Blue Peter has been an icon of the BBC’s children’s department since 1958, and has been a flagship for morality and old-fashioned family values in broadcasting since its inception.

However, in an untimely and ill-conceived attempt to emulate OTT, the ITV adult adaptation of Tiswas, the latter part of the 1980s saw the BBC decide to make a version of Blue Peter intended for adult viewers only. Details of the programme have never before seen print, and they have only been made available to the Encyclopaedia Britellica by a highly-placed source with the BBC itself, who has risked his employment, and indeed his life, to bring the shocking truth about Very Blue Peter to the attention of the general public.

The show was devised by Biddy Baxter and Edward Barnes, in consultation with adult magazine publisher David Sullivan and comedian Roy “Chubby” Brown, but was originally conceived by Michael Grade as a joke at the BBC Christmas party in 1986. Being just weeks before his departure to take up his post as Britain’s Pornographer-In-Chief at Channel Four, Grade, rather worse the wear for drink, took the Head of Programmes Jonathan Powell to one side and demanded he commission Very Blue Peter or lose his job. Powell, in terror for his job at the hands of his emotionally disturbed superior, did as he was told, and the programme first saw transmission in the summer of 1987.

Despite the show’s post-watershed timeslot, and a BBC announcer warning viewers that “this one’s not for your children – it’s got birds with big tits and some knob gags in it”, a few impressionable adults believed that this was merely a summer spin-off from their children’s favourite magazine programme, and allowed their sons and daughters to stay up late and watch it as a special treat. To the delight of the children, and the horror of the parents, what they saw was anything but the wholesome family entertainment that they had imagined.

Replacing the original Barnacle Bill them with altogether less innocent Testicle Ted, performed each week by the Macc Lads, the show was a constant stream of filth and depravity from start to finish, hosted by past and present Blue Peter stars who clearly needed the money, although John Noakes later claimed to have done the show simply for “a laugh”, and Janet Ellis also revealed in her autobiography that she revelled in the “sheer excitement of saying ‘Let’s go down to Simon’s farm, where he’s been fucking about with the animals again.’” Sadly Yvette Fielding was too young to stay up late enough to participate in the alleged fun.

Very Blue Peter’s features were as ribald as the language used by its frequently inebriated presenters. Here’s One I Laid Earlier, saw John Noakes and Peter Purves parading an endless stream of topless lovelies in front of the camera, all of whom they claimed to have seduced during their marathon drinking sessions. In reality, the women were prostitutes paid for by the regular VBP Appeals, an unashamedly uncharitable part of the show where Mark Curry would endlessly milk the dismal “sex appeal – please give generously” gag and talk about raising money to buy “new heads for spastics” and “lifeboats for Switzerland”. Worse even than the subjects of the appeals was the appeal totaliser which was a phallus which grew bigger each time someone donated money. Those with large cheques got to come into the studio and hand their money over while stroking it.

Another regular feature stemmed from a planned expedition to see the lady-boys of Bangkok, which was discussed on air but never actually went ahead. Instead, Christopher Wenner went on a seedy tour of Soho, ending up in an on-camera threesome with two transvestites and a Daily Express journalist. When he announced on air the following week that he had caught gonorrhoea, a delighted Biddy Baxter immediately decided to launch VPB’s VD, where viewers could ring in with their tales of venereal infection. Rumours that one of the future members of Take That rang in with a tale of an infection caught from a gerbil brought into the country by a sailor have never been confirmed.

However, despite high viewing figures and initially positive audience response, the BBC executives were growing increasingly concerned by the programme and its increasingly smutty content. After a “teach yourself masturbation” sequence featuring Lesley Judd in a state of orgasmic delight, questions were asked in the Houses of Parliament, and an official warning was given to Baxter and Barnes by BBC executives that the series was in danger of going too far. However, with students across the land enjoying the show, and the initial complaints from confused parents having dried up, a long and prosperous future seemed to lie ahead for Very Blue Peter.

It finally did go too after the tenth show of the series, which introduced the Very Blue Peter Hard-On, an enormous inflatable penis blown up in the garden outside the studio. Viewers were distraught and horrified to see a clearly ill Percy Thrower being forced to ride the ‘Hard On’ whilst Simon Groom and Peter Duncan laughed at him through a haze of smoke and profanity. When Thrower’s home phone number was given out, with an invitation to “Tell The Old Cunt The Difference Between A ‘Hoe’ And A ‘Ho’”, it was the last straw. The tabloids had a field day, and the viewers switched off in droves. The few former Blue Peter stars who had refused to participate were particular vociferous in their condemnation – Caron Keating said the BBC should be shot for transmitting the show, and Valerie Singleton called it “absolutely fucking obscene – a fucking disgrace.”

It was the final end - the BBC issued an across-the-board apology, and the show was immediately dropped from the schedules. Biddy Baxter and Edward Barnes were dismissed by the corporation, although a generous settlement ensured that they refused to succumb to the lucrative offers from the tabloids to reveal all about the rumoured on-set drug and sex orgies. All the presenters who had appeared were given warnings about their future conduct, and many were not to work for the BBC again for many years. John Noakes said at the time: “I’m livid – first Shep, then Go With Noakes, and now this – I feel like they’ve cut my bollocks off.”

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