Blue Peter legend Biddy Baxter said she was "appalled" by the revelation of a fake phone-in competition result on the BBC kids' show.

Baxter, who was in charge of Blue Peter from the 60s to the 80s, put the mistake down to "human frailty" and said that she did not think that anyone should be sacked over the incident.
Last night, Blue Peter presenters issued an on-air apology to viewers after 14,000 children entered the contest to win a toy - but due to technical problems the programme asked a girl visiting the studio to pose as the winner.

Speaking on a host of BBC radio and TV programmes this morning, Ms Baxter said she was "absolutely dumbstruck and then very annoyed".

"What one has to remember is we have to differentiate between the phone scams which are deliberate and premeditated and this ghastly thing that happened on Blue Peter," she said.
"Really it was a mixture of panic and inexperience because what happened was the person in charge of the item was on the floor. Phone lines went down, live transmission - panic, panic, panic.

"The irony was up in the gallery was the editor and the assistant editor completely oblivious of what was going on, and this member of the production team picked out one of the children in the studio and took them into the make-up area and that's how it happened."
She said that she hoped that the programme recovered from the scandal.

"I do hope Blue Peter will win back the trust of the viewers because it was human frailty. We are all liable to do something stupid and unfortunately that's what happened."

Mona Zahoor, who was at the Blue Peter studio with her son, Ali, on the day of the phone-in competition, told BBC Breakfast she had inadvertently revealed that the programme had faked the winner.

"On the day we were just visiting the Blue Peter studios and they had a phone-in competition," Ms Zahoor said.

"Towards the end of it, surprisingly, rather than a genuine caller calling, one of the children who was behind the set at the time was plucked out and asked to pretend to be a caller.
"I happened to be on the BBC message board on Friday and, while people had written these things had happened on various programmes, I added that it had happened on Blue Peter as well, just assuming people must have known this was just something I was adding to a message board."

TV standards campaigners said faking a winner on a children's TV show marked a new low in the phone-in scandal which has affected the likes of Richard and Judy, Saturday Kitchen and The X Factor. "This is a clear breach of audience trust and is made so much worse because this is a long-running programme for children. The BBC ought to know better," said Dave Turtle of pressure group Mediawatch UK.

My View:

Personally, being a fan of blue peter myself, i was appalled at the fact that blue peter felt they had to lie about the winner of the phone in competition, and the amount of money which they had raised. Blue Peter have the audience of ages between 6 - 11, and what Blue Peter did set a poor example for these children, Blue Peter should be very apolagetic towards the situation.

"I do hope Blue Peter will win back the trust of the viewers because it was human frailty. We are all liable to do something stupid and unfortunately that's what happened."