Blue Peter

On 7 May 1962, she joined the British children's television show Blue Peter

Blue Peter

Blue Peter is the world's longest-running children's television show, having first aired in 1958. It is shown on CBBC, both in its BBC One programming block and on the CBBC channel. During its history there have been many presenters, often consisting of two women and two men at a time...

as co-host, following the departure of Leila Williams

Leila Williams

Leila Williams is a former British beauty queen and television presenter.-Career:In 1957, Williams was awarded the title of Miss Great Britain; then, a year later, she became the first female Blue Peter presenter, co-presenting with Christopher Trace.Williams left Blue Peter at the start of 1962,...

. She remained with the programme for only sixteen editions, the last being shown on 3 September 1962, later that same year, making her one of the programme's shortest-serving presenters (other than stand-ins Ann Taylor, Tony Hart

Tony Hart

Norman Antony "Tony" Hart was an English artist and children's television presenter. He was famous for television shows such as Vision On, Playbox, Take Hart and Hartbeat.-Early life:...

 and Sandra Michaels

Sandra Michaels

English actress, Sandra Michaels, was born in 1944. Her first television role was in March 1957, playing Phyllis in the second BBC adaptation of The Railway Children. Later that year she appeared as Pamela Gwendolyn Stuart in The Adventures of Clint and Mac, a British-made serial commissioned by...

). She voluntarily resigned from the series because of her imminent divorce from the musician Ray Ellington

Ray Ellington

Ray Ellington was a popular English singer, drummer and bandleader. He is best known for his appearances on The Goon Show from 1951 to 1960...

 and her own worries of the inappropriateness for a presenter of a children's programme in this era. West never divulged her reasons for leaving to the producers, who deemed her "unprofessional" for simply walking out on the show.

The length of time West presented Blue Peter was so short that, for many years, she was not officially recognised as a Blue Peter presenter, only being added to the official list of presenters upon the show's fortieth anniversary in 1998. In contrast, her replacement, Valerie Singleton, ahead of whom West had come in earlier auditions, became the show's longest-serving female presenter until Konnie Huq

Konnie Huq

Kanak Asha "Konnie" Huq is a British television presenter, who is best known for being the longest-serving female presenter of Blue Peter, having presented it from 1 December 1997 until 23 January 2008...

.

Later career

After leaving Blue Peter, West appeared in such shows as Space: 1999

Space: 1999

Space: 1999 is a British science-fiction television series that ran for two seasons and originally aired from 1975 to 1977. In the opening episode, nuclear waste from Earth stored on the Moon's far side explodes in a catastrophic accident on 13 September 1999, knocking the Moon out of orbit and...

, Crossroads, The Saint

The Saint (TV series)

The Saint was an ITC mystery spy thriller television series that aired in the UK on ITV between 1962 and 1969. It centred on the Leslie Charteris literary character, Simon Templar, a Robin Hood-like adventurer with a penchant for disguise. The character may be nicknamed The Saint because the...

, and Lovejoy

Lovejoy

Lovejoy is a TV series about the adventures of Lovejoy, a British antiques dealer and faker based in East Anglia, a less than scrupulous yet likeable rogue. The episodes were based on a series of picaresque novels by John Grant...

. She also briefly returned to Blue Peter in 1998 to appear in its pantomime.
Also, for a period in the 1970s, she was employed as a PR hostess at the Palm Beach Casino Club in Mayfair

Mayfair

Mayfair is an area of central London, within the City of Westminster.-History:Mayfair is named after the annual fortnight-long May Fair that took place on the site that is Shepherd Market today...

 when it was owned by the Barnett family.

External links

• Anita West BBC
  BBC
  The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
  
   Blue Peter
  Blue Peter
  Blue Peter is the world's longest-running children's television show, having first aired in 1958. It is shown on CBBC, both in its BBC One programming block and on the CBBC channel. During its history there have been many presenters, often consisting of two women and two men at a time...