Happy 60th anniversary to Blue peter!

It’s hard to explain to culture-drenched, spoiled millennials how important this programme was to us oldies. Through this teatime prism into a whole new world, we saved milk bottle tops for the starving children of africa, learned how to make a dolls’ house from egg cartons and how to look after our pets properly. at Christmas, we made snowmen out of loorolls and a decoration from wire coathangers, tinsel and candles that would never pass health and safety checks now. My Blue peter generation was the holy trinity of peter purves, John Noakes and Valerie Singleton. How could bespectacled schoolgirl-me have imagined that, decades later, I’d be sitting in a London hotel, asking peter about having sex with Valerie. Good grief — back then, I thought sex were the things that potatoes were delivered in. ‘I went weak at the knees the first time I saw Valerie,’ he told me. ‘I fancied her like mad.’ I don’t think I’ve ever recovered.