Duncan Shares - an interview with Peter Duncan

11:43am Wednesday 1st October 2008

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Former Blue Peter presenter, actor, adventurer and chief scout Peter Duncan has certainly enjoyed a colourful career. He's going to be revisiting some of the best bits for his Duncan Dares show at Fairfield Halls on Oct 9. The entertainer talks to Kerry Ann Eustice about what audiences can expect.

Tell us about your show, Peter.

It's called Duncan Dares. It's an autobiographical journey through all the stuff I've done from my Blue Peter days to travelling around the world with my family and all the musical theatre I've done, such as Barnum and Me and My Girl. It's a bit of fun, lot's of showbiz.

It's a fun night out with lots of daring stunts - I do a bit of tight-rope walking and that sort of thing. Also it's Blue Peter's 50th coming up and I'm head of half a million odd scouts, so I'll be having fun with them as well.

It covers lots of territories really. The show is one of those things actors or variety people do sometimes, go back to all the best bits and relive them.

I'm finishing the script at the moment.

I'll be trying out about 10 dates this autumn. And if anybody comes and it's successful I'll put it on again this year.

Come along, it will be fun and exciting as well. There are a few stunt moments so anything could happen. It's a bit of a challenge/seat-of-your pants kind of thing.

How did you become an entertainer?

When I grew up, my mum and dad lived in Beckenham and Bromley, and used to put on summer seasons and pantomimes. Mainly in Tunbridge Wells and old-time musical shows on the south coast. So I grew up in a variety family.

That was my background so I became an actor when I was 15 and how I became interested in the profession. So this is like going back to all those roots of the old days when people used to get up on stage and entertain. That's where I'm coming from really.

Are you excited about revisiting all these experiences in the show?

I am a bit yes. It's a bit of trepidation now, you've got to hold the stage for an hour and a half on your own and it's all down to the material. I've done lots of big musicals so one can borrow from all the territories you've worked in before.

I just wanted to make it fun. I wouldn't call it stand-up as a lot of stand-up is about going up on stage and being abusive and rude. I won't be squeaky clean but it will be something for all the family really. The same audience who would go to a panto.

What parts of your career will you be revisiting?

Well I'm going to do, for all those people who ever failed to be a Blue Peter presenter, they're going to have a chance to go through the audition process. I'm going to show a clip of my audition, how I got the job, and then we're going to give them a chance to go before the camera and become a Blue Peter presenter. It's kind of a send up of what the famous Blue Peter audition was like.

Then they're going to try and make a Hadron Collider out of sticky-back plastic and a bit of old cornflake packet. It'll probably break down, of course, but there you go.

They'll be more from my daring days - spin off series Duncan Dares. So that was really about me doing tight-rope walking, formula one truck racing and all those kind of dangerous things I used to do, being a stunt man and driving a Volkwagon across the Irish sea. Lots of silly things. That was early reality stuff really, wasn't it? But I was doing it on my own.

We've got our own challenge-hungry adventurer here at News Shopper. Dan Dares. One of his dares has been to break the cream cracker eating record.

Tell him I'll challenge him to something. If he wants to come earlier before the show we can do a challenge. How could he resist?

The challenge could be to come up and be the pantomime cow. I'll call him out. I do a little sequence where I get a view volunteers up to be a cow. Let's see if he can hack that.

Tell us more about growing up in Bromley.

I was born in Chelsea and when I was about 18 months we moved to a maisonette in Road, Beckenham. I went to Hawes Down Junior School. Then when I was about 11 we moved to Bromley, at the top of Bromley Hill. That was when the old man had quite a successful show on Brighton Pier, so we sold the maisonette and bought a house in Bromley.

My childhood was spent in the parks and streets of Beckenham and Bromley, really.

Did you take part in any shows in the area back then?

My mum did. In summer season she was the soprano. We were like a showbiz family. We'd go off for summers to seaside resorts and hang around the stage door. It was a bit of a fragmented childhood, the education was a bit poor but that was all part of the romance of it.

What experiences did you prefer - presenting Blue Peter and the acting or making the travel documentaries with your family?

I've done different things. The good stuff, or the interesting stuff, was obviously when I got married and had my own kids. After the Blue Peter thing I started being a TV adventurer. This was the advent of much smaller technology, so you could travel much easier with kit, so we went on a six-month round the world trip which I filmed and eventually persuaded the BBC to give me thre'pence for to broadcast it and that was the start of another kind of adventure.

Then we went to China for three months and India for three months so we made three TV series.

I enjoyed the work because it gets into the travel stuff and the story telling. It wasn't just through my eyes it was through the kids eyes, they were aged from eight to 14 when we did so it was taking them around the world as backpackers and seeing the world through their eyes.

Do you have any plans to do something like that again?

Lucy my eldest, after her travels became quite fascinated and she went off to university to study Mandarin. She has just gone back with four of her mates and attempted to loosely follow the torch around China and speak to their contemporaries in Chinese and English. That's a slightly different angle, to show the real side of China, not the western propaganda side. We've shot all that. It hasn't got a commission but we're hoping someone will pick up on it really.

It is interesting, our media tend to make fun of Chinese and send them up. They love China and love the Chinese people. It's a different feel for it really.

You've done plenty of panto, will you be taking part in any shows this Christmas?

I'm writing and directing one at Oxford Playhouse but I'm not in that one, just in charge. Then, strangely enough, I'm in one at Rickmansworth.

Since you became chief scout numbers of scouts have risen significantly, haven't they? Why do you think has this happened?

I suppose the people before me have been lord this and major general that and there was so much a hierarchy it. When they had their centenary I was very much the front man.

I was a cub scout in Beckenham, when I was little. I wasn't a very good one, I don't think.

But they kind of bit the bullet and asked me to do it. It's a volunteer job, you don't get paid. I guess it was because I'm a communicator.

It's a lot of people, half a million people now and millions who have done it previously. I just thought it was good public duty stuff. I think everyone should volunteer at something. It fitted nicely on with all the appeals Blue Peter used to do and the idea of getting people involved. We've tried to change it from an old-fashioned organisation into an adventure organisation. Because I'm an adventurer, I fitted into that. They've got rid of me now though. I'll have done five years by then. It has worked though.

Are you still a fan of Blue Peter? Do you watch it still?

We've just done this programme for the 50th which is on Oct 16. I do. I saw Gethin the other day, but he's left now hasn't he. It's all changed, it doesn't quite have the kudos or the figures it used to have in my day and certainly not as in Noakes' and Pervis' day. It used to be the only programme on the block and now they have to compete with digital television. So they only get about half a million, so it doesn't really, for young people, have the same influence.

But it's still there and the ideas behind it still work. It's worth celebrating something like that. 50 years, it's extraordinary really and the fact it is interactive. It gets the kids who watch it doing things in the wider world outside. It actually has a purpose really and I think that's very important.

Duncan Dares at Fairfield Halls, Croydon on Oct 9. 7.30pm. 020 8688 9291.