‘Terry Jones tried to eat the studio’s pet goldfish!’ The tiny village TV station that became a 90s smash hit

When the people of Waddington teamed up to broadcast self-written soap operas, horoscopes and magic tricks, little did they know it would be the most successful channel in the world – despite the chaos behind the cameras

‘What a cock-up!” Those were the words that ended the first broadcast on the world’s tiniest TV station. Hours earlier, four young locals had been wrangled into being live presenters at their quiet village Sunday school. Despite dead air and awkward line delivery, it was the poor transmission quality that made the stars – Michelle Hornby (31), Jonathan Brown (27), James Warburton (25) and Deborah Cowking (21) – apologise and cut the inaugural broadcast. But Cowking, not realising they were still on air, slipped past the censors and summed up the evening’s vibe perfectly: chaotic, amateur and unrelentingly British.

This was The Television Village – a first-of-its-kind social experiment from 1990 that had the Lancashire village of Waddington “watch, make and become” television. For a short spell in the early 90s, the Ribble Valley was worth a fortune, as Granada Television shipped £3m worth of cutting-edge TV equipment to the rural hills of north-west England. Hidden cameras were set up in villagers’ living rooms to record viewing habits, day and night. Meanwhile, Channel 4 filmed the entire thing for a six-part documentary series. All of this was to monitor how people would react when the number of channels made the leap from four up to 30 – offering everything from sport, film and even porn, with villagers having access to terrestrial, cable and satellite channels, including from Europe and the US.