For The Record: Auntie goes West; The Guardian's tax affairs; Twycross Zoo's advertising drive
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Auntie goes West
Shoppers at the fancy new Westfield mall, across the street from the BBC's Television Centre in west London, have been amazed to discover that certain vantage points give views of the recording studios, offering glimpses of the making of shows such as Strictly Come Dancing. This has given ideas to the high-ups at the BBC for how the whole Shepherd's Bush neighbourhood could be reinvented to create an interactive broadcasting theme park. TVC itself might be a basket case of an asbestos-ridden building, but the corporation bosses now have their eyes on the land to the north of Westfield. There's even talk of an amphitheatre for open air music performances, as the Beeb currently has no such facility. With the television industry in turmoil, other broadcasters could be invited in as partners. Amazing what a few upmarket shops can do to make the once dowdy London W12 district feel like home again.
A Value judgement
2The hand-wringing goes on at The Guardian as it tries to move on from the fiasco of last year's Tesco story by relentlessly probing the wider world of corporate tax. Its investigation is made all the more complicated by the fact that Guardian Media Group set up a Cayman Islands company to minimise its own tax liability. After readers bombarded its website with accusations of "hypocrisy", The Guardian has issued an "update" in which it responds to "the outrage on this thread", by saying that at least the newspaper had not "allowed its reporting to be influenced by Guardian Media Group's handling of its own tax affairs". Big round of applause.
Animal magic
Twycross Zoo is to have an advertising drive and has been through a lengthy selection process during which five agencies pitched for the business before the account went to Golley Slater. All a waste of time, surely, when Twycross has, within its midst, one of the great hot houses in British creative advertising. I refer, of course, to the chimpanzee enclosure, from where the talent emerged for probably the greatest of all British ad campaigns... "PG Tips – it's the taste."
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