Is anyone else old enough to think John Noakes…

[CurlewKate]

…when they watch the sliding downhill very fast bits of the Winter Olympics?

DH was telling our GD about him this evening.

When I was a little kid I lived in Scotland and we were driving through the Scottish highlands on this tiny little road and we saw him coming over a hill with Shep and my Dad realised we’d driven past the Blue Peter cameras filming them.
I’m still ridiculously pleased with that story!

Ah the Beeb before health and safety. Loved it. They all diced with peril.
The bobsleigh and Nelson's Column were madness.
John Noakes was awesome. He also signed my copy of The Flight of the Magic Clog and was very lovely and fun when I met him.
Then Peter Duncan was a slightly less exciting version.

To be fair, I was only about 7 years old and also had a thing for Tom Baker 😂

Oh I had a thing for Tim baker - he came to our school date and we mobbed him 😂😂

Hurrah! Matt Weston has just won an Olympic Gold medal for the tin tray singles skeleton event today. Well done him.

Some of those stunts were unbelievable!! Not even a whiff of health and safety.
I remember Lesley Judd in the sea on a boat climbing up a rope onto (i think) a lighthouse . No safety measures, no hard hat Im not sure she even had a life jacket. It was crazy and very windy It sometime s pops up on those crazy stunt programmes. I also remember John Noakes climbing up Nelsons column on a very rickety looking ladder 🤯😵‍💫

The most hair-raising thing a Blue Peter presenter ever did was when Valerie Singleton interviewed Oliver Reed.

😂😂😂

god on a kids programme

waa he drunk?

Yes he was, and no it wasn't on a kids programme thankfully!

I think it was the wild curly hair that caught my eye. That and his ability to despatch intergalactic baddies 😂

I was just about to say the same thing. Even thinking about that programme gives me palpitations and vertigo!

Oh I loved the scarf!

he came in costume!

Was he ever not drunk?

Surely having sex with Peter Purves was more hair raising than that, although admittedly that wasn't on camera 😂

Agreed, I saw that again recently and it's still one of the most scary things I've ever seen on TV, especially the bit close to top where the ladder angled out..

The Flight of the Magic Clog!! I forgot all about that!

Ah, I miss those days!
I remember JN doing formation skydiving, too, poor bastard.

Did she?? I thought she was in a relationship with Joan Armatrading? I know she could also have been having sex with Peter Purves. But given the choice….

It was years before BP took any notice if H&S rules! Didn't Sophie Ellis Bextor's mum break her pelvis sky diving or something similar?

What? Valerie Singleton and Joan Armatrading? Wow we were so innocent 😆

Yes, John Noakes and I was desperate to have a go on the Cresta run for years after seeing it. I’d still like a go tbh. But not on a tea tray.

That seems to be a myth re JA unfortunately.

I recently rewatched Nelson’s Column, normal clothes, no safety gear at all, how he and the cameraman survived I will never know.

I always refer to it as ‘John Noake’s Column ‘ .
He climbed it for two different episodes of BP
. The second one is on YouTube . Don’t think anyone could watch it without getting vicarious butterflies 😬.
Is a fascinating bit of footage - that bloke cleaning off pigeon poo with one hand and holding a cigarette in the other …seems such an odd thing to risk one’s life for .
On that second episode JK had to do it twice because there was something amis with thr film in the camera I believe .
Anyway - how on Earth did the cameraman climb up there with one of those dirty great 70s cameras ?
Different times …