'Cocaine culture' BBC should test all staff for drugs, says mother of tragic Natasha Collins

By Elizabeth Sanderson
Updated: 17:48 EST, 31 October 2009

The mother of television presenter Natasha Collins last night accused the BBC of having a ‘cocaine culture’ and called for it to introduce random drug-testing of all its employees.

Natasha was found dead in the bath in January 2008 after she and her fiance, children’s TV star Mark Speight, had spent the evening taking ‘significant’ amounts of cocaine.

She was 31. Mr Speight, 42, committed suicide three months later, devastated by her death. 

Last night Natasha’s mother, Carmen Collins, said she believed the couple would still be alive had they not worked in television. And she attacked the BBC for not doing more to tackle the problem of drugs in the media industry.

She said: ‘I do think they have a responsibility to their staff and random checks could help save a lot of people’s lives. The BBC should do random drug-tests on all its staff.

‘You look at all the people who take cocaine in that place. I have a friend who works in a supermarket warehouse and they are randomly checked for drugs. If they can be checked – people not in the public eye, on barely more than the minimum wage – why in the name of Heaven doesn’t the BBC do it?

‘Their employees are role models who lots of people, particularly children, look up to.

‘There is a huge cocaine culture so it should look out for its employees.

‘The BBC executives must know it is happening and should protect people like my daughter when they enter the industry.’

Two weeks ago the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry into the cocaine trade was told by former BBC producer Sarah Graham that she was offered the drug on her first day at the Corporation. 

Ms Graham, who worked on children’s programmes and took cocaine for nine years, said use of the drug was widespread among senior executives and taking it helped to boost their careers.

Mr Speight was one of the most popular presenters on CBBC, the BBC’s digital channel for children, and was best known as the face of its long-running art programme, SMart. He met Natasha in 1999 when they both appeared in the CBBC game show See It, Saw It.

Mrs Collins, 58, who lives in Palmers Green, North London, said: ‘Natasha never took cocaine before she went into television. After she died, Mark told me, “I wish I’d never worked in TV. There’s too many drugs.”

‘Mark said there was a cocaine culture in the BBC where they worked and he told me he wished he hadn’t gone down that road.

‘Because many people in TV use cocaine, it isn’t seen as a problem and they can exist in their own world of drug-taking without anyone else being around to step in to help them.

‘People need to know that going into the TV industry, there is a massive chance they will be exposed to drugs.

‘In hindsight, I’d love it if Natasha had chosen to go into teaching like her sister and not into TV. But she had this dream of being an actress and the drug culture in the industry killed her.’

She added: ‘I think if there had been checks, Natasha and Mark would be here today. That would have been the one thing that might have stopped them. The thought of losing their jobs would have frightened them. And it would save the BBC an awful lot of embarrassment too.’

In 1998, Blue Peter presenter Richard Bacon, then 21, was sacked from the hit children’s show after it was revealed he had snorted cocaine.

Angus Deayton was forced to step down as host of Have I Got News For You in 2002 after it was revealed that he had taken cocaine with a high-class prostitute.

And in 2007, former Radio 1 DJ Kevin Greening died of a heart attack after taking cocaine, Ecstasy and GHB on the eve of his 45th birthday.

A spokesperson for the BBC said last night: ‘There is no contractual right to test employees and, as is made clear by Government guidelines, any such right should only be introduced in the workplace in order to address an identifiable risk to safety.

‘To make random drug-testing the norm would be a gross intrusion into the privacy of law-abiding employees.’