20 years since the Real IRA bombing of BBC TV Centre

I always thought that backdrop looked pretty smart on the news (you note this is also the period where Panorama was on after the news on Sunday, linked into by the newsreader and featured in the headlines). I vividly remember when I first heard about this, I switched on the telly when I got up and Breakfast with Frost was just starting, and David Frost started it by saying "Television Centre, the building we're broadcasting from, was bombed", and I said "bloody hell!" at the telly.



I think there's absolutely no chance of this being the case, not only was this during the House Party's golden age - and if he was that pissed off, he wouldn't have then gone to the Broom Cupboard to do the apology - but if they'd suggested that and it was found out to be a lie, the Beeb's credibility would be in absolute tatters. It's a ridiculous thing to lie about.

As far as I can remember, when it was supposed to start the announcer referred to "problems in the studio" as to why it wasn't on and expressed his hope they might be able to do it later, and indeed during the Christmas Presents repeat I remember there were captions on the screen suggesting the House Party would follow. But of course, it didn't in the end and we had Noel in the Broom Cupboard. I'm pretty sure the first I heard about it being a bomb scare was in the papers the next day.

Funnily enough that House Party bomb scare in 1993 was the second successive disrupted Saturday night for BBC1, as the week before they'd had to shove Casualty in a much later slot as they'd decided at the last minute it was unsuitable for showing pre-watershed.

Indeed those captions were in the NHP house style, suggesting that the studio was involved to some extent in playing it out.

It worth remembering this was all damage caused by a controlled explosion, which (should) relaese far less energy than the bomb being detonated 'as intended' ?

Was it a controlled explosion? I'm sure I remember it went off while they were preparing for a controlled expolosion, but it actually went off by itself.

You could well be right, and I'm not sure how controlled a controlled explosion might be !

That's a little over dramatic isn't it?
The BBC's whole credibitlity ruined because a presenter of a light entertainment programme who possibly had a disagreement with production staff wasn't announced to the public in full detail - if that was what happened.
Would that apply to the whole 99 year BBC credibilty, or just part of it out of interest?

Controlled explosion doesn't always mean that; where a robot fires a primer or water it detonates the bomb to make it safe, it's destructive but you know when it's to detonate giving time to keep people nearby safe.

I think in this instance the water jet failed and the timing mechanism detonated the bomb.

I don't mean not saying Noel had walked out, I mean saying it was a bomb instead.

The rumour was, apparently, that Noel refused to do it that week so they made up the story of there being a bomb scare to cover that up. Imagine if that was the case and it had got in the papers - the Beeb pretending there was a bomb, especially given it was only a week or two after the Warrington bomb which had been a tragedy. It would have been the most tasteless, most inappropriate thing they could have done - not just lying to the audience, but lying about that.

The point is moot anyway, because the Beeb didn't say it was a bomb scare on air, they just couldn't do it. It was the papers that reported it was a bomb scare.

It may come as a bit of a surprise, but when I worked in Broadcasting House in the 80s and 90s, the switchboard took several bomb threats every day. Of which they were almost all false ones.

I suspect that many of those were for either LBH or TVC, and so it is not impossible that occasionally there would be one which had a more authentic ring to them than the usual crank ones.

So if there is any truth to these rumours whatsoever, then there may well have been some substance to them.

However, as you say, the entire thing is a moot point as the BBC never said that - so what is the story?

As an aside and slightly off topic, that TC7 CSO background (shown where Sarah Montague is using Moira Stuart’s desk) is the same backdrop used - as Rob stated - for Moira’s news inserts during Breakfast and where a cleaner was once captured emptying bins and wiping-down desks during one slip-up in the CSO reel.

(I’m sure it was a CSO reel rather than an actual backdrop).

Otherwise, 20 years has flown by. This feels like only yesterday.

It was definitely CSO, but it seems unlikely to be pre-recorded given the cleaner incident. Given it was a shot of part of the N8 newsroom set and that would have been off-air at that time of day, could it have been a live feed from N8?

I thought the background of the red wall was used for UK Today's short bulletins, which I think were from a CSO position?

Obviously they've keyed the pillar over it to make it look more like N6.



Or possibly used for the News Multiscreen headline loop?