Alan Titchmarsh – Page 3 – What Was Pebble Mill?

End of Pebble Mill 1996

Crew and production team of the last Pebble Mill show, May 1996. Pebble Mill was an entertainment magazine show which went out before the lunchtime news on BBC 1 Daytime.

The show was presented by Alan Titchmarsh, Sarah Greene amongst others.

Here are a few of those in the photo:

Front row, left to right: Mark Kershaw (director),?,Kate Hillman, Crispin Evans , Alan Titchmarsh, Sarah Greene, Ross King, ?, Ronnie Butt, ?, Annie Gumbley-Williams

2nd row, l to r: Royston Horsley, Nick Harris, Shirley Benson,? , ?, Gill Thompson, Sarah Reddi, Melissa Feather

3rd row, l to r: ?, ?, Caroline Marshall, ?

1st row standing: Belinda Essex, ?, ?, ?, Vicky Jepson, Anya Francis, ?, Helena Taylor, Claire Chambers, Jane Benham, Clara Hewitt, Sue Lowe, ?

2nd row standing: Merrick Simmonds, Geoff Nawn, Andy Frizzell, (further across) Roulla Xenides, Janice Rider

Next to back row: (fourth and fifth from the right) John Carney (Tech manager), Mike Lee (Vision supervisor), in front of these row is Ian Cull (Vision engineer)

Back row: Dave Brazier, ?,?,?,?,?

(Thanks to Roulla Xenides, and Stuart Gandy for adding in some names).

Please add a comment if you can name some of the others!

Thanks to Ronnie Butt for sharing the photo.

Pebble Mill – Comic Relief

This photo is from when Lenny Henry kicked off the 1993 Comic Relief campaign on Pebble Mill. Alan Titchmarsh was the presenter, and Johannah Dyer, the producer.

Thanks to Johannah Dyer for sharing the photo.

Alan Titchmarsh opens a Children in Need project – Marie Phillips

Photos by Marie Phillips, no reproduction without permission.

The photos show gardening and talk show presenter, Alan Titchmarsh, opening a Children in Need project, before sharing tea with the children involved.

It was Ulverley Green Special School in Olton, about 1996. CIN had paid for the equipment for a play area and raised plant beds. We took some cowslips for them. Alan was, as ever, brilliant and spent so much time with the children and mothers, although he did get told off for eating the pansies on the tea tables. He was just demonstrating that they were edible, but some of the mums thought it might encourage their kiddies to eat some plants which were not!! He was mortified and very apologetic but made a lovely speech to officially open the Project. I drove him there and must have scared the daylights out of him because he made the return journey with Gyn Freeman and the film crew – hee! hee!

Gardener of the Year Final 1999

Photos probably taken by Mark Kershaw, no reproduction without permission.

The photos are from the first ‘Gardener of the Year’ final in 1999. We recorded the show at the Earth Centre in Doncaster in early September 1999, with the programme being transmitted just before Christmas on 21 Dec, and achieving some very good audience figures. The show ran for around 10 years.

For the final the contestants had to design and build a show garden which was about 5m square. They had a budget which they had to stick to rigorously, and they were allowed one helper each. Each regional winner from the heats had 5 days to build their garden. I remember a fair amount of tears and tantrums. The finale was an OB in a fantastic marquee presented by Alan Titchmarsh. Charlie Dimmock reported on how the contestants had got on during the build. The format worked really well, and was finessed over the subsequent years, although the preliminary heats were dropped.

The series was produced by me (Vanessa Jackson), executive produced by Roger Casstles, directed by Mark Scott, with assistant producers Kate Hillman and Beverleigh Wildman (now Thompson). The judges were garden designer Ali Ward, Gardeners’ World Magazine editor Adam Pascoe, and presenter and gardening expert Nigel Colborn. Alan Titchmarsh was the presenter, with Charlie Dimmock reporting.

The photos include: Charlie Dimmock (jeans), Roger Casstles (navy jacket), me (Vanessa Jackson, centre, blue floral dress – and 6 months pregnant), John Moorcroft (camera, yellow T-shirt, shorts). Ali Ward and Adam Pascoe (judges) in the penultimate photo, and Dave Brazier (floor manager) and me in the last photo.

Daytime Live – behind the scenes

Here is a behind the scenes clip of ‘Daytime Live’ from 1 November 1988, presented by Alan Titchmarsh. It was one of the successors to ‘Pebble Mill at One’, and had a very similar magazine format. This clip is one of a series recorded by the BFI as part of their ‘One day in the life of television’ project in 1988.

The excerpt shows Alan Titchmarsh giving a behind the scenes tour of the ‘Daytime Live’ office, with a psychologist commenting on the state of the production team’s desks and what they say about them as people. Featured are David Morgenstern and Jane McCloskey.

‘Daytime Live’ was recorded in Studio C, like ‘Pebble Mill at One’.

Jane Clement added the following information via the Facebook page: ‘Nice to see the back of my head there (at the first desk as Alan enters the office, opposite the gorgeous Steph). It was actually Jane (not Jo) McCluskey, I think – she was Queen of Books at the time, a role I held myself before her when I took over from the late great Jenny Cowan. Of all my jobs at PM, that was probably my favourite, given my lifelong love affair with books. Also interesting to see David Morgenstern; he and I had bought a house together in Harborne that year (purely as friends, I should say); I was due to emigrate to Australia the next month (December 88) and I laughingly thought the house would be a good investment. How wrong I was!’