Blue Peter's 60th anniversary

In the run up to their 60th anniversary next week, Blue Peter has been using the 60th anniversary opening titles for the last few weeks.

They are celebrating their 60th birthday next Tuesday (the actual anniversary) with a 1 hour special, including past presenters.

BBC Four has also got a Blue Peter evening next Tuesday, with the following programmes:

BP Confidential (1998)
It's A Dog's Life (1998)
Flies The World: Morocco (1968)
The Biddy Baxter Story (2007)

Will it be the original version of BP confidential, or the revised repeat from 2001?

Looks like it's a repeat of the original, which was also shown last year on BBC 2:


https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09jcx7z

Hmm, isn’t it time for an updated programme? This one ends with the news that Blue Peter will be releasing a CD-ROM.

Given that BP Confidential was last shown less than a year ago, it might have been better to have shown Blue Peter at 50, from 2008 instead.

The Biddy Baxter Story is 10 minutes long. Seems a bit mean...

Ask anyone under the age of 20 what a CD Rom is!

Another repeat on BBC Four, The channel is not what it used to be at all these days.

I think they might know somehow, AOL were banding their install CDs around as late as 2006, most of which are now either collector's items or sitting as bird scarers in allotments somewhere.

And there is still a demand for blank media (for backup purposes if nothing else) so I would be more inclined to argue that it would probably be more prudent to ask any under 20's what they think life was like in the days before mobile phones went mainstream in the 1990s.

The 60th birthday edition of Blue Peter is being repeated on BBC 2 on Saturday 20th October (together with a repeat of John Noakes: TV Hero, which was originally shown in December last year along with a repeat of BP Confidential).

I believe this will be the first time that Blue Peter has been shown on a channel other than CBBC since being axed from BBC One.

This isn't actually from 2007, as mentioned up there, but it's a Did You See feature from 1987 which was later re-edited into the standalone programme we're seeing now for the 35th birthday celebrations in 1993. It's very frequently been plundered for clip shows and documentaries as there's a lot of behind the scenes footage of Mark, Caron and Yvette in it.

The best bit is when they discuss the appeal, which came about because the original Christmas show before Biddy arrived was a look at all the latest toys - a bit like the Late Late Toy Show in Ireland, I suppose - and Biddy thought that was terribly vulgar and unfair on the members of the audience who couldn't afford any and so she decided to do something about giving instead of receiving. Anyway, on this programme she refers to that old Christmas show as "a Jim's Inn of toys", which is a reference to the fifties admag and would have been an archaic reference at the time.



No, BBC4 have shown the episode of Blue Peter from 1974 where they look around Studio 1 on two occasions - alongside Tales From Television Centre when they closed it, and then again as part of that evening of kids TV at Christmas 2015 alongside Play School, Newsround and Grange Hill. They also did a special about one of Helen Skelton's Sport Relief challenges on primetime BBC1.

I'm fully aware that BBC4 have shown various archive editions over the years.

I was referring to regular current editions, which have only been shown on CBBC since being axed from BBC1.

The Helen Skelton Sport Relief Challenge special was shown in March 2012, when Blue Peter was still on BBC1 (which continued until November 2012).