Biddy Baxter: Blue Peter's formidable editor dies aged 92

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Link: Biddy Baxter: Blue Peter's formidable editor dies aged 92 - BBC News

 

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Long-serving Blue Peter editor Biddy Baxter, who turned the children's show into a television institution, has died at the age of 92.

 

Over more than two decades, she introduced generations of children to the pleasures of sticky-backed plastic, on-screen pets, presenters' adventures and charity appeals - a recipe that stood the test of time.

 

She was also passionate about getting her viewers involved in the programme, long before audience participation became an industry mantra.

 

But during her tenure, which lasted from 1965 to 1988, she also gained a reputation as a formidable figure - a tyrant who fell out with presenters and jealously guarded the Blue Peter brand.

 

Make do and mend

 

Joan Maureen Baxter was born in Leicester in May 1933. Her father was the director of a sportswear company and her mother a pianist.

 

There were too many Joans in her class at school, so a nickname was made up on the spot.

 

Her upbringing during the war instilled in Biddy an ability to make do and mend, which later became part of the Blue Peter ethos.

 

"My friends and I held bring-and-buy sales for the Spitfire fund and put on plays and concerts for the British Red Cross and Aid to France," she said...