Pamela Armstrong – What Was Pebble Mill?

Daytime Live at Long Lartin Prison

Daytime Live from Long Lartin Prison, circa March 1987. A really interesting OB. Glad to leave afterwards. Bonnie Tyler was a sport and did the music slot!

Mike Johnston

This was almost certainly a BBC Bristol OB truck.

Included in the photo are, left to right: Mike Johnston (FM), Simon Shaw (producer), David Weir (director), Jo Dewar just behind David, Pamela Armstrong (presenter).

Please add a comment if you can identify others.

Personnel Department Memo

Memo from Mary Mallet in Personnel to film editor, Charles White, about the need to produce his birth certificate due to joining the BBC Pension Scheme.

I particularly like the sarcastic tone of the first line!

Thanks to Charles for sharing the letter, and keeping it safe!

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

Louis Robinson: ‘In the awful, awful days of the bloodbath that was the “Pamela Armstrong Show” Mary Mallett saved my sanity. Caught between two warring factions of management, she convinced me not to resign and leave. For that I am forever grateful.’

Mary Sanchez: ‘Hey! I worked on Pam Armstrong show ! Hilarious ! I’d only been at the Beeb a few weeks and this show was a real eye opener!’

Stuart Gandy: ‘Andy Tylee was the ‘personnel officer’ which was what they were called in those days, who I was assigned to when I joined.’

Marie Phillps: ‘Yes Stuart – Andy knew every member of staff he was responsible for and introduced many innovations including Career Development amd workshops for we “penpushers” to better understand the pressure and timescales faced by programme makers
I loved my morning Vision Mixing ! He gave me lots of confidence and is owed much by many. Still my Second Son!’

Andrew Godsall: ‘That is fabulous! I recall my first personnel officer at the BBC back in 1977. I was 18 and had no idea that I could just behave normally and didn’t have to bow and scrape to authority…she told me how she hadn’t really wanted to recruit me as she thought I should have gone to university instead! Then we talked about jazz and how much she loved it. Hardly any work talk at all!’

Pete Simpkin: ‘They certainly don’t make them like Mary in this sophisticated age!!’

The Pamela Armstrong Show – photo by Maggy Whitehouse

Photo by Maggy Whitehouse, no reproduction without permission.

The photo is of the production office of the ‘Pamela Armstrong Show’, seated at the desk are Peta Newbold and Jane McLuskey. The series went out in 1986/7, after the end of ‘Pebble Mill at One’ in 1986.

The series producer was Juliet May, with Vanessa Whitburn (now the editor of the Archers) one of the producers.

Pamela Armstrong was an ITN news presenter between 1983-6, before joining the BBC, and presenting the breakfast news and ‘Pamela Armstrong’ from Pebble Mill. The show was a chat show with celebrity guests, going out on BBC 2 in the afternoons. It lasted about a year. Pamela Armstrong went on to present ‘Daytime Live’ in 1987, a lunchtime studio magazine show, from Studio C.

Stuart Gandy adds the following information: ‘This was the show that effectively replaced Pebble Mill at One, which had been very successful for over 15 years and a lot of people were sad to see it end. I seem to remember that at the time there was a general feeling that this new show was an attempt to ‘de Birminghamise’ the output from Pebble Mill. (allegedly to fit in with ideas from London). The show had blacked out windows that made the foyer like an inside studio so that the familiar view outside could not be seen. This together with the afternoon slot pulled in far less viewers. The daytime live show that followed it was a complete turn around going back to more like the Pebble Mill format and using every bit of the building to make the programme from. Us engineers had to come up with some novel ideas when the request came in to get facilities into the parts of Pebble Mill that were far from the studios!’

‘Pamela Armstrong’ was one of the first shows Mary Sanchez worked on in the production office, ‘ operating autocue on what looked like wide toilet paper on a magnifying glass. I remember making changes while on the air by cutting out/ tippexing/writing and cellotaping it back together onto the roll !! We went on the air at 4pm and due to v generous hospitality at lunchtime, alot of the guests were a bit worse for wear by the time they went on! Remember the Keith Floyd cookery slots and Fanny Craddock??!’