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I’ve had a few comments about my use of the Blue Peter “Totaliser” style Pound-O-Meter on the main site. All of them positive, of course.

My homage to the totaliser stems from my wonderful childhood days of “bring and buy” sales and other such innocent pursuits. What better way pay tribute than to shamelessly steal their idea?

Take a look at these wee tykes, they certainly have got into the spirit of things! I applaud you youngsters. I applaud your spirit and your chutspah.

However, you’ve made a glaring error.

Everyone knows that a Blue Peter totaliser has to have a ridiculously high total at the top, which they never can actually reach.

500!! YOU MUST BE JOKING LADS.

Eventually, in all good Blue Peter appeals, the totaliser just disappears, and we hear no more about it. Still, being children, we’ll forget as long as we’re shown some grinning buffoon marauding around some foreign country on horseback…

I didn’t forget. Blue Peter taught me one thing: appeals only work if you set your sights a little too high. I could read between the lines, even as an eight year old.

By the way, kids, I think you’ll find that my “totaliser” is much more in line with the Blue Peter standard. Also, for future reference, notice the ridiculous increments as we near the top, and how out of line they are with the initial amounts. That, too, is a standard Blue Peter ploy, as it holds our interest right at the start of the campaign and gets us all selling bottle tops as fast as our little legs can carry us to a pasting table. As we reach the campaigns natural end, and the kids just don’t care anymore/have sold everything in sight, it really doesn’t matter, as no amount of bringing or buying will ever shift the figure.

Your totaliser does start well, at the bottom, but going up 100 each time on the top 4 figures? Sacrilege. Come on lads, must do better. Come back in 10 years. If you study hard, maybe one day you’ll be able to make a worthy totaliser, but, be warned: it’s not for the meek, or the faint hearted.

On the Blue Peter theme, I was perusing the web before and found a pretty funny site about Blue Peter, worth a look. The other sites I found were a bit bland to be honest. For example, there are countless opinions written on those consumer opinion sites saying “Blue Peter is such an institution” or, “My parents watched Blue Peter, I did, and so do my kiddies…” and other such nonsense. Do you people not have anything interesting to say or do other than stating the blindingly obvious??? What makes this worse is that they have all written about 2000 words on the subject.

Next time, church roof fund “thermometers”