You are in the Special Features section - Peter Purves, Blue Peter, Doctor Who

Peter: It all started when Johnnie Noakes and I left Blue Peter. We were invited to do pantomime. Paul Elliott asked us to do Cinderella and it's the only opportunity I ever get to work in the theatre! And I've done it ever since. After the first two I started directing and I've directed over thirty now. This year I am directing Wendi Peters (Coronation Street) in Snow White. 

Digger: It's a fantastic genre isn't it, pantomime? You've got the history obviously, but also there's the fact that there are jokes and lines aimed squarely at the adults that are over the children's heads but the children have plenty to enjoy.

Peter: Yes, I think you have to put something in for the adults. But the shows have to stay clean. I get very irritated by smutty comedians. It alienates the parents as well because they're embarrassed for their children. "What's that mean, mum?" It's not good.

Digger: How did you 'get into' acting and what/when was the defining moment that made you decide you were an actor?

Peter: I was about nine I think. I probably knew well before that that I wanted to be an actor, growing up in Blackpool. I went to lots of shows, mostly variety shows but also plays at the Grand Theatre. I saw all the big stars of the day because Blackpool had seventeen theatres at that time. 

Digger: Seventeen? Good grief! 

Peter on Doctor Who 

and John Noakes on Blue Peter

Peter: ..... I'd go to the shows for kids on the pier on Saturday mornings and occasionally I'd get the opportunity to take part. I was always the first on stage. It was a showing off thing.

Digger: Was Robin Hood on telly at the time with Richard Greene? 

Peter: No, we didn't have telly then. I'm very old! (Digger laughs) We got our first TV in 1953 to watch the Coronation and the cup final.

Digger: Oh, you're one of THOSE families! I've heard about them.

Peter: What was I?.......I was fourteen in 1953......

Digger: So it was a great time to be growing up in Blackpool?

Peter: ... Absolutely. Stanley Matthews was at his peak. I went to school with Jimmy Arnfield, who unfortunately has got mouth cancer. It's rather sad............... so school plays started me off and from then I wanted to be on the stage. That's the be all and end of it. As soon as I realised people could make a living from it, that's what I wanted to do. I remember being laughed at by my elocution teacher at school. "What do you want to be?" "An actor." "Ha ha. Fine!" And then he proceeded to put on rather bad mini productions of Shakespeare.

Digger: I'm sure he didn't get much further whereas you showed him a thing or two, didn't you?

Peter: Being an elocution teacher in Blackpool was hardly the pinnacle, was it?

Digger: The irony was that in the early sixties film and TV were falling over themselves for accents with all the kitchen sink dramas. 

Peter: Oh yeah, yeah, funnily enough when I started acting I didn't have much of an accent, I forced it away. I've got a bit of an accent but it's probably nothing like as strong as it was when I was at school. I consciously didn't speak with an accent. My grandmother spoke beautiful English. She used to stop me flattening my vowels. I'd say "Bla-a-ackpool" and she'd say "No, it's Blackpool."

Digger: Who were/are your acting inspirations, both male and female?

Peter: Well..............Marlon  Brando. On the Waterfront was probably the most inspirational thing I've ever seen. Em..... oh dear, it's very difficult!..... Funnily enough I loved Eve Marie Saint in the same movie. Funny how I grew up seeing and enjoying lots of movies - I mean I was very small when I saw Gone With The Wind. 

Digger: That was from 1939.

Peter: Well, I didn't see it in 1939 as I was a bit young!.... Obviously people like Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot....

Peter with his Newfoundland, Kent

Peter as Steven Taylor in Doctor Who 

and with Val and John on Blue Peter

Digger: They had some very sexy ladies in those days. 

Peter: Absolutely. And then early on contemporary people like John Hurt who came out of drama school and was two or three years older than me I think. And I was always impressed with him. And Bill Hartnell in his way, he made a number of good movies. This Sporting Life with Richard Harris. All of these people come to mind although I've never been a hero worshipper - I'd just get on and do it myself anyway. But things like On The Waterfront I thought "I wanna be that, I wanna be a film star."

Digger: Gaining fame as a Doctor Who assistant and then as a presenter on Blue Peter, what were the positives and negatives of being hugely famous nationally?

Peter: There weren't many negatives really. The press didn't intrude much. 

Digger: Anneke Wills said the same, she said we weren't bothered when we went into a pub. 

Peter: Absolutely right. The fame game had not started then and the cult of celebrity. Which is just as well because that gets in the way of doing good work. You want to be known for the work rather than you.

Digger: What are your enduring memories of Doctor Who?

Peter: Oh, I enjoyed a lot of it. It was hard work - we did them in a week and with all the technical requirements of it which were actually greater then than now. They do them in short takes these days but we'd start rehearsing on the Monday, do a technical rehearsal with the technical boffins, lighting and sound man and various studio personnel and the producer and director (who'd obviously been there all week) on the Friday. And on the Saturday you'd rehearse in the studio all day, camera rehearsals with a break for tea or dinner and then we recorded it Saturday night without breaks. The only time we had a break was if we were bringing the Tardis in or out. The 'Special Effect'!! (Digger laughs.) And the production levels were so huge then because the director had to be quite brilliant. It's not like a director nowadays where they shoot it once and then shoot it from another angle and then another and then cuts his best bits together. That's how they do it. He had to know the shots beforehand and he knew if it was a close-up, a big close-up, a two-shot, a three-shot, a group shot or whatever. And of course our wide shots were never that wide. It was important because the cameramen had to know which lens to use, they had a turret on the front of their camera with four lenses on it. When the camera wasn't being used they had to adjust to the next lens they needed. They were virtually the original cameras with very slow lenses and fixed focus.

The Chuckle Brothers

Digger: I remember those cameras on the intro to Grandstand. Programmes from that time did tend to be very close-up didn't they? 

Peter: They had to be. And consequently, your sets were very small. What was the point of having a big set? In those days the sets were mostly, or seemed mostly cardboard. They didn't move all the time like they did on Crossroads, but they were on the rickety side.

Digger: They're getting confused with Crossroads. Someone did some research on hundreds of hours of tape of Doctor Who and found five seconds of wobbly sets.

Peter: Yeah, yeah, that's about right.  

Digger: How much fun was it being on Blue Peter and how would you describe your fellow presenters? What were your funniest moments? What were your scariest? If you'd like to take this as..........

Peter: A general blanket Blue Peter question?! To actually start doing it was absolutely terrifying. It was live, when the music started I rather wished I hadn't signed the contract. (Digger laughs) It was that scary. 

Digger: Val had been around for a while with Christopher Trace. 

Peter: Oh yes, Val had been there quite a while and Johnnie but he never got any better at remembering his lines and all that. He was always hopeless.  

Digger: Which was part of his charm.

Peter: Exactly. And noone ever rebuked him for it or should they. And my position was that I arrived and nobody explained that I had been engaged as the heavy foil to his action man. It would have made no difference as I still would have taken the job but I was a bit disappointed when I realised it. I would have liked a bit more of the action. 

Digger: Have you got that sort of physical courage?  

Peter: Em.........yes, not quite the same as Johnnie. I don't think he had any fear. I don't think he thought about the dangers whereas I thought about them and then did it. Johnnie had a fear of one thing and that was horses. There were a couple of films where I stood in for him. 

Digger: I can remember that famous one they used to do every year on the boat where the cadets would climb up the masts to the crow's nest. 

Peter: I couldn't have done that. I wouldn't have done that. You see, John is small, five feet eight inches or something like that and I'm six feet and big guys like me don't do things like gymnastics. They tend to be lighter and more compact if you like. I used to do all the rock climbing films and drove racing cars and things like that. The person who's remembered for doing all that is Johnnie because he did some spectacular ones. Like climbing Nelson's column. That was seriously scary. We both turned down a submarine escape and said we don't want to do that. I turned it down because I thought I would have trouble with equalising the pressure on my ears, even though I'm a good swimmer. I got on very well with Johnnie, very well with Val and very well with Lesley. We had a good time and a good rapport and I think it showed.

Digger: What were your funniest moments? 

Peter: Well, the elephant! That was brilliant - it was live in the studio and you can hear tittering and see some camera shake as well. There were lots of funny moments on the programme and we had some good laughs. One or two funny films that the producers ultimately frowned upon. Sergeant Major Hutton from the parachute regiment - we did a film about orienteering and we did a film about being a waiter so we did a film called the waiter's orienteering race with Sergeant Major Hutton appearing out of trees saying "That way!" and then a camel and a couple of bunny girls from the Playboy club turned up. It was hated by the producers but everyone who saw it that I heard from said it was the BEST film we had ever done. 

Digger: How would you describe swinging London in the 60s, what are your happiest recollections of that period and who were the most interesting people you met?

Jimmy Greaves		Marlon Brando
Charlie Cairoli		Marilyn Monroe

Peter: Crikey! Well they say if you can remember the sixties you weren't there. Well I can remember the sixties. It was a great time to be in London - the music scene was fantastic. I've never been a clubber - actually that's not true I used to go to jazz clubs but that was in the late 50s. I enjoyed Humph and I'd go along to the Albert Hall and bands like Creedence Clearwater Revival and to see Clapton, Cream, Steppenwolf, Delaney and Bonnie on tour. Just great, great bands. My favourite bands - I never liked Dylan when he was acoustic but I liked him when he went electric although the aficionados said "Ugh!" and he has one of the best backing bands called The Band and they made one of my top twenty all-time favourite movies called The Last Waltz which Martin Scorsese directed and it's about their last concert in L.A. If you've never seen that movie it's a movie to see. The names that are in that concert are fantastic. The 60s were enjoyable - I was 27 in 1967 when I started on Blue Peter and I left it just after my 40th birthday. These days they start it much younger.  

Digger: People like me we grew up with you guys and you were like members of the family. The first thing you'd do when coming home from school was switching on Blue Peter. 

Peter: You have to bear in mind that there were only three channels then and if you missed it you couldn't see it again and your friends would all be talking about what you'd missed. It was never repeated. At that time people couldn't record things. I remember demonstrating the first domestic video recorder on Blue Peter in about 1976. 

Digger: How many Blue Peters were wiped by the BBC in one of those 'culls'? 

Peter: I don't think any. Most of Doctor Who was wiped - about thirty of my forty four episodes were wiped but I don't think any Blue Peter. Much of our stuff was recorded on two-inch tape and when we went to colour it was one-inch tape and much easier to store. The old two-inch tapes they used to wipe because they'd re-used them. It wasn't just profligate, but yes in retrospect it was. Our archives disappeared - wonderful things like a brilliant series that Alan Bennett did in the sixties called On The Margin of which not one frame remains. It was stunningly funny stuff. He is an absolute genius and became a great playwright but at the time was a great performer. 

Digger: So what are your biggest accomplishments to-date and what are your biggest regrets?

Peter: I don't rate my accomplishments at all really. I was delighted to do ten and a half years of Blue Peter. I was thrilled to present Kick Start. I am delighted to still be presenting Crufts after 30 years. There's a lot of things I've enjoyed and had fun with but I don't think I have any great accomplishments. I've been lucky enough to have a career in the business I wanted to do, that's my greatest achievement. I don't think there's anything I'd change. There are perhaps one or two bridges I burned that I shouldn't have but I don't worry about those. I never look back anyway, I only talk about these things when I'm asked. 

Digger: Do you get paid when they show this elephant scene from Blue Peter?

Peter: Yes.