Shipping Forecast largely autobiographical account of growing up in Liverpool during the 1940s and 1950s, opens with a shipping forecast from this period. In an episode of the BBC sitcom "Keeping Up Appearances", a soon-to-be-sailing Hyacinth Bucket calls over the telephone for an advance shipping forecast, even though the yacht she and her husband Richard are to visit is moored on the Thames near Oxford. Names mentioned (in scene sequence) are: Fisher, German Bight and Cromarty, Dogger and Heligoland (also known as German Bight). In an episode of the BBC sitcom "Ever Decreasing Circles", Howard and Hilda leave their neighbour Paul's house
British Isles also taken to be part of the British Isles, even though, as islands off the coast of France, they do not form part of the archipelago. The oldest rocks in the group are in the north west of Scotland, Ireland and North Wales and are 2.7 billion years old. During the Silurian period the north-western regions collided with the south-east, which had been part of a separate continental landmass. The topography of the islands is modest in scale by global standards. Ben Nevis rises to an elevation of only , and Lough Neagh, which is notably larger than other lakes