Set in stones
As the Parc Llandaf development takes shape on the old BBC Wales Broadcasting House site in Cardiff, former Beeb staff members have come together to commemorate colleagues who worked there. They drew up a list of names for the new housing blocks for the d
If these old walls could talk like folks, We’d split our sides at their cracking jokes Think of the stories they might tell Of flattering youth and blushing belle.
LIKE many who worked there, it was with a touch of genuine sadness that I witnessed the slow destruction of the BBC Wales site in Llandaff. Of course, the presenters, producers and technicians had to move out of the outdated buildings, but as, floor by floor, the bulldozers levelled it all, it felt like a part of me, and of many others who had such wonderful careers there, was being lost.
Opened in 1966, Dale Owen’s collection of concrete and glass offices and studios were influenced by that German master of design, Walter Gropius. The site has been described as one of Wales’ most outstanding and important Modernist buildings and there was an unsuccessful campaign to save the building for posterity. But no man can stand in the way of progress.
I first visited BBC Broadcasting House, as it was called, in the 1970s (the Beeb loved its acronyms and I later learned to abbreviate the name to ‘BH’). Mark Edmunds and I travelled in from Barry to listen to the orchestra as it played in the cavernous concert hall. We were 11, but felt very grown up.
Then, as teenagers, we were bussed in from school to be part of Gerry Monte’s Nine Five On Friday show on Radio Wales. Goodness, here was a man who was on television. On television! I think I made some sort of contribution but I can’t remember what I said. It wasn’t until the 1980s that I came home to Llandaff to work on BBC news programmes – and I have been here ever since.
On my daily walks around the village I watched first the main office block, the glass-fronted ‘pebble’ landing, then the news studio and finally the sports department sliced, smashed and turned to rubble. Memories of running down to the studio for that last minute interview on Wales Today and the bleary-eyed morning shifts when you got to work in complete darkness came flooding back. And, of course, there were the riotous nights at the BBC club and the workplace friends. With the crunch of the wrecking ball, all is gone.
But buildings are nothing without people, just bricks and mortar, and it is in the memories of those colleagues, the beer in the club and the coffees in the canteen that it all really lives on.
I was therefore truly grateful to a former colleague, but constant friend, Alex Mcdonald, who suggested naming streets in the new development after some of the most famous and influential people who had worked at the BBC during its 54-year stay in Llandaff. We wanted to keep those names alive, to honour their contribution to broadcasting and also to provide a permanent reminder of those good times.
The developers finally agreed and so the call went out on social media to former staff members. Just like when you choose your fantasy football team, there was a lot of discussion and not a little argument. Each one of us had our favourites, but there was also agreement on the people who really should be remembered. So who did they choose?
The main square is to be called Baynton Square. The BBC was built on the site of Baynton House, the family home of the 19th century Glamorganshire county surveyor Alexander Bassett. I can’t find any photographs of the house, but the BBC journalist Vaughan Roderick remembers it from his youth and describes it as a “Scooby-doo style haunted house” built from red sandstone.
Alun Oldfield-davies joined the BBC in 1937 and held several posts before being appointed director of what was then known as the ‘Welsh region’ for BBC radio. He oversaw a golden age in Welsh language broadcasting as well as the introduction of television to Wales. The historian, John Davies, was in no doubt of the importance of Oldfielddavies’ role. He said: “If there was a single creator of Welsh language television, it was Alun Oldfielddavies.”
His building will be in the ‘Courtyard.’ Aneirin Talfan Davies was a poet, broadcaster and literary critic. He left school at 14 and trained as a pharmacist. After his dispensary in Swansea was destroyed in a German bombing raid during the war, he started working for the BBC as a part-time newsreader. As a producer he worked with Dylan Thomas and was head of programmes from 1966 until 1970.
Ty Teleri will commemorate Teleri Bevan, the founding editor of BBC Radio Wales and another former head of programmes. She was a pioneering broadcaster in an industry that was, perhaps still is, dominated by men. I had just started working as a researcher with the BBC in Swansea when I heard her interview with Indira Gandhi in 1984. It was the last western interview with the Indian Prime Minister before she was assassinated. Teleri lived in Llandaff on Fairwater Road just round the corner from me and it was a privilege to know her in her final years at a nearby nursing home. Both Aneirin and Teleri will have buildings named after them.
After hanging up his boots, the Wales rugby international Ray Gravell became a radio presenter in both English and Welsh. It was always great fun to work with Ray, who was an affable and a genuinely nice guy. He would hand over to the urbane and high-minded journalist Vincent Kane with the disarming words, “Over to you Vincie baby.” Kane grimaced. We laughed. Naughty.
Ty Gravell remembers this giant of a man who died far too young.
Ty Ryan and Ty Carwyn are named after two more west Wales’ greats. I first saw Ryan Davies perform as a child in a musty chapel in the 1960s. With just a stand-up piano and his massive talent, he kept that eight-year-old boy, as well as a packed vestry of the Society of Cymmrodorion, entertained for a whole evening. Ryan Davies was one of those multi-talented entertainers we just don’t seem to see these days. He was half of Ryan & Ronnie, of course, but he was also a superb stand up comedian and singer whose life was also cut tragically short.
Carwyn James is a Welsh rugby legend. Born in the mining village of Cefneithin, he played for Wales and coached Llanelli and the British Lions to victory over the almighty New Zealand All Blacks. He was a cultured man who worked as a school teacher and lecturer. Carwyn later became an influential and much-admired rugby commentator. Both Ryan and Carwyn will be remembered on Parc Llandaf ’s ‘Crescent.’
All these people, even the ones I never had the chance to meet, have played some part in my life. BBC Wales felt like an extended family, like having your relatives round at Christmas. Yes, we had our ups and downs. I loved some of them a lot and some were best not spoken to, but there was always – and still is – a common bond that I can’t quite shake off.
The old family home, BH Llandaff, may have gone, but the memories live on.
Buildings are nothing without people, just bricks and mortar, and it is in the memories of those colleagues, the beer in the club and the coffees in the canteen that it all really lives on
KEEP your fingers crossed, please. After 12 months of to-ing and fro-ing on two potential first-time buys, this ageing 20-something may just be moving out of her parents’ home before she turns 30 this summer. This will be my sixth time flying the nest, if you count moving back each summer during three years of university. In Cardiff. What can I say? I’m a bit of a home-bird.
First, it was to the second or third-choice student halls on Senghennydd Road, Cathays, in a box room with a single bed and a shared bathroom, but the birthplace of true friendships I hold dear to this day.
Then there was one half of the attic a stones’throw away on Richards Street, in a student house of seven where the Sainsbury’s a minute’s walk away on Woodville Road quickly became a daily destination.
Then, to Flora Street to an all-girls quintet, where my electric blanket was a saviour during the winter months and the tiny sitting room played host to 10-year-old me’s dream, a Disney-themed 21st birthday party. I was Tinker Bell, I had wings and I took glitter into town to throw in the air while dancing. Some Dalmatians came, the maid Fifi from
Beauty And The Beast and a few princesses.
Then, to Cathays Terrace, to the goldfish bowl luxe flat with floor-to-ceiling windows where I lived well beyond my means and was forced to return up the A470 some time later, only to head back down to a gorgeous grown-up house share in Angus Street,
Roath, with some beautiful people inside and out, and Freddie the fluffy cat.
RICHARD Mylan vividly remembers the first time he took heroin. He was in his early-20s, having just spent several years appearing on stage in the musical Starlight Express. During his time in the West End he had fallen into the habit of drinking and taking cocaine, but he’d never dreamed of touching heroin. Then, after leaving the show, he found himself with more time on his hands and less structure in his life – and in the company of a friend who took heroin.
“I really did not approve at all, but it just took one night of weakness really where I thought, ‘Okay, let’s see what this is all about’,” he says. “It was the biggest mistake of my life because that that moment changed my life completely. I smoked it and as soon as I as I exhaled, I knew I was in trouble. I knew instantly.
“I’d suffered a lot with poor mental health – anxiety, depression – and it immediately took me away from it. No other drug had done that to me.”
Mylan was living in London but had grown up in Swansea, in a working class, single parent family. When he was 12 years old, he was accepted into the Urdang Academy in London and Swansea council gave him a full grant to go there to train as an actor.
“I suddenly went from a working class family in Swansea to lodging with an upper class family in a mansion apartment in Baron’s Court,” he says. “That was a real kind of culture shock for me.
“I remember they asked what I liked to eat and I listed burgers, fish fingers and chips. They introduced me to alien foods – things like quails’ eggs and asparagus. I adapted quickly, but it was a real shock to the system.”
By the time he was in his mid-20s he was living in London as a professional actor, but gaps between jobs created an opportunity to descend further into addiction.
“At first I decided I needed to treat heroin really carefully – like a fine wine and so it became an occasional reward. I’d work and then my treat to myself – I’d have a little blowout with some heroin.
“It was only every now and then, but then, of course, the reward mentality takes over and you start treating yourself for getting up in the morning. The lines get blurred and the times on it become more pronounced until you’re spending longer on it and having to detox for longer periods.
“I basically got into a rhythm of working and then, when I wasn’t working, pretty much using all the time, then cleaning up to go back to work.” This meant repeatedly going cold turkey.
“It was horrendous. But then, in a weird way, it was all part of it. It’s almost part of the mentality around self-harm, because it was part of the punishment of it and dealing with that just became a part of it.”
As he fell deeper into addiction, his social life changed and he found himself spending more and more time with drug dealers and users.
“It wasn’t just heroin, it was crack cocaine as well, so I mixed in very dangerous, chaotic circles,” he says. “But I met some incredible people. The perception of drug addicts is that they don’t have personalities, but the people I mixed with were highly intelligent and had overactive minds.
“As I got deeper and deeper into it, I got myself into deeper circles. I remember being in dealers’ houses, in crack dens. I was mixing with homeless people a lot.
It was a different world, but I just became a part of it, so it didn’t feel like an alien world to me – it was now my world.”
Richard had fallen into drug use as a way to escape emotional pain, but as his drug use intensified, his mental health worsened. Heroin started to take over his life and work became less of a priority.
“I got to the point where I could not function straight. It started to really take away my life, taking chunks of me away. Drugs were the priority, so I started to work less and use more. And