h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It seems that anyone living in Bristol can hardly escape being an 'extra' on some film or TV programme - our streets are not so much paved with gold as coated with the silvery sheen of gaffer-tape.

Pretty much everyone in the UK must know that the city of 'Holby', site of the most disaster-prone hospital in the universe, is actually Bristol - and the BBC makes no effort to disguise the fact, regularly treating us to glimpses of the Suspension Bridge, the Harbourside, Clifton Downs, Bedminster Down and the interiors of many local hostelries and restaurants. Indeed, Bristol is very popular with TV and film companies - possibly because its Victorian streets and Georgian squares look very much like London's, only easier to close off for filming. (When I lived in a flat in one such square, we were regularly asked to move our cars and hide indoors while filming went on. Although it was sometimes inconvenient to have to ask permission to walk in and out of our own front doors, we were generally good-humoured about it. After all, it's great fun watching a programme and saying, "Hey! That's my house!" - or, as is more often the case, "Crikey! Our windows need washing...")

The Casualty cast and crews are familiar faces hereabouts, because filming seems to go on all year. Other notable series filmed here include The House of Elliott, Berkeley Square, The Young Ones (which once featured my local pub), Only Fools and Horses (yes, Bristol is Peckham's stunt-double), Teachers, Shoestring (which in the 70s did for Bristol what Morse later did for Oxford) and Z-Cars (and you thought the mythical Newtown was on Merseyside, didn't you!).

Film companies also find Bristol a useful location: 'Paper Mask' (Paul McGann & Amanda Donahoe) used one of Bristol's more Gothic hospital buildings to provide the necessarily spooky atmosphere, and scenes from 'Truly, Madly, Deeply' (Alan Rickman & Juliet Stevenson) were filmed in Clifton - one of them in the alleyway that ran down beside my garden. (I wondered what a double-decker London bus was doing blocking our street - usually it's a coach-and-four or a Holby City ambulance...)

The BBC's presence in Bristol probably has a lot to do with the plethora of O.B. units on our streets. And wildlife ... Johnny Morris's Animal Magic was filmed here - and the easiest way to get an elephant from Clifton Zoo to the BBC studios was obviously to walk her there! (My friend remembers seeing Johnny Morris driving around Bristol with assorted animal companions quite regularly when she was a child - she also saw the Beatles at Colston Hall, but that's quite another story!) More recently, Bristol has hosted the 'Vets In Practice' crew, filming the Viking Vets and following Trude Mostue around the city as she went about her house-hunting, kitten-rescuing and other extramural adventures.

Finally, one cannot talk about Bristol as a filming location without mentioning the internationally famous Aardman Animation Studios - home to Wallace & Grommit and countless other charming characters, some of whom play out their scenes against an undeniably Bristolian backdrop.

So, if you want be seen on TV (and even if you don't), Bristol is the place be!