HENS in Broadway are enjoying a Big Brother experience and having their image beamed live into the Harrods store in London.

A webcam set up at Clarence Court in Cheltenham Road, which went live in the posh London store last week, allows customers buying Old Cotswold Legbars and Burford Brown eggs to watch the hens which laid them.

Clarence Court, which has been supplying eggs to Harrods for about five years, has placed a webcam in the hen house which can be viewed 24 hours a day.

Director Philip Lee-Woolf said everyone was interested in the eggs, from the younger generation intrigued by the range of pastel colours to the older generation who remember Burford Browns from childhood.

He said he often received letters and e-mails about the eggs and now customers can find out more at the touch of a button.

"This is something for the future. It is like Big Brother out on the farm," he said. "It's a wonderful way of communicating with customers. When selling to supermarkets, this does away with the barrier between you and the customer.

"The eggs are so unusual that people expect to know what the hens look like and the birds are enjoying the attention. Chickens are the new Jack Russell - everybody's got them."

He said Sainsburys and Fortnum and Mason were also interested in having hencam in store.

The hencam can be viewed at www.clarencecourt.co.uk/hencam.