Stage 4 (The Spur)

Stage 4 was the construction of the first section of the spur.  In 1959, months before the building had opened, a meeting was held to discuss what would be included in the first section of the spur.  They decided that it would contain another medium to large studio – TC8 – and the new news centre. 

Preliminary work began in 1963 and by 1966 the basic shell of the building was complete.  The occupation of the news area was postponed, however, by the World Cup.  The BBC, as host broadcaster, had to house the world’s TV companies for the contest so the space was turned into facilities for them.  A temporary studio was built, equipped with EMI 203 black and white cameras, which following the World Cup was used as the weather studio whilst Pres A was being colourised.  Once this was over work could resume on equipping the studios and newsrooms.

 

 

 

 

TC8 opened in the autumn of 1967 with Marconi Mk VII colour cameras.  It was intended as a specialist comedy and LE studio and had built-in retractable audience seating.  The design of TC8 benefited from the experience gained from working in the older studios.

 

 

TC8 soon became the most popular studio in TV Centre.  It was 2 feet wider than the other medium studios – and every inch counts when you are building a set.  The built-in audience seating gave it a classier feel than the other studios – almost like a theatre – and it had a lot more space left on the studio floor when you were using an audience.  Actors, comedians and performers loved it.

Its galleries were well laid out, the ventilation system was better, the makeup and wardrobe facilities were very good, there were loads of motorised scene hoists all over the studio, the lighting bars were closely spaced so lights could be hung almost exactly where the LD needed them to be, there was a large prop room leading onto easy access from the ring road – everything felt right for every department – from when the studio opened to when it was forced to close in 2013.

 

 

It was the favourite studio for literally hundreds of the greatest comedy and light entertainment artists in Britain’s TV history.  The programmes made in here included Sykes, The Liver Birds, Monty Python, Q, Are You Being Served, It Ain’t Half Hot Mum, Open All Hours, Dad’s Army, Citizen Smith, Up Pompeii, Porridge, The Goodies, The Good Life, Reggie Perrin, Not the Nine o’Clock News, Fawlty Towers, Butterflies, Some Mothers Do ‘ Ave ‘Em, To the Manor Born, Yes Minister, Only Fools and Horses, Bread, Hi Di Hi, Blackadder, Alas Smith and Jones, ‘Allo ‘Allo, May To December, Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads, Just Good Friends,  In Sickness and in Health, Ever Decreasing Circles, French and Saunders, One Foot in the Grave, The Fast Show, Lee Evans – So What Now?, Absolutely Fabulous, The Brittas Empire, Dead Ringers, As Time Goes By, Keeping Up Appearances, Dinnerladies, 2 Pints of Lager…, The Catherine Tate Show, Little Britain, Mitchell and Webb, Not Going Out, Yes Prime Minister and Miranda. 

Those are just a selection of comedy shows – maybe 10% of all those made in the studio.  There were just as many entertainment shows that included the likes of Morcambe and Wise and The Two Ronnies.  Even Hole in the Wall with its swimming pool was made in TC8.  OK, maybe best forgotten along with quite a few others but there were plenty like Bob Says Opportunity Knocks, The Dick Emery Show, Blankety Blank, National Lottery Live, Jet Set, In It To Win It, Parkinson, Saturday Night Armistice, The Paul Daniels Magic Show, Look: Mike Yarwood, Dave Allen at Large, Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge, Top of the Pops, Tonight’s The Night, Shooting Stars, Big Fat Quiz of the Year, Mock The Week  etc etc etc and those are just the ones that happen to occur to me now.  There will be at least another 30 or so that you are bound to remember if I could be bothered to look them up on Wikipedia.

 

Right to the end it remained the favourite for many in the industry.  Closing it was a genuine tragedy carried out by people who had never been involved in making any studio TV programmes in their careers and were utterly ignorant of the damage they were doing.  Rather like a bunch of sport fanatics demolishing the National Theatre because it looks a bit ugly from the outside.  When it closed it was equipped with the latest HD kit, was still the best designed studio in the country and would have continued to have had bookings for decades to come.

 

 

TC8 was also the first studio with thyristor dimmers controlled by a computer memory console – the Thorn Q-File. This console was subsequently installed in TV Theatre and all the other studios at TVC except TC6 and Lime Grove D and E.  These three studios were equipped with the Strand MMS – ‘Modular Memory System.’  This was a console with fader wheels rather than the motorised  faders of the Q-File.  It had a slightly different operating philosophy from the Thorn desk which some liked, others not.  It was in fact the predecessor to the Galaxy – without question the best lighting console ever developed for TV studios.  For many years, almost every studio in the UK was equipped with one – they were available to purchase, in improving versions, from the early ’80s to the mid ’90s.

Their manufacturer, Strand Lighting, offered no similar replacement when they stopped manufacturing them.  Unfortunately, they and all the other console manufacturers subsequently sold  consoles that were aimed at the theatre and moving light market.  Very few operators or LDs believed these were as suitable for television as the old Galaxy.  Thus, these old lighting desks soldiered on until the last one at Pinewood in 2015.  Spare parts were acquired from old consoles being replaced in theatres or studios all over the world.  The BBC even bought an old second hand Galaxy from Russia.

TC7 and TC8 were later equipped with  a radical re-development of the Q-File called the ‘Thornlight.’ It had obviously been designed by a committee and was in some ways rather clumsy to operate.  However, once you got the hang of it it was extremely flexible and I personally really got to like it.  These were later replaced by Galaxys, as eventually was TC6’s MMS, until by the late 1980s the only studios still with a Q-File were TC1 and Television Theatre.

 

The two News studios on the 6th floor of the Spur, N1 and N2, were not entirely fitted out with brand new kit, as you might have expected.  According to engineer Bob Taylor, no less than 65 large lorries were used to transport cameras, other technical equipment and all the office contents to TVC from Alexandra Palace.  The move began on the night of Friday 22nd September 1969. Astonishingly, they had to be ready for a broadcast into Grandstand the following morning and fully up and running by Monday.  People worked for days without going home, grabbing a few hours sleep when they could on camp beds in a conference room in order to complete the move without any hitches.

Actually, Roger Wilson has pointed out that the first news bulletin from TVC was not from N1 or N2 but from the newsroom – the lunchtime headlines insert into Grandstand.  He tells me he spent most of the time preventing editorial staff from wandering into shot as they no idea where they were supposed to be.

Each studio had 4 Marconi Mk VII cameras – remotely controlled from the gallery.  Three were brought from Ally Pally and the other five had previously been used in TC8 for less than a year between 1967 and 1968.

 

 

Both news studios were originally about 30 x 40 ft.  This was a bit of a disappointment to the news department, who had become used to working at Alexandra Palace in studios almost twice as big.  It is odd actually, that they were so small and consequently somewhat limited in their potential use.  However, in 1984 N2 was enlarged to include the lobby area and prop store that was sited adjacent to the two studios.  It thus became about 40 x 50 ft but one end had a low ceiling.  This enabled a big wideshot of the studio set to be done at the beginning of the Nine o’Clock News around that time.

I’m sure there are plenty of anecdotes of incidents during news broadcasts from these studios.  Please send me some if they are relatively short and of course amusing/interesting.  Well-known ones of course include Jan Leeming surviving an exploding light bulb above her head whilst on air in 1980.

On May 23rd 1988 the 6 o’clock News was invaded by several women protesting against Section 28.  Sue Lawley kept cool under fire whilst Nicholas Witchell sat on a passing lesbian to try to shut her up.  The most impressive part of this was that the protestors actually found the studio.  Most people who worked at the Centre had no idea where it was.

 

Then there was the 1976 Peter Woods incident – some assumed a little the worse for wear after a few hours in the BBC Club.  In fact it occurred at seven thirty in the evening, during a five-minute bulletin into BBC2.  After several slurred attempts to read out the trade figures he gave up, saying “Apparently, the trade figures are an awful lot.”

Simon King has written to me – he was working in News at the time.  He reckons that this bulletin was an insert into a current affairs programme – possibly  Newsday – presented by Robin Day.  He recalls Peter Woods being faded out pretty quickly and Robin Day saying something like ‘Well, we leave the newsroom there earlier than expected and…’

In any case, hundreds of viewers phoned in to complain.  His condition was later blamed on the effect of medication ‘for sinus problems.’  The news was always recorded ‘PasB’ on a domestic video recorder but on his website Bob Taylor, studio engineer, owns up to having removed the tape on the spur of the moment and erased it to save Peter’s blushes.  The official announcement was that the machine had been faulty.  The incident didn’t seem to affect Mr Woods’ career however, and he was even included in the famous Christmas Morcambe and Wise dancing newsreaders sketch singing the last line.

A little postscript to this incident:  I’m reminded that despite the ‘official’ video recording having been lost, Kenny Everett used to play it during his anarchic radio show.  How he got hold of it is a mystery but apparently a unit in the bowels of Broadcasting House had the job of transcribing news broadcasts so used to make an audio recording of the TV news.  ‘News Sound Recording’ dept in the Spur of TVC also it seems would have had an audio copy so the mole who leaked the tape to Mr Everett might have worked in either of those departments.  Or of course, neither.

 

Another anecdote from Roger Tone’s memory bank was recounted to me by Ian Hillson.  It seems that Robert Dougall, one of the old school BBC newsreaders, liked to sit on his ‘lucky cushion’ when he was in front of camera.  He was known as being icy cool and with a somewhat subtle sense of humour.  For a bet, one of the crew (who shall not be named here) placed a fully-charged whoopee cushion under the favourite ‘official’ one and the studio crew awaited the inevitable result when Mr Dougall sat down.  He was a little late into the studio and sat down rather gingerly just before transmission.  The whoopee cushion failed to detonate so all those in the know spent an agonising 10 minutes during the bulletin praying that it would not go off during a particularly serious piece to camera.  The studio director, fully appraised of the situation, instructed the floor manager confidentially over talkback, “If it goes off on-air I expect you to say ‘excuse me’…” It didn’t – and Mr Dougall went to his grave never knowing how very close to an embarrassing incident on camera he had been.

Roger Wilson tells me that the cushion was subsequently placed on various reporters’ chairs – they had a habit of rushing into the studio and flinging themselves down with disastrous consequences.  Fortunately, this only happened in rehearsals – it was the floor manager’s responsibility to ensure the chair was clear for touchdown during transmission.

 

 

N1 and N2 were closed in 1998 when the new News Centre opened in Stage 6.  They became the ‘property’ of BBC Resources who renamed them TC10 and TC11 but that department could not afford to refurbish them so they were left unused for a couple of years.

 

TC10  (30 x 40ft) was the home of daily afternoon shows The Phone Zone from April 2000 and then TOTP@Play, both broadcast on satellite channel UK Play.  When this channel closed down in September 2002 the studio was unused for a while but then became the home of the Virtual Reality (VR) department until 2004.  However, it is not known what VR programmes were made here.  During this period it was also used to make two new series of Treasure Hunt for Fremantle in 2002 and 2003.

From 2004, TC10 entered a ‘service level agreement’ with the Children’s department and was used for presentation and continuity for children’s programmes on BBC1 and BBC2 replacing TC9 in this role.  From April 2006 the daily Level Up show was based here.  This replaced X-Change on CBBC channel.  Level Up ended its run in Sep ’06.  This studio was then on long-term booking to Children’s dept until they moved to Salford and various children’s series used the studio during that time.  The studio was closed once Children’s moved north but the studio floor was occasionally used for single camera interviews etc.

 

TC11  (50 x 40ft) was opened as the home of Liquid News from February 2002.  At the extended end of the studio with the lower ceiling the 60-Second News set was built.  Both these programmes went out on BBC Three.  Liquid News became very popular with a small but dedicated audience.  Initially it was based in TC0 and then moved to this studio to make way for CBeebies.  The original presenter, Christopher Price, had a dry innuendo-laden style and the show became very much his vehicle.  Tragically, he died suddenly on 22nd April 2002, at the age of just 34.  Robert Nisbet was their main showbiz reporter, enthusiastically covering frothy stories from exotic locations all round the world.  He later became the Regional Director for the UK’s Rail Delivery Group.  A spectacular career change arguably on a par with that of Nick Clegg.

The show was quite expensive to produce and gradually reduced in audience terms following Christopher Price’s death.  It was axed on 1st April 2004.  TC11 then became the home of BBC Three’s 7 o’Clock News.  This in turn ended in December 2005.

The studio was subsequently used for a few news-related bookings, including covering for the main news studios whilst they were being refurbished in 2006.  It then returned to the BBC Studios portfolio and was available for general use.  I understand that TC11 was occasionally used by the Sport department.

In the autumn of 2008, 2009 and 2010 it was used for the daily Strictly Come Dancing  spin-off series – It Takes Two.  Previous series had been made at independent studio The Hospital Club, with its lovely Thomson LDK 6000 HD cameras, so the rather less sophisticated JVC KY-29D cameras in this studio certainly provided a bit of a challenge to the lighting and engineering departments, to say the least.  Fortunately these dreadful cameras were replaced by the Sony E-30 cameras from TC6 in the summer of 2010, which although SD were still very nice indeed and only 6 years old.

In 2011 James Corden’s ’round table meeting’ sketch for Comic Relief was shot in here over a number of days using a host of A-list celebrities and politicians.  The studio was closed in the autumn of 2012 and its equipment removed.

 

 

 

Back to the history of the building…

 

During the 1980s the site was developed further.  Offices were built behind the scenery block which also contained the telephone exchange – hence it became known as the EBX block – and opened in 1982.  The multistorey car park for 964 cars just snuck in before such things became completely impossible for planners to agree to and also opened in 1982.  It was said at the time that planning permission had only been granted by the council on the condition that it would be used by those working unsocial hours.  Astonishingly, once opened many such people found it very difficult to obtain car park passes and it appeared to be at its fullest between 09.30 and 17.30 during weekdays.  Fancy that. 

A Blue Peter time capsule was buried inside the concrete ramp near the entrance.  The brass plate indicating its location was removed early in 2013 – possibly by a souvenir hunter.  The car park has now been demolished and replaced with affordable housing as part of the redevelopment so what has happened to the time capsule?  I have read one report that this time capsule was removed at some time and re-buried in the BP garden and this was one of the two that was found damaged.  Can you confirm this?

 

 

 

Yet more office space had to be found so a ring of prefabricated buildings were set on top of the scenery runway.  This became known as the ‘periphery’ and these offices containing 15,000 sq ft opened in 1985, blocking the view of the park previously enjoyed by those sitting on the terrace outside the BBC Club.  This view had been carefully planned by Dawbarn in the original design and was no accident.  Still – these were the 1980s and offices had to come first, obviously.