The former children’s TV presenter has made a festive spectacular with friends and family. It’s Jack and the Beanstalk – filmed in his own back garden
‘Come in, hi, I’m Peter,” says Peter Duncan, opening the door of his house in south London. And he clearly is Peter. Peter Duncan! Thirty-six years after he left Blue Peter, the hair’s now grey, longer, held back with a Jack Grealish headband. But the eyes are just as blue, he still talks at 100mph, and at 66 he’s as bouncy as ever. The energy is both exhausting and utterly infectious.
Actually, I was watching Blue Peter a few years before his time, in the John Noakes era. But my younger brother is the right age: Peter was around our house, as he was to a generation of kids who grew up with him. He took over that Noakes role, the cheerful daredevil, which he carried on into Duncan Dares, remember? Next he started taking his family around the world and filming that, then he became Chief Scout, dib dib dib. But drama has been a constant throughout Duncan’s life – theatre, TV drama, a few movies, musicals, and in the last 20 years or so there have been a lot of pantomimes.