The 4th Blue Peter Book

Published in 1967, the legend that was Chris Trace had left Blue Peter in July of that year yet notably, even though he had featured in over half of the year's shows there is not a single reference to him throughout the whole book, not even a fond farewell in the introductory review of the year "Hello there!".

This seems at odds with the reputation that Blue Peter had taken pride in building, with Trace's input it might be added, as the trusted friend of ordinary boys and girls everywhere. Here was a department of the BBC who kept a database of every letter ever written to the programme so that each child (sometimes 7000 a week) always received an individualised response and who painstakingly and stressfully deliberated over how to present to viewers news of every small life event of their dogs, cats, parrots and assorted shelled reptiles. Yet when it came to waving farewell to a presenter who had been the backbone of the programme ever since the ship set sail in October 1958, there was not so much as a (in the words of the great man), "thank you and now for something completely different".

Perhaps this was a statement of intent, subconscious or otherwise, from the Blue Peter book authors, messrs. Baxter, Barnes and Gill, "lest ye forget, no presenter will ever be greater than the Blue Peter alter ego" and as if to reinforce the point, the 4th book was the first of only 2 out of 40 books which didn't feature human beings on the cover (the other was book 12 which also featured Jason and the dogs - though Patch had been replaced by Shep and there was no parrot).     

Retrospectively, a little thank you and goodbye would have been a nice touch.

However, in Book 4 Noakes and Singleton resume the voyage for just a short time as a duo. Incidentally, Peter Purves joined the show in November 1967 though in fairness that probably was too late to go into this edition.

Valerie Singleton - with a monkey

Without Trace to cramp his style, action-boy Noakes now starts to come into his own. Robin has assumed the mantel of Batman. Even as the book progresses things just get better and better for John Noakes as he goes from looking after Joey the parrot on page 14 to training Patch (page 23) to making advent calendars out of coat hangers on page 44 and a polystyrene glider on page 54 (yes folks they trusted him with makes) to winding up Big Ben (page 48) and finally peaking with a climb to the top of a 110 foot tower crane on Gray's Inn Road (page 64). A prelude to far greater feats over the next decade. 

Valerie remains a steady influence on proceedings in Book 4 with a shoe box doll's house make and a recipe for fruit cream crunch (I'm sure people still use the exact same recipe all over the country to this very day). She also takes Jason on a visit to the National Cat Club Show and helps him research his family tree. The production team are clearly building up the suspense for when they send her out to walk the lion to the local paper shop - but that's for another book.

Patch mentors John on festive uses for a coat hanger which
don't involve stringing up Biddy Baxter from one 

Book 4 continues the delightful input of both William 'Tim' Tymym (Bleep & Booster and Bengo) and Michael Bond (Paddington Bear) and also features a rather detailed though fascinating Cutaway Engine diagram of the inside of the Blue Peter locomotive by one Geoffrey Wheeler. 

The print run is said to have been higher for Book 4 than the previous three editions though it apparently suffered from poor binding so existing copies of this edition tend to have dodgy spines.

William “Tim” Timym In The Blue Peter Books

Article by Steve - see link below to read the full article

William 'Tim' Timym's Bleep and Booster characters featured in the first fourteen Blue Peter books in 4 page illustrated text stories, one per book. While Bleep and Booster may be Timym's best remembered characters the annual Blue Peter Books, published to tie in with the BBC children's television series, featured more of his work than just the pair of space boys.

The other main Tim character published in the Blue Peter books was Bengo the boxer pup. Bengo dates from the 1950s and in the early Blue Peter books he featured in colour nursery comic style adventures finally ending with several years of single pages of silent newspaper style short comic. Bengo also appeared in the TV21 nursery comic Candy during the same period as he was appearing in the Blue Peter books.

Unusually Timym also created a single page colour by numbers style Mystery Picture for many of the books. These were page size grids with squares to be coloured in based on each number being assigned a colour. These were normally based around animal subjects but the Mystery Picture in the ninth book featured Bleep and Booster. The first of these Mystery Pictures appeared in the second book and was not credited however they are also in the Sixth to Fifteenth Books in which they are all credited to Tim and therefore the details of the first one are also included..

What follows is a listing of all the Tim features appearing in the Blue Peter Books. More details of the first 30 Blue Peter books can be found on The Triangular Shelf website.

Read the full article by Steve on his blog of Bear Alley

Blue Peter's 'Here's One We Made Earlier' was an accident

One of the first presenters of Blue Peter accidentally came up with the idea of making things on the children's television show from scraps around the house, she has said.

By Stephen Adams, Arts Correspondent

Former beauty queen Leila Williams casually told her boss how she had made a doll's patchwork quilt for a friend's daughter from dress off-cuts, when he pounced on the idea.

Now 71, she recalled: "My landlord's daughter had received a doll's pram for Christmas and she wanted all the stuff to go with it. I took her around London but could not find anything.

"So I made blankets, sheets and a patchwork quilt with off-cuts from the bottom of my dresses. I mentioned this to John Hunter-Blair, who came up with the idea for Blue Peter, and he said 'Get in a taxi and bring them here now!' "

The item became a staple on the show, which is the longest running children's programme in the world.

The phrase "here's one we made earlier" - announced when a presenter is making an object on air - has fallen into the language.

Williams first presented the show on 16 October 1958 with Christopher Trace, a year after being crowned Miss GB.

Read the full article in The Telegraph

Presenter Profile - John Noakes

With Patch

John Noakes joined Blue Peter on 30th December 1966 and left the programme after twelve and a half years on 26th June 1978. He remains the show's longest serving presenter and is considered by many to have been the most successful and memorable Blue Peter presenter in its entire history.

Noakes was born on 6th March 1934 at Shelf near Halifax in Yorkshire. After training as an aircraft engine fitter with the RAF and working for the aircraft company BOAC, Noakes went to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and began a career in theatre and television. In 1965 his photograph was spotted by Biddy Baxter in a theatre review in the Leicester Mercury, taken by his visual appearance she contacted him and invited him to attend an audition for Blue Peter.

When requesting an increase in the Blue Peter budget so that they could employ Noakes, the Head of Family Programmes, Doreen Stephens wrote that he was '...a promising man. Young, attractive and unaffected, and a complete contrast to Christopher Trace.'

Biddy Baxter once wrote of Noakes:

"If there was a magic formula for scenting out good presenters, producer's problems would vanish overnight. There isn't. There's never any shortage of solid, run-of-the-mill, competent professionals, guaranteed to look at the right camera and speak on cue. On the whole they're boring and quite unmemorable. But once in a while a jewel emerges - usually totally by chance.

...We knew as soon as John Noakes opened the office door that he was our third presenter."  

Noakes was introduced slowly and subtly to the Blue Peter audience, even so he later recalled being so terrified for the first few months that he went to both a hypnotist and a faith healer to help him to get over his nerves in front of the camera.   

John Noakes finally overcame his intense nervousness by developing a strategy of acting the clown, getting laughs from his fluffs and deliberately sabotaging his own cooking. He also developed the role of a daredevil, literally climbing great heights, bobsleighing, tobogganing, reporting from an erupting volcano and most memorably, setting a world record for the highest civilian free-fall parachute jump. 
 
Like most presenters, Noakes was encouraged to take special responsibility for one of the show's pets. His original dog was Patch, the son of Petra, the very first Blue Peter dog. After Patch's sudden death in 1971 (from a rare disease) he was given another pet dog, a Border Collie puppy, christened Shep by viewers. Noakes' attempts to control the excitable Shep led to his memorable catchphrase "Get down, Shep!".

With Shep

 References:

Blue Peter The Inside Story - Biddy Baxter and Edward Barnes / Ringpress Books 1989

Blue Peter 50th Anniversay by Richard Masron / Hamlyn 2008

Wikipedia entry for John Noakes

Lewis Hamilton: From Blue Peter to Silver Arrows

Following Lewis Hamilton's decision to leave McLaren, BBC Sport charts the 27-year-old's development from karting prodigy to big-money Mercedes recruit.

 

Early years

Hamilton's taste for speed was showcased as a seven-year-old, when he took part in and won a remote-controlled car race on BBC Children's programme Blue Peter.

Read the whole article on the BBC News website

BBC Scandals: The 9 Biggest Upsets, From Blue Peter Cat-Name-Fixing To The Hutton Inquiry

From the name of a Blue Peter cat to whether Jeremy Clarkson's voice can be used outside the corporation, the BBC has seen its fair share of scandals.

Now, just over a year after the death of Jimmy Savile, allegations of widespread abuse have emerged with the Met police saying the former BBC presenter could have abused 200 victims.

The BBC director general, George Entwistle was accused by MPs of failing to "get a grip" on the crisis after a Newsnight programme on the allegations was ditched.

In 2003 the broadcaster was plunged into crisis after the tragic events that led to the suicide of Dr David Kelly, who was named as a source for a report on the Today programme about the government's preparations for the Iraq war.

The corporation has also been hit with a number of bizarre scandals, including a storm over its Diamond Jubilee coverage which was branded "irreverant".

See The Huffington Post for a run-down of their 9 biggest scandals to hit the corporation.

 

• Spaghetti

  A hoax report about a spaghetti tree was broadcast in 1957 on the BBC for April Fool's Day. However many believed the hoax, which was later described as "the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled."

• The Queen

  The BBC had to apologise when security correspondent Frank Gardner revealed the Queen raised concerns about radical cleric Abu Hamza. "This is a conversation we had a little while ago and she did say that she had mentioned to - I don't know which Home Secretary it was at the time - that was there not some law he [Abu Hamza] had broken," he said.

• Clarkson breaches BBC guidelines

  Clarkson, who breached BBC guidelines by comparing a Japanese car to people with growths on their faces. The BBC apologised to the Mexican ambassador after Clarkson branded Mexicans "lazy", "feckless" and "flatulent" in 2011. Equally it had to pull out of a deal to produce sat navs with Clarkson's voice after it would find it breached guidelines.

• Frank Bough

  Frank Bough was sacked by the BBC after he was linked to a sex and drugs scandal. Former news of the world deputy editor Paul Connew, said the scandal caused a sensation at the time, given Bough's public image as the squeaky clean frontman of breakfast and sports television."

• Sachsgate

  Jonathan Ross million-pound BBC contract was not renewed after he and Russell Brand left a series of voice messages on actor Andrew Sachs' phone about how Brand had slept with the Fawlty Towers actor's grand daughter. In one call Ross called out "he f`***ked your granddaughter."

• Richard Bacon

  Richard Bacon was sacked by children's TV show Blue Peter in 1998 after allegations of drug taking

• The Jubilee Coverage

  The BBC received more than 2,400 complaints from the public about some of the live broadcasts during the national celebrations. It drew stinging criticism during the river pageant broadcast, with viewers attacking its "inane" commentary, camera angles and sound quality. Some people also singled out a sequence in Tuesday's coverage which saw Fearne Cotton and Paloma Faith discussing a Jubilee-themed sickbag.

• Blue Peter cat

  The BBC apologised after a poll to name the Blue Peter cat was rigged - with the feline being named Socks despite Cookie winning the online poll. Presenter Zoe Salmon said: "We'd like to say that we're sorry." (Cookie not pictured here)

• David Kelly

  Dr David Kelly killed himself after being named as the source for a BBC story about "sexing up" a government dossier on weapons of mass destruction. His death led to the resignation of BBC director general in 2004.

 

The Third Book of Blue Peter

The third book of Blue Peter came out in 1966, just in time for the Christmas market and was once again published by the BBC themselves.

The first notable difference about the third book was the addition of a third presenter on the front and back covers, as a young looking John Noakes joined the team.

By Christmas 1966 Noakes had actually been a Blue Peter presenter for 12 months, having joined the programme on 30 December 1965, though the third book doesn't necessarily reflect the 'action man' reputation he subsequently developed during the late sixties and the seventies, with Chris Trace still appearing to dominate the boy-orientated stories such as making a packaway farm (page 14), operating a tractor of Africa (page 16), visiting the London fire brigade (page 31), being transformed into a Chinese Mandarin (page 50) and working with the transport police dog section (page 72) and generally comes across as 'the main man' of Blue Peter.

The prominent articles about John include a demonstration of magic tricks (page 38) and his visit to the Royal Mint (page 18), although the photographs in both of these articles do seem to indicate some of his hallmark 'have a go at anything and always with great gusto and humour' attitude applied even to the cleaning of thousands of pre-decimalisation one penny coins. 

In 1966 Valerie is clearly reinforcing her, by-then, well established role as foremost female icon and role model of British children's television. Whether it be caring for Jason's kittens (though remember that Jason was a male cat so his personal role in either producing or nurturing Matthew and Olwen would have been limited compared to his Blue Peter counterpart Petra with her litter of puppies), cleverly making things out of old cardboard boxes and plastic bottles, assisting John with his magic tricks (page 39), feeding Joey the parrot (page 48) or demonstrating a recipe for sugar snowmen (page 70), Valerie singularly maintains a strong girl-oriented perspective (in the context of its time) on what might have otherwise evolved into a slightly macho boys-own style action programme.

Consumate pro Singleton helps novice Noakes with his knot work

What is absent from the Blue Peter book of 1966 is any reference to the contemporary issues of the day. For instance, there is no way on earth that the Blue Peter annual of 2012 (if only there was one) would avoid featuring the London Olympic and Paralymic Games, yet the third Blue Peter book contains no reference to England winning the World Cup at Wembley or any other topical events of the year which, retrospectively, would have added an interesting historical angle. Did this reflect a prevailing attitude from the editorial team and BBC aspirations generally, that children's television wasn't a place for 'news' or that children and teenagers shouldn't do 'issues'?

The prevailing sub-themes of the third Blue Peter book therefore continued to concentrate on pets, makes & recipes, hobbies & puzzles, children's stories, charity & public services and heroes of history.

The strong focus on children's literature and cartoon based story telling continues in the 1966 Blue Peter book with features from regular contributors such as William Timyn, aka Tim, with his adventures of Bleep and Booster the space boys and Bengo the lovable though naughty boxer pup who remains as endearing for me today as he did when I was five years old in 1966. Indeed my personal memory of being transfixed to the adventures of Bengo on Boxing day 1966 far outweigh my actual recollection of Geoff Hurst scoring his winner in the dieing seconds at Wembley that same year - so perhaps Blue Peter were reflecting something of the interest factors of mid-60's childhood after all. 

Forget Geoff Hurst and The Beatles, Christopher Trace had his finger on the pulse of what 5 year old boys like me were really into back in 1966

The third Blue Peter book also introduces Paddington Bear as a new member of the Blue Peter family. Author Michael Bond was working in the Blue Peter studio as a BBC cameraman when he first started writing what subsequently became a long series of Paddington stories especially for the programme and the annuals.

The third book of Blue Peter remains somewhat of a rarity amongst collectors compared with books from the later decades, though having said this they are reasonably common on e:bay for people willing to fork out between £10 and £20 - not a huge amount if you are trying to complete a collection. Most second hand copies have seen better days, which in fairness reflects the fact they have been enjoyed by children over two or three generations, so if you are purchasing one its worth checking out the condition and making sure it has a spine before committing your pennies! Don't panic, a reasonable one will come along soon.