It started with something ordinary, or so I thought at first. They had to use an angle grinder to open it. “What a weird coincidence,” I remember thinking to myself at the time. But little did I know, the day held an even bigger surprise, a truly significant one for me personally, especially as someone who grew up watching Blue Peter.
Then, Katy Hill was there. Yes, the Katy Hill, the very Blue Peter presenter to whom I had penned a heartfelt letter as a child, a letter where I enthusiastically invited her to come and stay at my house for three whole days and two nights. On this particular day, she was on set to pre-record a segment with Lindsey and Radzi. And then I was asked if I wanted to have a chat with her. This was already surreal.
For most of our conversation, a part of me was wrestling with whether or not I should reveal the story of the letter. We were chatting about her long-held ambition to work in television, how she had dreamed of this job since she was five years old, and the slightly mind-bending fact that one of the current presenters had actually grown up watching her on TV. It was fascinating to hear her experiences.
We then got onto the topic of specific Blue Peter episodes. She mentioned the one where she was in a bobsleigh, and another where she was undergoing Royal Air Force training, which involved the rather unnerving experience of being put in a cage and lowered into a swimming pool. I was genuinely able to tell her that I remembered watching both of those episodes vividly.
“Are you my stalker?” she joked, with a playful glint in her eye.
When was the right moment to tell her about the letter? I wondered. It felt like a now or never situation.
“Screw it,” I thought, deciding to just go for it. Knowing that I had a photo of the letter saved on my phone, a slightly embarrassing relic of my childhood Blue Peter fandom, I decided to take the plunge and tell her everything. As she recounted some of the bizarre and funny things she’d been asked to do during her time on the show – the kinds of challenges that are a hallmark of Blue Peter and often earn presenters a coveted Blue Peter Badge – I decided to add another layer of weirdness to the conversation. I interrupted her and said:
“Speaking of weird things… I actually tried to send a letter to Blue Peter, addressed specifically to you, a few years ago.”
“Yes!” Katy responded, sounding genuinely excited and intrigued. “Did I reply to it?”
“Well, no, you didn’t actually reply,” I admitted. “We never sent it in the end, because my parents thought it was, perhaps, a little too creepy.”
I then took a deep breath and read out the letter to her, reciting the slightly over-the-top words penned by my eight-year-old self. Afterwards, feeling a mix of nervousness and exhilaration, I passed her my phone, showing her the photo of the actual letter. And to this day, I honestly cannot recall with complete clarity exactly what happened in the moments that followed. It’s all a bit of a blur. I can only imagine it’s akin to the feeling of being plucked from the audience and asked to perform on stage with your all-time favourite band. It’s an overwhelming, incredible moment, perhaps so intensely good that my brain decided to protect me by gently erasing some of the finer details.
Adding to the slightly surreal nature of the encounter, although I diligently recorded our conversation on my phone, it turns out there is absolutely no audio of this particular part. In a classic comedy of errors, Katy had accidentally covered the microphone with her hand while she was engrossed in looking at the photo of my childhood letter. Perhaps it was fate.
But despite the missing audio, one thing is crystal clear in my memory: she absolutely loved it. Thank goodness. The relief was immense.
When I listen back to the partial audio recording, the snippet where Katy is reading the letter aloud sounds almost comically dramatic, as though it’s unintentionally announcing the start of some kind of apocalypse. It’s unintentionally hilarious.
If only I could somehow travel back in time and tell my eight-year-old self about this moment. To let him know that this weird, slightly embarrassing, utterly stupid fan letter had actually led to something genuinely amazing, not just days or weeks later, but years down the line. It’s a reminder that sometimes the most unexpected things can happen.
In fact, thinking about unexpected connections, if I could give my younger self even more information, I would also tell him that, completely separately from this Blue Peter visit and Katy Hill encounter, I also once received a response from Stuart Miles, another beloved former Blue Peter presenter. This was in relation to a mention I made about his absence from a birthday party due to “filming commitments” in an old BuzzFeed post. Out of the blue, he actually responded to it all in a personal email. It seems the Blue Peter magic extends in unexpected ways.
