David Cassidy on the Web
The Blue Peter effect
August 30, 2008
From The Times
http://women.timesonline.co.uk
In 1958 a television show was launched that transformed British children's lives. Biddy Baxter, Blue Peter's powerhouse editor for 26 years, opens the archive to reveal the amazing relationship its viewers formed with the programme
Peter Purves, John Noakes and Lesley Judd are joined by David Cassidy to judge the 'Keep Britain Tidy' poster campaign of the early Seventies
Before its integrity was rocked by a phoney phone-in and a cat named Cookie, before its innocence was besmirched by coke-snorting presenter Richard Bacon, long before it became absorbed into Seventies nostalgic kitsch, Blue Peter set the course of my life. It is uncool to admit this, safer to make glib gags about sticky-backed plastic and "Get down, Shep!", but as a knowledge-hungry working-class child in a leaden northern town, Blue Peter offered me the world.
A safari in Kenya, training a guide dog, Noakesy on the Cresta run, even those history segments on Marie Curie or Christopher Wren, jazzed up with just a few line drawings. Every moment gripped me. Blue Peter made me long to see and know and do and travel. And the greatest measure of its power is that I watched until the last name rolled off the credits: "Editor Biddy Baxter".
What other TV producer was ever a household name? Yet who was this Svengali figure, the puppet mistress who operated Val, John and Pete, who for 26 years steered the lives of millions like me? Perhaps only interviewing Enid Blyton would be more exciting to my inner child. And here is Biddy at the door of her gracious mansion flat just behind Broadcasting House, apologising for the clutter. Beside her desk is a towering complete set of Blue Peter annuals - whose covers from the years 1970 to 1975 give me Proustian flashbacks - and on top are screes of letters from children, just a few of the 1,000 a day the programme received, which Biddy has edited into a book, Dear Blue Peter, to coincide with its 50th anniversary this year.
