Anne Diamond – Page 2 – What Was Pebble Mill?

Good Morning in Berlin

‘Good Morning with Anne and Nick’ did a live outside broadcast from Berlin, to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in Nov 1994. The show was transmitted from the Radisson Hotel in Berlin. The presenters included Anne Diamond, Nick Owen, Will Hanrahan, Tania Bryer, and Jeni Barnett.

The photos include: Sue Robinson, Sangeeta Modha, Katie Wright, Will Hanrahan, Nick Owen, Nick Thorogood, Marco, Steve Pierson.

The furniture for the broadcast was delivered to the hotel – but it was flat-packed, which meant that the first job was to literally build the set!

The following comments were left on the Pebble Mill Facebook Group:

Conal O’Donnell: ‘The Doolan programme did a show out of the former GDR studios in Liepzig a year after the wall came down .Strangely we still had a sort of old style communist minder with us who got terribly drunk over dinner & talked endlessly about the ghastliness of the fallen regime. Ashen faced & hung over the next morning he approached in tears begging us not to repeat anything he’d said the night before “it could ruin my career”(!)It was apparent that the old cultural cringe at saying anything remotely controversial was very much still there.Impressed too at our free wheeling ” anything goes” broadcasting style were the former GDR broadcasters who watched the show go out in some awe.A pleasant reminder of a time when the BBC was regarded as a free speech beacon to the world not a Saville style cess pit..’

Katie Wright (now Cooper): ‘God…memories! Yes it was the 5th Anniversary. The furniture arriving ‘flat’ was unbelievable but in the way of Pebble Mill folk, everyone just got on with building the stuff. I’m amazed it lasted the two hours…there were a lot of bits left over?! It was a great show with some very moving memories from Andrew Sachs. Then we all had to pile onto a rather ancient chartered aircraft to get back in time for the next day’s show……’

Good Morning with Anne and Nick Office

Photos by Sue Robinson, no reproduction without permission.

Sue Robinson (studio director) took these photos in the ‘Good Morning with Anne and Nick’ office. The office was in a portacabin at the side of the building, near the radio studios, and Pebble Mill garden. Pebble Mill was so full at the time that there was no available office space, and so the portacabins had to be bolted on the side. ‘Good Morning’ was a live mid morning magazine show presented by Anne Diamond and Nick Owen. It ran from 1992-6, and used Studio C, the foyer for the set.

The photos include reporter/presenter Will Hanrahan; head of newsdesk, Neil Morris; producer, Nick Thorogood; producer, Marjorie ?; assistant producer; Sue Walton; the practicals desk team; assistant producer, Shirley Thomas, Nick Kenton.

Good Morning with Anne and Nick

Photo from Kathryn Shuttleworth, no reproduction without permission.

The photo of presenters Anne Diamond and Nick Owen was taken with a panoramic camera.

‘Good Morning with Anne and Nick’ was a daytime magazine show which was transmitted on BBC 1 from October 1992, until May 1996. It was a live show from Pebble Mill’s Studio C, the Foyer, which was previously used by ‘Pebble Mill at One’. The show included a journalistic top story of the day, celebrity interviews, as well as cookery, medical, veterinary, gardening, fashion and interiors items. There were also video strands, such as ‘The Library of Romance’, a Mills and Boon type mini soap, with a different story each week.

Kathryn Shuttleworth worked on the audio of the show.

Good Morning with Anne and Nick, Guernsey OB – Laura McNeill

Photos by Laura McNeill, no reproduction without permission.

The photos are from an outside broadcast episode of ‘Good Morning with Anne and Nick’, from the Channel Island of Guernsey. I’m not sure of the year, but probably around 1993. Alan Whicker was a guest.

The photos feature Anne Diamond and Nick Owen, Steve Pierson (Floor Manager), Sally (make-up), Eileen Hubball (wardrobe), Will Hanrahan (reporter), Sue Robinson (multi-camera director), Duncan Howell (design), Laura McNeill (sound).

Despite the hard work, it looks like a good time was had.

Good Morning Summer 1995

‘Good Morning Summer’ was presented by Sarah Greene, and Will Hanrahan.

As the name suggests, the series was a summer version of ‘Good Morning with Anne and Nick’, but without Anne Diamond and Nick Owen. The production team was pretty much the same.

The photo includes: Katie Wright (deputy editor), Sue Walton (producer), Natasha Wood (PA), Tessa Finch (editor), Sue Robinson (director), Merrick Simmonds (director), Belinda Essex (researcher), Jane McLean (PA), Vanessa Jackson (producer), Sarah Greene (presenter), Will Hanrahan (presenter), Rosemary Edwards (producer), Sarah Jayne Phillips (vision mixer), Jane Lomas (producer), Claire Popplewell (PA), Julie Tanner (AP), Slavka (researcher), Sharon Fisher (researcher), Marco (FM), Jackie Deitrich (producer).

Thanks to Jane McLean for making the photo available.