IT’S a long way from the corner of a 1970s British living room to a mobile music app playlist in 2024. Yet there is one image that has, with peculiar stubbornness, crossed that analogue-to-digital rubicon. If you were home from school with chickenpox in the era before This Morning and Countdown, then, should you have switched on your parents’ wood-encased, steamer trunk-weight television before hiding under an eiderdown on the sofa, the image presented to you would be that of a girl playing a game of noughts and crosses on a blackboard with a predictably sinister-looking clown.
That clown was called Bubbles and that girl was eight-year-old Carole Hersee. She would go on to become the person who, to date, has clocked up the most screen time of any individual in UK history (about 70,000 hours so far) as the face of the BBC Test Card.
Denne historien er fra September 11, 2024-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra September 11, 2024-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Tales as old as time
By appointing writers-in-residence to landscape locations, the National Trust is hoping to spark in us a new engagement with our ancient surroundings, finds Richard Smyth
Do the active farmer test
Farming is a profession, not a lifestyle choice’ and, therefore, the Budget is unfair
Night Thoughts by Howard Hodgkin
Charlotte Mullins comments on Moght Thoughts
SOS: save our wild salmon
Jane Wheatley examines the dire situation facing the king of fish
Into the deep
Beneath the crystal-clear, alien world of water lie the great piscean survivors of the Ice Age. The Lake District is a fish-spotter's paradise, reports John Lewis-Stempel
It's alive!
Living, burping and bubbling fermented masses of flour, yeast and water that spawn countless loaves—Emma Hughes charts the rise and rise) of sourdough starters
There's orange gold in them thar fields
A kitchen staple that is easily taken for granted, the carrot is actually an incredibly tricky customer to cultivate that could reduce a grown man to tears, says Sarah Todd
True blues
I HAVE been planting English bluebells. They grow in their millions in the beechwoods that surround us—but not in our own garden. They are, however, a protected species. The law is clear and uncompromising: ‘It is illegal to dig up bluebells or their bulbs from the wild, or to trade or sell wild bluebell bulbs and seeds.’ I have, therefore, had to buy them from a respectable bulb-merchant.
Oh so hip
Stay the hand that itches to deadhead spent roses and you can enjoy their glittering fruits instead, writes John Hoyland
A best kept secret
Oft-forgotten Rutland, England's smallest county, is a 'Notswold' haven deserving of more attention, finds Nicola Venning
