THEY WERE THREE of the most familiar and best-loved faces on daytime TV, entertaining millions of kids with tips on how to make cuddly toys with cardboard, cotton wool and sticky tape, how to mend broken skates with just an elastic band, and how to build your own particle accelerator in your back garden using old tubing (although you had to get a grown-up to help you with that last one).
Valerie Singleton, Peter Purves and John Noakes were the Blue Peterdream team, presenting the popular children's TV show together between 1967 and 1972. Noakes went on to host his own show, Go With Noakes, and is now a language tutor. Purves became hugely involved with the world of dog shows, and also made cameo appearances on The Officeand I'm Alan Partridge.
Valerie Singleton remained a well-known name in broadcasting for many years, but she also lived a life that was quite different to the staid, make-do-and-mend image she presented on Blue Peter. And she endured a persistent – and false – rumour that she was a lesbian, and that she had been in a relationship with the singer Joan Armatrading, whom she had interviewed for the BBC in 1978.
Long after that brief encounter with Armatrading, the rumours stuck doggedly to the presenter, so she decided to settle the matter by going public about her heterosexuality in 2008, giving a candid interview to the Daily Mail. What she revealed raised more than a few eyebrows. Singleton said that, contrary to her schoolmarmy persona in Blue Peter, she was a modern, free-spirited girl who had snogged Albert Finney, bedded singer Graham Nash, and even had a secret fling with her co-presenter Peter Purves during their stint on Blue Peter.
As a teenager, she had attended drama and dance school, and her ambition was to make it in the world of acting. She got a small part in The Lavender Hill Mobwith Alec Guinness and attended Rada with Finney, Peter O'Toole, Alan Bates, Glenda Jackson and Richard Briers, but when she missed out on an audition for a West End play in 1962, she took a job as a continuity announcer on the BBC, and bagged the Blue Peterjob that same year.
She dated Top of the PopsDJ Pete Murray in the late 1960s; the pair got engaged but never saw it through to a wedding. She also revealed she got pregnant while dating a BBC writer, and had an abortion. True to her surname, Valerie has remained a singleton into her 70s, but says she's still hoping to meet Mr Right. She now lives in Dorset, so give her a call, guys. Just don't mention Joan Armatrading.
