Photos by Philip Morgan, no reproduction without permission.
These photos are of the cubicle in Studio 5, one of the network radio studios at Pebble Mill. They were taken by Philip on the viewing day before the auction to sell off the equipment from Pebble Mill that wasn’t being taken to the Mailbox.
Kathryn Shuttlecock adds the following information: ‘This was our main GP (General Purpose) studio and was used for most of our Radio 2 specialist music shows as well as plenty of live broadcasts such as Late Night Currie with the dear Edwina. This got a bit hairy in the later days as the desk was really on the way out and many a time an SM could be seen taking bits of the desk to pieces live on air to try and keep the thing running! Emergency calls to London to say we might actually fall of air were not unknown! The last time this studio was used was when we had actually moved to (and were broadcasting from) the Mailbox. I used the desk and the ISDN lines in there to do a live link up to Late Night Currie for Halloween when we had ghost hunters and psychics trying to work out if all the ghostly tales of the Mill were true. I had just enough bits of kit and cables to run from Studio 5 into Studio 3 where we had set up for the evening. By that time Pebble Mill was a spooky place to be regardless of any ghoulish happenings and the ghost hunting team were so fascinated they returned a few weeks later to do a full overnight ghost watch! This was probably the last thing to happen on site before the doors were closed to us for good.’
Steve Peacock adds the following: ‘It was also the studio for many fairly hairy live Farming Todays after the move from London and before we fell victim to a plague of Boyle and started pre-recording. 14 minutes live can be a tricky number for the numerately challenged.’