Maggie Thomas – What Was Pebble Mill?

Anna of the Five Towns – Publicity Card

Anna of the Five Towns was transmitted from 9 Jan 1985 on BBC 2.

Promo card inside cover

Promo card inside

Promo card back page

Boys from the Black Stuff scene by scene

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Thanks to Rachel Selby from the costume department, for keeping these scene by scene breakdowns for Boys from the Black Stuff ep 1 ‘There’s Nothing For You’, safe since the early 1980s, and for allowing them to be shared here.

This episode ends with the death of Snowy, as he falls from a window onto the street below.

The photo of Snowy’s death is from make-up designer, Maggie Thomas.

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All Memories Great and Small – part 8, Maggie Thomas

Maggie Thomas make-up artist on ‘All Creatures Great and Small’

Excerpt from “All Memories Great & Small” by Oliver Crocker.

Memories from Maggie Thomas (Make-up Assistant, and later Make-up Designer):

‘Television was still in its infancy in comparison to what they can do today. We didn’t have mobile phones on location, they hadn’t been invented then, the AFM had walkie talkies, but they could only be used a short distance within the crew – we were totally on our own once we were out on location. It was too late to make any important changes once you left Pebble Mill, so you had to make sure you had everything you needed in your kit before you left for Yorkshire, because it was something like a four hour journey from Birmingham up to Darlington to the unit base, so you had to do a lot of preparation behind the scenes before you hit the road.’

60 cast and crew have shared their memories for this new book, which is available to order now from Miwk – http://bit.ly/2d7p5ts

The Franchise Affair

Thanks to Roger Guest for sharing this script front page, from the 1988, six part drama series: The Franchise Affair, by Josephine Tey. The series went out between September-Nov 1988, on BBC1.

Here is the link to the entry in the Radio Times, for episode one of The Franchise Affair, from the BBC Genome project: http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/bcbdbb487b894908a9120d1acd02b909

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

Dave Bushell: ‘I enjoyed working on this – a touch of film noire style and location shoots in Church Stretton and on
the Severn Valley Railway.’

Winnie O’Brien: ‘I remember it well, I did the opening title sequence and graphics. It was a wonderful project to work on.’

Ray Holman – Costume Designer

Pickwick Papers, photo by Neil Wigley

‘All Creatures Great and Small’, photo by Maggie Thomas

I came to Pebble Mill and ‘trailed’ in costume at weekends on Occupation Democrat, I was still in college in 1984 (Joyce Hawkins took me on) and then I went filming on Pickwick Papers and saw the whole programme through the studio shoot too as a dresser.
I returned to Pebble Mill after working at BBC Wales as a Costume Design Assistant, I came to do All Creatures but then became staff and worked on Parnell, Broke and then designed Specials and The Real McCoy, I stayed for 5 years working on things like A Year in Provence and Skallagrigg. I left in the first round of redundancies in 1993 and went freelance as a costume designer.
My website has my credits

http://www.costume-designer.co.uk/

I did some studio work on and off while I was staff at Pebble Mill but a lot of the programmes I worked on filmed away from Birmingham for long periods of time. I loved my time there and made many lovely friends including Beverley Dartnall who we lost recently. I’m still in touch with some lovely people from costume, it was a great productive and artistic time and always a big learning curve.

I hope that makes some sense. Lots of people will not remember me as I spent a lot of time out of the building, but I just wanted you to know I mentioned PM in my article.

Best Wishes.
Ray.

[This is the link to the article in The Independent, which Ray mentions above, where he talks about his work as costume designer on Wolf Hall, Broadchurch and Dr Who: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/behindthescenes-with-the-costume-makers-for-wolf-hall-broadchurch-and-doctor-who-9981200.html]

Ray Holman, photo copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission