Biddy Baxter
| Joan Maureen "Biddy" Baxter | |
|---|---|
| Born |
25 May 1933 Leicester, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Television producer |
| Known for | Blue Peter |
Joan Maureen "Biddy" Baxter MBE (born 25 May 1933) is best known as the former editor of the long-running BBC TV children’s magazine show Blue Peter, a position she held from 1965 to 1988. As editor of the programme, Baxter devised much of the format that is still used today.
She was born Joan Maureen Baxter in Leicester to a teacher father who became the director of a sportswear company and a mother who was a pianist. She was educated at Wyggeston Girls' Grammar School, Leicester and St Mary's, a women's college at Durham University, which she attended from 1952 to 1955. At a meeting with the careers officer at her university, she noticed information about working for the BBC. "It wasn't that I was being snotty about secretarial work or teaching, I just didn't want to do either of them," she said in 2013 of the options offered to her on this occasion. "This particular teaching officer seemed to me – though maybe I was being unduly sensitive – to have this blind spot about women. All the men were going off to do these amazing things. I really should be grateful to him."
After graduating with a social sciences degree, Baxter joined the BBC as a studio manager in 1955, becoming a producer of schools' English programmes in 1958, and of Listen with Mother in 1961. After moving to a temporary post in 1962 within BBC Television owing to a staff shortage, she gained a permanent post as producer of Blue Peter from November 1962, and remained directly responsible for the programme for just over a quarter of a century.
First broadcast on 16 October 1958,Blue Peter had originally been devised by John Hunter Blair, but it was Baxter and her deputy Edward Barnes, later head of BBC children's television, who developed the format into a successful programme, initially on a budget of only £180 per edition. When they were first introduced, Barnes was told: "You'll have to look after Biddy – she doesn't know very much", to his considerable irritation.
Baxter devised and introduced the Blue Peter badge in 1963 to encourage children to send in programme ideas, pictures, letters and stories and also she introduced the now famous annual appeals. She was awarded a gold badge herself when she retired as editor from the programme. Having been disappointed as a child to receive the same reply twice to different letters that she had written to Enid Blyton, she also introduced a card index system so that Blue Peter viewers could receive more personal responses. Baxter became programme editor in April 1965 following a reorganisation, while Barnes and Rosemary Gill became producers when the programme went bi-weekly in 1964.
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