The risk assessment read ‘HE MAY DIE’
John Noakes, the legendary Blue Peter presenter, gritted his teeth and inched carefully over the edge of the stone plinth from which Lord Nelson proudly surveys Trafalgar Square. Some 140ft up, his hair whipped by a stiff breeze, the daredevil presenter began scraping bird droppings o the iconic London landmark, watched by a crowd below.
It was 29 April 1977 and just another day in the life of Britain’s bestloved children’s programme… But Noakes was climbing over the lip – leaning perilously backwards by 20 degrees for the final 8ft of the ascent – for the second time that day. Minutes earlier, his first attempt had been rendered unusable when a huge gust of wind caught his microphone, and feedback ruined the recording.
Clockwise from left: In Cypress Gardens, Florida; In a snow hole in Norway with Tim Vincent; Alex Lager in Ethiopia
Director Alex Leger, watching anxiously from the ground as Noakes completed his latest hairraising challenge, recalls: ‘I had no option but to ask John to do it again. To my surprise and relief he complied without a murmur of complaint. Not for the first time I marvelled at his courage.’
And that anecdote, according to Leger, who has published a book chronicling four decades of Blue Peter, sums up the essence of the show’s phenomenal success: treating the audience as equals – and scaring the wits out of the presenters whenever possible.
Leger, 65, a Blue Peter producer/ director for 36 years and responsible for many of the show’s most famous moments, laughs as he recalls: ‘Every presenter’s personality was different. The trick was to find what really scared them. It didn’t matter if they were terriffed as long as they weren’t completely struck dumb. As long as they could talk, and articulate their terror, and it was safe it made captivating television.
‘We really were the Top Gear of our day. If someone had an idea that would make great television, there was a good chance we could do it – and the more dangerous the better.’
Clockwise from top left: Filming on Solomon Islands; With Tim Vincent and manatees in Flroida; Reporting on alterbative energy in Birmingham with Matt Baker; John Noakes inches over the plinth of Nelson's Column
Leger, an ex-Army officer, joined the BBC as a management trainee in 1975 – when the UK had just three TV channels – before being hired by legendary Blue Peter editor Biddy Baxter to give some oomph to the show. And he duly did, regularly pushing presenters to their limits. In its heyday, Blue Peter was a creative and commercial juggernaut, regularly drawing eight million young viewers, but never talking down to them. Everyone has a favourite Blue Peter moment: John Noakes climbing Nelson’s Column; Mark Curry strapped to a windmill sail; Simon Groom covering famine in Ethiopia; Janet Ellis skydiving from 20,000ft; Gethin Jones surfacing from a submarine escape tank (‘Gethin may die’, read the risk assessment). Just a few of the iconic televisual moments Leger directed.
More recently, he persuaded Helen Skelton, one of the current presenters, to undertake a stunt involving a beard of living bees. Leger admits: ‘Bees can be pretty temperamental. The owner of the hives told me his bees had stung a sheep to death a couple of years previously. There’s no doubt Helen could have been badly hurt, even killed.’
With the BBC facing unprecedented criticism, most recently over the TV personality scandal, Leger’s stories provide a welcome distraction, demonstrating many of the things the BBC has got right over the years.
Today, talking about his book, Alex Leger is showing occasional flashes of the sheer bloody determination that made him a legend in Blue Peter circles.
Tim Vincent, who worked closely with Leger during his time presenting the show from 1993 to 1997, says: ‘Alex was just determined to do the best for the show. He was pretty scary, but a great director and friend.’
Leger himself says: ‘Treating the children as equals was crucial. We always tried to tell viewers something they didn’t know, without patronising them.’
Left: Alex Leger with the Kayapo tribe in Brazil Right: With Konnie Huq in Angola
In the early days, Biddy Baxter set the tone for the show with a mixture of charm and ruthless organisation, according to Leger. ‘I think Biddy thought that, as a former Army o fficer, I could organise things,’ Alex Leger recalls. ‘But when I arrived at Blue Peter they were flush with talent, loads of brilliant organisers.
‘In the early days, Biddy drove everything through. I was terrified of her. She was a very clever, very demanding leader. I suppose that’s the reason I stayed for so long. You just never knew what was going to happen. You learned everything on the job. I think they finally sent me on a studio-directing course after I’d been doing it for two or three years.
‘My only serious row with Biddy came when I was directing and she kept up a running commentary. We had a new vision mixer who had come from drama and kept cutting away on camera later than Biddy wanted.
‘I was getting more and more frustrated. Afterwards she was pretty critical and I just snapped and told her I didn’t want to direct her little programme any more. The gallery went dead quiet. She glared at me and I knew I had gone too far.
‘The next day I arrived early, to apologise, expecting to be sacked. She just said: “Don’t worry, darling, it’s all water under the bridge.” I think she quite liked the fact I’d stood up to her.’
One of the biggest changes to working practices over Leger’s time with the show was the advent of Health and Safety. He says: ‘When I started, there were simply no hazard assessment forms, I don’t recall any formal safety training either, apart from common sense. We’d talk our adventures through with an o fficial who’d make suggestions, but that was it.
‘Morally, I know I’d have been culpable if someone had been injured. I worried myself to death about some things we did.
‘The danger of an elaborate Health and Safety environment, and lots of form filling, is that it takes you away from asking opinions and promotes a tick-box culture. But there’s no doubt that it has made programmes like Blue Peter safer.
‘I remember Simon Thomas (presenter, 1999-2005) parachuting with the RAF Falcons’ parachute display team in California. His ’chute was slow to deploy and, on the footage, you could see one of the instructors punching his parachute pack at about 8,000ft to help it open. He was very shocked. We all were. It didn’t stop him jumping again, though.
‘I did two parachute jumps myself. I’d promised my wife Lynn that I wouldn’t do it, so I had to make sure she never saw the footage.’
Another time, Peter Purves (presenter, 1967-1978) was training with the Fire Brigade, putting out a blaze, when a piece of masonry fell off the building, nearly killing Leger’s cameraman, who ducked at the last moment. As he recalls, ‘I knew my employment had come within a hair’s breadth of a premature ending.’
The successful formula of Blue Peter very much depended on the bravery of the presenters, as well as the ingenuity of those coming up with the ideas. Fortunately, there was no lack of either. ‘Every year,’ says Leger, ‘I’d wake up worrying what we were going to do this year. I’d try and find a dozen or so ideas that really excited me. If I could get six of them past the editor, I’d be delighted. But, as a result, we pushed further and further each year in terms of our escapades.
‘I always had an ambition to get off the beaten track and Blue Peter was a great place for doing that.’
Blue Peter also got Alex Leger through some of his most di fficult times, none more so than when his first child, Lauren, died of a congenital heart condition. He and Lynn spent two months trying to come to terms with their loss. ‘I felt gutted emotionally,’ he says.
‘Then one day, editor Biddy Baxter walked in, told me that Mount Etna in Sicily was erupting, and that I should go there immediately with Simon Groom – on condition that we didn’t spend too much money getting there. In those days you could “blag” flights and free trips before the rules were tightened by the BBC. We did everything on a shoestring.
‘Two days later, I was standing on the top of Etna with Simon Groom looking into the crater with molten lava coming right up from the centre of the earth. It made me realise that there are things in life that are just awe-inspiring. It put me in my place.
‘I came back from Etna thinking it was time to get on with life.’
Thankfully, it is also a lesson that the Blue Peter programmes have passed on to generations of children.
Blue Peter: Behind The Badge by Alex Leger is published by Lauren Productions, priced £20 (plus p&p), available exclusively from www.bluepeterbook.co.uk
It was 29 April 1977 and just another day in the life of Britain’s bestloved children’s programme… But Noakes was climbing over the lip – leaning perilously backwards by 20 degrees for the final 8ft of the ascent – for the second time that day. Minutes earlier, his first attempt had been rendered unusable when a huge gust of wind caught his microphone, and feedback ruined the recording.
Clockwise from left: In Cypress Gardens, Florida; In a snow hole in Norway with Tim Vincent; Alex Lager in EthiopiaDirector Alex Leger, watching anxiously from the ground as Noakes completed his latest hairraising challenge, recalls: ‘I had no option but to ask John to do it again. To my surprise and relief he complied without a murmur of complaint. Not for the first time I marvelled at his courage.’
And that anecdote, according to Leger, who has published a book chronicling four decades of Blue Peter, sums up the essence of the show’s phenomenal success: treating the audience as equals – and scaring the wits out of the presenters whenever possible.
Leger, 65, a Blue Peter producer/ director for 36 years and responsible for many of the show’s most famous moments, laughs as he recalls: ‘Every presenter’s personality was different. The trick was to find what really scared them. It didn’t matter if they were terriffed as long as they weren’t completely struck dumb. As long as they could talk, and articulate their terror, and it was safe it made captivating television.
‘We really were the Top Gear of our day. If someone had an idea that would make great television, there was a good chance we could do it – and the more dangerous the better.’
Clockwise from top left: Filming on Solomon Islands; With Tim Vincent and manatees in Flroida; Reporting on alterbative energy in Birmingham with Matt Baker; John Noakes inches over the plinth of Nelson's ColumnLeger, an ex-Army officer, joined the BBC as a management trainee in 1975 – when the UK had just three TV channels – before being hired by legendary Blue Peter editor Biddy Baxter to give some oomph to the show. And he duly did, regularly pushing presenters to their limits. In its heyday, Blue Peter was a creative and commercial juggernaut, regularly drawing eight million young viewers, but never talking down to them. Everyone has a favourite Blue Peter moment: John Noakes climbing Nelson’s Column; Mark Curry strapped to a windmill sail; Simon Groom covering famine in Ethiopia; Janet Ellis skydiving from 20,000ft; Gethin Jones surfacing from a submarine escape tank (‘Gethin may die’, read the risk assessment). Just a few of the iconic televisual moments Leger directed.
More recently, he persuaded Helen Skelton, one of the current presenters, to undertake a stunt involving a beard of living bees. Leger admits: ‘Bees can be pretty temperamental. The owner of the hives told me his bees had stung a sheep to death a couple of years previously. There’s no doubt Helen could have been badly hurt, even killed.’
With the BBC facing unprecedented criticism, most recently over the TV personality scandal, Leger’s stories provide a welcome distraction, demonstrating many of the things the BBC has got right over the years.
Today, talking about his book, Alex Leger is showing occasional flashes of the sheer bloody determination that made him a legend in Blue Peter circles.
Tim Vincent, who worked closely with Leger during his time presenting the show from 1993 to 1997, says: ‘Alex was just determined to do the best for the show. He was pretty scary, but a great director and friend.’
Leger himself says: ‘Treating the children as equals was crucial. We always tried to tell viewers something they didn’t know, without patronising them.’
Left: Alex Leger with the Kayapo tribe in Brazil Right: With Konnie Huq in AngolaIn the early days, Biddy Baxter set the tone for the show with a mixture of charm and ruthless organisation, according to Leger. ‘I think Biddy thought that, as a former Army o fficer, I could organise things,’ Alex Leger recalls. ‘But when I arrived at Blue Peter they were flush with talent, loads of brilliant organisers.
‘In the early days, Biddy drove everything through. I was terrified of her. She was a very clever, very demanding leader. I suppose that’s the reason I stayed for so long. You just never knew what was going to happen. You learned everything on the job. I think they finally sent me on a studio-directing course after I’d been doing it for two or three years.
‘My only serious row with Biddy came when I was directing and she kept up a running commentary. We had a new vision mixer who had come from drama and kept cutting away on camera later than Biddy wanted.
‘I was getting more and more frustrated. Afterwards she was pretty critical and I just snapped and told her I didn’t want to direct her little programme any more. The gallery went dead quiet. She glared at me and I knew I had gone too far.
‘The next day I arrived early, to apologise, expecting to be sacked. She just said: “Don’t worry, darling, it’s all water under the bridge.” I think she quite liked the fact I’d stood up to her.’
One of the biggest changes to working practices over Leger’s time with the show was the advent of Health and Safety. He says: ‘When I started, there were simply no hazard assessment forms, I don’t recall any formal safety training either, apart from common sense. We’d talk our adventures through with an o fficial who’d make suggestions, but that was it.
‘Morally, I know I’d have been culpable if someone had been injured. I worried myself to death about some things we did.
‘The danger of an elaborate Health and Safety environment, and lots of form filling, is that it takes you away from asking opinions and promotes a tick-box culture. But there’s no doubt that it has made programmes like Blue Peter safer.
‘I remember Simon Thomas (presenter, 1999-2005) parachuting with the RAF Falcons’ parachute display team in California. His ’chute was slow to deploy and, on the footage, you could see one of the instructors punching his parachute pack at about 8,000ft to help it open. He was very shocked. We all were. It didn’t stop him jumping again, though.
‘I did two parachute jumps myself. I’d promised my wife Lynn that I wouldn’t do it, so I had to make sure she never saw the footage.’
Another time, Peter Purves (presenter, 1967-1978) was training with the Fire Brigade, putting out a blaze, when a piece of masonry fell off the building, nearly killing Leger’s cameraman, who ducked at the last moment. As he recalls, ‘I knew my employment had come within a hair’s breadth of a premature ending.’
The successful formula of Blue Peter very much depended on the bravery of the presenters, as well as the ingenuity of those coming up with the ideas. Fortunately, there was no lack of either. ‘Every year,’ says Leger, ‘I’d wake up worrying what we were going to do this year. I’d try and find a dozen or so ideas that really excited me. If I could get six of them past the editor, I’d be delighted. But, as a result, we pushed further and further each year in terms of our escapades.
‘I always had an ambition to get off the beaten track and Blue Peter was a great place for doing that.’
Blue Peter also got Alex Leger through some of his most di fficult times, none more so than when his first child, Lauren, died of a congenital heart condition. He and Lynn spent two months trying to come to terms with their loss. ‘I felt gutted emotionally,’ he says.
‘Then one day, editor Biddy Baxter walked in, told me that Mount Etna in Sicily was erupting, and that I should go there immediately with Simon Groom – on condition that we didn’t spend too much money getting there. In those days you could “blag” flights and free trips before the rules were tightened by the BBC. We did everything on a shoestring.
‘Two days later, I was standing on the top of Etna with Simon Groom looking into the crater with molten lava coming right up from the centre of the earth. It made me realise that there are things in life that are just awe-inspiring. It put me in my place.
‘I came back from Etna thinking it was time to get on with life.’
Thankfully, it is also a lesson that the Blue Peter programmes have passed on to generations of children.
Blue Peter: Behind The Badge by Alex Leger is published by Lauren Productions, priced £20 (plus p&p), available exclusively from www.bluepeterbook.co.uk