Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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"He's a one-man agricultural research station."

Bob Langley reports from Lincolnshire, home of one Roy Rothery, a compulsive inventor of things. Among other things, Mr Rothery has invented a dog collar with a built in retractable lead, a purpose-built box hedge trimmer, a corn shoot, an extra-wide lawn roller, and various tractor accessories like a ditch digging arm and a barbed-wire dispenser.

Roy Rothery's latest - and possibly greatest - invention is a multi purpose hover scarecrow for the 1970s. Might this be the invention that finally saves his seeds from those pesky birds?


Clip taken from Nationwide, originally broadcast on BBC One, 13 May, 1970.





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