The Good Life

Four decades ago, when television sitcom The Good Life was first broadcast, its subject matter was quite ground-breaking - a couple leaving the rat race to become self-sufficient, with an allotment in their suburban front garden.

Today, living healthily and growing your own fruit and veg isn't as unusual but the humour in The Good Life was mainly based on the ups and downs of free-spirited Tom and Barbara Good's relationship with their very proper and strait-laced neighbours, Jerry and Margo Leadbetter.

The sitcom ran from 1975 to 1978 on BBC television and was written by John Esmonde and Bob Larbey. It starred Richard Briers as Tom Good, who is a London plastics designer who suffers something of a midlife crisis when he hits 40. Tom decides to drop out of modern commercial living and he and his wife Barbara (Felicity Kendall) decide to become self-sufficient at their Surbiton home.

However, senior manager Jerry Leadbetter (Paul Eddington) and his rather snobbish and social-climbing wife Margo (Penelope Keith) sometimes find the Goods' lifestyle rather strange. The Goods buy pigs, chickens, a goat and a cockerel. They power their electricity generator using methane from animal waste and sell crops to buy essential items that they can't make.

It was voted the ninth best British sitcom of all time in 2004, as viewers loved the gentle humour that encompassed the Goods' decision to pursue a self-sufficient lifestyle that conflicted with the Leadbetters' regimented lifestyle. Despite their differences, the neighbours develop a close friendship but one that is tested to the limit by some of the comic antics that occur.

Today, more people are choosing to live the type of lifestyle personified in The Good Life to combat the rising cost of living. A survey by ICM found 26% of those who responded were growing their own fruit and vegetables. Three-quarters said they were doing it to save money - saving an average of £200 a year. Almost all of those surveyed said they were doing it to experience the health benefits of growing their own fresh fruit and veg.

Outdoor goods retailer B&Q has reported a 27% rise in the sale of vegetable seeds, with the best-sellers being traditional British crops such as carrots, onions, tomatoes, peas, lettuce and beans. Sales of vegetables that are ready to plant have increased by more than 40% since 2016. The boom in householders wishing to live The Good Life has led to the retail giant sending its staff on courses, so they can give advice to customers who are new to growing their own crops. Now, customers buying seeds for vegetables are given advice on how to cultivate them.

According to a report in The Mirror, Sarah Simpson and Nigel Mepham (who live in a Cornish coastal resort) are living The Good Life in reality by tending the land at their 18th century hilltop home, using solar panels to provide electricity. They grow their own fruit and veg, make jams and preserves and home-brew wine from their own produce. They believe they are living the same lifestyle as many people did in the 1930s and that it's a much cheaper way of existing.

If you're thinking of living The Good Life and are looking for high-quality storage boxes for your crops, Solent Plastics offers a large range of containers, including our food quality storage boxes and catering bins and our recycling waste bins. For further assistance, please give us a call.