The children’s television presenter Mark Speight had an engaging, enthusiastic on-screen presence, demonstrating to children how to draw or pulling wacky faces.

A trained artist, he had presented the children’s BBC channel (CBBC) art programme SMart for more than a decade since its launch and occasionally took part in public art initiatives. He had also fronted a number of other popular programmes, notably ITV’s Scratchy & Co.

Mark Warwick Fordham Speight was born in Wiltshire in 1965. His father was a property consultant and his mother was an art teacher who influenced his passion for drawing. He attended Tettenhall College for a year and Regis Comprehensive School (now King’s Church of England School) in Wolverhampton. He left school at 16 and later studied commercial and graphic art at Bilston Art College (now folded into City of Wolverhampton College) and had ambitions to become a cartoonist.

In 1994 Speight succeeded in a CBBC audition to become a co-presenter of SMart, an art programme reminiscent of those presented by the artist Tony Hart in the 1970s and 1980s. Speight tried to enthuse his young audience to be creative. He demonstrated different artistic techniques, from drawing to cut-and-stick, as well as showing off pictures sent in to the show.

In the late 1990s Speight was appearing in a growing number of shows and had come to be regarded as a leading children’s presenter. In 1998 he acquired further celebrity with juvenile audiences as “Scratchy” in the CITV programme, Scratchy & Co, which was broadcast in the primetime Saturday morning slot and nominated for a Bafta. The following year he appeared in See It Saw It with his fiancée, Natasha Collins.

He put his artistic talents to good use again in In the Toon Room, on which he demonstrated how to draw cartoons. In 2005 he collaborated with Rolf Harris to make a large version of The Haywain by John Constable in Trafalgar Square, London, and later recreated the Mona Lisa at Edinburgh Castle. He toured as an individual, putting on art workshops. He also presented On Your Marks for the BBC, Name That Toon for Granada and History Busters for the Discovery Kids channel, and hosted game show Beat the Cyborgs for children’s ITV.

Like many presenters, Speight also appeared in pantomime. In his case, however, this did not signify the end of a career — he was as an animated and popular presenter who was regularly nominated for industry awards as a children’s presenter and had shared in the accolade when History Busters won a Royal Television Society award in 2003. He was also president of the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign.

In January Collins was found dead in their bath, having died of hot-water burns. The coroner recorded a verdict of death by misadventure and said that although Collins had taken enough cocaine to kill her, it was likely that a heart problem had caused her to lose consciousness. Speight, who was cleared of supplying her with drugs, resigned from SMart. He was reported missing and after a week his body, which is still to be formally identified, was found at Paddington railway station.

Mark Speight, children’s television presenter, was born on August 6, 1965. He was found dead on April 13, 2008, aged 42