Bob Langley dances with Ginger Rogers
These photos are not be reproduced without permission.
Saturday Night at the Mill’ was a spin off from ‘Pebble Mill at One’, and featured live entertainment from the Pebble Mill foyer. Kenny Ball’s jazz band was the resident band. The show ran from 3/6/76 until 11/7/81, and there were 89 episodes. The photos feature: Bob Langley dancing with Ginger Rogers, Jenny Hanley, Natalie Wood, John Bennett, Marvin Hamlisch, Roger Whittaker, Robert Wagner.
NB: This song is not to be used in any commercial capacity. The Pebblemill.org site has kindly been given permission to include it, by Denis Sheppard’s family.
THE PEBBLE MILLY POLKA
As producer presenter of the mid afternoon show on Radio WM I had to seek out all sorts of people in the community who were achieving things or involved in events and occasions which were important or interesting in the community of the West Midlands.
These could range from visiting personalities or experts or, as was mostly the case, people who had done even one thing that was helpful to others or just plain interesting or entertaining.
Enter Denis Sheppard an octogenarian ex- Birmingham policeman and indeed Police Bandsman. Over the years he had composed music and songs on various subjects mostly annual expressions of love for his wife who was celebrated in many such songs. However living as he did in the Pershore Road he watched in the late sixties the development of the new building at Pebble Mill. He was moved to write a song in celebration of the opening and so it was when this came to my notice in 1982 some years later I just had to feature him and his music on the show. He gave a fascinating interview which has unfortunately not survived the move to the Mailbox but I still have a recording of the song which I enclose with this item together with copies of his original sheet music which you may be able to graphically include in the website. There is a mention of the BBC in the lyrics towards the end of the song. These items are included with the active help and permission of his family.
Photos provided by Jo Mainwaring, not to be reproduced without permission.
Martin Chuzzlewit was a 6 part dramatisation of the Charles Dickens novel, adapted by author David Lodge. It was transmitted in 1994 on BBC 1. Produced by Chris Parr and Directed by Pedr James, it starred Paul Scofield, Tom Wilkinson, Emma Chambers, Philip Franks, Keith Allen, Pete Postlethwaite, Julia Sawahla and Lynda Bellingham. The story concentrates on the wealthy Chuzzlewit brothers and their contrasting destinies.
Maggie Thomas Make-up Artist
The First Series Of ‘All Creatures’
Christopher Timothy, Peter Davison and Carol Drinkwater were with us all the time, since most of the storylines required them to be ready for their scenes all day. My main responsibility was Chris and Carol. How lucky was that? They soon became my dearest friends and keeping Chris’s period haircut neat was really the most make-up I needed to do for him. We were really aiming for the totally natural country look and with Carol it was a matter of controlling her beautiful natural curls into a slightly more old- fashioned look. So, apart from hats on and off and making sure that wind-blown pieces of hair were in the same place for continuity, the actual make-up job seemed pretty minimal, until we realised that every storyline had an injured animal in it and that my Designer and I would, as far as possible, be doing them!
What we didn’t know was that every animal injury in the storyline would require a lot of attention from the Make- up Department. It soon became very clear that we were going to have our work cut out to achieve some believable looking animal injuries and other problems that I will now relate to you. Another lovely job that came our way was mud – on and off at all relevant times, i.e. when an artiste slipped over in a cowshed or an animal had a sudden and unexpected movement that made the artiste get dirty. So, at the start of every day we had to mix up our bucket of artificial mud that went everywhere with us, just in case! That was not the worst thing we had to produce. Every day the script would throw up things like puss in the horse’s hoof which had us propositioning the catering wagon for a mixture of mustard and mayonnaise which we then put into the hole in the horse’s hoof that the real vet Jack Watkins had cut out in readiness and then we put some of the horny hoof bits back over it so that when Chris (Mr. Herriot) started to use the hoof implement the puss would ooze out.
Excerpt from ‘Dishing the Dirt’ by Maggie Thomas, available from Amazon, authors on line
‘NOW THE NEWS FROM YOUR REGION’
I wonder how many people remember the VHF regional radio news bulletins that used to go out at 6.55 and 7.55 am every weekday from Pebble Mill during the 70s.They were read mainly by John Hogarth and also by Christopher Stagg, David Stevens, Terry Coates and Guy Thomas, if my memory serves me right- and it’s been 30 years!.They were written by a reluctant team of BBC journalists, including me, who got in before 6am and cobbled together a read of overnight stories(left by the late sub the previous evening) to give our limited, but growing, VHF audience the latest news from the West and East Midlands, together with a brief weather roundup. Sometimes a tape insert was included, from the likes of reporters Barney Bamford, Geoffrey Green and Kay Alexander. I seem to remember Sue Beardsmore may have been involved on the technical side.Then along came breakfast optouts, the continuing expansion of local radio, a separate East Midlands region based at Nottingham and waveband changes and the bulletin became superfluous and disappeared without any fanfare. David and Guy went on to television news and continuity but the others disappeared. How many are still with us?
Maurice Blisson