By Christmas the next 12 months, the toy on each current want listing was a plastic Tracy Island. They have been bought out in all places. “There were rumours that the manager of one famous toy store had even had mothers offering to sleep with him to get one,” says Jamie Anderson, Gerry’s son. [Gerry died in 2012.] “I don’t know if he took the offer up.”
In stepped Blue Peter to avoid wasting the day with its regular resolution: make your personal. Thirty years in the past immediately, on January 7, in a 13-minute dwell section, the presenter Anthea Turner confirmed keen viewers tips on how to make Tracy Island utilizing nothing greater than cardboard, tin foil, papier mâché, toilet roll, pipe cleaners, crepe paper, yogurt pots, paint and sandpaper. The Tracy villa, a paragon of midcentury American stylish impressed by Frank Lloyd Wright, was constituted of the lid of a cream cheese pot, straws and one-and-a-half Swan Vesta packing containers.
“I cannot tell you how many of those things we made,” Turner says. “It was a live show, so you couldn’t make any mistakes. And we’d never give 13 minutes to anything, especially not a make. To execute it live on air I practised and practised and practised. I think I could probably still make it, it’s so ingrained in me. The programme invited viewers to write in – with a stamped addressed envelope, naturally – for the instructions. They were deluged. “We couldn’t cope,” Turner says. “The newspapers came to the rescue. One of them ran a pull out, which showed readers how to make it. Schools started making it. Tracy Island clubs sprang up.”
