The Starlight Laundry - Tinker Tailor Location
POSTED BY CONTROL
"There are three of them, and Alleline. Sweat them George! Tempt them, bully them, any damn thing. Give them whatever they eat. I need time."
With these words in episode 3, Control exhorts Smiley to engage with his four suspects to buy him some time, as he tries to uncover the identity of Gerald the mole. I'm not one for buying merchandise or souvenirs from my favourite television shows, but if anyone marketed a t-shirt with just the words "There are three of them, and Alleline" on it I would be first in a very short queue - I'm still tempted by a set of those replica matryoshka dolls for the bookcase!
As Smiley sets out to interview each suspect his first port of call is 'The Starlight Laundry'. In Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy the laundry is a cover for the Lamplighters' operational base. Headed up by Toby Esterhase, the Lamplighters are a section of 'The Circus' responsible for surveillance, couriering and wiretapping.
Smiley is driving his Rover 2000 SC MkII towards the Starlight Laundry in Woodstock Grove (below left) and, as you can see from the rather low resolution image which Chris found (below right), this was a BBC premises as the time.
In the 1970s Woodstock Grove was home to the BBC Television Training Department, production offices and film cutting rooms. You'll find details about the Television Training that went on at Woodstock Grove on page 5 of this BBC Engineering Magazine.
Woodstock Grove is now a complex of small offices and luxury apartments and this is how it appears today...
This link shows one of the apartments for sale and even includes a mention of Tinker Tailor in the advertising blurb!
Smiley drives into the small courtyard and parks his car. As he gets out of his car (below) we can see a gentleman on the left of the camera. John Rundle recognises him as an extra/background artist who had appeared in quite a few dramas - he specifically remembers him a a police officer in the Chinese Detective.
John Rundle decided to visit the location and he takes up the story...
The very kind caretaker allowed me to wander around the area, including the glazed offices and ground floor corridors and record any images I thought would be needed. It's apparent that a lot of building work has taken place since 1978 with the addition of the glazed office spaces to the left and right of the underground car park entrance. This, coupled with the rebuilding of the lifts, meant I couldn't work out which door Smiley enters the premises from. All the exterior walls have been painted white thus covering up any evidence of some original openings. Perhaps another set of eyes might unravel the mystery!
And John is right. It is very hard to match the shots that appear on screen with the visible architecture that exists today. John did wonder if this internal door in one of the glazed office spaces (bottom right) might at one time have been an external door - perhaps the one Smiley walked through? Unfortunately, we can't be sure but, despite all the changes, John remembers Woodstock Grove from his time working for BBC Television Film Studios Ealing and is certain the scenes of Smiley's arrival were filmed in the courtyard.
He is equally certain the interior scenes in Toby's office are not a match for that location.
Now it was at this point that Chris reminded me we actually had a piece of information suggesting where the scenes in Toby's office were filmed. Marcia Wheeler, the Production Unit Manager on the series, gave an interview in 2022 to the British Entertainment History Project where (at 1 hour, 16 minutes) she mentions the location, while discussing the industrial dispute that disrupted the production of BBC programmes:
It was the end of January before we were shooting again...then there was some dispute about transport which we could more or less work around... there were certain things we couldn't do because we couldn't get things from the centre out. We actually did a day's shooting in Graeme MacDonald's office which was meant to be the laundry at Acton...with Graeme MacDonald's hideous lime green sofa. The designer must have been tearing his hair out because we couldn't move anything.
Although it wasn't their first choice for the location, I think it is perfect. I could absolutely imagine Esterhase choosing those lime green sofas for his office - I suspect he would think they were tasteful and stylish! All of which begs the question - where was Graeme MacDonald's office?
I did find one photo of Graeme MacDonald online (see above) and it looks to me as though he is in an office at BBC Television Centre. The radiator and the window frames don't look like a good match for the office we see on screen though (see below). Could this be his office at Televison Centre or at another location?
It has to be said Chris, John and I were a bit stuck at this point. We really needed help from someone with a bit of inside knowledge about the BBC at that time. And miracles do happen because a BBC insider contacted the website out of the blue a couple of months ago to offer us their assistance. Our new contact would prefer to remain anonymous, so we will credit them as 'Source Merlin' when we draw on their product in future.
Thanks to Source Merlin we now know that the above photo of Graeme MacDonald was taken in Shaun Sutton's old office on the 5th floor of Television Centre. MacDonald succeeded Sutton as Head of Drama at the BBC in 1981, so the photo was probably taken around this time.
In 1977 MacDonald was Head of Serials and Source Merlin can confirm his office (lime green sofas and all) was at Threshold/Union House on Shepherds Bush Green (below) where Serials was based.
The Management offices were at the back of the building and Jonathan Powell's office was on the 5th floor. Merlin thinks that the two scenes in the office (the other being Esterhase's confrontation with Westerby in episode 6) were most likely filmed over a weekend, when the general office staff would be at a minimum.
The Dr Who Production Office was also based in Threshold/Union House and John Rundle can remember visiting The Chinese Detective production office on the 3rd floor a number of times over the production period.
Sadly, Threshold/Union House is no longer there. It was demolished in 2020 to make way for The Hoxton Hotel (below).
Try as we might, we haven't been able to find any photos of the back of Threshold/Union House, where the management offices were situated. If anyone has a photo of the rear of the building please don't hesitate to get in touch and we'll update this article to include it.
So the Lamplighter's operational base was a combination of two BBC locations - Woodstock Grove and Threshold/Union House.
As the following excerpt from Adam Sisman's biography of John le Carré indicates, it is fitting that BBC premises were utilised for some of the filming locations for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy:
In researching locations, Powell asked David what the Circus looked like. Irvin, who was always concerned about authenticity, wondered if it would be possible to arrange for him to be shown round the offices of MI5 or MI6. There was no need, David said, looking about him: the Circus, with its dusty rooms, long corridors, shabby paintwork, decrepit furniture and even the cranking lifts, was just like the BBC.
My thanks to John Rundle, Source Merlin and Chris for their contributions to this article. Incidentally, this is the first time four fans of the series have contributed to a piece for this website! If you have information about these series that you'd like to share with other visitors we'd love to hear from you at guinnessissmiley@icloud.com
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