Peter Purves on his affair with Valerie Singleton: ‘To be fair, it was only one night'

Telegraph

27-04-2025

Peter Purves noticed the smoke on the TV monitors first. 'They were showing a close up of the Girl Guides singing 'If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands' and not looking not too happy,' he tells me, sun streaming through the windows of his 500-year-old cottage in Suffolk where he has lived with his second wife Kathryn Evans, an actress, for more than 20 years. 'And then we turned and realised that the little fire was now quite a real one, and something would need to be done.'
Indeed: in what has become one of the most infamous moments in children's TV history, a live Girl Guide campfire-singing session in the Blue Peter studio in 1971 was suddenly threatening to engulf the Television Centre in flames. As black smoke filled the studio, Purves and his fellow presenters John Noakes and Valerie Singleton stood in front of the fire in a vain attempt to disguise what was happening, while the spluttering, coughing Guides gamely sang on.
'There was a fireman standing by in the wings, and I watched him smooth back his hair before picking up his extinguisher and rushing into shot,' remembers Purves with a chuckle. 'Of course, health and safety would never allow that today. Johnnie would never be allowed to climb Nelson's Column [in flares, without a harness, to clean off some pigeon poo, in 1977] that sort of thing. It was all very risky. You'd never get stuff like that on TV now.'
Purves, 86, and still sounding exactly like the debonair presenter who demonstrated the wonders of cordless phones and Ford V8 racing cars with the gung-ho enthusiasm of a nerdy science teacher to millions during his 11-year stint on Britain's longest-running children's TV programme, is lamenting the end of an era. Last month Blue Peter, which first aired on BBC One in 1958, announced it was ditching the live broadcast format to become a fully pre-recorded, watch-on-demand TV show.
It's a small but also seismic change, bringing down the final curtain on a golden epoch in children's entertainment epitomised by the show's plucky ambition, in which upright presenters with cut-glass accents took ridiculous risks on live TV, and in which things sometimes went spectacularly wrong. The moment Lulu the baby elephant refused to play ball and dragged her keeper to the ground while defecating all over the studio. The moment Val crashed a speed boat on the Thames. The moment Purves once dried up while live and had to request a script from the stage manager. Given how mad some of the stunts were – Valerie once took a lion with her to the shops – it's staggering how much in fact went right.
'You had to be very accurate,' says Purves who, along with Noakes and Singleton were known as the dream team, presenting without autocues or ear pieces throughout much of the 1970s and somehow surviving intact; Purves left the show in 1978. 'We didn't have the budget to not record live. I do think the edge goes off someone when they aren't under some degree of pressure, having to do it in the correct time and not waffling about and wasting shots.'
Purves, who was also the voice of Crufts for 41 years, until 2020, is trying his hardest not to lapse into 'things were so much better back then' nostalgia. 'I certainly can't comment on the professionalism of people working today in the business, even though I have views, because it's a totally different scene,' he says of an industry equally beset by budget problems but with seemingly less vision and definitely far greater technology at its disposal.
Nevertheless, it's not easy. Blue Peter still attracts around 100,000 viewers per episode but during the 1970s and 1980s, children up and down the land were practically brought up on its daring, often chaotic mix of factual entertainment, exotic on-location reports and epic DIY craft-making sessions. It was a time in which children collected milk bottle tops for charity, competed for Blue Peter badges and watched agape as Anthea Turner modelled a Thunderbirds Tracy Island out of yogurt pots – the episode proved so popular the BBC issued an instruction booklet. 'It insisted on not talking down to children,' says Purves, who was initially told off by the show's indomitable producer Biddy Baxter for being too 'school mastery'.
'We never asked for money. Biddy also believed that every child who watched it must be able to contribute in some way, particularly to the Blue Peter appeals, be it old plugs or old socks, whatever was lying around the house. Children never felt, oh I can't do that because I don't have the money. It was a brilliant vision – we were the first great recyclers. Even if it was your mum's birthday we showed them they could make her a card. Although I never did 'the makes'. I made a pig's ear once of an underwater city and I was never asked to do that again.'
Instead Purves demonstrated things, 'the more serious stuff,' he says, and 'items about dogs', while Noakes tended to do the daredevil stunts. Although Purves points out he did once walk the cable of the Forth Bridge without a carabiner and climbed Snowdonia in a snowstorm.
He was also known for his style, having ditched the 'Norwegian' knitted jumpers he'd been forced to wear when he first joined the show in 1967 ('I hated them. I stuck them out for nearly a year and then they let me wear what I wanted'). Instead he adopted what became his trademark sideburns and flamboyant shirts. 'I think I was even called a fashion icon at one point, which I was flattered by,' he says. Today he is in a rather more prosaic maroon jumper and slacks.
The show attracted its criticisms. 'Some would dismiss it as middle-class rubbish. But why couldn't it be middle class? Most people are middle class, basically. But there are lots of working class kids too and we encompassed them very well. We got involved in things children did or could do or would enjoy and they enjoyed it vicariously through us.'
For his part Purves had a whale of a time, particularly off camera, getting smashed on duty free Jack Daniels with Noakes while filming in Morocco ('I was convinced the next day I was going to be fired'), knocking back homemade hooch in Norway and perusing sex shops in Copenhagen with the camera man. Oh, and flirting with Valerie Singleton, with whom he had a brief fling. Singleton revealed the affair in 2008, saying she liked 'the pirate type. And men who give me what I call BSE – a big sexual experience.''
Purves beams a bit at this, like a Cheshire cat. 'To be fair it was only one night,' he says. 'And there was never any sexual tension on screen. We've remained great friends. Although we also used to fall out all the time. Val was/is extremely high maintenance. She always expected people to do things for her. She'd be sitting in the studio writing letters and call an assistant to 'get me an envelope'. Occasionally she would get under my skin. We were in Mexico once and we weren't speaking. We only spoke to each other through John, I can't remember why.'
Purves still works occasionally as an actor – he appeared in 41 episodes of Doctor Who as the Doctor's first companion Steven Taylor in 1965-66 and has often appeared in panto (including for years with Noakes before Noakes' death in 2017). Last year he toured in a production of A Christmas Carol with his friend and former Doctor Who star Colin Baker and hopes to do so again this year. He still adores dogs – during his stint he adopted the Blue Peter German Shepherd Petra – and currently owns three Daschunds, including a 14-week-old puppy. His house is beautiful, all Tudor beams and rackety staircases, elegantly decorated, with daffodils dancing in the garden, and a clock chiming every half hour.
At one point Kathryn, whom he met during a production of Cinderella in 1978 and who he married in 1982 – pops her head in to say hello. He met her while he was still married to his first wife, Gilly, whom he married in 1962 and with whom he has a son Matthew, a first assistant TV director, and Cheo, whom he and Gilly adopted from China as a young child, after Gilly suffered a difficult birth with Matthew. 'We decided that we did not want an 'only' child, and we had both the space and the time for another child, and so we fostered Chéo for eighteen months from the National Children's Home,' says Purves. The couple formally adopted her on her 7th birthday and she now works for the NHS. When she was an adult, Purves and Gilly were estranged from Cheo for many years but have since made up, and Purves sees her regularly.
Yet in his 2009 memoir Here's One I Made Earlier, he recounts a rather racier life, admitting to two affairs while filming Doctor Who and hinting at more. He's a bit more demure today when I bring it up. 'I like ladies,' he says. 'I don't know. I went to boarding school [in Blackpool] and ladies were off limits. Maybe I've made up for lost time. Kate and I have been married for 42 years, I was married 17 years the first time, I'm hardly a wastrel. I don't know the rumours.'
They are not rumours, they are in your book, I point out. 'Ah, yes,' and that's all he will say. 'I am not being shy, but I feel it is disrespectful to Kate to go into this. I loved the 60s, the world seemed to be a much freer place. It was a time of great music, peace, and fantastic clothes which went on into the 70s and 80s – and I had a great time. I would only apologise if I ever offended anyone, but I hope I didn't.'
Purves grew up in Blackpool, where his parents ran a hotel, which, during the war, housed billeted Polish soldiers that had been wounded. Purves describes his childhood there as a happy one: Stanley Matthews owned a nearby hotel and would sometimes come out for a kick about.
When he was about nine, his parents moved to a pub in Derbyshire and rather than force him to change schools chose for him to board at his current school. ' I hated being away from home,' he says. 'But at least I learnt to be independent.'
He was always determined to become an actor and on leaving school joined a repertory company in Barrow-in-Furness. Doctor Who was his first major TV role and Blue Peter followed soon after, the crown jewel in what was then a booming TV industry for children.
He was initially reluctant to join Blue Peter, worried it would take him away from acting, which to a large degree it did. Now he can't help but praise the BBC during that era and the way it shaped childhood for generations of children. 'The output was fantastic,' he says.
' Playschool. Jackanory. Multicoloured Swap Shop. Tony Hart, Record Breakers. John Craven's Newsround. And all on TV every day from about 3.30pm to five to six daily and none of them repeated. Children came out of watching that to seeing the national news at 6pm, which meant they got a broader view of the world. Now, if they want to watch cartoons all day they can, but where is the educational element in that? We have so many channels and most of them are watched by one man and his dog. What's the point?'
He thinks it's not only childhood that has changed, but children themselves. 'I don't think children are content anymore to live through what a presenter is doing on TV in the way they used to. I don't know any young children [he has one grandson, who is 27] so it's hard for me to know. But what I observe is a lack of discipline, and a massive lack of wider knowledge. They don't seem to absorb anything. They don't know where they live, they don't know what the country looks like. Show them a map and they couldn't make head or tail of it. It's not that they are less intelligent, it's just that there is nothing that tells them those things. Of course, what I observe may not be right. Someone my age observes things very differently.'
Has he seen Adolescence? 'No, but I know what it's about. And I did see a clip and thought 'what that kid needs is a good slap'. But that's not going to go down very well these days. I'd probably be cut off from the world and cancelled this way and the other. I don't want to say anything that would have that sort of reaction. I could see what it was showing but I don't see it as a piece of education for children, which is what the government is calling for. What, you want everyone to behave like that? Not all children are like that.' He is warming to his theme. 'I'm wary of talking about things I don't know about, but I think there is a lot of over indulgence going on with children today.
'Children are allowed to do things we would never have been allowed to do. I watch young kids with their parents behaving terribly. I think, 'Give them a clip round the ear', tell them 'don't do that'. But I can't advocate that. I'd be called some staunch right winger. In fact I used to be a socialist, a Labour voter.'
He last voted for Labour in 2001. 'I couldn't vote for them again after the [2005 invasion of Iraq]. I think Blair did awful things with the Gulf War and misled people terribly. I don't forgive him for that. And then the Corbyn era finished it for me.' He's not a particular fan of the Tories either. 'They did massive harm, in the way they dilly dallied on Brexit. It's left everyone saying Brexit was a failure, but it shouldn't have been.'
He would prefer not to say, though, how he voted in the recent election.
'I prefer to keep my politics private. I've argued with a lot of people in my industry who tend to be left wing. And left-wing views make for very good dramas, which I accept and understand and have enjoyed. But I don't go with the woke thing, that sticks in the craw, everything that has happened in that way is an anathema. I can't cope with the pronouns, for instance. And I really don't understand where [this militancy] has come from. I've a lot of gay friends, more gay than straight, and my daughter is in a gay relationship. None of this has ever before been a problem.'
Purves is a man who knows the world has changed and who is aware some of his views might not chime with modern sensibilities. He worries what people might think of him. But he has also been hurt. In 2021 he was sacked inelegantly by Channel 4 from Crufts, having first started presenting the programme in 1971 when it was broadcast by the BBC. 'I was very, very angry that they did that. I'm certain ageism was the reason, although my voice hasn't changed at all' [he'd often commentate off camera]. The reason given was that they wanted a sports presenter. 'What for?' Does he think the TV industry is frightened of having old people in front of the camera? 'Yes. Because we know a lot.' He got his own back by becoming brand ambassador for the pet joint supplement brand YuMOVE, presenting a show for them at Crufts in 2020 via their social media channels.
He certainly knows an inordinate amount about dogs, and is sniffy about the vogue for cross breeds: his personal favourite is a Newfoundland. 'People talk about labradoodles and I've got nothing against them, but there is no standard by which to judge them,' he says. Does he think the Dangerous Dogs Act is a good piece of legislation? 'I don't think it's applied fiercely enough. But it is the owners who are mainly to blame, not the dogs themselves. Some breeds are unfairly maligned: people think Staffordshire Terriers are bullies but they are really nice dogs with lovely temperaments. But there have always been idiots looking after animals. Any dog can bite – it is up to the owners to stop them doing so.'
He's pleasant company, courteous and welcoming, and keen to remain productive. He has recently been offered three parts in films that are still waiting on funding. And he still thinks Blue Peter has a future although he is quick to say he doesn't watch children's TV today and therefore feels unable to comment on its overall quality.
'I think the values Biddy instilled in Blue Peter are still in place,' he says. 'Which is in essence a TV show that aims to entertain children from between the ages of 7-12, to not tell lies, and to teach them something about the world along the way. These are good values and they ought to be promoted.' He's more concerned about the future of TV itself. The industry in which he made his name and which gave so much to so many has changed beyond recognition. 'Of course, children watch TV in very different ways today. It's a funny business. TV is great for live sporting events but I'm not sure what else. To be honest I don't know where TV's place in society is anymore.'