Secret Dorset: How a potting shed became a broadcasting icon

Old Country lasted for three series and Hargreaves then entered the home video market.

He produced a series of 28 programmes under the original title Out of Town and, for these, Jack did his bits to camera from his actual shed at his home in Dorset.

“He moved to Belchalwell and he had a barn built in the back field,” said Wagstaff.

“All the films that Southern TV had made were kept in storage. Those films were useless to anybody else so he acquired them.

“We went along to his real shed and we filmed the links between those films. He would present to camera and talk a bit about some aspect that was in the shed and then introduce the films.”

In 1972, Hargreaves was awarded an OBE for his work on the Nugent Report, which looked how land owned by the Ministry of Defence could be returned to public or agricultural use.

The broadcaster died in Dorchester in 1994 and his ashes were reportedly scattered on Bulbarrow hill, just south of his Belchalwell home.

But what became of his shed?

Wagstaff says it still survives intact.

“The shed is still there,” he said. “I went back there when the house changed hands and the shed has not been touched, it was the same as it was when we were filming there.”