BOOK TWENTY-THREE
Published 1987 (no book published in 1986)
BP Team: Just about everybody - a long-haired Peter Duncan answers the call and comes back to the programme. Janet's still there and the new additions are professional prat (in the nicest sense) Mark Curry and the leggy Caron Keating. Simon Groom is now the show's 'country correspondent', reporting on all things rustic 'n' rural. Oh and cat (Pussy) Willow joins as well.
Cover: Photos taken from the previous year's Christmas hoofery - clips can be seen on the deleted video 'Blue Peter: Best of the 80s'.

Features: One of our favourite BP features, where Caron joins a group of martial arts experts to stand under a Welsh waterfall and get royally soaked... Simon and Janet get soaked too, as they visit a turn of the century health spa at Malvern... Yep, there's the annual feature on Janet's parachuting, as she breaks the European woman's civilian freefall record rather than any bone in her body... Goldie has puppies, including Bonnie... Janet joins the chorus for the last night of the Proms and gets very excited about it. Oh dear... The Sight Savers appeal is launched to improve eye care in Africa - the in-studio Bring and Buy includes a copy of the book of children's drama The Cuckoo Sister!... Something we remember for some bizarre reason - Chris Amoo from top funk outfit The Real Thing breeds prize-winning Afghan Hounds and brings them to the studio for the trad. post-Crufts studio item... Some weird spams hang stuck to canvas to become scary living paintings - childhood nightmares must surely have ensued?... Duncan swings perilously from a crane to play about with dishes on the Telecom Tower... Janet investigates whether dolphins would enjoy having rock music piped to them underwater. The answer is, no, probably not.... Divers bring their haul from a shipwreck to the studio. The Nanking cargo (I said Nanking) includes china and gold... Mark visits the Up-Helly Aa Viking festival - hey, wait a minute, they did this in Book 10...

Makes: Crazy Cress Heads - Janet grows cress out of jars topped with 'funny' sock head puppety things. Cress. Cress. Cress cress cress.
Caron models snug snoods - as worn by the likes of Nik Kershaw and Alannah from the Thompson Twins (about three years earlier); "A 100g pack of stockingette roll, from a supermarket or car-care shop costs under £1 and makes a snood or scarf".

Historical Figure's Life Story in Pictures: A wazzy picture of Mark Curry holding a shell to his ear heads the story of The Grand Tours in the 18th Century
Stories: Nope.

Notes: So begins the twilight years for the annual... The BBC comes back after a year off for the BP Book and, now hooked up with publishers Macmillan, works with a restricted print run. Also, Book 23 is printed on cheaper paper than in previous years. Whatever, this annual is extremely hard to find and a sign of things to come as regards the sales of the BP Books. The Doctor Who annual, for example, was dead by this time as the market contracted. The beginning (1-4) and the 'end' (23-27) of the Blue Peter Books are the hardest of all to collect, and from hereon it gets very difficult indeed. As much as £3 if you can track one down.