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Have you seen what’s happening to Television Centre? It’s being  of 950 homes, offices, TV studios and restaurants, not to mention a hotel and a Soho House members club.

I’d not been back for almost a year and things have moved on apace. From the outside you can see cranes and bulldozers, and blue sky through the gaping gap between the historic heart of the building – the listed “doughnut” – and the glass-fronted newsroom. Inside, where I spent many years working for ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News, the transformation is equally dramatic – and it’s hard to remember what it used to look like.

As you go in to the entrance hall on Wood Lane, you now find a cafe in place of the old reception desk and the revolving glass security doors.

To get my bearings, I poked my head through a door on the right and recognised one of the numerous offices I had worked in over the years, as the arts and entertainment news team was moved from floor to floor – and building to building. This one was on the ground floor, facing onto Wood Lane, and right in the firing line on the day that the IRA bomb went off in a car outside the building.

Fortunately it was a quiet Saturday night and we weren’t working (though other journalists were, upstairs in the main newsroom). When we were finally allowed back in, days later, I had assumed it would look like a bomb site. But not even a book had fallen off a shelf. The building’s invisible bombproofing had worked remarkably well.

This part of Television Centre is now the headquarters of ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Worldwide, the Corporation’s sales arm and I was there to have coffee with one of the six participants on the director-general’s senior leadership development programme. The scheme – for people from a black, Asian or minority ethnic background – arranges year-long placements with members of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳’s executive board. It is run in association with the Clore Leadership Foundation, which trains talented young leaders in the cultural and creative sectors.

The person I was meeting had contacted me after taking part in a Clore media training day which I help run – one of several projects I’m now involved in, since leaving the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ almost three years ago. The – so it must be true – but like many ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Alumni I never intended to stop work altogether.

These days I speak, write and chair events for a range of media, cultural and academic organisations.

My most enjoyable new assignment came directly out of the Clore course, where I met a member of the National Theatre’s development team. She asked if I’d like to interview some of the actors and directors, after performances, for the National’s corporate patrons. A hard offer to turn down!

I’ve also just started a monthly column for the , looking back 30 years to 1986 – the year when everything changed for the media.

In January that year, Rupert Murdoch moved his four national newspapers to a new printing plant in Wapping, breaking the stranglehold of the print unions and revolutionising the economics of newspapers. to huge acclaim - and its decision last month to cease printing and publish only online has helped make the column very topical.

1986 was a game-changing year for broadcasters too. The eagerly-awaited Peacock Report on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ funding dismissed proposals to replace the licence fee with advertising but recommended that ITV franchises should be awarded by competitive tender. British Satellite Broadcasting won the UK's Direct Broadcast by Satellite licence, beating a bid from Murdoch.

And there were multiple crises at the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳, as it crossed swords with Norman Tebbit and the Tory government and acquired Duke Hussey as its chairman, culminating in the departure of the director-general Alastair Milne - all lovingly recounted in Michael Leapman's book of that year, The Last Days of the Beeb.

In 1986, I was writing about the media for national newspapers and business magazines and presenting a weekly programme on LBC Radio. Three years later I joined the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ as the media correspondent for radio news. It is fair to say that I was not welcomed with open arms, being seen by many in ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ News as one of John Birt’s unnecessary new cadre of social affairs specialists.

On my first day at the Corporation, I was shown round the programmes that I would be working for. In the Today office, I was introduced to the legendary Brian Redhead as the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳’s new media correspondent. “Oh well, I hope you get a proper job one day” he said.

24 years later, as I left the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳, . After covering the early departures of several ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ director-generals, chairmen and channel controllers; royal crises; the press and privacy, from paparazzi to phone-hacking; and the satellite and digital revolutions, I hope even Brian Redhead might have accepted there was a proper job to be done.

My last ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ crisis involved Jimmy Savile and the departure – after 54 days as director-general – of George Entwistle. for the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ in the book Is the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ in Crisis?, including why I had to read a two-minute piece for the 10pm Radio 4 bulletin live off my iPhone.

A few weeks ago I was back at New Broadcasting House, for a much more enjoyable occasion - the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Alumni event on the future for children’s broadcasting, a topic I’ve often covered over the years. It was a chance for former members of the department to catch up with each other and hear from James Purnell and the Director of ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Children’s, Alice Webb, about the latest plans - and to ask searching questions and give them the benefit of their wisdom and experience!

I hope there’ll be more – so if you’d like to suggest other ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Alumni events, let Natasha Maclean know.

Torin Douglas is former media correspondent and ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Alumni member.