KONNIE HUQ: Hovisgate

For a programme with an image that has always been squeaky-clean to the point of dullness, Blue Peter has been hard hit in recent years. First Richard Bacon had to be sacked after he admitted taking cocaine. Then there was the faked competition winners scandal. Now the popular, long-running presenter Konnie Huq has ruffled feathers by sharing a political platform with the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, in direct defiance of her BBC bosses.

Huq, 31, is generally held to be a rising star: attractive and bright (she has a 2:1 in economics from Cambridge), she plans to leave Blue Peter in February after ten years and move to “more grown-up telly”. Signs of a rebellious streak are unlikely to do her image any harm. But the launch of the London Hovis Freewheel cycling event, which Huq agreed to promote, was, said a livid Brian Coleman, Conservative and deputy chairman of the London Assembly, “a political rant. It is unforgivable for the BBC to allow the Blue Peter name to be lent to a political event.” The BBC agreed and, in a leaked letter to Coleman, confessed that they had turned down Huq’s request as “it would be unsuitable for her and Blue Peter”.

Huq’s agent, Jonathan Shalit ? the man who discovered Charlotte Church? claimed that it was all down to how you interpret her contract, but the BBC Deputy Director-General has had to apologise and, although Huq has now withdrawn her support, the real winners are the organisers of the London Hovis Freewheel, who must be gleeful at all the publicity their otherwise not-terribly-interesting event has garnered.

Huq was born in Ealing in 1975 to Bangladeshi parents who emigrated to the UK in the 1960s. At 14 she sang a solo on Blue Peter, later conducted an interview with Neil Kinnock for Newsround, then moved to present children’s programmes on Channel 5. In 1997 she became Blue Peter’s first Asian presenter. By the time she leaves next year, she will have beaten Valerie Singleton’s record as its longest-running female presenter.

Hovisgate is not a first brush with politics for the Huq family: sister Rupa is seeking a Labour seat after failing to win Chesham and Amersham at the last election. And Huq, though responsible for some memorable Blue Peter television, including a return to her Bangladeshi roots, was ridiculed for conducting what many said was the most obsequious interview of Tony Blair’s time at No 10: avoiding Iraq and “cash for hon-ours”, she asked what his favourite meal was and who his most important guest had been (clue: Texan. Not Jerry Hall).

Currently single, she split up last year with long-term boyfriend Richard Bacon, he of the unfortunate cocaine-related incident. In the Blue Peter brouhaha hall of fame, Huq will need to try rather harder than an assocation with Ken Livingstone and a loaf.

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