John Noakes
Encyclopedia
John Noakes is a British
television presenter and personality, best known for co-presenting the BBC
children's magazine programme Blue Peter
in the 1960s and 1970s. He remains the show's longest-serving presenter, with a stint that lasted 12 years and 6 months. He was educated at the independent fee-paying Rishworth School
in Rishworth, Halifax.
before deciding to become an actor. He trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama
, and made his stage debut as a dog and a clown in a pantomime
. He appeared on television in programmes such as the military police drama series Redcap
and worked with the comedian Cyril Fletcher
, before he joined Blue Peter as a presenter on 30 December 1965; his colleagues at the time were Christopher Trace
and Valerie Singleton. Trace left the programme in 1967, and was replaced by Peter Purves
, creating the 'Val, John and Pete' line-up which lasted until 1972. When Singleton began to diversify her television career, former Young Generation dancer Lesley Judd
joined the team. At a time when most BBC
presenters spoke with received pronunciation
(RP), Noakes's broad Yorkshire accent
was a novelty.
Noakes usually fulfilled the role of action man
in the series. Highlights included free-fall parachuting with the RAF's Flying Falcons
display team and bobsleigh
ing (his sled hit a hole in the ice and turned over, injuring him). After his five-mile-high free-fall with the RAF in 1973, he held the record for the longest free-fall parachute jump by a British civilian for a few years, although it has since been broken. In segments involving swimming, he often wore rather brief swimming trunks which caused raised eyebrows at the BBC (for instance the trip to Mexico in 1970); in a comedy routine recalling her childhood Dawn French mentioned this.
Like most presenters, Noakes was encouraged to take special responsibility for one of the show's pets. His original dog was Patch, the son of Petra, the very first Blue Peter dog. After Patch's sudden death in 1971 (from a rare disease) he was given another pet dog, a Border Collie
puppy, christened 'Shep
' by viewers. Noakes' attempts to control the excitable Shep led to his memorable catchphrase "Get down, Shep!".
, in which they travelled around the country getting involved in diverse activities like motor racing, rowing, aerobatics and painting. In each series Noakes was featured travelling around Britain in a particular mode, e.g. sailing, narrow boat, walking, open top car. Go With Noakes began on 28 March 1976, and would run for five series and 30 episodes, finishing its original run on 21 December 1980.
Noakes left Blue Peter on 26 June 1978. Popular belief has it that he was not allowed to keep Shep, but although the dog was indeed legally owned by the BBC, Noakes was offered the option of keeping him. However, according to the behind-the-scenes book Blue Peter The Inside Story (by Biddy Baxter
, the show's longest-serving Editor), this was conditional on Noakes not using Shep for any advertising or commercial purposes, and also on the cessation of the special regular payments Noakes had previously received to cover Shep's food and vet bills (Noakes' "dog money", as he put it). Noakes refused to accept these terms, and so Shep went to live with Edith Menezes, who looked after the programme's other pets. Noakes subsequently appeared in a dog food commercial with a lookalike collie named Skip.
In 1982, he and his wife made an unsuccessful attempt to sail around the world. A second attempt in 1984 got no further than Majorca, where they settled down to run a boat rental business. In 1983 Noakes presented The Dinosaur Trail, a 7-part documentary for Children's ITV.
Between 1986 and 1988, the BBC produced a programme called Fax!, which answered questions posed by viewers. One question was "Whatever happened to John Noakes and Shep?" Noakes and his wife appeared on the show on 20 January 1987 to reveal what he had been doing since retiring from television, and during the course of the interview, Noakes tearfully revealed that Shep had died just three days previously.
Notwithstanding his status as an icon for a whole generation, Noakes has become publicly bitter about his Blue Peter experiences. Despite having come across as a very natural presenter, he claimed his television personality was a fake, and he was merely acting a role. He also complained about his perceived low salary during his time on Blue Peter, and expressed disgust that he had apparently never been insured for any of the stunts he had undertaken, claiming that he would never have gone through with them had he been aware of this at the time. The Singleton/Noakes/Purves team was reunited in October 1998 for a programme celebrating 40 years of Blue Peter and again in January 2000 for the disinterment of the time capsule
that they had buried in 1971.
In 2003, Noakes co-hosted an ITV1 series entitled Mad About Pets and in 2004, he took part in the Living TV reality TV show I'm Famous and Frightened!
. A year later, he appeared in the Channel 5 programme Britain's Worst Celebrity Driver
.
On 14 June 2008, he appeared in a Blue Peter-themed edition of the Weakest Link
, being voted off second. It was noted that when the presenter Anne Robinson
spoke about Shep he became visibly upset and could not hold back the tears trying to answer the question.
He is now a language tutor, specialising in Romance languages
. He is trained in the Michel Thomas
method of language tuition.
Satirical rock band Half Man Half Biscuit
refer to John in their song 99% Of Gargoyles Look Like Bob Todd, from the album Back in the DHSS
.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
television presenter and personality, best known for co-presenting the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
children's magazine programme Blue Peter
Blue Peter
Blue Peter is the world's longest-running children's television show, having first aired in 1958. It is shown on CBBC, both in its BBC One programming block and on the CBBC channel. During its history there have been many presenters, often consisting of two women and two men at a time...
in the 1960s and 1970s. He remains the show's longest-serving presenter, with a stint that lasted 12 years and 6 months. He was educated at the independent fee-paying Rishworth School
Rishworth School
Rishworth School is a co-educational independent school in the village of Rishworth, near Halifax, in West Yorkshire, England. With Heathfield, its junior school, it provides education for pupils aged between 3 and 18 years, with boarding from the age of 11....
in Rishworth, Halifax.
Blue Peter
Noakes trained as an aircraft engine fitter for the RAF and BOACBritish Overseas Airways Corporation
The British Overseas Airways Corporation was the British state airline from 1939 until 1946 and the long-haul British state airline from 1946 to 1974. The company started life with a merger between Imperial Airways Ltd. and British Airways Ltd...
before deciding to become an actor. He trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama
Guildhall School of Music and Drama
Guildhall School of Music and Drama is an independent music and dramatic arts school which was founded in 1880 in London, England. Students can pursue courses in Music, Opera, Drama and Technical Theatre Arts.-History:...
, and made his stage debut as a dog and a clown in a pantomime
Pantomime
Pantomime — not to be confused with a mime artist, a theatrical performer of mime—is a musical-comedy theatrical production traditionally found in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, India, Ireland, Gibraltar and Malta, and is mostly performed during the...
. He appeared on television in programmes such as the military police drama series Redcap
Redcap (TV series)
Redcap is a British television series produced by ABC Weekend Television and broadcast on the ITV network.It starred John Thaw as Sergeant John Mann, a member of the Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Military Police and ran for two series and 26 episodes between 1964 and 1966, being about...
and worked with the comedian Cyril Fletcher
Cyril Fletcher
Cyril Fletcher was an English comedian; his catchphrase was 'Pin back your lugholes'. He was most famous for his Odd Odes, which was a section of the television show That's Life!. Fletcher had first begun performing the Odd Odes in 1937, long before they first appeared on television...
, before he joined Blue Peter as a presenter on 30 December 1965; his colleagues at the time were Christopher Trace
Christopher Trace
Christopher Leonard Trace was an English actor and television presenter, best remembered for his nine years as a presenter of the BBC children's programme Blue Peter.-Career:...
and Valerie Singleton. Trace left the programme in 1967, and was replaced by Peter Purves
Peter Purves
Peter Purves is an English television presenter and actor.Purves was born in New Longton, near Preston, Lancashire, and was educated at the independent Arnold School in Blackpool, he had originally planned to go into teaching, training at Alsager College of Education, but began to act with the...
, creating the 'Val, John and Pete' line-up which lasted until 1972. When Singleton began to diversify her television career, former Young Generation dancer Lesley Judd
Lesley Judd
Lesley Judd is an English dancer and TV presenter, best known as a long-serving host of the BBC children's programme Blue Peter. She was educated at the independent Royal Ballet School...
joined the team. At a time when most BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
presenters spoke with received pronunciation
Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation , also called the Queen's English, Oxford English or BBC English, is the accent of Standard English in England, with a relationship to regional accents similar to the relationship in other European languages between their standard varieties and their regional forms...
(RP), Noakes's broad Yorkshire accent
Yorkshire dialect and accent
The Yorkshire dialect refers to the varieties of English used in the Northern England historic county of Yorkshire. Those varieties are often referred to as Broad Yorkshire or Tyke. The dialect has roots in older languages such as Old English and Old Norse; it should not be confused with modern slang...
was a novelty.
Noakes usually fulfilled the role of action man
Action Man
Action Man is an action figure boys' toy launched in Britain in 1966 by Palitoy as a licensed copy of Hasbro's American "moveable fighting man": G.I...
in the series. Highlights included free-fall parachuting with the RAF's Flying Falcons
RAF Falcons
The RAF Falcons are recognised as the UK's premier military parachute display team. They perform their unique and colourful aerial display at numerous venues nationwide and are renowned for their famous 11-person non-contact canopy stack display routine....
display team and bobsleigh
Bobsleigh
Bobsleigh or bobsled is a winter sport in which teams of two or four make timed runs down narrow, twisting, banked, iced tracks in a gravity-powered sled that are combined to calculate the final score....
ing (his sled hit a hole in the ice and turned over, injuring him). After his five-mile-high free-fall with the RAF in 1973, he held the record for the longest free-fall parachute jump by a British civilian for a few years, although it has since been broken. In segments involving swimming, he often wore rather brief swimming trunks which caused raised eyebrows at the BBC (for instance the trip to Mexico in 1970); in a comedy routine recalling her childhood Dawn French mentioned this.
Like most presenters, Noakes was encouraged to take special responsibility for one of the show's pets. His original dog was Patch, the son of Petra, the very first Blue Peter dog. After Patch's sudden death in 1971 (from a rare disease) he was given another pet dog, a Border Collie
Border Collie
The Border Collie is a herding dog breed developed in the Anglo-Scottish border region for herding livestock, especially sheep. It is the most widespread of the collie breeds....
puppy, christened 'Shep
Shep (dog)
Shep was a famous Blue Peter dog, a border collie. Shep was bought by the BBC to replace Patch, one of Petra's puppies, born in 1965. He became the main Blue Peter dog when Petra died in 1977....
' by viewers. Noakes' attempts to control the excitable Shep led to his memorable catchphrase "Get down, Shep!".
Other television work
Overlapping with his period on Blue Peter, Noakes and Shep appeared in another factual series, Go With NoakesGo With Noakes
Go With Noakes was a BBC Television children's programme, broadcast between 28 March 1976 and 21 December 1980.A documentary series, it was presented by John Noakes initially alongside, then following his departure from, Blue Peter in 1978...
, in which they travelled around the country getting involved in diverse activities like motor racing, rowing, aerobatics and painting. In each series Noakes was featured travelling around Britain in a particular mode, e.g. sailing, narrow boat, walking, open top car. Go With Noakes began on 28 March 1976, and would run for five series and 30 episodes, finishing its original run on 21 December 1980.
Noakes left Blue Peter on 26 June 1978. Popular belief has it that he was not allowed to keep Shep, but although the dog was indeed legally owned by the BBC, Noakes was offered the option of keeping him. However, according to the behind-the-scenes book Blue Peter The Inside Story (by Biddy Baxter
Biddy Baxter
Biddy Baxter MBE is best known as the former editor of the long-running popular BBC One children’s magazine show Blue Peter, a position she held from 1965 to 1988. She was also its producer from 1962 to 1965...
, the show's longest-serving Editor), this was conditional on Noakes not using Shep for any advertising or commercial purposes, and also on the cessation of the special regular payments Noakes had previously received to cover Shep's food and vet bills (Noakes' "dog money", as he put it). Noakes refused to accept these terms, and so Shep went to live with Edith Menezes, who looked after the programme's other pets. Noakes subsequently appeared in a dog food commercial with a lookalike collie named Skip.
After Blue Peter
In 1979, Noakes wrote a children's book, The Flight of the Magic Clog (published by Lion, with illustrations by Toni Goffe) in which Mr. Brooks takes John, Mickey the brainy one, June the talkative one, Barbara the pretty one and Eric the clumsy one on an adventure against the international villain Baron Wilhelm Doppleganger and his secret arms factory using a giant magic flying clog.In 1982, he and his wife made an unsuccessful attempt to sail around the world. A second attempt in 1984 got no further than Majorca, where they settled down to run a boat rental business. In 1983 Noakes presented The Dinosaur Trail, a 7-part documentary for Children's ITV.
Between 1986 and 1988, the BBC produced a programme called Fax!, which answered questions posed by viewers. One question was "Whatever happened to John Noakes and Shep?" Noakes and his wife appeared on the show on 20 January 1987 to reveal what he had been doing since retiring from television, and during the course of the interview, Noakes tearfully revealed that Shep had died just three days previously.
Notwithstanding his status as an icon for a whole generation, Noakes has become publicly bitter about his Blue Peter experiences. Despite having come across as a very natural presenter, he claimed his television personality was a fake, and he was merely acting a role. He also complained about his perceived low salary during his time on Blue Peter, and expressed disgust that he had apparently never been insured for any of the stunts he had undertaken, claiming that he would never have gone through with them had he been aware of this at the time. The Singleton/Noakes/Purves team was reunited in October 1998 for a programme celebrating 40 years of Blue Peter and again in January 2000 for the disinterment of the time capsule
Time capsule
A time capsule is an historic cache of goods or information, usually intended as a method of communication with future people and to help future archaeologists, anthropologists, or historians...
that they had buried in 1971.
In 2003, Noakes co-hosted an ITV1 series entitled Mad About Pets and in 2004, he took part in the Living TV reality TV show I'm Famous and Frightened!
I'm Famous and Frightened!
I'm Famous and Frightened was a Living TV reality TV show in which 8 celebrities stayed for three nights in a "haunted" castle. They had to then do terrifying challenges in order to raise money for charity; each one was evicted until only the winner was left.The first series aired on Friday 12...
. A year later, he appeared in the Channel 5 programme Britain's Worst Celebrity Driver
Britain's Worst Celebrity Driver
Britain's Worst Celebrity Driver was a five Game show, in which six British celebrities had to perform various challenges to prove their driving prowess. The show was presented by Quentin Willson for both series, with Jenni Falconer joining as co-host for the second.-Series 1:The first series of...
.
On 14 June 2008, he appeared in a Blue Peter-themed edition of the Weakest Link
Weakest Link
The Weakest Link is a British television quiz show, currently broadcast on BBC Two. It was devised by Mr Wilton and Euan Green and Cathy Dunning, and developed for television by the BBC Entertainment Department. It has since been replicated around the world. The UK version is hosted by Anne...
, being voted off second. It was noted that when the presenter Anne Robinson
Anne Robinson
Anne Josephine Robinson is an English journalist and television presenter, known for her assertive views and acerbic style of presenting. She was one of the presenters on the long-running British consumer affairs series, Watchdog, from 1993 to 2001 before returning in 2009...
spoke about Shep he became visibly upset and could not hold back the tears trying to answer the question.
He is now a language tutor, specialising in Romance languages
Romance languages
The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
. He is trained in the Michel Thomas
Michel Thomas
Michel Thomas was a polyglot linguist, language teacher and decorated war veteran. He survived imprisonment in several different Nazi concentration camps after serving in the Maquis of the French Resistance and worked with the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps during World War II...
method of language tuition.
Satirical rock band Half Man Half Biscuit
Half Man Half Biscuit
Half Man Half Biscuit, often "HMHB", are an English rock band from Birkenhead, Merseyside, active since the mid-1980s, known for satirical, sardonic, and sometimes surreal songs. The group comprises Nigel Blackwell , Neil Crossley , Ken Hancock , and Carl Henry...
refer to John in their song 99% Of Gargoyles Look Like Bob Todd, from the album Back in the DHSS
Back in the DHSS
-2003 Rerelease:# "Busy Little Market Town"# "God Gave Us Life"# "Fuckin' 'Ell It's Fred Titmus"# "Sealclubbing"# "99% Of Gargoyles Look Like Bob Todd"# "Time Flies By "# "I Hate Nerys Hughes "...
.
External links
- John Noakes BBCBBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
Blue PeterBlue PeterBlue Peter is the world's longest-running children's television show, having first aired in 1958. It is shown on CBBC, both in its BBC One programming block and on the CBBC channel. During its history there have been many presenters, often consisting of two women and two men at a time... - A view of John Noakes as a childhood icon of the 1960s and 70's