Queen Margaret Drive
Today I found myself back at Queen Margaret Drive in Glasgow, having been invited to give a short talk to my colleagues in the Gaelic department. I took the opportunity to walk through the newsroom which has now been vacated by the radio team. It was good to see one familiar face. James Cook - working for television today - spotted me wandering aimlessly through the empty desks and called me over for a chat.
Then later, I received an e-mail from Scotland at Ten presenter, Colin MacKay, who was also feeling a little nostalgic about our old H.Q. He's given me permission to reproduce his thoughts here:
" I first entered the portals of BH Gw in, I think, 1958 or 59 when, in my early teens, I came to be a boy actor with Kathleen Garscadden in Children's Hour on the Scottish 91Èȱ¬ Service. This course of action had been suggested to me by a TV designer whom I met in his Portakabin office near the West Gate, as the contractors were putting up the extension to the original QM College building. My careers master at school the other side of the Botanic Gardens was a friend of his, and the upshot was the designer said I should try hands-on broadcasting to see if I wanted to make it my career.
Some days later, I nervously auditioned before Iain Cuthbertson, Effie Morrison, Bryden Murdoch, Leonard Maguire and other then repertory acting luminaries who were preparing for that night's programme. Kathleen smiled and said she thought I'd "do" … and I did Children's Hour on-and-off for four or five years before university and then 25 years of ITV took me away from all that.
So, to return in 1992 to the scene of my childhood training and the affirmation of my desire to be a broadcaster, and to resume working in the medium I had started in, seemed a most natural progression.
I will leave here tonight with very mixed feelings - excitement, obviously, about the brand-new experience of PQ but also great affection for this auld place. The intimacy of radio, its ability to create panoramic pictures in the mind by the use of words and sounds and silences - I had the privilege of realising its potential a long time ago in this very building."
Well said Colin and if you want to have your old stroll through the old building then you can double-click on this little You Tube film. I'm still being asked about the ghosts that are said to wander the corridors...maybe you'll spot them yourself.
