Demise of Blue Peter parallels the loss of childhood innocence

Blue Peter has been on the air for nearly 60 years. And the earnest, socially conscious show has long since ceased to be a mere children’s programme: it has become a national institution.

People born decades after it happened still love that flailing scene when a baby elephant caused havoc in the studio.

Those of us old enough can recall when the irrepressible John Noakes climbed Nelson’s Column – without, we read in horror in recent obituaries, either life insurance or a safety harness.

At its peak, 9.7million of us used to tune in. The programme made stars out of such personalities as Valerie Singleton and Caron Keating and, not so long ago, Blue Peter badges were retailing for goodly sums on eBay.

And then, on Tuesday, we learned that an episode of the show aired a few weeks ago – at 2.30 in the afternoon on June 13 – was watched by no one. Not a single viewer. At least, no detectable viewers, their sets wired into the official system by which audience share is estimated.

Blue Peter is still out there, if much mucked about. There is only one episode a week now, not three, and it is no longer on BBC One but the children’s ghetto channel, CBBC. Where, though, are the children?

Plugged into assorted ‘devices’, perhaps. Wittering away inanely on the likes of Snapchat or Facebook or being rushed by helicopter parents to maths tuition, computer club or flugelhorn class – but not, it seems, contentedly watching deftly made and intelligent children’s television.

In our age of Sky+, Netflix and so on, we forget that as recently as 1982 there was still very little British television and, in consequence, it was in some respects much better.

THeRe were only three channels, all of which shut down soon after midnight and for hours at a time in the afternoon broadcast only a test card. Of course, there was a fair amount of junk – Crossroads and Crown Court and cheesy imported American stuff.

At its best, though, there were such classics as I, Claudius, Brideshead Revisited and A Passage To India; and sitcoms – such as Dad’s Army – that have proved immortal. Children’s television was of an extraordinarily high order.

What lingers most strongly in the mind are the programmes ‘for younger viewers’ in the old Watch With Mother slot.

Some, like Andy Pandy or The Woodentops, were venerable, monochrome and incessantly repeated. Some – like Hector’s House – were overdubbed continental imports.

A few were engagingly odd: Tales of the Riverbank starred live animals – hamsters and guinea pigs. The Herbs was incomprehensible, though you watched it anyway.

But two categories – both stop-motion animations – have stood the test of decades.

One was that glorious ‘Trumptonshire’ trilogy of shows, by the late Gordon Murray – and the others were all the creations of Smallfilms, a genial concern run by Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate.

Their productions included Noggin the Nog, Pogle’s Wood, Ivor the engine, The Clangers and, perhaps best beloved, Bagpuss – its enduring status all the more remarkable as only 13 episodes were made. Other animations – of the sort shown in the late afternoon, and excluding such American imports as anything from Hanna-Barbera – were, in hindsight, a bit… trippy.

Crystal Tipps and Alistair seemed to be conceived and scripted by someone who had lunched on particularly weird mushrooms. The Magic Roundabout was, in fact, a French programme overdubbed in english by the droll eric Thompson – and with plots, or at least lines, that had nothing whatever to do with the original script.

But it wasn’t all cheerful, engaging nonsense. Blue Peter never patronised children and often featured guests or subjects of signal weight. I still remember Anne Frank’s father on the programme and an episode of the ‘Special Assignment’ spin-off when Valerie Singleton met Pope Paul VI.

On the other side – though, as a commercial channel, ITV never really seemed happy with children’s programming – we had Magpie, a forlorn competitor to Blue Peter, and How, an engaging facts-based show hosted by the rustic Jack Hargreaves.

The BBC had Jackanory, of course, when you sat and listened to a famous actor read a book – and there was quite serious drama, good enough to make you go out and buy the book – Josephine Poole’s Touch and Go; Noel Streatfield’s Thursday’s Child and Nina Bawden’s Carrie’s War.

But the show-stopper was Grange Hill, which first aired in February 1978 and ran for the next 30 years. It was sensational because in many regards it did reflect our own lives.

DeVISeD by Phil Redmond, there were assorted clever touches: all the camera work, for instance, was at children’s head height and compared to such fare as Graham’s Gang or Rentaghost, it had a hard grittiness.

Though not in the early years as issue-based as it later became, Grange Hill was hugely controversial.

There was off-camera caning, what for the time was thought to be shocking language (‘Flippin’ ’eck, Tucker!’) and one unnerving episode where a boy fell to his death from a roof. (Indeed, there were several fatal falls over the decades.)

A widespread outcry from teachers and parents and BBC bosses forced Redmond – in the early series – to dial things down. But the programme so resonated that on occasion, remembering a teacher’s name, I have to think hard if that was one of my actual teachers or one on Grange Hill.

But all this seems like another world. Television is now so atomised – online, on-demand viewing and so on – we no longer have the same sense of ‘event’ TV; the same show everyone will have watched and will want to talk about.

And children today have far less freedom – even far less privacy. Most are now driven to or from school. Most mothers work; so often the children are hauled along to after-school activities – or, when they play with their friends, must do so under adult supervision.

And they seem, too, to be under much greater academic pressure, middle-class parents as obsessed as ever with university entrance and staid professional careers. There is less space for children now – fewer and fewer places where boys can kick a ball around, far less time to call their own.

They do not even dress like children any more and one now senses very little innocence. (And no wonder, if you check out online the sort of pop acts – little Mix and so on – marketed to young girls.)

We have come a long dark way from sticky-backed plastic and the butler in Chigley ‘and just an old, saggy cloth cat; baggy, and a bit loose at the seams, but emily loved him’.