{"id":3045,"date":"2023-05-26T06:55:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-26T06:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/?p=3045"},"modified":"2023-04-02T14:11:38","modified_gmt":"2023-04-02T14:11:38","slug":"ten-years-since-bbc-television-centre-died","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/2023\/05\/26\/ten-years-since-bbc-television-centre-died\/","title":{"rendered":"Ten years since BBC Television Centre died"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am not often shocked by anything, but I was actually appalled to realise two minutes ago that I have missed a tenth anniversary of something that was huge to me. On the zero anniversary, I mean when it was actually happening, I wrote a very long howl<\/a> about it to you — and I also talked about it at length on radio.<\/p>\n

BBC Television Centre closed its doors on March 22, 2013. That’s 10 years, 2 months and 4 days ago. I thought I would be unlikely to get over it, as peculiar as that may sound about a building, but apparently I have.<\/p>\n

I’m disappointed in myself. That howl about TVC closing ended with a couple of lines that I was proud of then, I think I’m proud of now:<\/p>\n

It is a loss. It wasn\u2019t perfect.<\/p>\n

But it was perfect.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s just a building. And it wasn’t the first one where I got chucked out before it could be demolished. BBC Pebble Mill went too, and I was — I am — unhappy about that. BBC Woodlands went next, and I’m not that fussed. I can still mentally walk around both of those buildings and I took a lot of photos of the insides of Woodlands before it was turned into the outsides and then flattened.<\/p>\n

But TVC is different. Actually, it’s very different because you can still go there. God, you can actually live in Television Centre instead of just working there so much that it felt like you did. <\/p>\n

Oh! Maybe it’s the anniversary that made this hit so hard. On February 4 this year, I drove by TVC and for some reason it was acutely more painful than a couple of years ago when I’d been to see a recording of Pointless in the reopened studio part.<\/p>\n

Quick aside? At that recording, I asked a security guard something about the renovation of those parts of the building that weren’t demolished. I can’t remember what I asked, and I can’t remember how the topic got on to James Corden, but it did.<\/p>\n

I do remember this security guy saying something nice about Corden until I grimaced, said I’d met him once at a work thing and within half a second wished I hadn’t. Boom. All professional politeness was gone and the guard vented about that man. I think I saved him a therapy session.)<\/p>\n

I was going to say that this is what was so special about TVC. Bumping into people you wouldn’t otherwise ever meet, getting to talk, getting to share.<\/p>\n

But no.<\/p>\n

Everything was special about TVC and we have lost it. It wasn\u2019t perfect. But it was perfect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am not often shocked by anything, but I was actually appalled to realise two minutes ago that I have … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[178],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-selfdistract"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4chyI-N7","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3045"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3046,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3045\/revisions\/3046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}