There's a remarkably simple reason Steve from Blues Clues vanished overnight.

Steve Burns was just 21 when he auditioned for Blue’s Clues in 1995.

He had a full head of hair, wore an iconic green stripey jumper and so much of his idenity was so heavily intertwined with a blue, animated dog. The face of so many childhoods and illuminated by so many television screens, one minute he was one of the most recognized faces on our TV, the next he had disappeared, seemingly without a trace. It was 2002.

Years later, fake news sites would be saturated with reports Burns was dead. There were rumours Burns had overdosed, and others that he had been killed in a car accident.

None were true.

In a video released by Tech Insider at the weekend, Burns revealed he has lived a remarkably ordinary existence since his Blue Clues days. And his disappearance from the show had nothing to do with death, nor was it shrouded in drama. As it calls it, he was simply “getting older”. “It was time,” he told the video.

Today, 43-year-old Burns has stepped away from the camera a little bit. He dabbles in music, and also spends a chunk of his time doing voice-overs.

“I’m a voice-over guy. I’ve been a voice-over guy even before and while I was on “Blue’s Clues.” That was kind of my main gig for a lot of it. If you hear a guy on TV that tries to sell you insurance and sounds like the guy from ‘Blue’s Clues,’ that’s me,” he told the Huffington Post at the end of last year.

A photo posted by Steve Burns (@steveburnsalive) on Dec 28, 2015 at 10:23am PST

He is releasing a kids album “Foreverywhere” along with his friend Steven Drozd of the Flaming Lips, who contributed to his previous album “Songs for Dustmites.”

Life after TV fame has been interesting, he says. No one believes him when he says that he is, well, him.  “I have to convince people,” he also told the Huffington Post.

And as for those death hoaxes? They grow to become pretty draining pretty quickly, he told Tech Insider. 

A photo posted by Steve Burns (@steveburnsalive) on Jun 29, 2015 at 5:04pm PDT

“Sometimes it’s funny, it’s usually not. I remember when it first happened my mum called me crying. To be rumoured dead for 15 years starts to feel disturbingly like a cultural preference. Like what did I do? Why would you people prefer that I am not alive?”

Despite the rumours and the hoaxes, though, Burns recognises there’s one great thing about having so many ties to the show.

“I still meet parents who have watched Blues Clues who have children who watched Blues Clues,” he said.