Like a more sedate Glastonbury with added hedge-laying and ferrets, Countryfile Live touched down in Oxfordshire on Thursday, bringing the immensely popular television programme directly to its audience for the first time in its 28-year history.
Once a modest Sunday lunchtime magazine show, launched when Britons had four channels to choose from, it has grown to become a television sensation, broadcasting on BBC1 52 weeks a year and with an audience that earlier this year peaked at 9.7 million. That put it above X Factor, a fact even Simon Cowell conceded was “staggering” for a programme that in recent months has included features on Cumbrian female wrestling and the beetle life inside cow pats.
After spawning a day-time spinoff, Countryfile Diaries, earlier this year, the programme’s foray into the packed live events calendar was perhaps inevitable. Over four days in the grounds of Blenheim Palace, the event will allow tens of thousands of visitors the privilege – for £72 for a family ticket – of posing with oversized John Deere tractors, witnessing pigs being herded over jumps and having a pint in a pub named after presenter John Craven.
“I think Countryfile appeals to a simpler, more natural side of living,” said Mary Major, a retired teacher from Kibworth in Leicestershire, who was making her way past a display of early 20th-century threshers. “Everything is so commercialised these days. It allows you to get out into the country and see how it’s affecting our lives.”
Her friend Rosemary Watson, who had also come as part of a coach party from their local University of the Third Age group, said it gave a voice to “people who like a nice way of living, with picnics”.
“Someone over there just said: ‘You can follow us on Twitter and Facebook,’” said Major. “Why? I’d rather look at the beautiful scenery around me.”
At the Big Barn, an oak-framed venue surrounded by hay bales, hundreds listened rapt as Adam Henson, who presents a segment of the programme from his own Cotswolds farm, told a story about his former highland bull Eric whom he had to retire after he “started firing blanks”. “Does anyone remember Eric?” There was an enthusiastic cheer of recognition from the audience.
Sue Taylor and Mike Pickford, neighbours from Kingsbury in London, were sharing a drink nearby, accompanied by Rio, Taylor’s five-year-old Weimaraner. “We’re city folk,” she said with a giggle, but they “just love” the programme. Why? “It’s the complete opposite to London,” said Pickford. “It’s just nice. A nice, easy-going programme.”
For Bill Lyons, the programme’s executive producer, there is not one reason that explains the programme’s phenomenal success. He cited “something deep-rooted in the British psyche, the patriotism which dare not speak its name”, but said its scheduling, early on a Sunday evening, was also a factor - “it’s the end of the weekend, that precious hour before the start of the working week, it may simply be that. Or it may be that in difficult times, uncertain times, they are looking for a sense of permanence and continuity.”
Just don’t mention the n-word. “We’re not nice,” Lyons said, citing recent items on halal slaughter, campylobacter and domestic violence in the countryside. “People don’t just watch us looking for chocolate-box beauty. I’m very happy to show the beauty of the British countryside, but that’s a way to draw the audience and then reveal the present-day reality as well.”
With event organisers unable to say how many tickets had been sold for the opening day, there were some suggestions it had become a victim of its own success, with some of those arriving delayed for up to three hours getting on site - prompting the inevitable furious response on Twitter.
At least, for the most part, the rain stayed away, to the relief of weather presenter John Hammond, who said he was struggling to get far around the site without being stopped for forecasts: “The Countryfile audience are particularly interested in the weather, for obvious reasons.”
The programme, he said, had a special place in British national life. “Civilisation is becoming that bit more urbanised, and people are so busy with the trials of daily life through the week that the countryside is a piece of escapism for them. It’s a collective sigh of relaxation.
“I think Countryfile in a sense performs that role for the British people.”
