It’s popcorn time as the first woes of people you’ve forgotten were famous-ish start to be dragged bizarrely across the headlines in 2008. This week a bloke with a rubber face and the oldest spiv on the block are both up to their necks in it for our gawping pleasure.
Mark Speight first came to our attention as a shouty, detached, psychedelic head with hair like a luminous turd in 90’s kids TV favourite Scratchy and Co. At the end of his tenure he dodged the obscurity bullet that blindsided the likes of Jeffrey from Rainbow and instead was granted access to the most hallowed ground in kid's TV – the art programme.
This force field of longevity has however this week proven very vulnerable to attack from the inside. When Mark and his fellow kid's presenter fiancée Natasha Collins decided to go on what seems to be a mammoth coke binge that would ultimately end in her death, the rose-tinted bubble came crashing down around them, sending a fall-out cloud of glitter, stencils and rubbish pasta pictures sent in by eight-year-olds for miles.
Fortunately (and we use that term in its loosest sense) for Mark Speight, the police have today announced that they have dropped the charge of murder against him, leaving the only marginally better ‘supply of class A drugs’ to contend with.
In years to come the rosy, butter wouldn’t melt affection afforded to memories of other TV artists will not apply to this poor sod who, guilty or not, will instead have to contend with ‘that bloke who looked like a cartoon and OD’d his bird on sniff.’
We’re sure Barrymore and OJ will welcome him in to his new club with open arms though, and we’ll look forward to him on Celebrity Big Brother next summer.
Meanwhile, over on ITV, an entirely different situation that we shouldn’t laugh at but are going to anyway was about to unfurl.
The Bill’s Reg Hollis was one of those immortal, nobhead soap characters that allow occasional viewers a touchstone of familiarity in a programme they can’t really be arsed to watch that often. So we were shocked to hear that Jeff Stewart who plays him, may have attempted to top himself at the studio after being sacked this week.
It had been a slippery slope for his character for a while, to be fair. As the show was put on more times a week, and the stories became more emotionally involved, comedy rozzer Reg had several risible attempts to try and prove himself suitable for scenes with any proper depth, before becoming reduced essentially to a couple of half-arsed, moaning lines every other episode.
Jeff must have been looking wistfully back on his glory days where The Bill was one episode a week, with two unrelated storylines that were inexplicably linked by the end of the 30 minutes. With the plot taken care of Reg was usually given a light relief task of trying to chat up someone way out of his league, or cleaning up something ‘orrible, or locking his keys in the squad car or something.
With the general look of someone who’d try to sell you nylons and petrol from a shadow in the 1940s he was looking steadily more out of date roaming around like the spectre of Sunhill.
Unfortunately for Jeff, the makers of The Bill also realised what a cash void he’d become and decided to give him the Spanish archer this week. In the first bit of real drama he’d been involved in for 24 years, Jeff lost it and cut his wrists in his dressing room, before changing his mind, calling for help and being taken to hospital.
Two questions arise from this. Firstly, why would somebody whose character just wears a shirt, tie and occasionally a jumper need a dressing room? It’s hardly Moulin Rouge is it?
Secondly, will this drastic move elicit Owen Wilson-style mass waves of increased popularity and affection? Or will Jeff end up going where most old Bill actors go to live out their twilight, Albert Square, via Richard and Judy? Our money’s on the daytime sofa and Walford combo: Cheggers-style heart to heart with Madeley and Finnegan, and then he can graze out his days amongst old contemporaries, happily having the occasional run in with the Mitchells and all under the gaze of the original familiar soap nobhead, Ian Beale.
Next week on D-Z List Scandals: Roger DeCourcey and Nookie Bear in dead hooker gangbang shame! And 80s popstrel Yazz sprays her local Halifax branch with machinegun fire before covering the mortgage advisor in dribble and tears.
Read more:
Sacked Bill star out of hospital – BBC
TV's Speight not a murder suspect – BBC
[story by Matthew Loader]
