Chris tries to use his childhood Blue Peter badge as a VIP pass
Scott began the programme worried that a huge burrito was about to make him ill on air, while Beccy and Chris debated the problem of overcrowded trains. Chris’s proposed solution for Beccy’s Reading commute was characteristically impractical: she should take a fold-up camping chair with her and sit in the carriage when there were no seats. Beccy agreed to try it, provided it was a proper chair rather than a tiny stool that made her look as if she was on the toilet.
Chris then unveiled the day’s main experiment. He had found the Blue Peter badge he won as a 12-year-old for a poem, and wondered whether it still entitled him to free entry around London now that he was 24. Scott had one too, earned during a Bring and Buy sale with Martin Fowler from EastEnders, while Beccy’s badge had arrived after she wrote to a Blue Peter contributor asking to become pen pals.
With the badge pinned on, Chris approached the London Aquarium and the Tower of London with the brisk request, “Blue Peter badge, let me in.” Neither attraction accepted it. He had no modern badge card, and the Tower’s staff pointed out that the scheme was for under-15s. Scott thought Chris had confused a cherished childhood award with an all-access pass.
There were small victories. A fast-food worker gave Chris a free burger after he asked whether his badge qualified him for an offer, and a pub customer was sufficiently impressed to buy him a drink. Chris also tried the Natural History Museum, only to be reminded that everyone could enter free anyway. He nevertheless treated the whole outing as proof that the badge still carried real power.
The show also heard Chris’s recorded encounters at each stop, with his confidence growing even as the evidence became less convincing. His determination to present a free museum visit as a personal triumph was exactly what made the feature work. By the end, Scott and Beccy accepted that the Blue Peter badge had not opened London to him, but it had produced a burger, a drink and an unusually good day out.
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