The bbc.co.uk/archive pages are always worth skimming through as they contain plenty of interesting clips. Today I think I’ll be entertaining myself with Blue Peter’s makes through the ages – from 1963 to 1999.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/blue_peter_christmas_makes/zf82jhv
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I don’t think I ever made any of the items they showed you how to make on Blue Peter, apart from the Banana cake from one of the annuals which I made a couple of times. And my mum made the Scrooge cakes, which was the first thing John Noakes cooked on Blue Peter.
Originally it was always the female presenter who did the cookery items. But from the mid-seventies it always one of the men. And then in the nineties all the presenters got a turn at the cooking.
There was one time Blue Peter did a survey to see who still had items they made after watching Blue Peter. The earliest surviving item was a cuff link holder which some had made in 1968. And one viewer said they still used the same Blue Peter birthday cake recipe every year since 1965.
When Margaret Parnell, who devised a lot of the Blue Peter makes, made a guest appearance on Swap Shop they showed a clip from from The Good Like where Barbara was making a pair of leg warmers from an old jumper, and Margo came in and said “Oh, you didn’t take Blue Peter seriously?”. Noel Edmonds replied “Margo, we all take Blue Peter seriously.”
But one of the most famous Blue Peter recipes was Star Wars stew. Blue Peter asked viewers to send in their favourite recipes for their Gorgeous Grub Book, which was sold to raise money for their Cambodia appeal. Some children sent in a recipe for a sausage casserole their mother made for them after they came back from watching Star Wars at the cinema. And then when Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher appeared on the programme to promote The Empire Strikes Back Christopher Wenner made them some Star Wars stew.
The Blue Peter Gorgeous Grub Book must be worth a lot of money now.
The worst recipe they received, which didn’t go into the book, was a mixture of instant mashed potato and drinking chocolate. It was called Cadbury’s Smash.
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I did check out the website and came across another Blue Peter clip where they showed the results of their Year 2000 competition. But that should be discussed on a separate thread.
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Was trying to find the New Zealand Banana cake recipe that John Noakes made. My mum had the recipe, but no longer has it. She made it all the time after seeing it on Blue Peter.
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We no longer have our Blue Peter books. You’d have to look for them in vintage book shops.
I think the banana cake recipe was in book number 14. I’m sure it was in one of the annuals from 10.
There are guides to Blue Peter books on the internet.
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