[an earlier incarnation of the totaliser from 1972 - © BBC]
For those that don’t know, Blue Peter was a children’s TV program on the BBC that started back in 1958 and is still going strong today. A ‘magazine’ format show with features, news reports, Roy Castle, elephants, making things out of cardboard tubes and sticky back plastic. A selection of pets that would die at various points and get buried in the Blue Peter Garden. It also had a changing selection of presenters (some mentioned below) who, as far as I’m aware, have never been buried in the garden.
Now and then they would roll out a towering construction, which must have given the props department great joy in building. It was ten levels high, each level a change in colour, ranging from celestial golden yellow at the bottom to blood red at the top, a beacon of charity and goodness. Inscribed on each level was a monentary value, increasing £5,000 at a time. When each target was reached the layer would flash on and off dramatically a few times before being fully lit up. There may have been flashing on and off sounds and a final victorious “ding” for each occasion, but I forget. This was the Totaliser.
Anyway, a worthy cause would be selected: some part of the world suffering a disaster where they didn’t have food, medicine, milk bottle tops or even, poor things, television. The Totaliser would would stand tall, waiting to be filled up and radiate goodness around the globe. Janet Ellis, on video, would tell us which country we’d be helping this time. She’d also tell us what we could do to help: sponsored walks, hold jumble sales, send in replacement milk bottle tops and so on.
Schools would rally round the cause; we’d hold events and it was all quite exciting, apart from the part where you saw videos of dying children, that bit was sad.
Each week the presenters would update us on the amount raised so far. The Totaliser would flash and “ding” (probably) towards the grand total of £50,000. Each week we’d be told how many blankets, malaria tablets and lives we’d saved. We’d edge tantalisingly close to the glorious top layer of the Totaliser, at which point we, all the good children watching (not those scummy children who watched ITV, coverting every toy from advertisments pushed into their feeble minds and who had no care for other less fortunate children at all) would begin to get a sense of excitement and joy of a job well done.
We’d given our last; sponsored walked ourselves to the very edge of exhustion, poured too much milk over our morning breakfast cereal and forced our parents to wash the milk bottle tops, selflessly sold our favourite soft toy that we’d treasured for years for 50p at the bring and buy sale, because those other children have nothing! Leslie Judd had travelled halfway round the world to send back videos of all the good we were doing. Peter Duncan ran marathon after marathon in his green and white checked suit, until his legs could take no more and would collapse into the welcoming embrace of a shiny foil sheet. But then he would pull himself back up, sweat running down his face, and bravely plunge his hand into a scorpion-infested tree trunk, getting fatally stung and begging to have his hand cut off in an attempt to safe his life. For the children!
The Totaliser would hit the final target. We’d done it; we’d reached the top. Glory and redemption shone down upon us. The Totaliser blessed us who, each in our own small way, had played a part in fulfilling what seemed unattainable weeks ago.
Then, then they’d roll out a second Totaliser, a bigger Totaliser, a Totaliser with just the first level of £50,000 lit up. Nine new unlit levels for a grand total of £500,000.
Bastards!