Photo from Jonathan Dick, no reproduction without permission
The Midlands Today newsroom at Pebble Mill from the early nineties.
Cathy Houghton in the foreground and David Davies in the background, at BBC Pebble Mill, Birmingham. The computer system was BASYS, which Cathy apparently excelled at!
Thanks to Jonathan Dick for sharing the photo.
The following comments were left on the Pebble Mill Facebook page:
Malcolm Hickman: ‘As a Comms engineer, we sometimes had to see Gwen Smith when there had been a problem with the Saturday results feed. Her bark was always greater than her bite. When you got it wrong, she gave you a tongue lashing, when it went right, she sent out a hero gram. A lovely lady.’
Jane Partridge: ‘I remember when Phil was doing a Saturday Comms shift and I was away (possibly at Guide Camp in those days) he took our eldest daughter into work with him, she was 5 at the time (so 1989-90) and he was heavilly involved in setting up the BAYSIS system. She was used to using the BBC Model B computer we had at home, so going into the newsroom with him, she perched on a stool and was happily occupied tapping away on a keyboard…. the report I got was that there was a newsroom of open-mouthed journalists nervously attempting what this 5 year old didn’t bat an eyelid at.’
Diane Kemp: ‘I remember when BASYS came in. There were some ‘super users’ who taught the rest of us. Jane Green was one, I think??’