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SMarteenies

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Country of origin
  
United Kingdom

Producer(s)
  
Chris Tandy

Distributor
  
HIT Entertainment

No. of episodes
  
50

Running time
  
15 minutes

Starring
  
Kirsten O'Brien Mark Speight Jay Burridge Lizi Botham Marcus Clarke

SMarteenies was a spin-off of the children's art programme SMart designed for pre-school viewers. It was shown on the CBeebies channel daily until its suspension in January 2008, following the death of presenter Mark Speight's fiancée Natasha Collins, and his subsequent suicide.

The programme started with the four presenters determining who was to do the first piece (with the rhyme: "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, Smarteenies guess who'll have a go"). After each piece, the programme returned to this screen to select the next presenter.

Presenters

The presenters were the same as those who presented the original show, SMart:

  • Mark Speight - who often simultaneously produced a normal-sized and large-scale version of the same scene (e.g. using mops instead of paint-brushes for the large version). He also presented another segment where he created art using cut-out shapes from his 'Shape Store'. Speight died in April 2008.
  • Jay Burridge - Jay often appeared as 'Man of Letters', wearing a postman's cap and carrying a messenger bag covered with alphabet letters. This contains items all starting with a particular letter of the alphabet which he then uses to produce a piece of art. He also presented another segment where he demonstrates effective methods to make pictures like coloured pencils, wax crayons and so on.
  • Kirsten O'Brien - who appeared with a puppet dog called Doogy. Doogy normally has to go out in his little blue car called his Doogymobile to get things for Kirsten. She also presented a segment called Pattern Palace, where she uses different art media to create fun and colourful patterns.
  • Lizi Botham (Bizi Lizi) - who either made pictures using fingerprints on the screen or visits a group of children to make something.

    • Until its suspension Speight and O'Brien were the only remaining presenters of the principal show SMart, as Burridge and Botham had left.

    References

    SMarteenies Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA