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