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.