“It was a semijocular reference to Star Wars—but only semijocular,” Lucchino explained later.

As for changing the TV landscape, almost every programme it screened from 8pm until the early hours in the week beginning 11 August was either a repeat of one of its original transmissions or a re-run of cobwebby sitcoms and dramas it has bought from established terrestrial networks.

On life's long round by chance I found / A dell impearled with dew, / Where hyacinths, gushing from the ground, / Lent to the earth heaven's native hue / Of holy blue.

The aircraft rotates at sixty knots.