Blue Peter the 50th anniversary) the opening arrangement of the tune was reworked to include elements of "Barnacle Bill" once again. The closing theme for 2008 is the same as opening signature tune. In September 2011, the series returned to using "Barnacle Bill" though with the opening bars and drum roll omitted (along with the "Sailor's Hornpipe") and the traditional closing signature tune not used. 1958–1989: The earliest episodes featured stock footage of a sailing ship under the opening credits. By the late 1960s, Blue Peter's opening sequence featured extracts of that edition's filmed inserts or an event in the studio where
Barnacle Bill (song) Barnacle Bill (song) "Barnacle Bill the Sailor" (Roud 4704) is an American drinking song adapted from "Bollocky Bill the Sailor", a traditional folk song originally titled "Abraham Brown". There are several versions of the bawdy song in the Gordon "Inferno" Collection at the Library of Congress folklife archive. The first printed version of the song is in the public domain book "Immortalia" (1927). Later versions feature the eponymous "Barnacle Bill", a fictional character loosely based on a 19th-century San Francisco sailor and Gold Rush miner named William Bernard. Versions are also known in England and Scotland from the early twentieth