It is a growing trend – channels bringing in social media stars to front classic shows and attract new audiences.
And now it seems Blue Peter will swap one influencer for another.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal that Kyle Thomas, who has a staggering 34million followers on social media platform TikTok, is set to take over from Joel Mawhinney, who quit earlier this year. He has 16million TikTok followers.
Insiders at the BBC say that in the modern media age, the process of recruiting young talent is less about auditioning and more about numbers. That way, they bring viewers with them.
Thomas, 21, from Lisburn, Co Down, has won such big audiences because of his posts about exotic animals. He also has 1.3million followers on Instagram.
A source close to the show said: ‘Thomas has a real passion for animals, and that has proved extremely popular on TikTok. If they can bring just a few of his followers over to Blue Peter, it really is a no-brainer to sign him up.’
Thomas has been a guest on the CBBC show, presenting a segment showing viewers that ‘creepy crawlies can be cute’. But there was controversy when his mother, Zena Foord, was convicted of smuggling an unlicensed capybara, the world’s largest rodent, from Cambridgeshire into Northern Ireland. Her son regularly featured the animal in his postings.
Thomas named the capybara Queen Elizabeth, and dressed it up in jewellery, tiaras and dresses. It fell ill not long after it arrived in the family home, and later died.
Kyle Thomas with the capybara his mother smuggled from Cambridgeshire to Northern Ireland
The animal featured in Thomas’s TikTok videos – his mother was convicted for smuggling
Thomas has 34million TikTok followers and is set to become a presenter on Blue Peter
Mawhinney, 28, from Bangor, Co Down, announced he would leave Blue Peter earlier this year.
There were fears Shini Muthukrishnan, 25, Mawhinney’s co-presenter and girlfriend, could also follow him out the door, although she is yet to do so.
It is a long way from the programme’s heyday in the early 1970s when it was presented by John Noakes, Peter Purves and Valerie Singleton.
Back then, on BBC1, the TV audience could hit an impressive eight million viewers.
