There have been two sets of buildings that seem to have been constants through most of my life: Watford FC’s Vicarage Road stadium, and BBC Television Centre. The history of the latter enters a new era from tomorrow.
TVC, as the abbreviation junkies at the BBC inevitably call it, was a place I first visited as a young child. I have a vivid memory of walking around one of the covered roads where scenery would be shifted in and out of the studios and seeing the blocks that formed the backdrop of the pre-school show Play School. What was most amazing for me was the bright colours: at that time in the 70s we only had a black and white TV.
In the 80s, with my Mum working in the Correspondence Unit of Blue Peter (if you ever wrote, it might have been my Mum who composed and typed the reply), I would be a fairly regular visitor. The most mundane trips to meet her after school, usually being able to walk up from the main entrance to the East Tower where she was based, would always involve spotting something or someone famous “off the Telly”. And then there were the more glamorous visits: being whisked away from school in a cab one morning to be filmed riding a bicycle through the park at the back of TVC for a segment on Newsround; playing conkers whilst sitting next to Sarah Greene in the Saturday Superstore coffee shop; my non-appearance as an Egyptian mummy on Blue Peter…
In the 90s I started working for the Beeb in my own right. Although based in buildings further up Wood Lane, my staff pass have me access to this incredible building, and the BBC Club bar as well. By the 90s, though, with the advent of increased independent production of programmes, the studios were starting to become more often empty than in use, and the office space in buildings designed in the 1950s were really starting to show their age.
Tonight will see the last ever live transmission from the BBC’s home of television. By the end of the month the corporation will have vacated, and developers will move in to convert it into a hotel and more modern office space. I read recently that at least some of the studio space will be maintained, so some of its heritage will remain.
TVC arguably has had more impact on modern popular culture in the UK in the past fifty years than any other building. I feel very privileged that it has had a part in my life, and have a greater sense of loss about the BBC leaving than perhaps the fate of a building should generate.
mmitII 