As a child in Leicestershire in the 1940s, Biddy Baxter was a devoted reader of the work of Enid Blyton. She sent the creator of Noddy and The Famous Five a fan letter and was so delighted to receive an answer that she replied with follow-up questions. To her dismay, the response was identical to the first.
This sense of being let down by an adulated adult proved formative. When Baxter, who has died aged 92, was in charge of Blue Peter, the long-running children’s show that she essentially created, she introduced an alphabetical card index – that most efficient pre-digital database – to ensure that viewers received personalised replies.
That innovation reflected the gentle side of her professional persona. Some presenters on the show complained of a darker side – domineering, dictatorial – but, if true, that editorial insistence reflected the extraordinary extent to which she was Blue Peter and Blue Peter was her.
It has been rare in the history of broadcasting for one person to mould and own a programme for so long. For 26 years (23 of them as editor) at Blue Peter, she was keeper of the flame and and anyone seen as threatening its glow – staff, senior management, TV critics – was at risk of being burned.
Baxter’s forcefulness may also have reflected the tactics required of a relatively rare powerful woman at the BBC in her time. The corporation was initially less male than many vintage British institutions – Lord Reith, the first director general, appointed three female heads of department in the 1920s – but the balance had shifted by the time Baxter joined in 1955. (As late as 1985, an internal report found that the male-female balance in senior positions was 159 to six.) Tellingly, when Baxter informed the careers department at Durham University that she sought a BBC career, she was steered towards secretarial or receptionist posts rather than the production jobs she envisaged.
First employed as a studio manager in radio, she soon graduated to producing before, in 1962, being given a temporary transfer to TV due to a staffing crisis. (Something similar happened to David Attenborough, underlining the extent to which TV, in its early decades, was an accidental, undervalued medium.) When Baxter was given a permanent Blue Peter contract in November 1962, the programme (created by John Hunter Blair) had been running for four years. She made it into one of the most distinctive and significant broadcast brands, changing her own life and those of tens of millions of British children across many generations.
Baxter introduced or popularised all the most celebrated elements – the Blue Peter badge for viewer achievement; the pets (most notably, the mongrel Petra and the border collie Shep); the presenters’ summer holiday to film reports in a foreign location; and the “makes”, in which a dolls house or fort was created from everyday family refuse such as cereal packets and washing-up liquid bottles.
As a perfectionist, Baxter was irritated that the most attention resulted from things going wrong: a girl guides’ campfire threatening to burn down the studio, or Lulu the baby elephant, who copiously urinated and defecated before treading on the foot of the presenter John Noakes and dragging her zoo keeper through the mess.
Although from a generation raised on the wireless, Baxter (like Attenborough) had an instinctive understanding of how television could and should work. The catchphrase associated with the makes – “Here’s one I made earlier,” as the presenter pulled a complete model from under the table – was a practical solution to the time constraints of a 15-minute programme (later lengthened to 25 minutes) now routinely used by craft and cookery shows. Another link phrase, “And now for something completely different” (later satirised by Monty Python), originated in the sudden jumps of subject that were a feature of the series.
Baxter’s reputation inside and outside the BBC for tetchiness partly resulted from her fierce defence of Blue Peter’s legacy. Baxter was infuriated by claims that there had been two Petras (the second substituted when the first one died) and that she sacked the presenter Christopher Trace in 1967 for getting divorced and Michael Sundin in 1985 for being gay. Baxter always insisted that the two hosts were shown the door for being difficult with the crew or unpopular with viewers and that, before Petra, an unnamed puppy had died of distemper.
The concept of the presenters being a big brother or sister to the viewers (the target age was six to 14) meant that they were replaced as they aged. By 1988, it seemed anomalous to some that a 55-year-old was editing the leading BBC children’s show and it was perhaps convenient to both sides that Baxter resigned when her husband, the musical educationalist John Hosier, took a job in Hong Kong. However, on returning to the UK, she was tapped as an adviser to director generals for her sharp TV brain. The increasing marginalisation of Blue Peter due to technological trends – it is now screened weekly on a niche channel – was painful to her in later life.
Strikingly, at a time when TV was considered disposable even within the industry – few shows were archived due to the cost and space of doing so – Baxter understood the significance of what she was doing, insisting on every show from the mid-60s onward being recorded. It was a declaration that Blue Peter mattered and, largely thanks to her, it did.
