November 2011 – Page 4 – What Was Pebble Mill?

Pre-Pebble Mill buildings – Broad Street – Dave Kirkwood

BBC Broad Street. This building stood near the canal next door to Gas Street on the Mailbox side of the road. The ground floor was used by a variety of retail outlets. There was one unit on the ground floor, which was used as a BBC Club Bar. TV switching was at the back on the Ground Floor, but unseen from the road. Upstairs on floor one you found the sound control room, telecine, film editing and sound recording suites. In 1965, when I first arrived, there was also a tiny TV studio from which ‘Midlands Today’ was broadcast, but this was soon replaced by a modern studio on the first floor, which also handled other programmes such as ‘Farming’ and programmes for the immigrant community. (Not PC today I know, but that was how they were known then). Also on this floor was the film processing lab, a radio drama studio (for ‘The Archers’) and production offices for ‘Midlands Today’.

Dave Kirkwood

Gail Herbert adds the following comment: I thought the building had been knocked down and the Hyatt built in its place. There is a plaque I believe on the Hyatt Broad Street side saying this. The staff used to use the Crown as the unofficial club.

Cartoons of Pete Simpkin – Radio Birmingham

‘Good Company’ OB to the Saddlers Centre

Rolf Harris cartoon of Pete

Yoga on the Radio

Radio Birmingham producer/presenter Pete Simpkin has three cartoons of himself from when he worked at Pebble Mill. The first relates to an OB he did for the Afternoon show ‘Good Company’, from the Saddlers Centre, Walsall. The second was drawn by Rolf Harris whilst Pete interviewed him, and the third is about the famous ‘Yoga by Radio’ which was pioneered on Radio Birmingham.

Juliet Bravo – Janice Rider interview

Specially shot interview with Janice Rider about working on the police drama series: ‘Juliet Bravo’, starring Stephanie Turner.

There were six series in all, going out between 1980 and 1985. I don’t know if all of them were hosted at Pebble Mill, or just a couple of series. The series was created by Ian Kennedy Martin.

Pebble Mill at One, Bob Langley – Jane Mclean

Bob Langley on location in Italy

(This memory is of an incident which occurred in the 1970s, when Jane Mclean was working on autocue on ‘Pebble Mill at One’).

The one and only time I ever saw Bob Langley lose his rag was when I had altered the autocue/loo roll so much that it was too thick to go through the machine and stuck. Too much for Bob who couldn’t speak his own name without autocue – bless!! – so when autocue stopped, so did he!!

Jane Mclean

(photo by Ian Collins)

Golden Oldie Picture Show – ‘He’s in Town’ – photo by Gail Herbert

Photo by Gail Herbert, no reproduction without permission.

‘The Golden Oldie Picture Show’ was an entertainment show consisting of specially shot videos for music hits which predated the era of music videos. The show included a number of different music videos each week, linked by Radio 1 DJ, Dave Lee Travis. It went out between 1985-8.

The show was produced at Pebble Mill by John King.

This photo is of the location shoot in Bristol of the hit ‘He’s in Town’. I’m sure which version of the song was used.

Gail Herbert was the production assistant on the series.