Albert Barber, Chris Wickham, David Denness, Bernie Newnham, Tony Grant, Brian Curtis

Acronym	Definition
BBC	Backup Bus Controller
BBC	Baja Beach Club
BBC	Balanced Biological Communities
BBC	Balham Bowls Club (UK)
BBC	Ballentyne Brumble Communications
BBC	Ballet British Columbia
BBC	Baltimore Bicycling Club (regional organization)
BBC	Baltimore Brewing Company (Baltimore, MD)
BBC	Band Booster Club (various locations)
BBC	Baptist Bible College
BBC	Barking Brassware Company (UK)
BBC	Base Ball Club (vintage base ball teams)
BBC	Baseball Card
BBC	Base-Band Cabinet
BBC	Baseline Business Case
BBC	Basic Business Concepts
BBC	Basketball Club
BBC	Bass Boat Central
BBC	Batangas Breeders Club (Philippines)
BBC	Bâtiment de Basse Consommation (French: Low Consumption Building; energy efficiency)
BBC	Beam-To-Beam Correlation
BBC	Beautiful British Columbia (Canada)
BBC	Beaverton Bicycle Club (Oregon)
BBC	Bedrock Bioremediation Center
BBC	Beer Bikes Cider Festival
BBC	Before Business Clearance (NASA)
BBC	Behavior-Based Control (robotics)
BBC	Beit Bridge Complex (geology)
BBC	Belfast Bowling Club
BBC	Belfast Boat Club (Ireland)
BBC	Belgian Bus Company (the now defunct Alfacam, a Belgian Outside Broadcast company who built some trucks on coach chassis)
BBC	Bellflower Brethren Church (Bellflower, CA)
BBC	Belper Baptist Church (UK)
BBC	Bergen Brunswig Corporation
BBC	Berkeley Bicycle Club
BBC	Berkeley Biodiesel Collective (Berkeley, CA)
BBC	Berkley Business College (Oviedo, Spain)
BBC	Berkshire Boys’ Choir
BBC	Berkshire Brewing Company, Inc (South Deerfield, MA)
BBC	Best Buy Company (store)
BBC	Best of British Comedy
BBC	Bethany Baptist Church (Lubbock, TX)
BBC	Bethany Bible College (Canada)
BBC	Bible Baptist College
BBC	Big Bad Cow
BBC	Big Band Café (France)
BBC	Big Bear Chopper (motorcycles; Big Bear Lake, CA)
BBC	Big Beef Creek (Washington)
BBC	Big Blind Country (song by Fela Kuti)
BBC	Big Block Chevy (396/427/454 cubic inch displacement)
BBC	Big Blue Cup (Adventure Game Studios)
BBC	Bikes Belong Coalition
BBC	Bilharzial Bladder Cancer
BBC	Billionaire Boys Club
BBC	Binary Block Code
BBC	Biotechnology/Bioservices Center (University of Connecticut)
BBC	Bishop Burton College
BBC	Black Belt Club (brown belt training class)
BBC	Black Box Catalog
BBC	Black Box Corporation
BBC	Block Check Character
BBC	Bloomington Bicycle Club
BBC	Bluegrass Brewing Company (Louisville, KY)
BBC	B’nai Brith Canada
BBC	Board of Barbering and Cosmetology (California Department of Consumer Affairs)
BBC	Boarding for Breast Cancer (snowboarding)
BBC	Bodisen Biotech, Inc. (stock symbol)
BBC	Boeing Employees’ Bicycle Club (Seattle, WA)
BBC	Bolder Bicycle Commuters (Colorado)
BBC	Bolt Bus Controller
BBC	Bombay Bicycle Club
BBC	Bombenzyl Cyanide
BBC	Bonfils Blood Center (Colorado)
BBC	Born Before Computers
BBC	Bosco Business Club
BBC	Boston Bean Company
BBC	Boston Beer Company (Boston, MA)
BBC	Boston Borough Council (UK)
BBC	Boston Business Computing
BBC	Bowen Building Centre Ltd. (Canada)
BBC	Box Board Cuttings (paper products)
BBC	Brajindra Book Company (India)
BBC	Brake Before Clutch (driver training)
BBC	Brass Band of Columbus (Columbus, OH)
BBC	Braxton Butterfield Consulting
BBC	Breeding Bird Census
BBC	Breeding Bird Count
BBC	Brentwood Borough Council (UK)
BBC	Bridge Between Memory Cells
BBC	Bridgeport Brass Company
BBC	Bristol Bathroom Company
BBC	British Beer Company (Plymouth, MA)
BBC	British Biker Cooperative
BBC	British Born Chinese
BBC	British Born Cypriot
BBC	British Broadcasting Centre (common, but incorrect)
BBC	British Broadcasting Corporation
BBC	Brixton Broadcasting Corporation (Delbert Wilkins Show, UK TV)
BBC	Broad Band Channel
BBC	Broadband Bearer Capability
BBC	Broadband Chaff
BBC	Broadbank Burbcasting Corporation (syndicated radio program)
BBC	Brockway Broadcasting Company
BBC	Broken Biscuit Company
BBC	Broken Beatz Consortium
BBC	Bromley Baptist Church
BBC	Bromley Borough Council.
BBC	Brookline Bird Club
BBC	Brooks Biddle Chevrolet (Washington auto dealer)
BBC	Brothers By Choice (San Francisco, CA advertising agency)
BBC	Brown Boveri Company
BBC	Brown’s Boundary Control (and Legal Principles)
BBC	Buck-Boost Converter (power supply)
BBC	Building Better Communities (various locations)
BBC	Building Block Consulting, LLC (Austin, TX)
BBC	Building Business Communication (UK)
BBC	Building the Beloved Community (various locations)
BBC	Bulawayo Bowling Club (South Africa)
BBC	Bumper to Back of Cab (trucking measurement)
BBC	Bungay Bowls Club (UK; bowling association)
BBC	Burma Border Consortium
BBC	Burnt Bridge Creek (Washington)
BBC	Bus Bar Chamber
BBC	Bush Bedding Centre (Shepherds Bush Market)
BBC	Business Boot Camp (various locations)
BBC	Business Breakfast Club
BBC	O-Bromobenzyl Cyanide (tear gas, riot control agent)
BBC	Beer Bikes Cider Festival

Peter Hider

We had finished shooting a film, “Wynn and Penkovsky”, in  Rouen. The Mayor and Council invited our Production team to a rather grand dinner in the town hall. Dinner was excellent as was  our Producer Innes Lloyd’s speech in French. The Mayor countered with a short speech in English culminating in a toast to  "Our honoured guests from the British Broadcasting Castration".

On another film whilst recovering in the hotel bar from a long hot day’s shoot, a very irate gentleman demanded to see the Manager of the film crew. I was told that two of our BBC crew were in his hotel bar, some two miles away, drunk, lewd and verbally abusing the lady guests. Although I was fairly sure that all my crew were in our hotel and far too knackered to walk two miles for a drink, I reluctantly walked the two miles with him while he constantly gave me his very low opinion of the beeb. I arrived to find that what he claimed was true and still happening although on being questioned we discovered the two abusive drunks were from the very same Brown Boverie et Cie, the Swiss Electrical company that Hugh mentions. I insisted that he walk me back to my hotel during which time he gave me a grovelling apology and sang the praises of the beeb. The Brown Boverie Company merged in the 1980s and are now part of the ABB group.

Hugh Sheppard

Arriving in Sydney in 1987 I was taken aback that in Oz ‘BBC’ popularly meant BBC Hardware, a successful nationwide chain although I can’t recall what the BBC stood for.  I wasn’t the first to take them on, my predecessors had tried and failed and the company quoted the ‘Brown Boverie Corporation’ as pre-dating us with these initials in the UK.

We tackled them in a desultory way, mindful that the confusion gave us some gratuitous publicity.

One day in 1988 or 1989 two Japanese tourists came to our William Street office with little English, but with a Japanese street map of Sydney. They had been re-directed from a nearby BBC Hardware store, because their map showed its building marked as ‘BBC’ written in English. In turn, that had been identified in Japanese in the key as the ‘British Broadcasting Corporation’.

The hardware chain became defunct in about 2000, but I wish I had a copy of that map.

Dave Mundy

The list above includes the Brown Boveri Company. Some time ago we were doing an OB from the Wembley Arena and at the same time there was a trade exhibition in the Wembley Conference Centre.

One of the exhibitors was the aforementioned Brown Boveri Company. They had some advertising give-aways, with the letters BBC on, including this spinning finger! I think it could be used in a pub to decide who buys the next round, or a novel version of Russian Roulette! It is perfectly balanced and spins for ages.

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