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:
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.
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