I'm going to a lot of these leaving functions these days, all part of the passage of time in a working career. Today it was the turn of Alan Baker, the outgoing Media Manager for BBC Information & Archives Television Services - or as I first knew him in 1993 the Natural History Unit Film Librarian. Alan was the first ever person I met at the BBC as he interviewed me for a job in Bristol in October 1993. I worked for Alan for 7 years until I moved over into the BBC management area. Tonight after 24 years Alan leaves the BBC for pastures new, probably back in his native Scotland at some point in the not too distant future.
It was a lovely send off with staff old and new there to wish him well which was a good time to catch up with old colleagues. The above photograph is the moment Dave Cox in black unveiled a mock up Radio Times from the week Alan began at the BBC (the original cover was Jason Donovan). This went down very well with the watching crowd. So that's the end of an era. With the departure of Alan there is nobody left at the BBC who was there when I arrived and who has either not left, or left and returned. It seems strange to be becoming an elder staff member. I arrived at a time before e-mail, before computer terminals, before DVD and a time which seems like a foreign land now. How have I become this relic from an era that now seems as far away as Victorian England?
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