After 70-odd years, the BBC has begun to leave Bush House, home of BBC World Service radio. Some buildings have character. BBC Bush House has… had. This gives a flavour of it.
For a while I worked, drank and watched the fish inside Bush House.
I was particularly fond of the Outlook programme – partly because they paid me for stories from Africa. But also because you could climb out a window from their office to a flat roof with satellite dishes. From there a metal ladder led up to another roof level. Then a second set of rungs provided a route to the very top and views over most of the rooftops between Bush House and the Thames.
I sometimes wandered past the rooftop water tanks to the front of the building and out onto the canopy over the grand entrance. In my mind’s eye we sat and contemplated our eyrie above the throng. I lay back and surveyed the clouds. Maybe one of us smoked. I remember the roof as curving – with the slight risk of sliding off to plummet to street level, but it looks more angular in the slide show. Memories can be tricky.
Blackwatertown 
I felt the same about Radio Éireann’s days on the third floor of the GPO. Primitive it may have been but there was a community there that did not easily replicate in the more plastic environment of the Radio Centre in Montrose.
There is a guy who has just set up a website dedicated to those happy days. I have done a piece for him on a friend of mine who used to work there and who smuggled me in to join in the excitement.
http://thegpo.net/producers.shtml
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Good story – I still have a Uher myself.
Do you know anyone who’d like one?
Hi Paul. We would very much like your Uher for authentic analogue recordings of memories from GPO retirees. We would of course be prepared to pay you if that ir required. Godfrey Ryan (Webmaster at thegpo.net)
Hi Godfrey – sounds like a good destination. Perhaps you could drop me an email at paulwaters99 AT hotmail DOT com
I’ll be in Ireland next month.
Great when it all comes together.
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The 4-minute clip you provided was excellent!
Evocative and nostalgic. I worked with one of the speakers – Chris Gunness – good bloke.
Testing to see if WordPress will allow me comment. Refused several times already.
How rude. Apologies.
Grand so, my original comment went something like this:
Never had the opportunity to see Bush House, but it has been my bedfellow for the last fourteen years of sleepless nights. I hope the move does not change the format.
Same with me.
I now only get it through RTÉ’s digital CHOICE channel and then it’s only the odd half hour.
What used to drive me mad, though, was the bloody awful music they played between 12.45 am and 1.00 am. Or was that the BBC medium wave filling in a gap until they went over to the World Service?
I don’t have a medium wave radio anymore, got a DAB, so only FM and DAB.
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Some African programming is merging with the World Today I think – Nigeria rules everything.
I had also left a link to here at the bottom of my piece on the GPO site. At the time I didn’t realise that since my previous visit to the site they had added a “shoutbox” for comments. The webmaster has transferred my link to that page here: http://thegpo.net/list.shtml
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Interesting comments about James Joyce’s listening habits.
I often walked past Bush House when I worked at the LSE bookshop. I never had the slightest idea what went on inside, except that it was something to do with the BBC. Wht I do know is that a lot of BBC staff are thoroughly disgruntled at being winkled out of London and dispatched to the grim Northern wastes (as they see it).
You’re not wrong.
In 2008 we attended a Fortean Convention next door at Westminster Uniy.One lunchtime me and a friend [Bob,aged 70+} Went to The Reception Desk at Bush House.I pulled out my Nikon and asked if I could take shots .We caused a minor security alert,+ were bundled out the door..!!!!Where I took this photo instead!
They did use to be rather strict about security. There was bother in the past – poison-tipped umbrellas, Russian mafia, foreign dissidents working in the building – and the Indian high commission next door.
Actually, bother happens these days too. Emails at Broadcasting House in London were blocked for some hours recently, quite possibly as a result of an Iranian denial of service cyber attack – part of the ongoing tussle between the BBC and the Iranian authorities over BBC broadcasts to that country.
You were not spiderman were you?
No – but my Top Boy came home with a certificate from a school trip not so long ago praising him for being Spiderman. There was climbing and abseiling involved.
In late 1983, I thought I heard the following coming over the World Service airwaves: “The death has been announced of the Right Honourable George Wigg. His condition is said to be satisfactory”. Or perhaps Peter Cook been briefly let loose in Green Continuity at Bush House.
Hmm – well, George Wigg was known to be a shady character – perhaps he’d just gone into deep cover.
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Cheers!
Great post. You’ve gained a reader from the world of radio.
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@ Liverman, Bap & Pen – thanks.
@ Radio Gurbeti – welcome.
@ Bamberger – I don’t think I’m ready for touching just yet. Maybe when we know each other better?
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