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The thing that totally baffled me about the Star Bar is that it was an actual real bar, and every time they did anything from it they had to awkwardly pass microphones around and the acoustics were dreadful. It was if they'd built it and then forgotten it was supposed to be on television.
The Star Bar was originally a tea bar - the Red Tea Bar to be precise, between studios 1, 2 and 3. The original ring of studios 1-7 had three tea bars, red, green and blue, actually known as “Assemblies”, and we’re designed to be holding areas for artistes and crews while working in the studios. These days they’d be known as break out areas or something equally hipster. When I started at the centre in the mid 90s, the red tea bar still served tea from an enormous teapot, filter coffee and hot lunches of the shepherds pie variety, but it closed alas in the late 90s and was never the same again. Blue tea bar had no counter operating when I was there, just vending machines, and was the only one you could smoke in. Green had been rechristened “Strollers” and, being outside TC6 and 7, was often involved in Live and Kicking programmes. Strollers did great bacon baguettes in the morning and made to order sandwiches and lunchtimes. There were also several tea bars litters throughout the building, the East Tower, Stage V (White Tea Bar) and in the News Centre (Headlines outside the old N1/2 on the sixth floor, later the one near Stage VI was known as The Filling Station, hence The Killing Station on Twitter)
Red Tea Bar is of course the only one to survive the redevelopment of the centre and as far as I understand, has been retained as a break out area.
Anyway, back to Top of the Pops...
The thing that totally baffled me about the Star Bar is that it was an actual real bar, and every time they did anything from it they had to awkwardly pass microphones around and the acoustics were dreadful. It was if they'd built it and then forgotten it was supposed to be on television.
The Star Bar was originally a tea bar - the Red Tea Bar to be precise, between studios 1, 2 and 3. The original ring of studios 1-7 had three tea bars, red, green and blue, actually known as “Assemblies”, and we’re designed to be holding areas for artistes and crews while working in the studios. These days they’d be known as break out areas or something equally hipster. When I started at the centre in the mid 90s, the red tea bar still served tea from an enormous teapot, filter coffee and hot lunches of the shepherds pie variety, but it closed alas in the late 90s and was never the same again. Blue tea bar had no counter operating when I was there, just vending machines, and was the only one you could smoke in. Green had been rechristened “Strollers” and, being outside TC6 and 7, was often involved in Live and Kicking programmes. Strollers did great bacon baguettes in the morning and made to order sandwiches and lunchtimes. There were also several tea bars litters throughout the building, the East Tower, Stage V (White Tea Bar) and in the News Centre (Headlines outside the old N1/2 on the sixth floor, later the one near Stage VI was known as The Filling Station, hence The Killing Station on Twitter)
Red Tea Bar is of course the only one to survive the redevelopment of the centre and as far as I understand, has been retained as a break out area.
Anyway, back to Top of the Pops...
