There aren’t many country houses that have played host to the Queen, a clutch of US presidents, the Dalai Lama, Gerry Adams, Ian Paisley and the entire cast of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. But Hillsborough Castle is no ordinary historic mansion. This Georgian building, tucked away behind a town square in the small village of Hillsborough, near Lisburn, is a royal residence, a government office (home to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland) and from this month (July) a major new historic attraction which will entertain a hoped-for 200,000 visitors a year.

The 1980s are a bit of a lost decade for me – as far as television is concerned. I wasn’t in prison or embarking on a series of drug-fuelled hedonist episodes. I was, I guess, living the life of a young adult – out most nights at parties, pubs, concerts, or in my sad case, Labour party meetings. Not for me the slippers and fire, Radio Times draped over my knee while I watched an endless parade of sitcoms or variety shows.

So watching an episode of No Place Like Home on YouTube is a kind of retro revelation. Did this dreary domestic comedy really run for five whole series throughout the Eighties?

Historians, archivists and computer scientists will bring Ireland's Public Record Office back to life by creating a digital reconstruction of the destroyed building and refilling its shelves with fully-searchable surviving documents and copies of the lost records.

This extraordinarily ambitious project, called Beyond 2022: Ireland’s Virtual Record Treasury hopes to open its portals by June 30th, 2022, the centenary of the fire.