As BBC1's flagship kids' show gets shunted onto digital, I say good riddance to milk bottle tops, loo rolls and Lulu the elephant
By Rupert Sawyer
The Guardian, May 2012
On July 3 1969 a baby elephant, Lulu (no relation), took a dump on the floor of a West London television studio before pulling a zookeeper through his warm brown slurry – the beast had no manners, but what an insightful critic.
43 years later, and that same sorry incident is still the best thing to have ever happened on Blue Peter. Yes, in over half a century of broadcasting, 4,670 episodes to be precise, this remains the pinnacle of the BBC's flagship children's television programme – yet for some reason the people, and the leftwing rag in which these wise words are printed, are worried that it's leaving BBC1.
Blue Peter is one of the best examples of everything that's wrong with British television. In its heyday, it showcased a bunch of hyperactive long-haired layabouts and their dubious relationships with the show's pets and each other as they attempted to make quality children's toys out of nothing but dog-eared toilet rolls and cellophane – they never succeeded.
In its modern incarnation, it is the domain of the shouty, the metrosexual and the insufferably annoying. None of these are role models that children should be looking up to – these are not the bags of manure in which our children should be planted to ensure that they become tomorrow's David Beckham or Amy Childs.
Read the rest of Sawyer's 'critique' here
Editor:
What starts off as a funny and well written critique of Blue Peter as an insitution descends into an opportunity for Sawyer to trot out his personal prejudices on a range of topics which seem to have more to do with his own politics with the BBC than with the entertainment value of Blue Peter.
Blaming Blue Peter makes for creating a generation of young people obsessed with bling and suggesting that the programme's summer expeditions were to blame for hooligans interrupting his romantic moments with ladyfriends in Thailand, just don't make any sense as an argument and suddenly turn what started off as an interesting and entertaining take on Blue Peter into an irrelevant and poorly completed rant in which he makes his personal prejudice about the BBC in general plainly obvious.
A Jeremy Clarkson wanna-be.
By Rupert Sawyer
The Guardian, May 2012
On July 3 1969 a baby elephant, Lulu (no relation), took a dump on the floor of a West London television studio before pulling a zookeeper through his warm brown slurry – the beast had no manners, but what an insightful critic.
43 years later, and that same sorry incident is still the best thing to have ever happened on Blue Peter. Yes, in over half a century of broadcasting, 4,670 episodes to be precise, this remains the pinnacle of the BBC's flagship children's television programme – yet for some reason the people, and the leftwing rag in which these wise words are printed, are worried that it's leaving BBC1.
Blue Peter is one of the best examples of everything that's wrong with British television. In its heyday, it showcased a bunch of hyperactive long-haired layabouts and their dubious relationships with the show's pets and each other as they attempted to make quality children's toys out of nothing but dog-eared toilet rolls and cellophane – they never succeeded.
In its modern incarnation, it is the domain of the shouty, the metrosexual and the insufferably annoying. None of these are role models that children should be looking up to – these are not the bags of manure in which our children should be planted to ensure that they become tomorrow's David Beckham or Amy Childs.
Read the rest of Sawyer's 'critique' here
Editor:
What starts off as a funny and well written critique of Blue Peter as an insitution descends into an opportunity for Sawyer to trot out his personal prejudices on a range of topics which seem to have more to do with his own politics with the BBC than with the entertainment value of Blue Peter.
Blaming Blue Peter makes for creating a generation of young people obsessed with bling and suggesting that the programme's summer expeditions were to blame for hooligans interrupting his romantic moments with ladyfriends in Thailand, just don't make any sense as an argument and suddenly turn what started off as an interesting and entertaining take on Blue Peter into an irrelevant and poorly completed rant in which he makes his personal prejudice about the BBC in general plainly obvious.
A Jeremy Clarkson wanna-be.
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