Television Centre

When I was growing up, Disney World in Florida was supposed to be the special place that children longed to visit - at least that is where they always seemed to send terminally ill kids to have the holiday of a lifetime. I could never quite see the attraction but I was always fascinated with another location on the TV: the BBC Television Centre in London. For me this was the magical place where the boundary of dream and reality would become blurred. It's odd that for a place that seems so familiar, I have never seen it in the flesh as such. At least, that was until yesterday when I finally saw the inside of that strange and wondrous world...

I was actually down in London for a business meeting. The firm I work for supports the IT equipment for the BBC and the morning involved various discussions about all sorts of technology related matters. I was taken "on-site" to get a better idea of how things plugged together in the real world and I did genuinely discuss computer related matters for a good 10 minutes - honest! Our host found out that I was a bit of a Doctor Who fan and this led to a full tour of the building. Now I am supposed to be all middle aged and responsible but I honestly felt like a child let loose in Wonderland - if I'd known I'd be shown the whole site I'd have taken a decent quality camera but, as it was, I only had my rubbishy works mobile and not everything came out too well. These were the better ones:

I really wanted a decent picture of the iconic front wall. The sun was right on the camera so this was about my third attempt and it actually came out much better than I anticipated.

They have one of the current TARDIS props sitting outside and I didn't have the heart to tell my guide that I used to live in Glasgow where we have real Police Boxes sitting around on the street. It's actually a bit of a con because the new series is filmed in Cardiff.

This is the central fountain which I remember best from Roy Castle's Record Breakers with hundreds of tap dancers around it.

This is me pretending to be Alan Hansen on Match Of The Day (or should that be Pavel Srníček). What can I say: "Very, very poor defence, Gary."

This was the old Blue Peter set. I did have a picture of me behind the "makes" table but it was far too blurred. I couldn't find any sticky backed plastic either. The shot of me presenting the weather on the Blue Screen didn't really work either.

This is a snap of the roof in one of the scenery warehouses. Apparently, this has listed status but the walls don't - I'm not sure how that works. My guide told me that this was the inspiration for the original TARDIS roundels. I'm not sure whether that is a little TV centre folk law.

This Dalek was outside the BBC shop but I took a picture as it's the campest looking thing I've seen: Ooh! Get her!

The BBC are currently in the process of moving out of Television Centre. I think it's a great pity because this was such an iconic building. I think I belong to the television generation - those born in the 1960s and 70s who grew up with television, and the BBC in particular, as a cultural heritage. Times have changed and I probably only watch the News and occasional sporting fixtures live as broadcast with everything else being on the PVR or streamed online. Certainly, my own children do not get the concept of a TV schedule and the idea that a TV show could be a point of reference to the whole nation seems lost on them. I can't help but think that we are really going to miss this cultural glue with TV centre being it's high cathedral.