A few weeks ago I decided to preach on the life of St Thérèse of Lisieux in preparation for visit of her relics. I began by saying that my first memory of St Thérèse was through watching a feature on the story of her life on Blue Peter. When I stopped to think about it, it now seems highly unlikely that such a programme as Blue Peter would do a feature like that and I began to wonder if I had imagined the whole thing or had got mixed up.
Yesterday I was talking to someone who had been to a preparation session for the arrival of the relics . As part of the session they were shown the Blue Peter feature. Peter Purves told the story. I was so pleased to hear that I had been right and that it had really happened. My informant had searched for the episode on YouTube but it isn`t there. Maybe one day it will appear. I don`t suppose Blue Peter gave the tour of the relics any publicity this time.
I see the relics blog has published the numbers of visitors at each location. Newcastle with 5,000 didn`t really do that well: York managed 10,000 and Leeds 14,000. Still it certainly caught the imagination of people round the country. There`s an article in today`s Telegraph on the visit which tries to say what it all meant.
3 comments:
Perhaps the reason for the low numbers of visitors to the relics when they came to Newcastle was because the impression given by church authorities and the media in the preceding weeks was that there would be long queues to enter the church the whole time the relics were there thus giving the impression there was very little chance of even getting into the church
I remember the "Blue Peter Special". It was one of my earliest awakenings to the wonder of Catholicism.
I recall how Peter Purves concluded by saying that initially he hadn't been able to see what was so special about St Therese, but that in making the programme he had come to appreciate what she was all about.
As you say, there's no way Blue Peter would run even a short piece on a subject like that now, let alone devote an entire "Special" to a Catholic (or any kind of Christian) figure.
The Blue Peter Special Assignment: Saint Therese of Lisieux was broadcast on 21 January 1979, according to the skeletal record in the BFI Film and TV Database, http://ftvdb.bfi.org.uk/sift/series/4999
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