REVIEW: Once Seen on Blue Peter (Assembly Rooms) ★★★

Blue Peter is 60 years old this year. This show, devised by past presenter, Tim Vincent, is a celebration of the famous TV show for children that brings together familiar faces of past presenters including Vincent, Peter Purves, Janet Ellis, Peter Duncan and Mark Curry.

The stage is set in a Green Room where the presenters are gathered awaiting their moment to collect an award to celebrate Blue Peter. While waiting, they bicker about who should collect the award and reminisce about their time presenting the show with the help of clips shown on a screen behind them. The premise makes for a slightly awkward setting but once these seasoned presenters got going, I didn’t want them to stop talking.

Anyone who remembers Blue Peter from their childhood will be delighted by this trip down memory lane and the reminders of the daring deeds the presenters took on in the name of education and entertainment for their young viewers in the years before health and safety was of such concern and the BBC thought nothing of dangling a young presenter off the top of Big Ben or flinging another out of a plane.

Reviewed by Rhiannon Evans

INTERVIEW: Tim Vincent brings ONCE SEEN ON BLUE PETER to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival

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