ON the surface Blue Peter was a happy ship, where cheery presenters demonstrated the power of sticky-backed plastic and inspired Britain’s youth.
But behind the scenes of the world’s longest-running kids’ TV show its stars experienced a culture of fear and intimidation.
And none suffered more than the programme’s youngest ever host, Yvette Fielding, who joined in 1987.
At the age of 18 she was left a tearful wreck following allegedly ferocious roastings by Blue Peter’s legendary boss, Biddy Baxter.
But worse came when she encountered the two most notorious names in children’s programming at the BBC — Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris.
As well as Yvette, other Blue Peter presenters, including the late John Noakes, also complained about show editor Biddy’s fearsome attitude.
For Yvette, who went on to create the hit cable TV show Most Haunted and appeared in I’m A Celebrity . . . Get Me Out Of Here! in 2015, the “abuse” made her life a misery.
Now 55, she recalls: “You were always told, ‘Biddy wants to see you in the beat room’, which was like a store cupboard.
“She’d sit behind this desk and basically tell me I was fat, I was useless, and at one point she said, ‘The only thing you’re good at is being with the dog’.
“They call it workplace anxiety nowadays, but it was really abuse.
“I think I was too young to join then.
“I had never done presenting before, I had only acted.
“I froze, I was shaking, I wanted to be sick, I was in the bathroom an awful lot.”
Biddy, now 90, who was in charge of Blue Peter from 1962 to 1988, had selected Yvette as the show’s new presenter.
But the pressure of performing on a live show, which was watched by eight million at its peak, was too much for the teenager.
There was no autocue or earpieces, and shortly before Yvette went on air, Biddy would change the script that she had spent the previous night learning.
Biddy even wanted a say in where Yvette lived and when her bedtime was.
Yvette recalls: “They put me with a family and she would ring up the home to make sure I was in bed by nine o’clock, and if I wasn’t, the next day I’d be told off.”
Yvette found a flat to share with other young people, but was ordered to move out.
Describing herself as a “homebird”, she says she found it tough to be away from her family in Cheshire.
Her co-presenters, Mark Curry and Caron Keating, were both supportive and the problems started to ease.
But worse was in store.
When Yvette, whose autobiography is out at the end of this month, was left alone in a TV studio with Rolf Harris he used the opportunity to sexually assault her.
She tells The Sun: “It was very confusing and shocking — just bizarre to think Rolf Harris was squeezing and patting my bottom and I am standing there, thinking, ‘I don’t know what to do.
“Other people in the industry must have known what he was like and you left me alone in the studio with him’.
“That shouldn’t have happened.
“I must have been 18 or 19.
“I think a lot of them did know.”
The incident would have been in around 1988, when Harris was still hosting children’s programme Rolf Harris Cartoon Time and was one of the BBC’s most long-standing stars.
It was only in 2013 that his serial abuse of young women was made public after he was arrested as part of Operation Yewtree, the police investigation into sexual abuse claims against Savile and other celebrities.
Harris, who died last year aged 93, was convicted of sexually assaulting four girls — one aged just seven or eight.
Many of his victims felt that he had been able to carry out so many attacks because complaints were swept under the carpet.
Yvette, a former child actress whose first major role was in BBC kids’ drama Seaview aged 15, says there was a culture of cover-up in the TV industry back then.
She adds: “In my time it didn’t matter what went on — ‘Is the show doing well, are we getting good viewing figures?’
“‘Yes we are, keep going. Let’s cover it all over and get on with it’.”
She continues: “It was a different time when I was 18.
“The things people did back in my day, the pat on the bum and ‘Wahey’, all that.
“Back then it was just an everyday occurrence, we had sort of grown up with it.
“From what I heard, certain things were brushed under the carpet — and that should never, ever have happened.”
Yvette tells how she also felt uncomfortable in the presence of Savile, who died in 2011 before his sexual depravity became known.
She recalls: “He took my hand and started stroking it. ‘Look into my eyes’, he said, ‘And tell me what you’re thinking’.
“He was grotesque.
“I just don’t understand why the BBC allowed him to get away with that for as long as he did.”
After Biddy Baxter retired in 1988, Yvette started to enjoy her time on the show.
But in 2012 Blue Peter was moved from BBC1 and relegated to the CBBC channel, which currently streams on iPlayer.
Biddy would sit behind this desk and basically tell me I was fat, I was useless, and ‘the only thing you’re good at is being with the dog’
Yvette Fielding
Yvette insists it should be back on mainstream TV, and says: “I remember meeting Princess Diana and her saying, ‘William and Harry and myself love nothing more than to settle down, cuddle up on the sofa and watch Blue Peter’.
“And that’s gone, and that makes me really sad.”
After five years on Blue Peter Yvette switched to ITV kids’ show What’s Up Doc? before returning to the BBC to present The Heaven And Earth Show, followed by fly-on-the wall hospital programmes The General and City Hospital.
During her spell on City Hospital she met second husband Karl Beattie, who was a cameraman.
He proposed live on air as she was in an operating theatre with co-host Gaby Roslin, and Yvette recalls: “I said yes immediately because I knew I loved him.”
When the couple’s daughter Mary was born in 1999 Yvette was asked if she would give birth in front of the cameras, but she says: “I said no because I preferred it to be a private affair.
“I didn’t want to expose the nation to my privates — I am sure the nation wasn’t ready for that.”
But she was not asked to present another series of City Hospital after Mary was born.
She says: “I have always wondered if part of the reason was because I’d said no to showing my vagina on air.”
After the turn of the century Yvette became more of a stay-at-home mum, caring for Mary and her son William, from her first marriage to cop Barry Sweeney.
Her second hubby Karl suggested the idea for Most Haunted, filming Yvette spending the night in a haunted house.
They spent all their savings recording a pilot, but all the major channels turned it down before Living TV took it on, and it proved a massive hit.
Since then, US comedy show Saturday Night Live has done a sketch about the spooky series, and Girls Aloud, Boyzone and the Happy Mondays are among the celebrity guests spending time in haunted locations.
Karl and Yvette now tour theatres with their live show and produce a digital version of Most Haunted.
She thinks paranormal activity is on the rise and says: “Nobody wants to delve into it, and I think science should.”
