John Noakes: TV Hero

-John, stand by. Turn over now.

-Turning.

-Sound running.

Action!

# No matter what you are... #

The cry, "Action!" meant that I had to start pedalling

with the van in full pursuit.

Hold on to your seats because here we go.

Falling through space was fantastic.

# ..Ooh, girl, with you... #

When you think about the pantheon of presenters on British television,

not just the BBC, there's no question,

John Noakes is up there, he is one of the very, very best.

Suddenly I feel awfully alone up here.

Climbing the mast at HMS Ganges and tightrope walking -

I mean, other people didn't do that sort of thing, that was John Noakes.

# ..Knock down the old grey wall... #

For all boys, particularly, he was the go-to guy who did

something on telly that day before and you talked about it.

# ..Nothing to see Nothing to do... #

You might call that an avalanche.

The spirit of him, his gift to us really is that he said,

"Listen, you don't have to be prim about presenting."

Push it that way, that's it.

"You can also bring a kind of sparkle to it as well,"

so, thank you, John.

# ..No matter what you are... #

-He was a kind of nice, northern lad really.

-Whoa!

You know, down-to-earth but much more thoughtful

and didn't play the fool when he was just with us.

Never mind the sheep, just smell that moor air.

They say it turns men into mice.

He was so shy, he wasn't an extrovert.

It's a wild and woolly night out there, lad, isn't it?

So he invented a character that he could be.

# ..No matter what you are... #

Your sides, John.

Didn't he do...bleurgh?!

# ..Doesn't matter what you do, girl... #

John was a big star and he didn't even really realise it.

Hey! Big cheer for us. Hey!

My greatest claim to fame is not being on Blue Peter,

it's working with John Noakes.

# ..Ooh, girl, you girl, want you. #

The theme of the programme is adventure.

Yes, it's very difficult actually to say what Blue Peter is.

It's many things, it's almost everything.

We participate in things, we do things on film, we make things.

We never stand on the sideline and watch, we do it.

Nelson's Column was a terrific Blue Peter epic.

I mean, John was fearless and would have a go at anything.

Edward Barnes, who was the deputy head of children's programmes,

used to live in Balham and every day, he'd come in

via Trafalgar Square to get to Television Centre,

and on one occasion, he saw a ladder up the side

and he came and said, "Oh, there's a ladder up Nelson's Column,

"send someone down to see what's going on."

So I was sent off to go and have a look.

And I arrived and I found

the steeplejack on the square, Reg Dossell,

and I said to Reg, "What are you doing?"

He said, "Oh, I'm cleaning the pigeon droppings out

"from underneath Nelson's plinth."

And I said, "Oh, sounds very good.

"Do you mind if Blue Peter came down and make a film about it?

"We could bring John Noakes."

And he was sort of, "John Noakes?! Of course, John! Yeah, wonderful!"

The doors used to fly open, he was such a big star.

John had actually come back from filming

with the forces' gymnastics team.

He was absolutely shattered and exhausted.

Then they said, "We've got

"the go-ahead for doing Nelson's column, but tomorrow morning."

And so, he was already feeling quite stiff and elderly

when he set off that morning to do the film.

Oh! I'm a bit stiff, I think.

-Here we go.

-It's a long way, isn't it?

-It is, yeah.

-How high is it?

-It's about 180 feet, I think.

-Is it? How are the ladders fixed on?

They're roped quite firmly around the actual column itself.

We had a cherry picker in the corner of the square to get

the big wide shot and then I thought, "Health and safety."

In fact, I didn't think health and safety,

I just thought, "How can I stop John from dying?"

By gum, it's only held on with rope.

I said, "Have you got any safety harnesses?"

They said, "Oh, yes, we've got a safety harness."

They brought out this huge web-like thing.

And it's quite heavy and, of course,

there was 180 foot of rope to go with it.

John just took one look at it and said, "I'm not wearing that, lad.

"I'll be safer without."

I took Reg to one side, "Are you sure about this?"

And he said, "Don't worry, he'll be so scared,

"he'll be making dents with his hands on the side of the ladder

"as he goes up," which, of course, is not something you could ever

put in a health and safety report.

You have to take a rest every so often

when climbing a ladder this long, otherwise your muscles weaken

and you could easily lose your grip and fall.

Our cameraman Terry was waiting at the top and he really did

have a bird's-eye view of me reaching the worst part of the climb.

I wasn't actually on the ground when he arrived.

He told me afterwards that he looked up there,

he very nearly didn't do it.

At this level, the plinth on which Nelson stands overhangs the column.

I then noticed to my horror the ladder at the very top

of the column went back at an angle about 20 degrees.

It leaned out across the top,

so you actually had to lean out to go round,

over the top of the parapet,

and that was the most frightening bit of it.

I found myself, literally, hanging from the ladder

with nothing at all beneath me.

He said, he hadn't realised how strong you needed to be

to actually support your weight as you came underneath the plinth.

You told me there was overhang, but you didn't tell me

-it leant to one side, did you?

-No, that was the awkward part.

I was safely on the ground with a pair of walkie-talkies

and he climbed over the lip onto the parapet

and I heaved a sigh of relief just when the walkie-talkie burst in,

like, "Kshhh! Alex, he's got to do it again."

It was the sound recordist. I said, "Why?"

"Can't tell you, but I tell you, he's got to do it again."

The fault on the sound was John saying,

"They didn't bloody tell me about this," as he went over.

Once we were up there and we'd been up there a few minutes,

John started to relax.

-That's it. How are you?

-Fine.

-Good.

-It's the experience of a lifetime, actually.

-It is, ain't it, really?

Right, then.

Then, just as he was getting his confidence,

the steeplejack had to go over the side of the parapet

in a bosun's chair arrangement, so you had to lower yourself down

to get under the parapet to clean off all the pigeon muck.

Kneel down on the base there.

If I kneel down, I'll start praying, I think.

Again, when he realised he had to hang over

the side of the parapet, he wasn't too happy about that either.

-Get my other foot down.

-That's it.

-If you look over the edge, you can see all the footholds.

-I'd rather not!

It's one of those sort of sights that you can do without.

Move down a couple more feet.

That's it, get your hands underneath there.

Mind you don't scrape your hands on there too much.

-OK?

-Yeah. Are you coming down to join me?

Yes, I'm coming right down there now.

-OK? Do you feel all right?

-Yeah, it feels fine.

-Good.

But again, in his professional way, he overcame that nervousness

and was chatting to the steeplejacks as if he'd been at it all his life.

I suppose before I go down, I had to go right to the very top.

-Yeah, why not?

-There was insurance.

I mean, all BBC filming was covered by insurance,

but there wasn't any additional insurance.

I got into terrible trouble with the Home Secretary, I think it was.

They were not pleased that he didn't have any safety harnesses.

It wouldn't happen now.

Oh, a great deal of what we did we'd be in prison for now.

My hat's a bit dirty. Never mind, I don't suppose anybody will see that.

We were all in a bit of awe of him for it really.

We thought, "Bloomin' heck, Johnny. Well done, mate," you know?

Could only be proud of him.

John was undoubtedly the action man.

John never ever said he was scared of anything.

That was the beauty of working with John.

I shall...prepare myself.

CHEERING

He had a bit of Yorkshire grit about him.

He did this, "Oh, let's just do it then.

"Come on, let's stop messing about."

That's what warmed him to the audience in the first place,

that there was somebody doing marvellous things.

HE SHRIEKS

-I still can't do it!

-All these things started.

When I was doing a film with Christopher Trace...

..they had a tower crane, which was very new then.

So I suggested to Trace that he climb up the tower crane

and Trace said, "You're joking! I've got no head for heights,

"I'm not going to go up one of those."

Right now, let's go over and join John.

So I asked Johnny and he said, "Oh, I'll have a go."

John broke away from the rigidity of television.

He did things that no-one had done before,

he did things that no-one would do today.

And that takes spirit, courage and attitude.

Obviously it was his job, but he was doing it for the viewers.

I'm out of breath.

I'm listening and wobbling up here.

So he's on a radio mic, there's no direction going on,

he can't hear anyone on the ground,

he's left on his own to produce a piece of television.

I then had to try to shin up the mast to reach the top

called the button.

I just couldn't manage it, my legs were feeling like lead.

I decided this was the moment to give way to the expert,

though changing places on a ladder

127 feet from the ground had its dicey moments.

What he did was incredibly dangerous...

a lot of the time.

By not coming back with the film was worse.

A-one,

a-two, a-three...

..and go!

I've gone to St Moritz in Switzerland

to go down the bob run with the RAF team.

I actually managed to go with them on the trip to St Moritz.

I thought, looking at it, "I'm glad I'm not doing this," but, you know,

John was up for it and a really nice RAF team

who were taking him on board.

My driver was John Blockey.

John was giving me the ride of a lifetime.

We shot round every corner perfectly

and then got our speed up to around 90mph.

I was standing next to, I think it was John Blockey's wife,

and you could hear on the loudspeaker system

what was happening on each run.

But we didn't know that ahead of us there was a hole in the ice wall,

and by a million to one chance, we hit it.

And then suddenly, she said, "Oh, my goodness, they've had a crash."

I was trapped upside down in the bob and swept along for 100 metres.

On the final bend, the bob righted itself

and shot through the finishing post with John Blockey still in it.

I too went through the finishing post, but I was too dazed to notice.

I couldn't get out the sledge, yeah.

I was hemmed up against the ice.

He was extremely lucky to survive.

You could see the way the guys put their arms around him

and walked him off the run at the end. They knew.

-What happened to John?

-John's fine. John's all right.

I thought, "Oh, God, this could be major," but no, he was lucky.

I mean, he just got really badly bruised.

I look at myself, I actually am an average person. I'm just lucky.

He enjoyed a very happy childhood the first few years of his life.

This is a period that John glossed over,

he didn't want to talk about it.

He got a chance go to Rishworth School, which was a boarding school.

Hated every moment of it, he said.

I was always in trouble, I was a bit of a tearaway when I was little.

I gave up Greek after three weeks,

I gave up Latin after three years, French after four.

If I had been at school any longer, I would have given up English.

But I was a gymnast, rugby player,

cross-country runner, so I had all the things for being able to

swing onto pieces and jump out of aeroplanes for Blue Peter.

He said, "When you finally left school on your leaving term,

"the headmaster would have you all into the office to shake your hand

"and say good luck for the future and all that,"

and so John was lined up with the rest of the people

who were leaving on that particular term,

and the headmaster headed down the row

and when he got to John, he said,

"Hm. I just don't know what's going to happen to you."

Five, four, three.

This is Lulu, she's from Chessington Zoo.

And she's being... Well, she's leading in her keeper, Alec,

and she's also leading us in as well.

John Noakes is responsible for

one of the most memorable moments in British television history.

Let's just see if I can take the leg there and see if I can hold it.

We had an item with a baby elephant who came from Chessington Zoo.

I'm going to give her a bucket of water and see if that will...

-Come here, Lulu.

-Settle her down.

-There you are, there's the bucket of water.

The inevitable happened.

I mean, it was literally in one end, out the other.

In Ceylon, even the male elephants don't have tusks.

Oop! We're having a slight penny down here, a slight problem.

And then Lulu began to defecate.

Alec, thank you very much indeed. Can you...?

I'm going to stand back a little bit.

It was right up Noakes' street really,

because rather than pretend it wasn't happening,

with his sense of humour and his built-in anarchy,

John just took to this.

As I was saying, we'll see all sorts of very exciting things.

Let it go that way. Let it go that way.

I mean, Lulu the elephant,

it's one of the best bits of television of all time.

I feel so proud and lucky that I was there.

No-one knows I was there, they know Val was there

because they can remember that she tried to keep it going.

I just stood there laughing, I'd gone.

-..When we're on holiday.

-Ooh! Get off me foot!

Johnny really made it much more fun

than perhaps it might have been otherwise

and I don't think the elephant actually had stood on his foot.

They're going away on holiday too.

They're going to spend it out in the country, but Lulu won't be there.

LAUGHTER

Oh, dear! How are you doing?

John was making it into a variety act.

And there she goes, out of the studio. Farewell.

Oh, dear, I've trod right in it.

Well, that's the thing about animals...

They say it's lucky, don't they?

And we're having a lucky programme today.

That was absolutely John at his very, very best.

I don't think he ever topped that. He tried.

This is what's called getting left holding on to the cup of tea.

-Run it, Johnny, run it.

-Come back! You eat the fish and chips!

Right. Come on back, Roo. There's not going to be much time.

How are you doing? All right? Can you sit up? Ooh!

That's my finger! Yes, I know!

Ooh, you take the food away from a lion and he'll murder you.

Ooh, look, it's all over the place. All right!

All right!

I'm not going to take it away from you, it's all yours! Help!

-Can you give me a kiss? Oh!

-Oh!

Behave yourself!

If there was a joke there, he would do it.

I must say, Johnny, his white bits have come up really white already.

And his black bits are very black. They are, aren't they? Yes.

Obviously, after the programme is over,

-we're going to continue drying...

-Oh, sorry, I thought you were Shep.

We were out to have some fun.

I'll get a dirty great big headache if I go over the front!

Oh!

Johnny's first thing always, whenever we did anything was,

"Let's have some fun."

Practice will win out in the end!

Oh!

There were elements of the real John went into the clown,

the clown character that he evolved for himself.

His clown suit that he would sort of put on to perform.

But when he wasn't required to perform, you didn't see the clown.

Use proper make-up, don't use...

That John Noakes that you saw on screen was what

I always called his performance mode and he invented this madcap guy.

He invented John Noakes.

I started life as an engine fitter in the RAF

and then I joined BOAC,

and I always wanted to be an actor or a pilot or a doctor.

I didn't have the brains for being a pilot or a doctor,

so I became an actor. You don't need brains for that.

He decided that he would change his name by deed poll.

He took his name from his stepfather, Alfie Noakes,

who was quite a well-known professional trumpeter at the time.

And he became the John Noakes that we know.

When I first came across him,

he was definitely a starving actor which was quite appealing.

He was spotted by an agent

and that sort of rather changed things for John.

It was actually the most boring time of my life.

The same play for five months.

When you're doing the same thing night after night,

same spot, same words.

I couldn't do it.

And after that, came back and then started getting bits on television,

still doing rep in the meantime.

By chance, he ended up going at very short notice

to work for a friend of his who was a theatre producer

who was working at Leicester Theatre at the time.

I was up at Leicester Rep doing a guest appearance as Willy Mossop

in Hobson's Choice.

My picture appeared in the Leicester Mercury.

Biddy Baxter, who's the editor, the boss, her mum comes from Leicester,

so Biddy's mum sent the local paper down to Biddy

and she saw the picture and wrote to me.

I thought it might be an idea to audition him

and see if he'd like to work on the programme.

There's a friend of ours, John Noakes,

up at the top of the hill now, and he hasn't been skiing either,

but he's going to have a go.

-Are you ready, John?

-OK, Chris.

He did a fairly disastrous audition.

But there was just something,

there was always something about Noakes

that made you think there was something worth persevering with.

Well done!

I kept on my feet.

Well, now for some really splendid pictures of skiers

speeding down the French Alps.

He didn't find it easy at all.

He had a tremendous problem learning his lines.

The Royal Horse Artillery use all these tools to clean their horses

but things weren't quite the same at Wellington Barracks, because...

Now, why weren't they the same?

For the life of me, I just can't remember for the moment.

Er...

Now this is a problem.

I enjoyed being other people, pretending to be other people.

I enjoyed dressing up, putting on the make-up

and false whiskers, and saying someone else's words.

Myself, I hadn't anything to offer, but I liked to be somebody else,

and then sat in front of the camera, the camera wanted to see me.

I wonder if you can guess what this is.

And it was a terrifying battle.

It was quite frightening, in fact.

I've often wondered what would happen

if you got one of these stuck on your head, like this.

I remember thinking he was good and very lively and fun.

Just take a look at this for a cabbage,

I've never seen anything like it.

-Look at it, it's huge!

-Is it bigger than me?

-It's almost as big as your head!

-Shall we measure it?

We've got a tape measure there, just pop it round.

Gradually, he found the character he wanted to play,

and he did it to perfection, really, and I think he stopped worrying.

John was someone who defied the norms of television

in the '60s and '70s.

On your marks, champion going first, get set.

Are you ready?

-Go!

-Eh? Oh! Now.

He was irreverent.

He was funny.

He could be spontaneous.

-How long has the society been formed now?

-160 years.

160? Any founder members here?

It was great hearing someone who just sounded like someone

you might have heard in the shop next door or in your school

rather than somebody who was speaking to you very carefully.

-BEEPING

-Then if I press it in the left eye...

He was probably one of the first people in television

with a real regional accent.

And this is one of the latest things and T-shirts to come out of Japan,

and its designer, Kansai Yamamoto, and I had to write that on my wrist,

comes from Tokyo.

He enjoyed it when we had big items in the studio.

# We are! #

-We are!

-We are on fire! Let's get the firemen in behind.

When Purves arrived, they became great buddies.

And Valerie Singleton's boyfriend at the time

said they were like a couple of soldiers on leave!

Mr Peter Pruves.

Mr Peter Purves.

He was never the most approachable person at first

but we got on absolutely wonderfully virtually from day one.

Give me a hand, we'll open the box.

He's very lively, isn't he?

Here we are. Hello, fella.

And out he goes.

Pete was wonderful to bounce off,

but when Pete wasn't there, Shep was there, so I could bounce off him

and gradually started talking to the dog.

Yes, yes, you know that one, don't you?

Ah! He's got sharp teeth.

You have got sharp teeth.

Where's your bone? What he really needs now is a proper name.

Oh, sorry, I wasn't really watching.

I've got 100 lines of spelling des...

John really loved that dog.

Thanks, Shep. I know you know how to spell it.

And I think Shep understood John.

I know it sounds incredible.

I'm not sure what he's going to do

because they're fairly well spread out. He's doing a big circle there.

They were a double act, John and Shep. Shep played

Ernie Wise to John's Morecambe, basically.

Woof! Woof!

The bark frightened Shep more.

-Who is this little friend?

-He's a little friend with four legs.

He's a bit like you, a dog.

There he is.

Introductions are unnecessary, I have made contact.

Shep also knew the rules of the game.

He knew how to behave if he wanted to, not that he did.

-Give my regards to the Doctor.

-Affirmative.

Exactly like John, he'd got a rebellious streak.

He was another natural subversive.

They were an incredibly good pair.

No! You might go off with the Doctor to another planet.

They made a waxwork of John and Shep for Madame Tussauds.

I am quite jealous because they never made a waxwork of me.

You've got a very good likeness, actually, especially his eyes.

The people who watched the programme are not just children.

They go from four to 94, 104 in fact.

You get your old-age pensioners,

go down the docks, all the dockers know you.

Anywhere you go.

My better half.

He was shy, he didn't like celebrity,

and I used to get a lot of mail.

There were people from all walks of life

and the all sort of felt that they were John Noakes's friends.

Don't worry, you've got Percy Thrower here to talk to.

You can talk about your Brussels sprouts.

He wasn't in there to become a star.

He wasn't there to be a personality.

He was there to enjoy doing things.

It was last spring that Alex Jackson,

the leader of the Falcons, invited me to jump with his team,

but from a much higher altitude than I'd ever jumped before,

from five miles up.

The Falcons loved Noakes.

There was nothing of the grand BBC presenter

coming to be with the peasants. He was one of them.

Altogether, go!

This guy was going to come and if he didn't cut the mustard,

then he was probably going to be rejected,

but he did, on every level.

Everybody liked John and we didn't have any problems with him.

MUSIC: Flying by The Beatles

I think what impressed me about John at the time was things could

go wrong, but because we said

if you do this it'll be OK, he just accepted that.

And there was this confidence that, OK, he will do it.

He was nervous but controlled.

And there was never a concern

about him freaking out or doing something silly.

He said it was the nearest thing you could get to flying like a bird.

Yes, he really did enjoy it.

And we're in space, it's unbelievable, 25,000 feet!

I remember we flew down to him

and the boys had done their job very well.

They linked up with John into a formation

so that John was not flying on his own.

On his right was the movie cameramen, Bobby Soutar,

and a guy called Ray Willis was flying around taking stills,

then the formation began to build a little.

Somebody else is coming down.

Ray has joined us now, Ray with his still camera.

And then somebody hit it hard.

He's coming in rather fast.

And...oh!

I'm upside down!

He flipped over onto his back

and then recovered himself as he'd been taught.

Now we're going to make the link-up again.

We had originally decided it would be really cool

if John could do a commentary on the way down,

but it could have interfered with his oxygen supply

and that was out of the question.

So we couldn't mic him up in any way, shape or form,

so, secret's out, it was dubbed.

He's still hanging on to me, whoever crashed into me,

I don't know who it is.

I think it worked quite well, a lifelong secret.

And we've got a bit of cloud down there,

120mph and you can feel the speed!

People always talk about the five-mile jump and, of course,

if you do your maths, 25,000 feet falls a little bit short

of actually five miles,

but there was always that temptation just to sneak those extra few feet

and make a five-mile descent,

so in all the courses that we did,

we would always rely on the captain just to let the aircraft

drift up to the five miles

so it was...semi-legal, but very safe.

It was always done safely.

And now we're going to be opening.

We used to do it on each course, we did it for John.

Only feet to go...and touchdown!

John just said, "Job done," and we all got on the transport

and went and had a beer.

-That was all over the place.

-And we went head over heels!

The Falcons had been terrific,

not many crack teams would take on a learner like me

and thanks to them, I'd achieved one of my greatest ambitions.

It was a bit like an overgrown schoolboy's job,

I was a Peter Pan, really.

Towards the end I was very tired and exhausted

and I'd worked 12 and a half years and I'd done all these things

and I don't think any of them really ever realised how difficult it was.

You've got to be a Tarzan, haven't you?

I think there's a sense of honour, really,

that you offer them something else.

And John did Go With Noakes.

HE SINGS TO HIMSELF

Sheppy, bit more chocolate?

When he did his Go With Noakes series, it's great.

Him and his dog going off doing daft things.

Shep and I had stumbled on the monthly gathering

of the Egremont Gurning Club.

You can't move it around with your hands and hope it sticks there?

No.

The nice thing about John was he loved people

and whenever we took him into a situation,

he wanted to get on with those people.

I can't!

He'd actually take more time to do that than most presenters would.

He's a world champion.

The sheep are over there.

Remember your motto - pull yourself together!

All right? Now steady.

Shep had this instinct of knowing where the camera was, I think.

There's a good boy.

And would position himself or run around within shot to order.

Lie down, lie down! Not the sheep.

Get off! Good heavens!

I think possibly that would have been his happiest time on television.

That was Egremont.

We've never been there before.

We might not never go there again.

What are your good memories of Go With Noakes, do you think?

I think the old dog, really. He was a super fella.

I've got some very sad news.

He died on Saturday.

Oh...

And I'm not over it.

John could be quite emotional,

and if he was, he was.

It's no sham, no pretence.

Well, thank you very much for coming in,

and I'm sorry we've had to end on this rather sad note.

Well, I actually wanted to say it myself,

I didn't want anybody else to say it.

When Shep had died, that broke his heart.

Did you have any qualms about giving up a very successful television career?

None whatsoever.

What about the fame? Do you miss that?

The fame is in the minds of others.

It's an abstract quantity.

It doesn't exist.

MUSIC: Joy by Apollo 100

-We're going to come around.

-I'll give you a hand.

John was able to not have any backward looks.

A bit of a maverick in a way.

He had a happy knack of being able to change direction

and not take life too seriously.

Wasn't particularly absorbed by material things.

He was in a way quite a free spirit, really.

This was going to be the next phase of our life.

We were all set to sail off into the sunset

with no plan other than to go to the Caribbean, really,

and see what we found there,

so that's what we did.

But unfortunately we didn't get there.

We left Gibraltar with not a wonderful weather forecast

but not a particularly bad one,

but unfortunately it got worse and worse.

We were just off the North African coast

when the weather really came in with a vengeance.

Gigantic waves, as I saw,

I looked down the valley and looked out,

as far as the eye can see was a wall of water,

smooth, streaked with spume, and I think we went up it.

We went up it and fell off and down.

The wave broke on top of us, the windows caved in, the cabin split.

The boat was half full of water, the mast came down

then the starter motor went underwater

and I couldn't start it again.

Later, we saw a tanker coming.

That was the most frightening part of the whole thing,

this tanker trying to come alongside.

We were trying to manoeuvre as best we could.

They were up there and we were down, it was just a nightmare situation,

but anyway we did get alongside, they pulled us in

and finally we scrambled up scrambling nets and onto the boat.

MUSIC: Praise You by Fatboy Slim

There is a saying that old Blue Peter presenters never escape.

They're dragged back, they're thrown out of aeroplanes,

they climb cliffs, today I'm here to go right up there.

We'd like to give you the programme's highest award,

a gold badge. There you go.

In the later years when John was older,

-he'd turn up and do those reunions.

-That was worth it!

It was a bit like the Laurence Olivier of Blue Peter presenters.

He'd be the one who always just managed to grab

the attention from everyone else.

The 50th anniversary of Blue Peter,

we went to Buckingham Palace to have tea

with Her Majesty the Queen in the Salon.

They filmed us arriving and everything else,

you knew he was going to do it,

up the big grand staircase, tripped.

Can't see a set of steps without falling over.

Way on, long after Blue Peter, we were still very good friends.

He was my mate.

My pal John.

# Feel like I'm flying, I'm dying to say

# Want you forever and easy

# Be where you are, where I want you to stay

# Don't you know what I'm saying, believe me

# Feel like I'm falling, it's all I can do

# Lying and dying is lonely... #

We all die, I'm going to die.

Well, not for a few hundred years!

It's a super life.

# Way to believe

# Wish I could be... #