Remembering Percy Thrower - a gardening legend

Picture by Robert Broomfield

Percy Thrower was already a well known national gardening icon long before he joined Blue Peter in 1974, having presented the BBC's Gardening Club from 1956 before heading up Gardener's World from 1969 until 1976. He was also a star of radio and a newspaper writer on all things green and natural. 

Percy's first appearance on Blue Peter was when he helped the team to convert a patch of barren waste ground next to the restaurant block at Television Centre into the Blue Peter Garden. 

Lewis Bronze was to observe:

"It was a very lucky day for us when he agreed to pass on some of his secrets and techniques to Blue Peter viewers. Successions of Blue Peter presenters who'd hardly known one plant from another became keen gardeners when seeds they planted under Percy's eye actually sprouted and grew into plants! Perhaps the keenest of all was Peter Duncan, who Percy turned into an avid gardener".

Amongst Percy's most celebrated works on the programme was his design and supervision of the building of the Italian Sunken Garden, complete with an ornamental fishpond. He also designed a patio and built a greenhouse. Percy was respected by the Blue Peter film crew for his experience in front of camera "knowing when to show the leaf, seedling, or whatever to the right camera at the right time" according to Bronze.

Percy Thrower died in 1988 and shortly before his death was honoured with a Gold Blue Peter Badge to go with his M.B.E., his Victoria Medal of Honour from the Royal Horticultural Society and a waxwork statue at Madam Tussaud's. Following letters from viewers, a memorial plaque was put up within the Blue Peter Garden, in an area planted with two bushes of pink roses named after him and two of his favourite hardy fuchsias.

Percy was followed by Chris Crowder, Head Gardener at Levens Hall in Cumbria as the Blue Peter gardener from 1988 and then by Clare Bradley from Kew Gardens who joined Blue Peter in May 1991.. 

   

How To Make A Blue Peter Bicycle Pennant

Back in time to 1968, this was a small leaflet issued by BP with instructions on how to make a Blue Peter bicycle pennant. The leaflet came with a canvas ship emblem to be glued onto a triangular piece of felt, fixed onto a sturdy wire which could then be attached to the handlebars of your bike. By way of introduction the team said "Here's a reminder of how to make a Blue Peter pennant like the ones we've got on our bikes", with signatures from John, Pete and Val and paw prints from the pets. I'd like to have seen Petra trying to get on a bike.

Unfortunately I haven't managed to purchase a ship emblem badge on ebay yet as people keep outbidding me. These days anything that can be perceived as being a Blue Peter 'badge' appears more valuable than the books, games, even presenter autographs. I'm not sure if people think that anything with the BP emblem on will get them into Alton Towers or Madame Tussauds, but badges seem to be very sought after. There is also a roaring trade in fake BP badges on ebay, with a complete range of fake badges including the gold one going for about £20. I have complained to ebay that the sellers should at least be told to list them as replicas, but ebay don't seem to give a damn. So buyer be warned, if the Queen and David Beckham are the only people in the country with gold badges (well ok and a few others perhaps), it's unlikely you'll get the genuine item for a tenner on ebay.

Anyway, back to the Blue Peter bicycle pennant, the leaflet does recommend other uses of the canvas emblem for those who don't have a bicycle (such as Petra et al), which suggestions include sewing it on your knapsack or onto your anorak or blazer (oh yeah, I bet your teacher would be pleased if you turned up to school with it on your blazer - Biddy Baxter was so irresponsible). The 4-fold design of the leaflet even provides panels in which they have advertised the next Blue Peter Book and the Radio Times. What a lovely innocent world we grew up in, when our only decisions in life were whether to glue your badge on a pennant or on your knapsack.

Now, where did I put my anorak?          

 

Nice one Cyril

A lovely letter written by Cyril Fletcher to a fan named Miss Anita Caulfield of Northfield in Birmingham dated 1st February 1961. 

Cyril was appearing in The Legend Of The Sleeping Beauty at the King's Theatre, Southsea alongside Betty Astell, Patrick O'Hagan and Wally Patch. A Maurice Winnick presentation, produced by Cyril Fletcher. 

Cyril had also added his autographed picture.

The Blue Peter Book Of Odd Odes

Anyone who remembers Esther Rantzen's consumer magazine programme That's Life which ran for 21 years from 1973 to 1994, is sure to also remember a quirky old entertainer named Cyril Fletcher who would recite short verses known as Odd Odes. Veteran comedy entertainer Cyril would be seated in a big leather armchair in the style of Ronnie Corbett, contributing quips and amusing comments in response to features and reports from Esther and her colleagues, and always something called an Odd Ode to accompany some convoluted viewer story about being ripped off or treated badly by some rogue tradesman or 'jobsworth'.

Whilst the tradition of the 'ode' as a lyrical verse or poem dates back to ancient Greece and has included such exponents as Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth and Coleridge, Cyril Fletcher was credited as developing a distinctly comic form of the lyrical stanza known as the odd ode, and very good they often were.

In 1975, Blue Peter ran a competition inviting children to contribute their own original odd odes with Cyril Fletcher helping Peter, John and Lesley to choose their favourites.

The winning odd odes from 11,521 entries spanning the bizarre to the extraordinary, were published in a small paper back book with illustrations by Peter Firmin.

Cyril Fletcher on That's Life

Welcome to Blue Peter Book 13 - lucky for everyone ... but especially Lesley

The introduction to Blue Peter Book 13 says "we're not superstitious! For us, thirteen is definitely a lucky number, because it means there's another addition to our collection of Blue Peter publications. And since our Twelfth Book, we've been able to print some of the very best of your Odd Odes which we've put in a paperback, so watch out for that, too".

Yes I certainly will, in fact its in a large plastic crate under my bed. Anyway, we'll save Odd Odes for another blog post, if I haven't done it already. 

The 13th Blue Peter Book was published in 1976 and looks back retrospectively on the year of 1975, but no clues that 1976 would become the year that punk rock first burst on the scenes with the controversial appearance of the Sex Pistols on another BBC children's television programme, but I will come to that in a while. However, things were starting to feel a tad more contemporary with a three page feature about John and Lesley's appearance on a rehearsal shoot of the Generation Game, competing to reach Bruce Forsyth's conveyor belt where John Noakes managed to recall 12 out of the 18 prizes. Teas Made, cuddly toy, his and hers dressing gowns, etc. Sadly the prizes had to stay on the conveyor belt ready for the real recording of the show later that day. As they put on their coats to leave, Bruce turned to the lovely Anthea Turner and said "didn't they do well?"

If some of us had been uncertain for a few years about how Lesley Judd was fitting into the long-established team, Queen Valerie being a hard act to follow and Lesley's tenure still feeling a bit like the new teacher at school, 1975 was probably the year she stepped up proper, starting to kick some serious ass and nearly being battered to death by the waves of the Atlantic Ocean in the process.

For this was the year that Lesley was nearly dropped onto jagged rocks amidst the crashing waves around the Bishop Rock lighthouse six miles off the coast of Cornwall. This was after all, International Women's Year but even Lesley Judd, who had been gradually turning into the female version of Noakes would not have expected the events of 18 May 1975 when the canvas belt around her waist slipped and she was left suspended mid-air above the rocks, holding onto the winch rope for dear life with just her bare hands:

"My arms were being wrenched from their sockets and my hands were burning on the rope. I really was sick with terror and all the time I kept thinking - "if by a miracle I get there, I've still got to come back!"

But thankfully the former Top of the Pops 'Pans People' dancer did make it onto Bishop's Rock and recovered sufficiently to record a piece about this foreboding place miles from dry land. Plucking up her courage, she also made it back onto the boat via the same pre-health and safety era winch on which she had defied death by the width of one of Jason's whiskers, and lived to tell the story on the following Thursday's episode of Blue Peter though happily sparing us the flash of bruised bare backside which Noakes had treated us to when he came off the bob-sleigh the previous year. 

I remember watching this particular edition of Blue Peter with awe and thinking that Lesley Judd had well and truly made it as a presenter of equal if not more impressive stature than the likes of Noakes, Singleton, Purves and Trace. Her right of passage well and truly accomplished. 

Mr Noakes meanwhile was in his element, not just attending but competing in the 1975 Grassmere Sports or Lakeland Games. Billed as John Noakes of Halifax he was to wrestle with Charlie Younger of Throckton in the Cumberland and Westmoreland style, employing such moves and holds as the Inside Hyde, the Dog Fall and the somewhat dodgy sounding Cross Buttock. Having been defeated by Charlie's decisively operated Cross Buttock, John slunk off to watch the Hound Trail before volunteering to take part in the Butter Crag hill race which just so happened to excuse him from fighting 21-stone Wilf Brocklebank in the wrestling. Given the choice most of us probably would choose a heave up the Butter Crag over yet another session of Cross Buttock, this time with a 21-stone Grassmere farmer.

Euphemisms aside, Noakes completed his grueling run/crawl up Butter Crag, crossing the finishing line to the refrains of See the Conquering Hero Comes fittingly accompanied by a dog who had lost its way in the hound trail, trotting in beside him. There have been several Blue Peter action heroes following in the famous Halifax boots over the years, but none pulled it off with such perfectly delivered irony and the Yorkshire man's ability to send up oneself with an indiscernible combination of pathos and comedy.

It has to be said that the dashing Peter Purves, seemed quiet to the point of awol in this edition. Whilst Book 13 features an exciting four page spread firstly about creatures that might lurk on Mount Everest and then a piece on how Chris Bonnington's 1975 Everest Expedition planted a Blue Peter flag on the great mountain's peak, it is immediately followed by an article from Purves telling us how to make a tent for Action Man out of a coat hanger and some old cloth. Ouch! And as for Valerie, she doesn't get any coverage at all.

If we were to read into this a plot from Messrs. Baxter and Barnes to replace Peter and Valerie with some fresh new talent from the housing estates of London by the names of Steve Jones and Johnny Rotten, to name but two, alas in December 1976 the Bill Grundy Show beat them to it and children's television could never be quite the same again. Well, by that I mean we no longer had the short lived Bill Grundy Show.

Blue Peter would of course have it's own moments of controversy over the years, but even so has changed with the times and is still going strong in the year 2020. Whereas Johnny Rotten.... zzz.  

But back to the 1975/76 annual, a great cover, even if a close-up inspection does reveal a bit too much make-up on all three presenters and another great book in the tried and tested formula. Amazing to think that back in 75/76 there was a whole shelf load of BP books still to come.

Bring back the Blue Peter annuals! If I had a petition I'd ask you to sign it.

"He took me up to the topmost balcony and showed 

me the winch that had pulled me aboard".

At which point, the former Pans People dancer took great delight in grabbing the said Captain Bird's Eye by the seat of his Lighthouse Authority issue waterproof breeches and forthwith slinging him unceremoniously into the churning, frothing cauldron of the cold and merciless Atlantic Ocean.... and on Monday's show Leslie insists she will be making ear rings out of unwanted pieces of cooking foil

Girl Power or what? Siouxsie Sioux you've got nothing on Lesley Judd! 

On the twelfth day of Xmas Blue Peter gave to me...

On the 12th day of Xmas Blue Peter gave to me...

12 Cabbages from Percy

11 Swans at Slimbridge

10 Guide dogs for the Blind

9 Makes with glue and macaroni

8 Petra puppies 

7 Ballet moves from Leslie

6 Dinosaurs at the museum

5 Hours of Noakes stuck in a maze

4 Special assignments with Valerie

3 Motorcycle stunts from Pete

2 Tales of Paddington Bear

1 And a Blue Peter book unwrapped on Xmas Day

Apologies for the dodgy scansion but I hope you appreciate the intention in welcoming readers to the twelfth book of Blue Peter, published at the end of 1975 and costing just 90 pence. As usual packed full of programme features, makes and recipes, stories, puzzles, competitions and trivia. Written by Biddy Baxter, Edward Barnes and Rosemary Gill, the presenters were Val, John, Peter and Lesley with paw prints from Petra, Jason and Shep.

The front cover of Book 12 was dedicated to the mammalian pets, with Petra taking the central pride of place position to coincide with a special double-page tribute to television's best loved dog on pages 41-43. 

This edition also features the John Noakes Spinning Picture Machine make which inspired Damien Hirst on page 40. As far as Blue Peter makes go this one really was amazing and it is no wonder that the young Hirst was impressed. I might have a go myself sometime as I don't think I'm ever going to get round to making Tracy Island. 

This was also the year that John Noakes memorably came off a two-man Bob Sleigh at 80mph which was only surpassed in shock factor when he revealed the bruises on his backside to 8 million young viewers. I feel traumatised for life at the memory. Too much information - how did Biddy not censor that one?

It was always interesting to see the cut-away diagrams in the BP book which this year featured a R101 airship. I don't think this particular 14 year old ever studied these in detail but I had several friends who possibly did.

Valerie was dressing up in historical garb again in this book, this time as Elizabeth Barrett of Wimpole Street who married the poet Robert Browning. These cartoon style stories were always a great read for kids like me who preferred the visual style to text. Blue Peter books always had a great mix of different learning styles to appeal to different children, retrospectively one wonders if this was intentionally planned.

Well, in spite of my appalling version of 12 days of Xmas, this was another brilliant BP book (I've learnt they shouldn't be called annuals, even though they were) and it would be fitting to finish our review with an image of Noakes the artist as a young man. They'll be claiming Peter Duncan inspired Banksy next!

Bob-sleigh action hero to fine art innovator 

Noakes demonstrates his versatility as a presenter in one book

     

Noakes At Large

 

Noakes At Large was a one-off book published by Hamish Hamilton Children's books in 1980. The book came out two years after Noakes had left Blue Peter. He had in the meantime featured in his own tv show Go With Noakes, 31 episodes of which ran between 1976 and 1980 and half overlapping with Blue Peter, though there is not a single mention of either programme in this book. Noakes famously fell out with Biddy Baxter following a dispute about his canine pal Shep, eventually handing back the dog for someone else to care for. He then purchased a new dog named Skip who looked very much like Shep and he used Skip on adverts for Spillers dog food.

The cover of this book, Noakes At Large, interestingly features two dogs who look like Shep. Throughout the book there are numerous photos and cartoons of John with one dog, though there are no references to it by name. Can we read in to this the theory that the two dogs pictured on the front cover might be both Shep and Skip, whilst the rest of the book leaves an ambiguity around which is the companion to his latest adventures.

Even without the Blue Peter branding and the ambiguity around the identification of his hallmark dog, the Noakes At Large book is a superb work of general knowledge artwork and narrative. A mix of characteristic Noakes travel and adventure, along with factual tales of history and science, the text is dense and advanced and it is clearly aimed at the older age group. It is apparent that Noakes had a skillful team of designers and writers, including great cartoon sketches of a youthful looking Noakes by Toni Goffe, capturing John's exuberant and funny character even if the cartoons had taken about 20 years off his age. The book seems very dated nowadays, especially when we compare it with the electronic mediums which inform and entertain the young generation in the modern age, but it would still be difficult to beat it on the depth of knowledge contained herewith. 

I bet you didn't know that the Niagra Falls is switched off at night time and the water diverted to run a hydro-electric power station? Or that a woodworm is not a worm, it's a beetle? 

Noakes explores the Grand Canyon, gets lost in a maze, flies with the Red Arrows and goes up in hot air balloon. He tells us the history of clowns and the origins of the St John Ambulance Brigade. There is the slight feel of a Blue Peter book with some of this, but without the makes and colouring-in pages, the paper quality is of high standard so I predict vintage copies of this will be knocking around occasionally on E:Bay for years to come.               

A great retrospective read from a Blue Peter legend and his dog(s).       

A youthful looking John Noakes with Shep, er, I mean Skip.

Cartoon by Toni Goffe

Blue Peter Gallery

 Christopher Trace and Leila Williams

Past and present Presenters 1998

Valerie Singleton, John Noakes, and Peter Purves with Princess Anne

Peter Duncan, Simon Groom and Janet Ellis

Simon Groom and Sarah Greene with Goldie and Jack and Jill

Mark Curry, Caron Keating and Yvette Fielding

John Noakes, Konnie Huq, Lesley Judd, Diane-Louise Jordan and Peter Purves with the Queen

Konnie Huq, Richard Bacon, Katy Hill and Stuart Miles

Matt Baker, Konnie Huq, Zoe Salmon, Liz Barker and Gethin Jones

Presenters past and present

Presenters past and present

Konnie Huq, Andy Akinwolere, Zoe Salmon and Gethin Jones

Barney Harwood, Lindsey Russell and Radzi Chinyanganya

Damien Hirst credits Blue Peter for Spin Pantings

Damien Hirst has revealed the secret behind his spin paintings - they were inspired by a 1975 episode of the UK BBC children's TV show, Blue Peter. Hirst says 'patent picture painter' demonstrated by John Noakes on the show in 1975 inspired him as a child

Hirst appears on today's programme (August 30) and will receive a coveted gold Blue Peter badge for his services to UK art. He joins a select group of about 1,000 people who own a gold badge which includes the queen and David Beckham. "I grew up with Blue Peter," he tells the programme. "I got my idea for the spin paintings from an episode in the 1970s."

Hirst adds: "I never thought it was real art. I remember thinking: 'That's fun, whereas art is something more serious.' And then as I got older, I started thinking about Van Gogh and all those painters, and cutting your ear off when you're painting, and at that point I just thought: 'Why does it have to be like that?' I thought: 'No, actually, the better art is the art made with the spin machine.'"

Read the original article here:

https://www.phaidon.com/agenda/art/articles/2012/august/30/damien-hirst-credits-blue-peter-for-spin-paintings/

Legs Eleven - it's number 11!

The eleventh Blue Peter annual was published at the end of 1974 and was the second book to feature John Noakes on his own on the front cover without fellow presenters or pets. This one showed Noakes probably at his peak as the show's original if unlikely 'action man' when he flew with the RAF Flying Falcons and did an incredible five-mile parachute drop to become Europe's Civilian Free Fall record holder.

Having officially left the show as a presenter in 1972, Valerie Singleton still featured in the annual in her roving associate role, with a feature dedicated to her Blue Peter Special Assignments to such European cities as Madrid, Venice, York, Dublin and Brussels whilst elsewhere in the book she visits the elegant Somerset city of Bath where she donned the costume of Jane Austen. Val also played the part of Cinders in the Blue Peter Panto, partnered by a swash-buckling Lesley Judd as Prince Charming. John and Pete got to play the Ugly Sisters in six inch heels and frilly pants with veteran comic Arthur Askey playing their step-father, the Baron.

Lesley Judd was by now well-established as a Blue Peter presenter and had very much taken on the role of 'makes-presenter' alongside John and Peter on occasion. In this edition there are necklaces and bracelets made from junk materials, as well as an amazing table-top native American camp, complete with a forest made from plastic foam, a lake made from a mirror and brown paper wigwams with a red cellophane camp fire. Other makes included a fishing game made from old Christmas cards and a Scone Pizza in celebration of Princess Anne's wedding.

    

The 1974 annual contained some of the features which had become mainstays during the previous decade, including a mystery story with clues to solve, a Bleep and Booster adventure and a Paddington Bear story by Michael Bond. This year's cut-away illustration featured the Waveney Life Boat, which was no doubt connected to the news that three members of the crew of Blue Peter III, the show's Inshore rescue boat stationed in North Berwick in Scotland had received top awards for bravery from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.

Celebrations continued with Blue Peter winning the Sun newspaper's Top Children's Programme for the fifth year running and in April that year Blue Peter opened their second Old People's Centre, this one near me in Wolverhampton.  

In spite of Noakes stealing the limelight with his record breaking free fall that year, Peter Purves was quietly keeping up appearances by climbing the Black Crag in North Yorkshire with Chris Bonnington and surfing the cold November waves of Newquay with European and British campions Graham Nile and Tigger Newling.

All in all another fabulous Christmas gift I well remember receiving and enjoying. Bring back the Blue Peter annuals!

The Magpie ABC of Space - book of the year 1969

This is an early publication under ITV's Magpie banner, published in 1969 this is an ABC of Space written by Peter Fairley with a foreword by Magpie presenter Pete Brady.

This being the year that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first two astronauts to walk on the surface of the moon, I recall being an 8 year old boy obsessed with the images of space travel and the Apollo rockets. Brady writes that in celebration of this adventure, Magpie had launched an ABC of Space on the programme, the book therefore perhaps aiming to capture some of this content though apart from Brady's foreword there is little by way of specific reference back to Magpie.

Peter Fairley's 'annual-sized' book could have been one of Magpie's first forays into the world of publishing, which Blue Peter had been doing for some years with both annuals and other books with specific topics, and in fairness it has aged well in terms of quality and content. There is a lot of information here which you'd be hard pressed to find online today without a lot of Google searching.

My acid test with anything claiming to an 'ABC of...' is always "I wonder what they have included for the letters like Q, V, W, X, Y, and Z. So let's have a look shall we...

Q - interestingly Fairley points out that Q is for Q! He goes on to explain that Q is a letter used by rocket engineers to indicate pressure, useful to monitor when a rocket accelerates upwards through the atmosphere. When a rocket is on full power, says Fairley, the pressure builds up to its maximum which is known as Maximum Q. So yes we'll let him have that one though I would also have squeezed in Q is for Queen, a rock group who featured space themes in a few of their songs including the great Don't Stop Me Now (even though he'd have to have used a time machine to jump forward a decade or so to enjoy the amazing Freddie Mercury in full throttle). 

V - this one was initially disappointing when I first read it, V is for Velcro. Especially when you've previously been treated to such Boy's Own gems as J is for Jet Shoes (now you're talking), G is for Ground Control (can you hear me Major Tom?) and F is for Firing Pad (whoa!). To then come across V is for Velcro smacks a little bit of scraping the barrel, what next? M is for mittens on the ends of a long rubber band threaded through the arms of one's space suit? But Fairley enlightens us that the Velcro was actually placed in squares on the floor of the Moonship to aid the weightless astronauts walking around and thereby keeping their feet on the ground, as it were. Very clever, I didn't know that.           

W is for workshop. Ok, this does automatically conjure up images of elderly gentlemen polishing up their chisels down the man-shed at the end of the garden in Oldbury, but Fairley does remind us that the whole raison d'etre of going into space in the first place was to collect and study stuff so I guess he does make a good case for having a workshop and even calls it an orbital workshop (different to an orbital sander) at one point which at least does have more of a spaceship ring to it. The orbital workshop on an Apollo spaceship also had an exercise bike apparently and the photo of the exercise bike in the book looks like something you would only see nowadays at a car boot sale... "I'll have you know mate this is what Neil Armstrong used to tone up for his moon walk! Ok I'll take a tenner for it and I'll throw in the Velcro soled jet shoes I noticed you inspecting with a quizzical expression when you stopped by earlier".  

X is for X-Ray. I'm not going to quibble over this. If the alternative was xylophone, I am sure X-Rays have played a role in space exploration somewhere along the line so I'm not even going to bother reading it. Perhaps used for when a weightless spaceman sprains his ankle on the exercise bike? 

Y is for Yaw. No not a species of Arctic long-haired buffalo, a yaw according to Fairley is one of three movements which a spaceship can make without actually changing its orbit, the other two being pitch and roll. Yawing means moving the spaceship's nose from side to side. So if you are ever a space tourist on a Richard Branson flight around the earth when both the pilot and co-pilot both drop down dead, putting you under pressure to volunteer to take over at the controls and you hear ground control shouting "you're gonna have to yaw it man".... at that point you will be glad you read my review of Magpie's ABC of Space. 

And finally...    

Z is for Zero-G says Fairley, which basically means weightlessness and he describes this as being when "a spaceman is said to be weightless when the speed at which he is travelling balances out the pull of Earth's gravity". Apart from getting a bit Bleep and Booster on us with the use of the word spaceman as opposed to astronaut, this all seems in the words of Mr Spock... logical and I like how he suggests that when we reach the highest point on a playground swing and hang there for a split second before descending, we are momentarily at Zero-G (i.e. weightless). I must remember that for the next time this over-weight 58 year old squeezes himself into a playground swing and attempts to experience Zero-G momentarily before the local mums and dads report him to the park keeper.

What a good read. Well worth a fiver of anyone's money on E-Bay. Let them outbid each other for fake Blue Peter badges and forged signed Michael Sundin photos! I have the Magpie ABC Book of Space, will travel.

 

Bleep and Booster

Christopher Trace and Valerie Singleton 

with Bleep and Booster puppets

Bleep and Booster was a cartoon series by the Austrian sculptor and artist William Timym (aka Tim) which was featured on Blue Peter between 1964 and 1977.

Bleep and Booster were friends who had adventures in space. Bleep was a robot-like alien from the planet Miron and Booster was a human boy who travelled around with Bleep on his father's spaceship, Space Freighter 9, performing missions and getting into adventures. The technique used on Bleep and Booster was called animatic animation, which basically means still pictures that were scanned with narration from Peter Hawkins. This was a technique commonly used in the sixties and seventies on programs like Jackanory but was used with great affect on Blue Peter for many other features including historical and science items.

There were 313 five-minute episodes featured on Blue Peter and many of the stories also appeared in the Blue Peter annuals in book form. Bleep and Booster also had their own annuals for a number of years. 

The narrator of Bleep and Booster also provided narration and voices for The Flowerpot Men and Captain Pugwash. The artist Tim also created the cartoon character Bengo, a boxer puppy who first appeared in the Daily Express before becoming another regular on Blue Peter in 1962. Tim also created a statue of Petra and a sculpture of Guy The Gorilla in London Zoo.

 

Petra A Dog For Everyone

This delightful book dedicated to Petra, the first Blue Peter dog, was authored by Biddy Baxter and Edward Barnes and published by Pelham Books with the BBC in 1978. The book tells the story of Petra's first appearance on the programme in Christmas 1962, presented to Christopher Trace and Valerie Singleton in a large cardboard box covered with Christmas paper and ribbons. 

This book does not reveal that the tiny eight-week old brown and mongrel puppy that was introduced to viewers at Christmas 1962 sadly died of distemper just two days later. That part of the tale (excuse the pun) story was revealed by Baxter and Barnes in their 1989 book Blue Peter The Inside Story in which they describe the frantic search for a substitute, driving around London in Edward's Mini to try and find the dead pup's look-alike:

"It wasn't until they reached Lewisham they struck lucky. In a dingy shop window, there was one small brownie-black puppy, shivering in the corner of a pen".

In the days before video or digital replay and freeze-framing, not a single viewer noticed the swap. Baxter and Barnes claimed it was the first and last Blue Peter deception. 

And talking of voting....

The name Petra was decided by viewers, with over 10 thousand votes received. She very quickly became part of the team, joining Chris and Val on all of their outside filming and creating the sense of being a family pet.

In early 1964 Petra was joined on Blue Peter by Jason, a thoroughbred Siamese cat. Initially Petra was not delighted at having her new co-star but it is said that the two animals eventually settled for mutual toleration then bored indifference on one hand and lofty disdain on the other. 

Petra's puppies made a great impact and became the first time that a children's television programme made frontpage headlines... and for all the right reasons!

The puppies found the following homes:

Candy was given to the British Rail Children's Home   

Peter and Kim also went to Children's Homes

Rex and Bruce became farm dogs

Prince was given to an Old People's Home

Rover became a regimental mascot with the Junior Leader's Regiment of the Royal Engineers

Finally, Patch joined Blue Peter as the programme's second dog

In this book, Petra A Dog For Everyone, it is remarked that Patch's arrival at Blue Peter coincided with the arrival of another new boy, John Noakes, with whom he shared personality traits:

"Right from the beginning Patch was a nutcase, and by some quirk of fate he became the firm friend of another nutcase, John Noakes. Some people say that dogs grow like their masters, and others that people get to look like their dogs, but John and Patch bore an uncanny resemblance to each other, both in looks and temperament from the word go". 

After the departure of Chris Trace from Blue Peter, Petra became very close with his replacement presenter Peter Purves. Loving nothing more than joining Peter on a nature walk with the Blue Peter naturalist Grahame Dangerfield. Peter's love of dogs would continue to be demonstrated in his later tv career when he became well-known for presenting commentary of the Cruft's Dog Show.

Petra retired from Blue Peter in the summer of 1977 and died aged 14 years and 10 months on Wednesday 11th September 1977, her death hitting the national headlines once again.

A bronze sculpture of Petra was made by artist Tim (William Timym) the man who had created cartoon boxer pup Bengo and the space friends Bleep and Booster. The statue was placed outside BBC Television Centre. 

            

Hart for Arts Sake

A BBC institution in his own right, Norman Antony Hart (1925-2009) was an artist from Maidstone in Kent who built a career in children's television which included regular appearances on Blue Peter from the late 1950s.

The ex-officer in the Ghurkha regiment is credited as designing the ship logo on the Blue Peter badges as well as going on to work with Peter Lord's animated plasticine character Morph.

Writing about 'The Famous Badge', Biddy Baxter and Edward Barnes would later recall:

"We decided that it was essential for the programme to have a symbol. A logo that would not only be seen in the studio each week, but would be printed on every sheet of Blue Peter writing paper, every envelope and every photo of the presenters. The extended use of the logo would give Blue Peter its identity. Above all, the logo would be on the programme's badges. What should it be? We turned to Tony Hart, the young, up-and-coming artist who had appeared in some of the very early Blue Peters. He designed a symbol wholly appropriate for Blue Peter's nautical overtones, the galleon that was to become the most famous vessal never to sail the high seas. He received the standard graphics fee of a few pounds, for which he was immensely grateful. Later when Blue Peter was a household name and Tony was presenting his own programmes, Take Hart, and Hartbeat we all bemoaned the fact that he hadn't been on an artist's equivalent of the composer's Performing Rights contract. With literally millions of Blue Peter galleons bobbing about in homes all over the British Isles and beyond, he would have been the first of the TV millionaires!"   

Blue Peter The Inside Story/Biddy Baxter and Edward Barnes/Ringpress Books/Page 33

As well as his work on Blue Peter, Tony's appearances on television included Saturday Special, Playbox, Tich and Quakers, Vision On, Take Hart, Hartbeat, Artbox Bunch and Smart Hart. 

An innovative feature on some of Hart's shows was The Gallery, which displayed art works sent in by viewers to the tune of Left Bank Two. He was also remembered for his DIY approach to art which inspired many children's art programmes for decades to come.

Tony Hart was awarded two BAFTA awards and a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Shortly after Tony's death on 18 January 2009, a Facebook organised tribute was paid to him by a flash mob of around 200 people with Morph figures outside the Tate Modern.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO0gLgQkp3o

   

The Gang of Four

Described by Baxter and Barnes as the gang of four, left to right, Peter Purves, Lesley Judd, Valerie Singleton and John Noakes. 

Valerie Singleton joined Blue Peter on 3 September 1962 and left on 3 July 1972

John Noakes joined Blue Peter on 30 December 1965 and left on 26 June 1978

Peter Purves joined Blue Peter on 16 November 1967 and left on 23 March 1978   

Lesley Judd joined Blue Peter on 5 May 1972 and left on 12 April 1979

Whilst there was only a period of two months where all four of the gang appeared together in the studio on a weekly basis, Valerie Singleton continued to be an associate or roving presenter on Blue Peter for many years including the production of the Blue Peter Assignment spin-off series up to 1981. In his Blue Peter 50th Anniversary book, Richard Marson said that "Singleton never really left Blue Peter".

  

Enter Lizzie Dripping aka Tina Heath

 

Actress Tina Heath joined Blue Peter as a presenter on 5 April 1979 having already established a television career going back to 1969 when at the age of 16  she appeared in Broaden Your Mind on BBC 2 alongside Goodies legends Graeme Garden and Tim Brooke-Taylor.

Other pre-Blue Peter credits include a one-off appearance on the police serial Z-Cars in 1970, but her regular star role was playing the character Penelope Arbuckle in the children's television serial Lizzie Dripping. Lizzie Dripping was first introduced in an episode of Jackanory Playhouse in 1972 and 9 additional episodes were subsequently aired between March 1973 and March 1975.

Lizzie Dripping was written by by Helen Cresswell. In the pilot for the show it was narrated by Hannah Gordon but this was changed to Tina Heath narrating in the first person. The location for the show was in Eakring in Nottinghamshire.Tina's character in the show was actually Penelope Arbuckle, a girl with a vivid imagination who is befriended by a local witch played by Sonia Dresdel, whom only she can see and hear. The series was well written and well produced, following the dreamy North-country adventures of Penelope and the very strange witch. 

The name of Lizzie Dripping is a slang term in Nottinghamshire for a girl whom others believe to be a liar and who can't differentiate between fact and fiction. Her mother was played by the marvelous Barbara Mitchell (Beryl's Lot, Please Sir! and Fenn Street Gang).

Watch an episode of Lizzie Dripping here:

https://youtu.be/K7F6KHyz108

Tina Heath was chosen for Blue Peter as a replacement for Lesley Judd who departed the program to care for her husband who had fallen ill with multiple sclerosis. Baxter and Barnes describe how the crew and cast of Blue Peter were flabbergasted when they were first introduced to TIna Heath for drinks and realised she was much older in real-life than in the Lizzie Dripping series.

"A girl with that kind of spirit seemed just the person to replace Lesley Judd. She had considerable experience as an actress by the time she joined Blue Peter in 1979. No one with her determination was going to stay unemployed for very long! 

"Tina had a lot going for her as a Blue Peter presenter. She had been a lifelong fan and really understood what the program was about."

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

When Tina Heath became pregnant Blue Peter followed the progress of her pregnancy on the show, which was very innovative for children's television and every week there would be a conversation about the growth of the baby, which had a great impact on the viewers who responded with cards, letters and baby gifts. Tina's doctor Dr Anne Cobbe even came to the studio to perform an ante-natal examination on camera. The National Childbirth Trust wrote to congratulate Blue Peter saying "you have done more for birth education in that sequence than we could have done in years of talks, producing book lists for children and so on".

Tina left Blue Peter on 23 June 1980 after 14 months as a presenter. Her daughter Jemma Victoria Cooke was born on 22 September 1980.  

New presenter Adam Beales - but is he really the 40th presenter?

Adam Beales - selfie 

On 3rd September 2020 (last weekend in fact) 20 year old You Tuber Adam Beales from Derry, aka Adam B, became the 40th presenter of Blue Peter during its 62 year history. 

Adam launched his You Tube channel at the age of 13, filming and editing videos in his bedroom and by 2019 had over 2.7 million subscribers to his channel.

Adam is promoted as the 40th presenter on Blue Peter and he joins co-presenters Lindsey Russell (joined 5 September 2013), Richie Driss (joined 16 May 2019) and Mwaka Mudenda (joined 14 May 2020) on the team.

But is Adam really the 40th presenter or is he actually the 43rd? People of my generation, some of the very earliest Blue Peter viewers of the 1960s, will have strong memories of the original A-team, Singleton, Noakes and Purves whose collective tenure seemed to go on for our entire childhoods. I was born in 1961, by which time the very original presenters Christopher Trace and Leila Williams had already been presenting for three years. I have vague memories of Christopher Trace alongside Valerie Singleton though had always considered he was only around in the first few years. Actually Christopher Trace led the show for nearly nine years, retiring in 1967 to be replaced by Peter Purves a couple of months after his departure.

When I was considering why I don't have stronger memories of Christopher Trace, bearing in mind I was approaching 6 years old when he left, I realised it could have been because our working class family simply didn't have a television set until the mid-60s and even this was some giant of a thing which only had two black and white channels, the main thing of interest to children was Watch With Mother and the test card, and one of us had to stand next to the set holding the aerial in order to get a half decent picture. So this may explain why the 8 years of Trace's reign completely passed me by. This and the fact that for the first three years of Blue Peter I wasn't even born.

My guess then is that many other working class children completely missed out on Blue Peter from the late 50s to mid 60s simply because our poor (in the literal sense) parents could not afford the technology for us to watch it. For many of us of that generation of children, it is therefore a surprise to learn that Christopher Trace had a tenure longer than any other presenters barring the aforementioned Valerie Singleton, John Noakes, Peter Purves, as well as Konnie Huq's marathon 10 years and 53 days (putting her in 3rd place after messrs. Noakes and Purves). In fact Trace beats stalwarts like Simon Groom (8 years 39 days) and Matt Baker (7 years 1 day) and at the moment Lindsey Russell just entering her 8th year.   

But what is also an often over looked part of early BP history is that there were at least two female presenters even before Valerie Singleton. These were Leila Williams (3 years, 84 days) and Anita West (119 days). Any thoughts that their tenures as presenters were short-lived should be dismissed when we consider that Leila Williams for instance was a host longer than Christopher Wenner, Tina Heath, Sarah Greene, Michael Sundin, Mark Curry, Caron Keating, Anthea Turner, Tim Vincent, Romana D'Annunzio, Richard Bacon and Gethin Jones. So I think we have to give credit where it's due.    

  

What doesn't seem to be acknowledged much at all in BP host history is that there were two other female presenters before Valerie named Ann Taylor and Sandra Michaels, who are briefly remembered in narrative but not included in the list of 40. Ann Taylor was an actress and singer from Stafford who stood in for both Trace and Williams during 1959, on one occasion presenting the show on her own in the absence of both - now surely that deserves a place on the official list if not a Blue Peter badge?

The other forgotten female BP presenter was actress Sandra Michaels who covered two shows in April 1964 in the absence of Singleton. Apparently Michaels impressed producer Edward Barnes so much that he considered her as a replacement for Singleton before having a rethink and presumably sending out a note saying "why don't you come back over... Valerie".

Well ok, a couple of episodes may not be quite enough to qualify as an official Blue Peter host any more than bassist Chas Newby qualifies as the 7th Beatle because he played 4 gigs for the band in December 1960. 

Another temporary presenter who could also be considered for inclusion on the official list of hosts is the legendary tv artist Tony Hart (pictured below) who presented the show alone on 13th and 20 November 1959. Hart went on to become a children's television celebrity in his own right, famously hosting shows like Vision-On, Playbox, Take Hart and Hartbeat. Tony Hart was creator of the animated Plasticine character Morph and was also designer of the original Blue Peter badge for which he was paid a fee of £100.