Blue Peter the Bed Of Sin

It's quite humourous to see the Blue Peter phone-in fix [Independent article] as the headline news story of the day. Is there really nothing more grave going on in the world at the moment? There is actually, but admittedly none of it is as funny. Apparently these shenanigans represent a breach of Blue Peter's relationship of trust and respect with its audience, and jeopardise its whiter-than-white squeaky clean image.

That's a laugh - when I was a kid I always saw it as the televisual embodiment of hedonism and sin. It was my only opportunity for a peek over to the darker side of life while I went about my daily monastic existence. Richard Bacon was every nine year old's favourite cokehead, John Leslie was the resident loose-handed womaniser (allegedly), and when Katy Hill arrived the Blue Peter set was just brimming with sexual tension. And let's not forget Anthea Turner who went on to have that wedding photo with the Flake - bad behaviour to an extreme.

Those were the days, the early-to-mid-90s... when the Blue Peter Garden was probably a den of cannabis, magic mushrooms and opium. I don't know if it's cleaned up its act since then or what, but I'll always remember it as a window to society's most despicable, seedy and unruly quarters. A little phone competition fix here or there will hardly make much difference. Perhaps the greatest Blue Peter sinner of all time though is Diane-Louise Jordan, who used her Blue Peter fame to get a job giving a national television platform to enthusiastic Christians who can sing and like to flaunt the fact, when she took a job on Songs Of Praise. Has the woman no shame? You'd think they'd have pulled Blue Peter off the air long ago with such a dark cloud of guilt hanging over its legacy. If it survived that it can survive anything.