Daredevil TV presenter from Blue Peter’s golden age
John Noakes 1934-2017
In the 1970s, when Britain had only three TV channels, and even VCRS were almost unheard of, eight million children tuned in to watch Blue Peter. And for many of them, the main attraction was John Noakes (and his excitable Border collie, Shep). Boyish and tousle-haired, Noakes brought a fresh energy to the magazine programme, whether he was struggling with sticky back plastic, or crashing a bobsleigh on the Cresta Run at 90mph. The show’s resident daredevil, he broke the civilian free-fall parachute jump record in 1973 (five miles); and in 1977, he climbed, without a harness, 170ft up two ladders, and over a protruding edge, to clean the pigeon droppings off the top of Nelson’s Column – then, owing to a sound problem, he had to do it all over again. It has been said that in those days, the BBC risk assessments often simply read: “John may die”.
Noakes was born in the village of Shelf, in Yorkshire, in 1934, the only child of Arthur, a millworker, and Sallie. They split up when he was nine, and he went to live with a grandmother. At school, he excelled at cross country running, said The Times, but left without any qualifications. He joined the RAF and trained as an engine fitter, but he secretly wanted to act, and in the 1950s he enrolled at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama (taking odd jobs to pay his way). He was starring in Hobson’s Choice in Leicester in 1965 when he was spotted by Blue Peter editor Biddy Baxter. Struck by his vitality, she knew that she’d found her next presenter to join Valerie Singleton and Christopher Trace (later replaced by Peter Purves and Lesley Judd). Noakes, then 29, stayed on the show for 12 years, becoming its longest-serving presenter.
Blue Peter followed a largely unvarying format, and was tightly scripted by Baxter – yet it was not without unexpected incident. Viewers fondly remembered the time Lulu the baby elephant dragged her keeper around the studio, then defecated on the floor. “Oh dear, I’ve trod right in it,” yelled Noakes, in his distinctive Yorkshire accent (regional accents were then a rarity on the BBC). Animals were a major part of the show’s appeal. Soon after joining, Noakes was put in charge of Patch, puppy of the first Blue Peter dog, Petra. Patch died aged five in 1971, and was replaced by Shep, whom he adored, but whose bounciness he struggled to control. “Get down, Shep!” became a catchphrase, and even inspired a novelty pop song. In that golden age of Blue Peter, fans sent in around 1,000 letters a day, and in school playgrounds Blue Peter badges were highly prized items.
Noakes, however, was a more complex character than viewers realised. He had, he said, developed his jokey, gung-ho persona (“Idiot Noakes”) to cover up his nerves on camera – and he switched it off when he left work. In real life he was shy, and in interviews he could be prickly. Long after leaving Blue Peter in 1978, he said that he wished he’d never gone on the programme: he’d found acting far more fulfilling. The filming schedule had been so relentless, he’d come close to a breakdown, and the pay had been poor. As for Baxter, she was an “awful woman” and a “bully”. His anger was partly related to Shep, said The Guardian: the BBC had let him keep the dog, but refused to let him appear with Shep in a series of dog food advertisements, which upset him. He made one other show, Go With Noakes, which ran for five series until 1980, then largely retired from broadcasting. After that, he and his wife, Vicky, decided to sail around the world, but were thwarted when their yacht capsized. They later sailed to Majorca, and liked it so much they stayed. In 1987, Noakes made a brief reappearance on British TV to announce, tearfully, that Shep had died.