Brilliant day at the BBC

Today has been a tremendous day.  At midday we took the tube to Oxford Circus ……….

………  and waiting for the train on the platform at Paddington we were in good company, and so much reminded us of Oscar when he used to travel with us here. 

We had to be at the BBC for 12:30 to meet Adam, a good friend of ours who works in the news department, who very kindly invited us for a tour around the news studios.  We couldn’t take photos around the studio area unfortunately but Adam showed us around and explained the “workings” of news broadcasting.  We watched (from a distance) the transmission of the 1 o’ clock news on BBC1 and we were able to visit the studio area where the weather reports are transmitted.  We saw Alex Deakin and Phillip Avery, two of the weather men, as well a couple of other BBC news readers.

Adam took us up to the seventh floor where we had a view out from the front of the building towards the city.  The church of All Souls, Langham Place now sits incongruously in front of the new building.

One photo we could take was from the seventh floor looking down through the massive atrium onto the floor of the newsroom below.

We had lunch with Adam in the BBC club before he took us on the second part of the tour to the Radio 2 studios.  If the earlier treat wasn’t enough we were able to go into the control room and watch the end of the Jeremy Vine program.  Down the corridor we walked past Michael Ball sitting with staff and discussing his program and THEN we were “accosted” by a charming, and wonderfully fragrant, bubbly blond lady who happened to be Sally Boazman (the national treasure known to millions as “Sally Traffic”!!!!!)  

She was so very kind and spoke to us for quite a while and was delighted to have her photo taken with us.  She liked James’ shirt very much and wants it when he’s finished with it!

If that wasn’t enough – the treats kept coming.  Adam took us to the studios of Radio 6 Music where we watched him prepare for his broadcast of the 2:30 news at that channel which he was reading today instead of Radio 2.  James even sat in with Adam as he read it!

What a day we’ve had – the experience was wonderful and we have to thank Adam very much indeed for the invitation and his time today.