A producer on The One Show died in a horrifying freak accident, an inquest has heard.
Charlie Mott, who was an executive on the BBC One show, had been playing drinking games with his friends at a country manor when tragedy struck.
The 25-year-old, who also worked with talk show host Graham Norton, was found mysteriously tangled in a shower chord in the bathroom of the £2m five-bed manor he and his friends were staying at.
Charlie was fully clothed and slumped against the wall when he was discovered, an inquest in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire heard yesterday.
The coroner was told that the friends had spent the night at the manor playing classic drinking games like ‘Guess the Celebrity’ and that Charlie was on “good form”, making jokes and laughing with his pals.
The inquest also heard how the broadcaster, who joined the BBC in 2018, had some mood swings throughout the night, even telling a friend at one point that he hated himself.
One friend said in a statement at the hearing: “His moods were up and down with highs and lows but this was normal behaviour for Charlie. An hour or so before he was found, Charlie told me he hated himself and how unhappy he was.”
Charlie was discovered in the early hours of August 23 by a friend.
She found his body in the bathroom.
The distraught woman screamed for help and the friends called 999 just after 4am and began performing CPR on Charlie.
Tragically nothing could be done and paramedics confirmed he had died at 4.54am.
A post mortem examination found that Charlie had died from hanging.
The inquest was told that Charlie was believed to have consumed eight pints before moving on to drinking spirits and liqueurs that night.
Toxicologist John Slaughter said that Charlie was more than double the legal drink-driving limit, a state which is associated with “impairment of judgement and staggering”.
A friend told the inquest that they knew Charlie was taking antidepressants and that he had gone “from happy to sad back to happy” at the party and that it was typical of him to do so.
They added that Charlie went into their room at 2am and seemed to be “aimlessly wandering”.
Charlie had been prescribed the medication one month before his death, but the hearing was told that he had “felt low for a couple of years”.
Coroner Crispin Butler said the way Charlie was found combined with his intoxication raised questions.
He said: “There is not a clear pathway that he positively took the action to do something in a clear-headed manner.”
“I do not see it being intentional,” he added.
The coroner said he could not make “assumptions” based on Charlie’s engagement with doctors or his mood swings.
He said it was possible that Charlie had stumbled in his intoxicated state and was unable to free himself after falling unconscious.
He said Charlie’s death was “all the more tragic” given that the way he came about his death is not fully understood.
The coroner ruled an open finding.
Charlie lived in London with a friend from Bournemouth University, where he had graduated with a degree in multimedia journalism.
Before working on The One Show, he worked with Norton on his BBC Radio 2 show.
After his tragic death, One Show presenter Alex Jones paid tribute to him on the programme.
She said: “Now, before we go, we just wanted to pay tribute to one of our colleagues, Charlie Mott, who sadly died at the weekend.
“Everybody on the team is absolutely devastated. He was hugely talented and such good company.
“We miss him so much. Our thoughts are with his family and we are sending lots of love from all of us here.”
– mirror.co.uk
