Pioneering Blue Peter editor Biddy Baxter dies aged 92
As editor of the popular children's programme between 1965 and 1988, she introduced viewer engagement segments including UK-wide appeals and the famous Blue Peter badge, encouraging children to send letters, pictures and programme ideas.
Former presenter on the show Peter Duncan remembered her as "a true force of nature".
He told BBC Breakfast: "For me, she was a wonderful, inspiring person, and not just for her presenters, but for what she got onto BBC television, and the kind of things she projected about young people.
"She was a true enthusiast and a supporter of young people."
He added: "She was truly a one-off within the BBC. I think that if something upset her, she would trail off to see the DG (director-general) and tell him what she thought, really. So we need people like that now more than ever."
Born Joan Maureen Baxter in Leicester to Bryan Reginald Baxter and Dorothy Vera (nee Briers), she studied at St Mary's College, Durham University, where she first encountered recruitment flyers for the BBC.
She joined the British public broadcaster as a radio studio manager in 1955, and was promoted to producing Schools Junior English programmes and Listen With Mother, before making the transition to television.
Baxter took over as editor of Blue Peter in 1965, several years after the programme's launch.
She was seen as a formidable figure and some have criticised her conduct, including former presenter Yvette Fielding, who claimed she was bullied on the show and said Baxter had been "incredibly cruel".
Baxter served as editor for more than two decades, winning two Bafta awards and receiving 12 nominations.
Upon her departure from the show in 1988, she was awarded the programme's highest honour, a gold Blue Peter Badge.
"I didn't want to do anything other than Blue Peter," she told The Guardian in 2013.
"I certainly never wanted to be an administrator or in charge of anything.
"It was an absolute dream and I never wanted to do anything else.
"It was a terrific time to be in television."
She continued to act as a consultant to BBC director-generals Lord Birt and Michael Checkland after her departure, and received the special award at the Bafta Children's Awards in 2013.
Baxter was made an MBE in 1981 and founded a trust to enable gifted music scholars to pursue postgraduate studies in 2003.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Irish Sun
an hour ago
- The Irish Sun
Ibiza ‘Final Boss' Jack Kay parties at £9m mansion in Ibiza with bikini girls & dwarf from Lamine Yamal's birthday party
IBIZA "Final Boss" Jack Kay has hosted a huge late night party with dozens of bikini girls and a dwarf from Lamine Yamal's birthday bash. The British social media megastar spent the weekend celebrating his new found fame at a £9million mansion in Ibiza. 8 Ibiza 'Final Boss' Jack Kay has hosted a huge late night party with dozens of bikini girls and a dwarf from Lamine Yamal's birthday bash Credit: Instagram 8 The British social media megastar spent the weekend celebrating his new found fame at a £9million mansion in Ibiza Credit: Instagram 8 Juan Alberto Duaso. one of five dwarfs at Yamal's birthday bash, dressed up like Jack for an appearance in Ibiza Credit: Instagram 8 Jack even took a dip in the mansion's swimming pool as he held a girl up on his shoulders Credit: Instagram Jack, 26, found viral fame last week when a video of him dancing on the party island racked up millions of views. His unique brown bob trim stole the show as he was quickly dubbed the "Ibiza Final Boss" for his raver style and look. The Newcastle-based lad was later flown out to Spain in a luxury £5million private jet with four of his mates to the upmarket Santa Eulalia region. There he stayed in the mega five-bedroom mansion, The Blue Stone Villa. Sat tucked away in the hills of Ibiza, the glitzy gaff comes with a large outdoor swimming pool, private chef and its own indoor nightclub. There's even a barbecue, DJ booth and state-of-the-art surround sound system with unrivalled privacy for all guests. Jack's new found fame was on full display on Saturday as he invited 100 of his fans, who he described as "charvas", to the villa. Popular DJs Deniz Menendez and Rsquared performed for the surging crowds all as Jack embraced the party vibes. Pictures show the tattooed Brit in a white vest and black shorts with his trademark shades and thick chain clutching a vape. Next to him stood several tanned, blonde beauties. Ibiza 'Final Boss' Jack Kay's barber tells ALL about viral star's legendary bob cut after his return from Spain Just 24 hours later, the partying continued for Jack as he hosted a second bumper event at the holiday home with a host of new mates. One of those who made an appearance has already made headlines this summer after he was a part of FC Barcelona star Yamine Yamal's 18th birthday party. The teen sensation landed himself in hot water and is reportedly facing a government investigation after he allegedly hired people with dwarfism to perform. Juan Alberto Duaso says he was one of five dwarfs at the bash with him now making an appearance alongside Jack in Ibiza. Duaso was filmed sporting a bowl cut wig and mirroring Jack as the influencer described him as a "mini" version of himself. A video of the pair dancing was captioned: "The final boss and the mini boss out tonight, see you soon." After Yamal's alleged stunt, disability rights groups ordered a crackdown on celebrities hiring people with dwarfism. Laws in Spain prohibit the public exposure or criticism of a person due to their disability if it is aimed at humiliating or mocking them for entertainment. 8 Jack spent the weekend celebrating his new found fame with drinks, women and his friends Credit: Instagram 8 Jack's fame kicked off when a video of him dancing in Ibiza went viral Credit: TikTok/@zerosixwestibiza 8 Jack has already landed a management company and a trip on a private jet in the wake of the new fame Credit: Instagram/@ In July, the Spanish government tightened these regulations with fines now reaching over £518,000. At the time Duaso responded by blasting rights groups for "taking away work" from dwarves. Footage from the Sunday night shenanigans show Duaso and Jack dancing around a bucket of drinks next to girls in bikinis and fellow Ibiza boys. A notable omission from the guest list across both nights was Jack's rumoured girlfriend Alisha Cook. Unimpressed Alisha, 23, is said to have pulled the plug on their relationship days into Jack's fateful Ibiza trip as she was sick of him partying with the lads, according to pals. The pair have reconciled in recent days - but Jack is still "skating on thin ice", according to sources speaking to the MailOnline. A friend said: "It's hard to believe that he's been branded the super king of Ibiza - the final boss - when she's been left on her own back here." Jack is enjoying a jam-packed schedule back on the party island after signing up with top celeb talent agency Neon Management. He joins the ranks of Joey Essex and Love Island's Harriet and Ronnie on their books. A source told The Sun: 'Signing up with the agency was a no-brainer given their past success and they've been inundated with requests for him already. Final Boss' barber spills the secrets behind the trim By Patrick Harrington ALI Kurbani, master-barber at B&D Barbers in Blaydon, Newcastle, welcomed Jack into the chair before he jetted back for a tour round Ibiza. He told the Sun that he was baffled to see his handiwork hitting the headlines. Ali said: "I have been doing this job a while now and this is amazing. "We have cut Jack's hair for around ten years and we didn't expect this." Ali, from Kurdistan, said that Jack has kept the same cut for a while. After wild speculation online about the style Jack requests - from Robin Hood to a bowl-cut or "short back and Battle of Hastings" - Ali gave us the truth. He said: "To get this style, Jack asks for a medium skin fade and then a bit of length of the top. But the key to creating the crisp Lego-like shape is to "keep the fringe sharp at the front," he said. B&D Barbers charges £26 for the Ibiza Boss special - but being a "very nice guy" Jack sometimes pays over the odds. Ali's cut said: "It made me very happy when I saw the video had gone viral but it was a shock. "I am very happy about it all and Jack is a very nice guy. "It is great to see this happen for our business. I think he is going to keep the style." "It all really blew up in a matter of hours so from TV shows to podcasts - the sky's the limit." Jack first shot to fame this week when a video of him grooving on the party island gained millions of views. With a shiny helmet of hair, a chunky gold chain, huge rave shades and bright white teeth - his look immediately caught attention. His lid has been compared to a range of pop-culture icons from Ringo Starr to Friar Tuck and a Lego man. A flood of memes followed - and the "Ibiza Final Boss" born. After becoming one of the most famous faces in Ibiza, Jack dramatically revealed his true identity in a video for The Ibiza Times. Sporting a thick Geordie accent, he declared: "I am the Ibiza final boss. Jack Kay. Get to know." Ibiza Final Boss in talks for huge ITV reality show THE Ibiza Final Boss has been in talks to join Big Brother after being inundated with TV offers. After taking the internet by storm, raver Jack Kay has taken on a top manager to handle the deluge of showbiz interest. His viral fame caught the eye of ITV2's Big Brother casting team and led to conversations about him joining the upcoming series. A source said: 'The Ibiza Final Boss has really captured the nation's imagination and is exactly the kind of character that makes for a fun Big Brother housemate. "Bosses had talks with his management, it is very late in the casting process for housemates but everyone thought worth a chat whether it be in time for this series, even as part of a task, or for the future. 'Jack's reps Neon Management have been inundated with offers for him so he's certainly going to be busy for at least the next few months. 'They've seen an unprecedented level of interest in him, and that's the nation loves him.' It comes after the lad revealed he was going on a nightclub tour to cash in on his fame.
Irish Times
an hour ago
- Irish Times
Fiction in Translation: The prisons we inhabit
In Good and Evil and Other Stories , (Picador, 192pp, £16.99) Samanta Schweblin once again proves herself to be one the most unsettling and incisive voices in contemporary fiction. The collection, translated by her long-time collaborator Megan McDowell, offers six stories that move from the heartbreaking to the surreal, and are all marked by a claustrophobia that is at once spatial, emotional and existential. While Schweblin's stories are marbled with the dreamlike and the inexplicable, her characters are profoundly human, trapped by relationships, by expectations, by their own spiralling thoughts. Welcome to the Club, the bitterly ironic story about a failed suicide attempt, quivers with tension and fear – not of death, but of the hum and bustle of mundane family life, of the dread inspired by a child asking 'Mommy, are you happy?'. In A Fabulous Animal, Elena, who is dying, calls an old friend she has not seen since she left Argentina, but what might have been just another casual conversation is haunted by the vision of a dying horse, and an accident that shattered both their lives. In the most devastating story, An Eye in the Throat, two parents care for a bright two-year-old who suffered a serious injury when he swallowed a battery. But it's not the panic and the anxiety of illness that leads to the collapse of the family, but a seemingly anodyne incident in which the boy wanders off. Years later, the father's phone still rings in the dead of night, but when he answers there is only the dead air on the other end of the line. This simple supernatural trope offers a brilliant example of Schweblin's ability to make the uncanny feel inevitable, to weave abject horror out of silence and fear and the haunting nature of unresolved guilt. McDowell's translation is exceptional, effortlessly capturing the dark poetry of Schweblin's prose like a series of whispered confessions, and preserving the oppressive tone and the strange tenderness of the original. READ MORE [ Samanta Schweblin's Fever Dream review: extraordinary work full of eerie menace Opens in new window ] Annah, Infinite (Tilted Axis Press, 345pp, £19.99) is not a translation in the customary sense, but is subtitled 'translated from the painting Annah la Javanaise " . Through her writings, poetry and exhibitions, the Indonesian polymath Khairani Barokka has spent more than a decade exploring Paul Gauguin's unsettling and disturbingly sexual portrait of a child that is all-too-often hailed as a masterpiece, with little consideration for the sitter. Little is known about Annah (and, as Barokka points out, like all nouns in Indonesian the name can be singular or plural, so Annah may be multiple, or infinite). Gauguin's art dealer, Ambroise Vollard, claims to have 'gifted' the child to the artist when she was 'about 13', and Annah was widely assumed to be Gauguin's lover. But the painting (now in a private collection) and its digital versions offer no information about this child historically described as 'Javanese', 'mulatto', 'mixed-race', 'Ceylonese', 'half-Indian, half-Malayan'. What Barokka explores in this dazzling, endlessly imaginative piece of non-fiction is Annah, a child, perhaps multiple children, who may have been she/he/they or dia – the gender-neutral Indonesian pronoun used for everyone. Through essay, poetry and image, she tries to understand who Annah might have been, considers their pain, the abusive nature of their relationship, the unbridled license afforded to 'artistic genius', and in particular to men. Through this study of a single canvas and its subject, Barokka presents a brilliant book that defies classification, one that delves into linguistics, colonial history, queer theory and memoir, and is by turns lyrical, angry, tender and pained, harking back to the pioneering work of Linda Nochlin and John Berger, but blazing a new trail that is as unexpected as it is enthralling. A single image is also the inspiration for Capitalists Must Starve by Park Seolyeon translated by Anton Hur. The photograph, taken during the Japanese colonial occupation of Korea, shows Kang Juryong, a striking worker sitting on the roof of the Pyongwon rubber factory in Pyongyang in 1931. From the power of this image and the scant details known about the historical figure of a pioneering female activist, Seolyeon fashions a novel that is spare and stark, but shot through with joy, love and sensuality. Capitalists Must Starve begins at the end, in a cell, where Kang Juryong, an imprisoned union activist now on hunger strike, attempts to lift her bruised and beaten body so she can turn her back to the approaching footsteps in a last gesture of defiance. From here, Seolyeon takes us back to West Gando (the Korean name for Manchuria), to the day when, at the age of 20 (already considered too old to be a bride), she was married off to a man-boy of 15. In arranging the wedding, the Jeonbin's parents hoped to prevent their son running away to join the Liberation Army. In this, they failed: Seolyeon delicately and tenderly evokes the passionate conversations and the growing friendship between the mismatched bride and groom that gradually grows into love. Juryong has no wish to stop her husband achieving great things, and when he leaves to join the rebels, she goes with him. Though at first, Juryong is left to cook and tend for the men, she is befriended by Baek Gwangwoon and proves an audacious and ingenious comrade during dangerous missions. Humiliated by Juryong's successes, Jeonbin sends his wife away, though she briefly returns when a comrade comes to tell her that her husband is dying. Having been widowed at a young age, Juryong is horrified to discover that her parents plan to marry her off again, so they might own their house and land, Juryong leaves for Pyongyang. But her determination to be a 'modern girl' founders when poverty dictates that she take work in a rubber factory. Juryong's gradual politicisation and her innate sense of justice are simply and powerfully portrayed – and when the strike led by workers to protest against a decrease in pay is brutally crushed, her decision to climb on to the factory roof and stage a hunger strike seems as inevitable as it is courageous. Hur's taut, masterful translation wisely refuses to pander to what anglophone readers might not know, but maintains the brittle tension of Seolyeon's spare prose, and brilliantly succeeds in conjuring a time, a place and a movement and a pioneering activist who became a catalyst for change from within her cell. [ Translated fiction reviews: the best of China's incredibly deep storytelling tradition Opens in new window ] Imprisonment seems to be a theme in this month's choices. Later this year, Dubliners will have the opportunity to hear the Kurdish poet İlhan Sami Çomak, the first honorary member of the Dublin Book Festival. But when Words that Walk through Walls (Palewell Press, 121pp £12) was published recently, such an event was impossible, since İlhan was a prisoner before he became a poet. Arrested in 1993, at the age of 21, he spent 30 years as a political prisoner in Turkey. While in jail, he published eight volumes of what Ruth Padel describes as 'lyric poems of astonishing beauty, vitality and strength', which garnered numerous prizes. Led by his long-time editor Caroline Stockford, with Kelly Davis Words that Walk through Walls is a luminous, achingly poignant conversation. Writers from around the world (among them Theo Dorgan, Celia de Fréine and Leeanne Quinn) address poems to İlhan, who replies to some with poems of his own. It is a powerful, compelling, often uplifting collection that brings together a host of poets and translators, one that encapsulates, reflects upon and frames İlhan's shimmering work and his resilience as he asks: How much of flight is wind, how much the bird? How much the stubborn call of freedom? Branches follow the logic of light and the natural miracle of reaching. We must reach out.
Irish Examiner
4 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
Mark Chapman will be first of new trio to host Match of the Day after Lineker
Mark Chapman will present the BBC's first Match of the Day of the Premier League season on Saturday. Chapman is part of a three-person presenting lineup alongside Kelly Cates and Gabby Logan, who will work on rotation this season after the departure of former lead presenter Gary Lineker. It is understood Cates will host a programme on Wednesday of Uefa Super Cup highlights and a look ahead to the new Premier League season, while Logan will host Match of the Day's Sunday night programme this week. The BBC announced on 15 January that Cates, Chapman and Logan would be the new presenting team. It came after weeks of speculation about who would take over from Lineker when he said last year that he was stepping down. The 64-year-old had long intended the final Match of the Day of last season, on 26 May, to be his last, but he was planning to stay on to front the BBC's live coverage of the FA Cup and 2026 World Cup. However, he announced he was bringing forward his departure after a social media row when he shared a post relating to the Gaza conflict that contained an antisemitic symbol. Lineker, the BBC's highest-paid presenter and host of Match of the Day since 1999, apologised unreservedly for the post but said it was 'best for all concerned' if he left completely. Cates has been a presenter with Sky Sports since rejoining the broadcaster in 2016, fronting coverage of the Premier League. Chapman has been broadcasting for more than 25 years and has been a regular presenter of the BBC's Sunday night Match of the Day. Logan became one of the first female sports anchors to break into terrestrial television and has covered several Olympic Games, the World Cup and the Commonwealth Games during her time at the BBC. She presented Match of the Day in Lineker's absence and was part of the BBC's coverage of the past two Women's Euros in 2022 and this summer.
