Loosely imagining Wes Anderson and his wonderful world taking on the mantle of James Bond and his equally wonderful world …. all to a quirky soundtrack…
Category: Uncategorized (Page 9 of 11)
Dear Hollywood, as another annual Hollywood buffet and raffle night comes to a close and in the “indomitable journey of life that takes us all on an transformative odyssey of respect and being able to be who we are” just remember that no-one outside of award speeches uses the word “indomitable” – especially Brad Pitt (unless of course he is about to play an Austen spinster).
So what happened this year? We had a montage celebrating 90 years of cutting to Goldie Hawn in the audience, Ronan Farrow has to now add Cate Blanchett to the list of people he will have to Tweet-hate like a Sinatra behaving like a spoilt Kennedy, Bette Midler forgot how the Acadamee hated For The Boys to sing over a montage of beaches scenes from the movies (I think), Kim Novak took to the stage nearly looking younger than Jennifer Lawrence (though she has yet to fall over twice infront of a billion TV viewers – is Lawrence the new Lee Evans?), the black Will Smith presented the Best Film Oscar for the slave drama/trauma that is 12 Years A Slave (trust me, the Academeee does this a lot – which is why Harvey Feinstein will present the Oscar to Jonah Hill should my fantasy biopic notion of him as Divine ever see the light of day), Liza Minnelli was in the house to help celebrate 75 years of The Wizard of Oz by letting, er, Pink sing Over The Rainbow, Hollywood and the world forgot that a “selfie” is taken by one person of them self … otherwise it is called a “photo“, Hemsworth annoyingly didn’t take home the Best Supporting Junk award for that cameo of his ball sack in Rush, Gravity picked up all the important technical awards including Best Sound Editing (for a space-set film where there would be no sound) yet sadly the film about a women stuck in a Space nightmare in just her underwear and vest top and having to save herself with a fire extinguisher were noticed by the Acadamee before when Aliens and Wall-E came out (in Space everyone can hear Sandra Bullock scream), American Hustle failed to get noticed on the night (or a nomination for hair and make up?!!) yet another montage featured the all-important remake of The Karate Kid (which was no doubt a rider for getting Will Smith to be the new Poitier), Jared Leto is clearly in preparation for the sequel to Chapter 27 where he will not play John Lennon’s killer but John Lennon himself, McConaughey deservedly wins for playing the worst JR Ewing tribute act in the Dallas Buyers Club (though Leto did make a marvellous Victoria Principal), Frozen won Best Animated Feature Not Yet Based On A Hit Broadway Show and the Interflora In-Memorium montage had its work cut out this year but still managed to keep a blank space in case Liza didn’t get out of her chair.
Host and Mr Polari Paul Burston.
November 13th 2013 marked the night the Polari Salon had its annual Polari First Book Prize. Catching Bullets – Memoirs of a Bond Fan was on the shortlist this year so attendance in spesh clothing and clean shoes was a must. And no, I didn’t wear the Octopussy dressing gown or Roger Moore ski-suit despite hinting on Twitter I would (the many open stairs at the Southbank Centre rendered the Octopussy nightgown a no-no for anyone underneath not wanting to cop a peek).
And what a grand night it was, putting – as ever for a Polari gathering – the great and the good better all together to honour all guises of the queer word – spoken, sung, poetry, narrative fiction, non-fiction, stand-up, performance art and speech. And that was just host Paul Burston’s entrance!
Before the Prize winner was announced, Polari took on its more familiar monthly form. The nights are held at London’s Southbank Centre, cost a very fair fiver and represent two hours (plus interval, book and beverage stall) of the best LGBT readers and writers out there. This month’s menu of salonistas included Rosie Garland, Patrick Flanery, Dee Chanelle, Helen Lederer, Dean Atta and Charlotte Mendelson. It is hard and wrong to underline faves, but Patrick Flanery’s prose was fragile and quick-fire, Dean Atta’s stand-up poetry struck a very contemporary and sadly apt chord (“racism is institutionalised thinking“), singer Dee Chanelle gave the Brazilian street dancers a run for their volume-levels next door and Helen Lederer (a comedy hero of mine) was typically self-deprecating all over the podium.
And then to the grand master-plan, the denouement of the night and Polari’s crowning glory – the Polari First Book Prize 2013. Announced in true “Acadamee Award” style by the quietly incisive VG Lee (a new comedy hero of mine), the Societe Generale sponsored trophy went to Mari Hannah and The Murder Wall. A lovely winner clearly in awe of her charity telethon sized and much deserved cheque took to the stage and made winners of us all. Okay, she didn’t at all. Nor should she. It was her moment and she earned it. Us other four shortlistees got to go home with the ‘win’ that Polari and Paul Burston took us under his sterling wing. Not only have I been asked to read at Polari this year but I have seen first-hand the immense value and support mechanism it represents for queer writers. Writing is a lonely practise at the best of times. Paul himself has rightfully remarked how writing needs a reader to complete the process. Polari allows all manner of voices a podium or chair or even sometimes just a Re-Tweet and gives an audience to so many people, including myself. That is worth its weight in gold. The use of words as help and support versus the use of words to hate and incite is still the centuries old dilemma of language. Even now the use of phrases like “dyke” or “queer” is over-worried by the over-worriers, when it is up to gay individuals to adopt it into their parlance and out of the box marked “abuse”. Included in the audience was Nigerian activist and TV host Funmi Iyanda and out-gay Nigerian Bisi Alimi (now a welcome UK resident having had to flee his home country and family). The pair have their own [and sadly very] valid LGBT story to tell and THIS is where Polari is more than a few dykes and queers supping Pinot from plastic glasses in the name of literature (not that Burston would allow that complacency to sink in – hence his ever changing rota of readers and performers).
Polari and the work and efforts of its alumni, audience regulars (the life and pulse of each monthly gathering), venue owners and just those that pass the word on is one of the greatest LGBT assets in London and indeed the UK (where Polari is stretching its wings north – see here).
Furthermore, Paul and his team of judges give their time and efforts to reading the longlist and shortlisted titles and for my tale of a 1980s Bond fan to even get dropped on the “to read” pile is the stuff of privilege.
The Polari First Book Prize 2013 judges this year:
Paul Burston (Chair of Judges) – author, journalist and host of Polari.
Bidisha – writer, critic and broadcaster
Suzi Feay – literary critic
Rachel Holmes – author and former Head of Literature at the Southbank Centre
VG Lee – author and comedian
Joe Storey-Scott – books buyer
The Polari First Book Prize 2013 shortlist:
The Murder Wall by Mari Hannah (Pan Macmillan)
Tony Hogan Bought Me An Icecream Float Before He Stole My Ma by Kerry Hudson (Chatto & Windus)
The Sitar by Rebecca Idris (self-published ebook)
Catching Bullets – Memoirs of a Bond Fan by Mark O’Connell (Splendid Books)
The Tale of Raw Head & Bloody Bones by Jack Wolf (Chatto & Windus)
For more on Polari and why you should get along, click here.
Whoever said never meet your heroes clearly never had mine as theirs. For thirty years my cinematic hero, sartorial inspiration and now literary muse was and continues to be Sir Roger Moore.
It was June 1983 when my dad took a reluctant and seven year old younger version of myself to the Guildford Odeon to see Roger Moore’s sixth Bond opus, Octopussy. It was a simple outing that put a 007 shaped stamp on my life and was the beginnings of realising the stamp James Bond had already had on the O’Connell family. Key to that was Roger Moore. Being a 1980s kid, he was my Bond. Being a 1980s cinema kid, he was crucial. Numerous posters and images flanked my walls like Broccoli frescoes and an autographed still for my ninth birthday is still the best birthday present in the world ever.
Flash-forward thirty years and not only have I written a comedy memoir about literally growing up with Bond, Catching Bullets – Memoirs of a Bond Fan (Splendid Books), but Sir Roger is appearing in his current tour An Evening With Roger Moore at a local Surrey venue, G-Live (or the Moore-quip friendly G-Spot for those who can never quite find their way round Guildford’s notoriously shocking one-way system). Organised and marshalled onstage by Roger’s manager and biographer Gareth Owen, the Autumn 2013 show is a relaxed but complete look at Roger’s career from his early days at RADA (with fellow classmates including Bond alumni Lois Maxwell) via the touchstones of The Saint, The Persuaders, The Sea Wolves, that small matter of seven 007 movies to his more recent and very sterling work for UNICEF and taking on the charity baton handed to him by friend Audrey Hepburn.
And just as a 007 who sported the best ski-wear known to man should be, Moore is a master of going off piste – taking the audience and himself along reminiscences and sharply recalled anecdotes with cute timing and that self-mocking veneer that has served him well over the years. If only all of us could even hope to be so sharply minded at 86 years young. I had never seen Moore more lucid, relaxed, quick to quip and totally poised with all that trademark saintly persuasion.
It was not wholly random and the people who I need to thank already have been, but as the highly recommendable show came to a close I was faced with the prospect of finally meeting the man himself. Should I? Maybe I shouldn’t. The man might want to quite fairly shoot off home and crack open a glass of something bubbly, no? Guildford’s fine but it is no Monaco (despite Roger remembering with mocking fondness filming an AA commercial decades there before as a young actor). Suddenly I was overcome with a paranoia – “I should leave best alone, the journey of Catching Bullets has been so wonderful and well received and an L.A. encounter with my Bond Girl was such a divine day, don’t push your luck and spoil it now O’Connell!”. But if I didn’t try I would – to badly paraphrase the film Moore circles as his finest work – become the man who haunted himself.
Cut to the back car-park of G-Live and my seven year old Bond fan self has already led my adult brain down into a Guildford car park before the auditorium had barely got to its feet amidst well deserved cheer. A chauffeured car is naturally waiting for Mr Moore as is someone’s vintage Volvo from Roger’s The Saint days, and of course some loyal fans wrapped up against the autumn cold. A wink and a nod later and my partner, our friend Pat and I are coming in out the cold towards Mr Moore’s dressing room and a friendly hive of post-show backstage activity. I don’t know if the tricky Bond mistress that we all call ‘life’ meant to add such poetry to but it suddenly hits me how right now Roger Moore and I are merely yards away from the Guildford Odeon where my Bond fan journey commenced with Octopussy. Furthermore – and due to a bout of parental house-sitting – I write this piece alongside the very childhood bedroom that was a veritable shrine to our man James, 007, Octopussy, Maud Adams and all manner of Bond-foolery. Like those little white dots mark each and every Bond movie, events do sometimes have a very curious habit of going full circle. And before I knew it I was sat in Roger’s gleaming white dressing room with the man himself looking at me with the same piercing blue eyes that fought Zorin, Drax, Scaramanga, Stromberg, Nick Nack and Jaws with the same boyish grin that bedded Solitaire, Mary Goodnight, Anya Amasova and of course both our shared favourite 007 lady, Octopussy.
Whilst the details shall remain personal (in part due to me being caught by the utter surrealism of it all and hence forgetting what the hell happened), Roger soon beckoned me into his Santa’s Grotto of suavity to sit down with my cardigan-friendly eye already on his fine knitwear and wishing I had sported mine that night. We discussed Bond, Catching Bullets and my grandfather who worked with Cubby Broccoli and who Roger would have known. I also coyly mentioned the personal symmetry of finally meeting Mr Moore a few metres from where I had seen him in my first Bond at the cinema. He wondered, “which one?”. I nervously replied, “the Odeon“.
He then kindly asked again, “no, which film…?” to which I duly responded with Octopussy-mentioning pride and embarrassment. Roger then kindly said he wants to read Catching Bullets. I jokingly hinted of course he didn’t have to at which moment those firm blue eyes suavely clarified, “oh no, I will”.
Forever a gent. Forever Bond. Forever Moore.
An Evening with Roger Moore continues round the UK.
Catching Bullets – Memoirs of a Bond Fan is available now.
Splendid Books and I are more than proud to announce that CATCHING BULLETS – MEMOIRS OF A BOND FAN has been shortlisted for the POLARI FIRST BOOK PRIZE 2013.
Polari is a monthly literary salon held (more often than not) at London’s Southbank Centre. Masterminded by author/writer Paul Burston, it is a queer / LGBT showcase of a brilliant rainbow-hued spectrum of writing, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, performance, works-in-progress, theatre and song.
Previous readers have included Jonathan Harvey, Celia Imrie, Damian Barr, Jake Arnott, Neil Bartlett, Rikki Beadle-Blair, Andy Bell, Sophia Blackwell, DJ Connell, Maureen Duffy, Stella Duffy, Fenella Fielding, Christopher Fowler, Patrick Gale, David Hoyle, VG Lee, David McAlmont, John McCullough, Will Self and many more. Oh, and of course yours truly (January 2013).
The POLARI FIRST BOOK PRIZE is an annual award to honour the best in LGBT writing. CATCHING BULLETS and myself never once imagined we would be rubbing shoulders with a range of very skilled books so are doubly chuffed to find ourselves on the final shortlist. The winner is announced on November 13th 2013 at the Purcell Room, Southbank Centre.
One of “the World’s Best Gay & Lesbian Hotspots” for 2013! – ArtInfo.
“Lively, funny and inspiring – a gay-themed salon of interest to anyone remotely interested in literature, whatever their sexual bent. Paul Burston’s achievement in consistently bringing together writers and performers who will stimulate and inspire is remarkable” – Patrick Gale
“Always fun, always thought-provoking – a guaranteed good night out” – Sarah Waters, Tipping The Velvet.
“London’s most theatrical salon” – The New York Times
“London’s peerless gay literary salon” – The Independent on Sunday
For more details about past, present and future Polari nights then head over to the website. The evenings are a great and relaxed showcase of good writing, creativity, thought and ideas. A bar and book store is always at hand as are great views of London at night, whatever time of year. Though be warned – Polari often sells out quick so get in early.
@Mark0Connell
@PolariSalon
@PolariPrize
Exciting news! CATCHING BULLETS – MEMOIRS OF A BOND FAN has been nominated for the illustrious POLARI First Book Prize 2013! This is a fine honour indeed and I am most flattered, shaken and stirred!
Splendid Books and myself would like to extend a big thanks to Paul Burston and the POLARI First Book Prize judging team. I am now going to paint myself in gold paint and have a lie down to celebrate….
Goldfingers crossed for the prize announcement in September 2013.
www.polariliterarysalon.co.uk
www.splendidbooks.co.uk
PLAYBOY.
GAMBLER.
SPY.
Sky Atlantic and Ecosse Films / BBC America have revealed an early look at their new 2014 series, Fleming.
Filmed in the UK and Budapest, the mini-series is set during the Second World War when Ian Lancaster Fleming (Dominic Copper) was heavily involved in mounting special operations against the Nazis and others.
Mat Whitecross (The Road to Guantanamo) is directing from a script by John Brownlow and Don Macpherson (based on John Pearson’s work on the life of Fleming). Laura Pulvey (Fleming’s wife Ann), Annabelle Wallis (Muriel Wright), Rupert Evans (Fleming’s brother Peter) Samuel West (Admiral John Godfrey), Anna Chancellor (Lieutenant Monday) and Lesley Manville (Fleming’s mother Evelyn) co-star.
The four part mini-series will air on Sky Atlantic later in early 2014.
Check out the new teaser trailer, Fleming.
“Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going be a bumpy night”
(All About Eve, 1950)
With King of the Tangent himself Pedro Almodóvar on duty as chief flight recorder, pilot, trolley dolly and navigator, I’m So Excited! is a boisterous stopover of a film. Less long-haul than the melodramatic Volver, clever Live Flesh or the masterly All About My Mother, Almodóvar’s nineteenth feature is a short-haul hen-night of a movie, as quick to get into as it takes to blow up one of those canary yellow safety vests.
Welcome to Peninsula Airlines Flight 2549. You will be cruising at an altitude of 32,000 feet. Literally. And if nothing excites you on the duty-free cart, there will be enough in-flight entertainment and emergency grandstanding to keep children of all ages (and predilections) entertained.
This plane is like a sunlit backroom – floating on clouds of mescaline, passion and resignation. Neither bitter or moral, this is Almodóvar as chief pilot of a Mile [very] High Club. Never mind the fuel the plane suddenly has to burn off before an emergency landing. Almodóvar’s own script is more concerned in his motley passengers jettisoning absurd amounts of tequila, vodka and Valencia cocktails. Pilots, co-pilots, stewards, ground staff – everyone’s necking a quick shot to take the edge off. Before having another. An Easy Jet flight to Sitges packs less booze than this. Yet, as such happy-hour excesses soon replace characters inhibitions with much needed action (Lola Dueñas’s virginity status is quite cheekily – and anonymously – downsized at 30,000 feet), the weight of everyone’s emotional ballast nearly drags the flight into the sea. A mostly empty business class section and a disgraced banker speaks volumes about Spain and Europe’s economy – with the stricken Peninsula 2549 flight struggling to find an airport that is manned, let alone not cash strapped. But that is as political as Pedro gets. His world is one where men are already in marriages to each other (be it sexual, spiritual or actual), mistresses are afforded perceptive back stories and empty control towers are manned by a husband and wife and their packed lunch.
Just as the theatrical Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) pitches itself in a farce-like apartment, its nearest sibling I’m So Excited! relishes the proscenium confines of this Peninsula flight – affording Pedro his trademark backstage wranglings, curtain twitching, character hierarchies and story-centric phone-calls. It is certainly Almodóvar’s simplest effort for a while, jettisoning the masterful twists of Live Flesh and The Flowers of My Secret for an unabashed pantomime of an in-flight movie that unfurls as if Airplane had a quick knee-trembler in the disabled toilets with Carry on Emmanuelle and Shortbus was the result.
Gone for now are the masculine pulses and of The Skin I Live In and Broken Embraces. Here they are replaced for the mescaline ones of a cabin-fevered cabin-crew led by self-destructive, yet puppy-eyed steward Javier Cámara (Talk To Her, Bad Education) and Pedro newcomers Raúl Arévalo (granted a Pedro tache on his first outing) and portly Carlos Areces. If this work-weary triumvirate steal the movie, then it is the scene-chomping Areces who gets the ‘Peninsula Employee of the Month’ award with his dour queen Fajardo forever hand-fanning his magnificent cow-lick fringe amidst his random urges to pray into a brassy pop-up altar.
As Almodóvar’s gayest film for quite a while, there is very little room in the aisle for any straight manoeuvring. Like most of Almodóvar’s efforts, even the straight women behave like gay men. And possibly vice versa. Not that every persuasion doesn’t get a chance to “check in” on this voyage. Everyone is at it. From the hot straight couple fresh off a three day wedding bender (and a curious affliction the sexy groom is milking to the hilt) to a bi-curious co-pilot, a horny security officer and a veteran soap actor juggling a suicidal ex and a shrewd new squeeze via misplaced cell phones. So far, so very Almodóvar.
With crew and passengers pitched as types culled straight from 1970’s Airport, Almodóvar has early fun churning out the disaster movie character tropes (the disillusioned suit, the veteran fun-time girl, the cabin crews in mid-affair, the family man pilot’s bit on the side, a concerned psychic and a potential killer). Yet, as much as Almodóvar lets the film party with this entertaining bunch, he still takes the time to surprise, to charm and regret. Just as Airport 1975 had the real Norma Desmond in the guest-starring likes of Gloria Swanson, I’m So Excited! gets its own Norma in the guise of the fabulous Cecilia Roth (All About My Mother) as society dominatrix and potential government-toppler Norma Boss. This Anna Wintour fringed ice-maiden is the most familiar from Pedro’s oeuvre. We are told this is a character that – like the director himself – emerged onto the scene in the late 1980s, ruffled the establishment’s feathers and subsequently hit her stride in her 50s.
One of the utter joys of an Almodóvar film is how he lets you go ahead of his story and characters, allowing the audience to curve off with their absurd notions and plot predictions. You kick yourself for thinking that wildly or crudely. But then suddenly Pedro takes you by the hand and ‘goes there’ for you with a day-glo aplomb that is forever liberating and – most vitally – honest. The director’s CV is on show throughout. From key Pedro icons Penelope Cruz (Volver, Broken Embraces, Live Flesh) and Antonio Banderas (Matador, Laws of Desire, The Skin I Live In) playing consequential ground crew to the point of almost giggling on-screen at the fun of it all to the lies men tell of Laws of Desire, the drug dependencies of What Have I Done To Deserve This and Norma Boss’s sado-masochistic day job echoing Tie Me Up Tie Me Down.
Like a trashy airport novel, I’m So Excited! is a wondrous, crazy holiday distraction. Never meant to outstay its welcome, it is a rude jaunt farcing about its tight running time. Pedro purists might want this frothy baggage reclaimed immediately, but he still carefully peels back the motifs of character like the cling-wrap on a Stansted Airport beef casserole. This is a deliberate inflight meal of a movie – easy to get into, tastes better than it looks and will perfectly suffice until you touch down. As a comedy it is possibly more successful than Women On The Verge of a Nervous Breakdown – which now pales when compared to what Almodóvar did next. He is now a genre all of his own, one that has re-pointed people’s opinions and views on Spanish cinema and culture. As fun goes and the summer blockbusters start circling the skies, I’m So Excited! deftly proves Pedro Almodóvar can still drop a big block of blue toilet ice onto his rivals. Just when does this “seatbelt” sign disappear?
With thanks to Pathe UK for the screening.
I’m So Excited! lands at UK cinemas from May 3rd 2013.
SAW MISGIVINGS
Written by Mark O’Connell
Directed by David Lilley
Starring Vicky Album & Steve McNeil
Being the perfect housewife can kill…
“A bizarre, yet funny as hell mix of twisted humor….Seriously, this thing’s full of funny (the beer opening gag = genius) and not a one note joke…Damn fine acting, damn fine filmmaking, damn fun time.” – AIN’T IT COOL NEWS
SAW MISGIVINGS has featured very successfully at the LUND INTERNATIONAL FANTASTIC FILM FESTIVAL 2012 (Nominated – Méliès d’argent), the Three Corpse Circus Film Festival 2012 (USA), SAN SEBASTIAN HORROR & FANTASY FILM FESTIVAL 2012, COFILMIC 2012 (Nominated : Best Comedy Short), LEEDS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (Nominated – Méliès d’argent), SCREEN STOCKPORT FESTIVAL 2012 (Special Mention), THREE CORPSE CIRCUS FILM FESTIVAL, LONDON SHORT FILM FESTIVAL 2013, the LONDON COMEDY FILM FESTIVAL 2013, the SKEPTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, the DETMOLD INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM FESTIVAL 2013 and more.
“A ‘cute’ piece (if cute even sounds appropriate) … the perfect spoof short film for horror audiences. You’ll want to seek this out and take 6 minutes out of your day to enjoy the fun!” – HORRORNEWS.NET
“…a rock solid and humorous tribute to the Saw franchise, successfully lampooning the iconic traps as well as the kinetic style found in the series. All of the jokes perfectly hit their mark” – HORRORMOVIES.CA
Little and Large. Autumn 1988. Studio One. That was the first time I set foot in the hallowed halls of the BBC’s Television Centre. My dad had got tickets to a Little and Large recording. It was a Sunday night and I was 13. The night’s recording was okay at best. Sid Little fluffed some lines and I was mesmerised by how shiny the set was. Actually, it was only the off-screen machinations that I can only remember now – those Dalek sized cameras all emblazoned with a faded italicised “BBC” and the unseen faces from the gallery controlling every moment like Greek Gods whose chess pieces resemble now two comics from the tail end of the Northern club scene’s heyday.
Of course I had sort of been in TVC for years before that. Mentally I had been imagining myself making a chocolate sponge with Janet Ellis in the Blue Peter studio, playing with Goldie’s puppies on the Blue Peter lawn (in a pre-euphemism age that was something ten year olds could actually do), dancing with Nik Kershaw in the Top of the Pops studio, being one of those million tapdancers Roy Castle Bonnie Langforded with on Record Breakers or at least being on the phone to Sarah Greene shouting “left, left, splat” as Saturday Superstore foresaw the XBox generation with some then nifty graphical interactivity with Five Star’s latest album as a prize incentive. I may have even have penned a letter to Jimmy Saville so that some classmates and I could visit a haunted house. On that less salubrious note it turns out that possibly TVC itself was indeed the house of horrors (for some at least). But for the rest of us who can now say with relief that Jim did not fix it for us, the nearest we got to White City’s gleaming beacon of broadcasting was getting the engaged tone when trying to phone a question into The Boswell’s from Bread on Saturday Superstore. Actually, my eleven year old self did get on the BBC’s daily TV magazine show Open Air. I asked Julia Smith (EastEnders creator) whether it had been her favourite show to produce. She was as clearly disappointed in my soul searching mode of enquiry as I was that Open Air was not actually broadcast from Television Centre, but – heaven forbid – Birmingham.
Television Centre always felt like a second home, a sort of televisual embassy bound by political neutrality and a creative haven for all lost souls and fans of Points of View. If something horrible should happen to my home or family, I imagined I could at least get on a train to London, find my way to Wood Lane and TVC would shelter me amidst Sue Cook’s blazers, Selina Scott’s knitwear and Simon Groom’s sheep. And if that didn’t work, I could at least phone up. I knew the number. 01 811 8055 was not just Going Live’s phone-in number and the Children In Need pledge line. It was the only phone number every kid in Britain knew – before of course it was cruelly re-cast as 0181 811 8181, 0207 811 8181 or heaven forbid 0845 Give Us Your Views Now.com.
TVC was as much a character in the BBC’s ouevre as Basil Fawlty, Del Boy, Gordon the Gopher, Claudius, Russell Harty, The Two Ronnies, the Doctor and that odd couple with the matching anoraks from No Place Like Home (look it up). TVC denoted home from school and weekends. It was a babysitter you didn’t mind being stuck with. Saturday mornings were Sarah Greene and Mike Read frollicking about the forecourt of TVC all in the name of kids television. The Two Ronnies would dim the lights on a Sunday as Barbara Dickson would lean against a Studio One lampost to sing Another Suitcase in Another Hall. And on slow news days The Six O’Clock News would let some militant lesbians in so that Nicholas Witchell could sit on them and make the world just that bit safer for us impressionable kids as Blue Peter‘s Mark Curry traversed TVC’s corridors on an errant quadbike or penny farthing as crew members raced for cover.
Flash-forward a few years and I return to TVC as “staff” with a BBC pass and everything. Working for BBC Comedy, I was able to experience all those BBC jokes and cliches, all those BBC canteen jibes and over-judicious concierges giving Basil Brush so much grief (though it was a recent thrill to drive through those hallowed gates, let alone be let through them). However, what I encountered was still a thriving hub of production, a busy and industrious environment knuckling down and getting on with it – despite an evident “media course” mentality and vile sense of “accountability” kicking at the heels of content and production. But why does everyone of a certain generation want to work in “media”? Because Television Centre made us. It beckoned us in every day. It forever told us where it lived (“Wood Lane, W12 7RJ”). It took great pride to showcase its studios, dressing rooms, switchboards and broom cupboards. It was both Oz and White City – with roads paved not with yellow bricks, but Blue Peter badges, Food and Drink recipe sheets, Points of View correspondence and Russell Grant’s knitwear patterns. But the TVC I experienced was also creaking round the edges. Parts of what Terry Wogan affectionately christened “The Concrete Doughnut” were falling apart. It was cheaper and easier for shows to rent out Pinewood Studios rather than nip downstairs. And just like the alleged Golden Age of British television of the 1960s and 1970s, perhaps TVC too was not meant to last. Cliché aside, it was impossible not to get lost. Or it was impossible for me to not get lost when trying to find BBC Comedy Room 3167 a (South Wing). And the Blue Peter garden was not actually that big nor possibly even a garden.
But you would also nip in a lift and help a newsreader balancing her toddler and scripts. You would see the enthusiastic queues of “the public” waiting in the rain to get into a recording of Never Mind The Buzzcocks or Last of the Summer Wine. You would see actors and presenters necking a latte with their make-up protectors still in place. You would clearly see the retro-cool 1970s fonted signage and BBC livery.You would hear news academics discussing the future of the Middle East in the gents. You would see panel show presenters perched on the stairs apologising to the guests they were about to annihilate. It was what all of us imagined a television centre to be.
TVC was about coming home from school and knowing you were watching the same kids TV show from Studio Two that your mates were watching, rather than some syndicated 28-part cartoon on CBBC you can choose when you catch it. TVC was the epitome of broadcasting to the nation – with the nation watching as an engaged mass. For good or bad, shows like The X Factor get such solid ratings as they operate on the same notions of mass engagement – of knowing everyone is watching at exactly the same moment as you. As much TVC forever showcased its corridors and studios, its output was not yet reduced to forever demanding we all text in with our views, our opinions, our reactions. The “public” were not yet a tiresome co-star and cost-cutting alternative. Yes, we had Nationwide and That’s Life carefully balancing decent content and human inanity. But now the dinner wallpaper that is The One Show will have Tony Curtis or Michael Caine on the sofa and have no qualms in interrupting tales of Marilyn Monroe in order to “roll some VT” on what The One Show thinks is the nation’s favourite litter tray. And if we are not being forever asked to Watch Again, the only corridors we now see are not in TVC but corporate and laminated ones full of wannabee gastro pub owners nervously awaiting Masterchef’s verdict on a duck breast their dying nan advised them to make. The streets of West London are no longer the haunts of The Good Life or Dennis Potter dramas, but Rogue Traders Caught On Camera Driving on a Duel Carriage-way Without an MOT. As a viewer, it now sometimes feels like prime-time slots which once dripped with sitcoms and fierce dramas now resemble the back-pages of Loot with an exhausting obsession with family trees, antiques and getting your plumbing done properly. TVC used to make dramas about the Borgias, not transform tower block spare rooms into vestiges of Renaissance Italy for a fiver. Yet sometimes folk who are looking for another heyday are overlooking exactly what is going right now. Would anyone even suggest the likes of White Heat, Getting On, Call The Midwife, Wallander, Last Tango In Halifax, Sherlock, Dead Boss, Doctor Who, Horrible Histories, Dancing On The Edge, Merlin, The Girl, Restless, Africa, and the superlative Olympic coverage are examples of a TV behemoth losing its touch?
In an age before branding became more important than content, Television Centre was the only media monolith we knew. Yet that icon is now about to be a gravestone, a relic of progression and a victim of the public purse that once paid for it having to tighten its strings. In the television of the future, TVC will only ever be seen when BBC Four mocks up a matte CGI shot of an actor playing Jonathan Ross entering the Stage Door for a drama about Sachsgate. But are these are gripes about output and nostalgia overlooking how the BBC is and always has been made up of many iconic homes. Its’ new London face is even its old London face. The 1930s era Broadcasting House is once again spearheading the BBC in the capital, with a new home for its News service already in place and quite a 21st century sight it is to behold. The BBC approaching its centenary with a pride and confidence is surely more pressing than the closing of one building built over fifty years ago. And whilst moving the Blue Peter garden to a Salford rooftop holds less cache than the garden ever did and every drama and comedy seems to be over-keen on Manchester or Cardiff, time and television must move on. Whereas British telly may have once forgotten anyone north of Watford, great pockets of comedy, drama and factual television are now dotted throughout the land. The BBC Comedy of the 1970s may well have been called BBC Surbiton. But now we have BBC North and BBC Scotland producing great funny fare. The BBC is about its programmes, not its buildings. The BBC has always been made up of a rich cast list of broadcasting edifices. Alexandra Palace, Lime Grove, Pebble Mill, Bush House, Maida Vale and Elstree Studios have all housed the corporation and new hubs will emerge and old ones will get switched off. But it is the shows that came from these media stables that is why the BBC is the world’s most recognised television corporation. So why the outpouring of sentiment over TVC? Maybe TVC just represented a different era of audience engagement with television. It was more parochial, granted. But then so was the BBC. And so was Britain. However, it did have the production of content as its core DNA. And if content is to be at all part of the BBC’s survival, then any building that is not wholly necessary maybe does need an end credit “you have been watching” bugle call.
