#Bbc helios statue tv#

But there is also an office building, shops and a scattering of restaurants, one of them run by Terry Wogan’s sons. There are flats, at prices starting at £645,000 – 432 in the first phase, both hollowed out of the old building and in a new outer ring, with 519 more to come later. It is more than just another large residential development. It was a given, like the test card, or the slowly revolving Earth in the BBC1 ident, a quintessence of Beeb-ness handed down without explanation by our betters.Ī new outer ring of apartments surrounding the original building. It seemed to exist independently of any particular place, or at most in a rather vague part of the capital. Roy Castle performed there with the largest tap-dancing troupe in the world. Sometimes self-parodic comedy shows would shoot in its endless circular, Orwellian corridors. While the sets inside its large studios were beamed daily and nightly into millions of living rooms, images of the building itself, with its distinctive round courtyard, would be broadcast more occasionally. A bit Hollywood, a bit Magnitogorsk, then, although not too much like either.īBC Television Centre, which was designed by Graham Dawbarn from 1949 onwards and completed in phases from 1960, had an enigmatic presence in the nation’s consciousness. All came out of a nationalised dream factory in White City, west London, a work of Attlee-era, amiable constructivism, its plan not a hammer and sickle but a question mark.

#Bbc helios statue tv#

All, that is, for those of us old enough that BBC TV was the warp and weft of our childhood: Blue Peter, Doctor Who, Monty Python, Top of the Pops, The Two Ronnies. Officers also arrested another man at the scene on suspicion of conspiracy to commit criminal damage.O h my. The Metropolitan Police, which put a cordon in place around the entrance to the BBC headquarters, arrested the man on Wednesday evening. The BBC declined to comment on the incident, which began at around 4.15pm on Wednesday.

“The question many have asked and continue to ask is why the BBC have not removed it themselves, especially after the Jimmy Savile scandal?” So, I suspect, would the majority of the general public. “I personally would put them on a par with a slave trader. The corporation was also not reviewing the second statue by Gill, called The Sower, which is inside the entrance.Īndrew Bridgen, the Tory MP, said the statue was “the BBC’s problem”, adding: “There are very few people more despised than child abusers. The Telegraph understands that the BBC was not reviewing, or planning to remove, the statue in the aftermath of the Colston statue being toppled in 2020. The “Colston Four” verdict sparked numerous calls online for the toppling of Ariel and Prospero.Īnonymous users on Twitter shared messages including: “Vigilantes should take sledgehammers to Broadcasting House where this statue by paedophile Eric Gill sits.” “We have now entered a new age of barbarism, where the value of art is judged only by the politics imposed upon it, and destruction is considered progressive.” 'Why have the BBC not removed it?' “The Court of Appeal urgently needs to clarify the law on politically motivated criminal damage before more attacks take place. Robert Poll, founder of the campaign group Save Our Statues, said: “Coming just a week after the Colston verdict, this attack demonstrates that it was indeed a ‘vandal’s charter’ placing all of our built heritage at increased risk. Critics of the verdict have suggested the decision would embolden people to target statues over matters of conscience. The incident at Portland Place comes after four defendants were cleared of criminal damage after they pulled down the statue of slave-trader Edward Colston.