London Open House: TV Centre and the FCO
September 16th, 2007 at 23:50

This weekend was London Open House – for some reason loads of places in London decided to let in members of the public for free. So Katy and I did the most obvious thing and pursued my favourite hobby: being an awful tourist in London.

There was a lot to choose from – we could have gone to the top of the Gherkin, or to the Bank of England, or even to the Argentinian Ambassador’s official residence. Presumably if we’d gone to the latter, we would have seen tourists taking photos of a man lying on his sofa watching Last of the Summer Wine and the Antiques Roadshow.

So we decided to go to BBC Television Centre, and the Foreign (and Commonwealth) Office.

BBC Television Centre

Before the tour began, we walked over to the BBC Broadcast Centre (where transmission actually happens) and the Media Centre. It was here when I visited TVC a few years ago that I saw Director General Mark Thompson striding across the plaza like he was crushing the lives (and jobs) of tiny people. Unfortunately, rather than celebrities this time, we bumped into a woman who looked a bit… stoned. “Can either of you two do me a favour? If you do it, I’ll give you my phone”, she said, waving her phone at us. “…”, we replied. “Do either of you have a bus pass?”. We didn’t, as we’re not proper Londoners, so she had to keep her stolen phone and go and pester some more people.

TVC though, is an incredible building, because there’s so much famous stuff in it, and best of all, there’s a metal detector and security guards who keep the nutters out. Being the massive BBC nerd that I am, I’m already pretty well versed on the history of the building, the BBC and what goes on inside, but its still pretty spectacular to actually be there. The tour took us first to the central doughnut area where Roy Castle famously broke the world record for… tap dancing or something.

“The ground is covered in glitter as last night we hosted The National Lottery Awards Ceremony… which you might have seen on BBC One”, the tour guide told us, shortly before losing eye contact with everyone in the group.

Next, we were led into studio 2, the smallest studio in the complex. It wasn’t being used so there were no sets erected in there, but it was still interesting to see. Apparently it had been used for filming Red Dwarf, and they didn’t have the money to actually build a set, so they just ran around the gantry as it looked quite space age anyway.

Next stop was the former main reception and current “star entrance” that lead to the dressing rooms and so on. We all managed to crowd in one of the poshest dressing rooms, which was a bit like a rather upmarket hotel room with no windows. The tour guide explained that a lot of celebrities who come to TVC make demands on what is in their dressing room – Paul McCartney apparently demanding a bowl of fruit when he visits. He told a story, and I’ve no idea how much of this is verifiable fact, about Madonna when she came to appear on Top of the Pops once, demanded a life-size cardboard cut-out of Pope John Paul II. Apparently the BBC had to borrow a waxwork from Madame Tussauds.

Next up, we went to the Blue Peter garden. Its pretty weird seeing something you’ve seen on TV hundreds of times in the, er, flesh. It turns out that the vast majority of the stuff in the garden is bunched into one corner, as that’s where the camera tower points. I wanted a photo of me doing a thumbs up next to the pets graves, but, alas, there wasn’t really time, and I guess the BBC wouldn’t have been too pleased with me.

Interestingly, just outside the garden was a mural on the wall of Studio 9 (the former CBBC studio) of all of the Blue Peter presenters (and pets) past and present – including Richard “Sacked for Cocaine” Bacon.

The final stop on the tour was the news centre. We got to sit in the conference room whilst they told us about the news. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see any actual news studios, but then, I guess its pretty difficult to present a rolling news channel if you’ve got some tourists turning up to look around.

The tour was excellent though – the icing on the cake was the TARDIS in the BBC reception. Apparently it isn’t just a replica, and was used as the, er, actual, TARDIS for quite a while on the old series of Doctor Who. I dare-say that it was a little bit disappointing that there’s nothing inside, but I guess I’ve just been deceived by TV, again. First faking Bargain Hunt, now this!

The Foreign Office

We also went and had a look around the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, which was formerly the India Office. This was especially cool as its usually closed to the public, because its quite difficult to manipulate weaker states for your own evil ends if the general public are watching – they might blow the gaffe.

A couple of things surprised me about the building. First of all, it wasn’t just a load of offices with out of date computers covered in post-it notes like other branches of government. It was one of the most ridiculously ornate buildings this side of Paris. There were statues of famous generals everywhere, opulently decorated domes and the walls were practically caked in historical tat and nicknacks.

There was one particularly fancy room that had apparently been used to sign a treaty to ease European tensions in 1925. Needless to say it couldn’t have been a particularly effective treaty.

The second thing that surprised me was the massive courtyard in the middle of the FCO – which seems to be the same for most massive governmental/palace buildings in London (and indeed Paris). They look like huge structures from the outside – yet get inside and there’s just a big empty space. One advantage of being allowed into this courtyard was that there’s an archway that links both it and the front door of 10 Downing Street. So you can get a front-on view of Number 10, rather than an obscured sideways view like you get from standing on Whitehall. It was like watching telly, only from slightly further away, on an arch-shaped screen, without Nick Robinson jabbering on in front of the door.

The third surprising, and perhaps most worrying thing was that at the FCO I didn’t actually see anyone working. I mean, obviously there were security people and guides, but there didn’t seem to be anyone doing any actual foreign policy. Because it was Open House weekend, did they just send all of the staff home? Do foreign affairs not happen on a Sunday? Do they tell Iran to call back on Monday? What if North Korea were to ring up and threaten a nuclear war… will they just get an answer phone message? “Thank you for calling Britain. Our opening hours are weekdays from 9am until 5pm. Please leave a message after the tone or call back later. BEEP.”

Either way, the FCO was pretty good.

London is excellent.

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