Christopher Leonard Trace was an English actor and television presenter, best remembered for his nine years as a presenter of the British Broadcasting Corporation children"s programme Blue Peter.
Education
Trace was educated at Cranleigh School, a boarding independent school in the town of Cranleigh in Surrey, which he left early. After working as a farm labourer, he joined the British Army where he studied at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He was promoted to Lieutenant in February 1955, but resigned his commission in September 1956.
Career
Trace was the youngest of three children born to Edith (née Morley) and Lawrence Archibald Trace. His two older siblings were Ann and David Morley Trace. After Sandhurst, Trace received a commission in the Royal Regiment of Artillery of the British Army in 1953.
He had a relatively undistinguished acting career – his greatest screen role being Charlton Heston"s body double in Ben-Hur (1959).
Business By the mid-1970s, he had retired from the media, and briefly worked behind the bar of a public near Norwich before becoming general manager of an engineering factory, where he lost two toes in an accident. On Blue Peter’s 20th anniversary in 1978 he appeared on the show and the factory shut for the day so that the workforce could watch his appearance.
The award became an annual Blue Peter event. In the 1980s he worked in the press office of the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association (SSAFA).
In the 1990s, he briefly returned to the British Broadcasting Corporation to guest on and later host the nostalgia series Are You Sitting Comfortably? on Radio 2.
Trace died in 1992 from cancer of the oesophagus while living in Walthamstow. Valerie Singleton, Biddy Baxter and Edward Barnes visited Trace in hospital just days before his death. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography credits Trace with coining two phrases that have become prominent in British popular culture: the line "And now for something completely different", later taken up by, and usually attributed to, Monty Python, and "Here"s one I made earlier", since adopted by nearly all subsequent presenters on Blue Peter.
Views
Quotations:
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography credits Trace with coining two phrases that have become prominent in British popular culture: the line "And now for something completely different", later taken up by, and usually attributed to, Monty Python, and "Here"s one I made earlier", since adopted by nearly all subsequent presenters on Blue Peter.
Membership
Trace often threatened to resign and once the production team were happy that viewers had accepted John Noakes as a member of the team, Trace"s next resignation was accepted.