Copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission
This page is from the June issue of Midlands and East News from 1992. It includes news about Anita Bhalla acting as chair on the Equal Opportunities committee; Wendy Sears on running a marathon; the death of Harry Soan; Gail Herbert about Club membership for retired members; and Geoffrey Hewitt and Jim Lloyd with young musician Catriona Macdonald.
Copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission.
This photo shows Barbara Steele operating the first news digi-prompt machine at Pebble Mill, circa 1990.
This photo was originally posted on the Pebble Mill Engineers’ Facebook page, thanks to Stuart Gandy for allowing it to be shared here.
The following comments were added on the Pebble Mill Facebook page:
Keith Warrender: Autocue prior to this was generally known as the loo roll. It was manually typed with approximately three or four words per line and was hand cranked along to the speed the presenter needed to speak. They saw a magnified monitor below the camera. It was exciting if an item was dropped due to time or for a more important news story and frantic scrolling was required to go to the next news item. Corrections to Autocue were made with sellotape and scissors!
Mary Sanchez: Yes lovely Barbara… saw her recently and she’s still looking the same! So glamorous! She does not age! On the digi front – I worked on it in the 80’s when first started at Pebble Mill ( Daytime Live-Pamela Armstrong show)and yes indeed we typed about 2 words to a line in some loo roll looking paper and while on air if there were any changes we wrote them in manually and if there were any major cuts we literally cut out the paragraph and stuck it back together with sellotape during a VT!!! Hilarious! Happy manic memories! It’s very different these days in our Midlands Today newsroom!
Copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission.
Thanks to VT editor, Ian Collins, for making these screen grabs from the popular crime series, Dalziel and Pascoe available.
I think this episode is Sins of the Fathers, which was transmitted in October 2002, on BBC1. Here is the entry from the Radio Times, courtesy of the BBC Genome project.
Synopsis:
Sins of the Fathers. Investigating the murder of a young priest, the duo encounter a hostile village neighbourhood.
Written by Elizabeth-Anne Wheal; Producer Ann Tricklebank
Director Lawrence Gordon Clark www.bbc.co.uk/drama
Contributors:
Producer: Ann Tricklebank
Director: Lawrence Gordon Clark
DS Andy Dalziel: Warren Clarke
Dl Peter Pascoe: Colin Buchanan
DS Edgar Wield: David Royle
DC Carrie Harris: Keeley Forsyth
Harriet Clifford: Anne Reid
Father Tibbings: James Bolam
Bishop Halliwell: Roger Lioyd Pack
Sue Blackstone: Lindsey Coulson
Jamie Blackstone: Rob Dixon
Terry Brakespeare: Bryan Marshall
Dr Stephen Weston: Michael Hodgson
PC John Shepherd: John Flitcroft
Dr George Appleton: Tom Charnock
Dr Paul Ashurst: James Puddephatt
http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/c66fa5b9f4eb42a1b1867bf7741148ed
The following comments were left on the Pebble Mill Facebook page:
James Holloway: ‘Robert Carter (camera operator) and I (grip) worked on the last 6 episodes.’
Roy Thompson: ‘Excellent TV drama. Still watch it on the Drama Channel.’
Tim Partridge: ‘I was the Boom Operator.’
Matt Poynter: ‘I did the first series!’
Roger Slater: ‘I was Production Sound Mixer’
Copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission.
These pages include the cast and crew for episodes 1 and 5 of the series, Boys from the Blackstuff from 1982. The lists include the stuntmen, and the day by day schedule of the two episodes. Episode 1 includes the death of Snowy, in a fall from a window, which obviously involved a stuntman.
Thanks to Rachel Selby, from Costume, for sharing these pages, and for keeping them safe since the early 1980s.
The following comments were left on the Pebble Mill Facebook page:
Tony Wass: Myself and Andy Redfern were the Boom Ops on this and I was also the dubbing editor and gram op – we got a BAFTA for the sound too! This was the first time video audio was track laid like film, it took me some weeks……
Jane Partridge: I was working as Props Clerk, then. Can remember the faces of the lads who worked on it but not the names! ? Chris, Alan Fortey (Props Buyer Toni’s son), Dave Ackrill possibly – not sure if Bill did that one, too. Remember them getting ready to go away for the filming.
Screen grab from ‘You and Me and Him’. Copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission
In the months before David Rose died, I was approached by a friend and former colleague of his, asking if I could get hold of a copy of David Mercer’s 1973, Thirty Minute Theatre drama, You, and Me and Him, for him. Through friends at the BBC Drama Village, I managed to get a copy of the drama dubbed off, and sent to David. Fortunately, despite being very frail David was able to watch it in the weeks before he died, it apparently meant a lot to him. I decided to take the opportunity of watching the drama myself, and below are a few observations about it.
The only character in the play is Coster, played brilliantly by Peter Vaughan. It is a studio piece, which sounds simple, there being only one character. It is anything but! Coster is in conversation with himself, in three different guises throughout the drama, in quite a schizophrenic manner. There are different settings, an office, and a bedroom. When in the office, Coster wears glasses and is smartly dressed, in the bedroom he is dishevelled and wearing pyjamas. He is in the care of a psychiatrist and realises that he needs to pull himself together. We hear Coster taped on a ¼” tape, and on the phone to himself.
It is a psychological drama and quite philosophical, and considers some of the darker issues in life, there is talk of army rape, of pornography and lusting after little girls. The tone gets increasing violent during the drama, as one version of Coster wants to get rid of his alter-egos. He even talks of suicide. The drama ends with the conclusion that ‘You and me, are him’, and that in fact they each love the other.
Technically the drama is very complex, with hundreds of edits in a half hour piece, including a lot of split screens. John Lannin was the VT editor, and did a wonderful job. It was presumably recorded on 2” videotape, and so the editing process must have been tortuous and extremely time consuming. There are some really creative shots especially in transitions between settings, for example the feet of one of Coster’s personalities from one setting, appear in the foreground of the other setting. I’m not sure how this would have been done at that time, unless it was a locked-off shot. There is also a shot showing the empty office chair spinning, and then Coster appears sat in the chair, which was presumably a locked-off shot.
The director was Barry Hanson, with David Rose the producer, and Michael Edwards the production designer. This was a really innovative piece of drama, which stands up pretty well to contemporary viewing. Apparently the master tape was supposed to be wiped, but it was kept by the VT boys, who changed the tape number. It was then found in the basement by Paul Vanezis in 1990, and placed in the BBC Archive.