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This year the ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service is leaving Bush House - a building which has been our headquarters for the last 70 years.

John Tusa is one of Bush House's legends.

He managed the World Service in the late 1980s and early '90s. For the two-part documentary Goodbye to Bush House , he interviewed journalists about their memories of working in Bush House. But here's some fragements of it.

Najiba Kasraee (worked in the Afghan Service, now works for the College of Journalism):

Najiba : I started my work in May '92 in ´óÏó´«Ã½.

John Tusa: Yes.

Najiba: And I couldn't speak English. I remember coming for my first day. Brian Bull was the deputy of the Pashto Persian service then and he spoke Russian. So the best way for me to communicate with him was in Russian. And then they said to me, we can use you as a presenter for reading letters.

My job was to select these letters from Afghanistan and then read them. There was one letter and I still remember that from a woman in Kabul who said, could the United Nations 'blue hat' soldiers come to Kabul and I thought it's a civil war, not an international one - and I thought that's such a nice letter.

I soon realized that this was just a joke for everyone else. That the request from Afghanistan for international troops was not something that was taken seriously - and then history changed so much over several years.

John: Yes indeed. Tell me about your broadcast for Afghan children.

Najiba: When I joined the ´óÏó´«Ã½ there was programme called the World of Youth. It was a 12 minute programme - translating packages about new discoveries, and interviewing some Afghans either inside Afghanistan or outside. And I proposed to my editor a programme for children - I think I thought that it was something that was lacking, something for a five year old, for a six year old. I think that was something we had never had.

Then a colleague from outside the Pashto service said to me, well, why don't you use the special effects machine and create a character? And I said how, so he showed me. I changed my voice and my voice become like a cartoon character. I created this character, it was rabbit. He would sit with me and I love her, I still love that rabbit.

John: And you talk the rabbit?

Najiba: And I would talk to the rabbit and I will say how are you? And then, she'd say, I'm fine, then I would begin to read the story and then she'd interrupt me, asking all sorts of silly questions. All the questions children will ask and I remember my daughter was five at that time and I'd read the story to her. And I'd try to put the questions that my daughter was putting to me into rabbit's mouth because I thought that's how the children will ask you.

Raymond Lee - Editor of Chinese Service

John: The ´óÏó´«Ã½ does great feel of local shortwave and FM rebroadcasting. Is there any likelihood of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ being rebroadcasted through arrangements on FM in major urban areas?

Raymond: Actually, we were successful doing that in the 1990s and even in the '80s, but it is now no longer as popular as it was before. The Chinese authorities are imposing more restrictions on local radio stations in taking content from foreign media - organizations like us.

Secondly, it is very difficult to get radio partners to promote ´óÏó´«Ã½ content on air, so in a way the impact of having your programmes on the Chinese local radio stations can be limited. And sometimes they even can't guarantee a fixed time slot for your programmes. So that's why, a few years back, we started working with online partners in China. So which means we started syndicating of online content with the websites in China. Partnerships which have proved to be quite a successful in many ways.

Nowadays, we've got nearly 30 websites in China taking our content. But of course, as you can imagine, given the particular situation in China, the content we are able to syndicate to our partners there is non-news, non-political content. So it's very much about English learning, study in the UK or British life, that kind of thing.

It's not perfect, but then I think it's the best we can do, to raise a profile, to raise awareness or maybe understand the audience in China's attitude towards ´óÏó´«Ã½ content.

Sam Younger, former ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service Managing Director.

Sam succeeded John Tusa as the ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service Managing Director in 1994.

John: You and I have after all both walked out of the Bush House portals. Supposing you were doing it again in six months' time. Walking out permanently? What images would flood your mind? Would you be thinking, this is the end of Bush House - the end of World Service broadcasting at Bush House?

Sam: Well, I suppose, portal is a good phrase to use because it conjures up something as rather imposing and something almost sort of intimidating in its seriousness. I think the building exuded that always. And I think that was actually part of the strength and part of the image of the World Service.

I suppose the image that comes back to me every time I do walk through, the thing I always think of is the extraordinarily talented and eclectic bunch of people that made up the community at Bush House with - in my day - 45 different language services.

It always stays in my mind that one evening, in my early days as managing director, I was around in the evening and it's about 8'o clock in the evening. I went wandering around the studios. The Greek Service were broadcasting.

In once studio one of Greece's leading song writers was working and in another one was Greece's leading poet. I discovered later these were the kind of people who found their way into Bush House, not as guests, but working at the desks. They found their way to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ often for awful reasons, for reasons none of us would want. There were such an extraordinarily, talented varied bunch of people and I think I have never come across an environment where there are a more interesting people per square inch than in Bush House.