A farewell to TV Centre

Media caption,

Rory's last tea round at Television Centre

This is a week tinged with sadness and nostalgia for those of us who have worked for BBC News for many years. It is the last week when television news bulletins will come from Television Centre at White City, before the TV teams join the rest of the news operation at New Broadcasting House.

Television Centre is now rather battered and down-at-heel, but it was once an impossibly glamorous place. My first visits were as a child in the 1960s when my mother, a production assistant in the Drama Department, brought me in for lunch in a canteen where actors in costume and other celebrities might be sitting at neighbouring tables.

I joined the television newsroom as a sub-editor in 1983, and for much of the last 30 years TV Centre - or the Fun Factory as some of the camera crews dubbed it - has been my home.

Last Friday, on what may have been my last full day in my old office, I went to buy a tea round from the Filling Station, the TV Centre tea-bar immortalised on Twitter as @killingstation, external.

I took along a small camera, and instead of going the direct route I went via the newsroom, passing the edit suites and the N6 Studio which has been home to the main television news bulletins since the 1990s.

I edited my journey to a soundtrack of clips from old news programmes that have come from Television Centre. It is my little tribute to the place which has played such a big part in the history of broadcasting in the UK.