released on bail until the first week of February. Because of this, the BBC cancelled the Saturday repeat edition of 'SMart'.
- Speight also played the king on children's programme See It Saw It, where he met Natasha Collins. Collins was seriously injured after being hit by a car in 2001, and had to leave See It Saw It. Speight began dating her in 2003, and they became engaged in Barbados in 2005. They planned to get married in fancy dress and Speight joked that the wedding might feature monkeys, his favourite animal.
- He starred in the BAFTA-nominated ITV Saturday morning show Scratchy & Co. from 1995 until 1998.
- 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.
- He left school at 16 to become a cartoonist.
- Speight attended the private school Tettenhall College for a year, before moving to state comprehensive Regis School, now known as King's C.E. School, also in Tettenhall, at the age of 12.
- Speight's funeral was held on 28 April at St Michael and All Angels' Church in Tettenhall and hundreds went to pay their respects. The service included a performance by the choir from Tettenhall College, Speight's former school, and his coffin was carried out of the church accompanied by the theme tune of SMart.
- Speight planned to meet with Natasha Collins's mother at Covent Garden for coffee on the afternoon of 7 April. He was dropped off at Wood Green tube station that morning, but never appeared at the planned meeting. Speight missed an appointment with a counsellor, but this was because of confusion over dates. Two police officers spoke to him, as he appeared "vacant", "distracted" and "deep in thought", but he refused their help. He 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. He 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. Speight's father also appealed for him to get in touch.
- Following Natasha Collins's death, Speight moved in with Collins's mother.
- In 2005, he was involved in a project where Hans Holbein's portrait of Henry VIII and Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa were both reconstructed, the latter in the grounds of Edinburgh Castle.
- Speight denied any involvement with Natasha Collins's death, and on 19 March it was reported that the police were no longer considering him a suspect.
- Speight intended to become a cartoonist, but he eventually became a TV presenter following a job painting the set of a television production.
- Speight's other work ranged from children's television to adult factual programmes.
- 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. He said he did "very badly" because he was a victim of bullying, and the "daily ordeal for two years" forced him to become the "class joker".
- Speight also worked on 'This Morning', 'The Heaven' and 'Earth Show', 'The Big Breakfast' and was a contestant on ITV's 'Gladiators' and 'Celebrity Wrestling'.
- He 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. Speight became close friends with Burridge, whose art studio in West London was used to create all of the art content for SMart; Burridge noted: "We would bounce ideas and jokes off each other all day until we had developed an almost telepathically linked knowledge of what made each other laugh."[7] Speight and Burridge were joined by third presenter Zoe Ball, who was replaced first by Josie d'Arby, and then Kirsten O'Brien and Lizi Botham. With Burridge, O'Brien and Botham, Speight presented the spin-off shows SMart on the Road, SMarteenies, and various live events.
- In 2004, 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.
- Speight was also a presenter on 'See It Saw It', where he met his future fiancée, actress and model Natasha Collins.
- He 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.
- The report of Speight's death on the BBC's children's news programme Newsround provoked complaints that it upset young viewers, even though the programme had avoided use of the word "suicide" and had instead reported that "police don't think he was killed by anyone else.".
- Alongside his television work, Speight toured with his "Speight of the Art" children's workshops and was credited by many aspiring young artists as being an inspiration.
- He also appeared in Cameron Mackintosh's short-lived West End musical production of Moby Dick (Piccadilly Theatre, 1992) and designed the programme illustrations.
- In 2005, Speight was among celebrities pitted against each other in the ring in Celebrity Wrestling, a Saturday-evening ITV show intended to reflect the glitz and razzmatazz of American wrestling. After breaking a finger on his right hand during filming, the left-handed Speight - who fought as "The Quickdraw Kid" - observed: "I didn't realise the show was going to be so full-on.".
- From 2006 till 2008 he had played Buttons in Cinderella pantomimes in Broxbourne and Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, inviting children to go on stage and draw a pantomime character.
- In April 2018, Speight was reported missing and was later discovered to have hanged himself near Paddington station. Two suicide notes were discovered, describing how he could no longer live without his fiancée, Natasha Collins.
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