On 23 June 2000 Barker joined the children's television programme
Blue Peter. During her six years on the programme she reported from
Vietnam,
Morocco,
Brazil,
Austria,
Greece,
India and the
U.S. Her adventures included an inverted spin in a jet,
lawn mower racing,
paragliding, walking a
circus high-wire, cleaning windows at London's
Canary Wharf tower. She won a bronze medal in the two-woman Bob at the British Bobsleigh championships, trained as a
Childline counsellor for the charities appeal and once held the
Guinness World Record for putting on a duvet cover. She interviewed celebrities, including
David Beckham,
Quentin Blake and
Elton John, whom she presented with a Gold Blue Peter badge in Las Vegas. She also raced former Formula 1 World Champion
Lewis Hamilton at go-karts. She met
the Queen at
BBC Television Centre, where her colleague
Simon Thomas presented Her Majesty with a Gold Blue Peter badge. She played
Elizabeth I,
Queen Victoria and
Beatrix Potter in Blue Peter films, performed the lead role in the shows BBC Christmas specials 'Rock & Roll Christmas' (2001), 'Christmas At The Club Blue Peter' (2002) and 'Totally Blue Peter' (2005) and acted in the shows mini-series The Quest. She presented the Children's Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, the Blue Peter summer roadshows and the Queens Jubilee Concert. In 2003, Barker won the Children & Youth category in the CRE Race in the Media Awards for her film on Auschwitz for the Holocaust Memorial Day with survivor Kitty Hart-Moxon. On 25 May 2004 Barker announced that she was pregnant with her first child, by husband Michael Todd. A boy, Dexter Jack Barker Todd, was born on Saturday 4 December 2004 and featured on the show many times, including at just 13 days old, on his first birthday and on Barker's leaving date. She became the first presenter to rejoin
Blue Peter after having a baby, but on 23 January 2006 she told viewers that she would be leaving the programme at
Easter and moving away from
London so she could spend more time with her family. She was replaced by
Zöe Salmon, who originally took Liz's place in December 2004 when she had her baby. During her six years on
Blue Peter Barker presented with
Konnie Huq,
Simon Thomas,
Matt Baker,
Zöe Salmon and
Gethin Jones. On 11 April 2006 Barker left the programme with a special
This Is Your Life-style show devoted to her, featuring former presenters, family, friends and people she had met along her
Blue Peter travels, including
Kitty Hart-Moxon. She also announced, on her last live show, that she would be co-presenting a new CBBC show,
Totally Doctor Who, with CBBC's
Barney Harwood; the first episode was broadcast on 13 April 2006. On 18 September 2006 it was announced on
Blue Peter that Barker was expecting another baby and on 20 February 2007 it was announced on
Blue Peter that she had given birth to a girl called Poppy. She has since given birth to Rocco Winston Todd in 2011 and Gus Lennon Todd in 2013. After she left TV Barker spent several years working as a cake decorator for her family's bakery business. She also presented a radio show on
Cambridge 105. She was the voice of Buzz in the Sony
PlayStation game
Buzz! Junior: Jungle Party. She was the voiceover artist for the NMG Awards from 2016-2018 and 2023 and presenter of the annual Fiver Awards held in London. In July 2019, she appeared in the WriteOn production
Sink or Swim at the Corpus Playroom, Cambridge. ==Filmography==