19/10/07
They can't sell The Doughnut!?! -
Categories: I picked a great day to do the BBC's in-house gig. The day that it's announced they're looking at 2000 job cuts (but no one knows who) and also that they're going to sell off The Doughnut (aka Television Centre, aka one of the most famous workplace buildings in the country). London Lite says they're going to sell it either to a business (so Shepherd's Bush finally gets a Primark), or knock it down for housing. Urgh. I feel sick even writing that. It's a great building - a magical one - I still get the shivers walking in there, thinking of all the history of shows and talent that have made television there over the last century. Monty Python was filmed there, countless Comic Reliefs and Children In Needs, the Blue Peter garden is there, Roy Castle tapdanced around there... And by 2013 it's going to be a big Wetherspoons.
The BBC gig itself was fun tonight - I was compering, and baited them a little on the jobs front. Some of them even believed me when I said that, thanks to the unique way the BBC is funded, us comedians were paid by sacrificing their jobs. No one really knows who's safe. It looks like being news and factual (ie. Planet Earth and the like) who'll lose out the most. My suggestion was that, as BBC employees, they make a show like Job Swap or something just before the redundancies kick in, then just make sure the other job has more security. Swap with a Sky employee or something. Then what do you know - Sky worker comes to the beeb and gets sacked. Beeb worker carries on at Sky. Who loses? I should be Director General.
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