h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Alight here for BBC Television Centre (and various other buildings, including the one h2g2 is based in) and QPR football club. You can often see reasonably famous people on their way to or from the Beeb - or at least, the ones I remember seeing are Marcus Brigstocke, Steve Punt and Simon Day. Not all together though.

(I was behind Simon Day in the queue for the ticket machine. He dropped ten pence, which I picked up and handed to him. He 'thanks' and that's as far as I took the conversation. Sometimes it's better that way.)

White City is the first overground station on the Westbound Central Line coming from Central London, and also the first station west of Marble Arch where trains can be turned round and sent back east. It has two island platforms in between three tracks - the centre track can be accessed from either platform, and although through running is possible on it, it's usually used for trains that terminate. The doors open on the side of the Westbound platform, the tube is emptied, the doors are closed and then the opposite set are opened on the other side on the Eastbound platform.

Even regular commuters to White City often get confused by this. What happens is they don't realise the tube they're on is terminating, or notice that it's arriving on the central track rather than the outside Westbound one. So they stand there on the wrong side of the tube looking at what's actually the Eastbound platform and expecting the doors to open and they don't - it takes a few seconds to work out what's happened. Connisseurs of this phenomenon delay getting off so they can see the rueful looks on the faces of such people as they turn around 180 degrees to get off on the Westbound platform because that's the side the doors have opened on.

(I hope all this makes sense, and is worthwhile. I'm rather tired. Feel free to rewrite or omit it as necessary)

The station building itself was built after the second world war, and won an architectural award at the Festival of Britain. There's a plaque somewhere telling you this. It's also quite unusual for an Underground station these days in that it has public toilets.

I am curious. Does anyone know why the platforms at White City were constructed the wrong way around