I pray that my beloved Blue Peter will get a reprieve. Our youngsters want it greater than ever in as we speak’s complicated and troubled world, pleads former presenter VALERIE SINGLETON because the BBC present is compelled off dwell TV
Handing over my change, the shop assistant on the other side of the till smiled and said: ‘Thank you for my childhood.’ The moment caught me, but it’s not the first time it’s happened, which is remarkable given it is well over half a century since I was a Blue Peter presenter.
I’m 87, and Britons who were children in the Sixties and early Seventies (when I was on the show) are themselves of bus-pass age – making it all the more heart-warming they still have such fond memories of me and the rest.
Sadly, I fear today’s generation of Blue Peter presenters are unlikely to have the same experience in a few decades.
A damning combination of streaming, changing tastes and social mores have meant Blue Peter has long since ceased to be regular viewing for the majority of UK youngsters.
As The Mail on Sunday revealed last week, the final death knell has now been sounded by one of its long-serving directors, Martin Williams-Neale, who confirmed that it would no longer be a live show, but pre-recorded. While its main home will remain CBBC, plans have previously been announced for the children’s channel to become an online-only enterprise. Yet, if rumours are to be believed, the show is not long for the world in any form. It is, as Williams-Neale says, ‘the end of an era’.
Having been broadcast since 1958, Blue Peter is the longest-running TV series on the planet. A great deal has changed since it first flickered on to our black and white sets – not least the fashion (I do shudder at some things I wore back then). But Blue Peter was always a steady beacon of creativity, news and innocent fun for children – now just as much as then.
And at a time when panic over what our children are doing in their bedrooms – brought to such a pitch by the terrifying Netflix series Adolescence – the need for Blue Peter to anchor children in their sitting rooms, even just for half an hour twice a week, is surely greater than ever.
Its demise is both a terrible shame and a sign of the cowardice and wrong-sightedness of BBC executives, who seem to have forgotten they have a duty not just to chase ratings (important though they may be) but to broadcast a variety of shows to suit every member of the viewing public, not just those who shriek the loudest.
Valerie Singleton (pictured) was host of Blue Peter in the Sixties and early Seventies when the show was hugely popular
Valerie co-hosted the show with John Noakes (pictured right) who remains Blue Peter’s longest serving host
Valerie ‘fervently hopes’ Blue Peter gets a television reprieve in the future
Yes, Blue Peter may no longer pull in the millions of viewers it once did, but is half an hour of sensible children’s programming really too much to ask for in a world of YouTube reels and mindless American cartoons shown back to back on our streaming channels?
Evidently, maintaining the programme’s pull has been a challenge. When I joined Blue Peter in 1962 there were only two channels – the BBC and ITV – so there was little else for anyone, least of all children, to watch. We had a captive audience executives could only dream of today.
It meant that as far as I was aware, ratings were simply not an issue: they were for the men in suits upstairs to worry about, if indeed they ever did worry.
We knew from the reception we’d get at a school fete how well it was watched and loved.
Some unscripted moments have gone down in British television history, from Lulu the elephant relieving herself in front of millions to having a whole studio of hyperactive dogs go to sleep the moment we started filming – leaving us floundering to explain their antics had they been awake.
Not forgetting the campfire we set up with fake logs, that suddenly needed a real fireman to put out. And of course there were the campaigns, which were really rather ground-breaking because they didn’t focus on money but instead asked viewers to send in anything from clothes to scrap metal.
Image shows a Blue Peter badge from 1989 (file photo)
Blue Peter presenter Sarah Greene hosted the show for a three year period between 1980 and 1983
The programme began in October 1958 and in its heyday was screened three times a week on BBC1
One of my favourites was the 1972 Treasure Hunt, which asked the public for books that could be sold to buy four new RNLI boats.
Those appeals made a real difference, and they were cleverly inclusive too at a time when that word wasn’t such a hot-button term, as BBC suits may call it today.
Nor can we underestimate the impact the show had on the children that watched. I’ve lost count of the people who’ve told me they had been inspired to pursue their careers – be it designing hats, becoming a painter or an engineer – because of something they had seen on the show. That is the lasting impact of Blue Peter.
So yes, I can happily say I loved every moment of my nearly ten years at the helm, and I missed it terribly when I left in 1972.
But I remain a member of the Blue Peter family. Today, I’m friends with many of the presenters who came after me, from Mark Curry and Tim Vincent (who was actually born as I left) to Janet Ellis, Diane Louise Jordan and Anthea Turner.
And I kept watching it religiously too, that is until 2012 when the powers-that-be removed it from its long-standing slot just before the six o’clock news and placed it on their dedicated children’s channel CBeebies.
That relegation was the beginning of the end.
While I lost touch with the show, I gather from friends it had become a bit preachy, with wokery an ever-creeping presence.
The Blue Peter line-up in 1972: Peter Purves, Lesley Judd, Valerie Singleton and John Noakes with his dog Shep. The magazine show is staying on TV screens for now
Insiders have told how the decision to scrap the live shows was kept a secret by bosses, with its presenters wondering where their new contracts had got to in recent months. Above, John Noakes climbs Nelson’s column in London during a Blue Peter programme 1977
The Mail on Sunday first revealed fears that the BBC was planning to axe Blue Peter from TV screens in October 2023 after three presenters quit in three years – although BBC bosses played down the issues, insisting there were ‘no plans’ to drop the show
On the few times I did catch it, I was immediately struck by how much all of the presenters bounced around – while their energy was infectious, it made their delivery too breathless. We were all a little more subdued back in the day.
But style changes, and that’s to be expected. What has remained though – despite what executives seem to think – was the affection in which the show is held by children and parents.
In 2018 when I attended its 60th birthday party in Salford, I was stunned to see hundreds of letters from young viewers hanging down all the walls like Christmas decorations. In an increasingly online world, it touched me that children were still taking the time to write in, putting pen to paper.
It’s why I fervently hope Blue Peter gets a television reprieve. Lots of children watch television on their phones and laptops and iPads these days, and I’m sure it makes perfect commercial sense for Blue Peter to become something they can summon on an app.
Yet the BBC should remember it is not a commercial channel. It is uniquely funded by licence fee payers, who this month will be paying £5 more for the pleasure.
We pay this because we want the BBC to be different, for the BBC to cater for all – however esoteric our interests.
They may not be hits or money spinners, but programmes such as Songs Of Praise and, yes, Blue Peter enrich the cultural tapestry of our isles. They inform, educate and entertain us – founding edicts from a corporation that is in danger of forgetting them altogether.
