When was valerie singleton on blue peter

From April , the actress Sandra Michaels who starred in The Railway Children, acted as a guest presenter for one week. John Noakes is the longest serving Blue Peter presenter to date - he stayed on the show for 12 years and days. He got involved in acting and in he appeared in Doctor Who as Steven Taylor, a travelling companion the first Doctor, William Hartnell. Diane, Tim, Stuart and Katy. Stuart, Katy, Romana and Richard. Explore the BBC. Contact Us Like this page?

Send it to a friend! In Valerie was presented with an OBE in for services to broadcasting. Matt Baker on values from his childhood, marriage success and a wizard new challenge.

English radio and TV presenter Valerie Singleton has been in the limelight, gracing our screens for many years, best known for her work on the iconic BBC children's series Blue Peter from to Read on to learn more about where Valerie is from, her career and her relationships. Born on 9 April into a middle-class family in Hitchin, Hertfordshire.

Valerie admitted to having a rebellious childhood and was once expelled from a convent school. She comments about her rebellious childhood in an interview with the Daily Mail , "despite my rather conformist reputation, I was often naughty in my youth — a bit wild, even.

Valerie mentions that she attended many schools and was thrown out of class a lot! She states, "even on my first day, aged four, I repeatedly kicked a table leg and was marched out to a dark room where everything was covered with dust sheets. Valerie wanted to become an actress and as a teenager, she attended drama and dance school. She later spent a year at Bromley Repertory Company and performed in 24 plays.

Valerie started her career as a voice actress and voiced many commercials and documentaries from For me it was not so much that they could offer me a blueprint of how one should look and behave, otherwise I would have been walking around looking and acting like Beryl Reid's character in The Killing of Sister George, the first lesbian I ever saw on telly. It was more knowing that some other women thought it was actually cool to be a lesbian, and enjoyed being it.

I wanted to be able to say to my mother: "Look mum, Valerie Singleton is the same as me, and look how well she has done.

She mentions the irrefutably heterosexual Joanna Lumley as one "lesbian icon", based on the fact that a Lumley had a Purdey haircut, which broke the orthodoxy of the awful curling-tonged style so popular among young women at the time and b used to kickbox men on the telly. I understand her rationale. As a year-old, desperate for a sign that I was not the only gay in the village, I claimed Julie Covington, one of the actors in the s series Rock Follies about a female rock group, as a lesbian, because she had short hair, wore one earring, and drank like a man.

Having said this, I have never really understood why so many lesbians and gay men appear desperate to claim certain celebs as "our own". When droves of lesbians began, in sheep fashion, to fancy Sigourney Weaver after the release of Alien, I was confused. Wearing a vest that looked like it had once been white but had got caught up in the wash with a pair of workman's overalls, and not bothering to have a regular shampoo and set in between trying to save humanity, seemed to be the only lezzer indicators.

Yet still the rumours - which remain totally unsubstanttied - started around lesbian dinner parties. I have never understood why Armatrading is, to many, a lesbian icon. She doesn't sing about being in love with women, she sings about not having a boyfriend, or having her heart broken by one. Many people confuse the notion of a lesbian icon with a women in the public eye who some women fancy.

For me, the only lesbian icon worth mentioning is Martina Navratilova. Because she is secure in her appearance, does not dress for men, or seek to become acceptable to heterosexuals. She is also well out of the closet and has had fairly public, passionate relationships with other lesbian icons, such as the writer Rita Mae Brown. So who should we want in our club?

How about some real lesbians? If they don't want to be one of us, or would rather keep it a secret, I don't want them in my gang.