I was discussing horse racing with my sister. She had come over for a coffee between Christmas and New Year and we were talking about possible outings. She suggested going to the races and advised studying the form before going. I said I didn’t know how to read form. Racing pages and form are not my specialist subject – though she pointed out that our mother had taught her how to read the form. When I go to the dogs at Walthamstow, I bet on the trap number – I am that sophisticated, not!

Then she really surprised me and said that she remembered our mother taking her to the horse racing at Ally Pally. Well – firstly – why wasn’t I included? Possibly because I was only about five at the time. And secondly – how extraordinary given how well I know the history of the Pally – that I didn’t know that my own mother had taken to going to the horses and gambling there!

Of course, when the Palace is contracted out to developer Firoka for one hundred and twenty-five years and there is no plan, as far as I am aware, to re-introduce racing. However, there was a big row about the preservation of the birthplace of television – and it still continues.

Whilst there a clause that there will be a museum of TV, there is no contractual obligation to preserve the historic site itself and its one-off artifacts like the Director’s Gallery. There are moves I heard rumblings about, to try and get its listing changed as at present the listing only preserves the outside. And the Charities Commission has had a 30-day consultation to which people I hope submitted their views.

A TV program called me the day before New Year because they wanted to run a story on the TV studios and had picked up that I had tabled an Early Day Motion about this in Parliament. From my early brush with the new owners who were not happy that I had tabled such a motion or that the media had got the story (being about the birthplace of television it’s not that surprising) I gather that they are not keen on media attention – so luckily for them, the TV station decided anyway to go with another story.

But as the Pally passes into new hands, I hope that those who now have this amazing building in their care remember the importance of working with local people and considering their needs and their well-being at the same time as trying to turn it into a viable development for themselves.

And as for horse-racing…

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2007