Please cover up

QPR's plans for a new stadium and ma-hoosive development at Old Oak, north of the Westway and close to what's left of Wormwood Scrubs, looks like a smart move. They've already got strategic control of 100 acres, the support of Hammersmith and Fulham, the GLA - and the fixing skills of Antony Spencer, who advised Arsenal in the development of the Emirates, and is also helping Brentford with their plans for a new ground.

Public transport ought to be a doddle - accessible from North Acton, Willesden Green, and, probably, the proposed CrossRail/HS2 interchange at Old Oak Common. Some may even arrive by canal boat, with the development running alongside the Grand Union Canal. Altogether a much better idea than a once-mooted move to a tiny parcel of land south of Television Centre on Wood Lane.

But please, can we please consider a stadium with a retractable roof ?  Modern Desso-style pitches are getting better and stronger, and clubs need to look at getting more use out of their investments. A roof should enable more varied events - and less disruption when they are pop concerts.

A Tale of Two Chickens

Illustrative of the haves and have-nots of Islington: two offers off Highbury Corner, heading towards the Balls Pond Road.

Quartered

Bush House no more - the old home of the BBC World Service is to be renamed "The Aldwych Quarter". Japanese owner Kato Kagaku is clearly anticipating a mixture of tenants for the redeveloped 300,000 square feet of offices, and has let a contract worth some £52m to ISG to carry out the works. All four buildings will get a new roof, external clean-up and dedicated receptions. 14 lifts will be replaced - and one new one added. Unsurprisingly, there'll be new toilets.

The portico, main entrance, marble staircases and lobbies will be repaired, cleaned and preserved.

The site was hit by a fire last month on one roof, as workers were carrying out a soft-strip of the buildings ahead of the main contract starting.

Top billing

It's a week since Danny Baker's apparently terminal rant against the decision to drop his Radio London weekday afternoon show. The agile management has been defending the move, but it's clearly taking up a lot of time - the online schedules have the most marginal updates. Can you see the words Gary Crowley here ?

Showrooms vacated

Radio 1 began to move out of Yalding House today, with its first live broadcast from new studios in the Broadcasting House penthouse on air at 0400am.

All of the 30,463 sq foot of Yalding will eventually be handed back to owners British Land, when 1Xtra and Newsbeat make the move. British Land want to re-develop it. Yalding came into the BBC's portfolio first as a home for The Music Department (which meant mainly The Third Programme, then Radio 3), with the ground floor used to store orchestral and band music.  The floor was ideal - as it had been previously strengthened for use as a car showroom.

In the 1930s, Great Portland Street was known as Motor Row - with a total of 33 car showrooms (including Brock House) at the peak. Here's a soundless Pathe clip from 1933, when they launched the area as "Britain's Permanent Motor Show". The dais might just be in front of Brock....

LONDON'S PERMANENT MOTOR SHOW! aka LONDON'S PAERMANENT

Spartan

Heaven help us all. Saskia Feltz reporting on a squishy mobile, into mother Vanessa's Radio London show, babbling about the Paralympic Torch procession near Abbey Road. Let's hope no fee was involved...

listen to ‘Chip off the old block? Saskia Feltz - Vanessa's daughter - reports on the paralympic flame ’ on Audioboo

Too much fun ?

You have to look hard in architect Penson's designs for Google in London for what you might call "ordinary" office space.  They've taken 160,000 sq foot (traditionally enough space for around 200 employees) atop one of Renzo Piano's multicoloured building blocks at Central St Giles, and turned it into a sitcom set for an internet giant. They claim there are 1250 "seats and desks".

Penson is Lee Penson, and the 39-year-old self-professed wunderkind has few pretensions. His website celebrates with equal fervour jobs for a Premier Inn, a Ramada Encore in Leicester, the fact that OK magazine have done a shoot in boutique hotel Stoke Place, and that Lee likes parties and sailing. 

Here's a few Google shots - there's plenty more here in Dezeen.  

The show goes on....

Whilst many local sports fans will bemoan the lack of football chat in the evenings on BBC Local Radio in the coming season, non-league fans will get a national show as a result of Delivering Quality First. Radio London has played host to The Non League Show on Monday evenings for five years, and this season the slot has to go to make way for the 7pm-10pm national gabfest imposed on English local radio to save money. Now, sensibly, Radio Five Live has picked it up.

The new timing is not ideal - 0530 on a Sunday morning, starting on August 19 (it'll be recorded on the Saturday night) - but most listen to it as a podcast already.

Caroline Barker is the creator and presenter of the show, and runs an interesting multimedia company, Jibba Jabba.

Where are we ? (Part 3)

Anything odd about Friday's coverage of the Euro 2012 draw on BBC2 ?  Apart from Lineker's Movember moustache still being in place ?

The wires from the Ukraine Palace of Arts in Kiev clearly only stretched as far as the old Match of the Day set in London, not to the glitzy new one on MediaCityUK.   How long will they keep it in operation ?

University challenge

University College London wants to build a second campus, on a site in Newham - right next to the Olympic Park. It's a 15 hectare plot called Greater Carpenters Neighbourhood.  It seems a shame it's across the road - surely having a university at its heart would have ensured a better, more vibrant legacy for the Park and Olympic Village than bashing it into flats ?

The London Boroughs of Westfield

Lest Westfield White City is feeling out of it after all the attention given to Westfield at Stratford, the Bush now strikes back. An outline planning application (still strangely without drawings) was lodged at the end of August to beef up the White City site. Property Week says it amounts to a £1bn extension. They want three new blocks ranging from eight to 20 storeys high, connected to the existing centre by a high level podium; an 8-12 storey free-standing block to the south of Wood Lane Station; a building up to 8 storeys high to the east of the DIMCO Building (grade II listed, now serving as a bus depot); and a 4-5 storey addition to western wall of the existing shopping centre along Wood Lane. In all that, there'll be shops, restaurants, offices, and some 1,600 residential units. What chance does that give Auntie of selling Television Centre for the next ten years or so ?

Police records

David Cameron (Brasenose, Oxford) and Boris Johnson (Balliol, Oxford) will want assurances that the next man at the head of the Metropolitan Police is "one of us".

Will it be Stephen House (University of Aberdeen and Strathclyde Police),Tim Godwin (Warsash College of Nautical Studies, University of Portsmouth and Acting Met Commissioner), Sir Hugh Orde (University of Kent and ACPO) or Bernard Hogan-Howe (Merton, Oxford and temporary Deputy Met Commissioner) ?

Riot

Police last night were apparently warning journalists off using the word riot to describe the events in Tottenham. This is the opening definition from the 1986 Public Order Act.

Part I

New Offences
1 Riot.

1. Where 12 or more persons who are present together use or threaten unlawful violence for a common purpose and the conduct of them (taken together) is such as would cause a person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for his personal safety, each of the persons using unlawful violence for the common purpose is guilty of riot.
2. It is immaterial whether or not the 12 or more use or threaten unlawful violence simultaneously.
3. The common purpose may be inferred from conduct.
4. No person of reasonable firmness need actually be, or be likely to be, present at the scene.
5. Riot may be committed in private as well as in public places.
6. A person guilty of riot is liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years or a fine or both.

You probably went to bed seeing two police cars and a bus on fire, plus some smaller shops - and with a memorable image of one lad pushing a loaded shopping trolley away from the High Street. Sky News this morning made it clear that two major buildings were gutted - Aldi and Carpetright - because police couldn't protect fire crews. There were some 26 flats above Carpetright (a former large Co-op store) - and residents were only evacuated after midnight. Meanwhile we've seen no pictures yet of the looting at the Tottenham Hale retail park. 

Probably safe to talk about rioting now.   If you've watched Sky News.  I know BBC News reporters and crews got roughed up, and had equipment damaged last night, but this morning's 0600-0730 offering on BBC1 was a very uncomfortable watch for people wanting to find out what happened....  

Olympic odds and ends

The Telegraph says the seats have been ordered for the Olympic Stadium in Stratford, and they are all either black or white. Somehow, they'll be arranged to pick out the London logo on opposite sides of the arena. But let's hope we don't see much of them - let's hope the best pictures are taken when it's full of people.

I've also noted a lack of journalistic investigation into one burning question. Who was inside the Wenlock and Mandeville suits at the launch in London ? The Teletubby operators made several news stories, and there used to be some interest as to who was inside the Womble suits when they were on Top of the Pops. (Andy Price, formerly a reporter for You and Yours, was a "reserve").

Wenlock looked rather poorly padded at St Paul's School in Whitechapel. It can't have been Roger Mosey...

Not a Wicker Man

Antony Gormley has designed a sculpture you can stay in. It's a stainless steel creation planned to sit on the roof of the "Avis" building, which lies between London's Oxford Street and Grosvenor Square, which is being redeveloped as a hotel. The suite in the sculpture will have a bedroom, dressing room and bathroom - so I suspect it's not as transparent as the drawing suggest...

Found via Building Design.

Identity crisis

The cultural strength of Berlin is on the up, and its economy is beginning to follow, if an article in The Guardian is to be believed. The city is beginning to live up to the slogan coined by its mayor, Klaus Wowereit, "Berlin: arm, aber sexy" (poor, but sexy).

Meanwhile Design Week believes that the contract to deliver a new London "identity", paid for by the GLA, has gone to Saffron Brand Consultants, and its boss Wally Olins. Gawd knows what the brief is, but you can bet even BoJo won't be as pithy and to-the-point as Klaus. Who needs consultants when you've got a phrase-maker like Herr Wowereit ?

Stokey

I made a daytime visit to Stoke Newington yesterday. The young-ish mums were all braving the treacherous pavements with their buggies, and woe betide anyone who a) gets in their way when they are in motion or b) harrumphs when a cluster of mewling prams blocks a pavement entirely.

Mother to infant on bus "Another rice cracker, Phoebe ?"

No view

A budget hotel, with 495 "windowless" rooms between 12m2 and 17m2, is the latest plan for The Trocadero overlooking Picadilly Circus, London, according to Building Design. The first three floors will be kept for "retail and leisure" - not clear what might replace Planet Hollywood.












Architects Dexter Moren have made something of a speciality of mid-price hotels around London - the nicest exterior being provided for the new Novotel at Paddington. The facade of the Trocadero, however, will be retained. It's likely that flats with get the windows on the upper floors.

Figure skating

Excellent listening figures for the big BBC networks in the latest RAJARs, including a ten year high for Radio 4, and progress for Radio 3.

As BBC executives consider the shape and size of the organisation, at the behest of chairman Sir Michael Lyons, it's mixed news for the digital-only stations. Radio 7, probably the cheapest to run, is at a respectable 884,000 reach. 1Xtra (547,000) and 6Music (624,000) - stable, but not progressing much. The Asian Network, having first tried extra investment in news, and now, nurtured by Andy Parfitt, trying to boost music, looks to be struggling at 357,000.

In London, LBC 97.3's commercial brand of speech seems to have taken off in the recession - 907,000 (1,045,000 counting listeners elsewhere in the UK) is really strong, while BBC Radio London is weaker, at 405,000.

Who next, Boris ?

Sir Richard Rogers has resigned as an architectural advisor to Boris Johnson. From Building Design's account, there seems to be no rancour, but a slight sense of frustration from the knight at actually doing things within initiatives like Great Spaces. Who stands next in London with the same weight and experience ?