Television presenter;
Born November 24, 1944;
Died November 19, 2007.

LESLEY Blair, who has died aged 62, defied at least part of the old adage that you should never work with children or animals. She loved children, and was lucky enough to spend a career either presenting television programmes for a young audience or teaching child performers.

Blair got her first break when she was just 18, beating hundreds of applicants to become Grampian TV's "girl in a million". She was best known for Romper Room, and Blair worked as a presenter and producer on more than 3000 programmes.

Blair was born in Belfast but her main schooling was in Birmingham and at Oriel College in Cheltenham. Her family, however, decided to call Scotland home, and moved to Newport, St Andrews, and ultimately Glasgow.

Still only a teenager, Blair combined presenting for Grampian TV with teaching drama and elocution at Aberdeen's Albyn School for girls. She had attended the Ellen Rutherford School of Drama in Dundee, while her striking good looks and immaculate diction made her a natural on camera. A career highlight for Blair was interviewing the Beatles at the height of their fame, while she also claimed to have turned down Sean Connery when he asked her out on a date.

After several years at Grampian, Blair moved to STV in Glasgow, initially as a presentation announcer and newsreader. She later wrote, produced and presented the eponymous Lesley, a daily 10-minute children's programme. Blair also appeared on the STV show Cartoon Cavalcade and fronted coverage of three successive Edinburgh festivals.

In 1969 she moved to BBC Scotland as a presenter and reporter, and a year later she became engaged to Thomas Bannigan, a Glasgow lawyer.

However, they soon separated and Blair moved to London in the mid-1970s to work for Thames Television. There she met Edward Joffe, a director who had produced Tony Hancock's last television series and was to become her second husband. At Thames, Blair worked on more schools programmes, as a storyteller on the popular children's programme Rainbow among others.

Blair scaled down her television work after becoming pregnant, while retraining as a teacher so that she could devote herself to her daughter, Victoria, who was born in 1982. In 1991 Blair established her own school, the Blair Theatre School, in Archway.

A few years later Blair separated from her second husband and moved to Glasgow with her daughter, chiefly to be closer to her parents. She continued to teach drama at her daughter's school, Craigholme, while also working from home.

She is survived by her daughter, Victoria Joffe.