Julie Stevens, who has died aged 87 after suffering from Parkinson’s disease, has a place in the history of children’s television as a presenter of the under-fives series Play School – fronting 595 episodes, a feat exceeded only by Carol Chell and Brian Cant.
The first programme broadcast on BBC Two when the channel was launched in 1964, it quickly caught on with preschool children and their parents, who were introduced to the show with the words: “Here’s a house, here’s a door. Windows: one, two, three, four. Ready to knock? Turn the lock. It’s Play School.”
Alongside activities, stories and songs in the playroom, viewers were taken through the house’s arched, square and round windows for scenes filmed on location in the world outside. Stevens began her 14-year run after being recommended by another of the early presenters, Rick Jones, who acted with her at the Library theatre, Manchester. Singing, making something out of a box and reading two made-up stories at the audition clinched her the job.
But she was pregnant with her first child, watched the first episode from her maternity ward bed and was not well enough to start in the programme’s third week, as planned.
“So I didn’t appear until the sixth week,” she told Paul R Jackson, author of Here’s a House: A Celebration of Play School. “I don’t recall much of that very first week with Rick, apart from the pain I was still encountering from the stitches and the fact that I had to sit on the edge of everything.”
Broadcast five mornings a week, Play School was a new breed of children’s programme, moving away from filmed shows such as Andy Pandy and other Watch with Mother to feature stories and music relevant to a modern generation, with presenters speaking directly to their young audience.
Joy Whitby, its creator and first producer, told the Guardian in 2012: “At the time, people were becoming increasingly self-conscious about middle-class values. They thought our toys, like Humpty Dumpty, were too middle-class. So we introduced a very ugly, beaten-about doll called Hamble. The presenters disliked her intensely.”
Although she presented Play School for the last time in 1978, Stevens returned briefly as a guest storyteller in 1979 and 1980, and presented 40 editions of PlayAway, its sister show, aimed at a slightly older audience, from 1971 to 1979. She also brought her singing talents to the BBC schools programme Look and Read from 1981 to 1988.
Stevens’s vocal skills were previously showcased early in her acting career in the popular fantasy series The Avengers. As Venus Smith, a naive nightclub singer in the second series (1962-63), she assisted the undercover agent John Steed (played by Patrick Macnee) on six cases.
One of more than 50 actors who auditioned for the role, Stevens was offered it when Angela Douglas proved unavailable. She played one of three assistants featured during the series, but – like Jon Rollason, who played Dr Martin King – was largely forgotten by fans after Honor Blackman’s leather-clad judo expert Cathy Gale captured the public’s imagination.
Stevens was born Julia Bullas in Prestwich, Lancashire, to Ruby (nee Fogg) and Joseph Bullas, the manager of a potted meat factory. On leaving Stand grammar school, Whitefield, she became a nurse at Manchester Royal Infirmary, where she kept patients entertained with her singing.
When in 1957 she took part in the Bid for Fame talent show produced by the ITV company ABC, the managing director offered her a contract – and she changed her professional name (she had always been called Julie and took Stevens from her “Uncle Stevenson”).
She was an announcer, had small roles in both dramas and sitcoms – after gaining acting experience in repertory theatre – and, from 1958 to 1962, presented The Sunday Break, a “voice of youth” religious programme. She was also seen in advertising magazines and as the hostess in the Des O’Connor game show For Love Or Money in 1961.
After The Avengers, she landed the role of Gloria, a slave taken from England to Rome by Julius Caesar (Kenneth Williams), in the 1964 film Carry on Cleo.
Stevens starred in the ITV sitcom Girls About Town (1970-71) as Rosemary Pilgrim, one of two married women (the other played by Denise Coffey) trying to inject sparkle into their lives. She then joined Johnny Ball and Derek Griffiths in the BBC children’s historical comedy sketch show Cabbages and Kings (1972-74).
After leaving Play School, she spent 12 years as Harry Secombe’s PA, later personal manager, and appeared at Play School reunion events.
In 1962 she married the actor John White, another Play School presenter, and they had a son, Dixie, and daughter, Rachel. Six years after their divorce in 1975, she married the actor and theatre director Michael Hucks. They divorced in 2001.
She is survived by her children and and four grandchildren, Josh, Matilda, Tim and Felix.
• Julie Stevens (Julia Mary Bullas), actor and presenter, born 20 December 1936; died 5 December 2024
