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.
Bu hikaye Country Life UK dergisinin September 11, 2024 sayısından alınmıştır.
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Bu hikaye Country Life UK dergisinin September 11, 2024 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
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Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
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The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds
