Blue Peter’s biggest scandals – drug addiction, dead dog and secret adult tape

It’s fair to say Blue Peter is one of the most squeaky-clean children’s show on the box, inspiring generations of youngsters since it first hit the airwaves in 1958.

Usually broadcasted live to millions of homes up and down the country, the show’s carousel of hosts takes viewers on a range of outdoor challenges as well as teaching them easy arts and crafts which is now known for their famous says, ‘Here’s one I made earlier’. The long-running show has welcomed a series of celebrity guests dropping by for a chat on the famous blue sofa or to perform their new number one hit.

Many viewers will no doubt feel nostalgic for the show when the likes of Katy Hill, Konnie Huq and Simon Baker presented the show around the millennium. But what many viewers may not know is that the show has also experiences its fair share of mishaps, from dangerous moments filming on set to “hellish” challenges.

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Away from the cameras, the former presenters have also gone on to dramatically change their lives since their days being a children’s TV presenter, with some battling drug addictions while others turned to a career in pornography.

As the wholesome TV show celebrates its 65th birthday with a bang, Daily Star has taken a deep dive inside the dark history of the beloved show. Let’s take a look…

Cocaine scandal

In 1998 one of Blue Peter’s celebrated presenter’s Richard Bacon was sacked from the show after producers discovered he had taken cocaine. The now-defunct newspaper News of the World covered the explosive scandal at the time and reported that Richard was forced to hand back his Blue Peter badge after his drug use hit the tabloids.

Since then, the dad-of-two has reflected on the scandal and claims that the whole situation would have been far worse if the scandal had happened in the age of social media. He told The Sun: “My experience on Blue Peter would have been very different if social media had been around.

“The intensity of the storm is even more fierce and more frightening now. If you’re caught up in a massive scandal, there are probably tens of thousands of tweets about you. Cancel culture is about rushing to judgment. I’d love us all to slow down and go, ‘Stop, let’s think about this. Does this person really deserve never to have a career?’.

When the TV presenter appeared on Mel Giedroyc’s podcast Unforgivable, Richard joked that when the producers would shout ‘that’s a wrap’ at the end of shows, he’d shout “where”. A wrap is a term for the way some drugs can be stored.

Dead dog

The show has always had a strong relationship with animals throughout its history, with the first Blue Peter dog Petra joining the show in 1962. The beautiful canine quickly became a mascot for the show and would frequently share the screen with various hosts until her exit in 1977 due to old age.

However, it was later revealed that the original Petra dog had actually died a few days after she first appeared on the show back from distemper, a viral disease. When producers received the news, they decided not to tell the viewers, but to instead get a new similar-looking dog to join the team following the outpour of love for the furry friend.

Surprisingly enough, the trick worked, and it wasn’t until 2008 that the secret about Petra’s death was revealed when former editor Biddy Baxter wrote about it in her book, Dear Blue Peter. She wrote: “It was the dog’s first and last TV appearance. Two days later she died of distemper.

“It was unthinkable to traumatise our youngest viewers by giving them the sad news, so the producer Edward Barnes and I set off in his Mini to trawl London for the dead pup’s lookalike. It wasn’t until we reached Lewisham that we struck lucky.

“In a dingy shop window there was one small browny-black puppy shivering in the corner of a pen. Not a single viewers spotted the swap.”

‘Hellish’ challenges

Nineties kids will remember the wild challenges Simon Thomas and Matt Baker often underwent on the show, the most memorable being the two-week Royal Marines Parachute Regiment selection process. What many viewers may be surprised to know was how much the cast and crew struggled to film the daring segment.

“That was a very hard film for them to do and probably the hardest for the producers as well,” former producer Alex Leger, who worked on Blue Peter for 36 years, recalled to The Northern Echo as he discussed his book, Blue Peter: Behind The Badge.

“They tested aggression within three minutes bouts in which they pair them up and they beat the hell out of each other.” Leger later claimed Baker said at the time: “We knew it was going to be hell.”

But this was just one of the terrifying segments the show has aired over the years. Much earlier in 1977, presenter John Noakes was tasked with climbing Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square by using a ladder to clean pigeon droppings from Nelson’s head. Alex insisted to readers that this was before health and safety measures had been enforced in the workplace.

He later revealed it was even more of a treacherous climb up than they had first anticipated. He explained: “John was taught how to reset his arms and legs through the rungs on the way up. What he didn’t realise was that the ladder leans out at an angle of 20 degrees at the top and he had to climb that before raising himself onto the plinth.”

Things only went worse for the presenter when a sound problem meant that they had lost the audio from the top part of the climb, meaning he had to climb all the way back up to refilm the end of the shoot. Leger added: “To my surprise and relief John complied without a murmur of complaint. Not for the first time I marvelled at his courage.”

Porn film

Back in 1980s, presenter Peter Duncan became the first host to return to the show, a four-year run between 1980 and 1984 before he returned a year later for a further year from 1985 to 1986. What many viewers may not know is that he was also revealed by a tabloid at the time to have starred in a ‘porn’ film called The Lifetaker.

In the film, the host could be seen wearing very minimal clothing, however others pointed out that the art house-style film wasn’t exactly pornographic in its content. The response at the time was quite negative, with reports of parents decidedly against the presenter for wearing for baggy jeans and appearing scruffier than co-host Jon Noakes, who Peter replaced on the show.

In 2014, Peter shared a clip of a trailer from the infamous adult movie that caused his scandal on the show. He tweeted: “For your pleasure on my 60th here’s a trailer from my 1973 ‘porn’ film that cause trauma and headlines.”

Phone-rigging scandal

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Peter wasn’t the only presenter to face a scandal on the show, with Konnie Huq famously suffering aa major phone-rigging scandal on the show. Producers were forced to cut the phone lines during a live call-in segment when a young girl who was on a studio tour of the building posed as a caller.

The youngster then got through live on air and spoke to presenter Konnie who she accidentally treated as a real caller. It didn’t take long before the cheeky kid won a prize for correctly guessing the identity of a mystery celebrity even though she wasn’t a real viewer calling in.

Richard Deverell, the controller of BBC Children’s Television, said in a statement at the time: “The decision to put a child on air in this way was a serious error of judgment.” Konnie Huq told viewers live on air at the time: “We’d like to apologise to you because when this mistake happened, we let you down.”

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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk