Escape From the Carnival Part 2: Undersea Chaos at SEA LIFE London

The BP Portrait Award 2012

For day two of the Carnival we had planned an alternative escape route.  Rather than hiding out at Stonehenge, we would take part in some urban camouflage in the heart of the Southbank.  Before the main action we made a small detour to the National Portrait Gallery to check out the BP Portrait Award 2012.  This was a great warm up for the day ahead, below were a few of my favourites from the exhibition in no particular order:

Mr Kitazawa's Noodle Bar, Tokyo - Carl Randall
Still Waiting - Antonio Barahona
Rasputin always wins - Paul Moyse
Wes's Dream - Erin Wozniak

You can view the above pictures and info from the exhibition here: BP Portrait Award 2012


Las Iguanas
After a little taste of art it was time to fill our stomachs.  We settled on Las Iguanas, a Central and South American themed restaurant on the Southbank.  Las Iguanas appealed due to the cheapish looking lunch menu, the lack of a wait for a table and a feeling that if it were half as good as Wahaca we'd have a decent lunch.  We were quickly shown to a nice corner table in the downstairs part of the restaurant.  Sadly a common trick was in use today, advertise a cheap deal outside on the menu board, but once you get the customer sat down the deal is nowhere to be seen.  Instead we were offered a two for one on cocktails which we gladly accepted.  The cocktails weren't amazing but they did make for a very pretty picture.  The food was decent and came quickly, nicely presented and full of flavour.  Service was fine.  It was time for the bill and the chance to join the crowds for the privilege of queuing for the London Aquarium, or Sealife London as it calls itself these days.

SEA LIFE London Aquarium

Thankfully we had booked our tickets for the aquarium online that morning.  We took advantage of an after 3 PM special offer with reduced price entry and access to the priority queue.  If we hadn't have booked this offer we would have certainly walked away as the main queue was chaotic and slow moving and the admission charge is high.  Thankfully we waited barely ten minutes in the priority queue.  We hadn't been to the aquarium in some time and I remember it was busy in places on that occasion too.  Today however, it was crazy with people pushing each other in the dark on the way down to see the fishes.  The aquarium was worth about three hours plus of our time and we enjoyed watching the small children point out the "Happy Feet" and the "Finding Nemos"!  After a while of getting accustomed to the crowds and staying clear of the pushers it became an increasingly enjoyable visit thanks to the huge range of sea creatures on show and the chance to get up really close to them.  We also got to take some great pictures as well.

I Confess (Alfred Hitchcock, 1953)
I was looking forward to the next part of the day as we approached early evening on the Southbank, Alfred Hitchcock's, I Confess at the BFI.  I am a big Hitchcock fan with Vertigo and North by Northwest being two of my favourites but I was looking forward to I Confess as it looked like a simple tale of guilt and suspense.  The film is about a priest (Montgomery Clift) who is framed for killing a man thanks to a less than plausible alibi.  He is unable to clear his name, as the perpetrator of the crime Otto Keller, (O.E. Hasse) is someone close to him who has admitted to the crime whilst in confession knowing that the priest cannot say a word to anyone as it is against his faith to do so.  As the film progresses, the priest becomes more and more involved in the murder case.  However, he stays true to his beliefs by not giving up the suspect.  Eventually cracks appear, but it is not the priest that caves in.  After being found not guilty in a court of law to the disgust of all in the court room our priest walks free to cries of abuse from the crowd who all expected him to be found guilty.  Our murderer still can’t help himself and as his wife tries to give him up he shoots at her and the priest, fatally wounding his wife and giving the game away.   As the police and the priest chase him down he is still unaware and has deluded himself into thinking the priest finally talked as he is shot down by the police.   I Confess is a really well put together film in that all the characters have something to hide, have all trusted the wrong people or have betrayed the ones they love.  There is also an interesting political element/allegory with the criminal being German.  I was now looking forward to a tasty dinner to discuss the film over.


The Riverside
After years and years of walking past and saying no, we decided to try the Riverside at the BFI for dinner and it was a great choice, albeit the menu is a touch limited for regular visits.  The food is decent value for money and best of all there was no need to queue to get a table which on the Southbank is a big bonus when you are often quoted an hours wait for restaurants you'd not normally give the time of day to.  I went with the pulled pork burger with chips washed down with a pint of Heineken and finished up with a cup of coffee that smelt better than it tasted.  We then enjoyed the scenic walk back across the bridge to Embankment tube and off home, hoping we'd dodged the carnival for another year.

National Portrait Gallery - 2 St.Martin's Place London WC2H 0HE
SEALIFE London - County Hall, Westminster Bridge Road, London SE1 7PB
BFI - Belvedere Road, South Bank SE1 8XT

BBC Studio Tour

This is the BBC!
When: April 2012
Where:  BBC Television Centre, White City

Sometimes it's easy to forget about the things close to home and as the old song goes, "You don't know what you got till it's gone".  With that in mind we decided to book a tour of BBC's Television Centre before it is sold off and possibly shut down.  On a rainy afternoon we made the short journey to White City and began the tour.  I was looking forward to see a live, living, breathing workplace filled to the brim with memories and perhaps a show being filmed.  We were one of the last to arrive at the reception area where we were warmly greeted and handed our BBC Tours identity tag.  We were met by two bright young guides who led us back out into the rain to go through security and then up to a nice little photo op if you are a fan of either Dr. Who of The Voice. I am not a fan of either but it was still a good ice breaker.

Our first stop proper was the news room area.  Most of the filming is no longer done in London but is instead done in Manchester and the majority of the journalists don't work in the news room at the weekends as news rarely breaks at the weekend (mostly it's just sports headlines like Chelsea spanking QPR - YAY!) I did enjoy watching the news tickers they had and I was also unaware that the BBC is the largest news gathering agency in the world ahead of CNN and Reuters.  It was also interesting to know that the BBC only used fully paid up journalists for their news shows rather than TV presenters and this meant that those who read the news could also interview (or often interrogate) their guests to a high and critical standard that was not possible in the past.

We then walked over to the original main entrance to Television Centre where we learned that the circular design of the building was both to compensate for the odd shape of the land and also that it made it very easy to walk from one studio to the next across the atrium in the middle.  The entrance is a listed building and will be preserved in someway when the building is eventually sold.
After that it was on to an actual studio, this studio was the one used to film Strictly Come Dancing, however on this occasion it was empty.  The most interesting part of this section of the tour was that for reasons of cost they would build the set and dismantle it weekly for this show due to the cost of renting out the studio.  The level of detail that goes into setting up a studio is quite frightening and even as someone who likes to think they know a bit about film and TV, from the lighting, soundproofing, flooring and the reason why the walls are painted black!

It was then time to visit the MOTD studios, except it was just a replica as Match of the Day was now shot at the Manchester studios, you could sit and have your photo taken but it didn't feel quite right to do so with a replica set.  Interestingly it seemed as though Channel 5 now shoots its football show here instead.  In fact from walking around it seemed most of the shows shot here were not for the BBC.

Up next was the weather area, this was actually pretty interesting as the studios for the forecast are fully automated and the presenters are all fully trained meteorologists who write and present their own material.  Also they are standard civil servants rather than private employees of the BBC and have contracts and a working day that reflect this.  The forecasters also work across media (TV, Radio and Online) as well.  We got to watch a forecast being delivered and had a little fun with a green screen!

The penultimate stage of our tour was visiting some of the green rooms or dressing rooms where stars are kept before a show.  There are different types of dressing room depending on the star's status, apparently Prince, Jennifer Lopez and James Brown had some of the most interesting demands.  The stories were more exciting than the dressing rooms which were a little crowded for a group of 20+

The final stage was where we got to see the magic happen, four lucky (or unlucky) souls got to participate in a spot of Weakest Link and a News Broadcast for the rest of us to enjoy and watch.  After this it was time to say our good byes as we exited through the gift shop.  In all a fun but slightly underwhelming way to spend a few hours.  At least there was a trip to Wahaca to follow which as usual did not disappoint.  In all the tour did not quite meet my expectations.  I was hoping to see a little more action, but it seems everyone has moved up to Manchester where the new Media Village is whilst Television Centre was cutting edge in its day, HD, the Internet and 24 hour TV have slowly made it obsolete.  Whilst it was not the most exciting afternoon out ever it was worth it to see what would soon be a piece of history.