Blue Peter- England’s Dream Of Childhood

It is the 60th anniversary of Blue Peter. Described airily as a “magazine show” to those unfamiliar with its sui generis format, Blue Peter has sat in the BBC schedule as unwaveringly as the 9 O’Clock News for a televisual eon.

The reason, I suspect with an outsider’s perspective, is that Blue Peter is the collective dream of English childhood given form and that the culture could no more abandon that dream then it could abandon the idea of adulthood embodied in the News.

I say an English dream of childhood, rather than a British one, because whether they knew it or not, Blue Peter has never been about how children in Scotland, or Wales (and certainly not Northern Ireland) lived and played and imagined. They may well have all had the same dreams and been excited by the same Blyton-esque mix of pluck, exploration, make and do and dogs.

These were English pals (and the capacity to cast really likeable sorts for Blue Peter remains one of its spectacular skills) mucking in, or mucking about. Digging in the Blue Peter garden, exploring the British landscape (though always through the eyes of the English visitor), having adventures, making biscuits or honest terrible Christmas decorations and so on and so on.

But in fact, the producers (well, really the founding master and commander of Blue Peter, Biddy Baxter) understood their ostensibly factual programme was playing in the imagination as much as any Doctor Who or Wombles.

Blue Peter has pets, because there are many children who would like to have a pet, but can’t. And Biddy Baxter gave those children dogs and cats to live with- animals who would grow up and then old with them.

She imagined living in one of the newly built, post-war estates of high rise flats. So the Blue Peter Garden was created, so those children would have a garden- a patch of nature to tend along with the presenters.

Biddy Baxter understood that the reality of many children’s lives was not Blyton, but Kes. But her programme chose to offer them an escape, not a mirror. Even the famous Blue Peter badge- a talisman which allowed the bearer to access museums, galleries and the rest of the cultural world at discount or for free- was an unacknowledged effort to spread that access to children who might never manage it any other way.

None of this was ever acknowledged on screen, but was a quiet river of radicalism buried under the conventional enthusiasms of the middle classes.

Even the famous fund raising feats of the Blue Peter Appeal- where tens of thousands of children sent in bottle-tops or other tokens of value to help a charity- were more than their apparent Good Works at the Village Fête. What they really tried to demonstrate to children was the potential of collective action to make change.

A 60 year anniversary in television is an achievement difficult to imagine being repeated by any programme starting now.

Blue Peter’s continuing power comes from having offered more than imagined friends, pets or gardens.

It offered an imagined England that was always consciously and deliberately better than the real thing- because children deserved better.

Just there, in that studio, twice a week, England’s dreaming.

And just for once, we should be glad of it.

Girls’ Programmes: A partial bibliography

Bibliography

Gravette, Paul, and Peter Stanbury. ‘Jolly Hockey Sticks To Sheroes’. Great British Comics. London: Aurum Press, 2006. Print.

Hughes, Shirley. All About Alfie. United Kingdom: Bodley Head Children’s Books, 2011. Print.

Inglis, Ruth. The Window in the Corner: A Half Century of Children’s Television. London Chester Springs: Peter Owen Publishers, 2003. Print.

Judy For Girls 1978. London: D. C. Thomson & Co, 1977. Print.

Sabin, Roger. Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art. London New York: Phaidon Press, 2001. Print.

Citations, Quotes & Annotations

Gravette, Paul, and Peter Stanbury. ‘Jolly Hockey Sticks To Sheroes’. Great British Comics. London: Aurum Press, 2006. Print.

(Gravette and Stanbury 130)

Hughes, Shirley. All About Alfie. United Kingdom: Bodley Head Children’s Books, 2011. Print.

(Hughes)

Inglis, Ruth. The Window in the Corner: A Half Century of Children’s Television. London Chester Springs: Peter Owen Publishers, 2003. Print.

(Inglis)

Judy For Girls 1978. London: D. C. Thomson & Co, 1977. Print.

(“Judy For Girls 1978”)

Sabin, Roger. Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art. London New York: Phaidon Press, 2001. Print.

(Sabin 83)

Sapphire and Steel Intro

Sapphire and Steel Intro

Sapphire and Steel’s unheimlich opening narration

“All irregularities will be handled by the forces controlling each dimension. Transuranic, heavy elements may not be used where there is life. Medium atomic weights are available: Gold, Lead, Copper, Jet, Diamond, Radium, Sapphire, Silver and Steel. Sapphire and Steel have been assigned.”
-Opening non-explanation for Sapphire and Steel

Sapphire and Steel was the real vehicle for terror in my childhood. Never mind hiding behind the sofa. This was a programme to be watched through a crack in the door from the next room.

A Bibliography on TV programmes for girls

Bibliography: 

Judy For Girls 1978. London: D. C. Thomson & Co, 1977. Print.

 Gravette, Paul, and Peter Stanbury. ‘Jolly Hockey Sticks To Sheroes’. Great British Comics. London: Aurum Press, 2006. Print. 

 Hughes, Shirley. All About Alfie. United Kingdom: Bodley Head Children’s Books, 2011. Print. 

Inglis, Ruth. The Window in the Corner: A Half Century of Children’s Television. London Chester Springs: Peter Owen Publishers, 2003. Print. 

 Sabin, Roger. Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art. London New York: Phaidon Press, 2001. Print.

Theme Tunes as Madelines

“Ha ha thisaway, haha thataway, ha ha thisaway, my oh my.” This line, which reads like a mid seventies Eurovision runner up, is actually the chorus of the theme tune for a 1980s children’s programme called Wizbit. 

I know this because it is stored in my brain. Somewhere inside my head is a place where Paul Daniels is forever singing that song. Nearby, “In the heart of Transylvania, in the vampire hall of fame,yeah” the plot of Count Duckula is constantly being set out in rhyming couplets. Henry’s Cat’s self evident fame is being asserted (“You must have seen the movie, you must have read the book./He’s a mellow, yellow feline, so take a second look”) while Top Cat’s social position is vieing for attention with no apologies to Cole Porter (“The Indisputable Leader of the Gang./He’s the boss, he’s the pip, he’s the championship…”)

I forget my own birthday. I cannot recognise you if you change your hairstyle. I am actually uncertain what age I am. But, through whatever quirk of my synapses, I can provide you with poorly sung renditions of the theme tune of almost any television programme I have ever seen.

In case there be any doubt, this is a lot of television programmes. 

For children’s television, a theme tune has to do the usual job of setting the tone for what’s about to come. But, frequently, it also has to give us the set up- the controlling plot of the programme is outlined in lyric form before the opening credits have finished, freeing the writers from reintroducing the situation over and over again. 

Duckula is a vegetarian vampire duck. Top Cat is, well Top Cat is actually Sgt Bilko, but his defining characteristic is that he is the Leader of the Gang. Henry’s Cat has, for reasons unexplained, an absurdly high opinion of himself. 

Wizbit goes thisaway and thataway at the behest of Paul Daniels. (The paradigm doesn’t always hold true.)

The theme tune can sometimes give the programme more of a boost than it deserves. 

Jamie and the Magic Torch was a pleasurable enough Yellow Submarine derived cartoon. But by the time we were into the cartoon itself we had already been whipped up into a frenzy of excitement by this;

http://youtu.be/KeMMow_Itqw

Dear God, can there be anything more exciting than that guitar kicking in?