Exec producer Mark Cooper pays tribute to BBC Television Centre, as Later… moves out

Tonight, 30 November 2012, BBC2 transmits the last Later with Jools Holland from BBC Television Centre with a cast including star siren Lana Del Rey, exciting new talents like The Weeknd, Tom Odell, Tift Merrit and Palma Violets and legends like Soul II Soul and Nona Hendryx. Of course the actual filming and the transmitting of Later Live took place this Tuesday as cast, crew and a lively audience marked the end of Later…'s twenty happy years here in Shepherds Bush with as much great music as possible.

After 20 years, 41 series and more than 275 shows - not to mention 80-plus live editions since we went live on Tuesday, April 1, 2009 - Later… is comfortably the longest-running large studio show still in production at BBC TV Centre. Well it was until Tuesday!

It made for an emotional show for us and for the artists, who I think could tell what the occasion meant to the production team. The Weeknd, Tom Odell and Palma Violets had never appeared on television before and we tried to make them feel as welcome as all the acts who've passed through our scene dock doors...

Read the full article now at broadcastnow.co.uk

What we've been tweeting throughout the week...

Monday we told you that Nemone had snagged a rare interview with Four Tet over on 6 Music, where he discussed his new album, Pink, among other things.

In February Rebecca Mounsey completed her contract with the BBC's Production Training Scheme - eighteen months of training and working in placements across both TV and Radio productions. BBC Four's Punk Britannia is her first production working in her new role as an Assistant Producer.

Last summer we collaborated with BBC Music Online to explore the Arena archive and choose a selection of clips to go online. There are now more than 150 clips up on the Arena webpage.

Music has always been close to Arena's heart and with an archive of over 500 programmes, running from 1978 onwards, there are countless musical treasures stashed in the archive.

Many programmes contain one-off performances and interviews with an eclectic mix of the most celebrated and left-field musicians of the twentieth century: Van Morrison, Nico, Dire Straits, Celia Cruz, Joe Meek, Jerry Lee Lewis, Tammy Wynette, Poly Styrene and Gilberto Gil - to name just a few.

Previously, we showcased Arena: Produced by George Martin. Clips from the documentary feature alongside clips of Cilla Black singing along with Liverpool supporters and Charlie Drake throwing a boomerang in his back yard - among other unexpected delights.

We felt that it would be fun to do something similar with all these music clips. So here they are - Joy, Rage, Despair and Hope, Yearning and Wanderlust.

I'm a Pop Star!, the last but by no means least of a three part BBC TWO series, is all about the men and women who go it alone, armed with just a microphone, some songs and an unquenchable desire to be pop top dog.

Not wanting to share the limelight with anyone suggests an ego of gargantuan proportion. But after meeting lots of solo stars and, chatting with them at some length, I have come to the perhaps surprising conclusion: they aren't all egotistical attention seekers. Of course some are. Like Adam Ant who openly admits: "I'm egotistical, you have to be to be a pop star". But there are others who are surprisingly shy and rather introverted, like Rick Astley and Nik Kershaw, both of whom were not only gobsmacked by the raging sea of screaming fans that greeted their first performance but also slightly mortified at being the only one in the spotlight. Such is the complexity of being a solo artist, whose face adorns many a teenager's wall and provided them with their first crush. (Talking of which, my Rick Astley poster - I think my mum still has it. And 20 years later he didn't disappoint!)

Anyway, back to the show. Of course most solo acts are fixated on one thing. They unashamedly admit to wanting to be No.1. No other chart position will do. Cliff Richard, famous for having rather a lot of them, still admits:

"If you make records, the only reason you make records is to be number one; that's the only thing. But that's what you aim at. I've never heard of anyone who says 'I just want to get to number 30'. It's a waste of time, isn't it"

In this film we set out to define the pop star. Broadly speaking pop stars fall into two categories. There are the soldiers. The ones being led along often by a Svengali figure. And then there are the generals. The ones that forge their own paths. Adam Ant was one such general whose extraordinary vision brought us such pop brilliance as 'The Dandy Highway Man' and the Prince Charming dance! Genius.

Of course it's the solo pop act, perhaps more than the boy band or girl group, that becomes the object of a young girl's or boy's affection. Often, to a rather alarming degree. Gary Numan told of girls wetting themselves when they met him. Will Young got cornered in the frozen food department of M&S and Mika got trapped in a hotel lift with crazed fan, wearing only a towel! You'll have to watch the film to find out why.

I also wanted to unravel the complex lifecycle of a solo pop career. With some notable exceptions, Madonna for one, the solo pop star has a shelf life. It's a cruel and fickle world and, like Alesha Dixon says:

"I think it's really important to have a thick skin when you're in the music industry, because you're working with a lot of sharks and you're working with a lot of ruthless people that will drop you like you're a penny. They won't care. It's a business"

One of the things that moved me the most about making this show was the artists' honesty. We're all expecting stories of brilliant careers, chart-topping successes and musical prowess. But perhaps more surprisingly are the rather more complex, often heart-breaking tales of being a star on your own, with no team mates.

Jason Donovan was the quintessential teen heartthrob, poster boy of 80s pop. Multiple No.1s. Dating Kylie, pop's princess. Star of one of the West End's biggest musicals. Even though he couldn't sing really well (by his own admission), he couldn't stop selling catchy pop records. Led by 80s pop Svengali Pete Waterman, the pop world was at his feet. But he wanted more:

"I was Joseph at The Palladium, on a huge wage with a big record, a hit show, um, you know, and I wanted to be Kurt Cobain from Nirvana. I did, that's what I wanted to be. I looked at myself in the loin cloth in the mirror, and thought 'what the hell are you doing?'"

After spiralling out of control and into drug rehab, his career seemed over. It's a touching and sad pop career trajectory. And Jason's honesty in the show is admirable:

"Sitting in the back of an ambulance, having collapsed from cocaine, is a particular moment in my life, I feel, um, I'm not proud of. I'm through it. And that's never gonna happen again."

And the heartfelt admissions don't stop there. From Adam Ant's nervous breakdown to Gary Numan's musical downward spiral, pop's fickle world has had its casualties. But hey! Without them the world would be a worse place. They've given us something to obsess over, someone to have your first crush on. They have brought us the soundtrack to our lives. So to those who serve on the pop front line - we salute you.

Following on from last years 'I'm in a Rock n Roll Band!' series for BBC2, which sought to explore and unpack the inner workings of how great rock n roll bands work, 'I'm in a Boy Band!' kicks off a three part series looking into the wonderful world of Pop.

The intention with 'I'm in a Boy Band!' was to use the first hand testament of a cross-generational cast to examine what makes up a great Boy Band and to really get under the skin of the male Pop group experience.

The first challenge we faced was, of course, one of definition. What actually is a Boy Band? For many the term represents something of a dirty phrase. A byword for manufactured and the antithesis of authenticity in popular music. But the truth is never that simple. The concept of 'authenticity' in pop music has always been a shaky one at best in my opinion. From the very start our intention was to open up the definition of the Boy Band and explore the commonality, as well as the differences between, 50 years' worth of what is arguably pops most enduring format.

Whether manufactured, self-formed, a band of brothers or a group of strangers; this meant taking everyone from the Four Tops, to the Monkees via the Jackson 5 and on to the likes of One Direction and JLS and applying the same set of standards and principles in an attempt to find some underlying truths at the heart of the Boy Band experience.

Certain timeless traits began to emerge; the importance of having strongly defined characters, a sense of uniformity, sex appeal, as well as an underlying tension between the desire for self-expression and the need for group harmony.

But as well as exploring these larger topics, our interviews also produced their fair share of amusing insights and anecdotes. Personal highlights include; Merrill Osmond casually mentioning the fact that Chuck Norris was The Osmond's Karate mentor and choreographer, Aston from JLS being ribbed by his band mates for being the 'cute one' in the band and the only surviving member of the Four Tops getting so wound up in describing the glory of harmonising that he uses some language Sid Vicious would have been proud of.

In addition to these stories it was fascinating to hear of the personal challenges involved in leaving a Boy Band and getting to grips with life after Pop stardom. I am very grateful for the frankness and candour of the cast for giving us a genuine flavour of the perennial highs and lows of life in the eye of a Pop storm.

I'm sure some of you will question the inclusion and exclusion of certain acts in this documentary... and quite rightly so! In many ways I feel that is one of the jobs of a show like this - to take a view and to instigate debate. These programmes can never be absolute; they are a mixture research, ideas and an application of the best available material. But I do hope the result is an unapologetic and celebratory look at the world of the Boy Band.

'Boy Band' shouldn't be a dirty word, quite the opposite; it has been the channel through which some of the greatest songs, images, characters and youthful memories have flowed for generation after generation of screaming fans ... and long may it continue to be so.