November 2015 – Page 2 – What Was Pebble Mill?

The Long Lost Shows Show on Big Centre TV

Wesley Smith & Vanessa Jackson on the Long Lost Shows Show

Copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission. I was interviewed a couple of months ago by Big Centre TV, about BBC Pebble Mill. The show was transmitted on Big Centre TV on Saturday 14th Nov 2015, and is available to watch online, on the following link: http://www.bigcentre.tv/watch-again/entertainment/9742-tv-heaven-the-long-lost-shows-show.

I was interviewed by presenter Wesley Smith, who coincidentally I was at university with. We talk about several Pebble Mill programmes, including The Rainbow, and Nice Work amongst others. The show is part of a series: The Long Lost Shows Show, and therefore some lost Pebble Mill programmes are mentioned, including several episodes of Look! Hear! and The Actual Woman, which weren’t kept, and have now been restored to the BBC archive, through domestic copies kept by one of the Look! Hear! presenters, and by Jack Shepherd, who wrote The Actual Woman. The archive society Kaleidoscope copied the domestic tapes, and gave the copies to the BBC.

Saeed Jaffrey

Maurice Colbourne & Saeed Jaffrey. Copyright resides with the original holders, no reproduction without permission

Saeed Jaffrey, the well known Indian actor died today (Nov 16th 2015), aged 86. He will probably be best remembered for appearing in Gandhi, amongst a hugely long and impressive list of different film and television roles, but he also appeared in the Play for Today, and subsequent series, Gangsters (1975, 1976 & 1978), at BBC Pebble Mill. Gangsters was apparently one of his first roles after he moved from India to the UK. He played Aslam Rafiq, the charismatic boss of an illegal human trafficking racket.

Gangsters was produced by David Rose; Philip Saville directed the Play for Today, and Philip Martin devised and wrote the film noir, which was inspired by The French Connection.

We are BBC Birmingham – Nations and Regions

These pages are from a brochure called We are BBC Birmingham, which was issued to staff and others when BBC Birmingham moved from Pebble Mill to the Mailbox in 2004. An important part of BBC Birmingham was, and still is, as the headquarters of English Regions, which these screen grabs give details of. The English Regions controlled regional programming, local radio, and the websites associated with the local radio station areas – called, Where I Live, sites in 2004.

Thanks to Dharmesh Rajput for making these pages available.

Not A Lot Of People Know That!

Not a Lot of People Know That was a studio comedy quiz show which went out in summer 1998. It was transmitted on Mondays at 11pm. It was produced by Mike Taylor, with Sue Robinson as studio director.

Here is the entry for the first show from the BBC Genome project, which lists Radio Times entries:

Synopsis

A new comedy quiz presented by Bob Mills.
Tonight comedian Ben Miller , presenter Alice Beer and scientist Professor Heinz Wolff are among the guests answering questions on the strange, bizarre and downright weird. Director Sue Robinson ; Producer
Mike Taylor

Contributors

Presented By: Bob Mills.
Unknown: Ben Miller
Presenter: Alice Beer
Unknown: Professor Heinz Wolff
Director: Sue Robinson
Producer: Mike Taylor

http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/d4220216483a4faaa19eec9f373c3d0f

Thanks to Ian Collins for making this titles grab available.

Guten Morgen Mug

Photo by Jean Palmer, no reproduction without permission.

About a hundred of these mugs were produced, for the Good Morning with Anne and Nick programme which came live from Berlin, to commemorate the 5th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, in 1994.

Thanks to Jean Palmer for keeping the mug safe for the last twenty years, and for sharing the photo.