Magpie Annual 1970

Now that Magpie had successfully dipped a clawed foot into the domain of the annual, there was no stopping them and Christmas 1970 saw their 2nd book hit the festive shops.

Annual 2 continued with the tried-and-tested format and featured their three presenters, Susan Stranks, Pete Brady and Tony Barstable. The annual opened with an article about the making of Magpie and a reminder that it went out live every Tuesday and Thursday. Blue Peter fanatics like me will no doubt recall that BP went out on Monday and Thursday, so there was clearly competition for the Thursday evening audience (BP started at 5 to 5 if memory serves me correctly, as did Crackajack on Friday).

The introductory article also highlighted the role of the Magpie Producer, Sue Turner, like BP they obviously felt it was important and perhaps educational to let us see behind the scenes.

The 1970 annual featured lots of animals, historical costumes and features from the shows of that year. Sadly there was no Pete's Pick of the Hit Parade in their second annual, although Pete Brady does show readers how to make jazz instruments out of items of household junk. For a programme whose USP was being more hip than its rival, teaching teenagers how to create a skiffle band might have been better suited to the late 1950s than the era of Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd. Having said that, a recent documentary about the making of Dark Side of the Moon did show the Pinks using some fairly antiquated items of studio equipment to make their amazing sound effects, so perhaps Magpie might have had some influence there after all.

 

Magpie - the competition

The children's television programme Magpie was first shown on ITV on 30 July 1968.

The programme was created by Lewis Rudd and Sue Turner for Thames Television as competition to Blue Peter but attempted to be more "hip" by focusing on popular culture.

It started off as a weekly show but became twice weekly in 1969. The show ran until 6 June 1980.

The first presenters were the former BBC Radio 1 disk jockey Pete Brady, with Susan Stranks and Tony Bastable. Brady left the show in 1969 to be replaced by Douglas Rae and Bastable left in 1972 when he was replaced by Marc Bolan lookalike Mick Robertson.

Jenny Hanley replaced Susan Stranks in 1974. This line-up remained until 1977, when Tommy Boyd replaced Douglas Rae.

True to its name, Magpie successfully pinched many of Blue Peter's tried and tested features such as charity appeals, makes, recipes, history stories told in period costume and lots of information on animals, vintage motor cars and all the other stuff that we kids of the 60s and 70s were apparently fascinated by.

1969 - new kids on the block

Unlike Blue Peter however, Magpie was unscripted and the presenters were free to improvise the presentation of the show. The show did not have pets but did have a rather striking mascot called Murgatroyd who was, of course, a magpie.

Amongst the other gems which Murgatroyd swooped down and borrowed from Blue Peter was that beloved Christmastime institution, the annual. The first Magpie annual was published in 1969 and apart from the masthead on the front cover it could easily have been mistaken for its longer-established rival.

Being the same dimensions and having a similar number of pages as the BP annual, the 1969 Magpie annual also followed the by-now familiar BP formula mixing activities featured in recent programmes with makes, comic strips, recipes, science items, games, pet advice, presenter profiles and even a competition at the end of the book which offered lucky winners the chance to visit the Magpie studio in London.

Georgie Best Superstar

There are however at least three features in the 1969 Magpie annual which would have helped it to justify its claim of being more 'hip' than Blue Peter. One is an article on cars by Tony Bastable which is written with a 'boys-toys' level of enthusiasm that the lads from Top Gear would have endorsed. Secondly an article about top football players of the era, including George Best, Geoff Hurst and Mike England - although in fairness Peter Purves did once show us how to make a Spurs rattle.

But the third article was Magpie's piece de resistance, a six page look at the pop music charts of 1969 titled Pete's Pick of the Pop Parade. With an introduction about Pete Brady's career on Radio Jamaica, London and even Luxemburg before joining Radio 1, his article provides up-to-the moment information and photos of Herman's Hermits, The Marmalade, Cilla Black, Lulu, The Casuals, The Tremeloes, The Love Affair and Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Titch. Pete even provides a pop quiz at the end of his article which would have Never Mind The Buzzcocks contestants scratching their heads.

No one told me that George Best and
Herman's Hermits were in the Magpie annual! 

What a shame that at Christmas 1969 my parents probably had to stand in Woolies and decide between the trusted Blue Peter annual and the new kid on the block the Magpie annual. With the pennies tight and six kids for whom to buy pressies, it would have been an unthinkable extravagance to purchase both annuals and of course they were always going to come down on the side of BP. A great shame as retrospectively I think that Pete's Pick of the Pop Parade would have kept me occupied until at least the 1st January.
 

Blue Peter Special Assignment - Val branches out

 

 

In 1973 two paperback books were published by Pan Books by arrangement with the BBC which recorded the travels of Valerie singleton in her new role as Blue Peter's Roving Reporter.

Her first six assignments are covered in these first two books, another four books covering a further 10 assignments were to follow in the next two years.

The first six assignments were to the following six capital cities of Europe:

London, Amsterdam and Edinburgh

Rome, Paris and Vienna

In the introduction to these first two books, Valerie makes the link back to her visit to East Africa with Princess Anne just a couple of years earlier. Not quite as gripping a read as Bill Bryson, Paul Theroux or Michael Palin, even so Valerie Singleton was trailblazing as far as children's television was concerned and these books, actually written by Dorothy Smith and Edward Barnes captured her journeys with great interest and appeal.

The Blue Peter book of Limericks

1972 was a very good year for the Blue Peter publishing output with not just the annual, but also their first ever paperback book, The Blue Peter Book of Limericks.

The book was published by Pan Books Ltd in association with the British Broadcasting Corporation aka BBC. The book was edited by Biddy Baxter and Rosemary Gill with illustrations by  Peter Firmin and Edward Lear.

The Book of Limericks was an anthology of just some of the incredible 8,299 entries to the Blue Peter Limerick Competition. 

The introduction to the book provides a wonderful history of the limerick itself as well as tips on how to write a good one:

"A good limerick is not an easy thing to write. When you read them, you might think they're simple to invent, but they're not because there are rules you have to stick to. Limericks always have five lines and they're always nonsensical. The secret is to have a story in your limerick, to get a good couple of rhymes and always to have a funny last line".

The history of the limerick begins predictably in Ireland as far back as 800 AD when Irish writers first started writing in this rather peculiar way. The genre may have got the name limerick after the landlord of a tavern in Limerick City, John 'The Gay' O'Tuomy, became famous for writing such verses for his friends.

In 1820 a set of limericks was published in England called Anecdotes and Adventures of Fifteen Young Ladies, followed by a sequel, The History of Sixteen Wonderful Old Women.

A larger book of limericks was published in 1846 called A Book of Nonsense authored and illustrated by Edward Lear. Some of his illustrations and verses were published in the Blue Peter book, hence he is credited in this book even though he had been deceased for a more than a century.

Given the number of entries to choose from, the standard of the limericks in the book was high and included:

There was a young man named Pete,
Whose hair hung down to his feet
Said Val to John
"It's getting too long
We can't let him out on the street"

Karen Fisher aged 10

There once was a tortoise called Speedy
whose eye was ever so beady
His mate was called Kate
Green lettuce they ate
And lived in a run that was weedy.

Christopher R Randell aged 7

There was a headmaster called Skinner
At games he was always a winner
He won games of chess
And to Loch Ness
Then had the monster for dinner.

Fergus Cross
Aged 9

You get the gist no doubt? Anyway, at just 20 pence, The Blue Peter book of Limericks was a bargain. My copy cost me far more than that on E-Bay.

Incidentally, it seems that between 1972 and 1973 there were five print runs of this book and during this period the front cover changed. So if like me you are an avid collector of all things Blue Peter, for a complete collection it might be worth looking out for both versions.

Ah! Damn you Blue Peter!

There was an old geezer called Pete
Who thought it would be quite a feat
To track down online
A BP library so fine
But the reprints had him totally beat!

 

Blue Peter book number 10

The tenth Blue Peter book was published in 1973 with this rather fantastic cover featuring a never ending image of the full complement of four Blue Peter presenters - John, Valerie, Peter and Lesley.

The Blue Peter book shelf had expanded that year, not just with this tenth Annual, but a book of Limericks had also been published and a set of books covering Valerie's Special Assignments. 1973 was also the year that readers of both TV Critic's Circle and The Sun newspaper no less had voted Blue Peter the Top Children's Programme. 1973 also saw the one thousandth programme on February 15th.

But 1973 was also the beginning of the end for Valerie Singleton's tenure as a presenter because she had now gone part time, taking on a roving reporter role which she would continue to have until her final departure in 1975.     


Proof that the decadence started under Biddy's rule

Valerie does however feature in a number of these 'special assignment' features throughout the 10th annual, visiting Paris, Rome, Vienna and Amsterdam in one article, Hadrian's Wall in another and the Cornish tin mines in a third (granted the last two weren't quite as exciting as the other four). Though Biddy and Edward seemed to draw the line at letting her join the others on the annual Blue Peter expedition which saw John, Peter and Leslie chilling out in Tonga. The Blue Peter budget clearly didn't stretch that far. 

With Valerie's new role taking her away from the studio and the bread-and-butter girl-power features, recipes and makes she had pioneered since 1962, Lesley Judd was coming into her own and attempting to win over both the 1960s audience who had come to think that the Val, Pete and John line-up (just like in the picture on the front cover of the 10th annual) would simply last forever, but also the new seventies generation of junior glam rockers. 

Lesley's makes included a glamorous looking swing-hammock for Cindy doll and she did not miss an opportunity to boogie-on-down with the young people whenever the opportunity arose, whether it was keeping up with the fast and complicated movements of Korea's Little Angels or stomping bare foot with the Tongans. Even in her stint training to be a nurse at St Bartholomew's Hospital she remarked how the comradeship of the nurses' rest room reminded her of the big dancers' dressing-room when she was with the Young Generation (don't you just hate a name-dropper?)
. 
But Lesley was definitely bringing a new dynamic into Blue Peter as well as a spot of rhythm and not to be outdone, ITV rivals Magpie would be forced to respond by introducing Jenny Hanley the following year.

Phraw! Jenny Hanley!

Oh yes and a bloke who looked like Brian May.

The tenth Blue Peter was filled with all the usual favourites, Michael Bond's Paddington Bear was still confounding Mrs Bird the housekeeper, Bleep and Booster were still outsmarting unfriendly aliens and Tim's Bengo continued to annoy the local bulldog. Just like Eddystone Lighthouse (originally built by Henry Winstanley who was washed into the sea along with the first lighthouse and his workmen whilst supervising repairs according to Val) the good ship Blue Peter was a beacon of bright light in the otherwise dark and stormy ocean of the early 1970s.
 

Blue Peter: Opening the time capsules Part 4

Blue Peter: Opening the time capsules Part 3

Blue Peter: Opening the time capsules Part 2

Blue Peter: Opening the time capsules Part 1

Blue Peter Time Capsule 1971

The famous Lulu the elephant clip

Enter Lesley Judd

15th May 1972 - 12th April 1979

Before joining Blue Peter on 15th May 1972, Lesley Judd was a dancer with The Young Generation dance group. Prior to becoming a BP presenter she made an appearance on the show in an item where she taught Val, John and Peter a dance routine. Leslie had also been a dancer in the film Half a Sixpence, alongside the famous Tommy Steele. She had also appeared in television drama.

With the departure of Valerie Singleton, Lesley became the new queen of the makes, but also took part in a number of action features such as the famous report filmed at Bishop's Lighthouse when she almost fell into a very treacherous looking sea.

Lesley left Blue Peter to look after her husband, Terry Gabell (a Blue Peter film editor), who had multiple sclerosis.  Lesley made a brief return to dancing in 1976 when she joined Pan's People on Top of the Pops and often danced on the BBC Christmas show All Star Record Breakers.

Lesley with Pan's People

 

Blue Peter book number nine

The ninth Blue Peter book came out in 1972 and it's probably fair to say that John Noakes was in his prime as the quintessential Blue Peter presenter. Noakes went on to become the show's longest serving presenter reaching 12 years and six months on the good ship BP and in 1972 he was just over half way through his tenure.

But there was another reason why Noakes had the honour of being the only presenter to appear on the front cover of the annual BP book that year. Following the sad loss of his first BP dog, Patch in 1971, messrs. Baxter, Barnes and Gill decided to do what any indulgent parents would do to cheer up a youngster mourning the loss of his pet dog - they went straight off and bought t'lad another one, by gum!

Thus John was joined by his equally enthusiastic canine counterpart, Shep, on the front cover of the 9th Blue Peter book. A partnership which was to become the stuff of legend, the pair even making it as a twosome into Madame Tussaud's Waxworks - but that's another story.

The miracle of the front cover of book nine was undoubtedly how the photographer got either individual to pose long enough for this striking shot, let alone both at the same time! Shep looks like he is about to leap forward for a dog biscuit at any second with John being dragged along behind him shouting "whoa Shep! Come back lad!"

But Shep wasn't the only newcomer to Blue Peter in 1972 because that year Lesley Judd joined the team as presenter number seven. Lesley was a professional dancer who had previously worked for the BBC as a member of the dance group The Young Generation. She joined the BP team, making the numbers up to four presenters for the first time in its history, after Valerie Singleton started to diversify her television career. Judd's career on Blue Peter was only ever meant to be short term and she reportedly never had a contract for longer than three months, in reality she lasted for seven years and her partnership with Peter Purves and John Noakes was the show's longest running line-up. Apart from a feature about giant tortoises and a food make, Lesley Judd features minimally in the ninth Blue Peter book.

Burying the time capsule box - perhaps Peter's
shirt should have gone in there too!

One of the notable features in the ninth book was the burying of the Blue Peter time capsule box, a box containing items from the early 1970s with the words "Not to be opened before 2000" printed on the lid.

The box contained a copy of a Blue Peter book, a set of eight Blue Peter Mini books, photos of the presenters and the pets, a copy of the Radio Times, a piece of film from a programme, a spool of tape containing the signature tune, a set of decimal coins and a letter. The lead lined box was buried in a deep hole outside BBC Television Centre and a tree was planted close by. In the ninth BP book it says:

"We wonder who will write the first letter to arrive in the Blue Peter office telling whoever is presenting Blue Peter about the box?"

Shucks! I forgot!

The ninth book cost 55 pence and as usual was packed with fascinating features:

Features from the programmes:

Blue Peter box
The flying fusilier
Blue Peter expedition to Iceland
John visits Mount Etna
Peter explores London underground
Orphans in Nairobi
Val trains to pilot a plane
Wildlife with Grahame Dangerfield
John and Pete visit the Lapp people in the Arctic Circle
Introducing Shep
Karl Wallenda walks across a wire outside the BP studio
Lesley Judd looks at tortoises
Journey on a narrow boat

Lesley Judd joins the team 

Historic and other factual features:

Frost Fair - when the Thames froze over
Story of the liner, Queen Elizabeth with cut-away drawing
Valerie explores the story of the Brontes at Howarth
The story of Christmas in the Boer War
Story of Lord Nelson

Makes:

Valerie makes a Christmas tree
Val makes flower tubs
Lesley makes spudwiches
Val makes a door stop

Stories and fun items:

Bleep and Booster
Paddington bear
Mystery picture
Detective story - The Case of the Golden Buddha

 

Blue Peter book number 8

Blue Peter book number 8 was published in 1971 and featured Peter Purves and John Noakes on the front cover standing next to the magnificent 532 Blue Peter Locomotive which had been restored and re-launched in front of a crowd of 60,000 railway enthusiasts and Blue Peter fans on 22nd November that year - just in time for the front cover.

The 532 Blue Peter had been saved from the scrap heap in 1968. The Blue Peter was one of 14 locomotives built at the Doncaster Plant Works in the 1940s. All 14 were named after race horses and No.60532 was called Blue Peter after the famous horse that won the Derby in 1939. It went into service in 1948 but was withdrawn in 1966 and left in a siding with no protection from the weather or from vandals.

Railway enthusiasts Brian Hollingsworth and Geoffrey Drury discovered the Blue Peter and formed the Blue Peter Locomotive Society with the aim of restoring the loco to her former glory. The launch ceremony on 22nd November 1971 was to go down in Blue Peter history with unprecedented crowds converging on Doncaster to see Pete, John and Valerie perform the official renaming ceremony.

Witches out of plastic lemons

But if Valerie had not made it onto the front page of the BP book alongside the boys that year, she did of course have her own scoop in 1971 with the Blue Peter Royal Safari with Princess Anne (see previous post on this blog):

"And the most memorable day on the Safari" reported Val "was when we went riding and suddenly came across this African village. All the children rushed out to meet us and they proudly showed off their new litter of puppies. The African children were extremely interested in the horses, but they had no idea one of the riders was a Royal Princess!"

Apart from these two historic events for the BP team in 1971, the 8th book was as usual a veritable almanac of interesting fact and fun to delight and enthral the nation's children at Christmas time including:

John surviving a night in a snow hole on the Cairngorms
Reports from the summer expedition to Mexico
Peter visits a Dolphinarium
Peter attempts to swim the English Channel
Valerie meets a lion and a mouse
John is recued by Mrs McCarthy's radio dogs
The team stand in a giant kaleidoscope of mirrors - then make one out of old Christmas cards and handbag mirrors 
One hundred and three people break a world record by moving 5 metres in a Volkswagen car 
John drives the car of the future down Champs Elysees
The BP appeal for holiday homes and caravans
Life boat news flash
Peter finds out about Kathakali dancing from Kerala, India
John tries his feet at tap dancing

Car of the future? Perhaps we'll see more of them in 2015.

Factual items about:

The Aztecs
Juan, the assistant of the painter Velazquez 
Cadillac 1903 motorcar
Marie Antionette
The Eiffel Tower
Mary Anning - the dinosaur hunter
Tippoo's Tiger
 
Makes:

Valerie makes witches out of plastic lemons and dish-mops
Val makes picnic pasties
Val converts a washing-up bowl into a luxury basket for Jason the cat

Stories and fun items:

Bleep and Booster
Mystery Picture
Bengo
Paddington
Who-done-it story A Case of Double Treachery
    
The youth of today just don't know what they missed out on!
 

Blue Peter 1960s Doctor Who clip

MIKE WARD BLUE PETER 1962

Blue Peter HMS Ganges John Noakes Mast

Valerie Singleton has not slept with Joan Armatrading

How long should a rumour be tolerated? To what depths of scurrility must it sink before someone has the decency to put it down?

Take poor Joan Armatrading, dogged for 30 years by the story that she was in a gay relationship with Valerie Singleton. What serious cred can a rock singer expect if the fans think you go home after the gig and make periscopes from Pringles packets?

And now we know that none of it is true. That Val is straighter than six o'clock, and that behind those emanations of icy reserve lurks one passionate woman, whose lengthy roster of former lovers includes her fellow Blue Peter presenter, Peter Purves, known, in the long-running show's Singletonian glory days, as "the sensible one".

We know all this because, at 71, Val has produced an autobiography, and the millions of us who grew up thinking of her as the best possible alternative to a real mother, who ached for the affections she bestowed on the show's resident pets, who learned from her what people ate for breakfast in the Tuamotus Islands and how to make thermonuclear warheads from milk-bottle tops, are entitled to feel faintly dismayed.

Not that you can blame Valerie for wanting to set the record straight. The Joan Armatrading rumour dates from 1978, when Val interviewed the singer in Manchester for a BBC TV show, Tonight in Town. They got along well, but when the interview was over, Joan disappeared chastely into a night buzzing - as Valerie discovered - with romantic possibility.

Read the full article here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3559977/Valerie-Singleton-has-not-slept-with-Joan-Armatrading.html

Sochi 2014: Blue Peter's Radzi Chinyanganya on the skeleton

From slick-bottomed sleds to sticky-backed plastic, Radzi Chinyanganya has had quite a journey. Now a Blue Peter presenter, the 26-year-old could instead have appeared on the BBC this winter as part of Great Britain's squad for Sochi 2014.

Here he tells BBC Sport how he almost represented his country in skeleton, and was reunited with the sport after a three-year absence:

You couldn't feel more alive than when you finally get to stand at the top of the run and prepare to go down.

Every sinew in your body is saying 'panic'. Your instinct is either to fight or take flight, and neither helps.

When you are going down, it is like a racing game on a computer. Everything is happening so fast all you want to do is pause and reset.

You have an urge to scream and let out that tension and emotion, but you have to focus on what is coming up next. There will be big consequences if you don't.

And then, when you finally come to a stop, you just want to do it all over again.

Read more of this story:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/winter-olympics/25886823

Blue Peter Royal Safari

In February 1971 Valerie Singleton and the Blue Peter production team went on a trip to Kenya with Princess Anne. It was to be HRH's first solo Royal visit, her first solo film and a huge scoop for BP.

The visit was also an historic occasion for the people of Kenya and the Royal party, which also included Prince Charles was greeted by the President Jomo Kenyatta at Naiorbi.

In Kenya Valerie and HRH went on a photography safari in Nairobi National Park and also went horse riding through rural villages where they were enthusiastically greeted by local children.

The Kenya trip also helped to highlight the plight of homeless and destitute children on the streets of Nairobi.