John Noakes obituary: The action hero of Blue Peter

John Noakes was the television presenter best known for his work on the BBC children’s programme, Blue Peter, on which he appeared for twelve years.

An instantly likeable character, he cultivated dual roles as the team’s adventurer and its clown, often combining the two to amusing effect.

“It was a bit like an overgrown schoolboy’s job. I was Peter Pan really”, Noakes told Radio Times, in an interview recalling his time with Peter Purves and Valerie Singleton.

Noakes was born in Shelf, West Yorkshire, in 1934. He was educated at Rishworth School, near Halifax, where he became a keen sportsman, excelling in gymnastics and cross-country.

After initially training with the RAF and the airline BOAC as an engine fitter, he decided to become an actor.

First shown weekly, Blue Peter went twice weekly in 1965 and its editor, Biddy Baxter, decided to recruit another presenter to share the workload.

Noakes was spotted by Baxter from a photo in the Leicester Mercury newspaper, where he was pictured performing in Hobson’s Choice.

Baxter described him at the time as “...young, attractive and unaffected, and a complete contrast to Christopher Trace”.

She was careful not to upset the existing dynamic between the Trace/Singleton duo, introducing Noakes gradually into the programme.

Noakes himself at first found television intimidating, he remembered: “This glass eye, the camera, stripped me naked. I actually shook with fear, the voice tremoring as I said the words. The first few months were quite terrifying.”

While Trace was very much in the style of old-school BBC presenters, Noakes portrayed himself as a down-to-earth action man. For example, in a piece on the decline of steam trains, introduced by Trace from the studio, the camera cut to a scene of Noakes climbing up onto the footplate of the Flying Scotsman locomotive, where he is soon to be seen with coal shovel in hand, stoking the boiler.

Peter Purves joined the team in 1967, creating what was arguably Blue Peter’s best-known lineup of Valerie Singleton, Purves and Noakes.

“Peter and me worked so well together, like Laurel and Hardy,” Noakes later said.

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The old actor’s adage about never performing with animals or children could not held true for the Blue Peter team. Both were an essential and integral part of the show, with pets having been introduced into the format very early on.

Purves looked after Petra, a mongrel who appeared from 1962 to 1977. Shep, a lively border collie, joined in 1971 and was looked after by Noakes for many years. The cry “Get down Shep!”, in response to the unruly dog’s jumping, became a catchphrase and the theme of a 1978 hit song by the Barron Knights.

It wasn’t only domestic animals that appeared on Blue Peter. A visit from London Zoo by Lulu the elephant in 1969 inadvertently resulted in one of the funniest pieces of children’s television ever, where a hapless zookeeper is dragged around the studio by the baby elephant, spraying urine and dung in their wake.

Noakes, Singleton and Purves are seen hysterical with laughter.

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In 1973 the RAF Falcons asked Noakes if he would like to make a freefall jump. He became the first civilian in Britain to perform a five-mile freefall, gaining himself a place in the Guinness Book of Records, and was the first television presenter in Britain to talk to a camera while falling midair.

A 1977 episode of Blue Peter saw the ever-intrepid Noakes climbing Nelson’s column, without harness or other safety gear. Remembering the point at which he reached the ledge around the top of the column, he said “Of all my climbs last year’s ascent of Nelson’s column is the one I’ll never forget... I found myself literally hanging from the ladder with nothing at all beneath me...”

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Noakes left Blue Peter the following year, after twelve years on the show and continued with his series Go With Noakes – together with Shep – which ran for five seasons from 1976 to 1980.

Here he built on the man-of-action image he had already developed, taking part in aerobatics, rowing and motor racing and always choosing a different means of transport to get around the country.

Four years after leaving Blue Peter he and his wife Vicky set sail in their yacht to travel the world. Their adventure ended abruptly when the boat was wrecked in a hurricane.

They tried once again in 1984 and had intended to visit Majorca for just three days, before deciding to stay there for good, settling in Andratx. Noakes returned briefly to television in the ITV series Mad About Pets, which debuted in 1998, taking to the road with Sarah Matravers and Malcolm Jeffries in search of people with strange pets.

In recent years he had been affected by Alzheimer’s disease. In June 2015 he went missing from his home but was spotted by a police helicopter and rescued from a storm drain into which he had fallen. His wife confirmed then that he had been suffering from Alzheimer’s for “some years”.

The former editor of Blue Peter, Biddy Baxter, told The Independent: “During his twelve Blue Peter years John enthralled and inspired millions of children all over Britain. His impact on the audience was colossal, whether he was making his record-breaking five-mile freefall jump with the RAF Falcons, bathing the Blue Peter baby or cooking Star Wars Stew. A true television hero!”

John Noakes, television presenter, born 6 March 1934, died 28 May, 2017