Ten seconds... 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...
Hello, good evening and welcome.
It is without question the greatest purpose-built studios in the world.
I remember just seeing the building first of all
and I actually couldn't believe my eyes.
It's an icon. It's like Big Ben, it's like the Houses of Parliament.
It's like St Paul's.
When they built the Centre this was a temple to this marvellous new medium.
'This particular family is called Forsyte.'
Word reached us that amazing things were happening out in west London.
'Flipping heck.'
A jewel box full of activity.
'Tottenham Hotspur 4 Sheffield United 2.'
'That's the end of the news. Let's join Michael Fish
'and take a look at tomorrow's weather.'
I'm actually getting quite emotional remembering it.
It was like being at a very exciting party, really
because I was having such fun here.
'Tony likes Demis Roussos, I like Demis Roussos and so would like to hear Demis Roussos.
'So please, do you think we could have Demis Roussos on?'
It felt like home, certainly.
'Well thank you very much, Jerry.' 'I don't believe it.'
LAUGHTER
It was like Wonderland to me.
'Live from Television Centre...'
Walking into Television Centre meant sparkle time. This was show business.
'Now the Morecambe And Wise Show.'
'I'm free. I'm free. I'm free.'
APPLAUSE
'...Top of the Pops'.
Coming here in the taxi, I suddenly got this rush.
The memories that you have of this place.
People were bonking all over the BBC!
They were absolutely stoned out of their minds.
Please, don't smoke that stuff, you know.
I promise you I am not at all proud of this, but I was drunk.
What I'm going to do is bleach your moustache.
We were in the wrong set and he said, "Go on and act."
'Exterminate.'
'Whatever happens, don't have nightmares.'
What we now know as British television was invented here.
'Don't mention the war.
'I mentioned it once but I think I got away with it all right.'
My memories of Television Centre are so wonderful.
When this place finally goes, I will really cry buckets.
'And it's goodnight from me.'
'And it's good night from him.'
This will always be the building that will be British television at its best.
Tales of Television Centre.
'Nearby is a model of the White City Project, future home of the BBC.
'Here many different departments now scattered all over London,
'may one day become centralised under one roof.'
Nice motor.
I always love coming here, actually, even to this day. I get a twinge of excitement.
There's something about this building.
From an early age I was aware of Television Centre.
If you've ever watched Swap Shop or Superstore...
I knew all about TV Centre because I used to watch Blue Peter as a child.
The building had a resonance.
It was awesome to step inside it for the very first time.
I remember getting to Television Centre
and then having my name on the gates, and it was literally a religious experience.
I came here with my father who was a television director, John Glenister.
It was very exciting for a nine-year-old.
I visited the Doctor Who set. It was the TARDIS.
My abiding memory of that was, "My God, this is cheap".
Basically, it was made out of plywood and polystyrene.
This building in many respects acted as a catalyst for me
to go into the industry.
I'd grown up seeing BBC programmes in Australia
and this was the motherlode.
This was Television Centre, where all of those programmes
that I grew up with had emanated from.
'I can remember walking around the corridor for the first time'
looking for my first dressing room and thinking,
"I'm at the BBC, working as an actor."
Can you move from the monitor, please?
Good evening and welcome to Top Of The Pops.
'A friend of mine got tickets to go and see Top Of The Pops. I was about 15.'
I think you had to be 16 to get in, but we thought we would lie about our age.
'We were motorbike fanatics and we had leather jackets with studs
'and great boots and gloves. We looked - we felt,'
like Marlon Brando out of The Wild One or something.
They said, "Tony Orlando and Dawn are at number one
"with Tie A Yellow Ribbon, so we're going to give a yellow ribbon to everybody
"and we want you all to skip around dancing."
# Tie a ribbon round the old oak tree
# Tie a ribbon round the old oak tree. #
That was my first humiliation on British television.
'Incident Reported is the title of this week's story in the popular Z Cars series
'tomorrow night at 8.25.'
Z CARS THEME MUSIC PLAYS
My mum was in some of the live episodes of Z Cars.
It's a nice friendly shop. Yes, that's the way we like it.
'My dad and I would see the start of the programme,
'get in the car and come to Television Centre'
and wait for Mum to emerge.
I just can't breathe. You're all right. Come on. What do you think you're doing?
I hasten to add I was tiny, so everything was fabulously huge
and modern and shiny and so exciting.
They are waiting for me. Keep still, lad.
'I did this live Z Cars.'
I didn't have a big part in it,
but I was terribly excited and quite nervous.
Mr Rawlings says he's like to speak to you, sir. Mr Rawlings? Inspector Rawlings?
I don't know.
'I was a teetotal girl from Wales. Hadn't ever drunk in my life.'
Signed the pledge at 11. And at the end of it Jimmy, or Brian Blessed,
one of them said, "Come on, we're going to the club for a drink",
and I had my first drink ever in the BBC bar.
Thank you very much. Thank you, Mavis.
At school, when I was 13,
I think I did rather well in a science project
which was about the only time I ever did well in a science project
and the reward was a trip to Television Centre.
'I visited the Z Cars studio and it was the most magical thing.'
'I had watched Z Cars on the TV'
and thought, "They're sitting in their car in a street",
and there was the car, half a car cut out,
and just the seats were there and then a backdrop of a northern street.
It was like a revelation to me.
I remember thinking, "It would be fantastic to work in a place like this",
never thinking I ever would.
Add on film for 32 seconds.
'Everybody who was anybody came here.'
Prime ministers, great actors, heroes, they all came.
SHOUTING
One at a time, please. No, no, no!
The Prime Minister took time off from Westminster to come
to Television Centre to see how the BBC makes its programmes.
Have you never watched the news from there? I haven't.
Hello. Hello. Hello, I'm Elton John.
Who's that fat bastard?
DRUM ROLL
'This is BBC Television...'
DRUM ROLL
'..broadcasting from the Television Centre.'
The very first show that went out from Television Centre
was called First Night.
It was quite a challenge, but it was very rewarding
because it meant we were using all these new facilities
for the very first time
and it really was very exciting.
A lot of big names in it.
# Tonight I'm on a proper buster
# And my head is just a little light
# And with tomorrow's sorrow ready to drown
# I'm going to beat up the town tonight
# Tonight I'm on a celebration
# That will shake the nation to the core
# I'm going to beat, beat, beat, beat up the town
# The way it's never been done before. #
It was the biggest tailor-made television centre in the world.
My father had been a very senior engineer working for the BBC.
They sent him a model of the Centre and I remember it on my carpet.
I was 11.
'We have already started on the foundations and then later on,
'we shall build another part in the front here with three more studios.
I remember that circle that turned into a question mark. I remember it well.
To me, Television Centre was a work of art.
It belonged to that period in the late '50s
when everything was futuristic,
everything was space age. There's that same sense of design here.
The mosaic with the light coming in,
the honeycomb ceiling above it - it's wonderful.
There are echoes of that mosaic all around the central circle
and in the columns of the colonnade
and if you go to the staircase of the south hall, it's unsupported.
There's nothing holding you up,
so you get this wonderful feeling of precarious altitude
although it's perfectly safe standing there.
And the big basin at the fountains,
it's exactly like the flying saucer from Forbidden Planet.
But there's also a hint of Tracy Island about it -
that central circle, I can't really imagine it
without Thunderbird 3 coming up out of the middle.
THUNDERBIRDS THEME MUSIC
Everything here is solid.
With television now, everything has a life of about five years, really,
but this place was built to last.
The design of it is brilliant.
I love the fact that it's like a cross between show business
and a KGB interrogation centre.
That's a good description. Quite good. I like that.
It's almost as if it was designed
with a sort of Stalinist point of view
for bigwigs to look down and check whether the members of staff were actually working.
A revolutionary building in its time, a building
that was copied all over the world, as far as I'm aware.
I remember going to one place, I think it was in Zimbabwe,
or somewhere, which was virtually a carbon copy.
The dynamics work.
The two ring roads to bring the scenery and the technical equipment,
the inner corridor that funnels the artists from the dressing rooms
through the assembly areas into the studios via make up and wardrobe.
Everything arrives at the right place at the right time.
The production people, who of course were the brains,
would come in on the first floor
and hoi polloi, the actual horny-handed sons of toil,
the crews and technicians,
would come in from the back on the ground floor,
so they never, ever would meet.
The logic there was the proles didn't have to meet the important people, you know!
Dividing and ruling. Keep them all separate.
BBC Television, nine o'clock.
'Because it was live and there was always live things going on,'
it gave the place a fizz.
Good evening, this is David Jacobs
speaking from the BBC's Television Centre in London.
Viewers in the United Kingdom will recognise this building,
but it will be less familiar to the 75 million viewers
from 17 other European countries, who are joining us tonight
to watch the Eurovision Song Contest Grand Prix of 1963.
Everywhere that you looked, you got the feeling
that you were in the middle of this extraordinary fun factory.
'The difference between it and the factory was that every bit of artwork was different.'
The range of programmes that came out was extraordinary.
I mean, In TC1, you could have a full-scale opera going on.
HE SINGS
And then there would be the daily dramas that were going on.
Yes, madam. Yes it is on sale today.
Comedy shows, audiences coming in.
Scouse git.
And it really throbbed.
You could drop in and see the ferment of creativity
that existed all at the same time in this amazing building.
It was magic, it was, "Oh, this door, it's Eric and Ernie
"doing their programme."
HE COUGHS Arsenal.
You walked along the corridor, another door opened it,
"Oh, there's a drama going on."
And further around still, "Oh, a quiz is happening."
It was very vigorous at the time.
Things going on in every studio at the same time.
Would you mind going back, please?
There's just one tiny thing...
Television was on the rise, you see. In its power, its scope,
its creative possibilities were just exploding.
And this building reflected that.
The place reeks of history, of television history.
TV JINGLE
'The man who steers this vehicle of television communication
'is Bryan Cowgill, World Cup Grandstand's Executive Producer.
Can we do a... Bill, can you lower the scores again for me, please?
'Television Centre was the only place in which to work.'
This was the place where the big decisions were made.
BBC2 arrived, of course, then satellite television arrived,
the moon landing was done from here.
'It's one small step for man,
'one giant leap for mankind'.
Oh, good God! Straight back, we've got a boom in shot this time.
'The arrival of colour was a main event here.'
'And we were going so fast that the colour cameras'
were still under development.
'I was in the very first colour drama',
which was Vanity Fair.
And it was very stressful for everybody because nobody knew how it was going to work out.
What's the matter with props? They're all in the wrong place.
'We actually took a decision that we would risk it.'
And it worked, yes.
'First on BBC1, John Craven's Newsround.'
'No school today for thousands of children,
'as the nation goes to the polls.
'It's going to be a busy night'
of incredible complications for the people here at BBC Television,
who will be giving the viewers the situation, minute by minute.
TC1, this is the BBC's biggest television studio in London
and it's going to be the nerve centre for the election coverage.
And the BBC canteen has been preparing for the big night as well.
In its biggest ever operation,
it will provide the studio with 6,000 sandwiches,
20 gallons of tomato soup, 100 gallons of fruit squash,
3,500 cups of coffee
and hundreds and hundreds of sausage rolls.
Yes, Frank and Norman are clear, thank you.
Every studio was full, and it was a miracle of planning.
If someone rushed into my office, bashed on the door
and said, "Frank Sinatra's going to come in to town in two days
"and we reckon we can get him, have we got a studio?"
You could go across the corridor to all these lovely girls sitting there with their pencils
and say, "Quick! Can we have TC2 studio or something?"
And they would do it.
'Well, it was a self-contained city.'
It was like a mini studio.
It reminded me of what Hollywood must have been like.
You did say Hollywood? Yes. Not Cricklewood? No, Hollywood.
I played Roxanne to Eric's Cyrano De Bergerac, as one would.
He said, "I want a dream sequence in the middle of this."
We took over TC1 and there were Eric and Ernie
in top hat, white tie and tails and me in a blue floaty dress,
just prancing around the studio for about, I suppose a minute?
That wouldn't happen now.
'In my heyday, I was doing Morecambe and Wise and The Two Ronnies',
we didn't really have things called budgets,
whereas now, they nitpick over 50 quid.
'It was full of hurrying people.
'directors, producers, actors,
'dressers, it was a hubbub.'
We made programmes like shelling peas. Excellence came as standard.
The beauty of working at Television Centre
was that everything was on tap.
Lighting, design, make up.
If you were short of anything during rehearsal,
you could whiz round to small props and bring something in,
or whiz round to make up.
It all facilitated getting the shows on the air.
'You'd got whole wardrobes full of period stock,
modern stock, science fiction.
I mean, you could do a show from stock
and it wouldn't cost the programme anything for the costumes.
There's an awful lot of scenery kept in this place.
There's stacks and stacks of it.
Whole houses get built here
and they get made into small sections so they can be assembled here,
then painted, decorated, whatever has to happen to them.
'When I was writing my programmes,'
I would walk through the scene dock with my designer
and I'd see a Dickensian shop window with mullions.
And I'd then write a sketch
and it cost nothing because we could get it out the scene dock for free.
'It is the most incredibly exciting place,
'with these huge studio spaces,'
where you can create worlds in pools of darkness.
Can you clear for a moment?
We created the most wonderful worlds. The most intricate sets.
This would be turned into an 18th century house,
or a garden, and overnight,
everything would be carted out, deconstructed,
the floor would be repainted.
We'd literally say goodbye and you'd hear clanking
and think, "They're taking the set down already!"
and by the time you'd gone back into wardrobe,
taken your clothes off, you'd be out, half the set would be gone.
You were like, "How can that be?"
The little bloke would come on his machine and he'd go up and down,
up and down and all the lovely graphics that had been created
on the floor would be wiped away and then the next set would be put in.
Dawn French.
I'm allowed to park in there, please.
They'd look at you and go "Hi, Andi, how are you?" "Fine."
"Can I see your pass, please?" "But you've already identified that you know me.
"Surely you can let me in?" "I need to see your pass."
I work here! This is a BBC pass.
You're a jerk! You know that?
This is a career decision you're making here, buddy!
Look at the camera. Look at the camera!
OK, I have to go home.
'There was a day when a man wouldn't let me in
'because I didn't have a car park ticket. So I took the key out, left my car and ran into the building.
OK, man, yeah? You happy with that?
Can you see my fingers?
Count 'em, Stan, you fuck!
OK? OK! I showed him.
'From this place there is no escape!
'Not only can you not get out of this place, but you can't get in!
At the front of the building they had this thing called the Horseshoe car park, very exclusive,
I think just meant for the bigwigs on the sixth floor.
My greatest achievement at Television Centre
was when I was editor of Newsround
and I was actually given a permanent pass.
There was a very valuable form of currency
when it came to car parking spaces, which were these.
That this could get you a space anywhere,
even in the Horseshoe car park.
The internal bureaucracy was an absolute nightmare.
I had to get permission to have a helicopter land at the front
of Television Centre, actually in the bosses' car-park.
This was the first time a chopper had landed at the VIP car-park
at the front of Television Centre and, as you can imagine, it caused quite a stir.
I was given a complete brush-off and I was told,
"You're treating this as if it was a place for entertainment."
Sorry, we haven't got a meter. You're terribly privileged.
Only the very best people park in this spot, you know.
I gather the Rolls-Royces have had to leave.
We had our own security force, we had our own commissionaires.
My great-uncle was a commissionaire for the BBC
so he worked a lot of the time here.
So when I got the job as Director-General, I always laughed,
we've gone from commissionaire to Director- General
in only two generations. Not bad!
I'd be away at Yorkshire Television, what, 15 years,
and I came back, and on the morning I arrived,
the commissionaire said "Good morning, sir. Been on leave?"
They were fantastic. Like the guys at the front of Harrods,
all dressed up. "Morning, Mr Nigel."
"Morning, Miss Rippon." "Good morning, Mr Daniels."
They were their own men and they weren't in any way obsequious.
It was Vic, always Vic.
That was it, Vic, and he was on the main gate for years.
And Vic had lost an arm during the Second World War.
And he always wore his uniform and the ribbons of his medals.
He had quite a few altercations with people who thought
they had a right to get in, in their vehicles and he thought they didn't.
You could get through Vic.
I'd lift him up and put him on top of a car!
If he liked you, he'd park your car.
"Well, you can go over there, mate, or you can go over there."
Eric Sykes, the comedian, was coming in, chatting away,
and I said, "I didn't know you knew the commissionaire there?"
He said, "Oh, yes, he's a great pal. I always invite him to my shows.
"I can't imagine why, cos it halves the applause!"
It had such a status, that reception.
You felt a little bit swingy walking into reception.
Kings and Queens and Prime Ministers walked through there
and were met by dragon ladies.
Quite a stern-looking lot but really old-school,
all dressed up in their Chanel suits.
I was walking across reception and a lady came up and said,
"Excuse me, Miss Hughes, but I've often wondered,
"do you pronounce your name 'Nervous' or 'Nerees?'"
And I was Nervous Hughes from then on!
No, it's not Pebble Mill at Seven, it's Wogan.
Tonight, as you can see, we come to you from the main reception.
'One of my guests was the Dalai Lama.
'And when we'd finished, we were out in the main reception area
'and I heard this formidable blonde woman make an announcement.
"Taxi for the Lama. Taxi for the Lama!"
Those ladies on reception really ran the place. They did.
Knew more than anybody in the building
about what went on.
There were three ladies who took it in turn on rotation
to woman main reception.
And one of them was scariest of all.
She had the glasses that went up like this
and the hair piled high on her head.
Blonde hair going up like this,
sprayed to within an inch of its life.
And she would go, "Maaaain Receptionnnnnnnn."
Well, the thing that I find rather ironic is the fact that what
used to be main reception, where one arrived,
was given one's dressing room key and told where to go,
and there were always actors buzzing around.
Now actors are as rare as a snowball on the equator,
and yet they have changed the name to 'Stage Door'.
The blokes just aren't the same. The blokes they have now, not the same.
When I arrived, they said, "Yes? Name?" "Angela Rippon."
"Why are you here?" "I've come to be interviewed for a job
"for television news." And one of the girls looked up and said,
"Oh, are we going to have a woman on the news? Oh, that'll be nice."
Ready, Jack?
This is take two of the closing.
Good evening, all. I was doing a Dixon of Dock Green.
For Collins and Skinner... Oh, sorry.
And I can remember being terribly,
terribly nervous walking in this wonderful building.
I said my name and they had a long list,
and she started looking from the bottom.
I remember mine was the very bottom word! And she said,
"Oh, yes, dressing room 359." And she handed me a key and said,
"Do you know where to go?" I said, "Yes," cos I was so nervous,
I thought, I can't ask this terribly frightening lady where to go.
And I think I wandered round for about half an hour before I found my dressing room.
'Standby, please, we're going on.'
I did know the difference was in Thames Television,
you got a star on your dressing room.
When you come to the BBC, you didn't.
'Depending on where you were, I mean, if you're in the basement,
you'd sometimes get a dressing room that was made for 50 people
so you could do a lap of the room while you were waiting.
Good luck, Barry, darling, I'll be with you every inch of the way.
Poor brave boy.
It was like a small cell.
'Jeremy Kemp on the set, please.'
You never had a telephone or anything like that, or a loo.
One day in the corridor, this Blue Peter presenter came up to me
and said, "Have you got a star dressing room?"
And I thought, "Oh dear, they're obviously jealous"
because I had this lovely bath, and I said, "Yes, I have."
He said, "Would you mind sharing it with the otter that's on our programme?"
Shall I see if she can jump in from there? There.
Let's run a bit of water for swimming. Oh, come back!
You did sometimes get very noisy,
or very egocentric neighbours,
Who made it very hard for you to think.
Attention, attention, Joanna Lumley is back.
To all BBC producers, she's a size eight,
she's had her eyes done and she's feeling good.
Joanna, quick, get up, there's Michael Winner.
Mr Winner, remember Joanna Lumley?
She was a Bond girl... uh, a month ago
and she was the original Purdey...
Who? Purdey in the Avengers. Joanna, like we rehearsed.
2, 3, 4, cue.
AVENGERS THEME MUSIC
Go, Joanna, go!
There was a series called Adam Adamant where one of the actors
was well-known for, um, hitting the bottle.
'All right, darling? Yes, we're ready on the floor.'
His dressing room was fleeced
to see that there weren't alcoholic substances there.
He was brought his evening meal, but actually incarcerated
in his dressing room until he was needed on the set.
These are men who have been caught acting in Colditz,
being escorted to their cell by sadistic floor managers.
Whoops!
'I remember it was a dressing room'
just over there, actually, where I met Stevie Wonder for the first time.
He always had the electronic organ there.
He was always thinking up songs and I remember one particular one,
he said "Tony, what you think of this?" Dang-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding.
And I heard it a little later and thought, "Where have I heard that?"
And it was 'Uptight (Everything's Alright)'.
Well, I heard it for the first time in a dressing room down there.
They were convinced that the dressing rooms were being used
for naughty purposes.
Yeah, slightly sordid.
I think a lot went on in them just the same.
Oh, no, everybody was doing it on the premises.
They minded you being drunk and they minded you being late.
Yes. Drunk and late, but not sex.
Nobody cared whether you had sex in your dressing room.
No, people were bonking all over the BBC, haha!
Yeah, what do you think those 'B's stand for?
THEY LAUGH
I was not seeing very much of my boyfriend at the time,
who I hasten to add is now my husband, Mike Smith.
But we were like ships in the night.
I had dressing room number two,
so on the occasions where we did see each other, we had to take
full advantage of that time, of that blissful however long it was.
And I have kept a souvenir which I've brought with me rather cheekily
because I didn't know whether I should hand it in.
But it's my dressing room key. Number two.
I think Terry Wogan was in dressing room 1 that day.
I wouldn't say that people actually died in these dressing rooms
but they looked as if somebody had.
What they were known for were the soup stains and coffee stains
and indeed the bloodstains on the carpets.
Some of them have become really glam.
They're a set, what I might call the Bruce Forsyth dressing rooms,
stripy wallpaper and very, very dark lighting, and very glamorous.
I was in my sketch show,
and the first day of recording I was in the glamour dressing room
and when I came back the second day, I'd been moved.
I'd been moved into one of the old, sort of former dressing rooms,
recognisably just hutches,
with those very high windows like you see in police cells,
where you can hear the technical staff discussing
the programme they're working on.
"Yeah, I'm on that Smith and Jones thing. It's all right, I suppose."
I was very lucky to work with Joan Rivers
and she came over to this country to do her chat show,
so I got the job of tarting up Ms Rivers' dressing room,
and tart it up we did. It looked fantastic.
We had people knock on the door from around the building, saying,
"Can we come and have a look at the dressing room?"
And she was here for a fortnight, and how funny is this,
the minute she left the building,
we stripped it all out and put it back to as it was!
I want you to meet Damon Beesley.
He's a producer here but he's also a great writer. He's a script editor.
HIGH-PITCHED LAUGHTER
Room for a small one? Cheeky.
You started without me, and not for the first time.
What's he been saying? It's all lies.
The BBC's always had its strange hierarchy.
Some real talent at the BBC.
Cheers. He's lovely.
There were rules about what you could have in your office.
You could have curtains that drew, or, if you weren't senior enough,
they had to be just strips at the side.
You had to be on a certain grade to get a carpet.
You could have a drinks cabinet, you could not have a drinks cabinet.
But you knew that you were upwardly mobile when you were issued
with a rather grander desk and a coat and hat rack.
They put me into a little segmented room, like being part of an orange.
You were stuck with one wall narrower than the other
and peg boards,
and the whole thing was simply not conducive to writing comedy.
When I first arrived, somebody told me that it was built in a circle
so the buck couldn't stop.
'After a short drive, I arrived at BBC Television Centre.
'Unfortunately, this is the most complicated building in the world.'
Because it is a circle, it does encourage people to get to know one another.
Jim Cellan Jones was Head of Drama and I knew he was on the 5th floor
and I'd pretend I was going somewhere
and I'd just walk round the offices
and he'd say, "Nige, hey, come in, what are you up to?"
I'd said, "I'm just... Not a lot." And I'd get cast. I'd get a job!
Now I found this a very easy building to get to grips with.
Once you've mastered the fact that
it's all built round this circular quad.
I loved the shape of it because it's so organic, isn't it?
Easy to get lost,
but wonderful that it just goes round in a circle.
My wig was tight, my corsets were tight,
my shoes were hurting me, and there's no oxygen
in those big studios because there's so many of us there.
I would always have a cup of tea and then I would go and walk
around the doughnut maybe two or three times, in my costume usually.
And then you work out that all the studios are off it like that.
Make-up was sort of over there and below the studios there's more make-up and dressing rooms.
It actually worked really well. I think it was a brilliant design.
'A series of endless corridors.
'I have spent most of my formative years walking endlessly round in circles,
finding myself back where I started, unable to find a studio
or anybody to show me the way!
I could be wandering round there now.
It's a round building and I remember, very early on,
somebody said, "Do you want a cup of tea?" And I said, "Yeah."
They said, "Just pop up and you'll find a little tea bar."
I started walking. I could not find this tea bar.
What I was doing was walking round and round!
You wouldn't think you could get lost in a circular building,
because you'd just walk back to where you started,
but it's actually very easy to get lost.
It's such a big circle that you don't actually realise that
you've passed the point where you entered the circle,
and so just to find this cup of tea, I was gone for about an hour,
and I just carried on walking for a great deal of time,
round and round in circles.
When I was appointed Controller,
and I had to go to the first important meeting, I got lost.
I mean, I was going round and round the circle
and I suddenly realised I was recognising the same fire extinguisher. Where was I?
A myriad of corridors. I remember having quite an important meeting
downstairs and saying, "I've got to go. I'm going for a pee",
and going off for a pee, and I couldn't find my way back.
So in the end I had to ring up my secretary and say,
"I'm wandering around this place but I've no idea where the meeting is,"
because it all looks the same, doesn't it? 'Going down.'
In the sub basement, which is a level below the basement floor,
there are service corridors which connect all the blocks on the site,
so a corridor that's probably not much wider than a human being.
Extremely creepy because there are so many twists
and turns down there and it's very dimly lit.
I got a pink chalk and I just used to quietly put a chalk arrow.
On the very first edition of Newsround,
I nearly didn't make it because I was down in the basement
at about quarter to five and I had to get up to the studio
on the 6th floor. And I went the wrong way around.
And I got to the studio about six or seven minutes before air,
palpitating like mad.
You just follow the bum, and when we got to the bum,
we knew we were in the right part.
In the summer, the sun hits it in a certain way
and it really glows, that bum.
'Hugh Weldon, who was the boss, was on the other side of the ring,
so I could look out of my office and see whether he was in his office, whether it was worth going round.
"Come on then, Brian", said Huw Wheldon.
"You're a climber. Climb up this column, right up to the top,
"then get on to that statue down there."
Took me about 20 minutes, shimmied up, it's quite hard at the base.
But gradually wrapped myself round, got myself there, got to the top,
and I, "Pfffft" - blew up this great big French letter,
tied it onto its cock, and Huw Wheldon said,
"Now we hope people look at the bloody thing!"
Next day, when everyone came into their offices,
there was a French letter, a condom, tied over its cock.
That's why it's called Golden Bollocks.
The bowl which caught the water
was directly above where all the telecine apparatus was.
And it started to leak,
and this crucial element of the system was in danger of blowing up,
short-circuiting with water cascading down.
I think it was exaggerated but that was one of the problems.
The videotape recording department used to be in the basement.
One day the Queen was coming to something at Television Centre.
She was coming up Wood Lane in a limousine and they said,
"Quick, turn on the fountain, it's going to look smashing."
They turned on the fountain, it was lovely.
The Queen came in and said, "What a lovely fountain", and went through the door.
And then they said, "Turn it off, quick!" And turned it off.
But then they said, "Turn it on again,
"the Duke's coming behind in a Land Rover!"
So they turned it on again and the entire VT was flooded, I believe.
When it turned on, it made a heck of a noise.
Because the sound of the water
on the fountain was echoing around this ring.
I'm told that the more sensitive of the lady secretaries
found this really unendurable and had to keep going to the ladies' room
once every three quarters of an hour!
I'll never forget, one day the water tanks burst in the building.
And the water was coming flooding down. I don't know how many floors.
These days, of course, the building would be evacuated,
nobody would be allowed to go anywhere near it.
No, on Blue Peter, the idea was to get a sequence actually dancing,
barefoot, with umbrellas up, in the water,
coming right through the light fittings. Can you imagine?
There are a lot of obstacles in this building that you have to overcome.
God forbid you want to film anything outside the confines of a studio,
then I wish you luck.
Once you'd started to use the television centre as a location,
then you were in real trouble.
Prem ops, fire safety people, health and safety people, the list goes on.
What about the height? What would you say this is? About 60?
About 60 feet. What does it look like from down there?
Very high!
'Karl Wallenda was a world famous tightrope walker.
He'd done the most amazing tightrope walks,
and the great thing was that he never used a safety net.
There was the most almighty battle about that.
We got our own way, because we were such a pain in the neck.
There wasn't the Health and Safety around that there is today.
You are taking, not a chance, but a calculated risk.
You want me to stand on my neck? Can you? Well, I'll try.
Obviously, we couldn't do it live, just in case he did go off.
'I suddenly thought, what happens if he does fall?
'And I said to camera two, if he falls, pan with him.'
I was worrying about that. Can you walk right to the end now?
Karl said to me, "When it's time for me to go,
"I will either get run over by a bus, have a heart attack
"or fall off a wire. God above is going to make those decisions."
And three years after he told me that,
he did actually fall off a wire and kill himself.
On shorter programmes than yours,
I'd rehearse what we're doing next but on this occasion,
I can sit back and enjoy nearly three hours of your multi-coloured programme.
Marvellous. Well, thank you, Richard. Let's have the titles.
It was going to be totally live and absolutely unrehearsed.
The people in charge said "You're going to run about in unlit areas."
Well, we've come now this morning to one of the most important areas
of the Television Centre. We're one floor below ground
and this is known as the videotape area.
"We don't know where the sound's coming from. It's going to look and sound awful."
So in the half-hour between now and when we follow you on air,
we'll be tidying up the things that didn't work
and getting everything just right for transmission.
OK, I'll leave you to do that, Jim. Thank you very much indeed.
Thanks a lot. Grandstand later on BBC1.
I then said, "I tell you what, we'll just have one lit area
"and we won't deviate from that", which was a complete lie.
Haha! Silly!
'We just pushed it as far as we could.'
At the Television Centre here,
we do have many other things going on.
I mean, this is the only programme actually going out live.
But we've got people doing rehearsals for programmes, setting up studios.
Look at the mess here. 'The crews, of course, were wonderful.
'They thought this was a marvellous challenge,'
so we just upped and went.
They followed us, out of the door, into the corridor
and into the next studio.
Morning! Morning! Morning!
That's Noel Edmonds! Hello!
I've just taken a break from next door. Morning, chaps. How are you?
No one was foolish enough to try and do it before, but it worked.
Is it Dad's Army? No, it's not!
Because of this group of studios, all with different things going on,
we were able to show this is where it all happens.
'The idea of the tap dancing record came out of the fact that Roy Castle was in fact a tap dancer.
That took me into this spectacular thing here.
Are you part of the biggest tap-dancing troupe in the world?
Yes, I am. What's your name? Julie.
I looked up the record and it wasn't very big, to be honest. I thought, 500 will do.
Pardon me asking, but where are the other 499?
Right here.
We had absolutely no choice. If we wanted to do it,
we had to do it in December. It was cold and I wanted another take,
because there was a camera shadow, but my head of the department said,
"Get the children in the warm." We had a mini camera in those days,
which was that size, you know, quite big.
I said, "I want the Busby Berkeley shot, put it right over the middle,"
and they pulled it out on a wire.
To have the fountain going was the climax of the whole piece
and that was difficult to do but it's just getting the right people on your side, to be honest.
And there was a lady who was the powerhouse
behind what you could do on the building site
if you stepped outside the studio.
And I went up to her and she was knitting in her office.
And so I said, "Maureen, what are you knitting?"
She said "I'm being sponsored to do this knit."
So I said, "I'll help you, I'll sponsor you."
I gave her a couple of quid and she said, "Now what I do for you?"
I said, "Well, how about switching the fountain on for starters?"
And they did it.
That's how it used to operate in those days, bribery!
There was always some bugger out there, Doctor Who or somebody,
Dixon of Dock Green. They're always doing little shots.
And of course you had Michael Bentine's World out here.
Hello, and a very, very warm welcome back to the very last
in our present series of It's A Square World.
Michael Bentine loved Television Centre so much
that at the end of every series he destroyed it catastrophically.
It was sunk by a German U-boat, it was besieged by Red Indians.
It got blasted into space in one of them.
With the aid of some special effects, obviously.
Now what's wrong?! We are weightless!
Now easily observable is the BBC Television Centre.
You'll be able to see its form together with the many lights
associated with it.
Whenever surreal mayhem broke out around the grounds
of Television Centre, everyone assumed, "It's Michael Bentine.
"He's up to something again."
Until one day there was a real raid on the cashiers.
You've done more to confuse BBC Commissionaires
than any man in the history of broadcasting.
The robbers attacked, and they thought it was you.
Yes, they did. That was a shocking business. They were real.
The week's wages, £20,000 in cash,
had just been delivered by a security firm.
And a getaway car, full of people with stockings over their faces
and looking for all the world like pantomime bank robbers,
pulled up at the main gate.
I just said, "What's going on?" And he said, "It's all right, mate."
And then I presumed it was filming.
These guys went in with stockings over their faces, beat everybody up,
smashed them on top of their heads,
knocked them all out, and pinched £16,000. I was there!
I thought it was something like Z Cars.
You know, they nipped in here.
Ran in with guns, and said, "Everybody on the floor,"
and broke down the bars and got through the grille, you see.
They got in their car and they drove round the circle
and simply went out the back gate.
The commissioner appears and says, "Nice to see you, Mr Bentine,"
and opens the gate and lets them out.
"Hello. Hello, Mr Bentine. nice to see you back again."
And it really was five men in a Jaguar car
came up and robbed the place. Yes. Thanks to you.
There seemed to be no limit to the items
that people would take from the building.
Everything would go.
We would have a cage full of 100 footballs,
and by the end of the week, there were three.
They had a banqueting hall with a dozen place settings
and silver period cutlery had been hired
and very carefully laid out on the table.
And when people came back into the studio,
every piece of cutlery had gone.
But it hadn't just been stolen.
Somebody had actually gone to the restaurant block
and collected enough BBC canteen cutlery to replace it.
Oh, don't use that one! It's discoloured! Here, find another.
There were three canteens, all on top of each other.
So you had the first floor canteen,
waitress service on the second floor, and the third floor canteen.
And there was kind of an unwritten rule between, you know,
production go to the third floor,
and anyone that might have a high-visibility jacket
would go to the first floor.
Yeah, I think there was a sort of class system
of restaurants at one point.
The ordinary people ate baked beans on the ground floor,
and then there was a bit where slightly smarter people ate lasagne or something.
We're up here. You stay in that one.
That one's got sausages, beans, and mash. Ours has got chicken kiev.
I remember The Two Ronnies queuing up with everyone else,
and they got two little stools,
and they were sitting on these stools,
dragging the stools along as the queue shortened.
Wild horses would never have dragged me there. But I would hear tales.
The soggy bacon, left overnight.
Because there was no wastage. Good husbandry was the watchword.
People used to talk about having been taken
to the waitress service bit of the canteen.
Yes! Lots of times!
Lots of times? Yes!
There we go again.
I was so impressed, because it had white tablecloths
and there was the waitresses there going round.
So you felt you'd arrived. SHE LAUGHS
I don't think it was that glamorous.
There was some hairstyles amongst those waitresses.
And I used to look at John and say,
"I really want my hair to look like that."
You know, these beautiful beehives. Oh, it was brilliant!
I remember there was one lady, she had this enormous hairdo,
and the longest nails that were painted green.
And you think, how can you...anyway.
Did you ever have that waitress who was rather eccentric,
and she had a really, really, long fingernail, but it twisted round?
I never wanted to be served by her!
That would have put me off my lunch, I think, really!
I remember one day, Joan Collins walked in.
She sat down and just took out her little Tupperware box
and had her own salad.
I thought, "How chic is that, in the waitress service?!"
It was where most of the producers went to have their lunch, in fact.
And we used to eat lunch in those days.
It was sort of meat and two veg and a glass of wine.
I mean, it was none of this grabbing a sandwich by the...
HE LAUGHS ..by the typewriter!
When the controllers had a guest,
they would take them to waitress service.
And you could also book a table at waitress service,
and see them with their guests.
It was very useful to be able to nobble the bosses
whilst they were preoccupied with their meal.
The wonderful thing about the second floor was there was a balcony
overlooking the first floor.
So they could actually look down their noses at the proles below.
We used to imagine it was so they could do a Henry VIII
with their chicken bones. Toss it over.
"Look, there's peasants scrabbling for my leftovers!"
I was doing the Jackanory programme with Kenneth Williams.
So we went into the canteen
where some lady was behind the counter,
and we said, "What's nice for lunch today?"
And she said, "Oh, we've got a very nice chicken curry."
I said, "That's good. I'll have the chicken curry."
And Kenneth said, "Sounds rather lovely.
"I think I'll have the chicken curry as well."
And the woman dashes over to a hatch and yells down,
"There's a big rush on the chicken curry!
"Send some more up!" HE LAUGHS
I remember vividly it was a very nice steak and chips
with a bottle of what the BBC called, 'Good Ordinary Claret.'
I sometimes sat at the table and amused myself
by crossing out 'Good' and writing 'Very', Ordinary Claret.
You'd go in at 12 o'clock and you'd roll out at half past two.
FILM NIGHT THEME TUNE
Yeah, there was an occasion that could have proved disastrous.
And I promise you, I'm not at all proud of this, but I was drunk.
We all used to have lunch in the restaurant
before going into the studio, and on this particular Friday,
a lad who'd been attached to us was leaving.
He was going round the table with bottles of wine the whole time.
And in those circumstances, you lose track of how much you've drunk.
We walked down the corridor to the studio, Pres B.
But when I got inside and the lights came on
and I had to do my first link to camera,
everything fell apart. And I burbled and stuttered.
Oh, I was fluffing my lines.
And at the end of this, there was total embarrassed silence.
And I got up and said, "OK, this is what I'm going to do.
"I'm going to walk round and round this circular building,
"and every time I pass this door, I want someone to give me
"a cup of strong black coffee."
And I did this for about half an hour,
went to my dressing room, plunged my face repeatedly into cold water,
and went in and recorded the programme.
DIRECTOR: Just under 30 seconds.
It turned out it was the most sober programme I have ever done.
It also happened to be about the dullest programme I've ever done.
But the thing is, I got away with it, but I learned a salutary lesson.
I never drank again before working.
There are pop groups in to record in the afternoon
and of course, they smoked.
And they didn't smoke ordinary cigarettes.
David Attenborough was a very tolerant controller.
But he did pass a message to the editor, which was,
"There is a herbal smell
"drifting along that corridor from your studio.
"If it becomes any stronger, you'll be in trouble."
Look, please don't smoke that stuff, you know,
openly, and so that we can all smell it. I mean, just be sensible.
That was all he said. And so we were told to control it.
I remember you telling me a tale of you doing something on Play Away.
I think it involved silhouettes. And everybody had had...
Playschool, and it was the Nativity.
And there was Rick Jones, Lionel Morton, myself.
They got stoned on the biggest joint you've ever seen, in the studio.
And we were in silhouette, as the three shepherds with our crooks.
And Lionel purposely held his crook so the crook didn't show.
Like with the cameras, instead of that way!
They were absolutely stoned out of their minds.
So when we recorded, who cocked his lines up? Me.
I couldn't work with it, I really couldn't!
I like that you weren't stoned. I wasn't!
Such a professional.
HE LAUGHS
You would come from the screaming mayhem of the studios
and the Light Entertainment department or the drama department,
where basically everybody shouted to each other all the time,
and then you'd open up on the 6th floor.
There would be this swish, and then there was silence.
LIFT ANNOUNCEMENT: 6th Floor.
You couldn't hear yourself walk. People spoke in whispers.
It was like you'd sort of gone to heaven or something.
ANGELIC MUSIC
Ooh, the hierarchy! And you never really went onto that floor.
It was the posh floor, you know.
Where the head of BBC One, BBC Two, and the DG were.
You had to be fantastically well-behaved.
PRESENTER: Here, the drama department meets the controller of BBC One.
Well, let's move on to Dr Who,
because that's an even bigger problem.
Because you're asking for around 2,500 extra programmes.
Avoid the 6th floor.
It's just nothing but trouble.
If you're summoned to the 6th floor, you've put your foot in it.
You're going to get a bollocking.
Having a young baby and trying to do a live show really is a nightmare.
You know, I'd be trying to breastfeed her,
then I'd come in to rehearse a bit. Rose would be screaming.
How's your hair? All right?
So the girl who used to help me said, "I've done it.
"I've got this great corridor. It's just marvellous.
"There's no one around there. It's really quiet.
"And no matter how much noise Rose makes, in the end she calms down."
And I went, "Oh, great. Well done. Where is it?"
And she said, "Oh, it's the 6th floor."
SHE LAUGHS
Anybody who's anybody is here.
And they've got their names on all the doors.
Like, DG.
That means it's the Director General's office.
He's the head of everything. Oh, so exciting!
Let's have a look, shall we?
LAUGHTER
Oh, good morning, Mr Everett. Welcome to the BBC.
Naughty DG!
This building embodies the paradox in the BBC.
Of jazz hands and the smart suit.
THEY SCREAM Ken! You!
It's fun to see those two collide.
That's how you get the best programmes.
B-U-M.
That must be Broadcasting Under-Manager.
LAUGHTER No, it's a bum.
On Thursday evening, there's a rather special show of the week.
The other day, I spoke to one of its stars, Ernie Wise,
who'd brought along a friend.
Ernie, your Christmas show's being repeated. Why is that?
By public demand. What, particularly, has made this public demand?
Well, they're just clamouring to see my performance again.
My Napoleon was quite superb, wasn't it? Napoleon? Yes.
I did have the pleasure of working
on the Morecambe and Wise shows, and I think it was back in 1977,
if my memory serves me right.
They were coming to the end of their BBC contract,
and the BBC wanted to woo them to come and sign another contract.
So they threw them a very nice party
in the hallowed 6th floor suite.
To this day, I remember Eric saying,
"Just enjoy yourselves tonight, boys,
"because we've already signed with Thames Television."
So we knew before the BBC bigwigs.
Very slippy chairs.
Excuse him. He's always like this.
The BBC had a policy whereby the senior executives
would all meet once a week round the boardroom table.
All the heads of department went to B209,
which was a room in the basement.
And in those days, full of smoke.
The rest of us called it The Chimps' Tea Party.
And we used the Radio Times as our agenda.
We would say, "Look at your Radio Times, please.
"Now, who wants to comment on what?"
It went on from half past nine in the morning until lunchtime.
At one of those Chimps' Tea Parties, Paul Fox,
who was then controller of BBC One,
flew into a sudden rage
and slammed his fist on the table, and said,
"That bloke reviewing films on Film '72 last night was wearing a wig!
"I will not have wigs on my channel. Get rid of him!"
I really cannot believe that I said that.
I wasn't actually wearing a wig. I was just having a bad hair day.
Good evening.
Tonight, Joseph Losey talks about The Assassination of Trotsky.
There are some horrible places in this building.
Horrible offices. You would go to parts of it
and you couldn't believe that people were working there.
And there was a tower block over the back there
that Children's was in at one point.
Just a truly terrible place to work.
It is the grimmest office block you could imagine.
This grey, drab building.
You look up and there's endless floors.
But East Tower was to be my home.
And because I was so homesick, I just used to spend
as much time as possible in East Tower,
looking out of the window, dreaming of the North.
And everybody else just wanted to go home.
It was just so sad!
You know, people shouldn't have been asked to work there.
And yet, people thought this was romantic. I never got it.
The loos in the East Tower are on alternate floors.
The ladies are on one floor and the gents are on the other.
And a very, very distinguished senior member
of the BBC management board was caught short.
So there was nothing for it but to nip into the ladies.
So he nipped into the first open cubicle
and had his tinkle, and then
when he was washing his hands at the sink,
he let rip with a huge fart.
And then from behind the closed cubicle door at the end of the row,
a voice said, "Is that you, Maureen?"
I mean, it was one of those places that you felt that once
we moved out, the dossers would move in, really.
Cameras in the right place at the right time.
Microphones within reach, but out of sight.
Actors knowing what to say and where to move.
The right setting, designed to fit the actor
and leave room for the cameras.
The lighting worked out for each scene.
Everyone knowing what to do and when to do it,
so that every part fits together to become what was at first
only in the mind of the director.
David, can we come onto this next scene?
Two-shot, on camera five.
The competition to get the best stuff was absolutely knives out.
I mean, you had to pull out all the stops
to get the studio you wanted, to get the camera crew you wanted.
It was very, very, very competitive.
I remember working with fantastic camera crews
when we were working here.
You know, they would give you everything,
and the kind of pride of work, and just the sheer concentration.
I was very young. We were doing Casanova.
And I was doing one of the low cameras,
and I had a woman in front of me,
who was going to be superimposed in a dream sequence
that Casanova was supposed to be dreaming.
The thing was, she was stark naked. And I'd never seen a naked woman before.
We'll have to see what we can do, won't we?
And it had a certain effect on me, and I couldn't hide it.
And she looked at me in a most disdainful way - you disgusting little boy!
What a nice little old man!
You could be sent to a crew that worked on the not-quite-so-exciting programmes.
And then if you made a complaint, you got a card like this.
TS - tough shit!
There aren't many hovercraft I'd be allowed to bring into the BBC car park.
But this is different. It's very much more manoeuvrable, as you can see.
We're attempting a 360 degree turn here.
'I think part of the magic of this building'
is that you saw strange, incongruous, and weird things every single day.
DR WHO THEME PLAYS
I think the weirdest has to be
a more or less life-size Tyrannosaurus rex in rubber.
THEY GASP
DINOSAUR ROARS
That's the creature that attacked me in the caves!
And inside was a small, elderly man
wearing ballet tights and ballet pumps,
and he would enter this costume via a hole between its legs,
so it's already starting to get a bit weird,
but being in a completely enclosed latex suit,
he got very hot, so when there was a pause,
his colleagues would come up with a compressed air bottle,
stick it up the hole between his legs,
and send a jet of cold air up.
And when they did this, he would relax,
and the result was that the suit sagged
in such a way that the dinosaur's head lolled back
and its jaws flopped open.
So what you saw as a disinterested observer
was some people shoving a large metal cylinder
up a hole between the legs of a dinosaur,
a "psssht" sound,
and the dinosaur going, "Ahhh!"
DINOSAUR ROARS
The late Dame Thora Hird was doing
a programme called Mrs Pepperpot,
and we were getting ready for the dress rehearsal,
and suddenly the door opened and in came a whole lot of dignitaries.
They said, "Carry on as normal." HE GULPS
So we said, "Oh, right, we'll start rehearsing Mrs Pepperpot."
You remember Mrs Pepperpot.
You don't?
Well, she's a woman who shrinks to the size of a pepper pot...
..at the most inconvenient moments.
And so the music plays, and in went the camera to Thora Hird,
and she said, "Hello. Do you know Mrs Pepperpot?
"You don't? Well, sod off!"
SHE LAUGHS
Goodbye.
'We set ourselves a lot of very difficult things to do.'
This French device is a one-man elevator.
They expand to form a strong, light...that's hot.
It was a sort of challenge,
and they did often go wrong.
..let one go, releasing the brakes. Here's Kieran!
God, I'm sorry. I'm really suffering.
It's burning me!
Oh, my God. Motorised roller skates!
MOTOR REVS
'I had to start outside Television Centre.'
Aargh!
And I'd rehearsed all day long.
Tomorrow's World. What studio is it?
Studio 7, dear.
And no falling over at all. And, of course, live on air...
You have to...
SHE SCREAMS
It's not that simple.
I'd got the job, and this wonderful make-up artist set to work on me.
So she kind of pinned my hair back and everything,
and said, "Right, that's great, you've got a good face.
"Mmm. I think what I'm going to do is bleach your moustache."
So without me saying anything about it,
she put all of this foam on top of my upper lip.
Noel Edmonds burst through the door
and I was sitting there looking like...
I don't know.
Like a mad Father Christmas!
And you're the first people I've told that story to.
I used to love the make-up department.
Right, we are recording, everybody.
They used to wear these really sweet little blue gingham smocks.
They used to hate them,
but I thought they were just really erotic.
HE CHUCKLES
Take it from the second one, Roger. That's right, isn't it?
'It was rather like the theatre.'
'It was, "OK, guys, we've rehearsed all day.'
"It's now 7 o'clock, we're back from lunch.
"We have to finish by 10."
I know we're a little bit understaffed this evening...
LAUGHTER
But I know we're all going to do our best.
And don't be afraid to laugh as loud as you like,
and I'm sure we're all going to have a really super evening.
Interesting, when I did Strictly, it was in Studio 1
and I'd known that studio so much,
and for some people, they would be absolutely petrified going in to,
at one time, what was the biggest television studio in Europe,
and yet, for me, it was like going home,
and it just felt brilliant,
and I used to love going in there and dancing and doing my thing,
knowing that I'd spent so much time in this place.
MIMES BARKING
There's old magical memories like that.
You'll never lose them. They're with you forever.
Shot 52 on Take 1.
'Comes that moment at 7.30,'
the red light would go on
and you had to deliver.
I heard the music start and the doorman said,
"Can I have your ticket?"
I'm dressed like Carmen Miranda or something outrageous,
and I said, "No, I'm one of the dancers."
And he said, "No, no, I need your ticket."
And I started to lose my cool, and I promise you, I'm not a diva.
I said, "Do you think I normally dress like this?!"
And right now, the sound of Elton John.
Cue the disc! Island Girl and Pan's People...
Pineapples?
Two and four.
Three. Four and four.
'Ruthie was a nightmare.'
'Just before we were about to start the show,'
'Ruthie would suddenly say, "Which arm is it?'
"Is it the right or the left? Do we go on the left or right foot?"
And we always used to say, "Shut up, Ruth!"
And then, but the irony of it was,
she'd go on and do it right and we'd all go wrong.
# Smarty pants
# Looking for romance... #
Holy God!
You devil!
'We were doing a Dave Allen show, which involved the use of firearms.'
On the night, the adrenaline was up,
and he stood rather closer to his target,
a bare-chested man in bed, than he should have done...
Aaargh!
..causing shock and severe pain.
You've just shot my husband!
'We immediately rang the surgery'
'and were told that, no, it wouldn't be possible'
for anyone to come down in case there was an emergency.
From top again, 108. I think it's probably better on you, Mike.
'You were in a complete time bubble in your dark studio, you know.'
Completely divorced from the real world, but having to do this thing
and having to distil your programme down
to something that could be recorded within three hours.
Soon, Chancellor Flavia will...
'At 10 o'clock, the lights would just go off,'
or the machines would go off, and so you could see,
because they had the big clocks on the wall,
the seconds ticking away till 10 o'clock,
and you knew you had to do a certain scene.
Soon Peter will get the line out(!)
'We were doing Suffragettes.'
'It had a scene where it was force-feeding in Holloway Prison,'
and we had these four cameras on this woman being force-fed,
'and we had five minutes to finish.'
'It was unbelievable.'
'How do you get the shot?'
'And how do you shove the pipe down her throat?'
'and me shouting up in the gallery,'
and we managed to finish at one minute to 10.
'We actually did it, and when you watch it,'
'actually it's quite brilliant,'
because somehow, the panic set into the vision.
SHE CHOKES
'I was directing Eureka...'
I bought this trike for my wee 10-year-old son Johnny.
'..and we'd had a full day
'and we were scheduled to finish at 10 o'clock.'
I had one scene to record at 10 to 10.
'The cast were all pissing about.'
'All pandemonium was going on in the studio.'
'Over talkback, I said,'
"Look, I'm coming down and I'm going to direct it from the floor,
"because we're never going to get this done."
So I rushed out of the gallery and went down the back steps,
burst into the studio behind the white sight cloth and said,
"Will you fucking behave yourselves?!"
And I'd walked out into the Newsnight studio.
Such stories are cheap and nasty
and bring shame on anyone who spreads them.
I went, "Oh, my God! I'm so sorry."
Did he tell you he only did that once?
There was one particular scene, I remember,
where the producer came down to me
and I said, "We haven't rehearsed this."
We were actually in the wrong set,
and he just said, "Go on and act!"
'No tray. Where's the bloody tray?!'
We'll cope.
It's mentioned! Mentioned?
LAUGHTER
Get us out of it.
Come on, Beau.
Improvise!
Yes, I just had to bring it in to show you.
Take it.
Isn't it light?
Ooh! And such a lovely shade of mauve.
It was actually quite a thrilling experience,
but you knew the end result was going to be rubbish.
Should we cut? Go back? No.
We professionals notice.
Joe Public never clocks a damn thing.
It was just the biggest sin as a producer you could commit -
not finishing was like the end of the world.
You know, you expected to be shown the door
and sent out into Shepherd's Bush down to the dole queue.
I KNOW!
Look, have a glass of wine and cool down. I don't want a glass of wine.
You'll feel better for it. Barbara, have a nice glass of wine.
There was a lot of adrenaline. I remember darling Richard Briers
used to say, "Never again, dear. Never again.
'"I'm not doing this again."
Can we clear Penny and Paul?
Thank you very much. You can change.
Now? Yes, you can change now.
And it was quite scary.
The business of producing television gives you a great high.
You're throbbing with adrenaline by the time...
particularly if things have gone right.
If they've gone wrong, you don't want to go anywhere,
except to go and shoot yourself,
but if things have gone right,
you really feel terrific, and the place to go was the Club.
It was on the fourth floor, still is.
And it was the home of the comedy department,
which was a fairly disastrous idea, because, of course,
if any of the comedy department had any kind of block, you know,
what they were going to write,
what they were going to do on the show,
they'd go into the BBC Club and drink a bit of inspiration.
It's quite stressful doing a sitcom with an audience.
Even though I loved it. It was a place to go and unwind.
That was the rule of thumb of a good show,
if you could be in the bar by nine.
Shall we start again? Lost your friend? Lost my friend.
You went darting out there and it sort of did...
It's not your fault.
Those silly twits said, "Shut up in the scene dock."
There are the Dimblebys in that corner,
the Attenboroughs in that corner.
There were agents there and there were actors there
and it was the place to be.
All the Radio 1 guys to do Top Of The Pops.
# Mama told me not to come... #
And people tended to clique a little bit,
but we tried to break down those barriers,
and we would introduce ourselves.
"Can we buy you a drink?"
Sir David Attenborough would walk in, for example...
although it wasn't Sir David.
Forget David Attenborough, we liked all the pop groups!
We ended up getting married.
# That ain't the way to have fun... #
You could talk to, you know,
the David Bowies and the Bryan Ferrys and the Hollies.
You're talking to John Cleese and Marc Bolan
and Benny Hill or whoever,
and it's just wall-to-wall fabulous people having such a good time.
You never knew what bands were going to be around
and you had to take your pass up on a Wednesday night
cos otherwise you weren't allowed in.
This was gold dust.
This was the BBC Club card that you have to have
if you wanted to go to the BBC Bar, and without it you couldn't get in.
Or somebody had to sign you in.
We never got a pass!
I got to meet T.Rex and everybody up there without a pass!
It was so exciting.
The guy wouldn't let me in one night because I hadn't got my pass,
and he said, "You might have walked off the street,"
I said, "What, dressed like this?"
Opened my dressing gown and I've got this leather leotard on.
Then they believed I was... either that,
or I seduced him enough to be able to go into the bar.
I think Frankie Howerd really fancied my husband.
He saw him and though, "That's rather nice."
Didn't realise it was my husband, I suppose.
And I remember him chasing Patrick out of the club,
and I remember us running round and round
trying to get away, and giggling.
I mean, I suppose we'd all had a little bit of wine.
You mustn't take any notice of her because she's...she can't help it.
She's at a funny time of life, you know. She's very difficult.
Mind you, she has a point.
Actors in the BBC bar -
you've never seen so many moths flying out of wallets, you know.
I loved Jon Pertwee dearly,
but he did find it very hard sometimes to shout a round.
Sorry, could...please people keep out of my eyeline?
Dancing about. Please, it's terribly difficult.
Tom Baker, who was my Doctor,
would be the first with his hand in his pocket.
Doubles all round, all the time.
Even if you had an orange juice, he'd buy you a double.
We are still running recording.
I remember when the head of make-up was very much the worse for wear,
and we really should have taken her car keys from her,
but it was kind of before you did those very sensible things,
and she went up, collected her car from the multi-storey car park,
and I think she hit about 50 cars before she exited the car park.
It had an atmosphere, I tell you. It was a proper old club.
No, but seriously, gagging aside, it was a super show, I thought.
There you are, Richie! There we are! Drinks all round.
It was a marketplace, and it was there
that you ingratiated yourself with a producer
in order to get yourself onto the very best of shows.
The man, Eddie, the man who brought Keith Harris and Orville into Television Centre.
The nearest thing that I've got to family.
Oh, sod off, you old queen!
Ohhh, up yours, you rancid, dribbling zit.
Yeah! Screw you, you complacent, misogynistic bumsplat.
I got my first job in the BBC Club.
I went down to have a drink with somebody I'd met.
She said, "Ned Sherrin's looking for a researcher."
I said, "Stay where you are," ran up to the sixth floor,
wrote out my letter of application.
Esther, that wasn't in the script. You're ad-libbing.
And got the job, thanks to the BBC Club.
Do you mind if we carry on?
One day, as a young assistant floor manager,
I went to the lift, main lifts, to go up to the bar,
and the doors opened, and I walked in, and I was facing
this very tall man and this short man.
It was Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise, and they wound me up.
I mean, they used me.
"Hello, choochy-face!" "Oh, isn't he pretty?"
And the whole of that lift was in fits.
They were falling about with laughter. I walked out,
and they said, "Where are you going, choochy-face?"
And I said, "Oh, hopefully going to a bar,"
not thinking, of course, that's exactly where they were going.
So all the way down to the bar, I had to suffer these two people
sending me up all the way. It was delightful.
Nice fellow, that. Lovely mover.
A year later, I'm standing in reception, waiting for the lift to go up to the bar, the doors open.
Exactly the same situation.
A crowd of people, Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise stood at the back. And they said, "Ooh, it's choochy face!"
Why is it you can never remember anybody's name?
I don't know, I think it's a gift.
Well, you brought me to the BBC club,
which I have to say looks alarmingly sterile.
In my day, things happened that were more than just drinking.
People came for a drink and ended up thinking up programme ideas.
'From the cultural ghetto of BBC2, we present Line-Up Review.'
I remember one occasion when the programme ideas
completely died and about six o'clock,
we had no programme and we were on the air at about 11.
So we came down here and there were a lot of comedy writers here.
Johnny Speight, Spike Milligan and so on, sitting around drinking.
"Will you come and talk about comedy writing?" "Certainly would."
As we'll be pointing out later on, comedy is a serious business.
GIGGLING We're on the air...
That programme has become a legendary archive programme.
They didn't stay enormously sober, so it got quite boisterous.
I am a comedy writer... John, cool it for God's sake.
But it was vigorous and memorable. Come on, say what you mean. I'm saying what I mean.
If you are writing in television, this is not an ivory tower...
Wherever I write, I write for myself. If I write...
And you get dodgy ratings and nobody asks you to write any more.
There you go, Johnny Speight.
I write for myself. I write for myself. I have to live...
The commissionaire was very lordly.
Eric, the commissionaire. Tall, balding...
a man with years upon him.
The big thing at the club used to be to get yourself paged.
"Mr Attenborough. Mr Attenborough."
"Janet Fielding, please come to the phone, your agent is on the phone."
It was abused.
And several times, Rupert Bear was summoned to the phone.
Mr Andrew Pandy to TC5.
Yes! We did a lot of that!
Calling for Mr G Raffe.
The cast of the Woodentops go to TC6 immediately.
We had some really disgusting ones, too.
Oh...that's right... Yes...
Mr Hugh Jampton, will he come to...?
It was quite cruel when...
He never ever allowed YOU to make him feel silly.
As far as he was concerned, he had been asked to call for G Raffe,
that was his job and he was going to call for them.
He was once asked, "Eric, were you at any time a butler?"
He drew himself up to his considerable height,
looked at the person and said, "Was I ever a butler?
"I HAD a butler."
There's another wire!
I was a big fan of Robert's, I watched Doom Watch all the time.
So when Babs told me she was going out with him, I was so pissed off!
What?
Don't pull it, follow it back to the terminal.
For years and years and years, I had been watching Top Of The Pops
and I would sit there and gawp. I always fancied the big blonde one.
What are they called - Pan's People, yeah?
There's one special one, beautiful Babs.
Don't know what her name is.
I used to chase after Babs. Never got anywhere.
I was always very jealous of Robert Powell.
BLOWS RASPBERRY
Nice guy, but very skinny. Chin him when I see him.
And I had a friend who was the floor manager on Sportsnight.
I went to the bar and we were chatting away.
I'm standing there and suddenly these five extraordinarily beautiful women walk in. They were Pan's People.
As we walked in, I think Robert muttered something to Chris.
"Look! Look! There's Pan's People!" And he went, "Yeah.
"They're in every Wednesday. This is the night they shoot."
"Is it?" "Do you want to meet them?"
I said, "No, no, no!"
He said, "Come on," dragged me over,
plonked me down on a little banquette with the girls.
I bought them a drink.
And Robert decided it would be quite fun to take us all out to dinner.
Somebody said, "How did you've the nerve to do it?"
I said, "I didn't have the nerve to take one."
# Sharing horizons that are new to us... #
It was Babs he had his eye on.
# Watching the signs along the way... #
But we were a bit naughty and said yes, he could take us all out
because we just wanted to see what would happen.
I remember one point in the evening,
he put his arm around my shoulder and I thought, "Ooh!"
We've been together ever since that night.
I have the Centre to thank for that.
To thank for 36 years of marriage and two kids.
Thank you, Television Centre.
This is BBC1.
And this is BBC2.
And this is Television Centre.
And this is David Dunsbury, a commissionaire on the main gate.
And this is the main gate.
Just recently, I was working on a programme
and somebody made a fantastic fluff.
I said, "Save that one for the Christmas tape."
And everyone looked at me. What is she talking about?
The BBC Christmas tape was an in-house thing.
It was done by the VT department every year. And this predates
It'll Be All Right On The Night or TV's Naughtiest Moments.
Every time anything went wrong, it would be on videotape if it was a recorded show.
And the VT editors had amazing memories for things that had gone wrong.
Happy Christmas to you all in VT!
Happy Christmas, VT.
You would do a clanger on a recording
and you'd go, "Merry Christmas VT".
You knew they were going to pick it up and they liked it with the tag!
This is where we're happy to say "bollocks". Crap, anything you like.
That was what you'd do with all those outtakes - save them for the Christmas VT.
A very merry Christmas to all in VT.
And now those are broadcast and whole series have been made of them.
We had our own secret version.
It's running down my willy.
Merry Christmas to the boys on VT.
Obviously bigger budget than us!
'They were fantastic things.'
Whole dance routines and people joining in.
Obviously, people behind the scenes doing most of the work.
# All the girls in make-up
# In the Club bar
# The ladies down at reception... #
A lot of it consisted of rather well-known actors swearing blindly.
Oh, for fuck's sake!
Now piss off!
Fuck you, you fucking bastard! You're not getting it again! That's it!
# Oh Barry Norman... #
Everyone at TV Centre, happy Merry Christmas.
That was very much part of the bonding experience.
You had arrived, you were part of the family.
# ..Patrick, Patrick
# Grooving with Michael Rodd... #
The managing director, Alistair Milne,
today appealed to all programme departments
to stop deliberately making mistakes in studios.
He said commendable though it was to try to make appearances on the VT Christmas tape,
viewers could no longer distinguish BBC programmes from those at ITV.
God, if it's going to get like this, we'll be here till midnight.
Eventually, I think it was stopped because some of the presenters didn't like being humiliated in this way.
Isn't it sad?
My favourite one is actually one of Tom Baker and John Cleese.
Tom, sorry to bother you, sign this for my little godson, will you?
He's a nice little kid, he's blind.
"He's blind."
And so Tom says, "Of course I will. Do you have a pen?"
Have you got a pen? I haven't. He said "No, I don't."
Never mind, I'll tell him you signed it.
There was a bit of space behind the canteen
and I thought that would be ideal for the Blue Peter Garden.
Biddy, characteristically,
went in like Captain Cook, but with a Blue Peter flag,
and claimed it for Blue Peter.
You can guarantee the morning you were recording out here,
you'd open up the curtains and it would be hoying down with rain.
You mean, the minute you went out into the garden,
it would absolutely pelt down with rain, yes.
It's like a wind tunnel. We're just getting battered by the wind now.
They used to ring Biddy to say,
"Could we possibly use the Blue Peter Garden?"
But nobody had ever actually said it was ours.
I was directing the 50th anniversary of children's programmes.
And the climax of the programme was a huge firework display.
'So I said to Biddy,'
"Can we have the Blue Peter Garden to let the fireworks off in?"
And she said, "Yes, of course you can." She was very obliging.
'It was a huge fireworks display'
and the Blue Peter Garden was where the main bulk exploded.
'The next morning,'
the Blue Peter Garden looked like the Somme in the First World War.
Goodbye!
'Vandals broke into the Blue Peter Garden
'and caused rather a lot of damage.
'One really cruel thing they did was to pour fuel oil into the fishpond.'
'To be honest with you, it's really sad coming back here
'because I did so much work in this garden that is no longer here.
'We had a sunken garden, that's been buried.'
We had a nice little veg patch... The greenhouse isn't even there.
'We hope to repair the damage,
'but it's very sad to think that a few people take such pleasure...'
It's only a bloody garden! Turn it off!
Television Centre, from where this programme is broadcast,
has been put up for sale.
The 14-acre site in west London will be vacant by 2015
after staff move to other sites.
It was an iconic building on its own,
with the cars in the middle. All that's changed.
And certainly, the inside has changed radically.
And, um...
It seems awfully corporate to me now.
Apparently, they can't actually find a studio for us.
Studio 1 is now going to be squash courts.
Studio 2 is executive saunas.
And Studio 3 is now "the Television Experience".
You can actually go and experience television and how it was made.
One word to describe Television Centre...
Nucleus.
Historic.
Opportunity.
Brilliant.
Ideal.
Unique.
Magic.
Champion.
'There'd always be friends in there and there'd always be gossip.'
Eccentric.
Terrific.
Excitement.
Exciting.
Extraordinary.
It's a hard one to try and think of.
Magnificent.
Luscious.
If I was being romantic, I'd say it echoes with the spirits of creative figures
who have worked here and other such nonsense.
Creative.
Dedicated.
Wondrous.
It's like coming home.
It played such a big part of our lives.
Youth.
Topping.
Romance.
'There's another wire!'
Drama.
Peg board.
Fun.
Warm. Family.
Home.
Magical.
Wonderful.
Wonderland.
Shangri-La.
'Those were such happy days. I was so happy.'
Iconic.
Influential.
Historic.
'Television Centre completely changed my life.
'I met my husband here, we had a daughter.'
Rose is called Rose after Rosemary Gill,
'the editor of that first programme, Swap Shop.'
It's a building I will really, really miss. It's got such an atmosphere.
It's my guess that, in a very short time,
they'll be making a programme in which Penelope Keith will return
to restore this building so that the BBC can return in splendour
to where they belong.
'I would like it to live on through the programmes that it produced'
more than the bricks and mortar.
When we worked here, we used to say,
they won't be happy, the administrators,
until they've closed down all these studios
and this whole complex can just be admin.
'Television Centre is full of the laughter and the anger'
and the crackle of making television.
There's nowhere I've ever been like it.
There will never be a building like this in the world again
responsible for so much broadcasting.
'It wasn't just a fun factory,
'it was just one of those best places in the world to work.'
'My whole career was created here.
'Without Television Centre, my life wouldn't have been nearly as good.'
I don't want to see it go. I feel I have to walk away and not look back.
# There was a time when the time didn't matter
# Only the time of day
# And living was living in hope which would never pass away
# Worry was a Monday morning
# When weekend was done
# Fear was the fear of being what we had become
# Oh, what happened to you?
# Whatever happened to me?
# And what became of the people we used to be?
# Tomorrow's almost over
# Today went by so fast
# Is the only thing to look forward to
# The past? #
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd