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.