Blue Peter Book Number 5

The Blue Peter book number 5 was published at the end of 1968 and was the first to feature the full 'dream team' Valerie Singleton, Peter Purves and John Noakes.

In book 5 the editorial team wrote "Since our last 'Blue Peter' Book, there have been 84 editions of 'Blue Peter' and Valerie, John and Peter have done 588 different things between them."

The book bore testimony to this, being packed once again with a rich variety of features and articles, from their winter ski-ing holiday in the Austrian Alps, to John Noakes undergoing waiter training, Valerie going showjumping and all three presenters receiving life saving lessons at the National Recreation Centre at Crystal Palace.

In fact this book appears to have more balance across the three presenters than was evident before, especially in terms of gender stereotyping. Valerie is no longer destined to spend her entire time between caring for the cat and making things out of sticky-backed plastic and there are more activites involving all three presenters. But then, perhaps this was a reflection of the time - being the late sixties when 'women's lib' was a major issue.

On the eve of 1969, Blue Peter go with the flow on Women's Lib...

Valerie does of course still tend to get more makes than the likely lads, with a minature  
garden made out of a cake board (featuring a handbag mirror for a pool - an act of genius) and some delicious looking chocolate apples, whilst Peter gets to make table top tanks out of large matchboxes and John an Alpine Rally route out of cardboard grocers boxes and sticky tape.

Stories from history always played a big part in Blue Peter books and in book 5 we learn about the Tower of London, Father David's deer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. There's also a science feature about the Gemini X spacecraft and the Apollo spacecraft for which Blue Peter were making the sensational claim:-

"Apollo - the spacecraft in which America will send explorers to the moon, and bring them safely back to earth."

...and prelude a historic year to come 

Sure enough, this happened within the next 7 or 8 months when Apollo 11 landed on the moon in July 1969 and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on its surface. Another first - Blue Peter recording the history of the time in one of its books?

Long standing favourites Bengo, Bleep & Booster and Paddington Bear were once again up to their respective adventures in book five and the Blue Peter pets also featured strongly, incudling a feauture about Joey the Brazilian Blue Fronted Parrot who was apparently given free range to fly about the Blue Peter Office.

The fifth Blue Peter book was another classic and costing just 10 shillings (which was two years away from becoming 50 pence with decimalisation) it was an absolute bargain!