Sunday is usually a day of tranquillity, a moment of reflection on the week’s activities, a chance to catch up on world affairs, to have a quiet lunch by the lake. But that Sunday, April 13, was unsettling. A deep sense of disquiet was festering in my mind. Nothing had been heard of, or from, my son Mark Speight, the children’s television presenter, for some seven days.

The police search activity had been frenetic but they had no idea even where to start looking. Personally I remained convinced that Mark was still somewhere in London but, perhaps in desperation, attention had focused on the Cotswolds. This beautiful corner of England had proven to be a favourite hideaway haunt of Mark and his girlfriend Natasha Collins.

The last conversation I ever had with my son had taken place on the previous Sunday, April 6, at about 4pm. He answered the telephone in a monosyllabic tone as if receiving a typical promotional sales pitch from some distant call centre in India. This was not the buoyant, effervescent and vital entertainer that I had watched mature into an outstanding professional — he sounded like a mere echo of his former self.

Despite the professional help that Mark had been receiving since Natasha’s tragic death — she was found dead in the bath of the flat they shared, having taken cocaine, alcohol and sleeping tablets — coupled with continual and consistent support from friends, colleagues and families alike, I was becoming intensely concerned as to his mental wellbeing; particularly after that call.

However, the following day, Monday, April 7, Mark had spoken to his mother at midday in a more positive mode. He was also scheduled to meet Natasha’s mother Carmen that afternoon. He had been living with the Collins family since Natasha’s death in January.

Mark failed to keep the appointment. Anxious telephone calls followed to friends, family and colleagues as to his whereabouts, but all to no avail. The police were duly notified and their own intensive search campaign began. We were all left on tenterhooks.

The appointed police liaison officers had promised to maintain a close and daily contact with the family until they found Mark and this they did. In mid-week the police requested that we make a public appeal to Mark seeking a simple telephone call of reassurance that all was well with him, but none came. This was so out of character that I began to think terrible thoughts. Fears for his safety were never far away. The police had promised to advise me personally once he had been found and prior to any release to the media. They honoured that commitment.

At 2.30pm on that Sunday, the 13th, the doorbell rang and we were confronted by the police liaison officers. The face of the young detective sergeant revealed everything. An expression of helpless compassion was writ all over it. An agonising moment in a young officer’s life, to tell a father that his son was dead and, worse still, that he had hanged himself. I felt immense sympathy for this poor young policeman.

Then the questions began: when and where did he take his life and the biggest imponderable of all — why?

It appeared from the coroner’s findings that Mark had taken his life some six days prior to the discovery of his body. In other words, that he did it on that very Monday afternoon when he was supposed to have met Carmen Collins. He was found, by chance, by a service staff member on the roof of an empty office building next to a hotel near Paddington railway station.

It was on a routine inspection of the plant room that this silent witness made his traumatic discovery. The news of Mark’s death broke that Sunday evening. Reports on television came thick and fast and so did the response of the public. Children, their parents, those colleagues with whom he had been associated — all sent e-mails of condolence, loss and love.

Many thousands of children sent e-mails to the BBC alone. In total, we understand that more than 26,000 demonstrations of respect and admiration for Mark were made. He had touched the hearts of families to such an extent that I decided immediately to continue his message and his life’s work with the establishment of an art foundation for UK children.

We originally planned a family funeral in Wolverhampton where Mark was born, but rightly it expanded to include his colleagues from the media and his friends. In the church eulogy to Mark on that April day, I referred to him as a Peter Pan figure who never grew up. A Pied Piper leading children on a magical mystery tour of art.

He was a gentle yet charismatic and dynamic personality, whose creative and personal life ranged from the inspirational to the chaotic. But how we all loved him! He was irresistible!

I have deliberately left the question of why Mark committed suicide to the end. The full reasoning will never be known. But in my opinion a sequence of tragic events supplied the lethal cocktail of despair into which Mark had descended: those initial and wrongful accusations of murder and the supplying of class A drugs to Natasha, together with the associated investigations, scarred him deeply. On top of those allegations were his own feelings of remorse and helplessness, that he was asleep in bed while Natasha lay dying in the bath so close by.

Then, of course, was his inability to cope with the loss of his soulmate, his “monkey” as he called her, which became even more overwhelming when coupled with fears that his career, his home and the accoutrements of his life were about to disappear and he would lose the special contact with children and their artistic dreams that he valued so highly.

Of course, as the many thousands of e-mails from his many fans demonstrate, Mark had much to live for. But I believe he was unable to extricate himself from this self-imposed abyss. I think that to him the only way out was to end it all swiftly. And that he sadly did.

SP8 of the Art — the Mark Speight Foundation — has been established as a charitable vehicle to promote children’s artistic talent in all its forms from sculpture, graffiti and fashion to portraiture in the cities and towns of the UK. I hope he would approve.

To find out more about the Mark Speight Foundation see www.speightoftheart.org, which is to be launched on Wednesday

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