Carole Hersee (born 25 November 1958) is an English costume designer who is best known for appearing in the centrepiece of the United Kingdom television Test Card F (and latterly J , W , and X ), which aired on BBC Television from 1967 to 1998. As such, she became the most aired face in British television history .
8-519: The card was developed in 1967 by her father, BBC engineer George Hersee , who started by snapping test photographs of Carole and her younger sister, Gillian; Carole believes she was ultimately chosen to appear on the card simply because Gillian was without two of her front teeth at the time. However, in an interview with Andy Emmerson in 1988 George recollects photographing both, but the committee chose Carole as she had lighter hair. Someone noticed Carole appeared to be left-handed, so to make it seem that she
16-479: A box. On the 2006–2007 television series Life on Mars , Hersee was depicted as a fictional character called the Test Card Girl , played by Rafaella Hutchinson in series one and by Harriet Rogers in series two. Appearing to the protagonist in brief visions, she would often taunt Sam Tyler ( John Simm ) and occasionally scare him greatly. She is the final character seen in the series when she mimes turning
24-508: A switch at the side of the screen and the image disappears, similar to an old television set. Hersee attended Heath End School in Farnham , and as an adult became a seamstress for a supplier of theatrical costumes. She has designed costumes for several West End theatre productions and films, including The Last Emperor , Flash Gordon and Dangerous Liaisons . George Hersee George Hersee (29 December 1924 – 11 April 2001)
32-502: The BBC 's Planning & Installation Department, which equipped the BBC studios. By the late 1950s, he was specialising in lens and test card transparency specifications and became one of the leaders in this new field. The BBC had first begun to use television test cards in the 1930s, and by the mid 1960s it was realised that a new colour card was required, with particular attention being paid to
40-552: The UK and elsewhere for more than four decades, usually while there was no on-air programming. Because of the card's prolonged exposure on the BBC, Hersee received fan mail during her teenage years and was regularly contacted by media outlets for interviews, but she quickly grew tired of the publicity. According to a November 2006 article featuring test card enthusiast Keith Hamer, Hersee is in Guinness World Records for
48-520: The longest television appearance in history — an estimated total of 70,000 hours, equivalent to nearly eight continuous years. However, she denied this in a May 2007 interview with The Daily Telegraph , saying, "[It] can't be put in the Guinness Book of Records because it isn't a record that somebody else can achieve, apparently". Hersee still owns the Bubbles doll, which she keeps stored inside
56-535: Was a BBC engineer, who is most famous for his development of Test Card F . This design came about after Hersee was asked to intervene by the committee charged with the creation of technical standards for the new colour TV services. Hersee was born in Sussex , England. He was educated at Chichester Boys School and attended the University of Southampton , where he studied electrical engineering. In 1949, he joined
64-421: Was holding the chalk in her right hand they flipped the transparency. She was posed with a strategically placed Noughts and Crosses board (the "X" painted in the left centre square was directly in the middle of the screen) and her own clown doll named Bubbles, which was brought on set specifically for the photo shoot. She was paid £100 for the shoot. The card (actually a 35mm transparency) was used on television in
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