Mark’s Television Career

Multi-talented, Mark Speight was one of the BBC’s top presenters with the network’s highly rated children’s show, SMart which Mark enjoyed presenting for over fourteen years as well as SMart on the Road which he presented to great acclaim.

Mark’s career with the BBC involved a wide range of programmes. He filmed on location a one-off special for the BBC’s Africa week and he also featured in a series of 5 special programmes for BBC1’s Heaven and Earth Show. His involvement with BBC1’s Saving Planet Earth live finale programme, saw Mark produce a piece of art live on the show. It gave members of the public the unique opportunity to place bids for his painting, proceeds of the sale were donated to the BBC Wildlife Fund to help save the world’s endangered animals.

Mark took an active part in BBC1’s top viewing show Rolf on Art – The Big Event, live in London’s Trafalgar Square working with Rolf Harris to help recreate John Constable’s famous painting, ‘The Haywain’ on a gigantic scale. The BBC were so impressed with Mark’s contribution, they immediately engaged him to present live for the second programme where again artists from all over the UK joined forces to create their version of Holbein’s majestic depiction of ‘Henry VIII’.

The BBC, the National Galleries of Scotland and the City of Edinburgh Council teamed up for another event, which was again broadcast live on BBC1 and Mark was involved in recreating Da Vinci’s masterpiece, ‘The Mona Lisa’ in the grounds of Edinburgh Castle.

For BBC Northwest Tonight, Mark filmed an art campaign encouraging children of all ages to create portraits using any art form, linking this with major art galleries throughout the Northwest.

Television

Mark first shot to fame as the extraordinary rubber faced presenter of Children’s ITV popular Saturday morning show, Scratchy & Co which was nominated for a BAFTA ‘Best Children’s Entertainment Show’. It also won the RTS Award for ‘Best Entertainment Programme’ and was nominated as ‘Best Children’s Show’ at the Independent Television Awards.

Mark presented a wide variety of programmes ranging from a game show series called Beat The Cyborgs for CITV where he took on the role of the extraordinary character, ‘Max Manus’ to a 13 part series called History Busters, which won an RTS Award for the Discovery Channel.

Other series included See It Saw It, On Your Marks, Insides Out for the BBC, Name That Toon for Granada, which won the Best CITV Award and for which Mark was nominated Best Presenter for two consecutive years. The Toon Room was yet another series in which Mark used his remarkable artistic expertise to educate and teach children how to draw cartoons. Children just loved the section ‘Do You Doodle’ where they sent in their ‘squiggles’ on a piece of paper for Mark to cleverly turn into a drawing and bring them to life.

He regularly presented ‘Art & Craft’ items for ITV’s This Morning programme. He also hosted the ‘The Müller Big Art Project’ for Comic Relief’s Red Nose Day. This involved the creation of a giant painting made up of 54 canvasses which took place at London’s Trafalgar Square.

He also guested as the ‘Roving Reported’ for Channel 4’s The Big Breakfast show.

Although many presenters prefer not to work with children or animals, Mark had a special affinity for both, having presented Disney Club and Ratkin 11 for the Children’s Channel, as well as a special for BSkyB, Save The African Elephant, Challenge Anneka and both the CITV Awards and Champion Children’s Awards on LWT which were presented by the Duchess of Kent. Mark also guested on Wake Up in the Wild Room for Buena Vista Productions and Timmy Towers for CITV.

Theatre

Mark appeared in Cameron Macintosh’s stunning production of Moby Dick at the Piccadilly Theatre, London. Not content with just appearing in the show, Mark also designed the programme illustrations.

He regularly toured the country with his Speight of the Art children’s workshops as well as entertaining family audiences each year in pantomimes across the country with his unique style and humour.

Muscular Dystrophy

Mark loved encouraging kids to be imaginative and as President of the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, he had the opportunity to be heavily involved in their valuable work for a number of years. He supported the Young Pavement Artists Competition (Marks Gallery with the winners) (YPAC) which encouraged schools, youth groups and communities to bring children together to draw and have fun.

Visit Marks gallery of images

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