Craven marks Newsround birthday

Many successful presenters have worked on Newsround

TV presenter John Craven has returned to BBC children's bulletin Newsround for the first time in more than a decade as the show celebrates its 30th anniversary.

The presenter co-hosted the birthday edition of the show, which he started and which originally bore his name.

Craven, 61, who anchored Newsround until 1989, joined current presenter Becky Jago to look at the day's top stories.

The pair will also looked back at key moments from the show's history, while Craven revisited the first story to be featured on the programme - the return of the once-extinct osprey to the UK.

Not only has it broken a series of exclusives, but it has been the training ground for some of today's best known television presenters

Nigel Pickard

Craven, who now fronts the Sunday morning BBC One show Countryfile, is credited with pioneering the trend of ending news bulletins with a quirky story.

Nigel Pickard, controller of Children's BBC, said Newsround was "unique in the history of children's television" in serving the young audience with a daily news bulletin.

"In its 30-year history, not only has it broken a series of exclusives, but it has been the training ground for some of today's best known television presenters," he said.

Craven received an OBE for his TV work in 2000

Presenters have included the late Helen Rollason, who went on to present sports programmes but died after a long battle with cancer.

Radio Five Live's Juliet Morris, Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Sky News Sunrise's Julie Etchingham and Kate Sanderson - now with the BBC's Breakfast programme - have also fronted the show.

The programme broke stories on the election of Margaret Thatcher as Conservative party leader in 1975, the shooting of Pope John Paul II, in 1981, and the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, in 1986.

In 1992 it launched the Press Packer scheme to encourage its young audience to make their own news reports.