Skip to content

The man who became a local celebrity for owning a TV

Paul HayesSuffolk
Long Melford Heritage Centre A black and white photo of a man sitting in a living room next to an enormous television set, approximately four feet tall and three feet wide but with only a small 14-inch screen in the centre. It looks like an elaborate piece of furniture. Seated to the left of the set is the man, who in his mid-to-late 30s with short dark hair, wearing putties wrapped around his lower legs, trousers dirty and marked from manual work, a light-coloured striped shirt and a waistcoat of a mid-grey tone. He has his hands on his knees, has short dark hair, and a slightly proud expression on his face.Long Melford Heritage Centre
George Boar of Long Melford with his television set, which made him locally famous in the late 1930s

When BBC Television began on 2 November 1936, sets were very expensive and the range of the service was limited.

That made being a viewer, especially outside of London, so unusual that one Suffolk farmworker became a minor celebrity in the 1930s - simply for owning a set.

George Boar of Long Melford, near Sudbury, used an inheritance to buy his TV. This was so notable that when he told a journalist he wanted a wife to watch it with, the press reported him receiving letters from 800 women.

Television historian Prof John Wyver told an episode of Secret Suffolk on BBC Sounds: "The idea that a rural working class man like George had a television, and watched it regularly, was sufficient to attract really quite a lot of press attention."

Prof Wyver, from the University of Westminster, has written about Boar in his book, Magic Rays of Light, which tells the story of early British television.

He said that in the 1930s, viewers were "mostly upper middle-class, because a television cost at least the same as a family car".

George's TV cost 120 guineas in 1937 – worth around £7,700 in 2026.

He also paid £70, approximately £4,300 now, to have a 60ft (18m) mast set in two tons of concrete in his garden, to ensure reception from the BBC's only television transmitter at Alexandra Palace in North London.

Julie Thompson, from the Long Melford Historical and Archaeological Society, said the size of Boar's set was also notable.

"This thing was 126cm high, and a metre wide, set in an art deco-style wooden case. But it only had a 14in, or 35cm, picture," she said.

A black-and-white photograph of a view looking up at a large, ornate place, dominated by a tall archway with a round window visible recessed back beneath the arch. On top of a tower on a wing of the palace at the far end of the building is a large latticework metal transmission mast. In the foreground is a roadway, with a grass bank and some bushes between it and the palace.
George Boar picked up his television signal from the only transmitter operating in the UK at the time, at the BBC studios at Alexandra Palace in North London

Boar would allow fellow villagers to come and watch the set. One who still recalls doing so is Dorothy Theobald, who has lived in Long Melford all her life and will be 100 in December.

It is the size of George's television which she remembers from her childhood, more than the programmes.

"It was a great big bit of furniture, with just a little screen."

Theobald also remembers that Boar "advertised for a wife". When the newspapers reported he wanted someone to watch his set with, he received so many letters they had to be poured out of a sack through his window.

A black and white photo showing a large, open-air football stadium on a bright day, with thousands of people visible on the terraces. On the left of the image is a large, box-like television camera, pointed towards the pitch, being operated by a young man leaning forward slightly peering into a viewfinder, wearing some headphones. Ceremonial bandsmen and a police officer are also visible standing at the edge of the pitch.
The Radio Times reported that George enjoyed watching outside broadcasts of big events such as the FA Cup final at Wembley, seen here in 1938

Boar married a housekeeper from London called Beatrice Stent in Sudbury in April 1939.

The town was only two miles up the road, but Julie Thompson said the Historical Society's records showed "that was the first time Mr Boar had ever been to Sudbury".

Boar may not have often left Long Melford. But Prof Wyver said that an interview he gave the Radio Times showed he enjoyed seeing life further afield, through broadcasts of far-off events such as big football matches at Wembley.

"He said that television was a way of 'taking part in the exciting life of London'. So there was a sense that television brought to his very modest cottage in Suffolk the whole offering of the capital."

Listen: The Television Man

Do you have a story suggestion for Suffolk? Contact us below.

Follow Suffolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.

More on this story
Related internet links