TSDOAL2012OV – The International Broadcast Centre
Tucked away in a remote corner of the Olympic Park is a special building known as the International Broadcast Centre, if by remote corner you mean right next to the giant hockey stadium just below the Velodrome, and by tucked away you mean the biggest most grotesque building in the whole park.
The building is basically a giant warehouse full of TV studios from every country imaginable, which are apparently fair game to just wander into, and although I’m unaware of having made it onto TV as yet, I have wandered into quite a few and since I don’t comb through the news of every major network in the world there is a small chance that I might be seen wandering in the background of the daily review on Argentina TV1.
The BBC also have a studio in here which has slightly more potent security (see: I managed 2 steps into the room before the sight of an enormous guard advancing towards me lead to an about-turn that would put most of the army in the park to shame). HOWEVER, even BBC personnel need to use the toilets, and so it was to my great honour that yesterday, I found myself entering the toilet to find the one and only GARY LINEKER just finishing his business in there. I was in such shock that I failed to speak, and three seconds later he had exited, yes you guessed it, WITHOUT WASHING HIS HANDS. For those of you gagging to know, I obviously used the same urinal, and no I didn’t see IT.
There is also an amusing room called the rest room, which isn’t a “restroom” for you Americans out there (the toilet section of this entry was covered in the above paragraph), but in fact a room for the media to literally rest in, which generally ends up with sleep. A visit to the rest room is always sure to be entertaining as you enter a hideous cacophony of snoring journalists as you splash through the drool on the floor and then wonder why exactly you are watching a bunch of sleeping men, then realise it is an amusing topic for a secret diary entry and splash your way back out again.
Lastly, there is the 3D cinema which is what it sounds like. I’m not a massive fan of 3D in the first place but I figured I’d give it a chance, thinking it might be cool to see Usain Bolt speeding out of the screen towards me but knowing I wouldn’t get mowed down. In fact, the racing is mainly filmed from the side so this isn’t the case, but the slow motion replays are from all sorts of angles. What I forgot about was the nature of the skin tight nature of the leotards donned by most athletes, and after having Tyson Gay’s ass shoved in my face for the 3rd time in as many minutes I exited the cinema, my eyes scarred and wondering why so much of my day in the broadcast centre had revolved around men’s bodies.