# Now I Work for the BBC… #

Just how many quotes from “Elstree” by The Buggles can I use as headlines on Dirty Feed? (It’s two and counting, so far. There will be more.)

But in 2014, I did indeed used to work for the BBC, at BBC Elstree Centre on Clarendon Road.¹ That stopped at the end of 2017 unfortunately, which means I don’t get to accidentally walk through a Holby City shoot and get yelled at. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

As for what I actually did at Elstree, that’s a tale for 30 years time. Still, while I wandered those corridors, I began to piece some things together in terms of the television shot there over the years. Which meant that I could take a look at this shot from Series 2 Episode 4 of Alexei Sayle’s Stuff (TX: 09/11/89):

And notice that the same corridor was used 27 years later in Eric Idle’s The Entire Universe (TX: 26/12/16):

But that’s not really what I’m talking about today. This is a short story of a very specific prowl around the building. Although it is linked to the above corridor.²

What is now known as BBC Elstree Centre has a long and illustrious history, starting in 1914 as the site for the studios of Neptune Films. For the full version of that history, check out this section of Martin Kempton’s excellent ‘History of TV studios in London’; but here’s the short version. ATV used the site between 1958 and 1983, and then the BBC took it over in 1984. And being a TV geek of a certain flavour, I am rather interested in anything to do with ATV.

My challenge: could I find any obvious remnants of ATV at Clarendon Road, even though they had left the site 30 years before I got a chance to take a look around?

I can’t say I had a free run of the place. As much as I’d have loved to poke around in the galleries, plenty of doors were locked. And I was always wary of a burly security guard or two appearing behind me and giving me a good telling off. Still, I looked in the places I had access to. And for a while, it seemed like I wouldn’t find anything.

And then, I saw it. Tucked away in the same corridor pictured in the TV shows above – although little further down, just outside Studio C – I came across the following. With apologies for the terrible image quality…

And if you actually got to the end of this post, I’m sure you got just as much of a kick out of that as I did.

1. Well, more or less. I won’t bore you with the details of outsourcing, at least not today. ↩

2. I seem to spend my entire life writing about corridors in some fashion or another. A trait I share with most Doctor Who fans. ↩