Blue Peter/Trivia

• Contractual Purity: Very much the case here, at least while you're actually on the show. Presenters are required to present a "clean and wholesome" image at all times. This means no smoking, no drugs and certainly no being a Page Three Stunna.
  • The very first presenter, Peter Trace, was sacked - for adultery - in 1959.
  • A previous presenter's tenure was cut very short when tabloids revealed he'd not only been in porn, it was gay porn. This was compounded by his having, briefly, been a rent boy. BP takes it very seriously that its presenters should be morally upstanding and squeaky-clean. The original presenter from 1958, Peter Trace, was forced out when it was revealed he was getting divorced and moving in with his mistress. Richard Bacon's drug-related fall is well documented. Lesley Judd left the series shortly before it was revealed her lover had left his wife for her. Even in the morally less hung-up eighties, a female presenter was forced out when it was revealed she was having a baby but not married. Somehow, Valerie Singleton survived a very long association with the show, despite all the rumors about her gender preferences. (Les Yay!) And Zoe Salmon's inappropriate on-air diversion into her Northern Irish political affiliations nearly got her sacked (see main).
• Executive Meddling: The aforementioned Biddy Baxter, a woman steeped in the Reithian concept of the BBC, as an organization appointed to inform and to educate. Entertainment came a poor third down the Reithian list. Baxter's essentially benign, but still authoritarian, management of BP is said to be the biggest single reason why BP has lasted so long - it is viewed as an old-time quality product. It has been frequently commented on as to how "standards appear to have slipped" since Baxter gave up the reins.
• Executive Veto: In the early 1960's, a new producer arrived who was destined to be a part of Blue Peter for well over thirty years. Presenters might come and go, but Biddy Baxter stayed. And stayed. And stayed. And stamped her personality on the show in a way that would have made Margaret Thatcher or Catherine the Great look conciliatory. Prior to Baxter, the show had featured up-and-coming pop groups in music slots. Biddy changed all this. She was damned if she was having any mind-corroding pop music on her educational and improving show for young people, and red-pencilled scheduled appearances by two quite popular new bands of the time - the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. No pop group ever again appeared on BP until the very late 1990's and Baxter's retirement, when rather camp act Steps became the house-band for a new generation.
• Hey, It's That Guy!: Barney Harwood, one of the current presenters, was already well known as the host of Prank Patrol, Basil's Swap Shop, and other CBBC shows, before taking on the Blue Peter role.
  • In fact, he presented the Sunday evening radio equivalent Go for It! on BBC Radio 4 for some years - a long-running children's' magazine format show just after the Archers at 7:15pm.
• Never Work with Children or Animals