Keith Brook – Page 10 – What Was Pebble Mill?

Barrie Edgar 1919-2012

Barrie Edgar in July 2010

Barrie Edgar sadly died recently aged 93.

Barrie was closely associated with BBC Birmingham since the very early days of radio broadcasting in the city. His father, Percy Edgar was a Birmingham concert manager who was asked to start up broadcasting in Birmingham in 1922, by the chief engineer of the G.E.C. works in Witton, which was part of the British Broadcasting Company. He supplied artists, and produced programmes. Barrie’s reaction as a young child to a story called ‘Spick and Span’ was apparently the inspiration for establishing the first ‘Children’s Hour’ broadcast, which was years ahead of the BBC in London, and produced by Percy. Barrie made his first broadcast at the age of 14, playing Tom Brown in a radio adaptation of Tom Brown’s School Days.

Barrie started working in television in 1946, when he was demobilised after the war, and in 1951 he came back to Birmingham as a television outside broadcast producer. The O.B. unit was shared with BBC Manchester. The first programme he produced was an amateur boxing contest at Gosta Green, the same building which became the BBC Gosta Green Television Studio in 1955. Barrie was based at the new Broadcasting House, in Carpenter Road in Edgbaston, which was where most programmes were made until the move to Pebble Mill in 1971. Barrie produced programmes such as ‘Gardening Club’, which became ‘Gardeners’ World’, ‘Farming’ and ‘Come Dancing’. He also produced the ‘Kings College Christmas Carols’, ‘Songs of Praise’, as well as events like General Elections, and the consecration of Coventry Cathedral.

Barrie retired from television in 1979. Barrie’s son is the playwright, David Edgar.

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

Keith Brook: ‘Dear Barrie. Lovely man. Cool, calm and collected. That’s how directors and producers handle themselves when they understand the business. ‘

Gordon Astley: ‘Barrie was a mate of my dad, Pat Astley…and got me an interview for the Beeb via the back door. He looked after me for the first few months of a career that lasted 40 years. Lovely man.’

Pete Simpkin: ‘Wonderful broadcasting practitioner the like of which has gone for ever. I really enjoyed interviewing such a terrifically talented man on Radio Birmingham/WM and also remember him taking charge of the garden at Pebble Mill….how many retired producers of standing would do that?’

Lynda Kettle: ‘An extremely wonderful gentleman!’

Malcolm Carr demonstrates the EMI 2001 camera

Cameraman Malcolm Carr demonstrates the EMI 2001 camera from pebblemill on Vimeo.

Specially shot video with cameraman Malcolm Carr demonstrating the EMI 2001 studio and outside broadcast camera. The camera dates from the 1970s, and was a favourite amongst cameramen.

The camera was on display at a history of communication technology exhibition held at Salford University in October 2012.

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

Peter Poole: ‘I used these cameras when on attachment to Norwich as a Tech Op. Like most of their equipment they were in poor condition. I spent hours trying to line them up. But the pictures still looked poor. I was glad to get back on sound!’

Alan Griffiths: ‘Nobody seemed to mind if you spent two days lining them up properly. Nowadays there would be an inquisition if it took that long!’

David Short: ‘Used this camera at TV Centre. A cameraman’s camera, if ever there was one. Everything in the ‘right’ place. A joy to operate.’

Keith Brook: ‘Well done Malcolm, good demo. If I may add a comment.

Probably because of time, he missed an important point about the shot box and its use on drama.

There were six buttons, with the ‘middle’ four generally set-up to represent ‘natural’ lens angles, 9deg, 18deg, 24deg and 36deg which gave you CU, MCU, MS and MLS. All the cameras, each day, were set up on the same chart.

In a fast cutting sequence, this was the only way to accurately change shot sizes and still match the other cameras.

Without that shot box, we wouldn’t have been able to shoot drama anywhere near the standard we did. For example, we did Poldark, a 50′ costume drama, in 50′. Yes, really. Manually zooming would have created so many retakes that the rhythm of the drama would have been lost, the momentum would have gone and we’d have been there all night.

Incidentally, those lens angles, 9deg etc, were exactly the same angles as the four lenses on the old black and white cameras thus allowing the skills to transfer easily.

Thank you EMI, for understanding cameramen. And thank you Malcolm.’

Pete Simpkin: ‘EMI were very good with TV camera design.In Southampton news we had the little brother of the one Malcolm was demonstrating , the 201… we had two operators there working three cameras so they had to be literally ‘handy’!’

cameraman Malcolm CarrSave

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Pye Camera Demonstration

Pye Camera demonstration from pebblemill on Vimeo.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Specially recorded video of former BBC Manchester cameraman, Malcolm Carr, demonstrating the Pye outside broadcast camera.

The video was recorded at a history of technology exhibition in Salford in October 2012. The restored outside broadcast scanner, CMCR9, built in 1969, which was Pebble Mill’s original CM1, before becoming BBC Manchester’s, North 3, was on display at the exhibition, and the Pye camera was part of this exhibit.

Keith Brook (Scouse) posted the following comment on the Pebble Mill Facebook Group:

‘Great to see Malcolm again. Last time I saw him he was gainfully employed with 360 media, the joint venture between Granada and BBC Manchester. We were in the canteen at GTV and he was keeping his head down to reach retirement without any problems!! My memory of those Pye cameras was that on really hot days, the sides had to stay up to give ventilation, otherwise they’d overheat!!’

Look! Hear! College Rags

Thanks to Ian Collins for making these grabs available.

I think these stills are from a ‘Look! Hear!’ special called ‘College Rags’. ‘Look! Hear!’ was a regional teen orientated music, entertainment and fashion show, presented by Toyah Willcox. The shows were transmitted on BBC Midlands between 1977-81.

The title card and catwalk shots were taken in the concourse outside Studio A, and I’m presuming that Studio A itself was used for the interviews.

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

Stuart Gandy: ‘Look Hear was one of the first programmes I worked on when I started at Pebble Mill in 1980 in vision ops. On one occasion I remember we needed to get an overhead shot, looking down on one of the bands. Now these days that wouldn’t be too difficult with the small size of today’s cameras, but back in 1980 when the cameras were EMI 2001’s it was altogether more involved. The camera had to be mounted horizontally on a sturdy board with a mirror in front of the lens angled downwards. The whole thing was then lifted up above the stage using four hoists. The scans on the camera were suitably switched to get the picture the right way round because of the mirror. The shot worked though, so worth the enormous amount of time needed to set it up! ‘

Keith Brook: ‘I directed that programme!! It was full of problems during the planning and even more when a strike was called for the recording day. This will be a subject for one of my missives!! The recording went swimmingly and I finished at 4 seconds before 9. It took the whole of the following day to edit and just made transmission. I didn’t watch it go out, I went to the bar!!’

Denis MacShane at Pebble Mill

Labour MP Denis MacShane stepped down as MP for Rotherham last week after an investigation into expenses irregularities. Before he went into politics he worked as a journalist in radio, and was at BBC Pebble Mill for a while.

The following comments were contributed via the Pebble Mill Facebook Group:

Pete Simpkin: ‘He was one of the original News reporting team at Radio Birmingham. Sad to hear of his demise when so many Radio Birmingham people went on to great jobs in Network Radio and TV……….and politics.’

Keith Brook: ‘he also, surprisingly, did stuff for Midlands Today because I remember trying to teach him the etiquette of walking in front of a camera.’

Michael Fisher: ‘On the Saturday Night show RTE1 tonight one of the guests will be Edwina Currie a former Tory politician turned broadcaster who got plenty of radio experience on the breakfast show Heart of the Nation at Pebble Mill when she was a Birmingham councillor.’

Norma Scott: ‘I remember Denis when he worked for the Sunday Mercury!’

Conal O’Donnell: ‘Denis was born Denis Matyjaszek apparently changing his name at the behest of the BBC because it was too hard to pronounce (!) A legend amongst phone-in producers Denis enlivened one of his flagging shows by posing as a caller himself -unethical you might think but hey what do u do when the lines are dead?Trouble is he went on to compound the deception by calling Tory politician Reginald “reggie” Maudling a crook on air .Well he was of course but taking full advantage of our rapacious libel laws Maudling sued the Beeb for muchos sponduliks.One can’t help but smile!’