Thank you @dunebasher1971 - I have very happy memories of working behind the scenes on that show. I had grown up adoring Blue Peter and it was dream come true territory to be there. I was one of the judges, along with the presenters, Ian McNaughton and Biddy Baxter. I remember it all being great fun. Watching it now I'm blown away by how old fashioned it all seems, rather like the 1940s felt in the 1980s
@@naysmith5272 thank you! I was very lucky to get the gig, and wonderful to have the chance to make things for millions of viewers. I made a collection of the animations that I could find as of a few months ago, there's a couple more here to add - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-KTVaK_y0-WY.html
Can you speak a bit about the criteria you typically used? What was the most memorable prize you can recall, and the worst? Was there ever a time where you disagreed with the other judges, and how did you guys resolve the problem?
Probably because it was aimed at schools as well. Home users would never have had them but a school might. Although yeah, asking if you could send it to the BBC would have been a bit selfish in that case as they weren't sending them back...
@@purefoldnz3070 I wouldn’t say spitting image, but the family resemblance is certainly visible. When SEB first got vaguely famous in the late nineties it was the journalist’s law that you couldn’t mention her without mentioning that she was Janet's daughter.
So good to see this again, I entered this competition with a cartoon I did on the Spectrum. Unfortunately missed the bit where it needed to be no longer than 8 seconds, as mine was best part of a minute long 😂! Shame, I reckon I really wanted that Electron.
So did I. It’s the only one I remember entering. I’ve no idea what my entry was, but it was probably crap, as I was never really that artistic. It would have been on the Spectrum too.
John Menzies ran a computer programming competition in 1984, trying to solve number sequences and series, the top prize (for each of 3 age groups) was £1000 computing gear for the kids school, plus £30 voucher each. Winners were presented by Donald Michie of Bletchley Park fame. Still got the dictionary i bought with my voucher.
@@rambledogs2012 I was about 20 and I fancied her like mad. Watching this now I suddenly realise that I must have fancied every woman that appeared on TV in the late 70s and 1980s.
Amazing to see these graphics now and realise how limited they were. At the time they were considered to be the greatest thing since the invention of the wheel.
I would have been not yet fourteen at the time. My first memory of computers was four years earlier, when I encountered a BBC Micro Computer at junior school in the corner of my classroom. I played games on it. My brother Anthony had a ZX Spectrum during the that period!
When the only images on your tv were broadcast from BBC ITV etc , to be able to create your own moving image on your tv was mindblowing. It's equivalent now to creating your own 3d hologram that you can talk to and follows you around your house.
@@cappaculla To be fair, Duncan dared to say, if you have got a computer you will be offered some software for a BBC microcomputer. Why not software for your computer of choice? Go watch it again @3:00 and stay awake this time. 😛
Acorn were probably trying to shift older stock. Like, it's the equivalent of a giveaway of a CD32 ten years later or a PS Vita in 2015. Sometimes you've got to really sell those prizes while smiling through your pretty white teeth and cut glass RP accent after all those intrusive Rs were trained out of your pronunciation of 'drawing'.
Still equivalent to £800 taking into account inflation just for the Electron alone. BBC Micro would have been £1600. I did really enjoy my Electron… Ahhhh memories.
@@deavo74 oh wow, I didn’t realise the price difference was quite that large. I loved the BBC I got at the age of 8 but by that point the computer was already 10 years old, a hand-me-down from a cousin. Taught myself programming as a little girl with that thing, and I feel lucky to have had an older computer that made programming so much more accessible than most new computers in 1991 would have. And despite also owning a Sega Mega Drive, I still somehow had the patience to spend minutes loading various BBC games from cassette 😄
@@archibaldbuttle7 The Electron was STILL the cheap, pared down version of the BBC model B. Not sure when the BBC Master came out but it was supposed to be better again. The Z80 microchip, developed for the "space race", was the ONLY guaranteed chip available. The 6502 (BBC) wasn't!
This is the one and only Blue Peter competition I remember entering. Tbh I didn’t even remember it was a BP competition, I just remembered entering it. Now I wish I’d entered the York Minster one too, as they would have so cool now if I’d won.
Reminded me of the various transformer style toys that were around at the time. We had girly versions, but even so I do actually think I'd have loved that robot as the 5 year old I was at the time -- although I'd have probably broken it fairly soon after I got it.
I was 8. Don't remember seeing this and I liked the idea of computers but not as much as I do now. I remember a kid in our middle school was the only expert who knew how to use the class BBC. The teacher would always ask him to help her set it up. I remember seeing it used but don't ever remember getting to use it.
I remember this well at the time. Six years later I joined the BBC TV Centre Engineering team. I mailed the head of Children’s BBC presentation asking if I could do an air graphic ident. No idea why I did, I was not a graphics wizz but could program. Luckily he told me to pi$$ off
2:08 Despite starting my computing journey on the Spectrum I today learned they had wee cartridge things as storage. I only ever knew of tapes, and then later on 3½" disks.
@@Bungle2010 The infamous 'Microdrive'. It's an endless loop tape system which advances very quickly to provide a pseudo-random access storage device on a far smaller budget than a disk drive (although blank cartridges for it were more expensive than blank disks - it's quite an ask for someone to sacrifice a cartridge to enter this competition). They were developed for the Spectrum first. They were supposed to be available at launch (hence the keyboard having all the commands to operate them) but were a bit delayed and ROM support came from the ZX Interface 1 add on. The QL did use microdrives too but it came later. Although the same technology, the data format is different and so QL and Spectrum Microdrive cartridges are not interchangeable. Contrary to what is often reported, a new cartridge in a good working order drive was perfectly reliable, but over time the tape in the cartridges would stretch leading to them wearing out quickly and the whole technology certainly doesn't age well with reliably working examples today pretty rare.
I seem to remember it was a fire breathing Dragon. It turns to the camera / front of screen and snorts flames which then die away with the message word still burning like - Goodbye or Next etc....I could be wrong though but I think that was the winner that ended up being added to the various ones and used for a while...
@@dunebasher1971 Ahh I see. I just remembered the Dragon and was sure that was it...then it came to me! It was the winner of the competition for making a garden at the Liverpool Flower Show! That was a dragon theme with a slide built into its mouth. I knew there was a Dragon somewhere! I got it mixed up. My parents actually wanted to go to see that flower park etc after watching it with us on Blue Peter. So one summer holiday while we were in the area coming back from Alton Towers we went in to see it. The whole place was a total and utter let down. Most of the flowers dead, or not well cared for. Large patches of just soil with nothing in it, and things roped off, no entry etc. They made the place look incredible in all the adverts and flyers, but when you actually got there, you could not go on, or walk through any of the places they showed in them. It was a complete and utter rip off.
How many kids gave up because they thought BBC was biased against the Spectrum. The killer "if you have got a computer you will get software for the BBC Micro".
The Electron as the top prize...total pants. There were only 2 systems worth having then for the choice of software. A Spectrum or a C64. The rest were poor, also rans with limited software and that killed them off in a very short time frame. Without the BBC backing it and it being in schools the BBC Micro would have gone the same way. Bottom line was the games are what sold the machines. No decent games to play? No machines sold. So that was that...the BBC micro was garbage even back in the day, vastly over priced etc ....
Do you have the video of the winners of this competition. A school friend of mine won the top prize. He went to work in a French software company afterwards (as I remember his brother actually wrote the code) . A long time ago
2:06 That TDK AD46 is a bit excessive for computer data of the time. TDK Ds, Memorex dBs or even the cheapo tapes would have been ok for that. It was about this time when my primary school got a BBC Model B. Said computer, disk drive and printer were on a trolley that was pushed around the school as and when each class needed it. I was one of the kids doing the pushing.
@@evertonshorts9376 Yep. I still remember the day in late 1985 when we got ANOTHER BBC B which required two more 10 year olds as unpaid labour. Went back there about 12 years later. Several PCs in each classroom by then.
I remember entering with an animation of 2 guys on a circus see saw on my Spectrum. I couldnt remember the prizes at all but I remember the winner on the spectrum had a lot of colourful sprites which put my stick men to shame 😀
At that time Acorn were desperate to shift their surplus Electrons that missed the 1983 Christmas period, but it does seem odd that someone with the more expensive BBC would want to win the lower powered Electron. Mind you, I always felt it was superior to a Spectrum, but not sadly for commercial software where the cheaper Spectrum was the most popular and adopted computer in the UK.
@@Bungle2010 For some reason there used to be competitions like that. There would have been some things for the competition winner to keep for themselves as well
@@simonstclare I vaguely remember competitions like that from somewhere, but tbh the only BP competitions that I specifically remember are this one (because I entered it) and the York Minster one.
I wonder whoever won the Electron still has theirs as I've still got mine from that time, along with my Speccy..... and then in the latter days .... my Amigas
Still have my "grey case" Speccy 128K +2, plus an A600 and A1200, the Speccy and the A1200 work perfectly (test them every couple of years), but the A600 has some wonky ports so if you so much as fart the screen output goes from colour to monochrome.