A perfect excuse to include a picture of the first wife and Blue Peter Presenter. Although she was only on the show for just over a year, she became very familiar as the first presenter to have a live untrasound and subsequently give birth to The Blue Peter baby, Jemma Victoria Cooke.  Jem and Tina appeared together for several years after she left the show doing features and items relating to babies and children.

I got involved originally with the Blue Peter Pantos that happened every year arranging the music and producing the various scores, songs and incidentals.

This led to being asked to produce any and all musical features for several years with as many BP Presenters as could fit around the kitchen table prior to vocal sessions having a good old gossip and dishing the dirt.

I got to write and produce one of the Blue Peter theme projects that involved a cast of thousands and lasted until they got tired of it and commissioned a new one. Assisted by Matt Hay who engineered the many instrumentalists and Terl Bryant in charge of all the percussionists we used the original Barnacle Bill and broke it up into easily manageable phrases for the kids to play and then pieced it together for the final mixes.

Track 1 is the opening titles followed by a longer filler taking us into the closing titles. Two versions of Jem singing a couple of classics for the presenters to mime and some very silly blooper outtakes recorded to a dance groove. Name that presenter if you can!

Jem sang quite a few of the songs ghosting for the many presenters. So much so that fans of Liz Barker thought she had an amazing voice despite being completely tone deaf.

We also had to lock Konnie Huq into the vocal room until she’d sang at least one half decent take. She would come to the studio never having prepared the songs we needed preferring instead to sing something completely unrelated.

Teen still looks the same and remains the first wife. Thankfully we don’t have the cats!