Caron Keating, who has died of breast cancer aged 41, was not only a sensationally beautiful presenter of the children's magazine programme by which she will be best remembered, BBC television's Blue Peter. She also possessed a determination and grit that would have done credit to a marine commando.
Her letter to the programme asking for an audition was one of hundreds. When Peter Duncan left for his Duncan Dares series in 1986, there was a vacancy for an action man or woman, and Caron, who had been given all the stunts on BBC Belfast's teenage magazine programme Channel One, seemed worth an interview. Born in London and brought up near Hillsborough, County Down, she had been a lover of Blue Peter for as long as she could remember, with a cupboard at home still full of models she had made from the show as a child.
A graduate of Bristol University with an honours degree in English and drama, Caron talked very perceptively about the programme, its contents and its attitude to children. She was certainly worth an audition - and it was a good one. The cameras loved Caron. The crew gave her a thumbs-up as she made sense of the script, the nightmare of the out-of-vision film commentary, the cues, making the model, the radio-controlled cars, the animals and even the trampoline.
However, it was not until we asked Caron to join the programme that we discovered she had broadcasting in her blood. Her father, Don Keating, was a BBC news and current affairs producer in Belfast, and her mother, loved by millions on TV and radio, was Gloria Hunniford. It was much to Caron's credit that she had kept quiet about such a family background, so occasional (adult) complaints of nepotism got very short shrift from the production team.
Following Blue Peter's usual role-reversal, Caron was plunged into a series of gruelling assignments. "I said I'd have a go at anything at my interview - but never expected that within days of signing my contract I'd be sidecar racing at 80mph over a sea of mud with my right knee centimetres from the ground," she reflected. "There were 16 takes, too!"
But that was as nothing compared with training with the Cardiff Self-Defence Team. Caron joined the annual January two-mile run to the Valley of Scwyd-Yr-Eira waterfall - a raging 15-metre torrent which the team ran under, barefooted. Caron said the phrase had not been invented to describe how she felt climbing out of it, numb with cold. On an expedition to the then Soviet Union, she performed with Moscow's State Circus in an acrobatic act with the Moscow Builders. This involved being hoisted 20 metres in the air suspended on a very long pole: she passed that audition, too, and did it again in public.
Diving with sharks, abseiling down Anglesey's South Stack, climbing up Ben Nevis in a white-out, following up Blue Peter's second appeal for the devastated Cambodia and returning to interview Margaret Thatcher at Number 10 to lobby for more aid - nothing fazed Caron, and she never refused a challenge.
She was a hugely popular presenter, with a quirky dress sense that was popular with her intended audience, if not necessarily with the adults looking over their shoulders. In 1988, no fewer than 69,928 viewers entered a competition to design Caron a special outfit. The winner - 11-year-old Jasmin Nealon - came up with a butterfly-decorated hat, fluted bodice, a fluffy pink net rose-decorated skirt and hand-painted tights, which was made up by the BBC's costume department. Caron said the green tights with their rambling roses were the best bit.
After leaving Blue Peter in 1990, Caron presented a variety of programmes, taking time out to look after her two sons Gabriel and Charlie after her marriage to show-business agent Russ Lindsay. She returned to television in 1996, presenting ITV's This Morning when Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan were away, Channel Five's Attractions, and ITV's consumer affairs programme We Can Work It Out and celebrity-interview series Rich And Famous.
Caron battled with cancer for the final seven years of her life, spending the last two of them in Australia with her husband and sons. Her family was always her top priority, and her love for them transcended all the ambitions she had for a continued career in the media.
· Caron Keating, television presenter, born October 5 1962; died April 13 2004