Issue 290 - TAXI Newspaper

More readers than the rest put together! 3 APRIL 2013 | TAXI 19
Taxi Talk
ALF TOWNSEND
THE CURTAIN
COMES DOWN…
The farewell party for BBC Television Centre in Wood Lane bring back some fond memories
It’s amazing to think that the BBC
Television Centre complex was
first opened on June 29, 1960. In
the early days it wasn’t fully
centralised and able to broadcast the
whole shebang. It was backed up by
Riverside Studios in Hammersmith
and Kensington and Union Houses,
Shepherd’s Bush Green, as well as
Lime Grove Studios.
I worked nights in the 60s and
was also a loyal member of ‘Lords
Radio Circuit’ – now known as Dial-
A-Cab. The taxi rank, which was
then on the offside of Shepherd’s
Bush Green, was the calling point
for the TV centre and we all
gathered there at around 10 o’clock
at night to wait for ‘the burst’.
Stirling Moss
Before the advent of the hordes of
paparazzi, ‘A’ List celebs were a
dime a dozen in the back of your
cab, mainly because top American
stars took part in a popular TV
show, Sunday Night at The London
Palladium. I found the majority of
major stars quite friendly and very
polite, almost as if they had learned
the art of conversing with the
‘peasants’. Household names like
Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jnr and
Eartha Kitt were very chatty. The
English stars like Max Bygraves,
Tommy Cooper and the loveable
comedian Les Dawson, who never
stopped ‘Lord-Mayoring’ for the
whole journey into the West End,
were a pleasure to drive around. On
the downside, you had three top
comedians who were as miserable as
sin; Frankie Howerd being the
worst- he really was an old misery,
Benny Hill was very quiet and a bit
weird, and so was Kenneth
Williams. Only after their deaths did
their darker sides emerge.
Anyway, you were allocated your
job and drove up the slope to the
reception after booking in at the
desk. Talking about driving up the
slope, I was doing that quite
sedately one dark night, when a
souped-up mini whizzed past me
like a bat out of hell. Okay, so I’ve
got a big mouth and proceeded to
yell out at the driver, ‘who do you
think you are, bleedin’ Stirling Moss?’
The familiar bald head with scars on
the face peered out of the window
with piercing blue eyes – luckily for
me, with a slight twinkle in them!
The very posh lady staff
members who manned the
reception desk appeared to be on a
different planet. They seemed
programmed into believing that the
Director General – or ‘The DG’, as
he was called in reverent whispers -
was on the same plane as one of the
royals. This reverence manifested
itself one evening while I was
sitting there waiting for my fare.
A very smart, elderly gentleman
approached the desk and asked to
speak to the Director General. Well,
the lady behind the desk nearly had
a touch of the vapours. The look on
her face said, ‘people just couldn’t
speak willy-nilly to the almighty’.
‘And who shall I say is calling’? she
enquired with a sour look on her
face? ‘Could you tell him it’s King
Gustav of Sweden’, said the elderly
gentleman. The lady started
pushing her buttons and obviously
got connected with the DG’s
private secretary. Putting her hand
over the mouthpiece, she asked in a
very loud, rude voice, ‘I’m sorry sir,
who are you the King of?’ That’s a
classic isn’t it?
“BEFORE THE ADVENT OF
THE HORDES OF PAPARAZZI,
A LIST CELEBS WERE A DIME
A DOZEN IN THE BACK OF
YOUR CAB
”
Those days are now gone with
the programme makers moving to
Salford Quay, near Manchester. The
whole of the corporation’s news
output – including the world news
from Bush House - recently moved
into the newly-built extensions at
Broadcasting House. As for the
licensed radio circuits, well
before the move, they were only
allocated ‘locals’ and guess who got
‘the roaders’?
‘Foul play’
Like many other cabbies, I love my
football and, again like many other
cabbies, I am strictly an armchair
Image: Dave Smith via Flickr.com
Farewell to the BBC TV Centre
fan! The mere thought of having to
stand on a windswept terrace in the
perishing cold, amongst an unruly
mob of foul-mouthed supporters, is
simply not for me!
But, the recent sacking of Reading
manager, Brian McDermott, who
achieved wonders last season by
getting his club into the Premier
League, reeks of foul play. It is also a
move which has probably sealed the
club’s early return to the
Championship. Okay, so Reading
had a run of poor results after a
promising start to the season, but
their manager was always an
outside bet to be sacked. Suddenly,
the bookmakers put out a press
release which reported a sudden
wave of bets on him being the next
manager to lose his job! The fact that
the vast majority of the bets were
from Berkshire and the surrounding
areas, suggests that the tip-off must
have originated from within the
club. So a ‘grass’ in the club told a
mate, and he told his mate and so on
and so on, which saw the odds
tumble from 25-1 to 4-9 in just 53
minutes! The bookies decided to
suspend the market after the stakes
started to increase.
What a way for the loyal and
passionate Brian McDermott to
discover his fate by reading the
bookie’s press release about, ‘the
flood of bets’ laid on his sacking. We
all like to win a few quid from the
bookies, but those who made a few
hundred quid in this instance must
be choking on the stench of
treachery filling their nostrils!! n