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The Shipping Forecast, issued by the Met Office on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and broadcast four times a day on Radio 4, celebrates its 150th birthday today.

It is the longest continuous weather forecast ever made and has been a public service since 1867, when it was used to warn of storms.

Tommy Finn, a fisherman in the Irish Sea, tells Radio 4's PM that listening to the forecast took him back to when he was a child and his family would listen on a Sunday evening "to see whether my father [who was a fisherman] was going to go away for a week or not".

Gordon Macaulay - on the Piper Bravo oil platform in the North Sea - told presenter Carolyn Quinn that listening to the shipping forecast "was essential listening" when he was in the merchant navy.

(Photo: Ship in a storm at sea Credit: Getty images/iStock)