Secrets of Blue Peter

WHEN he was 17, Alex Leger’s ambition was to travel and work all over the world. What he didn’t imagine was that he’d achieve that through a television programme.

He did voluntary service overseas in the British Solomon Islands. He studied industrial engineering and management sciences at university. And he joined the army, but left after two years as “it was not really very exciting”.

Applying to the BBC and being taken on as a management consultant hardly seemed unlikely to fulfil his wish for a travelling, outdoor occupation.

Then he moved into TV production on the BBC’s flagship children’s programme Blue Peter, under fabled editor Biddy Baxter. He’d found his niche. For nearly four decades he travelled the world producing and directing location reports, many of which have gone down in TV history.

One of his earliest adventures in 1977 was John Noakes climbing Nelson’s Column in London’s Trafalgar Square to scrape pigeon droppings off the admiral’s head.

“That was a very lucky break. I’d only been on the show two years, mainly directing the live studio shows, and had only just started doing film reports for the programme,” he recalls.

“Someone spotted there was a ladder up Nelson’s Column and said we must make a film about it. I was the only one in the office and realised it could be a cracking film.”

Although every measure was taken to protect presenters on assignments, this was before the days of stringent health and safety measures.

Daredevil Noakes turned down the offer of a safety line as he embarked on the 140ft vertical climb up the London landmark. Leger tried climbing, but only got halfway up before deciding it was foolish to continue.

“John was taught how to rest 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 on to the plinth,” he says.

There was another problem. Leger received a call from the sound recordist that the recording was unbroadcastable. Leger had to ask Noakes to do the final leg of the climb again.

“To my surprise and relief John complied without a murmur of complaint. Not for the first time I marvelled at his courage,” he writes in his behind-the-scenes book about his time on the show Blue Peter: Behind The Badge.

HE joined the programme when Noakes, Peter Purves and Lesley Judd were the presenters. Over the years he worked with, and mentored, every one of the 30 or so presenters who followed them, including the current team of Helen Skelton and Barney Harwood.

Among the many films he shot were Simon Groom reporting from famine-hit Ethiopia on the fundraising response from more than 800,000 viewers across the country. Caron Keating in Cambodia, fronting an appeal to bring aid to the former Killing Fields, and then interviewing prime minister Margaret Thatcher on the genocide for the young audience.

He filmed Tim Vincent on gruelling winter survival exercises in Norway, including arctic immersion training, with the Parachute Regiment.

He was there when Janet Ellis, and later Simon Thomas, did freefalling jumps with the RAF Falcons parachute display team.

Leger did the training with Ellis. “She said during her audition that she’d do it because, of course, she didn’t really want to. She looked a bit worried so I said I’d do the first two jumps with her. We had four days training with a static line, which I was filming. At the end of the day I had to do the whole day’s training, in an hour, to catch up.”

That worked out in the end, but another assignment at Catterick Garrison proved one of the hardest when Matt Baker and Simon Thomas underwent a two-week Royal Marines Parachute Regiment selection process. Baker summed it up by saying, “We knew it was going to be hell.” He wasn’t disappointed. “That was a very hard film for them to do and probably the hardest for the producers as well,” says Leger.

There was one test he didn’t think a Blue Peter presenters should take. “They tested aggression with three minutes bouts in which they pair them up and they beat the hell out of each other,” he says.

There were often unforeseen problems. Like a puncture while driving in the Andes where the change in air pressure led to some of the crew hallucinating.

In the Solomon Islands, where there had a been civil unrest, he stayed at a rest house with local monks in the belief that no one would open fire on a religious order. They heard gunfire during the night and next morning discovered a house 400 yards away had been attacked and people killed in a neighbouring house.

ANOTHER visit to the Solomon Islands nearly ended badly for Leger on a recce.

He was exploring in a fibreglass canoe with two brothers. “It was a lovely day when we set out. By the afternoon, there was a very black cloud on the horizon. I thought if we went for it we’d get back before the bad weather hit us.

“We got halfway across and couldn’t see more than 20 yards in either direction because of the rain. We were bailing out the canoe by hand.

Then the outboard motor conked out. In failing daylight we were in a little canoe with no power and the rain was horrendous.

“The brothers managed to get the motor working and during a lull in the rain we raced for the lights of the yacht club beach in the distance and made it in half-an-hour. Then it poured until daybreak.”

An ideal Blue Peter presenter, he feels, is not someone who is super-confident but someone mildly rattled and slightly anxious, but able to carry out the assignment.

You could never predict how they’d react in situations.

Caron Keating particularly impressed him on the Cambodia trip. “We had the most horrendous journey in a vehicle out of Phnom Penh.

It was getting dark and they were difficult roads at night. As we drove along I noticed the driver was weeping – he was so scared and thought we would die in a minute. We lived in the most appalling conditions for a week making the film, but Caron was absolutely fine.”

Leger, 65, retired from Blue Peter when the BBC moved the children’s department to Salford.

“It was the right time because people coming into the system are much younger. I realised the presenters were treating me like their dad. When Matt Baker and Simon Thomas were offering to carry my equipment boxes it was time to move on,” he says.

He didn’t leave the programme behind entirely as he’s written the book – partly memoir, mostly the story of 36 amazing and action-packed years on the show.

• Blue Peter: Behind The Badge is published by Lauren Productions, £20 (plus postage and package) bluepeterbook.co.uk and Amazon