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I remember watching it when it was first broadcast. I sort of knew he survived because he introduced it in the studio beforehand. But frankly, that was health and safety gone non-existent.
My recollections of Blue Peter is that they tried to kill John Noakes every week. It was either dropping him from a parachute from near outer space, or flinging him head over arse down a bobsleigh (For which Mary Whitehouse complained because he showed his bruised arse on telly).
Of course, everyone loved Shep. Every kid in the 1970s wanted a border collie dog. We were dutifully told that they were very energetic and prone to bouts of canine hooliganism. We knew. We had seen Shep and totally wanted that level of mental in our living room.
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Have you (or anyone) seen the documentary series The Dark Wizard? Its about a freestyle climber called Dean Potter who was considered at the peak of the game in the early GoPro-youtube era. There is one part where he goes to China to do a televised slackline walk and loses his shit because against his contract they put safety nets under it. SO he fights them, threatening to go home without doing the stunt if they dont remove, all while genuinely thinking he might die doing it. Utter nutcase
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I donāt think John Noakes was looking for trouble, though!
I think it is forgotten how acceptable work place accidents were at one time. When I worked in the chocolate factory, there were lots of people with lifelong disabilities because they had been hit by a fork-lift or whatever. Cadbury-Schweppes were a somewhat paternal firm, so they didnāt sack people when they injured them.
I went on the Liver Building tour a couple of years ago, and they pointed out that only killing seven of the construction workers was regarded as something of an achievement at the time.
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Iāve seen the documentary
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We are currently watching a film on Paramount+.
For whatever reason, it screwed up and showed us American adverts instead of German ones.
FFS. What is wrong with that country. For a minute I thought it was a Paul Verhoeven film and they were meant to be satirical.
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