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!
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