Test Card Girl – Carole Hersee – Nostalgia Central

Born on 25 November 1958, Carole Hersee was the daughter of BBC engineer and test card designer George Hersee. It made perfect sense that she would be chosen to appear on the card known as ‘Test Card F’ – designed to help engineers check if the picture quality was good.

This test card (along with others like Test Card J, Test Card W, and Test Card X) was shown on BBC Television from 1967 to 1998, and 8-year-old Carole – who first appeared on television on 2 July 1967, in a red alice band, playing noughts and crosses on a blackboard, accompanied by a saggy clown doll namd ‘Bubbles’ – became the most aired face on British television.

Over 31 years, she clocked up more screen time – around 70,000 hours – than anyone else in British TV history.

Many people in Britain grew up with Carole, originally seeing her as an ever-present childhood friend and, as the years passed, waking up on the settee to her face at three in the morning with the telly still on and empty beer cans on the floor.

Her face never changed. The game of noughts and crosses never ended. Like a Home Counties version of The Seventh Seal.

Test Card F was also used in approximately 30 other countries outside the UK, including Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, Bahrain and Singapore.

Carole was paid £100 for the photo shoot and kept the Bubbles doll from the picture into adulthood.

The TV series Life on Mars featured a Test Card Girl based on Test Card F, who teased and tormented the lead character, Sam Tyler.

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