John Allan from Bridgetown, Western Australia – October 2025

If you are familiar with that phrase then you like me grew up in sixties and seventies
Britain and watched the children’s TV show Blue Peter. It was first broadcast in
October 1958 – the year of my birth – on the British Broadcasting Company and to
my knowledge is still running today though no longer live.

The show had then a magazine/entertainment format featuring challenges,
competitions, celebrity interviews, pop culture and arts and crafts made out of
household items. If you’d invested in sticky back plastic then you would have made a
fortune. And don’t even think about discarding your toilet roll inserts. They were DIY
gold. Yes kids, there was life before Tik-Tok !

I particularly remember a candelabra made from wire coat hangers, tinsel and candles being one years must have Xmas gift. I bet the Fire Brigade had a busy Yuletide that festive season.

Animals featured heavily on the show, from the Rohypnol induced pet cats and dogs
to the furry critters brought on that inevitably peed, shat or bit all and sundry.

The presenters I most identified with were John Noakes, Valerie Singleton and
Peter Purves.

Noakes was a proud Yorkshire man and the shows larrikin ‘daredevil’. If a giant
chimney stack or statue needed climbing or somebody to be thrown out of a plane our John was your man with his trusty hound Shep by his side…………….well not thrown out of a plane obviously !

Valerie Singleton was the bit of posh totty your Dad had a bit of an eye for who hung around Royalty. She bunked up with Princess Anne on a tour to Kenya once.

Singleton moved on to late night ‘grown ups’ TV presenting much to the delight of
many a Dad around the country.

Peter ‘Pervy’ Purves was a previous Doctor Who companion who epitomised the
seventies look with his collar length hair and big collars. He went on to commentate
at Crufts dog shows. Must have been the collars.

Blue Peter was distinctly nautical with it’s hornpipe theme tune and it’s sail ship
motif. I don’t know quite why. It had it’s imitators like Magpie on ITV but it didn’t
come close.

The show was heavily into recycling and charity appeals long before it became de
rigour. I remembering saving up stamps and milk bottle tops to send in to get a life
boat for the RNLI and the hope of obtaining a coveted Blue Peter badge. It was akin
to an OBE and I NEVER GOT ONE !

Oh well, I’ll just have to suffice with YouTube bloopers and this.

Get down Shep !