Carole Hersee is a costume designer

Costume Designer

A costume designer or costume mistress/master is a person whose responsibility is to design costumes for a film or stage production. He or she is considered an important part of the "production team", working alongside the director, scenic and lighting designers as well as the sound designer. The...

 who is best known for appearing in the centrepiece of the iconic United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 television Test Card F

Test Card F

Test Card F is a test card that was created by the BBC and used on television in the United Kingdom and in countries elsewhere in the world for more than four decades...

, which aired on BBC Television

BBC Television

BBC Television is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The corporation, which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927, has produced television programmes from its own studios since 1932, although the start of its regular service of television...

 from 1967 to 1998 and was revived in 2009. As such she remains the most aired face in British television history.

The card was developed in 1967 by her late father, BBC engineer George Hersee

George Hersee

George Hersee 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...

, who started by snapping test photographs of Carole and her younger sister, Gillian, with Carole ultimately being chosen to appear on the card simply because Gillian was without her two front teeth at the time. She was posed with a strategically placed Noughts and Crosses

Tic-tac-toe

Tic-tac-toe, also called wick wack woe and noughts and crosses , is a pencil-and-paper game for two players, X and O, who take turns marking the spaces in a 3×3 grid. The X player usually goes first...

 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 was used on television in 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 tired of the publicity. According to a November 2006 article featuring test card enthusiast Keith Hamer, Hersee is in the Guinness Book of World Records

Guinness World Records

Guinness World Records, known until 2000 as The Guinness Book of Records , is a reference book published annually, containing a collection of world records, both human achievements and the extremes of the natural world...

 for 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 Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...

, 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 today keeps stored inside a box.

Hersee went on to attend Heath End School

Farnham Heath End School

Farnham Heath End School is a mixed comprehensive school in Heath End, Surrey in south-east of England, with roughly 900 pupils.-About the School:Recently the school gained Specialist Mathematics and Computing College status...

 in Farnham

Farnham

Farnham is a town in Surrey, England, within the Borough of Waverley. The town is situated some 42 miles southwest of London in the extreme west of Surrey, adjacent to the border with Hampshire...

, and as an adult became a seamstress for a theatrical costumers. She has designed costumes for several West End

West End theatre

West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...

 theatre productions and films, including The Last Emperor

The Last Emperor

The Last Emperor is a 1987 biopic about the life of Puyi, the last Emperor of China, whose autobiography was the basis for the screenplay written by Mark Peploe and Bernardo Bertolucci. Independently produced by Jeremy Thomas, it was directed by Bertolucci and released in 1987 by Columbia Pictures...

, Flash Gordon

Flash Gordon (film)

Flash Gordon is a 1980 British/American science fiction film, based on the comic strip of the same name created by Alex Raymond. The film was directed by Mike Hodges and produced and presented by Dino De Laurentiis. It stars Sam J. Jones, Melody Anderson, Topol, Max von Sydow, Timothy Dalton, Brian...

and Dangerous Liaisons

Dangerous Liaisons

Dangerous Liaisons is a 1988 drama film based upon Christopher Hampton's play, Les liaisons dangereuses, which in turn was a theatrical adaptation of the 18th-century French novel Les Liaisons dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos....

.

On the 2006-2007 television series Life on Mars

Life on Mars (TV series)

Life on Mars is a British television series broadcast on BBC One between January 2006 and April 2007. The series combines elements of science fiction and police procedural....

, Hersee was depicted as a fictional character called the Test Card Girl, was 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

Sam Tyler

DCI/DI Sam Tyler is a fictional character in BBC One's science fiction/police procedural drama, Life on Mars.In the original British version of Life on Mars, Tyler is played by John Simm and in the American version he is played by Jason O'Mara....

 (John Simm

John Simm

John Simm is an English stage and screen actor. In recent years he is best known for his roles as Sam Tyler in the detective drama Life on Mars and as The Master in the revival of the science fiction series Doctor Who, but he has also starred in many highly acclaimed award-winning television...

) and occasionally scare him greatly. She is the final character seen in the series when she mimes turning a switch at the side of the screen and the image disappears similar to an old television set.

External links

• The Test Card Circle Details of the UK's Trade Test Transmissions including the history of the BBC and ITA Test Cards, a look at the music used and full details about the Trade Test Colour Films shown from the late fifties to 1973.
• Revamped testcard - Daily Mail, 22 May 2007