The steady ship

Every Monday and Thursday afternoon when I was growing up, a drum roll would sound throughout suburban Britain. ‘Damian? Blue Peter!’ my mother would call out, in a voice that made it clear that my presence was required in front of the television. Blue Peter — 60 years old this week — was top of the very short list of programmes of which my parents approved.

We lived in Woodmansterne Road, Carshalton Beeches, Surrey. You can’t beat that for a Blue Peter-ish address. Our house was mock Tudor; my father worked for the Prudential. My younger sister and I, pupils at modest private day schools, slotted perfectly into the middle-middle-class demographic at which the show seemed to be aimed, though its reach was far wider. And we were lucky enough to watch it during the era of Valerie Singleton, Peter Purves and the late John Noakes, whose death from Alzheimer’s last year distressed millions of people.