TV host Mark Speight 'found dead'

The BBC reports that the body of a man, believed to be missing TV presenter Mark Speight, has been found in a remote area of London's Paddington station. A formal identification is yet to take place but will be confirmed on Monday. This is a tragedy indeed. He has been a familiar feature in our house with his programmes about painting, drawing and design. My children thought he was very clever.

Humanity has a terrible propensity for self-damage. In this case, Mark has been racked with guilt about the circumstances leading up to the death of his girlfiend. Because of these circumstances, he had been arrested arrested on suspicion of murder and supplying Class A drugs, subsequently being released without charge. Enough in themselves to cause a person to feel that they had no further place in society. He was not to blame, except that he blamed himself for introducing her to drugs.

That he needed drugs or felt unable to face his family and friends says something, I think, about how we are as a society. John Donne famously wrote the lines "No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." What was true 400 years ago, is true today.