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Milly Jones
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« on: 18:09:11, 13-04-2008 » |
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How sad that he has been found dead. What a dreadful pity that he reached such a depth of despair before anyone could help him. So sad.
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We pass this way but once. This is not a rehearsal!
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Swan_Knight
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« Reply #1 on: 18:16:53, 13-04-2008 » |
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Sounds like a combination of drugs and grief did for him. Grief often leads to drugs, but - it would seem - drugs always lead to grief.
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...so flatterten lachend die Locken....
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marbleflugel
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« Reply #2 on: 18:24:53, 13-04-2008 » |
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I had a feeling the guy was in an end game. RIP nontheless to a bright young couple blighted. Presumably he felt responsible for his lovers' demise. I think the Beeb, and showbiz agents have some kind of duty of care when it employs very young staff like this in relatively fluffy roles, leaving them time on their hands,pitched to them in an avuncular way. I wouldn't go so far as to point the finger, but I would suggest that drugs awareness courses for proto-celebs would be a good idea-after all, sadly, their target audience is also being targetted by the pushers. And it has to be said it just wouldnt have happened on Biddie Barnes' watch, now would it?
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'...A celebrity is someone who didn't get the attention they needed as an adult'
Arnold Brown
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #3 on: 18:29:24, 13-04-2008 » |
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Biddie Baxter, surely, marbs?
These guys have to work incredibly hard at almost constant pressure in the harsh glare of media publicity. The duty of care really isn't there any more: agreed.
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Milly Jones
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« Reply #4 on: 18:32:38, 13-04-2008 » |
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He wasn't so very young though - 42. I don't mean that isn't young to die of course! But as far as duty of care goes to young employees, he wasn't 20-odd.
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We pass this way but once. This is not a rehearsal!
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Morticia
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« Reply #5 on: 20:20:31, 13-04-2008 » |
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I don't have anything profound to say here. I had a nasty feeling that this would be the outcome and I find it very sad that he had to crawl away into a corner, while surrounded by people bustling about him, to leave his life. A wounded animal. May he now RIP.
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marbleflugel
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« Reply #6 on: 20:26:19, 13-04-2008 » |
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Thanks for correcting me, guys. I have a feeling that there is something of a Peter Pan/ Wendy syndrome about the milieu that media presenters operate in now-perhaps its that the lifestyle is so scrutinised that the only source of respite is in extremis?
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'...A celebrity is someone who didn't get the attention they needed as an adult'
Arnold Brown
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Antheil
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« Reply #7 on: 21:13:29, 13-04-2008 » |
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Thanks for correcting me, guys. I have a feeling that there is something of a Peter Pan/ Wendy syndrome about the milieu that media presenters operate in now-perhaps its that the lifestyle is so scrutinised that the only source of respite is in extremis?
Until this weekend I had never heard of Mark Speight or his girlfriend. I don't read the redtops or watch much tv. But the burden of guilt he must have been feeling would have been overwhelming and who could cope with that? Certainly I know I probably couldn't |
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Reality, sa molesworth 2, is so sordid it makes me shudder
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marbleflugel
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« Reply #8 on: 21:24:22, 13-04-2008 » |
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I admire your empathy Anty, but I think we're looking at a different world as you say redolent of the redtops and the 'goldfish bowl'. Ron, are we on the right track here do you think?
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'...A celebrity is someone who didn't get the attention they needed as an adult'
Arnold Brown
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John W
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« Reply #9 on: 21:42:24, 13-04-2008 » |
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Mark Speight was a frequent face on our TV, Anna. His CBBC art programmes were favourites of my daughter. I think he tried to be very cool and hip on the show, to give the impression he was 20-something, and he succeeded, he had a real talent for art and TV Tribute to Mark Speight. |
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Ron Dough
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« Reply #10 on: 21:48:39, 13-04-2008 » |
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Who can say? But I'm sure that having been given that close attention and media speculation, there must have been all sorts of pressures apart from the sheer trauma of the loss of his partner - for whatever reason - weighing down on him. There's a very unhealthy 'build 'em up, knock 'em down' mentality in our press when it comes to figures in the public eye, and I can't begin to imagine what misery drove him to this lonely end. Desperation of an extreme order....
R.I.P.
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Milly Jones
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« Reply #11 on: 16:37:07, 14-04-2008 » |
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Dear God! He was found hanged. I had thought an overdose was more likely. Not one of the nicer methods of despatch I'd have thought. The legal term used to be (don't know if it still is) "suicide whilst the balance of the mind was disturbed". All the same I could think of better ways of doing it.
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We pass this way but once. This is not a rehearsal!
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #12 on: 20:27:16, 14-04-2008 » |
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Does anyone else find the level of "concern" on the BBC News website remarkably like a convenient excuse for ghoulish prying?  |
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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time_is_now
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« Reply #13 on: 21:07:15, 14-04-2008 » |
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Grief often leads to drugs, but - it would seem - drugs always lead to grief.
I don't want to get into another fight on these boards, especially not on a subject related to someone's death, but I need to put on record that drugs do not always lead to grief. I know large numbers of people who regularly use for recreation the sort of drugs that Mark Speight and his girlfriend had been using, and while there are risks - both of addiction/overuse, and of accidents while under the influence, as happened with this couple - there are plenty of users who don't experience these adverse effects, and who use drugs to enhance their social lives in exactly the same way that other people use alcohol. That's all I plan to say on the subject. I was very very sad to read the news this morning, but as Anty says, there would have been a burden of grief (about events which were actually no one's fault) that anyone would have found it difficult to overcome. The social stigma doesn't help, but I don't think that played such a major role in this case, and on the whole the press reporting I've seen has been quite sensitive. I'm also glad to see that his girlfriend's family seem to have been nothing but supportive. |
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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John W
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« Reply #14 on: 21:27:14, 14-04-2008 » |
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there are plenty of users who don't experience these adverse effects, and who use drugs to enhance their social lives in exactly the same way that other people use alcohol.
I have a difficulty with that statement though tinners. Mark S and his girlfriend were alone together when she overdosed and fell into a hot bath. Call that a social life? Most people I know (including myself) who use alcohol to enhance their social life often do it at the weekend with friends outside their family. If (as I sometimes do) I get into difficulty (pissed) then they or the family will rescue me  |
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