Learning English

Yuri Goligorsky
Former BBC Russian Service
I loved this building. Every bit of it. I loved it from the very first moment I entered the building. The only thing I was unhappy about, were the carpets. They were worn out with a lot of holes. Very undignified. And I thought, my god, such a beautiful building, such a fantastic organisation, such awful carpets.

Peter Pallai
Former BBC Hungarian Service
I remember the first three golden rules Mr Rentwood told me when he accepted me for the job: everywhere where you put a comma you put a full stop now because this is radio. The second one: whatever your political beliefs, leave them outside on the hanger with your coat when you come into the studio. And the third one: don’t sit down at a clean table in the canteen because it’s just been wiped with a smelly rag.

Raymond Li
BBC Chinese Service Editor
I still remember, after listening to the BBC, my dad will remind me ‘Don't tell anybody, you’d be in deep trouble. You could be put in jail’.

Giles Booth
Studio Manager, Bush House
I don’t know whether it’s just the physical building, the bricks and mortar of Bush House, or the fact that we have a sort of United Nations of broadcasting here. I think maybe it’s a bit of both. It’s not a bespoke broadcasting centre, and that’s part of its charm. It’s a rabbit warren of corridors and crazy modifications, and that’s part of what makes it special, I think.

Maya Samolov
Former BBC Yugoslav Service
I once heard Bush House in the Cold War years described as a place with various East Europeans and Russians walking down the corridors, smoking rank cigarettes, muttering to each other conspiratorially. But there wasn’t really that much to spy on because we were in the business of broadcasting.

Charles Hilary
BBC Swahili Service
There’s this sense that time passes through the entire building. All the programmes in all the different languages ticking on and off to the exact second, all based on Greenwich Mean Time. When I think of the pips, always I think of Bush House.

Julia Zapata
Former BBC Mundo Editor
I was saying to colleagues that where the marble floors were slightly dented that was my feet did that over the years. We’ve lived through so much change in this building and so much history that it’s going to be sad. And I hope she gets a proper send off, this building.

Chris Guinness
Former BBC Correspondent to the UN
It was more than just a building, I think it was an organism in itself. I mean, every day the night shift would melt away as the sun came up. We’d often go and have cigarettes on the roof and watch the buildings of the Thames slowly become lit with the morning sun.  The building would then stir into action as the first editors came in, the editorial meetings happened, the news agenda was set. It really had a life of its own.

John McCarthy
Journalist held hostage in Lebanon for 5 years
To be able to tune in to something like the World Service and hear this stuff coming out at you and giving you a shape to the world around you is unbelievable. It’s like bringing colour into a dark room.