First aid kits, torches ... fairylights?: Britons prepare blackout boxes

Casting an eye back to the 70s power cuts, we test the conversational gambit for this winter, what's in your BOB?'

For Steven Dowd, it's four head torches and a handsaw. For Ian Welsh, a pack of camping freezer slabs and a pair of slippers, and for Ellie Moss, a community gardener in Eltham, a cheering set of battery-operated fairylights.

With warnings that the UK could be subject to planned blackouts for the first time in five decades, the question what's in your blackout box (or BOB)?" could become as everyday a conversational gambit this winter as bemoaning the British weather.