I spent a couple of days back at BBC Television Centre this week performing with Kristina Train on Later with Jools Holland. I have been performing on TV shows inside this building on and off for over a decade and it always felt like a magical place, although I had not been there in the last year or so due to touring commitments abroad.
I know that the building was put up for sale in 2011 and the BBC have been slowly moving their resources into a number of shiny new constructions, all of which no doubt are better equipped and more energy-efficient than the grand old Wood Lane rotunda, but a cloud of heavy nostalgia still hovers over the building. I grew up on a steady diet of BBC shows and, like so many other kids in my generation, memorised the address for competition entries which was read out at the end of Swap Shop ("London W12 8QT") as if it were the postcode for Narnia. As a teenager I was lucky enough to perform on "What's That Noise" and "Blue Peter" with Northampton Youth Orchestra, where I broke a string in the excitement of it all. Yes, I still have the badge. I cannot walk into the circular forecourt without hearing a jovial Terry Wogan announce "And now, live from Television Centre" and imagining Roy Castle dancing his way around the fountain. Actually, this time I encountered not Noel Edmonds but Noel Fielding in equally bold knitwear, deep in discussion with Phil Jupitus, who was definitely not tap dancing, and I felt the heady buzz of light entertainment return briefly, but as I descended towards the dressing rooms I started to notice an absence, a sadness and a silence unusual to a TV studio.
The main body of the building is quaintly divided into the red, blue and green assemblies (the primary colours of television) but it is easy to get lost in this tripartate "Simon Says" given that there are many different floors and adjoining buildings spanning from it. The Jools Holland studio was busy with some exceptional talent, but during a long break in filming I headed to the restaurant building to visit the famed 'BBC Canteen', the source of a great many Wogan jokes, which also boasts a view of the Blue Peter garden. This used to be a bustling place full of chat and laughter, the smell of chips and treacle sponge wafting down the staircase, but I arrived to find it completely empty and utterly silent. I stood for a second in disbelief, mostly because I was hungry and disappointed that I was going to have to trawl to the behemoth that is Westfield for hot food, but largely because I felt the death of a golden era pass by me like the ghost of Goldie chasing Shep.
I was then struck by the crushing realisation that the one TV personality missing from my trip down Memory Lane was Jimmy Savile. As a kid I wrote to "Jim'll" to ask whether he could fix it for me to sing with ABBA, I watched the show every week, I waited anxiously for a reply, and at the time I was bitterly disappointed that I never got that opportunity, but in light of the recent revelations perhaps that was a very good thing. I dreamed of becoming a musician and watched him introduce the charts to me on 'Top of the Pops' not knowing yet that one day I would actually appear on the show. I stood in the empty canteen for a while staring at the sky over White City and reflecting on how it was possible that one personality could have such a monopoly over a generation of childrens' aspirations, how one person could be so morally corrupt, so consistently predatory, so horrifically abusive, and still get paid to balance a young child on his knee in front of a national audience, and I concluded that a great number of people must have known what was going on all along. The sadness of the canteen engulfed me and I left to find some fresh air, reluctantly acknowledging that sometimes things are not what they seem and that perhaps it is fitting after all that this building is condemned to the past.