Blue Peter: UtoPeter*

Programme of the Week has to be the Blue Peter Doctor Who Special or (ahem) Who Peter. Primarily a show to announce the winner of this year's Who-related competition, the winner of which gets a speaking part in this coming week's episode, 'Utopia', it followed the by-now familiar template of shortlisted auditionees being put through their paces before the unsuccessful ones are booted off.

What marked this programme out from the usual "It's not you" fare was the obvious talent of a lot of the kids, their unalloyed excitement at being there at all, and the concomitant disappointment when those that were rejected left the room. Now, I'm not so hard-hearted that I like seeing children deliberately upset on television, but the disappointment seemed so heartfelt and, more importantly, proportionate; if you're 9, being told you're not going to be in Doctor Who would be crushing - for a few days, until real life kicks back in. Kids are robust; appearing on Doctor Who is extraordinary and remote, so extraordinary and remote that they'll get over it. More difficult to stomach are those deluded adult souls who regularly fill the conference centres booked by The X Factor or Britain's Got Talent and who talk of 'their dream', as though universal adoration is in their grasp, as they tunelessly raid the Robbie Williams back-catalogue, or pull their luminous 'showbiz' waistcoat out of the wardrobe.

Anyway, enough of them. If the disappointment of the losers was tangible, it was nothing compared to the elation of the winner, 9-year-old John Bell. Receiving the news of his win on the phone from Russell T.Davies, the young lad went through astonishment, excitement, disbelief, and a silent tumult of all of these and more as the news sank in. The announcement delivered, he offered a professional thumbs-up to camera, before asking ingenuously if he could go and tell his mum and dad. The following footage of him on-set, having the time of his life, was simply a bonus after this. Terrific stuff.



Sandwiched in the middle of the programme, and I use the term advisedly, was the homoerotic sight of the week; namely, John Barrowman being lured into the Blue Peter greenhouse by Gethin in order to, um, make a TARDIS interior playset ("I need your help with something" "Oh boy..."). I'm aware that the mere presence of Barrowman is enough to make any given situation homoerotic, but the effect was compounded by the sheer complexity of the make, the speed at which they rattled through it, and the feeling from the viewer that both of them would rather be doing something less boring instead. Whether they were thinking of the same alternative will remain a matter of conjecture - but watch John Barrowman's face as Gethin displays his selection of coc - um, time rotor rings.



*Look, we can all force a pun if we want to!