Here's one we're going to keep on making
Brad Pitt says his young brood exchange home-made gifts rather than buy presents. But do children still revel in making stuff from cereal packets and toilet roll holders? Yes, says Blue Peter editor Tim Levell.
It started, as so often on Blue Peter, with a letter. Margaret Parnell, a housewife from Portsmouth, wrote in suggesting that the presenters show children how to make dolls' hats from crepe paper. The item went down so well that Valerie Singleton (for it was 1963) wrote back and asked if she had any more ideas.
 |   We try to keep the money spent to a minimum - the rule is that everyone's got to make something for someone else, you got to put time into it  Brad Pitt in Hello! |
She certainly did. Over the subsequent years, Margaret and her successor, Gillian Shearing, produced nearly 1,000 "makes", ranging from the small (loo roll holders) to the spectacular (fully-equipped dolls' houses).
Some have so caught the public imagination that they've been repeated endlessly, like the Advent Crown, or led to runaway print runs, like the legendary Tracey Island, complete with its 100,000 factsheets.
And the terminology has entered the nation's consciousness. Sticky-back plastic instead of the tradename Fablon; sticky tape instead of Sellotape; and of course the phrase "Here's one I made earlier" - a reference to the shortcuts needed to compress the item for television.
Make and do
There are many ingredients in the Blue Peter mix - the appeal, the badge, the garden, the competitions, the daredevil stunts. But for many people, it's the makes that have endured, probably because they inspired them when young to turn away from the glowing TV screen and do something creative instead.
| FIND OUT MORE Blue Peter Christmas special is on BBC One at 1635 GMT on Wednesday 17 December Or catch up at BBC iPlayer |
My brother, who works for an American financial institution, told me recently that he and his colleagues were devising the marketing for a European investment product by cutting up photos and text to create a promotional brochure. "We're having a Blue Peter moment," one said.
But in today's competitive children's television environment, with 30 dedicated channels, the internet and computer games all competing for attention, giving over a large slice of television real estate to show children how to make something practical and useful could seem like a luxury.
Demonstrating a make can take up to seven minutes - valuable airtime in anyone's book. And over the past few years, with supermarkets selling cut-price items like photo frames for less than a pound, the pressure on children to save money by making a corrugated cardboard version for Mum's Christmas present has definitely eased.
 Janet Ellis makes tree greeting cards |
Until this year, that is.
The effect of the credit crunch has spread far and wide - and children are not immune. "My pocket money used to be
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