Presenter Profile - Christopher Trace

Christopher Trace and Leila Williams were the first two presenters of Blue Peter which started on October 16th, 1958. Trace was 25 years old and Williams was 21. In their book Blue Peter: The Inside Story, former editor Biddy Baxter and producer Edward Barnes described Christopher Trace as a tall, good looking young actor who shared producer John Hunter Blair's "passion for the Hornby world". It is said that when John Hunter Blair interviewed Chris Trace for the job, the pair spent the entire interview playing with toy trains. Trace was to be the main presenter of Blue Peter for 9 years.

Christopher Leonard Trace was born in Hambledon, Surrey on 21 March 1933. After a successful career in the army where he reached the rank of Lieutenant in the Royal Regiment of Artillery he became an actor. His most distinguished screen role was playing Charlton Heston's body double in Ben Hur.

Christopher Trace stayed with Blue Peter until 24th July 1967. According to Richard Marson, Blue Peter would not have survived the "grim period" between John Hunter Blair's enforced retirement and the arrival of Biddy Baxter without Trace .

"The combination of Chris and Valerie Singleton, who joined as his co-presenter in 1962, was an immediate success and grew more so after the programme went twice-weekly in 1964".

Chris Trace was extremely popular with the Blue Peter audience but by the mid-1960s he was becoming difficult to work with, particularly for the production team. Trace was becoming frustrated with the hard schedule of outside filming for the programme and threatened to resign on more than one occasion. Edward Barnes eventually wrote to Biddy Baxter suggesting that Trace was holding a pistol to their heads and recommending that they appoint a second male presenter to take on some of the action films on Blue Peter.

John Noakes therefore joined the team on 30 December 1965.    

Trace continued to tire of the programme and his life became difficult when his wife divorced him for having an affair with a 19-year-old hotel receptionist during the 1965 Blue Peter summer expedition to Norway.

He eventually resigned in January 1967 but his final appearance on Blue Peter was on 17th July 1967. After transmission the team organised a farewell party with champagne and potato crisps.

After Blue Peter Trace set up his own film company called Spectator but sadly it failed and he was declared bankrupt in 1973. Trace continued to work on radio and for local television in East Anglia and on Nationwide. Later on he worked as a taxi driver and in industry.

In 1980 he appeared on Blue Peter's 20th birthday show and introduced a new award called the Outstanding Endeavour Award. This bronze medallion was made in the factory where he was working and was presented every October up until 1990. Winners of the award included Bob Geldof and Musical Youth.

In 1992, at the age of 59, Chris Trace developed cancer and died on 5th September that year, two days after he was visited in hospital by Vlaerie Singleton, Edward Barnes and Biddy Baxter.

Christopher Trace is credited for coining two well known phrases whilst he was a presenter on Blue Peter, the segue "and now for something completely different", subsequently used by Monty Python and "here's one I made earlier" which has become a line repeatedly used by Blue Peter presenters during makes.