Photography
“Graffiti is not made for 100 people but for millions” - Du graffiti pas fait pour 100 personnes mais pour des millions! - Le Rat, Marseille.
Three pictures from the glorious sunshine in Brighton & Hove this holiday weekend, scenes from Preston Park Rock Garden and Hove Park.
The weekend starts here: London Weekend Television building at Kings Reach on London's South Bank
Fond memories of working in, around and on the roof of this building for LWT, GMTV and Granada productions, these were “The Best on the Box”. Now it seems the studios have gone dark and the building will be redeveloped, as with the BBC’s television centre on the other side of town.
The London Weekend Television building always did look its best first thing in the morning, my photo shows it today at the same time as I would have been arriving to work in Studio 8 on “This Morning with Richard and Judy”.
The building was technically advanced at its time and aiming for a good environment for us staff; the staff restaurant enjoyed a magnificent view of the river (so did the bar), the lighting store was located centrally between the studios that are in the block at the foot of the tower and there was a system for scavenging and storing heat from the studios to warm the workshops and offices.
To paraphrase the LWT closedown message from that era before television continued through the night: “And so we come to the end of another London weekend. Good night. See you at the Ultimate Wrap Party.”
The wrap party to end all wrap parties at The London Studios. Party time on all three ground floor studio floors: quiet music in Studio 3, “The Soul Jets” played Studio 2 with a disco in Studio 1, “The Palladium of Television” (attrib. John Kaye Cooper). As always, the real chats took place outside, in Artistes’ Reception.
L’Hermione (1779) was a three-masted Concorde class frigate of the Marine Royale française, launched in 1778 and initially very successful around the French coast suppressing raids by corsairs. L’Hermione took the Marquis de La Fayette with a crew of 200 to help the American separatists led by George Washington in 1780. I was surprised just how big the three-master from the trine of the American War of Independence and the French Revolution looks even today.
