A children's television presenter whose fiancée died in the bath after a night of drug taking hanged himself because he could not contemplate life without her, an inquest was told yesterday.

Mark Speight, 42, was found dead in a building next to Paddington station, West London, three months after the death of Natasha Collins. He had hanged himself with his shoelaces.

Speight, who quit his job as presenter of the CBBC programme SMart after Collins's death, had been missing for six days when his body was discovered on April 13. He had vanished after setting off to visit a counsellor — a meeting that never happened because he had mixed up the dates.

Recording a verdict of suicide, Paul Knapman, the Westminster Coroner, said that Speight could not face returning to the flat in St John's Wood, northwest London, that he had shared with Collins, 31.

“It does seem to me that he has decided upon a course of action to kill himself,” Dr Knapman said. “What a tragedy. Clearly he was so devastated by the loss of Natasha Collins that at this time he could not contemplate life without her.”

Speight and Collins had met while both were working in children's television. She died after taking cocaine and sleeping tablets and had hot water burns covering 60 per cent of her body. Her inquest recorded a verdict of death by misadventure.

Lynda Morris, the coroner's officer, said that after Collins's death Speight had begun to see a counsellor and had come to rely on her support. “On April 7, Mr Speight was driven to Wood Green station to catch a train to make an appointment with his counsellor in Willesden. Unfortunately she was not in. Mr Speight had muddled the appointment up.”

Speight had telephoned the counsellor and agreed to see her the day after. But he never returned home. In the days that followed, officers released CCTV images of him and friends urged him to get in touch.

On April 13, a Paddington station security officer was showing two trainee officers around when the three found his body on top of MacMillan House, an administrative building. Brian Golding told the court that the three went to the roof, six storeys up, to see the lift motor room. “I saw a person in the corner,” he said.

The officer added that it looked like the man was standing up; he called over to him but there was no reply. Then one of the trainees had a closer look and said: “He's dead.”

Detective Inspector Will Jordan, who led the British Transport Police investigation, said there were no suspicious circumstances. He told the inquest that a suicide note and a broken belt were found in Speight's pocket.

A post-mortem examination found that Speight had not drunk alcohol or taken any drugs. A training shoe was found next to the body with its laces removed. These had been tied around his neck and fixed to a guard rail.

Other marks were also found on his neck. Peter Wilkins, a pathologist, said he believed that these had been caused by an initial hanging attempt.

After the verdict, Speight's father, Oliver, announced that a foundation would be set up in his son's name to nurture artistic talent among young people. He said: “How can we ignore the children that have written poems or painted pictures, and have written into the BBC in their thousands? Over 15,000 have written on the BBC website. We can't ignore them, we are going to be founding the Mark Speight Foundation. I am very proud of him — we all are.”

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